Jazz Monthly.com Interview with dee brown

“Jazz Monthly Feature Interview” Dee Brown

Smitty: Joining me at JazzMonthly.com is a fantastic guitarist. Let me tell ya, if you are into great guitar sounds and you love the music to touch you at the very depths of your soul, you have got to check out this next cat. His latest record is appropriately titled “No Time to Waste.” Please welcome the amazing Mr. Dee Brown. Dee, welcome to Jazz Monthly.

Dee Brown (DB): Mr. Smitty, so good to talk to ya.

Smitty: Oh man, likewise, my brotha. When I first heard this record, I could not help but say to myself over and over “What a fresh guitar sound.” Man, I’m totally digging the record.

DB: Smitty we worked really hard on that. The sound itself is a sound that I came up with from a long time ago. I’ve been playing guitar for a long time and listening to so many great players like George Benson, Wes Montgomery, Tim Bowman, people like that. Jeff Beck….I mean, I can go on forever. I can go as far as to say Jimi Hendrix.

Smitty: Yeah man!

DB: I mean, I go way back and I love them all. So I took all those sounds and the purest sound that I liked the most was the clean archtop guitar sound.

Smitty: It’s slick. Now, I expected some great sound from you when I heard you were from Detroit. (Both laugh.)

DB: Yeah, the musicianship from Detroit like from years ago—I guess about 30-35 years ago, Motown was the thing, man, and, you know, Motown was known for kickin’ out hits, kickin’ out musicians, kickin’ out people who were real. I guess maybe it kinda trickled down to me anyway.

Smitty: Yeah, man. Yeah, well, now, you grew up listening to that Motown sound, right?

DB: Oh yeah, man, I’m really, really upset that, you know, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I was really upset that I wasn’t actually in the Motown era. Like with the Marvin Gayes and The Miracles and the Diana Rosses and the Smokey Robinsons and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I listened to Motown all my life. My mom, she loved Motown. My dad, he was a jazz man.

Smitty: Oh yeah.

DB: So I listen to jazz mostly all the time when he’s there and when my mother’s there, she likes dancing, so she listened to Motown, listened to everything that was out. I mean especially that disco music stuff. So she really liked that disco music.

Smitty: How ‘bout that?

DB: Yeah.

Smitty: Well, listening to the Motown sound and listening to that great jazz sound that your dad was playing—and I’m sure he played some Miles and some Monk and Mingus and those cats—

DB: Oh yeah.

Smitty: --and when you put those two elements together, as a kid, that doesn’t leave you. That sticks to ya.

DB: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: And I can feel that in your project, this latest project here, because it has all of those elements, it has that style, it has that groove.

DB: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: And it’s a beautiful mixture, man, when you can really spend some time and blend those two styles, yeah.

DB: Yeah, I thank you for taking a listen to it and feeling exactly what I was trying to feel while I was doing the music. It is a mixture of all the things that I experienced in my past. The thing that I really loved back in those days was the funk music. I mean, when I think of funk music, I think of like the old groups like the Ohio Players.

Smitty: That’s what I’m talking about!

DB: And let’s not forget our homeboys, the Funkadelics.

Smitty: Yes indeed.

DB: Can’t forget the Funkadelic George Clinton.

Smitty: That’s right. He was the funkmaster.

DB: Oh man, he was the man.

Smitty: Yeah.

DB: And can we leave out Roger? I mean, I know Roger wasn’t from here, but he was from that funky kinda era, ‘cause it was kinda like a mixture of James Brown a little bit.

Smitty: Yeah.

DB: And he had that little funk thing going. Of course, James Brown, he was the one who really pioneered that funk groove in the first place. James was the man. James was the one who brought it. Horns, the groove, the funk…that was James. I listened to him and Prince, we can’t leave him out because…. Even though he came out way later, he’s like an icon today.

Smitty: Absolutely, no doubt about it. Well, I was a little curious, with all the great music that you came up listening to—How did you settle on the guitar?

DB: Oh, Mr. Smitty, you asked a fantastic question!

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: I was just waiting for you to ask me that. (Both laugh.) All right, Mr. Smitty, this is how it all went down. We’re going to try to make this long story very short.

Smitty: All right, do your thing, man. (Both laugh.)

DB: As I was growing up as a kid, my father played jazz all day like we said before. He played like Miles Davis; he played Thelonious Monk, he played Dizzy Gillespie; he played Les McCann. I mean, I can go on forever, these horn players and piano players. He played orchestra music by Gerald Wilson and I believe he’s a guy from Detroit who did a lot of orchestration. But he played this one song. It was called “Bumpin’ On Sunset.”

Smitty: Yeah man!

DB: That’s Wes Montgomery. And I heard that sound. Now, you gotta remember, man, I’m just a baby.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: I said I like that sound! That’s what I like, you know?

Smitty: Yeah.

DB: And then as time went on, I kept singing that song, even today I still hear it and know it note for note, but as I progressed in my life as a child, grew older and older, the first instrument I picked up was vocals, and then I started playing the guitar and it reverts way back to Wes, and then he introduced me to George Benson and that was pretty much it at that point.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: Once I heard George—and I heard the guy Grant Green and I heard people like Joe Pass and I heard people like Earl Klugh. I heard all these people and the guitar was the instrument that stuck in my mind that I loved the most. I loved the way the strings sounded, I loved the way people looked when they played it, I just loved that instrument, so after I was exposed to Wes Montgomery, George Benson, and after hearing all those horns, that was the sound that I loved the most.

Smitty: So, now, you’ve had some bands in your time. You had a very interesting band started out called Foreplay. It’s spelled a little different from today’s band.

DB: Yeah.

Smitty: Who woulda thought that there’d be another group today called Fourplay?

DB: Oh, Foreplay. This was a high school band that I started back…Let me just kinda fill in a little bit. I’ve got a very good friend who I grew up next to as a child. His name was Eric McClinton. Eric was the lead singer of a group called Eric & The Vikings. They had a song out called “Vibrations” and they were Motown. I don’t know if you remember that song.

Smitty: No, I don’t.

DB: It was called “Vibrations.” It was a number one song. He had this hit when he was around 17-18 years old. He went on to do a couple other albums. Eric lived next door to me as a kid growing up. Eric heard me playing rock and roll guitar. When I was practicing loud, he came over to the house and said “Who was that playing guitar?” And my mother said, of course, it was me and I had a chance to meet him.

Eric McClinton was a songwriter, he was a singer, he was a producer, and he had been in the business for a very long time. He was the person who really influenced me a lot, and as my years went on, I kept saying “Eric, I have a band. Come check me out. Finally when I was a senior, he finally came and saw me and he saw our band, he loved it. He said “That band’s fantastic,” brought in his people, and his people said “Hey, we need to record you” and from that point on we recorded with him and his sister—he had a sister named Arrinett McClinton—they sang background along with us, we’d create the music, the music came out, and it sparked interest. And it kept going and kept going, and it got to Quincy Jones.

Smitty: Nice!

DB: Jones heard the music and then signed the group that I was in to a record deal. Now, unfortunately, I was not in that deal because of other things that came up. So they went on to do the recording. I did do the first album with them and I did play guitar and I did sing too on it. I didn’t get any credit, but, you know, that was kinda part of the nature of things then.

Smitty: Right.

DB: At that time, the group The Time was the big thing, or The Time which was kinda like a funky little thing from Minneapolis, kinda like a spinoff of Prince. Yeah, and since that group was sorta like what we were trying to do, or I guess we were actually imitating them, they thought that they should take it a different direction, which conflicted with the beliefs that I had in music, so I just wished the guys the best.” Quincy Jones did sign them. They did do two albums. One of the songs on the first album I believe was like in the top hundred or maybe in the top fifty.

Smitty: Oh, that’s cool. Your career had just blossomed even at that point early on.

DB: Yeah, I had a chance with Eric. Because he was so into that production stuff, he actually started me recording and showing me how recording goes, how to get the most out of a singer, how to get the most out of a musician as we’re in the studio, how to work in a studio, how to work with an engineer, how to work with a board, how to hone in the talent to get ready to go in the studio so you don’t waste a lotta time. Eric and another gentleman from Detroit named Paul Reiser, who was also part of Motown, and Paul Reiser was a great string arranger. He arranged strings for likes of Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston, people like that. Gladys Knight, of course Stevie Wonder, and of course Ashford & Simpson.

Smitty: Impressive.

DB: He actually took me into his house and he showed me how to do production. He even brought in a whole string arrangement on a song that I had recorded and he wrote all the strings out for those people to play, and when I got to the studio, it was so beautiful, just like crying.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: This guy created my song, a string line that was when I heard it, it was just beautiful.

Smitty: Yeah man. Now, when you hear something like that, especially being exposed to something like this for the first time, how does that open up a new world for you musically speaking?

DB: Well, it actually…see, what music is all about to me, it’s about concert, it’s about playing together, it’s about getting his feel into your creation or to your song or to a song, and having that person’s feel, be that person’s feel, be with that person’s feel, and they come all together and they make a song. Now, so much music today, they use a lotta sequences and computers. But that’s what that was about then. Having that foundation and knowing where everything came from and bringing it up to today where you can’t always have the musicians play live with you would actually allow me to grow and understand production much better, so it changed me in the sense that I can see things through other people’s eyes and it doesn’t offend me if it’s not what I see. Look at it as creativity and something that they bring into the song to make the song better.

Smitty: Absolutely, man, and it’s always a beautiful thing. Talk to me about One Wish.

DB: One Wish, oh man. One Wish. Well, One Wish was my attempt at putting out a vocal group. Like I said, my first instrument was vocals and, you know, as I went through college I studied vocals as part of my college training in music, and after I got out of college, I decided, okay, I’m gonna do a vocal project, and at the time there were several groups out like Jodeci, Silk, Boyz II Men, and I figured, well, if that’s what’s happening, I’m gonna put out a vocal group. So I put together some guys who I knew from our town, we put together some songs, and what I did was something really strange. Because I was a product of the Eighties and I understood the MIDI production system, I decided to do the whole project—man, this was unheard of—on guitar.

That’s the only instrument I use and I use the MIDI system to create the other sounds. Like you hear the piano, but I’m actually playing on guitar. You hear the bass, but I’m playing on guitar. So I did that because I didn’t really have a lotta musicians that I could work with, so I just decided to do it all myself, and then I brought in the vocal groups, the two other guys who I work with, a guy named Venturi Gaddis and another guy named DeAngelo Webster, who are actually two brothers, and we formed the group One Wish. We had a song that was out, it was called “Tell Me Why” and it was on the TRC record label, and the song was in the top hundred when it came out.

Smitty: Wow.

DB: It’s kinda incredible.

Smitty: That is incredible.

DB: Yeah, and we were a vocal group at the time.

Smitty: Yeah, you won some awards with that song.

DB: Yeah, we were up for a Nashville vocal award, which was impressive. I really liked that. And we won the best song recorded by a local artist in a magazine in Detroit called The Metro Times.

Smitty: That’s pretty incredible stuff, man.

DB: Yeah, that was pretty incredible. I loved that idea, although in those projects, I never actually played—whenever we performed live, I never played my guitar, I just sang.

Smitty: That’s interesting.

DB: (Laughs.)

Smitty: You know, to have done as much as you had accomplished with the guitar, you had to go back to those roots, huh?

DB: Well, I always played the guitar, but I didn’t play it live. I didn’t play it when we performed, I should say. I mean, I would play with other groups and I would play guitar or play background on jam sessions and that kind of stuff, but when I performed as One Wish, I never even held a guitar.

Smitty: That’s pretty cool.

DB: (Laughs.) Yeah, it was kinda fun. I had a great time with that group. Unfortunately we had to disband because people had other ideas of how the group should go.

Smitty: Yeah, that happens.

DB: Yeah, so we disbanded from that, but we did make some really good accomplishments and we learned a lot.

Smitty: And that’s the thing. If you’re growing in that process, then that’s what you want anyway.

DB: Absolutely.

Smitty: And case in point is Shelby Brown.

DB: Yeah, Shelby Brown was a project that I started with a gentleman by the name of Gentry Shelby and that project was started because—I’m gonna tell you the truth, Smitty—I don’t even know if I should repeat this, but this is how I felt. I’m gonna tell you the truth. One Wish, they had fell out at that point, and I’m thinking I’m trying to do something else, and I really wanted to get into guitar because my mother said “Well, Dee, when are you gonna play the guitar again?” I was like “Dang, okay. Yeah, Ma, yeah, I do wanna play.” So I heard Norman Brown playing guitar on the Smooth Jazz station in Detroit.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: And I listened to him and I’m like “I’d like to try that.” That’s what I’m thinkin’. But I was in a studio recording and I met a guy named Tim Bowman.

Smitty: Yup.

DB: And Bowman’s from Detroit. We were recording in the same studio. Tim Bowman said he wanted to record a Smooth Jazz gospel project. And as he told me that, it hit me like “Dee, that’ll be your next step.” So it stayed on my mind, and I then went and I heard Norman Brown playing. From that point on, I started the group Shelby Brown. Now, Shelby Brown was really supposed to be me as a solo act, but when I heard Shelby playing and how much he really wanted to do and learn about the music business and be a musician, be out there performing, I figured, well, why don’t I do it with him? We did a few songs and it came out pretty good. And after that we decided that there were some other things that we need to do and other musical interests, so we decided to go our separate ways.

Smitty: Now you arrived at “No Time to Waste.” What an evolution, man. I mean, this is 14 great songs. It’s that simple.

DB: Yeah.

Smitty: And I cannot say enough about the arrangements and the groove from start to finish on this record. People have got to hear this. I mean sometimes people take the attitude sometimes that “Well, I’ve never heard of this guy.”

DB: Yeah.

Smitty: Well, you need to hear this guy is what I’m saying because, Dee, this is great music.

DB: Oh man.

Smitty: It’s that simple. I mean, it’s fantastic and the players you’ve got on here are some talented musicians. You know how to pick ‘em.

DB: I like to hope that I do. It all started out with a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, Gerald Mitchell. Gerald Mitchell is with the group called Los Hermanos. Los Hermanos is a group from Detroit and a company that does house techno kind of music. Gerald does that kind of music and he’s been playing piano all his life. He’s a son of a preacher, so he plays in church all the time. Now, he’s branched off into doing techno music, where now I’m doing the Smooth Jazz kind of music, and his music is more or less computerized. But what he brought, if you listen to the song real closely, you will hear elements of techno in the song. They’re sounds that are not normally used in the kind of music that we’re listening to, which is Smooth Jazz, and he brought that element, but he also is a very good player and he’s a very good arranger and he’s also a fantastic producer with fantastic ideas. Gerald is basically the producer of the project. I also produce. So Gerald and I created all the music. Now, the other players involved were my good friend Mr. Desi McCuller, Jr.

Smitty: You could stop right there.

DB: (Laughs.)

Smitty: Now, this cat is some kind of bad.

DB: Whoo!

Smitty: You know, when I heard him—of course his sister is a very good friend of mine, Althea Rene.

DB: Yes, I know.

Smitty: And I must say, that is one talented family, because you know what Althea can do with a flute.

DB: Oh yeah.

Smitty: And, I mean, she can bring it, and when I heard Desi, I was like “Whoo!” Talk to me about how you met Desi and how you two hooked up to do this project because what a great mix to work with this cat.

DB: Desi was introduced to me by one of the singers from the One Wish group that I stay close to. His name is Venturi Gaddis. I talked to Venturi and I told him that I was trying to do a solo project and I needed a horn player….give the people a little bit something more to listen to.” I said “I don’t need him to be a great player, just somebody that can play a little bit.” And he says “Well, Dee, man, I got just the person, man. I know exactly who you need, man. You’re gonna like this guy.”

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: He brought this guy over, his name was Desi McCuller, Jr. He came in and the very first song that we played was a song on the CD called “Before I Began” and I heard him play those melodies and those lines in there and I said “Desi, you got the job!”

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: And he was very thankful, he was very humble, and he has no ego or anything like that. I mean, the guy is just a charm to work with. He is just the epitome of professional. He really loved the songs, he loved what we were doing, he loved the experience, and he loved the idea of forming a group around the soloist, which would be Dee Brown. But Desi McCuller, he is a person who needs his own CD, he needs his own project.

Smitty: Well, let me tell you, man. I think if this cat does his own project, it’s on! (Both laugh.) You told me a story about the first track, “Blue Streak.”

DB: Yeah, what really happened with “Blue Streak” was—we had a nice groove, Gerald had laid down the keyboards, and I was coming up with the melody, trying to hum around, you know, trying to come up with something, and I had a part of the melody, and I was talking to Desi. I’m saying “Man, here, check this out, man. See what you think.” And Desi was listening to it and he was playing, so he said “Man, let’s just take a break.” We went outside, chilled out for a second and we were talking. Next thing I know, he said “Man, I got it!” He goes in, he plays the line “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.” I’m like “Oh, that’s it, Desi! That’s the song!”

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: From that point on, that was “Blue Streak.”

Smitty: Wow, what a tune. I mean, it just starts the party off right with this record.

DB: (Laughs.)

Smitty: Oh man, yeah, ‘cause this record, it really is a party. This record is a party. And speaking of that, when you get down to Track 6? “Dee Brown’s Place”?

DB: “Dee Brown’s Place.”

Smitty: Man, when I heard that track, I said “You know, I’m ready to go party at Dee Brown’s place. I wanna go over to Dee Brown’s place and party.” Man, that is one thumpin’ track.

DB: Yeah, we wanted to create an atmosphere on that song where the people who were listening would feel like they’re right in that room with us, so we got the sound of the clapping and the people in a room and you hear all the noise like you’re walking into a big party, and what it’s all about is this guy wants to get into the party for free because he knows Dee Brown, but of course there’s a big bouncer there. He said “You know Dee Brown? Then you get in line, get your ticket, then come on in.” (Both laugh.) “Support the guy. You know, you can’t ask him for staying free all the time.”

Smitty: Yeah, man, and that happens sometimes.

DB: Yeah.

Smitty: It’s always the name dropping and, yeah, “Let me in. I know him. Uh, yeah, we went to school together.” Yeah, you know. But that’s a great track, and I tell ya, going back to Desi.

DB: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: Desi just knows how to pick up a note and run.

DB: Yeah.

DB: You gotta watch out for Desi, you know? I’m being honest with you. Desi is such a good player that you gotta watch out ‘cause he will just take over and blow away what you just played.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: He can make it look like “Well, why did you even play that? Now Desi’s here, see?” And that is just the kind of musician he is. He is that quality of a musician. He can listen to what you did and he can make it better. The guy is a fantastic creative player who deserves his own. I mean, he is my man.

Smitty: Yeah.

DB: And he definitely deserves his own.

Smitty: I totally agree. You’ve got some other great cats on here, like Dave Henderson.

DB: Yeah, Dave Henderson, he’s the bass player, as a matter of fact, Dave, Gerald, and I grew up playing together.

Smitty: Yeah.

DB: Dave went off and he was playing really deep in the gospel circuit here in a couple of the biggest churches around in Detroit, and I asked Gerald about getting somebody to do some funk stuff on here. He said “Man, Dave can do it.” I said “Yeah, Dave can do it.” So he called Dave and I heard Dave play. He did the solo on “Blue Streak.”

Smitty: Yeah, man.

DB: There’s a bass solo on there.

Smitty: That was tight.

DB: And so believe it or not, and you can ask anybody, he did that with one take.

Smitty: Wow.

DB: Only one take, that was it and he was done.

Smitty: That’s knowing your business.

DB: And I like that.

DB: Yeah. Yeah, he didn’t waste a lotta time, no pun intended. No, but Dave is my man. He is the kind of person who is just so funny. I mean, nothing bothers the guy. If it takes him two, three, four takes, he’s just “Hey, man, I’m gonna do it for you, Dee, ‘cause I love you.” (Both laugh.) “I want it to sound just as good as you want it to sound.” I mean, that’s what you meant, and that’s the kind of people I’m dealing with, you know, with Desi and with Gerald and with David. These are my good friends growing up. Well, Desi’s new, I just met him, but the other guys are my good friends and they really wanna see some positive things happen, so they’d lend their talent.

Smitty: Yeah, well, you can feel that positive, camaraderie-type groove with the record, and this is music that you could do just about anything with. I mean, it’s not just situation music, but it’s just got this overall “take me with you” kind of vibe and it’s a party record. I love it.

DB: Absolutely. Now, there’s one song that we kinda missed on and that was my song or the song called “Sunday Jazz.”

Smitty: Yeah, great vocals.

DB: Yup, “Sunday Jazz” was sung by a young lady by the name of Audra Bryant.

Yeah. Audra Bryant…I had the song “Sunday Jazz” and actually Gerald wrote that song. We had the music, everything, all the foundation down, but we had no melody. We kept messing with the melody. It just didn’t come together and so Gerald suggested “Maybe we should get somebody to sing.” So this young lady named Audra came down to the studio and we brought her over to the De’Laf studio and we told her what we wanted the song to be about, she listened to the song, took the song home, and next day she had all the lyrics done.

Smitty: Wow.

DB: Came to the studio and sung it. You heard it.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: And I’m just telling you. I mean, these sorts of things….we’re very blessed because, yes, this is a divine kind of intervention. Blessed to come up with these kinds of people to come up with these kinds of ideas for things to flow like this.

Smitty: Talk about your feelings when this project was finished, when you can really sit back and relive some of the experiences of doing the record and now you’re listening to the finished product. What was that like for you?

DB: Yeah, I’m telling you, my good friend Gerald, who is the producer of the project, he’s like…how can you say it? He’s like riding a horse and he’s kicking you.

Smitty: (Laughs.)

DB: You know he’s always kicking you. “Dee, you can do it better. Come on, Dee. Come on, you can do it better. Do another take.” You know, that sort of thing and those sort of things go through my mind having Desi come over and say “Desi, just come up with something” and he’d just come up with line after line after line after line, and he is tireless with it, just keep coming. Those are the sort of things that stay in my mind. The diligence that we had, I mean, and the focus that we had on finishing this project and working on it continuously until we got it done. That’s the thing that kinda sticks in my mind.

Smitty: Yeah, and that’s nice, man. Well, I certainly wish you all the success in the world with this record and I would encourage everyone to take a listen to this record because it’s that good. You hear people say “Well, I wanna hear something fresh and new.” Well, here it is because this is a fantastic record and I highly recommend this one. Dee, man, I give you the high five on this one, brotha, ‘cause it’s great.

DB: Thank you so very much for having me, Smitty and your support.

Smitty: You’re welcome. So, now, can we see you on the road soon somewhere?

DB: Well, right now we’re working on that. The main thing we’re doing is we’re doing radio promotion trying to get things set up so that we can do some of the festivals and things that are coming in later in the year.

Smitty: Yeah, so how can people get the record?

DB: You can get the record by going to the Web site, which is www.deebrownmusic.com, and also you can visit My Space, which is www.myspace.com/deebrownmusic.

Smitty: All right, very cool. Well, Dee, you did it, man. This is fantastic. My congratulations to your entire team, including your photographer, Christine Edwards.

DB: Oh yeah. (Laughs.)

Smitty: She’s a bad girl.

DB: Yeah, Christine was very patient with me and I’m really not the kind of guy who is photogenic or whatever you wanna call it. She took time with me, took some great shots and coached me through the whole thing. I thank the Lord for her blessings also.

Smitty: Very cool. All right, we’ve been talking with the fantastic guitarist, Dee Brown. His great new record is called “No Time to Waste” and you certainly don’t wanna waste any time picking up this record. It is a fantastic mix of music with some phenomenal musicians. Dee, once again, congratulations and best of everything with this project and your entire career for this year and beyond and I hope to catch you on the road myself, my friend.

DB: Thank you, Smitty.

Baldwin “Smitty” Smith

For More Information Visit www.deebrownmusic.com and www.myspace.com/deebrownmusic