Smitty: Right.
DG: Especially if you gotta hit it and it’s gotta be in time and you gotta hit it like maybe two, three, four or five times. So there is a little technique into playing it and that was my early introduction. Once I graduated from high school, my parents couldn’t afford a set of drums, so I went out and bought a conga drum and I started just playing some congas and trying to just find whatever I could in terms of hand drums and try to latch onto that, and I guess after about a year or two, I started to realize that there were a lotta drummers that lived in my neighborhood, and also I realized that Philadelphia is like a hotbed for hand drummers.
Smitty: Wow.
DG: So I was able to connect with some of the masters, the older guys that lived in the city who put me down with playing certain instruments, not just the conga drums, but the shakeree and the pandero that comes from Brazil, and a few other instruments, and then I realized once I heard Aierto that I wanted to be a percussionist because I had played in a few bands before hearing Aierto and I was playing congas, but I still was kinda interested in some of this other percussion stuff but didn’t really know how I could fit it into the music I was playing. So once I heard Aierto and saw him playing with Miles [Davis], I said “Man, that’s what I gotta do.” So that might’ve been like around 1970-71, then I immediately started going to New York and going to a spot called the Drummer Percussion Center or something like that at 50th and 8th Avenue, and I would just go there and buy instruments even if I couldn’t play them. I would buy these percussion instruments and then go down to 42nd Street and go into the subway and buy the records ‘cause there was an international record store in the subway at 42nd and Broadway, and they sold music from Cuba, from Haiti, from Brazil, from different countries in Africa.
Smitty: Yeah, man.
DG: So I started buying those records and buying the instruments and then coming home and then just trying to work it out. And if somebody came in town who was a percussionist or played a particular instrument, then I would get with that person. Like I bought a berimbau, which is an instrument that comes from Brazil, and I bought the record and I could see how the guy was holding it and it’s a very difficult instrument to play ‘cause all the pressure for holding it is on the little finger because it’s like a bow and it has a gourd attached to it, so your one hand is holding the bow with the gourd attached to it and you gotta be able to move the gourd off and on your stomach to create a wah-wah-wah kind of sound.
Smitty: Yeah.
DG: And it’s definitely got some technique to it and I couldn’t figure it out from looking at the picture on the record and hearing it, and finally a guy came to Philadelphia. He was playing with a pianist from Brazil named Egberto Gismonti and he had a percussionist, a drummer, with him named Roberto Silva, and I had heard about him and so I took my berimbau down to see him at his hotel. He had his berimbau. I didn’t speak no Portuguese, he spoke no English, but we hung out. He showed me how to play the instrument.
Smitty: (Laughs.) Wow, music breaks down so many barriers on an international scale.
DG: True. So those are some of the kinds of things that I had to do because there were only a few people that I could look at or listen to and try to emulate in terms of developing my talent. I really loved Mongo Santamaria and he performed in Philly three or four times a year, so whenever he came to Philly I’d go see him.
Smitty: Yeah, Ralph McDonald.
DG: Ralph McDonald. I met Ralph through Grover. I used to hang out with Grover a lot and so he was going to Rudy Van Gelder’s studio to record an album with Bob James.
Smitty: Yup.
DG: And when we got there, once again everybody was there recording at the same time, and it was Eric Gale on guitar.
Smitty: Yeah, man!
DG: Bob James.
Smitty: Gary King.
DG: Hubert Laws, Gary King, I think Harvey Mason, and Ralph McDonald and maybe Richard Tee might’ve been there also.
Smitty: Hey.
DG: And they recorded “Westchester Lady.”
Smitty: Oh! That was my first ever jazz song.
DG: Really?
Smitty: Yeah, first ever. In fact, I didn’t know what jazz was until a friend gave me a Bob James album, and the first cut I heard on that album back in the vinyl days—
DG: Right.
Smitty: Yeah, was “Westchester Lady” and I just fell back in a chair and said “Where has this music been all my life?” (Both laugh.)
DG: Yeah, well, I went on that session—that was when I met Ralph, and Ralph took me over to Latin percussion and got me an endorsement and sorta took me under his wing, and he had a studio in Manhattan and he said “Man, you can come visit any time.”
Smitty: Oh, wow, how cool.
DG: So I would go and hang out at the studio and just watch him record people and watch him recording with people, and then he was really hot back in the 70s with jingles and commercials and whatnot, so he would take me on some of his record dates and I would just sit and watch how he did it, so I was getting all of this education on how to really be a percussionist because back then there were no universities or colleges teaching percussion and the closest thing to that was ethnomusicology, and even with studying that, that didn’t really teach you how to play instruments, so learning how to play percussion—this was back in the 70s—I had to kinda go to see the masters who played in the streets, and so that’s where I got my graduate studies.
Smitty: Yes sir. (Laughs.)
DG: On the streets.
Smitty: Yeah, man. Along with Ralph McDonald and Mongo Santamaria, you’ve also worked with other legendary musicians and artists, and I can think of Nancy Wilson, who is just such a classy, talented lady.
DG: Right.
Smitty: And Al Jarreau.
DG: Right.
Smitty: One of the best in the business.
DG: Oh yeah.
Smitty: Talk about taking all of that experience of you being with these great people in their studio and then going out and doing a date(s) with them. What’s that like?
DG: Oh, well, it’s an incredible experience because, number one, back in the 70s and 80s they used to have a thing that if you recorded—there were studio musicians and there were musicians who were great live, and if you played live, then they used to say “Well, you can’t be that good in the studio because what you do in the studio, you gotta be able to hold it back and not play so much, and live people aren’t really zeroing in on whether or not you’re playing too much. They’re being affected by what you’re playing.”
So I was fortunate being able to sit under Ralph and understand how to really manipulate percussion in the studio because around that time was when they started doing multi-tracking and doing overdubs, so a lotta times the artist isn’t even there and the rest of the band isn’t even there when you go in to record. You’re just recording your tracks for the tracks that are already there. So I used to watch Ralph because there would be limited tracks and I would watch to see how he would have to use two or three different instruments in one track. And so I learned a lot in terms of playing in the studio. And then playing with Grover and some of the other folks early on, I got a great opportunity with how to play live, and so I’ve had the best of both worlds-being able to play in the studio and record for people and to go out and play live.
Smitty: Yes.
DG: I mean, I’ve had an incredible career in the music business ‘cause I never really worked a 9 to 5 once I started doing this thing, and it’s been an adventure every step of the way ‘cause contrary to what people may think, it’s up and down.
Smitty: Right, right.
DG: And so I’ve been very fortunate and blessed that I’ve been able to stay up in it and still be active.
Smitty: Well, you’ve always been the artist that as soon as someone sees you play, they want you. (Both laugh.) There’s just something about when you hear the Doc Gibbs sound.
DG: Yeah, well, I always tell people I like to listen to a song and then figure out what instruments I think will work great in that song. So I might have a basement full of instruments, but I sure can’t bring everything ‘cause everything ain’t gonna fit on one or two songs. I bring what I need.
