I haven't had a studio album out in five years so I wanted to start this one with something that said, "Bang, I'm back!" I wanted you to know right off the bat that this is a MM joint, so the bass starts it off. This is the kind of vibe the Jamaica, Queens kats (Tom Browne, Bernard Wright, Donald Blackman, Omar Hakim, etc) would come with when we would hit at one of the local clubs- aggressive and in your face. Nard plays some of that soul Fender rhodes that I love against that beat that Jay-Z bounces to. The one thing we didn't get to do much in Queens was use strings (violas and cellos) -but I love the contrast that they bring to the funk. Reminds me of the old CTI records that I used to dig from the seventies (Bob James, Freddie Hubbard, and them). Check out the cello counterpoint on the 2nd bridge that Matt plays - sweet.
Lonnie's Lament
John Coltrane had a period in there after Giant Steps and before his more avant garde stuff where he was writing some really beautiful, simple, spiritual melodies. This is the period that produced Naima, Crescent, A Love Supreme, and this song, Lonnie's Lament. I'm not sure who brother Lonnie is but he must have been a deep, soulful cat with a lot on his mind - or he might 'a just been one of those cats who comes to all the gigs and gets drunk.... either way, this melody has a simplistic beauty that grabs you. One of the things on this album that is different for me is that it has five cover tunes. I like the idea of covering other artists' songs. I feel like if you know the original version of the song, and then you hear my version and hear what I change, you can start to understand how I hear music. Trane's original version of Lonnie's Lament is a jazz ballad..but as soon as I heard it, I felt like it would be sweet put a beat to it. The melody is so strong that you can still hear the beauty in it even though the funk is crackin'. After the bass plays the melody, there's a part in there where Hubert Laws and I do a flute-bass clarinet ensemble part that brings me back to those CTI days again. Branford reminds me of Sidney Bichet on his soprano sax solo! Toward the end of the song, I asked Hubert, through the headphones, to play a solo. That's why you hear him saying, "Oh yeah!" - even though it sounds like he's just diggin' on what I just played :-)........
Boomerang
I wrote the score for Eddie Murphy's movie, Boomerang in 1991. At the time, Eddie was coming off of smashes like Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places, so Boomerang, at first, was viewed by the movie studio as cool but not the blockbuster they were hoping for. But over time, Boomerang has lingered in peoples minds longer than any of those commercial smashes. When people leave messages on my voice mail, they still purr, "Maaaaahcus" like Eartha Kitt does in that movie! And for ten years I've been getting questions from folks about the music that goes over the title credits. "Man, where can I get that music??" "Is it part of a whole song?" "I bought the soundtrack but it's not on there!!!" It really blew my mind how often I got asked about that tune over the years. Originally it was called "Marcus' Stormy Mood" (Marcus was the name of Eddie's character in the movie). I was talking to Reggie Hudlin, who directed Boomerang and we started talking about resurrecting this movie cue, maybe turning it into a song. The result is on this album. I'd always wanted to do something with Raphael Saddiq. I've loved his music since the early Tony, Toni, Tone days. I know he's a bass player so I figured he might be down to hook up with another bass player and do something. This worked for me before when I hooked up with MeShell N'Degeocello to do Rush Over for my Tales album which I still listen to! Raphael says this tune sounds like New York at night. We do it as a duet (that's me singing first if you can't tell). Listen to Herbie playing some sweet piano in the background...and Patches' trumpet break is cool too!
Nikki's Groove
I was in the car, driving my family back to LA from San Francisco. Everybody was asleep, except Nikki. She has a different sleep pattern than everybody else, so lots of times we're the only ones up. I was looking at her face in the rearview mirror and started humming this melody. It was a simple melody but it stayed with me for that whole six hour trip. I have this thing about melodies that won't leave my head...I feel like I have to record them, like it's meant for me to record them. So there you go...This one sounds real old school, like Stevie Wonder. David Sanborn used to play with Stevie. I used to dig how small his sax sounded on the Talking Book album - like Dave was fighting to get through the mix. I rented an alto and played the melody then mixed it real small like Dave and Stevie used to do. When I'm working in the studio during the weekdays, I can expect a call from Nikki every day at 3:30 when she gets home from school, complaining that I'm not there. We set up a mike near the phone one day and waited for the daily call. That's how we got the intro!
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
There's a cat in France, I forget the town, who has a club that's called Mingus-Marcus. I always thought that was pretty cool. When I heard about the club, I went out and got a Charles Mingus compilation set and spent a whole day groovin to his vibe. When I heard Goodbye Pork Pie Hat...it jumped out at me the same way Trane's Lonnie's Lament did. The spirituality of the melody was so strong. Herbie Hancock told me he had never played this tune before which surprised me. But he sho-nuff has played it now! He only plays one chorus but he says more in that chorus than most cats could say in five! I really like the way he brings us back to the melody at the end of his solo. This is my first time recording with Herbie - so you know I'm lovin that! After the session, we went to Herbie's listening room at his crib and listened to Miles' Sketches of Spain till five in the morning!
Ozell (Interlude 1)
This is the first of the three Ozell interludes. You know what makes me mad about CD's verses LP's?? You don't have to turn a CD over. When we were doing LP's we had a built in set break. Turning the record over was like an intermission in a concert. And side two, song one was like the first song after the intermission! So I use these Ozell interludes as kind of a built in set break. Then we go on to act two. Then maybe an encore! Ozell is the nickname of one of my original mentors from Jamaica, Queens, Denzil Miller. D was one of the first cats to encourage me to write my own music. I was always trying to add my own thing to the hits of the day, changing up the bass line to an Ohio Players joint, or adding some new chords to a Parliament jam. Most cats were like, "Man, would you please just play it like the record?" But Denzil said that a true musician had to write his own music and he got me and Omar Hakim into writing our own tunes. He also showed me a lot of stuff on piano which is his instrument. The bass line on Ozell reminds me of a big, thick, python snake -crawling across the jungle floor, about to mess somebody up.... On this interlude, you get the main Ozell groove and the snaky bass.... There's more to come later....!
Burning Down the House
Folks are on my back about doing this one. But I always loved the Talking Heads, David Byrne's group from the eighties. He had one video where he wore this big oversized white suit with square shoulders. He was spazzing all over the stage like a mad man while the band played that future funk. This is the tune that my band loves to jam on. Check out Kenny Garrett's solo, he rips on this one. I love Poogie's tite drum sound on this one. That snare is just poppin'. Towards the end, I got into some sick stuff with the strings. I tried to really open up the harmony there and use some chords that don't really have names....it's just sound.
It's Me Again
I play this tune on my fretless bass. On fretless, I really try to make the bass sing. Andrew Gouche, the great gospel bassist, told me that this tune is really a gospel tune in disguise! I know I really tried to phrase it like a singer would sing it. Djavan also sings the melody on this one. Djavan is one of my favorite artists. He's a famous Brazilian singer /songwriter who I first got turned on to around eighty-one. I heard an album of his called "Seduzir". If you can find it, check it out, it's beautiful. If you don't understand Portugese, don't worry. Just make up the words in your head. You can decide what the songs mean for yourself! Vinnie Colaiuta plays some beautiful drums on this one. Paul Jackson Jr. really got into this one, too. He worked hard to get the voicings on the acoustic guitar perfect. He had that wrinkle in his forehead that he gets when he's really concentrating :-) And don't miss Branford's solo. I didn't write out any chords or anything for him. He just heard it and played it like he knew it already!
3 Deuces
My partners, Harold Goode and Harry Martin, and I started a record company, 3 Deuces, specifcally so we could release music like this. So this song is, like, the theme song of the label! It's funk-jazz or jazz-funk or hip-hop-jazz or whatever other names the critics come up with. To me it's music for your head and your body... We got James Carter to bless us on this one. He came in and went bananas! I wrote the song with him in mind, so if it had turned out that we couldn't get him, the tuned woulda' just been scrapped. I told him this song was about the old be-bop clubs so he played some futuristic bop on this one. 3 Deuces is the name of one of the famous be-bop clubs that lined 52nd street in NYC during the forties and fifties. Other clubs were Birdland, the Onyx Club, and the Hickory House. Miles used to talk about these clubs all the time. This was where all the cats played back in the day - Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Dexter Gordon, everybody. This was also the street where Miles got assaulted by the cop for hanging outside the club during a set break. He was in the newspaper that next day with blood dripping down his face. He never forgot that, was talking about it still in the nineties.... I like the bass sound on this - it gets real raw towards the middle, which matches Poogie's snap on the snare...
Red Baron
Back in '71, all the musicians were diggin Billy Cobham. He was playing some sick drums! Red Baron was the tune of Billy's that we all liked to jam on. I slowed it down and put a little different lean on it. Poogie played a beat that I really like that's halfway between swing and straight. A lot of the Brooklyn reggae drummers use it. I dig it because the musicians can go either way with that beat, swing or straight. After my bass solo, Maceo Parker comes in with some straight-up, old school, authentic soul on alto sax. Maceo became famous working with James Brown in the sixties and seventies. He's the one playing all those funky sax solos that all the other horn players have been copying for the last thirty years! We had been working together on a funk exhibit for Paul Allen's Experience Music Project (music museum in Seattle) so I asked Maceo and trombonist Fred Wesley if they'd hook me up on my record. Fred takes his solo later on in the tune. His sound is about a mile wide! I realize that he really gave James Brown's horn section that fatness! Right before the song ends you can hear me playing tenor sax, giving Grover a little shout out. After Maceo, Grover came on the scene in the seventies and blew our minds with jams like Mr. Magic and Inner City Blues. I got to play on a few Grover records in the eighties on tunes like Just The Two Of Us and Winelight. He'll definitely be missed...
Paradiso
If you bought M2 in Japan, or if you got the Japanese version as an import, then your CD has this tune. Otherwise, I'll try to describe it to you! I left all my instruments on this one so I'm playing the bass, keys, tenor sax, soprano sax, bass clarinet, and whatever else you hear on it. There's, like, a mishmash of styles on Paradiso. The beat is like an old Mandrill, Fencewalk beat sped up. There's a real low bass guitar that plays really sparsely that holds the whole thing together. The chords are created like the DJ's do it. It's one chord that's sampled and played higher and lower. Then the horns are playing like Wayne Shorter and Grover hooked up....Then I'm playing a high bass guitar in front of it all, buggin....Can you hear it?? Paradiso is the name of a club in Amsterdam. It's one of those clubs that has a main big room for shows and then about three other smaller rooms for different scenes like techno and old school disco (I stay out of that one!). I can never get used to all the love we get when we play there. The folks there don't seem like they're listening as much as they're feeling the music. They stand there with their eyes closed just moving back and forth...
Ozell (Interlude 2)
In this version of Ozell you hear the main melody. A couple of folks told me it sounds like the horns are laughing at one point. That snake is still there so watch yourself......
Ozell (Interlude 3)
On this version of Ozell, you hear the bridge melody. Wayne Shorter joins in on soprano sax on this one, darting in and out of the trees like a bird. One day I'll put up an MP3 of the whole Ozell so you can hear how it developed....:-)
Amazing Grace
One concert in Germany, I was supposed to play Strange Fruit on the bass clarinet but decided to switch up. I played Amazing Grace instead. Leroy "Scooter" Taylor, the keyboard player, plays in church - so I know he knew it (he better, right??). Anyway, it seemed to affect everybody, even the band. Folks were crying, singing.....So we eventually worked it into the show permanently. Poogie came up with a tite drum & bass beat for it. It's real subtle, it just bubbles underneath everything and gives it motion..like water. For the studio version we asked Chaka Khan to join in. I love when she first comes in. It's unexpected and I like the looks on people's faces when they're listening...It's, like, "Whoa, that's nice!" Before we perform, we do a little prayer. Not to ask for a good show or anything like that - just to give thanks for the opportunity to play music for people. We also give thanks for the folks in our lives who love us and put up with us. And also safe traveling. It's all a result of God's grace.
Marcus wrote these track descriptions for the website of his record label, 3 Deuces Records. He asked me to put them on this website, too - and I'm glad he did. Thanks!
