Power Pickers of the '60's

I heard a rumor from a close friend yesterday that another old friend, percussionist/songwriter/publisher Ralph MacDonald is fighting lung cancer. I have to check it out, and I will, and it will distress me if it’s true, because this is a towering musician who enriches the music world every time he hits a conga, slaps a tambourine or taps a cowbell.

I met Ralph about 40 years ago, in LA, when he was the traveling percussionist with Harry Belafonte and I was lucky enough to be in the band playing with him, et al, on the tracks of one of Harry’s many albums (vinyl days, you understand). So I have a few personal Ralph stories in my repertoire. Here’s one of them, in abbreviated form.

Shortly after I came East to New York, in 1975, and Ralph was showing me the town, he got a call to go out to Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Jersey to overlay percussion on some tracks Creed Taylor was producing of/for someone, I think it might have been Patty Austin, but it could also have been George Benson or neither of them. But when he got out to the studio Creed and Rudy told him that actually they’d run out of tracks, save one (of 24), which was earmarked for (illegally) double-tracking the strings to further enlushen a sound that was already pretty rich, tho not necessarily very interesting.

They apologized to Ralph for promising him a gig when there wasn’t one, and Ralph was characteristically generous about letting them off the hook. But before he did, this went down.

“No problem, guys,” Ralph said, “don’t worry about it, shit happens. But I’d like to hear the track, anyway, as long as I’m here.”

Creed said fine, told Rudy to put up the track for us to hear in the control booth. We listened for awhile, then Ralph said, “Give me a headset and let me play along with the track in the studio. What can it hurt?”

Creed shrugged, Rudy shrugged, but I guess they figured they owed him something for the trip he’d made from Manhatten to Buttfuck, NJ, and maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to humor him, since they did use him on a lot of their product, it would be good for the relationship, race relations, whatever.

“But we’re out of tracks, Ralph,” Creed said, as Ralph was rummaging around in his percussion kit. “I’m just saying, so you don’t…” But Ralph was out of the control booth and onto the studio floor with the kit before Creed could finish. He grabbed a stool, took it to the to the center of the studio where there was a mic and a headset, and asked Rudy to turn the mic on, which Rudy did. Ralph asked him to run the tracks.

The tracks began to play, very big, lots of instruments. I don’t remember anything about the charts, which tells you something right there, I guess that there might not have been much to remember. Anyway, Ralph put on the headset, didn’t sit on the stool, began listening intently, like I’m picturing an an air traffic controller might as he lands a couple big liners at the same time. Then, after maybe the first verse, he picks a tambourine out of the kit and starts playing it. I don’t remember what he did with it, but whatever it was, it suddenly got everyone in the control booth’s attention like a two-by-four to the head. The tracks came to life. Everything about their focus changed, and the string and horn figures seemed to now make more sense, like they actually belonged in the arrangement.

The tracks stopped playing after another verse or two, and Creed or Rudy or both hit the talkback. “Uh, Ralph, why don’t we try a take? It might make some sense to have it in the can in case we need it,” read: “Shit, get this on tape, and fuck the strings.”

So they recorded Ralph and his tambourine in one or two takes, finished up and sent out for pizza and we all palled it up talking shop and pussy and everything else except the incredible show an ex-coke dealer/point-guard from Harlem and a dumb rhythm instrument had just put on, which brought verve and soul to some tracks which, it looked like sorely needed them.

Ralph didn’t say anything about it on the way back home, which was in keeping with his style, but I could only guess what he had to be thinking: “Shit, I just took out an entire string section a bunch a white guys payed for and now couldn’t use and made it look like an easy layup. Kiss my ass.”

Anyway, that’s my RMD story for today, and now I have to go to an AA mtng.

Posted August 16th, 2011 under ALL POSTS. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.