A Conversation with Gerald Albright – HuffPost 6.20.12

Mike Ragogna: Gerald, you have a new album with Norman Brown called 24/7. But first, bring us up to speed on your life with Spotify. Spare no detail.

Gerald Albright: You know, I recently just signed up with Spotify and I haven’t gotten deeply into it yet. I thought it would be a thing kind of like Pandora, but all of a sudden, I’m getting a bunch of notifications from people saying “Hey, I want to share this music with you,” and honestly, it’s overwhelming for me. When you’re trying to administer your Facebook page, your Twitter page, your LinkedIn page and then your regular email and now you’ve got Spotify… It’s a great website though for finding out about music, so I’m going to dig a little deeper and see.

MR: All these other social media sites seem like they’re doing really well and they’ve entrenched themselves in our lives in such a way that I’m addicted to Facebook, which really sucks.

GA: Well that makes two of us, Michael. I check Facebook at least 40 times a day, but in my case, I have a lot of music students who want to ask particular questions about what kind of equipment I use, how I approach my practice regimen on a daily basis, things like that, so it’s kind of like a virtual lesson type of thing for me. I like talking to prospective students about gaining more knowledge about the music business, and also I learn from it as well, so it’s kind of a win-win thing for me. I’m doing pretty good on Twitter, too. I just reached the 5,000 follower mark on that. I’m not in the millions yet, but I’m working on it.

MR: As far as people who want to follow you, well, you’re part of their life, which is really cool.

GA: Exactly.

MR: So, 24/7, your new album with Norman Brown. How did the two of you sync up for this project?

GA: We are pretty much under the Concord Music Group label. He’s on Peak, I’m on Heads Up, and the president of the company pretty much came to us and said, “You know, I think it would be great for you guys to collaborate on something, what do you guys think?” Norman and I throughout the years would always say, “We need to get together and do something,” so this was kind of like the bridge to allow us to do that. I’ve known him since the eighties, we’ve known each other many years, and we’ve seen each other at different jazz festivals. We did do one Christmas tour together with Will Downing four or five years ago, but when you think about the number of years that we’ve known each other in comparison to the amount of work we’ve done together, there’s a big gap there. I’m really elated that we have this opportunity to do a collective project, 24/7. We’re very proud of it and we can’t wait for it to ship to radio and ship to streets where people are really abrasive, and then we’re going on the road this summer as well, so it’s a win-win and I’m looking forward to sharing the stage with Norman. He’s the ultimate musician and I really love what he does.

MR: Yeah, his guitar licks are pretty classic when he digs into it, huh.

GA: Oh yes, definitely.

MR: And you, Mister Saxophone, you’ve been prominent over the years. Let’s go through some of your triumphs here: You backed up Ray Parker Jr., The Temptations, Olivia Newton-John and many others, but someone who impresses me a lot is Anita Baker. To me, she’s an amazingly sensuous singer. What are your thoughts on playing with her years ago?

GA: Well, you know, it was a very unique situation for me. I worked with her two or three years prior to beginning my solo record deal with Atlantic Records–this was back between 1985 and 1987–and ironically, I didn’t start out as her saxophonist, I started out as her bassist. I played bass guitar with her. It wasn’t until we got well into the tour that she even knew that I played saxophone. When she found out, we incorporated the saxophone into the tour and I was playing both instruments. It was really unique and it created a nice buzz for me in the music industry as I was able to get more bass work and more saxophone work from it. But you’re right, she definitely had one of the more sensuous vocals and one of the more unique vocals out there. She has her own brand, there’s nobody that really sounds like Anita Baker. I spent a few years with her and it was fun.

MR: Also you teamed up with Will Downing, Jonathan Butler, Hugh Masekela, Chaka Khan and Rachelle Ferrell for the Jazz Explosion tours?

GA: Yes. Those Jazz Explosion tours went on for about seven or eight years and there were different combinations of artists depending on which tour you were speaking of. But the beauty of it, I was able to become associated with those great names that you mentioned and go on the road and share the stage with them. It was a great experience. Stemming from that, Will Downing and I did our very first duet record called “Pleasures Of The Night” and it’s very unique. He has his own brand and has a real debonair quality to his musicality. I’ve been very blessed to be coupled with some great vocalists throughout my musical upbringing and I’m very happy about that.

MR: And let’s not forget you’ve appeared on television a few times, like in A Different World and Melrose Place.

GA: In Melrose Place, I did one episode as part of a band that was in a small club scene there, and TV is totally different from my world of going on the road and doing recording sessions and things like that, but, of course, in the music business, you want to be able to diversify and do different things. So I had the opportunity to be on Melrose Place and it was a nice experience. It was an all day shoot, but I got a chance to meet the whole cast, and I was on stage with Joe Sample. Just to hang out with the wonderful actors and the icon Joe Sample, it was a great day for me. It was more than just getting a check and paying some bills. It was really an honor to be there and to have that experience under my belt. So I look back on it and I crack a smile at the experience that I had.

MR: It’s good to hear that it only took a day’s shoot and it didn’t take (clears throat) 24/7 to get it done.

GA: (laughs)

MR: Since someone just butchered, er, mentioned it, let’s get back to 24/7. You wrote that title song with a certain Selina Albright?

GA: Yes. I did all the music and I gave her the concept of “24/7” and I said, “Write a nice little hook vocal for this song,” ’cause the ideas weren’t coming to me. But my daughter writes lyrics prolifically. She comes up with these ideas and she’s so quick with them. She came up with this wonderful lyric that fits so well with it. We’ve done some other songwriting as well–we released a single on iTunes called “You and I,” which was her feature actually, and we got a lot of downloads from that particular song. In fact, on the project it was on, it was one of the most highly downloaded tracks.

MR: How’s she doing?

GA: She’s doing really good, I’m very proud of her. She’s my daughter and as we speak, she’s in LA working with another producer to do some songs for her own demo to get her own solo project going so she’s doing some great things.

MR: Sweet. What about “Power of Your Smile?”

GA: Oh yeah, “Power of Your Smile.” I’m very happy with the way that came out. I wanted to produce and write something that just had a simple melody that me and Norman could dig into. It didn’t have to be a lot of improvisation and fast notes. I wanted the song to really rely on the melody to take it where it needed to go, and it’s orchestral, it’s got some weight to it. I’m really happy with the way it came out.

MR: What’s your creative process when you’re writing music?

GA: Well, you know, it’s something that I’ve learned over years that I can’t force. Sometimes, I’ll sit down at the piano and try to crank out some chords or a melody, and sometimes, it doesn’t work. I’ve learned to back off from it when the creative juices aren’t flowing. You kind of know internally, especially if you’ve been doing it for so long, when it’s time to write. You get that spark; all of a sudden, ideas start to flow and feel good and all that’s to say that I don’t write songs year-round. I have to be personally in the season of writing songs. But once I do start, it can last for weeks, it can last for months, and I like to think that a lot of great stuff comes out of it. But I love the process of it, watching just a fragment of an idea build into this wonderful finished product, a full production and thickness and authority. It’s always been fascinating to me. I really do love the process. Putting this “24/7” project together was a lot of fun, and unique in a way because I got a chance to have some camaraderie with Norman Brown who I deeply respect, not only for his guitar playing, but for his songwriting as well. It was a great partnership.

MR: That had to be a cool experience, getting together and saying, “Okay, here’s how we make it one thing together.”

GA: Exactly, exactly. There are certain units that just kind of fit. You put a couple of musicians together and sometimes it doesn’t fit. I’ve had experiences where maybe the personality wasn’t right, or it was just the wrong time for that project to happen, but I’ve been blessed to have so many more experiences where I’m coupled with another person like a Norman Brown and everything just worked. There was the respect level, there was the creative level where we allowed one another to hear the other side’s ideas and concepts. It just really worked from note one to the finished product. A little challenging, too, being from Denver, Colorado, when he lives on the West Coast in Los Angeles, so we had to deal with the geographic challenges as well. But of course, with technology, we were able to work that out very efficiently, being able to swap files between musicians to complete the project.

MR: And it does sound full, it doesn’t have any digital harshness.

GA: Good, I’m happy to hear that. Thank you, Mike.

MR: It’s also great that you not only got to play sax on the project, but you got to stretch out a little on bass, too.

GA: Yeah. A lot of people don’t know that bass is one of my loves. I really enjoy the bass. I started playing bass in 1978 when I was in college, and I was inspired by Louis Johnson who was one of two brothers of The Brothers Johnson who, back in those days, were produced by Quincy Jones, and they had a wonderful heyday of hits and I’ve always loved their music. But I saw them in San Bernardino and Louis came out front and center and performed this incredible bass solo and I said to myself, “Oh my gosh, I want to do that.” So I sat in my dorm room in college and became self-taught on the bass and after I graduated, I was able to get with some great bass players in Los Angeles who do a lot of live shows and great recording sessions, and they would give me tips on how to do this and that with the bass, and it really worked out well. So now bass is actually an integral part of my sound, and a lot of people don’t know that on any of my fifteen projects starting in 1987, I’ve played bass guitar on at least 60 or 70% of that stuff. it’s very cool, it’s a lot of fun.

MR: Yeah, but you get why people aren’t really associating you with the bass, right? It’s because you’re so front and center with that sax of yours.

GA: Absolutely. Sax is my first love and it’s kind of a cornerstone for me. Sax is really my brand, but bass guitar is part of the Gerald Albright portfolio along with the flute and a little keyboard and some other instruments. But, of course, the alto saxophone is definitely my first love.

MR: How did you get into sax?

GA: Well, I started playing saxophone when I was nine years old. When I was eight, though, I took piano lessons from our church’s choir director, God rest his soul. My parents deemed that it would be a cool thing for me to start learning piano. Parents think about that for a lot of kids, they should learn the scales of the piano. But piano, at that time, really didn’t speak to me, and I never was prepared for my private lessons on a weekly basis. Probably out of frustration, my teacher told my parents, “Gerald needs to go to another instrument if you want to explore music with him. He’s just not interested in piano.” He had an old alto saxophone in his garage that he used to play in the army, and to my surprise, unannounced, he brought it to my next piano lesson. He brought this case in and I was like, “Whoa, what’s going on,” and he said, “Well, we’re going to try something different today.” He opened this old case and it had the smell of history–you know, kind of like mold, and you could tell it had been sitting in the garage for a while with some neglect. But he put it together and he put the reed on the mouthpiece and showed me how to make a sound out of it. I was fascinated, of course, to be able to blow through something, make a sound, press the keys. It was like a toy to me. I was far more interested in that than the piano. He quickly found out that I was inclined to play it, and here I am forty-some years later still doing it, and I owe it all to him.

MR: Since we’re talking about young people–in this case, you–what advice might you have for new artists?

GA: Knowledge is power in anything, and the music industry is no exception. It’s really about knowing all the facets of the music industry, both creatively and business-wise. It’s really about having some great people around you that you can trust, i.e. managers and entertainment lawyers and record company folks. These are the people that literally have your career in their hands, and if they’re not representing you right, then obviously, you won’t attain that wish list that you really are emphatically trying to attain. I would say to the youngsters create your own brand, don’t try to copy somebody that’s already out there doing their thing. They’ve made their own brand, and they’re successful at that brand, but you don’t want to sound identical to them, because that’s already been done. Create your own sound, your own brand, and be as unique as you possibly can. Then the third thing is just treat people right when you’re out there. Music is something to take very seriously. People rely on music as a life-changing platform, sometimes. I’ve had a lot of military people who tell me that when they were on the front lines in the Vietnam War or the Persian Gulf War or whatever, they would listen to my music and my music would get them through that challenge. We have a responsibility with our music to make it as quality and as positive as we possibly can. That’s what I would say to them, basically.

MR: Thank you again Gerald, for coming to The Huffington Post.

GA: My pleasure Mike, and let’s do it again.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne