Interview with Galt MacDermot by Eothen "Egon" Alapatt

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In order to understand the following interview, you gotta dig this:

Galt MacDermot was born on December 18, 1928 in Montreal, the son of Elizabeth Savage and Terence MacDermot, a Canadian diplomat. The elder MacDermot, a pianist, exposed his son to a variety of music at an early age. By age 8 Galt had adopted the violin, but it wasn't until he landed behind the piano at age 14 that he took a serious approach to music. Having heard Nat "King" Cole and the infectious boogie-woogie sound emanating from the United States, MacDermot was hooked. He stayed in school - and landed a BA in history and English from Bishop University - but dedicated all of his spare time to music. His love for Duke Ellington grew and grew, and he became a self-described "jazz freak." In 1950, when the Canadian government appointed his father High Commissioner to South Africa, he moved with his family to Cape Town and enrolled in a music program at the university there.

"The African Experience," as MacDermot now calls his time spent there, would come to influence his musical development greatly. His father, a forward-thinking Jamaican native, hated the apartheid system propagated by the South African government. Thus it comes as no surprise that MacDermot embraced the music created by native South Africans. He combed Capetown searching for music and vividly recalls the African style of drumming; it's rhythms so much more free than the jazz swing rhythm that he had grown accustomed to in North America. He recalls the complex African singing that he now recognizes as the basis of American gospel. He recalls his family's cook, a drummer who schooled him on ways to incorporate new beats into stock rhythmic phrases. And he recalls his summers spent in the North, listening to the work songs of African miners. Attempting to describe his experience, MacDermot recently stated, "Once you hear African music, you...," before pausing abruptly. He continued, "It's serious music, they're not faking anything." However, upon his return to Canada, MacDermot did not immediately put into practice that which Africa had taught him. He assumed the relatively low-key job of organist in a Baptist church and played with two bands on the side - one for club gigs and one focusing on calypso. But it was in Canada that MacDermot would first break into the music industry. He wrote some music for the play "My Fur Lady" in 1955 and ended up landing a record deal with the company that recorded the musical, Laurentien Records. In 1956 Laurentien recorded MacDermot's Art Gallery Jazz, an LP that contained a version of a tune that he had written in Cape Town, "African Waltz." Later, in 1960, while enroute to Amsterdam, he stopped in London to play his record to bandleader Johnny Dankworth. Dankworth told MacDermot on the spot that he would record the song, but at the time MacDermot thought little of it. It wasn't until he heard from a friend that English radio was heavily rotating Dankworth's cover that he realized he had his first hit. It was at this point that MacDermot decided to move to England, as he now jokes, "to exploit himself." But it wouldn't be so easy. He found work scarce in England. So scarce in fact, that he moved back to Canada before his royalty checks ran out! He did not remain in Canada long, opting instead to move southward to New York City in 1964. Cannonball Adderly had recently covered "African Waltz" (actually releasing an album under the same name!) and MacDermot had won a Grammy for his composition. Through the connections he had established, he met producer Rick Shorter, who at the time was in the business of assembling studio musicians to cut tunes for music publishers. Shorter introduced MacDermot to the mid-Manhattan studio musicians that would become his co-workers for the next few years.

This is where our story begins:

Eothen: In 1964 you moved to New York from Canada in search of work as a musician.
Galt: Yes, and I met Rick Shorter, a producer. He wanted a ska tune for Woody Herman so I wrote one. He like my piano playing so he started using me on his record dates, cutting demo records.
E: So it was through Rick that you first met Bernard Purdie?
G: Yes, I had done about three or four sessions with Rick when he said to me, "There's a new guy in town - he's the top." That was Bernard, and he was the top. He was excellent. That was about 1964 or 1965.
E: So at this point, Bernard was fresh on the scene from Maryland?
G: Well, he'd been around, playing with King Curtis and the like. He would do sessions around town with signs all over his drums: "Pretty Purdie, The Hit Maker" [laughs].
E: You two hit it off immediately...
G: Oh, yes. I was a bit older than he was but our tastes were the same. He knew exactly what I was doing. When I played something on the piano, he'd pick right up on the drums.
E: How about the others? Snag Allen, the guitarist...
G: In those first few years, I ran into so many great musicians - guitar players, even pianists. But out of all of them, Snag appealed most to me. I used him on my first session as a leader. As well as Jimmy Lewis the bassist.
E: So mostly black dudes in your sessions - you were the anomaly.
G: [Laughs]
E: But I'm not saying that you didn't have a keen sense of music. Before you moved to New York, you'd seen the world - Africa, England. You understood music - especially the rhythm & blues that would become funk.
G: Yes, in England I was playing the jazz swing rhythms - but I was really feeling the African rhythms I had heard when I was a student in South Africa. But when I came to New York, I noticed that the rhythms that people were playing were different even than those that I heard in England and in Africa.
E: So when was it that you noticed that the swing jazz rhythm was going to lose its dominance in American music?
G: Oh, I noticed that long ago - in the 1950s. As soon as I returned to Canada from Africa, I heard these rhythm & blues acts coming up to Montreal from New York and thought, "This is the direction music is going to go."
E: But this wasn't yet funk per se.
G: Oh but it was - those musicians were very intense about their rhythms - and it wasn't swing. Serious stuff. And it wasn't a shuffle the drummer played - it was an even 8th note with a strong backbeat.
E: And in the mid 60s, the backbeat changed even more - it got more powerful. Remember that Lee Dorsey song we listened to, "Get Out My Life Woman"?
G: What year was that?
E: 1966.
G: Really!
E: Yeah that was the pre-funk of New Orleans and the South in general. White rock & rollers were not doing anything like that at the time.
G: Oh yeah, the rhythm & blues that I was listening to was all black...

Shaping the Rhythms of the Future

E: Now in the same year, you recorded your first instrumental album that you released on Kilmarnock - Shapes of Rhythm. You used those sessioners we just mentioned - Snag, Bernard and Jimmy - to record your vision of that rhythmic change. "Coffee Cold" is the track off that album that, to me, most clearly anticipates the whole funk movement of the late 60s. Now there were other songs on the album that had the feel - "Field of Sorrow" especially - but "Coffee Cold"! The drums so loud and strong, driving the whole track. Snag only playing the backbeat. Why record a song like that in 1966? You know, people still listen to that song in amazement...
G: Well, I don't know why. Maybe the chord progressions? That lent to the funk feel. Plus we were trying to put as much rhythm into that song as possible. We did that with all of our songs, but that song especially lent to it.
E: When you were done with the session - what were you thinking?
G: Well, we had so much fun - I don't think that we took more than one take on each song. Such a good session!
E: Did you think to yourself - "You know, I just recorded something that is pretty revolutionary?"
G: Oh no, I just thought it was good. I always thought that any session I did with those guys was good [laughs]...

HAIR takes off  

E: At any rate, come a couple years later - 1968 - funk, because of musicians like James Brown, was coming to the forefront. You too were involved in bringing funk to the masses, with your score to the immensely popular score musical HAIR. Some songs, like "Where Do I Go," you wrote in 1967 for the first run of the show at Joe Papp's Public Theater. Some, like "Let the Sunshine In," you wrote for the Broadway version in 1968. HAIR continued your move towards the funk side.
G: Well my idea was to make a total funk show. They said they wanted rock & roll - but to me that translated to "funk."
E: So what is all the confusion about? Everyone calls HAIR a rock musical, but now we look back and say, "Oh, 'Colored Spade,' 'Ripped Open by Metal Explosions'...those are funk songs."
G: You know, part of the difference was the band - we had a funky band [laughs]!
E: And a lot of those musicals that came out after HAIR with lesser bands and lesser composers were actually rock musicals - the music was horrible!
G: Well, you have to remember, a lot of post-HAIR musicals only used straight ballads. They added a backbeat - that's not enough! On HAIR I wanted to include an African influence with the backbeat.
E: It would seem funny that you, a white guy from Canada, had such a great understanding of Africa and of the musicians you worked with. You were definitely closer to Bernard's thought processes, than let's say a white musician like Robert Plant.
G:That's true [laughs]! But the truth is, I didn't know that. I just like what I was doing. I was aware that a lot of people didn't understand what I was doing - and didn't particularly like it!
E: When you reopened HAIR on Broadway, you also changed your band. Bernard couldn't play...
G: Well, he was too busy. So I asked Jimmy to bring in a drummer, and he introduced me to Idris Muhammad.
E: Now about this time, Jimmy, Bernard and Idris had started to really kill East Coast soul jazz sessions for Blue Note and Prestige and all that. You said you like Lou Donaldson - were you listening to those records? Johnny Hammond, Sonny Phillips, Reuben Wilson, etc.?
G: No, not really. I was listening to WNJR out of New Jersey - they played funk, R&B mostly - not much jazz. I'd lost interest in jazz in the '50s.
E: But the whole soul jazz movement was really a melding of the funk concept and some jazz progressions. A lot closer to blues and funk than to jazz - except for the improvisational sections. But anyway, you weren't into this kind of thing.
G: Yeah, I knew Idris was more of a jazz drummer than Bernard was - he had that leaning. But I had no idea what he was doing when he wasn't playing the show. When I met Idris - he was Leo Morris then - I saw a different kind of power in him than I had grown accustomed to with Bernard. It took me a while to appreciate him. He has an extraordinary power!
E: You know, on the RCA HAIR album, even though the band is mixed low as to give precedence to the vocals, if any two instruments pop through, it's Jimmy's bass and Idris' drums.
G: Oh yeah!
E: Idris and those guys ripped those songs apart.
G: Right - and after about a year, he and the rest of the band had become so unbelievable that I had to record them as a group! I had only played with the band for a couple of months, and then I had to travel all over the world to open different runs of the show. But no other band I saw could match our show. They couldn't imitate us - they did what they thought was right, and it worked to a degree, but it wasn't close to what we had.

A 'Major' Success?

E: So the next major label album you did was First Natural HAIR Band?
G: Yes, I suggested that we record, and the band was all for it. The songs we chose to record were the lesser-known songs from the show, and the songs the band played best.
E: You had already done an instrumental HAIR album - HAIR Pieces on Verve Forecast in 1967 - but First Natural HAIR Band was a totally different feel. HAIR Pieces was more palpable - you used strings and a vocal chorus. But this one had a raw funk feel. Some songs on the album - "Walking in Space," for example, with the horns punching with the percussion, with Charlie Brown and Al Fontaine adding rhythm on guitar to back up Idris and Jimmy - is a great example of what a funk song could be.
G: Well, the whole band was a rhythm section. The whole point of that album was to emphasize rhythm. Only Charlie, Al and I would take some solos.
E: Now, the one song that stands out most from the album is "Ripped Open by Metal Explosions," which happens to be your favorite song of the whole musical. What made that song stick out in your mind like that?
G: I don't know - the feel, I guess. It's like a blues - but it's not...
E: What is it about these morose songs and you?! "Coffee Cold" - remember your original lyrics, "Coffee cold, brown and indifferent..." - "Duffer" off of The Nucleus. These aren't the happiest of songs, but you do them so well.
G: It's a feel that works. I'm not a depressed person, but there's something about sad words that I like! But we all liked playing "Ripped Open by Metal Explosions." In many ways it was the climax of the HAIR show. There was a war, and then followed a fantasy where everyone dies. They gradually stand up and come back to life, and "Ripped Open by Metal Explosions" plays in the background as they sing. It's very dramatic. Powerful, not atmospheric in the least...
E: So you finish this record, for which you are paid only as a sessioner. But when it comes out, it obviously doesn't get the promotional attention that it deserves. It's funny, the English Company HAIR records are easier to find than this one, an album released domestically that far surpasses it musically. That's kind of crazy, cause your band was so good! And now, to lovers of funk music, we want a record like First Natural HAIR Band badly. More than we would ever want a vocal version!
G: It's good to hear you say that, because to me, it's much more important to hear the rhythm of a song.

Woman is Sweeter

E: About the time United Artists issued First Natural HAIR Band, you released a small press run of the soundtrack Woman is Sweeter on Kilmarnock. Now, before HAIR you released Fergus MacRoy's first LP and Shapes of Rhythm independently. After HAIR, and all the financial backing you gained, you continue to release records, but they hardly ever get sold!
G: Well really, Kilmarnock was an outlet for me to record music that I knew the majors wouldn't like. There was no way a company besides Kilmarnock would record Woman is Sweeter. It was the soundtrack to a tiny movie by Martine Barrat.
E: An interesting fact about that soundtrack is that it features both Idris and Bernard playing drums, though not at the same time. What dynamics! What a great time for music... Even a song like "Space," which you yourself said you envisioned as a ballad, is really a quirky, self-contained commentary on funk.
G: Quite intense, really - I was just playing it with the band the other day, and I realize that now!
E: There were a lot of songs like that. Like HAIR, Woman is Sweeter bounces all over the place. And you have these two drum masters, that you're working in a way that soul jazz leaders never did - you'd often only find Idris or Bernard in their respective blues or funk shuffles. On your record they jump from one rhythm to the next.
G: Of course. You see, those were all ideas that I had for the movie - I scored that movie in about a month. And I used every I idea I had! Some of them were sort of bizarre - but they worked nonetheless.
E: HAIR was great for more reasons than one. It made these little projects possible. But there was this one story I remember you telling me that really captured your take on success.
G: Well that was a little before HAIR really took off on Broadway. I was walking down 8th Street in Manhattan. It was raining and my shoes started to leak. They were these old, pointed shoes that I had bought when I played organ. I had just gotten a thousand bucks from Joe Papp, so I went and bought a pair of desert boots and threw the old shoes in the garbage!
E: You know, a lot of other people would have squandered their money on either drugs, huge houses or cars. But that was never the case with you - you funneled your money into releasing music you believed in. That's why I enjoy that story - it kind of captures your anti-materialist nature.
G: Well, I'm only really interested in music. Well, I like to have a decent car. And I did buy myself an old schoolhouse here in Staten Island. But I put the money into what interested me. And believe me, I was very happy to record whatever I wanted.

Kilmarnock Records

E: After Woman is Sweeter, you released many records on Kilmarnock. But rather than getting sold, most of them ended up in your basement.
G: Yes, I had two friends, Joe Lewis in New York and John Holden in Montreal, that helped me run the company, but we didn't sell any records. Joe would see to it that the records got assembled, and I believe he would hand sell them to certain stores. But we had no distribution, and I got no response from anyone - so I would record, press an album, store the records away, and move on.
E: You recorded an album by Billy Butler, a guitarist we all know from his session work and his solo albums on Prestige and the like.
G: Yes, Billy Butler Plays Via Galactica. I think I first met Billy because he subbed in the HAIR band. Or I might have met him on a session, for he was good friend with Jimmy. Anyway, he played in the show Via Galactica. And he approached me about recording some of the tunes from the show.
E: You know, a lot of people only used Billy, Idris, Jimmy for that stock drum beat, bass line, or guitar riff. But you produce them on a record, and it's a totally different feel. Billy Butler on Via Galactica is a much different Billy Butler than on "Twang Thang."
G: But I didn't know that. There were certain guys who couldn't pick up on what I was into. And there were certain ones who did. The ones who did, I used - like Billy and Idris.
E: Now The Nucleus - which was a high point for Kilmarnock was it not?
G: The Nucleus was released after my musical Two Gentlemen of Verona. It contained songs for two soundtracks I did - Duffer, which came out in England, and Ever After All which was released over here. I used Gordon Edwards on bass, because Jimmy was still busy with HAIR. I used Ted Dunbar and Billy Nichols on guitar. Very nice guitar players! It was one of my few instrumental albums - I think it was my last.
E: It was a very funky record - much different from say The Karl Marx Play or Salome Bey Sings Songs from Dude. As the '70s progressed, you recorded some soundtracks that never came out - Fortune and Men's Eyes with Chuck Rainey on bass and Billy on guitar and, and still later, you did the film version of Ionesco's Rhinoceros. But you took a break from releasing records on Kilmarnock in the mid-'70s.
G: Yes, but I didn't take a break from music. I traveled to Jamaica and started working with Derek Walcot from Trinidad. I didn't record my work down there - except for O, Babylon! - I was just having fun. I really got back into music stateside after I re-orchestrated the HAIR score for the movie in 1979. I got to experiment with horns and more elaborate orchestrations. Then I created the New Pulse Jazz Band because I enjoyed that experience so much. For once the band was more than a rhythm section. It was fun - and I still play with the band today, though it's stripped down a bit. It had gotten a bit big at 14 pieces!

The Hip Hop Era

E: Since you mentioned the late '70s, let me say that it's thankful you never embraced disco!
G: No, that never interested me because that music lacks rhythm. After a while people rejected funk. I noticed that after I did the musical Dude in the early '70s. There was no response from the crowd. Maybe it had gotten overdone, maybe people were over-saturated. But they didn't want it anymore, of that I was sure.
E: How sad. What power laid in 18-year-old musicians in the late '60s was totally lost by the mid-'70s. The next time that young kids would come to have that power again was with the hip hop generation.
G: Yes... Now who was it that did "Down with the King"?
E: Pete Rock produced the song for Run-D.M.C.
G: Yes, you know that was the first sample I knew about - "Where Do I Go" off of the HAIR soundtrack. I had heard rap in the '80s - on the street, you know - but I was never that impressed with it. It seemed like more of the same rhythms that I wasn't interested in. Kind of tired funk... But as producers started getting more adventurous with their beats, that's when it changed.
E: Some of those adventurous producers, tired of those James Brown and Ultimate Breaks samples, moved quickly in the direction of you, David Axelrod and the like. And they discovered your Kilmarnock records.
G: Victor Padilla (The Mighty V.I.C. of the Ghetto Professionals -E.) was the first person to come to the house to buy my records in the early '90s. I didn't really know what was happening in hip hop. He called me up, told me he was into hip hop, and that he was looking for Woman is Sweeter. So I invited him over and he went through the basement.
E: At this point, no one had seen the cache of joints in your house. Basically what you hadn't stored in Canada was in your basement. You had hundreds of copies of those LPs!
G: Yes, and Victor bought a few. Then he started bringing his friends over. He was here quite often and he always brought sombody. A guy came over from California, one guy came down from Boston. We talked about music - but not about the music he was making.
E: Or the music that his friends were making. Because now, I think back on some of the guys he brought by the house - Ju Ju, Lord Finesse - at that time those guys were producing some landmark hip hop!
G: I sort of knew Victor was a musician. You see, Victor had an ear for certain chord progressions in my music that he liked - that I liked! He would spot them in my songs. I was more surprised of that than the fact that he had found me, or that he had heard about Kilmarnock. But his friends never said much - they were just nice guys. I didn't even know they were in the business.
E: It's interesting - when we first started talking, you hadn't even heard VIC's music! But your music obviously meant a lot to them!
G: Well, you know Victor wanted to record us. I said sure, but Bernard was a bit skittish...
E: A cover of "Get Out My Life, Woman" right?
G: Yes that's right. He gave me this record that had all of these versions of that song. I wrote out a version, but we never recorded it.
E: It wasn't until 1994, when you received the tape of Rashad Smith's "Woo-Haa" in the mail for sample clearance that you really got into hip hop.
G: Right. I really liked that song, and I started following its progression. I started listening to Hot 97 in my car and listened carefully to what was going on.
E: By this time, your work had already been established in the hip hop canon. Your soundtrack to Cotton Comes to Harlem had been used several times, First Natural HAIR Band was in the mix, and many people had gotten samples from variations of HAIR songs. Remember the Japanese cast's version of "Dead End"?
G: "Dead End" - Victor liked that one. But he wasn't the one who used that...
E: No, it was Large Professor. But many people were going through your songs and isolating the elements they liked. And along comes Busta, still relatively unknown, rapping over your keyboard work and there is a huge rush to find Galt MacDermot records.
G: Well, then other people started coming in to buy records. Mark Johnson (notorious record buyer/dealer) was one person. We were happy to get them out of the house! The records were finally moving. They hadn't moved in thirty years!
E: What other records were people buying?
G: They would check out all my records. Even odd records like The Karl Marx Play. But they tended to buy the instrumental funk stuff - The Nucleus, HAIR Cuts, and Shapes of Rhythm. Everything about it surprised me, but I figured they had their reasons. I mean, I liked those records, so it's fair enough that someone else would!
E: And basically, you sold out of every one.
G: Well, you saw the situation. Some records haven't sold at all - like Take This Bread. We have a couple thousand of those [laughs]! The instrumental stuff is gone. We only have a couple of copies of each.
E: So all of your records are circulating within the hip hop community - and you like this! What is the value you see in hip hop music?
G: As I started listening to hip hop, I heard the rhythms and the beats. They were interesting. So I kept listening more and more, and enjoying them more and more.
E: Well hip hop heads are still enjoying the records you put out. The re-issues help get the music to a broader base than the few people lucky enough to score original copies. And heads are getting excited about all of these unreleased tracks and albums that are in the works...
G: You know, music swings around. Funk came to an end in about 1974. But now people are returning to that feel. That has always been the best part of American music - that bluesy feel, it's emotion... But you know, it does sort of surprise me that Desco and record labels like that are putting out straight funk stuff. I think that if I was a young musician, I would be trying to find my own thing.

The Future...?

E: But you yourself stated that rhythm hasn't changed in thirty odd years. In 1974, you granted an interview where you stated that rhythm in popular music had to change. But it hasn't.
G: No, it hasn't. And that's curious. When I say rhythm has to change, maybe I'm being too forceful. Maybe it doesn't have to change. You hear different rhythms come in and out, like the reggae rhythm came in for a while, and then the disco thing. I don't know what's in now - but I do know that rappers are doing something serious. I'm really only interested in serious music. Pop music never meant a thing to me. Even when I was a kid dancing, I would try to get rid of the pop songs and put on Duke Ellington. You know, the good music.
E: And now, with people like PB Wolf the cycle continues. Independent labels, much like Kilmarnock...
G: Right, they're bringing out the good music.
E: You've had a chance now to hear how your music influences the hip hop generation. And on the whole you're pleased.
G: Oh yes. And I think hip hop producers are very careful with what they do. Like that one song that used "Ripped Open by Metal Explosions"...
E: Buckwild's "C'mon with the C'mon" for the Artifacts.
G: It's so beautifully done. The way they isolated the bass, added in the drums. It's very good - they got a good sound.
E: And records like the Beatnuts first LP. These are musicians with no formal training, but they have an innate musical sense. They're the ones who are digging up music like your own, weaving it into hip hop songs, and making the music known again.
G: It's excellent. It's nice that people are ready to hear this music. I recorded so much music, and if people didn't feel it, then I filed it away. Even people like my old managers weren't interested. But now there's interest - and that's a whole lot better than no interest [laughs]! I like the appreciation - the fact that these young guys hear what I heard.

Editor's note: This article first appeared last year on World of Beats (www.worldofbeats.com), but we all thought it should be re-presented here. So big thanks to everyone involved: Eothen, Soulman and, of course, Galt and Mary Anne MacDermot.

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