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Marcus Miller, "Tales (Reprise)" (1995)
Thanks to Marcus Miller and Bibi Green for kind permission.
For further information on this incredible artist take a look at the (unofficial
but supported) website www.marcusmiller.com.
"Joe Sample: It was 1954 or 1955. I'm either 15 or 16 years old. The place is somewhere in a barn with a bandstand along the east Texas/Louisiana border. We are in sugar cane country, approximately 200 miles from my hometown of Houston, Texas. I am a piano player in a band, the house band, the road band. We are the put together band. Country towns. These blues artists could have been Gatemouth Brown, T-Bone Walker, Big Walter, Little Walter, Johnny Copeland, Percy Mayfield or any number of those particular men that were prominent at that particular time. The custom was the band played a warm up set and of course the singer finally comes on to the bandstand and then the show commences. We of course wanted to play our jazz. We were doin' anything, were doin' anything to play jazz and we would force jazz on the top of these rhythm and blues grooves. Suddenly men would start walking from the back of the room and approach the bandstand. This man said to me, 'Look. I want you niggas to understand something right now. We paid 25 cent at the front door and we came in here to have a good time. Now it sounds to me you guys are playing a bunch of bull and we're not getting our money's worth. So we're gonna tell you now. We will take your instruments from you, whip your ass and destroy your vehicles and more than likely you will have to walk and beg your way back to Houston, Texas. Now we will do this to you unless you make us feel real good, real suddenly...' So of course this is the supreme method and technique in the learning of how to groove. I became an instant groove master, as so did all of my buddies on the bandstand. This is a tale of development along the Texas/Louisiana border."
