Stix Hooper: The God of Groove!

Crusaders founding member, jazz fusion icon, and among the most sampled drummers in the history of recorded music: Stix Hooper joins hosts David C. Gross and Tomaso Semioli to talk all things groove!

Stix Hooper: The God of Groove Playlist

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Now, from somewhere in beautiful downtown Burbank, NBC once more tries to prevent.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

This radio show may be hazardous to be established in the media. You are about to embark on a cultural and intellectual journey to the intellect. Don't touch that dog. I will take it. Take the wrong. Don't swim an order. No through an order.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Susie? Yes. Susie Cream Cheese? That's the voice of your conscience, baby. Uh I just want to check one thing out with you, you don't mind it. Susie Cream Cheese. Honey. Let's get into you.

SPEAKER_06 1:38

What do you mean very interesting? It was stupid.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

It was stupid. But it was also very interesting. Hi there, nice to be with you. Happy you could stick around. Like to introduce Leg Larry Smith. Come. Sam Stones Rosenpo. Confirming Dudley Bohey No bass guitar. And Neil Edwards piano. Come in, Rodney Spawn Tac guitar.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

David, let me introduce Sticks Hooper to our audience. Okay. Ned's Bert Dix Hooper, I might add. He is a performance. Fame on you. Well, if it's on the internet, Dex. Okay, it must be true. It must be true. He is a performing and recording artist. He is a founding member of the Jazz Crusaders. He has recorded several albums under his own name. And he was vice chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. And you were the president of its Los Angeles chapter. How did that happen?

SPEAKER_06 2:53

Well, I I thought that they uh believed that I could do the job and uh or be responsible for what it was to be. But unfortunately, uh it didn't work out that way eventually because now, as you can record this, which I don't care, the Academy is no longer what it used to be.

SPEAKER_04 3:11

Okay. Okay. And you were also a radio personality. KGJ.

SPEAKER_06 3:19

Uh I had a broadcast on uh K Jazz FM, which is the station in Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_04 3:25

Okay, and it was Lay It on the Line, right?

SPEAKER_06 3:27

Lay It on the Line, that's true. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 3:29

Now, David, check this out. Downbeat and Playboy, your favorite magazine, um, named Sticks. Um, their fa their best drummer. Ten times you made the just best drummer. Do you get a free uh subscription to Downbeat and Playboy when you win those polls?

SPEAKER_06 3:48

Yeah, I had to pay for that, you know. No, they showed that they thought that I was worthy of uh them giving me that accolade, and uh so yes, uh that it that is true. And uh they're good magazines that have done a lot for jazz and for music per se.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

Yes, they have, certainly. Um uh David Sticks's collaborations include Quincy Jones, B.B. King, The Rolling Stones, you remember them, Elton John, Grover, Washington, Hubert Laws, Nancy Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Eric Clapton, you Massekela, George Shearing, Les McCann, I'm running out of breath here, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, among others. And nice work if you can get it, Sticks.

SPEAKER_06 4:33

Yeah, really. I was lucky to get a couple of kids, you know.

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Along the way. Well, it's interesting, you know, you know, just to to jump ahead a few years, you work with the um Philharmonic uh Orchestra of London, and your most recent record is Orchestrally Speaking. And it's um, you know, the uh orchestral uh remake of some of your classic compositions. What what inspired you to do that record?

SPEAKER_06 4:59

Well, I felt that uh music can be put in different kinds of settings, and uh particularly jazz musicians have always placed themselves into orchestral background things with strings, etc. etc. And depending on the composition, it it can be an enhancement to uh present the music. And I wanted to do that per se and make that the main focal point, and it was very, very rewarding to me. And I was working with a very, very competent uh uh worker with me that's a great orchestrator by the name of Eugene Maslov, who is a Russian uh pianist and composer, and we we worked together on to put that record together.

SPEAKER_04 5:42

Yeah. And how was it to trade your drumsticks for a different stick, a baton, to to lead the orchestra?

SPEAKER_06 5:49

It was great. Uh it was to do that. You know, you it's nice to be at the helm when you can shake a stick at the people, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_04 6:00

And the record swings, which you don't see on most uh jazz orchestral albums.

SPEAKER_06 6:05

Yeah, that is true. Uh you you always gotta have some kind of a pulsation or groove, if you want to call it, uh a tempo thing that it that has some momentum. So I wanted to keep that within a certain framework, but yet have the orchestral things where you have the different degrees of uh both the the pianissimos to the fortissimos and to the all of the different tempo variations, and and and it just shows that uh playing uh jazz-oriented things can be placed in a setting that has variety of of input.

SPEAKER_05 6:41

Oh, exactly. And you actually, I guess in the beginning were were um involved with the Houston Symphony as well, correct?

SPEAKER_06 6:50

That is true. My uh friend uh who passed on, Joe Sampler and I, we we worked with the Houston Symphony for a while. In fact, kind of ironically, even though we're instrumentalists, we uh sing in the chorus for um Aida, uh Aida. And uh so we've had experiences beyond just as instrument instrumentalists, particularly working with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, which gave us a lot of uh leeway into becoming musicians and seeing the variety of both vocal and instrumental work.

SPEAKER_05 7:22

Well, I've got to be honest, uh when I was a young cherub trying to get into studio work, there were three records, well, actually, four records, and and you laugh at the fourth one because it's it's the Crusaders What Crusaders East. So put it where you want it, scratch, and my favorite of all favorites was Southern Comfort. I thought uh uh both Stomp and Buck Dance and The Well's Gone Dry are like two of my favorite tunes. And the fourth record that actually fit in perfectly uh is stuff.

SPEAKER_06 8:02

Ah, wow, you really had a variety of things. Yeah, the whale's gone dry. That was a typical thing that happened when you didn't get any rain, if you know what I'm trying to say. So the Aqua scene got kind of kind of limited. But uh we've had a variety of things, and of course, titles always represent the uh what's going on with the composition. And uh you you definitely crossed a different variety of things that we were involved with, and and it was a lot of collaborative things uh that happened within the framework of the Jazz Crusaders and the Crusaders. And one of the first things that was of when you said swinging record, which was written by Wayne Henderson, is kind of interesting because the the title and the speed speaks for itself called The Young Rabbits. I get it. Yeah, really, yeah. We could we we could that that was a main thing, and not a main thing, but in in in Texas, you know, the when the rabbits sprang out, well, they were they were going fast. And if you get a chance to look at the video on that, you can see how fast we were playing on that particular record. And uh that was the inspiration. Uh and all all compositions have some kind of an inspiration, either with with the title or the purpose or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_05 9:23

Sure. Another thing that Tom and I brought up is you basically have led a very entrepreneurial life, and I feel so many musicians need to know more about being entrepreneurs. You're your own business. And uh you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

You were in the jazz crusaders business, 1960, you go from Houston to Los Angeles. That must have been a cultural shock.

SPEAKER_06 9:48

Yeah, that was a very much of a cultural shock in more ways than one, which I won't go into all the detail. But at least I guess I had the impact and the charisma to get all the musicians to take their individual cars to drive to Los Angeles. And you coming from Houston to Los Angeles, we chose to go there because we thought that that would be a place that we could at least possibly have a career development and also a backyard as opposed to going to New York, which was considered more or less a mecca of uh where musicians were to be. And eventually I joked uh with Horace Silva about that. I said, we went to the West Coast because uh we wanted to at least have a backyard instead of walk out on the sidewalk in New York, you know. And so it was a lot, it was a lot of fun. There's inspiration about the things. We have a lot of good moments, and it was really, really fun. And so that's that's what it was about. And then I'm just glad to still be around and to be able to do things and to have worked in such a variety of things, like you said, uh, with different musicians, different settings, different, different players from actually you say from Elton John to Eric Clapton, you know.

SPEAKER_04 11:01

What what in in terms of you know, but uh in 1960 for you to become your own band leader um was was pretty significant. Were there any band leaders in particular that you worked for that inspired you?

SPEAKER_06 11:16

No, not really, because my inspiration was in high school with our musical uh director or the the school teacher who was a band leader and band director there, and his inspiration to to learn to be a good musician was primarily it. But there were a couple of bands that I listened to. Of course, you know, if if you listen to music, you gotta hear Duke Ellington, you gotta hear Count Basie and people like that, you know. But uh my inspiration was primarily within a school setting.

SPEAKER_04 11:48

That George Magruder was your director, yes?

SPEAKER_06 11:50

That is true.

SPEAKER_04 11:51

Yeah, yeah, okay. So that's that's that's still a very, very solid foundation. And when you got to LA, um, even though you were, you know, rooted in hard bop, um, you had more of a slant towards rhythm and blues and soul music. How was that accepted in Los Angeles in 1960?

SPEAKER_06 12:10

Ah, that's interesting. It was it was questionable, uh uh because uh the West Coast jazz scene was altogether different, and I don't want to get into certain particulars about it, but it was definitely you know I won't call any names, but you probably knew who was in that movement. And so it did not have the the RB influence or that kind of an inspiration with the chord progressions and all those things. So it was something that we had to maintain uh our purpose for that and to convince people that that was something that they should pay attention to, other than what was happening with just covering just the standards, which you know what the standards are, you know, in terms of American standards.

SPEAKER_05 12:54

Tell me about I I was reading, Grace sent us some information. You're the most sampled drummer. That that's a remarkable, remarkable feat.

SPEAKER_06 13:08

Yeah, that's true. I wish I could get paid for all the times I've been changed. But you know, the way that the techno world works, sometimes you you get lost in the wind, you know.

SPEAKER_05 13:19

We were um interviewing uh the guitar player from a group called Roxy Music, and he told us this story that he gets a phone call from uh I guess it was BMG Publishing, and they said to him, You're gonna be very, very happy. Kanye West sampled a part of your song, and he didn't even remember which song it was. Then about three weeks later, he gets a call from another record company, and once again, you're gonna be really happy about this. And essentially, he said he made more money off of this one sample for Kanye than he did in his entire career with boxy music.

SPEAKER_06 14:06

Yeah, that that makes sense because nowadays at least some of the laws are so out there and they're so prevalent that they people have to acknowledge the fact of sampling, you know. Yeah, particularly when it's when it's straightforward and it's obvious that that was the case. Uh, and so you get well, of course, the term royalties and you get uh money from from doing that. Well, but uh because uh fortunately we get paid, uh the people who uh sample get paid, but unfortunately, the the artists that are making the big bucks from it uh are the ones that couldn't do it unless they would have sampled. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 14:43

Right. That's that's a whole other case. We had Ron Carter on the show four times, and one time, Sticks, he only talked about his wardrobe.

SPEAKER_05 14:51

So we only uh that's closet to get shoes to show us that matched his socks.

SPEAKER_04 14:59

So we will definitely we will definitely have a Sticks Hooper uh habitashery fashion show later. But um I want to uh Ron told us uh David that he has a lawyer on retainer and his job is to find Ron Carter samples and and get royalties from them. And I guess now with artificial intelligence, you can probably do that a lot more accurately.

SPEAKER_06 15:25

Yeah, it you can do it a little bit more accurately. It's still a big thing to deal with. You still need uh uh an attorney and legal help to do that because uh uh the artificial intelligence are not exactly artificial, they're intelligent and they know how to they know how to get past you, you know. But uh, if you get if you do get it, when people realize that they're putting themselves in a position where they could be sued or something, they have to be pretty much straightforward and coming coming forth. But AI is an unusual situation we're dealing with right now. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

Yeah, yeah. Now the business of music has changed. We went from LPs to cassettes to CDs to streaming, and now you can have a million songs at your fingertips. What are your thoughts on the Crusaders now being streamed?

SPEAKER_06 16:20

Well, all I know is there's subsequent roles that come from that, uh, especially the to me, particularly, with the things that uh my compositions, because I don't deal with the things that are streamed from the uh Crusaders or the Jazz Crusaders as much because they were more or less involved with the authenticity of the recording company of the label. But uh it's it's it is something now that people have to be more forthcoming. Because with things being heard so much, you it's pretty hard for them to dance around the fact that that they didn't sample something or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 16:59

Right. Yeah, and I I think Clyde Stebblefield is up there with the samples too. I think he's all his James Brown stuff is is you you hear it on so many, so many hip-hop records.

SPEAKER_06 17:12

Yeah, that's true, you know, and like I said, some of that that music was so authentic, and again, I'm not putting down the most contemporary musicians, but the grooves and the rhythms and the figures and the chord progressions and all those things, um most of the current people don't don't have the knowledge about that, so they have to sample that and expand on it a little bit in order to to get a recording out there. And and you know, and all due respect for the the hip-hop movement and all that stuff, I mean the people never even heard of Eddie Jefferson and all that stuff, you know. A thousand years ago, you know.

SPEAKER_05 17:53

Well, I think a lot of that has to do with our education system.

SPEAKER_06 17:57

Well, I won't go there because we have such a brilliant president, so we shouldn't talk about that.

SPEAKER_05 18:03

No, no, no. Think back. Uh I think the the people who grew up in the 60s and the 70s were the last to get actual real uh music education classes in their schools where they actually had instruments in their hands. I mean, I started uh uh when I was three, I started on piano. At seven, I had a clarinet. My sister took me to see A Hard Day's Night, and there was no way in hell I was gonna get any girls playing clarinet. So I ended up with the bass.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

But did you get girls when you got you started playing bass, David?

SPEAKER_05 18:41

That's true. I got lots of girls. They didn't stop playing bass. But but no, seriously, it it it just strikes me that the the um the knowledge that we grew up with having to listen to records and listening to full records back and forth and reading the uh the covers. There was an education that that streaming does not allow. And I guarantee most kids, I have a 21-year-old uh daughter graduating college, and she, of course, uh doesn't even go to Wikipedia to find out who's doing one. She'll call me and say, Dad, who did this? And and things of that ilk. So I think part of the issue is uh just the laziness and the fact that they don't want to do the hard work to do the uh to get the same foundation you do.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

Yeah, at at Wheatley High School. And I mean, I you know, music was part of my education in the 1970s. And it I I try to impart to young musicians it's easier to play when you know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_06 19:53

Yeah, that's a that's a good way to look at it. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 19:58

But now you went from being uh the Jazz Crusaders to the Crusaders, but you never really lost your identity as a band. And I think of the Jet the Crusaders almost in the way that I think of artists like Miles Davis or even the Beatles, where even though the band evolved, um you knew it was them. And of course, you had to make a conscience evolution in the 1970s because the music business was changing.

SPEAKER_06 20:26

Yeah, that is that is very true, you know, and uh and also to interrelate with what not only what was changing, but other people and other genres of music to respect, because we had a major hit on a on a Beatles song called Eleanor Rigby.

SPEAKER_04 20:43

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_06 20:44

And uh because uh, you know, but the point is that you get inspired by what other people are doing, and not because they're successful, but if there's some uh ingredient of good musicianship there, good music, you do it. It becomes like doing the standards, whether you're doing one of the standards. I won't call it a name because I don't want them to, you know what the standards are, but that that's that was that that kind of an interrelating factor of uh music being so universal and so being able to be appealing uh to people not necessarily stylized in a certain genre, you know, and it's just a matter of accepting, okay, uh Eln John wrote this, so therefore this is it's good. So what? It's not a jazz song, but it's a good melody, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 21:32

You know, right, and and and Elton had some jazz and rhythm and blues chops. Now, uh David and I are bass players, and among our favorite bass players are Wilton Felder and Pops Popwell. Now, it's just remarkable to me how many great records Wilton played on.

SPEAKER_06 21:52

Oh, he played on a lot of them. Except Barry White would probably be Barry Black if it wasn't a No, really, but he had unusual, besides being a great tenor player and a good writer and all those things, uh, he liked the bass, the the electric bass, yeah, but not so much the acoustic bass. And he developed a technique that was very unusual, and m musicians copied him, you know, and uh in fact he was the inspiration for even for Pop's Pop Well, you know.

SPEAKER_04 22:24

Well, I'll tell you also, uh Wilton inspired Jocko Pastorius, and when you listen to him and and Jocko side by side on the Joni Mitchell album, you have to check the credits to see who played what.

SPEAKER_06 22:38

Yeah, that is true. Uh, but if you really check the credits and see the songs, you can pretty much tell the difference between uh Jocko and and uh and and Wilton because Jocko was more articulate in maneuvering the bass uh as a solo instrument, right? More so than playing the groove or the pocket on the thing, as Wilton was.

SPEAKER_04 23:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:01

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 23:02

And it we it's interesting to see uh Jocko uh on the live Joni Mitchell record, and I saw it in person where he would appropriate Wilton's lines on the on the tracks that Wilton played.

SPEAKER_06 23:13

So it's pretty interesting. It's just uh it's but well, like I said, music is is always a cross-section of uh talent, uh musicianship, uh r respect for the style in which you're playing, the artists in which you're working with, or whether you're enhancing your own personal career. So all of those factors have to come into play in order to move forward on your instrument, in particular on the bass, or or any any any instrument. And certainly with my instrument, I mean I was inspired by Max Roach, but uh when I got a chance to become friends with him, he would always say to me, but I don't play the groove like you can play, but then I he was uh have had a sp spontaneity and creativity way beyond some of the things that I would even be able to do, you know.

SPEAKER_04 24:06

Yeah, yeah. And tell us about Pops Popwell. I mean, he was a great uh we're talking groove machine here, and quite an animated performer as well.

SPEAKER_06 24:16

Yeah, yeah, groove machine, and you know the gym, the gym, the gentleman that worked playing bass for uh you ever heard of James Jameson?

SPEAKER_04 24:25

Yeah, slightly.

SPEAKER_06 24:29

Yeah, yeah. I won't go into the story about him, but he joined the band so he could go and join the band and get out of uh Motown land, if you don't know. Right.

SPEAKER_05 24:41

Yeah. I met him when uh out in LA when when he was uh I'm at at Motown Studios, as a matter of fact. Really nice man.

SPEAKER_06 24:51

Oh, he was very nice man, very talented. Uh never got the credit and the the the money means of what he contributed to Motown Records. Because none of those records, particularly he played would if he wouldn't have played on, wouldn't have happened. They wouldn't have had the groove, wouldn't have had the pocket, the artist would not have been enhanced by his creativity and all of that stuff. So literally, he jumped into we were riding in a van and said, I want to join the band, go with you guys and play some some different stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

Wow, that's amazing. Well, uh uh it was nice to see James get his uh due in in standing in the shadows of Motown. And then of course later in the 70s, record credits became more common, so you got to see who played on what.

SPEAKER_06 25:41

So yeah, that's true, and that's one of the big problems now that we don't have with uh streaming and all that stuff, and with with at least on the vinyls and on the then you could read what was happening on things, you know. And none of that stuff is really announced now when you're listening uh on the digital stuff here right now. You know, it's just so different. So people are are just kind of guessing and assuming that this is what it is, don't know the the the context of which it was done or don't that's one of the sad things of what has happened with the music scene. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:17

Yeah, right. We don't get our we don't get our credit as due. Now, Sticks, before you go, we gotta ask you, what are you gonna what's on your bucket list? What can we expect from the future of Stix Super?

SPEAKER_06 26:28

Uh I'm gonna go have a chit and sandwich. No, I want to stay in the business as long as I am, like you said. I'm 21 now and I get 22. I want to be able to continue play. And even though I'm not religious, to be blessed to to perform and to write music and to be it to enhance the music scene. And the lady that's been supporting me for for the past uh 30 years is still supporting me and and and making the transition herself to find out how the music business has changed so much to the point that it has become a challenge now to even be involved in music to get your your stuff to surface, you know?

SPEAKER_04 27:15

Well, they probably have to have the same attitude like you did when you went to LA, that you just you have to look at it as your own business.

SPEAKER_06 27:21

Yeah, that is true. And uh that's what I I'm doing now, looking at my own business, and became more of an entrepreneur, like you said earlier, about me being involved with the the academy and being a talent manager of people that I thought were very, very good. You've heard of a singer by the name of Ernestine Anderson, which is part of the reason why I ended up in in in the Washington area. Uh and I managed literally managed her and encouraged her to write a couple of things that we would work together with, you know. So I always like to expand myself beside playing the groove, you know, and and and and be to touch base with the other things that are important that are related to to being a musician, being involved in the music scene, and and and respecting things that were not necessarily instrumental or vocal. So I had a good relationship working with Ernestine Anderson, who was a really, really great singer. By the way, happened to be another Houstonian. Huh.

SPEAKER_04 28:21

All right, that's great. All right, Sticks, thanks for talking with us. Um, we'll send you links when the podcast is up and running, and uh, we'll break the internet like a Kardashian.

SPEAKER_06 28:33

Okay, Joy. I'm ready. Thank you, and I'm gonna go now have my chimpanzee and I'll be enjoying.

SPEAKER_04 28:41

Take care, Sticks.

SPEAKER_06 28:42

Thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_05 28:43

Bye-bye now. You gotta fucking be kidding me, kid me, kidding me! How dare you call yourself professional?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Through unforeseen circumstances, this show will remain on the air until further notice.