Soul spoken here: Johnny Pate, part 2

When last we left our hero, he had just been fired from ABC....

How did that affect you?
Well, of course you know you’re fired from a job; it’s your ego.

Did they give you a reason?
Yeah, they said well you haven’t had to many hits recently and then of course other people were after my job because I had a nice set-up. In Chicago ABC set up an office for me and I didn’t have a boss standing over me, I did my own thing. There were a few other people after my job and they were you know, running to ABC. And then ABC had a change of the higher-ups; some of the people that I guess I had rubbed the wrong way were now in power. So now it was a thing where I guess in their own way they were out to get me and this is true to form, you know, it happens.

In your position how could you rub people the wrong way?
Well the thing is I was what they called an A&R man, a producer, and I would go in and actually create, produce records. Then my records would be turned over to promotion and distribution people, sales men, people who would have to go out and sell the records. And there were a few instances where I would record something and turn it over to these guys. “Well I don’t think this record’s got it,” they’d say. And they wouldn’t really put the push behind it. So I would sort of stay on their case pretty much. If they’d say “well I don’t think this record’s got it” then I’d say to them, “well, how many records are you gonna buy, are you gonna buy any records?” I said, “promote my record, and put it out there on the air and then let the public say it didn’t have it” and a lot of times they weren’t willing to do this.

But anyway, this happened, they had a change of the guard more or less and I was fired. They had just renewed my contract for a year in September and they fired me in December, so that means they had to pay me through the following September. But then after the first of the year I think two or three of the biggest records that ABC had were produced by me, and they had a big corporate meeting and one of the records was BB King, “Paying The Cost To Be The Boss” and an other one was The Marvelows “In The Morning” and at the time these were the biggest records, pop or whatever else they had. So to make a long story short, after this meeting some of the higher-ups were saying well who produced these records? So it came down, “Johnny Pate had produced them”.

In the mean time they had hired some other guys in Chicago and they were, they had really goofed up the office I had in Chicago. I had a nice office in Chicago, and these guys were really just having a ball, they were doing a lot of partying… but at the same time Capitol Records had approached me, they wanted to hire me, and of course the industry, everybody knows what’s going on with each other so ABC knew they were trying to hire me. And at the same time I had gotten an offer from MGM. So here’s two companies who are offering me a job so ABC decided well, we’ve got to get him back. So they hired me back at a lot more money but I still didn’t like the guys that I was working with so I think I only stayed maybe another year. In the meantime Capitol and MGM were still approaching me. I finally decided I would go with, well actually I left ABC and I was really out of work, I had no job. I moved to New York, rented an apartment in Manhattan with no job but I knew that eventually I was gonna have a job so I ended up going to work for MGM Verve, and that was jazz, they hired me for jazz, which was where my heart was anyway. So that’s how I got to New York.

What year was that?
This was around the late sixties, I’m not exactly sure what year. 66, 67, 68.

So did it feel better to be working in a different mode?
Oh yeah, at the time, well I was pretty wild at the time, I was between marriages, I was a single man making a lot of money living in New York City and I was working in jazz which was my first love.

Something that is so different in your story compared to other people in the music business is that you were able to be financially stable, whereas others seemed to have been abused by the music industry.
Actually, I guess this goes back to my jazz roots again. A very good friend of mine named Horace Silver; I don’t know if you know of him or not, Horace and I became friends many, many years ago. At the time we talked about the business. I don’t know if you know much about Horace’s music…

He does my favorite Blue Note single, Song for my Father…
Everything that Horace has ever recorded – Horace wrote. And Horace published. And that’s what Horace and I talked about. The secret was to try to get involved in publishing. If you can get involved in publishing and writing then you’ve got a good chance to survive in this business. And when you’re involved in it, be sure that you own it. Don’t let the record company own it. I guess that’s probably why I was lucky that way. And I always thought of it as a business, this is the only thing I know how to do. I don’t know how to do anything else. And this is what has to feed me and my family.

What brought you out west to Los Angeles?
The thing that brought me to the West was the involvement in movies I think.

Early seventies?
Yeah, early seventies. I got a call; I was working for MGM at the time. Course MGM is the company that was behind Isaac Hayes Shaft; they were the studio that did it. They did the Shaft first of all, just the one called “Shaft”, then they did the one called “Shaft’s Big Score”. They were going to do one more called “Shaft In Africa”. Through a contact that I knew at the studio he said, “Look, why don’t you just take a shot, throw your hat in the ring for the score” I had a little experience in doing scores. So I ended up with the score for “Shaft in Africa” and of course this was done on the West Coast so I was going back and forth to do that.

I thought that was on ABC…
What, Shaft In Africa? The soundtrack was. The soundtrack was on ABC and the reason it got on ABC was because they wanted a song for the movie and the song came from the Four Tops, a tune called “Are You Man Enough”.

That’s a great song.
I had nothing to do with “Are You Man Enough”, this was Steve Barry and … I forgot the other guy’s name, English guy. But anyway, they produced “Are You Man Enough”. Now, they made some kind of deal with the record company, they said, Look, the Four Tops song “Are You Man Enough” is what we’re pushing but we’d like to put the soundtrack on ABC. And at that time, the MGM studio and the MGM record label were beginning to kind of separate. A young guy named Mike Curb had taken over as president of Verve, in fact that was about the time I left because Mike’s head was into really pop stuff, into country western, he was kind of going in that direction more than the jazz thing. So at that point I was I guess beginning to look for other avenues, so that’s when I left the company, Verve and MGM. MGM pictures and MGM the record label were kind of separating they weren’t really as close together as they were when Isaac Hayes did his thing. So therefore, ABC said, Hey, we’ll do the entire soundtrack on ABC and of course the picture people said “great” and that’s why it came out on ABC.

What about the soundtrack for “Run Brother Run”?
Oh [graciously laughs at my error] “Brother On The Run”? “Brother On The Run” was a little independent thing that was done. A theatre owner in New Orleans put up a lot of the money, like most of the money, for the “Brother On The Run” thing. I’m trying to remember how I really got involved in that… how did I really get involved?

That was on the Ovation label.
Ovation? …or…Perspective… [actually it’s on the Perception label]

[gasp] I always get the two confused. Now these kinds of films are called “blaxploitation” films, what were they called at the time?
Um, I guess they were called “Blaxploitation”, yeah, back then. [Carolyn concurs on this point]

Did you think anything of the term; it’s a little denigrating.
Not really, not really. It was just a title that they were given.

Why is that LP so hard to find?
[laughs] Why is it so hard to find? Because it was an independent venture, the picture was, and also the record. It wasn’t done by a company that puts out records more or less. The people that did the movie said well okay we need a soundtrack so we’ll start a company and they probably never did another record. You probably can’t find another record on that label, Perspective. [The Perception label issued the northern soul classic “Let Her Go” by Otis Smith]

What are your thoughts on your “underground” acclaim?
Actually I’m still baffled by all this, I have no idea what’s going on with this underground thing. When Lou Ragland brought John Smith here that day I was just amazed, I said “God, what’s going on?” and to come up with a record like Earl Jackson “Soul Self Satisfaction”, god, I forgot this thing even existed! I’m still amazed and I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you when you shut this thing off, a loooot of questions [laughs].

A lot of your tracks are heavily played on a regular basis at these dances that they have in England and on the Continent.
And this just blows me away. I’m baffled; I’m amazed at all this.

Your productions and arrangements are so perfect for the dancing style.
Well this is your opinion, because you told me about this before, this is your opinion okay [laughing].

Carolyn: I wonder when we were over there recently how you go about finding out what was what. We had no idea where to begin.

Kathleen: It’s very underground

Johnny Pate: Yeah, it is very underground. See, she has relatives in Germany in Kaiserslaughten…

Nancy: See, we’re gonna be going to Frankfurt for a big dance.

Johnny Pate: All right, Kaiserslaughten is close to Frankfurt.

Nancy: Well, there you are. The biggest German soul allniter happens in Frankfurt, and there several of your tracks would get played.

Johnny Pate: now you say “these allniters”, well what happens at these things?

Carolyn: It’s just a dance, like a nightclub environment…

Nancy: It’s a very long dance with two separate rooms. One will be a seventies to contemporary room and then the larger room plays mostly sixties. And people will dance from about 11 at night until 6 or 7 the next morning.

Carolyn: That’s marvelous.

Nancy: there are several djs that come from different parts of Europe, asked out special; we’re coming in from Italy…

Johnny Pate: Are there any in Denmark, Copenhagen?

Nancy: I think there are but I’m not really familiar with the scene there.

Johnny Pate: My grandson is Danish and he’s got some cousins that are young and his mother’s over there and of course we’re in constant touch with them…but this… I just can’t believe all this…

Nancy: well we can get back to this after I’m done grilling you about yourself.

[After talking about the Trends & what nice well-groomed young men they were, always nicely dressed in suits…]

Johnny Pate: There wasn’t so much the .. the drug scene wasn’t that heavy back then.

Carolyn: No, drugs weren’t… a little marijuana but that’s all…

Johnny Pate: Yeah, a little grass but uh, … I wish I could help you more in remembering things. But this thing by the Trends you say is one that I’ve done, right?

Nancy: Yeah, there are a couple of them. I’m gonna have to make you a tape.

JP: Please, you’ll have to. Back in those days I was recording so fast I would do a session, say, mid-morning to the afternoon, I’d be through in the afternoon. And I would have to go home and write for the session that would take place the next day! And a lot of times there were groups, I remember when Carl Davis was producing, he had a lot of groups over there. He would call me and say, “here’s this group we’re doing” and I would write for them and half the time I wouldn’t even know the names of the groups. I’d just be doing the sessions and they’d be over and then I’d be on to something else.

How did you keep your quality so high?
[chuckles] I don’t know, I guess I was lucky!

[At this point Johnny Pate shows Carolyn the photos from our first visit, including the nervous shaky-hands blurred pictures and they have a laugh about that.]

JP: Simone was the one who brought up “Bucktown” [laughs] I was floored when he said “Bucktown USA” and it was so funny – after that, after we came back from Europe, we looked up one day and they ran Bucktown on the BET channel, they ran it a couple times. And this thing is, you know… I was really just, course there was never a soundtrack on it. Just the movie.

Carolyn reminds Johnny about “The Chicago Sound” and the use of trombones, was he aware of this musical style?
Pretty much, yeah. They’ve got these books and everything that this guy, somebody sent it to me.

Would you say the Chicago Sound pre-dates the Motown Sound?
Uh, I don’t know. It may. I don’t know, you guys probably know that better than I do - because you guys are the historians.

Carolyn: It just may, maybe by a year or so.

Were you influenced at all by their producers and arrangers and writers?
What, Motown?

Yeah, or any other Detroit writers?
Not really. I was just doing my thing pretty much.

Well you know how the Motown label was so commercially successful. Would the record executives try to push you in that direction or would they just leave it up to you?
No, I don’t think anybody ever really came and tried to influence me as far as what I was doing. On so many records where I was the producer, it was entirely up to me what I wanted to do. I don’t recall companies, higher-ups, ever coming and saying “Why don’t you do it this way” they just more or less let me do my thing.

And on the West Coast?
When I finally went to the west coast I stopped doing a lot of record work. I was trying to do movies and TV work. And every now and then I would get a call from someone who would want me to do a record date. So after the seventies… [he confers with Carolyn to get the chronology right] Peabo Brsyon on Capitol.

Did you keep up with the trends over the passage of time?
I probably kind of doubt it. I guess I haven’t even thought of that. I guess you’d have to listen to the Peabo Bryson records to see whether I’ve changed or not.

Soul spoken here: Johnny Pate, part 2

Nancy Yahiro continues with the second of this three part interview with Johnny Pate.

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