Drummer, musical director, composer, producer
(1957– )
Music was always in my house—always in the family. Music and baseball. Those were my two favorite things. My parents were big music fans. My mother used to sing classical music, actually. My father is an engineer/architect, but you could swear that he was a musician. I was sitting with him a couple of days ago, and he sang that great old Lionel Hampton tune “Flying Home.” He sang the solo, the saxophone solo, verbatim. That’s where I get that from, because I can sing a solo break too.
I was the class clown in school, so for a couple of years there my parents had to stay on me. But I wasn’t like an evil kid. Nothing like that. Any time I got grounded, the one thing they didn’t take away from me was studying music. So when I was sent to my room, I could listen to music and I could practice. So I was like, Hey, this isn’t too bad. In fact, it kind of helped me focus.
From the age of two years, I played on pots and pans and, in fact, I was always also playing records for people. My parents were fascinated about how I knew, before I could read, how I knew which record was which. I had figured it out. I must’ve been able, because I have this photographic memory kind of thing, to just identify the labels and the print on the labels. I could remember which song was sung by which group by the look of the label.
When I was about eleven or so, if my aunt was having a party or somebody in the neighborhood was having a party, I was the deejay. If my class was having a party, I would deejay the party. I was on this AV—audiovisual—team in school. There was this record player that was made for schools, a big mono speaker, just one speaker, but it was heavy duty to withstand children. It always had a really big sound ’cause it was a bigger unit. It had a little bass happening. It was very sturdy. I always remembered that record player. So years later, I was producing a record—and they were still records in those days—in Milwaukee. I was going down the street and saw this AV repair shop, so I walked in and I saw all the stuff that I used to have in school. I bought all of it. So I have one of these record players in my home now. It sounds fantastic.
And of course I was a baseball fan. I played second base from the age of about seven years old through the clinic and then Little League. In the back of my head, my dream was to be the second baseman for the New York Yankees. To begin with, I wasn’t very tall. In fact, I was always trying to figure out how to grow. I gotta get taller here. I’d try standing up straight. I loved milk, so I drank a lot of it. They had to lock up the fridge. One of my best friends, Steven Grant, was a guy who was almost like six feet when I was five-four or something like that. Actually, he went on to play professional basketball. It kinda drove me nuts that he was so tall. My dad had to take me to a shrink because of it, to talk it out. To have this doctor explain to me that it was okay and that it doesn’t mean that you’re any less of a person or anything like that. You know, it got serious. The strange thing is that my father is six-one, so there was always hope. Hope springs eternal. I was gonna get there.
My mom started a neighborhood association. That was a big thing in the sixties and seventies—to try to get your communities back. The organization started a day camp, so the whole camp was able to get tickets to go to a Yankees game. It was the old Stadium, and of course we were sitting in the bleachers, where the seats were black. Those seats were about twenty degrees hotter because of that black paint. It was really a bizarre design, but the reason for it was because if you’re hitting, if the bleachers were white, you wouldn’t be able to see the ball, so there had to be a black background.
The Yankees did their best to try to help out the community. They teamed up with Con Ed and came up with a program called Con Ed Kids. They’d get a bunch of kids from different communities around the city and you’d get into a game for free. You’d also get a special gift, besides the seats from Con Ed. Some extra perk. There was this guy called the Answer Man. His name was Earl Battey. Now Earl Battey was a professional major league catcher who played for the Minnesota Twins. So he’s sitting out there in the 900-degree heat and there’s a field full of kids—just millions of them. Around the seventh-inning stretch, it’s time for him to ask a question to one of the kids, and if you got the answer right you’d win two free tickets to sit in the mezzanine section at the Stadium and then get your picture taken with a Yankee. So we’re out there—a sea of kids. And now it’s time. He asks the question. And I, with all the other kids, I’m like—Hey teacher—and I raised my hand and I pinned on the Answer Man, and he looks right back at me, looks right into my eyes, and poses the question to me. So this is like incredible. The question is, “Who plays second base for the New York Yankees?” I’m like, What? I’m like, This is crazy! Or maybe the question was, “Who’s number 20 for the Yankees?” Something ridiculously easy for me.
The second baseman for the Yankees at the time was a gentleman named Horace Clarke. It was a very tough position for him to fill because he was taking the place of the great Bobby Richardson, who had played second base for the Yankees. His number was number 1, and he was an all-star. I mean, he was a great Yankee and everybody wants to be like Bobby Richardson or Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris. And so these are the lean years for the Yankees, right after they won all the championships. Mickey Mantle’s still on the team, but they’re not doing so good. So it’s like okay, Who’s number 20 for the Yankees? Well, it’s Horace Clarke. He’s from the West Indies, I’m of West Indian descent, and to top it off my dad’s name is Horace. So they ask me this question—it’s like—Is that the question? Don’t you have a more difficult question? So obviously I answered the question correctly and I won the two tickets.
My dad, Horace, took me to the game, which was the prize. I got on the field and I got my picture taken with Bobby Murcer, who was the guy who was supposed to be the next Mickey Mantle. It was amazing, of course. The Yankees. The Stadium. Earl Battey. Con Ed Kids. It was a Cinderella kind of thing.