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BINKY GRIPTITE

One Man Under a Groove

Binky Griptite

Interview by Jessica Lipsky | Photos by Eilon Paz

F

or more than two decades, Binky Griptite has been the voice of the Dap-Kings, the hard-hitting funk and soul eight piece behind the incomparable Sharon Jones. As the band’s guitarist and emcee, Binky would introduce the group as it warmed up, then in the style of James Brown cape man Danny Ray, announce the arrival of “100 pounds of soul dynamite” as Jones danced her way to center stage.

Binky toured the world as a founding member of Soul Providers, Antibalas and the Dap-Kings—and he picked up a lot of records along the way. After Jones passed away and touring slowed, Binky shared his talents as an emcee and collector by hosting a weekly all-vinyl radio show on WFUV. “The Boogie Down With Binky Griptite,” which airs Saturday nights 8-11 PM EST, showcases his chops as a soul and funk aficionado as well as his commitment to supporting working soul groups.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Binky lived in Minneapolis for a few years before moving to New York City in 1996. After spending much of the past 10 years on the road with the Dap-Kings, he’s settling back in to being a full-time New York resident, complete with regular digs at his favorite local shop, a weekly jam at Threes Brewing and an early rhythm and blues-inspired band called The Binky Griptite Orchestra.

We visited him at his Bed-Stuy home on a dreary day to talk shop as he prepared for his Saturday evening radio show.

I noticed you have a bunch of Syl Johnson records around. Are you a big fan?

I am a big fan of Syl Johnson. I grew up with those records. When I was a kid and I heard him on the radio, I didn’t have so much name recognition, but I knew the music. Then his music left me for a long time and when I started getting back into classic soul music as an adult, I knew all the songs.

This is the bane of his career, but a lot of times people thought he was Al Green because they both had those versions of “Take Me To The River,” so that was confusing to me as a child.  We’ve actually worked with him—the Dap-Kings have done some recordings that were never released and we performed with him a couple of times. He’s a very interesting character and very talented.

Syl Johnson: Complete Mythology – I can’t get enough Syl Johnson; I like performing his covers because they fit my voice and my style.

I’m guessing that there were records in your home growing up?

Yeah, a lot of them. I’m the youngest of seven, so I had the benefits of my older brothers’ and sisters’ record collections, which were small, but there were definitely records in the house.  And some records that are still favorites of mine, we had brand new. I remember The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers when it came out. Everybody’s just like, oh my God, it’s like, it’s a picture of a guy’s pants, but it’s got a real zipper on it! One of my favorite songs was “Sugar Sugar” by The Archies.The Archies, “Sugar Sugar” – When I was a kid, if you wanted to see somebody playing music on TV, you had to sort of take what you got.

What is it about “Sugar Sugar” that appealed to you? It’s so bubble-gummy!

I was five or something and it’s almost like tailor made for me as a child in the early ’70s.  I was always attracted to music from a very early age and this is, like, fully 20 years before MTV and there wasn’t that much music on TV. And so I would find myself watching Hee Haw or the Glen Campbell Show just to see somebody playing guitar. The Archies had a band and that song “sugar da du dumm dum…” I like catchy melodies.

What are some other influential records from your childhood?

I think I still have my sister’s copy of Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions. I don’t have my original copy of Sly and The Family Stone Fresh, which is a drag. I mean, I still have two copies, but it’s not the one that has my sister’s name on it. I’m really fortunate that I knew all those records when they were pop music. It’s easy to say disrespectful things about pop music, but all of our favorite songs are pop music—they’re just pop music from another era.

I also remember when Funkadelic was on the radio. It took them awhile to get on the radio. I grew up with Cosmic Slop and remember being 11 years old, jumping around the house singing with my sisters.

What about Uncle Jam Wants You got you in 7th grade?

At that point, I was already sold, I was just a huge Funkadelic fan, they were just golden up until then. Uncle Jam was just the last good record before they succumbed to various things like cocaine and drum machines. But when the band was strong, they were just on fire; they were the ones to beat. I live for this shit—these are the original pressings but not my originals.

Bootsy was just everything to me, just everything I always wanted to be.  And I’d still be very happy to be Bootsy. The first Bootsy record is one of the many records that’s affected my life. He’s my rock star, he’s my Hendrix. This was like ’75, ’76 or something. I was 10 years old; Funkadelic was on their own shit.

From ’75 to ’78, the only good black records were Funkadelic and everybody else was just left in the dust. When other bands started to change their styles to try to compete with Funkadelic, that’s when music started to suck. Then Funkadelic themselves lost it, as I said, from cocaine and drum machines. And um, then just everything sucked and I just couldn’t. Then it was all Led Zeppelin.

I can’t even imagine going into a record store and buying one record, particularly on the road. Traveling with one record is more of a hassle than traveling with 15 records. If you have a stack of records, together they’re stiff and protected, but if you have just one record, it’s gonna get bent and twisted.

Bootsy’s Rubber Band, Bootsy? – Bootsy was everything I always wanted to be, and I’d still be very happy to be Bootsy.

Do you still have a bunch of Funkadelic records?

I do, but again, I gave a few of them away and I’m in the process of re-buying them on vinyl. But it’s hard to find them for reasonable prices—I’ll buy reissues in some cases, but some of these reissues are, like $25, $30, and you know that the money’s not even going into the people that deserve it.

Kids today have no idea how good they have it because everything is available right now, but back in the day (holds up America Eats Its Young) this was really hard record to find, at least in Milwaukee. I never had this record growing up. I knew some of the songs, but it was hard to get. Records used to go out of print. They would just press a few thousand copies or whatever. Like, they weren’t huge million-selling records.

I mean people don’t realize how George Clinton was very quotable; he said a lot of really intelligent shit. Really deep, meaningful stuff like, “People keep waiting on change but they ain’t got sense enough to come in out the rain.” Just like, if you don’t like the effects, don’t produce the cause.

By the way, people conveniently forget that KISS and Parliament were on the same record label. All the costumes and the production and explosions, KISS stole all that shit from Parliament.

At the time, Funkadelic records were really hard to get because they would go out of print.

You mentioned Parliament Live was the very first record you ever stole. Normally we ask what the first record you bought with your own money was, but this is much more exciting.

Yeah, it was at the behest of one of my older brothers. I was shopping with my family and my older brother was there, oddly enough because he was much older and generally just out running the streets and up to no good, and I think maybe we’d already gone through the store and had maybe made a purchase, so I had a bag.

I was 11 years old, and he told me to put this in the bag. It was this and a Brothers Johnson record, I can’t remember the title. Anyway, he put me up to it and then later tried to claim it as his and I was just like, fuck you, I stole it, it’s mine.

This isn’t the record I stole but it has the poster and came with an iron-on.

Parliament, Live: P-Funk Earth Tour – This was the first record I ever stole and then later my brother tried to claim it.

When did you start playing music?

I started wanting to play music probably around like seven or so; it took me till I was 14 before someone finally gave me a guitar. Growing up in Milwaukee, people think [playing music professionally is] just a dream; the highest aspiration at that time would be to just get a factory job for $14 an hour. This is when minimum wage was like $2.70, so if you got a job at like Briggs & Stratton or A.O. Smith for $14, $15 an hour, you could buy a house and have a family. If you started talking about anything in the entertainment business, people thought it was just like some pipe dream. People didn’t think you could be a working musician and feed yourself without having to be a mega star or make it on TV.

What finally crystallized it for me, at least the way I remember it, is when I first learned of the existence of Janet Jackson. I was obviously a Jackson Five fan and at one point they had some TV special and all of a sudden this little girl in an evening gown comes walking across the stage with this exaggerated switch, like throwing her hips from side to side. And I was just like, “What, Michael has a little sister that’s my age? That’s my wife.”

And I started like figuring out how am I going to make her my wife. She’s famous, famous people only marry other famous people, I have to get famous. So like that just sealed the deal. And 20 years later, I’m sitting in a recording studio with Janet Jackson and she said something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

This happened at Flyte Tyme studios in Minneapolis. I was in a band with Jellybean Johnson and we were working on an LP. My friends and I were in the game room shooting pool and Janet and her choreographer came in and they’re just, like, sitting there watching us shoot pool and I said, “Yada yada yada…my wife,” and Janet said, “Aww, you’re married too?”

I did play one song on the Janet LP, the sepia-toned one.

Damn, that’s crushing. What else got you started as a guitarist?

I’m actually much more of a rocker than people know or might understand. I just got booked to be a part of this Led Zeppelin tribute at Carnegie Hall. I’m nothing without Jimmy Page, which might be hard for people to imagine.

I started playing guitar when I was 14 and as you know, I grew up with Funkadelic and Funkadelic was very much a rock band. When I started playing music, I initially wanted to be a bass player, but I was so much in awe of Bootsy and I felt like I could never do that; it seemed like guitar would be easier. But I always started from rock music with Funkadelic. When Funkadelic kind of fell off in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I just started digging back into older rock bands. I was listening to a lot of radio rock, like Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. I don’t listen to rock at home but that’s my foundation stuff.

When did you start collecting records? It looks like you have a good mix of 45s and LPs.

After years of touring with the Dap-Kings, a lot of my bandmates have been on the 45 thing longer than I have. I don’t have the patience to play 45s at home— you’re not doing the dishes and listening to 45s, you’re playing 45s and you have to change them every three minutes. All those years on the road, I was more of an LP buyer.

I can’t go into a record store and not spend three hours. I can’t even imagine going into a record store and buying one record, particularly on the road. Traveling with one record is more of a hassle than traveling with 15 records. If you have a stack of records, together they’re stiff and protected, but if you have just one record, it’s gonna get bent and twisted.

The Isley Brothers, Get Into Something & The Ohio Players, The Ohio Players – The Dap-Kings would listen to these records all the time on tour. We’d get in the van, light a blunt and…

Where do you like to dig locally?

Northern Lights off Broadway. I’m really not the type to buy $20 45s. I’ll just spend all day in the $3 section. I’m not collector enough to know which of those $20 45s is worth it. It’s great to have, like, those sought-after 45s, but you know, a lot of funk and soul DJs are playing those same collectible 45s. As rare as they are, you start to hear the same stuff at every soul party.

I don’t necessarily feel the need to get all the same records that all my friends already have,  I’m just enjoying the dig and getting into the smaller sections. And also a lot of those $20 45s are on eBay because everybody is just doing their digging online.

When you’re digging at Northern Lights, what appeals to you about a record?

I’m pretty quick. You know certain labels that are really recognizable, like, if you see something on Ronin then it’s probably pretty good, it’s good to just get to know certain labels. First you look at it, and if you don’t recognize the label or artist, you just sort of follow your feeling.

Then once I go to the listening station with a giant stack of records, I’m not trying to spend three hours listening, so I’ll just put it on really quick. And first I listen to the sound of the recording and if the drums sound good, then that’s half the battle because if it’s a great song, that’s one thing, but if it’s a bad recording or a bad performance, it doesn’t matter.

Take this Tina Britt Record. I was just in Northern Lights, doing my thing, going through the 45s, and this was playing in the background, and I was like, “Who is that, what is that?” By the time side one was done, I was like, “Okay, I’ll take that.”  It’s odd because if I had been looking at this in the LP section, I never would’ve played this, I never would have picked this up.

Tina Britt, Blue All the Way – This record had some versions of familiar songs I never heard before, and it turns out that it’s not quite as new as the front cover made me think. The back cover looks much more relatable.

What didn’t appeal to you about it?

I don’t know her name and the Minit label is a good sign, but something about the picture. I have a cutoff year. Shit gets dicey around ’75, ’76.

Young Hearts, “I’ve Got Love For My Baby” – This is one of those songs I’ve heard other DJs play a lot but I never  knew who it was.

Maybe you can shed some light on what happened then.

I know exactly what happened. I was nine years old—I was born in ’66—and what happened was disco. As Funkadelic started to become the biggest band in America—and it’s hard to remember that now because George Clinton is playing bars and clubs, which is a bit of a travesty to me because I saw them in arenas when they were huge—but as they started to take over the music business, other people tried to copy their sound and they just did it really poorly. It became derivative and that was the rise of the machines.

By the way, people conveniently forget that KISS and Parliament were on the same record label. All the costumes and the production and explosions, KISS stole all that shit from Parliament. They have two good songs in their entire fucking catalogue. I just always figured, pardon the way it sounds, but they’re like Funkadelic for white people. But like, several steps below.

Back to the analog days before the rise of machines, are drums more important to you than guitar on a record?

Yes, because even though I am a guitar player, I survived the ’80s and the music world still hasn’t recovered from the ’80s and ’90s to a point where, like, everybody’s just tired of hearing guitar solos. There’s so many guitar players that think it’s guitar first and then everything else. If you’re Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix, fine. But not every guitar player is Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix. There’s a lot of pretenders to the throne, but there are very few people that are talented enough to be the centerpiece.

From my experiences of being in bands and being in recording studios and producing other bands, the drums are the foundation. It’s literally like building a house and if the foundation is weak, your house is weak. If your drummer’s weak, everything else suffers. Like, you’ve got nothing if you don’t have good drums. Not only a good drummer but also a good drum sound, like a truly good, distinctive drum sound.

A lot of times when I’m shopping for records, I’ll buy a record for the drum sound. It’s like, if I’m looking at like a dollar 45 or $2 45, if the drums sound good then I know it’s worth a dollar.

Jesse Boone & The Astros, “No Particular One” – I picked this up at Northern Lights after I heard a lot of my friends spin it; I was surprised that it was not an expensive 45.

It seems like you’re also into groups with serious vocal harmonies.

Yeah. I mean this is like what was really ruling the radio when I was a kid, the Chi-Lites. In the early days of the Dap-Kings, everybody was into the deep funk, and that’s cool, but everyone kind of got burnt out on it. As far as contemporary bands go, it’s really hard to do that well, and that’s when you really need a good drummer and a good sound.

So we got to a point where that sort of sweet soul was a little bit more interesting because you get better songs, better singers, more complex arrangements. I think we all got really into The Impressions ten years ago, like, really digging into those Johnny Pate arrangements.

They just have a little bit more substance than some band that is just whacking away at the speed [makes drum roll sound]. There’s only a couple of groups that are good at that and a whole lot of pretenders. I don’t like that spastic sound. I don’t want to offend anybody, but it’s taste. Al and The Jigawatts is an example of hard-hitting funk that’s modern and well done.

Chi-Lites, “Give It Away” – This is hard not to play every week- the band sounds great, the vocals sound great,  it starts with a great drum fill. Everything is right with this song.

Bobby Bland must be a big inspiration for you

Yeah he is, and on the band in these past few years. One of our favorite songs to play live was one of his, “Road of Broken Hearted Men.” We just played that song every night for two or three years, it always got Sharon going really well, so we had to bring that mood to our record.

On the new record we have a song that was sort of influenced by that sound, the second song on the album, “Sail On.”

Do you have a record that Sharon turned you onto that’s been with you since?

The old Gladys Knight stuff. She was a big Gladys Knight fan and so we started doing “In Every Beat of My Heart,” which is something I never heard before. I was only familiar with that sort of middle period of Gladys Knight, that early ’70s “Midnight Train to Georgia” and stuff like that, ‘cause I remember that from my childhood.

Gladys Knight and The Pips, Gladys Knight and The Pips – Sharon remembered Gladys from the middle and later sixties. I sometimes play that period on my show.

How long have you been DJing?

I’m not like some kind of master DJ or whatever, and also, I’m not playing for a dance floor, and it’s a very different thing when you’re playing for the dance floor. DJing for public consumption is new to me, because I’m a musician first. I mean, I even hesitate to call myself a DJ because I know real DJs and I do respect the craft of playing for a dance floor. On the radio you can just be a person playing records, or in a bar where it’s just people chilling, drinking and talking and whatever.

I’m still getting to the point where I could straight up say I am a DJ. I’m a radio DJ for sure, but there’s definitely some real craft to it that I respect. And I don’t call myself a singer, I’m a vocalist, but I’m not a singer because I’ve worked with real singers. I take words seriously like that.

How did “The Boogie Down” on FUV get started?

Literally since I was in high school, people have been telling me, “Oh, you have a nice voice, you should be a DJ,” and I always had it in the back of my mind. I started being the emcee for the Dap-Kings, for Sharon, and before that, I was the emcee for Lee Fields.

After Sharon died and I found myself with all this time being local again, I went with one of my bandmates to FUV to be interviewed by Rita Houston, who’s the program director at WFUV. She’s always been an early and very strong supporter of the band. After the interview, I was just like, “Hey, what would it take for a person like me to get a show?”

I told her I wanted to do an all vinyl show that would obviously be heavy on classics. But also part of my mission is to promote bands that are currently active, bands and labels that are still making soul records. The Dap-Kings and Daptone Records have received so much support from DJs, I just wanted to repay it.

I wanted to help other people that are still out there working because I understand. It’s not easy, you need that support.

Within a couple weeks it was done. It was just a really well timed request because they were already making a change that left a hole in their programming, so it was just perfect.

Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, “I Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Is In” – This might be my favorite Sharon song, it’s a pretty faithful cover to the Betty Lavette version.

Lady Wray, “Smiling” – Part of my mission is to promote bands and labels that are still making soul records. I find myself playing this one a lot.

So you play a mix of old and new groups on air?  

It’s really important to me to play new records and that’s also one of the reasons that I’ve made the show vinyl only, because I don’t want people sending me CDs; I  definitely don’t want people sending me downloads.

Charles Bradley & LaRose Jackson, “Luv Jones” – A favorite Charles record is a hard thing to pick, it’s between this and “The World’s Going Up In Flames.”

I’m not gonna pull a record and say this record came out in 19-so-and-so. I personally don’t enjoy listening to that type of DJ, so I don’t have any desire to be that DJ. Honestly, I’d just rather be a person who’s playing records. I do talk, but to be more entertaining than educational. Everybody’s got the internet, got a computer in their pocket, if you want to know when and where it was recorded and who’s playing the triangle, look it up.

I just want to play records and have people take their mind off of whatever horrible news story there is today. I don’t even watch the news. I know what’s in the news; some rich people exploited some poor people. Is that really news? Somebody abused their power, you think that’s news? If you think that’s news, then I can’t help you.

Those two dollar bills over there on my bed are my savings. The rest of my cash is in my checking account.

Is there a record that somebody sent you for the show recently that you were impressed by?

I actually really like this Australian group, Emma Donovan and the PutBacks. I find myself playing this a lot. We get a lot of love from Australia, they do love soul music and have been very dedicated to the Dap-Kings.

It’s really hard not to play Bob and Gene “It’s Not What You Know.” That, to me, was always the best song on [Daptone’s reissue] record and it doesn’t appear on the original record. Let’s just say it’s my favorite song of theirs for sure.

Bob & Gene, “It’s Not What You Know” – To me, this was always the best song on the LP reissue, but it doesn’t appear on the original album.

Emma Donovan and the PutBacks, Dawn. – I find myself playing this a lot- she’s got a good voice, it’s a good recording, the band sounds good. What more do you want?

One of the modern bands you’ve played on your show is a British group and you said the singer had a memorable name.

Yeah, we only met her that once. Sharon Jackson and the Soul Destroyers were opening for us, I assume it was in London. At some point she talked to Sharon and sort of dropped that little nugget that her real name was Sharon Jones and she had to change her name.

For me, it was sort of an eye opener. One of the impacts that we were having, and Sharon Jones was having, was that we had become big enough that another singer had to change her name. This was pretty early on, maybe our second album, and definitely before the Winehouse days.

Sharon Jackson and the Soul Destroyers, “Keep On” – This singer’s real name is Sharon Jones. We met her on one of our early tours to England, and she said she had to change her name.

How’d Sharon respond to that story?

I’m sure she just took it with a smile and was humbled by it. She was very humbled by stuff like that. To think somebody had to change their name because of her.

There are three guitar-playing Binkys in New York, and one of them is another black guy around my age, but not nearly as handsome. But none of them had to change their name.

I remember reading an article about how you got that name, but remind me where Binky comes from.

I sort of opened myself to finding a ridiculous stage name and one day in the course of a conversation with the doorman at the building where the original Desco Records studio was, he was telling me this story about how he got ripped off for an invention. I asked him about the company that ripped him off and he said Binky Griptite. And it was like a ray of sunshine.

Do the folks at Daptone call you Binky or by your real name?

Mostly real name these days, but what is a name? It’s pretty mutable to me. Maybe I got it for my father. My dad did auto repairs and bought this garage, the sign above it said Tiny’s Garage. He wanted to change the sign to put his own name up there and it cost like $350 that he didn’t have, so he just became Tiny. That didn’t cost anything.

I also performed various Antibalas albums under, like, four different names, concurrent with me using Binky. On the first record I just used a name of this African cab driver that was killed by police—Amadou Diallo—to keep his name alive.

You have a very distinctive voice, but is there anyone that influenced you as an emcee and radio DJ?

There’s not so much a record, but there’s definitely a list of a few bands that have influenced me, as far as our live show goes. With the Parliament Aqua Boogie record and also on The Mothership Connection record, George Clinton did some DJ-type things that gave me that feeling of, like, how a DJ should sound, how an emcee should sound. And you have those James Brown records where you hear Danny Ray introducing James Brown. They’re the sort of gold standard, so that’s obviously an influence.

Even though he wasn’t that type of emcee, just as far as vocal skill and his tone and manner,

I’ve always loved Chuck D.

Speaking of the hardest working man in showbusiness, do you have a favorite James Brown era or single?

I wish I had some rare, unheard of tracks that I could just pull out and say, “Oh yeah, you need to hear this,” but I mean, his hits were his best shit and that’s why they were hits. I’m not one of those collectors that only likes super rare stuff. Sometimes it’s rare because it didn’t hit.

I know a lot of people that are really nuts for records where the singer’s out of tune and stuff. You can like that shit 30 years later, but when it came out and when that was pop music, it didn’t work because the singer was out of tune and wasn’t nobody trying to hear some out of tune singer. They age well because out of tune singers of the past sound better than the autotune singers of the present. The hits were hits for good reason, and that’s why I’m not scared to play hits.

James Brown and the Famous Flames, “There Was a Time” – I liked the early ’70s James best, but from ’68 to ’74 he was pretty unstoppable. “There Was a Time” is just undeniable.

I have James and Charles right next to each other and that’s just for my own convenience, like I should be able to quickly access the James Brown stuff, quickly access Charles and quickly access Sharon.

You mentioned that you want to get into collecting earlier ’60s stuff and your band, The Binky Griptite Orchestra, plays jump blues and R&B. Are you collecting any of that?

Slowly but surely, but it’s hard to find any of that. It’s a whole other category of digging because, in record shops, I’m trying to figure out what section they put it in. I’m finding things on LPs but at that point it’s going to be a compilation because most of those records from the forties were originally 78s.

I’m slowly building those up and trying to learn about the other artists, other than the famous ones like Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner. But once you get the records and start listening to them and really getting to know them intimately, it’s like a full time job and it’s really hard when I come home with a stack this high, whether it’s 45s or LPs. God forbid if it’s LPs.

Going beyond soul and blues, you mentioned earlier that you really liked Fishbone.

They’re the same age as me and when that first record came out I was feeling really isolated and just like some weird little black kid. Then I found that video for “When Problems Arise” and I was like, there’s other black weirdos like me. I liked the music and I just appreciated that they were very black, but not the sort of, like, typical mainstream black.

I went and saw them live the first chance I had. They came to Milwaukee and played some little punk rock bar on some like 6-inch stage. They just made me feel better. And now we’re friends.

Fishbone, Fishbone – Fishbone were my age and I could tell that their musical tastes were more in line with mine,  and that they didn’t just didn’t fall neatly along some racial lines.

How was it meeting your idols?

Mostly good. I’ve had a couple of bad experiences, twice I’ve lost girls to my idols. Well, one was never had. I went to a Funkadelic concert, I was maybe a junior or senior in high school, and I wound up standing next to this girl in the front row. She’s just gorgeous. This would have been Funkadelic in the early ’80s so they were already on the downside, and we’re staring at Michael Hampton. After the show’s over, he walked up to the front and asks her, “Hey, you wanna come backstage?” Now we’re pals. I never reminded him of that story, but not like I wouldn’t have done the same thing.

I won’t name names, but yeah, definitely lost a girl to somebody that I looked up to who became a friend. He became my ex-wife’s next guy, so whatever. He did me a favor.

Who else inspires you as a musician and collector?

I went back into blues and when I got older, I learned how to hear clean guitar. When it’s a rock band, the guitar is distorted and really up front. In some of these records, the guitar is mixed in such a way that it’s not really apparent. As my ears matured, I could hear soul guitar much better and I became a much better rhythm guitar player. So now I’m really inspired by people like Booker T. & the M.G.’s guitarist Steve Cropper and Curtis Mayfield and Al Green collaborator Teenie Hodges.

You know what, without endorsing his behavior, or his life, or his skills as a husband, Ike Turner is a motherfucker. He’s really important and yeah, I have the luxury of being able to separate his work from his life. But his work is really important. But no doubt he was a bad husband.

You can’t talk about Tina without talking about the way he treated her. But I always compare and contrast Bill Cosby to Ike Turner, because when we found out that Ike turned out to be a shitty husband, nobody was surprised, like zero people were surprised. And that’s why I can still listen to Ike and Tina Turner in a way that I can’t listen to Bill Cosby. Because Ike always presented himself as a bad man. Bill Cosby held himself up as a paragon of virtue when he’s quite the opposite.

Tina is a favorite. I have something like 15 of her albums and they have some of the greatest album covers ever.

Do you have a comfort record? Something that you don’t have to think about that you always go back to when you want to feel good or relax.

I have so many. My comfort record might not necessarily be a soul record. Curtis Live is always great. That and the Donny Hathaway Live at the Bitter End 1971. I like this live record because you just hear the realness, there’s no overdubs. You’re still mostly hearing a real record of an event, versus some crafted thing, like Dark Side of The Moon where they spent two years making 45 minutes of music. This is just a show, the band got up on stage, somebody pressed record and then recorded it.

Curtis Mayfield and Donny Hathaway live at the Bitter End – I like these live records because you get to hear the interaction between the people and the instruments. You get to hear the crowd, how they’re receiving it.

Does it really put you there as a musician?  

Yeah I think it does. On Curtis Live, when he’s doing “Stone Junkie,” you hear people responding to the words. They’re hearing that song for the first time and they’re reacting to his lyrics and the truth of the lyrics that everybody’s on something. It’s like church. There’s a special place in my heart for live records for that reason.

Is there a record that hurts for you to listen to?

Only records that I’ve made that I wish I had done a better job on!

I mean maybe not like hurts in a “god I fucked up” kind of way, but like something that is so comforting that, like, it kind of hurts your heart, you know?

I mean sometimes I get in certain moods where you listen to something that’s so great, you feel like, man, I could just never do that. I’ll just never be that good no matter what I do. Impressions records do that, actually. I went through a period where I was just listening to The Impressions constantly and when you really dig into their arrangements, they’re just so good. We all sort of have times when we feel like we’re not good enough and we beat ourselves down.

The Impressions, This Is My Country – Curtis Mayfield is just so good and I’m very fortunate that I got to work with The Impressions.

How’d you end up working with The Impressions?

It’s weird being able to work with your idols. That’s another instance where it worked out really well.

We were in the middle of being obsessed with The Impressions, listening to them constantly, and my friend, whose name is DJ Pari, posted on Facebook that he’s managing The Impressions. I sat on that or a couple months until I got up the gumption to ask what’s up. I booked a show for them to subsidize their trip for that recording.

The Impressions, “Rhythm!” – We recorded four songs but only two of them have been released so far. I distinctly remember writing the first line for “Star Bright” when I was 7 years old.

We recorded four songs but only two of them have been released so far. We even got the original arranger-producer Johnny Pate. He did incredible arrangements for it. I remember the melody for “Star Bright” just stuck in my head for all these years and once I had access to The Impressions, it just popped back into my head. The lead singer on this one, Reggie Torian, was the first replacement for Curtis when Curtis left the group. Reggie was with them for many years, then left the group then came back and was with them for several years until he died in 2016.

The b-side is a Curtis song that was originally recorded by Major Lance. Another interesting footnote is Fred Cash and Sam Gooden sang backup on all the Major Lance stuff, mostly uncredited because of the record label.

The Impressions, Ridin’ High – The Impressions actually toured driving their own cars.

My friend Sam told me that these were their cars, and they actually toured driving their own cars. Fred and Sam had matching Corvettes. Curtis had a Jaguar XKE. The joke about the Jaguar XKE is it’ll do 120 when it’s not in the shop. And so they were constantly pushing that Jaguar, like, oh shit, just keep on pushin’. He wrote “Keep On Pushing” about his car!

 

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2 Responses

  1. Santeri Skofelt

    Hi

    Brilliant post! Binky is such a cool guy and it would be so amazing to someday see the Dap Kings playing live. Also, it’s breathtaking as a young record collector to see all those cool records. I mean Funkadelic, Hathaway, The impressions and Gladys Knight and the pips, just a name a few. Binky’s stories were awesome to read and i just discovered this site and immediately got hooked on the stories and the way they are presented. Keep em coming and have a nice day.

    Santeri

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