Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2024 11:42:56 GMT -4
The Leon Sylvers III Interview Part 1
The legendary multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter reflects on homemade DIY drum kits, The Little Angels, The Sylvers' self-titled debut, and the creation of Foster Sylvers' "Misdemeanor."
The biography of Leon Sylvers III far exceeds a single article. His production and songwriting accomplishments require an entire book, yet even massive volume would fail to fully capture his rise as one of the most sought after creative minds in Black music during the 1970s and 1980s.
Despite Leon’s remarkable and varied career that spans across many decades, the excellent Questlove Supreme Episode #69 is the only long-form interview with him available online.
That changes now. Here is Part 1 of our conversation.
Growing up in Los Angeles near Adams and Crenshaw, Leon Sylvers III built his own drum kit out of coat hangers, a broom sweeper, and a box spring when he was just six years old. This exercise wasn’t simple child’s play, the eventual in-house producer for Dick Griffey's SOLAR Records was already demonstrating a preternatural ability to analyze and compose sound.
Utilizing a level of dedication and focus well beyond his years, he tried to mimic actual percussion as accurately as he could. “The hanger was the high hat, the broom—the hard part—were the rims and the snare, and the box spring was the kick,” he says. “I trying to create as close to the sound as possible.”
Not only was Leon mimicking actual kits, he would also retain his drum patterns and build them into full songs. “I would memorize the beat,” he says. “And if I had a title, a song that fit that beat and the melodies too, I would memorize everything. And when I would think about it, everything would flow, would pop up in my head, you know?”
By the time he was seven, his career started to transition from bedroom box spring drummer to professional artist. When his mother heard Leon and his siblings Charmaine, James, and Olympia, singing along with a three-part harmony for potato chip commercial one day, she told their father about the promising young vocalists. With a bit of coaching from their dad, the four Sylvers children were soon dubbed The Little Angels. They cut the 7” single “Santa Claus Parade”/”I'll Be A) Little Angel” on Riverdale Records, put out the 1960 Capitol Records 7” “Says You”/ “Olympia,” and earned appearances on such as TV shows like Make Room for Daddy, You Bet Your Life, and The Spike Jones Show.
Watching videos of The Little Angels’ TV guest appearances, it’s remarkable that they had the ability rehearse and perform together in such a cooperative, focused manner. Leon attributes this to several factors: the lack of easily accessible entertainment and distractions during their childhoods, a social climate where children were expected to be obedient to their parents, and the emergence of “the Motown sound.”
As much as he loved the overall Motown sound, Leon was especially taken with legendary bassist James Jamerson. Jamerson, along with drummer Benny Benjamin and the rest of Motown’s The Funk Brothers backing band, was instrumental in shaping the legendary label’s early signature aesthetic by providing the instrumentation on hits like “Dancing In The Street” by Martha and the Vandellas. “I loved the songs, but I was attracted to the bass,” he says. “Even at a young age, I loved the way it sounded.”
An opportunity to try to his own hand at bass presented itself when The Little Angels were booked at the Moulin Rouge, better known now as Nickelodeon on Sunset, alongside Dennis the Menace actor Jay North for a Christmas show in the early ‘60s. All the young performers were given gifts and Leon received a guitar at the conclusion of the show. He immediately went to work modifying the instrument, much like he did his makeshift drum kit from a few years prior. “I took the two high strings off because I knew a bass only had four,” he says. “And that's how I started learning bass. That's how detailed and strong willed I was in liking the bass over any other instrument.”
Though he didn’t realize it at the time, this decision to alter his guitar was a pivotal step in developing the novel sound that helped him become one of the most sought after songwriters and producers in the industry several years later. “The bass was the other half of my writing,” he says. “I always used it as a harmonic to my melody instead of just playing bottom. And that developed a style. All my basslines, even the hits back in the day with SOLAR, the bass is harmonic to the melody.”
Though Leon’s proficiency on the bass started to blossom, the popularity of The Little Angeles fizzled over time and the group eventually disbanded. After his parent’s separation, there was a relocation to Watts with his mother and siblings and a brief period where he was out of the public eye. But the 1970s brought about the reunion of Leon, Charmaine, James, and Olympia, and the addition of younger Sylvers siblings Edmund and Ricky.
By 1971 they had inked a deal with MGM Records’ Pride imprint and rebranded themselves as The Sylvers. Linking up with the well-established and highly successful Jerry Butler and co-producer Keg Johnson for their 1972 self-titled debut, the group became especially close to Johnson after an early meeting with him. He showed up with some songs Butler had pre-written for them to perform, but The Sylvers asked to audition their own material instead. Johnson was so impressed with their original music that he threw Butler’s songs in the trash. “I was a teenager then,” Leon says. “He was my guy after that. When he did that, we all looked at each other and smiled, and we knew what was up.”
Leon’s songwriting process for The Sylvers’ 1972 self-titled debut was just as memorable as his first meeting with Keg Johnson. When all was said and done, he ended up writing 7 out of the album’s 10 total tracks. And like any good wordsmith, he paid close attention to his surroundings for inspiration.
As an 11th grader at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, he absorbed passionate lessons from a revolutionary history teacher named Mr. Simon. Not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom or the status quo, Mr. Simon would review the textbook version of a lesson, flip over his giant chalkboard, and tell the class, “This is what really happened,” before exploring different angles of the topic at hand. Apparently Mr. Simon’s lessons were progressive and against the grain that they became an issue of grave concern to the powers that be. FBI agents even showed up in his classroom one day and were rumored to be monitoring him.
As he wrote “Fool’s Paradise,” Leon found himself drawing upon Mr. Simon’s lessons and his language. “He used words and stuff like euphemisms, and I put that in the song,” he says. “That song was inspired by him.”
Scholarly inspiration wasn’t limited to “Fool’s Paradise,” as “Wish That I Could Talk to You” was also born in an academic setting. Apparently, Leon was busy coming up with the track’s lyrics during a math lesson when the teacher called on him for an answer. Not wanting to lose the rhythm of his work in progress and realizing he didn’t have a chance of answering it correctly, he used blunt honesty in his response and asked to be sent to detention. When his teacher pressed again him for an answer, his response remained the same. “I said, ‘Ms. So and So, send me to detention. ‘Cause at this point I'm not even going to try to act like I know.’”
His decision to take the punishment and finish the song in detention turned out to be the right one. “Wish That I Could Talk to You” was The Sylvers’ first #1 single on the R & B charts and received significant airplay on KDAY.
With the group now a known entity in the record industry, Leon wasted little time creating his younger brother Foster’s hit song “Misdemeanor.” Using a Sanyo radio cassette player/recorder, his bass, and his foot, he laid down a demo that would inform the album version later co-produced by Jerry Peters and Keg Johnson. Though the Sanyo tape recorder was simple, Leon believes it played an important role in capturing the desired sound for his little brother’s smash single. “That was a great machine,” he says. “It had the perfect condenser. It had one big, giant mono speaker.”
As he worked on the demo tape, Leon was so meticulous in the recording process that he even memorized the appropriate distance between his foot—which functioned as his drums—and the mic. “I put the cassette player at an angle,” he says. “I stomped my foot and then I started singing. The sound of the condenser mic was lovely. I was like, ‘Woah,’ I noticed how good it sounded.”
This method of a bass coupled with foot stomp percussion played into the Sanyo machine became a go-to process for Leon’s demos.
Though Keg Johnson and Jerry Peters are listed as co-producers, Leon recalls Johnson playing a larger role in the song’s creation. That said, he is quick to acknowledge the genius of Jerry Peters and his gift for song arrangement.
In addition to the killer bassline written by Leon, the song is notable for having a different percussion arrangement than the one he expected. “I knew the baseline was going to be exactly the way I did it. I didn't think the drums was going to be that beat. It was so different than what I put in my mind, but I was like, ‘OK, that'll probably work’ because the baseline was there. It was enough, ‘cause it worked, and we didn't have that much promotion and that record kind of took off.”
In another intriguing footnote to the “Misdemeanor” backstory, it was originally intended for The Sylvers’ sophomore effort The Sylvers II. That all changed when Keg Johnson showed the song to film/record producer, Incredible Bongo Band founder, and audiobook innovator Michael Viner, who was in charge of MGM’s Pride division at the time. When Viner heard that Leon and the rest of The Sylvers were waiting to release “Misdemeanor” with the next group project, he urgently insisted that it come out right away. “Keg told him about it and he heard it and said, ‘No, we gotta put that out now.’”
It instead ended up on Foster Sylvers’ impressive 1973 self-titled debut—released well before his 12th birthday—and became a surprise hit.
PART 2
The Leon Sylvers III Interview Part 2
Reflections on reverse engineering Motown, the series of coincidences and the 100-person recording session that led to The Sylvers' "Don't Stop, Get Up," and Leon's early years with SOLAR.
With The Sylvers debut LP wrapped and “Misdemeanor” making its rounds as a hit record, Leon knew that nothing in the industry was promised—so he continued to put in long, hard hours practicing the bass. This insured he was always ready to execute any task required of him in the studio. “If we had to go over it more than one or two times, I wanted my fingers in shape,” he says. “Everything I did, I knew it was going to be hard. So I assumed it and just took it on like that.”
He now considers his diligence a critical part of his artistic growth that helped him compensate for a lack of formal training. “I think that was part of the maturation, as far as embedding that technique into my creative process,” he says. “How I practiced, it was based off everything new, ‘cause I wasn't taught no kind of way.”
In addition to neverending practice sessions, Leon also tried to reverse engineer his favorite Motown records during his free time to understand the complex dynamics of sound at play. Hours spent intently studying the famed label’s output helped him better understand the elements needed to arrange, produce, and write a great record. “I called it reverse music in my head,” he says. “I would buy it and then study it and take it apart—the drums the baseline, the melody, the lyrics, how they would able to sing off the beat. And that was part of the process too.”
While Leon continued to immerse himself in solo practice, studio sessions, and Motown record reverse engineering, he quickly realized he had found his life’s calling. “I was so into it,” he says. “I was supposed to do this for the rest of my life, I assume now, because that's what I'm still doing. And I love it.”
As The Sylvers’ second album started to come together, he further honed his songwriting skills by penning the majority of the tracks on the 1973 LP The Sylvers II—a rich, moving album beautifully co-produced by Keg Johnson and Jerry Peters. Much like his bass proficiency and understanding of song arrangement, the language needed to write many songs efficiently came from intense focus and deliberate practice. “When I was in the Nickerson Gardens projects, I would read almost halfway through the dictionary to learn words that nobody used,” he says. “Plus I did poetry before I started writing.”
Though The Sylvers II is now regarded as one of the group’s strongest efforts and was positively received at the time of release, their creative process started to evolve and change as work began on their next album—with Leon writing only two out of 10 tracks on the following year’s The Sylvers III. Pride also folded the same year, making The Sylvers III their final release with MGM.
The Capitol Records releases Showcase (featuring the hit “Boogie Fever”) and Something Special (featuring the hits “Hot Line” and “High School Dance”) both saw Leon write or co-write four out of 10 tracks. The group then self-produced their final album on Capitol, 1977’s New Horizons, marking the next major turning point in his career.
Leon’s move towards production began with The Sylvers 1978 release Forever Yours, an album he co-produced alongside Bob Cullen and Al Ross. Like so much of his catalog, the backstories surrounding the relea are plentiful. The LP’s hit record "Don't Stop, Get Off,” for example, was birthed out of a series of coincidences that provided the inspiration for the song’s infectious hook.
First, the group attended a Brother’s Johnson concert together after an extended tour in Japan. When the energy in the show picked up, Leon noticed people in the crowd enthusiastically shouting, “ooh, ooh” to the beat. Immediately intrigued by how good it sounded, he asked the people near him about the chant. “Everybody around me said, ‘Where you been? That's what everybody do when they like something,’” he says. “I was like, ‘Ohhh.’ So I started writing the song right then.”
The rest of the “Don’t Stop, Get Off” chorus came from a Sylvers concert where the group sent Foster out with his bass to warm up the crowd and give the rest of the family a bit more time to get ready. One of the grooves he started to strum had an immediate impact on the crowd. “He had a funky bassline,” Leon says. “And the kids start saying, ‘don’t stop, get off’ to the beat.”
Not one to miss an opportunity for a unique recording, Leon grabbed a boombox that was handy and captured the impromptu bass/chant combo. “I recorded it right there,” he says. “And it was perfect. After the show I was waiting to get back and hear that.”
Though Forever Yours eventually came out on Casablanca, The Sylvers were still with Capitol Records during the recording process. As they set out to make the album version of “Don’t Stop, Get Off” in the studio, Leon asked Bob Cullen to get as many Capitol employees as possible to participate in the “ooh, ooh” part of the song. People showed up in droves and the recording session soon turned into a party. “Almost a hundred from the Capitol building, they came and did that to the beat and stayed,” he says. “It was fun. And it sounded great on record.”
Feeling that the group had captured a soon-to-be trend with the “ooh, ooh” and “don’t stop, get off” chants, Leon pleaded with Larkin Arnold—the head of Capitol’s Black Music Division—to push the single immediately before another act beat them to the punch. He remembers telling the executives at Capitol, “‘This is a new thing. If we get at the beginning of it, this will work because the people created it. And once they hear themselves on radio, it’s a trend.’”
Unfortunately, his please fell on deaf ears. “They didn't understand what it was at Capitol,” hes says. “And so it was one of them things, man—that record sat for almost two years.”
Leon’s frustration grew when songs started coming out to commercial success that featured a similar “ooh, ooh” in the mix. When Foxy released their 1978 single “Get Off” and it proved to be a major hit, it felt like it was too late for The Sylvers’ inventive song to gain any traction. But the group prevailed, eventually finding success with “Don’t Stop, Get Off” during their transition to Casablanca.
Despite the disappointing conclusion to his time at Capitol, the experience of having his input ignored provided a valuable lesson. “That showed me, as a producer, when you get a move like that, when you can catch something like that, it's important to always listen,” he says. “The powers that be didn't understand it, but I did.”
Events were already taking place that would help with Leon’s solo production journey before Forever Yours saw commercial release. The Sylvers had established themselves as a presence on Soul Train early on and quickly won the affections of host Don Cornelius and talent coordinator Dick Griffey (pictured above with Leon). When the two industry icons asked The Sylvers to be part of a Soul Train tour a few years before Griffey founded SOLAR, the siblings eagerly agreed.
During the tour the group worked the the Chi-Lites “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)” (later sampled by on Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” in 2003) into their set with a choreographed step, much to the delight of Griffey. “Dick loved it, he would come on the side of the stage just to see us do that move,” Leon says. “He told me, ‘That that's a bad move Leon. That that's a bad move right there.’
Leon’s friend Richard Aaron, who had co-produced Jerry Peters’ Blueprint For Discovery with Peters and Keg Johnson, helped cement the business relationship between Griffey and Leon by setting up a meeting between the two men. Never one to show up unprepared, Leon invested $10,000 to cut three master recordings to bring along with some unreleased Sylvers material he had produced.
One of the self-funded recordings later became the Dynasty hit “I Don't Want To Be A Freak (But I Can't Help Myself)” from their 1979 SOLAR debut Your Piece Of The Rock, which Leon produced front to back. The second song he recorded for the meeting was “Take Another Look at Love” from the group’s sophomore album Adventures In The Land Of Music, also entirely produced by Leon. Though the third song never became an official release, the $10,000 investment proved more than worth it. “It couldn't happen any better,” he says. “Usually when you do that, you kind of write it off as learning, but those two songs royalty wise paid for itself and above paid for itself.”
Before any of the Dynasty material came out, however, Griffey wanted Leon to attend to Shalamar after being impressed by his material during their Richard Aaron-facilitated meeting. His first production credit and hit with the group was 1978’s “Take That to the Bank,” a rhythmically similar number to Dynasty’s “I Don't Want To Be A Freak (But I Can't Help Myself).”
Using the basic rhythm of the song he had cut as a demonstration track for Griffey, Leon focused specifically on the drums first and used a seasoned studio musician who later joined Dynasty to help enhance the song. “I had a cow bell, conga, timbale rig,” he says. “I would bring it studio. And I used Kevin Spencer, who used to play with The Sylvers at that time. He played bass and keyboards. I did the baseline and was singing the melodies and then so he jumped right in.”
Originally inspired by Robert Blake’s catch phrase on the detective TV show Baretta, “Take That to the Bank” established Leon as a producer by providing him with his first hit at SOLAR. The single also set to stage for a remarkable five-year run of successes as the label’s in-house sculptor of sound, with Billboard magazine dubbing him, “the man of the hour in R & B” in a 1981 article.
PART 3
The Leon Sylvers III Interview Part 3
Reflections on The Sylvers' catalog as a frequently used sample source.
Little did The Sylvers know at the time, but the 1973 release of Foster Sylvers’ “Misdemeanor” coincided with a burgeoning cultural force that was developing on the other side of the country in the Bronx borough of New York City. As the siblings found their footing in the music industry, DJ pioneer Kool Herc used two turntables and a mixer to isolate and extend various breaks in his record collection at now legendary block parties. His innovation led to the widespread popularity of DJs repeating their favorite breakbeats as way to heighten crowd energy during performances throughout the 1970s and beyond.
The eventual advent of DIY sampling techniques like pause tapes in the late-‘70s and ‘80s, looser sampling laws, and increasingly more affordable sampling technology led to an explosion of game-changing production techniques throughout the 1980s. With rap music an established cultural and commercial force as the decade came to a close, “Misdemeanor”—which first began with Leon’s bass/footstomp Sanyo tape demo—started to find a new listener demographic fourteen years after its initial release.
Foster Sylvers’ hit had already been covered, with pianist Ahmad Jamal recording a beautiful take on the track for his 1974 LP Jamalca—a cover version that would later become an important sample source in its own right. Grandmaster Flash, however, was the first to sample “Misdemeanor” by employing an interesting, fragmented style on “Tear the Roof Off” from his 1987 Ba-Dop-Boom-Bang album.
British rap pioneer Derek B and legendary Juice Crew MC Big Daddy Kane soon followed suit, with their tracks “Success” and “On The Move” each taking tiny bits of “Misdemeanor” in a more subtle, understated style. But it was Dr. Dre’s booming, obvious use of the tune on The D.O.C.’s 1989 single “It’s Funky Enough” that was a true breakthrough moment.
n the 31 years since “It’s Funky Enough,” The Sylvers’ albums have become beloved and well-worn source material for producers—with beatmakers dipping into their collective archives countless times. Leon, who seems to have a positive view of sampling, believes that the popularity The Sylvers’ catalog amongst producers has something to do with the group’s youthfulness during their early years of success. “We were teenagers, so everything was new and fresh at the time,” he says.
He believes this fresh, youthful energy was captured on the group’s recordings and later transmitted to new generations. “Most people that sampled us were young,” he says. “It was always the same age as we were or three to four years older, you know what I'm saying? Hip-hop came out and that was another time where young people were into music and they went back and sampled and listened to certain things they picked up on.”
Sharing a label (Pride) with the Incredible Bongo Band also likely played a role in The Sylvers’ growing popularity as a sample source. Not only was Incredible Bongo Band’s 1973 version of “Apache” a favorite of the aforementioned Kool Herc and DJs the world over, the song has also been sampled well over 600 times.
Leon thinks DJs and producers started to seek out labelmates of the “Apache” creators as the record’s legend grew. “They recognized that Pride record logo,” he says. “So everybody looked for that and we were the only other artists on Pride. When they found us, ‘Misdemeanor’ took another level. That's how the process of music works—the ear connects into the next year, then the next ear.”
It’s a fascinating connection to consider, especially because the Incredible Bongo Band’s founder Michael Viner was instrumental in the release of “Misdemeanor.”
The track “Only One Can Win” from The Sylvers’ 1972 debut is another memorable Sylvers song that traveled from ear to ear. Though the specifics of the recording session have faded a bit with time, Leon rememembers The Sylvers co-producer Keg Johnson’s respect for the group’s original creations as being instrumental to the development of the song. He also recalls feeling a special fondness for the record as the group recorded it. “It was one of my favorites, ‘cause I liked the harmony,” he says.
Though just five artists have sampled “Only One Can Win,” the late J Dilla’s legendary Donuts rework “Two Can Win” is so powerful it will no doubt remain the industry standard on trying to do something new and unique with the original. Leon’s son Leon Sylvers IV, who is also an accomplished producer, introduced his father to Dilla’s famous instrumental.
Remarkably, after having such a profound influence on recorded music as a bass player, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer—an influence that today’s generation of producers continues to turn to for inspiration—Leon Sylvers III shows no signs of music industry fatigue.
In fact, he’s still listening to the world around him for new ideas and inspiration. “I'm always listening, ‘cause it's a life thing,” he says. “Songs come from episodes and escapades in life, you know, and the more you get close to that, the more identifiable the song is.”
Then
Just a little older
The legendary multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter reflects on homemade DIY drum kits, The Little Angels, The Sylvers' self-titled debut, and the creation of Foster Sylvers' "Misdemeanor."
The biography of Leon Sylvers III far exceeds a single article. His production and songwriting accomplishments require an entire book, yet even massive volume would fail to fully capture his rise as one of the most sought after creative minds in Black music during the 1970s and 1980s.
Despite Leon’s remarkable and varied career that spans across many decades, the excellent Questlove Supreme Episode #69 is the only long-form interview with him available online.
That changes now. Here is Part 1 of our conversation.
Growing up in Los Angeles near Adams and Crenshaw, Leon Sylvers III built his own drum kit out of coat hangers, a broom sweeper, and a box spring when he was just six years old. This exercise wasn’t simple child’s play, the eventual in-house producer for Dick Griffey's SOLAR Records was already demonstrating a preternatural ability to analyze and compose sound.
Utilizing a level of dedication and focus well beyond his years, he tried to mimic actual percussion as accurately as he could. “The hanger was the high hat, the broom—the hard part—were the rims and the snare, and the box spring was the kick,” he says. “I trying to create as close to the sound as possible.”
Not only was Leon mimicking actual kits, he would also retain his drum patterns and build them into full songs. “I would memorize the beat,” he says. “And if I had a title, a song that fit that beat and the melodies too, I would memorize everything. And when I would think about it, everything would flow, would pop up in my head, you know?”
By the time he was seven, his career started to transition from bedroom box spring drummer to professional artist. When his mother heard Leon and his siblings Charmaine, James, and Olympia, singing along with a three-part harmony for potato chip commercial one day, she told their father about the promising young vocalists. With a bit of coaching from their dad, the four Sylvers children were soon dubbed The Little Angels. They cut the 7” single “Santa Claus Parade”/”I'll Be A) Little Angel” on Riverdale Records, put out the 1960 Capitol Records 7” “Says You”/ “Olympia,” and earned appearances on such as TV shows like Make Room for Daddy, You Bet Your Life, and The Spike Jones Show.
Watching videos of The Little Angels’ TV guest appearances, it’s remarkable that they had the ability rehearse and perform together in such a cooperative, focused manner. Leon attributes this to several factors: the lack of easily accessible entertainment and distractions during their childhoods, a social climate where children were expected to be obedient to their parents, and the emergence of “the Motown sound.”
As much as he loved the overall Motown sound, Leon was especially taken with legendary bassist James Jamerson. Jamerson, along with drummer Benny Benjamin and the rest of Motown’s The Funk Brothers backing band, was instrumental in shaping the legendary label’s early signature aesthetic by providing the instrumentation on hits like “Dancing In The Street” by Martha and the Vandellas. “I loved the songs, but I was attracted to the bass,” he says. “Even at a young age, I loved the way it sounded.”
An opportunity to try to his own hand at bass presented itself when The Little Angels were booked at the Moulin Rouge, better known now as Nickelodeon on Sunset, alongside Dennis the Menace actor Jay North for a Christmas show in the early ‘60s. All the young performers were given gifts and Leon received a guitar at the conclusion of the show. He immediately went to work modifying the instrument, much like he did his makeshift drum kit from a few years prior. “I took the two high strings off because I knew a bass only had four,” he says. “And that's how I started learning bass. That's how detailed and strong willed I was in liking the bass over any other instrument.”
Though he didn’t realize it at the time, this decision to alter his guitar was a pivotal step in developing the novel sound that helped him become one of the most sought after songwriters and producers in the industry several years later. “The bass was the other half of my writing,” he says. “I always used it as a harmonic to my melody instead of just playing bottom. And that developed a style. All my basslines, even the hits back in the day with SOLAR, the bass is harmonic to the melody.”
Though Leon’s proficiency on the bass started to blossom, the popularity of The Little Angeles fizzled over time and the group eventually disbanded. After his parent’s separation, there was a relocation to Watts with his mother and siblings and a brief period where he was out of the public eye. But the 1970s brought about the reunion of Leon, Charmaine, James, and Olympia, and the addition of younger Sylvers siblings Edmund and Ricky.
By 1971 they had inked a deal with MGM Records’ Pride imprint and rebranded themselves as The Sylvers. Linking up with the well-established and highly successful Jerry Butler and co-producer Keg Johnson for their 1972 self-titled debut, the group became especially close to Johnson after an early meeting with him. He showed up with some songs Butler had pre-written for them to perform, but The Sylvers asked to audition their own material instead. Johnson was so impressed with their original music that he threw Butler’s songs in the trash. “I was a teenager then,” Leon says. “He was my guy after that. When he did that, we all looked at each other and smiled, and we knew what was up.”
Leon’s songwriting process for The Sylvers’ 1972 self-titled debut was just as memorable as his first meeting with Keg Johnson. When all was said and done, he ended up writing 7 out of the album’s 10 total tracks. And like any good wordsmith, he paid close attention to his surroundings for inspiration.
As an 11th grader at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, he absorbed passionate lessons from a revolutionary history teacher named Mr. Simon. Not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom or the status quo, Mr. Simon would review the textbook version of a lesson, flip over his giant chalkboard, and tell the class, “This is what really happened,” before exploring different angles of the topic at hand. Apparently Mr. Simon’s lessons were progressive and against the grain that they became an issue of grave concern to the powers that be. FBI agents even showed up in his classroom one day and were rumored to be monitoring him.
As he wrote “Fool’s Paradise,” Leon found himself drawing upon Mr. Simon’s lessons and his language. “He used words and stuff like euphemisms, and I put that in the song,” he says. “That song was inspired by him.”
Scholarly inspiration wasn’t limited to “Fool’s Paradise,” as “Wish That I Could Talk to You” was also born in an academic setting. Apparently, Leon was busy coming up with the track’s lyrics during a math lesson when the teacher called on him for an answer. Not wanting to lose the rhythm of his work in progress and realizing he didn’t have a chance of answering it correctly, he used blunt honesty in his response and asked to be sent to detention. When his teacher pressed again him for an answer, his response remained the same. “I said, ‘Ms. So and So, send me to detention. ‘Cause at this point I'm not even going to try to act like I know.’”
His decision to take the punishment and finish the song in detention turned out to be the right one. “Wish That I Could Talk to You” was The Sylvers’ first #1 single on the R & B charts and received significant airplay on KDAY.
With the group now a known entity in the record industry, Leon wasted little time creating his younger brother Foster’s hit song “Misdemeanor.” Using a Sanyo radio cassette player/recorder, his bass, and his foot, he laid down a demo that would inform the album version later co-produced by Jerry Peters and Keg Johnson. Though the Sanyo tape recorder was simple, Leon believes it played an important role in capturing the desired sound for his little brother’s smash single. “That was a great machine,” he says. “It had the perfect condenser. It had one big, giant mono speaker.”
As he worked on the demo tape, Leon was so meticulous in the recording process that he even memorized the appropriate distance between his foot—which functioned as his drums—and the mic. “I put the cassette player at an angle,” he says. “I stomped my foot and then I started singing. The sound of the condenser mic was lovely. I was like, ‘Woah,’ I noticed how good it sounded.”
This method of a bass coupled with foot stomp percussion played into the Sanyo machine became a go-to process for Leon’s demos.
Though Keg Johnson and Jerry Peters are listed as co-producers, Leon recalls Johnson playing a larger role in the song’s creation. That said, he is quick to acknowledge the genius of Jerry Peters and his gift for song arrangement.
In addition to the killer bassline written by Leon, the song is notable for having a different percussion arrangement than the one he expected. “I knew the baseline was going to be exactly the way I did it. I didn't think the drums was going to be that beat. It was so different than what I put in my mind, but I was like, ‘OK, that'll probably work’ because the baseline was there. It was enough, ‘cause it worked, and we didn't have that much promotion and that record kind of took off.”
In another intriguing footnote to the “Misdemeanor” backstory, it was originally intended for The Sylvers’ sophomore effort The Sylvers II. That all changed when Keg Johnson showed the song to film/record producer, Incredible Bongo Band founder, and audiobook innovator Michael Viner, who was in charge of MGM’s Pride division at the time. When Viner heard that Leon and the rest of The Sylvers were waiting to release “Misdemeanor” with the next group project, he urgently insisted that it come out right away. “Keg told him about it and he heard it and said, ‘No, we gotta put that out now.’”
It instead ended up on Foster Sylvers’ impressive 1973 self-titled debut—released well before his 12th birthday—and became a surprise hit.
PART 2
The Leon Sylvers III Interview Part 2
Reflections on reverse engineering Motown, the series of coincidences and the 100-person recording session that led to The Sylvers' "Don't Stop, Get Up," and Leon's early years with SOLAR.
With The Sylvers debut LP wrapped and “Misdemeanor” making its rounds as a hit record, Leon knew that nothing in the industry was promised—so he continued to put in long, hard hours practicing the bass. This insured he was always ready to execute any task required of him in the studio. “If we had to go over it more than one or two times, I wanted my fingers in shape,” he says. “Everything I did, I knew it was going to be hard. So I assumed it and just took it on like that.”
He now considers his diligence a critical part of his artistic growth that helped him compensate for a lack of formal training. “I think that was part of the maturation, as far as embedding that technique into my creative process,” he says. “How I practiced, it was based off everything new, ‘cause I wasn't taught no kind of way.”
In addition to neverending practice sessions, Leon also tried to reverse engineer his favorite Motown records during his free time to understand the complex dynamics of sound at play. Hours spent intently studying the famed label’s output helped him better understand the elements needed to arrange, produce, and write a great record. “I called it reverse music in my head,” he says. “I would buy it and then study it and take it apart—the drums the baseline, the melody, the lyrics, how they would able to sing off the beat. And that was part of the process too.”
While Leon continued to immerse himself in solo practice, studio sessions, and Motown record reverse engineering, he quickly realized he had found his life’s calling. “I was so into it,” he says. “I was supposed to do this for the rest of my life, I assume now, because that's what I'm still doing. And I love it.”
As The Sylvers’ second album started to come together, he further honed his songwriting skills by penning the majority of the tracks on the 1973 LP The Sylvers II—a rich, moving album beautifully co-produced by Keg Johnson and Jerry Peters. Much like his bass proficiency and understanding of song arrangement, the language needed to write many songs efficiently came from intense focus and deliberate practice. “When I was in the Nickerson Gardens projects, I would read almost halfway through the dictionary to learn words that nobody used,” he says. “Plus I did poetry before I started writing.”
Though The Sylvers II is now regarded as one of the group’s strongest efforts and was positively received at the time of release, their creative process started to evolve and change as work began on their next album—with Leon writing only two out of 10 tracks on the following year’s The Sylvers III. Pride also folded the same year, making The Sylvers III their final release with MGM.
The Capitol Records releases Showcase (featuring the hit “Boogie Fever”) and Something Special (featuring the hits “Hot Line” and “High School Dance”) both saw Leon write or co-write four out of 10 tracks. The group then self-produced their final album on Capitol, 1977’s New Horizons, marking the next major turning point in his career.
Leon’s move towards production began with The Sylvers 1978 release Forever Yours, an album he co-produced alongside Bob Cullen and Al Ross. Like so much of his catalog, the backstories surrounding the relea are plentiful. The LP’s hit record "Don't Stop, Get Off,” for example, was birthed out of a series of coincidences that provided the inspiration for the song’s infectious hook.
First, the group attended a Brother’s Johnson concert together after an extended tour in Japan. When the energy in the show picked up, Leon noticed people in the crowd enthusiastically shouting, “ooh, ooh” to the beat. Immediately intrigued by how good it sounded, he asked the people near him about the chant. “Everybody around me said, ‘Where you been? That's what everybody do when they like something,’” he says. “I was like, ‘Ohhh.’ So I started writing the song right then.”
The rest of the “Don’t Stop, Get Off” chorus came from a Sylvers concert where the group sent Foster out with his bass to warm up the crowd and give the rest of the family a bit more time to get ready. One of the grooves he started to strum had an immediate impact on the crowd. “He had a funky bassline,” Leon says. “And the kids start saying, ‘don’t stop, get off’ to the beat.”
Not one to miss an opportunity for a unique recording, Leon grabbed a boombox that was handy and captured the impromptu bass/chant combo. “I recorded it right there,” he says. “And it was perfect. After the show I was waiting to get back and hear that.”
Though Forever Yours eventually came out on Casablanca, The Sylvers were still with Capitol Records during the recording process. As they set out to make the album version of “Don’t Stop, Get Off” in the studio, Leon asked Bob Cullen to get as many Capitol employees as possible to participate in the “ooh, ooh” part of the song. People showed up in droves and the recording session soon turned into a party. “Almost a hundred from the Capitol building, they came and did that to the beat and stayed,” he says. “It was fun. And it sounded great on record.”
Feeling that the group had captured a soon-to-be trend with the “ooh, ooh” and “don’t stop, get off” chants, Leon pleaded with Larkin Arnold—the head of Capitol’s Black Music Division—to push the single immediately before another act beat them to the punch. He remembers telling the executives at Capitol, “‘This is a new thing. If we get at the beginning of it, this will work because the people created it. And once they hear themselves on radio, it’s a trend.’”
Unfortunately, his please fell on deaf ears. “They didn't understand what it was at Capitol,” hes says. “And so it was one of them things, man—that record sat for almost two years.”
Leon’s frustration grew when songs started coming out to commercial success that featured a similar “ooh, ooh” in the mix. When Foxy released their 1978 single “Get Off” and it proved to be a major hit, it felt like it was too late for The Sylvers’ inventive song to gain any traction. But the group prevailed, eventually finding success with “Don’t Stop, Get Off” during their transition to Casablanca.
Despite the disappointing conclusion to his time at Capitol, the experience of having his input ignored provided a valuable lesson. “That showed me, as a producer, when you get a move like that, when you can catch something like that, it's important to always listen,” he says. “The powers that be didn't understand it, but I did.”
Events were already taking place that would help with Leon’s solo production journey before Forever Yours saw commercial release. The Sylvers had established themselves as a presence on Soul Train early on and quickly won the affections of host Don Cornelius and talent coordinator Dick Griffey (pictured above with Leon). When the two industry icons asked The Sylvers to be part of a Soul Train tour a few years before Griffey founded SOLAR, the siblings eagerly agreed.
During the tour the group worked the the Chi-Lites “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)” (later sampled by on Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” in 2003) into their set with a choreographed step, much to the delight of Griffey. “Dick loved it, he would come on the side of the stage just to see us do that move,” Leon says. “He told me, ‘That that's a bad move Leon. That that's a bad move right there.’
Leon’s friend Richard Aaron, who had co-produced Jerry Peters’ Blueprint For Discovery with Peters and Keg Johnson, helped cement the business relationship between Griffey and Leon by setting up a meeting between the two men. Never one to show up unprepared, Leon invested $10,000 to cut three master recordings to bring along with some unreleased Sylvers material he had produced.
One of the self-funded recordings later became the Dynasty hit “I Don't Want To Be A Freak (But I Can't Help Myself)” from their 1979 SOLAR debut Your Piece Of The Rock, which Leon produced front to back. The second song he recorded for the meeting was “Take Another Look at Love” from the group’s sophomore album Adventures In The Land Of Music, also entirely produced by Leon. Though the third song never became an official release, the $10,000 investment proved more than worth it. “It couldn't happen any better,” he says. “Usually when you do that, you kind of write it off as learning, but those two songs royalty wise paid for itself and above paid for itself.”
Before any of the Dynasty material came out, however, Griffey wanted Leon to attend to Shalamar after being impressed by his material during their Richard Aaron-facilitated meeting. His first production credit and hit with the group was 1978’s “Take That to the Bank,” a rhythmically similar number to Dynasty’s “I Don't Want To Be A Freak (But I Can't Help Myself).”
Using the basic rhythm of the song he had cut as a demonstration track for Griffey, Leon focused specifically on the drums first and used a seasoned studio musician who later joined Dynasty to help enhance the song. “I had a cow bell, conga, timbale rig,” he says. “I would bring it studio. And I used Kevin Spencer, who used to play with The Sylvers at that time. He played bass and keyboards. I did the baseline and was singing the melodies and then so he jumped right in.”
Originally inspired by Robert Blake’s catch phrase on the detective TV show Baretta, “Take That to the Bank” established Leon as a producer by providing him with his first hit at SOLAR. The single also set to stage for a remarkable five-year run of successes as the label’s in-house sculptor of sound, with Billboard magazine dubbing him, “the man of the hour in R & B” in a 1981 article.
PART 3
The Leon Sylvers III Interview Part 3
Reflections on The Sylvers' catalog as a frequently used sample source.
Little did The Sylvers know at the time, but the 1973 release of Foster Sylvers’ “Misdemeanor” coincided with a burgeoning cultural force that was developing on the other side of the country in the Bronx borough of New York City. As the siblings found their footing in the music industry, DJ pioneer Kool Herc used two turntables and a mixer to isolate and extend various breaks in his record collection at now legendary block parties. His innovation led to the widespread popularity of DJs repeating their favorite breakbeats as way to heighten crowd energy during performances throughout the 1970s and beyond.
The eventual advent of DIY sampling techniques like pause tapes in the late-‘70s and ‘80s, looser sampling laws, and increasingly more affordable sampling technology led to an explosion of game-changing production techniques throughout the 1980s. With rap music an established cultural and commercial force as the decade came to a close, “Misdemeanor”—which first began with Leon’s bass/footstomp Sanyo tape demo—started to find a new listener demographic fourteen years after its initial release.
Foster Sylvers’ hit had already been covered, with pianist Ahmad Jamal recording a beautiful take on the track for his 1974 LP Jamalca—a cover version that would later become an important sample source in its own right. Grandmaster Flash, however, was the first to sample “Misdemeanor” by employing an interesting, fragmented style on “Tear the Roof Off” from his 1987 Ba-Dop-Boom-Bang album.
British rap pioneer Derek B and legendary Juice Crew MC Big Daddy Kane soon followed suit, with their tracks “Success” and “On The Move” each taking tiny bits of “Misdemeanor” in a more subtle, understated style. But it was Dr. Dre’s booming, obvious use of the tune on The D.O.C.’s 1989 single “It’s Funky Enough” that was a true breakthrough moment.
n the 31 years since “It’s Funky Enough,” The Sylvers’ albums have become beloved and well-worn source material for producers—with beatmakers dipping into their collective archives countless times. Leon, who seems to have a positive view of sampling, believes that the popularity The Sylvers’ catalog amongst producers has something to do with the group’s youthfulness during their early years of success. “We were teenagers, so everything was new and fresh at the time,” he says.
He believes this fresh, youthful energy was captured on the group’s recordings and later transmitted to new generations. “Most people that sampled us were young,” he says. “It was always the same age as we were or three to four years older, you know what I'm saying? Hip-hop came out and that was another time where young people were into music and they went back and sampled and listened to certain things they picked up on.”
Sharing a label (Pride) with the Incredible Bongo Band also likely played a role in The Sylvers’ growing popularity as a sample source. Not only was Incredible Bongo Band’s 1973 version of “Apache” a favorite of the aforementioned Kool Herc and DJs the world over, the song has also been sampled well over 600 times.
Leon thinks DJs and producers started to seek out labelmates of the “Apache” creators as the record’s legend grew. “They recognized that Pride record logo,” he says. “So everybody looked for that and we were the only other artists on Pride. When they found us, ‘Misdemeanor’ took another level. That's how the process of music works—the ear connects into the next year, then the next ear.”
It’s a fascinating connection to consider, especially because the Incredible Bongo Band’s founder Michael Viner was instrumental in the release of “Misdemeanor.”
The track “Only One Can Win” from The Sylvers’ 1972 debut is another memorable Sylvers song that traveled from ear to ear. Though the specifics of the recording session have faded a bit with time, Leon rememembers The Sylvers co-producer Keg Johnson’s respect for the group’s original creations as being instrumental to the development of the song. He also recalls feeling a special fondness for the record as the group recorded it. “It was one of my favorites, ‘cause I liked the harmony,” he says.
Though just five artists have sampled “Only One Can Win,” the late J Dilla’s legendary Donuts rework “Two Can Win” is so powerful it will no doubt remain the industry standard on trying to do something new and unique with the original. Leon’s son Leon Sylvers IV, who is also an accomplished producer, introduced his father to Dilla’s famous instrumental.
Remarkably, after having such a profound influence on recorded music as a bass player, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer—an influence that today’s generation of producers continues to turn to for inspiration—Leon Sylvers III shows no signs of music industry fatigue.
In fact, he’s still listening to the world around him for new ideas and inspiration. “I'm always listening, ‘cause it's a life thing,” he says. “Songs come from episodes and escapades in life, you know, and the more you get close to that, the more identifiable the song is.”
Then
Just a little older
