What makes your sound different from the others?

I try to incorporate more music. The crowd response and the audience participation, and the percussion breakdown and all that shit is real good; I started all of that. But back in the day, [when] we were doing 20, 25 songs a night, top 40—you didn’t do James Brown, you may not get that gig no more. James Brown was the biggest thing in my life, and I’ve been inspired by a lot of artists. A lot of great artists from gospel to blues to jazz and all that. I’m inspired by all of that, and that’s why I wanted to do a jazz album. I did two jazz albums, and I was happy with that. The type of music that I do, I try to pick something that is unusual that nobody else would normally try on a go-go beat. Some of the same tunes that I’ve done in jazz like “Misty,” I tried that on a go-go beat and it worked quite well. Duke Ellington—“Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” I like to take ballads and update them. “My Funny Valentine,” which is a slow tune, I redid that in up-tempo go-go style. All this keeps me going.

I heard that one of your first jobs was playing guitar with Jerry Butler.

I wasn’t actually hired in the band. I was playing at this night club with this group called Los Latinos, and the Los Latinos was one of the greatest, influential groups. I got so much experience playing with these guys. Joe Manley and Thomas Smith, they were Latin dancers and Latin singers and we only had up top percussion. We didn’t have that bottom, low bass drum. The Latins don’t have that big drum trap, and I enjoyed doing all the top 40. I learned a lot, had a great experience. I got to where I could do any kind of song that we wanted to do: Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, James Brown, all that with the particular Latin sound. I decided to get my own band together and that’s when I took that flavor with me.

When was that?

1966 is when I started to put my own band together. That’s 41 years, huh?

Jeez, yeah, do you feel it?

Look at me, 60 years old. Shucks, I’ve been partying since I was a teenager! When I get on that stage I feel like a big ol’ kid! We used to work seven nights a week, double gigs on weekends, triple gigs on weekends, two gigs on Saturday, two gigs on Sunday, and two gigs on Friday. Work work work work work. We used to do as many as ten gigs a week, and they kept us going. We used to play until 7, 8 a.m.

I knew go-go would catch on eventually, in 1972, ’73 when we would do the top 40 songs, and then we’d break down. A lot of people would dress up all the time. Coming to my shows, they’d have suits and neckties and mink coats and all that, especially in the winter time, and they came and they chilled and would sit around ’til they got drunk or high, then they’d get up and dance. There was a small dance floor, and by the time we threw that go-go at them, the mink coats came off, the neckties and they stopped wearing them suits. The tables and chairs disappeared, nothing but a big dance floor. Everybody was dancing, and that’s when I knew we got it. It done caught on. All they did was sweat, sweat, sweat, alllllll night long.

In the song “The Party Roll”, you mention Deno’s. What’s Deno’s?

Deno’s is a club that I played in. He [Daniel “Hollywood Breeze” Clayton] changed the name from Breese’s Metro to Deno’s. A young man that used to have a little TV show around here, Teenarama, we called him Breeze, he was a disk jockey, a great disk jockey too, from Virginia, and he ended up owning his own club. He got started at the Ebony Inn. The Ebony Inn is one of the clubs I got started in. That was the first club that gave me a job and we wasn’t getting any money, but we was playin’ Friday, Saturday, Sundays, and we was getting barbecue and beer.

Back in those days, I was a drunk. Not an alcoholic, a drunk. There’s a difference. I put that in the song. After we started packing that place, then they started payin’ us a little money, you know, $5 a night, then we got up to $10 a night and they took away the beer! $15 a night, we had to start payin’ half for the barbecue. Then Breeze came up there and looked at us and said, ‘Look, you guys are getting pretty good. You’re packing this place. How much are you getting?” I said, “We’re getting $15 a night.” He said, “I’ll tell you what. Come on uptown with me and play the Red Carpet Lounge and I’ll give you $17 a night.” That’s where we got a lot of exposure, and those people started booking us for their cabarets and their political affairs, and that really got us started being popular.