Robben Ford- rare interview and informative

my name is robin ford i was born in a small town called woodlake california in 1951. it's sort of central california but shortly thereafter i moved to uh another small town in northern california near the coast um called ukaya and ukai is the county seat of mendocino county and mendocino county has somewhat of a reputation for being an artist community and a few different artists came out of there in fact i think johnny mathis lived in that area for a while um my father worked for a lumber company and was in charge of shipping lumber all throughout california and picking the best lumber from from lesser grade lumber he traveled a lot later in the time when i was still at home he would be on the road quite a bit and he was a guitar player and a singer and i learned my first guitar chords from him and he used to perform live over the radio in idaho the state was idaho even though my father is from illinois so um i learned a little bit from him my mother also was musically inclined a really good singer played a little piano listening to the radio was certainly a favorite pastime and also uh singing in church was something that um you know what happened two and three times a week when we were kids it wasn't formal but music was an integral part of you know being at church when i first went to a concert at school my older brother was a drummer he played in the school band and you know this was not necessarily great music it was junior high school kids you know young teens but so we went to a concert to see my brother play drums in this school band and at one point there was an alto saxophonist who came to the front and was featured as a soloist on this one number and i had this tremendous epiphany at that moment that that's what i wanted to do i mean you know the world went golden and i wanted to play the saxophone the first thing that really set my direction in terms of what i wanted to do with the guitar was a record by the paul butterfield blues band which featured mike bloomfield on lead guitar and when i heard this record i was just absolutely blown away by the energy the record was called the paul butterfield blues band and [Music] it was an integrated group three black musicians three white musicians and um you know paul butterfield was a great blues singer and blues harmonica player but in particular mike bloomfield on electric guitar just excited me so much and i started trying to copy his style and virtually taught myself to play guitar from that point on i i had a good ear for music and the blues made it fairly easy in terms of learning the fundamentals and so that really again started my direction in terms of what i wanted to do i wanted to play blues guitar and that's where it began for me the first jazz record that i ever heard was dave rubeck's take five album actually the record was called time out and the hit from that record was called take five and was actually written by paul desmond the altis saxophone player i heard that record i was probably 10 around 10 years old when i heard that record but so it took a little while but by the time i started having a little bit of money and i was able to afford to buy records occasionally i uh i i wanted to find out about jazz so at the local record store i would go down and look in the jazz section it just said jazz it was small you know and there'd be a few records in there and uh if it had a saxophone on it i would buy the record if i could afford it so the first jazz record that i ever bought with my own money was ornette coleman new york is now so this music was very unexpected very out there very free but also ornette style was very melodic you know he plays melodies on the horn and i just loved the record i immediately took to it it did not put me off and the next record that i bought was archie shep the way ahead and this was also very far out music so i started listening to just all kinds of great jazz artists from gil evans stan canton uh of course john coltrane then uh miles davis and um wayne shorter and all these great musicians uh either my brother was bringing these records home or i was finding them myself and uh this influenced my style greatly so what i did was combine blues guitar and jazz saxophone these are the two main ingredients to my own personal style i feel the west coast when i was growing up was very alive with music and um i lived about two hours away from san francisco i lived in a small town uh but san francisco was not far away and so my brothers and i used to go down to san francisco to hear bands all the time and this was you know literally when the san francisco scene was was beginning and burgeoning so the bands that we would see you know were big brother in the holding company with janice joplin grateful dead jefferson airplane uh but as well uh mike bloomfield was living in the area then and he was my guitar hero he had the electric flag paul butterfield blues band and then of course the english you know cream jimi hendrix led zeppelin santana um and uh you know jazz groups were imported you know i saw in in in the same evening you know you would see yosef latif um the [Music] ten years after and the paul butterfield blues band you know on one stage in one night and um so it was a fantastic you know time in music and for me uh i think especially being a guitar player there was a lot of great guitar at that time and it was when guitar heroes guitar gods were you know that whole concept was just beginning and i saw all of them you know just you know i was five ten feet away from you know all of these guys so it was really tremendous uh experience so we played a lot together my older and younger brother myself we had a band called the charles ford band which was named after my father even though he was not in the group we called the group the charles ford band so and that band has some legendary status in america for being one of the early all-white blues bands and uh specifically in the san francisco area we were very popular because uh we were well we were considered the best blues band in the area and we used to open for all the great blues artists who would come to town so we opened for uh muddy waters uh buddy guy junior wells freddy king otis rush a lot of people in san francisco we were 13 13 years old no one knew how to play and i was approached by a couple of friends who said would you like to start a group and i said yeah sure so um from that point on i've i've been in a band and it was never you know money or career was always a secondary consideration it it didn't have anything to do with my motivation to play music and if i wasn't making money as a musician i wasn't making money i mean i never did anything else [Music] for money in my life i never had another occupation i i left home when i was uh i think 17 i might have been 18 and joined up with my older brother again patrick ford the drummer and we started a group together in the bay area around san francisco and uh basically we had no money we were staying at friends houses um eventually we uh after we got our group together we got a house together with the band and five guys were living in one house and um you know again with no money uh the only meal we had in the day was a 35 cent hot dog around the corner you know so um it was tough surviving at that time but eventually our group opened up for the blues harp player charlie musselwhite we played a show with charlie in a town called san rafael outside san francisco and charlie invited my brother patrick to join his band literally during the the gigs and he fired his drummer and hired my brother so patrick started playing with charlie musselwhite and um after about a month and a half uh patrick told charlie that he wanted to continue to work with me and that he was going to have to leave so instead of letting patrick leave charlie hired me into his band so that's how i got my first professional job was with charlie muscle white so that my brother wouldn't quit so um from that point you know uh making again very little money uh nonetheless we were my brother and i lived together and uh we were able to pay our bills we were able to eat and um i started my first jazz group i wanted to start playing jazz i'd been playing primarily blues and r b up to this point so um i found some new musicians to play with who are interested in in this music and shortly after the group started uh there was a club we played at often in palo alto california called in your ear blue singer jimmy witherspoon was coming in to play the club and i asked the owner if my van could open for spoon because i was a big fan of his and he said sure so uh we indeed opened for jimmy and it turned out he came in he didn't have a band he just had a guitar player so he asked if we would be interested after he heard our set he said would you guys you know like to go ahead and play behind me for the night we said yes and he uh from you know at the end of the evening he said i want you guys to move down to l.a and be my band so this was a tremendous opportunity and quite unexpected and so indeed after we played with him for a week in san francisco and then we all moved to la and and started playing with with jimmy witherspoon he was um a master of uh what it was to be in control of the situation when he was on stage a very commanding presence a great sense of humor and um just the best blue singer i mean for me to this day jimmy witherspoon is my favorite blues singer so i worked with jimmy witherspoon for two years and the very day that um i uh i had decided i wanted to leave it was time to move on and the very day i went to the offices to wait for jimmy to come in he didn't come in that day but while i was waiting i got a phone call again very out of the blue from tom scott who's a saxophone player uh who was very big in the studios in la at that time and was was writing for television and um very talented musician he asked me if i'd be interested in going on the road with joni mitchell and uh this is 1970 uh just about 1974. and um at first i said no because i really wasn't that aware of joni mitchell's music and i didn't know who tom scott was um but he said well would you maybe just consider it would you like to maybe hear what we're doing uh and i said well sure you know i probably should at least give it a listen so he came over to the office that very day and he brought along uh joni mitchell's album court and spark which was not yet released he also brought the la express's first album which was not yet released and he played them for me they were obviously great musicians and joni mitchell's record i was intrigued by and i also on both records i kept tuning in to the drummer i really liked the drummer and that was john garan and so so he asked if i'd like to come over and play with the group and i did and uh i said yeah sure you know and so i joined tom scott in the la express i learned more in that two-year period of time than at any other time in my life uh i learned how to play with other people because prior to that i was playing really primarily chicago blues and um um bb king i was also had been trying to mix like music of john coltrane and wayne shorter and people like that into this chicago blues kind of thing and i pretty much was always leader of the group and out front so this really was the first time that i was in a band where i was really having to learn a listen to what everybody else was doing and so i i learned or started learning i should say at that time how to fit in and blend with other instruments and maybe you know uh when to play when not to play in terms of a support artist and uh i mean i was working with the best in the business at that time for exactly that i mean tom scott and those guys they were the first call studio musicians in la they were playing on everybody's records so i could not have been in better company plus they all were jazz background musicians and tom scott turned me on to stravinsky and a lot of classical music and indian music george harrison came to a concert that i did with joni mitchell in london in 1974 and he and tom scott who was the director of the band musical director were friends and had done some recording together in la with ravi shankar so george invited the band all to come out to his house which is in henley on thames outside london and so the next day we went out to his very large home it used to be a i think a nunnery it looks like a castle and there's beautiful grounds all over the place beautiful green rolling hills an amazing place and we spent the day out there and then the night uh recording with george he had a studio in his home and um after we went back to the states uh we got a call from george and he asked if tom well thomas had already been talking with george and was going to do the george harrison's tour and george asked if i would be interested in doing the tour as well so i i joined that group and so right at the end really of the tour with joni mitchell we started rehearsals with george and then did a two-month tour of the united states in canada with george harrison so these were back to back very big you know situations to find myself in i must say emotionally i was kind of unprepared for either one of them because basically i'm from a small town but they were tremendous uh experiences great learning experiences and uh the tour of victoria terrace and included ravi shankar and a 16-piece musical a 16-piece indian orchestra which had alaraka in it and i mean that the cream of the crop of the indian musicians of the day very rarefied you know company rarified situation i was in so again the most important thing i learned there i think was uh how to play with other people you know i got a call from jimmy haslip who's the bassist with a group called the yellowjackets many people may know he had been called by tommy lapuma who was producing miles davis's album at that time tutu it was miles's first record for his new label warner brothers and um jimmy told me that uh miles davis was looking for me to play guitar with him and uh this was a shock jimmy haslif gave me tommy lapuma's number and i called tommy tommy said yeah miles wants you to play with him man what do you think and i said absolutely because i can say pretty hands down that miles davis is probably my greatest musical influence my most listened to artist i have more miles davis records than any other artist he made more records than most people um but uh i had never expected to have the opportunity to play with him uh so um eventually uh miles called and invited me to join his band i said yes and he gave me to his uh tour manager and we worked out the basic situation so they sent me some cassette recordings of the band rehearsing and i think one live concert and some very illegible charts of his music and i had 25 pieces of music to learn in 10 days and the charts were as i say almost unreadable so what i did was i listened to the music i just kept listening to the music over and over again i would occasionally learn some things from the charts there was a couple that i could by listening and you know i could work out these crazy melodies and so i spent uh you know this time working on the music and miles called a couple of days before i came out to see how i was doing you know and i said well you know i don't know it's kind of kind of hard but he just laughed and he said it's you know it's okay it's your groove it's just your groove so he felt confident you know and uh so my first show with miles uh i played having never met him in person having never met the band so uh i flew out to washington dc on a midnight flyer i got next to no sleep that night and the uh the sound check miles wasn't there so no actually i think they had the sound check and i wasn't there i missed the sound chip but uh i played my first show with miles davis in washington dc we were on the bill with bb king and i was terrified i met miles 20 minutes before going on stage with him and i was dressed very conservatively i had like a little tie on i think even you know and slacks i used to dress like that in those days and uh so the only thing that miles said to me when he you know he i went back to meet him was he said robin what you going to wear on stage that was like the only thing he said to me he didn't talk to me about the music or or anything it was just like what are you going to look like you know so i went out there just in knots virtually petrified and uh you know i was following mike's mike stern uh who had been miles guitarist uh for certainly the year and a half before so i felt like i had to play a lot of notes and that's not really my thing but i did it anyway you know and uh you know i had this big solo on the first song and um myles is just you know he's standing like seven feet away from me and i'm kind of looking down i couldn't even look up you know so eventually i kind of peek out of the corner of my eye at him after i take a guitar solo and he's looking at me and just goes damn you know like great and that made me feel a little better and so i got through the evening but immediately i knew that i could not walk out on a bandstand with miles davis being that uptight because i mean i was i was sick to my stomach you know on stage so i just just just made up my mind to drop it and just relax and go out there go out on the bandstand just like i would you know if it was my own group you know just walk out there and play and play the way i play and um so the next night we were in new york city and again with bb king we played two nights at the beacon theater there and i just dropped it i just relaxed and he was grinning from ear to ear he was really digging it and uh so from there on out everything was okay you

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Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021