(Editor's Note: The following is an addendum of Mildred Fallen's interview feature about RAMP, a locally-based Funk/Soul band from the ’70s with an international fanbase, thanks to crate-diggers and samplers use of their old music. The band is playing two reunion shows this weekend, Friday and Saturday, at Alexander's V.I.P. Lounge, 3120 Reading Road, in Walnut Hills.)
The purpose and intent of "Rewind! Pt. 2" is like flipping a 45 record and playing side B. If you already read my CityBeat article "Rewind! Do It Again" about RAMP, Cincy’s 1970s Soul Band discovered by Roy Ayers, then I gladly spin this B-side as a supplement.
1977’s Come into Knowledge was probably one of the last new releases on ABC’s Blue Thumb Records before MCA officially took over the catalog in January of 1979. According to an ABC discography, the only other new album released in 1977 was The Crusaders’ Free As The Wind.
Hit albums for ABC were rare, as the “A&R team” consisted of Tommy LiPuma, recruited by former owner, Bob Krasnow. According to Goldmine, making hits wasn’t a focus of Krasnow’s. Krasnow signed whomever he wanted, and during his time at ABC, he released a lot of parental-advisory National Lampoon albums and non-commercial Rock. Their biggest sellers were The Crusaders, who’d already built their fan base from their early 1970s Jazz recordings through Motown, and R&B acts, The Pointer Sisters and Rufus & Chaka Khan.
So where did RAMP fit into their marketing vision? There was no marketing vision for them to begin with. Nevertheless, the sophisticated young group followed in the vein of Roy Ayers Ubiquity, The Blackbyrds and other soulful Jazz players of the mid-70s. And because of Roy Ayers’ vibraphone treatments on “Come Into Knowledge,” some of RAMP’s influences can also be traced back to legendary Jazz artists from the prior decade, like The Modern Jazz Quartet, Lionel Hampton and Cal Tjader.
The music trade magazines wrote “that RAMP reminded them of Friends of Distinction,” who are best known by their early 1970’s Soul hits, “Going in Circles” and “Smiling Faces (Sometimes).” RAMP’s music mixed a warm brew of Jazz, Funk, Soul, spirituality and self-empowerment. Their prophetic title track suggested to listeners, “Come into knowledge of a spiritual law and people you’ll find out who you are.” Several members of RAMP say they didn’t see the depth of those lyrics until much later.
In 2005, I gathered that RAMP was now learning, through the vast revolution of digital communication, that their music reached people in faraway places. Fans on MySpace from U.K., Austria, Japan, New Zealand and Australia bless the band with spirited messages, such as this beautiful one from a 25-year-old in Vienna: “I wake up to the song, 'Daylight' every morning. Thank you for kissing my soul.”
I thank the group for embracing my effort to share their story. My individual talks with bassist Nate White, lead vocalist Sharon Matthews, drummer John Manuel and guitarist Landy Shores had a synergy that buzzed through the phone. The five of them rarely see each other anymore because they are spread across North America; Sharon and Nate live in Cincinnati, Landy in L.A., John in D.C. and Sibel in Vancouver. They all seem more like siblings who say things about the others like, “I love every one of us,” or, “We’re a family.”
The only person I missed was Sibel Thrasher, RAMP’s other lead vocalist. Sibel stays busy in British Columbia doing theater, film and of course, music. Excited, I dialed her back when I saw she’d phoned me from her hotel room, and then learned just how janky my janky cell phone plan really is: No international roaming. Ah, fudge! Good thing I’d found her on MySpace the night before. Even through texts, she was warm. She wrote me back thanking me for being her MySpace friend, signing off, “God bless, Millie Mil…halla!”
On Sibel’s page, Edwin Birdsong’s, “Cola Bottle Baby” was bumping for the whole world to hear. Need I preface for you how much his music is significant to RAMP’s style? The early Electronica song being a far-out groove ahead of its time in 1979, it's the real source of the Daft Punk-begotten-Kanye West hit, “Stronger.” Edwin was the songwriting visionary behind sassy, Garage-Funk arrangements heard on “Give It” and “The American Promise” on Come Into Knowledge. As John Manuel says, Kanye’s sample “makes our sound current. It’s 30 years old and still viable.”
So before we go “anutha futha,” let’s hear a little more from the band.
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Landy Shores: (The local Soul scene in Cincy in the 1970s) was fun. It was a comfortable place to play. One thing about it, John and I had been playing in the same band since junior high school, from 1964 to 1971, when we went to The Spinners. (Note: The band he’s referring to is The Regals.) We had four singers, two horns, keyboards, guitar, bass and drums. We were too young to play in clubs and we had a manager that was like our father. We’d go to each other’s houses and record and rehearse and our mothers would talk--we were like one big happy family. We had a manager that would take care of the money; all we had to do was practice and play. When we got a call asking if we wanted to play with The Spinners, it was like, ‘Duh! Yeah!’ Half the band was from Cincinnati.
Sharon Matthews: Mostly, it was working with my brother-in-law, Charles Spurling, who was kind of an icon around here at the time. He worked with James Brown and Bootsy Collins and Hank Ballard, and so sometimes they would need background singers to come in. I know I was on some of Hank Ballard’s older tunes. For the life of me, I cannot tell you the name of any of them! Charles himself was a performing artist around here, so Sibel and I worked with him for awhile, Charles Spurling and The Lovejoys. We had some singles out, so we performed with him sometimes. That’s how Sibel and I met. After we left Charles then we just continued on, and singing with different bands around here, but we were still always just the two of us, the female duet. We continued to do that until we ran into John Manuel and Landy, and then we got with those guys and became Saturday Night Special.
Nate White: I met John through, I think, it was his brother-in-law. We went over his brother-in-law’s house to practice one time, and John came over. We talked and decided to try to get something going. He said he had been looking for a bass player, so I went over his house, we started talking about it and started rehearsals and bringing in other people. We formed a band called Saturday Night Special. It was a great band, pretty much, all the people that’s in RAMP was in that band. We had a keyboard player, Sonny Miles, that played keyboards. Great piano player.
John Manuel: Just being there, with all that magic in Cincinnati, experiences with the groups, going to the clubs… we had the Viking Lounge and the Clock Bar. I remember being at the Clock Bar when Al Green’s “Let Stay Together” came out and became a smash. And I was just playing with local bands at the time and I was like, ‘I sure would like to have a hit record one day.’
I remember a group, The Mystics, who I played drums with sometimes. I remember L.A. Reid, Marcus Antonio Reid and his band. I remember him having The (Pure) Essence Band In Show, I remember a group called 400 Years of What? I remember the D’Italians (which included DJ Hi-Tek’s father and uncle), ‘cause my group The Regals, we were doing our thing. I remember people really having a lot of talent. Dayton was right up the street and they had their own share of talent, as you know.
And then after we stopped performing, I remember Midnight Star, the Calloway brothers … and Babyface hooked up with L.A. (Reid) coming out of Indianapolis. Bootsy Collins of course, and then my main man, Phillipe Wynne, who rolled out of Cincinnati to join The Spinners, and he and I were there at the same time, both being homies from Cincinnati.
Nate White: I started playing bass at 16. A whole lot of other people started younger, when they were 3 and 5 and 6, so I considered myself a late bloomer. And when I did start, I was really serious about it. I just wanted to be a really great bass player, and there was a lot of good songs out there that had great bass players on the songs. I think that time period was really about the rhythm, the groove of the music and that’s really the job of the bass guitar.
I never went to a formal school, musically, I just had to pick it up and get some books where I learned scales, chord relationships and theory, and through records. One of the main things I did was listen to records, like Earth, Wind & Fire. There’s a whole lot of records out there, I mean, really groove songs where the bass is really dominant in a lot of those songs. I had a lot to listen to, and great teachers that didn’t know they were teaching me, but they were teaching me a whole lot.
Landy White: I liked Jimi Hendrix, of course. I also liked Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Larry Carlton, “Wah-Wah” Watson, Corneil Dupree from Aretha Franklin’s band (The Spinners often toured with Aretha Franklin and her band during 1970-1972.) And those are just some of them. When we were with The Spinners, we were observing some top folks.
I’ve played with some Country-Western artists and I didn’t try to bend the notes. I just stayed with what I did.
I like Fender Rhodes’ bass. I like the Olympic bass, but I’ve never owned one. It’s not so much the brand of the bass, it’s the amp. It’s more of what’s putting the sound out there for you. I like the Gibson guitar, that’s what I played on “Daylight,” and on the whole album, in fact. Just for the quality of instrumentation that they have, those vintage ones now cost $5,000 to $10,000 in the store. If I’d kept some of those Gibsons, I’d be a rich man!
— Mildred Fallen
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