HOW DO YOU GROW AS A MUSICIAN?

HOW DO YOU GROW AS A MUSICIAN?

Listen, musicians don’t teach you their tricks. I tell a lot of people—see first of all, if you come to an average musician and you ask him about something, he’s not going to tell you the true tricks. In other words, you could go to that piano and a jazz teacher will teach you all the scales and chords. But you can learn all that and you will still sound like shit.

Until, you…Let’s say you like Coltrane. Until you sit down with Coltrane and listen the hell out of him, pick up some of his licks, you’re not going to get to the stuff. Called coppin’. Coppin’ is when you listen to somebody and learn how they play. That’s how you really learn. And most musicians aren’t going to tell you that.

Like I had a teacher in San Francisco who could play his ass off, he come out of the Coltrane school. And this is standard—he was teaching me all the slick scales but when he played it—ooh it sounded good. But when I played it, it didn’t sound worth a shit. At that time– I learned that late in my musician’s life—I didn’t know you just got to cop.

You got to sit down with a record like Junior Walker—I mean I’m talking rhythm and blues now.

You remember Shotgun? (Singing) “ Shotguuun, shoot him ‘fore he run now. Do the jerk baby. Pum pum pa lo dara dara dada. Darada da da dera da aa rada dera.”

I had to learn all that, its like learning a language. People can learn from a book but if they’re not exposed to the real people talking it’s just not going to be right. Now most of the musicians I’ve been around, they couldn’t read music, they didn’t know anything about theory but they could play—all ear learned.

If you really want to play, you got to pick someone you love. But you got to love someone, otherwise its going to be hard. And you got to listen to that shit over and over.

I didn’t know how good I was. The records I made, I felt embarrassed because I’m so critical. Now that I listen to them, they’re much better than I thought they were.

Note: Two years ago, Bobby had a stroke which he is struggling to get back from. He plays everyday, getting his chops back. Retha has him on Instagram and Spotify where he has many, many followers. This was a recent thing he said on Facebook:

Thanks to all of you – and especially to Retha for putting me out there! I think I’m like most of us musicians – just want to know my music is being heard and enjoyed – very gratifying – especially given the fact that I’ve been pretty much out of the picture this past couple of years.