Billy Price – Soul Singin’ – Interview
by Matteo Bossi
“That festival in Lucerne was wonderful, one of the best experiences I have ever had in music, you know in the hotel they have an Otis Clay suite! Otis was a very dear friend, I learned so much from him. We recorded an album together and it was the last one he did before he died. We had done a couple of shows and we had plans to tour and everything but it wasn’t meant to be.” Our conversation with soul singer Billy Price starts off reminiscing about his performance at the Lucerne Blues Festival a few years ago and his friendship with the late great Otis Clay. Price has been singing for over fifty years with the same passion for classic soul and R&B and he has just put out a new record on Little Village Foundation, “Person Of Interest”.
How about the new album produced by Tony Braunagel? You had an impressive list of musicians playing on it.
Yes, Tony is very well connected in southern California and he was able to call some amazing musicians for that session.
And it is maybe the first time you wrote or co-wrote every song of one your records?
Yes it’s the first time I’ve done that. I’ve always been a fan of music as much as a practitioner and I think I’ve always loved to cover some of my favorite songs, sometime obscure songs…but I started to get into writing in the last ten or fifteen years or so. When Tony and I were putting the material together for this album, I had a lot of songs that I had written, especially during the pandemic I wrote a lot. Tony had suggested a few songs, he brought me some songs from good songwriters the he knew in California and eventually I said, “you know Tony, I think I really want to do my own songs”. That’s what we’ve done.
Jim Pugh plays on the album, like he did on the two previous ones.
Yes he played on the ones I did at Greaseland with Kid Andersen, he’s a wonderful keyboard player, a good guy and a good friend. I was on Vizztone at the time I did “Reckoning” and then I got a deal with Mike Zito’s label, Gulf Coast, to do “Dog It Dog”. Mike and I and Kid and Mike’s business partner, Guy Hale, were all on a Rhythm and Blues Cruise together around the time Mike and Guy were starting the label. So we were one of the first releases on Gulf Coast.
How did you connect with Tony, do you and him go way back?
Actually before I did “Reckoning” with Kid Andersen I had already been talking with Tony about doing a recording. Then I talked to Kid and I went in that direction. But in early 2023 I had done a tour in Europe with Anthony Geraci and the Boston Blues Allstars and then we played together at the Blues Music Awards and right after that in Clarksdale, Mississippi at a festival. But for the festival gig Anthony’s drummer had to go home and so Tony sat in on the drums. So Tony and I became reacquainted, we met again at the airport on the way back from Memphis. We talked and he said, “I still like to do and album with you sometime”. I got home and I thought about it, we talked some more and started working together.
You cut the record in California at Johnny Lee Schell studio.
Yes, Tony usually works there, it’s like a little garage, separated from his house, in Studio City, California. They do a lot of production together there. Johnny was the engineer, he has a great history as a guitar player. Phantom blues band, of course, but he was the guitar player on “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” by Lucinda Williams. He’s a great guy.
Some of these songs you co-wrote with your keyboard player or Fred Chapellier and even with Jon Tiven.
Jon and Sally Tiven live in Nashville, he has produced the new Steve Cropper album. Jon has an amazing history if you look up on his wikipedia page all his credits are just impressive. I’ve been writing with them for years but the interesting thing is I’ve never met them face to face.
He recorded some great soul singers like Wilson Pickett, Garnet Mimms or Howard Tate.
Yes and Little Milton and Syl Johnson as well…but mostly I write with my keyboard player from my band here in Pittsburgh, Jim Britton. We wrote a lot of songs on the Greaseland albums. Jim is not playing on the album, the only person from my band playing on it is my saxophone player, Eric Spaulding. We put him on a few saxophone solos. Eric is also on a lot of Greaseland album, he is good friend with Kid Andersen.
How do you work on your songwriting, for example about a song like “Crying at the Stoplight”?
That was a real story, it’s quite cinematic. She was crying next to me and I thought “I could write a song about that”. I try to write from real experience. Anytime I hear somebody say a phrase or anything I write it down. My keyboard player sends me musical ideas all the time. I go through them and try to match that with a lyric concept. It evolved that way over time. Jon Tiven sends me tracks and I have twenty or thirty of his things that I have never written anything to, but the song “A Certain Something” and “They Knew” started out that way. Maybe we’ll do an album together. But I’d like to make another album with Kid. I have some ideas and I need to spend some time developing some more material.
Billy Price Lucerne photo Philippe Prétet
There is an older song, “Mercy”, how did that come about?
Yes, it’s funny, I was playing in Philadelphia area, on the eastern side of Pennsylvania, about five hours from where I live and there was this woman who came to my show and she was a big fan of mine, especially in the Eighties when I had the Billy Price & The Keystone Rhythm Band. And she told me she used to sneak high quality equipment into the shows and make recordings of the band. And she said, “do you like to hear some of them?” Of course I wanted to. And this one song just jumped out of it, I remember the song from those days but for some reason I just stopped doing it…but I thought, well this is a really good song, I’d like to do this again. I got it into the repertoire with my band, then I presented it to Tony and he loved it. So we recorded it. I think we got a great version.
Maybe in those tapes there are more songs you forgot about?
Oh there should be others like that! She does have more tapes. I remember the last album we did with the Keystone Rhythm Band, it was called “Free At Last”. Do you remember a band called The Hooters? They were a pop band and I had the same manager they had. And he was sort of trying to move my band to more of a pop direction. But we came from deep soul music. I think he was instrumental in saying, “let’s not record this song, Mercy”. He wanted more upbeat stuff and “Mercy” is kind of a deep gospel / soul song and it wasn’t what he wanted the band to be doing at that time. All things in time. I’m currently working on a video of that song, I released one video of “Inside That Box” and I’m working with the same videographer. You know, when I wrote “Mercy” I was thinking about relationships and in relationships a lot of times both parts hurt each other…in a long term relationship the ideal was let there be mercy, I don’t know who’s right or wrong. But a lot of people have told me that if you universalize the lyrics then it starts to be a call for mercy all over the world for wars and poverty…so I’m working with the videographer to inject this universal element, in a subtle way.
You did other videos of the new songs
Yes, recently I did a tour in New England and we stopped at a video studio called Don Odell’s Legends. Don is a former TV producer and he produces high quality live videos, he gets forty or fifty people in as an audience and so I have some very good videos from our performance there. It’s my band plus a baritone sax player, Mark Earley. That third horn makes a big difference but of course I can’t afford to have them on all my shows.
You also do a tribute to Roy Buchanan on the record.
Yes, you know the song I’m most famous for, having sang it with Roy Buchanan was a cover of Tyrone Davis “Can I Change My Mind”, we did it on the “Live Stock” album in 1974 or ’75. So Jim, my keyboard player, and I wrote this song, “Change Your Mind”, the title is somewhat similar…Also the sound and the feeling of the song reminded me of some other things that I’ve done with Roy, so I suggested to Tony that we should dedicate this to the memory of Roy Buchanan and we should try to get a guitar player who has been influenced by him and who could play a guitar solo channeling a bit of that. Tony is friends with Joe Bonamassa and sometimes he plays with him, he invited Joe to do a solo and he texted him and he said yes within a minute. That song is being played on the Sirius XM Bluesville Satellite Channel, and that’s really good for us.
You have done other tributes to Roy Buchanan over the years, I remember one with Fred Chapellier.
Oh yes, that was the first album I recorded with Fred. He was supposed to be in Lucerne with us that year but he got ill, so I had my guitar player from Baltimore at that time. The sax player Drew Davis I met him when I recorded a live album with Fred in France, he lives there. Fred put out recently a live album, we wrote six or seven songs together that are on that one.
How did you and Fred Chapellier first meet?
Oh Fred was big Roy Buchanan fan and I had a website a long time ago, when most artists didn’t have websites, I had a guestbook on there, where people could leave a message. And he wrote to me, “I’m a guitarist from France, I’m a big fan of Buchanan and of your music, I’d like you to come to France sometime”. We talked for a while and I gave him my address, “send me some of your music” I said. He sent me some CDs, that I think sat in my car for several months then I listened to them and I started to get interested in working with him. He was putting together his tribute to Roy Buchanan album and I sang a couple of songs, I did my vocals here and then sent it to him. Then we started to talk about me coming over doing tours and I think four or five tours over the years. We did an album called “Night Work”, we worked in a studio here in Pittsburgh and then we did a Live album in France, “Live On Stage”, with Drew Davis on sax. He’s really great, he’s got an album that is a tribute to Louis Jordan, he’s terrific. I’d like to to do something with Drew again. I’ve just been to France with Anthony Geraci’s band as featured vocalist, we had a very nice tour.
“Can I Change My Mind” was also the title of one of your records too, from the late Nineties, produced by Swamp Dogg.
Oh Swamp Dogg! Did you hear his latest record? It’s a great album, he’s 83 or 84 years old. He wrote everything on that album, except of course “Can I Change My Mind”, we had a kind of strange arrangement of that tune. Some of those songs I still do a lot of them. He’s an amazing writer, singer, keyboard player…and incredibly talented guy. Do you remember Leon Haywood, the singer? He got a big hit with “It’s got to be mellow”…we recorded in Leon’s studio in Los Angeles, Swamp Dogg used that. He would come over every now and then have a suggestion and all the suggestions were great.
I guess you had Swamp Dogg records or Otis Clay’s records and then you worked with both of them. That must have been special as a fan of soul music.
It is so true, I was just metioning to a friend yesterday. I got a comment to one of my Youtube videos from Jerry Jemmott, he wrote, “Billy Price always makes me happy”. And I was thinking I take these opportunities I got for granted too much, if I stop and think about it, I’m friends with and I’ve worked with Jerry Jemmott, I was friends and I worked with Otis Clay and Swamp Dogg…I have so many blessing and maybe I’m not sufficiently grateful. I was just going to post a video from de Don Odell’s session of the song “Turn Back The Hands Of Time” and I was recalling a time in the early Eighties when my band and I were playing a club in Chicago, Otis Clay was our guest, we did sing together and Tyrone Davis came in, he came on stage with me and Otis and the three of us sang together “Turn Back The Hands Of Time”. It was a surreal moment.
Do you remember the first time you did sing with Otis?
Oh I’ll never forget it. We had been talking to him for quite some time about coming from Chicago and sing with my band in Pittsburgh and Washington D.C. He resisted for a while and finally he agree to come. We rehearsed and everything clicked beautifully. I remember singing the song “Is It Over?”, it was the title song of my first album with the Keystone Rhythm Band and it was a cover of an Otis Clay song. And having the opportunity to sing right next to him, trade verses…I was overcome with so much emotions and I almost could not continue, it was a very moving experience.
Otis being such a nice person it must have been very open and welcoming.
Oh he was, it just took a while to convince him to come.
Going a little way back, when you started to sing with Roy Buchanan what was it like? You were in your early twenties, while Roy was ten years older.
Yes, I had been playing these little bars in central Pennsylvania and all of a sudden I’m playing Carnegie Hall or the Spectrum…it was surreal. An amazing opportunity and it gave me a great start in the music business, I’m grateful for that. We did an ill conceived studio album, called “That’s What I’m Here For”, which had some good music on it but generally it wasn’t that well received. But they did bring me back do to a live album, the “Live Stock”.
What kind of guy was Roy Buchanan?
He was a very kind person a kind of introverted and shy. He had a lot of problems, it’s no secret, with drugs and alcohol, so he was either very reserved or the opposite. But I had a lot of good times with him. He was a huge fan of music, a student of music, he and I used to stay up all night drinking and listening to music together. It lasted two or three years. I had another band and I was trying to use my situation with Buchanan to get a deal for the band that I led in Pittsburgh, it was called The Rhythm Kings, but that never worked out. It was more of a jump blues/swing band, sort of like Roomful of Blues…we also did a lot of soul music as well. It was a good band with two or three horns, but it wasn’t something that record companies were interested in at that time.
That would have been different in the Eighties probably.
Yes, in the Eighties there were some roots oriented rock bands in the Robert Cray category, like Huey Lewis or the Fabulous Thunderbirds and my manager thought there was a possible niche for my band too. But it didn’t work out.
It’s funny that Otis Clay did sing on a Roy Buchanan album on Alligator.
Yes, I had nothing to do with that. At the time Roy was on Alligator and I think Bruce Iglauer or Dick Shurman of course they knew Otis and they called him to do “A Nickel and A Nail” with Roy. They had Delbert McClinton singing on another record. I think in retrospect the Alligator albums were the kind of stuff Roy should have been doing all along. He had a pretty uneven recording career, I would say. Because the bottom line is he didn’t know what he wanted to do, so he had other people making those decisions for him, which is always a mistake. Recently they put out “Live At Town Hall”, they took the entire evening that the “Live Stock” album was pulled from and they released everything that they had. There’s some songs I was not too thrilled to see out there, but what can you do?
In the Nineties, after the end of the Keystone Rhythm, you recorded a series of soul records.
I started working in Pittsburgh, which has a very rich jazz tradition and I worked with good jazz musicians. We put out an old style blues album called “Danger Zone” and then we started to do more soul music and we put together “The Soul Collection” album. We used a little studio here that was operated by a guy with the same taste in southern soul music that I have, his name was Don Garvin, a very good guitar player too. So Don and I my drummer, put together that album and we got Otis Clay to sing one song lead with me and some background vocals too, and we used Dianne Madison and Theresa Davis who were Otis background singers. It’s one of my favorite album, it’s out of print these days.
Having this longtime friendship with Otis it is surprising it took you thirty years to do an album together.
Yes, he had been on a Rhythm and Blues Cruise, he came home and he called me and he said to me, “four or five people on the cruise told me I should do whole album with Billy Price!” I had been talking with Duke Robillard about producing me, we were just getting started. So I called Duke and I said, “what about doing an album with me and Otis Clay?” And he was very exicted about it. The album has Duke’s musicians from New England, we put together the album with the guys in the studio where Duke works and then we went to Chicago and we got Otis to do the vocals. The same saxophone player we talked before, Mark Earley played on the album, he’s an old colleague of Duke. We talked about the songs, I knew Otis loved the song “Love Don’t Love Nobody” by the Spinners. I think he did on one of his live albums in Japan. And that song still gets a lot of play, it is by far my most streamed song on Spotify.
You did a Los Lobos song too.
Oh yes, that was out of the box, that was my girlfriend’s idea. “Tears Of God” is a beautiful song and I was able to give a copy of that album to the guys of Los Lobos when I met them one time. It wasn’t a song that came naturally to Otis, it took a while to do it right, but I think we did.
How did you fall in love with soul music and R&B when your were a teenager?
I can’t really explain it…where I grew up in New Jersey the popular style was Doo-Wop, the vocal groups like The Moonglows, The Flamingos. Then I loved early soul music like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson…and I was already such a fan of that music by the time the English bands started to come over that I just wasn’t really interested in what all my friends were interested in. They were excited about The Rolling Stones, The Beatles…it’s all great stuff, but I was deep into Otis Redding, Sam & Dave or Wilson Pickett…I was a member of the national Otis Redding fan club, I got letters in the mail, I saw him live three times before he passed. He always had a great band and very slick performance. I saw James Brown in his prime many times and I’ve never seen anything like that in my life…unbelievable. In later years I became friends with two brothers, Alan and Eric Leeds, Eric played saxophone in my band. His older brother, Alan, had been James Brown’s road manager. Have you seen the James Brown biopic that Mick Jagger produced?
I did, “Get On Up”.
Do you remember the white DJ from Richmond, Virginia with an afro? That’s Alan Leeds. Alan is one of the world’s experts on James Brown, he wrote a great book about him and whenever there is a documentary about James, Alan is always in it. He then became president of Paisley Park Records and Prince’s manager. And Eric, who played in my band for a while, played for James Brown for a short period of time and then went to play with Prince, he’s on a lot of Prince’s album. From Billy Price, to James Brown, to Prince!
You’re in good company.
Oh he’s the most famous musicians who ever played with me for sure. We’re still very good friends. It’s great to hang out with these guys, pick their brain and just listen to them, you know what a character James Brown was…much larger than life! Alan’s book is called “There Was A Time”, it’s really worth reading. For some reason he even thank me in the credits. I was lucky I saw a lot of my favorite artists, two artists that I never saw and that I regret having never seen are Bobby Womack and Al Green. But I’m a huge Al Green fan. And O.V. Wright either. I used to joke with the guys in my band that we were nothing but an O.V. Wright cover band!
Billy Price Lucerne photo Philippe Prétet
Did you ever sing gospel?
I sing now in a traditional chorale in Pittsburgh called the Heritage Gospel Chorale, I sing tenor with them, it’s a group of about thirty or forty people under the direction of a guy named Dr. Herbert Jones, who’s an amazing musical genius. I rehearse with them every week and I sing on their concert just as a member of the choral. I learned a lot. I’m gradually learning to read music vocally. It’s not like hard quartet gospel, it’s a chorale, but Dr. Jones is from Mississippi and he knows the Canton Spiritualaires and all those great Mississippi groups. Speaking of which, Jim Pugh and I have been talking about connecting me with Castro Coleman /Mr Sipp, that guy is really great. I’d love to be able to do something with him. He wrote a lot of the hits for the Williams Brothers or the Canton Spiritualaires. You can hear even in his blues the deep gospel roots. That’s what I appreciate the most, the southern soul blues thing. There’s a film that a friend of mine co-produced called “How They Got Over”, it’s about gospel quartets and they have all these great photographs and there is one of the Sensational Nightingales and if you look really close there’s Otis Clay!
Do you like a guy that Kid Andersen produced, Marcel Smith? He comes from the gospel too.
Oh man, yes! You know Kid had on both of my albums the Sons of Soul Revivers on background vocals and they’re a traditional quartet. That’s the thing, when you record at Greaseland you get all that. And giving a change to artists who otherwise might not have one that’s very much the mission of Little Village, they started just this year to put out records by more established artists like me or Curtis Salgado, Mighty Mike Schermer…Jim liked our album and I didn’t have a label, I was going to release it myself but he said “let’s put it out on Little Village”. We were together earlier this year in Memphis and he looked at me and he said, “I don’t understand, I really like your album” “What do you mean?” I said, “you’re surprised that you like and album by me?” “No,” he said, “I don’t like anything, but I really like your album”. That was a great compliment.
Do you do a lot of dates?
Mostly on the East coast, but it’s a problem with artists on my level to connect with a good booking agent, that can book a lot of festivals. But I’d like to travel more than I do. I contacted Graziano Uliani, I’d love to come over.
What do you like to listen to, mainly old stuff ?
A lot of stuff… I like the Dap tone label, the Colemine label, so I like Thee Sacred Souls or Thee Sinseers of Joey Quinones, that’s great stuff. I like Aaron Frazier, the drummer with Durand Jones, he’s got some beautiful falsetto, he reminds me of the Delfonics. I also like the California Honeydrops quite a bit…so I listen to contemporary things too.
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