The Robert Greenidge Interview is featured on The Paul Leslie Hour.
Are you here? Dorothy said “there’s no place like home.” When you’re listening to The Paul Leslie Hour, we hope you feel like: “there’s no place like here.”
On this episode we’re celebrating Mr. Robert Greenidge. You’re about to hear an interview Paul did with Robert Greenidge in a hotel room the night before he was to perform with Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band. The conversation began with Robert’s solo album and from there went into a variety of directions.
Robert Greenidge is a man who has lived by and for the steel drum.
Sometimes called Robert G., he is a recording artist, entertainer and composer. He also fronts the band Club Trini along with partner and friend Michael Utley. He’s a member of the Trinidad-based steel drum band The Desperadoes. Robert has recorded with artists ranging from Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Robert Palmer, and others.
Robert has been a member of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band for 40 years—since 1983. With the unfortunate passing of Jimmy Buffett, many are asking what will become of the Coral Reefer Band without Jimmy? The Trinidad Express newspaper recently interviewed Robert, and he suggested the band may carry on. Remarking on the passing of Buffett, Greenidge said “Would he want the show to go? Absolutely! He would say, ‘rock on!’” Interesting idea, isn’t it?
Mr. Greenidge is about to share some great stories, but real quick—consider giving yourself and others the gift of stories. You can do that by going right here. Paul has many more great interviews in store for you. Be one of the people who keep this show going.
And with that, let’s hear from Robert Greenidge.
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The Official Transcript
[2:25] We’re talking today with the world’s foremost steel drum player, Mr. Robert Greenidge.
Howdy, Paul.
Thank you very much for making the time to do this.
No problem. Always a pleasure.
We’re going to talk a little bit about Robert Greenidge’s solo album, From the Heart.
And I wanted to ask you, first of all, that, of course, was one of the songs, the title track, From the Heart. What made you decide to pick that one to be the title track?
[2:52] That one was chosen because of my good friend Ralph MacDonald. He helped me produce the CD, and I did some of his songs: Antisia music songs, and some of my songs also on the CD.
[3:06] And I heard “From the Heart.” It was one of my compositions that I had a little while. While. And I said, you know, this is probably a good time to put it, put it out there. Since I was doing solo stuff. And when we put the major tracks down, then we realized it was coming from the heart. And that’s where that came in. And we decided to call the album “From the Heart” because the whole, all the songs were, you know, well done, everything were, you know, we had good, a good recording setup. We worked at Ralph’s studio, which was great. And also another studio called Avatar, downtown New York. And we just put it together. Myself and Ralph worked a lot on it, and we produced it. And I did most of the arrangements on most of the songs. Songs that was done by Ralph, Ralph’s group, meaning his writing team of Bill Salter, Bill Eaton and Ralph MacDonald. They helped on the songs that we did that, like “Just the Two of Us,” another one, there’s a couple more on there that “Kiss Kiss” and all those different songs that were written by Ralph and them before and I liked them and I asked to put them on my CD because [4:35] it sounded like something that I would do and that is how we came up with the whole concept of the album “From the Heart,” you know, as I said, some songs by me and some songs written by them.
[4:47] One of the other songs that you did, you wrote along with Mr. MacDonald and his writing team, Bill Salter and William Eaton, and that song was called “Love Me Up In The Morning.”
Oh, yes.
And it features Miss Nadirah Shakoor on vocals.
Yes, that was my original song. I got that first and I had Ralph and them put some lyrics to it.
And of course, she had a lovely voice like Nadirah, I couldn’t resist having her work on my album, on my CD. And by doing that, I got the chance to have her sing “Love Me Up in the Morning,” and it was such a great song. Also, I had her sing “Just the Two of Us.” I also had her sing the song “Kiss Kiss,” and it worked out pretty good. You know, I [5:33] also had a couple of Calypso songs on there, one called “Rosie,” and there’s a couple of them that has vocals on it also. I don’t know if it’s on that particular cut that you have the “Rosie” vocals.
I see, “Rosie” Greenidge. I think this is the instrumental version.
Oh, you have the instrumental version? I think this one is.
Yeah, well, yeah. That was a great song. We did that for Trinidad for the Carnival.
And I have a steel drum band in Trinidad called the Desperado Steel Band and there’s another one called the Solo Pan Knights and there’s a big competition down there and I took that song down there and put it in what we call a panorama arrangement of a 10-minute piece, take a three-minute piece song and [6:24] put it in 10 minutes with a lot of arrangements and different things like that. So, you know, we did that song called “Rosie” and that was a nice instrumental version we had of it.
I also have a vocal version that I have on a later CD because of, as I said, we did this for the Trinidad for the Carnival. I had to put some lyrics in and I had a guy named Roger Giles sang it. He’s a guy from Trinidad and he’s a great singer and he does a lot of work.
[7:02] The next piece on there was from “Rosie.” We had another Calypso piece called “Dark Horse.”
And we also had some lyrics, but we didn’t have time to put it on the CD. But next time around we bring it out, we’ll be definitely hearing the lyrics on it.
[7:22] So there may be a follow-up.
Yes, there will be a follow-up. There will be a follow-up to “Rosie.” There’ll be a follow-up to “Dark Horse,” those two particular songs, because there’s lyrics for them, you see.
Something that I think sounds like a very interesting story, when you were 16 years old you went to perform at the first Negro Arts Festival in Africa, and to be such a young man that has to have been very exciting.
Yeah, that was a very nice highlight of my life, being able to travel at the age of 16 and go there and do something you love to do like playing music and get a chance to represent the country at Trinidad and really make a, you know, we went with a group called the Desperado Steel Band.
That’s who I travel with because that was the group that, I joined that group in 1965, and I believe it was 1966 or 68 we’ve been to Africa on a couple of occasions and it was great to be able to, you know, just be the young boy in the band with all the older guys and learn a lot from them also, in the line of arrangements, technical playing, all these different things because everybody had a good, they were much older than me, they were much more experienced and I get a chance to learn from great guys.
[8:46] But the trip to Africa was real nice, to the Dhaka, we went to Dhaka, we went to Zambia And I believe in 68, Zaka was 1966, I believe, in 68 we went to Zambia and we were representing the country, Trinidad and Tobago, and it was great to go there and do some work.
[9:09] I wanted to ask you about a question about Club Trini. You told us the last time you were on about how you and Mr. Utley met, and I’m wondering because you guys, one of the things I noticed just from the interview is you guys have just, amazing rapport with one another. It’s like you guys can finish one another’s sentences, you know what the other one’s thinking. And I was wondering when you guys first met, did you know right away that you guys were just destined to be friends?
I think so because we met in the studio, a record plant in LA. That’s the first time I I saw Miss Earthly, they were recording this album called One Particular Harbour.
And that’s when I, that’s when actually my first record with Buffett.
I think it was 1982, 83.
You know, I was in LA and I got a call to play some steel drums and because I do a lot of session music in LA, and I got a call to play with Jimmy Buffett.
I didn’t know who Jimmy Buffett was then at the time and I just went ahead and do a normal session and then after the session, you know, everything went well.
The CD came out and everything was good and I was asked to come on the road with him and And here I am today still, here with Jimmy Buffett on the road, we’re still travelling a lot and still enjoying our times on the road after all these great cities have been made since I’ve been with him.
[10:31] And what he did before also.
So I was just happy to be a part of this team and that’s where I, as I say, met Michael Utley and we hit it off really well.
And there was one time we got, you know, a friend in the business and he asked us if we, you know, if we want to do a CD with the Master Series on MCA Records.
And we accepted that and that’s where we started our first CD.
But what we’re doing is, you know, we did that “Mad Music,” then we did another one called “Jubilee” over the period of years, then there’s one called Heat.
Of the three on the MCA records. And then we went ahead and do something on Margaritaville Records, Club Trini. And then we come and did “Club Trini Back in Town” on Club Trini records. And we also did, there’s a couple more we did. But we, you know, we just, as some, most of the times we try to write as much as we can whilst we’re on the road or while we are home. I would do stuff home in my studio and send it to Mike, let him check it out and we’ll approve of it and then we’ll get together and put the band together and just do a live recording of it. So this is how we operate here.
[11:49] I wanted to know, when you first started this first project with Jimmy Buffett, the “One Particular Harbour” album, what did you think when you first met Buffett?
What did you think about him? Well, I approached it as just another session.
As I said, I didn’t know much about him before.
[12:10] There’s other people that we work with, people like Ringo Starr, there’s people like Earth, Wind & Fire. There’s people like Harry Nilsson.
[12:17] All these different people we work with. So I approached it the same way of working with them and it was great. A very good session at the record plant in LA and I went in there to do one song I believe or two songs and next thing I end up doing at least five or six songs on the CD. So that alone gives some encouragement that he is interested in the steel drum, which was my main interest of, you know, having it being heard out there, instrument itself because those days everybody, you know, the sensitizer and the discs and that was out. So the steel drum tune was kind of hard to get until they started to do the samples and all that tiny different things. So there’s some, a lot of them wanted the authentic sound of the steel drum so they would call us because I live in Los Angeles for the past 30 years, even though I’m from Trinidad and Tobago. But I’ve been in, you know, I’ve been in LA, I moved to LA in 1971, 72 and I’ve been there ever since and back and forth to Trinidad all the time.
Every year I goes back, see my family.
I also do some work with a group called the Desperados Steel Band which is one of the main steel drum band in the world and it has, you know, during the Mardi Gras time, the, is consists of 100 to 120 players playing all steel drums and during the year they’re like 50.
[13:45] For the regular, we call the stage side, the regular grouping. And I go back and forth all the time, do arrangements for them. They did a couple of my songs already. We have won the competition a couple of times, well, with my songs and a couple of other guys’ songs. So.
[14:02] It’s something I enjoy doing, working for the whole steel drum band situation. I like that because, you know, it’s very unique, you know, there’s no electrical amplification stuff, but, you know, it’s real nice when you hear the whole band come together and hear that organ song, you know, definitely.
But, you know, it was real good, as I say, working with Jimmy and still working with, him and everything is so great. Everything’s still working out with us.
It’s one of my best stores I’ve ever had in my life and I stay and I enjoy.
[14:32] And he treats us very well. but we have a good time and you know like family here.
Listening to the album on the way up here, I can’t help but get this feeling of like euphoria, listening to some of your songs. It’s like I view a lot of your songs as like painting a picture of paradise.
Right.
I was wondering what is it that you hope the people that listen to your music, get out of your music?
Well, just like what you say, you know, I hope that they get something where the kids really sit down and listen and hear the steel drum, not as before where you just hear Miriam or you hear Jamaica Farewell, that type thing on it. We try to take it to this other level where it’s pleasable to the ear so that you can really listen to it without being overpowered by it and the mixture of it with other equipment, other instruments and the blend of type of of instruments we use. Most of the music on this is done with three or four sets of steel pans. So I did two or three multi-track, just to get the pan tone quality. And then I end up using a regular bass guitar, drums, percussion. I use a saxophonist and a vocalist and some strings. And that is the kind of combination we did in order to get that type of song from the hard CD.
[15:59] With Jimmy Buffett, is there any particular song that you especially enjoy performing?
[16:07] Well, yes, of course, “One Particular Harbour,” which is the first one. There’s “Brown-eyed Girl.” There’s also “Margaritaville,” of course. “Changes in Latitudes,” like that. There’s a couple of songs we’ve been playing for years that have been around. “Fins” is a favorite because everybody goes crazy with it, you know, and they do the antiques and they do all that kind of stuff. And he did a version of “Jamaica Mistaica.” And I like that also, you know, you have some great songs. There’s so many, it’s kind of hard to just kind of pick a few. And there’s one that we all kind of co-wrote together called “King of Somewhere Hot,” which of course, I would like that.
We did a lot of work with that and I was very much involved in the production of it and all that. So that is one of the favorites. And then also “Creola.” “Creola” is a great song. I think it was written by Ralph and it was fit to that’s right for Jimmy and I believe that they went over pretty well.
Is there any person in the Coral Reefer Band that you feel exceptionally close to?
[17:23] Yeah, there’s a couple of them that I feel close to, like Mike Utley, we feel close. [17:29] Ralph MacDonald, of course, he’s become like a brother. There was a couple others before that, like Sam Clayton who was a great percussionist, used to play with Buffett before, and he was a very good friend of mine. Most of the guys from the older band were great friends, and then the new band came in with Roger and them came in I think it was 12, 15 years now or whatever, somewhere in between there. And musically they have made the band like a nice little unit. And we pull off, we work well together.
And hopefully we will continue working the way we are these days and as I said, people like, you know, Utley definitely for sure and Nadirah we are very close because we, you know, we work together a lot and we’re off if we’re not doing any Buffett stuff.
Sometimes we get other stuff, Club Trini stuff or Robbie Greenidge stuff and I’ll use the same band basically if I can. Once everybody’s not busy, you know.
So we have a Club Trini song all the time, you know, and we, Everybody in the band knows the songs, whatever songs we’ve been playing with Club Trini, so it is okay to regroup any time and at least play, you know.
[18:47] We have little festivals we do off and on as Club Trini, different times when Buffett is off, and if we, once we could get the schedule in, then we could have other gigs on the side.
[19:00] Other than being the steel drum player and doing lots of session work and performing with the Coral Reefer Band, performing with Club Trini, playing on Ralph MacDonald’s albums. You’re a busy guy. I was wondering what you like doing during your downtime, if you have any.
If I have any, I’m always concentrated on the music for some reason. I might be down, but for some reason I would always, more or less straight [19:29] more or less try to. You know, if I’m not playing, I want to create on my downtime, I, you know, drive, take a drive by the beach, check it out in California, or try to get to Trinidad and just kind of relax a little. I’m always playing and always working because of the fact that, you know, if I’m not doing it, I don’t feel like I’m doing something. There’s something about it that if I’m not touring on the road, I need to be doing it in my studio at home or going somewhere and as I said arranging for steel drum bands.
I do a lot of workshops, in the different universities like West Virginia. In Morgantown there’s a nice university there, West Virginia University, that we do workshops. We do a whole week of that. There’s also one in Ohio I do. So those are the things you get a chance to really showcase the instrument because there’s so many kids in schools and high schools, colleges now that have taken up the steel pan or the steel drum in such a way that it’s pretty soon, next five years, there’s going to be steel drums all over the States, which is great. I want to see the instrument itself build itself just like a piano.
[20:45] I mean Trinidad is the foremost maker of the steel drum, but you guys can’t keep it in Trinidad Otherwise it’s going nowhere. It’s like the piano, you know, if you had a piano and the guy who made the piano keeps it where he made it, then we’d be in trouble, you see?
So now the pans now are coming out more, even though, as I said, you know, it’s being played all over the world have steel drums now. We have steel drum sites, pan sites that we go to that would give you all the information you need about steel drums, and it’s worldwide. And it’s great to see that the instrument is climbing the ladder. And it’s the only instrument of the 20th century that’s like that.
[21:31] You’ve done a lot of work with Taj Mahal.
Yes.
On the last time you were on, you mentioned that he was a close friend of yours.
Yes, he was. And he still is. Yeah,
He is a good friend of yours.
Yes.
He is such a phenomenal artist.
Oh, yeah. He’s great. I started to play with him either in 1974 or somewhere around there, or maybe earlier, somewhere there.
When I came to the States, he was performing at a place called the Roxy Theater in Los, Angeles, a famous joint. And his guitar player didn’t show up, and he needed somebody to fulfill that.
And there were two guys from Trinidad, a drummer and a bass player.
And they tell him, hey, we got a steel drum player in LA that might be able to hold this, you for this.[22:15] in the band here. That’s the day of the show. So I went there for the sound check and, play with him and then that was it. All the rest was history from there. I started to play with him all over, travel all over the world with him. Australia, Africa, you name it, all these places.
He traveled a lot. Great blues guitar player and singer. He took us to Japan, different places.
And, you know, he’s just a great guy, you know, he’s just a great guy and I enjoy playing with him still.
We may do something in the month of October. So far there’s a big blues boat cruise that we’re going to go play on, that type thing, on the west coast that is, you know, going to Mexico and all the other places and that type of thing. And it would fall right in the off-time of Buffett, which is great. So I still get a chance to play with him and then play with Jimmy Buffett also. So it’s working out pretty good for me. I enjoy that. He’s a really great friend because, you know, he’s the first one out there that really take the pan and really showcase it the way I thought it should have been showcased because he features on all the solos, you know, it’s not just like play two lines and stop or play some chords.
It’s like he’s out there like a saxophone or keyboardist or a guitarist and he just out there holding the fort for the shows.
[23:38] What kind of music do you like listening to or have you have you heard any groups lately that you thought were exceptionally good?
[23:46] Of late I really can’t say, but I like classical music personally. I do like classical music because I like the way the voice I like I like to listen how they harmonize I like to listen how they put it together because I was never really trained officially musically. I went to a couple of schools but I never really majored in any major classes. Like to say, hey, you come from Howard University or you come from whatever. I didn’t reach that far, but I have it in my head. And I think that’s one of the key things that I know how to arrive at certain things. And I’ve learned a lot from a lot of different guys around. I like to listen to a lot of people like George Benson type thing. I like those kind of styles. Chick Corea, these kind of people like that. And, of course, the classical music.
[24:48] You mentioned that the album from the heart was a lot of it was recorded at Rosebud 2 which is Mr. Ralph MacDonald’s studio…
Yes.
And I wanted to ask just because ever since I’ve been listening to Ralph’s music I’ve just become so entranced by his his writing. I was wondering is there something about Ralph MacDonald that we would be surprised to know.
Well, a lot of people don’t really believe that he writes the songs. Not that they don’t believe, but I mean, like, he’s like the main man in the Antisia music. And he comes up with great ideas. And sometimes if he figures he wants some more. [25:31] Information on how to come up with it, his other two partners are great.
And they were all, you know, Bill Salter and Bill Eaton. Those are with the Antisia music. And they write great songs. Bill Eaton does great arrangements. Ralph and Bill Salter does a lot of the lyrics. And by working with them over the period of years on Ralph’s CDs, I’ve gotten to like the style, the way they do the music. It’s like real old time music, old school, and really fit well together. Not just anybody playing any and everything. [26:07] And it might sound like there’s a lot of stuff going on, but it’s all in format.
Everything is put in the right place. Each note is being played, it’s being heard, there’s a particular reason why that note is there. His studio is great. He has a nice studio, he has a nice board, he has a good engineer. And when I’m getting ready to do my next album, I’ll be doing some of that at Rosebud 2 also. So it has to be good for me to go back to that studio. And when that time comes, I’ll call in Paul and say, Paul, we got a new CD. Listen to it.
I was curious. How do you compose your songs? Do you compose on the steel drum?
I compose on the steel drums. I go to my studios. I might go in there like now and not sure what I might come up with and just start to play. Or sometimes I would do a quick chord chart of a verse and a chorus of something.
[27:09] You know, just write the chords out and then come up with a melody for it. Or sometimes I come up with a melody and then change the chords. So I do that at home and then I do usually do it with all the steel drums from the bass to the lead drum.
And then I’ll send it to like Ralph or someone, listen to this and say, “yeah, man, this is great.” Or this is not great or whatever it is. And, you know, let’s put it out there and we get the conventional instruments and put it on there. But the steel drum, I always have like the demo copy of it for some reason.
But that’s where it starts off in my studio.
[27:45] Not many people can say that they have recorded music for half of The Beatles.
That’s a tremendous accomplishment, having been a session player for Ringo Starr, and also performing on, or recording on the John Lennon song “Beautiful Boy.”
Right.
When you were doing those sessions, did you have a feeling in your head like, wow, I really accomplished?
[28:11] Sure I did. Because, I mean, you know, I mean, to get first to begin to get close to these guys, sometimes it’s pretty much impossible.
And the music take us right there, right in the back door, right inside the studio, and you get the chance to meet them, and they, you know, as, you know, as like us, normal people that’s doing their things and making things work, but they’re just very exceptional in their music.
And, um, by me living in LA and all these guys used to come through LA and different things, I got opportunities. Except for John Lennon, I did that in New York City at, I think it’s a Hit Factory 2 or something. And that was great. That was a great session. We went up there and the whole place was all blocked off. I mean, everything was cool. It was very well secured. And nobody expect whatever happened to him happened. You know what I mean? But I mean, we was all secure. We was just happy to do this. He did have his son and he had this song called “Beautiful Boy.” And he just figured that it would be good to have the steel drums on it and I got a call and I went up there and it was one of the best sessions I ever had also.
Ringo was great also, because we did that in LA at RCA Studios and it was great. [29:26] He was, I’ve met him a couple of times as well. There’s a main guy called Van Dyke Parks, did a lot of connections for me because he was the keyboardist within the organization that would do all the sessions and he would write the songs and arrange also. So through him I got to to play with all these great guys, you know, from Harry Nilsson, as I said, Ringo, name them, you know, John Lennon’s session was a different contact.
And there’s a lot of other sessions, you know, Robert Palmer, all these people have been, – did a bunch of different things with.
I just sometimes, you know, they bring the CDs, like we go to Japan and the Japanese people will bring the CDs and say, “could you sign this?” I say, “I don’t think I played on this,” you know, and they say, “yeah, look, your name.” Oh, okay. No problem. You know, so we have some of that too because it’s so much that sometimes you kind of forget, you know, all what you did, you know. Sometimes you might do a demo for somebody and then the next thing the demo turned out real good and they go on with it, you know. And, you know, they take care of business and we take care of business and that was it, you know.
[30:35] But, you know, I really enjoy working with all these great people. And Earth, Wind and Fire was a great session also. On their CD they had a CD called “Power Light,” I think is the name of the CD.
And they did a couple of songs on there and used the instrument. And that’s one of the first groups like that I’ve seen use the instrument in a manner that really speaks out.
[30:59] Amazing thing about the steel drum is it seems like it’s an instrument that can’t be replicated you know i’ve heard people try to or you know. I’ve definitely heard musicians that have you synthesizers and things but it’s such a unique sounding instrument
Yeah.
And having come you know it’s it’s it’s a new instrument relative to all the instruments out there.
And a lot of people, you know, there have been some people that have said that the steel pan comes from Jamaica but it really comes from Trinidad.
It really comes from Trinidad, from my knowledge and from my [31:37] uncles and grandparents knowledge, it came from Trinidad.
There’s some people say it came from St. Thomas. There’s some people say it’s from the Virgin Islands.
You know, some people say it comes from Jamaica. Some say from Barbados. But as far as I know it came from Trinidad and, And there’s still, there’s books out there on all these different, history books out there on all these, when the pan started, and where it started, what caused the pan, you know, what caused this to arrive at that, and all different things like that. So, from my knowledge, I believe it came from Trinidad.
[32:13] Trinidad and Tobago.
So, Mr. Greenidge, what would you like to say to all the listeners out there that are listening?
Well, I would just like to say I hope you enjoyed this interview and I hope that you go out and listen to this radio station and also try to find “From the Heart” CD and purchase it. And that would be a good thing and then by that way you’ll be able to hear first hand, what Paul is listening to and what we are doing. So, you know, I would advise them, you know, tune in most of the times and if you want to find the CD, go to robertgreenidge.com and you’ll get it.
Mr Greenidge, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Paul.
It’s been a pleasure speaking to you as always.
No problem. And Jeff Pike, you know, very good engineering, my friend. All right.