The Ohio Players’ James “Diamond” Williams Talks Reinvention, Playboy Models & New Music [Interview]

Source: The Ohio Players

After 30 years in the game, the original “Player” in The Ohio Players, drummer James “Diamond” Williams explains why there’s no slowing down the funk.

The Ohio Players may be the most under-appreciated funk band from the ‘70s. They began in the ‘60s as a band so funky they could rival James Brown’s band. Their debut LP, Observations in Time, on Capitol in 1968, showcased more traditional R&B than funk, before they signed with Westbound and returned to their funky roots. At their height they produced 17 Top 40 hits, with several platinum and gold selling albums that included cuts that were masterpieces like “Skin Tight,” “Fire,” “Sweet Sticky Thing,” “Love Rollercoaster” and “Who'd She Coo?”

Known as much for their spirited sartorial choices, rejecting the suits and perms of musicians from the ‘60s, as well as their provocative album covers, The Ohio Players played backup for The O’Jays before they lost all inhibitions with their 1972 album Pain and their follow-up Pleasure. Pleasure spawned their first number #1 hit, “Funky Worm” and entertained audiences with Junie Morrison’s ubiquitous granny voice. “Funky Worm” represented the beginning of a number of classic hits the band would continue to churn out. These hits would turn into samples in the ‘80s and ‘90s and create hits for hip-hop producers for years to come.

For the first time in almost 30 years the original Players have been back in the studio recording new music. Their first single, “Reset,” the title track for an album due out next year impresses with a robust horn section, bombastic guitars, and free form rhythms. After nearly 60 years they are proof that there’s no slowing down the funk.

Drummer James “Diamond” Williams talked to @Okayplayer about reinventing themselves in a new musical landscape, album covers and Playboy models and the losses and the gains of the band over the years.

Source: James Williams

Okayplayer: Tell me a little bit about the forthcoming album?

James Williams: It should be finished by next year. We already have five tracks and we are about 90 percent finished. The second track that’s going to come off the Reset album is already mixed and mastered. We are ready to roll as soon as we get the green light. The third track will probably be a ballad that’s absolutely a knock down killer ballad, one of The Ohio Players trademarks.

Four original members are in the band now: Clarence “Chet” Willis who plays guitar and sings lead and background vocals, Billy Beck, who is our music director, keyboard player and he sings lead and background vocals, Robert “Kuumba” Jones plays percussion and me on the drums and I do lead and background vocals.

OKP: Why did it take 30 years for new music?

JW: A little bit of listening to the music industry. And then as a writer you have to do it when it hits you. You can’t force it. It just has to be something that either you have it or you don’t have it. I guess for a while we didn’t have it [laughs]. We had to get it again... and getting it again it takes a little bit of time. During that period of time, we were still going around touring and playing. We were listening to what the industry was presenting to us, which was a lot of daggon machines and auto tunes. Everybody can sing, but nobody’s really singing, nobody is really talented, drum machines and all kinds of stuff and no spirit and no life with the music.

I am the drummer with the band—the first person they picked on to use a machine to replace a person was the daggon drummer. A drummer is not perfect, a machine somewhat is, it does not vary, it is straight ahead and life is not like that and no drummer is. As much as I've been trained myself with private lessons and all city orchestra band. I got a full ride to Kentucky State University for music. I did my due diligence in being able to play these drums. Nonetheless I'm still not perfect. When they come out with all of this “perfect” machine music, it has changed a lot.

Listening to that we got fed up. Not to say we are against things that move on, we understand automation. But there’s nothing like people. Music it’s a spiritual thing. When you play music and you go in the studio, you play one with another. Music is an interpretation. It’s hard to interpret a computer or a machine. You can’t ask questions and get a human answer, you can only get a mechanical response. That’s why it took some 29 years before we decided to do this thing again.

OKP: You lost some folks along the way, Marshall Jones, Sugarfoot, Morrison, Clarence Satchell...

JW: Yeah, we have lost Sugarfoot and we have lost Marshall since then. Since ‘88, we lost Satch and Pee Wee. They respectively died in ‘95 and ‘96. We lost four of the original seven and we’ve lost four of the nine that we have onstage today. We have 11 pieces on stage today, but four of us are original guys. Three are from the horn section out of Chicago. Johnny Cotton on trombone, Kenny Anderson on trombone, Michael Turner on sax. Darwin Dortch is on bass. Guitar players, well, one is from Youngstown, Ohio, Edward Rick Ward, and the other guitar player is from Dayton, Ohio. His name is Christopher Bowan. Both of which are blazing saddles. These boys can play... and we have Odeon Mays, a keyboard player.

OKP: You took Greg Webster’s place as the drummer when he got sick and you have something called a matched grip as a drummer, what is that?

JW: When one hand does not match the other as far as how you hold your sticks. That’s not traditional. I started playing everything when I started to perform single stroke. During the recording process we would loosen the head so loose it made for a fat sound recording wise, but you couldn’t play a press roll. Two strokes and you would play a roll like you would use in a marching band. I got used to playing everything single stroke. You get more power that way. It means alot to have a little bit of freedom and a little bit of power and dexterity. I’m ambidextrous. I eat with my left hand and I write with my right hand. Being ambidextrous helped for me to play the drums.

OKP: The big thing that made Ohio this hotbed of talent, according to other musicians that came out of Ohio, was playing the clubs back then and competing with other musicians. Is that part of the way Dayton and Cincinnati produced all this talent or was it something else?

Photo Credit: Andrew Potter

JW: I think there was something else too. My mom played all reeds when she was in high school, everything from oboe to bassoon to clarinet to saxophone. My dad messed around with drums and he played in the Navy choir. So music has always been a part of my life. I knew in my heart of hearts I was gonna play drums.

The reason why there are so many people in the Dayton area in my estimation has to do with other musicians that were there before us. My dad got me involved with the jazz clubs and jazz labs. I was a kid, like 12 years old, watching jazz musicians like Raymond Herring that played saxophone and Malcolm Taylor that played trombone and Zeke Sloane that played double bass and Joe Arnold and Shannon Bell.

In the ‘40s and ‘50s, we had a place called the Palace Theater and Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Cab Calloway would come through Dayton and they would pick up musicians out of Dayton because there were so many musicians that would hang around. They would be like when I was 12 years old, ‘Let this little kid come up and play,’ and I would play with these jazz musicians.

There were incredible musicians for people like The Ohio Players to spawn off of and to learn from. I used to watch Joe Arnold and Shannon Bell play on drums and I still marvel today thinking about how they did that.

They had summer music scholarships at Miami University in the summer time all through high school. They had the best musicians in Ohio going to Miami University. My parents afforded me all of that growing up.

OKP: Did everybody participate in the songwriting for the Ohio Players or was it just listed as that?

JW: It was just listed as that. We were one of the bands that had a bit of business prowess. We own all of our publishing and writer’s rights. Every time you hear an Ohio Players song you hear a little bit of cha ching go up in the air. Originally Satch did most of the business part with the band. He had a pretty good business sense about him.

OKP: What kind of feedback were you getting about album covers at the time?

JW: Coming home from college and getting with The Ohio Players and having my second album Skin Tight with a picture of my face next to the derrière of a woman. I go home and give this album to my mom and dad and they said this is what we sent you to college for son? I’d go home to my wife and my daughter who was about three-years-old at the time, asking mommy is this you?

So we got various comments. One thing The Ohio Players always did was try to depict the black woman in her beauty for what she really is, a beautiful black woman. The most perfect specimen on Earth. You go to a museum of art, you see statues and pictures of the female and male anatomy. It is what it is. We tried not to deter from looking at it as art. We used beautiful black women and we did it with the Playboy studios andPlayboyphotographers to make sure it was done to a high level. In most cases we usedPlayboymodels for the album covers. It was very catchy to the eye. We knew we could get the guys looking at the album cover if we put a beautiful black woman on it and it worked to perfection.

They were very well done. It wasn’t like Hustler magazine. Skin Tight, Fire, Angel all those album covers came from Playboy photographers on staff out of Chicago. Jim Ladwig was one of the photographers. That Honey album won a Grammy for its cover [with model Ester Cordet who was Playboy’s “Playmate of the Month” in October 1974].

OKP: So, what’s next?

JW: Right now, we are touring. We did the Taste of L.A. We’ve been to Mississippi, The Hollywood Bowl, and we had three sell out shows at Yoshi’s in Oakland.

I’ve been the manager of this band since 1983. We never had the occasion where we played for four or five places, and they were like, ‘We gotta have you back next year,’ and they negotiated it on the spot.

OKP: Why do you think that is?

JW: Audiences want to see someone who has taken their life and their gift and perfected it. We can make music and create atmospheres and relate back and forth during the night. You feel good, you remember things that happened during a certain period of time, and it sounds like the record. And that’s what it’s all about.

There needs to be a meeting of the minds and collaboration between the old and the new—the mechanical and the real. There are new artists that I like, like Bruno Mars. I would love to have old school meets new school event with Bruno Mars.

Ericka Blount is a journalist, professor, and author from Baltimore, Maryland. Her book ‘Love, Peace and Soul: Behind the Scenes of Soul Train’ is available on Amazon. Please follow her (and us!) on Twitter @ErickaBlount.