Music Interview: Billy Valentine

Billy Valentine and The Universal Truth, the latest album by veteran US soul singer and songwriter, Billy Valentine, is the first record of new music on the iconic jazz label, Flying Dutchman, since 1976.

Started by Bob Thiele in 1969, the label put out music by acts including Ornette Coleman, Leon Thomas, Gil Scott-Heron, Count Basie and Lonnie Liston Smith.

When Flying Dutchman was founded, it was during the era of ‘60s counterculture and black power, so it seems fitting that for the label’s comeback album by Valentine – thanks to a collaboration with Acid Jazz – those involved have chosen a record made up of eight moody message songs, including Valentine’s stunning jazz-soul interpretations of tracks by Scott-Heron, Curtis Mayfield, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Eddie Kendricks, Pharoah Sanders and War.

Recorded at the legendary East‑West Studios in Hollywood, the album features jazz luminaries Immanuel Wilkins (saxophone), Theo Crocker (trumpet), Jeff Parker (guitar), Larry Goldings (piano) among others, as well as acclaimed session bassist, Pino Palladino.

Valentine is based in L.A. and, in 1982, as one half of the Valentine Brothers, with his brother, John, wrote and recorded ‘Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)’, which went on to become a hit for Simply Red three years later.

hi-fi+ asks him how his new album came to be released on the resurrected Flying Dutchman label.

“My dear friend and producer, Bob Thiele Jr, whom I’ve been working with for close to 40 years – we’ve written songs together – came to me during the pandemic and he said he wanted to relaunch his father’s label and that he wanted me to be the first artist on it,” he says.

“I was pretty honoured by that, and I’ve always thought that if anybody was going to be the perfect producer for me, it would be Bob Thiele Jr. 

“We’d just come out of isolation and there was the George Floyd thing and Black Lives Matter, so when he brought me the songs, like ‘Home Is Where The Hatred Is’ and ‘The Creator Has A Master Plan’, they truly resonated with me and seemed very fitting for 2019 /2020. Once we got in the studio, it felt like the perfect storm.”

SH: How were the sessions for the album?

BV: It was great doing this project, but when you’re dealing with your soul down there and you’ve just seen George Floyd get killed on television, and when you’re putting yourself into the songs, it burns you out.

It was a dark period – these were dark songs. I felt drained – I put the songs down for nine months before I picked them up again. 

Bob said, ‘Hey, man – I think we’ve got something very good here’, and eventually I started listening to them again and I was very surprised at how it came out. 

I’m very proud of it and I think it’s the best record I’ve done because of what it’s saying – I really had something to say. I had a voice and I wanted to use it. I wanted to scream out and say, ‘what’s going on now is unjust’. 

Had you worked at East-West Studios before?

Absolutely – I’d done a record for Atlantic there, produced by Stewart Levine, that didn’t get released. It was a solo album. 

I’ve done sessions there – I worked with Ringo Starr. I’ve been in that studio many times. 

The making of this record was so easy in terms of everyone being there for me – I was surrounded by brilliant cats.

The songs you’ve chosen to record on the album are still very relevant today even though some of them were written in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Does it make you sad that some things haven’t changed? Is it a case of history repeating itself?

Exactly – that’s the way I felt. I felt like I was back in the ‘6os – I was there during that era. I can remember when Gil was putting those songs out – I was about to be drafted for the Vietnam War. I avoided it because I’m my father’s oldest son – they wouldn’t take me.

You’ve put your own spin on the songs – your version of Prince’s ‘Sign of the Times’ is jazzy, but the original is much more electronic…

Yeah – I was just feeling it, man, those words and all – I hadn’t done that style before, with those kinds of words. I love a challenge and with Prince’s melodies, you can’t go wrong. 

It’s a great album – your voice and the arrangements are wonderful.

The musicianship… I give Bob Thiele Jr all the credit, man – he brought the right people in and he allowed us the freedom. 

He said, ‘Man, just let ‘em play’. Do you know what I mean? And that fitted with me, pretty much. I was singing a bit differently on this record than I’ve ever sung before. I am a bit more jazzy but my soul is still gonna be there. 

Your most famous song is ‘Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)’, which you wrote about the Reagan era in US politics. There’s always been a sociopolitical side to your music, hasn’t there?

Yes – I think that’s who I am. I look at myself as a messenger – there was social commentary with ‘Money’s Too Tight.’

I felt that was the wagon I was supposed to get on – most of my writing, which nobody has heard yet, is all social commentary. They’re songs that speak to the human condition. 

I’ve got a song called ‘I’ve Seen Enough To Know’ – I wrote that with Jeff Silbar, who [co-]wrote ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’

Can you remember how you wrote ‘Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)?’

My brother, John, came up with the title. He started writing the song – we were in a musical called The Wiz. We’d travelled around the country with that show for three and a half years, and we got laid off from work, which is the first line of the song.

It was a real situation – we can only write about what we know. Money was too tight to mention at that time. When John and I write together, it comes pretty fast – it’s a family thing.

Did you like the Simply Red version?

Oh, are you kidding me? How could I not?

I guess when they had a hit with it, money wasn’t quite so tight for you…

[Laughs.]

You’ve co-written with Will Jennings, and written for Ray Charles and the Neville Brothers, and you’ve sung demo versions of tracks for songwriters like Bacharach and David and Gerry Goffin. Can you tell me how that came about?

That’s how Bob and I came together. John and I had started to drift and go our separate ways, so I hooked up with Bob and he and I started writing. We had another guy join us – Phil Roy. 

I was always singing songs for Bob because he had a publishing deal with Warner Chappell. 

All the other writers started to hear my voice and they started using me – that was a career in itself because you’d learn to initiate yourself into a song for five to seven minutes, and it becomes a part of you. Being a demo singer opened up many doors – it taught me how to sing differently. I sang songs I would never have sung because I was singing for pop writers. I did stuff with Gerry Goffin – I loved Gerry – and I did stuff with Burt Bacharach. There’s an album of Burt’s that I’m on.

Did you ever wish you’d become more of a household name? 

Somewhere deep down inside, I think I was always a bit afraid of that – of becoming really famous. I just wanted to be a part of the conversation.

I’ve done soundtrack work in films and television but most of that has been behind the scenes – I’ve enjoyed it immensely.

Has recording the new album persuaded you to make more records?

It has – and it’s got me into writing again. I’m thinking of the songs that I have in the can, and I’m writing a couple of songs with a friend in Paris right now. He’ll send me tracks and if I feel it and get into it, I’ll put a vocal on it and send it back. We’ll cut it – he comes to L.A. quite a bit.

Anyone you’d like to write for?

I got to write for my idol – Ray Charles. That was such a great gift, man, and he named the album after my single – ‘My World.’ 

I never thought as myself as a writer – I thought of myself as a messenger and a singer. I just got lucky. 

Billy Valentine and the Universal Truth is out now on Flying Dutchman / Acid Jazz.

www.billy-valentine.com

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