KP: How did you first get into production?
MO: I got into production early on in 1975. I really couldn't get anybody to work with me I was trying to get my songs recorded. I had a childhood friend who was a bass player for Gladys Knight & The Pips, and I asked him to take the songs to Gladys to see if she would record any of the songs. She sent a message back saying yes she liked the songs but she wasn't going to record them. She didn't see how that was going to help her bass player move forward in his pursuit of a musical career. So he tried to explain to her that because we grew up almost like brothers that he was going to be included in the writing and publishing. But, that just didn't work out.
So in the end I just had to tell myself that I was going to have to do it myself. So that was how it all got started. I just did the songs myself and I traveled back and forth between Ann Arbor, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio to meet with him. We hired a group of guys (in fact one of the guys even played the drums for the O'Jays at the time), and we rehearsed two weekends in a row and went into the studio and basically played my ideas and music. All the guys were telling me, "Well that's what producers do!"
So, I'm an old-school producer you know? I wasn't a beatmaker, you know what I'm saying? I was putting together… "This is what you do, this is what you do." You know the rhythms. This kind of ad-libbing and overdubbing certain horn parts and, the name of the album was "Spread love".
KP: Are you self-taught or did you go to school for?
MO: No, I'm self-taught. I'm one of those people that play the piano at three years old and still don't understand how I did it sometimes they're just people that have the gift within them and they can just do it. I don't know where, other than God, that it came from. My son is the same way, same thing, he played piano and he can also play drums. I'll call that self-taught. I just think it’s best to call it the gift of grace. You can hear sounds and match them. There's a thing in your head that remembers what key you get when you got that particular sound and, you end up with perfect pitch...that type of thing.
KP: So from that first album what was next?
MO: I was never able to get much going. Very limited airplay. I had some airplay in Detroit and I had some airplay in DC. They would only play this one song called, "Feelings". I couldn't get very far with that album except Melvin Lindsey fell in love with it on WHUR and then a couple of people fell in love with it in Detroit. But I couldn't get going.
I couldn't get going; couldn't get any distribution. I couldn’t get signed to label. I met with people from Buddha records. I met with people from RCA. The people from Philadelphia International said "Well he sounds like Lou Rawls". I even met with Kenny Gamble (of legendary R&B production duo Gamble & Huff) and it just didn't go.
So, then from there I became a minister in a church by way of self-taught self-study. I put a group together called, "The Book of Life" and we recorded a Gospel album. We went out to California and recorded them. That was just a thing I wanted to do. A dream [I had]. There was an album that The Whispers had done and they [recorded] this album at a place called Studio Masters out in LA and I liked the sound so much that I wanted to record in that venue.
When we got to LA we found out the hard way that the only thing in there [the studio] is an acoustic piano; everything else we had the rent. So there we spent part of my production [money], my recording budget so now we have to rent amps, rent pianos, rent drums and it just cut into the budget like you wouldn't believe. [And] I'm sitting there thinking like "I'm going to Disneyland…" So, now my little throw away money is now part of the recording budget. However, when we finished [mastering the album, The Love Will Rise Project ] the guy liked it so much he gave me the entire two track Masters and they were like a $100 apiece and he gave them to me. Because, he was like "You're a good guy you came all the way out here and didn't know it was going to cost all this money."
So when we finished the album up I have to say it was an amazing experience. There was a guy from Birthright records who worked for the owner of the label. Now Edwin Hawkins and his sister were both on Birthright records. So to me it was a dream come true. So we had this great album and then we got no promotion they put no backing behind it. And that was the end of that I ended up having to take legal recourse to get the album back [from them].
I was sitting in my office about two weeks ago at the church and the phone rang. Now the caller ID said "unknown" and normally I won't answer a phone call except that something just said, “Answer it”. When I answered the phone it was a guy from Japan. He had tracked me down over the Internet and said that he had [been] looking for me. They had been trying to find me through a company that's kind of like BMI over in England. There the people collect money from publishing and songwriting once the song has been distributed and marketed. So somehow it led him to our church's website. He found me on the site and tracked me down, called me and he told me that his company wants to re-release the “Love Will Rise Project ‘over in Japan! And it's just [been] sitting on the shelf doing nothing. So I was like, "Let's do this!" We talked for a while, we emailed back and forth for the next two weeks. I found out that this company is the largest independent record label in Japan and have been in business since like 1975. So that right there is my 40 year trek in the wilderness like Moses. [Laughter] Because, it's been forty years since I recorded that album.
KP: So from the initial setback that you had in the industry what was your next step? How did you move past this huge obstacle?
MO: I kept writing. I kept producing. We wrote a song called put it on paper [Ann Nesby]. We wrote it for a guy who was a good friend of Toni Braxton. He had been in her concerts singing with her at different venues. She would bring him up and let him do a duet with her. She told him that if he were to get his own songs together she would help them parlay it into some type of record deal. He was referred to us so we put together a record for him to duet with Toni Braxton.
We were able to finish that project up [but for some reason he didn’t record the song.] [ The song [did] end up catching the ear of a producer that knew Ann Nesby. So he arranged a meeting for us to meet Ann Nesby. [When we got there] she said to us, that she was looking for her next hit. At the time she was switching record labels. So she listened to some of the records we [brought with us.] But, once we played "Put It On Paper" she said "That's My Hit!"
Unfortunately after we signed all the paperwork they went in a different direction. Once you agree to do something from a songwriting standpoint they can go in a different direction. The next time we heard the song it was produced by another producer and they had placed Al Green on the song. And they changed it [back] to a duet, which was the idea I had to do in the first place.
But, what kept me in focus with all the setbacks was that I was ministering in churches and sharing the positive awareness. Knowing that God is all there is. Knowing that at some point if you stay faithful to your convictions [that] the trying of your faith will work your patience. Once you realize that you are patient then God's love will bring about the manifestation that you've been looking for. So, [that’s] what kept me going in between setbacks. Because it was setback after setback after setback for 40 years. A lot of people told me they would have quit a long time ago. But, when you love something it's like quitting on a marriage. You don't just quit on a marriage.
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