Episode 7 Soul Unlimited - A Music Sold To The World - Sho' You Right

Barry White's music resonated with audiences worldwide, with only Michael Jackson achieving similar success. White's music was a universal expression of love, connecting people across languages and cultures. However, after signing with CBS, White's career suffered as he felt unsupported by the label. Changes in technology also affected his sound, leading to a decline in popularity. Despite this, White continued to write and produce music, earning a Grammy and collaborating with Quincy Jones. Journalist Stephen Ivory shares his experience interviewing Barry White, highlighting the impact of White's music on his own career. Has anybody over the years touched the same kind of chord with buyers and listeners that you did? Anybody close to it? This is how you'd be able to answer that question. Has any artist that we know of, since Barry White left the scene in 78, 79 rather, has anybody made music that sold to the world? I know of one, Michael Jackson. And there may be a whole other set of circumstances there, too. Sure, you're right. Let me tell you what was said to me by Baskar Mennon. He said, nobody has a Barry White. Well, it is fascinating to me that you hit this universal subject which never goes away. You talk about love. I've got Freddie Jackson who's out there singing. But they don't want to hear him in Sweden. No, they don't, no. But your stuff and the way you attack it. Did you ever do it in any other languages at all? Got a number one record in Spanish. Love making music at CBS. You know, love is a beautiful thing. It's a very strong thing. And the only way I can bring it to you is through music. Go back with us a little longer, if you please. I've been listening to you and the message was terrific. How good do you rate the music? I rate the music as a different spectrum. See, there's nothing new with music. It's interpretations of it. How do you use strings and horns? People in our industry use strings very shitty. Well, we need some violins. We'll go and hire four of them. Four violins and I'm going to give you... They're going to make you think, yeah, I'm hearing violins. When you hear the strings, I want you to hear the strings. When you hear the French horn speak, I want them to speak. When you hear the oboes and bassoons and the horn section, I want them to speak. Listen to this statement. This was said today at lunch. To make a music that is sold all over the world, bar no place. I was invited to Cuba by Castro. We were setting up productions. I wanted Walter Cronkite to host it. I mean, I was going in there. Invited by him. Not no self-appointed yet. I didn't want to get in no political thing, you know. I would have loved to have gone over there and talked to Castro and seen the Cuban people. I've got fans all over this world. Somewhere, somehow, I've got to let them know how much I care. I'll never give up looking for my big. I said, oh, Barry White, you know. He's one called Lee Stanton. I'm singing. He said, yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. And I said, you know, we sort of wrote all around the world as a tribute to you. And you know the song that he does, Show You Right? I just said, we wrote, you know, it was a tribute to you all around the world. And he said, show you right. Hello, soul friends. Welcome back. Episode 7, can you believe that? Of Soul Unlimited. You'd have to admit, that's a pretty impressive love letter from Lisa, wouldn't you say? I did say it was worth waiting for. So what does this claim, then, of White's, that his music travelled all around the world? Well, I've heard examples of when it did back then. But how has it stood up against the test of time? Let's hear the reaction. Hello, friends. I'm Surisa Dai Sastre, and I'm the director of the Royal Orchestra of Xalapa in Mexico. Barry White's love scene is a very meaningful piece for us, as it represents an icon, an era, and the musical genre that had never been repeated, nor had had the same force, nor reached the same height that it did in its own time. The music strikes everybody the same way. Whoever's interested in Barry White's music all tell you the same story in different languages. Can't get enough of your love, babe Yeah, I don't know, I don't know why Can't get enough of your love, babe Oh, some things I can't get used to What did you think of that? In those two clips, we learnt that the Barry White music did indeed travel continents. We had some input from Orquesta Real de Xalapa, kindly translated for us by Chris Blight and Sandé. Then we jumped forward a generation to hear the Messengers Choir from Barcelona. Ramon Escal, the choir director, told me how music was his path into finding spirituality. Why then, after 1978, this universal message? Why did the audience fade away? They didn't fade away. What happened? We faded away. Why did you fade away? Because I went with a big guy. I went with a giant who don't need talent. And that was? CBS. And you were just a number on the wall, like a... I was a major deal for his paper, but it didn't mean anything outside of that. There was no support. Even the people that made the deal could not... The man that really wanted Barry White and Love Unlimited, that orchestra, was Bruce Rumbault. And after we were there four months, you hired him, friend. You know what happened. That's what Barry White got caught up in. The biggest deal black at that time in CBS's history, I had. Here's the thing. I must have listened to that interview, I don't know, 25, 30 times when I first started doing this podcast. But it wasn't until I listened again recently that I joined the dots. It was actually Russ Regan, long-term ally at 20th Century Records, sitting alongside White for the whole interview. The interview was recorded in 1987, so he's still musically active at this time, and I guess it's close enough to detect what a sense of regret or injustice in signing that record deal with CBS. That said, a tepid look at Bruce Rumbault's resume will tell you he was a highly effective A&R executive. A failed jazz musician, Rumbault was responsible for signing a stellar cast of artists, such as Herbie Hancock, James Taylor, Stan Getz, Wynton Marsalis. This was after being credited with signing Bruce Springsteen for his breakthrough album on Born to Run. So taking that into consideration, I guess you can understand how White might have been willing to sign. And it's been this number of years? I was at CBS for five years, Joe. Good or bad, when I make a contract deal, I live up to it. It was over in 83. I said, let me get off the scene for a minute. Let me go try to form my own record company independently. That's how I met Bascar Lennon, going to Europe to talk to the labels about distribution. We had a couple of guys, joint venture capitalists, who we were speaking to, about $8 million. Rod McGrew was involved. He was involved. Al Bergamo was going to be president. Used to be at MCA. I wasn't forming a company to ego trip. I was forming a company who would take a serious look at my product. How has your music moved the world? Well, technology, for one, has moved it. I still write about love songs, love stories, but it's more of now, stories, lyrics, songs on the album called Under the Rainbow Moon, I'm Ready for Love, I'm Ready for Love, Lovers in Your Eyes, share titles, songs that mean the same thing. Do you approach it the same way? We got the rap in there, because people, that's part of Barry White's sound. We have the rap, but it's where it is, and it's what kind of rap it is today. How has your music moved the world? You know, when you're an artist the size of Barry White, or Paul McCartney, or Stevie Wonder, or any of those kinds of people, you find yourself competing with yourself. You know, you find yourself competing with your past. Barry White suffered the amount of money that it took to make a record, as that began to diminish, because so many youngsters were making music just by using synthesizers, and they were doing this stuff at home, and the whole thing. It changed the whole world of recording in general. To cut expenses, the latter Barry White began to record with synthesizers. He just, you know, diminished his sound, or the production, and it never worked. You'll hear me agreeing with Stephen at the end of that interview. That's not to run down Barry White. For me, I think he just wandered into musical wilderness, and was shackled by new technology. I mean, there were the likes of Talking Heads. They were right at the cutting edge of digital loop tracks, the likes we'd never heard before. For all that though, White proceeded to write and produce two more albums. The icon is Love, and Stayin' Power. The latter, which notched up two Grammy Awards, his first and only, I might add. The following year, he appeared on a kind of Harlan Globetrotter-style cast on Quincy Jones' The Secret Garden Roots. I had no ambitions to write, but I was reading one day, and I thought, you know, I could write one of these stories. I didn't know anything about writing, but I knew that I would have to have, I'd have to be writing about somebody that an editor would take an interest in, and so Barry White was hot at that time. I said, gee, I wonder what it would take to just go interview Barry White. So I did something you could never do today, and that is I just called up his label at the time, 20th Century Records, and in my deepest voice, I said that I was Stephen Ivory calling from Los Angeles Times Magazine and that I wanted to interview Barry White. Oh, you did it from the Los Angeles Times, did you? I told them that I was from the Los Angeles Times. When you're lying, you've got to aim high. You know, they called me back in a week, and they said, fine, you can come interview Barry White in Hollywood at his office. Come here at 12 noon, and you've got from 12 to 1 o'clock to talk to him. What about that? Stephen Ivory recording how he got into music journalism. Want to find out how that one turns out? This episode featured Barry White, Joe Smith, and Terry Gross under Creative Commons or Fair Use policy. All music used under the same license. Background music by Chris Shuroy. What am I going to say? What am I going to do? How should I feel when everything is you? What kind of love is this? Everything is me.