The Flute the Whole Flute and Nothing But the Flute

I am delighted to share my recording with you.

The Story

How did I get this title? It was given to me as a gift by my dear friend James Moody. Moody, as he liked to be called, told me that he always wanted to do a recording of all flute and name it The Flute the Whole Flute and Nothing But the Flute. He told me that he wouldn’t be getting to that project and he wanted me to use that title as the name of my recording. What could I say, that was it! Thank you Moody.

Years before doing this recording Moody set me up with Larry Gray, who is a superb Bassist in Chicago, to do a demo and have Larry look out for me. Larry Gray has always been one of my favorite bass players and does some of the most expressive bowing I have ever heard. Moody would have Larry in his group when ever he was in Chicago.

I stayed in touch with Larry and when I was ready to record I asked him get the players together. I told him what I wanted and mentioned that I had a love for guitar and was wild about Wes Montgomery. I wanted a guitarist with that warm and full sound. Larry got Henry Johnson on guitar. Henry sounded so good I had to pinch myself to see if this was really happening. Larry brought in Leon Joyce on drums who had been playing with Ramsey Lewis at the time. I heard Leon play several times with Ramsey and when Larry said he got Leon for the session, I was very happy.

We did the recording in Chicago at Bass is the Place Studio with Recording Engineer Donn De Santo. It was so cold when I got off of the plane to be picked up by my good friend Steve Jacobson, a very fine guitarist in his own right, that it made Denmark in the Winter feel like a summer heat wave in Las Vegas.

I spent a night at Steves house and we went over the tunes. The next day Steve dropped me off a The Hilton Hotel, which would be my home base for the week I was in Chicago.

Larry came over to my room with a guitar and we went over the music for a couple of hours. With Larry’s guidance we came up with a plan. The next morning Larry picked me up at 8:00 and we drove through the snow to get to the recording studio. It took a few hours to get set up. We did most of the tunes in 1 or 2 takes and called it a day. Then we got together the next day to do the last 3 songs and that was it. I have always believed that 1 or 2 takes should get the job done and that is how it went.