Terry Clements in center playing sax with Janis in Germany
Terry Clements has a relatively small internet footprint. There is another Terry Clements, a guitarist who played with Gordon Lightfoot for four decades.
This Terry Clements played saxophone with Janis Joplin’s briefly formed Kozmic Blues Band at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and that’s why I’ve put together this small piece as I’ve tried to do for all the Woodstock performers.
Electric Flag
Terry Clements also played with the Electric Flag, Leonard Schaeffer, Buddy Miles, Stoneground, and Michael Bloomfield.
The Electric Flag 1968 album is a live one featuring vocals by Erma Franklin, Aretha’s older sister. The album, as you can imagine, is loud and proud.
Saxophonist Terry Clements
Leonard Schaeffer/Buddy Miles
Leonard Schaeffer is not a common name and his music leans far away from the Electric Flag’s sound. Terry plays sax on Schaeffer’s album, A Boy and His Dog (but not on this cut).
Saxophonist Terry Clements
Jimi & Janis
He joined the Janis’s Kozmic Blues Band in December 1968 and toured with the band for its brief time, but he sat in with Jimi Hendrix on June 22, 1969 at the Newport festival in Devonshire Downs, CA. By the way, Jimi played the Star Spangled Banner that day, too.
Saxophonist Terry Clements
Stoneground
AllMusic lists Terry as a member of Stoneground for their 1972 Stoneground 3 album. Wikipedia states that, “Stoneground was a rock band formed in 1970 in Concord, California. Originally a trio, Stoneground expanded to a 10-piece band by the time of their eponymous 1971 debut album. The group appeared in two films, Medicine Ball Caravan (1971) and Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), and released three albums before singer Sal Valentino quit in 1973. “
Other than several albums that are reissues of Janis Joplin material, the internet suggests that Terry has been professionally quiet or at least under the radar.
If anyone can assist, please comment. Thanks.
Saxophonist Terry Clements
And in February 2023 the following comment was added to this post by a Steve Becker:
Terry played in my band, Stormy Weather in the mid 80’s in Asheville, NC. He had moved to Cullowee, NC and bought a farm. We were the House band at the Radisson Hotel for 10 years. This tall, blonde BRIT walked in one night & asked if we could use a sax player. He grabbed it from his car & tore it up with us that night. I hired him on the spot. We loved playing with him till he retired to farming and being a carpenter as well. When i saw him on the Ed Sullivan show & the Woodstock movie with Janice….I knew how lucky we had been. Assuming he still lives in the mtns of NC.
Norman D Smart, the peripatetic drummer from Dayton, Ohio was born on September 29, 1947.
He started along his musical path in the mid-1960s with a band called the Rich Kids who were later the Mark V.
He left them to join the Knights. The Knights became Thee Rubber Band.
Drummer ND Smart
The Remains
The Remains were four college students who had formed in Boston in 1964, achieved local success, re-located to New York, achieved further success as shown by an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and Hullabaloo.
That type of exposure led to an amazing opportunity. a request from Beatles management to be one of the opening groups on their 1966 American tour.
They readily accepted, but then drummer Chip Damiani, homesick for Boston, quit the band.
Drummer ND Smart
Serendipity
ND Smart had left Ohio and moved to New York in 1966. There he met Felix Pappalardi who had just heard that the Remains suddenly needed a drummer.
And so The Remains were back on tour with 17-year-old Smart as their drummer. They would open each concert, they serve as the backup band for Bobby Hebb and the Ronettes.
At one point, Smart lost his nerve before a flight out of Seattle for Los Angeles because the plane had experienced mechanical issues before take off. He and Ronettes singer Estelle Bennett and Rontettes manager Joey Delon took a commercial flight the next day in time to perform.
Here is an amateur live recording of the Ronettes from Maple Leaf Gardens on August 17, 1966. The Ronettes were Nedra Talley, Estelle Bennett, and Elaine Mayes. (Ronnie Bennett was absent for this 14-city tour.) Estelle on lead vocals on this song. Backed by The Remains (Barry Tashian on guitar, Vern Miller on bass guitar, Bill Briggs on keyboards, and N.D. Smart II on drums). Audience recording on a battery-operated, UHER 4000 REPORT-L reel-to-reel tape machine.
Despite the amazing exposure The Remains broke up later in 1966. Smart returned to Ohio for a bit and then left with old friend Jim Colegrove for Boston in early 1967.
Drummer ND Smart
Briefly Bo Grumpus
There they formed The Bait Shop and after a few months the band moved to New York. Again under aegis of Felix Pappalardi, the band now renamed Bo Grumpus began performing locally.
Drummer ND Smart
Kangaroo
Smart left Bo Grumpus and joined a Washington, DC band Kangaroo: Barbara Keith (vocals), Teddy Spelies (guitar, vocals), , John Hall (bass, keyboards, guitar, vocals), and Smart drums
At the same time he was also working with the group The Hello People. Here is a video of them performing “Anthem”, by Wrightson “Sonny” Tongue, on the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”. Aired February 23, 1969.
Drummer ND Smart
Felix Again
Felix Again
In early 1969, Smart did session work with Felix Pappalardi as drummer for Leslie West who was recording his first solo album. It would be called Mountain. From that work, Smart briefly (of course) became part of West’s band that performed at Woodstock.
His drum break during his Woodstock performance of Long Red has been sampled many times by hip hop artists.
And of course, he was replaced by Corky Laing in late 1969.
Drummer ND Smart
Great Speckled Bird
Great Speckled Bird, 1969 Left-Right: Amos Garrett, N.D. Smart, Ian Tyson, Sylvia Tyson, Buddy Cage, Ken Kalmusky
After Woodstock, Smart left Mountain to became a member of Ian and Sylvia’s country rock group Great Speckled Bird. Their first album was produced by Todd Rundgren. Smart would work with Rundgren throughout the 1970s.
Drummer ND Smart
Hungry Chuck
Amos Garrett, N.D. Smart, Jeff Gutcheon, Jim Colegrove, 1997
Smart, friend Jim Colegrove and Jeff Gutcheon formed the group Hungry Chuck in 1971. Amos Garrett was the guitarist. From the coolgroove site: It was their intention to form a band that played an eclectic style of music blended from root forms of American Music: rhythm and blues, blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, folk, country and gospel. The LP, titled Hungry Chuck, was issued by Bearsville Records in 1972. The group recorded an as yet unissued LP for Bearsville that same year. After making those recordings the group went their separate ways.
Drummer ND Smart
More and More
Again from the coolgroove site:
N.D. returned to performing with The Hello People. In turn, they began performing with Todd Rundgren. N.D. made records with Todd, James Cotton, Bobby Charles, Jesse Winchester, The Woodstock Mountain Review and others during the 1970s. He became the drummer in Gram Parsons band, The Fallen Angels. He continued to perform with Todd Rundgren into the 1980s.
During the 1990s N.D. worked on new material with Jim Colegrove, Jeff Gutcheon and Amos Garrett on new Hungry Chuck tracks. Get The Deadly Ebola Virus here. These days N. D. still keeps up his music and performs from time-to-time with a trio.
In 2014, a previously unreleased Hungry Chuck album was released.
N.D. Smart II is one of those names that keeps turning up, in album credits, the occasional songwriter’s line, or the lineups of lots of bands that attracted attention, especially in the 1960s
“I’m gonna add some bottom… so that the dancers just can’t hide!”
Screen grab of Graham from a 2012 concert, Bataclan, Paris
“None of us had ever done anything even close to Woodstock. Then, all of a sudden, we had the attention of the world. If you were part of that, it just turned everything around.”
Larry Graham was born August 14, 1946 in Beaumont, Texas. From an article in The Watchtower: I was born into a musical family…, my mother’s only son. She [Dell] was a pianist with the church choir, and my father was a jazz guitarist. Soon afterward my family moved to Oakland, California, where I started tap dancing at the age of five. Two years later, I learned the piano under the guidance of my grandmother, who cared for me in those early years.
From the Varga interview: “My biggest influence was actually my mother’s left hand. Because, before I went to bass, I was playing guitar. And when she would solo, I would play bass lines on my guitar. And when I would solo, she’d play bass lines on piano with her left hand. That’s the way she played anyway, before I started playing with her. So when I started playing with her, I was influenced by her left-hand bass lines.”
From Episode 175 of Andrew Hickey’s History of Music in 500 Songs podcast: “Dell Graham was a singer and pianist who apparently sounded exactly like Dinah Washington, and whose repertoire was similar to Washington’s — jazz standards and a little classy blues.
Hickey continues: When the drummer left the band: “The solution he came up with was similar to the way that rockabilly double-bass players had played to compensate for the lack of drums — what was known as “slapback bass”, like we talked about in episodes on Bill Haley and Elvis. But while as we often say “there is no first anything”, as far as anyone is able to tell, Larry Graham was the first person to do it with an electric bass, a slightly different technique with a very different sound.
For slap bass, you have two techniques to get a more percussive sound — you “slap” the string with your thumb, giving a deep booming sound unlike the normal sound you get from plucking a string, or you “pop” it — pulling the string away from the body of the guitar and allowing it to snap back and hit the frets, creating a buzzing tone.
Bassist Larry Graham
Sly
Graham is in the back in yellow
His breakout success was with Sly and the Family Stone (1966 – 1972).
Albums with Sly and the Family Stone
1967: A Whole New Thing
1968: Dance to the Music
1968: Life
1969: Stand!
1971: There’s a Riot Goin’ On
1973: Fresh
Bassist Larry Graham
Bass Technique
From that same interview: “By slapping the strings and expertly plucking and popping them with his fingers, he transformed the electric bass, making it as prominent as a guitar and dramatically increasing its rhythmic intensity. By dong so, he laid the foundation for several subsequent generations of bassists, including everyone from Stanley Clarke, Victor Wooten and San Diego’s Nathan East to Les Claypool of Primus, Level 42’s and Mr. Big’s Billy Sheehan.”
Bassist Larry Graham
Witness
In 1973, he met his future wife Tina. Tina’s mom was a Jehovah Witness and asked Tina to be present at her baptism in the Oakland Coliseum. Graham attended and says he’d never seen anything like the gathering before.
He and Tina began Bible study and visited various Jehovah Witness congregations while on tour. He and Tina were baptized at the district convention in Oakland in July 1975.
Graham would later introduce the religion to Prince. He became a Jehovah’s Witness later in life, and according to Graham, that helped shape Prince’s music as well as his lifestyle.
Graham said that Prince would knock on doors, talk with visitors at his studio-compound Paisley Park in suburban Minneapolis and even share his faith with small groups after a show,
After Sly [from the QG Enterprise page]: [Graham]…went on to produce a Funk band called “Hot Chocolate”, which he eventually joined and renamed “Graham Central Station”. The original lineup included guitarist David “Dynamite” Vega, organist Robert “Butch” Sam, keyboardist Hershall “Happiness” Kennedy, vocalist/percussionist Patryce “Choc’let” Banks, and drummer Willie “Wild” Sparks. The group used the funk foundation that Graham had established with “Sly and the Family Stone” and sweetened it with various layers of soul, blues and other styles – a magical combination that scored the band a Grammy nomination in 1974 for Best New Artist. Graham Central Station released a string of seven albums throughout the 70’s. Their debut album, a self-titled effort released in 1974, proved highly successful, launching a minor pop hit with “Can You Handle It“.
He reformed Graham Central Station in the early 1990s and performed with the band for several years. Graham and Graham Central Station performed internationally with a world tour in 2010 and the “Funk Around The World” international tour in 2011.
My Radio Sure Sounds Good to Me (Warner Bros., 1978)
Star Walk (Warner Bros., 1979)
Live in Japan (1992)
Live in London (1996)
Back by Popular Demand (1998)
The Best of Larry Graham and Graham Central Station, Vol. 1 (Warner Bros., 1996)
Raise Up (2012)
Bassist Larry Graham
Prince
In 1998, he recorded a solo album under the name Graham Central Station, GCS 2000. It was a collaboration between Larry Graham and Prince.
While Graham wrote all the songs, except one co-written by Prince, the album was co-arranged and co-produced by Prince, and most of the instruments and vocals were recorded by both Graham and Prince. Graham also played bass on tours with Prince from 1997 to 2000. He appeared in Prince’s 1998 VHS Beautiful Strange and 1999 DVD Rave Un2 the Year 2000.
When Prince died in 2016, Minnetonka, Minnesota’s Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall held a memorial service for him – “Brother Nelson” as his fellow congregants knew him – Sunday at the church where he worshiped.
At the service, Graham spoke about Prince and their shared faith. [RS article]
Bassist Larry Graham
Credits
All Music has a very long list of his credits. Among the names (in addition to Prince, Sly, and Graham Central are: Betty Davis (the second ex-wife of jazz legend Miles Davis), George Tyson, the Oak Ridge Boys. Aretha Franklin, Stanley Clarke, George Benson, Stanley Jordan, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Mahalia Jackson, Frankie Lanine, Eddie Murphy, Santana, Chaka Khan, Luther Allison, Government Mule, Billy Preston, Shania Twain, Kanye West, as well as many many others.
Bassist Larry Graham
Solo
Graham recorded five solo albums and had several solo hits on the R&B charts. His biggest hit was “One in a Million You”, a crossover hit, which reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1980.
Solo albums [all Warner Bros. releases]
1980: One in a Million You
1981: Just Be My Lady
1982: Sooner or Later
1983: Victory
1985: Fired Up
Bassist Larry Graham
Hall of Fame
A 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee as a member of Sly & The Family Stone
Bassist Larry Graham
Check out this live concert. Amazing energy!
Bassist Larry Graham
Drake
Most Woodstock fans might not recognize the name Drake, but he is, as described by Wikipedia, “…a Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor [as well as an]… influential figure in contemporary popular music, Drake has been credited with popularizing singing and R&B sensibilities in hip hop artists.
Drake has been nominated for many and won several awards, mainly related to hip-hop.
And Larry Graham is Drake’s uncle.
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
