Pioneering drummer Bill Curtis shares his half-century music journey, detailing how he forged The Fatback Band’s signature “greasy” funk sound, fought for independence in a notoriously exploitative industry, and accidentally helped lay the groundwork for both rap and house music.

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Sounds Visual: What music shaped your formative years in North Carolina? Were there any artists that really made an impression on you?

Bill Curtis: Well, Jimmie Lunceford. When the band would come in town, I would always go down listening to them. It was a big band. I always followed a big band. And what happened was my mother’s boyfriend was a musician, and he played piano, and he was in a band—a little three or four piece band. And I think that’s when I fell in love with music, watching them play.

SV: You said you mostly watched the drummers in those big gands. Was there one technique or player you tried to emulate?

BC: One of my favorite drummers back in those days was a drummer called Foots; he played with Buddy Johnson. I didn’t know nothing about technique and all that back in those days.

SV: Your mother’s piano was, from what I read, reportedly the only one in the neighborhood. How did that turn your home into a hub for local musicians?

BC: Well, [musicians] would come back and play. My first instrument was playing the piano. But then again, like I said, my mother’s boyfriend played piano, but he had a brother that was a drummer. But we didn’t have no drums in my house. So he would come down there and do that sound that they do, the deep beat with his mouth and stuff. He was doing that back in those days when I was a kid. He would play the drum part while the other [brother] played piano, and I thought that was fascinating. I think that’s when I fell in love with the drums.

SV: How old were you when you left for the East Coast, and what changed once you got to New York?

BC: When I came to New York, I think that was in 1950. That’s when I grew up, came up to stay, after I finished high school. And I thought I could play. You know what I mean? I thought I was ready. But I wasn’t ready. I was dead. And in 1950, I had to go to school, and I couldn’t find anything. I didn’t have no place to stay. I went in the summertime, and wintertime was coming in, and they told me wintertime was rough in New York. So I went and joined the Army before it got cold.

SV: How much of the Fatback backbeat that you pioneered was a deliberate creation versus a fusion of your Carolina blues roots, New Orleans rhythm, and military-era playing?

BC: My style of playing is a little different. I felt something different back in those days. When I was coming along, everybody kind of laid back on the groove, you know. They played that laid-back groove against everything else. But my style was being on top of the band, pulling the band. And I had problems playing with people because they was forever thinking that I was rushing the tempo, but I wasn’t laying in the pocket—but I was playing at a different pocket than they was in. But I didn’t know I was playing in that pocket.

That came from my little classical background. Because back in those days, they didn’t have no exclusive jazz music school or something. Everything you learn right then was kind of classical style. But then again, drummers read one way but play another way. See, I didn’t know—they don’t teach you that in classical music. When you come out, you look one way, but you play another way. There are a lot of drummers don’t know that. And then another thing, there’s a groove that you can’t teach nobody and they don’t understand, only if your drummers have that kind of style.

SV: Where does the name Fatback actually come from?

BC: Fatback is the same as soul. They say soul music back then, playing some soul music, and fatback meant greasy. You know, fatback meat is a greasy pork. You ever seen fatback? It’s greasy. So the kind of groove I played was kind of a greasy, funky groove.

We had a guitar player that played with us in the band, Eric Gale. Eric Gale gave me that name because he liked the way I played a double shuffle. I played with two hands. And he would play a tune, and he would say, “Give me that greasy beat, that old fatback beat you got.” And then they would start calling me Fatback when I came to New York. So when I got my band, I named my band Fatback.

SV: Did the formal training you got at Mannes College change how you played?

BC: Well, it did not fit in where I was going. At Mannes College, I would be rushing. But I wanted to play slick beats, right? And back then, they were playing too straight. They was really straight up and down. But I had learned—it was really hard for me to transfer during the day. Like, during the day I’m playing one way, and night I go out play another way. They didn’t teach it. That’s what was confusing about coming up, starting music back in those days. You wanted to play jazz, but they wouldn’t teach jazz back in those days. They didn’t have a school or nothing to teach you that way. This came later.

They only had a few teachers who taught me how to play and read in a band. Because when I came out of Mannes, when I came out of the Army, I could read backward, sideways, upside down and everything. But I couldn’t play in a band because I didn’t know how to interpret it. I noticed that the trumpet players and I had the same figures, but they was playing one way and I was playing another way.

Then I was doing all of that in the Apollo Theatre. They had a show came in, they had a very thick book, and they had to read it. But I could read it, but I wasn’t hitting it with the horns. So the conductor called one of his friends, and his friend happened to be Charlie Persip. Charlie Persip was an excellent drummer. He taught me how to read music and to interpret the band. He told me, “Look at the eighth notes like a dotted eighth.” And you play them like a dotted eighth, but you read it—they write it one way, but you play it like that.

SV: Why were you blackballed as a session musician? Was it because of your playing style?

BC: No, I was blackballed from a session musician because at that time, the gear for the studios… you know, they have everything in the studio for you now. Like, a drummer had to bring his own drums in the studio for a session. And as I would bring in my drums for a session, this policy came in that they would have the drums there for you set up. And I didn’t know it. So the guys would just say, “Bill, why are you still bringing your drums? They have drums here already.” So then one day, I said, “I don’t have to take my drums.”

So they were doing a Lesley Gore session. They had about 20 musicians in there. I go to the bandstand over there—there’s no drums. And they had to hold the session up to get drums. Word got out on the street that I held up the session. And especially the drummers who’d been doing sessions—I was getting work from them because I had a new groove I brought in. Everybody wanted me to play on sessions then, so the old drummers spread word to the contractors, “Don’t hire him.” So word just spread around. Since that happened, what I did was I started producing myself.

SV: Talk to me about setting up the “House of Fatback”—you had booking, label, and even catering under one roof.

BC: I just decided to do it because, number one, I didn’t like the idea when I started reading contracts that the record label checks off 2% before they even started paying you. You getting paid on 98%. I didn’t like that. I thought that was a ripoff. And then I didn’t like the idea—after I paid for the session, the masters don’t belong to me. I didn’t like that neither. So I started my own stuff.

And then when I go to sessions and tell people how I want to be paid and I want this, the agents stopped booking me too because they didn’t like my policies. See, agents don’t realize that they work for you, not you working for the agency. They got the whole damn thing twisted around. Agents work for you, right? So that was one of my problems, and that’s what the problem people downtown had with me.

SV: How did you link up with Johnny King, Johnny Flippin, and the rest of the original rhythm section?

BC: I was already working with a band, Ron Anderson. Ron Anderson had like an eight-piece band that played for dances and stuff like that every weekend, and I was playing with them. But they was playing to Duke Ellington stuff back in the day. But the time was changing. Motown was coming in fast. And I saw Motown and I heard that sound and everything, and I said, “Hey, this band is behind time. I’m going to get a band to come up to date with what people wanting to hear, I’m gonna try to get that Motown sound.” That started me.

And then I started my own band with a friend of mine, Warren Daniels. He played tenor. So when I get a gig, I would hire him; he get a gig, he hire me. But then my catalog got large for dates, and his got large for dates, so we had to get separate groups. I had to get my own group together. So I had to find me some musicians to play with me.

Somebody told me about Johnny King, a little musician who was living in Harlem. I’m trying to think who told me about him, I can’t remember. But anyway, I went down to see Johnny, and told Johnny I was starting a band together. John was playing guitar. I said, “John, I’m thinking about putting the band together. You want to come with me?” He said, “Yeah. Who we got on bass?” I said, “Ain’t got nobody.”

He said, “I got my buddy, Flip. I’ll tell him.” That’s how I got Flippin in the band. And that’s where we started out with three pieces: bass, guitar, drums. We played for a long time. Then I added a conga. Bass, drums, and conga. We played that way for a long time. And then I had a saxophone player [who] told me about his buddy who played trumpet with George Williams. And that’s how that band got together.

SV: I’m curious about your perspective on the Motown sound—specifically, could you share that story about your roommate and their theory regarding what made it so unique?

BC: [My roommate] was a keyboard player; he was a writer. And we were playing—I was doing work up in the Catskill Mountains in New York. We were booked there for the summer, we stayed there, and he was writing, he was learning that Motown sound. He figured out the formula for Motown. And he said, “When you get a formula, stick with that formula. Don’t change it.”

And my formula was bass and drums, and then I brought in a style that started the whole thing. I brought in what they call “beat music.” That’s my style. I brought that in. Then after I brought beat music in, the next sound Fatback broke was house music. Fatback was the first to play house music. All of street music and house music all went together, all of that has come out of Fatback. Fatback was one of the groups that made it possible for little bands, street bands, to come back because record companies are copycats. Once a record company get a hit on something, every record company go and follow. When Perception got that one record going with Fatback Band, that opened the door for Cameo, B.T. Express, Brass Construction—all the rest of the companies looking for a band, some self-contained bands.

SV: How did your working relationship with Gerry Thomas hold together for decades?

BC: Gerry’s my partner. I met Gerry after he got out of high school. He went to that Performing Arts in New York. He was playing in Ron Anderson’s band, he was playing trumpet. And that’s how we met–in the Ron Anderson band. I told him what I wanted to do, and he told me, “If you need help, let me know.” And when I got started getting it together, I made my first recording. I said, “Ger, I need some arrangements.” And that’s how we got together. Then he was with the symphony orchestra, and he would come on record with us. We’ve been together now for just 50-odd years, about 55 years together.

SV: The band famously never rehearsed. How did you keep that off-the-top-of-the-head chemistry tight enough for the dance floor, take after take?

BC: See, when a band is working, they don’t have to rehearse that much. And we have about five tunes came from one tune. The first tune we did called “Street Dance.” Out of “Street Dance” came “Bus Stop,” “Goin’ to See My Baby”—all those tunes came from one because we never played the tune the same way each night. So when we go into the studio, we would play one of those versions we played on stage. We never played the tune the same way.

And that was frustrating to Gerry Thomas when he came in the band when we added the keyboard. He would learn it one way that night, then the next night we’ll play it a different way, until one day he told me, “I don’t got all the versions of the way you play it now. Come to me and indicate which way you want.”

SV: How did the chance meeting with Boo Frazier on Broadway lead to the Perception deal, and why did labels kind of struggle with your raw sound?

BC: Boo Frazier was partners with the other guys, and they were struggling with groups and trying to get off the ground. I think they had a couple of small hits, but when I came along, I saw Boo down the street. I had been to about every record company in town for the last six months trying to get me a deal. Nobody wanted to mess with me. So they said, “What you got, Bill?” He said, “I don’t know why you messed with all of those people where you didn’t come see me.” He said, “What you got?”

I don’t know what made me tell him that—I told him I had some country western funk. He said, “I never heard of no country western funk. I want to hear what it is.” And so he said come up to the office. I went up to the office and played for them. He said, “You want to go in the studio and record this country western funk?” I said, “Yeah.” He said he got $5,000, that’s all the budget that he can give me. And we went and it cost about $1,000 to $1,500. But we didn’t play no country western. One tune in there maybe sound like country, the rest of it was just that raw sound because when I went in the studio at that time, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Like, they treat me now like I’ve been producing for the last 20 years, so I didn’t know what I was doing. So when he said, “You want to edit this?” I said, “No, just leave it like it is. This is everything just like I played it.” I didn’t know I was supposed to kind of smooth it out. I said “Leave it like it is. I want to capture the raw sound the way we did it.”

I would always bring in three or four people, five or six girls, and party to get us going to make us feel like we was recording to a live audience. Because just sitting up there playing, I found out that they don’t have the same groove that they have if you’re playing if they had people out there dancing. Especially girls. Everything we did when we came into the studio, everybody be looking to me, “What we going to do, Bill?” And then I’ll start a groove, because I’m forever playing different beats and grooves.

I’ll start a groove and I would tell the bass player—this is what started it all—I told the bass player, “I’m going to put a 4/4 down and I’m just going to hold the drum, but I want you to play the fill-in just like the drummer would play.” That’s what started that popping and filling and stuff. And my bass player would tap on his bass, and hit the strings and all that while he played bass.

SV: Can you discuss how Caribbean, Reggae, and Calypso rhythms—specifically in tracks like ‘Spanish Hustle’ and ‘Night Fever’—shaped the signature sound of the Fatback Band?

BC: Well, “Spanish Hustle” is a Gerry Thomas piece, but that hi-hat rhythm, I took that from when we played dances. I took that from the Calypso style they had and put a backbeat to it. Instead of putting the backbeat on the foot, I played it on the snare drum for four. That gave you the Fatback groove, what they called the Fatback beat. And I got it from playing Calypsos.

SV: There was a whole kind of New York street funk fraternity—Kool & The Gang and Cameo and Brass Construction. How connected or competitive did that scene really feel from the inside?

BC: Well, I didn’t see no connection, no competition at all. They had their sound. Cameo had their sound, and I had my sound. And we kept that sound. None of them had the Fatback sound. And to this day, bands can’t play Fatback.

SV: Randy Muller once said he felt some pressure to write more lyrical songs once disco hit. Did you feel that same pressure, and how did you handle it?

BC: I didn’t feel no pressure because I didn’t like to stay in one groove. If you know the Fatback albums, you would see the change; each album changed. That’s because I wouldn’t have been happy with one groove. I didn’t believe that I was supposed to stay in one genre. If you look at my albums, you say, “He didn’t stay in his format, his genre. He’d wander around.”

You think it might be jazz, sometimes I’m playing pop, sometimes we’re doing this here. I didn’t like to be put in a category. And I’m still trying to get out that mode that I got to play a certain way. I want to record what I feel then and what I feel when I go into the studio, because that feeling only happens once. That’s why—back to a good example—we recorded a song called “Gotta Get My Hands On Some (Money).” It took us three months to learn how to play it. We couldn’t even play it live. Most of them we recorded, we had to come home and study them ourselves.

SV: Tell me about the story behind “Groovy Kind of Day.” This one was more jazzy and seemingly came out of left field a bit…

BC: All my tunes come out of left field. “Groovy Kind of Day”—people gave me that tune, and it was kind of a jazz tune. And I played—I tell you who stole that idea: the Blackbyrds. Donald Byrd. I was working with the same agent, and Donald heard my song, “Groovy Kind of Day.” He said, “Oh man, that’s a tune.” Oh, he loved that groove. Next thing I know he did that tune—something in the park. Oh, “Rock Creek Park.” “Rock Creek Park” came from “Groovy Kind of Day.”

SV: Another one that was kind of a departure was “Mile High” from the Man with the Band record…

BC: Oh man, you’re going deep with that one, [laughs] “Mile High”—another keyboard player and a girl, Debra Cooper, brought that tune to me. Her boyfriend wrote that tune at the time. I came back in and he asked me would I record it. I said, “Yeah.” I said, “You know I record anything as long as it’s got a groove, as long as you could let me record it.” See, my problem is, from people who bring me songs, I have to put my touch on it. And a lot of people don’t like that; they want you to put their spin on it. But if it’s going on my album, I have to put my spin on it. “Mile High,” I put my spin on it, get it kind of funky groove.

SV: I also love “Double Dutch.”

BC: I think “Double Dutch” came when I saw the kids doing that jump rope in Jersey one day when I was over there. I couldn’t think of a name because I record the tunes, but I don’t have names and no ideas for them. The tunes in the track come before the words and the lyrics.

SV: What about recruiting Phyllis Hyman for “Night Fever”? How did that happen?

BC: She [had] just hit New York, and we call all the backgrounds—the singers we had on the record—we used to call them The Galloways. And we got Phyllis. That was nice. Phyllis was very good.

SV: Walk me through how “King Tim III” actually came together, from needing a single to finding Timothy Washington.

BC: We always had a track for music. And I was doing this album—I think it’s Fired Up ‘N’ Kickin’, I said, “Gerry, I don’t smell no hit in this one. I don’t smell nothing in here good. We gotta get something in here.” And then I came in the studio, I said, “Gerry, let’s do a rap.” Gerry said, “Hell, ain’t nobody in the band can rap.” We just barely sang.

But then the road manager was in the studio, and he said, “I got a friend that know how to rap.” I said, “Yeah? What’s his name?” He said, “Tim.” I said, “Where is he?” He said, “Down in the projects.” I said, “Bring him to the studio tomorrow night.” He brought him in the studio and I played the track, and I said, “Can you go on in there and throw something on the track?” He said, “Yeah.” That’s when he went in. That’s how “King Tim III” was born.

SV: “King Tim III” had an enormous impact on the nascent culture of rap and hip-hop. [The song was later sampled by artists including the Beastie Boys, J Dilla, Spoonie Gee, Funky 4 + 1 and many others.] Do you see Fatback as having invented rap, or just capturing something that was already happening in the streets?

BC: No, it was already happening in the street. I was the first one to record it. I got lucky, and I was the first one to just go out and say, “Put it on tape.” But it was already happening in the street. Rap been around a long time. One of my favorite artists, I think the first one I heard doing the rap, was Louis Jordan. That was my favorite band. That’s what I formed my band after—Louis Jordan. He had the hot fire. I used to go to the Apollo Theater when I was young just to see him every time they was in town.

SV: Was industry fear the only thing kind of standing between Fatback and a bigger place in hip-hop history, do you think?

BC: Well, you see what happened with “King Tim.” At the time I recorded it, the disc jockeys used to have the convention—you remember that? Jack the Rapper, and all of them down in Philadelphia at the time. And I took a “King Tim” down and played it for the convention, and they told me, “Hurry up, get it out there. Let’s get it out there.”

So I came back to Spring [Records]—put this out tomorrow, man, right away. Spring said, “No, no, man, we ain’t doing that. We going with Candido because we don’t want to alienate the jockeys.” They say, “You’re stepping on their toes. That’s Jack the Rapper, he raps on that stuff, and we’re not putting that up.” I said, “Okay.” They said, “If you want to insist on putting out ‘King Tim III’ on the A-side, we’re not going to do an album poster, we’re not going to put the crew behind it to push it.” I said, “Well, then put it on the B-side.” And they put it on the B-side.

Now, the jockeys out in California got it. And this happened—Joe Robinson’s promotion man was in the studio, and this guy called him in and said, “Come here, come in. That guy got the biggest record down in the country, but they playing the wrong damn side.” And he heard it, and he jumped on the phone and told Joe to get that group and do this, and do a rap. And they went in the studio that night and had it on the market that morning. They went in the studio—I’m going to tell you exactly what they did—they went in the studio, paid the engineers to get that track out on… what’s the name they did it on now? Chic. “Good Times.” They paid him to give them that track. He gave it to them, and they recorded that over. When he had it on the market, we was out first with it, but we was on the wrong side.

SV: Since we’re again just kind of talking about “King Tim” for a minute, I’d like to hear your thoughts on sampling.

BC: I think sampling [is great for] musicians, as long as you give them credit. That’s what you want. Because if you’re going to try to steal it, I’m gonna go get you. I feel the same way about streaming, too. I hear a lot of musicians talk about it, and they don’t get paid and they’re not doing that, but they don’t realize how much money [the labels] stole from them back then, during the days.

SV: What does managing royalties on a 35-plus album catalog look like today in the streaming era?

BC: Albums are gone. People don’t have time to listen to an album nowadays. That’s gone. And I try to tell musicians: don’t waste your money on putting out an album. Try to build your own little following, put out your own music, get your own money. But it’s hard work. It’s hard work.

SV: You were keen on holding your own masters and publishing rather than kind of going through a very conventional type of deal, for example. Do you think that independence actually cost you anything over the decades?

BC: It cost me at the time being because I didn’t get the work. But look, in the long run, I’m from the school that a slow nickel is better than a fast dime. And pain don’t last long. Now, don’t forget now, Fatbacks been around since 1972 and they’re still playing our music. How many rap tunes going to be around that long? Not that many.

SV: Between things like Perception’s bankruptcy and Cotillion and other kind of setbacks and obstacles that you’ve had, what’s kept you creatively driven through all these years?

BC: We call it the “Fatback Jinx.” Every time we get something going, something happen. But my thing is this, like I said: I love music and I like creating music. But now I’m trying to hang up my sticks. Every time I think about hanging up, I get depressed. I’ve been doing it all my life; it seems like I’ve been doing it all my life. I like marching to my own beat. And I like being in front; I like being the first to do this. So I’m trying to create the next big thing right now.

SV: Is there a Fatback song that’s become a bigger deal now through like sampling or reissues or DJ culture than it was upon release?

BC: That’s a hard one. I tell you what it is: “Bus Stop.” “Bus Stop” got a new life when Chaka Khan did “Like Sugar.” [“Like Sugar” heavily samples”(Are You Ready) Do the Bus Stop” by The Fatback Band. ] And “I Found Lovin’” has been on the charts—I mean, not on the charts, but number one disco for the last several years.

SV: What do you teach the newer players in Fatback or your other groups about reading the room, or that never-rehearse method–things that can’t be learned just from the records?

BC: I find the young people coming on now, they think they know everything, so you can’t teach them nothing. That’s my problem with them. They can’t wait. They don’t have the time. They don’t even have the time to listen to a record all the way through. How do you think they’re going to learn something?

SV: Your discography is massive, it’s been sampled all the time. Aside from the big hits that everyone knows or some of the songs that we talked about today, is there a specific track or album in the Fatback catalog that you feel deserves more recognition as a highlight of your artistic growth?

BC: “Oh, What a Night.” I love it. Nobody ever listened to that, never played it. You would never think Fatback did a song like that.

SV: Reflecting on the impact of your career with The Fatback Band and the music you continue to create today with Bill Curtis and Friends: what would you like your body of work to ultimately signify?

BC: That I stayed in the pocket, kept that groove. A lot of drummers don’t know how to stay in the pocket, you know? And then I like that I did change a few musical scenes.

SV: Anything upcoming you wanna plug?

BC: We have got a new one coming—it should be on the market now, our new mix. And it’s a long play; I think it’s about seven minutes. And then I got some new stuff coming up on the Fatback After Hours. And then I’m going to come out on Bill Curtis and Friends. I have friends that recorded with us and played with us, and I do records on them, like Robert Damper, keyboard player who used to play with us. I’m putting that out on Robert Damper and people who used to play with us. With friends, it’s gonna be a compilation.

SV: Bill, thanks so much for your time today! I know we’ve been trying to make this happen for a while.

BC: Yeah, man. What kind of drumkit you got set up?

SV: Oh, I have a Ludwig, but I had a Rogers kit for years.

BC: I got a Rogers set, and a Gretsch too.

SV: Nice! Thanks again, Bill.

BC: Thank you. Enjoyed it, man.