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people in my neighbourhood played. I mean, I remember seeing Earl Klugh. With my mum we
went to this summer talent show and we went up to the high school and I saw Earl Klugh play
and he was living a couple of blocks from me, but I didn’t know him then. I got to know him, of
course, later and then there was a guy next door to me named Mike that played and he played
more like Wes Montgomery style, and there was a guy named Donald Anthony and Leroy
Emmanuel, he played with “The Fabulous Counts” and then people ask me why I play with my
thumb and those guys played with their hand. Wes always said play with the hand, but Leroy
Emmanuel played with his thumb and then he sort of validated that I could play that way. I didn’t
need to play with a pick because all my friends were saying, you have to play with a pick to play
guitar, but I had started playing with my thumb and I’ve never played any other way.

BiTS: Okay.

RJ: Leroy Emmanuel was the guy who sort of validated it, but The Fabulous Counts were pretty
well known in Detroit and they had a couple of hits and the biggest, the first one was ‘Jan, Jan’
and I was really into that.

BiTS: Was Wes Montgomery your
particular influence to get into jazz stuff?

RJ: Well, I’m not really a jazz player. I’m
just lucky my style sort of fits into jazz, but
I’ve never really been a jazz player. When
I came into what they call contemporary
jazz, it was years even after The
Boneshakers, but I had always played on
records for different people, and rhythm is
everything. Rhythm is everything, it really
is. Your rhythm style depending on who
you are can sit in multiple genres. I’ve played with B.B. and I've played with Willie Nelson, and
I’ve played with Seal and I’ve done stuff with Tears for Fears, and of course, Was (Not Was). It
was a big part of my history. That was a unique situation where we did all kinds of different
music under the mantle that it was pop and rock, but it was all kinds of music.

BiTS: Most of what you do now is very funky. Was there a particular influence for you as far as
the funk was concerned?

RJ: Sure. In the beginning, it was a lot of guys you never heard in Detroit, but of course, like I said,
The Fabulous Counts who were considered sort of funk jazz. Back in the day, this guy named
Bobby Franklin, Bobby Franklin’s Insanity, he had a song called ‘Sexplot’ and he had another
song ‘Bring It On Down To Me’. He was on Curtis Mayfield’s record, but those guys I went and
saw when I was younger in Detroit and I saw The Funk Brothers when they used to jam up at
the club in Maury Baker’s place. I used to go up there. I couldn’t get inside, but I would stand

outside and listen, and it was all mixed up. Those guys were jazz players that were called upon
to play on these records, but they were incredibly funky. So it was a good time growing up in
Detroit to see these guys and to play, know them and play in their thing. I did some of my first
stuff for Barrett Strong, ‘Money’, and everything with him was about emotion. He didn’t
necessarily give me any parameters. He’d tell me what key and then he sort of had these gyrations
and, hey, play this, man, like this. But he’s not telling me anything, but it’s sort of body movement
and it was definitely from a funk aspect. How it makes you feel, and even now, that’s still how I
kind of go.