Questlove Supreme: Robert “Kool” Bell

Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.

Shall we start, Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I'm your host quest Love Jenkins. Uh, you got the Supreme family, fresh off of our fifth anniversary, fresh from the Met Gala.

What's up on pay Bill?

I'm just saying I was just taking off my alpha from met Gala. Everything's good. It was good, it was fun.

What did you do at Wow?

Yeah?

Yeah, I was. I was Kim's uh uh you know Date, I was black a second actually was Can you imagine that.

Was the.

Dude you work with muppets all day?

Of course I can imagine that you could have just borrowed an outfit that's much more American than the than the Muppets.

I will say I've had some great Halloween costumes care of the costume department at Sesame Street.

I was I was going to say, are you allowed to borrow like extra costumes if you return it.

I'm not sure if the loudest correct word, but yes, I have procure pure.

Duck like a spare big bird offset.

I have not snuck puppets offset that would give me, like, you know, jail time. But I have stolen other people's costumes.

For sure. Yeah, we got we gotta reinterview you one day, Bill, Yeah, for real.

Hey, you know I am a book of open knowledge. What I'm a open book. That's fine, that's fine, That's that's fine with me. I'm ready to talk at any time. You tell me what talk, I'll go, Suger Steve, Yes, you have you found Have you found God?

Yet?

Not exactly, But I am working on the greatest audio book right now.

To tell Steve.

Look, okay, I went overboard in the pandemic. I wrote to books and it's held. Steve is losing his hair right now because the book is like thirty chapters.

What hair? Oh wow?

Yeah, I mean you know I had nothing to do. I was doing Summer Soul on the day, be born on the farm. At night, you start journaling and somehow got turned into a thirty chapter book or whatever.

You live the dream right up. You should break that joint up.

You should break that joint up into an audio book, into thirty second snippets and put that shit on Spotify and bring your numbers up.

Yeah, you just got marketed that that Yes, that's why we wish we paid Fronte the big bucks that.

See he's wearing his glasses today.

I got my stringle bell glasses. He's smart, smart tage run around my company all day.

Right yeah, and with the with the special auburn.

I think that's I don't know if it's my red light or you're special.

Real family to me because as family, you all don't recognize I got my hair done until two months later. That is tofo me or thank you. We are family.

It is that shows you that we're we're real guys because guys don't recognize.

We don't notice none.

We notice if you cut it, like if you cut it, I'll notice you cut your hair.

But a new style too.

Much cool saying this is what can I just say before we get into it. I just wanted to also big up to LA because we've got a big decision to make today. I know this is gonna come out later, but some new some newsometime crazy mess.

Got time.

I have faith. I'm also running for governor of California.

The list is long enough.

Hey man, you know, look about our guest today.

Without any doubt in my mind, I believe that our guest is the founding member of the first Hip hop band wow, meaning a unit without a direct leader. You know, no, no disrespect to the James Brown Empire and whatnot. And even though technically Virginia's own Winston's They're They're a classic single, Amen brother, that interpolation of you know, Curtis Mayfield's Uh We're a Winner, which weird enough they never got litigious on.

But I don't want to open up any can of worms with that.

Even though that's been sampled five thousand plus times, making that the most sampled single. I'll say that our guest today holds as leader of this band, holds the dubious honor of having the most sampled catalog by a band.

In music.

And I'm not saying hip hop because that's that's limiting it. Like throughout music, pop artists have sampled cool and so yeah, and you know this dame like Summer Madness has been used billions of times.

Uh in t no title. People don't know that NT stands for no title.

Name them jungle boogie, give it up, Hollywood Swinging, Uh, Winter Sadness, Sport with Lightning ride, dungle jazz.

Uh So what was what was? What was a ho happy Jackie with Oh Little Children? Oh Little Children exactly all the others like over.

I believe the precise numbers eighteen hundred samples over songs that have either sold gazillion.

Triple or or just been declared classic.

But to me, what's more, probably more incredible about the legacy of Cooling Gang, is probably their ability to check the forecast and adjust accordingly throughout the decades, be it like the their their jazz soul instrumental heavy beginnings, with those like the self titled record and the two live albums that came after it, more soul Yeah, Live at Pj's and Sex Machine, the soul oriented stuff like Music and Message and Good Times, or their funk masterpiece Wild

Yes in the heart.

Johanna's album as one Something Special The Emergency Record was like one of their biggest selling albums.

UH to this day hashtag to this day.

UH.

This band continues to still operate and their sound is around forever, be it samples or seeing them a real deal live.

They still make records and they continue to brighten our lives.

And this is a long overdue, overdue episode of US Love. Yes, Basim and gentlemen, please welcome the namesake of one of the greatest bands in music, Robert cool.

Bell Coolni Gang. Yes, indeed, how are you? How are you doing today?

I'm doing fine. Quest his story when it comes to cool a guy.

Well, you guys, maybe you know, I'm just glad to be in great company. And you know, you guys literally have have written the blueprint that you know we are still following.

And you know, it's hard to do that.

Like oftentimes when people look at the story of groups and bands that have been around since the sixties and the seventies, there's a point in the eighties in which you kind of have to make life decisions on do you go with the flow, do you fight it, do you sabotage it? And you guys probably I'll say that,

You guys found a way to.

Really adjust and the silence, as we say, silence to the haters that might have had disdain because every record didn't sound like jungle boogie whatnot. But I mean, I I personally love in hindsight, how you guys have done that. And you know, as a member of a black band that's almost going on in the third decade, I mean, it's it's exemplar. Thank you, thank you very much on full exemplary. You know, I also want to note yesterday I got in the mail your I love your also your fora into the spirit.

Speaking of the spirit, of the boogie the spirit world.

You have your own champagne called lay cool I like, and I'm holding it even though they can't see it at home. I'm showing you guys right now that you know Robert cool Bell has its own When did you When did.

You get into actually a mirror?

But uh, when did you When did you first start your kind of your foray into the world of.

A fine drink?

Well, I mean what happened was I was on tour about three or four years now from Mota.

He came up to me.

He said, listen, you know we had it was in fast and we had about twenty days seven sold out.

And we're got ready to do it tour.

Of course, said to me, listen, I'm doing a champagne with the late Berry White and the Erry White look alike and also one of the BG's.

At the time there was a very white lookalike touring in Europe.

Yeah, they had a bit looks like you were doing Suffer club dates.

Wow, okay, I wasn't ready for that one.

He asked me.

Uh he said, uh uh, would you like to sell champagne on your tour and come up with your own champagne? I said, well, listen, then, I don't think that my fans we want to take a bottle of champagne after my show. They want the T shirts and caps and stuff like that. So I said, listen, I want to get on the shelves. He said, oh, I said, yeah, I want you on the shelves.

I ain't talking about no tour, no promo item.

With this idea and concept with the leg Who Champagne and up in the Rims where they make Don Peril on Crystal, all the big boys up there. You know, we end up cutting the deal with the Burchelo family and we worked on this for about a year and a half. I went to the Cool Champagne and I wanted to have that surprise element like coming to America.

Eddie Murphy that.

America, And that's how I got started with that several years ago. The one the most successful, but we got hipopandemic and everything else.

So but that's kind of how it happened.

I'm feeling that I'm feeling that you know that that's that's that's a hard world to break into. So you know, I'm glad that you found a way to get into it, because you know it's it's uh, this looks it's a classic package here.

I'm definitely send you a bottle uh on pay Bill.

I always wonder, yeah, the fact that how this country boy from Oxtown, Ohio break into the cocktail?

How did you get you know something?

I got to say that on on your on the official Cool and Gang Instagram page, those those little animated vignettes that you guys were doing telling the history of the group. It's probably one of the best surprises I've ever seen, because I mean, I've heard the story of the group, but to visually see that, it's it's a wonder that you guys even made it to even form a band, like not even to get to this point where you are as as as legacy, but just what you guys had to go through just to form a band.

For our listeners that have not heard or seen.

First of all, I recommend that you guys followed Cool in the Gang and look for these like.

Minute long bits on the one and.

So on YouTube is Yeah, Well, one I want to know, are you guys going to continue that series to tell the story of the band that in that manner? Because I love it, But can you tell us basically your beginnings from where you were born to to what brought you to Jersey to even form the.

Yeah, that's the first. Yeah, we want to continue that. We stopped, uh where where you see right now? Of course I want my brother, but a lot of stuff around myself and also you know, and then we lost d T. That was you know, another part of it. But let me go back Yoxtown, Ohio. We started off as the Jazzy Acts. Yes, the name was changed to the Soultown Band. It was the organization in Jersey City. It was trying to be like Motown and we became

We saw him in sixty four.

Okay, So that's when he said, well, you can't use the flames because so we said, well, we don't want to have any problems with the Godfather, so well, don't we just call ourselves Cooling the Gang.

The music was the mixture of the jazz and the.

R and B when we were the Soul Town Band, and that's when we found Cooling the Gang and we came out with our first record in July third, nineteen sixty nine.

Okay.

One of the most interesting elements and telling that story, and I'm sure that a lot of our listeners, especially the younger ones, might not be familiar with Could you just talk about speaking of your names like the gang.

Well, I'm trying to make it.

I mean we're you know, we're we're we're a we're a nerdy, so you don't have to give us the truncated answer like we we like those those nerdy details.

Yeah.

Well, what happened was that moved Jersey City, my family and I. I noticed that I my mother sent me to the store. They get a load of bread. At that time, it was called Lucy cost twenty five cents, and two guys walked up to me and said, uh, give me your money. Yeah, give me your money. So the two corners or whatever and I have. My mother said, well, boy,

And that was before I changed my name to cool. My name was to Mango.

To Mango to Mango was the significance of to Bengo.

What happened was that the that movie had Doughty Danders in there, and the save from africt. The name went to Mango.

Okay, I took on I took on that name, and I ended up those two guys one name was Quinno. Then other name was Monk and the other one was Tiger. So I became a part of that game. And I turned around and I ended up being the leader of that game. We had about twenty strong. What yeah, in the movie, in the book, that whole story before cooling, damn, And so I.

Had to learn the ways the way up the street at that time.

So you're saying that you had natural born leader skills that you know you've always had your whole life.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well my brother kind of kind of pulled me out of that. Okay, Calice, it was getting a little rough out there, and I started playing the bass and we started working the boys club, and uh, you know, when things started to changing a little bit.

I was gonna say this, this is sort of archetype story where like where you hear people just randomly say yeah. And then I started playing piano, But like, how long does it take you? Like how from how what was your musical IQ before you picked up the bass? And how long did it take you before you're confident enough to know I can play in a band or I can be a musician.

Well, Uh, the.

Late Spike Mickens, his brother's played guitar. I should come by Spikes housand. I learned how to play one song on one string called coming Home Baby, Okay working at the cafe well one night and Alice said, once you come up, because I was playing coulas and bos and stuff. He said, what you come on up and let's play that one song.

You know that you learned on that one string.

And the guy gave me your base about the base, and I played Coming Home Baby.

So wait, I'm sorry, is the question not when did you start playing bass, but when you started playing Cunga's then, because then you just threw that in there.

That sided Back in Uptown, Ohio, okayat pint can Okay Ford Bongos, we used to sit up in uh Youngtown, Ohio and uh it was a school called the Back of the uh School and we used to take the paint can. Depending on how much paint is left in the bottom of the can, created whatever that you're gonna get.

Yeah, So.

We played paint care t became to Jersey and if my brother finally bought uh some bongles there too, learning this one song and then I started listening to you know, different songs, and then Charles Smith used to show me some lines with the bass and that's when we became a part of the Soul Town Band.

And the name Cool.

That came about because there was a guy in the neighborhood and he was a hood and he uh, his name was Cool.

He spelled it was a C. I gotta get out of this day. I said, I like that name, So I took.

On the name Cool and spelled minds with the K, not knowing that that was the beginning it was gonna lead up to Cool at the game.

I did Cool ever find out that you were inspired by his name because you said he wasn't like, you know.

Not not really. I mean he was you know, he were one of those guys in the projects.

Man.

Oh but you was a boss?

No, not really.

So we're the fellow members of the original incarnation of the group. Were they also gang related as well?

Like?

How did you wind up organizing the band? And also like, I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, I understand the finances of the situation. And in terms of that, you know, I know it's not profitable for any you know, band over four members to really make money like that. So, like, how did you incorporate the other members that started at least the first incarnation of the band once they became cool in the game.

Well, I mean we started as were the members when we became a cool in the game.

Of course, we were all playing, you know, as.

A Soltown band, and the Solotown band we were, we created and learn the motile hits me.

I will listen to Jamison the lines that you're playing. You know, uh, for.

Verious motown artists. None of those guys was from the streets. I'm the only one that had to deal with that.

Okay, So what were those early shows like, like, did you still once you transition to music then, you know, were you able to successfully leave the street world that you're trying to escape from behind or do you still have to worry about those things when you're at shows, when you're going to rehearsal, when you're just walking around the neighborhood by yourself, Like, like, once you make that transition to a music musician, does that world still try to suck you in and bring you back to it

Okay, he's a musician now like leave him, leave him be Yeah.

Yeah, you had the problems, you know, a little bit.

You know, you're playing with the game whatever. You know, hardcore gods quick try to create some problems.

But uh, I was able to get through that. But that was but yeah, we had that.

Oh man, you know sold out man, you playing that music stuff.

Man, they saw it as a step back like some you're being a nerd now you're you're That's how they saw that.

The music and they was in the streets.

But you know, I think, I think, I think for for God, for the blood of that because all them guys all did and some of them went to jail, and.

That was a blessing to make it through that during that time.

You're right, I'm curious, uh, because I'm familiar with their history with uh you know acts like uh Louisa and like GM alone. I'm curious to how you found you know, like Fred uh well did you did you have dealings with Fred uh vigor Vodo and Fred uh Fyoto and Ted Simon Simoniadi I forget their names. I get those guys mixed up with Hugo and Luigi, but basically the

Okay? So you just talking about.

Yeah, like, can you talk about them and how they operated?

I've heard stories, but you know.

Well there was a small gene Renz story. Okay, he was a manager with.

Red Cole's Records, and then uh it was changed to we went from the Red Coach to the Light. And I remember mister V, Fiolo Freddy and mister V. They came to my house in Jersey City and uh knocked on the door. There's two guys down there with the tal you looking guy. So mister B and they came into out and listen, this is how you living? He said, listen weight problems with mister Red, and uh, we want to bring you guys.

Over to the Delight Records. So that was real, and they put a lot of pressure on mister gim Red. I had heard the story like the five heartbeats. They must have hung them out the window. One there and said, listen, you're gonna give up. That's it. Even before the heartbeats.

You said red, I was like, is there a connection?

Oh yeah, yeah, I was wondering. I was wondering, how you know, if those stories were true. My dad had like minor dealings with with Delight because they were also associated with Pickwick correct in.

The NASA the yeah, with.

Guns, I was not. I was not involved with those guys. And he'd be clear, Yeah, it's just that my dad.

You know, my dad's Philadelphia, and you know, after his his paraise into oldies do wop, you know, he would do like these little one off records in the sixties.

And it's no secret.

That a lot of the a lot of the Jersey associated labels, a lot of the tri state areas local labels were kind of mob run, you know, which even with sugar Hill, like with with with uh, you know, with Sylvia and Joey, having dealings with like Mars Levy and all those cats, like, you know, it was like

Could you could you share that story?

Well, mister v as we call him and frenyfield Yodo.

Called friendly Fielder.

Yeah, he said, you guys, you guys have been having some territorial hits, like in Philadelphia, maybe New York, Yeah, maybe Connecticut, he said, but we want you to work with this kind of thinking. That last name was some Douglas. He had had this.

Big hit with Mongol Debaco and uh.

He said, I want your guys to work with this producer. So we met them one time and it wasn't really flowing for us. So we went downtown to a studio called Baggies and we went in there around eight o'clock in the morning and we came out of there. We had created Jungle boogie Holly was swinging and funky stuff.

So no more problem from the big readers.

But I heard y'all hated it.

What did you hate about Jungle Buggie?

Well, according to your brother that you know, well, your brother explained to me that.

I guess you know Mango's world famous hit, uh soul Makosa, I em I'm a bum boop. You know it was the the origins of that song was that it was it was a hit in France and over in Africa and somehow, like bootlegs of the of the record made its way to the States right when disco culture is.

Starting, and that was a very very popular song.

And Calais was basically like yo, like make make your version of this song. And because they were jazz knobs, you know, it would be like yo, Fonte like you know you you and little brother y'all called y'all little underground okay player stuff.

But you know, y'all, y'all gotta need to lose it album right right, And so.

Uh, you know, brother brother Bayon basically said that you know, they listened to soula Makosa and it felt like just African mumbo jumble music.

We don't know this African mumbo jumble music.

So kind of mocking that song they made Jungle Boogie, And to me, the greatest moment. I'll say that my my all time favorite television show is really prevalent in my life right now, and there's there's there's a really telling moment about what I feel is the moment that Soul Trained solidified itself in history because, you know, the first two years of Soul Trained, Don had to lean heavy on his Chicago connections, so a lot of local you know, favor