Smitty:  Yeah, well, you’ve always been a pioneer in music, period.  You’ve done so many new things, for example, this new record.  Talk to me about the difference of this record and, say, music of the past.  Why is this new for the listener?

BB:  What I’ve learned over the years is that funk music is played on all continents and you’ve got Jocelyn Brown out there in the U.K., you’ve got Tyrone who lives in Bermuda, you’ve got Frank McComb out on the West Coast, you’ve got Najee in Florida by way of New York, and I just wanted to basically just add a little bit more urban to the record and add a little more vocals.  I think most of the Smooth Jazz guys, they’ve kinda shied away from doing anything with vocals, but I wanted to broaden the horizons and just add hip hop drums from a New York point of view and just create a different fusion of jazz.  You have guys out here who do the Smooth Jazz thing, but I wanted to be a little more risqué with the low end.

Smitty:  Yeah, man, and you did a great job with it.  And thank you for including some local talent there in Atlanta with my boy Joey Sommerville.

BB:  Yeah.  My man is blowin’ up, dude.  He’s got a record coming out nationwide in May.  I forget which label he’s gonna be on. So he’s been hitting it hard every Thursday from like September on and doing really well, bringing special guests like Marion [Meadows] and Phil Perry, and he’s brought in Peabo Bryson and Jeff Lorber, so his lineup has been really, really hot every Thursday, and then not too long ago he spent some time down at the Seabreeze Jazz Fest in Florida and did an outstanding job down there, so he’s knockin’ ‘em off one at a time.

Smitty:  (Laughs.)  Yeah, I love his vibe…

BB:  He had Toni Redd.  I didn’t get a chance to do a full song with her, but I wanted to include her on it because I did some work on her most previous record, so we were just showing a little appreciation of each other’s talents.

Smitty:  Exactly.

BB:  And you have Ragan Whiteside from New York who I worked with for many years. I just want to help develop people’s talents, man.

Smitty:  Absolutely, man.  I love that.  We all should in some way give back and reach out because there’s so much great talent out there. That statement has become a cliché more than ever before.

BB:  Mm-hmm.

Smitty:  And if we all just grab some of those pieces and introduce them to new audiences…

BB:  Right, exactly.

Smitty:  I think that’s a beautiful thing.  And you can say hello to my girl Toni Redd.  I’ve been knowing her for years.  I remember her when she…

BB:  Oh really?

Smitty:  Oh my Gosh, yeah.  I remember Toni when she lived in Dallas.  In fact, I didn’t know her until I met her in Hawaii many years ago.

BB:  Yeah?

Smitty:  Yeah, and just fell in love with her voice and we stayed in touch.  We would lose touch and then we’d find each other again.

BB:  Mm-hmm, real nice lady.  She was out in California there for a while too in San Diego.

Smitty:  Yeah, absolutely.  She was down there with Fattburger.

BB:  With Fattburger, right.

Smitty:  Yeah, she’s a great girl, I tell ya.

BB:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Smitty:  And you featured her on “Flying High” on your new project.

BB:  Yeah, along with Frank McComb.

Smitty:  Yeah, and Frank is a bad boy. 

BB:  He’s a madman.  He’s like a little scientist.

Smitty:  (Laughs.)

BB:  That is my man right there, Frank McComb.

Smitty:  Yeah, and a cool dude, you know?

BB:  Brilliant talent, man.

Smitty:  So you just pulled out so much great stuff with this record and I want to particularly talk too about Track 13, “Joe Zawinul.”  What a nice thing to do.

BB:  Mm, that one was inspired by actually Ike Stubblefield, who is an older cat, organ player who actually has got a real nice song out in Europe.  He was in Atlanta and he gave me this track for his record and I gave it a listen.  It didn’t have any melody or anything like that, so he basically played the track for me without any kind of melody and he said “Man, I’d like for you to write something on top of this.”  So we were just sitting around the room and talking about great musicians and then the topic of Zawinul came up and he was talking about his experiences with Zawinul personally from a musical standpoint, so that conversation just evolved to just doing that particular song and that’s what came out, “Joe Zawinul.”

Smitty:  Wow, well, Zawinul evoked music in a lot of people.

BB:  Yup, yup, and I love the funky organ that Ike is playing on that.

Smitty:  Yeah, man, I love that organ.  We need more of that organ sound out there.

BB:  Exactly, exactly.  That’s an authentic B3. And then he added some horns, so we wanted to really keep it special, something years from now people would be like “Who is Zawinul?”

Smitty:  Yeah.

BB:  Exactly.

Smitty:  And you caught up with my boy Marion Meadows.

BB:  Oh yeah, oh yeah.  I’ve known Marion, ’84 we met in St. Croix.  I was hired to do a gig with Norman Connors and that’s how we met.  We’ve been brothers ever since.  He’s played on about seven of my records, I’ve played on about four or five of his.

Smitty:  Yeah, he’s a great cat, yeah.

BB:  Nice guy.

Smitty:  So the record is out and people can get it everywhere.

BB:  Yes.