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By the mid-1990s, Donald “Devante Swing” DeGrate, Jr., Dalvin “Mr. Dalvin” DeGrate, Cedric “K-Ci” Hailey, and Joel “Jojo” Hailey—collectively known as Jodeci—had established themselves as the dominant male R&B quartet on the planet. After the releases of their multi-platinum smashes Forever My Lady (1991) and Diary of a Mad Band (1993), the group redefined the standards for successful, viable R&B artists by standing out from their contemporaries in musical approach and aesthetics. As numerous R&B groups began to emerge, Jodeci raised the stakes with their third album and it allowed them to reach another level of superstardom.On July 18, 1995, The Show, the After Party, the Hotel was released by Uptown/MCA Records, and it became their third consecutive hit recording. The album spawned three singles: “Freek’n You,” “Love U 4 Life,” and “Get on Up.” For the album’s twentieth anniversary, we spoke with legendary engineer Jimmy Douglass about his role in constructing this timeless album.
How did you become involved in the making of this album?
Well, it was really a roundabout situation. There was a studio located in Rochester, New York called Dajhelon. There was this guy named Lamar Mitchell, who used to be with Bernie Worrell back in the day playing keyboards. We became very, very close. He ended up being a part of Jodeci, somehow. When they were touring after the release of Diary of a Mad Band, he was one of the people they took on the road with them. He became part of their whole package. So there was that connection, but I still didn’t know them. The drummer in the band, Reggie Young, lived in Rochester, New York. This is a long story, but it’ll all make sense eventually. In Rochester, New York, at that time, studios were flourishing, but it was hard to get into a large studio. Reggie Young knew a guy in Rochester whose parents built a great studio for him. It was this three room operation with a big board. It was great. They were trying to figure out how to get some of the New York City business. Hip hop was starting to become the best thing as opposed to rock and roll. Rochester was six hours away from New York City by car. The owner of the studio had an artist that was signed to MCA Records. He also had a bunch of people that wanted to come from New York City who wanted to record there, but he didn’t have any urban engineers located in Rochester at that time. The owner asked Reggie, “Do you know anyone who would be willing to do engineering work here?” Lamar said to Reggie, “There is this guy I know.”
So I took a trip up there one weekend, and he brought up three groups and there was nobody else up there except for me. It was a holiday too. It was the weekend that Kurt Cobain died, actually. I remember it so well because I had the TV on and there was no sound. I kept on seeing the same bite over and over again. There were five producers in the studio, and they just tag teamed me to death for three days. I thought it would be a situation where we would record and the group would be done. But no. They brought in these producers, and after one set was done, the next one would come in. This is what happened that whole weekend. I also mixed a record for him for his artist. So I did all of these things, and I barely slept the entire time. He came back to me blown away, and I was blown away at myself because I did so many things. After that, I went back home and that’s the end of that story.
A few months later, he called me and said, “Hey, I have this gig coming up to my studio. It’s going to be about a six month gig. It’s going to be Jodeci, and they need an engineer. They’re going to rent the whole place out. Devante is also going to do some producing for Whitney [Houston] and a lot of different acts. I’d love for you to come and be their guy.” I replied, “Sure. I’ll come.” This is how I got invited to party. It was from the studio owner and not the group. So what Devante did was he made a deal with the studio to do Jodeci and all of his productions—because there were three rooms available—the studio owner basically gave them a six-month fee. We came in and locked ourselves down for six months. In that six months, we worked on Jodeci’s album and all the producers and other side projects that Devante had going on. In Studio A, Dalvin was working on his record. We were doing so many things. Downstairs, K-Ci and Jojo were working on The Show, the After Party, the Hotel. This is how crazy it was back then. The house had twenty-one people there that were all talented: Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Magoo, Playa, Tweet, Ginuwine, Sugah, and when we made that album there, we found and met Stevie J. We brought him into the fold. So that is what was going on in that house. It was a boiling hot pot of talent there. It was just incredible.
that six month period of recording this album, how much work was completed overall?
nBetween doing Sugah’s and Missy’s group, Sista’s album, it was a busy time. Timbaland was there making beats every day. He was making beats for Jodeci and K-Ci & Jojo. He was just making stuff every day. First of all, those six months turned into a year. They didn’t get the album done in six months. It almost turned into a year-in-a-half, actually. Devante was a mad man. He couldn’t just close the door. That is what he did. He was very particular about what he did. He wouldn’t let anything go through the cracks, unless he was truly satisfied with it. So a whole year passed by. I remember Suge Knight coming up there. We had all kinds of visitors while we were making this record. Mike Tyson came up there and took everybody to dinner. When Mike came to visit, Devante showed him the whole set up, the production crew, and the talent that was there. He loved it so much. He just fell in love with the whole thing. Afterward, he said, “I want to take everyone to dinner.” [laughs] Rochester is a very small town; it’s like a small college town. So how are you going to suddenly take twenty people to dinner? He rode in a limousine from New York City up to Rochester. He offered to give $1000 to every person who would give up their seat in the restaurant, so we could all eat together. [laughs] It was that kind of party when making this record. It was so crazy, but ridiculously amazing.
One of the things that was interesting about it for me was amongst this talented camp of young people coming up, Devante, who was viewed as a God because of what he had accomplished, was regarded as the hot hand. Record companies were sending him stuff every day to get him to do anything on a record. At the time, Timbaland was 19, Static Major was 17 or 18, and they were all young people that didn’t have the knowledge of the music business. He was amazingly talented, so they were soaking up the talent, but they were also soaking up what he represented. One of the functions I had was keeping them focused. It just became this way because I was a little older than everyone else in the house. I had a whole career before I went up to Rochester. I worked with Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Foreigner, Genesis, and Phil Collins, so to me, Devante was a great talent, but the rest of the allure I couldn’t buy because it didn’t have anything to do with making records. It had to do with another part of our culture. He was an amazingly talented human being. I couldn’t buy into the rest, so that’s who I was to all of them. We were making great fukking music. As history would tell us, we were making music that didn’t exist yet. Therein lies the love and the amazement of the whole thing. I would try to steer everybody to keep their heads level and to keep working, instead of believing that they would become superstars which happened anyway. [laughs] What I was trying to tell them was, if you didn’t work, becoming a superstar wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t about becoming a superstar; it was really about self-gratification and getting the music out of your soul and having the world hear what you felt inside. That’s what I was trying to get across to them. This was kind of my role during the making of the record. [laughs]
When you began working with the group on this album, can you describe your first studio interaction with them?
It was a different kind of experience for me because machines had come into the art of making music. The drum machines as well as other machines. The one thing about this album that was different and interesting was that house, Dajhelon Studios, had this Neve VR console upstairs in the big room which is what I excelled on. Timbaland and I ended up using that room, specifically. They had a room downstairs that was in the basement. The big room upstairs had tall ceilings, the Neve VR, big speakers, and there was some fan noise in there. I think, Devante, brought in his own stage monitors. They sat right in our faces, along with some other subs he had in there. It was so fukking loud in there. It was ridiculous. On the back table is where he would set up and Timbaland would set up there sometimes, too. Everyone was fighting for studio time. There was also a guy named Darryl Pearson up there. There were three to four producers vying for studio time. Devante and Jodeci, obviously, had the first pick. It would be so crowded upstairs. Devante and I talked a lot before we began making this record. He had so many keyboards. He collected so many keyboards. I’ve never seen that many before in one setting.
There was this studio downstairs that you could walk to the back of and there was this door, and when you opened it, there was a recording booth, and it led to a hallway and then across from the hallway, there was a second big room for whatever. Then across the hallway, there was the control room. The control room had an Amek board. I didn’t really like the Amek board that much. What happened was Devante ended up loving that studio because he could sleep down there and outside the studio itself and the control room was there. In the other room, he put all of his keyboards. When you walked in there, you would’ve thought you were in a music store. He had lines from that keyboard room to the studio. So he took over the studio downstairs in the basement and that became his love. Upstairs, it was Timbaland, Missy, Ginuwine, me, and everyone else doing stuff all the time. Then, he would come upstairs and bring Jodeci’s music. Most of the time, Jodeci would record their vocals upstairs, but sometimes, they would record the vocals downstairs with Devante. There was a second studio, one flight downstairs before the basement, where Static and them would be, but it didn’t have as much equipment in it. Everybody was working every day. That place was on fire.
It was me and another engineer that Devante brought from Baltimore. I can’t remember his name, but his name is on the record. This guy wanted really badly to stick with Devante, but I would listen to what Devante had to say. He would say that he wanted to spend two weeks on a mix, and I would tell him that I didn’t want to spend two weeks on a mix. He was very discerning about what he wanted. He would hear certain things and he would stew over it until it died. This album is very detail oriented. We spent a long time working on these songs.
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