Biography
Moving butts is a science. It's an art. Roger Troutman and his immensely talented musical family, Zapp, perfected this art form. The talkbox, the signature drum, and handclap track are all staples of the Troutman family's funky legacy. I hope you enjoy it. -Barry Benson
How do you like your funk? Old school, P-Funk, or regular? No matter how you like it, there was one artist and band that combined all the best elements of funk into an incredible sound that continues to please old fans and win new ones: Roger Troutman and his group, Zapp. But for all the millions of records and CDs the group sold, the packed concerts they played for almost 20 years, and the accolades they received from rappers and hip-hoppers like 2Pac and Dr. Dre, surprisingly little is known about this family-based band from Hamilton, Ohio, and the man who led it.
Together Roger and Zapp changed the sound of funk, staying true to its old-school roots while expanding it sonically. At their peak, they were among the hottest draws onstage or on record. Roger Troutman was an incredibly charismatic performer, who could play a myriad of instruments while leading Zapp through non-stop workouts that made the crowd beg for more. A man of charm and grace as well as undeniable talent, Roger was the ringleader and creative centre, and with his three brothers, Larry, Lester, and Terry (nicknamed Zapp), he brought the funk to new musical heights.
Roger was born to Rufus and Ruth Troutman on November 29, 1951, in Hamilton, Ohio. He was the fourth child in a family of nine kids and took to music early on. "Roger always played the guitar, " says Zapp drummer and younger brother Lester Troutman. "He called it the LaLa, and he would mimic Elvis Presley with a broom when he was like two or three. He got his first guitar when he was five or six, and before you knew it, he was playing in little bands."
One of the first groups Roger played in was an all-white band called The Crusaders. They released an instrumental record called "Seminole," on which an 11-year-old Roger plays guitar. Soon brother Lester joined up. "He could never keep a drummer, so he told me, you're gonna be my drummer, and he taught me how to play," Lester remembers. "And then my Dad bought me a snare, and that was hard, man. We were buck po', and after Roger taught me how to play he, my Dad, and I would go to these shows."
The
Crusaders broke up, but Lester and Roger joined forces and started
playing "tennis court dances," where they would remove the
net from a tennis court, hook up some electricity, and get their
party on. This was in the early 1960s, and they would play the
then-current hits early Temptations, Wilson Pickett, and, later on,
funked-up versions of The Beatles and The Monkees.
To keep his sons equipped with the various instruments they needed to progress, Rufus, a truck driver and industrious man, delivered wood scraps from the neighbouring lumber mills for extra cash. He also provided them with an education in early blues and R&B. "Dad had no musical training," Lester recollects.
"He worked two jobs during the week, but on the weekend it was party, party, party! B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, Chuck Jackson, Junior Walker..I mean, music was playing all the time. He'd have a little spirits, or cocktails as you call them, and we grew up listening all the time to his music, which was great."
It didn't hurt that they were also coming of age in one of the most musical states in the Union. Ohio is uniquely positioned close to such northern musical strongholds as Chicago and Detroit as well as Southern cities like Memphis. As a result, the Buckeye State became a hotbed for funk and soul music. The Isley Brothers were originally from Cincinnati, as was King Records, the home of James Brown, Little Willie John, The "5" Royales, and numerous other early R&B and soul artists. The Troutman brothers were exposed to all this music by their dad, who would take them to see the touring shows when they came through Dayton or Cincinnati.
Seeing all those artists gave the Troutmans an incredible music education. "We got a direct hands-on experience with all that kind of music--anything black, anything R&B. We were privy to all of that" says younger brother Terry "Zapp" Troutman. "Coming up, we were inspired by all the great singers, musicians, and entertainers we saw. We were totally into music, and in our world music was everything".
Father Rufus clearly responded to his sons' musical needs. Though the young Roger was primarily a guitar player, he was captivated by the Hammond B3 sound of Dave "Baby" Cortez and his instrumental hit, "The Happy Organ." Roger badly wanted a B3, but the instrument's bulk, along with its expense, made it impractical. So Rufus found a cheaper and smaller replacement. "The popular organ at the time was either a Wurlitzer or a B3," Lester explains. "But my dad found a smaller version of the B3 called the C3, and we'd play that song 'The Happy Organ' on that. We wrote our own version called 'The Jolly Organ' and recorded it and changed the name of the song to 'Jolly Roger.' It was a regional hit and helped us stay busy gigging."
Lester also remembers his first set of drums. "They were some off-brand called Roxy. I never saw or heard of the brand again, but [Dad] polished them up and put our names on the bass-drum head. He bought us the equipment, but he taught us to make the most of what we had. And because most of the instruments were old and from the pawnshop, we did whatever we had to do in order for them to play . . . tape, chicken wire, whatever it took."
The Troutmans now had the drums, organ, and guitar, but to get that fat Hammond sound on the organ, they were missing one critical ingredient: a Leslie Speaker. Luckily, Dad had gotten his hands on an old, broken-down one, and a local neighbour, an electrician, was able to repair it.
Even in the early days, Roger was fascinated by electronics and the new sounds that were pushing music forward. As soon as he had the Leslie, he started experimenting by playing his guitar through it. This was the era of Jimi Hendrix, and although Roger was a better keyboard player than guitarist, Hendrix's music pushed him to become as strong on the guitar and to toy with all the era's new gadgets--the fuzztone, wah wah pedal, and tremolo bar.
A pivotal moment in Zapp and Roger's musical history occurred while the Troutman brothers were at home watching, of all things, Sesame Street. Stevie Wonder was appearing on the children's program, doing number counts through a new invention, the talkbox. Absolutely blown away by how Stevie was combining vocal and keyboard sounds, Roger spent the next two or three years tirelessly trying to duplicate the talkbox effect with his Leslie--until he finally got it right.
In 1965 older brother Larry got out of the service and came home to find his younger siblings moving ahead with their music. Larry was more of a jazz fan, especially of Wes Montgomery; however, he couldn't help but get excited by what his brothers were doing. By the early '70s he had joined the group as conga player-road manager. At this time the group was called The Essentials and consisted of Roger, Lester, bassist and cousin Roger Shepard, and local friend Chris Croom. When Larry joined they became Roger & The Human Body. ("The drums were like the heart, and you've got the rhythm, which was like the soul, and the vocals were like the voice, and the leader was the head," offers Lester.) That's when things started to take off.
Upon Lester's high school graduation in 1974, Roger & The Human Body put a show together and started touring all over the U.S. and Canada. As the band got tighter and more experienced, it started moving up through the ranks. Within a year, the group was playing better gigs at NCO clubs, fairs, and nicer venues.
By 1977 the band had gotten even larger and more dynamic with the addition of brother Terry (nicknamed "Zapp"), a junior in high school. Soon after his arrival, fate stepped in at a 1978 gig in Cincinnati. "We were playing this club called Never On Sundays, and there were about seven people there, because it was during a blizzard," Lester recalls. "But one of the people in the club was Bootsy's brother, Phelps "Catfish" Collins. We were doing a song by George Duke called 'Reach For It,' and Catfish was just blown away. He had seen us years earlier, but we had lost touch. He asked us if we were signed up with anyone. We had talked with a number of labels . . . Westbound, Polydor, and Mercury, but nothin' was happenin.'"
"Catfish said he would have Bootsy call us," Lester continues. "We didn't think anything of it until Bootsy called and asked if we could be in Detroit in a couple of days. We said sure and headed off to Detroit. We were walking around the block near United Sound with Bootsy when George Clinton pulled up in a taxi. We talked with George and made a deal on the spot..and boom, it was on!"
The group, now called Zapp, recorded their debut album in Detroit at Clinton's favourite studio, United Sound Systems. Roger was fascinated by Clinton's hand-clap sound, which was the sonic rage at the time, and wanted to learn how Clinton got the thunderous noise.
"George had the biggest and baddest hand claps in the industry," remembers Lester. "He took us down in the basement at United Sound and showed us how he did it. A few years later, when we set up our own studio in Dayton, the first thing we concentrated on was building a room just to get handclaps. We kept what we learned from George and took it to the max".
George introduced Roger at the first (and only) Funk Awards in December 1979. After speeches and awards were given out to various record industry execs who had helped the funk along, George came up to the stage with an announcement:
"I've got someone y'all are not gonna believe. This is the most talented musician I've ever seen or heard in my life. His name is Roger Troutman, and he's the leader of a group called Zapp - we'll have their record out in the spring and watch out, 'cause it's going to explode!" With that, Roger came out on a makeshift stage and did a small set by himself. Backed by a drum machine, he astounded the crowd with his talkbox vocals and guitar, saxophone, and keyboard playing. When it was all over, everyone in that room knew that Roger and Zapp were going to blow music fans away.
But as usual in the P-Funk Empire, there were complications. The first Zapp album was supposed to be part of a production deal George had made with Columbia Records for his own custom label, Uncle Jam. George had already gotten advances and had geared up the Columbia hit-making machinery for the release. Meanwhile, a Warner Bros. exec who was at the Funk Awards took Roger aside and signed him to a separate deal. Needless to say, this caused a great deal of legal wrangling, but the outcome was that Roger and Zapp went with Warner Bros.
"More Bounce To The Ounce," the debut's first single, came out in the summer of 1980 and reached #2 on Billboard's R&B chart. All of a sudden, the group went from playing clubs to opening concerts for Rick James and other funk acts. "Can you imagine being in your early twenties, and everywhere you go, you're hearing your music on the radio?" an excited Lester remembers. "I mean, record company checks as big as this room. Women, cars, shoes, diamonds . . . that's what it meant as far as material things." Younger brother Zapp chimes in, "That was the one that kicked us off on a national level. That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me."
But "More Bounce" proved to be the tip of the iceberg. The four Troutman brothers were soon joined by seven other musicians, vocalists, and horn players, and their stage show became even more renowned for non-stop excitement. A typical Roger/Zapp show would usually start with the band vamping to a deadly groove, and then Roger would emerge from the back of the hall on the back of a very large roadie, who would carry him toward the stage. The place would go wild.
During their set, Roger would play keyboards/talkbox, harmonica, saxophone, and drums. With dual keyboard/talkbox set-ups on either side of the stage, he would work both sides of the hall while the band would dance, play, and sing behind him.
The showmanship was incredible, peaking when Roger would stand on his head and simultaneously play guitar. People were so amazed by these antics that Zapp and Roger would often eclipse the headliners, winning new converts at every gig.
The Zapp debut went gold, and taking a cue from the George Clinton playbook, Roger became a featured solo artist onstage and in the recording studio. He released his first solo album, The Many Facets Of Roger, in August 1981. The lead single, Roger's take on the Motown classic "I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Part I)," climbed to #1 on the R&B charts; it was the song's third trip to the top (Gladys Knight & The Pips and Marvin Gaye recorded the two prior versions).
With Zapp and Roger now both established R&B-funk stylists, their albums became virtually interchangeable, and throughout the 1980s, both acts had a string of hits. "Be Alright," written by Roger and older brother Larry, went to #26 on the R&B chart in early 1981 and was followed by their only #1 R&B hit, "Dance Floor (Part I)," in 1982. "Doo Wa Ditty (Blow That Thing)" also landed in the R&B Top 10 in1982, and "I Can Make You Dance (Part I)" made it to #4 R&B in the summer of 1983. Then things started to fall off for a couple of years until "Computer Love" went Top 10 R&B in 1986. Even with fluctuating chart success, they kept touring whether they had hit records or not--something that has continued to this day.
Roger also continued to release his solo albums throughout the 1980s, and though a number of the jams contained on this set are familiar to Zapp and Roger fans, it's surprising how few charted. Roger struck Top 10 R&B in 1984 with "In The Mix," from the album The Saga Continues, but his biggest hit, both on the R&B and Pop charts, was "I Want To Be Your Man." This slow jam from his album Unlimited! Utilizes all the killer Roger ingredients: a slow, sexy groove, amazing vocoder vocals, and ultra-soulful lyrics.
For both his solo and Zapp albums, Roger included old soul favourites done in his signature style. He couldn't get enough of classic soul and R&B. In fact, when he visited L.A., he would often come over to my house and watch videos of performances by everyone from James Brown to Sly & The Family Stone. His absorption of the great stuff paid off creatively: In addition to "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," his soul covers included "Ooh Baby Baby," "Midnight Hour," "Thin Line Between Love & Hate," and others.
Roger's love of classic jams was matched only by his passion for recording. In 1983 I flew to Dayton to meet with him to get information for a press package I was doing. The Troutmans had just finished building their own studio, Troutman Sound Labs, and Roger couldn't have been more proud. As he walked me through the studio, he pointed out the Neve board with flying faders and outboard gear stacked to the ceiling. Not being a recording techie, I nodded as he explained all of the outboard gear and what it did. But then he pressed, "play" on the console, and "Heartbreaker" came booming out of the speakers. I was floored. The handclaps thundered across the studio as the Zapp track took their sound to a new level.
Ten years later I ran into Roger while he was playing a gig in Southern California. His bus was parked behind the club, and he was anxious to show me how he had outfitted it. "No, man, you gotta check this out, you won't believe it," he told me as we walked across the parking lot. I climbed up the steps into the main cabin of the bus, expecting to find a tricked-out custom coach. Instead, I gazed at an incredible mobile studio, built by Roger to record live gigs and any song ideas that came to him while travelling. All the outboard gear and a full 24-track console were loaded into this bus, and Roger couldn't have been happier.
The studio on wheels certainly came in handy, since Roger and Zapp toured for a mind-blowing 300 to 350 dates a year throughout the 1980s and into the '90s. Even as the hits started falling off in the late '80s, they still took to the road, building up a national fan base unlike any other funk-R&B act of the day. The clubs might have gotten smaller, but they were always filled with excited fans who couldn't get enough of the Roger/Zapp live experience.
However, by the mid-1990s, Roger and Zapp were at a crossroads. Just as their hits were dwindling, and they had lost their recording deal with Warner Bros., old hits were finding new life as hip-hop samples. A diverse group of rap and hip-hop artists, including MC Hammer, Kris Kross, Blackstreet, Michael and Janet Jackson, Ice Cube, and Snoop Dogg, all borrowed from Roger/Zapp. Roger even guested on "Boom! There She Was" by the British group Scritti Politti.
The most popular sample was Dr. Dre and 2Pac's reworking of "Computer Love" into "I Get Around," which rose to #5 R&B in 1993. A relationship with Dr. Dre had developed when Dre was working on Snoop Dogg's first album and needed a talkbox sound. He knew that Roger did the baddest talkbox work on Earth, so he and Roger hooked up during one of Zapp's West Coast tours. A musical and personal friendship developed, resulting in "California Love," a huge national hit for 2Pac in 1996. In California the track connected strongly not only with the group's urban base but also with a huge Latino crowd, thereby resuscitating Zapp's West Coast profile.
Roger and Zapp stayed on the road throughout most of the 1990s until tragedy struck on the morning of April 25, 1999. In an apparent murder-suicide, Roger was discovered near death in an alley behind his company, Roger Tee Enterprises, having been shot multiple times. His brother Larry was found dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in his Lincoln Continental, which had crashed into a tree less than seven blocks from the murder scene. Roger was pronounced dead at a Dayton hospital.
Certainly the members of Zapp were shocked by this horrible tragedy. They remained off the road for six months, but in the fall of 1999, the group decided that Roger's memory would be better served if they'd go back out on tour. I was fortunate to catch one of their shows at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre in August 2001. Zapp was sandwiched on a bill between openers Tierra and headliners War, a show that appealed to Zapp's huge Hispanic audience in Southern California.
Even though Roger's presence was lacking, the performance still contained all the excitement and full-blown funk of earlier gigs. The line-up now consisted of Lester Troutman on drums; Zapp (Terry) Troutman on bass, keyboards, harmonica, vocals, and voicebox; Rick Bray on guitar; Greg Jackson on keyboards and vocals; Dale DeGroat on vocals, harmonica, and keyboards; Nicole Cottom on vocals; Bart Thomas on keyboards, voicebox, and bass; and MC Bigg Robb. Most of the band members had been playing together for the past ten to 12 years.
When Zapp hit the stage, the crowd went crazy as the talkbox sound of Roger echoed throughout the Greek. MC Bigg Robb gave a brief eulogy to Roger, and then it was as if time had stood still. The band kicked it as hard as ever, and the memories and sound of Roger and Zapp drifted through the L.A. night. All of the hits were delivered with Zapp and Jackson handling Roger's vocal and talkbox parts. It was a standout show, proving that you can't keep a great band down.
So to Roger and Zapp fans, this funk's for you! Enjoy the greatness that this musical genius spread during his brief time on Earth, and if you see that Zapp is touring in your town, check them out, you won't be disappointed.
Tom
Vickers
(Tom Vickers is an industry veteran who started as
Rolling Stone's ghetto correspondent and worked for George
Clinton's P-Funk Empire from 1976 to 1980. Since then, he has worked
in publishing and A&R and is currently a consultant in both of
these capacities for various major labels.)