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Topic subjectLarry Blackmon of Cameo
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=18&topic_id=204548&mesg_id=204613
204613, Larry Blackmon of Cameo
Posted by be_yourself, Wed Apr-27-16 05:11 PM
The link below didn't seem to be working too well so I've copied and pasted just in case.

https://www.facebook.com/CameoNation/?fref=ts

Larry Blackmon's Thoughts on the Passing of Prince:

People use the word genius and they throw it around, but Prince was a true genius. There are artists that I like to call “streamers,” people that bring to you their interpretation based on how it's coming to them, and Prince was a consistent streamer. His new material always had something to offer musically, and you would hear so much more in his music than from the average John Q. Michael Jackson's organization with Quincy Jones was like that, too.

Prince and myself were both honored to be mentioned in Miles Davis' autobiography. Miles gave a birthday party in New York on the east side in the '70s and we were both invited. We were all sitting at the table and a member of Miles Davis' entourage was very talkative, a little beyond what was necessary. Prince leaned over to me and said “Larry, I can't take much more of this, I'll see you guys later.” It was a little funnier than that, but that impressed me. He was a very private person. He wasn't very talkative, especially in an environment he wasn't familiar with, but he was always courteous. That was the last time we had that much time together. We would run into each other occasionally, and it was always a pleasure. He was a class act. When we had our encounters, it was always warm. We both felt like we belonged to a special club.

In turn, there were a lot of people from my organization that Prince would choose to work. They called it the CAMEO orientation. The most recent was John Blackwell who played drums for Prince from 2000 to 2012. Johnny would tell me that Prince used to yell at him and say “man, I need that Larry Blackmon funk on the damn drums!”

RIP His Purple Highness