Don Blackman - 1982 - Don Blackman

Don Blackman

1982

Don Blackman

01. Yabba Dabba Doo 5:17

02. Heart's Desire 4:30

03. Holding You, Loving You 4:12

04. Deaf Hook-Up Connection 4:02

05. You Ain't Hip 3:00

06. Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide 3:36

07. Since You Been Away So Long 5:13

08. Never Miss A Thing 3:50

Don Blackman arrived in 1982 like a quiet hurricane from the fertile musical soil of Jamaica, Queens, a neighborhood that seemed to manufacture funk-jazz hybrids the way other places made bagels. Born Donald Blackman on September 1, 1953, he grew up next door to saxophonist Charles McPherson and within shouting distance of the jazz pantheon—John Coltrane had lived less than a mile away, and a cousin ran with McCoy Tyner. By fifteen he was already holding his own in McPherson’s band alongside bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes, the sort of teenage résumé that makes ordinary high-school yearbook entries look like grocery lists. The electric piano soon called, and with it came the 1970s parade of heavyweights: stints with Parliament-Funkadelic, Earth, Wind & Fire, Roy Ayers, and then a foundational role in Lenny White’s Twennynine, where Blackman wrote the irresistible “Peanut Butter” and “Morning Sunrise.” He also gifted Bernard Wright the gleefully unpronounceable “Haboglabotribin’,” a track that would later become hip-hop catnip. By the time Arista’s GRP imprint handed him a solo deal, Blackman was already the secret weapon every producer wanted and almost nobody outside the New York session circuit could name.

His influences formed a deliciously contradictory stew. The pure jazz vocabulary of Coltrane and McPherson sat alongside the cosmic absurdity of George Clinton’s mothership, the harmonic sophistication of Herbie Hancock and George Duke, and the gospel-tinged soul of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. You can hear all of it swimming around inside the eight tracks of his self-titled debut. The record was cut at Manhattan’s A&R Studios in late 1981 under the co-production of Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen—the GRP brain trust—with Weldon Irvine serving as associate producer. Mastered at Sterling Sound by Ted Jensen, the album wears the crisp, slightly glossy sheen of early-’80s high-end jazz-funk without ever sounding sterile. Blackman himself handled synthesizer (Oberheim OB-X), Fender Rhodes, clavinet and Yamaha grand, while the rhythm section was pure Jamaica Queens royalty: Barry “Sonjohn” Johnson on bass (a player who made even Marcus Miller sit up and take notes), a young Dennis “Washington” Chambers on drums, Steve “City” Horton and Eddie “EPM” Martinez on guitars, and the ever-tasteful ‘Crusher’ Bennett on percussion. Horns arrived courtesy of Jon Faddis, Ronnie Cuber, Alex Foster and George Opalisky; strings were conducted by Grusin himself. A small army of background singers—Desire “Deezie” White, Sheri “Ayo” Snyder, the Palmer Brothers, and an adorable contingent labeled “The Little People”—filled out the vocal tapestry. It was less a session than a family reunion with better clothes and tighter arrangements.

The music itself refuses to sit still. “Yabba Dabba Doo” opens the proceedings with a call-and-response P-Funk roof-raiser that somehow also feels like a Saturday-morning cartoon rewritten by a conservatory graduate. Martinez’s guitar solo cuts through the party like a neon switchblade. Then the mood shifts without warning into the liquid mid-tempo elegance of “Heart’s Desire” and “Holding You, Loving You.” The latter remains the album’s calling card—a romantic slow-burn whose bassline alone could power a small city, its piano flourishes so delicate they feel almost shy. Blackman’s voice, sweet and slightly grainy, floats above the groove like someone who knows the difference between seduction and salesmanship. “Deaf Hook-Up Connection” closes side one with grinding guitar riffs and kicking horns, a reminder that Blackman never forgot how to get dirty. Side two keeps the same mischievous balance: the playful finger-wagging of “You Ain’t Hip,” the conscience-probing “Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide” (co-written with Irvine and Steven Moss), the aching ballad “Since You Been Away So Long,” and the closing slap-bass masterclass “Never Miss a Thing.” Throughout, Blackman’s keyboard work is the quiet star—never flashy for flash’s sake, always serving the song while still managing to sound like no one else.

The album’s artwork matches the music’s sly confidence. Photographed by Trudy Schlachter and designed by Howard Fritzson, the cover presents Blackman himself in a clean, stylish portrait that feels both approachable and quietly regal—no spaceships, no exaggerated Afro, just a man who knows exactly how good the record inside is. The design is pure early-’80s GRP elegance: crisp type, restrained color palette, the sort of packaging that looked equally at home in a jazz boutique or a disco crate.

Commercially the album barely registered in the United States; GRP and Arista’s promotional machinery apparently took the day off. Yet across the Atlantic, especially in the United Kingdom’s rare-groove and jazz-funk scenes, it found a devoted audience. “Holding You, Loving You” and “Heart’s Desire” became minor European hits and permanent fixtures on specialist radio. Critics who actually heard the record tended to rave—AllMusic later called it “as phenomenal as anything else his contemporaries were producing at the time (George Duke in particular)”—but the wider press mostly looked the other way. That initial neglect has only burnished its cult status. Original pressings now change hands for serious money, and successive reissues (Expansion in 2006, various vinyl revivals including Vinyl Me, Please and Music On Vinyl in the 2020s) have introduced new generations to its charms.

Its true legacy lives in the samples and the quiet influence. J Dilla (as Jay Dee) flipped “Holding You, Loving You” for Slum Village’s “Go Ladies.” Elements of the album have turned up in downtempo house and countless hip-hop tracks. Bass players still study Johnson’s lines the way guitarists study Hendrix. And every time a modern neo-soul or jazz-funk artist reaches for that perfect blend of sophistication and street-level groove, they are, whether they know it or not, walking a path Blackman helped clear. He released only one more album under his own name—2002’s Listen—before cancer took him in 2013 at fifty-nine. Yet this single 1982 statement remains his monument: a thirty-four-minute masterclass in how to be funky without shouting, soulful without sentimentality, and jazzy without ever forgetting the dance floor. In an era of overproduced excess, Don Blackman made an album that still feels like a secret handshake among people who know better.