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19:40-32:20

Ralph Humphrey: George Duke was a good friend of mine—we're both from the bay area—and after I decided to leave Don's band, lo and behold, I get a call from George Duke. Frank's looking for a drummer.

I'd Hit That: And this is like how long after?

RH: Well, I leave Don in '72 and . . .

IHT: And why did you leave?

RH: Oh, I think I had run my course with Don. And I was working my way in the town here, trying to do sessions and what not, so I kind of wanted to get myself out off the road—little did I know that I was gonna go way back on it. But, yeah, I mean, George called and said, "Look, Frank's looking for a drummer. He's putting together a new band, blah, blah, blah . . . and he'd seen many, many drummers already." So, he went, "Why don't you come down and audition?" And I've never even consider Frank Zappa. I didn't even know that much about him at the time. But I went down and did the audition and because I didn't know what to expect— I did know one thing, that after my experience with Don Ellis I was fearless.

IHT: Yeah, yeah.

RH: I mean, you know, after that, throw anything at me, I don't care. You know? Well, Frank did. He threw everything at me, you know . . .

IHT: Like what? Give us some examples.

RH: Well, yeah, okay. So I recall I know there was at least one piece of music that he put in front of me that was a typical Frank Zappa "Black Page" kind of chart—might have been the "Be-Bop Tango" actually. And, so— I don't play with the band in the rehearsal studio . . .

IHT: And the whole idea is say like in real time, go ahead, read.

RH: In real time, let's see what you can do with this. AlrightAll right? So he was testing my reading ability and my ability to, you know, see what some of this stuff is. So, you know, there's no perfect reading with Frank, you know? If you're sight reading Frank's music you're not gonna read it perfectly, it's too hard. You see, it's too unusual, alrightall right? And a lot of it it's orchestrated, and so he's orchestrated this part for the drumset and you're reading note to note, it's like learning a classical piece of piano. You know, you gotta spend time with that, you know? So, but he wasn't expecting me to sight-read it perfectly, he just wanted to see how I deal with it. So—

IHT: Just how close to perfect—

RH: Exactly. It wasn't perfect at all, but I gave him a certain idea of yeah, I can read and I can figure things out, give me enough time. And then we jammed. I think, you know. He lead me through some styles, lead me through some odd meters, he had me solo, that kind of stuff. It was like a forty-five minute audition.

IHT: Did you—at the time were you digging it? When you left, or were you—

RH: Well, no. I left with the gig.

IHT: He said—

RH: Right on the spot. Yeah.

IHT: Yeah.

RH: Yeah. That was pretty cool.

IHT: "You're the guy."

RH: I'm the guy.

IHT: Yeah.

RH: Yeah.

IHT: And like what, you started—

RH: Oh, I started right away. Jean-Luc Ponty, George Duke, Ian and Ruth Underwood, Tom Fowler, Bruce Fowler, Sal Marquez on trumpet.

IHT: Jean-Luc Ponty at the time, you knew right away this guy is—

RH: Oh, I knew of Jean-Luc Ponty, yeah. Oh, yeah.

IHT: The word had got—

RH: Oh, yeah. I had heard him. I mean, I said, "Well, this great jazz violinist is gonna be in Frank's band." And my good friend George Duke, who's, further than that, one of the best piano players in the world—musicians in the world.

[...]

IHT: Where were you rehearsing with Frank?

RH: Where?

IHT: Yeah.

RH: On Sunset Blvd., when it cross [Arby's], say between Cahuenga and Wilcox or somewhere— No, no, Cahuenga and . . . I forgot the street. But yeah, it was his warehouse.

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