JONES: And I didn’t get paid.
GATES: You didn’t get paid?
JONES: No. I didn’t know producers got paid.
GATES: You had a salary.
JONES: I had a contract and it said in the contract in no event, in no event, will you make over X amount of money, and it was not very much. But I didn’t know what that meant then because I didn’t know producers got paid because I learned producing by being an arranger and as an arranger Bobby Shad, I’d say Bobby, I found this incredible saxophone player just came into town with his brother from Florida. I was living in a basement on 91st street in New York, Cannonball and Nat Adderly. He’s incredible, man, trust me, we got to record him. He said great. He didn’t even want to hear him. This was Thursday, he said Wednesday book a session, book the studio, get the engineer, call the musicians, write the arrangements, write the compositions that you have to and I’ll see you next Wednesday or Thursday. That was it.
So as an arranger I was doing everything you do as a producer anyway and then some guy would come in the booth that night after we put that together and he would say take one. And take two. And that was the producer — he was making money. And I didn’t know you got paid for that.
GATES: The system has worked so well for you and you’ve worked the system, and it’s worked well for me. I mean the capitalist system as we know it which does not appear to be going anywhere. Do you think it can be made to work for more of our people?
JONES: It is. Are you kidding? I bought my man, the billionaire.
GATES: Bill Gates?
JONES: No, the brother, the food — what is his name? Lewis, Reggie Lewis. But everybody, I mean come on, brother, Johnny Johnson, Ed Lewis, there’s a lot of things going on. But people don’t hear about that and they need to hear about it because that will inspire somebody else to go through the same door. I know five situations, including Russell and Andre Harrell and Babyface and a lot of them, they have the same deal now. They have multimedia companies. Never been heard of before. And Babyface just signed a deal with 20th. It’ll be great. He’s in a picture already. He’s got a two picture deal going on, and television, whatever he wants to do, and that’s the way it works. If it’s successful —
I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is. You can call it racism if you want to, but the people that are fighting us happens when it’s the 20 and $30,000 homes. You don’t see a brother have a problem when he buys a million dollar home next door to anybody. It’s about that and it’s sad. It’s really sad that it’s like that but that’s what it comes down to, you’re a threat to my job, blah, blah, blah, perceived threats, when there’s really enough for everybody. But that’s what it’s about.
As you look at it on the big scale that’s what’s happening and that’s happened throughout history, that the people that are making a lot of money keep the people not making money fighting with each other, stir that up so they won’t pay any attention to us…..That goes back to — that’s European. African too. That’s an international sensibility.