Don Grusin (born April 22, 1941) – I'll Get By Without You (1977)
This epic funky Pointer Sisters jam was co-written by keyboardist Grusin, his fellow Quincy Jones band member Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin, and Bonnie Pointer.
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Don Grusin is a keyboardist, songwriter, and producer. He has toured extensively since the 1970s, playing in Japan alone more than eighty times over his five-decade long career. His song “Let’s Not Talk About It” (1979) by Friendship is well known because parts of it were copied (or “re-played”) by Nintendo composer Koji Kondo to create the Super Mario Bros. Underworld Theme, possibly the most famous video game theme music of all time.
Donald Henri Grusin was born in Denver and grew up in a musical family in Littleton, Colorado. His father was a classical violinist, and his older brother is the pianist Dave Grusin, who has composed the scores for more than 100 films and first rose to fame after scoring The Graduate in 1967.
Grusin moved to the Bay Area in the early 70s to teach economics at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, near Silicon Valley. In 1973 he joined Azteca, the Latin jazz-funk group led by Pete Escovedo and an all-star lineup that included drummer Sheila E (Escovedo's daughter), his brother Coke Escovedo, guitarists Neal Schon (of Santana and Journey) and James Vincent (who would go on to release the jazz-funk masterpiece 1976 solo LP Space Traveler), and Lenny White on drums.
Bassist Paul Jackson was one of the group’s members until shortly before Grusin began playing with them, when he left to join Herbie Hancock’s new band the Headhunters. Jackson and Grusin later played together in the post-Headhunters era.
In 1975, Quincy Jones invited Grusin to tour with his band. He and his brother Dave both played keyboards on Mellow Madness (1975), the first album Q recorded after recovering from two operations to treat a cerebral aneurysm that nearly killed him, He returned to the recording studio with a new lease on life, and Mellow Madness was the result.
The album also marked the beginning of Jones’ collaboration with brothers George and Louis Johnson, who co-wrote four of its ten songs. Other players on Mellow Madness included Harvey Mason on drums, flutist Hubert Laws, Ralph MacDonald on percussion, and Funk Brother guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin.
After touring with Quincy in the U.S. and Japan, Grusin and Ragin co-wrote a song together when they got back to California and Ragin was working on his debut solo LP, Elementary (1976). Their third co-writer was Bonnie Pointer.
“Melvin (Wah Wah) and I had written some groove related tunes and that's how I hooked up with Bonnie,” Grusin told Jointz Of The Day in a recent interview.
“It was mostly after we had worked with Quincy Jones on the big tour we did in ‘75 with the Rufus guys, the Brothers Johnson, Frank Rosolino, Ernie Krivda, Ramon Flores, Sahib Shahab, and many others. Wah and I did write with Bonnie. It might have been in San Francisco, but I think it was in L.A., at Larrabee Studios in North Hollywood. Not sure if she met with us in West Hollywood where Wah lived on Olive Street.”
The track they came up with was the epic breakup jam “I’ll Get By Without You.” It was originally released by Ragin on Elementary, featuring Don’s brother Dave on Rhodes piano. The following year in 1977, the Pointer Sisters released their version on the Dave Rubinson-produced LP Having A Party with Bonnie on lead vocals.
The album’s stellar lineup featured five bassists including James Jamerson and Louis Johnson. James Gadson played drums, Ernie Watts was on sax, and guitarists included David T. Walker, Ray Parker, Jr., and Ragin. Stevie Wonder was a special guest on keys on the song he co-wrote, “Bring Your Sweet Stuff Home To Me.”
Arguably the Pointer Sisters’ funkiest-ever album, “I’ll Get By Without You” was one of its funkiest cuts (eclipsed in overall funk flavor only by “Don’t It Drive You Crazy”).
In retrospect, the song’s lyrics held extra meaning for Bonnie at the time, since Having A Party was the last Pointer Sisters album she appeared on before going solo.
In the late 70s, Grusin began collaborating with guitarist Lee Ritenour. He co-produced and played on his album “The Captain’s Journey” (1978), and co-wrote the song “What Do You Want?” He also played on another Ritenour album later that year, Friendship (1978).
Around this time, Grusin and Ritenour formed a short-lived but legendary group by the same name, Friendship. Other members were Ernie Watts on sax, Abraham Laboriel on bass, Steve Forman on percussion, and Alex Acuña on drums.
They released one self-titled album together, Friendship (1979). Grusin and Ritenour co-produced it and Grusin was its principal songwriter, writing or co-writing four of its seven tracks.
These included the superb jam “The Situation,” which he co-wrote with Ritenour, the beautiful closing cut “The Real Thing,” and the very funky jam “Let’s Not Talk About It,” the latter two written by himself.
As pointed out by Micro-Chop’s
in his excellent Substack post from 2021 on the work of Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, “Take a listen (to) ‘Let’s Not Talk About It,’ especially at the 0:12 and 2:26 mark, and you’ll hear the origins of ‘Underworld Theme.’”Also in 1979 all the members of Friendship except for Abraham Laboriel appeared on another album, Session II. It was released in Japan on Yahama’s own record label, and recorded entirely with Yahama instruments, designed to show off the company’s product line. Grusin played keyboards on the LP and arranged half its tracks, including the funky cut “All Night Lover.“
Starting in 1981, Grusin went on to release at least 18 albums under his own name and in collaboration with artists including Leon Ware, Bill Sharpe, and his brother Dave. He produced Ernie Watts’ Grammy-winning 1985 album Musician, was nominated for a Grammy for his own 2004 live album The Hang, and won two Grammys for his work on a pair of albums by the Paul Winter Consort.
Other artists he has worked with as a keyboardist or producer include Gerald Albright, Patti Austin, David Benoit, Larry Carlton, Oscar Castro-Neves, Dori Caymmi, Gilberto Gil, Jim Hall, Sérgio Mendes, Airto Moreira, Milton Nascimento, Flora Purim, Nelson Rangell, Brenda Russell, Zoot Sims, and Sadao Watanabe.
Earlier this month, the legal music sampling site Tracklib made Grusin’s catalog available for the world to explore and share.
Happy Birthday to the great Don Grusin.
More info:
“Sample Jazz Keyboardist Don Grusin's Early Records, Latin Influences & an Iconic Bassline,” Tracklib, April 6, 2023
#funk #soul #jazz #PointerSisters #WahWahWatson #Friendship #DonGrusin