Theodis Ealey Interviewed by Riveting Riffs Magazine

Interviewed by Joe Montague

Theodis Ealey Photo 1 Those in the Atlanta, Georgia area and Blues fans in general, have long appreciated the silky smooth vocals and the slick guitar playing of singer – songwriter Theodis Ealey. He was born in Sibley, Mississippi, and grew up in Natchez, south of the Delta and he says, “I grew up listening to all of those great singers who came out of there.”

“I came to realize that no matter what kind of music I played the Blues was going to come out of me. Even if I am playing Jazz, I am going to play Blues (he chuckles). I call myself an old hippie, because I was a young man during the sixties and I love good rock music. I listened to Jimi Hendrix and I loved him. I also used to love Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago and groups like that. I started to emulate them,” he says.

It was while he was living in Honolulu, Hawaii that Ealey connected with Jazz organist Talmadge Grundy, who was playing a lot of legendary organist Jimmy Smith’s music and he and Grundy who played a left hand bass with his organ decided to form a group called the Triple Sounds.

Even though, Theodis Ealey says, that for the most part the music he heard on the radio while he was growing up was Pop, Country or Rock it was the Blues that captured his heart and his ears from an early age. “It is good music and my brothers played it. We went out to the juke joints and stuff. I lived on Highway 61 and across the street was a juke joint that was run by this woman named Willie Mae and I referred to it as Miss Willie Mae’s Place. Every night as a little child I would sit there and listen to my brother YZ and all of the other people like Little Jimmy Reed. I was too young to go in there, but I could hear it. My cousin owns a studio right there at the base of Highway 61 and I was thinking about going back there and doing a Blues album and calling it From The Base of Highway 61.

Theodis Ealey knows who he is and what he is all about as an artist, “I have a hard time with the music business, because they tend to want you to be a certain type of musician. You have to be a Blues musician or a Rock musician or a Folk musician. You have to be this or you have to be that. I heard an old man say one time, there are only two kinds of music; there is music that is played good and there is music that is played badly. When I sit down to do a song, I do not think about what kind of music it is. I hate it when people ask me what kind of music is it? I just try to play good music. Throughout the years, I have found that no matter what I play, (whether I am) playing Funk, Jazz, Blues, Soul and Gospel or any type of music there is to play, you are still going to hear some Blues in it, because that is just what I am. I grew up with it and Blues is going to come out of it. If you are a Gospel singer, no matter what you sing, Gospel is going to come out of it. I don’t set out to write a certain style of music.”

“I tell young people in the music business that the first thing that you need to do is to say that you are a musician or you are a producer. You have to speak it into existence and you have to live it. You can’t wait for someone else to come up with it for you; you have to discover it yourself. That is why I did the (music) label, because I didn’t want to wait for anyone else to do it for me,” he says.

Ealey is referring to IFGAM, the label that he owns. He credits fellow musician Bob Geddins and Victor Green, both of whom he met while he was living in Hawaii, for teaching him about the business side of music. Mr. Geddins taught me about having my own publishing company and he said whenever you can always record yourself. Never sit around and wait for someone to record you. I took his advice and I started recording myself and after I started recording myself the sons Larry, Jay and Darrel made up this song, “I Feel Good About Myself.” We used the letters from the song to create the name for the label. I formed my own label, because I didn’t want to wait around for someone to discover me.”

Even though he had been recording and performing for many years, it was in (insert the year) that Ealey’s song “Stand Up In It,” hit number one on Billboard’s R&B charts and with that success came a new generation of fans. To say the song is risqué would be an understatement however, it packs a clear loud message from a woman’s perspective and although it is sexual in nature the message is if you want to enjoy this side of the relationship then you have to bring a lot more to the relationship than just that.

“The song talks about something that is very, very real and it has a great beat and a great story line. When you have a great beat, you can’t help but to want to dance, because it just flows so well. The other thing is I have had women from their early twenties and into their eighties, who come to my shows, so they can see the man who put out the song “Stand Up In It.” I have never had a woman tell me that she didn’t agree with what I was talking about. They thank me, hug me and they thank me for putting that song out, because they say they have wanted to tell men that for years. Some people refer to it as the Black woman’s national anthem,” he says laughing heartily.

For as much as he enjoyed the success of the title song “Stand Up In In It,” from the 2004 album of the same name, Theodis Ealey is equally appreciated for his silky smooth vocals on tender songs such as “If You Leave Me, I’m Going Wit Cha’,” from the same CD and “Please Let Me In,” from the 2006 album release I’m The Man You Need.

It is always risky to cover a song by a legendary artist such as Marvin Gaye, but when Ealey started playing “Let’s Get It On,” during his gigs, “and I was selling my CDs at the end of the concert, people would ask me if the Marvin Gaye song was on the album and I would tell them no. I didn’t feel right about covering a Marvin Gaye song, but people kept asking me if it was on the CD, so I decided to put it on one and they love it.” Not everybody can say that.

Recently Theodis Ealey was in the studio recording an album with legendary Blues guitarist Tommy Castro.

Theodis Ealey, make sure you check out his music and you can listen to samples of his songs on his website, through which you can also purchase the music.