When it comes to influence on R&B, pop, and dance music, few compare to the legendary duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Responsible for an incredible string of hits, songs and albums across four decades—including sixteen number one Billboard Hot 100 singles—their acclaimed work has shaped the sound of artists from Janet Jackson, the SOS Band, New Edition, Usher, Boyz II Men, and Mariah Carey. As five-time Grammy winners, Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees, and true pioneers, Jam and Lewis will receive the Ray Harris Lifetime Achievement Award in Atlanta on Oct. 3 for their pivotal role as architects of modern music.
WBLS spoke with Jam & Lewis about their prestigious honor, developing the Minneapolis sound, and playing their catalog of music live on stage.
WBLS: Throughout your remarkable career, you have received so many awards. What makes the Ray Harris Lifetime Achievement Award so special to you?
Jam: It’s going to be beautiful to actually get it because Ray Harris was one of the people who was really responsible for helping us when we first started. He gave our demos out to everybody, and we ended up at SOLAR Records. When Ray was there, he really championed us and made sure we were getting the chances to get with the artists in the early days. So it’s kind of a full circle that way. And it’s also a full circle because it’s in Atlanta. This award is normally in LA, but this year, the fact that it’s in Atlanta is very significant because Atlanta has been so significant to us, and really, the beginning of our career. Our first big record came out of Atlanta, SOS Band’s “Just Be Good to Me.”
WBLS: Speaking of Atlanta, when you were stranded in the ATL and missed your gig with The Time, was that a sign that you two were destined to make it big as producers?
Lewis: No, that was a sign that we were going to be fired [Laughs]. Which we ended up being. In retrospect, we were being freed to pursue the destiny that God had written for us. But at the time, I can’t even think of a worse feeling than we were letting our brothers down because they had to play a gig without us. That’s unacceptable. It wasn’t about the money or about getting fired. It was just letting the fellas down.
WBLS: Last month, you performed at your own show, Jimmy, Jam & Terry Lewis and Friends. How did it feel to get on that stage and perform with some of the folks you’ve worked with over the years?
Jam: It was fantastic. We’re at that part of our lives where we feel like there are things we still haven’t done. One of those things is that we haven’t played our catalog of songs live. We wanted to put our songs in front of people, but also we want to tell some of the stories behind the songs. Being in Stockbridge in Georgia, we told a lot of those Atlanta stories. And then to have those people on stage like Cherelle, Ann Nesby from Sounds of Blackness, Deborah Cox, and Shante Moore, Morris Day and Jerome from the time, and Jordan Knight from New Kids. It was amazing. And the SOS band where we started. Mary Davis, who doesn’t really perform anymore, was like, “No, I’m coming.”
WBLS: Coming up in Minneapolis as musicians, did you know that you were all really good?
Lewis: Well, Prince was outstanding. He was, he was different. There were several different outstanding talents. Sonny Thompson, who played bass for Prince, He was a guitar player, singer, and just outstanding. Craig Peterson came from Minneapolis. But I have to tell you, the music scene wasn’t what you think it was. There were a lot of talented people, but you don’t know the measure of your talent until you get out of your environment against other people. So we knew we were pretty good, but we didn’t know how good we were. We were all playing and competing against one another, and still sharp and still so I guess it was a great environment for us growing up. We weren’t afraid of anything. We were exposed to pretty much everything. We didn’t grow up in an all black environment. So we were exposed to all kinds of different musical genres, and we accepted those as our standard of what music is and could be.
Jam: And the lack of opportunity because we couldn’t play in the white clubs. They had white bands play R&B. So instead of a seat at the table, we just built our own table. We rented out a ballroom at a hotel that actually was condemned, as a matter of fact, and we had like 1500 people show up the very first night. The clubs were empty. Everybody was like, ‘Where’s everybody at?’ They said, “They’re down watching the band you wouldn’t hire.” We realized it taught us to be entrepreneurs.
WBLS: Lastly, what do you love about today’s music, and what do you believe is missing in the music scene today?
Jam: Wow, that’s a great question. I love today’s music. Quite honestly, I would say the thing that I feel is missing, but I think it’s trending towards coming back, is the art of collaboration. Terry and I came up in a time where he was the bass player and I was a keyboard player. We had a drummer, a guitar player, and so everybody had to fill their role and then mesh together. It was a team sport. Because the technology exists where you can just make a song on your laptop all by yourself. I always say H.E.R. is one of the artists that I always look to, because she’s obviously a songwriter, she’s obviously a singer, she’s a producer, but she also plays a mean guitar, plays the keyboards, plays the drums, plays the bass.
Lewis: My answer would be the art of appreciation. I think that dictates how art is driven now. I’ll say that just on the base level, when you have water. You’re not really worried about it because it’s something that you just turn on in the spigot and it’s always available to you. You never worry about it until the day they turn the water off and you can’t drink or take a bath. Those are the intangible things that you just take for granted. And I think music is now taken for granted in our society. We have to respect the people that create the music whether you like it or not. It’s like free speech but it’s never free because it takes a lot to make and create music. We have to invest a little bit more. Now, for $9.99, you can get every piece of music that ever existed in the world. You can just throw one for the other. But it used to be a time, man, you had to go to the record store, dig into crates. You went for Con Funk Shun but you found Mass Production. The discovery was different. You would go to somebody’s house and they put on some Black Ivory, and you’ve been listening to The Dramatics, you’d be like, ‘Who is that?’ You invested, and you put time. And when you found something that was particularly good to you, you would want to expose it to everybody in a shared listening experience. That’s what’s missing.