Chump Change Records

When your father hands you a set of drumsticks at the age of four, chances are you’ll wind up a drummer.

Paul Tillman Smith’s father, George Smith (Kansas City Smitty) played drums during the big band era with many well-known bands including Count Basie, Trummer Young and the Harlem Aces. He was also a mentor to singer Pearl Bailey‘s husband drummer Louie Bellson. At age fifteen at the urging of his mother Della, Paul began playing the piano. Dropped from piano lessons for not cutting his fingernails, he began to write simple three chord songs like the ones he would hear on the radio. This love has lasted a

lifetime. Paul has published over eighty songs to date including the Pharaoh Sanders and Phyllis Hyman jazz pop classic “As You Are”, the Norman Connors and Jean Carne hit “Stella” featuring guitarist Lee Ritenour, and the tender love ballad “ Heavenly”, recorded by pianist Webster Lewis featuring saxophonist Benny Maupin with strings by Herbie Hancock and performed by the Boston Pop Symphony for nationally syndicated TV.

Paul’s album “Sharing” from his middle seventies Buddha Records recording group Vitamin E., produced by Norman Connors featured the Sly Stone, Frank Zappa vocalist Lady Bianca and saxophonist Jules Broussard’s vocalist David Gardener. “Sharing” the single from that album with a special guest vocal by Freddie Hughes and written by Paul, became a number one hit in over twelve cities across the nation. In the ninety’s, the Vitamin E. CD was reissued in Japan as a double CD also featuring vocalist Melba Moore’s biggest selling CD “This is It”. Paul’s CD “Crying for Love” was voted record of the year by Blues and Soul magazines in England in 2001. The CD featured never released demo’s recorded at Fantasy Studio’s by his eighty’s Bang CBS recording
group “Bridge”. The CD was released by the U.K. record label “First Experience Records” and featured fourteen original songs by Paul with co-arrangements by Ronnie Laws keyboardist Michael “Spiderman” Robinson and vocals by former Motown recording artists Derrick Hughes and Debra Von Lewis. The European critic’s called the Bridge CD a rare brilliant American discovery. Paul is also reputed to be the first to record Sheila E., Rosie Gaines and Bonnie Boyer of Prince fame.

Paul considers his biggest contribution to the Bay Area music scene is being the co-founder and Music Coordinator of the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival, the longest running African American Arts and Music festival in Northern California history. Upwards of twenty thousand people attend annually. He was also the first to promote free music concerts in Berkeley’s Provo Park and Oakland’s Mosswood Park in the seventies and eighties when he was a music and concert supervisor for “ACNAP”, the Alameda County Neighborhood Arts Program. Paul has been the stage manager for the Richmond Juneteenth, the Oakland Port Festival. the Laurel District World Music Festival, and the Vallejo 4th of July Festival. He also put the music program together for the city of Emeryville’s Appreciation Day Festival and helped put the city of Berkeley’s 100th Anniversary Arts and Music Festival music program together and managed both stages.

Paul also is no stranger to theater and film. He has been musical director for “Ain’t Supposed To Die A Natural Death” directed by Ted Lange of “Love Boat” and band director for “America More Or Less”, the bi-centennial play of San Francisco, featuring works by playwrighters Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Frank Chin and American Indian playwright Leslie Silko. While a Senior in the Rhetoric Department at U.C. Berkeley, Paul made the Oakland Tribune’s front-page headlines for songs he and the late Lonnie Hewitt (Cal Tjader’s pianist) wrote for the Off Broadway play “Dunbar” based on the writings of poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar. “Dunbar” later won Paul the prestigious New York Audelco Theater Award, the highest honor in African American theater putting him in an elite club, which includes Denzel Washington and Felicia Rashaad. Paul’s composition “ A Hymn” (Gently Lord and Slow) from “Dunbar” was performed with full orchestra in a salute to Harry Belafonte at the Black Film Makers Hall of Fame Awards the following year. Paul wrote music for two one act plays by Cal Berkeley Professor and Author Cecil Brown and award winning Author Ishmael Reed at the Julian Morgan Theater and wrote music for Cecil’s movie short entitled “Twofer”. Paul currently has twelve songs showcased in the feature film the “Tears of a Clown”, produced by Tony Spires. Tony promotes the annual Comedy Competition at the Paramount Theater. His movie features famous BET comedian DC Curry and several other rising comic stars. The songs in the movie showcases the talents of vocalist’s Lenny Williams, the late Bonnie Boyer, Rosie Gaines, Freddie Hughes, Denise Stewart, Avis Nixon and American Idol finalists Donnie Williams and La Toya London. Paul’s music also has a performance by Pharaoh Sanders, Herman Jackson, Eric Daniels, Donald Tavie, Michael Stanton, Calvin Keys, Juewette Bostick, Edell Shepard, Carl Lockett and Nelson Braxton who is also co-producer of several songs along with Norman Connors.

Paul Tillman Smith’s first professional drumming gig was with Blues legend Lightnin’ Hopkins at the Continental Club in West Oakland. He was fifteen years old. At the age of eighteen he joined the rock group” The second Coming’, which included Steve Miller and musicians who later split up and became two historical groups, “The Steve Miller Band and “Country Joe and the Fish”. Both groups sought Paul’s services, but he chose instead to go to New York playing and recording with Avante Garde Jazz musicians Sonny Simmons and Albert Ayler, the later who came to be considered a founding father of the Avante Garde Jazz Era, along with John Coltrane. While in New York he also performed with Jackie MacLean, Archie Schepp, Kenny Dorham and Pharaoh Sanders. On his return to the Bay Area, Paul performed and recorded with award winning Jazz Violinist Michael White on the Warner Brothers Label. That band featured the legendary pianist Ed Kelly.

Paul has had the honor of performing or recording with many music legends including the Bobby Hutcherson and John Handy Quartets, Alice Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Jimmy Mc Cracklin, Richard Pryor, Etta James, Jon Hendricks, Marlena Shaw, Abbey Lincoln, Dewey Redman, Faye Carol, D. J. Rogers, Harold Land, Lorez Alexander, Odia Coates, Erma Thomas, Cold Blood, Jon Faddis, Bobby Lyle, Gary Bartz, Reggie Lucas, Azteca, Rodney Franklin, Carlos Santana, Michael Henderson, The Brecker Brothers, Sylvestor, Jeannie Tracy, Mtume, Big Momma Thornton, Eddie Henderson, Rashan Roland Kirk, Buddy Connor, Angela Bofill, Dewey Redman, Woody Shaw, Pete Escovedo, Ray Obiedo and Merl Saunders just to name a few. Paul was the first drummer chosen to audition for Jimi Hendrix’s new band, “The Band of Gypsies”. Jimi heard tapes of Paul playing in New York with Bassist Percussionist Juma Sultan who had become Jimi’s Guru of sorts and offered to send for Paul to come to Woodstock to audition. Paul didn’t go because he felt the timing wasn’t right. Thelonius Monk and Herbie Hancock also sought out Paul’s drumming skills. At seventeen Paul auditioned for the gig to play with “Sly and the Family Stone” and was told by Sly’s brother Freddie Stone that he was the second drummer chosen. Though Paul loved Sly’s music and the Band, he often quips that that is one gig he is glad he didn’t get.

Paul’s achievements have been a source of inspiration and creativity for numerous musicians. He ran three of the longest running Jazz jam sessions in the history of the Bay Area, Harry’s on University in Berkeley plus the jam session’s at Ivy’s and Bluesville in Jack London Square. He provided a venue for young and old musicians alike to sit in and jam and no musician no matter how they played was ever turned away. He recently produced “The Big Belly Blues Band’s” first CD for his label Chumpchange Records composing six of their original songs. “Big Belly”, a twelve-piece band with four horns consisted of some of the most prominent jazz musicians in the Bay Area including the late vocalist and pianist George Hubbard and Ed Kelly, Earl “Fatha” Hines bassist Harley White and Oakland Tribune Editor and Rapper Martin Reynolds. His song “Nobody’s Home” recorded by blues legend Sugar Pie DeSanto was recently named a blues breaker by the national syndicated house of blues radio network. Paul recently completed work on the first CD by American Idol finalist Donnie Williams and his band “Park Place” entitled “Just Like Magic” which also features vocals by Donnie’s youngest sister Terrell Williams and top American Idol finalist Latoya London, who is currently touring with Oprah Winfrey’s “Color Purple”.