First Listen: Melle Mel helps Sir Jonathan Williams find the "Place"

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    Photo courtesy of Sir Jonathan Williams

    (April 17, 2020) If you’re around music enough and you have the interest and drive, sooner or later something is going to happen. That’s how it happened for Jonathan Williams, a music lifer who released a song, “Your Place or Mine” that the DJ can play when the steppers want to slow down the pace.

    The Petersburg, Va. native grew up in a musical family where he taught himself how to play all of the rhythm section instruments. Williams was inspired by watching his father play organ in church and then practice at home with a band that he formed. Eventually Williams focused on the bass, and with guitarist Walter Morris and drummer Clarence Oliver went on to form the core of The Rimshots, the house band for All Platinum Records – a label that eventually became Sugar Hill Records.

    (April 17, 2020) If you’re around music enough and you have the interest and drive, sooner or later something is going to happen. That’s how it happened for Jonathan Williams, a music lifer who released a song, “Your Place or Mine” that the DJ can play when the steppers want to slow down the pace.

    The Petersburg, Va. native grew up in a musical family where he taught himself how to play all of the rhythm section instruments. Williams was inspired by watching his father play organ in church and then practice at home with a band that he formed. Eventually Williams focused on the bass, and with guitarist Walter Morris and drummer Clarence Oliver went on to form the core of The Rimshots, the house band for All Platinum Records – a label that eventually became Sugar Hill Records.

    The Rimshots backed a who’s who of musical legends, including Etta James, Brook Benton, The Moments (Ray, Goodman and Brown) and Ms. Pillow Talk herself - the founder of Sugar Hill -Records Sylvia Robinson.

    Williams takes center stage of “Your Place or Mine,” a ballad for the steppers set where he and his lady try to decide the venue for their first night together. The also features vocals by Oliver and Keith Harris, and a rap by a legendary Sugar Hill Records alum, Melle Mel, who shows his flow is as tight on bedroom ballads as it was on party anthems on socially conscious tracks. Check  “Your Place or Mine” out here.

    By Howard Dukes