Follow-up Q&A with Philly native includes playing the Soul Train cruise with Deniece Williams plus a special musical tribute to a friend and mentor
Exclusive interview with FBPO’s Jon Liebman
February 19, 2016
Originally from Philadelphia, Derrick Murdock played clubs and shows in Philly and Atlantic City before relocating to Los Angeles in 1994, when he got the gig with Sheena Easton. Since then, Derrick has performed and/or toured with the Capital Cities, Dr Dre, Rose Royce, Natalie Cole, Will Smith, Gladys Knight, The Jazz Crusaders, Frank Gambale, Andre Crouch, B.B. King, the Dazz Band, Jeff Lorber, Tom Scott and many others. From 2005 to 2010, Murdock played bass in The Tonight Show band during the Jay Leno/Kevin Eubanks period.
FBPO: I was reading your first interview that we published on December 31, 2012. Bring us up to date on what’s been happening since then.
DM: I just got back from a Soul Train cruise, where I played with Deniece Williams. They have it every year. I think this is like their fourth one.
FBPO: Did you have a good time?
DM: Man, I had a great time! I just love being out on the water. It’s very relaxing. That’s always cool for me.
FBPO: Where was the cruise?
DM: We left out of Fort Lauderdale and went to the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, the Bahamas. It was fun, man.
FBPO: What else has been keeping you busy?
DM: I’m doing a lot of online sessions. I just finished recording some tracks that will be on a commercial for Mattel Toys. I just did the 58th annual Grammy “after party” with Thelma Houston this past Monday. That was awesome! I’ve also been playing with Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. Coincidentally, I’m also playing with the Fifth Dimension.
FBPO: Are you working on any projects of your own?
DM: I’ve been really working on getting my CD done. That’s been very important.
FBPO: Will this be your first solo release?
DM: This is my first solo release. Actually, I’m trying to put three of them out. The first one will be a bass CD. I’ve always wanted to do that. The second one is going to be an R&B-like dance type thing and the third one is going to be movie score type stuff, avant garde type stuff, whatever comes to my head. I’m just going to throw it all on there!
FBPO: Why three? Do you have a record deal?
DM: I just have so much stuff in my head. I need to get it out. I don’t have a record deal, not at all. I met some friends in the record industry when I was on The Tonight Show who heard a couple of tunes I wrote with Jef Lee Johnson and they are waiting for me to finish the bass and dance CD.
FBPO: Do you have any of it recorded yet?
DM: Here’s the thing. There was a guy named Jef Lee Johnson, from Philadelphia. I met Jef in Atlantic City and he was very instrumental in my life until he died a couple years ago. He got me my first R&B gig when I was still living back in Philadelphia. We were both playing in Atlantic City and there was a lot of work happening back then, in the late ‘80s, ‘90s.
At the time, I was putting feelers out to move to L.A. and a friend of mine who lives in Vegas, that goes by the name of Jim Moran, told me that Sheena Easton was auditioning people. Half of her band was going out with Janet Jackson, so she needed some new players. Jef and I put a demo together and that demo got me the audition and the gig. That’s how I moved to L.A. in the first place.
FBPO: What’s the connection between Jef Lee Johnson and your upcoming CD?
DM: Jef was in LA a lot doing stuff with George Duke. He was going to help me produce my CD. He was playing with Esperanza Spalding at the time. He mentioned that he really wanted to co-produce my CD, so we started doing some songs. I got about four songs done with him before he passed.
I was pretty depressed after he died. This brother was so bad, I knew he was going to make my CD sound different because of the way he thought musically, you know?
FBPO: And he played on those tracks in addition to co-producing?
DM: Yeah, absolutely! He even wanted to redo some of the tracks we did on my demo tape that got me the Sheena Easton gig because he thought they were pretty cool. So we were in the process of doing that before he died. Then I got really depressed and I had to put the project aside for a minute. I think around the time of my first interview, I was doing a pop gig with a group called Capital Cities, which had a couple hits out. So I was doing that and then, about a year and-a-half later, I finally got off my butt and just said, “Look, I gotta get this thing done and I’ll just dedicate it to him.”
FBPO: It must be bittersweet for you, but I’m sure you’ll be glad when it’s done.
DM: Absolutely! And what I did to get myself going was put out an app, which is basically a modern-day website/resume. In this day and age, everyone is walking around looking at their cell phones, so I thought this would be a great idea to put this app in people’s faces! [Laughs] I have a blog on there too, where I’ll be telling people about the CD, letting them know the progress of it. I’ve got a sample tune on it already that people can hear. I’ll be doing stuff like giving away free prizes to kids, showing them how to function in the studio and on TV show, stuff like that.
FBPO: Where can people go to download the app? What should they search for, specifically?
DM: Just go to the App store for Mac and the Play store for Android do a search for my name, Derrick Murdock. It’ll show up in iTunes.
FBPO: You’ve been a long-time fan of Ken Smith basses. Which models do you play?
DM: I’ve got the BT5, which is one of the first ones I purchased. I also have two BSR 5-strings one of them a fretless, and a BSR 6-string. I’ve had so many over the years. They’re all great.
FBPO: What do you like about them?
DM: The first thing that drew me to them was the fact that they sounded a little bit like a Music Man and I love that sound. It also had a lot of tone variations, which I liked. A lot of the R&B stuff I used to listen to back in the day had that nice round bass sound, real articulate, nice lows and mids. You know, you have all those choices on it.
FBPO: Do you use Ken Smith strings also?
DM: Yeah. I don’t use anything else but the Ken Smith strings because they last a long time. My hands sweat and I’ve got the acid thing going on, but for some reason they last. I can go almost a month with those.
FBPO: What about the future? What else is on the horizon after you get these three CDs out?
DM: I’ve been working on doing movie scores. I met people on The Tonight Show that also heard some of my TV and movie compositions and loved them and asked me to make a demo of that stuff as well so well see. I’d also like to produce more artists as well as get into more record exec duties.
