Amp Fiddler

You haven’t heard of him yet?

by Craig D. Lindsey

Detroit-born vocalist and keyboardist Joseph “Amp” Fiddler has been around. He toured with ’70s R&B group Enchantment as a teen. He performed and collaborated with George Clinton and his Parliament/Funkadelic collective in the ’80s. He’s appeared on albums and tracks by such folks as Maxwell, Seal, the Brand New Heavies and even Warren Zevon. He was also the guy who showed the late J Dilla the tricks of the producing trade by letting him use his MPC sampler.

So you’re probably wondering why the hell haven’t you heard of him by now? It’s taken something of a while for Fiddler, now 49 and in disturbingly good shape, to reach the status of solo performer. Back in 1990 he and his brother Thomas “Bubz” Fiddler formed a group—aptly titled Mr. Fiddler—and released one album, With Respect, on Elektra.

But for the most part Fiddler has been content with being on the low, backing up the aforementioned artists and even humbly downplaying his accomplishments (the man made Dilla, for chrissakes!) as a seasoned musician.

“I don’t like to consider myself as an accomplished musician,” says Fiddler over the phone. “I love what I do. I think I have something special that I’ve learned and I’ve done, you know, with the years that I’ve played with different acts. Accomplished? Nah. I think my cousin, [keyboardist] Greg Phillinganes, he’s more accomplished, you know. He’s been playing, like, since he was five years old. So, he’s naturally accomplished, a little more than I am.”

Even the solo stuff he’s done recently, 2004’s Waltz of a Ghetto Fly and 2006’s Afro Strut, was released overseas first. “I mean, it’s cool, because it just worked out for me that I found a label that was interested in releasing my music, and it just happened to be in London,” he says, referring to British-based Genuine Records.

Eventually Fiddler’s work found its way over to these parts—such is the case with the recently released Strut. Just like Waltz, Strut shows off Fiddler’s flair for creating progressive R&B music that’s as soulful and funky as it is classy and elegant.

But while Waltz was virtually his testament to the eclectic musicality of his Motor City hometown (it included appearances by pals/Detroit emeralds Clinton, Dilla and John Arnold), Strut has him meeting up with performers from all over. He duets with U.K. songstress Corinne Bailey Rae on the jazzy “If I Don’t” (which has already been a top 30 radio hit in the U.K.), and he and New Yorker Stephanie McKay team up for the beautiful “Heaven.” Raphael Saadiq, Manchester DJ Only Child, Afrobeat great Tony Allen and Philly string man Larry Gold also do some production time.

“I just like doing stuff with other people, because it’s gonna bring a different vibe to my music,” Fiddler says. “I always experiment and try new things. And the only way to do that is to do things with other people. Otherwise, I’ll be looking at doing things the way I tend to do things.”

Now that he’s on tour in the States to promote Strut, it’s kind of amusing that Fiddler is making a stop in Philly. His out-of-this-world grooves are often reminiscent of the music of another R&B journeyman, Philadelphia International architect and future soulster Dexter Wansel. It’s a comparison the veteran Fiddler admits isn’t that far off.

“I think you’re on point with that, in a sense,” he says, noting that he’s never worked with Wansel. (Of course he wouldn’t mind collaboing with him.) “We kinda sometimes work as underground artists and we find what we have to do to be heard and grow and push our talents and our music into the holds of people. I met Larry Mizell and those guys a couple years ago and we talked about that same thing, some of the things they did with the Blackbyrds. I can see that point of view. I don’t get that from people much, but it’s good to hear.”

Amp Fiddler