Narrative 1 of 3

Guitarist- "Superfly" Album
McMullen, Craig
2010-03-04



>>Craig McMullen: 
	
	My name is Craig McMullen, born here in the capital city of Columbus, Ohio. I went to high school, graduated from Columbus puppy schools and also went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. After graduating from Columbus public schools, I only attended one year at Berklee, but I did complete it, and got passing grades. 

	So, after that, I came back to Columbus. Then I ended up starting a professional career playing guitar. And I started playing...my first professional group I started to play with was "Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions." From there, I played for about a year, then Curtis went solo, and I started playing with Curtis's band, all the way through "Superfly." Then a little bit after that I left the Curtis Mayfield band, and moved to Los Angeles to have aspirations of being, or continuing, I should say, studio work, trying to be a studio guitarist.

	At that point is when I was able to continue my career. When I first got there, I did some studio work for Ike Turner, also started playing behind The Supremes, and then Bill Withers. Then I started getting into the mix with H.B. Barnum and that gave me the opportunity to play with Aretha Franklin for several years, played on her album. Also, in that time I was also freelancing, doing other studio work. I've played on albums with Jazz greats such as Freddie Hubbard, Bundle of Joy, Stanley Turrentine, the album "Everybody Come on Out," "Places and Spaces," album by Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphrey- the flute player- she got an album out on Blue Note called "Fancy Dancer."

	Also, I was doing other studio work in the R&B field. I have a Gold Record at home for "Boogie Fever" by The Sylvers, which was produced by Freddie Perren, who was gracious enough to give a Gold Album. I had played on Gold and Platinum Albums before through Curtis Mayfield, but never received one personally. But that's ok. 

	And like I said, I have numerous people I've played for, also...I won't get into everybody right now, but the list goes from Marvin Gay, The Supremes, I can say Bill Withers, been on The Tonight Show, TV shows such as "Midnight Special," and oh, a long list of people that I've played with that I can't even really remember right now...

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	..started on guitar when I was seven years old. My mother's sister lived in Detroit, I would go to Detroit every year from since I could remember, maybe four, five years old, and all the way through high school, I'd spend all of my summers in Detroit, staying with my aunt. And my uncle was a guitar player, but he was not a professional guitar player. He professionally drove for the DSR, which is Detroit's Streets & Railways. No- because he was a bus driver...

	But he had picked up the guitar, and he was pretty proficient at playing it, and he first showed me my first two notes when I was seven years old, which was Honky Tonk, and I became interested after that, in the guitar. So when I was eight years old, my mom paid for me to have lessons. My first guitar teacher was [Lee Nolan], here in Columbus, Ohio. And he taught me down in what was known as Lazarus, F&R Lazarus department store. I took lessons from [Lee Nolan] for, I'd say, at least seven years. 

	Somewhere around, maybe in the 9th grade, I stopped taking guitar lessons. Upon entering high school, which was Columbus East High School, I was fortunate enough to play in the jazz band there. At that time, Columbus East High School had a very rich tradition in everything. Basically, jazz band, marching band, orchestra, championship basketball team for the state, stuff like that. Just a tremendous amount of things going on to uplift you at that time. Our jazz band was one of the number one jazz bands, every time we'd come to competition we would actually win, all the time. I was in the 10th grade, I was able to be honored with making what they called "All-City Jazz Band," which came under the direction of Doc Severinsen, because we played for the Ohio Music Educator's Association, they had something here at Columbus, and the band was chosen to play for them. And Doc Severinsen was our band leader, he was a guest director, but at the same time the charts that we played were the charts from my school, which the great Ted Turner and Doc Severinsen and he were very good friends from then on...

	But Ted Turner was my music director at East High School. He was the one that more or less moulded everybody to be the type of musician turned out to be.  Luminaries were with me at high school, such as Bobby Austin, Lee Savory, and then the guys that preceded me: Nate Fitzgerald, an incredible drummer named Fred Thomas that used to play up at a place across from the campus here called "The Sacred Mushroom," and he was still in high school. But he was playing straight-ahead Jazz stuff, I mean he could play. So, like, there was such a rich tradition that you had to be a good player. After high school, I went to Berklee, we've come up to that point.

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