As James 'D-Train' Williams, he recorded a couple of albums for Columbia ('Miracles Of The Heart

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1 Brooklyn-born James Williams is best known to soul music fans as the legendary 'D-TRAIN,'th e gospel-raised powerhouse vocalist who stormed the charts on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s and made such memorable singles as ' You're The One For Me,' ' Keep On,' ' Music,' and ' Something's On Your Mind ' for indie label Prelude before being signed by major label Columbia in As James 'D-Train' Williams, he recorded a couple of albums for Columbia ('Miracles Of The Heart,' which spawned the US R&B Top 10 single, 'Misunderstanding,' and ' In Your Eyes,' the latter including the Quiet Storm classic, 'Shadow Of Another Love'). Though the hits dried 1 / 6

2 up as the '80s became the '90s, D-Train continued to work and thrive, and during the next twenty-five years, his projects ranging from creating jingles for TV ads and working as an in-demand session singer (he's backed up everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Elton John) to being a martial arts expert, hosting his own radio show and performing in front of his eminence, the Pope. 'D-Train's' distinctive set of pipes can be heard fronting 'When You Feel What Love Has, ' the latest single by DJ-turned-producer, LENNY FONTANA, on his Karmic Power label. The two have recorded together before - on Fontana's floor-mashing jams 'Invincible' and 'Raise Your Hands' - and seem to have found the perfect chemistry, with D-Train's explosive vocals riding Fontana's pumping beats. " We met through a mutual friend of ours," explains Williams, talking in detail about his long career to SJF's Charles Waring. " He took me over to his house and we clicked right away. We became fast friends and started writing. 'Invincible,' which we wrote a few years ago (in 2011), was the beginning of our writing relationship..." 2 / 6

3 What's Lenny like to work with in the studio? Oh, he's a lot of fun. It's not like it was years ago, when you went in the studio and everybody was pretty much competing for a spot in radio. It was a little more serious back then and the competition was Prince, Morris Day and the Time, and Parliament/Funkadelic. Technology was not as prevalent as it is today - you had to hire session musicians and string sections but nowadays it's just Logic Pro X (laughs) and that's pretty much it. These kids don't have to be rocket scientists to record great music. How did 'When You Feel What Love Has' come into being? Lenny had a track and said "man, I've got the next single" and I said "okay, I'll come over and give it a listen." I went over to his house and he played it for me and I started writing it right there. When I work well in the studio with somebody, it just comes boom, boom, boom, boom. And with Lenny, that's the way it was. It just kept coming. I wrote it in an hour and we recorded it. He did his mix and worked his magic and the rest is what it is. Lenny is a great engineer and has a great ear for what the street wants and what radio wants. Will you do an album together? Lenny's label, Karmic Power, doesn't really do albums, they do singles. With me, I'm working on the new D-Train CD which is going to go back to where music was music. When you heard the Temptations and when you heard Marvin Gaye, you didn't say that was white music, black music, purple music, R&B music. They didn't have a section for it and that was one of the great things about Great Britain that I appreciated when I first did Top of the Pops in 1981 with Sting and the Police. They were there doing 'Synchronicity' and I was there doing 'You're the One For Me.' One of the things that I really appreciated about the British pop charts was that it was one chart for all music. It was either good or bad. Going right back in time, how did you get started in music? My earliest memories of making music are with my dad in the living room. He bought an 3 / 6

4 eight-track recorder which was the first one of its kind back in We loved music and music was always in our house. Dad had always bought a lot of Temptations' albums and loved Nat King Cole, The Ink Spots and people like that who we'd be playing around the house. My dad was a master carpenter so he put speakers in the dining room and he ran wires all the way up to the living room to the television set. Back then you had a television, a record player and radio, all in one piece, and he ran the wires from that to our dining room and his study so that way you could be watching TV in our living room and we could be listening to music in the back room. When he bought a eight-track recorder I was into Michael Jackson and the Jackson five. When they came out in 1969 on the Ed Sullivan show it was like seeing the Beatles to young black kids in America. They sang 'I Want You Back' and my world changed right at that moment. We started singing Michael Jackson songs acappella in the living room. I always wanted to play the bass like Jermaine (Jackson) so my father got me into guitar lessons. I studied the jazz guitar at the age of 10 years-old to 15 and at that point I stopped and started playing football. But my earliest recollections of music before that would be in the church. I started singing when I was six years old in the choir in the Washington Temple Church of God in Christ in Brooklyn. (Singer) Ronnie Dyson, who did 'Let Me Make Love To You,' was our choir director and Al Sharpton, the political activist, was our junior church minister for the young people. So gospel music was an important part of your development as a musician? It was important part of my development as a human being as well. I lived in a rough neighbourhood and my mother always kept us in the church. We was in church on Friday and all day on Sunday. So if we weren't in school we were in church. We played in the park sometimes but my parents were very selective about who they let us play and hang out with because the neighbourhood was so bad. So music, by the time I was 10 and playing guitar, was really at the forefront of my life. 4 / 6

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