Bio:
As a child of Memphis, Tennessee, Doug Wamble has always been surrounded by a vast musical and cultural landscape. From listening to his mother play piano in their Baptist church to his grandfather singing cowboy songs, murder ballads and old time gospel favorites while strumming his guitar, Doug has been immersed in music for his entire life.
After completing two music degrees, Doug decided to head to New York to seek a career as a guitarist and composer. Appearing on bandstands and recordings with such artists as Wynton Marsalis, Norah Jones, Steven Bernstein, Courtney Love, Madeleine Peyroux, and Cassandra Wilson, Doug was making a name for himself in the jazz world and beyond when he was signed to Branford Marsalis’ label, Marsalis Music/Rounder Records. Doug released two critically acclaimed records Country Libations and Bluestate, and decided a change was in order.
Focusing on being a singer/songwriter was never something Wamble had considered, but upon delving into this new direction, he found that something resonated with him. “I had self-identified as a jazz musician for so long that it was strange at first to put that aesthetic aside and refocus my energies into the craft of songwriting. And I also had been developing the skills needed to get into pop production as well as film-scoring. So I was able to pivot and find new avenues to keep me feeling that spark I felt when I first got into jazz.”
In 2009, Doug released his self-titled album on Koch/E1 records, and followed up in 2013 with another singer/songwriter album on his own Halcyonic Records imprint entitled Fast as Years, Slow as Days which was funded by a wildly successful PledgeMusic drive. “I never thought I was a good candidate for crowd funding, but I was humbled by the amount of people out there who wanted to help get the record made,” Wamble says. And in 2014 came Doug’s first all-instrumental recording, Rednecktelectual, which features his original compositions all performed on a single guitar, using non-traditional recording techniques and treating the resophonic guitar like a bass, a drum and a piano all at once. Two albums are completed and awaiting release in 2014 and 2015 in the form of an all-acoustic vocal and guitar record of new songs called For Anew, as well as an acoustic jazz record called The Traveler, which is a song cycle commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Building on his history with Wynton Marsalis, which led to guitar contributions to several Ken Burns documentaries for PBS such as Prohibition and Unforgivable Blackness, Doug began working as a composer for Burns’ Florentine Films, collaborating with Ken, his daughter Sarah, and David McMahon for the tragic film The Central Park Five. Wamble is currently at work on upcoming Florentine productions on Vietnam and Jackie Robinson.
Producing is another job Doug relishes, and it can be heard and felt by listening to the debut recording by Epic recording artist Morgan James on her album, Hunter. Doug co-wrote many of the songs, which feature an exciting mix of modern pop and classic soul, bound by Morgan James’ stunning vocals. “I never thought I’d produce a major label pop record, but I love the process, from writing that first note to listening on mastering day. It’s such a joy to make a real record from start to finish.”
The future holds a full plate with a full spectrum of projects for Doug this year. A new duo project with acclaimed percussionist Mino Cinelu, performances at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis, in Europe with New Orleans piano master Henry Butler, and all over the globe with Morgan James to promote Hunter.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).