Wally Badarou - Volume 1: Sessions

It’s funny how sometimes you think you’ve discovered a musician for the first time, only to discover that you have heard him many times before! You just weren’t aware of him…
Wally Badarou is a French musician, but with ancestry from Benin, West Africa, and known for his close association with the English group Level 42, and for his prolific work as a session musician...
In my case, Wally’s synthesizer playing started appearing on my musical radar through the Sly & Robbie sessions for Grace Jones.
A little later, I discovered that he was also participating in sessions for Joe Cocker, Gwen Guthrie, Black Uhuru, Barry Reynolds, Jimmy Cliff, a.o, as an informal member of the Compass Point All Stars.
Sadly enough, the CPAS never was a real band, but Wally did loads of studio work there for other artists such as Gregory Isaacs, Robert Palmer, Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads, a.o.
I decided to have a better look into his career and encountered quite a few surprises.
M’s "Pop Muzik" was a big hit in the Netherlands, and Wally described his part as follows:

That one, “Pop Muzik,” was actually very precious to me because it was the very first one I did with a British band. Up to then I was just a regular French session player. And I was working on small pieces of music, the bass player was English and the drummer was English and between sessions we used to jam a bit. One of them said, “You should meet my brother. He is working on something I am sure you are going to love it.”
So one day I was sleeping because I had a very long night demo-ing on my four-track Teac machine. I received a call from that guy, “Wally, you should come over, it’s great!“ And I said, “I am too tired,” but I went over anyway. I brought my Korg machine which only had one preset, polyphonic ensemble, and there it was. It was “Pop Muzik.” It was his 15th version of the song. And we spent a whole week devising just the bass sound because in those days synthesizers didn’t have neither memory nor MIDI. So by the time we had the sound it was out of tune and we couldn’t keep it so we had to do it again.

The Compass Point All Stars was Island Records’ boss Chris Blackwell’s idea: get some kind of a cocktail of musicians. He had Sly & Robbie in the pocket already. He did not know me, but he had heard of me through “Pop Muzik” and also with a band I used to do with a band called the Gibson Brothers, a tune called “Cuba,” and he said, “OK, Wally, I want you on this.” And I took the plane and landed there and met Sly, Robbie.

That Gibson Brothers’ tune “Cuba” was a hit in the Netherlands as well…
Although at first the sessions were rather frustrating for Wally (due to the rather loose Jamaican style of working), once he heard the results it dawned on him that something special was happening.

"I learned a lot from Alex Sadkin on the first Grace Jones album. He taught me how to re-structure everything once it has been recorded. I would put lots of different ideas onto tape and he would keep just the first two bars, put it into a long reverb or something and bring it back sounding completely different to how I meant it. Initially I got very upset and felt that he didn't have any respect for what I was doing. But the end result sounded much more significant than my original ideas. That taught me to re-evaluate myself."

For whatever reasons Wally has never received a decent overview of his session work. This provided me with the opportunity to compile a number of tracks in which he participated.
Keep in mind though, this collection only shows a small part of his session work, but at least it’s a start!

About the artists:

Tumblack was a 1978-79 group project made up of prolific French-Beninois everything-composer Wally Badarou and Tele Music library star Sauveur Mallia, focusing on deep percussed drum sounds, taking many cues from the zouk-informed musical traditions of the neighbouring Caribbean isles of Martinique and Guadeloupe. 

The Gibson Brothers were a French disco group , originally from Martinique . Formed in 1976, the group achieved its greatest success during the disco era of the late 1970s. The group's best-known songs are "Cuba" and "Que sera mi vida".

Robin Scott is the British singer who produced and recorded the hit "Pop Muzik" in 1979. A group of musicians he named "M" participated in the recording: Julian Scott on bass, keyboardist Wally Badarou, Canadian programmer John Lewis, Brigit Novik on backing vocals, all under the supervision of sound engineer David Richards.

Bernie Lyon is a French reggae singer, songwriter, arranger, and guitarist, active primarily in the 1980s, when he achieved some success with his hit "Eleanor Rigby," released on his first album "Reggae."

Grace Jones, Jamaican singer, actress and supermodel from Spanish Town, Jamaica, West Indies. While in Paris, she branched out into a recording career, first as a disco diva, working with Tom Moulton, before evolving towards a reggae / new wave sound created at Compass Point Studios with Sly & Robbie and marked by striking visuals created by her then partner Jean-Paul Goude.

Charlélie Couture is a French and American musician and multi-disciplinary artist who has recorded over 25 albums and 17 film soundtracks.

Jimmy Cliff was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician. He was considered to be one of Jamaica's most celebrated musicians and was credited with helping to popularise reggae music internationally.

Joe Cocker was an English singer known for his gritty, bluesy voice and dynamic stage performances that featured expressive body movements. 

Level 42 is an English jazz-funk band formed on the Isle of Wight in 1979. They had a number of UK and worldwide hits during the 1980s and 1990s.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a French musician, singer-songwriter, and composer associated with New York City's late 1970s no wave music scene. She recorded several albums on ZE Records beginning with her 1979 debut Press Color.

Barry Reynolds is a British guitar player, songwriter, composer, and producer, best known for his long-lasting collaboration with Marianne Faithfull.

Black Uhuru is a Jamaican reggae group formed in 1972, initially as Uhuru (Swahili for 'freedom'). The group has undergone several line-up changes over the years, with Derrick "Duckie" Simpson as the mainstay.

Manu Dibango was a Cameroonian musician and songwriter who played saxophone and vibraphone. He developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music.

Gregory Isaacs was a Jamaican reggae musician, known as "the most exquisite vocalist in reggae".

U2 are an Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1976, who have staged several elaborate tours over their career. Over the years, U2 have released 15 studio albums and are one of the world's best-selling music artists.

Marianne Faithfull was an English singer-songwriter and actress who achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her UK top 10 single "As Tears Go By". After a long absence, Faithfull made a musical comeback in 1979 with the release of a critically acclaimed seventh studio album, Broken English.

Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in New York City in 1975. Described as one of the most acclaimed groups of the 1980s, Talking Heads helped to pioneer new wave music by combining elements of punk, art rock, funk, and world music with "an anxious yet clean-cut image".

To be continued!