My Six-Decade Journey in Rock and Roll

IF YOU SEE ME

My Six-Decade Journey in Rock and Roll

By Pepe Willie (with Tony Kiene)

If anyone deserves accolades for his contributions to the music industry, it is this man. He has been a winner because he has helped others win. From Brooklyn to Hollywood to Minneapolis, Pepe Willie’s memoir, If You See Me, takes you on his ongoing journey, its ups and downs, good memories and bad, love and loss, but above all, hope.

Born in 1948, Willie’s roots began in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, better known as Bed-Stuy. When his parents separated, he was raised by his father while his sisters were raised by his mother. Later, due to abuse by his father, he went on to live with his grandparents. During his teen years, he was no stranger to street gangs as a means of survival in his neighborhood, and in later years, drugs. However, music is in his DNA; the prime example is his uncle, Clarence Collins, who was part of the group Little Anthony and the Imperials, now members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Willie became a valet for the group in the 1960s, and as such met many of the music greats we know today. Where Harlem had the Apollo Theater, Brooklyn had the Brooklyn Paramount and the Brooklyn Fox. The atmosphere between groups was one of friendly competition and support of one another. In 1969, while Little Anthony and Imperials performed at the Copacabana in New York, he met the legendary Jimi Hendrix. Little did he know that another meeting that night, with a young woman named Shauntel, would change the course of his life in ways he never dreamed.

He and Shauntel fell in love and subsequently married. As it happened, Shauntel was from Minneapolis, and she had a 12-year-old cousin named Prince Rogers Nelson. Prince would go on to become an iconic genius in music, but it was Pepe Willie’s gifts and knowledge of the industry that took Prince to the next levels when he was a teenager in the group Grand Central. Though his marriage to Shauntel didn’t last, his connection with Prince spanned decades, evidenced by the regard with which he holds him as his story unfolds.

Moving to Minneapolis in 1974, Willie’s gifts as a songwriter and musician coupled with a desire to create his own niche, thus he established PMI, Inc., and the group 94 East. His moniker as the Godfather of the Minneapolis Sound is well deserved. Through him and Prince, we have such entertainers as Andre Cymone, Morris Day, the Time, Sheila E., Dez Dickerson, Jesse Johnson, Sue Ann Carwell, and Alexander O’Neal, to name but a few.

By no means does Willie sugarcoat the difficulties and costs of fame and success in the music industry. He relates the 12-hour days of band rehearsals that test the discipline to one’s craft, the pitfalls of drugs, unscrupulous contracts/deals, talented individuals that never achieved that “big break.” At the same time, his love and appreciation for music shines through, and his happiness for the success of others as well as his own.

As an original member of the Sounds of Blackness, there is so much to his story I can relate to, since the Sounds was on the same circuit in the Twin Cities as Prince and Flyte Time back in those days. You learn the industry from the ground up, and you pay your dues. As a contemporary, I recognized and remembered the groups and solo artists from those days, and the level of professionalism and drive it took not only to succeed, but endure over the years. His place in Rock and Roll history is secure.

If You See Me is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Thank you, Pepe and Tony, for sharing your story and your stamp on the Minneapolis Sound. Your wisdom and insights are invaluable. Readers, one last tidbit: the title of this memoir is no accident. You’ll find out the reason, and the origin, as you read the book.