{"id":611303,"date":"2026-04-28T13:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T13:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611303\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T13:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T13:39:12","slug":"after-the-grammys-i-was-stood-in-mcdonalds-waiting-in-line-and-a-guy-came-up-to-me-and-said-you-bought-me-my-house-jimmy-jam-on-sampling-ai-and-his-new-eastwest-drum-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611303\/","title":{"rendered":"“After the Grammys, I was stood in McDonald’s waiting in line and a guy came up to me and said, \u2018You bought me my house\u2019”: Jimmy Jam on sampling, AI, and his new EastWest drum machine plugin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Jam is back. Not only appearing live in Vegas in a showcase of classic tunes alongside his longtime production partner Terry Lewis, but also providing hundreds of drum patterns for EastWest\u2019s new DrumX drum machine plugin, released April 27. <\/p>\n

For \u201880s and \u201890s aficionados Jam and Lewis will need no introduction. Starting out as part of Prince\u2019s backing band (before being \u201clet go\u201d by the temperamental superstar) the pair swiftly moved into music production, crafting such classics as Just Be Good To Me for the SOS Band, Change of Heart for Change, Saturday Love for Cherelle and Alexander O\u2019Neal, plus their incomparable work across the decades bejewelling hits for Janet Jackson.<\/p>\n

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To date, they\u2019ve scored 42 Billboard No 1s and more than 100 gold, platinum, and diamond records. Check the sleeves of beloved albums by Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Usher, Boyz II Men and many more, and you\u2019ll find Jam and Lewis in Control<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Article continues below <\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, EastWest\u2019s DrumX brings together 10 of the most iconic drum machines ever created \u2013 including the LinnDrum, TR-808 and TR-909, DR-55, DMX, DrumTraks and SP-12 \u2013 all meticulously sampled by the producers and reimagined for modern production by Jimmy Jam himself in an exclusive collaboration with the award-winning virtual instrument developer.<\/p>\n

We caught up with the production legend alongside EastWest\u2019s founder, producer and king of the sample library Doug Rogers to talk sampling, AI and what comes next in Jimmy\u2019s illustrious career.<\/p>\n

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Jimmy Jam and Doug Rogers (Image credit: EastWest)<\/p>\n

What is it about DrumX that made you want to get involved? <\/p>\n

Jimmy Jam: \u201cI liked the concept of going back and doing things the way that I used to do them. In the early days, a lot of the stuff we did started with drum machines and beats. So the idea of having something starting with a drum beat again was very intriguing.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think it was not only the ask, but who was doing the asking. What Doug has built is pretty amazing and it was exciting to be a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it’s not just your sounds? It’s got your grooves in there as well?<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cSomebody literally gave me the drum machine and said \u2018Go create\u2019. That’s what we did for a couple of weeks \u2013 just experimenting, learning things about it. There were things that the machine could do that I don’t even think the designers knew that it could do. And there were other things where I\u2019d say, \u2018You know, man, it’d be great if we could do this\u2026\u2019 and then the next day I’d come back and they’d say, \u2018Oh, it’s there now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

Doug Rogers: \u201cI know we changed things on the quantization.\u201d<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cYeah, we changed some things where it wasn’t quite right. They said, \u2018Where do you think it should be?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Right here\u2019, and then the next day, there it was. I always like when people are creating software or whatever and include the creatives in the process. I had a great time doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jam and Lewis perform onstage during a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and Friends 40th Anniversary Tribute concert in 2025 (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

What were your aims for DrumX? What makes it different? <\/p>\n

DR: \u201cJimmy. [laughs] That makes it different! You\u2019re not gonna be able to get Jimmy to do your drum tracks so that’s a great foundation to build any piece of music on \u2013 something from a proven hitmaker, that forms the foundation of whatever you\u2019re working on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of drum machines out there and a lot of people have sampled 808s, 909s, and the rest, but what we have are 10 of the real classic drum machines really deeply sampled, spending a lot of time capturing every nuance. Plus we also wanted to add something so as not to be stuck in the \u201880s and \u201890s \u2013 to create something that could be used in modern music.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s your take on the \u2018modern\u2019 sound?<\/p>\n

DR: \u201cThe thing that\u2019d happened between the \u201880s and \u201890s and now is that people use a lot more distortion. EDM didn’t exist in the \u201880s and \u201890s. With DrumX we were running these machines through four levels of tape saturation, using an analogue Studer A820 and then the fifth one with the [Studer] J37 tube, which really sounds great when you push it real hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Opus \u2013 our audio engine \u2013 has got hundreds of effects. The default reverb is a simulation of an AMS [RMX16] gated reverb, but you could change the reverb to another 100 different reverbs if you want to do that, just by going into the mixer.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen a lot of people using drum machines, but I’ve never seen somebody honing in to create a piece of music on a drum machinE<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that I think that was most interesting to me was how musical Jimmy got the drums. He was going for notes, musical notes. I haven’t seen that before, I’ve seen a lot of people using drum machines, but I’ve never seen somebody honing in to create a piece of music on a drum machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy was pulling sounds from all those 10 machines and stacking them, tuning them, putting them through effects, adding tape saturation, adding some crush. Just screwing them up as much as possible, but in a very musical way. It’s almost like the drum machine became a drum synthesiser, with all of those tools being added together.<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cMy thing \u2013 with any piece of equipment \u2013 is I want it to inspire me. I love it when I turn it on and instantly a song idea comes or a drum idea comes or a melodic thing comes. And that was the thing with DrumX. The more I got into it the more inspired I got.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy, what would you say the secret of your drum sound is? Those famous \u2018trash can\u2019 snares. When we listen to one of your classic tracks, what are we actually hearing? <\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cWell, a lot of it was sound effect-based stuff. It was things piled on top of each other. It wasn’t one snare drum, it was a combination of three. And then the AMS. We use the AMS a lot on our records \u2013 the non-linear setting on there. It was always combinations of things.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved the records Trevor Horn made and the way that he took sounds that were percussive, not necessarily drum sounds, but glass breaking or trash can lids or whatever. A lot of stuff we did in the early days was Linn Drum, and we used the 808 back in the day, but we took those sounds and then combined them with other things and ran them through an AMS\u2026 You could change the complexion of the sound totally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always liked the idea of having a super distorted drum palette then putting something beautiful over the top of it. And I have to give a lot of credit to Steve Hodge, our engineer. These were very ugly sounds but he would find the beauty in them.<\/p>\n

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John McClain, Terry Lewis, Janet Jackson and Jimmy Jam, pose for a portrait during the celebration for 2,000,000 copies of Control in 1986 (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cTerry and I came along at a time when drum machines were very new and drummers were, in a lot of cases, kind of scared of them. But I started off as a drummer, and I loved the drum machine because I felt like, \u2018wow, I know how to do it!\u2019 I should be able to do this better than anybody because I started off as a drummer, so I never felt threatened by it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never felt threatened about pushing the envelope. Working with Janet Jackson on Control, Janet was so open to whatever we wanted to do. She grew up listening to musicals, movies, so the idea of rhythmic sounds with picture and choreography and those things together \u2013 I think she loved the fact that we were doing things so rhythmically aggressive. She loved that.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike when she heard the drums in Nasty, she didn’t go \u2018Oh, that sounds ugly\u2019 or \u2018that sounds too aggressive.\u2019 It was like, \u2018No, that’s really cool\u2019. She embraced those kinds of things and when you work with artists that don’t really have limits on what they wanna do, you can do all kinds of different things.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn’t have come up with those drum programmes and pushed the envelope the way we did \u2013 and it’s really true of all the artists that we work with \u2013 it’s really them that’s the inspiration. Some things we would push more than others, but Janet always really wanted us to come up with whatever weirdness we could come up with. She was totally into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the incredible sounds you got for Scream, with Janet and Michael Jackson together.<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cYeah, I think we came up with probably six or seven tracks for that. Scream \u2013 or what ended up becoming Scream \u2013 was the track that he liked the best. But then after we were done with that, he came back and he asked, \u2018What about that other track?\u2026\u2019 Tabloid Junkie was another of the ones we did. And the title track, History. I think we ended up doing like five or six on that album. We probably would have worked again with each other at some point because it was a really enjoyable experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Scream. I think that Janet always felt like that was Michael’s track, that she was just a guest on his record. She didn’t really feel it was a duet, because it was very much Michael’s kind of lyric and where he wanted to go. And also even the key of the song was more Michael’s than Janet’s. But we love the way it turned out.<\/p>\n

\u201cJanet was the inspiration for doing it because we knew that Michael was in love with a song on her Rhythm Nation album, The Knowledge. That used to be his warm-up, so we knew if we gave Scream some of that sonic character then that would be it. And Janet said, \u2018I knew that was the one he was gonna pick. I know my brother!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Tell us about the process of putting DrumX together.<\/p>\n

DR: \u201cWe did the DrumX sampling maybe two years ago, before Jimmy came on board. I’m an analogue buff and the best you can do if you’re an analogue purist is do as much analogue before you get to that final stage, where it has to be converted to digital. I put the audio down to Pro Tools and direct to tape, so I have the choice between both, and usually, I end up using the tape version because a lot of these sounds benefit from a little bit of harmonic distortion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere tape falls down for me is in the bottom end. The digital bottom end is much more solid and has better bass than analogue. So we use both. We just get the best signal chain we can and then figure out what’s going on with the machine, and what settings are there, and make sure we capture every setting that is important. At the end of the day, it all ends up digital, whether you like it or not, because we live in a digital world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy Jam Creates Grooves with DrumX\u2122 | EastWest Sounds – YouTube
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Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

For your Fab Four project, where you re-created all The Beatles<\/a> most famous signature sounds, you put together an amazing collection of kit. Do you still have it all?<\/p>\n

DR: \u201cWell, I kept the [Studer] J37. But I sold the REDD desk. And I sold the TG12345 because they cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once the project wrapped, I just didn’t see the need to keep them. And I actually didn’t like the TG! I know it’s sacrilege to say something like that, but I really didn’t like the sound of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it was absolutely amazing that Alan Parsons and Pink Floyd got the sound of Dark Side of the Moon from that console. It was such a credit to them as a team. But I did like the REDD because that was tube-based. I think Abbey Road was the first album that The Beatles used a transistor-based console with the TG. I think right up until then they were using the REDD and the J37, so everything was tube-based and that has a sound \u2013 a fatness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s something about a tube that’s living and breathing. It never repeats itself. I equate it to being like the ocean. The waves are never the same a second time, you know? There’s something about that movement inside a tube. It’s unpredictable and it’s a sound that people just love. So I kept the best part of it, which was the J37. But someone offered me an insane amount of money for the REDD, so I had to let go of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy, you were saying earlier you started out playing drums?<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cMy dad was a musician, still is a musician, 99 years old, Cornbread Harris. I was a drummer in his band at 12 years old. When I met Terry [Lewis] later that same year, 1973, HE said, \u2018I already have a drummer\u2019, who was Jellybean Johnson, who recently passed away, but Terry said, \u2018Be a keyboard player because your Dad plays keyboards\u2019. Terry was the one that got me into playing keyboards.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt home my mom controlled the record player, so everything I heard, whether it was Ray Charles or James Brown\u2026 All those things back in the day. All of those combinations of things led to this. I was a DJ as well as a musician. All of those things taught me how to pack a dance floor\u2026 or clear a dance floor! Learning other people’s songs taught me how to make hit songs, I guess. And then, obviously, going back to Terry. I have had a great partner for over 50 years. All of those things kind of go into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s great that these tools are only getting more useful and more powerful but when does music tech cross a line? How do you both feel about the role of AI in music-making?<\/p>\n

DR: \u201cI think that Jimmy and I are both on the same page here. In 1987 when I got my first sampler there were no sounds for it. There was nothing, and that just seemed ridiculous to me. It was like having a computer with no software. So we made the very first drum sample CD of all time and put it out. I think it was early \u201888.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they said the world was gonna fall apart, that we were destroying music. We were gonna be putting all these people out of business\u2026 But actually, the complete opposite happened. Now there are millions of people making music that weren’t before because they didn\u2019t have a record contract. Or they didn\u2019t have access to an expensive studio. So I’ve kind of been through the \u2018AI thing\u2019 before, and I saw that it was just a load of crap.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m working with an AI company now, Ace, who are the leader in musician-based AI. Suno, for example, is a consumer product. They\u2019re for the people that just want to type in, \u2018Make me a good song\u2019, but there\u2019ll always be real musicians and they want to make music.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now you have to become a rocket scientist just to create a musical passage that sounds real. My whole thing has always been about simplicity and I see AI as really opening that up. So someone can sit down at a keyboard and the software will interpret perfectly what they intended to do in terms of their performance. They won’t have to learn all the articulations and all the rest of it that goes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cWhen I think of AI I think about two things: permission and compensation. Permission has always been in place for any sort of copyright, and so it should be for AI. Where AI is taking people’s voices or they’re taking art without the permission of the person or the people who they\u2019re scraping the information from, they should be compensated.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if they’re being compensated, and they give permission, then I think that\u2019s good. There needs to be some sort of regulation or some sort of rules in place, but this train has left the station. You can either get on the train, or you’re gonna get run over. So learn as much as you can about it and find a way to use it in a way that’s respectful, and as a tool to help you create. Then I think AI is a really good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you use AI in the studio?<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cWe’ve always embraced the idea of technology. I won’t name the artist, but there was a legendary artist we were working with who’s on the older side, and there was a part that they just couldn’t get as we were recording.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, now with AI I can take the demo vocalist \u2013 who sang it exactly the way we wanted it to be \u2013 and I can take the voice of the person that we’ve been working with, and I can combine those two things together. And now I have him singing it perfectly, the way we want to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now the choice is, do I have this older gentleman come back and sing his part, or do I say to him, \u2018We can correct this so it’s the right timing. Is that OK with you?\u2019 That\u2019s where the permission comes in. They said, \u2018Yes, that’s perfectly fine\u2019. That\u2019s the problem solved, and this person is being respected. We’re not just \u2018taking his stuff\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

DR: \u201cIt\u2019s like when sampling first started \u2013 sampling records. On the creative side, there were no guardrails in place. Clyde Stubblefield [the origin of the Funky Drummer riff] being a good example. He was the most sampled guy ever and never got a cent for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cI love sampling because I love the idea of being able to take a song and bring together generations of people. Like Got Till It’s Gone for Janet. That started out as a Joni Mitchell sample of Big Yellow Taxi and then I added a drum beat to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr a song like That’s the Way Love Goes which started off as a James Brown Papa Don’t Take No Mess sample alongside an Impeach the President sample. Rhythm Nation itself is probably the best example \u2013 that’s Sly and the Family Stone\u2019s Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two samples in particular that we used, that I always think about because I ran into the people that did them. Once, I got on a plane and a guy turned around and he said, \u2018Are you Jimmy Jam?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Yeah\u2019. And it was Gerry Beckley of America and he said, \u2018You built me my pool,\u2019 because Someone To Call My Lover, the song we did for Janet, sampled their Ventura Highway. He said \u2018If you ever wanna redo any of our stuff, just call me!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother one was after the Grammys, I was stood in McDonald’s by The Staples Centre, waiting in line and a guy came up to me and he said, \u2018You bought me my house.\u2019 It was Wayne Garfield, the writer of The Glow of Love for Change that we sampled for Janet\u2019s All For You.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we were able to introduce a song to a new generation of people, but we were able to compensate the songwriter that wrote the original song. But at the beginning of sampling? People didn’t think twice about it. But once the lawsuits started flying they got serious about getting permission and compensating the artists. AI is that same wild west right now, but it’ll get sorted. I’m confident it’s all gonna work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you\u2019ve got a Vegas residency coming up?<\/p>\n

JJ: \u201cWe’re gonna head to Vegas tomorrow. It’s Terry and myself and then our kind of our foundational singers are Ruben Studdard for the male singing and Shanice Wilson for the female. And then we’ll have a few other folks drop by on different nights to do different things.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s kind of like going back to our roots because before we were songwriters or producers, we were just musicians in a local band playing everybody else’s hits. So now we go back to just being musicians, but we get to play our own music! We\u2019re doing six shows, at The Venetian, a club called Voltaire. It’s about a thousand seats, intimate, every seat is great \u2013 really great sound, great lighting, just a really cool place. It’s a kind of a trial run. We’ll see how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Find out more about EastWest DrumX.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Jam is back. Not only appearing live in Vegas in a showcase of classic tunes alongside his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-611303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}