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Ralph MacDonald, 1944-2011
"I don't want to be a superstar. Above all, I'm a musician first."
—Ralph MacDonald was not a superstar. I didn't know his name (despite reading it on lots of liner notes that I apparently quickly forgot), but everyone knows his music, that's for sure. From the songs he wrote, like Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway's "Where Is the Love?" and Grover Washington and Bill Withers' "Just the Two of Us," to the percussion he played on ones like Paul Simon's "Late In the Evening" or David Bowie's "Young Americans"—his discography is jaw-dropping. He played such an important role in so many important songs. Man, the things you don't know 'til someone dies. MacDonald was 67.
i probably wouldn't have ever noticed his name, either, if i hadn't interned for the late, great, joel dorn way back in 2001. he spoke highly of ralph then, and starting some 30 years before, used ralph on just about every single atlantic lp he produced. the percussion on les mccann's invitation to openness is a personal favorite. i also love his LP the path and am surprised it's not more heavily sampled. the track you posted has been, most notably, to my ear, on del's "money for sex". anyhow, RIP, to an amazing percussionist and, by all accounts, a solid human.
I actually remember noticing in liner notes that MacDonald played with both Paul Simon and Billy Joel lo those many years ago–it was my first real awareness of the concept of the professional studio musician (though apparently he was much more).