Fact #117278

Ann Peebles : That was an electric timbale. We were the first people to use it, at least in that order. When we were recording something, we usually played the tape back and maybe we'd take something off, like the first bars, and listen to it. Then we'd take the bass off and listen to it and so on. Sometimes we'd take off everything and just listen to the voice to see if we had every note that we wanted. At first, we had the timbales all the way through the song but as we played the tape, Willie Mitchell said 'what about if the timbales were in front before anything else comes in?'. So we did that and when we listened back I said 'I love it, let's do that'. That's how that came about, everybody agreeing. During that time period, Hi was really like a family, with the musicians, Willie Mitchell the producer/engineer and all the writers. If one person heard something and everybody agreed, then we'd do it and I think that's how Hi came to be as big as it did. Because it was like a close-knit family.