Over 30 years he recorded 18 albums playing tenor sax with the Texas band (fka The Jazz Crusaders), with a parallel career as a West Coast session musician.

 

Felder created the groove behind Jackson 5 hits like ABC and I Want You Back, and Let’s Get It On for Marvin Gaye. But that was not all; far from it.

 

As a session man he also played on albums in many different genres by (deep breath…) Joan Baez, Four Tops, Donovan, Jackson Browne, John Cale, Dizzy Gillsespie, Randy Newman, B.B. King, Harry Nilsson, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Minnie Riperton, Steely Dan, Dusty Springfield and many more.

 

The place where he first caught my ear was Joni Mitchell’s 1975 album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, especially this song, Edith And The Kingpin – a fantastical story about an encounter between a real-life Vancouver pimp Mitchell had met and his new moll… Edith Piaf.

 

It’s an extraordinary album, and my favourite by Mitchell, probably because it’s the first one I got to know and love, long before I heard the more introspective Blue.

 

By this point in her career, Mitchell had moved away from her folk roots and begun, on her previous album Court & Spark, to collaborate with jazz-rock musicians.

 

She now introduced synths and samples for the first time – The Jungle Line’s use of the Drummers of Burundi is arguably the first ever example of a sample in ‘rock’ music.

 

Her musicians included Jackson Browne, David Crosby and Graham Nash, but the core of the studio group was drawn from the bands L.A. Express and The Crusaders, including Felder and keyboard player Joe Sample.