Tunde Williams & The Africa 70 – Mr. Big Mouth

Babatunde ‘Tunde’ Williams was born in Nigeria, in 1943. Like Fela, his family was from Abeokuta, but his father was employed by the United Africa Company in the middle belt city of Makurdi, where Tunde was born in 1943. He attended primary school at Gboko Elementary School in the nearby town of Gboko, and later attended Katsina-Ala Middle School in the northern town of Katsina. Unbeknownst to most people, Tunde’s first instrument was percussion, and his earliest professional experience was as a conga, bongo, and traps player for various highlife bands in the early 1960s. By 1965 he was playing with the highlife band of Olu McFoy, and he later joined Atomic Eight, a highlife and copyright band from Aba in eastern Nigeria. It was in Atomic Eight that he befriended the bandleader Raymond Baba, a multi-instrumentalist who was proficient on both brass and woodwinds. Inspired by Baba’s example, Tunde switched from percussion to trumpet shortly thereafter, with Baba as his first teacher. He also cites Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis as formative influences on the instrument.