The stars finally seem to be aligning for New Paltz-based musician Dorian Randolph, after some years of challenge, and he’s like a kid in a candy store about it right now. “People don’t believe me when I tell them, but I get a sensation in my body or my brain or my soul that’s able to tell me that something exciting’s happening. I definitely believe in the power of manifesting,” he says. “I’m going with the flow of what the universe is bringing me.”
Dorian, who uses Mr. Randolph: The Melodic Storyteller as his “artist name” these days, is the son of the late professional jazz drummer Eugene Randolph and has been making music since he was a toddler. He has toured worldwide with big names in the business, most often Murali Coryell and Joe Louis Walker. “Over the years I have played at almost every music venue in the Hudson Valley,” he says. But, as with many artists, the COVID shutdown put a major crimp in his ability to make a living. It’s only now that years of creativity, focused effort and positive thinking have converged to yield opportunities for his career to burst wide open.
Randolph’s recent big break came when his music somehow caught the ear of King Malik, the CEO of a Sacramento label called The Delta CA Records. “He randomly reached out to me via social media, on my Instagram, and told me not to quit. We started talking together about music,” Randolph recalls. “He mastered a track for me that I wrote during the pandemic.” That song, the soulful “Just a Number,” had its official release on March 12, and there will be a local release party from 7 to 10 p.m. on Saturday, April 13 at Keegan Ales in Kingston. When we spoke, he had just found out that the single would be spotlighted for a 30-day period on the Los Angeles radio station and podcast Power 102.8, beginning on Tuesday, March 24.
Dorian’s mother Sharon, born in a small town in New York’s Southern Tier, met his father Eugene while she was working in a Borscht Belt hotel where he was performing. Eugene was “brought up a drummer” in a jazz-loving Bronx family; his father, also named Eugene, was a songwriter who co-wrote “A Tear Fell,” which was a #5 hit for Teresa Brewer in 1956 and also recorded by Ivory Joe Hunter, Ray Charles, Billy “Crash” Craddock, Solomon Burke and Eric Donaldson. So, Dorian got the songwriting genes as well as the rhythmic ones.
His father studied music at NYU, taught in the Bronx, toured with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and comedian Totie Fields, among other stars; among his anecdotes about life on the road was an incident where he “accidentally wound up at Charles Manson’s house,” Dorian says. The couple eventually moved to New Paltz to start a family. Eugene was in the house band at the Granit Hotel in Kerhonkson from the 1970s to the 1990s, while Sharon worked in administrative positions at the New Paltz Central School District for many years.
Eugene’s musical tastes straddled the eras of Big Band jazz, bebop and progressive jazz – “He loved Miles, Ellington; he was a huge Billy Strayhorn fan” – and Dorian was exposed to a broad variety of musical genres from a very early age. “Between my Dad and Mom, I listened to everything from jazz to pop to rock to soul, R&B, even some country and classical.” Earth, Wind and Fire, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and James Brown were early influences, and later Dorian got into Prince, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and a variety of hip hop artists.
“I was born in 1985, so I was watching MTV when I was two or three,” Dorian recalls. “Michael Jackson was one of the first artists I was drawn to. When I first saw ‘Thriller,’ when I was in diapers, it was a spiritual moment for me.” Indeed, he has early memories of sitting in diapers beside his father while he practiced drums, banging along on a tambourine. “I was drumming on stuff before I could really pick up a pair of drumsticks.” His grandmother bought him a Casio keyboard, on which he made his first forays into songwriting.
Young Dorian took advantage of every opportunity to practice music that the New Paltz school system had to offer: the choir, band and jazz band in middle school; band, chamber singers, marching band and spring musicals in high school, performing in productions of Barnum, Bye Bye Birdie and Fiddler on the Roof. He won a place in the NYSSMA Area All-State Band and took an advanced class that enabled him to study and perform classical music at SUNY New Paltz.
He took a detour into metal bands after high school, he says, but his father’s collaborations with Murali Coryell brought him back into the fold of jazz, blues and R&B. “I would sit in on percussion, and eventually Murali gave me a chance to play with him. I did my first tour, from New York to Tennessee. Then, in 2009, when I was 23, Joe Louis Walker invited us to go tour Europe. That was a dream come true. Through Joe, I got to meet some of my musical heroes.” Dorian recalls a blues benefit concert on the Caribbean island of Mustique that turned into a two-week stint at a club: “Mick Jagger was there for five nights.”
Back in New Paltz, Dorian Randolph was playing out by night and driving cabs by day when the pandemic struck, and his world fell apart. Trailways buses stopped running for awhile, which meant little demand for taxi service. “So, I stopped working there, and my music gigs were gone, too. I lost most of my livelihood. I wound up writing a lot of music to get through it, and also playing remotely.”
It was during this fallow period that he got the brainstorm to organize a community music festival “for when things opened up again,” and approached the Town of New Paltz to hold it as a Juneteenth celebration. Town officials were receptive; Elting Memorial Library, Historic Huguenot Street and several restaurants got on board with the planning. The first New Paltz Juneteenth Festival took place in 2021, and it has continued yearly since then.
Having brought his idea to full fruition should’ve been a personal triumph for Dorian, but disaster struck: In the night between the first and second days of the festival, someone broke into the gift shop at Historic Huguenot Street and stole the full donation jar. “I was really heartbroken by that,” he says. “I had to work on myself and get over my anger.” More disappointment followed when a production company he’d signed up with to promote local artists “became corrupt.”
Undaunted, he got what work he could, playing at open mics at dive bars. He volunteered to help out with Kingston’s O+ Festival and ended up performing with Juma Sultan’s Aboriginal Music Society, the nine-piece ensemble founded by the percussionist and bass player who backed Jimi Hendrix at the Woodstock Festival. Meanwhile, he was writing enough songs to qualify for licensing through ASCAP – a major professional coup that opens doors for his work to be performed and recorded by other musicians.
“I have about two albums’ worth of music that I’m putting singles out with King Malik. We’re doing at least two or three in the next month,” says Mr. Randolph. You’ll surely hear some of those performed live if you attend the release party at Keegan Ales on April 13. On tap to play with him that evening are Josh Towers on guitar, Michael Purcell on keyboard, Bill Foster on bass and Patrick “Pete Rock” Robinson on drums, with a possible guest appearance from drummer Terry Hampton, who “studied drums with my Dad over the years.” Dorian Randolph will sing and play percussion. Go catch him now, before he gets too famous for us locals who knew him way back when.
You can listen to “Just a Number” on all major streaming platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, Tidal and AppleMusic. To follow the burgeoning career of Mr. Randolph on social media, visit www.facebook.com/dorian.randolph, www.tiktok.com/@dorianrandolph1, https://www.instagram.com/dorianr845/
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