In mid-July, Deggans and fellow
NPR correspondent Michele Norris discussed the impact of the
music and film of Prince’s Purple
Rain, celebrating its unfathomable 30th anniversary in 2014.
Deggans mentioned how the
story of “The Kid” and “The Revolution” strangely mirrored his own
dreams of pop stardom.
Most of us will not likely become
NPR commentators or authors of
social and media dissection. Yet,
many of us have had the dream
of becoming a music star. This is
the story of how Deggans and
Voyage, the band he was a member of, got to live out that dream
and to be signed to the famed
Motown Records label, and how
there’s never really such a thing as
a “sure thing.”
One key proviso: Deggans stipulated that, “These are my recollections only, without consultation
from anyone else in my band or
our management from back then.
So it’s basically what I knew then
to the best of my recollection; others may have different memories.”
How did the Voyage Band start
out and what did you play?
I was the drummer, drum programmer and occasional backing
vocalist. I was taking a class at Indiana University called the IU Soul
Revue, where we put together a
show through the African American Studies Department which
showed off the history of black
music. There, I met a bass player
named James Strong; he had
some other friends at the school
who played other instruments and
eventually we decided to form a
band that we eventually called
Voyage.
What was the process of putting
together “Strange Situation”
which was the band’s initial regional hit?
In 1986, a few years after we
formed, we were approached by
students in IU’s audio engineering program. They were helping
with a charity project called Live
From Bloomington. The idea was
to record an album featuring one
song each from a host of local
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