God sent me here.” Alford looked up and replied, “Have a seat.” He introduced her to piles of jazz chords. She was there looking at guitars and upon hearing his named mentioned by an employee replied, “Spanky’s here?” Walking back to the store’s teaching studio, she found Alford there and said, “You’re supposed to be my guitar instructor. She finally found him at Shepard’s store by chance. Strong had been looking for him for a while, after musician friends kept recommending she take lessons for this guy named Spanky. She took lessons from him for two or three years.
Stephanie Strong was one of Alford’s Huntsville guitar students. We’d leave Huntsville all the time.” The break sparked a highlight-stuffed career for Wooten that’s included co-producing/co-writing the song"Freedom" from 2012 Quentin Tarantino film “Django Unchained” and writing and playing on Earth, Wind & Fire’s 2004 album “Illumination.” “Spanky was there pretty much all the time, just about every one of those sessions we did together. “From that point on, I had like a 10 or 15 year run with Raphael,” Wooten says. Saadiq liked what he heard over the phone and asked to speak to “this kid over here cutting class,” as Alford put it. The day Saadiq called Alford, Wooten happened to be playing keyboards in the background. “Ask of You” would eventually become a top 20 hit.
A fan of his Mighty Clouds of Joy work, Saadiq had tracked Alford down to get him to play on “Ask of You,” a song Saadiq doing for “Higher Learning,” the 1995 John Singleton film with a soundtrack boasting cuts by Ice Cube, R.E.M., OutKast and Rage Against The Machine. Raphael Saadiq, of platinum-selling R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné, was on the other line.