Felton Pilate is a member and co-lead singer of 1980s Bay-Area hit R&B-fusion-sound band Con Funk Shun. He has an encyclopedic music mind, can read and write complex music as well as sight sing from reading music sheets, unlike most popular-music musicians from Rock to C&W to R&B and Hip-hop/rap. Felton, the son of a medical doctor, hails from Vallejo, CA, and was regarded as a child prodigy. He plays the piano, keyboard, guitar and saxophone, as well as sings and arranges song orchestration. When he was a boy he belonged to an acclaimed youth music group in Vallejo named The Minnie Singers. As a producer and private music studio engineer, his clients have included Whitney Houston at the start of her career, Pebbles of the hit song Girlfriend, pioneer hit rapper Dougie Fresh and MC Hammer, aka Hammer -- the latter for whom he was music director and lead band performer during Hammer's ascent to the pinnacle of music celebrity and his near s...