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Up to the State Capitol and Back
Entry 22 of 34 | show all | print this entry |
(Lansing, Sunday, May 6, 2007)-It's way early in the morning when Adam Brook pulls up in front of my daughter Sunny's house by 7 Mile & Mound to carry me to Southfield for my scheduled 9:00 am appearance on Fox 2 News. At the studio we meet Matty Lee, who set this thing up, and Jeff "Baby" Grand, who will play guitar with me, and I go on with Charles Pugh for a respectful and pretty intelligent interview centered on GUITAR ARMY before Jeff and I get to play a little blues on Sunday morning television.
We shoot back across the city aiming for Hamtramck, where my daughters & granddaughter will meet us for breakfast at the venerable Clock restaurant across the street from the Attic Bar, Hamtramck's long-time home of the blues. I can never get enough time with my daughters, and any hours spent with Beyonce are heavily infused with grandfatherly bliss.
We enjoy our brief morning feast and say goodbye as Adam and I are quickly back in the Caddy and off to the state capitol- but before we get to Lansing we'll stop in Okemos to visit the sprawling compound of Bob Baldori & family and have a splendid meal prepared by Bob himself with the assistance of his lovely and brilliant wife Kelly.
I've known Baldori a long, long time-since the second week of the Grande Ballroom in October 1966, when Bob's band The Woolies shared a bill with the "avant-rock" MC-5. The Woolies had enjoyed a huge hit single with their version of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love," produced by Lou Adler for Dunhill Records, and they would go on after a chance on-stage encounter to become Chuck Berry's Midwestern back-up band of choice for more than 30 ensuing years.
Bob's a highly skilled rock & blues pianist and a world-class boogie woogie practictioner who's lately teamed up with Michigan piano legend Bob Seeley and scripted a two-piano boogie woogie show that will stop you dead in your tracks. A DVD is in production now that will showcase this dynamic duo in action at Birdland and at festival venues damn near everywhere.
Baldori is also a playwright, recording studio owner-operator and producer, and a first-class lawyer who put himself through law school at the age of 45 in order to represent himself in a protracted lawsuit against the county which was ultimately resolved in his favor to the tune of about $100,000
Baldori was also the protagonist in a legendary marijuana case where he turned out to be in the middle of two gangs of undercover narcotics agents-one selling, one buying-who had somehow insinuated themselves into Bob's Okemos recording studio operation. Bob & Kelly fled the USA, spent time in Paris and London, then settled in Toronto for a spell until Baldori was apprehended and taken back to Michigan to face the trumped-up charges. Bob kicked their ass so bad that they're still afraid of him.
Boogie Bob (as he's familiarly known) has been a mainstay of the Lansing-area cultural scene since he matriculated at Michigan State University 40 or so years ago. He's been a major force in his community ever since, and the Baldori-Seeley collaboration is just the latest in a long string of modest triumphs.
I love to see the Boogie man and especially appreciate his fantastic feasts, both for the carefully-prepared food and the scintillating companionship. Today Bob's invited old friends Mark "Mr. B" Braun, another world-class Michigan blues and boogie pianist; the fine guitarist and blues disc jockey Scott Allman; associated companions and other friends from the studio and the DVD project.
Mr. B is from my home town of Flint, Michigan, lives in Ann Arbor and has gone all around the world on his blues piano playing and singing inspired by his mentors Little Brother Montgomery, Sunnyland Slim and Boogie Woogie Red. He made several splendid discs for the defunct Schoolkids label in Ann Arbor and continues to function at the top of his form.
I'll never forget the night B and I played together at Ann Arbor's late lamented Performance Network on some kind of benefit show. I said I'd participate if they'd assign me a musician to back me up, and I got to choose the great Mr. B as my accompanist. We'd been knowing each other in the local music world for quite a while, but I don't think he was at all aware of my existence as a poet and performing artist.
We met in the Green Room before the show. B produced a little silver flask of an alcoholic beverage, offered me a snort and said he didn't know too much about poetry. "I kinda like Robert Service," he confessed, and I had to tell him that what I did wasn't nothing like Robert Service, but I thought he might like it.
On stage, when we got to my poem "The 44s" and the words of Little Brother Montgomery explaining how the song should be played, B shouted out from the piano bench, "Man, that's just what he told me!"
I've known Scott Allman almost as long, from when he had a band in Lansing called Flying Tigers and I was pressed into service as its manager. This would have been around 25 years ago, and we became really good friends even outside the context of the band, traveling to New Orleans together for the Mardi Gras and conducting blues investigations into the Mississippi Delta on the way.
Inspired by our mutual pal Martin "Little Tino" Gross, who was producing a fantastic R&B radio show called the Big City Blues Cruise on WEMU-FM in Ypsilanti, Scott founded his very popular Sunday night blues program, Capitol City Blues Cruise, on a commercial rock radio station in Lansing, where he's outdrawn all the competition in the local market for 20 years or so. In the daytime he's a media expert for MSU, and when I come to Lansing he'll get out his guitar and back me up if I need him.
It's great to sit around outside and fatmouth with my old friends like this, and even greater to move inside and gobble up some of Baldori's cooking with fresh vegetables and condiments he's grown in the garden outside. Bob knocks us out with some footage of the Boogie Woogie documentary he's making with Bob Seeley, and then Adam and I head out for Schuler's Books to make my 7:00 pm reading from GUITAR ARMY.
Schuler's is very good to us, as usual, and there's a good crowd in attendance, the sort of mix of grizzled oldsters and bright-eyed youth that makes this kind of appearance worthwhile. We'd like to hang for a while afterwards but there's no more time-we've got to speed back to Detroit to make our last commitment for the day: an appearance on Mark Pasman's blues show on WCSX-FM in Oak Park. We have some laughs with Mark, annnounce my final Detroit appearances the next day, plug the book, hear some hip music and head home for the night.
************
Thinking about when I met Scott Allman makes me think about another Lansing musician who was a close friend and is now no longer with us, the tenor man known as Big Red, or Ron Redman, or legally (I think, if he ever did anything legally) as Ronald Gulyas.
I remember one night in the mid-'80s at the original site of the Creole Gallery in downtown Lansing, when the whole neighborhood was in a state of serious collapse, we convened an all-star edition of the early Blues Scholars with Big Red on tenor, Scott Allman on guitar, Bob Baldori on piano, R.J. Spangler and Akunda Hollis on congas, Little Tino on drums, James O'Donnell on trumpet, and I'm pretty sure Rick Steiger was there on alto & baritone sax.
Man, that was some wild music that night! That's when I first met the proprietor of the Creole Gallery, Robert Busby, a very sweet cat who was ruthlessly murdered in Lansing earlier this year by a guy who then took his own life. Big Red had passed away right around Christmas 2005, and I had a chance to read this poem I wrote in his memory on the same bandstand we had once shared in Lansing on one of the many, many nights we worked together in bands or as a duet.
"hold your horn high"
("big red")
for ron redman gulyas
early sunday afternoon
taking coffee at the dolphins
& the spring training reports
from the detroit news on-line,
all of a sudden
i'm at the batting cage
in royal oak 20 years ago
with big red,
a great big motherfucker in his late 20s
who weighed about 390
& played the tenor saxophone
with the sound of yore
like coleman hawkins
& ben webster were whispering
in his ear
while he fingered his horn,
big red
was a great big crazy character
who could tell you
the high school & college stats
for all the players
coming up on the tigers in the spring,
& he still played baseball himself,
semi-pro for a lansing team,
not the popular lansing lug-nuts
but some obscure outfit
that would pay him a few bucks
to suit up & power a couple of balls
out of the park,
& he claimed to be a gypsy
or either related to the little giant
of jazz, don redman
& he played
anything he wanted
on the tenor saxophone,
incomplete skills but
plenty of feeling, a
round,
warm sound
that was always good to hear,
big red,
my man,
he backed me up so many times
& his weight
would go up &
down the scale
from 390 to 210
& then back up again,
& in the early '90s
he fled the united states
& roosted in budapest
for a few years
& had a ball playing his horn
& digging his gypsy roots,
calling himself "ron goulash"
like the hungarian stew
& why he ever came back
will never be known
but he passed in east lansing
just before Christmas of 2005-
big red,
hold your horn high,
let us hear your raspy breath,
my brother, just one more time
--the dolphins, amsterdam
march 19, 2006/
rochester ny
January 18, 2007
************
Finally, I just stumbled across the following review of the last show I played for Robert Busby at the Creole Gallery last year. Dr Dorothy was with me, and I've been missing her pretty bad, but I'll be with her in New York City in a couple of days, and that will be good. Here's the review:
Lansing State Journal
August 10, 2006
CREOLE SHOW SURREAL
By Ryan McCormick
(Lansing) - Sitting alone in an art gallery of strangers, the
photographer and a couple of scattered friends, I prayed Creole
Gallery's Megan Holland wouldn't embarrass me in front of
these supposedly hip cats.
Please don't single me out for being with the press with all
these poets and blues musicians looming in a place where the
cast of Rent would love to hang.
I knew she would.
I did nothing to stop her at this gathering of curious MC5 fans,
wandering bohemians and tuned-in cats looking for something to
do on a Tuesday night.
OK, she's on the tiny stage with the Motor City Blues Scholars,
who all looked like they were on vacation - guys with Hawaiian
shirts, baseball caps and jeans.
She's got the microphone and is thanking everyone from the
media for promoting the John Sinclair show.
I had never seen the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street, this full
or a crowd so energized.
Holland cited a couple of names from other publications, but
then I heard my first name and then something that sort of
resembled my last name.
She mispronounced my last name.
I sort of blacked out.
The next thing I knew the Motor City Blues Scholars were jamming
with an ultra-cool demeanor and sound.
Rubbing my eyes, I was confused as to where Sinclair was.
Maybe it was time to go home and tell my editor that there was a
death in the family.
No, what would Kolchak: The Night Stalker do? I had to press on.
Then an imposing figure in a black T-shirt, camouflage cargo
pants, fanny pack and long, skinny, red-beaded necklace
slithered in front of the tiny stage like a snake after a big
meal.
Is that really him?
It must be him. Nobody else has a white chin-beard like that.
But jeez, I would never have thought a poet could grow to be so
tall.
Well, maybe Charles Bukowski was just as tall. [Editor's Note: No, but Charles Olson was even taller!]
But why was Sinclair pacing in front of the stage instead of
jumping on.
Ah, he was waiting for an introduction. Drummer R.J. Spangler
did the honors. Sinclair made his way to the stage with a woman
wearing a black flowing gown with a towering green headdress.
She was to sing backup.
My hands were sweating, while Sinclair dictated to the band the
style of blues he wanted.
Guitar player Jeff Grand informed the band in which key they
would be playing, and off they went.
Notebook in hand, Sinclair's raspy voice beautifully delivered
poetic story after bluesy tale with unrivaled wit and humor.
Bob Baldori was rocking the keys and Chris Rumel was banging the
stand-up bass.
It was a blur of musical spontaneity and lyrical brilliance.
Before I knew it, the band was taking a set break, and Sinclair
was outside smoking while signing books and taking pictures with
fans.
I gave Sinclair the article I had written about him, and he
called me Zack. I corrected him, and he apologized.
When Sinclair hit the stage for the second set, he waved my
article in the air.
He mentioned he liked the article but wanted to correct one of
the facts.
I had written that he was the self-proclaimed "Hardest Working
Poet in Show Business," but he informed the audience that a
journalist in San Francisco had given him that label.
Well, at least he got my name right while correcting me on
stage, and I was able to experience one of the most artistically
engaging shows of my life.
http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=37155
-Amsterdam
June 13, 2007
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