Dick Waterman Music Photography

I appreciate that my post of getting Matt Murphy into the Blues Brothers was popular with you and passed along many times.

But, I forgot to tell you the most important part of the saga.

He had never heard of them!

I told him about Belushi and Ackroyd.

Never heard of them.

I told him that they were stars of Saturday Night Live.

Never heard of the show.

How could he be totally unaware of a show that had been a huge hit for several years?

The answer was simple to the extreme.

The show was broadcast live on Saturday nights and, well, good musicians are working on Saturday nights.

I remember that I called Doc Pomus in a panic that ‘our guitarist’ had never heard of the band that we wanted to put him in.

He shrugged it off as nothing.

“He’s a player and he’ll do what good players do. It’ll work out fine. Just convince him to take the gig.”

For those of you who not have heard of Doc Pomus, let me tell you that he was one of the greatest song writers (Elvis did seven of his songs) and he wrote the greatest wedding song of all time.

He had polio as a young man and walked with a cane. His condition worsened through the years until he used hand braces, then crutches and finally, he spent his final years in a wheelchair.

He was hobbled on crutches on his wedding day. He loved her so very much that he wrote her the greatest wedding song that any groom ever gifted to his bride.

 

You can dance-every dance with the guy
Who gives you the eye, let him hold you tight
You can smile-every smile for the man
Who held your hand neath the pale moon light
But don’t forget who’s takin’ you home
And in whose arms you’re gonna be
So darlin’ save the last dance for me

There was a coincidence of occurrences a few days ago that brought back the memory of the time when I helped to put together the band for the Blues Brothers. First of all, I heard that ‘Duck’ Dunn passed away and he was the bass player for the Blues Brothers.

Then I was in the Memphis for the Hall of Fame dinner and the Blues Awards and I ran into Matt Murphy who I had not seen in a whole bunch of years.

The story begins about 1978 or so when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd started their shtick on Saturday Night Live, doing soul standards in their black suits with narrow ties. After a season or two, they started getting offers to put together a real band and take it out of the road when the show was on hiatus.

So I got a call from the late Doc Pomus telling me what was happening. They were using a horn section put together by Howard Johnson, keyboards were set, ‘Duck’ was in on bass but they couldn’t convince Steve Cropper to take the gig.

We tried everything to change his mind and finally realized that we were going to have to get a different guitarist. OK, Doc’s mind was a data base of musicians and we brain stormed on this for a week or so until Belushi reminded us that time was getting really really tight.

It was Doc who thought of Matt Murphy and asked me to sound him out of taking the gig. I knew that Matt was playing in a band called the Zaicheck Brothers (maybe misspelled) in Connecticut and he was very loyal to them. He wasn’t going to walk out of them for another band.

So I told him the deal: try this new band for two weeks and if it didn’t work, he was back with the Zaichecks again.

Belushi called me and, to this day, I tell people that John Belushi as one of the most knowledgeable people that I have ever spoken to in the music business. He was from Weaton, IL, just west of Chicago and he had been a member of the Second City comedy troupe, located right in Chicago. He know exactly what he wanted from a guitar player and we name checked a dozen or more. We talked about Jimmy Dawkins, Otis Rush, Johnny Littlejohn and many others.

He didn’t know anything about Matt Murphy except for the names of the bands he had played with (mighty impressive) but we were right on deadline. The guitarist would come to new York City for two days of rehearsals, fly to Los Angeles and then play their very first gig at a two week advance sold out series of shows opening for Steve Martin at Universal Amphitheater. Martin had his “King Tut” hit single going and this was going to be a major music event.

I went over the money with Belushi, cleared my throat and called Matt.

I told him he was to go to New York on Friday, rehearse for two days and then go to Los Angeles for a two week gig. Naturally, his first question was about the money.

“Seventy-Five Hundred a week.” I said.

Silence

“And a hundred a day for per diem expenses.”

Silence

My mind was racing ahead. What if I couldn’t make this deal happen? We had come to the point of Matt Murphy – period – there was no other choice available.

I heard Matt breathing on the phone.

“How much that come to for two weeks,” he said slowly.

“Fifteen thousand salary and fourteen hundred in per diem,” I said.

“Man . . . ” I heard him say softly, “Who I got to motherfucking kill for that kind of money?”

I exhaled slowly, gave him traveling plans to get to to New York and then I called Belushi back.

“Matt’s good” I said. “He knows where to go for rehearsals.”

Belushi said, “I hope he’d the right guy because we’re fucked if he can’t cut it.”

Well, that’s pretty much the whole story. Nobody ever called me from Los Angeles with a report but I saw the movie a few years later with Matt playing Aretha Franklin’s husband so I guess that it all worked out for the best.

I haven’t told that story in over 30 years, probably because there was so much stress with absolutely no wiggle room for mistakes.

I got a little pay back gift on Wednesday night when Matt Murphy saw me across the room and charged over to give me a hug.

“You changed my life, motherfucker. You sure did change my life.”

I remember back around 1954 when I was underage for liquor clubs but still managed to find a way to get into Storyville a jazz club in Boston’s Copley Square. I saw Dakota Staton, Al Hibbler and others there. It was a heavy dose of music considering I was still in my teens.

Storyville was owner by George Wein and he is (and always has been) the Godfather of music promoters in this country. A wealthy Rhode Island family invited him to promote jazz concerts in Newport in 1954 and thus was born the first out door jazz festival in the country.

He organized the first Newport Folk Festival, the Playboy Jazz Festival (at the Hollywood Bowl), New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and so many more.

George started out as a piano player and he was a very good one at a young age.

“I thought I could make a career out of it,” he said years ago. “But then I saw Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, and I knew that no matter how much I played, I could never get to that level.” (more…)

I guess that there aren’t a whole lot of you that ever heard of Fred Wilhelms. He was a lawyer in Nashville with a love for the music and a deep understanding of the publishing and copyright laws that help the money flow. He died yesterday after a lifetime devoted not to those who could most afford  a lawyer but to those most in need of a lawyer. He could explain the arcane workings of publishing law to a semi-literate person who wrote a song that was being played by some band overseas.

He would find the beginning of the thread and then gradually trace it back until the light reflecting off of shining money came into view and then Fred would reasonably and responsibly explain why a fair share of this wealth should go to the song writer.

I never knew Fred to ever lose his temper. He was a big man but always chose logic over losing his composure. He was at his best in explaining how some new Federal regulation was going to impact the songwriter.

I don’t even remember how we first met. I think it was when Howard Tate had been rediscovered and brought back to Jerry Ragovoy with high anticipation that they could recapture their musical magic of decades past.

I watched the project unfold with more than a little irritability. There had been incredible industry buzz about Howard but it was fading fast and Fred and I were urging Jerry to finish the album so that a good deal could be made.

It stretched out for a year or two and public curiosity was pretty much gone when it did come forth into the marketplace.

Fred said that Howard had become very difficult to work with and he was stepping back from any business association. Well, I wasn’t going to stick around without my copilot so I bailed on the project too.

When I heard that he had died yesterday after fighting cancer for several years, I felt an overwhelming weight of sadness that one of the really good ones had moved on. I was angry with God that he had taken a soothsayer, a shaman, a wise council, a voice of calm reason just when it was needed most.

I loved him a lot . . . my soft self-deprecating friend who always had the time to help anyone who found himself among life’s disenfranchised . . .

To send him on his way, I found an old copy of “The Grapes of Wrath” and found Tom Joad’s final words to his mother. He tells her that . . . he won’t be here . . . but that he’ll never be gone . . .

“I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be ever’-where – wherever you can look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise, and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.”

Today is the 100th anniversary of the first baseball game played in Fenway Park. Four days after the Titanic sunk, the Boston Red Sox set up for business a block from the Charles River and just across the bridge from Kenmore Square.

It was then – and remains so today – the best place on earth to watch the game as it was meant to be seen. I have not been back there since they created “Monster Seats,” which means that they tore down the huge screen that caught home run balls hit over the left field wall and replaced it with high priced seats for more revenue.

But come back with me for a moment and I’ll introduce you to this green jewel on the banks of the Charles:

You enter Fenway Park by walked down a concrete slope to the concession area. (Remember Kevin Costner talking to James Earl Jones here in “Field of Dreams.”)

You look at the overhead numbers to find your seating section. Then you start to walk up the ramp toward that designated area.

As you trudge upward, the first thing you see is the top of the light towers. They are bright against the black night sky and you catch a glimpse of the CITGO sign that has been there for decades. It is blocks away but it has always loomed as a backdrop, a righteous part of this baseball scene.

As you move up the ramp, you begin to see the top of that famed netting, final resting place of thousands of home runs. Your eyes seek the very spot where Bucky Fucking Dent broke a million hearts in 1978.

A few more steps and the metal wall – the Green Monster itself – comes into view. It is taller than you think it is. You wonder if it is really made of metal and then you remember watching games on television and hearing the ‘clank’ as the ball came back onto the playing field.

As you near the top of the ramp, the scoreboard comes into view. It is an old fashioned creation that for 100 years has shown the scores of out of town games posted by people working inside the wall. It is a job most desired by Fenway faithful. There is a small opening that was put there for a network camera during the 1975 World Series and that very night, it captured the image of Carlton Fisk waving his arms in a plea that his long drive stay fair for a game winning home run.

At the top of the ramp, the field lies before you. There is no greener green. The lights illuminate evenly and the white Red Sox home uniforms seem to glow with luster.

This is how the game was meant to be viewed. There was a period in the 1970s when monstrosities with artificial turf and faux grass were built in Philadelphia and Kansas City and Cincinnati. But baseball men – real baseball men – came to their senses and they are all gone, torn down as the games returned to its original roots.

But the green jewel on the Charles is still standing . . . a hundred years gone and ready to showcase the game as long as baseball is played . . .