Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

When I was young…

I was born in 1955 and my first mem­ory of music was when I was 4 years old and my mom got a record player for her birth­day. It was a small portable with a fake alli­ga­tor skin cover and it played 33’s, 45’s and 78’s. My lit­tle sis­ter Denise and I loved to play records at 78 rpm to get that Alvin and the Chip­munks thing going. Not too much has changed.

My mom, Dolores Zavala, also got the lat­est Bobby Darin record, which included “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea.” I still love Bobby’s ver­sions of those clas­sics. Up to that point I don’t think I’d ever seen her so excited. She loved Bobby Darin and Tony Ben­nett and we used to play the shit out it. I loved look­ing at the album cov­ers and beg­ging my dad to read the liner notes to me. I remem­ber Darin’s album cover hav­ing a telegram from Sammy Davis, Jr. printed on the back and I thought that was so cool. Sammy was wish­ing him luck with some gig or the record and some­thing about it all seemed mag­i­cal. I’d even devour the inner sleeve that adver­tised other artist’s releases and I wanted to know all about them.

My dad, Roberto Zavala, was a blue-eyed Mex­i­can devil, and he loved his Mari­achi Records. He spoke flu­ent Span­ish and new the words to every song. All us kids could sing “Guadala­jara” by the time we were 6. We still have those records and I think I came up with this triplet riff on the harp that has become a sig­na­ture of mine off those Mari­achi records.

My older sis­ter and brother, Karen and Gary were born in “48 and ’49 which is sig­nif­i­cant in the fact that in the six­ties when they came of age I really ben­e­fited because they were buy­ing all the hip music that was com­ing out which I couldn’t have afforded or prob­a­bly would not even have thought about it. I was only 9 when the Bea­t­les started the British Inva­sion and of course my older sis­ter Karen loved them and I loved them too but the Stones were my boys. They were just so dirty look­ing and play­ing the blues with a raw­ness that struck a chord in me. I couldn’t get enough of that shit. I used to carry the Stones’ album “Beg­gars Ban­quet” to school and hook up at a buddy’s house before to have a cou­ple of smokes and lis­ten to “Para­chute Woman” and “Sym­pa­thy For the Devil.” It kind of got us into the groove for the day, not to men­tion a joint or two.

My brother had all the lat­est and coolest stuff out from 1963 to 1973. We started with the Beach Boys, then Bea­t­les and Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, The Band, Spencer Davis Group, Sly and the Fam­ily Stone, Traf­fic, Blind Faith, Cream, Steve Miller Band and Jimi Hen­drix and the list goes on. But dur­ing all that time my brother Gary also had the bad­dest blues col­lec­tion of Muddy Waters, Lit­tle Wal­ter, John May­all, Fleet­wood Mac Blues Band with Peter Green, Otis Spann, James Cot­ton and John Lee Hooker. We shared a room and had one of those old stereo record play­ers which you can stack up to six records on it and we’d drift off to sleep lis­ten­ing to some very inter­est­ing mixes of music of that era for the night.

I started play­ing har­mon­ica in the late six­ties and it was at this time when I really got into read­ing the liner notes of albums and want­ing to know who was play­ing which instru­ment in every band and on every ses­sion. I could tell you whether it was Brian Jones or Mick Jag­ger play­ing harp on a track or not. I could tell if it was Eric Clap­ton or George Har­ri­son play­ing the dif­fer­ent gui­tar tracks on the White Album or that Paul Butterfield’s drum­mer, Sam Lay used to be Muddy Waters’ drum­mer and was on at least another half dozen blues albums in our col­lec­tion. Or that Boz Skaggs was in the band for Steve Miller’s first cou­ple of albums. I became obsessed with hav­ing to know who was who on a record and start­ing buy­ing records depend­ing on who was in the rhythm sec­tion or any­one else on the record­ing date. If the great drum­mer Har­vey Mason was play­ing on a record I’d buy it. The ses­sion play­ers were stars to me. I remem­ber star­ing at a black and white photo of sax great King Cur­tis sit­ting on a stool in the stu­dio, hold­ing his sax with the micro­phone in front of him, hav­ing a cig­a­rette and star­ing off into space prob­a­bly wait­ing to do the next take or lis­ten­ing back to one and I would dream of being that guy in the photo. Some­times dur­ing a ses­sion that’s going well and I find myself in the exact posi­tion as King Cur­tis was in that photo, I smile to myself. I may not be rich finan­cially but I’ve had my share of magic moments in the stu­dio… and still do, thank God.

Then a cool thing started hap­pen­ing in the early sev­en­ties, just around the time I bor­rowed a tenor sax from a friend towards the end of my senior year in high school. Side­men like sax­o­phon­ist Tom Scott started to step out into the lime­light hav­ing suc­cess sell­ing records as lead­ers. Creed Taylor’s CTI Record label was one of my favorites, putting out clas­sic albums from Stan­ley Tur­ren­tine, Hank Craw­ford, David “Fat­head” New­man and Grover Wash­ing­ton just to men­tion a few. These guys had been on count­less clas­sic record­ings as side­men and had released many records as lead­ers but now they were get­ting national recog­ni­tion and sales. I ate it up and lived and breathed it.

So you ask “WTF is a side­man?” let alone a “glo­ri­fied side­man?” A side­man could be the gui­tar player or piano player in a band with a leg­endary star such as Rod Stew­art or Annie Lennox as the leader. They might even co-write songs with him or her and help put the live show together and make it work with arrange­ments and other input. Or be the drum­mer and the bass player that laid the groove down so solid no one even notices that they are so good. Or a sax and har­mon­ica player that can take a good song, whether it be in con­cert or in the stu­dio, and make it a great song and make a good con­cert an unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence. They travel and hang out with the lead­ers and seem like equal mem­bers of the band… but they are not. They live what seems like a glam­orous exis­tence from a far but in real­ity not a lot of peo­ple ever know who they are or how piv­otal they can be to the artist in the stu­dio or on a con­cert stage. They may make a decent salary and liv­ing but it is far from what the star is mak­ing and far from what the pub­lic might assume. Some­times crit­ics refer to them as stu­dio hacks. I’ve never really under­stood this term.

Through­out the sev­en­ties I learned how to run a band and be a leader. I would front the band and sing lead on a few songs but more often then not I would hire a lead vocal­ist and work my magic in the shad­ows and then step­ping out to solo when needed… which I thought should be every song to the con­ster­na­tion of some of my band mates, but what the hell… if it’s my band, I’m going to blow for a few choruses.

Just try and stop me.

© 2010 Zavala Songs, Inc.