Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

Cru­sader Stix Hooper & Jimmy Z at the Solvang Blues Fes­ti­val, 2007

When I was com­ing up, The Cru­saders were so influ­en­tial in my life. They were so soul­ful and funky. I wanted to be sax/bass player/composer Wilton Felder. I still try to live up to the high bar he set as a musi­cian and songwriter.

Dur­ing the 70’s I had all of their albums. I couldn’t wait for the next one to come out as soon as I got the new one.

In the early 90’s I was doing ses­sions fairly often at Chuck Nor­ris’ stu­dios in Toluca Lake with producer/guitarist Ron Bloom. He pro­duced all the music on the sound­tracks for Chuck’s Miss­ing in Action movies.

One day I was hangin’ around the stu­dio and was told the drum­mer for the Cru­saders, Stix Hooper, was fin­ish­ing up some over­dubs for his solo record, which I believe, was on Chuck Nor­ris’ record label. I was stoked. The MAN. My hero in the building!

I told one of the execs how excited I was and he said he’d intro­duce me. I tried hangin’ in the shad­ows just to be close to his stu­dio room. He was under a lot of pres­sure with dead­lines and such and I heard him being fairly gruff with his assis­tants. He was an impos­ing fig­ure to say the least.

We were intro­duced and he said, “I hear you can play the harp. Ya got your ax? I could use some harp on a track but I’m fin­ish­ing up mixes today and we have to do it fast.” I told him I had my gear in the car and I’d be hon­ored. He said, “Go get set up.”

Man, was I stoked. I set up really fast and waited… and waited.

At some point I heard him almost yelling at an assis­tant say­ing, “I ain’t got no time for no damn harmonica!!”

Stix just hap­pened to glance my way and saw that I’d heard him. He walked over to me and started apol­o­giz­ing that he was really pressed for time and didn’t really have time for any­more recording.

I was cool and told him that I under­stood and I was hon­ored to have him even con­sider me. He gave me that side­ways badass brother look (ya know what I’m talkin’ bout if you know Stix) and looked me up and down and asked “You set up ready to go?” I said “Yes I am”.  He said, “Alright…you got one pass”

Oh shit. One fuck­ing pass. I’d never even heard the song.

Here we go. I go in the stu­dio and pick up my harp mic and the engi­neer tells me the key of the song and I get the right harp and hope he is correct.

Stix and about 7 other peo­ple are watch­ing me through the stu­dio glass and the song starts. It’s a jazz/funk type groove song with some blues type changes so I’m get­ting my groove on and get­ting into the song. And a bit relieved that I’m play­ing the right harp.

A sec­tion comes up in the arrange­ment that screamed solo so I took it. WTF. I’m really deep in it now and I wrap up the solo and start chug­gin’ along with the track when I open my eyes to a most hilar­i­ous beau­ti­ful sight. It was Stix danc­ing right next to the glass, danc­ing like crazy with arms flail­ing with a big shit eatin’ grin on his face, laugh­ing and point­ing at me, givin’ me the thumbs up. Whew!!! I fin­ish up the song and every­body has caught Stix’s vibe and it’s a party all of a sud­den. He had been bit­ing people’s heads off all day so I think it was a wel­come development.

Every­body loved what I’d just done but most impor­tantly the Stix Hooper did. I was on Cloud 9.

Months later I get a phone call from Stix invit­ing me to play with him on the Grammy’s. Not the whole album but just that track. It was either up for or won a Grammy for Best Jazz Instru­men­tal. From then on Stix said I was his lit­tle good luck charm and we worked together on var­i­ous projects he was pro­duc­ing or involved with. One of my favorites was the leg­endary jazz singer, Ernes­tine Ander­son.

Ernes­tine Anderson

I don’t remem­ber too much about the ses­sions. Just that I played only harp as that was all Stix really knew that I played. This was some­thing that had hap­pened through my career. A pro­ducer would hire me for one instru­ment, not hav­ing any idea I played others.

Any­way… so I play on Ernes­tine Anderson’s record and damn… it wins a Grammy. This is around 1994. I get a call from Stix that Ernes­tine is head­lin­ing the Play­boy Jazz Fes­ti­val at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl and they want me to play harp on a few songs.

I go to a rehearsal in a North Hol­ly­wood stu­dio and what a great band!  Jazz band pretty much, but some heavy cats. I wish I could remem­ber all their names right now but the only one is Oscar Bras­hear, one badass brother and moth­er­fucka trum­pet player. He is a lithe, mus­cu­lar man with long dread­locks and a look on his face which, if you have any sense, screams, “Don’t fuck with me.” Stix intro­duced me to every­one and I got a feel­ing no one knew who the fuck I was or cared. I think I men­tioned to Oscar I was a big fan and he just grunted. I didn’t say much to any­one after that.

We finally get to my songs and I tore it up on harp and I think the respect level for me was raised a frac­tion… just.

So it’s show day at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The Play­boy Jazz Fes­ti­val 1995. Ernes­tine is head­lin­ing in a prime 5pm slot. There are over 18,000 fans packed all the way to the top rows. The weather is per­fect. Stix had given me my instruc­tions in his lov­ing, stern way. I was sup­posed to come up on the 4th or 5th song and just play my solos. I’m to be fea­tured soloist on 5 songs and then I’m off. Cool. I love it.

It’s about an hour before our set and I stroll down to the dress­ing rooms to check in and I hear some argu­ing. I walk by Ernestine’s dress­ing room and I hear my name. The room is packed with the band sur­round­ing her. Stix and her are in a heated argu­ment and it’s about ME!!! She’s sit­ting in front of a lighted dress­ing room mir­ror look­ing like a diva queen and I hear her say, “I’m not going on with­out Jimmy Z!!” I’m think­ing WTF!!!?? Stix is try­ing to rea­son with her that I should come up for the 5 songs I played on the album and fea­ture me.  She’s hav­ing none of it. “I ain’t goin’ on with­out Jimmy Z on the first song.”

Cats in the band see me behind them lurk­ing in the door­way and every­one starts look­ing at me and Stix spots me and makes a B line for me and pulls me aside.

He says, “Alright! Look mutha­fucka. You come on with the band but I only want you to comp. No solos!!”  I said sure Stix. No problem.

The way it works with the stage at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl and the Play­boy Jazz Fest is like this… Imag­ine a round stage cut in half. While one band is per­form­ing on one half of the cir­cle the next band is being set up to be ready to go. When it’s time the stage starts revolv­ing and the next band is on. It’s bru­tal. If you are in the mid­dle of song and time is up too fuck­ing bad. Your ass is on the merry go round out, your sound is turned off and the next band, us, is put in the house and away you go. It’s kinda cheezy being slowly rotated in front of 18,000 peo­ple but I sup­pose it could be a worse day at the office.

We’re open­ing with a medium tempo blues shuf­fle in F and I’m stand­ing next to my man Oskar Bras­hear. I’m play­ing thru my favorite long time part­ner in crime, a Fender Con­cert Black­face with a 15” speaker. I’m get­ting a really fat Lil Wal­ter tone. I’m comp­ing, peo­ple are groov­ing, Ernes­tine is in fine form and life is good.

I wasn’t sup­posed to be play­ing on the first song so I really didn’t know the order of solos or arrange­ment but it don’t mat­ter cause I ain’t play­ing one any­way. I look to my right and I see MC Bill Cosby smok­ing a long, fat cigar stand­ing next to Stix groov­ing to the music.

Ernes­tine sings a cou­ple verses and nods for some­one to take a solo. Then it hap­pens… or I should say noth­ing hap­pens. Within the span of 2 sec­onds the key­board player looks at the gui­tar player, he looks at Oscar, he looks at me… and I say fuck it and take the solo… haha.…

I’m down in a total groove. My amp is screamin’ and I can hear my harp loud, bounc­ing off the Hol­ly­wood Hills. I build up the first cho­rus and then take another one and tie if off. The whole damn place explodes. 18,000 peo­ple on their feet scream­ing and wav­ing white towels.

I take a bow and hap­pen to look over towards Stix and he’s giv­ing me this  stern look. I smile and shrug with a sorry about that type look and he throws up his hands, shakes his head… then smiles.

Ernes­tine is happy. Oskar Bras­hear don’t look like he’s gonna slit my throat.

Life is very good.

Update — Stix Hooper mailed me a copy of his new CD Stix Hooper/Many Hats. I play harp & solo on a song called Gotta Get It On along with Oscar Bras­hear on trumpet!!!

Guess he should make room on his shelf for another Grammy… lol

Dis­claimer: In the fol­low­ing, I dis­cuss my use of ille­gal drugs. Let me be clear, I no longer do ille­gal drugs or have plans to ever do them again, nor do I wish to con­done or encour­age their use by any­one. Ille­gal drugs were a part of my life in the past and I can’t change that.

Eddie and I first hooked up in the early ‘80s through my band­mates from the Rod Stew­art Group, Jay Davis (bass) and Danny John­son (gui­tar). We all came in at the same time so we will always have the cama­raderie of being called the Sep­tic Tank Yanks (see my post about my days with Rod and the boys).

Back then, Rod wrote songs with the band so we all played on each oth­ers demos. Jay wrote Rod’s hit Baby Jane on which I played the alto sax solo.

They had a side project going at the time — ’82 or 83 -  called Pri­vate Life — There was a female singer, Kelly Breznik, and Jay & Danny were writ­ing and play­ing on it. Eddie Van Halen was involved with the project as co-producer, so con­se­quently we got to know each other in the stu­dio and rehearsals.

We hit it off imme­di­ately. He is such an open and friendly guy — but very intense when it comes to the music. On one song we were rehears­ing I had a harp solo. I tore through it as I would with EVH play­ing along and watch­ing and I did one of my sig­na­ture fast harp licks. He rolls his eyes and smiles yelling, “Whoa!!!!”

So after the song’s done, he comes right up to me with gui­tar on and says, “Do that again. Do that riff!” So I do. He starts try­ing to pick it out on his gui­tar and pretty much almost got it but says, “One more time. Do it again.” To which I reply dead­pan, “Sorry man, one pass is all ya get. After that ya gotta pay.” He looked at me like he was gonna hit me and then we all started laugh­ing and we bonded. He even­tu­ally came up with his ver­sion of the lick which he prob­a­bly never played again… lol…

He was and is a musi­cal freak o’nature and a hel­luva nice guy. He starts telling me how his dad was a sax player when he was a kid, how he loves it, how it really influ­enced him and he still had his Dad’s sax. One thing lead to another and I found myself being EVH’s sax­o­phone teacher…

He was mar­ried to the actress Valerie Bertinelli at the time and she was on his ass about drink­ing and smok­ing. It seemed Eddie always had a cig­a­rette and a Coors in his hand all the time… if not a gui­tar. They had a house at the beach in Mal­ibu and I’d go out there from West Hol­ly­wood to give him lessons.

At the first les­son, I brought a begin­ner sax book so he could learn the fin­ger­ings. He took one look at the book and tossed it down say­ing, “I don’t wanna learn from no fuckin’ book! Just show me some licks!” I tried to rea­son with him but he was hav­ing none of it. So I told him to put his sax on. I pro­ceed to blow a cou­ple of blues licks.

He said, “Ok, cool. What was that?”

- “Hit a Eb to E up to G then A and repeat fast.”

- “How do I hit an Eb?” then looked at me and he knew I had him.

- “Oh what luck. There’s a fin­ger­ing chart in this book I brought!”

- “Mutha­fucker!” and I’m laughing.

He started learn­ing the fin­ger­ing that day.

Dur­ing this time a gig was booked for a Pri­vate Life show­case at the infa­mous Tran­cas Night­club, right down the hill from Eddie’s house in Mal­ibu (see my post about when Eric Bur­don & I played there).

Word had got out that EVH was gonna play a few songs so the place was packed. I’d got­ten to know Valerie a bit dur­ing my les­son vis­its so we said hello backstage.

We’re all back there drink­ing and get­ting psy­ched to go on stage and every­body goes except me because I didn’t play on the first song or two. I find myself alone in the room and pull out a bindle of coke and pro­ceed to do a cou­ple snorts off a key and the door opens and Eddie pops his head in with gui­tar on and says “I knew it!!! Gimme a bump!”

For some rea­son we were right by the door and just as I’m putting a key full of blow up to his nose the door opens and Valerie is look­ing right at Eddie and then at me as he still sniffs it all up his nose. We were lit­er­ally in each oth­ers face and she loses it, yelling over and over “You moth­er­fucker!!!! I can’t believe you!!!…” and on and on… She gave me the stink eye from hell, yelled at Eddie some more then stalked out.

Eddie just shrugged and wanted more blow. I said some­thing like, “Well, so much for the home sax lessons.”

We laughed and then did a hel­luva show. We traded licks all night and just tore the roof off the place. Great fuck­ing night.