Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

I first met Whitesnake’s David Coverdale after an Etta James gig up at Caesar’s Palace, in South Lake Tahoe, some­time in the mid 90’s. My par­ents were there and I was look­ing for them after the show to let them back­stage, oth­er­wise I would have missed David. As I was look­ing for my folks, I heard this guy with a British accent. He was about to get booted out by a secu­rity guard. He was say­ing, “But I’ve got to talk to Jimmy Z!!”  I didn’t rec­og­nize him. He had on round wire rim glasses and long over­coat and did not look like the Rock Star he is.

For some rea­son I told the guard “It’s OK, he’s with me.” After we got my folks through, he intro­duced him­self and I was sur­prised. He was such a gen­tle­man and went on about my harp play­ing and how he wanted me to come up to his home stu­dio in Tahoe to record on his new album. It just goes to show how fate can be such a part of show busi­ness. As luck would have it he saw the right gig. Some­times Etta wouldn’t even call the Jimmy Reed song I per­formed with her and I could go sev­eral con­certs with­out ever play­ing har­mon­ica. (Here’s one story of what hap­pened to me when I played this song with Etta.)

We exchanged num­bers and I went back to LA. He called and we set up a date. David called me the night before I was to fly up and said he was really sick with a cold. He wanted to post­pone the ses­sion. I had a six month old daugh­ter, a wife, and I had just got­ten clean. I had just sold most of my sax­o­phones to rent an apart­ment, so I really needed the bread. I lied and told him we’d have to do it now as my sched­ule was so busy. So he said. “OK, come on up.” Sorry, David, I really needed the money…

He arranged for my amp and me to be flown to Reno where I was picked up and taken to his house. And what a place! A huge man­sion on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe over­look­ing over one the most beau­ti­ful views in the world.

He had an incred­i­ble stu­dio in the house, too. And sooooooo many gold and plat­inum records on the walls. I have to be hon­est; I didn’t know all his his­tory. I was not aware he was the singer in Deep Pur­ple and so many other big, suc­cess­ful groups and the singer on so many songs I knew.

David was sick, but damn, he worked me so hard on that song. I swear I must have done 38 takes. He worked long and hard as if he was healthy as a horse, but he was cough­ing and apol­o­giz­ing the whole time. I’d hate to see him work ya when he’s healthy!! LOL.  We even tried a cou­ple of other songs but the harp didn’t fit.

He was the most gra­cious host. There was some talk this past spring (2011) that I would maybe see David again at the largest rock fes­ti­val in Swe­den. I was there in May and June tour­ing with Swedish blues­man Slidin’ Slim. The pro­mot­ers found out that I’d played with David and asked if I’d join in the All Star Jam. As it turned out my sched­ule didn’t work with the fes­ti­val but that would have been great fun.

Slidin’ Slim found an inter­view with David where he men­tions me. It’s funny… ‘cause deep down Slidin’ Slim – an award win­ning blues musi­cian –  is a hard-core metal head. He knows them all. Some­times on long dri­ves he’ll men­tion one or slide their CD in and I’ll say, “Oh I know those guys or I played on their CD.” Dur­ing the 80’s I recorded and hung with some of the biggest metal groups and didn’t even real­ize it…

Excerpt from MelodicRock.com’s Inter­view with David Coverdale:

…No, I haven’t.

DC: Now he used to be with David Bowie, its like I’ve got all of Bowie’s gui­tarists in. He worked with the Tin Machine when Bowie was work­ing with him. And a bass player gui­tarist called Danny Sabre who does work with Bono and U2 and stuff and was gra­cious enough to add some won­der­ful ele­ments on “She Gives.” Yeah, so other than that I’m just try­ing to think what I can say. Oh, a killer har­mon­ica player, Jimmy Z.

Oh yeah, I know him.

DC: Yeah, I’ve got, he played on “Mis­sion­ary Man,” Eury­th­mics, but I’d got down to see Etta James whose one of my favourite singers, and he, Jimmy Z’s actu­ally a sax player who just hap­pens to blow insane, insanely beau­ti­ful har­mon­ica. And, and he did a fea­ture with Etta and I went oh, I’ve got to get him on the record. So I looked at all the songs and the only one I could really think of was “Cry For Love” but he brought a com­pletely dif­fer­ent dimen­sion to the song.

So that was, that was just a thrill and a half!…

Read the com­plete inter­view on MelodicRock.com.

I could not find a pub­lic record­ing of Cry For Love, the song I played on, but here is a video of a guy play­ing along with the record.