Dec. 22, 2021
Rick Estrin interview
Rick Estrin joins me on episode 52. Rick grew up in San Francisco and starting sitting in with bands in the city. He was friends with Jerry Portnoy, who persuaded him to spend some time in Chicago. Here he met many of the harmonica greats, and missed the golden opportunity for the harmonica chair in the Muddy Waters band. It turned out this wasn’t a bad thing though, as Rick forged his own path with Little Charlie & The Nightcats (later Rick Estrin & The Nightcats). A band...
Rick Estrin joins me on episode 52.
Rick grew up in San Francisco and starting sitting in with bands in the city. He was friends with Jerry Portnoy, who persuaded him to spend some time in Chicago. Here he met many of the harmonica greats, and missed the golden opportunity for the harmonica chair in the Muddy Waters band.
It turned out this wasn’t a bad thing though, as Rick forged his own path with Little Charlie & The Nightcats (later Rick Estrin & The Nightcats). A band in which he has played harmonica, sung and wrote most of the lyrics for well over 40 years.
And with great success as the band has won many Blues Music Awards, including for Rick’s harmonica playing and songwriting prowess.
Links:
Rick's Website:
http://www.rickestrin.com
Instructional DVD is listed at the bottom of this page:
https://rickestrin.com/music
EP Booster pedal:
https://xotic.us/effects/ep-booster/
Videos:
Rick singing with Little Charlie & The Nightcats in 1981:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyEYO1Pkosg
‘Contemporary’ album video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY1tkJRrx9Q&t=9s
I Met Her On The Blues Cruise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqS_nL2jvHE&t=55s
Rick Estrin & The Nightcats at World Harmonica Festival, 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sccRtO1mJfw&t=6s
Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com
Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB
Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ
Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/
01:26 - Rick lives on the West Coast of the US
02:04 - Sister bought him a Ray Charles record which started his love of the blues
02:40 - Why the blues and associated music has such an appeal (especially to a white audience)
04:44 - Rick started playing harmonica age 15
05:17 - Plays a little guitar to help in writing songs
05:52 - Started playing the harmonica shortly after his father died
06:22 - Singing is what drew Rick to music initially
07:22 - Started playing harp by sitting in at the black clubs in San Francisco
09:25 - Harmonica influences on Rick
10:48 - Qualities of James Cotton’s playing
11:58 - Got first regular in San Francisco at age 18 with Trevor Phillips and Filmore Slim
13:07 - Moved across to Chicago at the prompting of Jerry Portnoy
14:11 - Difference between West Coast and Chicago blues music
15:06 - The Nightcats bands developed their swing sound from a variety of sources
16:28 - Got to see some of the harmonica greats in Chicago
17:54 - Sat in with Muddy Waters at Theresa’s Lounge Club
19:09 - The time Rick almost became the harmonica player in the Muddy Waters band
22:17 - Formation of Little Charlie & The Nightcats and secret to longevity of the bands
23:37 - Transition of the band from Chicago Blues to West Coast swing
25:04 - Rick was mentored in songwriting by Rodger Collins
27:59 - T.V. Crazy was first recorded Little Charlie song written by Rick
28:43 - Writing more modern blues lyrics and not just recycling the classic blues songs
29:45 - Some of the songs Rick wrote for Little Charlie & The Nightcats
31:01 - Dump That Chump song
31:53 - My Next Ex-Wife song won Blues Song of the Year in 1994
33:35 - Role of the harmonica in Little Charlie & The Nightcats
34:34 - Rick plays a lot of chromatic as it suits swinging style of Nightcats
37:00 - Little Charlie left the band and it became Rick Estrin & The Nightcats
37:50 - Songs Rick has written about his own mortality
38:52 - Live album with Rick Estrin & The Nightcats: You Asked For It, and SBWII trick of playing harp just in mouth
39:30 - Groovin’ In Greaseland album recorded at Kid Anderson’s studio
40:14 - Latest album is Contemporary from 2019, with a great video for title track
40:57 - Difference in creating songs between different incarnations of The Nightcats band
42:08 - Rick has released a harmonica instructional DVD, with more of an emphasis on performance
42:18 - Made album not with Nightcats (On The Harpside), partly to educate people that he is called Rick Estrin and not Little Charlie
43:47 - 10 minute question
44:34 - Is a Hohner endorsee
45:50 - Chromatics of choice
46:17 - Different tunings and overblows
46:36 - Embouchre and Paul Oscher
49:47 - Amps
50:35 - Effects pedals
52:04 - Mics
53:58 - Small amps used in studio
55:09 - Future plans
56:24 - What Rick did over the pandemic layoff
WEBVTT
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Hey everybody, welcome to episode 52.
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And at this stage I have finally got together a separate website for the podcast.
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You can find it on harmonicahappyhour.com.
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So on there are some useful features.
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You can find some featured episodes.
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It's a bit easier to navigate.
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There's also a donate page.
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If people wish to help support the running cost of the podcast, you can send a little money my way for that.
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So much appreciated.
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Rick Estrin joins me on today's episode Rick grew up in San Francisco and started sitting in with bands in the city He was friends with Jerry Portnoy who persuaded him to spend some time in Chicago Here he met many of the harmonica greats, and he missed the golden opportunity for the harmonicature in Muddy Waters' band.
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Turned out this wasn't a bad thing though, as Rick forged his own path with Little Charlie and the Nightcats, later Rick Estrin and the Nightcats, a band in which he has played harmonica, sung and wrote most of the lyrics for well over 40 years, and with great success as the band has won many blues music awards, including for Rick's harmonica playing and songwriting prowess.
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Thank you.
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Hello, Rick Estrin, and welcome to the podcast.
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Hi, Neil.
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So you're talking to us from the west coast of the US.
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Are you still in San Francisco?
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I'm in Sacramento, which is about 90 miles east of San Francisco.
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But I think you were born in San Francisco, yeah?
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Yeah, I was born there, grew up there.
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I moved to Chicago when I was about 19 years old.
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Lived there on and off for several years until I came back to California for good in 1976 or something.
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and then I moved to Sacramento.
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So talk about your early life, you know, what was your involvement early on with music and the harmonica?
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I always loved music and it was like an escape for me, you know, listen to the radio.
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I think probably that's true for a lot of musicians.
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I had an older sister who had some Jimmy Reed records and she had some other blues records and stuff and I was just fascinated by that music and there was something about it and especially she gave me a A Ray Charles album, I think it was new at the time, was called The Genius Sings the Blues.
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And she gave me that album and there was something about it that just, it sounds ridiculous now because obviously I was just a little kid, but I felt like, wow, this guy knows how I feel, you know.
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Oh,
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yeah.
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Well, he does that to a lot of people, doesn't he?
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It's amazing, isn't it?
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This connection that those kind of white guys have with what was fundamentally African-based music, wasn't it?
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What
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do you think it is
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about that
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music?
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I think that, first of all, there's more naked emotion in there.
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It's more honest, more than regular pop music typically is.
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There's also, you know, from having made a life of this music and being primarily a fan anyway, there's a lot of nuances and subtleties that I notice now that when I first heard it, I just took them in on a visceral level, but I didn't know what was, you know, what was occurring.
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But man, there's a lot of a lot of subtleties and different aspects to it that create that feeling.
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It's very multidimensional, I think.
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Yeah, and it's just more honest to me.
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I don't know.
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There was just something about it.
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And then, too, I noticed that in African-American culture, you know, as a kid growing up.
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I mean, I can remember being 12 years old in school, and I was walking next to this girl in— that was in my homeroom named Sondra Price.
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She was an African-American kid, same age as me and stuff.
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And there was this guy walking in front of us named Marvin Vesey.
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And Sondra said to me, you know, she was just looking at him, ooh, he's got, he's just got the cutest little walk, you know.
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And something about that, man, like, you know, I was 12 years old.
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I had never even thought of that.
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It was like an awakening to me, not just that one incident, but just to me black kids in school there was just something more expressive about them and more more vibrant more alive more colorful more they didn't seem as stiff
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you know yeah definitely so you got that early connection with the music so when did the obviously there's a harmonica podcast so when did the harmonica come in and you know did you obviously you mentioned jimmy reed there you know did you start getting drawn to the harmonica and the sound of it
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yeah i got a harmonica when i was about 15 years old and I had already been hearing Jimmy Reed in the house, and I already liked those records, and I knew some of the songs.
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I got a harmonica when I was about 15, but I had already heard and already knew some Jimmy Reed songs in my mind, and I was already familiar with him.
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And so when I got the harmonica, that's what I started trying to do.
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And I always really wanted to play anything else.
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I mean, as far as a style of music, I'd play a little guitar just to help me write songs.
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But as a style of music, and especially on the harmonica, all I ever wanted to play was blues.
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I learned a couple other things when I was just trying to learn, just because I was studying the instrument.
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¦
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I understand as well, when you started playing the harmonica, your father had recently died, so that was quite an emotional outlet for you, was it?
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Yeah, I was really lost for a long time, and that was one of the principal things that saved my life, was it gave me something to care about, and something to, kind of like a refuge.
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Music was a refuge, and playing the harmonica gave me something to focus on, and I channeled all my emotions into it.
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Yeah, so at this stage, were you singing as well?
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Did that come later?
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Yeah, I was actually singing earlier.
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I always tried to sing.
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And when I was younger, if you listen to some real early, even before we were on Alligator, when I was really young, I had more voice.
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I was more of a singer.
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I don't want to be a lesser
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now i'm more of a stylist that i have been that way for years because i i mess my voice up you know it works out fine because now i'm probably more readily identifiable but
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yeah give me character in that voice yeah
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but when i was young i i wanted to be a singer and and i i was more like your traditional people that could actually sing and stuff like that at that time
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you mentioned you went across to Chicago after a few years but did where you started playing out in in the black clubs yeah and that's how you started sort of sitting in with people was that in the west coast before you went to Chicago or
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yeah in San Francisco what happened was in my teenage years you know when I was 15 and I was starting to play the harmonica growing up in San Francisco there was the hippies were just starting to be a scene there and so there were these guys concerts and Bill Graham and another guy named Chet Helms had the Fillmore Auditorium and another place called the Avalon Ballroom and you could go see music there and they would have these very eclectic bills with you know some hippie you know they'd have like the Grateful Dead and Big Mama Thornton you know Junior Wells and Buddy Guy and the Quicksilver Messenger Service or something so you had a chance to see these people and so when and then when I got more serious about not when i got more serious i was serious from the beginning but when i felt like i was making some progress on the harmonica and with my you know just my whole thing i started going out to these clubs probably when i was about 17 i started going out to different clubs in the ghetto and sitting in
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and uh you were welcome there i think uh it's quite a case with a few people of sports so you know the kind of young these young white guys going to these clubs uh were quite welcome weren't they?
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I was I mean I felt that way I did notice a difference after Martin Luther King got shot you know that didn't stop me from going but I noticed the difference but yeah I was welcome and I was felt really welcome you know because they could tell I was serious I was sincere I was always trying to play the real music I think I had maybe not exquisite taste, but I had better taste than a lot of young guys trying to play.
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I didn't try playing a million notes.
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I always tried to say something.
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And at this stage, had you been listening a lot to the harmonica greats, Little Walter and Soul, so you'd start getting that language?
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Absolutely, yeah.
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I mean, I started out with Jimmy Reed, and then by the time I got a harmonica, I had already been listening to Jimmy Reed, but then I got some Sonny Boy Williamson And then I threw the grapevine or whatever, you know, looking at British blues magazines and stuff.
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And I heard about Little Walter and Muddy Waters, you know, with Walter on these records.
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And then I had a friend that turned me on to, you know, Cotton with Muddy and Cotton with Johnny Young.
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And...
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and uh i know i know obviously you like uh everyone loves little walter yeah you do a good song called marion's mood i was uh i was listening to that one early on
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yeah that was sounds like a tribute
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so And you mentioned James Cotton there as well, and I think you like his high energy playing, and is that what drew you to him?
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The high energy is one aspect of it, but there's also such a vocal aspect to his playing, the way he shapes notes and things, even amplified, and I'm not just talking about the obvious wah-wah things, but there's so much texture and subtlety and shapes.
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People don't think of him as a subtle player because he's so, you know very brash and in your face but he's uh there's a lot more layers to his sound and his the the feel of it and and then most people pick up on i think and also he was somebody that i got to see him probably more than anyone else because you know when i was young because his band was real popular and uh you know bill graham and then the film auditorium and all that stuff he was that early band that he had with luther tucker and alberto gianquinto and and bobby anderson and you know that was just a very popular band
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yeah i was lucky enough to see him once in the uk but a little later obviously so uh so yeah so in play so so great so you were playing in san francisco is this where you were playing with trevor phillips and you got a regular gig with him yeah
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yeah by the time i was 18 or so yeah i was playing with travis and phil more slim
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yeah i'm phil more slim slim he was the pimp wasn't he
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yeah he was he really was yeah he was he was very famous as a pimp although he's a great entertainer and a great singer too
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did some side of that fall out into the band you know did you sort of see that i guess he was very extravagantly dressed and all that sort of thing
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uh you know he was actually his he dresses more like that now he was a little you know more toned down than what you typically would think a pimp would look like you know The way he dressed, he wore nice suits and stuff, and he had a Cadillac Fleetwood Brom, but it was very tasteful looking.
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It was just a nice, soft brown color.
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He was not as flamboyant as...
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people typically fell.
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Most of the other pimps that I knew at that time were a lot more flamboyant than him.
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Good.
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So you were in quite a cool scene then at a young age.
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You mentioned again that you'd moved across to Chicago.
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I think you were friends with Jerry Portnoy, yeah?
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And he played a part in that.
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Right, yeah, because he was living in San Francisco at that time and we were both just trying to figure out how to play.
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We were both new at this stuff.
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But I had that gig with Travis and Fillmore and Jerry would come see me play, you know, and we were friends and we would try to figure out, you know, one of us would figure something out and we'd show the other one or we just, you know, we were friends.
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We were both into this, you know, music and just, we were both obsessed with it.
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Then his father got sick and he moved back to Chicago.
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And when he moved back to Chicago, he would send me postcards saying, yeah, you need to come out here, man.
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I just sat in with the aces and all this.
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So I found a girl to buy me a plane ticket and I went to Chicago.
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Great.
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So then you could absorb the Chicago blues scene.
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Yeah, because on the West Coast, I was playing blues and there was plenty of blues out here, but it's a little different brand.
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It wasn't that the black migration to California was primarily from Texas and Louisiana and Oklahoma and mostly Texas.
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texas probably and it was a more generally a more urbane type of blues you know it wasn't as country as as the chicago stuff that came up from mississippi i'm generalizing
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but i think that comes through doesn't it in in the west coast bands like your own we'll get on to your music shortly but you've got that more kind of swing jive sort of style in the west coast don't you than the chicago blues and
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yeah thanks t-bone and and and and lowell folson who was actually the first guy that ever let me on a bandstand.
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Guys like that and Charles Brown were more popular out here.
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And the band that you're in, the Nightcats, you do have that more swing element to it.
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So is that...
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...
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...
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You know, how did that come about?
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You know, when you went back to California, that's the sort of style that was popular or did you choose it on purpose?
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No, it wasn't popular.
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I mean, when I came back here, came back here and I started playing with Little Charlie, we were just playing Chicago blues, you know, trying to learn that stuff.
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We were in love with that.
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And little by little, we just started getting these other records and listening to different stuff.
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We got into Bluebird stuff very heavily for one period of time.
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we got and we got into um more jazzy type of stuff as well but it wasn't like that was a thing here but that was something that was was occurring simultaneously like in southern california you know you had rod piazza and he was getting into the same kinds of things so it was really just something that naturally occurred it was not a thing like later on they started calling it oh the west coast style and
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that's what came afterwards yeah so yeah so so Before we get on to the Nightcats, so your time in Chicago, you had the chance to meet some of the Harmonica greats, yeah?
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Yeah, sure.
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You know, obviously, Rice Miller was dead, and little Walter had died a couple of years before I got to Chicago.
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But I could see big Walter any time.
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I could see Cotton quite a bit when he was not on the road.
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He would play, and he would do these middle-of-the-week residencies sometimes.
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And, you know, for a month, he'd play, like, Wednesday nights.
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somewhere or something, you know, so I got to see Cotton a lot then, got to know him a little bit.
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I saw, you know, just some lesser known guys, you know, little Willie Anderson.
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who was like a little Walter disciple, you know.
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He didn't have the technique of Walter, but there was something, the visceral feel of it was quite a bit like Walter.
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He had a more swinging, jazzier feel to his playing, even though he didn't have, you know, his execution and stuff was a little, you know, not as flawless.
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It sounds like harmonica heaven being in Chicago at that time.
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Maybe early as well, like you say, seeing Little Walter and Sonny Boy too, but superb.
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So a great chance to see all those guys.
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So is this the time as well that you got to sit in with Muddy Waters?
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Yeah, the first time when I first went to Chicago, that's the first time I sat in with Muddy.
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I went to Teresa's.
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Jerry took me to Teresa's and I sat in.
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I mean, you can't even imagine what the scene was like in those days.
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I mean, I mean, Teresa's was packed and everybody was in there, man.
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It was a Monday night.
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I mean, Junior Wells was in there.
00:18:19.141 --> 00:18:20.842
Terry Bell was in there.
00:18:21.042 --> 00:18:32.013
I didn't see Cotton that night, but the band that was working there that night, you know, and they were just sitting on chairs, sitting on folding chairs.
00:18:32.134 --> 00:18:41.104
But the band was like B-Lo, Buddy Guy, Sammy Lawhorn, and I can't remember who was playing bass, but that was the house band in Teresa's.
00:18:41.104 --> 00:18:41.684
Wow, yeah.
00:18:41.845 --> 00:18:41.964
I
00:18:42.404 --> 00:18:44.267
mean, it's like, what's happened to the world?
00:18:44.448 --> 00:18:45.588
That's a Monday night, yeah?
00:18:45.689 --> 00:18:49.373
You wouldn't find that in many places on a Monday night these days, would you?
00:18:49.393 --> 00:18:50.213
I don't think so,
00:18:51.035 --> 00:18:51.154
no.
00:18:51.194 --> 00:18:53.737
Everyone's too busy watching Netflix these days, sadly.
00:18:53.958 --> 00:18:56.980
Well, I mean, it was just an informal thing.
00:18:57.040 --> 00:19:01.766
It was a popular place to go on Mondays, but it was...
00:19:02.105 --> 00:19:09.473
I can't remember what the cover charge was, but it was, you know, very cheap and just a neighborhood ghetto club, you know?
00:19:09.775 --> 00:19:10.796
So this time...
00:19:11.056 --> 00:19:17.182
I hear that you had a chance to be the harmonica player in Muddy Waters Band and it just passed you by.
00:19:17.222 --> 00:19:17.303
Yeah,
00:19:18.364 --> 00:19:24.851
what happened was that night in Teresa's I sat in and Terry Bell at the time was playing with Muddy.
00:19:25.010 --> 00:19:33.799
He told me he was going to quit and he said I should come sit in with Muddy at the Sutherland Hotel where they were playing that weekend.
00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:35.102
Come down and sit in.
00:19:35.162 --> 00:19:39.686
He said if Muddy liked me I could have the gig because he was going to quit.
00:19:39.987 --> 00:20:13.343
So I went down there and i waited around all night friday night and he had introduced me to muddy and muddy said he'd call me up and i waited around all night and this place had a 4 a.m license you know so i waited till 4 a.m he never called me up so he said i got up the nerve to approach him afterwards i said oh i thought you were gonna call me up and he said oh oh yeah he goes i forgot come back tomorrow it took me years afterwards to realize he didn't forget me he just wanted to see how serious I was.
00:20:13.623 --> 00:20:20.029
So I came back the next night and he ended up calling me up and I put a long distance call with him.
00:20:20.309 --> 00:20:26.537
And then the band took a break and he was sitting over by the side with these couple of women.
00:20:26.836 --> 00:20:31.342
He sort of beckoned me over there with his finger, you know, like crooked his finger.
00:20:31.442 --> 00:20:39.450
And I walked over there and he stood up, halfway stood up from the table and he started shaking his finger in my face.
00:20:39.570 --> 00:20:41.291
And he's going, you out of sight, boy.
00:20:41.332 --> 00:20:43.275
You play like a man, boy.
00:20:43.295 --> 00:20:45.016
So you got that sound, boy.
00:20:45.076 --> 00:20:46.417
I know that sound when I hear it.
00:20:46.478 --> 00:20:47.919
That's my sound, you know.
00:20:48.200 --> 00:20:52.584
And I was just practically levitating, you know.
00:20:52.625 --> 00:20:54.306
So he asked me what I was doing.
00:20:54.365 --> 00:20:56.729
I said, well, I was thinking about going back to California.
00:20:56.749 --> 00:21:00.472
And he told me, don't leave town for at least three weeks.
00:21:00.893 --> 00:21:14.988
And he gave me his phone number and he took the phone number that I had at the time, which was where I was staying with this girl that had bought my plane ticket, and I ended up leaving that place.
00:21:15.169 --> 00:21:20.594
So I don't know if I waited, but I ended up, you know, I never heard from him, and I went back.
00:21:20.914 --> 00:21:26.340
And later on, I know I saw those guys, and Fuzz said, man, what happened to you?
00:21:26.421 --> 00:21:28.041
You were supposed to be with us, you know.
00:21:28.262 --> 00:21:32.467
But as it turned out, after that, Paul came back to the band.
00:21:32.507 --> 00:21:45.820
He had left for, I don't know what happened that time, but he left for a came back to california then i went back to chicago and never really worked i never happened
00:21:46.001 --> 00:21:51.968
it wasn't written in the stars but in the end you know it all turned out well for you yeah so it turned out turned
00:21:52.048 --> 00:22:12.430
out perfect because i was too immature to i'd have gotten killed or something man i you know i didn't know how to act and i was an idiot i could have grown into the job playing wise but i didn't have good sense as a as a as a young person so it's it's everything worked out for the best.
00:22:12.829 --> 00:22:17.095
Plus, Jerry ended up getting the gig eventually, so that was really cool.
00:22:17.634 --> 00:22:25.983
So after this, at some point at least, then you went back to the West Coast and this is where you met Little Charlie and then Little Charlie and the Nightcats formed.
00:22:26.285 --> 00:22:28.106
Right, that was like 1976.
00:22:28.247 --> 00:22:29.087
So
00:22:29.127 --> 00:22:39.598
you've been with Little Charlie and the Nightcats and then Rick Esther and the Nightcats since, well, this band has been in existence for well over 40 years, so an amazing longevity.
00:22:39.638 --> 00:22:42.821
How do you put down your a long success in this band?
00:22:43.323 --> 00:22:45.164
No skills and no education.
00:22:45.184 --> 00:22:46.386
I don't know.
00:22:46.606 --> 00:22:53.355
The band started with myself and little Charlie and our mutual love of Chicago Blues, really.
00:22:53.375 --> 00:22:54.796
He was so great.
00:22:55.176 --> 00:22:59.182
You know, we both had this desire to just get inside that music and play it.
00:22:59.461 --> 00:23:03.527
We had just a real deep mutual love for the music.
00:23:15.074 --> 00:23:20.038
So you talked about, you know, maybe being immature, you know, when you were young.
00:23:20.479 --> 00:23:24.821
But when you're in this band, certainly, you know, you've got a very strong image.
00:23:24.862 --> 00:23:30.567
You know, you've got this kind of, you know, pencil-lined mustache and pompadour haircut and sharp dressing.
00:23:30.647 --> 00:23:37.353
And, you know, the band were playing quite a mixture of, you know, kind of obviously blues, rockabilly, some jazzy stuff, some swing stuff.
00:23:37.753 --> 00:23:43.238
So was there a transition early on where you're playing more kind of Chicago blues stuff and then you transitioned into this more?
00:23:43.558 --> 00:23:44.199
Oh, absolutely.
00:23:44.298 --> 00:23:44.960
Absolutely.
00:23:45.039 --> 00:23:49.425
That's what we were bonded over, that love of Chicago blues.
00:23:49.666 --> 00:24:00.522
Little by little, we started bringing in other elements because we were just listening to all kinds of things, and we started introducing other elements into the music.
00:24:00.982 --> 00:24:13.821
You know, the swing thing actually came from, we really got into Bluebird blues, RCA Bluebird, you know, Sonny Boy and Jazz Gillum and stuff like that, and Willie Lacey blues.
00:24:14.049 --> 00:25:04.217
was sort of almost like a bluesier charlie christian type guitar player you know he was he was a session guy he wasn't a blues guy but he was on these records little charlie we just got fascinated with willie lacy and through willie lacy little charlie got into charlie christian and and it just went on and on i mean i can remember one year we were we just were so into like brother jack mcduff and soul jazz and i mean it's just it was just a never-ending journey of discovery
00:25:04.458 --> 00:25:12.484
so you're very well known for songwriting as well and you write largely blues kind of lyrics yeah for the for the songs that the band do i knew this singer in the band.
00:25:12.505 --> 00:25:15.167
So at what stage did you start writing songs for the band?
00:25:15.428 --> 00:25:21.354
Well, we'd have to go back to the time when I was first playing in clubs.
00:25:21.594 --> 00:25:41.055
My first gig that I ever got was I was 18 and I got a job opening for ZZ Hill at a ghetto nightclub which was, but it was a kind of a nice, wasn't it like a tavern, you know, it was a sort of a nightclub type place and they had, it was a more formal show.
00:25:41.615 --> 00:25:44.761
So So at that time, that was when I met Philmore Slim.
00:25:44.801 --> 00:25:47.227
He lived across the hall from a friend of mine.
00:25:47.607 --> 00:25:53.960
And I met him because I heard him playing blues guitar across the hall and I just knocked on the door.
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:58.910
So it just so happened that that week I was going to...
00:25:59.041 --> 00:26:04.567
begin my first engagement, which was like a week-long opening for ZZ Hill.
00:26:04.906 --> 00:26:07.750
So I invited him to come to the club Long Island.
00:26:07.829 --> 00:26:19.400
So he came down there and he had another guy with him who I thought must be another pimp because he had all kinds of diamonds and he was, you know, dressed up and had processed hair and all that.
00:26:19.579 --> 00:26:28.247
But who he was, was he was a singer and he had had a big number one hit a couple of years before called She's Looking Good.
00:26:28.326 --> 00:26:30.269
And this was a guy named Roger Collins.
00:26:34.114 --> 00:26:38.219
And
00:26:42.664 --> 00:26:47.570
I met him that night when Fillmore came down to see me at the Club Long Island.
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