Cropper Quartet Record Shows - Chicagoland Record Collectors

Continued from page 31
parents my parents' ages: Motown, The
Beatles, The Stones, Fleetwood Mac. One
funny thing I picked up on – never having
put a record out before – was working on the
one-sheet [promotional biographies for
media and distributors] with the label and
listing influences and that. The one-sheet for
the first record definitely said 'reminiscent of
T. Rex and some Bowie.' [I thought] people
would listen to one song and decide I'm some
huge T. Rex fan, when in reality I don't own a
T. Rex record. Maybe it's a vocal thing. I heard
T. Rex after I had been recording and doing
stuff a certain way. It was like 'Holy shit.
Whoa.' It's mainly the quiet, double-vocal
and the tape-pitch stuff."
Some of that survived transfer to Sunrise,
on tracks that presaged his eventual move to
Nashville in a manner he couldn't have predicted. Both "Hit The Road" and "Old Turns"
channel the dark sessions that produced Big
Star's scarred Third/Sister Lovers.
"Cryin' Like The Rain" dips the
Marc Bolan effect underwater, and
it reemerges as George Harrison
disguising a broken heart. Despite
the occasional loose shard – Neil
Young's spirit breathes a fiery solo
during "Lyin' In Bed" – the album
wafts like a reverie and ends with a
similar lack of closure, floating
away.
"I have a way," he explains,
"and maybe on Moonstation it was
more of an obvious approach, of
each song being produced, like
writing a song to have a very distinct vibe, with the production
going along with it. All of the songs
for that record were recorded analog by myself, and it was experimenting with pitching the tape
way up and making my voice
sound crazy with effects, and varying the speed. With this record,
kind of because of the situation I
was in, I approached it naturally."
Hence the decision to record
live, though, keeping Sunrise from turning
into a bar-band burner. Vandervelde worked
against the grain of the typical debut/sophomore dynamic. Artists usually craft their first
albums over years of trial and error, coming
forth with their best songs having honed
them over myriad shows. Follow-ups get
written and recorded in short order, which is
why they might pale in comparison while hitting many of the same notes. Vandervelde
had no conception of a debut album, so
Sunrise synthesized on its own.
"Yeah, I would agree," he says. "Most of
the songs were written well before they were
recorded. I was playing guitar and singing
those songs all the time in my apartment for
a year before recording. I knew which songs
would be on the record before doing it. It's
definitely a different approach from the first
record, which was scratched together."
The boy who works backwards . . . yes. It's
a tad cerebral, but this could be a storybook
yet.
Cropper
Continued from page 28
market has changed. Now I know if I could
get a song that I really believe in, that I think
'Boy, this is the thing. This is going to hit it,'
and get the airplay that I used to get, I guarantee it would sell. Big time. But I can't get
that."
What Cropper has been able to do, however, is bring his masterpieces to new audiences, letting each generation of newbies
rediscover them in a way they can accept. The
Blues Brothers is, of course, Exhibit A. The
Blues Brothers produced three albums, two
films – and a lot of flack for Cropper and
bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn for backing
"comedians who were making fun of pure,
real, rhythm & blues."
"Yeah, yeah," Cropper says. "Eat that one.
One of the biggest movies ever made in
Hollywood was The Blues Brothers and it got
some of the worst reviews on the planet.
Sometimes people miss the boat. They just
don't get it. I think people didn't realize that
John Belushi had been in bands. He was a
drummer. He actually could sing in pitch. He
actually could sing in time. Dan Aykroyd
actually can play a harmonica and dance. I
mean, it was a goofy dance because of the
way he's built, but he could play. They
weren't just clowning around. Yeah, it came
out of a skit on 'Saturday Night Live,' which
is meant to be funny, but it was entertaining.
I go back to when we opened for Steve Martin
at the [Universal] Amphitheater in [Los
Angeles]. The first night, the audience was
stone-faced, like, 'What is this?' Then all of
sudden, it's mania. When we showed up the
a gift of being able to support and pull the
best out of people and that's what I like doin'.
So."
So. That gift includes interviewers, too.
Quartet
Continued from page 32
Reprising the role of Johnny Cash in the
Chicago production, Lance Guest recalls
super fans in Washington returning up to five
times, which caught The Last Starfighter actor
by surprise. "I do small theater in L.A. That
never happens!" he exclaims, but admits the
"good time music" coupled with the story
brings folks back.
Playing guitar since age 9, the role of Cash
seemed destined to be Guest's. He participated in early table readings of the show before
the decision to have the actors take up instruments was even made. "Johnny Cash is the
first guy I grew up singing with 'cause . . . the
first record album I ever owned was Johnny
Cash At San Quentin. So I pretty much mem-
are really gonna like this play because it's got
a lot of heart and soul and tons of music and
it's exciting and it's like a little piece of history that maybe you've heard about or maybe
you haven't heard about," Mead says breathlessly.
Cossette hopes to use the Chicago run as a
spring board to raise the show's profile on an
international level. "We'd like to have a company in London. We'd like to have a . . . company maybe in Toronto," Cossette fantasizes.
"We're thinking big and who knows? Sam
Phillips thought big. So can we."
Record Shows
Continued from page 60
'90s. There's been a general shift away from
'50s and '60s music; you're seeing mid- to late'60s, '70s and early '80s – people who grew up
in that period are getting a nostalgia thing
and going back and collecting the vinyl they
might have missed the first time through;
music that kind of was a forerunner to current music starts to do better.
People look for metal and punk,
look for older electronic music."
Govi says his own daughter surprised him with what goes on in
her college residence hall (and it
didn't involve a case of airplane
glue). "She said turntables are all
over her dorms and kids are buying used vinyl. Not CDs – REO
Speedwagon, The Beatles."
As such, a new booth will pop
up in November sporting nothing
but turntables and such accessories. "We're gonna be pushing
needles," he jokes, saying they'll fit
right alongside record supplies,
posters, programs, sheet music,
autographed photos, DVDs, and
those pesky CDs.
Of course, families of four wearing Colgate smiles and pushing
shopping carts full of records
aren't the norm yet. The core business comes from a dedicated cadre
of collectors still searching for the
elusive gaps in their anthologies.
Price is convinced some of his hardest targets
will have to come upon him by accident, so
thorough has his four decades of crate-digging proven. But Govi remembers a particular collectors-only surprise.
"You know Jerry Butler?" he asks, referring to the former Impressions member who
became The Iceman. "His first big hit, 'For
Your Precious Love,' was on a label called
Abner. But the first pressing was on Vee-Jay,
limited to 500 copies. Finding that first press
is almost impossible. A couple years ago at a
show in Indiana, this man approached us and
wanted to know who our high-dollar buyers
were. I pointed him out to one and he had a
mint copy of 'For Your Precious Love' on VeeJay. He wanted $5,000 for it – he saw that
price in a guide. It was eventually bargained
for $3,500, but there you go: He just showed
up, knew it was worth money, and we had
the right guy to make a deal with."
It's the magic of vinyl that CDs will never
attain.
"My parents bought records, my brothers
bought records," Govi says. "It's in our blood.
I treasure all my Beatles records; I have first
pressings on every one."
Then why keep this up when satisfaction
has been had?
"I do run around a lot," he laughs. "It's a
labor of love."
Jay Koh
Vandervelde
second night – I will never forget this – the
audience was chanting, 'Blues Brothers! Blues
Brothers! Blues Brothers!' None of us had
experienced that with any artist, let alone
ourselves. It was unbelievable. That's how
well it went down. So there you go."
For all their outsize fame, Aykroyd and
Belushi are probably two of the more undersized talents Cropper has ever worked with.
Cavaliere is the latest, but before him the list
includes John Mellencamp, Tower Of Power,
Etta James, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and
Aretha Franklin. With all of them, whether
producing or playing, he does the same thing:
stays in the background and makes them
sound good. It comes from a long-held philosophy that "The less you play, the more it
meant."
Given his résumé – and in spite of his
instincts to be forthcoming – getting Cropper
to list favorite musicians is little like bailing
out the ocean with a bucket. Can't be done.
With one exception: drummer Al Jackson,
Jr. Even before Jackson's death in 1975,
Cropper had referred to him as one of the
greatest drummers of all time. "Nobody plays
like Al Jackson," Cropper says. "There aren't
hundreds and thousands of drummers in the
world. There's millions of drummers and
none of them can play like Al Jackson did. It's
amazing. I played with some of the greatest
and they are great. But they're not Al Jackson.
There's only been one. There's only one Otis
Redding. One James Brown. One Ray
Charles. One Aretha Franklin. There's never
any room for two."
There's one Steve Cropper.
"But who cares about that? There's a lot of
guys who play better than I can. I think I have
64 illinoisentertainer.com september 2008
orized all the songs and all the patter in
between, so I had a sense of how he talked
from a fairly early age, like prior to my voice
changing," Guest recalls. "So when it came
time to do it . . . I could sing like that pretty
much as a part of my vocal development as a
person."
Signing up for another stint as Cash was a
no-brainer. "For me, it's a challenge and a joy.
It's a joy to go up there and be Johnny Cash
and sing those songs," Guest admits. "Who
doesn't want to do that? I feel like we certainly get to play rock stars for 90 minutes. It's
just something about playing that music
that's very necessary."
But Guest quickly points out the show is
not a collection of impersonations – it's a fluid
retelling of a night that, in Mead's point-ofview, brought the "Mt. Rushmore of rock 'n'
roll" under one roof. Citing artistic license,
Million Dollar Quartet turns "Brown-Eyed
Handsome Man" into a full-blown number
when the Chuck Berry tune only made a brief
appearance and includes Lewis' "Great Balls
Of Fire."
"If you listen to the tapes of the original
recording, it's just a bunch of guys messing
around. They sang all those things that they
felt like singing. It's not like they all sang their
hits," Guest says. "We've sort of contrived it
so . . . they sing their hits."
"They didn't do 'Great Balls Of Fire,'"
Mead adds. "That song hadn't even been
recorded yet, but we put it in the show
because if Jerry Lee's there, you've got to have
'Great Balls Of Fire.'"
Running 90 minutes without an intermission, Mead calls Million Dollar Quartet an
"onslaught" of instant gratification. "People
Appearing: 9/14 at Best Western Hillside
(4400 Frontage Rd.) in Hillside.