This week marked Holocaust Remembrance Day which was an historical event that saw the anguished cries of millions of Jewish people incinerated at the hands of the Nazi's.
Jewish musicians have always had a soft spot in my heart especially if they can swing like my guest who developed and identified with his black brothers who lived under oppression and slavery for years similar to the gulags that were strewn across Eastern Europe.
My guest played organ and piano and within the swirling confines of south side Chicago where the ChessBrothers owned a stationary spot which allowed them to promote Otis Rush and Muddy Waters, Ramsey Lewis. My guest also idolized Jack McDuff and Groove Holmes and Jimmy Smith. Cats who could lock the groove with their left hand and solo over the top with the right while Sam Lay or Harold Jones or Bernard Pretty Purdie held it down.
My guest came from a contingent of white authentics like Elvin Bishop, Michael Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites Harvey Mandel who sat at the feet of the titans, learning how to improvise on the fly and developing their own individual sound. They also always kept the blues in their muse.
Chicago was a bastion of blues and post bop when my guest headed west to Marin county with Michael Bloomfield wailing on Blues in Orbit while self medicating and surviving in a tough business that my guest found success in with the overlapping strands of Bob Dylan and Al Kooper, Harvey Brooks, Neal Merriweather and Charlie Musslewhite Marc Naftalin, Boz, Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs
Unlike cats like Kweskin and Muldaur my guest adopted the plug in and the electric mud that was being slung across hippies shoulders even if Muddy Waters couldn't stand it.
He continues his musical collaborations today with the same grey beards that looked up to and had opportunities to play with John Lee Hooker, The Reverend Gary Davis and Papa John Creach.
All good things in all good time Barry Goldberg welcome to the JFS....