THE ONE AND ONLY COMBINED NRBQ

THE ONE AND ONLY COMBINED NRBQ: NOTHING REALLY BEATS QUALITY

FEATURES

by

Dave DiMartino

Years ago, say 1968 or so, I was a snivelling adolescent who stole off outside the house to smoke Tareyton cigarettes. I often did shameful things. Sometimes, I would tell my parents I was going somewhere I wasnt. Many times I would sneak off to the movies with a friend— exceptthe movies were one of two Miami clubs, The World or Thee Image — to see bands like Cream, Country Joe & The Fish, the Mothers and Ultimate Spinach. Theseclubs served no booze and smelled like pot all the time; the first looked like a reconverted airplane hangar, the second a decrepit, hollowed-out bowling alley. We would hitchhike, my friends and I, to these clubs and sit down on the ground and smoke cigarettes and look at the black light posters and feel very grown-up indeed. And as often as not we would be watching NRBQ, who would open for anybody and everybody who played there.

In those days, the Miami scene was slight but interesting. The three hottest bands of the time had signed contracts with big time record companies: the Blues Image with Atco, Fantasy with Liberty, and NRBQ with Columbia. There seemed nowhere to go but up, and pretty soon third-stringers started getting similar contracts with other labels, most memorably Bang (with Capitol), Katmandu (with, God forbid, Mainstream), Peace & Quiet (with forgotten CBS subsidiary Kinetic), George Terrys Game (with Evolution) and Bethlehem Asylum (with Ampex). The chronology may be a little rusty here—I moved away in 1971—but, as I remember, something seemed to be happening at the time, and KC & the Sunshine Band wasnt it.

In retrospect, though, I pull out all those Miami albums, from Fantasy to Bang to Game, and I have to wonder: most of them stink. The first Blues Image album doesnt—it had no realhits but featured an excellent band with an even better guitarist, Mike Pinera, who left South Florida for Iron Butterfly, Cactus and too many other bands to name. Much more of interest, though, and certainly more listenable, is NRBQs first album, until this year a rarity before Columbia wised up and reissued it. Certifiably ahead of its time, it predates most every trend fromjazz rock to the nearest rockabilly revival (not to mention the kind ofrevived R&B certain Boston bands only dream of), and that it all holds together so well—maybe better than ever—these years later is a curiosity in itself.

"We're not gonna come out and throw body slams to get on the radio. -Terry Adams"

But Columbia Records doesnt reissue albums to satisfy record collectors; they want money. And whoever gave the corporate nod to the LPs reissue wasnt stupid—NRBQ arent simply historical relics, theyre a band who arehappening in 1981 as much as they were in 1969, whenThe Man couldntBust Our Music. In fact, NRBQ are significantly better off now than theyve ever been; coming off a few regional hits and rabid East Coast fandom, they probably watched their first albums release with no small degree of self-satisfaction. Things are slowly falling into place for the band: Dave Edmunds and Elvis Costello are interested, suddenly old fans; the Shaggs album reissue indirectly brought the band into the limelight; tastes have run their full extremes in rock, jazz, blues, more—full circle, where its all really the same thing, indirectly, and you cant like one if you dont like the other. In the same regions of eclecticism as the Byrds, Kaleidescope, the Lovin Spoonful and too few other American bands, NRBQ takes the music apart phrase by phrase, shaping and restructuring all styles until theres just one: theirs. Youd have to be a moron to say youve got afavorite band, but if you said yours was NRBQ, youd be forgiven. And theyre still here.

NRBQ followed their debut album with a collaboration with Carl Perkins called Boppin The Blues. Ironically that set—admittedly a lesser effort, for the band was holding their better songs for their own next album—has never left Columbias catalogue, while until recently its predecessor changed collectors hands for double-digit sums. Soon after came Scraps and Workshop, both on Kama Sutra (and later reissued as a double set on Annuit Coeptis), then relative silence. Five years later, All Hopped Up suddenly emerged on Red Rooster, the bands own label, and then a brief liaison with Mercury brought At Yankee Stadium, probably their best album ever. Quickly leaving Mercury (like every other band you can think of), they reactivated Red Rooster through Rounder, reissued All Hopped Up and followed it with Kick Me Hard and Tiddlywinks. And that—at least as far as albums go—is that.

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Among other things, NRBQ stands for New Rhythm & Blues Quartet, New Rhythm & Blues Quintet, New Rockabilly Quartet (long ago, once in a while) and other less-likely permutations. NRBQ began with keyboard player Terry Adams, bassist Joey Spampinato (Jody St. Nicholas til Scraps), guitarist Steve Ferguson (who left after Boppin The Blues), vocalist Frankie Gadler (likewise after Scraps) and drummer Tommy Staley (gone after Workshop). When Ferguson left he was replaced with guitarist A1 Anderson, from Connecticuts Wildweeds (one Vanguard LP, singles on Vanguard & Cadet); when Gadler left there was no need for replacement. Ardent NRBQ fan Tom Ardolino then stepped in for drummer Staley, and its been that way ever since. ☆ ☆ ☆

"We used to say sometimes that ˜NRBQ was for the New Rockabilly Quartet, says Terry Adams.We used to say that in the 6Qs. Or Rhythm & Blues, depending on our mood.

Hows this for irony? Terry Adams is telling me—a fan who hasnt seen the band perform in over 12 years—about the NRBQ Ive missed in the interim, the one that left Miami years ago to make a new home in New England and upstate New York. Adams, the man who wroteHoward Johnsons Got His Hojo Workin, is munching a grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread and a side order of fries. Were in a Howard Johnsons Motor Lodge in Hartford, Connecticut, Hojo Colas are flying left and right, and if you know the song youll understand why what hes eating sets the scene so perfectly.

"I dont like guys who dedicate themselves to rockabilly, says Adams.Im not saying I dislike it, I just wouldnt do it myself. I couldnt picture cutting my hair and greasing it back and trying to recreate a certain era. You can try as hard as you want, and maybe youll get close to it and maybe you wont, but what have you accomplished?

"Why not wear a leather jacket and have greased-back hair and play big band music, why not blow everybodys mind? Why go along with the whole trip? I just couldnt do that. We gotta be ourselves, and rockabillys just a part of the music we play. We were told five or six years ago, ˜If you guys would really get into this rockabilly thing youd be big in England. Were not gonna just decide to become something...

Adams talks about blowing peoples minds and trips and its utterly appropriate and too good to be true: the Great Lost American Band who never changed for the times but let the times change for them.Its just that the 60s were real open-minded, says Adams.The 70s got narrowminded, and its maybe more so now. I dont compare us to the Beatles in any way, but the Beatles were able to play any type of music that they wanted, whether it was sitars or turning around and doing a Buck Owens song. No one was saying ˜Hey, what bag are you in? Everybody just loved it cause it was the Beatles.

"And I dont see why it is today that people cant do whatever they want. Theres so much pressure to have an identifiable style. I think we have an identifiable style—it just doesnt fit in the categories that they know from the past... ☆ ☆ ☆

Terry Adams and I sit in the Hojo booth, talking about his hometown of Louisville and how NRBQ ended up doingRocket Number Nine on their first album so many years ago.First thing I did when I got to New York, besides call Thelonius Monk, was to go hear Sun Ra, says Adams.He used to play every Monday night to about 12 or 15 people. And he invited me to his house, and I went, and he gave me a single—˜Rocket Number Nine. He looked at me and said ˜This is especially for you. And I took it home and said ˜Hes right, this is especially for me. And thats the first song we ever played under the name NRBQ.

We discuss the merits of Sun Ra album covers, Saturn versus the few Impulse reissues ("I hated em, says Adams, and, he says, so did Ra), and who comes to join us but Captain Lou Albano, current NRBQ manager and a wrestling legend unto himself. Albano greets Adams happily seemingly the total opposite of his professional self.

"People boo him, they hate him, Adams tells me later.Hes one of th most hated people in wrestling. But we love him. And so does our Hojo waitress, who couldnt care less about our table until Captain Lou arrives.Excuse me, she says politely,are you Captain Lou Albano? Captain Lou beams proudly and Adams grins.I cant believe it, says the waitress,I watch you with my husband on TV all the time, is it him or am I dreaming? I asked myself...I wasnt sure. How come you look so bad on TV and real, its not the same man?

"Trying to make money, thats all, rasps jovial Captain Lou.Im crazy, but Im not bad. 

Lets say its five years from now, and NRBQ are still signed to some quirky label, theyve still got some regional success and are just getting by. Will that be OK by Terry Adams?

"Well, he says, cautiously,it doesnt really read well when you say something like this, but its like not that were not ambitious. And I would hope that you would write this thing from more of a positive side that a ˜these poor guys deserve more kinda attitude. Because the more people say that, the more they believe it. It spreads. ˜Oh, how come youre not in the charts? They just read it somewhere, instead of talking about whats happening now. Were not just trying to ˜make something happen...

Why not just change the bands name and start all over again?

"We changed our names once to the Marlboro Men, for one night, and we came out smoking cigarettes. People hated it. People used to tell us to change our name. I remember we had a manager in the early 70s, Frank Scinlaro—he was great. He did a lot of good for us, but was under the impression we should change our name. But I always felt that was kind of like admitting defeat, like ˜Oh, come on, well never make it...

"Even recently, a major label said to us, i like this thing with Captain Lou and this wrestling—why dont you adopt this wrestling thing, change your name and do this...And thats only like a part of us, were not gonna come out and start throwing body slams to get on the radio. Its like whenever we did the Yankee Stadium album. Mercury suggested that we get this huge backdrop of Yankee Stadium and take it with us everywhere we go. I couldnt believe that theyd say that to us—a walking, living ad for our album. I mean, thats just like one of our records, were not gonna carry a huge backdrop of Yankee Stadium with us. How do you explain that to someone?

Terry Adams and company recently completed an album with Skeeter Davis, tentatively titled Skeeter Davis Sings, NRBQ Plays. Adams speaks of it with great enthusiasm:Its something she would never do and its something we would never do and were doing it anyway.

"Skeeter was originally in the Davis Sisters, thats what started this whole thing. In the early 50s they had the Number One record, in 1953: ˜1 Forgot More Than Youll Ever Know. I think Bob Dylan cut it. My dad bought it when I was like five years old—I remember him coming in the house with it—and, I dunno, I always loved the Davis Sisters, and I never knew that Skeeter Davis was one of them.

"Meanwhile, Im growing up and Skeeter Davis has all these Number One hits on the radio and Im kind of ignoring them. And I still have this little stash of Davis Sisters records. One day I read that she was one of the Davis Sisters, and it blew my mind. She was playing some fair somewhere, and I ;took my 45 book— theres at least 12 Davis Sisters singles of RCA and like two on Fortune or something —and I went up to her and opened this thing up. And she had never run into anybody that had even...it was like a thing of the past, ya know? And I said the right things.

"Number one, I think that the Davis Sisters were like the primary, the biggest influence on the Everly Brothers, that the Everly Brothers worshipped the Davis Sisters. And Skeeter said ˜No ones ever said that before, but Phil and Don Everly came up to us... And if you ever get the Everly Brothers first record on Columbia (both sides recently reissued on the two Epic Rockabilly Stars compilations), before they were with Cadence, its exactly the Davis Sisters, not for note, their choice of harmonies and everything.

"So to me, there was like this direct line: Davis Sisters, Everly Brothers, Beatles...I dont know if you can see the jump from the Everly Brothers to the Beatles...and then the world. I thought the Davis Sisters were like the most important thing in the world...and no one knows about it. Adams collected several acetates, outtakes, radio broadcasts and even church recordings of the Davis Sisters and—in addition to the new Skeeter Davis albumplans to issue a Davis Sisters album on the bands Red Rooster label.

There remains the fascinating Philosophy Of The World album by the Shaggs, reissued by Red Rooster last year and still defying description; sort of what youd get if you crossed the Raincoats with Trout Mask Replica and the Incredible String Band.Keith Spring (saxophonist with NRBQs Whole Wheat Horns) brought it in, says Adams.Keith brought a tape and everybody just immediately said ˜Thats the greatest thing I ever heard and we had to find em. And here we had Red Rooster, so we did something with it, and its been a great success.

Good news: Philosophy Of The World has a successor thats sitting in Adams basement, waiting to be released.People are gonna love this next album. The Shaggs Own Thing is the name of it, and its all sitting there, just waiting. The former trio of Wiggin sisters has expanded into a quartet,. Adams reveals.The girls are really good; they developed. Some people will be disappointed because the playing isnt as far out, the drummer is playing more metered. Theyre kinda playing together, right? But you kinda want to hear how it developed, you dont want it always to be the same thing.

"And its like the songs are even better, grins Adams.One of ems called ˜Hes My Cutie. Adams shakes his head,Man, its like Brian Wilson couldnt have done any better...

Later that night, Im whisked away to the Hartford club where NRBQ are playing, and its everything Ive been promised and more. NRBQ are hot—the crowd knows em, loves em, and I cant imagine this ever happening in hometown Detroit, which 1 guess is all a part of the problem (Detroits, not NRBQs). Captain Lou introduces the band, the promised boos are heard, he leaves and non-stop music follows. From the beginning to the end of the set, its clear that I)IRBQs collected body of recorded work, sparse as it may seem, is as contemporary and as fresh as anything anyones ever heard before. The entire band—quarter plus dual Whole Wheat Horns—play what may be the best representation of pure American music of the age, and 3,000 of Hartforss finest not only realize it but expect it. The show goes on, and there really isnt that much difference between the hollowed-out-bowling alley of 1968 Miami and this Hartford boozeoleum of 1981. Except that everythings legal.

Walking around, hearing the music 1 never thought Id hear, Im reminded of my earlier conversation with Adams. Id asked him why he didnt do morestraight jazz sessions after all these years, especially after the Carla Bley tour.

"Well, he said,I could do things, but Id never really be happy. Because the whole time, any time Im playing with somebody else—as much as I may enjoy it— Im always saying its just not the right rhythm section...Im so used to being with the best that Im spoiled. And its the same with everybody else here. Were like... stuck... 

And so no way-out hyperbole and aint-it-a-shame claims, mainly because the band doesnt want it played that way. Yes, NRBQ are definitely happening today, as much as they ever were, and if they arent the best band in America, at least theyre one natural resource that hasnt had the good sense to dry up and blow away. For that, and for their eight great albums, with many more to come, give thanks. They have the magic that John Sebastian once wrote a song about.