Arts & Entertainment
Rockin' On
For more than four decades, Al Kooper
has enjoyed a career as a musical Jack-of-all-trades.
Al Kooper:
"From one Jew
to another," says
Paul Stanley of
KISS, 'Al is the
definition of
chutzpah."
DON COHEN
Special to the Jewish News
I f there were justice in this world, more people
would know of Al Kooper than Alice Cooper.
Those familiar with his work know his
rightful place in the pantheon of esteemed
classic rock and blues artists. Others probably
don't realize he's responsible for some of the most
famous passages in several all-time favorite classic
rock songs.
They include his famous organ riff on Bob Dylan's
"Like A Rolling Stone" from Highway 61 Revisited,
and the classic piano, organ and French horn play-
ing on the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get
What You Want," from Let it Bleed.
This eclectic musician appears with his group the
Funky Faculty Saturday, Sept. 15, as part of the Detroit
Festival of the Arts. The three-day visual and perform-
ing arts event takes place throughout a 20-block area in
the University Cultural Center Sept. 14-16.
Kooper's influence extends way beyond his own
music. An artist who's worked with Simon and
Garfunkel, The Who, Tom Petty and Jimi Hendrix, to
name just a few, the musician/composer/producer dis-
covered Lynyrd Skynyrd at one of his hangouts in
Atlanta. He formed a record label to release the group's
music and produced its first three albums, including
the hits "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird."
Along with Steve Katz, Kooper put together the
Blues Project, then Blood, Sweat and Tears. His col-
laborations with his close friend the late blues gui-
9/14
2001
R60
tarist Mike Bloomfield achieved critical and com-
mercial success with the million-selling Super Session,
which also featured Stephen Stills.
Kooper also composed songs — like "This
Diamond Ring," for Gary Lewis and the Playboys
— and has done solo work, in addition to becoming
a respected producer. In 1998, he wrote a memoir,
Backstage Groupies and Backstabbing Bastards, about
the music industry.
Born in Brooklyn in 1944, Kooper was making
music by the time of his bar mitzvah, but neither he
nor one of his teenaged guests, the soon-to-be
"Godfather of Soul" James Brown, performed at the
party.
"My bar mitzvah was so long ago," Kooper jokes,
"they played 'Kum Ba Ya' there. The band that
played was some society outfit from Long Island
called the Jerry Jerome Orchestra — oy!"
Though he hasn't lived in New York for quite
some time, the city shaped Kooper's Jewish identity,
which leans toward the secular, cultural and gastro-
nomic variety.
"I am a New York Jew. Hardcore," he says. "Today
I meet other Jews my age that I call 'fake Jews.'
They've never eaten kasha varnishkes (Jewish soul
food). They blanch at the thought of a tongue sand-
wich.
"Get away with these fake Jews! If you can't enjoy
tongue on rye, with Russian dressing, a couple of
pieces of roast turkey and coleslaw on the sandwich,
don't even talk to me. And if you've never had kasha
varnishkes with a buttah-soft brisket, don't tell me
you're Jewish like me."
When asked if he has ever played in Israel, he says,
"Israel? Are you crazy? Yeah, I could see a two-CD
set — Kooper at the Golan Heights Amphitheater.
"One CD would be music and the other gunfire
and ambulances. I think I'll wait for my next life
when there's peace in the Middle East."
No solidarity missions for this guy.
Probably the most famous Kooper story is about
how he was invited to watch a Bob Dylan recording
session and ended up playing on "Like A Rolling
Stone," though he'd never played the organ before.
Less well known is that he met Mike Bloomfield
at the Dylan session. Their work together, and
Norman Rockwell's painting of them on the highly
regarded 1969 live double-album Live Adventures of
Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper, are both classics.
Kooper says Bloomfield had a theory about how
Jews, blacks and the blues intersect. "Mike used to
say that the tie-in was that black people suffered
externally and that Jewish people suffered internally,
and that the suffering was [what] triggered the real
blues."
Whatever the reason, it's true Jews took to the
blues. In fact, Kooper's first blues band, the Blues
Project, which helped fashion the 1960s urban blues
sound, was made up of five young Jewish guys.
In the fall of 1997, Kooper moved to Boston to
teach at the Berklee School of Music. He found
teaching to be "great and frightening — frightening
because these kids had never heard of Laura Nyro or
the Isley Brothers, and great because now they know
all about them."
His teaching career was cut short last year, when a
debilitating condition robbed him of two-thirds of
his eyesight. But it doesn't hamper his performances.
Kooper explains that the Funky Faculty — the
group he'll perform with
Al Kooper got his start
in Detroit — is "made up
with the boy band the
of rockin' professors from
Royal Teens, which in
Berklee who need to blow
1958 made a fashion
off steam after teachinc, all
statement with the pop-
these kids how to do
charting "Short Shorts."
music. We got a real
rockin' band and we cut
Kooper, who went
school a lot to play all
on to co-found the
over the world."
rock/jazz/blues group
Kooper's new Web site
Tears,
Blood, Sweat
— www.alkooper.com —
once dubbed his mid-'60s
is different from most
New York-based band
others in that, in addition
the Blues Project "the
to promoting his activi-
&
Jewish Beatles."