BACKSTAGE PASS:

Go behind the scenes with staff writer Scott Dirks as he shares inside stories and additional details on the cutting room floor regarding Delta Groove artists and releases. This month's article focuses on the formation of the friendship between Randy Chortkoff and Rod Piazza that ultimately led to the two recordings by the Mighty Flyers now available on Delta Groove Music.

Those who have read the liner notes for Rod Piazza’s two Delta Groove CDs know that Rod and Delta Groove head Randy Chortkoff have a long friendship leading up to their current business association. I recently asked Randy to share some stories about how they met and became friends.

“Well, my first exposure to live blues was at the Ash Grove [in L.A.] and up in San Francisco in the ‘60s. I saw Muddy, Freddie King, Jimmy Reed, Albert King, some of the big names, but I can’t say I had a real deep understanding of what I was being exposed to at the time, mainly because of the precarious lifestyle I was living. I eventually got into some real trouble, and by the time I came around in 1979, and got sober in 1980, I’d missed a lot. I didn’t know who Piazza was, had never heard of him, which is odd because we must have crossed paths - I used to go to the places where he played, like the Ash Grove and other places around L.A. And I’d seen some of the people he hung out with, like Shakey Jake and George Smith. But I didn’t know Rod…I was kind of isolated.

Then my girlfriend at the time, Sue, took me to a place called the Country Club in Reseda, a big 1500 seat venue, kind of an arena, they had all different kinds of music there, boxing, whatever. People like B.B. King played there when they came through town. I’d gone to one big show there, it was Big Mama Thornton, Lowell Fulson, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Crayton…it was a revue, a traveling group of people I’d heard records from, but had never seen. A couple of months later B.B. played there…I believe there were two opening acts, and one of the opening acts was Rod Piazza and his band. I had already been playing harp in some little bands, and when I heard this act had a harp player, I was interested, but figured he couldn’t be good or I’d have heard of him before. Little did I know! His band then was Honey, Bill Stuve on bass, Bill Schwartz on drums, and Junior Watson on guitar. And this guy took me by surprise. I’d been a fan of Butterfield, but didn’t know anything about Little Walter or Big Walter. Of course I’d seen Junior Wells with Buddy in the ‘60s, but he wasn’t playing ANYTHING like this. But I was unaware of Rod, and he just blew my mind. I had never heard anyone play with such a fat tone, and I was really intrigued. He played through two Fender Bassman amps at the same time, one on the edge of the stage, and one off to the side. And he had a mic I’d never seen, a bullet shaped mic – none of the guys I’d seen used a bullet. So I really paid attention to what he was doing, made mental notes, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him.

“So I noticed his name in the paper a few times after that, and I went to see him in Santa Monica with George Smith. And I really became aware of the chromatic then - it was a sound I’d never heard before. I’d liked Jimmy Reed, Butterfield, that sort of stuff, single note players. I wasn’t hip to the Chicago scene at all, or the idea that there was a lot of more sophisticated stuff being played on harp. The next time I saw his name in the paper, I approached him at the gig - it might have been at the Music Machine in West L.A. on Pico Blvd, which by the way was a place I later did one of my Little Walter tribute shows. I approached him and told him I played a little bit of harp, and I wanted to know how he was getting his sound. He showed me an Astatic bullet mic with a volume control on it, and he showed me his amps. He had these vintage tweed Bassman amps, they were in perfect condition, like new, and he made a point of showing me that there were four speakers in each amp. He explained about vintage amps and speakers, that you needed the right equipment, and that it was the reason he got that sound, and said I could get it too, with the right amp and mic. Little did I know, he was setting me up! I said, “Jeez, how can I get one? I don’t have much money...” He said, “Well, I just happen to have a couple of these for sale,” and he gave me his number.

“I drove out to his house in Riverside, and he had like eight or ten of these tweed Fender amps, Bassmans, Pros, he had a Concert, a brown one, and then he brought out the Bassman he said I could buy from him. It seemed strange right away that it was a lot heavier than his amp, and I asked why it was so heavy, a lot more than his. He didn’t really say anything, but he plugged it in and blew some harp through it, and he got a great sound out of it at his house. And it looked just like the amp I’d seen him play, so I said, “OK”, and I got this amp, and an Astatic mic, for something like $700 or $800.

“But I got home and I couldn’t get it to sound right - it didn’t sound anything like when he’d played through it. So I called him back, and he said, “Well, you know, it’s in the way you hold the mic too, and how you blow,” etc., and he started giving me some pretty useful information. So I started calling him, and talked about equipment and harp playing and harp players, and we became friends…and eventually he told me that the amp he sold me probably wasn’t what I wanted. It turned out it was some kind of carcass he’d put together out of a bunch of other amps, the Bassman amp name plate was a forgery, the speakers were the wrong speakers, with these big thick magnets, the output transformer was a replacement. But he’s a good guy - subsequently I returned the amp, and he returned my money. But because the amp deal didn’t work out, and I’d been calling him and talking to him a lot about it, out of that we became friends. And over the next ten years or so I ended up buying probably eight or ten REAL Bassman amps from him. One of them I sold to Lester Butler, it ended up with Bruce Willis, one ended up with Junior Watson. But it was all because our first deal ended up being a big joke, he’d sold me a Frankenstein! [laughing]

“Around the time I met Rod, I had my own little band called Dirt Cheap. I’d put together this band, I thought it was a blues band, but prior to meeting Rod the main reference I had for current blues was early T-Birds, of course Butterfield, a little bit of later Junior Wells…I thought ZZ Top was blues then. So I had a guitarist who was really a rock guitarist, and a drummer who was really a rock drummer, and I forced them to listen to what I was listening to, but they weren’t really getting it, even that stuff. I had a black bass player, but all he knew was Hendrix. So we were basically playing for free anywhere we could, doing covers of ZZ Top and Butterfield, Born in Chicago, Messing With the Kid was about as deep as it got. It was pretty horrible. But I kept talking to Rod, and through him I met George Smith, and Shaky Jake, and Johnny Dyer, and all the great harp players he knew. And Rod kept telling me that Little Walter was the source of it all. He told me who all the Chicago guys were, and how only certain guitar players and drummers could accompany a harp player. Through him I found out about Dave and Louis Myers, Robert Junior Lockwood, and all the great Chicago guys. He also turned me onto James Harman, who was playing with Hollywood Fats and Kid Ramos, and that was a great band for harp. And little by little I started getting hip to the real blues, thanks to Rod.

“I wanted to do a demo tape with my band to get some gigs, and I went into a little studio called Hit Man Recording in Hollywood, but I didn’t know what I was doing, or how to make a good sounding recording. So I called Rod and paid him $100 to produce a three song demo…in fact, he actually played harp on one slow blues, which was great.

“Rod made me all kinds of tapes to listen to. Little Walter was all he talked about, and his act was a lot of Little Walter covers, but he also made tapes of Big Walter, early Junior Wells, and lots of other records that were hard to find then. From that time on, around ’81 or ’82, was when I started getting hip to what blues was REALLY about.

“Over the years, I used to have these birthday parties, I’d find a bar, come up with some money to get a band, and invite tons of people - I’d have Rod, William Clarke, Mitch Kashmar, whatever harp players were available, at these parties. That’s when I met Alex Shultz, who really knew how to back a harp player on guitar, and Debbie Davies, and they became my band.

“The coolest show I put on was Rod Piazza, William Clarke, and Paul Butterfield at a little bar in North Hollywood…there were people lined up around the block. I used to idolize Butterfield. I’d seen him play back in the ‘60s in San Francisco, and in the early ‘70s, but not in a while. So all of this blues awakening stuff coincided with me getting sober, and I was at an AA party, and sat in with the band and did “Help Me”. A guy came up afterwards and said, “Man, that was great, really great”, and I looked up and it was Butterfield. So we talked, and I found out he was making an attempt top put his music aside in order to get sober, and he hadn’t been playing. But we did this show, and it was great, and not just because we got Butterfield on it - Clarke and Rod were at odds a lot, they’d had a falling out and didn’t get along at all. I got them back together for that one show, and Butterfield also played – it was real traditional Chicago blues, he was playing Little Walter and Sonny Boy, and it was a great, great night. Unfortunately it didn’t it last for very long past that one night – Rod and Clarke didn’t patch things up, and it was only a couple of years later that Butterfield died.

“So Rod and I have a pretty colorful history…we’ve been though a lot over the years. As the ball got rolling and I got involved with some bigger deals, I had him on some of the Little Walter Tribute shows I did, and I’ve continued to be a big fan too, and have seen his act a lot over the years. I was really honored and flattered that he reached out to me for my input on his first Delta Groove release, “For The Chosen Who”. I’m proud to have him on Delta Groove, and of course I had no problem at all handing complete creative control over to him on his new Delta Groove CD,“Thrillville”. I know as well as anyone that he knows what he’s doing…and I’m glad he shared some of it with me over the years!”

Written by Scott Dirks