When you’ve got the chops to rock the 88s with musicians as varied as the likes of Lou Rawls, Van Morrison, the Blues Brothers, and the Boston Festival Orchestra for Summer Pops, taking chances may seem to be taken for granted. Given that, then, for the multi-talented pianist and former Westerly resident Al Copley, recording chestnuts like “Louie, Louie,” “Great Balls of Fire,” and “How Sweet It Is” for a new, solo album release wasn’t that big of a stretch.
“In the summer of 2001, we made a demo of the group, which had been evolving and developing over three to four years,” Copley recalled in a recent interview with Sound Waves from his home in Europe. “An unfinished copy wound up in the hands of Swing FM, who were playing it to promote a gig in Newport on September 14, which we couldn’t get to since there were no flights from Brussels to Boston (right after September 11).
“They kept playing it afterwards,” he said. “A good buddy of mine heard ‘Great Balls’ on the radio shortly thereafter, pulled his car over and broke down crying.
“I know this is the purpose of music, to tend to a sorely troubled world, and I knew that we had to put it out,” he added. “That track sounded so just like plain ol’ fun to me, that I couldn’t not include it.
“ ’Louie Louie’ was something I hadn’t done since the age of 15, and it fits too perfectly into a ‘Post-Blues Brothers’ scene,” Copley recalled. “Each tune is there for a specific reason, and they are fun.”
Those classic tracks, and others, form a centerpiece, of sorts, to “Jump on It,” Copley’s new solo album (see review elsewhere in this issue), and their inclusion are a highlight, augmented by Copley’s first recorded stab at lead singing, something that he did not previously do in his long and varied career, which got started with as one of the founders and original members of the classic Roomful of Blues.
“Singing was something that I didn’t do with Roomful, aside from the horn parts and bass parts for the other guys,” Copley said. “This fellow, Willy Leiser, head of artists’ relations at the Montreux Jazz Festival, one day asked me ‘do you ever sing?’
“I said, ‘look, Willy, I backed up Lou Rawls, Jimmy Witherspoon, Big Joe Turner, Helen Humes, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Big Mama Thornton, Roy Brown-those people sing!
“So, Willy said, ‘yes, I understand. I shall the promoters that pianists who play like Errol Garner don’t have to sing,” he said. “So, I started to sing.”
And, with his singing technique, Copley still remembers that it’s still the song that comes first.
“I noticed that whether Big Joe (Turner) was singing or talking it was the same,” he said. “And Sinatra pronounces like the man in the street. So, I just phrase it as I would say it, and keep the story of the song the first priority.”
Having fun, yet giving the music the respect it deserves, has long been a staple of the 51-year-old Copley’s career. Moving to Westerly as a second grader, he took piano lessons through the age of 18, and also played drums between the ages of 10 and 13, all the while researching and developing his interest in music.
“I looked at the songwriters on those old Stones and Animals’ records, and I stumbled across the names of Jimmy Reed, McKinley Morganfield, and Chester Burnett, although it took me a long time to find out that the last two people were also known as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf,” he said.
“At the age of 14, I first came across an LP with a guy named Otis Spann, a good old Chicago double shuffle, and that convinced me that the piano was for me, so I stopped playing drums,” he recalled.
At that time, Copley was invited to join Pawcatuck native Greg Piccolo’s band, “Greg and the Groupe,” which made quite a name for itself playing tantalizing versions of both obscure and popular cover songs at local dance halls. In 1968, Mike Robillard (later known as “Duke”), who had played in an earlier band with Piccolo, wanted to put together the best band he could from the Westerly area, to play on the open stage at the Newport Folk Festival.
That, Copley said, was the beginning of Roomful of Blues, a group that set the contemporary standard for horn-based blues and swing performances for years.
“The name of the band came from a poem written by a guy from Westerly, named Randy Saunders,” Copley said. “We never learned it as a song, but it did name a band.
A trip to the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival in 1971 cemented the idea to have Roomful a horn, rather than harp-based, blues sound, he said.
“It was a Saturday evening in which Mighty Joe Young’s two-horn band backed up Junior Parker, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson and Big Joe Turner,” Copley remembered. “It changed my life to hear blues which had such heartfelt soul and musical sophistication.”
“Then,” he said,” the kids figured out that it was fun to dance to blues, and so Roomful actually became popular, too.”
And, Copley said, the band left a meaningful mark on music in this country.
“In the late Sixties, blues seemed just about gone in America as a visible form,” he said. “Horn-based jump blues was virtually unknown, so, really, Roomful of Blues was playing music in the 1970s that might have been lost, otherwise.”
“Duke Robillard was an excellent guitarist with distinct ideas, and a great record collection,” Copley remembered. “Greg Piccolo, at one point, helped keep a band without much popularity working, and he did a seemingly endless job of it.”
“Alvie was so far beyond the rest of the band, who played basically by ear,” Piccolo said of Copley’s early days playing in the Groupe. “He was amazing, we had never seen anyone like him. He had been taking lessons since he was about seven years old, and could read music, which most of the rest of us really couldn’t do.
“He’d figure out how to play something immediately,” Piccolo added. “We all learned from him. He’s always had great rhythm, with that strong left hand on the piano. That’s why he’s the ‘boogie man.’”
Copley remained with the band until 1984, when he relocated to Europe.
“I had a list of 10 contacts (in Europe), one of which proved to be very useful,” he said. “I sent out 37 cassettes to 37 agents (looking for work) and I got back 36 ‘nos.’”
Leiser, though, familiar with Copley’s amazing piano work with Roomful, got him work.
“It was quite a switch going from one-nighters with a nine-piece band (Roomful) to playing solo piano in concerts, clubs and piano bars,” he recalled.
“Whatever I missed from Roomful, I incorporated into my solo playing,” he said. “I’ve noticed that with other Roomful alumni. We were a collective musically, everyone added something to the stew, and it was more like a basketball team without any star players who played so well together that an All-Star team couldn’t beat ‘em.”
And, surprisingly, that work led to writing for and performing with symphony orchestras.
“I was absolutely knocked out when I was asked to perform with the Boston Festival Orchestra,” he said. “I found an orchestrator, but in the middle of the night, I woke up with all these sounds in my head. A voice was saying, ‘look, Al, it’s gotta be like this.’ So, I said, ‘but, how I am going to explain this?’ The voice said, ‘well, you’re just going to have to write it out.’ The next morning, I went to the music store in Brussels and found a perfect book used to teach orchestration.
“I wrote, basically, 10 hours a day, non-stop, around what I was singing and playing on the piano,” he recalled.” I was surprised to hear how much more music was there already-I just had to listen and write it down.
“It took every bit of musicality I had, and more, to do it, and when I was done, and wanted to do another session for ‘Jump On It,’ writing three-piece horn charts was a piece of cake,” he said.
“I recognize the symphony orchestra as one of the highest artistic achievements of the West,” Copley said. “The possibilities are endless. I don’t expect these to be the last orchestrations I’ll write.”
Whatever the genre or forum, it’s clear that Al Copley will be making, and playing, music, in some form for a very long time.
“”Music is the rhythm of head and heart, and I combat the proverbs which say ‘one either makes art or money,’” he said. “Musicians don’t make music, music makes musicians.
“And, yes, there’s another record coming,” he said. “Stay tuned.”