My experience with The Abstracts, as wonderful as it was, left me tired of the entire 'pop' music scene and yearning for music created for the simple pleasure without commercial considerations. That for me at the time meant blues, Chicago style.
|
 |
| Tilton's Market |
|
|
 |
| Don Sucher |
|
Don Sucher Recalls Tilton's Market
I put up an ad in a large Long Island music store: "Guitarist looking for musicians with an interest in electric blues" and linked up for the summer with a group named The Brave Maggots. That summer remains lost in a bit of a, umm...shall I say, "’60s haze." But we made some great music and had some wild times.
After that I beat around in dollar earning bar bands for a time, then helped create a group named Crystal Circus that did some seriously good work (including music for a motion picture), but my search for what I was really yearning for came with another music store sign similar to the one mentioned above. This time it was responded to by a Long Island North Shore band then playing under the name Red Caboose.
|
Tilton's Market grew out of Red Caboose - not so much (at least at first) by personnel changes, but through growth into an entirely new style of music.
Red Caboose, as I found it, had a lot going for it. Foremost among these things was a singer by the name of Barry Edelman. Barry was not a Long Islander. He was a Brooklynite, and indeed one that had experienced some tough situations already in his young life. Thus when he sang “the blues” he really sang the blues. And could he sing!
There was a story that I had heard—a perfectly believable one considering the man and the times—that Barry had once sung at Harlem's famous Apollo Theater only to be shot at while on stage because, "no white man has the right to sing like that." Indeed when I first heard Barry I was in the basement of the house that the group was scheduled to rehearse in (this was my introduction and “try out” for the band) and when I heard Barry singing as he came down the stairs I thought he must be black. What is amazing is that there was no imitation going on. It was just the man being who he was after absorbing the harsh urban environment at that time, I guess, about 18 or 19 years. (He also could sing great Jersey Shore style doo-wop by the way!)
Up until that time Red Caboose was doing mostly rock songs, many of which (including some well written ones by the groups guitarist Keith Tilton) had a Rolling Stones vibe.
My joining the group brought in a second entirely new style of music to its repertoire because Barry and I quickly discovered that we had found in one another the perfect musical mate. This, over the months ahead, led us to be a real, close, writing team and as the group evolved and changed personnel-wise, led to a totally original sound and style of song writing.
Along with Barry Edelman there was a very gifted guitarist named Keith Tilton. Now bringing him up I should address a likely misconception, that the groups taking on the name “Tilton's Market” marks it as Keith's band. Not so. In fact he hated the name! We took that name largely at Barry and my insistence because "Tilton's Market"—a literal grocery store which had been run by Keith's family since before WWII—was a North Shore landmark. Oh, the fun conversations we would have just because of that name! And naming this somewhat avant garde but earthy rock band after a grocery store just seemed too cool at the time. (Yes, the sixties were weird.)
Anyhow Keith was, as I said, a really good guitarist. But he was more than that. He was a real musician, one who could change his chops to match the needs of the music. Keith was half of the original Tilton's Market sound—and an important half at that.
The other "half" was Barry and I. No one but a writer/musician can fully understand what can happen when the right two people come together and just totally merge as creative souls. We see examples of it throughout musical history: Gilbert and Sullivan. Rogers and Hammerstein. Lennon and McCartney. Not that I am making a direct comparison to the worth of our creative output to theirs—but the same, rare, once in a lifetime magic that they had and exhibited was experienced by us as well. It was a blessing and a joy beyond words.
Also making significant contributions to what Tilton's Market would become was the group's bassist, Chuck Schilling, and our drummer, Richie Catalano.
Tilton's Market, unlike any of my previous groups, played for older, more musically sophisticated audiences. Yes, we'd take the occasional job at a North Shore country club, or a bar, but when the group actually smoked was at clubs like Juicy's Cafe in the Hamptons with its older, racially mixed, audience. There some folks would dance and others would pull a seat right up to the stage and just listen. And oh, what a groove an audience like that can help create in a band like Tilton's Market!
Tilton's Market played publicly less often than other bands I was in around that time. That, frankly, was not our goal. What was is better described as "art.” Art as in, "art for art’s sake." We lived for our music, and our music lived on account of that fact. But yes, we did do gigs. A few were typical; more, like Juicy's, less so—at least for relatively young musicians like we were at the time.
Back when the group was still Red Caboose, Keith's older brother—a butcher at Tilton's Market (the family grocery store)—took up management duties. He was a good, hard-working, soul who did his best for the band. That was easier when they were Red Caboose; harder when they went outside the mainstream. But he did well by us.
Somehow—and I have no memory of the details here—the band came to the attention of Arnold Goland, Barbra Streisand's producer. He brought us into the studio and had us do some quick recordings of original songs. I do remember that session quite well. (I guess you can understand that!) We did several of Keith's Rolling Stones-styled pieces. One particularly stood out: ‘House of Stone,’ a wonderful song about a lonely, misunderstood girl, who "Lived all alone, in a house of stone, where no one was, every home ... she's lonely!", and several Edelman/Sucher songs including the then just written ‘Meadow Song’ ("Running through a meadow, sunshine is falling down on me. Butterflies of yellow, caressing the leaves of green...") which really grabbed Arnold's ear.
Anyhow that led to a solid contract (one that had one weird clause which I'll perhaps talk about later) and was expected to lead to some pretty immediate master sessions. Alas it did not, and for an interesting reason.
Arnold had told us that he was about to leave for Hollywood with Barbra to shoot a movie called Funny Girl. First thing upon his return he promised us we'd get into the studio together. But in a fashion I have been told is a constant for her, Barbra Streisand does nothing quickly or easily. She is a perfectionist (as most such truly gifted artists are) so the "shoot" went on and on, and our promised studio session went off and off. Bummer!
And that is where the weird clause in the band’s contract came in. You see the Vietnam War was raging at the time, and like many young people—certainly most young rock musicians—we wanted no part of it. I was the one most at threat. I had just graduated from college and started post grad studies. Thus my student classification was at risk and I might well soon be getting reclassified "1A" (otherwise known as "Dead Meat"). And if that was so I had determined that I'd rather go north over the border than get involved in a conflict that was against my youthful conscience. So Tilton's Market's contract had a clause in it that any draft issues canceled our obligations under the contract—this to take away any "leash" that the government might have had to bring me back. I have to add here that as I grew in life that anti-Vietnam War position has become far less clear then it seemed to be then, and I have mixed feelings about the course I personally chose, but there it is. What was was.
And indeed that is just what occurred. I was reclassified, they did try to draft me, and the band was forced to take advantage of that clause when we had to leave New York…not as it turned out to go 'over the border,' but to Boston where I was assigned what was then called "alternative service."
Bottom line: Those master sessions never happened and to my knowledge the initial sessions are lost forever. Whaaaa!
This then leaves the only extant tapes of Tilton's Market some decently done "basement" recordings, such as the groups' unique version of ‘Summertime’ that I turned into a YouTube video some months back.
|
Tilton’s Market wrote dozens of original songs. Keith had his, Barry and I ours. Some exist in absolutely terrible basement tapes that are simply too poor to share. Well, maybe I shouldn't be quite so hasty since I haven't heard them in years. I should at some point dig out the old reel-to-reels and give them a listen. But that said I'm not hopeful. Some are totally lost to time except in my (our?) memories.
And they were really special. Some played with changing time values (4/4 to 3/4 mid phrase). Others laid the end of one verse over the beginning of another such as, "Take in a movie, something groovy, would be better if you shared it with a friend." Verse two picking up over verse one with "A friend would want to go..."
Another, actually written later when the band had, with some changes in personnel, followed me to Boston, was called ‘Mister Michael.’ It told the story of a successful business man who looked back over the regrets of his life as he drank glass after glass of wine. It began, "Mister Michael sat and dined, and drank a glass of rich red wine. He thought back to the far off day his daddy took his toys away and said its time for you to make your way..." And then, after further development comes the short refrain "...and Mister Michael drank the 1st (2nd, 3rd) glass of wine." That song was in total a good 15 minutes long. It was written on and featured a prominent sitar. There are three tapes that survive: ‘Summertime,’ ‘Spoonful’ and the original Edelman/Sucher song ‘Like the Living Dead, Lingering On.’
|
 |
| IV Kings and A Queen |
|
The group with the lineup mentioned earlier morphed into another group with a significant change in personnel in late 1967. Keith (who I am sad to say died a short time later from a brain aneurysm) was replaced by Roland DiDeigo and Chuck by Ken Smith. Then the band followed me to Boston where we added the lovely Jan Vadala—stole her away from the popular Boston band IV Kings & A Queen really—and where in time Ritchie was replaced by the IV Kings & A Queen’s drummer, Nicky Popadopoulos.
When the group moved to Boston the goal was not to play there. No, it was simply to write, arrange and practice so that at the end of my two year stint of "alternative service" we could return to New York and take on the world.
In Boston the band rented a huge rundown house—locally called "Hippy House" by the less than thrilled to have us neighbors—and had quite a scene, musically and otherwise. We then played under the names of Christopher and The New Action Army.
Again, little remains of that time except for some very wild stories and one terribly over-modulated rehearsal tape of the group working on the above mentioned ‘Meadow Song.’
In the end the group was driven out of that house by mobs of crazed local kids—crazed largely because their girl friends were spending their days (and occasionally nights) with "Those $#&! hippies."
Shortly thereafter, in the early spring of 1968, the group broke up. Well…not completely—Jan Vadala having to my joy become Jan Sucher. We're still collaborating buddies and best friends (to say nothing of husband and wife and lovers) to this day.
These are wonderful memories, of dear friends, of great music, of extraordinary collaboration, and of growing more than a bit wiser in the strange ways of the world.
I wouldn't have missed it for anything!
|
|
|
|
|
 |
