parents my parents' ages: Motown, TheBeatles, The Stones, Fleetwood Mac. Onefunny thing I picked up on – never havingput a record out before – was working on theone-sheet [promotional biographies formedia and distributors] with the label andlisting influences and that. The one-sheet forthe first record definitely said 'reminiscent ofT. Rex and some Bowie.' [I thought] peoplewould listen to one song and decide I'm somehuge T. Rex fan, when in reality I don't own aT. Rex record. Maybe it's a vocal thing. I heardT. Rex after I had been recording and doingstuff a certain way. It was like 'Holy shit.Whoa.' It's mainly the quiet, double-vocaland the tape-pitch stuff."

Some of that survived transfer to Sunrise,on tracks that presaged his eventual move toNashville in a manner he couldn't have pre-dicted. Both "Hit The Road" and "Old Turns"channel the dark sessions that produced BigStar's scarred Third/Sister Lovers."Cryin' Like The Rain" dips theMarc Bolan effect underwater, andit reemerges as George Harrisondisguising a broken heart. Despitethe occasional loose shard – NeilYoung's spirit breathes a fiery soloduring "Lyin' In Bed" – the albumwafts like a reverie and ends with asimilar lack of closure, floatingaway.

"I have a way," he explains,"and maybe on Moonstation it wasmore of an obvious approach, ofeach song being produced, likewriting a song to have a very dis-tinct vibe, with the productiongoing along with it. All of the songsfor that record were recorded ana-log by myself, and it was experi-menting with pitching the tapeway up and making my voicesound crazy with effects, and vary-ing the speed. With this record,kind of because of the situation Iwas in, I approached it naturally."

Hence the decision to recordlive, though, keeping Sunrise from turninginto a bar-band burner. Vandervelde workedagainst the grain of the typical debut/sopho-more dynamic. Artists usually craft their firstalbums over years of trial and error, comingforth with their best songs having honedthem over myriad shows. Follow-ups getwritten and recorded in short order, which iswhy they might pale in comparison while hit-ting many of the same notes. Vanderveldehad no conception of a debut album, soSunrise synthesized on its own.

"Yeah, I would agree," he says. "Most ofthe songs were written well before they wererecorded. I was playing guitar and singingthose songs all the time in my apartment fora year before recording. I knew which songswould be on the record before doing it. It'sdefinitely a different approach from the firstrecord, which was scratched together."

The boy who works backwards . . . yes. It'sa tad cerebral, but this could be a storybookyet.

market has changed. Now I know if I couldget a song that I really believe in, that I think'Boy, this is the thing. This is going to hit it,'and get the airplay that I used to get, I guar-antee it would sell. Big time. But I can't getthat."

What Cropper has been able to do, how-ever, is bring his masterpieces to new audi-ences, letting each generation of newbiesrediscover them in a way they can accept. TheBlues Brothers is, of course, Exhibit A. The

Blues Brothers produced three albums, twofilms – and a lot of flack for Cropper andbassist Donald "Duck" Dunn for backing"comedians who were making fun of pure,real, rhythm & blues."

"Yeah, yeah," Cropper says. "Eat that one.One of the biggest movies ever made inHollywood was The Blues Brothers and it gotsome of the worst reviews on the planet.Sometimes people miss the boat. They justdon't get it. I think people didn't realize thatJohn Belushi had been in bands. He was adrummer. He actually could sing in pitch. Heactually could sing in time. Dan Aykroydactually can play a harmonica and dance. Imean, it was a goofy dance because of theway he's built, but he could play. Theyweren't just clowning around. Yeah, it cameout of a skit on 'Saturday Night Live,' whichis meant to be funny, but it was entertaining.I go back to when we opened for Steve Martinat the [Universal] Amphitheater in [LosAngeles]. The first night, the audience wasstone-faced, like, 'What is this?' Then all ofsudden, it's mania. When we showed up the

second night – I will never forget this – theaudience was chanting, 'Blues Brothers! BluesBrothers! Blues Brothers!' None of us hadexperienced that with any artist, let aloneourselves. It was unbelievable. That's howwell it went down. So there you go."

For all their outsize fame, Aykroyd andBelushi are probably two of the more under-sized talents Cropper has ever worked with.Cavaliere is the latest, but before him the listincludes John Mellencamp, Tower Of Power,Etta James, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, andAretha Franklin. With all of them, whetherproducing or playing, he does the same thing:stays in the background and makes themsound good. It comes from a long-held phi-losophy that "The less you play, the more itmeant."

Given his résumé – and in spite of hisinstincts to be forthcoming – getting Cropperto list favorite musicians is little like bailingout the ocean with a bucket. Can't be done.

With one exception: drummer Al Jackson,Jr. Even before Jackson's death in 1975,Cropper had referred to him as one of thegreatest drummers of all time. "Nobody playslike Al Jackson," Cropper says. "There aren'thundreds and thousands of drummers in theworld. There's millions of drummers andnone of them can play like Al Jackson did. It'samazing. I played with some of the greatestand they are great. But they're not Al Jackson.There's only been one. There's only one OtisRedding. One James Brown. One RayCharles. One Aretha Franklin. There's neverany room for two."

There's one Steve Cropper."But who cares about that? There's a lot of

guys who play better than I can. I think I have

a gift of being able to support and pull thebest out of people and that's what I like doin'.So."

So. That gift includes interviewers, too.

Reprising the role of Johnny Cash in theChicago production, Lance Guest recallssuper fans in Washington returning up to fivetimes, which caught The Last Starfighter actorby surprise. "I do small theater in L.A. Thatnever happens!" he exclaims, but admits the"good time music" coupled with the storybrings folks back.

Playing guitar since age 9, the role of Cashseemed destined to be Guest's. He participat-ed in early table readings of the show beforethe decision to have the actors take up instru-ments was even made. "Johnny Cash is thefirst guy I grew up singing with 'cause . . . thefirst record album I ever owned was JohnnyCash At San Quentin. So I pretty much mem-

orized all the songs and all the patter inbetween, so I had a sense of how he talkedfrom a fairly early age, like prior to my voicechanging," Guest recalls. "So when it cametime to do it . . . I could sing like that prettymuch as a part of my vocal development as aperson."

Signing up for another stint as Cash was ano-brainer. "For me, it's a challenge and a joy.It's a joy to go up there and be Johnny Cashand sing those songs," Guest admits. "Whodoesn't want to do that? I feel like we certain-ly get to play rock stars for 90 minutes. It'sjust something about playing that musicthat's very necessary."

But Guest quickly points out the show isnot a collection of impersonations – it's a fluidretelling of a night that, in Mead's point-of-view, brought the "Mt. Rushmore of rock 'n'roll" under one roof. Citing artistic license,Million Dollar Quartet turns "Brown-EyedHandsome Man" into a full-blown numberwhen the Chuck Berry tune only made a briefappearance and includes Lewis' "Great BallsOf Fire."

"If you listen to the tapes of the originalrecording, it's just a bunch of guys messingaround. They sang all those things that theyfelt like singing. It's not like they all sang theirhits," Guest says. "We've sort of contrived itso . . . they sing their hits."

"They didn't do 'Great Balls Of Fire,'"Mead adds. "That song hadn't even beenrecorded yet, but we put it in the showbecause if Jerry Lee's there, you've got to have'Great Balls Of Fire.'"

Running 90 minutes without an intermis-sion, Mead calls Million Dollar Quartet an"onslaught" of instant gratification. "People

are really gonna like this play because it's gota lot of heart and soul and tons of music andit's exciting and it's like a little piece of histo-ry that maybe you've heard about or maybeyou haven't heard about," Mead says breath-lessly.

Cossette hopes to use the Chicago run as aspring board to raise the show's profile on aninternational level. "We'd like to have a com-pany in London. We'd like to have a . . . com-pany maybe in Toronto," Cossette fantasizes."We're thinking big and who knows? SamPhillips thought big. So can we."

'90s. There's been a general shift away from'50s and '60s music; you're seeing mid- to late-'60s, '70s and early '80s – people who grew upin that period are getting a nostalgia thingand going back and collecting the vinyl theymight have missed the first time through;music that kind of was a forerunner to cur-

rent music starts to do better.People look for metal and punk,look for older electronic music."

Govi says his own daughter sur-prised him with what goes on inher college residence hall (and itdidn't involve a case of airplaneglue). "She said turntables are allover her dorms and kids are buy-ing used vinyl. Not CDs – REOSpeedwagon, The Beatles."

As such, a new booth will popup in November sporting nothingbut turntables and such acces-sories. "We're gonna be pushingneedles," he jokes, saying they'll fitright alongside record supplies,posters, programs, sheet music,autographed photos, DVDs, andthose pesky CDs.

Of course, families of four wear-ing Colgate smiles and pushingshopping carts full of recordsaren't the norm yet. The core busi-ness comes from a dedicated cadreof collectors still searching for theelusive gaps in their anthologies.

Price is convinced some of his hardest targetswill have to come upon him by accident, sothorough has his four decades of crate-dig-ging proven. But Govi remembers a particu-lar collectors-only surprise.

"You know Jerry Butler?" he asks, refer-ring to the former Impressions member whobecame The Iceman. "His first big hit, 'ForYour Precious Love,' was on a label calledAbner. But the first pressing was on Vee-Jay,limited to 500 copies. Finding that first pressis almost impossible. A couple years ago at ashow in Indiana, this man approached us andwanted to know who our high-dollar buyerswere. I pointed him out to one and he had amint copy of 'For Your Precious Love' on Vee-Jay. He wanted $5,000 for it – he saw thatprice in a guide. It was eventually bargainedfor $3,500, but there you go: He just showedup, knew it was worth money, and we hadthe right guy to make a deal with."

It's the magic of vinyl that CDs will neverattain.

"My parents bought records, my brothersbought records," Govi says. "It's in our blood.I treasure all my Beatles records; I have firstpressings on every one."

Then why keep this up when satisfactionhas been had?

"I do run around a lot," he laughs. "It's alabor of love."

Appearing: 9/14 at Best Western Hillside(4400 Frontage Rd.) in Hillside.

VanderveldeContinued from page 31

CropperContinued from page 28

QuartetContinued from page 32

Record ShowsContinued from page 60

Jay

Koh

illinoisentertainer.com september 200864