Jimmy Norman's roots revival
Astounding return for desperate and nearly forgotten musician
GREG QUILL
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST
NEW YORK? "Few years back ... don't know how long ago ... I was
finding watches everywhere I went," recalls veteran American R&B
singer and composer Jimmy Norman. "On the sidewalk, in parks, in
the back of taxis, in the subway ... if I looked around, I'd
find a watch.
"And it started to get to me. I thought someone was trying to
send a message ... time was catching up with me."
His reading seemed prophetic. This was the man credited with
co-writing the R&B standard "Time Is On My Side," subsequently
recorded by dozens of artists including the Rolling Stones, for
which Norman has never received a dime, he says, thanks to legal
squabbles. But just a couple years ago it looked as if he was
indeed out of time.
A pair of heart attacks had finished his 30-year career working
the chitlin circuit and retro rooms in the most legitimate
version of the Coasters. (Several groups tour under the name of
the 1950s vocal act who sang "Charlie Brown," "Yakety Yak" and
others.)
"I came in in 1969 to produce the band, and stayed on as a
member ... but 10 years ago I could barely breathe, I was down
to about 20 per cent of my lung capacity, and it was a tough
life, touring constantly, singing the same 10 songs every
night," says Norman on the eve of an extraordinary comeback.
On Monday night Jimmy Norman stepped back into the present tense
? into real time, his time ? with a short show at Au Bar on 41st
St. The concert celebrated the North American release of his
first album in more than 20 years, the CD Little Pieces, a group
of luminous and contemporary-sounding original folk/soul R&B
songs. The CD, distributed on Judy Collins's Wildflower Records
label, is what Norman calls "swamp funk;" it is being described
by critics as a roots classic.
"Finding this recording is like stumbling on an undiscovered
gem, full of history, depth and beauty," Collins tells me Monday
night.
The songs, retrieved and pieced back together from notebooks and
cassette tapes left in garbage bags, are both a testament to
Norman's childhood in Nashville ? where he says he grew up
listening to both Grand Ole Opry and "everything from the blues
to Sam Cooke to Billy Eckstine" ? and evidence of a remarkable
gift from New York musicians.
"I've never had an album party before," says Norman, grinning as
he tucks into a huge pile of seafood linguine on the patio of an
elegant Italian eatery on uptown Broadway. "In New York,
whenever you ask a musician to play something, the next question
is, `How much does it pay?' No one asked that question from the
time Kerryn and I started on this."
Kerryn Tolhurst is the expatriate Australian guitarist and
songwriter who produced Little Pieces. (Full disclosure:
Tolhurst and this reporter toiled together in the 1970s
Australian roots rock band Country Radio; we also put out a CD
last year.)
Tolhurst used to scour Melbourne record stores in the 1960s for
music like Norman's, looking for blues, country and R&B licks to
copy. Norman's notebooks were akin to buried treasure.
"These were songs that had been frozen in time from the 1960s
and '70s," Tolhurst says. "They had been put aside for 40 years,
but when Jimmy started playing them on his old piano, you could
hear all his influences ? Muscle Shoals, Stax, Joe Tex. But to
give them that sound would have been a mistake, a retro project
with no contemporary relevance.
"We had no money, no studio, no record company backing ... only
the trust of the handful of musicians who knew him and admired
him. But how could I not do it?"
Norman smokes only once or twice a day now ? against his
doctor's orders, of course ? and, at 67, he walks cautiously
with the help of a cane. Still, he's in considerably better
shape, he says, than he was in 2000, when he lay helpless on the
sofa in his tiny Manhattan apartment for hours on end, wondering
whether he could pay his rent, or afford the medical care he
needed.
His circumstances came to the attention of the New York Jazz
Foundation, a charity that provides assistance to ailing
musicians. On the foundation's behalf he now regales students
and hospital patients with stories of his colourful past. For
example, he mentored Bob Marley when the young Jamaican arrived
in New York in the 1970s determined to become the next James
Brown.
"We hung out, wrote a lot of songs together," says Norman. "The
songs with Bob were okay, but his sense of time was just a hair
behind mine. I even went back to Kingston with him for a while,
and he taught me the rudiments of rock-steady, which became
reggae."
Norman got close to Jimi Hendrix during the guitarist's tenure
with bluesman King Curtis in the late 1960s.
"Jimi used to play his own stuff down in the Village when he was
in New York, but no one really paid it much mind. I was with him
on his last night here. `I'm going to England tomorrow,' he
said. `People here don't understand my stuff.' It was a sad time
for him. But the next time he was in New York he was in a limo,
and there were hundreds of people climbing all over it and
screaming his name."
Thirty years on, Jimmy Norman, in his quiet, unassuming way,
drew the attention of the Monday night jam crew at Penang, a
midtown Manhattan Malaysian restaurant where the cream of New
York's musicians like Tolhurst, under the directorship of well
known pianist/singer Johnny Rosch, gather to unwind and
challenge each other to largely unseen feats of musical
excellence. Usually Norman sat at the bar, and occasionally
stepped up to the microphone "for a song or two."
Tolhurst became fascinated by Norman's songs. He started
building the album "back to front, recording the vocals first,
because I had no idea how long Jimmy's voice would hold out."
Over the next year Tolhurst added his dobro and guitar parts,
and bringing in New York notables (including bassist Paul Ossola,
drummer Tony Beard and Rosch on keyboards, who performed onstage
on Monday) one at a time to his home studio in Brooklyn to add
subtle Southern and urban textures.
On Monday night, Norman's set ended with a slow and soulful
rendition of "Time Is On My Side," and with his hands held high,
he stepped off stage and into the loving embrace of an admiring
crowd. On Nov. 8 he'll sing it again, this time at Carnegie
Hall, with the New York Pops Orchestra.
"This whole experience has saved my life," Norman says later,
after he was moved to tears during his performance. "I do feel
blessed. My motto has always been: `Hope for the best, expect
the worst, and take it as it comes.'
"But I never thought I'd have another chance, not like this."
Additional articles by Greg Quill
PHOTO: DIANE BONDAREFF PHOTO FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Jimmy Norman sings at a concert marking the release of his new
CD Little Pieces before 400 adoring fans on Monday.
