Prototype Issue
Suzy Williams: Local Music Hero
By Rachel Wexelbaum
(page 1 of 1)You hear a lot of complaints these days about the state of music based on the bad behavior of mainstream pop stars. Scratch the surface, and their lyrics often reveal misogyny, homophobia, and violent tempers with little substance to feed their anger. There are alternatives.
There are local heroes who sing from the heart about love, the challenges and delights of everyday life, and change. Suzy Williams is one of those people.
When Suzy writes new music, it is three dimensional. The first dimension is her voice, the arrangement, and the music itself. The second dimension is the story, and the energy behind the words. The third dimension is the sense of place. Some of Suzy’s songs will take you on a trip to the past, while others will take you down today’s Venice or Sunset Boulevard. One of her best songs, “Autumn in LA,” talks about all the places you can get to in LA on the bus or on a bicycle—waterfalls, the Sweet and Hot and Watts Tower Jazz Festivals, MOCA, LACMA, the Anson Ford, and other locations that define Los Angeles. Anyone who knows LA can relate to this song, and anyone who never set foot there would easily imagine it from her highly visual lyrics.
Suzy is a prominent performer within the Venice Arts Council, and sings for several different groups, including the Backboners, who specialize in music inspired by the Mamas and the Papas, and the Solid Senders, a jazz/blues/swing group focusing on musical styles from the Forties including originals in that style -rooted rather than retro.
Suzy writes music and performs with her bands or solo in venues such as the Temple Bar, the UnUrban Coffee House, the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, and Sponto Gallery in Venice. She and her husband/agent Gerry Fialka also work with Venice’s well-established literary venue, Beyond Baroque, to produce the annual “The ‘Lit’ Show: Songs by Literary Lions”. At this event, Suzy performs songs written by classic authors like Dorothy Parker and Tennessee Williams, and she puts her own music to excerpts from classic poems and novels. From a dancing lobster in Alice in Wonderland to Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, Suzy has resurrected some of the stranger characters of literature through her music.
A tireless worker, in one day she might have three gigs, and she will still cook, teach yoga, and come up with a new song. One of her colleagues told her not to write any more songs, and just polish the work she has already done, but how do you stop Niagara Falls? The output covers the emotional scale, from upbeat, bouncy pieces to mournful jazz.
One of her subjects is unrequited love, an age-old story in jazz and blues. In her most recent outburst she recorded with pianist/arranger Steve Weisberg her new song “Hello-Oh!”, which will appear on an upcoming CD. , “Hello-Oh!” is about a woman soberly convincing herself to dump a man she loves because she knows he does not feel the same.
Many modern performers simply imitate the strategies that veteran singers use to elicit an emotional response, or cobble some key phrases together to compose a finished piece. Not so with Suzy. As we listened to her recording of “Hello-Oh!” in her living room filled with cartoon memorabilia of an earlier, more innocent American culture, the lively, mischievous twinkle in her eye dimmed, and she went to another place. She had this argument with herself at some point, perhaps a few times, and had just the right words to capture it. This was no karaoke singer or cover band singer I sat with that afternoon. This was not someone who sold their soul to sell platinum albums and churn out formulaic chants dictated by the Man. When Suzy sings, you get Suzy.
The first person to teach Suzy how to sing her feelings was her mother. Throughout her childhood, Suzy heard Barbara sing with a “lovely, sensuous soprano” to handle the pain of divorcing her father and their struggles as they moved from Suzy’s birthplace in Oakland to Berkeley Hills, then a trailer park in Barstow, and a horse farm in Gridley. From her mother, Suzy got “an exceptional expressive tone and control over long notes with various vibratos.” When Suzy began singing during her childhood, her mother would back up her “caterwauling” on piano. At 15, Suzy discovered the music of Bessie Smith, and found that she could sing just like her. Now she loves to use the Janis Joplin quote, “Bessie showed me the air, and taught me how to fill it!”
At 18, Suzy met “Stormin’ Norman” Zamcheck, a Yale graduate in literature and “damn good boogie woogie piano player”. Partnering with Stormin’ Norman, she cut two albums with him (Fantasy Rag, 1975 and Ocean of Love, 1978). They toured the East Coast for 12 years. In 1976, the great jazz pianist and composer Eubie Blake paid Suzy an inspiring compliment in the form of a handwritten letter. In his own words: “I heard a lot of white women try to imitate negroid singing, but you’ve got it perfect. So many way before you were born tried but they overdid it. You have it down pat.”
With their own unique “rag’n’roll,” Stormin’ Norman and Suzy eventually played Carnegie Hall. They received lots of praise from critics; Nat Hentoff described Suzy’s voice as “vibrant and lusty…[with] great gusto and bold emotion” while Robert Palmer of The New York Times lauded Suzy’s energy as a natural performer. Suzy and Stormin’ Norman continue to do a few shows every year.
In 1977, in Pittsfield, Mass., Suzy married Bill Burnett. Ten years into the marriage, they decided to form “The Boners.” Bill, who wrote a song that is in Bette Midler’s new Las Vegas show, has a great knack for harmony arrangements. They looked for a new jump start to their music and enlisted Kahlil Sabbagh on vocals, vibes and percussion and added his wife Ginger Smith, who sings harmonies and plays tambourine. They all thought it would be great for the group to sing Mamas and the Paps tunes as well as original songs. Eventually they renamed themselves the Backboners which has been performing for so long, and so well, that Michelle Phillips from the real Mamas and the Papas accompanied them at the Palmer Room last fall.
Although the Backboners have enjoyed great success, the Solid Senders is the group that gives Suzy her voice. Says Suzy, “The Solid Senders came about because a trumpet player friend of mine, Barry Anthony, said, in passing, that he didn’t have any gigs. I thought ‘That’s a shame! I should create work for him and his ilk.’ Then our friend Robin Carter wanted a horn band for her going away party. Voila! Suzy and her Solid Senders.”
Suzy’s pianist and longtime “vaudeville pard,” Brad Kay, came up with the name—”senders” being the hipsters of the late forties. Dan Weinstein, Brad’s friend who plays trombone, offered to arrange music for the group, while vibes/percussion master Kahlil Sabbagh from the Backboners became the musical director. And what did Suzy do? “I began furiously writing songs for the group!” she laughed.
Suzy and the Solid Senders are one of at least 15 groups in the area who play music from the 1910s through the 1940s. The Solid Senders attract lindy hop dancers to their performances, and instructors are also on hand for anyone in the audience who would like to learn. As far as Suzy is concerned, however, people can move their bodies to the music any way that they want. She calls her audience “furry woodland creatures.”
In another manifestation, Suzy somewhat reinvented cabaret with the accordion maestro Nick Ariondo. Los Angeles magazine proclaimed “Suzy Williams and Nick Ariondo—[When] He squeezes, she torches—for one night, all’s well with the world.” Along with vibraphonist extraordinaire Sabbagh, this evocative trio perform original compositions and songs by Henry Mancini, Erik Satie, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, Tom Waits, Edith Piaf, and Kurt Weill. Eric Layton of Entertainment Today has described this trio as “a flammable mixture,” and called Suzy’s voice “boundless, Hell-Hath-No-Fury croonings.”
For more on Suzy, check out www.puddingbench.com/suzy.htm. For upcoming shows call 310-306-7330. Suzy & Her Solid Senders play the 4th Tuesday of every month in 2008 at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica www.templebarlive.com. .
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