After years of waiting, Happy Dunbar once again had what he referred to as the feeling. It was a sense – a frisson, as an old French girlfriend once described it – that he had gotten only a few times in his life. That, he understood, was why he could vividly remember each and every instance. The first came when, as he often joked later, he integrated a black church in Newark, where a visiting minister named Solomon Burke – known in the secular world as The King of Rock & Soul – filled not just the building, but also Happy’s needy soul, with a belief in the healing power of music. In those days, Happy, who had yet to acquire his music biz moniker, was rarely the least bit happy.
He was alienated long before he’d ever actually stumbled upon the word, a lost soul bearing the name Harry who rarely fit in, and whose only source of solace came from the black stations broadcasting from his home town and from Harlem. Seeing Solomon Burke sing and preach in a church setting was a revelation, for above and beyond the joy Happy experienced came a sense that he, a white kid of nine, might possess a special gift. In contrast to his peers, for whom music was simply there, a part of the world no more important than pizza or bubblegum, he seemed to have the ability to recognize real and unique artistry. Whether that meant that his choices would ultimately translate into popular acceptance, let alone stardom, was not for him to determine. His strength was not as a taste-maker, but rather, as he eventually came to phrase it, as a seer.
It was not until years later, in a small club in Greenwich Village, that Dunbar, still unhappily stuck with his given name of Harry, had another epiphany. Armed with a fake New Jersey drivers license that added three years to his tender age of fifteen – and bore the strikingly inappropriate name of Barry Plotkin – he was stunned when he witnessed the New York debut of a singer from Ireland who had only recently dumped the group with whom he had a minor hit.
Despite being short, stocky, and seemingly willfully dyspeptic, Van Morrison, sensed instantly, had it – the same indefinable magic he’d felt in Solomon Burke. That was the very moment that Dunbar realized that his own gift might prove to be a calling.
Lacking the skills to make it as a musician, he would channel his energy and passion not into guitar, piano, or vocals, but into the business of music. Bolting across the river into Manhattan the moment he finished high school, Dunbar clawed his way into a world that to him represented the promised land. He did a stint as a gofer at a recording studio, then toiled as a schlepper for a concert promoter. He wrote liner notes for a record label that
issued bootleg reissues, then a graveyard DJ shift at a radio station that no one in his limited sphere of contacts had ever heard of. He produced vanity demos for self-styled artists who squandered family money, plus a few for people who deserved a break that would likely never come. Then at last he got a legitimate gig, coming on-board a company that had a small but respected niche on the jazz scene. Even as he made the transition first from squatter to sharing an actual mail box, then from thrift shop furniture to Ikea, Dunbar kept searching for someone – anyone – who could thrill him the way he wanted to be thrilled. There were more and more artists he came to appreciate and admire: Sonny Rollins, Nina Simone, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Thelonius Monk, Love, Cyndi Lauper, Slim Harpo, the Chambers Brothers, Irma Thomas, and Willy DeVille among them. But though there was no doubting either their talent or the joy he derived from listening to them, there was something inside of Dunbar that wanted more.
It was not until he relocated to California that Dunbar at last got the long sought-after sensation once again. Based on little more than a hunch, he stopped in at a tiny club in Santa Monica, where lightning struck in the form of an older-than-his-years hipster named Tom Waits. Hoping that he was finally in a spot not simply to acknowledge a budding phenomenon, but to be the mover and shaker who could accelerate the ascent, Dunbar approached the singer after the first set. Though they seemed to hit it off, the result was far from ideal. The Eagles, Dunbar learned, had recently recorded one of the songs that Waits performed that evening. That break, not surprisingly, had yielded both a manager and a recording contract. In other words, Dunbar’s musical instincts proved to be better than his timing. Having at last started to receive some financial rewards from what would later be looked back on as the boom years in the record biz, Dunbar, like most of his co-workers, was ill prepared for the disaster caused by the inability – or unwillingness – of the big labels to recognize the importance of
downloads.
Forced anew to cobble together a living – managing a couple of acts that proved to be perpetual headaches… producing sessions that required tapping into the favor bank for guest appearances intended to up a release’s profile… hawking songs to TV shows… even selling the vintage Camaro he’d painstakingly restored – Dunbar kept up the quest that he often described with a Dusty Springfield title: Wishin’ And Hopin’ that one day he would stumble upon the special talent with whom he could share a rise to fame and maybe even fortune. Then one gloomy September Thursday, after being kept waiting for over an hour for a meeting that was over and done with in less than ten minutes, then discovering that his next appointment had been scratched, Dunbar decided to blow off the rest of the afternoon by driving to the funky beach town of Venice.
Trudging unhappily down the boardwalk, where the peddlers, freaks, and buskers looked forlorn in the absence of weekend crowds, Dunbar was stunned when, despite his overwhelming desire to avoid anything resembling human contact, something caught his ear. It wasn’t one more would-be Dylan or Robert Plant wannabe, or a whiny Justin Bieber clone, or an aspiring Justin Timberlake. Nor was what he heard blessed with the kind of vocal purity Dunbar associated with Aaron Neville, or the guitar virtuosity that he loved in T-Bone Walker. What impressed him first and foremost was a rare kind of emotion – something heartfelt that derived from an almost magical convergence of voice, guitar, and lyrics. Unless Dunbar had suddenly become delusional, there was, he felt, something incredibly distinctive – naïve yet somehow wise… cynical yet strangely hopeful… rural yet strikingly streetwise – that was fresh, winning, and above all, necessary.
Even better, Clete Holmes, Dunbar learned after treating the musician to fish tacos and a couple of Mexican beers, had no representation, no label, nor any professional baggage whatsoever. He was a guy who’d played little clubs first in the Rust Belt, then in places like New Orleans and Austin, supplementing whatever cash he made by working odd jobs and busking. Some of his songs were drawn from personal experience, while others were inspired by snatches of conversation overheard in dive bars, Greyhound stations, or honky-tonks. Plus there were a couple that were triggered by unlikely signs he’d seen on the kinds of streets people in show biz brag about
flying over. Careful not to do anything in haste, Dunbar worked with Clete over a period of weeks. The first session dealt with what Dunbar called stage presence, with Dunbar teaching his new protege how to
make contact with the audience in a personal way, without resorting to the over-the-top flourishes that both of them dismissed as Vegas. Next came what Dunbar referred to as sequencing, mixing up-tempo numbers with ballads, while at the same time balancing humorous pieces with those that carried a special kind of poignancy. Then they focused on what Dunbar deemed breathing room, which meant patter that added a personal touch so that Clete never resembled a human jukebox, simply pouring out song after song after song.
Calling in markers, Dunbar started getting his star-in-the-making guest spots at neighborhood coffee houses and funky out-of-the-way clubs. The purpose, above and beyond creating the beginnings of a buzz, was to prep Clete in every way imaginable. Based on the response – not just from the audiences, but also from Clete, whose charisma was increasing in direct proportion to his growing confidence – Dunbar, with each passing day, felt that his
instincts were justified. Never a particularly sound sleeper, he started finding himself awake at 3 AM, wondering if he and Clete Holmes would one day follow in the footsteps of other tandems that had jointly risen from
obscurity: Colonel Parker and Elvis, Phil Spector and the Ronettes, Jon Landau and Springsteen, David Geffen and Laura Nyro.
Those musings, in turn, led to more constructive thoughts as he plotted the best, wisest way, and hopefully most appropriate way to introduce Clete Holmes to the powers-that-be in the music business. Days turned to weeks, then weeks into months as Dunbar pondered, night after night, what needed to be done. And all the while, he continued to raid his rapidly dwindling finances not just to keep Clete going, but also to produce the right demo.
Then one evening, while nursing a beer and pondering how long it had been since the last time he had anything even resembling a date, it hit him. Champ Sumner was the man who could make what he wanted a reality. Champ, who had started as a wunderkind before making the leap first to record mogul, then to eminence grise in the rapidly expanding world of multimedia, had the wherewithal, both literally and figuratively, to provide exactly what was needed.
Even better, though Dunbar was someone who had worn out his welcome in many places by hounding relentlessly, then hounding some more, Sumner was not someone with whom he had burned many bridges. Managing to schedule his first face-to-face in ages with the industry heavyweight, since he knew that merely sending an email with a link would never accomplish what he wanted, Dunbar did his best to be on time and put on the charm.
Then, instead of handing Sumner a CD, he begged for the chance to play it for him, even if that came to mean only a tiny morsel of one tune. Happily, it wasn’t just one little bit that Champ listened to, nor even just one song. To Dunbar’s great glee, it was three songs in their entirety that he chose to hear. “I’ll need to see him play,” Sumner then stated, much to Dunbar’s satisfaction.
“Say where and when.”
“In front of an audience.”
“Okay.”
“And not in some shit hole.”
“I’ll make it happen,” Happy Dunbar said happily.
It took no small amount of begging, pleading, nudging, and wheedling, all sweetened by more coke than he could afford, but ultimately Dunbar got what he wanted: a prime-time slot at a Monday evening open mic in West Hollywood. After giving a final pre-show pep talk to Clete Holmes, in which he stressed that the musician simply be and trust himself, Dunbar went back to the Silverlake apartment that, even after seven years, still didn’t feel like home.
In contrast to the advice he had given to his new protege, he, himself, the putative voice of experience and wisdom, could not find a way either to be or to trust. His entire being, to his chagrin, seemed to consist of little more than exposed nerves, ravaged by anxiety and doubt. Nothing made time pass more swiftly – not meditation, not medication, not exercise, not booze. He would have gone out to a massage parlor in the hope of finding some solace, but even the cheapest ones would have been an unthinkable extravagance. Instead he let his mind wander, summoning memories that were long forgotten or suppressed. He thought about the Swedish girl whose name he could no longer remember, a sweet innocent who made him feel like somebody. And about the dinner he once had with not-yet-famous Jimi Hendrix at a Spanish restaurant near New York’s Chelsea Hotel. And about the promises he’d made to himself when, three years before, he was misdiagnosed with what proved, after an awful scare, not to be prostate cancer.
Then, though not given to prayer, he prayed that Champ Sumner would not let him down. When the big evening came, despite his fear of being stood up, Dunbar did his best to convey nothing but confidence, especially in the presence of Clete Holmes. Nonetheless, it was with great relief that he greeted Champ Sumner, whose arrival at the club sent a buzz through all those who recognized one of the last remaining power brokers.
“Is he ready?” Champ asked.
“You’ll have to tell me,” Dunbar responded.
Every second felt like an hour as Dunbar, with Champ Sumner beside him, suffered through a neofolkie with stringy hair whose self-confessional woes were no more scintillating than her reedy voice, then a heavyset guy who wasn’t anywhere near as clever or funny as he thought he was. Then onto the stage came Clete Holmes.
“Something tells me I’m not in Pittsburgh anymore,” he said with a wry smile. “Or Dubuque either, it appears. So I guess I better put up or shut up.”
With a wink at a cute redhead, Clete strummed his guitar, then started to sing.
I wasn’t born in the bayou
I wasn’t raised in the ‘hood
I was never told I was special
I was never told I was good.
Dunbar snuck a glance at Champ Sumner, who was checking out not just Clete, but also the reaction he was getting, particularly from the women in the audience. And with each passing moment – and each additional verse, he was more and more convinced that this, at long last was it. That enabled him to relax as Clete went into the finale.
I’m not much for praying
Or hoping dreams will come true
But I’ll never stop trying
To make things better for you.
As applause rang out around the room, Champ Sumner leaned toward Dunbar. “We may be onto something,” he said, filling Dunbar with pride. Then Clete once again took hold of the microphone. “Thank you,” he said to the audience that he’d already won over. “Now what do you say we get our blood pumping?”
Without waiting for an answer, Clete merrily launched into an upbeat number.
Down in Austin, Texas
There’s a dance they call the Stomp.
It’ll make you frisky,
It’ll make you want to romp.
First you stomp!
Then you stomp!
With each use of the word stomp, Clete did just that, stomping hard with his right foot – a move that was instantly picked up on by the entire crowd. That led to Clete creating a frenzy by repeating both the word and the action again and again.
Once more Dunbar managed to steal a peek at Champ Sumner, who looked positively enthralled – until, that is, a girl with spiky blond hair and the skimpiest of mini-dresses jumped onto the stage and
joined Clete at the microphone, shouting and stomping. Champ Sumner’s look turned from first from glee to disbelief, then to what Dunbar took to be scorn.
Without another word, Sumner turned and headed for the exit. Forced to fight his way through a romping and stomping crown, it was only when he at last made his way to the parking lot that Dunbar caught up to Sumner.
“Didn’t you like him?” Dunbar asked plaintively.
“Sure, I liked him.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Champ gave him a look that Dunbar took to be pity. “Some idiot girl jumps on stage and grabs the mic?”
“Yeah?”
“If it’s Springsteen, or Jagger, or even Tom Petty –“
“Yeah?”
“They’d punch her fuckin’ heart out! It’s not just talent that gets you somewhere in this world. It’s being willing to kill.”
With that, Champ Sumner climbed into his Bentley, leaving Dunbar speechless as he headed off into the night.
Feeling alone as never before, Dunbar allowed himself a rare moment of reflection. So much that he had either sacrificed or deferred while chasing a dream came surging forth. He had no wife, no kids,
no home, nor even a dog. All he had – all he might ever have – was a love of music, plus a belief that he, even if he had little to show for it, knew what it could be… should be… ought to be.
Promising himself that he wouldn’t let Clete Holmes know what Sumner said, Dunbar took a deep breath, then started to think about indies, smaller labels that might position his new discovery to be the
next Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, or George Thorogood & the Destroyers, or even Norah Jones.
Then back into the club Dunbar went.
—
Alan Swyer is an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentaries have dealt with the criminal justice system, Eastern spirituality in the Western world, diabetes, and boxing. In the realm of music, he’s written scores of liner notes, has produced several records, including a compilation of Ray Charles love songs, and contributes regularly to Britain’s “Blues & Rhythm.” His fiction has been published hither and yon.
