Merl Saunders "Still Groovin" (good news)

[Esau]

Now here is some serious good news.

[color:"red"] Silenced by a stroke, Merl Saunders is grateful to be grooving. His son Tony has helped him find a new voice.

Tony Saunders didn't want to go back to work on his father's album after his dad suffered a paralyzing stroke. The 48-year-old musician would go to recording studios, where Merl Saunders was well-known, and people would comment on their resemblance, ask after his dad and generally keep him from putting the whole catastrophe out of his mind.

It was record producer Narada Michael Walden who convinced him that he needed, in effect, to face his father's music and complete the last solo album by the big, huggable keyboard man who made so much great music over the years with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

On a warm Sunday afternoon, the stricken patriarch is sitting in the Pacifica living room of his daughter Susan Mora, recently divorced mother of two grown children, with his son Tony, another big, cuddly bear of a man, and Merl's girlfriend, Deborah Hall. Yes, he can walk. Hell, he can even dance, which he joyfully demonstrated. He can laugh and he can cry -- which, if you get right down to it, covers just about everything. It's only speaking that eludes him these days.

"He's come a long, long way," says Mora, who handles her father's affairs full time now. Everybody in the room smiles and nods assent, including Merl. It is a happy thought to people who remembered much darker days not that long ago.

Saunders, 70, hovered in a nether zone between life and death for several days after his May 2002 stroke. When he finally started coming around, he faced a long road back. He couldn't so much as swallow. His daughter beams as she recalls the day they were sitting at the beach watching the sunset and her father crossed his legs.

Wearing his trademark cap, Merl Saunders sits at the small keyboard in his basement room at Mora's house and picks out the left hand part to a little Ellington. Tony Saunders leans over his father's shoulder and plays the right hand part. They finish together and dad grins triumphantly.

Otherwise silenced by his stroke, Saunders grunts "yes" to questions and pounds his heart to show love. Tears stream out of his eyes at the slightest provocation. He can't say it, but he can show it -- he's happy to see old friends and grateful to be alive. He plans to attend the release party Friday at the Great American Music Hall for "Still Groovin'," the album his son finished, and even hopes to play a little music in public for the first time since the stroke.

The album brings together a number of Saunders' celebrated friends. Bonnie Raitt contributed a duet recorded in 2001 at the Rainforest Cafe. Mavis Staples added her lead vocal to "Grass Is Greener" at a Chicago recording studio with Merl before his stroke (Vernon Black, Mariah Carey's guitar player, also appears on the track). Huey Lewis, on the other hand, came in after Merl was off the project to sing the lead vocal on "The Music Man," the song Tony wrote about his old man.

"He does many things well," says Tony Saunders. "Jazz ... rock ... he could play everything. That is his legacy."

Saunders was already a veteran jazzbeau, a second-tier organ bar bebopper on the same '60s circuit as Brother Jack McDuff and Jimmy Smith, when he first met Jerry Garcia at a recording session. He grew up in the Haight, went to Polytechnic High School with Johnny Mathis, backed up Dinah Washington and jammed with Miles Davis. He and Garcia started working around Bay Area clubs as the Merl Saunders-Jerry Garcia Group in 1971. It was a musical association that would last the rest of the great guitarist's life, without and with the Dead proper. Among other things, Saunders, as musical director of the new version of the old television series "Twilight Zone," recorded the Dead playing the classic TV theme for the 1985 reprise.

Saunders was the kind of well-schooled, knowledgeable musician whom Garcia could trust to always keep him between the gutters. He was a dependable anchor and an affable associate in his leather caps and gradient-tint aviator shades. When Garcia needed to recover his basic skills after falling into a diabetic coma in 1986, he went over to Saunders' house, where Saunders worked him out on jazz standards like "My Funny Valentine."

Along with weekend gigs at Bay Area rock clubs, the pair used to play every Monday at the tiny bar, Sand Dunes, near the beach on 46th and Judah because Garcia thought young Tony Saunders, learning the electric bass with the group, needed the practice. Trained on piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Tony Saunders started playing bass as a teenager. His father used him on the soundtrack to a PBS documentary called "Soul Is" when he was only 14.

"I didn't play the bass real well," he says, "but my father showed me the lines."

Merl Saunders has had brushes with death before. He underwent surgery for cancer in March 2002. "Monday Night Football" saved his life the previous September when he took an early flight home from the East Coast to watch the game at his home and canceled his reservation on United Flight 93 out of Newark, N.J., which ended up crashing in a field in Pennsylvania.

After the stroke, the family sold his house, let go the office staff, the crew and the band. His daughter runs the office and left a fulltime job to care for her father five days a week, around the clock. His other son, Merl Jr. , who serves as executive director of the local chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, visits every week. The elder Saunders' beloved vintage MG convertible with the personalized license plate ("I H My B3") sits downstairs, covered in a tarp, blocked in the garage by boxes.

Tony finally picked up work again on the album they began together in 1999. He brought back an organ bar groove number originally recorded for an album by guitarist Carl Lockett ("That music reminded me of my whole childhood, " he says). He did some overdubs on existing recordings and brought in friends such as guitarist Roy Rogers, harmonica ace Norton Buffalo, vocalists Maria Muldaur, Glenn Walters and Lady Bianca to play on others. He built a few tracks from the ground up, including his tribute to his father, "The Music Man, " for which he stumbled out of bed at 3 in the morning to lay down the basics in the first flush of inspiration.

"I got everybody I wanted for that song," Tony says. "Everybody came though and I didn't have to beg anybody."

Playing the solo piano on the piece is his young cousin, Ray Chew, who received many important piano lessons from his uncle Merl. Chew happened to pass through town playing piano with the "Showtime at the Apollo" show and went into the studio with his cousin in the wee hours to cut his part, sounding as much as anybody can like Merl Saunders himself, back in the day.

With the album done, Tony Saunders feels better. The hard work of his father's continued recovery remains. But Merl Saunders has two feet planted firmly in the land of the living, and his life is going on again. In a way, his son knows he was lucky to have all the unfinished business to attend to in the studio.

"This was the greatest gift I could give to my dad for his tutelage," Tony says. "He used to tell me 'Stay on the yellow lines -- if you keep to the yellow lines, you'll get where you're going.' I owe my career to him. This is the summation of every trick he's turned me onto over the years. There's been some new technology tricks that I've taught him. But it always comes back to, yeah, but how you going to put together the music. That's what he's been drilling into me since I was 14.

"It was my therapy," he adds.

Across the table, his father's face creases into another giant smile. He flutters his hand over his heart.

http://sfgate.com

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“Still Groovin’ ” Party The Merl Saunders CD pre-release party takes place at 8 p.m.Friday at the Great American Music Hall. Guests will include David Grisman, Mic Gillette and Skip Mesquite of Tower of Power, Melvin Seals, others. Tickets: $22. Call (415) 885-0750 or http://www.tickets.com/

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Cheers to Merl!!

[bONES]

great news and a good read

thanks Esau

[kc]

Thanks Esau.

I saw The Other Ones with Ziggy Marley in 2000 I believe it was. It was the first time I had seen any of these guys since they were still the Gratefel Dead.

I didn't really like the 2 shows I saw and thought they were a little sad.

This was in Denver and the next day we noticed by luck, in reading the local weekly, Merle was playing in Boulder today.

Saw the show and was overjoyed, he had more soul and energy in his show then any thing I saw the previous nights.

Anyway, he made my little miny tour to Denver all worth it,

I owe him for that. Here's hoping he gets better, but I'm sure he'll be fine either way.

[zero]

"Monday Night Football" saved his life the previous September when he took an early flight home from the East Coast to watch the game at his home and canceled his reservation on United Flight 93 out of Newark, N.J., which ended up crashing in a field in Pennsylvania.

!!!!

[Esau]

"Monday Night Football" saved his life the previous September when he took an early flight home from the East Coast to watch the game at his home and canceled his reservation on United Flight 93 out of Newark, N.J., which ended up crashing in a field in Pennsylvania.

!!!!

Thats what I was thinking.

[MuleMomma]

Thanks Esau, that's the most news I've heard about Merl since his stroke. And, Merl really liked to tell that story when I hung with him for a couple shows in the fall of 2001. He also told me additional tidbits about playing in Muhommad Ali's band at The Apollo back in the 70s, doing the soundtrack for "Fritz The Cat", being the music director for The Grammys, and one of his relatives being Jamie Fox. Can't remember all he told me, but that article was a good memory refresher, and it's great to hear he's doing so well!!! Keep on keepin' on Merl ::