JOHN KLECKLEY AND SMOKE

Smoke on a set break in our club.
From left to right: John Kleckley drums,
Huey bass guitarist,  Kenny bandleader and saxophone,
Lee Cronbach aka 'Groucho' ("Don't get grouchy, Grucho!")

   5. JOHN KLECKLEY and SMOKE  -  I ran into my last Boston teacher unexpectedly, when I got invited to join Smoke, an R&B band that was playing in Roxbury - one of the Black neighborhoods of Boston.  The offer came in 1975, when I was already thinking about leaving Boston for either New York City or Los Angeles.
         I fell in love with Smoke, as I had with Tribal Rhythms and Boston Elevated Railway, on first playing with them.  What really made them outstanding was an incredibly tight and smoking drum and bass partnership.  John Kleckley, the drummer, had come from Philadelphia where he had played with the Gamble and Huff team, both in their Philadelphia International studio and on the road with some of their famous acts - Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass, and the O’Jays, among many others.  ( Gamble-Huff created 'The Sound of Philadelphia', aka T.S.O.P.  Their fully integrated studio orchestra combined White and Black players, hippies and society orchestra players, horns, string section, guitars, keyboards, strong congas and drumset.  In the early 70s they originated The Hustle dance, one of the most important sources of 1970s disco, and up to 1975 they looked ready to rival Motown as the leading R&B label in the U.S.   (One of my favorite albums from their studio was the doowop nostalgia album 'Gonna Take a Miracle' with Laura Nyro with the Labelle Trio  and with the T.S.O.P. orchestra backing them.   Hey, if you haven't heard this recording and you like doowop and soul, I think you will love it. Also you might want to check out these two instrumental albums, Love is the Message and The Sound of Philadelphia”.)
         John was a short, skinny, brainy-looking guy.   His bass partner Huey was the opposite in appearance: in short, huge!  Huey was a policeman by day,  musician by night, and had a demanding wife.   So sometimes John would have to shout at him 'Wake up, Huey!' when the multiple physical and professional demands on Huey just got to be too much for him.
         Anyway, John and Huey made one of the most excellent bass-drum combos I ever worked with.   The rest of the band was me on keyboards, another White guy on guitar, a woman singer, Verna, and the leader, Kenny on alto sax.  This was at the time when Muhammed Ali and George Foreman had their famous Manila bout, and the song 'Rumble in the Jungle', commemorating it, was still a hit.   That was our masterpiece:  we would play it for up to half an hour, and the crowd loved it!   One night, so many people were crowding into the small club, that some people took the door off its hinges and for the rest of the set our audience was both in the club and up and down the street! At one in the morning!  That was a good time!  
         Alas, just like with my flautists back with the Cosmic Playboys, John got religion and decided he was either not going to play at all or else only forn religious purposes (he had become a devout Jehovah's Witness).  Once John left, Huey left soon after, and Smoke's great groove went with them.  So soon after I left, to work with Ben Petrucci and Jack Jarnis on the Creation City recordings.
         While we were together, John liked to take me aside during set breaks and teach me principles of music.  That was 50 years ago, and I forgot a lot of the specifics, but much of it became so much a part of me that I can't distinguish it from other lessons other musicians taught me.  However, I remember this one in detail:  after a strong set me and John were sitting in a booth in a nearby eatery, and I told John that when I was really into it I would be humming what I played.  "What!" John cried out.  "Aren't you ALWAYS humming?  I hum every drum beat I play!  If my throat isn't sore from humming by the end of the set, I know I've been cheating my audience!" Then he told me how in Gamble-Huff studios they used to distribute chewing gum to all the musicians so their humming wouldn't get into the recording.
         I wonder about that, but ever since I always hummed while I played, and  made all my students do it at least a few times, and the best ones all the time.
         (Interesting that in a classical music teachers meeting in Seattle, the piano chairwoman at University of Washington gave the same advice.   In her case it was her parents, both musicians, who made her hum from her very first piano lessons.  "Aha," I thought, "this advice is coming from opposite ends of the music world  - it's got to be one hundred percent"  So, dear reader, if you are playing piano or bass or drums or guitar, anything that leaves your mouth free? Get humming and keep a-humming!)
         Those nights with John and Huey burning down 'Rumble" are one of my fondest music memories.  And John Kleckley was one of the six teachers who taught me the most (Six?  Don't forget Javier Castillo back in Berkeley in the pre-Chambray days, who started off my whole career).