by Paul Shaffer
When I become an adult, I form my own “Love Network” with friends who share my affection for Jerry and his wondrous show. We indulge in a running commentary and analysis conducted simultaneously over the phone. My fellow telethon pundits are Martin Short, Harry Shearer, and Tom Leopold. Harry not only tapes the show so we can later review our favorite sections, he also gets the satellite feed, which means he reports on the rehearsals.
Earlier in life, before the formation of our “Love Network,” I was proud to be a member of the Sammy Club, comprised of East Coast fans of Sammy Davis Jr. and, in particular, fans of his TV show Sammy & Company. In addition to Sammy simply being Sammy, the thing we enjoyed most about the show was Sammy’s announcer, William B. Williams. His function was to pay the first compliment. “Sammy,” Williams would say, “I hate to interrupt your conversation with the great Tony Curtis, but, if I could embarrass you for just a moment, on behalf of all of us who play your music, I must say that you, Sammy Davis Jr., you are the entertainer’s entertainer.” From then on, it was a frenetic compliment free-for-all—Sammy complimenting Williams, Williams complimenting Tony, Tony complimenting Sammy, and Sammy, the unrivaled king of compliments, complimenting the audience for their kind indulgence. (A year or two after the founding of our Sammy Club, I meet Tom Leopold for the first time. This happens in New York. He lives in L.A. and tells me there’s a West Coast Sammy Club. He is taken aback when I declare in no uncertain terms, “I want this clearly understood. There is but one authentic Sammy Club, and it functions here on the East Coast. Yours is nothing but a copy.” That statement cements my friendship with Tom.)
Back on Jerry’s telethon, the weekend draws to a conclusion, and the marathon winds down. It is 2 p.m. in Vegas and 5 p.m. in New York when Jerry introduces the last big celebrity. It’s the Desert Fox himself, the man fellow entertainers affectionately call “the Indian” because of his part—Native American heritage. It’s none other than Mr. Wayne Newton, who has come to the studio with his own rhythm section.
“Wayne,” says Jerry. “I can count on you. My kids can count on you. And you’re one of the great Pussycats of the World.”
“No, Jerry,” says Wayne, “you are the all-time greatest Pussycat of the World.”
Wayne breaks into Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land,” singing about how he left his home in Norfolk, Virginia, and was taken to the promised land. Jerry is transported, but Jerry is exhausted. Jerry is also excited and grateful that the tote is well over a million. “This year was a close one,” he says, “but you people came through.” Now it’s time for Jerry to sit on a stool, pick up the mic, and sing the closing song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Mr. Lou Brown, Jerry’s longtime bandleader, is getting on in years, but Jerry is loyal. Loyalty aside, though, Jerry is annoyed with Lou—and tells him so on camera—when Lou misses Jerry’s cue to start the song. “I sing it every year, Louie,” says Jerry. “By now you should know—that’s a cue.”
Earlier in the evening, Jerry referred to Lou by his Yiddish name, Lable. “Lable,” said Jerry in jest, “are you ready for Hesh?” Hesh is Yiddish for Harry. This was Jerry playfully introducing Harry James. From that moment on, Harry Shearer began his every phone call with “Are you ready for Hesh?”
But there is no kidding around when it comes to “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” On another night at another show, Jerry wanders into the audience to interview a kid who does a Jerry imitation.
“Do whatever you want, son,” says Jerry.
The kid starts mocking Jerry’s version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Jerry stops him.
“No,” the comic says firmly. “We don’t joke around with that song.”
Nor will I.
There are endless variations to the drama of Jerry asking for a dollar more. To be sure, the telethon is one of the enduring institutions in American show business. And of course Jerry Lewis sits at the center of that institution. Surely he is the celebrities’ celebrity.
Decades later, I found myself in a place where I had met hundreds of celebrities. You might even say that I was suffering from celebrity burnout. And yet, when given the chance to have dinner with Mr. Jerry Lewis, I didn’t hesitate to run out to John F. Kennedy International Airport and jump on the first nonstop to Vegas.
A little background information: My dear friend Richard Belzer had been befriended by Jerry. Richard was the link between Jerry and myself.
I had first met Jerry when he came on Letterman. All had gone well. After the show, he came over to me and whispered with a wink, “They aren’t on to you yet, are they?” I took this remark as a compliment. Friends suggested he was actually saying that I was getting away with something—and that he was on to me. Whatever the interpretation of his cryptic remark, I was grateful for the attention.
That was in the eighties. Sometime in the new millennium Belzer told me, “You won’t believe who called.”
“Who?”
“Jerry Lewis!”
“For what reason?”
“He’s a fan. He loves Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”—the show on which Belzer plays Detective John Munch—“and he wanted to discuss the production techniques we use.”
Next thing I knew Jerry had invited Belzer to Vegas.
“How’d it go?” I asked Richard when he returned to New York.
“He bombarded me with questions about Law & Order: SVU. When it comes to the show, he’s practically a groupie.”
“Amazing.”
“By the way, I told him that you were a fan and asked if you could join us for our next dinner out there.”
“That’s very kind of you, Richard. What did he say?”
“‘I love Paul. Bring him along.’”
Three weeks later Belzer and I were winging our way to Vegas. We met up with Jerry at his favorite Italian restaurant. He was already at his booth when we arrived.
“Glad to see you, Paul,” said Jerry. “Do you like stone crabs?”
“I love them.”
He ordered stone crabs.
“Do you like Maui onions, Richard?” he asked. “Love them,” said Belzer. Jerry ordered the onions.
“I’m going to eat exactly half of everything that’s placed before me,” said Jerry, who had recently lost a great deal of weight. “That’s my diet.”
When it came time to order pasta, Jerry said, “They’ll make the red sauce from the recipe I gave them.” The restaurant also kept Jerry’s special stash of wine close at hand.
As our conversation began, I couldn’t help but speak in telethon-ese.
“Jerry,” I said. “I’ve watched your telethon year after year. I study it. I make no secret of this.”
Jerry didn’t seem impressed. What’s more, he really didn’t seem to care. He was more interested in getting inside stories about Law & Order: SVU from Belzer. Acknowledging my interest in him, though, he did say, “I’ll give you a complete set of my movies on DVD.” And with that, he had his driver go back to his house and fetch the DVDs.
When the DVDs arrived, I thanked him profusely. “I will treasure these,” I said.
“Richard,” he said, “have I showed you the schedule I made up of the Law & Order: SVU marathons coming up? It’s a very meticulous schedule.”
“I haven’t seen it, Jerry,” said Belzer.
“Would you like to?” Jerry asked.
“Sure.”
That prompted Jerry to send his driver back to the house to fetch the schedule. When the driver returned with paper in hand, Jerry carefully went over his viewing schedule, showing the countless hours he was devoting to watching each show, in some cases for the third or fourth time.
The rest of the evening consisted of Jerry discussing the technical aspects of Law & Order: SVU, the pans and zooms, the wide shots and close-ups. He showed little interest in me and could not have cared less about my encyclopedic knowledge of his telethons.
A week later when I was back in New York, an expre
ss envelope arrived from Las Vegas. Inside was a profile of me that had appeared some years before in The New Yorker. Attached to the article was a card that read, “With compliments from Jerry Lewis.”
I thought it strange. Surely Jerry knew that I had seen the piece. Why was he sending it to me? Then I remembered that the author of the article had said something about Shaffer liking “telethon sleaze.”
Oh God, I thought to myself, Jerry feels like I’ve been making fun of him. Our relationship, to quote the great standard song, had ended before it began. Not only had I not been able to impress him with my vast knowledge of his show business exploits, he was implying he never wanted to see me again.
Was this, in truth, an accurate reading of Jerry’s attitude?
If you’ll bear with me, I’ll hold that question in abeyance. I’ll get to more of my adventures with Mr. Jerry Lewis in due time. For now, though, we must pick up the thread of our story that has young Paul Shaffer, dutiful son, arriving at the University of Toronto to fulfill his destiny and do what has been done by hundreds of thousands of Jewish boys before him: get an education, become a lawyer, and make his parents proud.
Chapter 12
Nights in White Satin
Yes, I had a girlfriend in college. Her name was Virginia. She was lovely and coaxed me out of my virginity.
Yes, I was listening to progressive FM radio that played the Moody Blues and Spirit until Sly and the Family Stone hit with “Dance to the Music” and I was souled out again.
Yes, Ginny and I enjoyed loving nights in white satin, but, besides those, I was mostly bored with the college experience.
I took the required courses, I did reasonably well, but I did not connect with academia. I had hair down to my shoulders and a Fu Manchu mustache; I had music coming in and out of my ears; on solo piano I would play Laura Nyro’s entire LP Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, from top to bottom. I was obsessed with the Temptations Live! record. After class, after getting back to the dorm and opening up my Sociology 101 book or philosophy text, I’d get into the bed and drift off to the sound of Dionne Warwick’s “Make It Easy on Yourself.” I was trying to make it as easy as possible. I spent most of my college years sleeping.
The one artist that woke me up and got me going—and, I must add, has kept me going throughout my life—was the Godfather of Soul, Mr. James Brown. James electrified me, as he electrified the world, beginning in my precollege years. I loved listening to the time-honored introduction rendered by Danny Ray, James Brown’s formidable master of ceremonies.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is Star Time. Are you ready for Star Time? Thank you and thank you kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you at this particular time the artist nationally and internationally known as the hardest-working man in show business.
“Bringing you such tunes as ‘I Feel Good’ … ‘Try Me’ … ‘Night Train’ … Million-dollar seller ‘Lost Someone’ … Very latest release ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.’
“Yes, he’ll make your bladder splatter, he’ll make your knees freeze and your liver quiver. The star of the show, Mr. Please Please himself, soul brother number one, Mr. Dynamite, the man with the crown … James Brown and the Famous Flames.”
Musicologists hail the sublime musical contributions of Mozart, Monteverdi, Beethoven, and Bach. Here in America we celebrate Louis Armstrong, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, and Charles Ives. The relative merits of musical geniuses are impossible to calculate. I won’t try. I will only say that, for my money, James Brown is—as Arthur Conley calls him in his fabulous “Sweet Soul Music”—“King of them all, y’all.”
It’s the singing, yes: the pitch-perfect screams that penetrate your heart and freeze your blood. It’s the dancing, of course: the spins, the splits, the grace, and the grit. It’s the band: tighter and righter than any orchestra in the proud history of soul. It’s the songs: the social messages, the sexual subtexts, the self-assertive anthems of a free black man in a white world. It’s everything. James Brown is everything I love in music.
And while James’s greatest songs were born before and during my days at the University of Toronto, and while I promised that I would give you a taste of that time and maintain some chronological order in this narrative, I must once again jump ahead, even as I slide back—just as James Brown might do in his act.
So dig me now, skip ahead to later. Then jump back, Jack, and do the Alligator …
It’s 2008. James is much on my mind because I have just returned from an auction at Christie’s where I bought a number of choice items from the James Brown estate, including his Hammond B3 organ and a glorious cape worn by the man himself. As I will soon explain, the cape holds special significance for me. I was sad that James’s finances required such a sale; but I was also grateful to have the chance to acquire and lovingly preserve pieces of his precious history.
My history with James began two decades before I met him in person. I met him on screen when he appeared in the famous T.A.M.I. concert film shot at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1964. I saw it in Thunder Bay, at the local movie theater. When I heard it would be playing, I arrived at the only showing—Saturday morning at 9 a.m. By the time the film was over, I was a changed man. T.A.M.I. stood for “Teenage Awards Music International.” The concert was wildly successful in defining the essence of teenage music for that era. Its director, Steve Binder, also directed Shindig! In fact, much to my delight, T.A.M.I. had the same shady lighting and Hollywood rock-and-roll feel as Shindig! I sat with my mouth open, my heart beating, blood coursing through my veins at twice the normal speed. I sat looking at Chuck Berry, the fiery opening act. Then came Gerry and the Pacemakers, a nod to the British Invasion. Motown stormed back with the Miracles literally getting down with “Mickey’s Monkey.” Then came marvelous Marvin Gaye. (I would later learn that Teri Garr was one of the background dancers and that Glen Campbell and Leon Russell played in the backing band.) Lesley Gore rocked pop’s first women’s lib affirmation, “You Don’t Own Me.” At this point I was convinced that it couldn’t get any better. But it did. Jan and Dean were great. The Beach Boys were even greater. In fact, the Beach Boys were fantastic, even if Brian Wilson later insisted that they be edited out of the show because he thought their Kingston Trio—style outfits made them look like golf caddies. Next up, from the other side of the Pond: Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas followed by Detroit’s very own Supremes, whose delicious subtext was sex, sex, and more sex. How much more could I take? After Diana, Mary, and Flo came the burning sounds of the one-handed drummer Moulty Moulton and his Barbarians.
The most ferocious barbarian of all, however, appeared as the penultimate act. It was as though, for all their brilliance, the preceding artists had merely been warm-ups for this man. This man was James Brown. And his performance in this movie made time grind to a halt, and the world stop turning on its axis. Dogs stopped chasing cats. Cats stopped chasing birds. Lions lay down with lambs. Babies ceased crying. Women stopped weeping. And James Brown, in singing “Out of Sight,” conquered the known world. From there he went into “Try Me” and “Prisoner of Love.” But it was “Please, Please, Please” that tore the roof off and brought down the heavens. At the end of the song, a cape was placed on James’s back. I sat in wonder. Why the cape? What were they doing? James had fallen to his knees, and perhaps the purpose of the cape was to prevent a chill after his red-hot performance. But as he started to leave the stage, he threw off the cape and returned to the mic, singing another stirring chorus of “Please, Please, Please.” The routine continued. He fell to his knees; a new cape was placed; then he got up and threw it off only to return to the mic. Again! And again! He couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t stop returning to plead to his woman, “Don’t Go.” He was truly out of sight, only to get even further out of sight during his chaser, an instrumental version of “Night Train” during which JB left the ground and levitated like a dark angel in a waking dream.
The dream needed t
o end there, but, alas, it didn’t. The Rolling Stones were the final act. The Stones weren’t bad. The Stones were great. But the Messiah had already come and gone and, despite their love of R&B, the Stones simply couldn’t deal with Mr. Dynamite. For the rest of his career, Mick Jagger would try to emulate the man who had performed before him, while the always-candid Keith Richards would admit that following JB was the worst mistake the Stones had ever made.
The best move I ever made was to perform with Mr. Brown on Letterman. His first appearance came in 1982 when we were on NBC.
“Mr. Brown,” I said, “this is the honor of a lifetime. Just tell me what you’d like to play.”
His answer astonished me. “What do you guys want to play, Paul?”
At the time, my World’s Most Dangerous Band featured the great Will Lee on bass plus Steve Jordan, drums, and Hiram Bullock, guitar—three brilliant cats. I let the band pick the songs. Steve said, “Sex Machine” for the drumming. Hiram said, “There Was a Time” for the rhythm guitar. Will was cool with all of it.
On “Sex Machine,” James wanted a fast tempo. That’s the tradition of live R&B. It’s all about energy. Steve Jordan, though, was a young buck who wanted to re-create the groove he’d heard on wax. He didn’t quite understand that when you deal with the Godfather of Soul, you put the groove where he wants it. James won out and the funk got thick. He played his short keyboard solo and at the end of the song slapped me ten. I told him I wouldn’t wash my hands for a week. During the break, as the band played a small portion of “I Got the Feeling,” James took note.
