Look At Him Now
Illinois Entertainer, August 1998
All of us, at one time or another, can feel the presence of the apparitions
that foreshadow misfortune and bad luck, even if their ghostlike vagueness makes
it impossible for us to actually see them. For over 40 years, Terry Callier
has vanquished the always-proximate, ever-hovering blues with a distinctive,
cooling freshet of folk, soul, and jazz that has evaded comfortable categorization.
This fluid and unbounded spirituality of sound has carried with it-a dubious
marketability, which has resulted in many people never hearing Calliers
music. Those that have, however, know the healing powers of his surpassing vocals
and nuanced guitar playing. Callier grew up on the near North Side Chicago neighborhood
surrounding the Frances Cabrini Homes in the 40s and 50s
before the emergence of the menacing high rise extensions, the drably monolithic
William Green projects, or the almost exclusive territorial domination of the
Gangster Disciples. Back then, it was still a largely Italian neighborhood with
much of the action centered around the St. Philip Benizi and St. Dominic churches.
But the influx of black families in the late-50s transformed the neighborhood
yet again, just as the Italians had previously supplanted the Swedes and the
Swedes had replaced the Germans before them.
From the age of three, Callier would visit his grandmother at the large boarding
house she owned and operated on South Indiana Avenue, another neighborhood and
environment of substantial character. She had an old piano there, and
I would fool around on it, Callier recalls. She rented to a variety
of interesting transients -- soldiers, musicians, drifters, anyone who was passing
through town or needed a temporary place to stay. The musicians would sit down
at the piano with me and give me tips. I sort of put these together into a kind
of makeshift musical training at a very young age. As Calliers love
of music grew into his teen years, he found Cabrini loaded with musical talent
-- Jerry Butler, Curtis Mayfield, and Otis Leaville among others. I started
singing as a social outlet. I was very shy and did not have a lot of friends.
I found it much easier to put my feelings about a person or about myself into
song, he explains. But it meant so much for me to see the rise of
Jerry and Curtis and so many others. Music was a real option for success.
Calliers first groups -- The Whippor-Wills, The Serenaders, and later
The Saharas-featured the layered harmonies of the doo-wop style vocal arrangements
popular at the time. When Callier was 17, he recorded his first single Look
At Me Now for Chess Records. It was also the first of many stunning collaborations
with the great arranger Charles Stepney and the first time Callier heard himself
on the radio. The Chess brothers had the most influential R&B radio
station in the country at the time, says Callier. Whatever was played
on WVON was soon played on other R&B stations all over the United States.
As the popularity of Look At Me Now spread, the Chess brothers set
up a tour in which Callier was to perform with high-profile belters from the
label like Little Milton and Etta James. When I told my mother, she was
very upset. She insisted I finish high school. Though I was disappointed, I
listened to her because I respected her so much. When he was a freshman
at the University of Illinois in Champaign, a friend in the dormitory had a
guitar and started showing him some of the basic fingerings. This only intensified
Calliers connection with music, and over the summer, while back in Chicago,
Callier started singing and playing in front of audiences more regularly. It
was a little folk club called the Fickle Pickle that used to be over on State
and Elm. At the time, my combo had a unique sound because we used two acoustic
bassists. I was having so much fun and learning so much that I decided not to
go back to school, which again made my mom angry -- but this time she let me
make my own decision. I was meeting so many interesting people and really felt
it was important for me to start exploring my feelings through music. Plus,
I had a bar tab upstairs at the club, adds Callier with a chuckle. The
meditative sonic configurations of the John Coltrane Quartet in the early 60s
became a powerful camarilla for Calliers approach to music, and influenced
him to such a degree that he still speaks of his experience today with charged
emotion. One of the most important events in my life was when I went to
see Coltranes quartet at a South Side club called McKees Disc Jockey
Lounge. I knew I was going to be in for something big while I was waiting in
line outside. I heard a loud pounding, an insistent hammering, and I thought,
What is going on here? After I stepped inside, I saw Elvin Jones
nailing down his drum kit to the stage! I thought to myself, Why would
he have to do that? When the show started I found out, Callier
laughs. The club was packed to the max, and people rushed toward the stage.
Coltrane, Jones, [bassist] Jimmy Garrison, and [pianist] McCoy Tyner played
Out Of The Blue, but it was very different than it sounded on the
album -- much more explosive. To be honest, when I first started to listen,
I was afraid. Very afraid. I mean, this was heaven and hell, good and evil,
soul and spirit, the sun, the moon, and the stars all rolled into music. It
also made me realize that I had no idea of the intensity that could be brought
to music. The experience overwhelmed me to the point to where I stopped playing
for about nine months so that I could reexamine what I wanted to put into my
music and what I wanted to extract from it. After his Coltrane-inspired
retreat, Callier recorded the recently issued Live At Mother Blues 1964 (Premonition).
This remarkable recording features Callier lost in a desolate pensiveness that
apparently transfixed the Hootenanny Monday crowd lucky enough to
have witnessed the event. Soon after, Callier met the esteemed Prestige Records
producer Samuel Charters. Charters was so impressed with the vibe of Callier's
music that he asked him to record immediately. The record, originally titled
Its About Time and eventually called The New Folk Sound Of Terry Callier,
was far ahead of its time, presaging much of the work of Bob Dylan, but with
a private poetic symmetry that was pure Callier. Unfortunately, Charters went
on a self-discovery retreat similar to Calliers post-Coltrane explorations-and
took the master tapes with him. Sam drove down to a Yaqui Indian Pueblo
in Mexico and I could not find him for years. Then in late 1967, my brother
said he saw my record in the window of a bookshop! I was so excited, but the
music on that record wasn't really timely anymore. Dylan had gone electric,
psychedelic music was coming on, and my record was pretty much ignored.
In 1970, Jerry Butler formed the Chicago Songwriters Workshop and Callier
was one of the first invited to take part. It was wonderful. We could
write anywhere we wanted, but we also had a sort of collaborative commune at
1402 South Michigan Avenue. My writing partner then was Larry Wade-and he's
still my partner to this day. Callier and Wade wrote stone-cold soul classics
during this period for the Dells (The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind),
Freedom Means), Otis Rush, Garland Green, and Butlers brothers
group, Billy Butler & Infinity. This led Callier back to Charles Stepney,
who was now the head man for Chess Cadet label. Stepney was a master arranger
and a phenomenon on almost every keyboard instrument, so when he asked Callier
if he would be interested in recording together, the guitarist jumped at the
opportunity.
Under Stepneys guidance, Callier recorded three breathtaking albums with
the true-blue feel of loves telepathy: Occasional Rain (72), What
Color Is Love (73), and Just Cant Help Myself (75). When
I recorded What Color Is Love, Charles just told me to stop by the studio at
2250 South Michigan Avenue at 10 a.m. When I arrived, I could hardly believe
my eyes. He had a full orchestra there-all members of the Chicago Symphony.
We recorded every song in one take. I cant even tell you what it was like
to sing with that kind of instrumental backing. It was incredible
beautiful.
As is the elegant, impassioned, mystical album. Unfortunately, 1975s Just
Cant Help Myself would be Callier and Stepneys final collaboration;
he unexpectedly passed away at age 45. It was devastating to me,
Callier says quietly. He was a great friend. Adding to Calliers
sadness was the demise of the Songwriters Workshop, which was precipitated
when Chess (and Cadet) were bought out after Stepneys death. Making
great music was no longer a priority. Selling music was the key. They wanted
product -- something I have never been real successful with. Nonetheless,
Calliers Cadet records had generated an enormous following in Europe,
and led to a new recording contract with Elektra. Releases such as Fire On Ice
(78) and Turn You To Love (79) stayed true to his earthy yet multifaceted
roots at a time when the decadent glitter-ball of disco was sweeping the nation.
So despite cracking the pop charts with the superb Sign Of The Times
(best known as the theme song for legendary WBLS disc jockey Frankie Crocker)
and playing to a capacity crowd at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Callier again
found himself without a label. In the 80s, Callier devoted himself to
the demands of being a single parent, as he sought and gained custody of his
daughter. In between the rigors of fatherhood, steady work as a computer programmer,
and night college, Callier still occasionally performed, as is evidenced by
the mesmerizing 82 acoustic date documented on T.C. IN D.C. (Premonition).
Callier also recorded a few one-off singles, including the gliding steppers
anthem, I Dont Want To See Myself (Without You), recorded
on the tiny Merrillville, Indiana-based Erect imprint in 1982. Ironically, it
was this little single that somehow found its way over to London, where a remixed
version became one of the early anthems of the acid jazz movement
in 1992. After his daughter Sundiata graduated from college, Callier started
recording again, this time for Verve. Timepeace (featuring lush collaborations
with Pharaoh Sanders and Beth Orton, who Callier recorded an EP with a few years
ago), his most recent release Lifetime, and First Light 1969-1971 (Premonition),
a top-notch collection of unreleased, pre-Cadet masters, reveal that Callier
has as much to offer now as he did at his first four or five creative peaks.
He was even awarded a United Nations Medal Of Peace for the characteristically
thoughtful Timepeace. Unfortunately, those damn blue demons continue to haunt
him. As Callier told me in an interview at his new Evanston home, he recently
received word that Verve would not be renewing his recording contract. But spin
Lazarus Man from Timepeace - or your choice of Calliers records
- and you just know that hell beat back those blues once again and his
musical soul-roots will only be stronger for the experience.