10:14 AM EST on Thursday, March 2, 2006

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Pop Music Writer

It sounds so simple when Al Kooper explains it.

"The music changed. When I first started, in '58, it was primarily very basic rock 'n' roll and doo-wop. And when it turned to the '60s, it was all sort of the music like today -- it was all pop music with a lot of guys named Bobby. And then in '65, the Beatles, Dylan and the Stones changed everything.

"And I was involved in all those genres as they came along."

How'd he manage that?

"Because I loved what I was doing."

In nearly 50 years in the music business, there isn't much that Al Kooper hasn't done.

He's played with and produced records by acts including Bob Dylan (with whom he played at the "going electric" Newport Folk Festival show in 1965), the Blues Project with Michael Bloomfield, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Tubes, Ray Charles, B.B. King and George Harrison.

He was a founding member of Blood, Sweat and Tears. He discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced their first three albums.

So how come the guy at Newbury Comics replied to a request for Kooper's latest album with, "That's C-o-o-p-e-r, right?" Well, probably because there's not one hit record with Kooper's name as the artist -- at least, not the artist the DJ will announce.

Not that it bothers Kooper.

"Oh, that's so common," he says by phone from his home in Somerville, Mass. "They don't know, come on! You gotta be 40 or 45 to start in that club."

Apparently so. But for club members, Kooper's latest, Black Coffee, released last July, is an object lesson in how rock music and rock musicians can age gracefully.

Kooper and the Funky Faculty, an outfit of Berklee College of Music teachers (Kooper used to teach songwriting and record production at the school, retiring after a tumor robbed him of about two-thirds of his sight), swing through loose, horn-laden ballads, R&B stomps (such as a live version of Booker T and the MGs' "Green Onions") and inspired oddities such as a hoedown version of the Temptations' "Get Ready."

Front and center are Kooper's guitar, organ and keening vocals.

Kooper says the record, his first solo studio record in nearly 30 years, came about because "I just had a lot of good songs" written over the past 12 to 15 years "and I wanted to get them out there."

Kooper will be with the Funky Faculty on Sunday at the Hi-Hat in Providence. The group plays "as much as they'll let us. We'd play every day if they'd let us."

He says 2006 looks like a good year, with as many gigs already booked through July as in all of 2005.

"I love my fans. They're really special people to me. One of the things I say in my show is, 'The average age of people who come to see me is deceased.' And then I get e-mail from younger people. I just got one yesterday from someone who's 18. . . .

"In Japan, I have a much younger following. I couldn't tell you why."

He played it by ear

Kooper was born and raised in New York, and his musical training consisted of a few piano lessons in his youth and some theory lessons in junior high school.

"College was a disaster. I went to classes for six months, and then I just stayed for another six months and didn't go to classes. And then I left. It was an incredible waste of time, for me."

Not exactly the typical background of a future music professor ("I know; it's humorous), but he'd played on a hit record at age 14 -- "Short Shorts," by The Royal Teens. And by the time he was 20, he'd written the hit "This Diamond Ring," recorded by Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

He was an early rock 'n' roll studio musician, giving the authentic "teenage sound" to rock recordings that the jazz players who played on most such records couldn't necessarily cop, despite all their skills.

Susan Monosson

Al Kooper, seen in a 2006 photo, was on stage or behind the scenes for watershed events in rock history. At age 62, he plays the Hi-Hat Sunday.

"Well, they could play them, but they sounded like jazz musicians playing them. And I was much sloppier, with all due credit.

"And the interesting thing about that was that the musicians were sort of divided. There were those who resented me because I wasn't as good as they were, and there were those who were supportive of me and helped me to be a better musician.

"And that was the thing I found most interesting, other than learning how to be a studio musician, which has been really invaluable to me throughout my whole career."

He learned fast how to learn songs by ear and to play accurately.

"When I started, there would be rooms full of 40 people, all playing instruments. They didn't overdub back then. So you'd have a rhythm section and a horn section and a string section and background singers and percussionists. All these people are playing at the same time.

"And you had to get three songs in three hours -- that's how it worked in New York. So if you made a mistake, 40 people had to go back to the beginning because of you. So you had to be very careful, and you'd get a lot of people who would laughingly berate you.

"So it was very important to learn how to conduct yourself in situations like that, because it was terrifying if you didn't know what you were doing."

Thanks in large part to studio technology, the session scene has been "wiped out," Kooper says, at the cost of "spontaneity and musical chemistry."

We've all heard him

Even without much formal training, Kooper learned to play "a bunch" of instruments -- that's him playing organ on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," and the French horn (one thing he picked up in college, he says) on the intro to the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

On Black Coffee the mandolin improbably becomes a central instrument on the soulful "My Hands Are Tied" and the blues stomp of "Am I Wrong," and Kooper picks up the oboe for "How My Ever Gonna Get Over You."

And the same studio technology that lessens the demand for studio musicians also enables him to play all the instruments on five songs on the record.

"I can do that, and it's very helpful to me when I write a song. . . . And then I bring it to the band, and I let the guys take a bite out of it.

"And they have their little things which they add to it, which I miss about working like that. Because six heads are better than one."

But "there were some where I really liked the demos and I didn't want to try and better them."

The mentor's mentors

At 62, Kooper says, a lot of the people he came up with aren't around anymore. "I would say probably half of them are deceased. That's not a great feeling. Some are sick, some have been phased out of the business."

One of the mentors he keeps up with is Jerry Ragovoy, 76, the producer and songwriter whose credits include "Time is On My Side" and "Piece of My Heart." And there's still B.B. King, "probably the nicest guy I ever met in my life. . . . He's very special because of that. And it doesn't have anything to do with music; he's just a great guy. . . . And when he leaves, there's going to be a big space in my life."

At the same time, Kooper spends a lot of time listening to new music these days. He turned his back on the popular radio about 30 years ago ("I can't stand it"), but he says iTunes "changed my life." Through the Internet, he's found bands such as Hella, Deerhoof and Von Frickle, whom he cites as his three favorite new bands of the moment.

When he listens to these groups, particularly Deerhoof and Von Frickle, "I go, 'I'm glad I'm 62; I don't know what they're doing.' It's so over my head.

"It's great music. Most records, I can pick out what they're doing just by listening to it. Not those bands. They're nuts! But it really reaches me. I get it."

Kooper holds forth expansively on the subject of iTunes, and while he's not crazy about their current policies, he's crazy about the basic idea of downloadable music.

While some have worried about the death of the unified album, Kooper says, "If there's just a bunch of [garbage] on the album, then they're doing the consumer a tremendous service that hasn't been done in the history of the music business. I think that's more important than the destruction of the album, because I'm a consumer as well as a musician.

"If you just like four songs on my album, download the four songs rather than not buying the whole album. . . . It's a democracy; they can do what they want, and I think that's fabulous. . . .

"I see sort of a life at the end of the tunnel. I think record companies may die. And I would love to stay alive long enough to attend every single funeral."

Producing a legacy

Kooper says he's most likely finished producing records other than his own. "It would have to be a lot for me to produce a record. It's very hard work. I do my own records, but I don't have to please anyone other than myself. And I don't charge me very much."

As for his favorite new bands, "they don't really need my help in production. They're doing a great little job, however they're doing it . . . And the fact that they know who I am is very flattering to me."

With all the very different artists he's produced, Kooper says that there is really only one rule that he sticks to.

"To me, the job is to fill in the gaps where the artist is deficient in getting their thing across to the public via recording. . . . And some people need more help and some people need less help. And some people need no help. The trick is to have the correct judgment.

"It all breaks down to two kinds of producers: Those that have something to prove, and those that don't. And I have been one of each. You tend to put more of yourself into the record when you have something to prove."

It wasn't always easy. "Ray Charles was really tough to work with. For everybody. So you just had to step back and say, 'OK, I have to give him that. Because I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him.' I got so much from him. But to work with him is tortuous. But you do it because he was really special."

Kooper met Charles when he was 14, hanging around a rehearsal hall. "He wasn't very nice to his band, I learned when I was 14. . . . So like a million years later, when I worked with him, I knew what was going to happen. It wasn't a surprise."

But it was worth it?

"Sure, everything's worth it. I usually don't take anything on unless I can learn something from it."

Sounds like a rule for living, and he agrees it is. "My other one is, if you don't expect anything, you're never disappointed. Which has kept me sane most of my life."

A career like his could happen again -- sort of, he says. He cites Rick Rubin, a producer who has worked with a diverse cast of artists -- from the Beastie Boys to Public Enemy to Johnny Cash to Neil Diamond -- and seems concerned only with getting the best out of them, as something resembling an inheritor.

"He seems to be from the same box I came out of. I think he's maybe 12 years behind me, but I think he's doing the same sort of things that I did."

Shark bait

Nowadays, Kooper says he's doing "six million things, just a little bit at a time." He's working on compiling a Mike Bloomfield box set, as well as an audio book, a documentary and on getting his old albums and autobiography (Backstage Passes) back in print. "And there's about 10 more of those. So it does take up the week quite well."

And while he's not happy with the amount of money he's made over his career ("I wasn't paid for any of the big stuff that I did. . . . I was much more interested in the music than the money. And when you do that, they just come around you like sharks"), he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about whether he got his due.

"I actually really enjoy not being recognized, in terms of walking down the street. There was a time when I was very recognized, and I didn't like that at all. And it sort of drove me into the house. Where I have remained ever since.

"But now, if I go out where I live, nobody knows who I am. And I enjoy that. I don't need that other thing. Some people do."

And he'll keep playing as long as there's a gig to get to.

"Till I die. I love to play. It's my favorite thing. And if they put me in front of a bunch of people I can make happy by doing it, well, what a great way to make a living.

"Although I don't make a living from playing, but I sure do enjoy it. And the fact that they pay me money to do it is hilarious."

Al Kooper and the Funky Faculty are at the Hi-Hat, 3 Davol Square, Providence, Sunday night at 9 p.m. Tickets are $25, $40 for reserved seating. Call (401) 453-6500.

rmassimo@projo.com / (401) 277-7206

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HEAR Al Kooper talk to Rick Massimo:

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