Did you ever get to jam with any famous musicians?

I was once tasked with reciting "Magical Misery Tour" to its author, Tony Hendra.



The voice at the end of that clip is Melissa Manchester, BTW.

 

I sang "Hang On Sloopy" with NRBQ once.

 

James Cotton. He had a bad gig. Threw his harmonica across the stage. I saw the guys in the band near the shadows and went and asked about him and apologized. They told me to come back. I went back. The blues legend was sitting on a couch. And we all started talking. He was very nice to me for some reason. I made a request and they played a little. I asked the guitarist about his guitar. He allowed me to hold it and I played a little blues vamp (Im horrible) and James did a little run that lasted about 30 seconds. I nearly cried. I got his autograph and got out of there before I fainted.

 

I got to sing "Louie Louie" with Richard Berry at the KFJC Louie Louie Marathon in 1983.
(......along with about 50 other people jammed into the studio.)

 

I actually got the chance to record 5 tracks with Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox in April of 1969 that were subsequently released of 4 different EH releases and 1 Dagger release...I also, played a few songs with The Gin Blossoms at a NARM show at The Bayou in 1996, Backstage Jam with Extreme at Lakewood Ampitheater, backstage jam with Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron at Lollapalooza in La mid late 90s ,Couple of Soundchecks with Del Amitri during the Twisted tour, jammed with Zal Yanovsky,John Sebastion,Spanky McFarlane numerous times when I lived at the Chelsea Hotel in the village 1965, Leslie West when he was with The Vagrants before Mountain in NY late 60s,Peppy Castro of the Good Rats in NY early 70s, too many more to mention...50 years of being a musician and working at Record Companies gave me many opportunities

 

Myself? No.

However, about 20 years ago or so I was told a story by someone who claimed to have seen Carmine Appice jamming with a local band.

The guy told me it happened in either the late 70s or early 80s. Supposedly Appice came through town to play a concert with whoever he was playing with at the time, and after the concert someone invited Carmine to a local bar that had a band playing that night.

After being greeted like a hero/god by the entire bar, he was invited to jam with the band. Unfortunately for Appice, the song required a shuffle groove to be played and Appice had no idea whatsoever of how to play what the song required. I don't know how the band or audience reacted (either that, or I just can't remember what he said about that), but this guy said he felt really bad/embarrassed for Appice.

 

Not my very favorite musicians but musicians I respect and legends. I got to sing a bit of Battle of New Orleans with Jimmy Driftwood in 1996 and I got to smoke cigarettes and stare at women with Charlie Louvin
In more recent times I did a song with Tom Doyle of David Peel and The Lower East Side/Plastic Ono Band and began work on a song with Frank Lanci also of Peel and Lennon's early seventies posse.

 

When I was in college in the late 70's, our jazz band got to play a couple of numbers with Count Basie on piano. He and his orchestra were performing in concert that evening.

 

Almost got to jam with Chris Layton from Double Trouble. I received a phone message from a guy I knew at church. He had Layton over visiting and wanted to get some guys over to play. He asked if I could sit in on bass. It was far too late to even think about it.

 

Nice! Were you in The Cherry People by any chance?

 

Yes. I once sat in with Todd Rundgren and friends.
He had been hired to play at an outdoor party at the lakefront home of a vendor/friend of mine. The host of the party, my buddy, had just finished sitting in on a couple of tunes playing drums. My buddy then switched over to guitar, and out of the blue calls me up to play drums.
Took me totally by surprise, but was fun to do.

 

Not in but with them...Lived in the guitar players (Chris)basement during the Silver Dollar days..Chris and Rocky are on the Hendrix tracks with me, Jan played second bass with Billy Cox on one track but it did not get used and Punky and Doug were not at the first session but were there for the second one...

 

Amazingly great! But why didn't you make it? Just Kidding, sounds like a good time to me.

 

Cool, thanks for sharing. There are some fun stories about those sessions in the book Ultimate Hendrix.

 

Sounds like he did!

 

Those sessions are detailed in the Hendrix book, but some of the stuff is not in there...The interpersonal stuff between Hendrix and Rocky was hilarious,Gary Kellgren was an amazing engineer and just being around Hendrix when he was creating off the cuff was jaw dropping...Oh and by the way the reason I didn't "make" it was that I got married and my wife made me quit playing as I had a daughter from her previous relationship so I had to get a real job...But I was lucky and went to work for a major record company...The rest is history

 

Played bass and sang "I Fought The Law" with Randy Fuller during break from filming a music video we were in that never got released...late 90s I believe...oh and performed on stage with Mark Lindsay for 4 songs in 2013...

 

I said "just kidding" did you not read my post?

 

Yes...my response was lighthearted....I was not offended at all...LOL...

 

I knew you got it. Petem1966 might not have.

 

Back in the late 80s I met one of the then-wife's friends back from her highschool days by the name of Bob Webber. Turned out he used to play in Sugarloaf (Green Eyed Lady etc) as their lead guitarist. He had long given up and was an engineer for the local telephone company. But he was happy to dig out a couple of guitars and guitar amps, and we jammed for maybe an hour. He was light years better than me, but was quite patient showing me how to play several licks, including some very tasty jazz ones. He mentioned in passing that he used to take lessons from Joe Pass!

 

Marshall Crenshaw and Cub Koda are pretty well-known in my book. Very cool
I opened for Marshall. Didn't get to play with him

I played I Saw Her Standing There with The Grip Weeds.
My band did Twist and Shout with The Smithereens at the Dirt Club way back when.

 

I know this doesn't count but I once helped Urge Overkill load their equipment van

Oh, and to the guy who jammed with Hendrix & Cox: Holy cow.

 

I cut a jazz version of Dream On with Gary Cherone and Mike Mangini when Gary was working on a Sinatra-themed project with the jazz pianist I was playing with (Houndstooth). We did one live gig (which was quite good, as I recall; Mangini wasn't the group's drummer, but our drummer was unavailable the day of the booked studio time, so, a nice treat for me, although our regular drummer was/is a great drummer in his own right), cut the track, and then came the call from Eddie VH. My 15 minutes, I guess.

No, I wasn't jamming, but I was improvising, as it was more or less a simple ii(b5) V(b9) i in Eb minor that included a rather cliché, yet effective 1/2-step kick up to E minor for the closing. For the live gig, it was structured jazz standards, but still some room for improv.

 

I've never jammed with any famous musicians (yet haha), but I have jammed with a few who (at least at one time) have played with/for famous musicians, actually all within the past few months.