Tom Ardolino, drummer for NRBQ, died on Jan 6, 2012 after his health gave out. He and I were friends for twenty years, and the loss of his brotherhood and musicality has me in a bad way.
I have no idea where I'd be without his influence. Aside from the obvious effect of him playing in my favorite band, the band that most shaped my view of what a great band is, the role of improvising, and the dangers of imposing categories on music, he was also a guy who turned me onto so many life-changing records. That's not hyperbole. He introduced me to things that stopped me in my tracks, and, in his memory, I'll play you a few. Tom was forever making compilation tapes (then later CDs) for his friends, and his amazing taste and fanatic's love for finding beautiful, obscure music was a constant, as was his encyclopedic memory for ever record he'd ever heard. And his musical generosity was legendary. Along with Milstein, Matt Goldman, Byron Werner, and Wayno, his tapes exerted a lot of influence on a bunch of us. A few highlights:
It might seem strange, but this little trifle (the b-side of Patience & Prudence's "Tonight You Belong To Me") blew me away. Patience and Prudence were a sister singing duo (11 and 14 respectively) whose father was the pianist on the Chipmunks singles, among other things. "Tonight" was a big hit in '57, they had one other hit, and then kinda faded from view. But this record was to me -- and Tom -- just perfect and mysterious in its own right, and we both wanted to know all we could about it and them. I wound up doing some detective work, which has subsequently become a loose but affectionate friendship with Patience. Slightly before I was to be in NRBQ for a few shows in 2001, she found a stash of photos and sheet music. I had her autograph some for him, and I gave them to him when I arrived to meet the band in Louisville. Her generosity blew him away.
Tom compiled the LP Beat Of The Traps, a collection of some of his favorite "Send us your poems! We'll set them to music!" records, mostly oN the MSR and Prevue labels, mostly sixties to the early seventies. The mastermind behind a great many of these sessions was the then-myserious Rodd Keith. After doing some research around the Hollywood Musicians Union (AFM Local 47), I found out he was one Rodney Keith Eskelin, whose union membership had lapsed in about 1974. I knew only one other musical Eskelin -- Ellery Eskelin, the brilliant tenor saxophonist playing in my friend Joey Baron's trio. I asked Joey if he knew anything about this, and he said, yes, this was Ellery's father, and did I by any chance have a way to get in touch with anyone from the band NRBQ. It just so happened... Phil Milstein wound up taking up the task of documenting the history of song poem records, and he has done a breathtaking job. Also, there is a terrific documentary called Off The Charts, which covers the subject real well and has Tom (as well as Ellery) talking on camera about song poem records.
Tom was the first person to tell me about Joe Meek, the English record producer whose work in many ways is the bridge between Les Paul and Phil Spector. He was England's first great independent record producer, and he cut his hit stuff in his apartment, including "Telstar", the first record by an English artist to top the American charts. Meek's records were theatrical, dramatic creations that were at once rockin' and slightly sinister. In 1967, he shot and killed his landlady, then turned the gun on himself.
Anybody who ever exchanged tapes with Tom experienced the Nutty Squirrels. I don't know why this held so much appeal for him, but... At some point, he and Hal Willner had intended to do an antho of the Squirrels, but it fell through.
No joke -- this song was a guilty pleasure we shared. While I was with him and the Q in Louisville, we walked from our motel to the Barnes and Noble, and he said something about "the doldrums of my dreary dreams", and I stopped him and said "Mardi gras?" and he lit up and said "You dig Gino!" It was one of the best moments ever.
I will never meet anyone like Tom again. And I'll miss his playing and his generosity.
