Category Archives: Herschel Dwellingham

“The Boogie Woogie Waltz Man”—Remembering Herschel Dwellingham

Herschel Dwellingham, whose drumming provided the funky underpinnings for Weather Report’s third album, Sweetnighter, passed away on April 16. He was 77 years old.

I got to know Herschel while researching my book Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report. I interviewed him twice, and over the years we talked by telephone many times, usually initiated by Herschel calling me out of the blue. It was always fun hearing from him. One time he called to tell me about a new project he was working on. He called the band the Sweetnighters, an obvious nod to Weather Report’s album. When Herschel needed a write-up for it, I was happy to do it for him.

Write-up in Cashbox, Oct. 20, 1962.
Herschel had a long and varied career with an extensive list of credits not just for his drumming, but for songwriting, arranging, and producing as well. In fact, producing his own songs was his true passion. He got his first songwriting credit when he was sixteen years old and continued writing and producing to the end of his life. Many of his songs found an afterlife in television shows and motion pictures (e.g., “(Gonna Ride This) Whirlwind” as performed by the Escorts, which appeared in the 2020 film Don’t Look Up starring Leonardo DiCaprio).

Herschel got his start as a musician when he was just a toddler. As he told it, “My mother told me that to keep me from crying, she used to give me two wooden spoons and a pot for me to beat on just to keep me busy so she could cook.” A little later, his parents, who were school teachers, took him to a high school prom they were working at. In the band was Earl Palmer, a drummer who has been credited with helping to invent rock and roll, and who later gained fame as a member of the Wrecking Crew, a loose collection of studio musicians who played on hundreds of top 40 hits in the 1960s and 1970s.

As Herschel remembered, “Earl Palmer was playing with the Rhythm Aces [a popular band based in Herschel’s hometown of Bogalusa, Louisiana] and I watched Earl all night, standing near the stage, just watching him. When the night was over he handed me a pair of drum sticks and that started me off. To this day, I keep four or five pairs of new sticks in my bag and I given them to kids who come up to me asking about the drums.”

In addition to the drums, Hershel learned the piano and played organ in his church. His high school bandleader taught Herschel how to write and arrange music, and he began arranging for the marching band. “I did that to keep from marching,” Herschel said. “I made a deal that I would orchestrate and arrange the half time shows to keep from marching because I hated it.” Herschel also took over the drum chair in the Rhythm Aces and starting writing his own songs. At the age of sixteen he took thirty songs he had written to Joe Ruffino, who ran two New Orleans–based labels, Ric Records and Ron Records (named after his sons). A month later, Herschel heard one of his songs on the radio, “Come On and Tell Her,” sung by Benny Freeman. All told, Ruffino released ten of Dwellingham’s songs as singles.

Upon graduating from high school, Herschel moved to Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music. At Berklee, he came under the tutelage of legendary drummer and teacher Alan Dawson. Years later, Herschel said his drumming style was a combination of his Louisiana roots and the rudiments that Dawson taught. He and Dawson would often trade licks in a Berklee practice room, and Herschel would pick up gigs substituting for Dawson at local jazz gigs. He was also part of a band that included guitarist John Abercrombie, Mark Levine on trombone, and Carl Schroeder on piano. They played a mixture of dance jazz, R&B, and funk.

Herschel leading the house band at the Sugar Shack.
While Herschel was studying with Dawson, the Sugar Shack opened in downtown Boston. It quickly became Boston’s one and only place to hear the top R&B, soul and funk acts of the day. After completing his studies at Berklee, Dwellingham took over the house band at the Sugar Shack, leading a 13-piece orchestra and backing many of the name acts that came through, including Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson, just to name a few. Herschel also did sessions for local R&B acts. There’s no question he was an important part of Boston’s Black music scene in the late-sixties and early-seventies. According to Herschel, he became known as “Boston’s Number One Soul Man.”

Meanwhile, his real goal was to write and produce his own songs with the goal of achieving a national hit that could put him over the top. He did his own arranging, hired the musicians, and foot the bill for his own sessions, then either shopped the tapes to the record companies or put them out himself on My Record, a label he and his wife Alva started with Skippy White, a Boston disc jockey who also owned several record stores in the area. The first 45 he released on My Record was “Young Girl,” featuring vocalist Frank Lynch, who came under Dwellingham’s mentorship and sang in his band. Tragically, Lynch’s life was cut short when he was shot and killed by a police officer. That story was remembered in a recent Boston magazine piece which you can read here.

In 1971 Herschel took a song to Black Rock, CBS’s corporate headquarters in Manhattan. There he met Bob Devere, who was on Columbia Record’s Artists & Repertoire staff as manager of independent projects. In this role, Devere purchased the masters of regional hits that he thought could go national, which Columbia then put out on a subsidiary label, Date Records.

As Herschel remembered it, Devere didn’t really want to give him any time. “He said he didn’t have time to hear it. I said, ‘Well, take it in back, listen to it, and come back. We don’t have to go in.’” So Devere took Herschel’s tape back to his office while Dwellingham and his wife Alva waited in the lobby. When Devere returned, it was with a different attitude. He offered Herschel $15,000 for the master tapes, the only catch being that he wanted to re-record the vocal part using O.C. Smith, who a few years earlier had had a gold record with “Little Green Apples.” But Herschel wasn’t interested in giving the song to another vocalist and he wound up selling it to RCA instead.

A year and a half later, Devere was managing Weather Report and Joe Zawinul tasked him with finding a funky drummer for their upcoming recording session, and he thought of some R&B 45s that had come through his distributorship with the name “H. Dwellingham” on the center label. By then, Devere had forgotten all about Dwellingham’s visit, and even his name. After checking around for “H. Dwellingham,” he found Herschel in Boston and asked about the drummer on those tracks. Surprised to learn that Herschel played the drums in addition to writing the songs, Devere invited him to the Sweetnighter session. My book goes into great detail regarding the making of the album, so I won’t repeat it here. However, one thing I didn’t include in the book was Herschel’s reaction to Joe’s claim that he spent hours teaching the drummers the beat to “Boogie Woogie Waltz” and “125h Street Congress.”

“He’s full of shit,” Herschel said, laughing. “Everybody who knows me knows I was playing those beats even in my Boston days. It’s like a New Orleans drum style mixed with Alan Dawson’s jazz sensibility. If you hear the records I played on in Boston before Zawinul, you’d hear the same thing. Those beats are a combination of my Louisiana roots and George Stone’s Stick Control book as Alan Dawson taught it. I started incorporating his teaching in my playing way before Zawinul was ever in sight. That’s where that came from. Joe Zawinul didn’t teach none of us anything, especially me. I didn’t play the song more than two or three times, anyway. There wasn’t a live rehearsal—everything was done in the studio. So I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

With Eric Gravatt also in the studio for the Sweetnighter sessions, there’s been some confusion as to who played drums on what. According to Herschel, he was the sole drummer on “Boogie Woogie Waltz” and “125th Street Congress,” and he and Gravatt both played on “Manolete” (“Eric’s on the beginning of that with me”) and “Non-Stop Home.” “Non-Stop Home” was his favorite. “I liked that round jazz groove,” he told me. “That’s my ringtone for my phone. That’s what I use for my alarm.” (laughs)

“And then Zawinul wanted the tempo to speed up and that was a good finish—faster and faster and faster, intentionally.” As a session player, this wasn’t what you would normally do. “No, it wasn’t,” Hershel agreed. “I’ll tell you, bass players or keyboard players that push the tempo, I don’t play with them anymore. I don’t get high. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. I don’t do none of that because I don’t want to mess with my built-in metronome. That’s what made me a great session player. I’ve never done anything with a click track unless it was a movie score I was playing. But all the records I played never had a click track.”

Shortly after the Sweetnighter sessions in February 1973, Herschel moved to New York City where he became an in-demand session drummer working with the likes of REO Speedwagon and Peter Nero. He also worked in the Broadway pit bands of many high-profile musicals. Aside from Sweetnighter, his best-known session work is probably Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s In the Cradle,” a gig he got from Paul Leka, who co-owned Connecticut Recording Studio where Sweetnighter was recorded several months earlier. After spending a couple of decades in New York, Herschel returned to Bogalosa where he set up his own recording studio and production company.

Through it all, Sweetnighter seems to be the thing Herschel is best known for, and people mentioned it to him for years to come. “That one little album must have put me on the map,” he told me. “Even in Europe. I was in Frankfort and I did master classes and private teaching—it was just unbelievable. My wife and my friends say I really don’t realize what I did and how important to drumming my playing was. I’m just a country boy who doesn’t think nothing about that. To me, I was just trying to make money to feed a wife and three little kids. That’s what I was doing. I didn’t think I was making history or fame or anything. Just trying to keep money in the house.”

At one point, Herschel was in New York and noticed that Zawinul was there, too. “He was in town at the Blue Note and I was playing the same night he was playing, so I couldn’t get there. So I called the club and asked for Zawinul. They said he’s on stage; call back in ten minutes. I called back and said, ‘Tell Joe Zawinul that Herschel Dwellingham is on the phone.’ I thought, this guy isn’t going to remember who the hell I am, but he came to the phone and said, ‘The Boogie Woogie Waltz man!’ I said, ‘You remember me?’ He said, ‘Man, are you kidding?! There wouldn’t be no Weather Report if it wasn’t for you.’ That’s what he called me, ‘The Boogie Woogie Waltz Man.'”

I will miss Herschel. He was a good man. Rest in peace.

Herschel Dwellingham’s Soul Bass

Soul Bass Album Cover
Fans of Weather Report’s Sweetnighter album know the name Herschel Dwellingham. He’s the drummer that brought the funk. A few years ago I wrote a post updating readers about Herschel’s current activities. Now he has produced a new album called Soul Bass, utilizing his Sweetnighters Band. As the band’s name suggests, the inspiration comes from his experience playing on Sweetnighter. But Soul Bass is a very different kind of album, one that highlights Herschel’s love of R&B and his own writing and arranging. In addition to Zawinul classics such as “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and “Boogie Woogie Waltz,” as well as Wayne’s tune, “Palladiium,” you’ll find a bunch of Herschel’s original material on Soul Bass, some of it dating back to his days before Sweetnighter when he was a fixture in Boston’s R&B scene.

The Sweetnighters BandThe Sweetnighters band on the last day of recording at Studio In The Country, Bogalusa, Louisiana.

Herschel asked me to write the liner notes for Soul Bass, which I was happy to do. I have reproduced them below. You can find the album itself on Apple iTunes. You can also find the tunes on YouTube, and I believe a CD is in the works.

In February 1973, Herschel Dwellingham got a call from Bob Devere, a producer at Columbia Records, inviting him to a recording session. This wasn’t unusual–Herschel was doing a lot of sessions in those days–but when he arrived at Connecticut Recording Studio a few days later, he realized that this one would be different. For in the studio were legendary jazz musicians Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, along with the rest of their band, Weather Report.
Upon seeing them, Herschel’s first thought was, “These guys want to play with me?” At the time, Weather Report was an avant-garde jazz band, whereas Dwellingham was known for his R&B grooves. It seemed like an odd pairing.

But unbeknownst to Herschel, his sound was exactly what Zawinul was looking for and together they spent several days recording Weather Report’s third record, Sweetnighter. With Dwellingham providing the funky underpinnings the album sold over 300,000 copies and proved to be the turning point in Weather Report’s fortunes. Years later, Joe would greet his old friend as “the Boogie Woogie Waltz man,” a reference to the album’s best known track. “There wouldn’t be Weather Report if it wasn’t for you,” Zawinul would say.

Forty some odd years later, Herschel had a dream in which Zawinul, who died in 2007, urged him to start a new group dedicated to performing some of Joe’s old tunes, as well as showcasing his own writing. In the past, such dreams had led to some of Dwellingham’s most successful projects, so this was something to take seriously. In response, he assembled a topnotch thirteen-piece band populated by many of his favorite musicians, some of whom he’s known for decades, and augmented them with a full string section and guest vocalists. Together they recorded Soul Bass, an album consisting of two of Zawinul’s best-known pieces, one of Wayne Shorter’s, and a clutch of Dwellingham originals, all dressed in luxurious string and horn arrangements and tasty grooves.

The leadoff track is “Big Girl,” the first of two Dwellingham-penned instrumentals. Listeners who know Herschel only from his drumming would be unaware that his real passion is writing and arranging his own music—something he’s done since high school. This tune dates back to Herschel’s college days and features a fine tenor sax solo by multi-instrumentalist Ed Pazant and the trumpet work of Cullen Knight. Both are among Herschel’s oldest musical associates. Pazant died not long after this recording, and Herschel has dedicated this album to him and Zawinul.

“Boogie Woogie Waltz” was the centerpiece of Weather Report’s Sweetnighter album–a thirteen-minute groove with a lot of improvising around a handful of melodic themes. Dwellingham’s version is more to the point, expanding the orchestration behind the melodies and providing another platform for Pazant, this time on soprano sax. As with the Weather Report version, Herschel grounds the tune by rapping out every beat on his snare drum, while his bass drum never deviates from emphasizing the and-one.

The soulful ballad, “Cold Spot,” features vocalist Marlena Lady Black Lace, formerly known as Molly Holt of the Rascals. Her musical association with Dwellingham goes back many years and this tune has long been among their favorites. The lyrics explore the heartache of unrequited love, and Marlena delivers an emotive performance worthy of the tune’s message, emphasized by the sustained tones of Tony “Strat” Thomas’ electric guitar.

“Flex-a-ble” is Dwellingham’s take on soul-meets-rap. With its chromatic melodies and deliberate rhythm, it sounds as if it could be at home in a 1960s secret agent movie. But just as listeners get comfortable with that vibe, into the mix comes the rapping of Kenyell Brown. The point, Dwellingham says, is that you can’t be rigid in life and in love. Sometimes you have to compromise and learn to be flexible.

Joe Zawinul’s tune, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” was a surprise instrumental hit for Cannonball Adderley in 1967. It quickly rose to number eleven on the Billboard pop chart and within weeks two vocal versions, each with different lyrics, were also released. At one point, all three of them occupied spots on the R&B singles chart. Here Dwellingham fashions it as an R&B powerhouse, with full-throated horns and a vocal chorus, and after Michael Lemmler’s Hammond B-3 intro, the band hits a toe-tapping groove behind Beverly Crosby’s stirring vocal. An added bonus is the baritone sax solo played by Roger Lewis, a founding member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

“Palladium” is Dwellingham’s nod to Zawinul’s musical partner, Wayne Shorter. It originally appeared on Weather Report’s 1977 album, Heavy Weather, which also includes “Birdland,” Joe’s well-known ode to the famous New York City jazz club of the same name. “Palladium” is its counterpart, named after the Palladium Ballroom, which was located just down the street from Birdland. In the 1950s it was the epicenter of the mambo craze that took the country by storm, and Wayne spent many evenings there as a young man, dancing to the likes of Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez, and Machito. Dwellingham’s arrangement lends the tune an easy going Latin feel. Dig the conga work of Kahlil Kwame Bell.

“Soul Bass” is another Dwellingham instrumental, with fine solos by Ed Pazant on flute and Cullen Knight on trumpet. The tune is based on a catchy drum-and-bass groove that Herschel improvised in his home studio. He wrote the melody and chart the day before the rest of the musicians arrived for the recording session. As with all of these tunes, Dave Ellis is rock solid holding down the bottom on electric bass.

Closing out this collection is the ultra funky “What I Got, I Got,” a throwback to Herschel’s Boston days when he led the house band at the Sugar Shack, then the city’s biggest and best soul venue. Dwellingham originally recorded this tune in 1971, with lyrics written and sung by Maurice Rice. Here Eli “Paperboy” Reed delivers a vocal straight out of that era, while “Strat” Thomas wraps a searing guitar solo around the melody. This is Boston soul, Dwellingham style.

Decades after its release, Sweetnighter continues to have a lasting impact on Dwellingham. Numerous hip-hop artists have sampled it, and Joe Zawinul went so far as to say it contains the first hip-hop beat.

“That one album put me on the map,” Herschel says. “My wife and my friends say I really don’t realize what I did and how important to drumming my playing was. I’m just a country boy who doesn’t think nothin’ about that. To me, I was just trying to make money to feed a wife and three little kids. That’s what I was doing. I didn’t think I was making history or anything. I was just trying to keep money in the house.”

It’s safe to say that Herschel did more than that. And now Soul Bass gives us a broader taste of his musical range—his love of soul and R&B, and his affinity for arranging for large ensembles. Let’s hope there’s a sequel.

Catching Up With Herschel Dwellingham

Herschel Dwellingham

I recently interviewed Herschel Dwellingham, one of the drummers who performed on Weather Report’s third album, Sweetnighter. I’ll be updating that page soon, but in the meantime, here’s some background about Herschel himself.

Weather Report fans who know him solely from his work on Sweetnighter may not know that in the sixties and early seventies, Herschel was quite active in the soul and R&B scene in the Boston area, having arrived there in 1963 to attend the Berklee School of Music after graduating from high school in Bogalusa, Louisiana. By the time Weather Report came calling, he was a much-in-demand session drummer, and would soon move to New York to work with top-notch arranger-producers such as Phil Medley (writer of “Twist & Shout” and “One In A Million”), Bert Keyes (Stephanie Mills), Paul Leka (Harry Chapin), and Bert De Coteaux (Sister Sledge and the Manhattans). He and his wife also started their own production company, Helva Records.

One of the earliest tunes Herschel produced in Boston was “Young Girl,” sung by little known Frank Lynch. A few years ago, contemporary R&B artist and Boston native Eli “Paperboy” Reed told the story of “Young Girl” in a post on The Southern Soul List Yahoo group:

[Herschel] became THE arranger, producer and session drummer for basically all the R&B and soul records that came out in Boston between 1963 and 1973. He also was the band leader and drummer at the biggest and best Boston soul club at the time, The Sugar Shack, in addition to writing and arranging commercial jingles at Ace Recording Studios in Boston’s famed combat zone.

Herschel really transformed the soul scene in Boston by combining the southern sound he had gotten growing up in Bogalusa (about 70 miles north of New Orleans) with the formal training he received at Berklee. In fact, the first record he produced in Boston was a cover of a big New Orleans hit, “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye,” which had been recorded by singer Danny White. Herschel’s version is a great example of that combination of styles and was sung brilliantly by Billy Thompson, and arranged by Herschel’s friend from Berklee, Alf Clausen, who later went on to garner much fame for arranging and writing for The Simpsons television show!

“Young Girl” single

“Young Girl” was recorded in late 1967 and was the second record Herschel ever produced, after the Billy Thompson record. He and the singer, Frank Lynch, had known each other for a few years and after a local DJ failed to follow up on a promise to record Lynch, Herschel decided he would produce him himself. He wrote the song “Young Girl” along with the b-side of the single “People Will Make You Say Things.” This time Herschel did the horn and string arrangements himself, in addition to producing and playing drums. His friend Alf Clausen was involved again, playing the distinctive french horn part on the session! Herschel recorded the song on his own dime and then brought it out on his label, My Records, which he co-owned with his wife, Alva, and Boston area record store impresario Skippy White.

As soon as the record came out in 1968 it was given pick hits by Billboard, Cashbox, and several other trade magazines. “Young Girl” was on its way to taking off before fate intervened. On a Friday night, Frank Lynch was playing with Herschel and his band at the famous Boston club, Paul’s Mall. At the time, Lynch was living with his aunt, with whom he had recently moved in with after living with Herschel and his wife for almost two years. After the gig, Herschel was driving Frank home and said that he was acting “funny” and kept talking about death and about how he knew he was going to die.

That night, Lynch got into an argument with his aunt which escalated into a physical fight. A neighbor called the police who, in the process of arresting Frank, broke his arm. He was taken, along with another prison, to Mass. General Hospital and an armed police officer was stationed there to guard both prisoners. Apparently Frank was still in an odd state because when he came out of the bathroom he started waving a towel at the police officer in a threatening manner. The other prisoner decided to join in and they both advanced toward the officer. The cop shot Frank three times in the head at close range, killing him instantly.

After that night, there was an uproar in Boston’s black community. Frank Lynch’s family sued the city of Boston along with the Boston Police force, but their case was unsuccessful. Boston was still a very racially divided city in 1968 and no one was surprised by the verdict.

Fast forward 40-some years and “Young Girl” was re-discovered by Eli Reed. As Herschel tells it, “Eli found it on the floor of Skippy’s record shop after Skippy had moved out. He took it home and got interested in me and the song. When he got a deal with Capital Records, he told what made the deal go was that they loved the song, and he re-recorded it. He copied my arrangement for Frank Lynch just the way I did it originally. And I just got an email from a music supervisor that it’s going into a new movie, [Kevin Costner’s] Black and White.”

Nowadays, Herschel’s back home in Bogalusa, running his current record company, Bogue Magic City Records. “We started it in 2004,” Herschel recently told me. “I’m an owner. Mary Starr, with whom I’m married to now, is one of the owners. And the singer Marlena, who was Molly Holt from the Rascals, is one of the owners. Right now we’ve got something like 50 releases and 30-some artists. We’re an Internet record label and we’ve been doing pretty well.”

Sweetnighter has had a lasting impact on Dwellingham. “I go to places around the country and they say ‘Herschel Dwellingham’… Even in L.A.… I played the Whisky A Go-Go and people must have known I was going to be there. A lot of drummers were there. Drummers come out wherever I go. That one little album [Sweetnighter] must have put me on the map. Even in Europe. I was in Frankfort and I did master classes and private teaching. It was just unbelievable. My wife and my friends say I really don’t realize what I did and how important to drumming my playing was. I’m just a country boy who doesn’t think nothing about that. To me, I was just trying to make money to feed a wife and three little kids. That’s what I was doing. I didn’t think I was making history or fame or anything. Just trying to keep money in the house.

“When Zawinul was in town at the Blue Note, I was playing somewhere else on the same night, so I couldn’t get there. So I called and asked for him. They said he’s on stage, call back in ten minutes. I called back and said, ‘Tell Joe Zawinul that Herschel Dwellingham is on the phone.’ I thought, this guy isn’t going to remember who the hell I am. But he came to the phone and said, ‘The Boogie Woogie Waltz man!’ I said, ‘You remember me?’ He said, ‘Man, are you kidding?! There wouldn’t be no Weather Report if it wasn’t for you.’ That’s what he called me, The Boogie Woogie Waltz Man. We talked and we were trying for me to come to L.A. and do another album with him, and then he got sick.”

Herschel with DJDJ and Herschel

Herschel keeps busy producing a variety of artists from his Bogalusa office and studio. “We have a young girl named Annie Gambino that Marlena and I have been writing and producing for. I’ve got a new Tony Williams, he’s nine years old. His name is DJ; I call him DJ the drummer. I just started teaching him the [Berklee percussion teacher] Alan Dawson system. He’s got a good groove, his tempo is solid, he doesn’t speed up or anything, and he’s going to be a great drummer.” For Herschel, it’s a part of passing down the tradition. “As a kid, I used to watch the great Earl Palmer, and that’s how I got interested in being a drummer. Earl gave me a set of sticks, and I just gave another little guy that I’m teaching a set of sticks. When I go places and I see young people who are enthused and want to play, I keep a bunch of brand new sticks that I give them.

“The latest artist I produced is a 16-year old girl, Marce, who’s going to be another Whitney Houston. She’s dynamite–got the chops and everything. We recently did a Christmas song for her that Marlena and I wrote it, and we put it out on iTunes and all the Internet stores. Early this year there will be a new release from Marlena, a new album by Timothy Wilson, and another song from Marce.

“I also have my own album, Enlightenment. I play all the instruments and Marlena sings. Everything on it is me. And there’s a song called ‘I Thank You Joe’ dedicated to Joe Zawinul. It’s what I think Joe’s style is.

“I’ve got a growing production company and record company, and we’re busy producing and writing,” Herschel concludes. It sounds like life is good for the Boogie Woogie Waltz Man.