BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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Whenever I hear Fred Kaplan play the piano I feel like I am listening to the history of the blues. There is a very good reason for this.
Fred Kaplan first sat down in front of a keyboard at the age of three and began making music. He was taking lessons by the age of five and performed his first recital when he was seven.
As a youngster Kaplan remembers purchasing his first 45 RPM records for a nickel a piece from a man he knew who serviced old jukeboxes. He recalled hearing records from T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, BB King and others. This music opened up a new world for the young man and he wanted to learn more about the exciting new sounds that so captivated him.
Kaplan however remained interested in hearing the great piano players and relating to the sounds he heard from some of the giants in the field. Some of his early blues piano influences were Otis Spann, Floyd Dixon, Charles Brown, Big Maceo Merriweather, Sunnyland Slim, Walter Roland, Pete Johnson, Professor Longhair, Leroy Carr, Amos Milburn, Ray Charles, Roosevelt Sykes Lloyd Glenn and others.
As his musical sophistication and his insatiable appetite for knowledge grew, Kaplan started exploring the sonic worlds of Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Sonny Clark, Oscar Peterson, Teddy Wilson, Hampton Hawes, Earl Hines, George Shearing, Ahmad Jamal, Willie “The Lion” Smith, McCoy Tyner, Barry Harris, Horace Silver, Thelonius Monk, Errol Garner, Bobby Timmons and other jazz piano masters.
Kaplan was also beginning to discover the vocabulary of gospel and its piano greats like Arizona Dranes, Thomas Dorsey, Evelyn Starks Hardy, Mildred Falls and Evelyn Gay.
By this time in Kaplan’s musical odyssey, the Hammond organ began to assert its influence on him as well. Players such as Jack McDuff, Shirley Scott, Jimmy Smith, Baby Face Willette, Larry Goldings, Charles Earland, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Wild Bill Davis, Bill Doggett, Jimmy McGriff, Billy Preston and Dr. Lonnie Smith had an impact on his playing.
Kaplan started to hang around some of the many musical haunts that populated Southern California back in the early seventies. The Golden Bear in Huntington Beach and the Ashgrove in Los Angeles were where you might find young Fred Kaplan soaking up the musical stylings of the artists that played there. It wasn’t long before Fred was starting to befriend some of his heroes. It was one such association that led to one of the most important musical friendships of Kaplan’s life.
Big Joe Turner invited Fred to a benefit concert following T-Bone Walker’s funeral. The event was a fund raiser for T-Bone Walker’s widow held at the musician’s Local Union Hall #47 in Hollywood. At this event Fred introduced himself to a man whom he had seen perform many times, pianist Lloyd Glenn. Their close association turned out to be the single biggest influence on Fred’s playing style. Glenn became a lifelong friend and mentor. As Kaplan told me recently, “Not only did he help teach me about music he helped to teach me to become a man.”
Another significant relationship developed when Kaplan met Al Blake. Kaplan and Blake started performing together as a duo when one evening they ventured out to Hollywood’s famed Whiskey A Go-Go to see Muddy Waters. When Muddy asked Kaplan and Blake to sit in with him that night they met a young guitarist who was performing with Muddy. His name was Michael “Hollywood Fats” Mann.
In the early 1970’s these three, Kaplan, Blake and Mann formed the band The Headhunters Trio. This ensemble evolved into The Hollywood Fats Band with the addition of bassist Larry Taylor and drummer Richard Innes. They recorded one self-titled album in 1979. The impact of this album on the blues world was enormous. Later retitled “Rock This House”, the historic recording has been reissued world-wide many times over the last thirty years.
During his tenure with the Hollywood Fats Band, Kaplan was fortunate enough to play with some of the greatest living blues artists of our time such as T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton, Big Joe Turner, Albert Collins, George Harmonica Smith, Percy Mayfield, Lowell Fulsom, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Freddie King, Johnny Shines, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Mama Thornton, Louis Meyers, Jimmy Witherspoon, Roy Brown, Snooky Pryor, Johnny Dyer, Phillip Walker, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, John Lee Hooker, William Clarke, Lynnwood Slim, Rod Piazza, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, James Harman, Charlie Musselwhite, Kid Ramos, Kim Wilson, Otis Rush, Joe Willie Wilkins, Freddie Robinson and Margie Evans and many other musical giants.
Fred Kaplan’s legacy continues to move forward in the new millennium with three new albums he recorded with Hollywood Fats band alums Blake, Taylor and Innes under the banner of The Hollywood Blue Flames. They are joined on guitar by both their young musical protégé Kirk Fletcher and, more recently, the legendary Junior Watson.
Kaplan also plays in solo acoustic settings. Kaplan is adept at playing play jazz as well as blues. He is one of the most versatile pianists in any musical idiom.
Record Producer and host of a popular, long running Southern California radio show Jeff Scott told me recently, “Fred may be one of the only people on the scene today who can play blues piano in so many different styles.”
Fred’s longtime musical companion Al Blake puts it this way, “Fred is simply a great musician.”
I think Fred himself put it best when he told me, “I play music with articulated substance. I know not everybody gets it but I am not going to dumb down my playing for anybody…ever.”
Fred Kaplan’s firsthand accounts of the musical history of the blues, as well as his deep appreciation of the form pre-dating his extraordinary career, make him one of the world’s leading authorities on blues history.
With this in mind I urge you to read some articulated substance in Fred’s article Blues Piano: An Endangered Species. Fred was also kind enough to offer our readers a short sample of recommended listening which serves as a companion piece to his treatise on the subject of blues piano. See Fred’s Picks on this site as well.
I also encourage our readers to seek out the music of Fred Kaplan. Visit his website (see our links page). Visit Delta Groove Records website (also on our links page) and learn more about The Hollywood Blues Flames. The trio of recordings they have released since 2005 are blues from the twenty-first century but you can hear the history of the blues in every single note.
- David Mac
Copyright 2022 BLUES JUNCTION Productions. All rights reserved.
BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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