Hearing Steve Gadd Band album conjures memories of Rick's Cafe, Hong Kong
Steve Gadd is still going strong at 70, with his current gigs including drumming for Eric Clapton.
Readers who were in Hong Kong in the 1980s would probably remember Rick's Cafe, a loosely Casablanca-themed cellar bar in Tsim Sha Tsui. For several years it was the only Hong Kong watering hole that hosted live modern jazz - mostly performed by bands led by saxophonist Ric Halstead, who went on to become the musical director of The Jazz Club.
Visiting jazz musicians would sometimes sit in with the house band, one incarnation of which featured guitarist Eugene Pao, and was called One Finger Snap after a track on Herbie Hancock's 1964 album Empyrean Isles. Hancock was one of those guests and Chick Corea was another.
I was reminded of Rick's last week while listening to 70 Strong by the Steve Gadd Band, because I had lunch at Rick's with two of its members on separate occasions.
Rick's was involved in promoting a concert by this band's predecessor, The Gadd Gang, and Gadd, along with pianist Richard Tee, guitarist Cornell Dupree, baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber and bassist Eddie Gomez, came to the bar to meet the press.
The other occasion involved the Steve Gadd Band's current bassist, Jimmy Johnson, who was then half of a highly rated rhythm section with the wonderfully named drummer Chad Wackerman. They both played Rick's with guitarist Allan Holdsworth, and can be heard on many of his albums from the mid-1980s onwards.