Up Where We Belong-Joe Cocker
December 22, 2014 1:05 AM
So by now, everyone has heard the news today either with sadness or God forbid, indifference, that Joe Cocker has passed away at age 70, after a long battle with lung cancer. While never lauded as a great songwriter or instrumentalist, his fame was acquired through his strong, bluesy vocal interpretations of songs by the Beatles, John Hiatt, Dave Mason and others.
Cocker’s gravelly voice and spastic arm gyrations were lampooned by John Belushi on Saturday Night Live, and Cocker was able to touch several generations with his music, performing at Woodstock (two incarnations!), contributing a duet with Jennifer Warnes called “Up Where We Belong” to the soundtrack of the 1982 movie “An Officer And A Gentleman,” and taking “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” a Randy Newman composition, to the top of the charts as part of the “9 ½ Weeks” soundtrack in 1986. Cocker continued his recording career into the 90’s and 2000’s, collaborating with platinum artists like Bryan Adams and Carlos Santana.
I am a comedian for precisely one reason; I am not a talented enough musician or singer to be a rock star. I’ve always craved the stage, attention is my drug of choice and that’s why it’s so difficult to get me to leave once I’m up there. But I will take my turn at karaoke, because I have a better tool for karaoke night than most singers who get up and try karaoke; I have a very firm understanding of my limitations.
There’s nothing worse than watching a person take their turn at karaoke and to have to listen to them suck for five minutes. It’s even worse when they suck *and* the song they chose was terrible. I always made sure to choose a song I knew I could pull off, and a song that the crowd would enjoy; those two aspects are crucial to your success on karaoke night.
Joe Cocker songs can be very accessible, because everyone knows them or has heard them at least once. You want to do a Joe Cocker impression to really perform the song correctly, and in order to do a good Joe Cocker impression, you just need to tighten up your neck and pull your jaw in until your face is in a grimace, and then get those arms going. Reach up and tug on your hair, do a low, arthritic air guitar motion with your hands, and sing with conviction.
I sing karaoke maybe once a year if I’m lucky, and when I do, I reach for some Joe. “Unchain My Heart” is a good song to do, it’s uptempo and gets a drinking crowd moving. I stay away from “A Little Help From My Friends” or “You Are So Beautiful;” you want the crowd to party and stay up, you don’t want anyone crying in their beer. “You Can Leave Your Hat On” is a good, sleazy number that gets the women in the crowd going, and the background singers on the backing track do a lot of the work. But when I know I’m only getting one shot, or I need to pull out the big guns, the closer is “Feelin’ Alright” by Dave Mason, one of Cocker’s most popular tunes. Everyone knows it or has at least heard it once, it’s uptempo and there’s a long instrumental break in the middle which gives you the opportunity to patter with the crowd, tell them to tip the bartender (which can get a free drink scooted your way in the right place), and it’s not so long that you outstay your welcome. That’s my go-to song for karaoke night, and it always scores. My wife even got me tickets to see the man in the summer of 1999 at Finger Lakes. We got good seats so I could watch him up close. It was a magical performance, and two hours felt like 20 minutes.
Now I’m telling you all of that to tell you this story.
Early in my standup comedy career, the need for a paycheck was as serious as it was ever going to be. When you want to pursue a standup career, you can’t take a full-time gig that expects you to be there Monday through Friday, some clubs need you there as early as Wednesday for a week of work, and most employers are not so understanding about missing days. So I maintained part-time employment at a radio station and grabbed whatever gigs I could get.
One gig I got was working for a promotions company that was pushing Captain Morgan rum, specifically the new Parrot Bay coconut rum flavor that was brand new at the time. The gig required me to dress up in a Captain Morgan costume and travel around with a couple of models dressed as Pirate Wenches, go bar-to-bar handing out samples, introducing the new beverage to the drinking crowds. One of the promotional things that we would do was take pictures of guests with the girls with a Polaroid Camera, and then stick the pictures into a cardboard frame. The customer could then peel back the cardboard frame, and if there was a Captain Morgan logo, they could come over to me and choose a prize from a big wooden treasure chest that I carried around filled with Captain Morgan t-shirts, sunglasses, boxer shorts, frisbees and can coozies. It was big fun for everyone all around.
One bar that we worked was an outdoor bar by the lake, which was little more than a 30 seat circular bar with a huge umbrella over it, with all the patrons facing inward toward the bartender in the middle. 50 feet away, there was a small covered stage where a husband-and-wife guitar duo sang for the patrons, but no one was facing them and they were more or less background music. The Pirate Wenches and I were doing our level best to get some attention from the bar patrons to do our job, but it’s rough when everyone is facing away from you no matter which direction you try to approach them.
So I’m shaking hands and doing the pirate voice “ARRR!” and hamming it up, and the guitar duo starts singing the Crosby, Still & Nash song “Southern Cross.” I do a quick inventory of the song lyrics, and I wait to strike. When the duo gets to the line “I have my ship, and all her flags are a’flying” I moved into position and sang, pirate style, into the microphone “She is all that I have left….and MUSIC IS HER NAME!!!!”
The patrons at the bar go berserk.
They were giving the first real feedback of the day, and the folks on stage were smiling for the first time as far as I knew. The folks at the bar were hooping and hollering and the two looked at each other and didn’t know what to do. I brought them in close and said “Do you know ‘Feeling Alright?’” And when they said they did, I asked “Could I sing it with you?”
So now here are these acoustic guitar folks, strumming out the hit Dave Mason song and they have the strangest guy decked out in a sweaty pirate costume under a hot summer sun, and I lay the Joe Cocker version on the people. I’m tugging at the pirate wig, arms flailing and I throw the hat. One of the pirate wenches picks up the hat and now she’s dancing with some guy in a polo shirt, denim shorts and deck shoes. And the people are going nuts. The bartenders are handing out the coconut rum samples and when the instrumental break happens, I give the audience the whole Captain Morgan pitch, tell them about the photos, the prizes, introduce the girls, tip the bartender, give it up for the band, the whole spiel.
After the song is over, we start to cook. I’m handing out prizes, the girls are sitting on guys’ laps and it’s a party. The band is playing, people are dancing, and a guy comes over to me and says “Can I talk to you?” He introduces himself, and come to find out he’s the guy from the liquor company that we’re working for. And he shakes my hand and compliments me up and down and offers me a full-time job doing what I just did. We talked money, and the change was strange which is why I turned the offer down. But it was nice to have been asked.
I don’t sing karaoke that much anymore, honestly it just doesn’t seem to come up like it did twenty or even ten years ago. But when it does, I’ll grab a glass of whiskey and when it’s my turn, I’ll ask the DJ for Joe.
