Heart and Soul

Felix the cat: Felix Cavaliere plays New Times photographer Michael Davis’ Hammond B3 organ at the 1994 Syracuse Area Music Awards where Cavaliere was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Felix Cavaliere’s Friday appearance at Jazz Fest brings his connection with Syracuse full circle

By Jessica Novak

Felix Cavaliere is just soul, all-American soul. For five decades his voice has transcended genres and generations, buffering the British Invasion of the 1960s as he and The Rascals recorded some of the biggest hits of the decade: “Good Lovin’,” “Groovin’,” “A Girl Like You,” “A Beautiful Morning” and “People Got to Be Free.”

But Cavaliere’s success isn’t limited to The Rascals. He has continued to write and record through the years, solo and with various groups and collaborators, the latest being 2010’s Midnight Flyer (Concord Records) with fellow member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Steve Cropper. While other voices and talents have faded, Cavaliere’s endures, making him a prime, if belated, choice for this year’s 29th annual Syracuse M&T Jazz Fest, Friday, June 24, and Saturday, June 25, at Onondaga Community College.

“This is long overdue,” Jazz Fest promoter and producer Frank Malfitano admits. “This is his debut appearance at Jazz Fest. I should have done it a long time ago. But everything happens in its own time. It happens when it’s supposed to. This is the year when it’s supposed to. It just feels right. And the combination of Robert Cray and Average White Band and Felix. . . man, that Friday night. . . I’m excited about it.”

Friday’s festivities start with gates opening at 3 p.m. and music beginning at 5 p.m. (see schedule, page 20). Felix Cavaliere’s Rascals, with guitarist Mike Severs, bassist Mark Prentice (who hails from Watertown) and drummer Matthew Bubel, will take the stage at 6:30 p.m.

“We’re kickin’ it old school,” Malfitano says. “There are so many people that weren’t around in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. They missed this. But these cats are still great and you’re gonna see it at the festival. They’re gonna bring it. They’re gonna blow everybody away. That’s what I’m excited about. All the people who have never seen these cats live are gonna get to see ’em just like I did the first time.”

That first time was when Cavaliere, 68, played with his band Felix and the Escorts at Syracuse University. Cavaliere studied premed from 1961 to 1963 before leaving school to pursue a career in music. The group played fraternity and sorority houses on the SU Hill before and after football games. “The fraternities and sororities in the 1960s were very hip and they had great bands,” Malfitano says. “Felix was like a campus band. So I saw him and I went, ‘Oh my god.’ It was awesome.”

Although Cavaliere studied pre-med in college, he had focused on music, specifically piano, since age 6. For a time, he took three lessons per week. His mother wanted him to become a classical pianist, but he had different plans.

“I never really had the interest because of a very simple reason,” Cavaliere says in a phone interview from his home in Nashville, Tenn. “You’re not allowed to create. You play what those guys wrote many years ago note for note, and you’re not allowed to make any changes. I rebelled against that. And then the influx of rock’n’roll, it’s infectious.”

Organ Grinder

Cavaliere’s mother died when he was 14, which signaled a major shift in his musical path. “I was able to drift into La La Land,” he says. A few years later a friend exposed him to an organ trio and the sound immediately clicked within him. He was fascinated by the ability of the organ to bring bass and lead parts to life, all while allowing the player to sing as well. He began making frequent trips to a showroom on 34th Street in New York City and would beg the staff to let him play the mighty Hammond B3 that was there.

Although he loved the B3, at the time it cost about $3,000, far beyond his budget. His first organ was a smaller version and about half the price. But it was enough to spur his musical career forward despite his planned educational

path. “I was studying pre-med and that summer of my junior year just got really bitten by the show business bug,” Cavaliere says. “I had a lot of people see me that encouraged me to give it a shot and that’s what I did. Instead of going back to school, a few of us tried to take the semester off. Other guys got pressure, so they went back to school. But I didn’t. I went overseas.”

Joey Dee and the Starliters invited Cavaliere to tour Europe as a replacement for their organist who had recently quit. That experience exposed him to The Beatles, pre-1964 U.S. invasion, as he watched the Fab Four take over Europe before their leap across the pond. “That did it,” Cavaliere says. “I just kinda said, ‘Well, I know I can do this.’ I was classically trained. I really felt like I had the chops and I certainly had the desire and people gave me the opportunity to bring my talents. So it worked.”

Upon returning to New York City, Cavaliere made it a mission to put together his own band. The city was bursting with available talent, placing Cavaliere in a prime position to pick the best musicians around. At the time, pre-Beatlemania, there also weren’t as many people with rock star dreams.

“If you were really good, you had a really good shot because there weren’t that many people that were trying to do this,” he says. “There was no real major kind of income for it. It hadn’t really happened. Nobody really knew that it was going to be what everybody’s son and daughter would like to do no matter what they were doing. It hadn’t gotten to that level yet.”

Cavaliere formed The Young Rascals with Dino Danelli, Eddie Brigati and Gene Cornish in 1965. In October of that year, they played an elite venue called the Barge in Southhampton, Long Island, and were quickly signed to Atlantic Records and managed by the influential Sid Bernstein. This move prepped them to brace the British bombardment, although other artists were forced to bow to its power.

“Even Motown artists had to go out and record Beatles tunes,” Malfitano says. “The British Invasion was more than a wave, it was a tidal wave. But Felix had a base of about 8 million to 10 million people. When you’re like the house band for New York City, that’s pretty good insulation against whatever trend is going on in the industry. And the songwriting was so strong—their songs were amazing. That enabled them to survive.”

The Young Rascals changed their name to The Rascals and gained in popularity rapidly. They appeared on television for the first time in 1965 on the NBC series Hullabaloo and were an inspiration for the term “blue-eyed soul,” coined by the media to describe their music. For Late Show with David Letterman bassist Will Lee, a regular at the Syracuse Jazz Fest—although not this year—the Rascals during that period were his No. 2 behind The Beatles and only because The Beatles had a larger catalog of music.

“When I was a kid growing up in Miami, The Rascals were, besides The Beatles, something I was very, very focused on,” Lee says. “I couldn’t wait ’til the next record came out. I’ll never forget the first time I saw them live. It was unbelievable. It was just so exciting.”

The Rascals’ noticeable absence of a bass guitar also fascinated Lee, even though that’s his instrument of choice. “I was infatuated with the fact that they would pull that off without a bass player,” Lee says. “Felix would play all the bass stuff on his organ. It’s a really special feeling. When we cover Rascals stuff on the Letterman show, I have this foot pedal that has an organ bass sound emulated in it and I’ll kick it in for the Rascals stuff—really get that Felix feeling.”

Racial Expression

Cavaliere and Brigati were the songwriting team of the group and by the late 1960s, the duo was leaning toward more politically and socially focused lyrics. They wrote the 1968 song “People Got to Be Free” in response to the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It