David O'Connor: Still the Funniest Guy I Know.

From Historical Artifacts

David and I played together on Sofrito, the band that introduced salsa music to hippie culture in Santa Cruz, California. This was back in 1977. David had gotten off the road with Leonard Cohen (and before that Buffie St. Marie), and I was between road adventures with Stan Kenton and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Dave had been working with the rhythm section which had been added to the drums. The drummers consisted of Dennis Broughton, Michael Spiro, and Raul Rivera, who sang and started it all. I used to say that Raul had done the equivalent of parachuting into the Amazon and setting up a Gilbert & Sullivan troupe made entirely of native peoples. The band grew outward from several dance classes at UCSC which the three drummers had played for. The drums were always the core of the band, and they worked at it, doing Latin rhythms for the dance classes.

Raul never imagined himself as a teacher, I’m sure. He had a shady past that included stays in the grey bar hotel on charges stemming from addiction. But what he did was remarkable because he taught the genuine thing to a couple white kids from the suburbs and made them a cohesive salsa drum section. And then they went out looking for a band.

Once they had their grooves down--the afinque--the guitar (David) and the bass (Fritz) were added. Fritz had to learn that in most situations he wouldn’t be playing on beat one of the measure. It was hard to convert jazz guys to this way of thinking, I found out later, but Fritz had no problem with it.

So then they were ready for horns, and that meant someone had to write the charts, and someone mentioned me, and one thing led to another . . .

We started one off night at the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, a club owned by a one-armed framing carpenter who had a successful business but needed a place to drink. I’m afraid we violated the first rule of working in a club, because we didn’t know that he wanted to be left alone to quietly drink his beer. The problem was we packed the place, from the very beginning. We instantly got moved over to weekends, then Fridays and Saturdays, then we added Wednesdays. I remember one night dividing the money up at the pool table and O’Connor asking as his wad was passed to him, “Any of you boys want to play a little poker?”

Soon we were on the cover of the local alternative paper. We started to cross over into local rock star status. Still, we played places like the Crow’s Nest at the harbor, which meant no dancing and a very small stage, and low wages but a great dinner for each band member. For me, as I lived on Sixth Street, it meant I could walk to work.

Sofrito suffered a collapse when Raul let his demons get ahold of him, but it was too late: Salsa was out of the bag in Santa Cruz. We were too happening. The band splintered into several bands and a softball team as well. We made regular pilgrimages to Oakland to root for the then-hapless A’s. Cornelius Bumpus, one of the guys we ran with regularly, got an unbelievable gig that he deserved from the Doobie Brothers.

I left Santa Cruz in 1979, convinced that the remote location and easy lifestyle of Santa Cruz were messing for my chances at a gig.

A couple years later I heard that David O’Connor suffered a stroke. But I heard he was fighting back, that it took him five years of therapy to be able to play guitar again. He had married, but his wife stuck with him, against the odds stacked against his recovery as a musician in a remote corner of Northern California without health insurance.

I started talking to David again last month. His speech can be halting at times, but he’s still the funniest guy I know. He’s got a website with mp3 samples, and he’s doing pretty well with the wedding business, a furrow that my brother and I plow as well in Austin.

It’s funny when you talk to a guy from the remote past who naturally feels like he’s taking up the conversation when you last spoke. That’s what it’s been like talking to Dave. I look forward to talking again.