Keyed in to funk: New Orleans piano strikes the right note with Raitt bandmate Jon Cleary
by Larry Katz - Boston Herald - Wednesday, August 7, 2002

Jon Cleary's got a specialty: funk-drenched New Orleans piano.

Bonnie Raitt heard him, loved him and hired him to play in her band, which performs tonight and tomorrow at the FleetBoston Pavilion. Lyle Lovett is also on the bill.

Raitt admires Cleary so much she has called him "the ninth wonder of the world'' and said, "Nobody since (Little Feat's) Lowell George has affected me like Jon.''

But Raitt sings more than Cleary's praises. She sings his songs. "Silver Lining,'' her latest album, kicks off with Cleary's hard-grooving "Fool's Game'' and reaches its sweatiest moment with the tight Crescent City funk of his "Monkey Business.''

Cleary also has his own band, the Absolute Monster Gentlemen, which he formed after years working with such New Orleans legends as Johnny Adams, Earl King and Snooks Eaglin. Their CD "Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen'' is a percolating modern funk set that includes two Raitt guest spots and extends a New Orleans funk style popularized by Dr. John and the Neville Brothers.

But what distinguishes Cleary from his New Orleans brethren is geography: He grew up in Kent, England.

"I was very lucky to grow up in a family of musicians and music lovers,'' Cleary says. "My mum loved New Orleans jazz. My old man liked Leadbelly and the skiffle stuff. My grandma liked Fats Waller. My aunt loved soul music and my uncle loved old New Orleans r & b. He traveled around the world and settled in (New Orleans') French Quarter at one point. He used to send me letters describing the place and that fired up my imagination.

"When he came back to England,'' Cleary says with an accent more limey than Louisiana, "he had a suitcase of 45s. I liked nothing better than spending an evening with him mesmerized by the sound of Professor Longhair, Clifton Chenier and Clarence Henry.

"Then I discovered a whole world of funk listening to Radio Caroline. Robert Palmer doing `Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley,' and this song `Brickyard Blues' by Frankie Miller just killed me. I didn't know they were written and produced by (New Orleans mainstay) Allen Toussaint and (New Orleans band) the Meters played on it. Eventually I figured out that this stuff was New Orleans funk and it came from the same place as Professor Longhair and Fats Domino.''

When Cleary turned 17, he took off for his city of dreams. He landed a job painting the Maple Leaf Bar, a hangout for New Orleans musicians including prodigiously talented pianist James Booker. Cleary, a self-taught guitarist, became inspired to start plinking away at a keyboard.

"I'd see Booker at the bar almost every day,'' Cleary, 39, says. "(Blues pianist) Roosevelt Sykes would come in, too. Through a process of osmosis, it just soaked in. The house I was living in had a piano and at night I'd go home and listen to my records and try to cop all the licks. I was in heaven.''

After two years listening and practicing, Cleary went back to England and put together a band to play pubs. When he returned to New Orleans two years after that, he was good enough to get a gig at the Maple Leaf as the replacement for Booker, who had died when Cleary was away. Soon he also had Professor Longhair's old job at another New Orleans' hot spot, Tipitina's.

"I got to play with all the guys I idolized in England,'' Cleary says. "I was getting hired as a sideman to play with my heroes at the same time I was getting jobs as a bandleader where I could hire all the musicians I'd listened to on my favorite records. I did that for years. But it got to the point that I wanted to have a regular band that could learn all the songs I was writing. So I went to the church and got some players who were young and hungry and became the Absolute Monster Gentlemen.''

Cleary's Gents appeared as the opening act on the first leg of Raitt's tour. He expects they'll embark on their own club tour when he finishes his current stint with Raitt. But his long-range ambitions extend beyond his role as the British-born ambassador of New Orleans funk - all the way to the other side of the Gulf of Mexico.

"Ever since I was a kid I thought that Havana must be similar to New Orleans,'' he says. "I started going to Cuba about 10 years ago. I'm fascinated by the links between New Orleans piano and the music in Cuba. It all comes from the same place, Africa, with Spanish and French thrown in the bargain.''

Would he like to make his own Cuban music album?

"Yes, definitely. I'd have to repeat the past 20 years and do what I did in New Orleans, which means going to live there.'' Cleary chuckles, clearly enchanted by the prospect. "But I've spent the past 15 years listening to Cuban stuff, so I'm already well down that path.''