Jackson musician Denny Burkes realizes dream with international Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio tour.
Denny Burkes has kept the beat for Jackson bands since his teenage years, but a recent opportunity launched him onto the international stage and lassoed a dream he’d held for almost just as long.
September saw him in Paris, at the Jazz à la Villette music festival on the stage with the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, in front of 3,000 rapt fans, playing the specific top-level soul-jazz that’s been his target for years.
Burkes’ affable cool turns passionate when he talks about the experience, and the music. The tour took him to Lisbon, Portugal, too, as well as across the U.S. West with the irrepressible groovemeisters (as New York Music Daily has described the trio).
“I’ve always wanted to play gigs in continental Europe,” Burkes, 52, says of a goal since he was a kid. He’d been to England a couple of times, including moving there for a few weeks straight out of college. He even landed a job at Tower Records at Piccadilly Circus (thanks, Bebop Metro experience) but, young and alone in London and overwhelmed by the search for a place to live, he soon returned home. “That’s always haunted me as, really, the biggest mistake of my life. It was an absolute goal that I had … and I chickened out of it. I didn’t push through.
“Whether it’s true or not, I always felt like I would never get that back.” This year, he did.
The native Jacksonian grew up playing snare drum in school band, first at McCluer Academy and then at Jackson Prep, but after a few key classmates opened his eyes to the “new music” of the day, his interest turned toward new wave and punk rock. He quit school band after his sophomore year, transitioned to a drum kit and started on rock’n’roll.
“We started playing gigs at W.C. Don’s when I was, like,15 years old,” he says of those early days in a band with Jimmy Bishop and Paul “Tuck” Tucker. “I never looked back from that.” (His 9th grade son, Graeme, is on a similar path, “which shocks me,” he notes with a grin).
Roll Call
Burkes’ Jackson band roll call likely entertained all of a certain age, at one time or another — The Suede Gods, Great Big Buildings, The Shines, The Hot Mops, Superband Wasteband, Risqué Ray & The Swing Set, The Steve Deaton Three, and Eric Stracener and The Frustrations.
“That’s been the working model — either start a band or find a band that I can persuade into doing the kind of granular fringe musics that I’m interested in — that culminated with The Vamps.”
The soul-jazz ensemble he started with guitarist Barry Leach in 1998 has logged decades-plus in the capital city, still swinging in that magical musical realm of tight playing and loose grooving. The band’s current lineup also features Adib Sabir, Bob Pieczyck, Kevin Lewis, Terry Miller and Todd Bobo; former members include George Reid and the late Booker Walker. The band celebrates 22 years in February.
“The Vamps really is what I refer to as ‘my identity band,’ because it’s the music I’ve always wanted to play.
“There’s always a level of musicianship that A) I aspire to get to and then, B) it’s just loose and easy,” Burkes says. The band started out with what he calls “the absolute music that was my favorite … soul-jazz of ‘60s Blue Note label.” While that remains in the repertoire, the chameleon band can suit any situation or party with cocktail jazz, reggae, funk, Latin, blues and more.
For Burkes, there dangled a musical brass ring he still dreamed of grabbing — a soul-jazz organ trio of Hammond organist (who kicks bass), guitarist and drummer. Real Hammond organ, he specifies, with classic Leslie speaker cabinet. “It’s the equivalent of hauling a chest of drawers and a dresser around.” One stab at the style, his band The Rumprollers (with addition of a bassist), still didn’t quite reach and replicate the way Burkes’ beloved records delivered the sound.
“I had to go all the way to Seattle and to Europe to be able to play music I wanted to play, the way I wanted to play it.”
Burkes discovered the Seattle-based Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, with Lamarr on Hammond organ, guitarist Jimmy James and original drummer David McGraw on KEXP’s YouTube channel. “It was killer,” he says of the live mix of their own tunes, Curtis Mayfield tunes, Tyrone Davis tunes — “very much in the classic way soul-jazz records are made, It just resonated with me. Hard, you know?”
He kept up with the band through social media for a few years, and was happy to see their debut album top jazz charts. When he noticed different drummers in tour posts, he surmised the spot was in play. Then, with a post for auditions, “I knew I was going to have to do it. … If I didn’t at least go through that process, then I would never be able to look myself in the mirror again.
“This was so exactly in my wheelhouse of everything that I wanted to do, for so long.” And if there was ever a time to leap, it was then. He landed it. Built-up time off at his day job made a month off possible for the tour block. Two days’ rehearsal in Seattle, and they were off to Paris for Jazz à la Viilette.
“The Paris show — that one night, Sept. 6, 2019, changed my life,” Burkes says. “It got the monkey off my back. …I got to play Hammond organ soul-jazz at the absolute highest level — in Europe, in Paris,” before a crowd of avid listeners who later pegged him for autographs and music chat.
Ultimately, Burkes decided the drummer slot with the constantly touring, Seattle-based trio was unsustainable, for reasons both personal and professional. He had to let the opportunity go, though longing lingers for the combo’s October leg, which took them back to Europe. Burkes is back home in Jackson, at his day job as web content specialist with Baptist Memorial Health Care, with Vamps gigs on the calendar.
He logged some great music memories — such as playing a Curtis Mayfield tribute at the Fender Guitar headquarters in Hollywood, and a gig at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown, California (where Beatles fan Burkes was tickled to play on the same stage Paul McCartney had).
But, that Paris show — “I got out of it, in that one night, what I set out as a kid to do,” he says. And right now, that feels like enough.
