Had a great time at the Toto/Michael McDonald show last night and got a chance to reconnect with my cousin, David Paich who plays keyboards for Toto after the show and is a truly great guy. The wacky part about this is that I sang Davids wedding back in the 80s when we first met and we went years without knowing we were cousins. And our dads had worked together and were friends without ever knowing their grandmothers were sisters! Marty Paich was one of the great arrangers, composers, conductors pianists of all time and worked with people like Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé, Ray Charles, Johnny Rivers, Aretha Franklin, Linda Ronstadt, Al Hirt, Jack Jones, Neil Diamond, Stan Getz, Sammy Davis Jr, Michael Jackson and Art Pepper. And he and Pop both worked with Stan Kenton besides collaborating on the music on True Confessions. Somehow the subject of family never seemed to come up enough that they connected the dots until I made contact with our other cousins, the Arnerichs a couple of years ago through Facebook. Lots of friends in common too and I played with Steve Lukather (Toto guitarist) in high school and their lead singer, Joseph Williams dad (John Williams) collaborated with Pop on a number of film scores and Josephs uncle, Jerry Williams was my first drum teacher. While were waiting to go backstage, I start talking with Steve Lukathers cousin, Mary Ellen who apparently sang with Pop at St. Charles when she was a kid! Sometimes the world is REALLY small and nicely so! Anyway, I thought some of you might get a kick out of this story.....
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 16:13:00 +0000
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