The Love Dogs
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Aug. 20, 1999) -- Rock 'n' roll music wasn't always around, but neither did it simply spring out of nowhere. There was a vibrant style of music, albeit mostly underground or limited to a black audience, out of which it grew, and it is to this style of "pre-rock" that the Love Dogs pay tribute.

"I always think of the stuff that we're influenced by as somewhere in between Count Basie and Little Richard," said Ed Duato Scheer, top dog of the Boston-based outfit, in a recent phone interview.

"It's stuff coming out of the Forties, with still sort of the big-band sound, but with a smaller group, a small energetic sound, and then leading up to the real rock 'n' roll stuff of Little Richard and Chuck Berry."

Scheer leads his seven-member pack into the Center Theatre on Kemble Street in Lenox on Friday, Aug. 27, at 8 pm.

Founded in 1994, the Love Dogs play their own, horn-heavy style of pre-rock rhythm and blues, mixing original tunes - many written by Scheer in classic, double-entendre style of R&B - in with standard and obscure "race records" by the likes of Ray Charles, Big Joe Turner and Chuck Willis. Their two albums, "I'm Yo Dog" and last year's "Heavy Petting," are both on Tone-Cool Records.

"This was stuff from the Fifties that was rock 'n' roll before they called it 'rock 'n' roll,'" said Scheer, on the morning after the group returned from its first trip to Europe, where the Love Dogs performed in clubs and festivals in Norway. "Rhythm and blues records that were played on jukeboxes all across the country, the stuff that led up to rock 'n' roll.

"Louis Jordan would be on the early end of that, people like Red Prysock, Tiny Grimes, Ray Charles. Stuff that was called `race music' before it was called `rhythm and blues,' heard mostly on black radio stations. Then finally people like Alan Freed and some of the other white DJs picked up on it and started playing it for the white kids, and they started digging it and that's when it started being called rock 'n' roll."

Scheer grew up hearing a lot of this music through his father, who was a big fan of Nat King Cole, Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong. Then when he was in his late 20s, he played drums for Johnny Adams, a great New Orleans blues singer, from whom he learned a lot about the more obscure music of the 1950s.

Scheer finds a purity in this era of music that was compromised or lost altogether as soon as it became rock 'n' roll. "Generally, the guys who made this stuff never made a lot of money," he said. "It wasn't about that. It was about making good music. There's a raw energy to it. In a way, it was rock 'n' roll before rock 'n' roll became a commodity. It was just plain-old, good-rockin' music, and that resonates with people. It's just good, crazy, energetic music - pure, simple, unpretentious."

In addition to Scheer, the group's lead vocalist and percussionist, the band includes pianist/vocalist Alizon Lissance, saxophonist Myanna, saxophonist Gordon Beadle, saxophonist Glenn Shambroom, bassist/vocalist Jesse Williams and drummer/vocalist Steve Brown.

Yes, that's three saxophonists and half a guitarist.

Scheer explains, "When we formed the band, we purposely said let's not have this be a guitar band - the world does not need another guitar band. There are so many great blues guitarists out there - I played with a lot of them. We said let's have this be about the horn and the rhythm and the singing. Those were the three things we wanted to feature.

"Fortunately, we have a great piano player who does a great job comping. I think most people don't even notice that we don't have a guitar, although Glenn, who plays saxopohone, does also play guitar on a few numbers, so have the option of having him play some guitar without having guitar all night."

The Love Dogs have found themselves swept up in the neo-swing craze of the last year in the wake of success by the likes of the Brian Setzer Orchestra, Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. But Scheer goes to great lengths to distinguish what his band does from the neo-swing trend.

"I think most of those band are doing music that's a little bit older and campier than what we do," he said. "It's been a double-edged sword. When we started playing in 1994, we hadn't any idea that there was even a swing scene out there. We were just playing rhythm and blues the way we wanted to play."

The group began getting calls to play swing gigs, and the difference between what they were doing and what the neo-swing bands do was pretty much lost on the swing crowd.

"The whole thing sort of exploded last year on the radio," said Scheer. "It really at that point sort of ended up not being good for us. When our record 'Heavy Petting' came out last September, we didn't get as much airplay as we might have if we weren't grouped in with that whole scene….I think a lot of radio stations said, 'Oh yeah, another swing band, we're really trying to get away from the swing thing.' So we got hurt by the backlash.

"In the end, we just got to do what we do, play the music we love and not worry about it. There's always going to be scenes. The most important thing to us is that we're being true to our music."

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[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Aug. 27, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]