Skip Heller’s path to his music career resembles a film.
He worked as a stable boy at a carnival when he came across the “worst-ever Beatles tribute band playing at the amusement park entrance to the midway.”
At the gig, “George Harrison” punched out “Paul McCartney,” leaving the band without a guitarist. Until they discovered Heller, shoveling horse shit in a stable.
“They didn’t audition me,” said Heller, a Philadelphia native. “I got the gig because I had a Gretch guitar. The ‘George’ guy was kind of large, so they put his clothes on me and pinned it in the back. They told me not to let anyone see my back.
“The band was so terrible that I thought, ‘At least the horses don’t know they smell bad.’”
Dubbed a “creative genius,” Heller has carved out a career in music. His work serves as a history lesson, drawing influences from punk, reggae, and, intriguingly, the ambiguous doo-wop records of Detroit.
The Downtown LA resident is bringing Skip Heller’s Voodoo 5 feat. Lena Marie Cardinale: Midcentury Tiki, Exotica & More show to The Century Room on Saturday, Feb. 1. “Voodoo 5” is a mélange of exotic vocals, steel guitars, mallet percussion and Latin American rhythms.
“The audience there is better than walking in the door to anyplace else,” he said about The Century Room.
“What Arthur (Vint) has managed to accomplish there is nothing short of remarkable. I live in a town with a huge reputation for jazz and we don’t have anything close to The Century Room.”
To say Heller’s career has been rich is an understatement.
After releasing the 1999 album “Couch, Los Angeles,” Heller began writing for TV shows like “The Flintstones: On the Rocks” and “Dexter’s Laboratory.”
He hearkened back to his Philly jazz roots with the organ-based quartet album “Homegoing,” followed by an all-standards organ trio album, “Out of Time!” “Bear Flag” pulled from his influences, such as Curtis Mayfield and Frank Zappa.
Further expanding his catalog, he focused on world music for the 2006 album “Mean Things Happening in This Land.” Heller is set to release a new album in February.
“One of the hidden influences in my compositions is Stevie Wonder,” he said. “When I have to dig myself out of a ditch, I’ve come to a point in the composition when I don’t know what to do, I think, ‘What would Stevie Wonder do?’”
Heller never imagined he would play the electric guitar since he initially started on the acoustic. The first songs he learned were by Bob Dylan and The Beatles.
Now, his and the Voodoo 5’s music carries Heller’s love of “exotica.” Exotica was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s, and it was especially popular among those who came of age during World War II. Si Waronker, Liberty Records co-founder and board chairman, coined the term after the 1957 Martin Denny album Exotica.
Exotica is described as tropical ersatz, the non-native, pseudo-experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean, and tribal Africa.
Heller said he infuses jazz into exotica music, but “at the same time, we’re not recreating 1959.”
“I love the idea of being tied to tradition,” he added. “Frankly, that’s a Jewish thing and a historian thing. I don’t want to go out there dressed like somebody else. There’s a lot of cosplay that goes along with (tribute acts).
“I’m a musician. My wardrobe is largely five black suits, as black suits can go anywhere — the Modern Jazz Quartet or George Jones or the Blues Brothers. I take a lot of delight in people who want to create that sound themselves. I don’t think 1959 is where the interesting world ended.”
Skip Heller’s Voodoo 5 with Lena Marie Cardinale: Midcentury Tiki, Exotica & More
WHEN: 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1
WHERE: The Century Room, 311 E. Congress Street, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $20; 21 and older
INFO: hotelcongress.com
