Legendary Session Keyboardist Don Randi Revisits The Hits, & The Stories Behind Them, At Cafe 9

So one day, I’m told about a young Motown act coming into the studio. I get there, and it’s a group called the Jackson Five. And a young man by the name of Michael comes and sits next to me at the piano and says, ​‘Mr. Randi, could you show me what you just played?’ And this is what I played…

As keyboardist Don Randi told that story, the band, which had been vamping alongside, swung into the opening bars of the Jackson Five’s hit single, ​“ABC.” Randi plunked the familiar chords, as he did over 50 years ago on the original recording.

Randi, who is now 88, shared dozens of anecdotes like these — tales from his recording studio days, working alongside some of music’s biggest names — during a performance at Cafe Nine on Sunday afternoon.

Randi is considered one the most recorded pianists of the 1960s, having played on over 3,000 tracks with artists such as the Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, The Ronettes, Neil Diamond, Sonny & Cher, Michael Jackson, and Nancy Sinatra. Randi is best known for his role in the Wrecking Crew, which was a loose collective of LA musicians employed for studio sessions in the ​’60s and ​’70s.

The performance on Sunday was the conclusion of a brief weekend tour, which included shows at The Bitter End in Manhattan and at 41 Bridge Street in Collinsville, Conn. The gigs featured familiar tracks from Randi’s prolific body of work with the help of a band called Quest and special guest vocalists.

Following the show, Randi signed copies of his 2015 memoir, You’ve Heard These Hands: From the Wall of Sound to the Wrecking Crew and Other Incredible Stories, which details ​“the in-studio, behind-the-scenes, and on-tour tales from the man whose hands we’ve heard playing on our favorite hit tunes.”

Before bringing out the vocalists Sunday, Randi and the band performed a number of instrumental tracks and mashups. Most notably, the band opened with a variation of ​“Friday the 13th” by Thelonious Monk that blended into Nirvana’s ​“Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Connecticut’s own John DePatie jammed on the guitar, Tom Brechtlein kept the beat on the drums, and Chris Roy held down the bass line for themes of popular television shows, like Game of Thrones and M*A*S*H*. Audience members nodded their head in time and applauded midway through songs as the musicians cycled through solos. After the instrumental portion concluded, the group transitioned to songs on which Don Randi originally performed.

Now this next one, we thought would take only a day or two to record. It ended up taking three months to do this song. It’s probably one of the greatest songs ever written by the Beach Boys. This is our version of ​“Good Vibrations.”

Four singers took to the mics to sing in four-part harmony to the beachy 1966 classic. Christine Ohlman, who’s known as ​“The Beehive Queen” for her towering blonde hairdo, entranced the crowd with soulful vocals that have been featured in Saturday Night Live, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and in performances alongside Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson, and Bonnie Raitt.

Ohlman performed ​“He’s a Rebel” alongside Leah Randi, Don’s adult daughter, who played bass and and backup for three-time Grammy award winner, Pink. They transitioned into ​“Spanish Harlem,” by Ben E. King, which was performed on Sunday by recent college graduate Daniel Mizrahi. This tour was the first time Mizrahi, who is from Fairfield, performed with the band; he was flattered to know that Don Randi said to ​“keep an eye on him, he’s going places.”

Don Randi’s son Justin brought the audience, and his wife, to tears with a heart-wrenching rendition of ​“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” by Glen Campbell. Then he shared his father’s story of an encounter with Elvis Presley:

One of the days my father was in the studio, and he was doing a movie track with Elvis Presley. He’s looking over, and he’s standing right there, and they’re like, ​“We need a B side to this album.” They didn’t have a B side; there was no other song. So they went in, and they started making up a song, and Mac Davis went into the hallway, wrote some lyrics down, and they recorded this thing. And then Elvis walked in a just sang it, didn’t know the song, he just did. And this is the song that they did by mistake…

The band revved into a rock groove, and Justin Randi began to sing ​“A Little Less Conversation.” Audience members rose to their feet to dance to the Elvis hit. They stayed standing for other classics like Nancy Sinatra’s ​“These Boots are Made for Walkin,” ​“Help Me Rhonda” by the Beach Boys, ​“I Got You Babe,” by Sonny and Cher, and ​“Da Doo Ron Ron” by the Crystals.

Introducing ​“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin” by the Righteous Brothers, Don Randi said that they knew it was going to be a number one hit as soon as they wrote it. 

Justin Randi told the story of when his father wrote ​“Cracklin’ Rosie” with Neil Diamond:

They were in the studio, they’ve got the Wrecking Crew in there, and it’s just not working out. Hal Blaine says, ​“Neil, just go with Don to your house and sit down and figure this out.” And so they did, and they came back, and this is the enormous hit song they did.

Audience members mouthed along to the words between sips of draft beer. One patron in particular, Fran Fried, was excited to see that Randi was at last getting recognition for the breadth of hits he performed on.

Fried, a former music journalist who now hosts a radio show on Cygnus Radio, said that music industry insiders were aware of Randi’s talent at the time of his career, but the public has only begun to appreciate the work of the Wrecking Crew following a 2008 documentary that shed light on the group.

Randi said his love of music keeps him going as he approaches 90. He is grateful that he is now playing alongside his children, who he said he missed throughout their childhood because of his demanding career.