The Roger Bartlett Interview is featured on The Paul Leslie Hour.
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If I had a dollar to wager, I’d say that you’re here, tuned into The Paul Leslie Hour!
We’ve got an interview with Roger Bartlett that originally went out on the radio. It’s been tucked since 2007, but now it’s a pleasure to bring this to you.
You’re about to hear your host Paul’s interview with songwriter and guitarist Roger Bartlett. Roger Bartlett is a solo artist and was also the front man for the band Hell’s Kitchen.
Oh, Roger was also the very first ever member of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band. Interesting, isn’t it?
Let’s have a little history lesson. Back in the beginning, Jimmy Buffett typically performed solo, then would sometimes have harmonicist Greg “Fingers” Taylor informally sit in.
Then in 1974, Buffett started his first official Coral Reefer Band…with just one other musician. Accompanying Buffett was Roger Bartlett on guitar. The next year, Buffett added Harry Dailey on bass, Philip Fajardo on drums, and Fingers Taylor on harmonica and keyboards. Since he was the first band member, Roger Bartlett is known as the original guitarist of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.
We hope you enjoy this in-depth interview with Roger Bartlett. In addition to talking about the old days of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, he talked about his life in Manhattan. Roger talked about his songs, which have appeared in some unusual places, including the movie “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
Roger Barlett will tell you about his childhood in Louisiana, as the son of Ray Bartlett, famed radio host of the show “Groovey Boy, The Boogie Master.”
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The Official Transcript
Roger Bartlett: [2:44] I live in Manhattan.
Paul Leslie: Oh, okay. Do you like it there?
Yeah, I love Manhattan.
You know, before I moved to Vegas, I lived in Vegas for a little over a year, but I lived in Manhattan, you know, forever before that. So, you know, even though I was born in Louisiana and grew up in Arkansas and Texas, I moved here a a long time ago, and you know, they call it the capital of the world. You know, within three miles of my house, or within three blocks of my house, you can get anything you can think of, and some things you never imagined.
That sounds pretty tempting. So you were born in Shreveport, Louisiana.
I was, yeah.
Growing up in Louisiana, did you get interested in the Louisiana styles of music?
Well, you know, I was born in Louisiana. My father was a disc jockey at the time.
He was on a radio station, KWK 8, and he had a radio show called “Groovey Boy, the Boogie Master.”
[4:04] And he was also the announcer for the Louisiana Hayride, which at that time was a competitor with the Grand Ole Opry.
[4:15] So I sort of had the dual influence, or the triple influence of the Cajun stuff that was going all around me, the blues stuff that my dad played on the radio, and the country stuff that, you know, filtered in through the hayride.
[4:32] You know, the people that were appearing on the hayride at that time were like Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, Johnny Horton, Jim Reeves, Johnny and Jack, and, you know, so, and Elvis came on later, back before he met Colonel Tom when he was just the King of the Hillbillies.
And went out to have raw oysters with my dad when I was a kid, with me and him and Roy Orbison and Stonewall Jackson.
So it was a fertile ground to develop musically, yeah, definitely.
So growing up, what kind of music was your personal favorite?
Well, I’ve always had a problem that my tastes are so eclectic.
I like every kind of thing that’s good.
[5:33] I like the blues, I like the funk, I like the jazz, I like the country, I like the bluegrass, I like the rock, I like some of the metal, I like some of the electronica, anything that’s really good, I’m sort of drawn to.
It’s great for me in that I don’t get bored with one kind of thing, but it’s bad for me me and that’s you know it’s hard seems hard for me to stay within the lines of a style.
So how did you make the leap from being a music fan to being a musician?
Oh my Uncle Tommy when I was I guess about 10 or 11 had a guitar school. He and his wife, his wife taught the accordion and he taught guitar, and so he taught me, “Out in the West Texas town of El Paso,” “Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes,” and “Hang Down your Head Tom Dooley.”
And, you know, I played that for a while, and then I sort of let up, you know, I played for about a year, and then I didn’t play that much again until I was about 14, you know, when the Beatle thing started happening. And then I picked the guitar back up and.
[7:02] We got a garage band going. Our first band was called The Legends.
And we were legends, at least in our own mind.
[7:17] So how did you end up being a Coral Reefer?
Well I lived in Nashville four different times and one of the times I lived in Nashville I was working with two guys Mike Lynn and George Worthington and we had an acoustic trio called the Outlaw Brothers and we happened to open for Jimmy Buffett at a
[7:44] place called The Exit Inn there in Nashville, which with no names because the front door was far closed and you came in through the back. Then, I don’t know, a year later or a year and a half or something like that, I’d gone to Austin, Texas with a new partner, a guy named Bill Talerty, and we played down in Austin for a while and then, you know, we sort of had different musical directions and we split up as a group but I was playing bass and mandolin for him at a club called Castle Street that a guy named Doug Moyes ran and Jimmy happened to be the headliner and Bill was opening for him and you know I was I just started sitting in with Jimmy on the gig and he liked it that I could just play along without having to rehearse or anything and just sing harmonies, you know, and at that time he was having some success with “Come Monday.”
So he was traveling alone and doing the road by yourself is pretty lonesome endeavor. So, you know, he hired me out of Austin. I went from, you know, hanging out in Austin to the next thing I know we were playing at the Troubadour opening for a Hoyt Aston, the guy who wrote, “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog,” amongst other things.
[9:13] When the band was first coming together, you mentioned in the beginning it was just you and Jimmy Buffett, and a lot of people I hear they say that Greg “Fingers” Taylor was the original Coral Reefer, but it was actually you.
Well, you know, Fender did go out and play a few gigs with him. He was actually at that time, he was with Larry Raspberry and the High Steppers.
So in that respect, you know, he was out on the road with Jimmy before I was, but only for a gig here and a gig there. I was the original Coral Reefer in that I was the first guy to go out on on a regular basis with him on the road.
[9:55] One of the songs you wrote, I was listening to, “Fool for a Blonde,” and that was in the classic movie “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
How did you get the inspiration for that song?
[10:15] Well, you know, I have a long history of blondes, and so that contributed some, but me and my friend, Bill Cowery, when we got down, we used to go to a sidewalk cafe, right in Austin has a University of Texas there.
And there was a sidewalk cafe called Les Amis, and, you know, we would sit out there and, drink coffee and watch the college girls walk by and there used to be this one waitress at Les Amis, her name was Karen Ford I believe, who was just the babe of babes and although she was not a blonde, you know, she ended up with Bill for a while, but there seems to be a surplus of blondes in Texas, I I don’t know why, but I’m for it.
I’ve noticed a lot of the songs you wrote for “City Street” seem to be influenced by women.
[11:27] It seemed like a lot of songs, which is a good thing, I think.
Well, I mean, you know, how many songwriters could you say that about?
Yeah, but, I mean, I thought that too, but like listening to your music, it seems, uh, it seems especially prevalent. But they’re good, they’re great songs.
I like this song, uh, “I Don’t Care.” It reminds me a lot of, a lot of people I know.
Oh, I remember the girl I wrote that about.
[12:03] Unfortunately, he already had a boyfriend, you know, but there was many times that I didn’t let that stand in my way.
As I got a little older, you know, I began to realize the error of my ways.
When, after the first year that you and Jimmy Buffett toured, when it was just you and he, The next year, he picked up some more people. He had, or maybe it was the year after that when he picked up the drummer, Philip Fajardo, and Harry Dailey on bass, and of course, Fingers Taylor on harmonica. I was wondering, how did that come about, the putting, how did he find these other guys?
Well, that’s an interesting story. Actually, Philip was a friend of mine from Austin.
[12:58] And he’d been playing around Austin, So I grabbed him, and at that time, Jimmy was managed by a guy named Don Light.
And Don Light had another artist named Gove Scrivenor, G-O-V-E. And Gove knew Harry, so that’s where Harry came from, and you know, fingers had been around off and on for the whole time, so that’s where he popped us from.
I heard Fingers Taylor say that throughout all the incarnations of the Coral Reefer Band, he told me, he said, the best ever lineup was Roger Bartlett, Harry Dailey, Phillip Fajardo, and himself.
[13:46] Well, that’s very flattering of him to say so, you know, and, you know, I’ll write that, down so I can bring it out whenever I hear him talking about it.
But I tell you, Jimmy’s band now is excellent.
His guitar player Peter Mayer, is just amazing. And Roger Guth is an excellent drummer, and Jim Mayer is an excellent bass player, and Mike Utley, you know, what more could you ask for than Mike Utley?
I mean, he plays great piano, he’s a producer, he’s a writer.
You know, actually, Utley did come in with us off and on back in those days.
He was working for Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge when they were off the road and he was available.
So, we brought him out on the road with us, too.
I wondered if maybe what he meant was, the band in that day, you know, the band, I got to agree, it’s a really tight band right now, but the band, well at least the old recordings I’ve heard, it was more of a relaxed kind of sound, and more of a, it sounded more like a, I don’t know how to put it in words exactly, more like a rock band, you know, like kind of more. [15:11] I don’t know. I can’t put it into words.
Well, I mean, we were a little more raw, a little edgier.
Raw, that’s the word. Yeah.
Yeah, there was more ragged edges to what we did.
And, you know, part of that was because we were partying like it was 1999.
Are all the stories that I’ve heard through about, you know?
Probably.
I guess with a band name like the Coral Reefers, what can you expect?
Yeah, really. I mean, you know, back in those days, we had a t-shirt that we called the D&O Awards.
It was the Drunk and Outrageous Award, and you know, if you threw up, it was an automatic win.
[16:02] And, you know, so the D&O Award sort of traveled between the different members of the band.
Whoever got the drunkest and said the most outrageous stuff, you know, got the t-shirt.
And, you know, it was quite a competition because, you know, we did explore the limits of artificial inspiration.
You called in to the show a while back and you said thank you to Jimmy Buffett for putting, you and Roxy in the same room, but that you were sorry that you didn’t make the most of it.
I was just wondering, because this has been in my mind for a while, who was Roxy?
[16:49] Jane Buffett had a friend back in those days named Roxy Rogers who was just a, total babe and you know back in those days you know there might have been the budgets might have been a little thin now and then and you know so we’d save on rooms, they stuck me and her in a room together. Of course, in my state of, inebriation, you know, I mean, you reflected about the subject of many of my songs. Well, you know, when we were in a room together, my initial thought was, “Oh boy.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t her thought as well.
[17:43] So, you know, it’s like going into a donut shop and, you know, having the counter locked back there.
I noticed there’s one of your songs, there was one that you cut both on the Hell’s Kitchen, album, but you also did on the Live at the Windjammer album, which was a reunion of the first Coral Reefer Band, and the song is called “Going Down to New Orleans.”
And I take it that that’s a city that you can appreciate.
I do love New Orleans. I haven’t been down there since Katrina.
But actually that song came from a friend of mine, Ze’ev Gilad, who’s an Israeli filmmaker, did a movie called “Dog Run.”
[18:36] Has a big segment that occurs in New Orleans. And he used a bunch of music that he didn’t license.
And then when he finally got a distributor, he went in to license the music, and the costs were just prohibitive.
So he had to get all new music. So for the New Orleans segment, he had a Professor Longhair song in there about Mardi Gras.
And he wanted me to write something like that.
So that’s where that song came from. And it was in the movie “Dog Run,” which was a small, independent film that it played, I think, the major markets.
It played New York, LA. It played Europe. I get royalties from Belgium, and France, and Spain, Italy.
[19:32] You know, I do love New Orleans, though.
I imagine you like the culinary offerings that New Orleans provides.
Indubitably.
The song, “Give Me Something to Eat.”
Oh, yeah. Well, that was actually written by a friend of mine named Chris Carter, who, you know, ironically enough, is a little skinny guy.
You know, it’s always the skinny guys who go in there and can eat mounds and mounds of stuff.
When, you know, all I have to do is go by the place that serves beignets and, you know, I just sniff in there and I gain five pounds.
[20:14] You know, so, uh, but, but, uh, “Give Me Something to Eat” was a great song.
I love that song. That’s why I did it.
I still do it.
One of the songs you wrote, “Dallas,” was covered by Jimmy Buffett, and I was wondering how you got the inspiration to do that song?
[20:33] Well, at that time I lived in Dallas, and I was with a band called Bacchus, you know, the name of the Greek partying guide.
And as the band began to crumble, the girl singer in the band began to have psychotic episodes or schizophrenic-esque episodes, and, you know, we were playing Las Vegas-style clubs, and at that time I was a stoned hippie boy, and they had me wearing a short-haired Wig, you know. I will have to say, though, we did get to open for some great people.
We got to open for Count Basey, and we opened for Bill Haley and the Comets, and we opened for Jackie Wilson, you know, who had, uh, “Your Love Has Lifted Me Higher.” So, I mean, we had some great gigs, but the whole thing just started falling apart, and, uh, you know.
[21:39] That’s promo man part of the bridge there. But you know, looking back on that time, I might have been a little hard on Dallas itself, and it was just really the circumstances that I was experiencing at times.
I wanted to know, back in the early days of the Coral Reefer Band, was there any fond memory that still kind of steeps in your mind?
[22:14] Some sentimental kind of memory about the Coral Reefer Band?
Um, you know, the Coral Reefer Band was not exactly a sentimental endeavor.
It was more like party time, you know?
I mean, it was great times. We had some really terrific times.
You know, I can’t tell you, you know, to have those experiences, you know, you know, was unique and I cherish them, you know, and I try not to go over them too often because you want to look ahead, but, you know, I will have to say the one thing about being in the Coral Reefer Band, not very sentimental, but, you know, one of the greatest things about working for Jimmy Buffett, is that he is such a reader, and he used to pack me books that he read from different authors, and, you know, that was an exceptional thing. I love that. He introduced me to a lot of great authors.
[23:23] The soundtrack for the movie “Rancho Deluxe” has a song that you sing on, Left Me With A Nail to Drive.
Yeah.
And I was wondering, weren’t you in that movie?
No.
No?
I wasn’t. They wouldn’t bring for my airfare to come up there and be in there. Oh, I see.
So the band consisted of, I think Fingers made it up there for it, but it was like, I don’t know if even Fingers, I think maybe the actor Warren Oates was quite the harmonica player.
I can’t remember who the band was, but I remember at the time it wouldn’t spring from my airfare, so it was not in the budget.
So how did you come to do the vocals on the song?
Well, you know, Jimmy was working on songs for the movie and, you know, as always in, the music business, there was a big deadline, so, you know, that song just kind of got whipped out and then when we went into the studio, I think he’d been singing for a while, and, he said, hey, do you want to sing this one?
And I said, sure, no problem.
So that’s how I have this sort of serendipitous.
[24:50] When you’re not doing the music, either in performing or recording, what kind of stuff do you usually do with your spare time, if there is any?
You know, I play the guitar. You know, I just sit around with the guitar in my lap while I watch TV, I walk around the house with the guitar, strung across my back and when I go into the bathroom I take the guitar with me.
[25:19] So it’s just like, you know, I am a reader. I love to read, you know, living in New York City, I love architecture, I do go to museums and stuff, you know, and I love to go out and see live music.
I mean, especially now, you know, you can see the last of live music, you know, because it’s, If things keep going the way it’s going, it’s going to disappear.
What makes you say that?
Well, clubs are disappearing.
You know, used to whenever there was a dance club, they always had a band.
Now when you go to a dance club, they never have a band.
You know, there used to be middle class music and, you know, steady gigs all around.
You know, you could work at a club and you could work there six nights a week, you know.
You know, and you could work there for, you know, seven months or 10 months or, you know, there’s no gigs like that anymore.
There used to be a lot more clubs with live music. Now they all have recorded music or DJs.
[26:28] And it makes you kind of wonder if it’s like all the technology, everything is so, everything is so electronic now, everything is so instant, and it’s almost like we’re losing something in the process.
Well, you know…
We’re losing the rawness, like we’ve mentioned.
Yeah, we do lose the rawness. You know, everything is very slick.
You know, and people get used to sitting around in their media cave there and, you know, I guess they feel like, you know, like, you know, why can’t I go hear somebody sing, you know, Justin Timberlake songs when I can just put on a CD and hear Justin Timberlake or watch a video or…
But at some point, you know, they’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg because, you know, the world is emerging and, you know, the United States is not going to be preeminent, in science or art or, you know, culture or whatever, you know, if, you know, they decide that mediocrity is good enough, you know?
You know, we’re in the age of good enough.
[27:42] When you had, after you’d been playing with with Jimmy Buffett for a couple years, how did it come that you left the band?
Well, you know, at that time, looking back on it, you know, there was a steady stream of people following us around with names like Captain Easy, you know, and Captain Easy had a shrimp boat and, he’d go out for a few days and he’d come back but he never seemed to catch any shrimp.
[28:18] But he still seemed to drive a Mercedes and have plenty of money so he also had some other goodies along with him and as well as other people and you know I, I began to get to the point of where, you know, my cheek was twitching and my finger was twitching and, you know, I was getting a little paranoid and I think something in my body said, you know, something in my subconscious said, it’s time to jump this ship.
You know, so at the time I was, you know, intent on going to do my own music but I think really way down, deep down. It was really because I was getting over-served in the Artificial Inspiration Department.
I see. And what happened after you left the band? What did you do next?
Well, I moved to New York City and, you know, I started playing with my own band around New York City and I picked up a manager. I got on a compilation album out of WMMR Philadelphia and I got some more songs and some other movies and.
[29:36] I began to, you know, as a songwriter back in those days, you know, to do a song demo you had to hire a band, you know, you had to go into the studio and so, you know, one song would easily cost you, you know, a thousand dollars to do with studio time and music and so as I, you know, spent, you know, I don’t know, eight or ten thousand dollars a year working on song demos, you know, I began to engineer myself. So I began to do some engineering in the studio and got a job in the studio as an engineer and began to produce some other people and you know do different stuff. I had a TV show here for a while on cable TV called “Midnight in Manhattan” and I was The Nightcrawler and got in a couple other movies you know it’s that sort of stuff you know, did sideman work for other people.
[30:41] A few years ago, you did a live CD, actually it was kind of like a collaborative effort.
You had, there was Jay Spell on it, Philip Fajardo, the late Harry Dailey, Fingers Taylor, Deborah McColl, Keith Sykes, live at the Windjammer.
Tell me how that came to be.
Well, Bob Robinson of that Parrot Head Club down there in South Carolina got us all together, at the Windjammer Club there in the Isle of Palms, on the Isle of Palms, which is just outside of Charleston, South Carolina.
And, you know, we all showed up and the club owner happened to have a Mac that was hooked, up with 24 tracks of digital audio.
[31:42] So you know, I talked to him before the thing to see about recording the thing and, you, know, I, you know, tried to send out CDs to everybody of everybody else’s songs so everybody had a good idea of what was going on when they got there and, you know, I hadn’t seen, you know some of those people. I hadn’t seen Jay Spell in a million years. I hadn’t seen Deborah McColl in a million years, and hadn’t seen Keith Skykes in a long time.
I’d seen Harry several times down in D.C., you know, saw Fingers occasionally, although I think that was…
No, it wasn’t… Fingers came into New York a couple of times. I met him and his then-wife and their two, little boys, and so we had like very minimal rehearsal time.
Bob was in a band, but it was kind of an acoustic band, and he didn’t realize we actually needed amplifiers for our guitars. We thought we were just going to play through the PA, so, we were scrambling at last minute trying to come up with amplifiers and come up with equipment here and equipment there and you know, the fact that we got on stage and did so well.
[33:02] was just nothing short of a miracle.
There’s a lot of, excuse me, there’s a lot of really, a really great cut on that and it really surprised me that it wasn’t a thought out, I figured it was probably planned and all that.
Well not really that planned, you know I sent out CDs to everybody, but Jay got the CD and there was nobody around to tell him what it was. You know Jay’s blind and so he didn’t listen to the CDs and he got there sort of at the last minute, he’d done a gig, the night before and I don’t think he really listened to the CDs but, Harry did, Harry listened to the CDs and Phillip listened to the CDs so you know there was a basic rhythm section I think was cool with the tunes and you know it came up pretty well.
You wrote a song kind of in memorial to Harry Dailey. “Heaven’s Band.”
Right.
Could you tell us a little bit about Harry Dailey?
Well, Harry was a great guy. Harry was a gentle guy. He had a good heart. You know, he was a good bass player.
He was a good singer, he was a loyal friend, you know, uh…
[34:26] In the early days of the Coral Reefer Band, you know, we all piled around and had a great time, and the camaraderie between us was really unusual, and it was nice. And, you know, after Harry left the band, Harry stayed on beyond when I did, beyond when I left. And, you know, I don’t know, you know, there was such a large amount of artificial inspiration going around, you know, that by the time he left, he’d done some irreparable damage to his body. You know, he, the doctor told him, you know, some of that partying had caused his hip sockets to dry up, and and you know in his 40s he had hip replacements and you know during that time you know.
[35:27] You know it’s just bad for everybody you know and you know you can see by the fact that, that’s after he left I mean also during that time he got hepatitis c I think which was like, like, you know, caused him, you know, terrible pain and just debilitated him, you know, and due to the fact that, you know, he had so many medical problems, I mean, that was, you, one of the causes of his untimely death.
[36:04] So after all these years, do you, have you seen Jimmy Buffett lately or do you ever see him?
I do see him occasionally. I did see him in Las Vegas. I moved out to Las Vegas for about a year and when I first got there about a year ago, October, they came through and played two weekends in Vegas.
And, you know, I was just barely in Vegas, and Jimmy invited me up on stage to sit in on Margaritaville and said, you know, ladies and gentlemen, the original Coral Reefer!
Here I want to introduce him to Las Vegas! And you know, people went, yay!
You know, despite the fact that everybody there was from out of town.
It was very nice, and I enjoyed it going backstage, talking to him for a while.
It’s hard to talk to people backstage because they’re getting ready to go up and play.
I know personally when I’m playing a gig somewhere, I’m trying to focus in on the gig.
[37:18] Shooting the breeze backstage is really not my priority, but he did take out time to talk to me. It was really nice.
Then this last year, they came back and played the MGM Grand again.
I got down there to see them both weekends and hung out a little with Utley and Peter Mayer and, and Robert Greenidge and Jim Mayer and
[37:48] You know backstage a little bit and they had some uh Had some special guests in there. They had Mickey Hart from the Grateful Dead and, And um have you heard this new album of his “Take the Weather With You”?
Yeah, Yeah.
That’s that’s an excellent album. I think I I really like that album. Yeah, I’d have to agree uh, and uh, I can’t think of the name of the band, the boy band, those three guys from England who…
Gomez?
Huh?
Gomez?
I guess. Um, they were there and they sat in too, so… So, those were the last times that I saw Jimmy Buffett.
[38:32] Do you have any, uh, any plans to come out with another album, or…?
I am working on a CD, right, as we speak.
I just put down some new track. I’ve got I think about five songs recorded and I’m working on a sixth song right now. As soon as I get 10 or 12, I’m gonna pop that record out.
All right. Imagine there’ll be a couple songs about women.
Oh yes! (Laughs)
So when you look back on your life, what would you say is the best thing, has been the best thing about being Roger Bartlett?
My family. You know I have the greatest family you could ever have you know they’ve always been there for me and you.
[39:24] Know they’ve always been supportive you know I look around at other people’s families and see them trying to sabotage each other and and you know ragging on each other and, you know, I can’t say that my family’s perfect, but, you know, when, it’s time for them to be there for me, there they are.
So my last question, since this program goes out all over the world, what would you, Roger Bartlett, like to say to the world?
[39:54] Come see me play! Buy my CD! Go to CDBaby.com. Look for Roger Bartlett.
All right. Well, Mr. Bartlett…
Hey, go to RogerBartlett.com too.
Well, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and I thank you for giving us the time.
Oh, nice talking to you, Paul.
It was my pleasure.
