If he were a guitarist he’d be as well-known as Eric Clapton, but Terry Hanck is a sax player. His latest album, Grease to Gravy, contains seven originals and five covers that range from blues and R&B to jumps, strolls, and slow dance numbers. Inspired by the work of Fats Domino, Ray Charles, B. B. King, and King Curtis, he’s spent a large portion of his career working with Elvin Bishop.
One critic summed him up by saying he’s the nexus of classic New Orleans R&B, Chicago blues and soul, West Coast honk, and Memphis rock and roll. He can be heard on Elvin’s 1975 hit “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” and he’s responsible for bringing a then 20-year-old Kid Andersen from Holland to the United States. His new album on Andersen’s Greaseland label proves that his three-time winning streak as a Blues Music Award winner is no fluke.
Terry went to see B. B. King at the Regal Theater when he was 19. “This is 1963 before white people even knew about him. I was in the Regal in Southside Chicago up the balcony, and I’d never seen B.B. King before, but it was life changing hearing this. You didn’t hear people playing that sustained note guitar back then. You can’t hear that stuff. It just went down my spine.
“B. B. said he was influenced by the horn. And the same thing with Little Walter. I thought he turned it around. The sax was influenced by the guitar players. I wasn’t playing yet in 1963. I just liked everything, and when I listen to music I’m not just thinking about the sax. I write and I sing. I think about singing now as much as playing.
“I’ll hear a song in my head. A lot of people say if you don’t hear it in your head, don’t play it. And I think that’s important. You hear stuff and say, “I’d like to learn that.”
Terry’s father was in the music business. “My dad was in the legit world. He hired musicians that were flat out jazz guys for light gigs. They all needed to make money, you know, and he’d always look at me, ‘When are you really gonna learn the language of this, how to record and everything?’ And he was right, but he didn’t really listen to music that much after all.
“He’d be up all night arranging, but he didn’t really listen and after a while he didn’t jam. He didn’t play. Most of the time he was a contractor. He mostly hired the bands, hired the musicians, but he’d know music, but he couldn’t sit down and jam.
“I moved out here permanently in ’67 to southern California and decided to move up to the Bay Area and make my fame and fortune in 1969. We (my band and I) moved up there, and Elvin Bishop came to a show we were doing in a club in 1972, and I (eventually) joined the band. I didn’t want to at first because I was trying to get my own band together, and then I did a few shows with him as Crabshaw Outlaws. A little side thing.”
It would be five years later before Terry joined The Crabshaw Outlaws. Elvin’s nickname is Pig Boy Crabshaw. “I (already) had a band. We were kind of like a farm team. We had people who came up and down: Tower of Power, Santana, a couple other bands. So, I kind of look at it as a triple A farm team, but we never quite made it ourselves. The musicians were desperate for a band. I joined Elvin in ’77 and played with him for 10 years.”
In 1975 Elvin had a number 3 pop hit with “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” with Mickey Thomas later of Jefferson Starship on lead vocals. “I remembered when they laid the track down, and Elvin tried to sing it. Mickey Thoms was in the band, and Mickey came in and sang it. Right away everyone knew he had the voice for the song. So, that was how that worked, but I was there when that happened, and then I went back home. Then, I joined in ’77. When I joined it was still humming. It went to number one for a long time. I think it was still number 3 when I joined. I would have anyway because it was already a successful band out there touring all over.
“I remember when Elvin went out on his own. I went to see him at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach when he first went on his own (after leaving the Paul Butterfield Blues Band). This was probably ’68, and I always liked Elvin, and I was into a similar kind of music. So, I learned a lot from Elvin. It was where it was coming from. He seemed to have it together. It would take me a lifetime to try and get to that point – feeling at home with myself and being able to relate to people, but he always had the ability to relate to a crowd.
As a teenager Terry just didn’t see myself playing music. “I guess in my mind I didn’t have the attention span. Even before rock and roll I’d hear Dixieland records, but hearing Fats Domino, that sound! Earl Palmer was the drummer on a lot of that stuff. I wasn’t playing the saxophone yet, which was the main instrument.
“It was called rhythm & blues but later became rock and roll, but the saxophone was the lead on all that stuff, and there were great players. A lot of it was jazz players, but they didn’t look down their nose at rock and roll. They played it really cool. The music really got to me. One song I put on the new album, “Sick and Tired,” pretty much has the rock and roll sound, but that always stuck with me.”
He may be 80 years old, but Terry’s voice sounds decades younger. “Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t blow it out singing in the church when I was young. When I took up the horn, I wanted to be part of the avant-garde and probably for all the wrong reasons. Because I wanted to go to C without learning the ABCs. I knew nothing about music, and I just started scaring my friends.
“I hear horns from a lot of young guys out there are just phenomenal horn players. Give me another lifetime and a half and I’ll catch up. I didn’t put in hours learning all the scales back and forth. I’m self-taught, but yeah, the avant-garde thing – I got it out of my system, but I think it helped me out by not performing rigidly what you’re supposed to play and all that.”
While sax is the lead instrument on Grease to Gravy, Terry’s secret weapon is guitarist Johnny “Cat” Soubrand. “I think the music we’re playing, we both connect stylewise. He constantly gets better and better. We’re working as a four-piece. We don’t have a keyboard, so he’s the only instrument that’s playing a chord, and he just gets a nice big sound without being hard rock.
“Kid Andersen produced all my stuff. I wasn’t sure of all the chords on everything; So, I got together with Kid and Jim Pugh a couple times, so they knew where the chords were, and Jimmy helped me out with a little bridge on it. So, it came out sounding really good. The first song we did was “Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You.” I wanted to do it more like an organ shuffle. It was pretty much a first take. The Kid put the guitar solo on afterward. He played the big B-3 shuffle with John Otis on drums, no bass, no organ.”
Terry reluctantly reveals if there were one artist living or dead that he’d like to play with, it would be Ray Charles. He covers Ray’s “Come Back Baby” on Grease to Gravy. “Like, what am I gonna say? I’d like to play with Ray Charles. What the hell would I do? The first thing I think of is who the hell am I thinking? Who the hell is crazy enough to try and sing a Ray Charles tune? I saw Ray at the Regal Theater same year I saw B. B. King.”