Tudy Taddi Article 10.7.99

Music author Joe Nick Patoski wrote of Tudy Taddi: "A musician's musician, a drummer's drummer, keeper of the key that unlocks the mystery of the shuffle, arbiter of cool, honky tonk fixture, juke joint regular, a player who played because music really mattered, and a genuine legends."

Tudy, frankly, would have wondered who Patoski was talking about. That's why I liked him and at the same time was frustrated by a paradigm of his own making that I've repeatedly tried to figure out. Then last month when the call came that Tudy was dead, I sat in silence wondering about his unorthodox views and feeling like this didn't have to happen. He was only 54.

I never played music with Arthur Leslie "Tudy" Taddi like most of his other friends did. My history with him goes back five years, shorter than other friendships, certainly. I only saw him at the same jazz club in all that time, except for driving him home a few times, but I watched him, really watched him, while he played, and even closer when he didn't. I was oblivious to his reputation in music at first, and he could have let me in on who he was. We talked about our kids, our exes, growing up, our jobs, music (we were both sappy about Gershwin and torch songs) and friends. Mostly we laughed. I played a secret game, waiting for Tudy to utter a sentence that he didn't begin with the word "Man." He won.

Our first conversation happened on a winter night, during a break between sets. He lumbered over to my table wearing a heavy red plaid flannel shirt, black knit cap, thick glasses and gloves. Tudy worked a day gig at a veterinary clinic and we cheerfully talked about the dogs we've loved and spaying cats. His best friend, guitarist Ron Theibert, sat with us. They're both gone now, within a couple of years of each other. Their rapport on stage inspired a poem out of me that I offered to Tudy after Ron's death. We became closer after that.

His life played out like a movie. Many conversations in which he'd tell another episode of his past would end in laughter, and we plotted to get rich and famous with these stories. He jokingly said I should write the screenplay and someday and we'd run off to party in L.A. Drinking tea, we'd cast this epic. They'd have to beef up some, but Dustin Hoffman and Janeane Garofalo would work nicely for our roles. Instead, I had to write his obituary.

Many will focus on Tudy's music and talents on at least seven self-taught instruments and his far-reaching influence in music. To me, though, Tudy's music was secondary, merely the audible manifestation of the man inside. To get me through, I looked to his sheer survivability, his unaffected demeanor, his insistence on being content with where he was, his spirituality that had no religion, his complex simplicity. I hoped whatever he knew would somehow rub off on me. He survived heroin addiction, homelessness, years in the state penitentiary, and the death of his 6-year-old son, John. He had record deals, life on the road and years of watching kids he taught make it big while he rode the city bus and smoked generic cigarettes. He had kids and grandkids he admired for doing so well without him, at least in the traditional sense. Looking deeper revealed no bitterness, few, if any, regrets and a tangible gratitude that through it all he got to do what he loved most‹play music. It was the act of playing, of creating and surrounding himself in sound that mattered. He didn't care about the money, the applause or being the star. It used to piss me off only because some cash would have helped, especially since his health was risky and of course, no insurance meant more problems than necessary.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, last Father's Day, we drove to his small apartment. I asked him if he'd see his daughter Amy that day. "Naw, man. She's got her prison ministry today." He beamed at how she took her own pain of having had a dad in prison and used her music to do what she could. "I would go through every minute of [prison] again to prevent it from happening to her," he said. It was cool with him. We watched the rain quietly, but not sadly.

His past seemed brighter than his future and he knew it, but it didn't matter to him. He didn't live in the glory days of sitting in with Elvis at 16 years old when their guitarist got sick, or Frank Beard of ZZ Top telling Tudy and his daughter backstage at a sold out Reunion Arena gig that he wouldn't be there if it weren't for Tudy teaching him. Tudy laughed at the New York producer, the very guy responsible for bringing the Beatles to the U.S., who came to the Cellar and stayed a week in 1965, trying to persuade Tudy to fly back and record. Laughed and stayed and played.

At the age of 10, he prayed for God to just let him play music and he'd be a good person and ask for nothing more. Simple as that. As a kid, Tudy washed dishes to afford a Goodwill suit to get into what he called "a Ricky Ricardo-Tropicana-type club" just to look at the instruments.

Tudy died last month, alone in a duplex on Hemphill that he had moved into that weekend after a gig. A couple of days passed before he was discovered. The coroner's report said natural causes. Complications from diabetes. His remains would be cremated by the county.

When the call came, I sat in silence.

Originally published by FWWEEKLY, Oct. 7, 1999.
Reprinted with permission