The Real Stormin’ Norman: Norman Zamcheck
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added by: John O’Leary
August 9, 2018
As a musician, Norman Zamcheck has been an indefatigable road warrior. His band, Stormin’ Norman & Suzy, were Polydor recording artists and darlings of the 70’s cabaret scene. See some of the videos below to get what I mean.
More recently, aside from periodic SN&S reunions, Norman has been performing his wild and wooly “riverboat boogie” up and down the East Coast. But his colorful ballads showcase his considerable compositional talent and keyboard dexterity.
At our Class of ‘69 reunion in Pierson College many years ago, Norman pulled me aside and played his then-new song—“Purple Shadows”—on Pierson’s Common Room piano.
Both quirky and majestic, the song instantly grabbed me and hasn’t let go of me since. Check out its Sondheimesque key changes.
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Videos
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The Stormin’ Norman & Suzy live video below was produced by CBS to accompany the Polydor release of their album, Ocean of Love in 1978 (sample or purchase). The setting is The Paradise Ballroom in Boston where they were co-billed with Tom Waits. (I hope Waits didn’t have to follow this act.) The video captures the manic energy of an SN&S performance, especially with full band accompaniment. Performances like this earned them an appearance at Carnegie Hall and rave reviews in Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
The song itself was written by Norman in Portland, Maine at the Red Eye bar—a brawling pub whose bartender eventually became the wife of another classmate of ours. (What happens in Portland stays in Portland.) Our classmates certainly get around.
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This next vid, recorded at Brookline’s Tam O’Shanter Pub, showcases Suzy Williams’ flirtatious wit, well-matched to Norman’s piano-pounding accompaniment. Suzy has artfully described their musical approach as “Norman bangs and bangs and I shake and shake.”
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The short clip below further demonstrates their performance chemistry. Though Norman and Suzy—he in New York, she in LA—perform separately much of the time, they continue to circle back to play as a team, as demanded by their fans.
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This is a documentary of their swing through California a half-dozen years ago, ending with a poignantly intimate living room performance in Suzy’s old hometown of Gridley.
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Please respect the artist’s copyright. You may listen to and enjoy the performance personally, but please do not copy and distribute any digital rendering of the performance.
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Send me YOUR music!
Don’t be bashful! If you have a recording of you singing or playing, send me a copy so that I can share it with others here. Remember only Classmates can see and hear this, so you are among friends … friends who want to hear stuff you have done, from long ago or recently! Information about how to submit your music is explained fully here.
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What a pleasure to hear Norm again. I knew him first as a crazy man at Stiles – little did I then imagine he played the piano, nor that he came out of Exeter and the Harvard academic community. No one was more manic; to eat with him, I risked getting slimed; it was a far distance from my proper Andover habits.
Then I heard from Derek Huntington that he had produced Norm and Suzy’s best album, and that Derek had been on the music road with Norm in the 70’s. I ran into him at the 20th (?) reunion, with Richard Smith, of course, his constant companion at college. We stayed in touch enough to share lunches monthly when he was a principal in Norwalk. His whole story there will have to be a chapter in my memoires – or in his. The music he wrote there captivated me, for he never stops composing. It pours out of him.
His music speaks for itself. Live music is improvisational, and he is in the best of that tradition. Last, I heard, he was retired from teaching and at a piano bar in the east village. He has an unapologetic spirit of love and peace. To sit around with him is to become part of the music. A man should have so much joy. He might even get me to send him a song of mine sometime.