Tales of the Near Legendary Za Zu Zaz

        Once upon a time there was a quartet of swingin'' musicians known as Grover, Margret and Za Zu Zaz

This is a taste of what it was like from the Bass Chair. Read on and find out how Zaz later became a quintet.

       So, now we're talking the winter of 1976.Tim Solook and I had met at a recording session for Keyboardist and composer Doug Reicken at the House of Music (then located in the basement of a house on Crystal Ave in West Orange). Tim was playing percusion on those dates. I would say that about 4 bars into the gig we realized that we were grooving like we had played together since kindergarten. we were breathing the music together  and it was too much fun.

       One day Tim calls me and says "Hey, Grover and Margret have got eyes to mix in a bass player and a drummer". Well, my response was "Cool but, who are these folks?" So, Tim hips me with a mini bio and I said "Let's go check them out."

       Tim said they were playing at The Public House in Chester so we went out there to give a listen. That night was a serious wake up call for my ears cause man, they were Great! I loved their sound and what they were doing.

       After a couple of jams we all decided we were basically on the same musical pages and, rehearsals began in earnest. I guess it took us a couple of months to put things together and then we hit the clubs and coffee houses.

    So, what were some of the early gigs, you may be asking yourselves.

Check out our first mailing list (yeah, everybody back then had actual mailing lists and we would send out our schedule to our fans evey month).

   Three places that were important gigs in our early days were the Townhouse Off the Green in Morristown, Wallace's in West Orange and O'Connor's in Warren.

     Our first Studio promo shot. We were getting serious about our look on stage.Grover had hair and the rest of us had hats.Pretty spiffy, eh!

   Harley's Bar in Hackensack was a gig that kept us if not rolling in cash in the early days, paid us enough to afford some coconut custard pie at the Morris Plains Diner.  Tim loved to dig into a bowl of "Uncle Dave's" chili everytime we played here.

Grover, Margret and Za Zu Zaz

Grover Kemble, Margret Taylor, Tim Solook and Me