2023 Fall Issue

It’s All About the Music for Al Kessel
10
Story by MICHAEL DAIGLE
Photos by KAREN FUCITO
The voice carries the stories.
Stories from Newark, Kearny
(his hometown), Jersey City, Asbury Park,
Sergeantsville and now Hopewell, from doo-wop
on street corners, days on the radio.
Stories of hearing Chuck Berry for the first
time, of Les Paul, of absorbing the chunk, chuck-a,
chunk of Johnny Cash’s guitar style. Stories of the
jam sessions at the Upstage Club (home of the
Asbury Park sound) and stories sometimes told
with appreciation from the edge of someone
else’s fame.
The voice of the soldier, the history teacher
and reader of histories that add just a touch
of erudition, the session musician, the country
music player and preservationist, the band leader,
the businessman. Performer. Promoter.
Sometimes the stories arrive in bits, choppy
sentences, the pith of the tale delivered in sound
bites as the key parts are recalled from the well
of nearly 90 years of life; sometimes the stories
ramble, wander through years, a name slipped in
leading to another name, then another; the voice
with the Jersey edge, softened now, the Jersey
thing, the long story never off track because it
all matters.
The stories that pull the listener along, wanting
to hear the untold parts.
Top to bottom: Kessel practicing in his home
studio. Kessel with members of his band at
Hopewell United Methodist Church in 2019.
(Photo courtesy of Robert Yellen.)
LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS Fall 2023
That is Al Kessel’s life.
A rambling trip through American music as
a performer, then promoter and now in a dual
role, that today finds him playing traditional
country music, keeping alive a genre that had its
beginning on front porches, in small town halls,
church halls and tiny local radio stations.
He came to the guitar by way of a piano in his
uncle’s basement, Kessel said, who lives in Kenvil
with his wife of 35 years, Marylou.
“He’d play that old song…” He sings: “‘Grab
your coat, grab your hat, leave your worries on
the doorstep…on the sunny side of the street.’
The sound got to me.”
The familiar Louis Armstrong song, “On the
Sunny Side of the Street.”
“That inspired me. I surprised my uncle when I
learned to play the song.”
It was post-war America of the 1950s and
1960s. By 1953, Kessel, then 20, was out of the
Army after World War II.
For Kessel, it was a time to learn how to play
his first-ever Gibson guitar by listening to guitar
stylist and pioneer Les Paul and diving deep into
the traditional country music of Hank Williams
and Johnny Cash.
“I was self-taught,” he said.
“Johnny Cash and the song, ‘I Walk the Line.’
Bum-bumpa-bum, bum-bumpa-bum. The sound
kind of knocked me for a loop.”
At the same time, Elvis Presley was emerging
as a rock star, changing the business. But, Kessel
said, Presley had begun as a country singer with a
version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
When he heard Chuck Berry, Kessel said, it was
hello to rock ‘n’ roll.
“I was in my car. He was on the radio. Oh, that
guitar. Oh, my goodness. It was guitar for me
ever since.”
It was a time, he said.
He chose the word “fomentation” to describe
what it was like. An active music and bar scene,
new styles, new players, the explosion of AM
radio as a music outlet —Kessel and a group
of players recorded a demo—the bus tours
that brought performers to happy audiences,
playing with some other players in bars in Union
and Jersey City and Newark and other cities,
grabbing gigs wherever they could. Crossing
paths with players on their way to greater fame,
like Tom DeVito and Bob Gaudio, later of the
Four Seasons, or Eddie Rabbitt, a Jersey kid who
made it good as a Nashville country songwriter,
and still others working through the grind of bar
scenes.
“We got a show at one bar that paid us $5 a
night. Then some other bar owner offered us $15
a night, and we took it,” Kessel said, laughing. “We
were thrilled to death to get $15. A big pay jump.”
He said he gravitated toward musicians who
appreciated country music, but in their shows,
Al Kessel at home with his favorite guitar.
they played the popular styles of the time,
mixing in doo-wop with the popular rock songs.
“I played rhythm guitar,” he said, “because I was
also singing.”
Then to Belmar and the Jersey Shore and
eventually to Asbury Park.
That’s where he met Tom and Margaret Potter,
owners of the legendary Asbury Park after-hours
club, the Upstage. The club operated from 1968
to 1973.
It was where the musicians would come after
the other bars had closed, Kessel said.
“They’d pay their three bucks to sit in. The rule
was they could not play with their own band, but
had to play with the other bands,” he said.
There were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van
Zandt and the musicians who became the E
Street Band. There was John Lyon, better known
as Southside Johnny, playing with the Asbury
Jukes, all the creators of the Asbury Park sound
that captured the hullabaloo of Jersey Shore life.
“I played in a little band with Margaret,” Kessel
said. “I taught her to play ‘Johnny B. Good.’”
By 1966, he had graduated from then Montclair
State College and began teaching history in high
schools, the last one at Hopatcong until 1973.
In 1973, he jumped back into the music scene
in a big way, as the owner of Hopatcong’s
Governor’s Inn on Lakeside Boulevard.
He ran the venue until 1986, three years after
New Jersey changed the drinking age to 21.
“We did well because the drinking age was
18 and rock ‘n’ roll was hot,” he said. Chubby
Checker was one of the popular acts, he said.
For a while, he offered comedy nights and
showcased such acts as a then-unknown Jerry
Seinfeld.
“It was the year before he appeared on the