When David Letterman took the stage at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles, he wasn’t just paying tribute to a friend and frequent guest on his late-night talk show. He was paying forward a piece of Jewish-American rock history.
During his final appearance on Letterman’s “Late Show” in 2002, Warren Zevon, who was terminally ill, performed “Keep Me in Your Heart.” He later gifted his guitar to the comedian.
Letterman brought that guitar to the Nov. 8 ceremony, where Zevon was inducted into the Hall of Fame and given the Musical Influence Award posthumously. Standing beside the instrument, Letterman told the audience that he had cared for it for 22 years.
“By God, tonight it’s going back to work,” he said, per a transcript that Variety published. He handed the guitar to Dave Keuning, of the Killers. “It’s all yours, sir,” he told Keuning.
Letterman told the audience that Zevon’s son Jordan Zevon — a musician in his own right — told him a week ago to mention three things: that his father studied as a kid with classical composer Igor Stravinsky, Stumpy the gangster and Bev the Mormon.
“Okay. Stumpy the gangster, Bev the Mormon. Got that,” Letterman said. “By the way, Jordan, those are my two favorite songs.” (The younger Zevon corrected him and said those were Zevon’s parents.)
“Oh, by the way, Igor Stravinsky is still waiting for his nomination,” Letterman told the audience.
After the comedian’s remarks, the musician Waddy Wachtel, who performed with Zevon, performed the latter’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” with the Killers.
A singer-songwriter who was born in Chicago to a Russian Jewish mobster, Zevon, who is also known for “Werewolves of London,” died in 2003. He wrote songs in an “ironic and biting and satirical” style, according to Jonathan Karp, a Jewish historian and Binghamton University professor.
“You don’t have to be Jewish to have those qualities, but it helps,” Karp, who is writing a book on Blacks and Jews in the business of American popular music, told JNS.
The record executive Lenny Waronker, 84, and bassist Carol Kaye, 90 — both of whom are Jewish — were also inducted into the Hall of Fame at the ceremony.
The son of Liberty Records founder and violinist Simon Waronker, Lenny Waronker, who was honored for his decades at Warner Bros. and DreamWorks Records, “grew up in the whole world of Jews in the record business,” Karp told JNS.
Karp said that the record executive embodies a deep tradition of important Jews in the music business.
“Where do you begin? It’s huge,” he said. “Jews were important even before the recording industry started. They were well situated to be involved not just as performers but even more so as impresarios and entrepreneurs.”
“Jews had this really long pedigree,” he told JNS. In the 1940s and 50s, “they are filling a niche by recording rhythm and blues music made by black people for black consumers,” he said. “Over time, white kids are also buying this music and it’s starting to morph into rock ‘n roll. Jews were situated as business people.”
“They have good ears,” he said. “They know if something is commercially viable.”
Kaye, a studio musician whose credits include “Good Vibrations” and “I’m a Believer,” was also honored at the event. She was raised Baptist and converted to Judaism in the 1960s and later celebrated a bat mitzvah.
“She was given the name ‘Ruth,’” Karp told JNS, “which is not uncommon to women converting to Judaism.” (The biblical Ruth was a convert.)
“She shuns fame,” Karp said. “She’s a woman playing in a totally male Wrecking Crew studio musician environment that was influenced by the Phil Spector sound.” (Kaye reportedly declined to attend, saying the honor “wasn’t something that reflects the work that studio musicians do.”)
“She’s a figure that attracts a lot of interest,” Karp told JNS.
