Arts & Entertainment

Jimmy Vivino Talks Career, New Album and Valentine’s Day Show at Cap with Bill Murray & His Blood Brothers

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Jimmy Vivino (left) and Bill Murray. (Photo credit: Dino Perrucci)

February 5, 2025

By W.B. King–

Even before dropping the needle on the seminal blues-rock album Super Session in 1968, a then 13-year-old Jimmy Vivino was aware of Stephen Stills and his astounding work with The Buffalo Springfield. He was also atuned the harmonious prowess of Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield, who had played in Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Electric Flag, respectively. The latter pair of troubadours had also supported Bob Dylan on his heralded Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and backed the “Like a Rolling Stone” singer’s historic electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival (recently memorialized in the celebrated film, A Complete Unknown).

Hearing the innovative, Kooper-conceived Super Session, which featured Bloomfield on side one and Stills on side two, proved to be a life-altering experience for Vivino—opening new doors of perception. “You listen to what Al Kooper does. He’s brilliant at playing the right thing…getting the great sounds,” Vivino told The Hudson Independent. “After I heard Mike Bloomfield on that, I latched on to everything he did…he was on fire. He played heart to hand.”

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For the Glen Rock, N.J.-raised Vivino, a son of a jazz trumpeter, “everything” was an understatement. Bloomberg created a musical bridge he could safely traverse. Soon blues artists like Muddy Waters, Hubert Sumlin, Johnnie Johnson and Jimmy Smith were focal points. These discoveries dove tailed with the music Vivino’s parents were keen on playing—from Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong to Frank Sinatra. Along with his brothers and future fellow entertainers, Floyd and Jerry, the family also enjoyed a healthy dose of New Orleans-infused Dixieland jazz along with comedy albums by the likes of Bob Newhart and Pat Cooper.

Leader of the Pack

To emulate his heroes, including the Garfield. N.J.-based group, The Rascals, the young upstart began jamming with his brothers and local pals. “The Rascals were my people. I said, ‘I can do this.’ They got me with their blue-eyed soul. I was 11 or 12, starting bands,” Vivino reflected, noting that he began his multi-instrumental journey singing, playing trumpet, organ and guitar. It was around this time he also shifted interests from groups like The Beatles and The Monkeys to newer bands, one of which especially caught his ear and has yet to let go.

“‘On the Road Again,’ Canned Heat, got to me because that’s the most interesting take on the blues that I had heard,” allowed Vivino, who is currently a band member. “I tell Fito [Adolfo de la Parra], I’ve been in Canned Heat since 1968 but you guys just didn’t know it,” he added with a laugh, citing a recent exchange with the band’s original drummer and noting the group’s latest album, Finyl Vinyl (2024).

Being a member of Canned Heat is but one of many hats Vivino has worn over the years. He never lost his love for another iconic 1960s group, The Beatles, which is best reflected as being a founding member of the internationally acclaimed tribute band, The Fab Faux (the group is slated to play A Hard Day’s Night and Abbey Road at the Capitol Theatre on June 14, 2025).

Golden Handcuffs

Throughout the 1980s, he was a regular fixture on the New York club scene playing with many bands, including “Jimmy Vivino and the Black Italians.” He also was making his bones on Broadway, serving as a musical director for Leader of the Pack, featuring Darlene Love. Soon his reputation caught the attention of Al Kooper, who later hired him as his musical director—an inspiring collaborative friendship that endures to this day.

Prior to joining the Late Night with Conan O’Brien house band, (known as the Max Weinberg 7) in 1993, that included his brother Jerry, Vivino had produced, played and arranged for artists like Phoebe Snow and Laura Nyro. Weinberg, best known as the drummer in Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, eventually parted ways with the show. So, when The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien aired in 2008, Vivino served as the musical director as he did when Conan moved to the TBS network in 2010, spawning Jimmy Vivino and the Basic Cable Band.

“Being involved with the Conan O’Brian TV show for 30 years, has only deepened my experience and contact with people who stepped out of my record collection and into my life,” Vivino shared, “and for that I am truly grateful.”

In search of bandleader inspiration, Vivino recalled his high school friend Jeff, a fellow trumpet player, whose father was the associate producer on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. At the time, the band was led by Carl Hilding, a.k.a. “Doc” Severinsen.

“We would take a bus in from Jersey and have lunch in the basement of Rockefeller Center–and then go up to watch Doc Severinsen rehearsals. So, I was in the same studio [6B] I ended up in [with Conan]. We sat in Doc’s office, and he would play for us, and then he would say, ‘You got to practice every day.’ I would see those same guys playing on Monday nights…like Thad Jones and Mel Lewis or Snooky Young and Jerry Dodgion,” Vivino said, noting that he was too young to drive and would grab rides into the city with his friend’s older brothers to places like the Village Vanguard and the Fillmore East. “All these guys, they were playing on Monday nights and they also had the Tonight Show gig, which was their golden handcuffs. That was their gig, man. And they were doing sessions…New York was fruitful.”

Years later while serving as a musical director for shows at the Bottom Line, which featured acts like Ben E. King and Rick Derringer, Vivino was introduced to Paul Shaffer who then served as musical director and band leader on Late Night with David Letterman. “Paul mentored me into being a better band leader, and in hearing music, you know, from the bottom up. He said to me, ‘If the bass and drums are right, everything else will fall into place. Don’t assume too much,’” Vivino shared. “Paul and Al Kooper were the biggest influences on me.”

Among standout performances on Conan were bands like Radiohead, which was the show’s first musical guest, and other up-and-comers like Green Day. On other nights, blues legends like Johnnie Johnson or James Cotton sat in with the band, sometimes at the last minute. “Then there were so many moments like Bonnie Raitt and Ruth Brown or Little Milton or B.B. King or Al Green that were amazing or having Joe Strummer [The Clash] or Roger McGuinn [The Byrds] on,” he shared. “It was eclectic—like the radio when we grew up.”

Every Christmas season, crooner Tony Bennett stopped by to sing “White Christmas” or other holiday classics. One year, Bennett turned to Vivino and said, “How about just me and the guitar.” Ever the professional, Vivino, not prepared for the audible, “got through” the performance, but not without a lesson learned. “There’s something about when somebody is that great, you play better automatically—you don’t have to do much because it’s all coming out of that voice.”

An Old Fashion Midnight Ramble

Over the course of his career, Vivino has become friends and a trusted partner with many of his musical heroes, including Levon Helm. Known best as the drummer and singer of The Band, Helm sadly passed away in 2012 but not after a career rebirth that Vivino helped resurrect.

“You believed every word that Levon, Richard [Manuel] and Rick [Danko] sang; the characters they made in the sound of their voices,” Vivino said about The Band. “They created music that later became called ‘Americana,’ but they were the first ones who really forced that blues and country thing more than anybody.”

As recounted in John W. Barry’s stirring book, Levon Helm: Rock, Roll & Ramble: The Inside Story of the Man, the Music and the Midnight Ramble (2022), in the late 1990s and 2000s Vivino buoyed Helm through financial woes and later throat cancer. Their pondside jams at Helm’s Woodstock, N.Y. home and ongoing musicologist banter gave rise, in part, to what became the “Midnight Rambles,” featuring The Barn Burners.

“I said, ‘Let’s start a blues band. You’ve burned so many barns in your life anyway,’” Vivino told The Hudson Independent, referencing that Helm’s home and studio, the “barn,” had burned down in 1991 and was rebuilt. “He didn’t want to go out on the road, so we had an old fashion midnight ramble,” Vivino told The Hudson Independent, which, he added, was essentially a rent party.

Overtime, the morphed Levon Helm and the Midnight Ramble Band became so popular that Levon Helm Studios, an intimate venue, began selling out shows. Notable artists such as The Black Crowes, Norah Jones, Mavis Staples, David Crosby and Phil Lesh would also perform to adoring crowds in what was essentially Helm’s home. Before his passing, Helm recorded several heralded albums including the Grammy-Award winning Dirt Farmer (2007).

“There was no leader [in The Band]. They did things organically,” Vivino said. “Levon took that with him all the way to the end of his life…he wanted things to happen organically, and he wanted each player to be their part without a music director, and for me, that was a new experience.”

Helm played his last two road concerts at The Tarrytown Music Hall in March 2012; nearly a month later he passed but not before playing one more Midnight Ramble. On the anniversary of his death the following year, Vivino returned to the Music Hall and performed “Song for Levon,” a piano-driven tune he penned for his good friend, which is featured on the Jimmy Vivino & The Black Italians’ album, 13 Live (2013). “It ain’t what you take with you, it’s what you leave behind,” Vivino soulfully sings.

Bill Murray Gets Serious

Among things Helm left behind for Vivino is an insatiable appetite to create and push forward, as evidenced by his latest release, Gonna Be 2 Of Those Days, which drops February 14, 2025.

“For so long I sang everybody else’s songs, and I hope I learned something from that,” Vivino shared, noting that longtime collaborator John Sebastian from Loving Spoonful fame, and Joe Bonamassa are guests on the album that features topical tracks like “Blues in the 21^st Century.” “We don’t have the same blues that Muddy Waters had, and it’s almost dishonest to copy it because you’re singing about stuff that has nothing to do with you. It took me a long time to really understand that. Between Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry are human problems…everyman’s problem, everywoman’s problem…their own sort of rebellion.”

When Vivino joins Bill Murray and His Blood Brothers band for a Valentine’s Day show at The Capitol Theatre, he will be reuniting with some of his favorite Irish siblings—the Murrays. He first met the brothers—all five of them—in 1979 while playing in a club in uptown Manhattan. One brother, Andy, was the chef and after his shift, many of the Murrays would sit in with Vivino’s band.

“The Murrays all had this sort of knack of picking these numbers that nobody else would sing like ‘Little Sister’ or ‘Viva Las Vegas’ and Bill would come around…they’re all really good friends. We did a lot of damage together through the years,” Vivino said, laughing. “They have a Caddyshack golf tournament and fundraiser in Florida every year. I MD [musical director] and Bill would come and sing.”

While performing at last year’s event, musicians Mike Zito and Albert Castiglia joined the fold—what Vivino described as the Italian rat pack. “Bill dug what was happening and said we should go out and he’d be in the band.” While Vivino thought it was just a good idea in passing, he later received a call that Murray, known for such movies as Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters, Lost in Translation and Stripes, was actually serious.

“It’s kind of a new thing for us,” Vivino said of the band that features Zito and Castiglia. “You can’t underestimate the power of people wanting to see somebody live. Bill has always been just a great entertainer, and so engaging. He doesn’t have that, ‘Look at me on stage’ thing. He just prowls around the stage,” Vivino said of Murray who has also performed with other rock bands and classical groups over the years and is known for his famed parody work on tunes like “Star Wars” and “Brandy,” among others. “He goes back and plays percussion, he comes up and sings a song, and he picks great songs. I won’t reveal any of that. You just have to come and see it because it’s a really fun show.”

For ticket information, www.thecapitoltheatre.com.

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