From playing with Joe Cocker to playing at Joe’s Albums, saxophonist extraordinaire Deric Dyer seems to have the world on the string.
And that’s not even counting his year-and-a-half long stint touring the world as Tina Turner’s sax man.
Dyer will have a not-to-be-missed launch party for his new disc, “Red String,” at 6 p.m. Oct. 24 at Joe’s Albums, 317 Main St., Worcester.
‘Timeless classics’
“I’ll be playing songs from the new album, which is filled with timeless classics,” Dyer said. “It’s a record that has been in the back of my mind for a long time, but I didn’t have the opportunity to bring it to fruition until now.”
The event — which will feature a sax performance by Dyer, as well as a video presentation and stories behind the music — is free, but Dyer insists that he’s going to give the crowd the “$45 show” at no extra cost.
And that’s not all. Legendary guitarist and fellow Joe Cocker Band member Cliff Goodwin will join Dyer for a few numbers.
“I’m going to do some stuff from Red String, and then I’m going to bring Cliff up to fire things up for the last couple of tunes,” Dyer said.
‘Head in the clouds’
Dyer is the son of Eric and Betty Dyer, a “tremendous trumpet player” (according to his son) who played with Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey, Engelbert Humperdinck and Bette Midler (when Barry Manilow was her musical director) and a singer on the lines of Peggy Lee, respectively.
“I was born in Ireland. Father was a musician, moved to England. The Beatles came along put my father out of business. My father got a gig in Bermuda, moved the whole family to Bermuda when I was 11,” Dyer said.
By age 16, Dyer was already an accomplished sax player, playing seven nights a week in night clubs on the island.
“In a lot of ways, I was a kid that had his head in the clouds,” Dyer recalled. “When I was 13, the school I was going to didn’t have a music department, but we had 10 clarinets, and they were asking the kids, does anyone want to play them. And I said, I’ll give it a go.”
Dyer instantly took to music and it turned out he was a natural.
“It was the first time I had anything that I was really interested in,” Dyer continued. “My dad talked to Sister Joseph Anthony at the Catholic school down the street and said, ‘My son’s playing and doing pretty good, but he got nobody to play with. She said, bring him over, even though I didn’t go to the school.’”
And at the Catholic school, Sister Joseph Anthony introduced Dyer to the saxophone for the very first time.
‘Amazing adventure’
In the early ‘70s, the American Standard Band (featuring the aforementioned Cliff Goodwin and singer Kevin Falvey) came to Bermuda to play and asked Dyer to join the band and come back to America.
Dyer, only 19 at the time, left the sandy beaches of sunny Bermuda behind for the dirt-floor basement of Goodwin’s childhood home on 55 Institute Road in Worcester.
A few years later, the American Standard Band became Joe Cocker’s backup band.
“I met American Standard from Worcester in Bermuda in the spring of 1975. They asked me to join the band. I moved to Worcester from Bermuda. I lived in the basement of a triple-decker on Institute Road that belonged to Cliff’s mother,” Dyer said. “Then American Standard had this amazing adventure with Joe Cocker. I moved into Boston. I was able to get a gig with Tina Turner and then go back to Joe for another 25 years.”
With only 24-hour notice, Dyer was to audition for Tina Turner on Jan. 24, 1987, the day before Super Bowl XXI between the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos.
Dyer passed the audition with flying colors and ended up touring with Tina for the next year and a half on her “Break Every Rule World Tour,” playing to over five million people and performing 250-plus concerts worldwide.
‘The Best’
Only July 4, 2023, Dyer was handpicked to perform a hefty sax solo in the performance of “The Best,” as a tribute to Turner, for a live Fourth of July event in New York City.
Before Turner’s death, Dyer was invited to be a special guest speaker at the Tina Turner Museum in Brownsville, Tennessee.
“I was already contracted to do it, then Tina Turner passed away. So, they decided to do a memorial as well,” Dyer said. “They asked if I would play at the memorial service. Of course, I said, yes. And, I was going to do solo sax.”
Dyer did some hunting around for the perfect backing track for “Amazing Grace” and found a version done with Elvis and the London Philharmonic and a gospel choir.
“Tina is still impacting my life,” Dyer said. “I knew that when I was auditioning for Tina, it was a really important turning point in my career but I never thought, at this point in my life, that I would be still reaping the awards.”
‘Pulling a red string’
Dyer was also at the point of wanting to do his next record, and he began looking for songs that he was interested in recording, and to see if they would work for the saxophone.
Dyer found a website out of Paris that has tracks that were originally recorded in the studio with real musicians.
“The tracks are real. And they sounded so beautiful. I don’t know the musicians. I don’t know the arrangers. I just picked what I loved and thought my style of playing would fit,” Dyer said. “From where I started out, to be able to have this quality at this level, at my home studio, in mind-boggling, absolutely mind-boggling.”
Red String features Dyer’s incendiary sax fleshing out and reinterpreting beloved standards that include Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately,” Etta James’ “At Last,” Hoagy Carmichael/Ned Washington’s “The Nearness of You,” Carmichael/Stuart Gorell’s “Georgia On My Mind,” Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love,” Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon,” Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer’s “Moon River,” the beloved bolero standard “Bésame Mucho,” Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
“I’m a melody guy. I love beautiful melodies, but they have to fit right with the saxophone,” Dyer said. “I tried a couple that didn’t work. These particular tunes (on the album) sit right in my wheelhouse for the way that I play. And with these beautiful tracks, it’s an easy collection. It’s effortless.”
For Dyer, the “Red String” symbolizes destiny. He said he couldn’t plan his musical career any better. And if he could plan it, he wouldn’t want to have planned it any differently.
“I wanted to play music, but did I consciously do it? No. Everybody is pulling a red string and destiny is that red string taking you through these different phrases of your life,” Dyer said. “As for the record, I needed a backing track for the Tina Turner Museum. It brought me to this place that I would have had no reason to be looking for if it wasn’t for Tina.”
When it comes to the final product, Dyer said he is most proud that he made a record that his parents would love.
Deric Dyer Red String record release launch party, featuring guitarist Cliff Goodwin
When: 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24
Where: Joe’s Albums, 317 Main St., Worcester.
Cost: Free, joesalbums.com/
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