Still a Milwaukeean - Paul Cebar Reflects on 45 Years of Music

Słill a Milwaukeean

PAUL CEBAR REFLECTS ON 45 YEARS IN MUSIC

BY DAVID LUHRSSEN

Photo courtesy of Paul Cebar. Photo by Kathleen Hill.

Photo courtesy of Paul Cebar. Photo by Kathleen Hill.

Although he is one of Milwaukee’s most recognized musicians, and one of the most recognizable for his retro-future style sense, Paul Cebar was seldom seen in public from March 2020 through August 2021. The pandemic lockdown, however, never silenced his voice, heard on his Wednesday show on WMSE in between spinning records by other artists. Despite leading the band that was formerly called The Milwaukeeans, Cebar doesn’t sound like he comes from these parts. Whether speaking or singing, his words are steeped in an easy warmth and good humor that suggest life along Lake Pontchartrain more than Lake Michigan. The native Milwaukeean first appeared on small stages around town, sometimes playing solo, sometimes singing with Robyn Pluer and backed by saxophonist Rip Tenor. By the mid-‘80s he co-commanded (with John Sieger) a regionally popular touring and recording act, The R&B Cadets. When the Cadets disbanded in 1986, he continued as Paul Cebar and The Milwaukeeans, a band that traveled a circuit of music festivals each year from coast to coast.

During the first decade of the new century, he changed the band’s name to Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound. “The studies that talked about Milwaukee as the most segregated city in the country played into it,” he said, adding that it was also simply time for a change. “By calling us The Milwaukeeans, I took the example of Duke Ellington’s band, The Washingtonians,” he explained. “It should have been cautionary to me that Ellington soon changed his band’s name to the Jungle Orchestra—and I failed to make the Jungle Orchestra move.”

The Milwaukeeans were a racially integrated band as they toured the U.S. in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. The lineup has changed since then; Tomorrow Sound shrank to quartet-size with bassist Mike Fredrickson joining longtime saxophonist Bob Jennings and drummer Reggie Bordeaux alongside Cebar on guitar. Like the compact R&B combos of the 1940s that supplanted the swing orchestras of the 1930s, economics is a factor. “Part of me would love to have a conga player back and another horn player, but it’s been a strong consolidation,” Cebar says. “Tomorrow Sound relies on less of us to make the rhythm emphatic. Given the nature of club work and travel, the fourpiece made it possible to travel in one van instead of two.”

Despite the changes, Tomorrow Sound continues along The Milwaukeeans’ path. In his early years Cebar emulated the uptempo fervor of ‘40s R&B but has long since evolved a distinctive sound that blends rock energy with Latin rhythms and classic ‘60s soul in songs that amplify his love of succinct, vivid language. The Tomorrow Sound name captures the idea that while historically rooted, the music is striding towards the future. Altogether, Cebar has released a dozen albums, several of them for niche labels with national recognition.

THE LAST YEAR

“I was holing up like the rest of us,” Cebar said, recalling 2020. He spent the year looking after his father, age 98, and recording at home. Neither task was new. “Over the past 20 years I’ve been doing home recordings,” he said. “I’ve got the bones of a bunch of useable recordings in there. Some of them will turn into fullfledged songs,” possibly for a Paul Cebar solo album.

The pandemic thwarted plans for a new Tomorrow Sound album. “We had a very collective vision for it, vaguely gospel in terms of sound—and inspired by New Orleans street music,” he said. Cebar plans to restart the project, to be recorded at Chicago’s Reliable Recorders by Alex Hall, whose resume includes Robbie Fulks, The Cactus Blossoms and others. “He’s got a good sense for the history of music and for nailing a mood,” Cebar said.

Dormant since March 2020, Tomorrow Sound ventured outdoors this summer for shows in Wisconsin as well as a few festivals around the country as they began to rebuild their network. This fall, the occasionally regrouped R&B Cadets as well as Tomorrow Sound have returned to playing clubs.

Sharing music remained central to his life during the long absence from the stage through hosting “Way Back Home” on WMSE, 9 a.m. to noon on Wednesdays. In any random hour of programming, Cebar might wander from lively Trinidadian calypso to melancholy Francophone soul from neighboring Guadeloupe, from obscure gems of ‘60s American soul to Brazilian Tropicalia and back round again to muggy New Orleans blues in improbable but meaningful transitions.

“It’s a corrective to blinkered American radio—the horrible thing of it now,” Cebar said. “Radio used to bring Little Richard into everyone’s house. Now it brings Sean Hannity. I’m on a free-form station so the least I can do is play exactly what moves me.” Although selections are largely driven by music from the African diaspora, “there’s not a lot of forethought. I bring along a lot of records to the station and I make it up as I go along.”

Yes, Cebar considered leaving Milwaukee for one of those fabled musical meccas where careers are forged. “We were talking about it 40 years ago,” he began. “Rip [Tenor] and I were theoretically moving to New York—but then came the nuts and bolts of actually moving there. In New York, I’d have to wait tables while I waited for my couple of gigs.” With The R&B Cadets, he was headlining shows across the Midwest in the ‘80s. Why leave?

And now? “I feel comfortable living here. I support the dream of a multicultural Midwestern life with some sophistication to it,” Cebar concluded, before refecting, “As the realization of life sets in, you realize how much progress has been made in some ways and how little in others. I dedicated my first single to the memory of Ernest Lacy,” a young black Milwaukeean who died in police custody. “That was 40 years ago.”

David Luhrssen is coauthor (with Bruce Cole and Philip Naylor of Milwaukee Rock and Roll 1950-2000: A Reflective History and coauthor (with Steve Nodine, Eric Beaumont, Clancy Carrol) of Brick Through the Window: An Oral History of Punk Rock, New Wave and Noise in Milwaukee, 1964-1984.