Marty Kupersmith still creating those magic moments

Troubadour and herpetologist, Jay and the Americans co-founder now calls Warwick home, By Wayne A. Hall Warwick - Marty Kupersmith’s curly, gray head hears a tune in his dreams, wakes up with a start, grabs his guitar (he sleeps with it), rolls his 6-2, 218-pound frame out of bed, turns on his beside tape recorder and catches the melody before it evaporates. Sometimes, it’s great. Like what’s now a hit song on iTunes, “Christmas in America.” Other times, he asks himself: “What the hell was that?” He’s a cowboy-boot-favoring, foot-tapping tune factory out there on Warwick’s rural Route 17A where he’s still spinning pop songs after more than 48 years with the 1960s group Jay and the Americans. Their big hit then was “This Magic Moment,” still a staple. They’ve shared billing with the Beatles on their 1964 national tour and played Carnegie Hall with the Rolling Stones, appeared with Jimmy Sturr. These four Brooklyn boys, says the group’s Web site, “survived from two-track recordings and vinyl 45s to downloading on iTunes.” They’re regularly booked across the country in everything from adult residential homes to concerts. “We work baby boomers and younger,” Marty said during a recent interview. “And in Napa (California) at a community that never heard of us and they were ancient but we did great.” “We get an unbelievable reaction. People come and expect to see a group pretending to be us but we’re the originals,” Marty said. Adds group fellow composer and singer Sandy Yaguda: “We all write, he’s got chord structure. He’s a troubadour. And he’s outside the box. He’s our Johnny Appleseed.” Marty Kupersmith (he’s Sanders in the singing group) is also known as the local, state certified, go-to herpetologist when people find eastern timber rattlesnakes in their backyards. Strange direction for a performer? “No, Johnny Carson was into snakes,” said Marty, who was crazy about dinosaurs as a kid (he still keeps small lizards in a couple of terrariums. “And rattlesnakes are my way of giving back to the community.” That means lots of calls. “I got this call from this man who said he had a huge snake in his living room,” recalled Marty. “I went in and found a large, harmless black rat snake coiled up on a table doily and I just lifted it off and took it away and released it.” He teaches rattlesnake facts to the locals. “A lot of housewives are less afraid than men,” he says. “I tell them how to pick them up one year and they’ll listen and then they’ll do it - with a hoe and into a Rubbermaid (container) the next year. They tell me, ‘Oh, I can do that.’” He’s talking about reptiles. And all the while strumming a guitar, almost non-stop. He gets back to Jay and the Americans, and says the group “have a new kind of validity, that we’re more than just an oldie group or tribute group to what was. There’s a reason for new people to come and see us. Yes, we got old. Thank God we did because a lot of us didn’t. “My brain is still creating. Once inspiration comes knocking I gotta open the door.”

For more
Go to www.jayandtheamericans.net for the complete, intricate and fascinating history of how the four “Americanos” got started, and check out their CDs.
Marty Kupersmith also has a solo gig at Edenville’s Crystal Inn on New Year’s Eve.