‘Healing the health care blues’
Blues festival to benefit Oregon Single-Payer Campaign
It’s considered a jinx in the per-
forming arts industry to wish someone
“good luck” before a show. Instead, it’s
customary to say “break a leg.”
But, say a performer was to break
their leg, chances are it would put them
in such financial straits that it could
take years for them to climb out. That’s
because many performers can’t afford
to buy health insurance. And it’s why
more than a dozen blues musicians
from Portland are getting together April
14 for a “Healing the Health Care
Blues” concert at Melody Ballroom.
The concert is a reunion of the In-
ner City Blues Festival, a popular an-
nual event that started in 1988 by the
Portland Rainbow Coalition. The last
concert was held in 2003.
This year’s reunion is a fundraiser
for the Oregon Single Payer Campaign,
a coalition promoting a universal, af-
fordable health care system for all.
Headlining the event will be the Nor-
man Sylvester Band. Sylvester and his
band mates are members of Portland-
based Musicians Local 99.
The union is endorsing the event. In
fact, the American Federation of Musi-
cians was an early endorser of a na-
tional campaign promoting a single-
payer health care system.
Musicians don’t work a typical 9-to-
5 job with health care covered under an
employer’s insurance plan, said Bruce
Fife, president of Local 99 and an in-
ternational vice president of the Amer-
ican Federation of Musicians. When
Fife was performing decades ago, he
had to buy his own health insurance,
too. But, he said, pay was much better,
he worked a steady five nights a week,
and insurance premiums were more af-
fordable.
“Union density in the industry at
that time was more than 80 percent,”
Fife said. “The union had agreements
with booking agents and venues, and
musicians could make a good living.
Today, most musicians can’t survive
playing music alone; they need other
jobs to survive.”
Fife said the industry began to un-
ravel starting in 1978, following a court
ruling that declared musicians inde-
pendent contractors. The decision
stemmed from a lawsuit the music in-
dustry filed against the union.
“It took time for the lawsuit to af-
fect the industry,” Fife said. “But it
changed the whole dynamic in so many
ways.”
[Symphony musicians are the ex-
ception. In fact, Local 99 recently rati-
fied a new three-year contract with the
Oregon Symphony that provides 100
percent employer-paid health insur-
ance.]
Fife said one of the first things he
did as president of the union was to
reach out to Kaiser Permanente to ac-
quire health insurance for musicians.
He polled members, asking them what
would be most beneficial in a health
care package. Kaiser determined that it
was impossible to provide a health care
PAGE 12
Norman “The Boogie Cat”
Sylvester, a member of
Musicians Local 99, will
headline the Inner City
Blues Festival April 14 at
the Melody Ballroom in
Portland. The event is a
fundraiser for the Oregon
Single-Payer Campaign.
Nine labor unions and 31
community organizations
are members of the
coalition.
package because musicians have too
many different employers.
“So we turned our focus to single-
payer,” Fife said.
Reforming the health care system to
a single-payer format would benefit all
Oregonians, supporters say, by replac-
ing an expensive and complicated sys-
tem — dominated by a multitude of
private insurance companies — with a
single non-profit agency that would
collect and distribute funds equitably
and fairly.
Norman “The Boogie Cat” Syl-
vester, is a staunch supporter of a sin-
gle-payer system. He and his wife
Paula are helping plan the benefit show.
One of the premier bluesmen on the
West Coast, Sylvester has shared the
stage with B.B. King, Buddy Guy,
James Cotton, Junior Wells, Otis Clay,
Tower of Power, Peter Frampton and
many other national touring stars.
Early in his career, Sylvester needed
to work a day job to survive. But even
after becoming an established star he
relied on his wife’s business to pay for
his health insurance.
“I’m one of the blessed ones,” he
said.
Sylvester worked for 23 years at P-I-E
International trucking company — start-
ing in the shop, moving to the parts de-
partment, and ending up as a purchasing
agent.
He recalled a time in 1987 — after
performing at the Arlene Schnitzer
Concert Hall and partying most of the
night with B.B. King — how he was up
early the next morning at his Teamster
job at P-I-E International.
It was only after the trucking com-
pany filed for bankruptcy and closed in
1990 that Sylvester took the bold step
of trying to make a living playing mu-
sic. Prior to that decision he was in a
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
dislocated worker program (that tried
to steer him toward accounting), and he
relied on the government to pay for his
health insurance.
“You learn to deal with pain, or you
try home remedies or to diagnose and
heal yourself using the Internet,” he
said, pointing out that it didn’t take him
long to discover that The Mayo Clinic
“has a killer web site.”
There was a four-year stretch from
1990 to 1994 that Sylvester said he was
under tremendous stress. What if some-
thing happened to him? What if his kid
falls off the monkey bars at school (and
gets hurt)? What if he cracks a tooth?
“One of the biggest health care is-
sues out there is stress,” he said. “Stress
can lead to a bunch of other bad things.
Having universal health care would
take a lot of the stress out of peoples’
lives.”
In 1994, Sylvester married Paula.
She operated a small janitorial business
and was able to pay for family cover-
age health insurance.
Today, at 66, Sylvester is in his sec-
ond year under Medicare, a program
that single-payer health care advocates
would like to emulate.
To help promote the single-payer
plan, the Sylvesters and more than a
dozen co-sponsors have put together a
show April 14 featuring a host of
Northwest blues stars. In addition to the
Norman Sylvester Band, which will
unveil a new song, “Healing the Health
Care Blues,” guests will include tap and
sax sensation Shoehorn (members of
Local 99), Lloyd Jones Struggle,
Chatta Addy, Lloyd Allen, Sara
Billings, LaRhonda Steele, Sonny
Hess, Jim Mesi, Richard Arnold, Bill
Rhoades, Peter Moss, Lenanne Miller-
Sylvester and Janice Scroggins.
Sylvester said Melody Ballroom is
donating the venue for the event. Music
will be performed upstairs, and tables
will be set up downstairs with informa-
tion about Mad as Hell Doctors, Nurses
for Single Payer, Musicians Local 99,
the Fair Trade Music campaign, the Di-
abetes Association, and others.
Food will be for sale, along with a
full service bar.
Tickets to the Inner City Blues Fes-
tival Reunion are $15 and can be pur-
chased online at www.ticketsoregon.
com. You must be 21 or older. Melody
Ballroom is located at 615 SE Alder,
Portland. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
For more information about the
Oregon Single Payer Campaign, go to
www.singlepayeroregon.org.
APRIL 6, 2012