Northwest Music History: 1970s

PENTA LESLEE SWANSON

Penta Leslee Swanson in the kitchen. Paris 1996

“I should have been born in Seattle” Penta Leslee Swanson tells me. “Instead I was born in Wenatchee Washington on September 14, 1962, though I never lived there. My parents were visiting my grandmother in Moses Lake. At the time there was no hospital in Moses Lake so they had to drive almost 70 miles to Wenatchee.  That was the closest hospital…That’s where  I was born. The Deaconess Hospital in Wenatchee Washington

That first long trip was a prologue to the peripatetic life of the girl born Leslee Swanson.  Although she went by the name Leslee growing up and in the early stages of career, let’s dispense with the earlier name and use ‘Penta’ just to keep things clear.

“I knew from the time I was a child that I was a singer. I just knew that’s what I wanted to do. I always knew that was what I wanted to do. I grew up in a household with a sister who was 11 years older and she was a big Beatles fan. So I grew up listening to popular music… especially the Beatles. It was just something that I loved all my life. My mom raised me and two of my brothers as a single parent.  We grew up all over in Seattle. We moved all the time. We moved every six months to a year. It was nuts”.

 “I started in my first band when I was 13” says Penta, who was still known as Leslee to her friends and family. “We did cover songs. I don’t even remember the name of the band, but I was hooked. That was it. I got asked to be in other bands over the next few years, and sang in a couple of them. One of the bands I played in was with Richard Stuverud. He played with The Fastbacks for awhile in the 1980s. When Richard was in my band we used to call him ‘Dickie’.

“When I was 15 I had a boyfriend named Jeff Gilbert. He was really cute back then, and quite a bit older than me. He and I wrote songs together and I did my first recording with him when I was just barely 16  at a studio on Queen Anne Hill called ‘Big and Famous Studio’ We recorded about 6 or 7 songs. I actually have cassette copies of the tapes. The songs were super-pop. I think Jeff was trying to go for a Beatle-esque kind of thing. even though he was a big Rolling Stones fan. It was really cute, really sweet music Jeff Humphrey from the Seattle band The Moving Parts drummed with us sometimes.  John Nay who’d go on to play in The Lewd and The Frazz also recorded with us.

As improbable as it may seem the Jeff Gilbert that Penta mentions is the same Jeff Gilbert of Seattle heavy-metal fame. Jeff wrote about metal bands for The Rocket, Playboy, Spin, Britain’s Kerrang! and as a contributing editor for Guitar World. He was manager of  Seattle’s Mansplat Record Store and managing editor of their magazine, Mansplat! He compiled a series of ‘fanboy’ movie reviews from Mansplat! Magazine called ‘Drinkin’ & Drive-in: Horror, Sci-Fi, Beer Vol. 1.’  According to Viral Recordings blog ‘...the reviews are offbeat, darkly humorous and wickedly insightful”.

Jeff Gilbert outside The Feedback Lounge in West Seattle.

 Jeff is also the author of ‘Trick or Shriek’ and ‘Camp Vampires’ two schlocky booksfull of horror movie clichés and teen-age terror…on purpose.  In fact, Gilbert  has plenty of serious journalism under his belt.  He was a long-time disc jockey for Seattle’s KZOK radio and  introduced his listeners to unknown metal bands that would go on to be stars. He also gave the local guys airplay. He was one of the co-owners of Seattle’s rock hangout/bar The Feedback Lounge. The bar lasted from 2009 to 2015 and was a “must visit” for music fans, and tourists taking in the Seattle music scene.  Jeff might be best known for the ongoing appearance on the ‘Lame List’, self-deprecating sketches on Almost Live!,a local show that aired between 1984 and 1999 on Seattle’s KING TV.

Local comedian John Keister’s hosted the show from 1988 to 1999, which is the era the show is best known for.  Almost Live!  was later re-edited to remove ‘local place-names, and broadcast on Comedy Central. It should be noted that Almost Live! also launched the career of Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

In short, Jeff has more Heavy Metal cred than many of the musicians he writes about.  He also has a wicked sense of humor.  He once said;

“Grunge isn’t a music style. It’s complaining set to a drop D tuning”.

Back let’s return to Penta’s story;
“One day Jeff Humphrey, the drummer from The Moving Parts came in while we were recording and said ‘You guys should hear this single that just came out, because you guys sound a lot like this! It was The Pretenders‘Kid’. So of course I fell in love with The Pretenders right then and there.

“I was working at Tower Records by then” says Penta. (Jeff Gilbert had worked there previously). “I was the youngest employee there. They put me in the back room re-sealing records that customers had returned.That was my job because nobody else wanted to do it”. Bill Larsen, who worked with Penta explains that Tower Records used to say ‘if you don’t like it, just bring it back‘.  When records got returned by customers we’d just send the returns down to the basement where there was a re-sealer.  So the records got re-sealed and we put them back on the racks” he says while laughing”.

“Bill Rieflin was also working in the back room at the time” Penta tells me. “He was the shipping and receiving guy.  That’s how I met him.. “Now he’s one of my best friends.  He never talked about being in a band or anything.  When I went to see Iggy Pop at the Showbox in Seattle, Bill’s band opened for Iggy…and there was Bill up on the drums. I thought ‘what are you doing up there?‘ (she laughs).  I had no idea. The band turned out to be The Blackouts. It was their first show”.

“So that’s how I got started” says Penta”.

While she was still in high school she started going to more shows.  Penta says she learned a lot more about music by expanding her experience of new music.  She also admits getting into bars and other places that she wasn’t supposed to get into because she was underage.  Later Penta moved into a house with some of The Blackouts and others who were or had been Seattle’s earliest practitioners of new, alternative and highly original music. It was during the time she lived with them that she started The Dynette Set.

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER The Pudz.
Rob Morgan, Mark Halterlein,
Dave Drewry, Dave Locksley

“Around this time I saw Rob Morgan’s group The Pudz” Penta says. “I just flipped. I just loved The Pudz. Then I thought ‘this would be so great, but with chicks” she says with a laugh. “So that’s how I got the idea for The Dynette Set. I thought ‘there’s this whole genre of music; this ‘girl group’ thing that nobody ever thinks about’. So I just put my ideas together and started talking to different people”.

There was lots to love about Rob Morgan and The Pudz as well as his later band, the long-running (now re-united) band The Squirrels. Over the years Rob has been backed by some of Seattle’s best musicians while he weaves in and out of pop songs and mashes them up at a dizzying speed.  It’s both comic and jaw-dropping in it’s expansive brilliance. Morgan careens onstage, makes his way into the audience, sometimes leading conga lines out the door, then back to the stage…all the while singing.

“One day at Tower Records Penta was re-sealing records” Bill Larsen tells me. “We started talking and asking ‘What kind of music are you into?‘ She said, ‘Well I’m really into the Beatles and Ronnie Spector,The Ronettes, and Darlene Love’ and I said, ‘Shit! this is what I’m into’.  Then she says ‘I want to start a band‘ and I told her ‘well count me in’.  It was kind of funny because I’d just met Dave Drewry a couple of weeks before that.  She told me “I have a drummer named Dave Drewry, so I told her ‘Yeah, I know Dave. I just met him.  He’s a great guy!’”

“Dave Drewry was the first person I talked to about it” according to Penta. “I said ‘I really want to put this band together and do something like you’re doing in The Pudz, but with women, doing ‘girl group’ stuff’. He loved that kind of music and he said ‘yeah, yeah, sure‘ just brushing me off.  Finally I made a demo tape at a studio that was then in Pioneer Square. I sang vocals over the top of Ronnie Spector and all those people. I played it over the phone for Dave.  He got excited and he said ‘Oh wow! These sound really great with you singing’. Dave said ‘You should talk to this person and to that person’ so I approached Bill Larsen, a guitarist that played in The Loud Ties. Then I talked to Riki Mafune. She was also someone that Dave recommended. I called her and immediately fell in love with her.

Riki Mafune remembers meeting Leslee the first time.  Riki now refers the young woman she met as Penta. the She says “I knew a lot of the people…Bill Larsen and Penta worked together at Tower Records at the Mercer Avenue store.  Before that Penta had worked at Budget Tapes and Records on ‘The Ave’ (the nickname for University Way near The University of Washington).  I knew Bill and I knew Brent Pennington because Brent and I were dating.  At the time Brent was in one of Seattle’s early punk-power pop bands The Girls. I was hanging out on The Ave a lot.  Bill and Brent already knew each other. Bill, Brent and Dave were walking musical encyclopaedias.. They had this musical bromance going on, which was cool. That’s how I met Penta.  Bill Larsen had heard Penta sing, but he hadn’t heard me. Rumor got around that I was a singer, songwriter and guitar player. Penta and I met at the frickin’ Frankfurter hot dog stand on University Way of all places.  We talked over Penta’s concept.  I knew The Girls were kind of on their last legs for a lot of different reasons.  Brent was looking for a gig and Dave was playing with just about every band in town.  He was heavily invested in Jim Basnights band The Moberlys and The Pudz. I’d known Rob Morgan of The Pudz forever!!!. I’ve known him longer than I’ve known Penta.

“Penta and I said ‘let’s put our heads together’. Dave Drewry was in.  Brent was in.  So  Dave and I went to talk to Penta,  Dave wanted to find a little bit more about what we wanted, so, Penta and I started talking about songs and looking into how to fill out the band, because we wanted that ‘girl group‘ format”.

It was 1980. Scott McCaughey was working at Cellophane Square Records in the University District. His girlfriend was Christy Wilson (later known as Christy McWilson after Scott and Christy married)  They had recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco.  Christy was working at The Deluxe Bar and Grill on Capitol Hill Broadway Avenue. Dave Drewry suggested her to Penta and Riki.  Dave only knew she was Scott’s girlfriend and that she sang.

“It all came together organically”. Says Riki.“Bill Larsen was already on board because he was totally into that genre and Dave Drewry was there..  Of course Penta and I were committed.

“Riki had done some songwriting”. Says Penta. “She was even younger than I was. After we met she said, ‘well I have this boyfriend and he’s played in a band’. It turned out to be Brent Pennington, who had been in The Girls, so he ended up being the guitar player. We did a whole lot of auditions for another vocalist, but nothing worked. People couldn’t sing; they thought they could, but they couldn’t. It was then that Dave said ‘there’s this woman that just moved here from San Francisco with her boyfriend. You should see about her. I heard that she sings’. Then we found out she was the same woman who was with Scott McCaughey.  Riki and I went over to her house to see her audition.




“Scott and Christy were living right off the freeway just south of 45th street. We were sitting there on their porch waiting for her”recalls Riki.. “I was the baby at 17 at the time all this was going down.  Penta was a little bit older than me. Christy said that when she walked up and saw us sitting on her porch she thought….well she later referred to us in a letter as  ‘teen queens’.  She thought we were chewing bubble gum, but I corrected her recently and said ‘No! We were eating Starbursts!‘ There I was  on her porch with my candy and my Marlboro Lights”

The three of them went inside and Christy put on a Connie Francis record and sang into an empty wine bottle, and danced around the room singing.

“We were like ‘who cares if she can sing? she’s hilarious!’. Penta says. “We thought she was great. Then she said ‘I have this boyfriend, and he plays the bass, if you need a bass player’. Of course that was Scott McCaughey. So that’s how The Dynette Set got put together. That was a really wonderful experience”

Their first gig was at The UCT Hall (United Commercial Travellers Hall) on lower Queen Anne Hill. It was Penta’s birthday, but she was still going by Lesslee back then” says Riki Mafune. “We literally took off from there. It was like a rocket! We opened for The Fastbacks.  Duff McKagan was drumming for them. We were nobody.  It was our first gig. It was a pretty good show, even though the crowd leaned a little more to the punk side than the pop side. But everybody seemed to dig us”.

It was probably this show and the nexus that would develop with Kurt Bloch and Scott McCaughey that led to The Dynette Set’s Christy McWilson, Riki Mafune and Leslee Swanson to provide back-up on two of The Fastback’s earliest recordings, ‘In America’ and ‘Whenever I’m Walking.

“I lived at Chez Macabre during this period” Penta says. Chez Macabre was a communal house that saw many of the early Seattle alternative scene had paraded through…too many to name here.

“Mike Davidson had just moved out and I took his room.  Roland Barker and Giselle Spence across the hall from me. Neil Hubbard and Mary Moyer were living in the basement.  Homer Spence was living on the main floor.  Mike Davidson and Roland Barker were in The Blackouts at the time. Roland became part of the band Ministry along with former members Bill Rieflin and Paul Barker. Neil went on to release the seminal album “The Seattle Syndrome” Volumes One and Two. He also released the first Blackouts album Men in Motion  on his Engram label. Giselle Spence would move to Hollywood and become a seamstress and costume designer for the film industry. Homer Spence was a former teacher who gave it up to become a member of the Telepaths and later a sort-of philosopher who drove cab and became one of Seattle’s most loved and respected bartender.  He was also a baseball fanatic who brought his television into the bar to watch every World Series.

Homer Spence. After work at The Virginia Inn.

According to Jeff Stevens of the City of Anxiety blog;

“Homer Spence deserves more than mere passing mention here, since he remains today a genuine legend within Seattle’s countercultural community. A native son of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Spence came to Seattle to teach (economics) at the University of Washington, but quit that gig to play music instead. He would then also work various common jobs to support himself, including cab driving and bartending at Belltown’s Virginia Inn. Spence died tragically of a heart attack on January 18, 1991. Homer is sorely missed to this day.

Kurt Werner had been a member of Seattle’s now-legendary band The Telepaths. His brother Erich Werner was a founding member of The Blackouts. Three of The Blackouts members, Bill Rieflin, Roland Barker and Paul Barker would later join Al Jourgensen to transform his synth-pop band Ministry, who had toured with new wave acts like The Police Culture Club, A Flock of Seagulls, Depeche Mode and Culture Club.  The four of them, with a bit of outside help from Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc turned Jourgensen’s original new wave band  into a caustic, severe,speed-dirge powerhouse. Ministry went on to be one of the most popular of the so-called industrial bands of the ‘80s and 90s.  Roland Barker was part of Ministry in 1986, but returned to the band in 1992 and 1993.  Rieflin left the band in 1994… midway during the recording of Filth Pig. Paul “Ion” Barker (a.k.a. Hermes Pan) remained in Ministry 27 years, when he finally broke ties with Al Jourgensen.  It’s said that neither will talk to the other since the band’s break-up.

Penta tells me about first meeting Paul “Ion”Barker, “I met Ion who was playing with The Blackouts the first show after bassist Mike Davidson had left the band in 1981. His brother, Roland Barker was already a member of the band.

Penta and Paul Barker
Seattle 1981

“Ion was an important influence in my life. A true artist. I had never been with anyone who had lived in Europe before.” He was so sophisticated to me, highly intelligent.” Penta tells me.  “He was real intellectual – the first I had ever met; not to mention him being extraordinarily beautiful and a brilliant musician.  We spoke,” says Penta,” and I told him he was a perfect addition to the band.”

That was all it took. I didn’t see him for the rest of the summer, but in September I went to Gigi’s Spence’s birthday party.  Homer Spence was my date. I saw Ion there. We began to talk to one another. “He asked me if I wanted to take a walk and I agreed. Then he asked me if I would go home with him.  I didn’t say good-bye to Homer…later I apologized to Homer for leaving him at the party but he understood when he saw Ion and I had fallen for each other.  Ion lived in a loft Belltown just above the Blackouts’ rehearsal space.. I believe that was a space rented to him by Danny Eskenazi (of the vintage store Dreamland). I had never been in a loft space before and I was struck by Ion’s style and the way he furnished his space. He told me he was a minimalist. He had purchased Homer’s vintage 1960s Dodge Dart with the push button controls on the dash. I was very smitten and impressed by him.  Ion had just returned from living in Germany for several years and spoke fluent German”.

“Ion used to buy me clothes and things that HE liked to see me in.” Penta tells me.  “He influenced my style a great deal. I would say that being with him is what inspired me to move to NYC and pursue a more artistic path than the one I was on in Seattle. I had been in The Dynette Set when we were together and he came to most of our shows. He was so unique looking that he really stood out in the crowd..” “After The Dynette Set shows were finished we would head over to a Blackouts show together. They usually played very late. It was a crazy combination. The Blackouts were always my favorite local band; all of them were extraordinary people.

I stayed with Ion until I moved to New York City. Shortly after I left, Ion moved to Somerville, Massachusetts with the Blackouts. I saw him in New York City several times after that . After he joined the band Ministry I got invited to their shows whenever they played in a city I was living in. We’re still in touch to this day. What a lovely man he is.”

“I stayed with The Dynette Set less than a year” Penta says. “I left Seattle in late 1982. I wanted to go to the big city and be in the arts community. I chose New York and just decided to go”. When I first got to New York I was just getting oriented, and getting over my culture shock.

According to Riki Mafune;

“After Penta left The Dynette Set, all we knew was that we were being offered gigs, so we did some auditions for a new singer which was really hard because the original line-up, as I said before, happened organically. We had all just really jibed. So in finding a third voice, a third front person we just lucked-out. We found Shelley Stockstill and she just stepped right in. She was there for the main run of The Dynette Set. She was such a workhorse…we all were, but she was totally invested, never missed a gig.  We were really lucky to find her because if we hadn’t found her I’m not real sure we would have continued”.

The change from Penta to Shelley seems to have gone unnoticed by some.  Shelley and Penta had similar looks and the same colored hair. “Well.she is taller than me and she’s younger..by nine years” Shelley says. “One night out when we were out in Belltown we found out we were both born in the same hospital; The Deaconess in Wenatchee.  They only had one birthing room!”

Sometime in the early 1980s Penta recorded a version of a song written by Jackie DeShannon called Each Time.  It had  been a 1965 hit for The Searchers.  Penta’s recording includes  Phil Motlet on bass, Dave Drewry on drums, Robert T. Dale on guitar, Bill Larsen on guitar and percussion and  Leslee Swanson on vocals. Engineer and co-producer with Steve Larsen was Terry Date. 

“That was kind of cool. We recorded it in a day”says Penta.”But it deserved more time. We recorded it at Steve Lawson’s studio with Terry Date.  Terry was the in-house producer at Lawson’s studio at the time. He went on to become a big local metal producer. Metal wasn’t really his thing but he knew how to get the sound. He was a really nice guy to us. Considering the time we had to do it in I thought he did a pretty good job.  We sent the demo to Gary Stewart at Rhino Records and he said ‘Yeah we’re gonna get it done.  We’re gonna put this track on one of our records’, so we said ‘OK! Great!!!”

The song Each Time appeared on the Rhino Records compilation The Girls Can’t Help It released in 1984. The date of the recording is unclear but it’s clearly after Penta left The Dynette Set.  There is also have a track on  The Girls Can’t Help It by The Dynette Set. The song is Seed of Love was written by Penta’s replacement Shelley Stockstill.  The band is the rest of the classic Dynette Set line up.  The track was produced by Jim Wolfe.  Both songs are as much fun as you’d expect coming from the young Leslee Swanson and from The Dynette Set. Although the album was deleted from the Rhino catalogue years ago, it’s still fairly easy to find through collectors on vinyl.

 

 

Penta continues her story by explaining how her name came about.

Penta and Eliot Crimson

“I was born Leslee Swanson, but now I go by Penta Leslee Swanson. Penta was just a word that came to me that I really liked. When I went to New York City, Kurt Werner came to pick me up at the airport. I knew who he was, but I had never met him before. I was going to stay at Jim Basnight’s place and Kurt was already living there.  At least  I thought his name was “Kurt so that’s what I called him.  The first time I did he said ‘my name is Eliot Crimson!’  I said ‘OH! excuse me’  I thought to myself  ‘well, where did that come from?’. Then he told me a little about the back-story which I don’t remember. I do remember him telling me how he re-named all of his friends in a book he’d written.  He changed the names of his friends into all these crazy names”

“I told him if I was ever going to change my name it would be to Penta. He said ‘PENTA??? Oh my god that’s Fantastic!’ He flipped over it. Jim Basnight was in Seattle at the time so Eliot took me out to see New York that night. We hit it off right away. I was crazy about him and vice-versa. Everywhere we went that night he introduced me as Penta and I really liked it. So I just kept the name and I’ve used it ever since.  I was 19 at the time. Later I figured out things about the name. In Greek it means five and I’m the fifth of five children and five is my birth path number in numerology.  When you add up all the numbers of my birthdate it becomes a five. My mother was an astrologer. She was quite a remarkable woman.  I grew up surrounded by psychics and numerologists and astrologers and palm readers and all that.

In 1983 Eliot and Penta  moved back to Seattle and spent a year living on Capitol Hill. “I wasn’t doing anything except being Eliot’s girlfriend”  Penta says. I was just dealing with Eliot because he was a handful! We’d sit around and play music together but we never did any shows. I did work with The Moving Parts for a bit. Damon Titus and I got together and started talking about possibilities, but we didn’t do anything.

“I went back to New York City in 1984, and right away I got involved in a cabaret group called Mader and his Biarritz Orchestra” Penta recalls. Mader (born in 1958 as Thierry Schollhammer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France)  was the leader of a 13 piece band. “He played guitar and accordion and sang” says Penta. “I also sang and we had three violins, contrabass, woodwinds and horns, a flute and a clarinet …it was a wonderful band. It was really my dream. We were doing stuff from Brecht/Weill, and Edith Piaf, so I was singing in French and German, and of course some English. That was a really great experience. I’d been learning Piaf songs on my own for years. I just loved her work. I wasn’t taught French. I just sang it phonetically. Now I speak fluent French because I lived in France so long but I didn’t know any of it back then.

In the early 1980s Mader was playing clubs around New York City that included trendy hotspots like Danceteria, The Limelight and The Pyramid Club.  In 1984 he released a solo album based on his cabaret performances called Tangobidet.  It was voted best album of 1984 by the then-influential Details magazine.  According Mader’s official biography ‘He became an overnight cult sensation.  Somewhere between Yves Montand and Lou Reed, well out of the pop mainstream. Mader’s bold performances of Tangobidet in New York City’s main clubs fascinated audiences because of it’s timeless originality in stark contrast to the New Wave trends of the time’.”

Mader and Penta New York City’s cutest couple ,1984

At that time Details magazine also called Mader and Penta ‘New York’s cutest couple’.

After success in New York, Mader and Penta moved to Strasbourg, France. Mader had gotten a job offer to be be a producer at a recording studio there. “It turned out to be a total disaster” says Penta. “We hated Strasbourg. We only stayed there two months. Then we went down to his parent’s place in Marseilles and then to Paris. In fact we were travelling between Marseilles and Paris the entire time we were in Marseilles. That’s when I met Hector Zazou in Paris.

Zazou is a legendary figure in contemporary French music. He is adored in France and internationally recognized for his work that combined the work of popular western musicians with folk musicians from Africa, Asia and Europe.  He was a skilled musician and avant-gardiste with a cult following around the world.  Zazou was born Pierre Job on July 11,1948 in the town of Sidi Bel Abbès in Algeria while it was still a French colony. His father was French and his mother Spanish. After the Algerian war of independence his family was part of the 900,000 Pieds-noir (Algerian-born Europeans) that fled to France in 1962.  Many of the Pieds-noir settled in and around Marseille.  The French government was not prepared for the chaos such a large number of refugees that were a sudden influx to France.

Hector Zazou

There are many theories how the term Pieds-noir came about. The term literally means ‘Black Feet’ According to Le Dictionnaire Robert one possible establishment of the term Pieds-noir dates back 1901 to describe sailors working barefoot in the coal rooms of ships.  These sailors’ feet would be dirtied by the soot and dust of the coal they used to power the vessel.. Around the Mediterranean this often referred to Algerians working on ships. It was a pejorative label for Algerians until around the middle of the 20th century, when it began refer to the French born in Algeria. It slowly went from a racial epithet (used against native-African Algerians) to become synonymous for the French people who had colonized Algeria.

In the mid 1960s, after Pierre Job’s family having been evacuated from Algeria, Pierre re-named himself to Hector Zazou and founded an artists’ commune that occupied a ruined castle near Marseille. He had chosen the name Zazou’ to refer to a non-conformist youth movement during the Nazi occupation of France.  The Zazou’s were similar to the Zoot Suit culture of the United States, but they had a political bent, and were defiant (as much as they could be) toward their German occupiers.  It was a way for the former Pierre Job to show his defiance to the norms of music and culture.

Mader had been part of Zazou’s commune in the 1970s before striking out on his own, but he and Zazou had remained friends since then.

 “Zazou heard me sing, and he loved my voice” says Penta. “Right away asked me if I would sing in his band. I said ‘Yes! of course!’ and I ended up doing a little tour with them in Europe during 1986. The band was fronted by the well-known Congolese singer Bony Bikaye.

Bony Bikaye and Hector Zazou

Bikaye was not what one would think of as a typical, traditional African artist.  His musical interests included  Krautrock and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He was also an early advocate of using synth-loops, sequencing. the latest electronic studio techmiques and wild avant-garde musical themes.

Later Pitchfork magazine said of his collaboration with Hector Zazou on the 1983 album ‘Noir et Blanc’ (Black and White) ‘The electronic musicians Guillaume Loizillon and Claude Micheli (collectively known as the duo CY1), laid down knotty sequences and gurgling metallic textures while Bikaye multi-tracked his voice in warm, woozy layers…They sound wonderfully alien: weird, vine-like tangles of arpeggiated synthesizer and sweetly harmonized vocals, robotic and ghostly all at once’.”

During the European Hector Zazou/Bony Bikaye tour that included  Penta, Bikaye left most of the studio effects and electronica behind in favor of a more Afrocentric approach to music. Instead of the “weird, vine like tangles” he favored African Pop infused with European overtones.

“There were two African backup singers touring with Bikaye who had really great voices” Penta says. “We sang in Congolese dialects, Lingala, Kikongo, Swahili and in French.  I had no idea what the hell I was singing.  It turns out it was very heavy political stuff.  It was really great and a really fantastic experience”.

Meanwhile Mader had returned to the United States where he began building a career as a respected soundtrack composer for film and television.  He combined his fascination with the music of Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, Nino Rota, Maurice Ravel and French popular music of the 1920s that he’d heard as a child from his grandparents collection of of old 78rpm records.  He infused these influences with his own unique musical sensibilities.  It wasn’t long before he started scoring for important indie films by respected directors.  Starting with Ang Lee’s films ‘The Wedding Banquet’ and ‘Eat Drink, Man Woman’. He went on to score Robert Greenwald’s ‘Steal This Movie’ (based on the life of Abbie Hoffman), Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara’s documentary Bhutto, about the life and assassination of the late Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, Alexandre Rockwell’s In The Soup, and Lisa Sprecher’s Clockwatchers among scores of other television and film projects.  He even found time to record and release a second solo album 5 Legged Fish in 2013.

Back in France Penta, as well as other Seattle-based musicians Bill Rieflin and Fred Chalenor continued to work with Hector Zazou. Bieflin and Chalenor worked with  Robert Fripp, Matt Chamberlain, Hector Zazou and Pete Buck as part of the Slow Music Project in 2005 and 2006. Sadly, Chalenor passed away June 23, 2018 of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease.  Chalenor had collaborated with Wayne Horowitz and ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper as well as being a member of the band  known best known by Seattleites, 3 Swimmers

Shortly after her tour with Zazou and Bikaye Penta returned to New York City where she met her first husband Carlo Altomare.

 “I met Carlo through a friend of mine that I was living with on Manhattan’s Lower East Side” Penta recalls. “Her name was Karey Degnan but she used to call herself Cruella De Ville. She had her hair like that and it was awesome”.

Cruella DeVille was well- known throughout the Lower East Side for years.

“We were high on mushrooms and we were crossing the street at Avenue A and 8th Street” Penta tells me. “Carlo was walking in the opposite direction and we met in the middle of the street. Later he came over to Karey’s and when I moved he kept following me wherever I went. So we got together pretty quickly”.

“We lived at the Alchemical Theater space. We were squatting at the Alchemical Theater space for three years. We built the theater at this squat and it was really fantastic. It was harsh, but it was awesome. Later we lived at The Living Theater’ Penta says laughingly. ‘We even lived with Gordon Raphael and Josie Lazo for awhile!”.

Penta and Carlo Altomare Photo: Ira Cohen

“Carlo had been the musical director and the one who did the music for The Living Theater.  “He and I also worked with Tim Wright of Pere Ubu. We had a trio at the time and collaborated together for the live for the music accompanying for The Living Theatre’s production of ‘The Tablets” Penta says.’The Tablets is amazing. It was such a new thing at the time…that would have been around 1986. Anyway, Tim Wright played the bass, I played all kinds of crazy percussive instruments and did my magic with sounds and voices. Carlo played piano which is his specialty. Carlo is amazing. He composed the music for The Living Theater for many years. He’s also a modern classical composer and pianist”

“The guy who wrote The Tablets is Armand Schwerner” Penta tells me. “He was the cousin of Michael r.”

Michael Schwerner, along with Andrew Goodman and James Cheney were abducted and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in June of 1964. The three of them were involved in the civil rights ‘Freedom Summer’ and on their way to an event in Meridian MS. They were pulled over for speeding outside Philadelphia Mississippi. The three were taken to the local jail, where they spent several hours. After being released the trio were followed by the police and a group of angry racists and Klansmen. The three were stopped again, but this time they were taken to a remote location and murdered. Schwerner and Goodman were shot in the heart and Cheney ( black man) was severely beaten and castrated before being killed by three shots. Their bodies were then shoved back into the Ford Station Wagon they had been driving and taken by the mob where they buried the men within an earthen dam that was then under construction. The car was later located in another location where it had been set ablaze.  The whole affair and original acquittal of many who took place was one of the most profound incentives for all Americans to come to believe Equal Rights were also the natural rights of minorities.

Penta as Mother Courage
Mother Courage and Her Children
U of O Robinson Theater March. 2018

The Living Theater is still going, even though Judith Malina who co-founded The Living Theater passed away in April of 2015.

Malina and her husband Julian Beck had started the theater company in 1947.  The first piece they did was written by Pablo Picasso.  They were a radical political theatre troupe that rose to prominence in New York City and Paris during the 1950s and 60s. The Living Theatre was originally established as an alternative to New York’s commercial theater and pioneered the unconventional staging of poetic drama. They produced plays by William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, John Ashbery, Paul Goodman and Kenneth Rexroth among others.  They also presented plays by Europeans whose works were rarely seen in the United States. These included Jean Cocteau, Bertolt Brecht, Luigi Pirandello and Federico García Lorca.  Julian Beck died in 1985, leaving his wife to capably run the theater for the next 30 years. In1983 The Living Theatre and its founders were the subject of the 1983 documentary Signals Through The Flames.

The Alchemical Theater has also come into prominence.  Aside from their own company they offer space at the re-named Alchemical Studio for several other theater companies to rehearse and perform.  Besides being it’s founder, Carlo Altomare, Penta’s former husband, is now it’s Artistic Director

.I was doing theater for quite awhile in the late 80s, but then I started writing songs” Penta says. “Jeff Cerar had moved to New York City and I played with him for awhile.  We did my songs and he accompanied me on guitar.  We’d do bar gigs around the East Village. That was really fun. It was kind of a weird fluke that we happened to find out we were both in New York at the same time.I don’t remember how that came about.  Somebody must have told me. After a short period performing with Jeff Cerar, Penta set her sights on the theater again.

“I did a show in New York City with Sharon Gannon, David Life and Kathleen Hunt at The Limbo Lounge in the East Village” Penta says. “I was working with Sharon at the time at David Life’s Life Café. “I performed in the nude and sang accapella..just making noises and sounds and sang doing all sorts of crazy stuff with my voice. It was really wild. Sharon and Kathleen danced. I had painted all my body white and did accents on my breasts and accents on my pubic area. It was funny because Eliot had come to see that show and he brought Larry Reid and John Bigley with him.The U-Men were in town playing. They opened for Nick Cave at Danceteria.

Penta then began a collaboration with Tuxedomoon bassist Peter Principle (born Peter Dachert, in 1954 in Queens, New York).

“Peter produced a bunch of demos for me when I was in New York, right before Carlo and I moved to Prague. He was an amazing guy and a great musician. I had a bunch of songs and went to his place.  He had a recording set up; a reel to reel,  so we recorded six of my songs. I played accoustic guitar and sang.  Peter played all the other instruments”.

Unfortunately Peter died July 17, 2017.  His friend and bandmate Blaine Reininger, posted a message on facebook that said Peter ;was found in his room at Les Ateliers Claus in Brussels, where Tuxedomoon has been preparing a new tour and new music. He was the apparent victim of a heart attack or stroke’.

In 1990 Penta made another trip to Seattle.  Carlo followed her and in that year, where their daughter Casimira was born.  Soon Penta was back to work, While Carlo played briefly with the band Sky Cries Mary, alongside  Ivan Král .  Penta says she remembers Ivan used to call Carlo ‘New York; He’d call out to Carlo by saying ‘Hey!.New York!”

“In 1991 when I was in Seattle, I went into the studio with Bill Reiflin, Mike Davidson and Ivan Král. We did three of my songs and a couple of Ivan’s songs. I remember one of his songs was called ‘Cry For More’  (the song Bill Rieflin mentions) and Ivan had me sing lead vocals on it.  Ironically I saw Ivan Král again in Prague because after they’d opened the borders he went back there to play music.  A good friend of mine in Prague played with him, so I saw Ivan again”.

“We did a live gig together in Seattle” continues Penta.  “Ivan Král played guitar.  I don’t remember who played drums.  Mike Davidson played bass.  Bill Rieflin was kind of upset when I told him we did the gig.  He asked ‘Why didn’t you ask me to play drums?’  I said  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d want to’.  It was for the ‘Alternative to Loud Boats’ event  that is held every summer when the Hydroplane races take place in Seattle.  It was held over by Seattle Central Community College on Capitol Hill.  I did that show a couple of times; once with Jesse Bernstein.  That was really fun. Another year we held it down by the railroad tracks somewhere, and the trains kept passing by (laughs) It was terrible.

In 1992 Penta and Carlo and moved to Prague.  Carlo had been offered a job as a Theater Professor at The University of Prague.  Penta  convinced Mike Davidson to move there with then. Mike was a ‘super-good friend’  according to Penta. He lived with Penta and Carlo when they moved there. He and Penta did  a lot of shows together in Prague…just the two of them on their own.

“Oh my god, it was totally wild in Prague!!” Penta tells me while laughing. It was right after The Velvet Revolution that freed the country from Communist rule.  “Some people told me it was like Amsterdam in 1968. We rented a place that cost us about  $42 a month. Prague is a great city, but I was really glad to get out too.  While I was living there I was going to Paris and working with Hector Zazou on a regular basis.  I ended up doing an album that he produced in Paris while I was travelling back and forth from Prague.  It was about half my own songs and half covers.  His treatment of the music was really interesting.  The album was called ‘Sorrow and Solitude‘. Zazou did a really fantastic job on it, but it really wasn’t me”  Penta says.  “It was very different than what I probably would have done myself, but it’s a beautiful record. Zazou had his own studio in Paris during the early 1992, but it wasn’t released until 1993 on the German label, Erdenklang.

Penta may be understating what she and Zazou came up with in recording ‘Sorrow and Solitude’ 

Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. He spent the 1960s living between in Morocco and in New York City.  Penta met Ira through her husband,Carlo Altomare in New York City during the mid 80s.  Later Penta  introduced Ira Cohen to Zazou.  She also introduced Bill Rieflin to Zazou.  Ira took the cover photo for ‘Sorrow and Solitude’ and wrote some of the notes for the album. including;

“Imagine whatever you will, but know that it is not imagination but experience which makes poetry, and that behind every image, behind every word there is something I am trying to tell you, something that really happened.” -Ira Cohen”.

“Ira wasn’t a musician” says Penta but I used his poem Annapurna Moon for my song on Return to Alpha.

“On Sorrow and Solitude, Penta Leslee Swanson bares her sole with her voice” reviewer Lynn Freedman wrote in 2006. “Picture a dimly lit alley way in Paris on a warm summer night. A haunting sax leads you into a small, unpretentious bar. Just you, the bartender and the jazz combo. On the stage a sultry singer is at the mike. She sings slowly and deeply, with eyes cast down.
Sorrow and Solitude
is bluesy, moody, and unlike anything you’ve probably heard. Music for times of deep reflection, or deep relationships.”

I’m not sure if she’s being tongue-in-cheek or serious when Penta tells me “I missed  the whole “grunge” thing that was happening in Seattle. but  I do remember seeing Nirvana all over on European television.

“After we moved to Prague with our daughter we had a friend there named Vladimir Penta says. “One day Vladimir asked (here Penta goes into a fake Russian/Slavic voice). ‘Why are you naming your daughter Cazz-ee-meer-a?’ We said ‘Because it means ‘the bringer of peace’ which is what I thought. Vladimir said ‘no,no,no. Vlad-ee-meer is bringer of peace. Cazz-ee-meer-a  is ‘BREAKER of peace.  Penta says they all had a good laugh, since they’d chosen Casimira because to Carlo, as an Italian-American thought that it sounded more Italian than Slavik”.

“By that time I was really just doing my own stuff. I had a band in Paris simply called Penta at the time and I went through different band members over the next few years.  Hector Zazou did a couple of shows playing in my band. I also did some recordings that were possibly going to be on one of his albums, Chansons des mers froides (Songs from the Cold Seas). He record three songs with me, but none of them came out on the album. I have the demos I did with him.

James Trussart with his Rust-O-Matic Fleur de Lys SteelCaster guitar.    2013

“In 1994 I split up with my first husband Carlo.  I went to Berlin to think about the path I was going to take” Penta says.  “I had a German boyfriend in Berlin named Tenta. Really. It was Penta and Tenta! No one believed it!  Then I relocated to Paris full time. In 1994.  I met James Trussart, who became my second husband. Our first date was on my 32nd birthday, September 14th 1994.  James is a world-renowned guitar maker- a Luthier who has become much like the 1960’s British Luthier named Tony Zemaitis. James makes amazingly beautiful guitars. I think he’s the greatest guitar maker in the world. I’m slightly biased but I do think he’s the greatest. They sound fantastic!”

Zemaitis was born Antanas Kazimieras Žemaitis in London in 1935.  His family was Lithuanian was of Lithuanian descent. He started making and selling his guitars in 1960, but in 1961, he came to the attention of many (mostly acoustic) stars of the day.  After experimentation he began making innovative electric guitars  started to be approached by famous players who wanted to use his guitars. In the 60’s and 70’s he was building custom guitars for the likes of Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood (Then of The Faces), Keith Richards, and George Harrison.  Zemaitis became even more famous after 1971, when asked a well-known gun engraver by the name of Danny O’Brien to do beautiful engravings on the metal-bodied guitars he was becoming known for. He was working for so many famous musicians that it’s said that George Harrison called him one day to ask about making him a new guitar.  The phone was answered by Mrs. Zemaitis, who told Harrison, ‘Oh, no no no! He’s far to busy!’

 Trussart followed in Zemaitis’s footstep, but taking it a few steps further.  His metal bodied guitars are sometimes engraved, but he also creates designs that include unusual materials and oftentimes guitars that are rusted, or meant to rust over time. Above all, his guitars, like those of Zemaitis’s produced beautiful tones…after all, anyone can paint or jazz up a guitar, but it’s proof is in the quality of it’s sound.  Penta calls James Trussart the greatest living guitar maker.  This opinion is held by many many guitar players.

James put a studio together in our house” Penta recalls. “It was a  beautiful five storey house in Barbes-Rochechuart  just off rue de la Goutte D’or. (Street of the Chest of Gold)  near Montmartre.  It was closed off to the public in a place called Villa Poissonnière (Villa Fishwife). We lived at nombre 3,Villa Poissonnière. We sent my daughter to l’École Foyatier, a school near the the foot of the funicular line that runs from the bottom of the La Butte Montmartre (The Montmartre Butte) near rue Foyatier to La Basilique du Sacré Cœur (The Basilica of The Sacred Heart, often shortened to Sacré Cœur-pronounced somewhat like sack-Ray Coor in English) at the top of  Montmartre  Mike Davidson had moved from Prague to Paris along with Penta. He worked, recorded, engineered and played in Penta and James’s home studio.

Bill Larsen and his wife visited Penta and James at Villa Poissonnière. He recalls;

“James Trussart is a good guy; a real interesting guy.  We stayed at their place a couple of nights. James, of course, is a guitar builder…he builds incredible guitars.  He also refurbished the house they lived in.  It was like a row house; all brick and probably 150 or 200 years old. There was a facade and everybody had their separate key to their houses. James bought one of those places and totally gutted it. It was literally five storeys tall with a sub-basement. He totally gutted it to a shell, then rebuilt the whole thing. He’s really talented. He was buying a lot of the materials at flea markets (le marché aux puces) around Paris. He’d find an old pile full of interesting things. He put a spiral staircase in the center of the house toward the back.  It was funny because one step was concrete and he said ‘I only had one mold that I bought at a flea market, so I had to mold one stair at a time’’. It was pretty cool”.





 “It was like a fairy tale for me” says Penta.  “I did a whole bunch of recordings over a period of seven years in the studio  that we had built in the house..  It was a 16 track Fostex tape machine and a Mackie board. It was really ,but it sounded  great.  I had all kinds of incredible musicians passing through that were playing in Paris that I or play with. The results of seven years recording led to Penta’s unrecognized masterpiece, Return to Alpha.

James and I used to get invited to all the shows, and get invited backstage, so I met all these incredible people over the years” Penta tells me. “I met David Bowie. I met Bryan Ferry. I met Marianne Faithfull. I met The Black Crows.  I met Bob Dylan’s band-but not Bob.  One  of the guys in Paul McCartney’s band is a friend of mine.  I’ve been backstage and meet all of those guys (except for Paul and Bob).  ZZ Top.  I met Elvis Costello (‘a real gentleman’ according to Penta), Nick Cave, James Burton and dozens of other well-known musicians.  I also met Radiohead when they came through Paris. They played a TV show that James had all-access to.  I got to watch them rehearse for the show! they were really people. Thom Yorke actually came up to me and introduced himself – very sweet”

Penta says she also met Elliot Murphy in Paris and became good friends. She calls him ‘a super-great guy’.  Murphy came to prominence about the same time Bruce Springsteen was starting to get attention. Murphy’s debut album Aquashow got phenomenal reviews from rock music critics as well as reviews in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Newsweek.  He too was set to be the “next big thing” but Elliot just didn’t get the fame and fortune that Springsteen got. Perhaps his songwriting was a bit too subtle, but he’s had a sizeable following over the decades, and was the subject of Jorge Arenillas documentary film The Second Act of Elliot Murphy. In 1990 Murphy moved to Europe and has based himself in Paris since then.

Chris Spedding and Penta

“I met Chris Spedding when he was doing the same TV show as I was” says Penta. “He was playing guitar with an early French Rock and roller named Dick Rivers ((born on April 24 1945 as Hervé Forneri). His name was pronounced Deek Rivers, after the character Deke Rivers that  Elvis Presley had played in the 1957 film ‘Loving You’.The French Dick Rivers had been an early French Rock and roller who modeled his persona and singing career on Elvis. The French Dick Rivers had started as the lead singer of the band Les Chats Sauvages (The Wild Cats) and singing on his first record in 1961 on his fifteenth birthday. The band became such a sensation in France, they even caused riots at their shows.  Rivers let the band in 1962, and set out on his very long, successful career over which he’s released  58 albums and 168  singles and EP’s

I think the show-but I’m not certain- was Poum Poum Tchak! (roughly translated as the sound of beating on a drum). I’d heard that Chris Spedding was there. Somebody said ‘yeah, you can go back and talk to him. He’s just in the back room over there’ I went in and he was sitting there by himself, kind of dozing off in his chair. I said ‘Hi!’ I didn’t say ‘I worship you‘, but I came close. I introduced myself and said ‘Would you play guitar with me?’ (Penta laughs). I just asked him if he would do it, and we became friends…and he did play on my album Return to Alpha! I also had some really great people on that recording. Alex Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten played on the album. He was friends with some people that we knew in Paris. I think we must have gone to an Einstürzende Neubauten show and met him. Other players were Ira Cohen, Mike Davidson, Bill Rieflin, Warren Ellis, Marc Upson, Larry Mullins, James Trussart, as well as about another dozen musicians.

les Rita Mitsouko.
Catherine Ringer and Fred Chichin

James had made a couple of guitars for Fred Chichin of Les Ritas Mitsouko. Chichin’s wife and co-founder of the band was Catherine Ringer. In the 1980s and 90s they were pop superstars in France and had success worldwide. We went over to their house a few times and they came over to ours. They were very nice. Catherine was very funny. She told us that when she got bored with Fred she’d send him off to a brothel to get rid of him for awhile. They were awesome”

When Fred Chichin died of  heart failure from cancer on November 28 2007 the whole of France was shocked and treated his death as seriously as the French have always done for artists like Edith Piaf, Collette or Maurice Ravel.  Sadly, Chichin died two months after his first diagnosis of cancer.

Penta picks up by telling me “The group Pink Martini came for dinner one night.  Another night all of Iggy Pop’s guys came over.  Iggy’s drummer, Larry Mullins played drums on my CD. Larry is fantastic”.

Coincidently, Larry Mullins also played live behind the duo Such in New York City. One half of the duo was Seattle’s own Upchuck.

“Chuck was amazing” Penta remarks a bit sadly.

 Another coincidence;

“Warren Ellis from The Bad Seeds and Dirty Three also played on Return To Alpha. He played violin on a cover of Jacques Brel’s ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’. (Don’t Leave Me) We had just finished recording Warren’s part on violin and we went upstairs and his wife Delphine was there.  She had also been in my band, Penta.  They were both there and we turned the television on, and there was Jacques Brel singing ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’.  It was insane!”

 “I have to say that Alex Hacke had a lot to do with the production of that album, as well as this other fellow, David Husser. He’s a French guy who helped me out a lot.  Bill Rieflin contributed a lot to  the song ‘Humans‘.  I was visiting Seattle from Paris and I told Bill I wanted to do something with him. He said ‘OK, throw a couple of things at me and we’ll see what happens’  I just had the bass line and the lyrics and melody for the song. He did a whole entire production around it that was awesome.  We ended up basically trying our best to copy what he did on Return to Alpha and we kept his rhythm tracks.  David Husser did the guitars and Alexander Hacke played bass on that, but Bill had come up with the arrangement. I have a recording of Bill’s original somewhere…just me and Bill, which I’d really like to have now.  Bill is amazing…just incredible.  One of the nicest people.  A really good guy too. Bill says:

Penta with Bill Rieflin. Eugene Oregon, July 2013

“My memory is a little hazy, but I recall working with Penta on at least two occasions: one was on the song Humans from her record Return to Alpha; the other was a demo for Ivan Kraal on his song Cry For Love. The thing these sessions have in common was how effortless they were. In both cases, everything came together really quickly with no futzing about.  Penta was very open and the overall flow of things was good.  And, great results!!  What more can you ask for?”

 Return to Alpha was a big birthing process and it took seven years to make” Penta tells me. “Like I said it was all those musicians who came through the studio in Paris. Nobody got paid. It was all done through the kindness of their hearts.  They were all incredible. Mike Davidson also played on Return to Alpha. Mike was a super-good friend of mine. He worked with me in our home studio.  He did some engineering and played bass.

“Unfortunately we had a falling-out, but I really love him and I still really care about him” says Penta.  “I would love to see him again. During a recent trip to Seattle I thought I was going to get to see him because I did some recording with Paul Hood of the Toiling Midgets.  Paul asked me to sing some French for him on one song they were recording.  Mike was supposed to be there and help us engineer it.  We couldn’t figure out how to do it and were having a hell of a time.  I ended up doing just the one song in French.  Paul Hood is somebody I played with when I lived in Seattle briefly for a year. Paul’s a dear friend too”.

“Charlie Sexton is a friend of James’ and James has made guitars for Charlie over the years. One night he came to our house in Los Angeles to see James about a guitar, and as he was leaving James gave him a copy of Return to Alpha He told Charlie it was mine. The CD had just come out at that time (2002). So, later that night around midnight I get a phone call from Charlie Sexton! He says to me, ‘Who are you and where did you come from? I’m listening to your CD in the car and I’m on the fourth song and it just keeps getting better and better!’ That was an unreal moment for me! Bob Dylan’s guitar player was not supposed to be calling me and telling me how much he liked my music!  Charlie still puts me on the list every time Dylan is playing somewhere near me. I’ve been backstage at Dylan shows so many times, but I have still never met him. I LOVE Bob Dylan; but I’ve had the privilege of watching Dylan and his band rehearsing!”

Penta and James Trussart, Paris

In fact the music on Return to Alpha defies genre.  In fact it may be an entire genre of it’s own.  One reviewer wrote ‘This music is incredible and her voice is mesmerizing.  Return to Alpha  can only be described as sultry and bohemian.

James Trussart who co-produced the album says  “I think it was a great project. I think it’s fantastic too. Sometimes when people ask me what kind of music it is I like I try to explain depending who’s asking me. What’s great about Penta is she’s very cultured. She’s a really fantastic singer.  I think she’s also a great songwriter.  I’m still happy that we made something like Return to Alpha together. It was a great experience.  It was a challenging experience for me, but I like that. It was also a chance to share the project with great people”

“The album was recorded in Paris” James continues. “We recorded it off and on at our house.  At the time I also had access to a great studio, kind of a jazz studio with a great collection of microphones. Most of her vocals were  recorded with a Neumann U87.  I was trying to capture a Julie London kind of recording. We had a chance to work with a few great guys.  They were all excited by the project. It translates to the audience.  There’s a  great version of ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’ . At that time in France it would have been a really great chance to promote that at the time. But we were in the process of moving from Paris to Los Angeles. I gave a copy of Return to Alpha to this guy who was signing bands for Virgin Records but he didn’t ‘get it’” James then talks about his guitars;

‘It’s the same as kind of thing as fashion; the music and the instruments. I collect instruments. Not really to collect them but to use them in musical projects….like cooking.  Early on I put a guitar repair with some friends for three or four years.  I left but kept doing guitar repair by myself with a team.  I did that for ten or fifteen years. Then I moved to Los Angeles and I decided just to do my guitars. That’s what I’ve been doing since 2000.  I repaired and, tweaked a guitar that I made in 1992. It was The original SteelDeVille I made for Willy DeVille when he recorded  Backstreet of Desire.  He was a friend, and I was a fan of his. It’s funny to see what you did 30 years ago.  It all comes back and you. I look at it and it’s still great. It was a good choice of parts,of pick-ups and this and that’.

‘Lisa Johnson is going to take a few photos of my guitars to put in a book to be called Rock Star Guitars”. Says James. “Anyway, I do whatever crosses my mind. Sometimes I’m thinking about a particular guitar player and what he’s going to do with it..  It’s a way to put art into the accidents. The muse is just the art of it.

When I started making guitars I thought ‘You never totally reinvent the wheel’.  You take elements and things that have come before.  For instance I like classic contours.  It’s easy to re-design a personal contour but it’s always going to be around a classic contour no matter what. I think I add a bunch of new elements, not only for the  look, but for the sonic approach”.

Mike Davidson was also on Return to Alpha” Penta says. When I was re-located to Paris, Mike came along. He worked with me in our studio.  He did some engineering and played bass.  Unfortunately We had a falling-out, but I really love him and I still really care about him and would love to see him. When I was in Seattle the last time I thought I was going to get to see Mike because I did some recording with Paul Hood of the Toiling Midgets.  Paul asked me to do some French for him for one song they were recording.  Mike was supposed to be there and help us engineer it but he didn’t make it.  We couldn’t figure out how to do it and were having a hell of a time.  I ended up doing just the one song in French.  Paul Hood is somebody I played with when I lived in Seattle briefly. for a year. Paul’s a dear friend too.

“James and I permanently moved from Paris to Los Angeles in December of 2001. It was a better home base for his guitar business. All the guitar players lived there. He’s still there. We bought a 4,000 square foot Craftsman house in Echo Park when we were there. It was drop-dead gorgeous. Stained glass windows, all original woodwork, original light fixtures,  Everything just beautiful.  It was my dream house.  I just cried when I saw that house.

“While in Paris we had been dealing with a guy who lived in L.A.called Chris Romano” Penta tells me. “He was distributing James’s guitars, but he ripped us off really badly. We had been travelling a lot from Paris to Los Angeles and back to deal with the guitars. James had his guitars at Guitar Center and places like that. We got really screwed over by this Chris Romano guy. He kept telling us that we owed him money. Once he sent us a letter that said that he’d itemized everything and we owed him $97,000. I said to James ‘This isn’t right. What’s going on here?’ So I did all the math and found out that he owed us about $100,000. It was really fucked up. He and his wife both were really fucked-up. I won’t say her name but she used to be in the band The American Music Club”.

“We had to take Chris Romano to court.  He had to pay us back. and pay for the court costs and all of that.”

“I stayed with James for another three and a half years in L.A. and then we got divorced.  It wasn’t too horrible. We had a mediator. It was a very copacetic and fair settlement. I bought a little bungalow across the park from him. My daughter was  going to a private school..a bilingual school called Lycée LILA (Lycée International de Los Angeles). It was really scary where we lived and I was afraid to send her to public school in Los Angeles.  I thought ‘I’m just going to move‘ so I ended up moving to Bend, Oregon because some of my family lived. I hated it. It’s a beautiful landscape, but there’ nothing in Bend. It’s really conservative and just awful”.

“I ended up moving to Eugene Oregon and I’ve been there a long time, and I’m really tired of being in Eugene” Penta says. “I’m moving back to Seattle; that’s my plan. There’s a lot of theater in Seattle now…that’s what I do mostly these days. I’m with a theater company in Eugene, and I do a lot of shows.  I just did  Mother Courage and Her Children. I played Mother Courage. It was unbelievable.  I’ll probably be acting when I get back to Seattle, because I just love it.  I’ll still keep singing though.

The Spyd’elles.
Steve Larsen, Jeff Simmons, Penta Leslee Swanson

After moving to Oregon Penta and Bill Larsen (still in Seattle) hooked up with Jeff Simmons to form The Spyd’elles.  Jeff was a veteran of Seattle’s psychedelic era band Easy Chair. After playing The Seattle Pop Festival and opening for The Chambers Brothers, Cream, Blue Cheer and Led Zeppelin and hundreds of gigs throughout the Northwest Easy Chair were ‘discovered’ by Frank Zappa and his manager Herb Cohen during their sound check before they were slated to open for The Mothers of Invention at the Seattle Center Arena on August 24, 1968. They were impressed enough to fly Easy Chair to Los Angeles and a contract with one of two new labels Zappa had created, Bizarre Records.  After a few high-profile showcases studio sessions never materialized and the band broke up.  Simmons stayed in Los Angeles and ended up being signed to Bizarre Records as a solo artist and delivering two very fine albums.  The first was an incredibly innovative soundtrack to Naked Angels a biker/sexploitation film.  His second album ‘Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up’ included a host of Zappa regulars-and Frank Zappa himself.  Soon Jeff was touring and recording with The Mothers of Invention from 1970 through 1974, with a brief hiatus during the filming of Zappa’s film 200 Motels

Penta says; “Jeff Simmons. I love that guy. He is such an incredible musician.  He’s possibly the most incredible musician I’ve worked with besides Bill Rieflin. Jeff is just so amazing and I learned so much from him. He taught me a lot about singing. He taught me that I could do things with my voice that I didn’t know I could do. He encouraged me and pushed me and got me to sing songs that I never would have even thought that I could sing. Things like Etta James and Dusty Springfield .

“That’s pretty lofty praise”Jeff tells me

.“I’m good friends with Bill Larsen who was in ‘The Dynette Set’ says Jeff. “The thing is, I grew up in the ‘girl group’ era; pre-Beatles, so I have a special affinity for that music.  Bill and Penta would come out to my place, they’d spend some time at Taco Time to get some tater-tots or whatever and then we’d rehearse the group. I actually have two songs recorded, and a live recording. Our repertoire was pretty eclectic.  I had been in a band called the Del Psychics a little while before that and we had a singer who was my girlfriend at the time.  That was one of my first chances to bring my sensibility of the girl groups into the Fender Rhodes, Clavinet, modern kind of deal.”

“We cut Nitty Gritty by Shirley Ellis and tackled some interesting tunes. Me, Bill and Penta would harmonize together on If You Think You Can You Can by Marcia Clark. I also played piano with Penta” Jeff tells me. “Penta would also come around a  little gig I had playing grand piano with bass player Billy McPherson. Billy had been in Ballin’Jack and The Regents out of Tacoma.  He had been a child-prodigy that ended up in The Air Force Band.  Then he played with Buddy Miles and Albert Collins  He’s passed on now” Jeff says. “He and I and Bill Larsen and a various assortment of players would show up at The Pig and Whistle, a little joint on Greenwood Avenue in Seattle. Penta would sing. We did some continental-type jazzier stuff that was really esoteric and off the beaten path”.

“Penta is a tremendous singer and stage presence” Jeff continues.  We only played a modicum of gigs as The Spyd’elles. Two or three live gigs because she was living in Oregon at the time and would come up and sing with us. All I can add is that Penta’s’ a fantastic talent, a beautiful woman and I really enjoyed my time with her and Bill.  Like I said there’s a couple of recordings extant.  Maybe I can dig them up someday”

I worked with Ben Ireland during the same time I was working with Jeff Simmons” Penta tells me. “I was doing a jazz thing with The Pete Leinonen Band . We’d played little lounge gigs. I got to choose my own material. Barb Ireland filmed us once, so there’s some footage of us somewhere in her collection. I sang, Ben was on drums and Pete was on bass. We also had horn players. It was low-key fun.

“After I moved from Bend to Eugene I started going to Massage therapy school. Penta tells me.  “I wasn’t doing music at all, l just started back going to school.  Then in I fell in love with my massage therapy program director.  His name is Cliff Stenquist. We met in 2005. We’re still together”.

“I’m licensed to be a masage therapist. I also did a teacher training class with Sharon Gannon and David Life in 2008  at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck New York. I’m also a certified yoga teacher.  Sharon and David are the creators of the Jivamukti Yoga method. She’s created quite an empire” says Penta. It’s world renowned”.

Sharon Gannon and David Life

Sharon has always been a caring, creative and spiritual person.  It’s nice to see how far she’s come her days  helping Student Nurse guitarist and graphic artist Helena Rogers pull her beautiful silk-screened posters of the 1980s. It’s also somewhat of a validation in her early association and dancing for Sue Ann Harkey and Audio Leter, a band so ahead of it’s time that it was once scorned even by Seattle’s alternative music community. It’s only recently that folks have looked back and seen how the avant-garde quality of what they were doing permeates much of what we hear today.

“I haven’t really written songs for awhile, but I’m still singing. We did a Dynette Set reunion shows in 2013 and 2015 at the High Dive in Seattle.  That was pretty amazing to get everyone back together except Scott McCaughey. We also did a show at The Tractor Tavern which made reunions three years in a row.  We also did a show at the EMP (Experience Music Project) in 2014. It’s now called MoPop (Museum Of Pop Culture).  I just come up from Eugene and do shows in Seattle then go back.  One time I’m going to come to Seattle and stay!”

The 79’ers also got together in 2012.  It was a whole mess of people.  All the guys from The Dynette Set. Me and Riki Mifune.  Rob Morgan. The guys from The Enemy. We had three different drummers; Dave Drewry, Marty Waychoff of The Girls and Peter Barnes of The Enemy.  Rick Smith, also of The Girls was part of it. Henry Boy Jenkins was there. Too many people to name” Penta says. “It was supposed to be a one-off show, but  a year later we did a show with The Dynette Set. It was basically the same line up for that show. I’m not sure if Rick Smith was there that year. The 79’ers opened for The Dynette Set 30th year reunion. at The High Dive. The 79’ers only did two shows and both were at High Dive.

Then Dave Drewry got really sick and died of cancer. It was horrible.  I went down to L.A. at the very end of his life.  It was so sad.  He was such a good guy.”

Dave Drewry died on November 2, 2016. He was 57 years old.

Dave Drewry and Penta

I absolutely adored Dave” Penta says. “He was a dear, dear friend. A fucking awesome drummer. He played that girl group music like nobody’s business. He could do that Hal Blaine thing like WOW!  He was such a great drummer he was mind-blowing. A powerhouse. He held The Dynette Set rehearsals together. He was like a conductor during rehearsals. He kept everybody on track. Now it’s a little bit wonky in rehearsals. We’re all trying to be the boss, but we’re all over the place. Dave was really good at keeping everything together. He was funny as hell and he told great stories. He’d tell hilarious stories during rehearsals and keep us entertained”.

“We have a band now called The Mrs. Bill Larsens” Penta tells me.”  She may not know I already know this, but Bill Larsen has already told me in a tongue-in-cheek manner that he objected to the name at first, but was out-voted.

“We do kind of girl group music, but not exactly” Penta tells me. “It’s kind of women’s music of the 1960s but not necessarily of the girl group genre. There’s a couple of girl group song in there.  It’s really fun. Half of the members of the Dynette Set are involved  Me and Shelly Stockstill will be singing together, which is interesting because we were never in the Dynette Set at the same time. She took my place when I left the band. So we’re having lots of fun with that.  I’m going to be in Seattle because we have a show on the 9th of November at Slim’s Last Chance Saloon (5606  1st Ave, South in Georgetown) with Shagnasty and Shelley and I are also Shagnasty’s back-up singers The Shagri-las”.  (like Shangrillas, geddit?)

The Mrs. Bill Larsens are Damon Titus, John Nay who used to drum for The Frazz and The Lewd, Brent Pennington, Shelly Stockstill, Penta and Damon Titus who’ve all been in The Dynette Set. Kevin Crosby is also in the band. He’s a Berklee School of Music graduate who’s really ino Frank Zappa. He had a Frank Zappa cover band called Zero that actually had Ike Willis in it, which was kind of cool. Ike Willis is a guitarist who was part of Frank Zappa’s studio and touring band from 1978 until Zappa’s final tour in 1988.

The Mrs. Bill Larsens tell me they absolutely LOVE Jackie DeShannon, so they’ll be doing some of her songs, including Each Time that Leslee Swanson sang on The Girls Can’t Help It compilation.  For that matter they’ll probably do The Dynette Set song from the compilation. I’d even like to do more French pop music and add that kind of stuff to the repertoire we do with The Mrs. Bill Larsens”.

Bill tells me “We’re still trying to shake things out.  Penta lives down in Oregon and it’s hard for us, because we don’t have any rehearsal space.  We get space here and there when we can.  So we pulled out some of the old  Dynette Set songs that Shelley wanted to sing like ‘I Know A Place’ and ‘It’s Too Far’ and a handful of Jackie DeShannon songs…like ‘Put A Little Love In Your Heart’ and ‘What The World Needs Now’.  All kinds of songs in that genre.  Some of them are pretty tough songs to play. Everybody knows ‘Love Sweet Love’ but when you’ve just played three chord rock for a long time and then you come up to major 7, minor 9 chords it’s a chore. hat song; but it sounds great and Penta sings it great!  We’ve only played two gigs so far. It seems that every stage we play on gets progressively smaller. We had to fit our band into the  Lucky Liquor and then Tim’s Tavern. It’s even smaller.  Our upcoming gig at Slims will have a bigger stage.  That will be an interesting show because it’s going to be us, Shagnasty, Swedish Finnish and The Maywood Mailmen which is a John Prine cover band.  I play banjo in The Maywood Mailmen.  Bill says he didn’t understand the significance of the name of the Prine cover band until it was explained to him. There should be a few fans there that already know it.

Shagnasty do a Mike Refuzor song” says Penta. “We love Mike. I’m so glad I got to hang out with him a little bit during the last year before he died.  I saw him, and we danced together and he said ‘ I had such a good time’.

“We love Damon Titus too. He’s someone we’ve been trying to work together with for many many years. Finally it’s happening!”

AND WE LOVE THE BEATLES!!!

 

 

 

-Dennis R. White. Sources: Penta Leslee Swanson “Interviews with the author” (October 20, 2018 & October 25, 2018). Riki Mafune “Interview with the author” October 19, 2018).  Bill Larsen “Interview with the author” (October 21, 2018). Jeff Simmons “Interview with the author” (October 30, 2018). James Trussart “Interview with the author” (October 30, 2018). Tessa Jeffers “Builder Profile: James Trussart Guitars” Premier Guitar, January 9, 2013). Bill Scheppler “The Mississippi Burning Trial: A Primary Source Account” (Rosen Publishing Group, 2003). “A Brief History of The Regents of Tacoma (pnwbands.com retrieved October 29, 2018). “Mader: About” (http://madermusic.com/mader, retrieved October 29, 2018). “The Living Theater” (https://www.livingtheatre.org/home, retrieved October 29, 2018). Olivier Lamm “Light and Shadow: The Story of Hector Zazou” (November 5, 2015, Red Bull Music Academy Daily).  Garth Cartwright “Obituary: Hector Zazou” (The Guardian, September 23, 2008). “Alchemical Studios” (https://www.thealchemical.com, retrieved October 20, 2018). “Elliott Murphy: Biography” (http://www.elliottmurphy.com/bio.html, retrieved October 23, 2018). Derek Power “Mader: Biography” (IMDb.com. retrieved October 19, 2018). Pierre Job “Zazou/Bikaye/CY1: Noir et Blanc” (Pitchfork Magazine, November 8, 2017). Sid Smith “So Long Fred Chalenor” (DGM Live, July 4, 2018). Michael Sutton “Scott McCaughey Biography” (allmusic.com, retrieved October 30, 2018). Jeff Stevens “Seattle’s Flaming Telepaths” (City of Anxiety, January 9, 2017).

CHINAS COMIDAS

In 1978 The Bay Area Recorder announced an upcoming gig at San Francisco’s Mabuhay Gardens.  It read; ‘Seattle, the city that brought you The Kingsmen of ‘Louie, Louie’ fame, and Jimi Hendrix, exports their premiere new wave team —Chinas Comidas”

Later that year L.A.s Slash magazine called Chinas Comidas “Seattle’s most important band”.

Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth would say ‘Chinas Comidas were the real deal.  Exciting, intriguing and intoxicating”.

Yet, in 1980 Marvin Goodman declared in Gary ‘Pig’ Gold’s Pig Papers the second single by Chinas Comidas, ‘Snaps (Portrait of a Fan)’ was “Boring. A copy of Talking Heads copying Blondie. Two chords is rotten-you need at least three. Turn it off. It stinks! ‘Dulll as Ditchwater’ as Jack Good (the creator of Shindig!) would say”.

Here we have proof of a couple of  elemental things.  Platitudes are easy to come by, but musicians must work really hard to engender the kind of dismissive, smarmy and calculated attitude that Goodman shows in his review.  Humans do not like change…music critics are especially resistant to it.  If a band receives comments like Marvin Goodman’s it probably because they are taking listeners out of their comfort zone.  Experimenting.  Challenging what is popular. Travelling their own artistic road.

Listening to ‘Snaps’ in 2018 might cause a person to wonder what song Goodman was listening to and how he mistook it for Chinas Comidas.  But Goodman had made no mistake at all.  He was listening to Chinas Comidas… something new to him’ something outside his comfort zone.  He did not like that.

Goodman would not be the only critic or listener that seemed to show visceral distaste for the band during their career.  It was unfair and pedestrian, but as we know, sometimes artists are totally vindicated by time and ongoing artistic and social evolution.

(N.B. Another elemental thing a music writer might do is to discover which band, from which city brought the world which particular song.  Knowing who wrote and recorded the song first is helpful-but only if the right band is named).

Chinas Comidas is really a tale of two cultures colliding-that of the erudite New York poetry scene and the somewhat more relaxed beginnings of punk and experimental music in Seattle. A third location could be added-Los Angeles, California.  But where the northwest and the northeast had birthed Chinas Comidas, it would be southern California that would break it apart.

The Seattle tale starts with two boys, one from the city’s View Ridge neighborhood and the other from nearby Laurelhurst.  They were assigned adjoining desks in their crafts class at Nathan Eckstein Jr. High School in 1962.  The boys, Rich Riggins and Gary Minkler became friends right away   Soon after meeting  they started playing and listening to music together

“Little did we know” says Riggins, “it would turn into something a bit bigger than what we expected.  We were just searching for ideas and being crazy artists guys”.

By the time they’d reached high school the two became even more serious about music.  They began working with other musicians and started their own band.  “We started getting really serious into music” says Riggins “We became inspired by all the other music we were hearing on the radio. Then we came across Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart and stuff like that”.

Meanwhile, across the country in New York City a budding poet was finding her voice.  Cynthia Genser had already had a couple of her poems included in the Paris Review (issue number 57, Spring 1974) and had started doing what was then called “spoken art’ around venues in New York City.  Early on she wrote;

“I’m attempting to position myself in the universe so as to read the books, which, as William Burroughs says, are out there.  I like to hang out in bars and grocery stores and listen.  I’m trying to be a writer, a woman, a human being in a world where those are all considered ‘criminal activities’ “.

While Genser was ‘attempting to position herself in the universe’ Minkler and Riggins began to combine  complicated music and absurdist humor within a group of interchanging artists and musicians.  Musicians were free to come and go in a free-flowing fashion.  The musicians  included Pete Pendras, Jerry Anderson, Steven Hoke and John Olufs among others.  These were the  early days of what would become the band Red Dress.

“Initially Red Dress was more experimental and full of theater and costume” Rich admits.  ‘We would have more theatrical performances with props.  We’d have little skits and crazy stuff. It was kind of off the wall. Kind of Dada-esque, inspired  by the surrealism of Frank Zappa, and corny. goofy things trying to startle people a little bit and be a bit more creative than the norm.  We wanted to challenge people with syncopated rhythms and more complex musical ideas; It was almost  a circus-y thing in the beginning.  Then, from there, Red Dress formed and Gary got more into having the band he took on.  He started recording and performing with the band that became so popular’.

‘We met Cynthia Genser a couple of years after Gary and I got started” says Riggins. “She was vagabonding around the country, writing poems. She had attended Columbia University in New York City.  She was a poet who had a collection of her work published by Wesleyan University Press called ‘Taking On The Local Color’.

She had this prestige about her.” Riggins says.

Although she already had been published the collection of poems was from several years earlier.  She says her work had become influenced by The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron and Jayne Cortez. “Spoken art was very big in New York at the time and I actually performed at Doctor Generosity’s” Cynthia says. Doctor Generosity’s was one of the most important poetry hang-outs in the city, at 73rd and Second on New York’s Upper East Side.One night there was a group on the bill called The Experimental Jazz Quartet.  I don’t know who they were butI played with The Experimental Jazz Quartet.  I want to thank them whoever they are”. The performance came out on BLACK BOX, an early spoken word ‘magazine’. It consisted of poetry performances on cassette tape, sometimes with musical accompaniment. The issues were released in an actual box. “Very cool.” adds Cynthia”

“Audre Lorde is on it and Allen Ginsberg and Leon Damas are on it. Really good people… and me. I was on it too!  Little old me. I was asked back to Doctor Generosity’s  by popular demand. I did two performances. That was the scene I was used to”.

In fact, Cynthia’s performences were included on two issues of BLACK BOX  (Black Box, Number 9 in 1976, and Black Box, Number 12 in 1977).   Both were published by The Watershed Foundation that was formed in 1970 in Washington D.C.  The cassette magazine BLACK BOX published 15 issues between 1973 and 1978 although The Watershed Foundation would last until the mid-1990s. Over a more than thirty-year period, The Watershed Foundation released approximately 130 Watershed Tapes,  and two series of poetry programs broadcast on 250 public radio stations. In the mid-1990’s, when a major portion of the archives was destroyed in a flood, The Watershed Foundation folded.  BLACK BOX was available by mail-order during it’s run but it also had sales representatives concentrating on college and university libraries, book stores and other institutions.  Their masters along with the entire Watershed tape collection are now in the archives of the Special Collections division of Gelman Library at George Washington University in D.C.

Meanwhile in Seattle, Gary Minkler remembers “In 1976, I was living (drinking beer, filling up notebooks, and sleeping) in a bag on a sheet of plywood placed on a couple of sawhorses) in a garage behind Gary and Marguerite Margason’s house in Wallingford”

Earlier, in 1962 Gary and Marguerite Margason had been instrumental in establishing KRAB, a volunteer-run, eclectic, listener-supported radio station.  It became part of Seattle counter-culture. Gary Margazan was the long-time Program Director and a trustee of  ‘The Jack Straw Memorial Foundation’ that had been set up to oversee the station. Realizing how tenuous their programing could be with FCC standards, KRAB did a good job flying below the radar for the first couple of years.  Later the scrappy little station would find itself embroiled in all sorts of attempts to shut them down, but the station lived on for 21 years.

In 1983 The Jack Straw Memorial Foundation  sold  KRAB to Sunbelt Broadcasting, Inc.  based in Colorado.  The sales price was said to be between $3.5 and $4 million. After paying off their debts, the now renamed ‘The Jack Straw Foundation’ opened a multi-media, creative public resource with a recording studio, and dedicated it to supporting of artist and authors of all genres.  Seattle had always begged for innovation in the arts.  For decades this made for a landscape of Seattle artists and musicians ready to experiment, but very few public places to present their art.  Many took it upon themselves to create their own venues-the streets.  It is from here that the seminal drag street theater troupe called ‘Ze Whiz Kidz’. who in turn helped inspire early Seattle punk.  The streets were also the starting place for Seattle-born performance artist Johanna Went.

Cynthia continues her story by telling me “It was the mid-70 and I was living in New York . I was studying with a  poet named Fanny Howe…she’s still around and she’s a wonderful poet. I told her I was thinking of going out west and she said ‘DON”T FLY! Don’t be one of ‘THOSE’ people!!!   Go across the country and really see it” So I thought ‘Yeah, OK’.  I picked up a ride with a person I didn’t know. His name was Miles which I thought was fictitious. He turned out to be a big bore.  We parted ways in Pennsylvania then I started to just get rides off of ride boards and occasionally I’d hitch solo…..Even in the ‘70s it was a little dicey going alone. But it turned out OK….It turned out wonderfully!”

“I met a lot of really interesting people. When I got to the Mississippi River…for me, being from New York that was mythic!” Cynthia continues.  “I said ‘I have to get out of this car! I have to put my boots in the Mississippi mud!’. To me this was like ‘America for real‘.  I ended up going out west three times. Once by these pick-up rides. Once by Canadian Rail, which was a lot of fun because at that time if you went by a cheaper line you could get on and off as often as you wanted.  I had adventures out Canada where I’d never been… out in those huge Mid-western, mid-Canadian spaces.  I saw all those mythic things and wildly empty, fantastic places for me.

https://youtu.be/Imm6Sz4ErZY

“You know, I came from a congested city and to see so much space, in itself, was crazy. The third time I went west was by hippie bus, The Grey Rabbit. You’d travel around sitting and smoking weed while they drove.” Cynthia says.  “On my travels to the west I went from New York to Berkeley and then up to Issaquah Washington where I had a friend.  That was my first trip to Seattle.  I went back to New York City pretty rapidly.  I stayed a longer time in San Francisco and Berkeley than Seattle. It was sort of a progression. When I was in Berkeley I worked as a journalist for the underground, counter-culture journal The Berkeley Barb.  That’s when I started to use ‘Chinas Comidas’ as a ‘nom de plume’. I was an at-large cultural critic. I did movie reviews, I did gatherings and places. Then I covered the trial of the ‘San Quentin Six’ which were the guys who were blamed for killing George Jackson, even though it was obvious that it the cops who killed Jackson. They were set-up, although there was plenty of violence. I went with a cartoonist named ‘Spain’.  I just heard that he’d gone.  I didn’t realize he had died; He was a wonderful guy. He was a lovely, lovely man”

Free The San Quentin Six        Poster by ‘Spain’

 

It was a little confusing” says Cynthia, “because one of the defendants on trial was also called ‘Spain’ (Johnny Larry Spain).  The ‘Spain’ Cynthia attended the trial with was Manuel ‘Spain’ Rodriguez.  He was a well-known cartoonist who would make an indelible mark on underground comics and illustrated novels. Rodriguez used only his childhood nickname ‘Spain’ for his work. When Genser attended the trial with him he was already a counter-cultural icon who had co-founded (with Robert Crumb) the United Cartoon Workers of America.  Between the early ’60s to the early 2000s ‘Spain’ contributed to numerous underground comics including Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, Zap Comix, Young Lust, Arcade, Weirdo, and dozens of others.  His unabashedly radical leftist views resulted in covering not only the San Quentin Six trial, but also the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a reporter/illustrator for the East Village Other.  He died  at home in San Francisco November 28, 2012 in after a six year battle with cancer. He was 72 at the time of his death.

In 1994 Seattle’s Fantagraphic Books published ‘Spain’s biography ‘My True Story’. Spain’s’ real-life story involved his love of motorcycles (and motorcycle gangs), his radical politics, and his heroic illustrated novels about Ernesto “Che” Guevara. ‘Spain’ was also responsible for creating ‘Trashman’, a superhero of the working classes and the radical left. Trashman’s adventures are set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian America run by a fascist police state and a patchwork of self-governing areas akin to territories ruled by warlords.  In 1997 Fantagraphic Books also  published ‘Trashman Lives!’, a collection of comics and illustrated novels that chronicel ‘Spain’s’ fictional defender.  Fantagraphics Books is closely associated with Larry Reid, who was an early champion of the music of Chinas Comidas and the poetry of Cynthia Genser. In fact, aside from playing Reid’s own late 70s gallery Roscoe Louie, Larry Reid has hosted re-unions of the Chinas Comidas at least twice over the past few years.

The San Quentin Six Genser covered were inmates Luis Talamantez, Hugo Pinell, Johnny Larry Spain, David Johnson, Willie Tate and Fleeta Drumgo.  They were accused of taking part in a prison riot at the facility’s euphemistically named  ‘Adjustment Center’ on an August 21, 1971.  The riot left six people dead, including George Jackson, a former Black Panther who had co-founded the Black Guerilla Family (BGF). The BGF initially was inspired by Marcus Garvey and held the ideology of creating a revolutionary African American/Marxist-Leninist organization comprised of prisoners who would focus on eradicating racism within the prison system and offering dignity to prisoners.  Another of their primary goals was the overthrow of the United States government

The prosecution claimed that George Jackson was given a .32 caliber pistol by his attorney, Stephen Bingham, and it was Jackson’s attempted escape that caused the rioting.  The accused inmates’ defense was that prison guards had smuggled the pistol into San Quentin, hoping it would result in George Jackson’s death. In fact, Jackson did die in the riot, as well as three corrections officers (Frank DeLeon, Jere P.Graham and Paul E. Krasenes). Two inmates were also killed (John Lynn, and Ronald L. Kane).  Another two corrections officers (Charles Breckenridge and Urbano Rubiaco, Jr) were attacked but did not die.

The trial cost the state $2 million and lasted 16-months. At the time it was the longest trial in California history. The final verdicts were that Johnny Larry Spain was guilty in the shooting deaths of prison guards Graham and DeLeon. Pinell was found guilty of cutting the throats of the two guards who survived, and Johnson was convicted of assaulting one of the corrections officers, Charles Breckenridge. There were no convictions for the killings of Krasenes, Lynn, or Kane. Defendants Drumgo, Talamantaz, and Tate were found Not Guilty of all charges, which had  included counts of murder, conspiracy, and assault. To this day the trial and convictions remain controversial and many still feel the blame should have been laid at the feet of the prison guards responsible for giving the pistol to George Jackson. In the aftermath of the riots, Jackson’s lawyer, Stephen Bingham fled the country.  He returned to the US in 1984 and was acquitted on charges of having supplied Jackson’s pistol and for any other part in the riot that led to the deaths and

‘They didn’t let cameras into the courtroom’ Cynthia says, “so ‘Spain’was the illustrator and I was the journalist. We went a few times. That was where Chinas Comidas was born as a name”  This experience had to have a lasting impression on Cynthia. a writer, an activist, a poet and a feminist.

The Last Bath, 1975           Film by Karl Krogstad

At about the same time Genser (now Chinas) was reporting on the San Quentin Six, Rich Riggins continued to perform with Gary Minkler.  Riggins had also been commissioned by Seattle filmmaker Karl Krogstad to create a soundtrack for his film The Last Bath.  In the ’60s Seattle’s ‘King of Porn’ Roger Forbes, decided to expand his hold on the city’s porn palaces and produce porn films himself. Forbes hired Seattle filmmaker Karl Krogstad to direct The Last Bath, an underground, sexploitation, artsy piece of pornography. The film makes ample use of psychedelic, underground imagery, confusing dream sequences and acid-inspired optics. IMdb notes ‘the film starts off impressively with an abstract chase sequence involving a Jaguar XK-E’ . It seems the film devolves from there. Two unnamed girls are played by Thalia Lemar and Debi Duchamps.  They and the  ‘big-dicked hero’ named David have a series of bizarre, convoluted sexual encounters.  The film is clearly not meant to be linear, but it’s hard to decipher which is past, present or future.

Late in the film David requests a bath after dinner.  One reviewer remarked ‘The cast seems stoned (for real) during this lengthy troilism in the tub scene, with tarot cards another suggestive (but unresolved) motif’.  Everything ends in a montage of violence and flashbacks of suicide.  The hero is dead while the film ends with the two women in the bath having sex with each other…sans David.

The Last Bath includes both graphic and soft-focus sex with Krogstad using ‘motor only shots’ (MOS) without sound capture.  Riggins’ musique concrète soundtrack was apparently set over the action in post production concurrent with the shooting. Riggins says “The thing that drove me crazy is that they gave me these shots and I had to view them for days on end.  It was driving me insane, viewing these scenes over and over again”.

Although the film is quite muddled, Krogstad was setting out on his career in experimental film. The film has rarely been seen on screen since its release in 1975.  Occasionally it shows up in underground art houses and among Karl Krogstad retrospectives. It’s far too ‘artsy’ for the porn crowd, and far too pornographic for the ‘artsy’ crowd.  Perhaps the most notable part of the film is Rich Riggin’s soundtrack.

The character of David was played Templeton Blaine, a member of one of Seattle’s wealthiest founding families. It’s said he was disowned by his family for appearing in the film and moved to Los Angeles to continue his career in the porn industry.  Whether his disownment is true or not, he continued to use his real name throughout his career….unusual for a porn actor.

When Cynthia finally arrived in Seattle she became familiar with Rich Riggins and Gary Minkler who were part of the alternative art and music scene then developing in Seattle. We all weren’t involved in  Red Dress” says Cynthia. “but we hung out so much that we were all together. I knew Gary Minkler first. I met Gary early. So definitely we go back. He’s a big person in my mythology…and my reality. He’s a sweetheart and he’s a great musician, songwriter and performer”.

Gary Minkler recalls “One evening I came over to find a group of friends socializing in the living-room. I was immediately transfixed by a dark eyed, thin-limbed Jewish girl sitting with them”. Gary found out she was a poet from New York and was even more intrigued. Having earlier seen the red hourglass marking on a black-widow’s abdomen became Gary’s inspiration for the name Red Dress.  He says it had a direct link to Cynthia.

I was moved to offer to put together some musicians to back her when she told me she wanted to do some performances” Gary says. “I had the idea she might be talented, but more likely the offer was a ruse to get closer.  Anyway, very instinctual”.

Rich Riggins remembers hearing about Cynthia’s arrival in Seattle.“We were all excited to meet her. She was from New York. She was vagabonding around the county writing poems and she had graduated from Columbia University.  The Wesleyan University Press had published her first book  Taking On The Local Color.

“She had this prestige about her” says Rich Riggins.

Cynthia points out that Taking On The Local Color was a collection of poems from years before the book was published and that she had not graduated from Columbia University.  She had spent one year at Columbia but found the atmosphere stifling for her as a feminist and as a woman.

She directs me to the story of  Carolyn Gold Heilbrun.  Heilbrun was the first tenured woman in Columbia’s English Department, held an endowed chair, was past president of the Modern Language Association, a leading feminist literary scholar and the elusive writer known as Amanda Cross.  Under that pseudonym  she was responsible for a series of mysteries who’s protagonist was named Kate Fansler.  From 1985 until her retirement in 1992, Heilbrun was Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia.  Her academic books include the feminist study Writing a Woman’s Life, written in 1988.  In 1983, she co-founded the Columbia University Press’s Gender and Culture Series with literary scholar Nancy K. Miller.  Heilbrun’s specialty was British modern literature, with a deep  interest in the Bloomsbury Group who’s most famous members included Virginia Wolfe, E. M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, and Lytton Strachey.  Heilbrun was the subject of a 1992 profile in the New York Times Magazine. She looked back on her academic career and told The New York Times;

“When I spoke up for women’s issues, I was made to feel unwelcome in my own department, kept off crucial committees, ridiculed, ignored,” says Heilbrun a month or so later, perched on a sofa in her large, light Central Park West apartment, an elderly Maine coon cat in her lap. “Ironically, my name in the catalogue gave Columbia a reputation for encouraging feminist studies in modernism. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The remark was challenged by her male colleagues, but there was no doubt many women teaching or studying at Columbia University during Heilbrun’s academic career agreed.  It seems that Cynthia was one of them.

She was hanging out at the Hasty Tasty, a greasy spoon that was open 24 hours a day in the University District. We’d hang out there to have coffee and be poets. There was me, Gary Minkler, Eric Apoe, John Olufs and Bill White. We all started forming some crazy little music ideas and piecing together little groups within our group”.

Gary put together a group of musicians to back Cynthia as he’d offered.  He hired an upright bass player named Jerry Anderson (later the bass player for Red Dress).  Cynthia found a classical guitarist and Gary played sax” Riggins says.   “We might ve had a conga player. We got together for rehearsal and it worked!  Cynthia recited her poetry over instrumentation. It was all very unplugged and ‘beat’ “Gary tells the story of the first ‘Red Dress/Chinas Comidas’ gig in the basement of the College Inn that used to stand  at the corner of University Way and 40th Street NE. “We all told our friends, and showed up descending into the view of the bartender with our instruments and a little crowd. The bartender asked ‘what’s going on?’ I said ‘we’re performing here tonight’. He said ‘Nobody told me about a performances here tonight!’ I said ‘well, it was booked last week, where do we set up?’  We found a spot, did our three our four numbers then split. Meanwhile the bartender had gotten ‘hold of the owner or manager and realized there was no booking ever made.  We were done and walking out before he could express his protest.  This was Cynthia’s first Seattle performance”.

Chinas Comidas with Al Sharp. Alternative version of
Snake In The Sun. 1977

Jerry Anderson was the upright bass player Gary had dragged along would become more musically involved with Cynthia as Chinas. “I had met Gary Minkler at a jazz jam in a bar on University Avenue in Seattle, in about 1976 or 1977′. Jerry tells me. “I was playing upright bass.  He was playing some really scrappy outside sax and he had asked me if I wanted to play bass ‘with a poet’.  “I had said ‘OK’ to meeting her, and gave him my number”.

“The poet turned out to be Cynthia, who had arrived in Seattle relatively recently.” Jerry tells me. “She had been hanging out with Gary and Rich Riggins, and was looking for outlets for her poetry which she wrote under the pen name Chinas Comidas. This was before the name was attached to the band.  Cynthia and I tried arrangements of several of her poems to music, often just bass and recited poetry.  Gary would sometimes play sax, and I recall an early version of  ‘Johnny Guitar’ with Rich and Cynthia as a duo. Now and then different musicians were around as Red Dress and Chinas Comidas bands began to gradually take shape.
Rich and Gary were initially working on the earliest Red Dress tunes with me and other musicians Gary had recruited.  This was before Rich split off to concentrate on Cynthia’s music.”

“At the beginning Cynthia was still working mostly in the pure poetry vein.  We were not so much working them into songs, but adding musical backgrounds. I have a copy of her poetry collection from that period, ‘Cowboys’ that she self-published in 1978.  It contains some of the poems we performed as spoken voice and upright bass duets. We performed  pretty much in a beat style. The poems worked pretty nicely with moody upright bass backups.”

“We did half a dozen poems in several performances at the UW Ethnic Cultural Theatre,” Jerry continues “and a few other small gatherings in galleries or on the University of Washington campus.  I recall playing with Cynthia, Rich and drummer (maybe Stuart Laughlin) opening for The Ramones. This must have been in 1977, before Rich and Cynthia spun off Chinas Comidas into a distinct band from Red Dress. The same year a similar formation played The Bumbershoot Festival.  After that I spent most of my efforts on Red Dress, though I saw a lot of Rich and Cynthia for a while.  I liked what they were doing and Cynthia always had something interesting going on”.

Gary Minkler            Photo: Ernie Sapiro

“We eventually separated from Red Dress” says Riggins.  “Cynthia and I developed a romantic relationship.” He adds. “The name Chinas Comidas  comes from Puerto Rican restaurants in New York, The term means Chinese Food in Spanish. Signs hang outside practically every Hispanic/Chinese restaurant in New York City. Cynthia copped that name from the local cultural color of New York. In fact for a few years Cynthia WAS Chinas Comidas and would often be referred to as ‘Chinas’.  Then she reverted to Cynthia because people actually felt the band’s name was Chinas Comidas”. “It was flexible” says Cynthia. “We never assigned any title”.

“I designed the Chinas Comidas logo” Cynthia tells me. ” I just painted it. Carl Smool put the little star on the ‘i’ then he took the whole thing with my face, and that became our trademark.  Carl also made a poster that was so great we had to use it over and over again.  Carl has been a great friend and a great supporter.  He’s another great Seattle guy and a magical person. A talented person. He was definately part of the ménage that we travelled around with at the time”.

“Because Cynthia and I had this romantic relationship” says Riggins. “we were burning that off and writing lots of songs. I was approaching things from a little different angle. We all were loving the punk idea…Cynthia too. We wanted to rebel and we saw a wonderful platform for art to mesh with words.  Interesting words that meant more than ‘I saw my girl walking down the street today’. We wanted something somewhat political and a little bit Dylan-ish. Of course Cynthia, being the creative literature person that she is, could piece together these wonderful, simple, artful, lyrical ideas that weren’t the norm but still fit into a great pop style. In my musical writing I was trying to maintain certain kinds of pop ideas but then twisting them around a little bit. Doing syncopation or a stop and a start that usually wouldn’t have been there; a break or complex rhythm change; a little twist and turn that to make it a little more interesting. If you were to take all that stuff off the top we were just cranking out the basic pop structure”

After the delineation, between Red Dress and Chinas Comidas. Gary started moving toward a completely different direction than his arty first incarnation.  By the end of the decade Red Dress had become the most popular white R&B band in the Northwest.  The charismatic Gary Minkler stepped out front singing songs that were influenced by the great blues great masters as much the absurdity of Captain Beefheart.  In 1980 the band released Bob Was A Robot b/w Pterodactyl Teenagers, one of the truly great records in Northwest music history”.

Mark Wheaton of Chinas Comidas and long-time sound designer for Johanna Went

Around this time Rich connected with Mark Wheaton through the band Uncle Cookie. Conrad Uno was a member of Uncle Cookie and would later make his name as the producer of The Young Fresh Fellows, The Posies, The Presidents of the United States of America, The Fastbacks, Mudhoney, The Squirrels, Roy Loney and Red Dress among others. Uno eventually acquired a total of at least 166 production credits to his name.

Mark Wheaton says “The first time I ever met Rich and Cynthia was when they were rehearsing in the basement of a friend of mine’s house. His name was Dave Hancock. He was someone I met when I was the sound guy for  Uncle Cookie.  At the time Dave was interning at a recording studio on Capitol Hill called The Music Farm.  It was a good, full-on 24 track recording studio. Dave would get Uncle Cookie in the studio during ‘off-times’ with him doing the engineering. At some point my relationship with Uncle Cookie stopped but I was still hanging out with Dave Hancock.  I’d go over to his house a lot. Dave had one of these houses on the hill above Green Lake, north of the University of Washington that had an enormous basement, like a lot of houses in Seattle. He would let people rehearse in the basement.  One of his friends was Steven Hoke. His little brother was Eldon Hoke  ‘(‘El Duce’ of The Mentors). Eldon would practice in Dave’s basement with The Mentors. I’d be over visiting Dave and they’d be downstairs practicing. Then they would come upstairs and sit around and listen to the cassette tapes of their rehearsal”.

ROCK IN CONCERT IN SEATTLE Seattle May 5, 1977

“Eldon was playing with a lot of bands in his early days” Mark continues.  “At one point before he was drumming for The Tupperwares, who would later become The Screamers.  Both Chinas Comidas and The Mentors were using Dave Hancock’s  basement for rehearsals at the same time.  Eldon  was drumming for both bands. Ed Shepard, a local promoter, was going to put on a big show at  the I.O.O.F. Hall on Capitol Hill.  A  poster had been created and The Mentors were the featured band. Chinas Comidas were also on the bill. Eldon decided he couldn’t  be in both bands. He felt he needed to focus on The Mentors, so he quit Chinas Comidas. It was an amicable departure, and China Comidas would find itself with The Mentors on many future gigs.  However Eldon quit Chinas Comidas about a week before Ed Shepard’s big show.

According to Mark “I was upstairs and they (Rich and Cynthia) came upstairs, all panicked saying ‘We don’t have a drummer. What are we going to do?’ “So I said ‘My brother Brock is a drummer.  I could talk to him. You could see if he might be a good fit’.”

“Brock had been playing drums since the early ’60s and he began playing around Burien in 1969.  His first band was called The Sound Barriers.  Brock was mainly in the south end of Seattle, drumming with neighborhood hard-rock bands that were more like early metal bands” says Mark.  “After he graduated from High School he joined a Bremerton-based band called Razzmatazz.  He was a very serious student of a drum teacher in Burien and he’d even attended workshops with Dave Brubeck’s drummer, Joe Morello, who was a friend of Brock’s drum teacher. He was also involved with several people in the band Mondo Bando.  He was really invested in the hard rock and metal scene that was happening at the time”.

“I had taken him to see The Ramones show at The Olympic Hotel’s Georgian Ballroom.  The high-end hotel had unknowing allowed promoters Neil Hubbard, then 19, and Robert Bennett, then 20, to book The Ramones in what the young promoters thought was the last all-ages room left in Seattle the night The Ramones were scheduled to play in Seattle.  The Olympic Hotel’s  patrons looked on with both bemusement and horror when they saw throngs of young punks descending on the hotel.

“That was the first time Brock heard The Ramones and he was totally blown away.” says his brother Mark.  “He was like, ‘Wow! This is another way of looking at things’.  So he agreed to come and rehearse with Rich and Cynthia. They hit it off pretty well. I think there were some on-again, off-again moments there for awhile where Rich, Cynthia and Brock  played together and then it didn’t happen for a while.  At that point Rich and Cynthia were still associated with Red Dress. They would do shows basically with Red Dress as the backing band, and there were times Cynthia would just do poetry with a stand-up bass player, Al Sharp (Jerry Anderson).  Cynthia would also appear with guitarist Annie Rose DeArmas, who would later head up her own long running revue, Annie Rose and The Thrillers”.

So with Brock on board, he and Rich started writing more rock songs to accompany Cynthia’s pieces. “That was kind of where the beginning of Chinas Comidas as a band happened” says Mark.

“At that point Shawna Holt began playing keyboards”. Mark says “Shawna’s boyfriend at the time was Lyn Paulson, who became the bass player for Chinas Comidas.  Brock knew them from his Mondo Bando days. Brock wasn’t in Mondo Bando but he was friends with all those people who were playing in this dark metal, sludge-rock kind of thing that was happening in Seattle the same time as punk rock”.  Chinas Comidas was finding a loyal audience in Seattle and managed to play on a fairly regular basis. After establishing themselves among the early Seattle punk vanguard, Chinas Comidas ventured south to San Francisco to play The Mabuhay Gardens, one of the west coast’s most important venues.  They played on August 5 and 6, 1978. The Kids from L.A. and San Jose’s hard-core metal band, Seizure, opened for at least one of these shows. The gigs seem to have been good shows for Chinas Comidas.  They were written up in San Francisco’s Search and Destroy magazine, although existing copies are near impossible to find except on the collectors market.  Shortly before the band returned to Seattle they were set to record their first single.  Then there was a break with Shawna and Lyn and the rest of the band.  Both of them left Chinas Comidas.

Chinas Comidas     Ethnic Cultural Theater 1976

“Finally after a year” Mark says, “I took the leap and became the keyboardist for Chinas Comidas”.  Mark had been the bands’ soundman for almost a year before becoming the band’s keyboard player.  “One day after Shawna and Lyn left,” Mark tell me, “Rich came up to me and said ‘You should be the new keyboard player.’ I said ‘Well, I’ve never played keyboards before’ (Mark laughs). “He just said ‘get yourself a synthesizer and I’ll show you the parts and we’ll do it‘. ‘So I did. I got a loan and bought a Wurlitzer electric piano and a Steiner Parker synthesiser. I began learning the parts from Rich. I really never learned how to play keyboards, I only knew the parts to the songs Rich had taught me”.

Mark points out that he didn’t play keyboards on the first Chinas Comidas single ‘Peasant/Slave’ and ‘Love Love’ although his photo is on the sleeve. “It was a transitional period” he says. “I was still occasionally doing sound for the band in local clubs. says Mark. “Rich would come over to my apartment and show me the parts to the songs and that’s basically how I learned how to play in the band. I didn’t know a thing about playing keyboards. I wasn’t a keyboard player at that point but  I became a keyboard player.”

The band recorded their first single at The Music Farm, the studio that Dave Hancock worked at.  The flipside included Al Sharp (a.k.a. Jerry Anderson) accompanying Cynthia on the spoken word poetry that had been recorded at the UW Ethnic Cultural Theater.  For the two studio recordings Rich played the bass parts since Lyn Paulson had left the band. Chinas Comidas turned to Gordon Raphael for the keyboards. Gordon is now well-known for his production work with The Strokes, The Libertines, Regina Spektor, Damon Albarn and dozens of others.  Although he’s based in Berlin Gordon globe-hops from one place to another doing production jobs, or guesting as a DJ.  Finally after decades of making other artists household names Gordon released his own solo album in February 2018 called ‘Sleep On the Radio’.  

Producer Gordon Raphael

“He was just a little kid then” Rich says of Gordon. “I remember having to drive out to the north end of Seattle-almost to Edmonds-where he and Ben Ireland lived. That’s the first time I met Ben Ireland, (later of The Fags and Sky Cries Mary, a band that also featured Gordon). I drove out there and taught him the song and then took him to the studio one night and he pulled the whole thing off…and he was on acid! He was on LSD and I changed the key on him (Rich laughs). I didn’t know he was on acid-he didn’t tell me. Then years later he said ‘You fucking changed the key on me!’ (more laughter) So he had to go through an acid moment while I was piecing together the key structure and changing it around…but anyway he pulled it off!”

Gordon has a similar but slightly different version.  He says:

“I played My arp odyssey on Lover Lover, a fast and difficult riff that Rich wrote. That was fine,
but then a week later he called me out of the blue, as I was just starting a Peyote trip (I was walking around Green Lake with a friend) and picked me up, took me to the studio, and showd me this old Moog Sonic 6 synthesizer.  The keyboard was rickety, plus I’d never used one before.  He asked me to learn and record the riff in a new key.  It was really hard to concentrate on in the
shape I was in… but somehow, we did it!”

Soon after recording their first single, and without an official bassist the band began auditions for a replacement.  Mark says “I was working at one of Wes Eastman’s used record stores in the University District. One night I was going to take the bus  home and I was standing at the bus stop next to a guy with blonde punk-rock hair. I started talking to him and he told me his name was Dag Midtskog and he played bass.  I said ‘we’re looking for a bass player are you interested?’  So he came and tried out and became our bass player.

Before bringing Dag into the band they also allowed a familiar face on the Seattle music scene to audition. Her name was Sheli Story.

“It’s funny because I had actually met Brock Wheaton at a party” Sheli says.

The party was at the notorious Mad House in Seattle’s University District.  It was one of the wildest, most boisterous party houses of the 70s and early 80s. Though it was in the University District it was clearly and definitely NOT a fraternity party house  It’s denizens were mostly punks, weirdos, artists, working kids without trust funds, early video geeks and people working and living on the fringes of punk rock. Sheli remembers her and Brock’s first meeting as ‘sitting back to back on this ottoman chair’. “We ended up fucking in his van” she says.

As for her audition:
“I was 16 or 17 and just got my first bass. I played classical music and jazz  because my parents are classical musicians. I had a black Precision Fender bass…. heavy as fuck, and here I am trying to play it, auditioning for Rich and Brock because I had been fucking Brock. I knew nothing about  ‘jamming’ or how to ‘rock ‘n roll” . Gawd. It was so funny because those guys were so sweet and forgiving. It ended up that they chose Dag Mitskog to play bass. All the girls in town were saying ‘Oh my God, Dag is so cute!’ and then I ended up with Dag and marry him.

Dag says his first band was called ‘Violent World’. “I was invited into the band by a guy named Electra Bue who was the soundman for The Lewd. . Naturally I was very interested. Mike Davidson was in the very first iteration of The Lewd along with Dave Drewry’.  ‘We’d hang out at Davidson’s house”

The Lewd and Chinas Comidas  July 17,1978 Seattle

The Lewd,  fronted by J. Satz Baret (another alum of the glam troupe Ze Whiz Kidz) had catapulted onto the west coast punk scene as one of the most entertaining and forceful outfits during Seattle’s early punk days. They would move to San Francisco leaving Davidson and Drewry in Seattle. In 1979 The Lewd released a great three-song EP on Scratched Records in 1979. (‘Kill Yourself’ ‘Trash Can Baby’ and ‘Pay Or Die). The Lewd’s guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof (a.k.a Blobbo) left to create his own very successful  band, Metal Church. After some musical chairs were re-arranged Olga de Volga who’d been in The Offs and VS. became part of The Lewd.  In 1982 The Lewd released their only full length album, the classic American Wino. One side was recorded at Mystic Sound in Hollywood and the other side live at Target Video in San Francisco  Shortly after its release The Lewd dissolved.

“I was kind of like a hippie kid, and going to shows” Dag continues. “I took photographs, press photos and  band photos. I know some of the photos I took are still used on CD’s which are uncredited.  So, I met this guy, Electra Blue through The Lewd and we started a band with Brad Rammels and a guy named John on drums…I can’t remember his last name.   After the original guitarist for The Lewd  left the band, J. Satz Baret, the founder of The Lewd stole our guitarist Brad Rammels”. Rammels would  go on to play with R.P.A. and The Wolfpack, an early ’90s band featuring punk legend, the late Mike Refuzor. “I started playing guitar in Violent World” says Dag. “That meant Electra Blue started playing bass, and my younger brother Tor Midtskog was on drums for a short bit”.

“Electra Blue had also been in Mondo Bando with Shawna Holt and Lyn Paulson who were stolen by Chinas Comidas which was just Rich and Cynthia originally.  “Rich and Cynthia had seen me around, or maybe at a Violent World show when they asked me to play bass in Chinas Comidas.” Dag says so I said ‘Sure, OK’.  “I left poor Electra behind. All of these other bands were stealing his fellow band mates”.

“I was in another band with Mark Smith called The Beakers” says Dag. “ I was the bass player before Frankie Sundsten came along”.  The Beakers would become one of the most innovative and influential band to come out of the Seattle/Olympia vortex in the ’80s. Their impact is still felt today.

“My time with The Beakers was concurrent with Chinas Comidas”Dag tells me. “Rich and Cynthia were very much the taskmasters. You know, we practiced a lot!  I was pretty much a beginning player in my first real bands. I was a very shy kid and was very anxious about playing live; but when you’re really well-rehearsed and you concentrate on the music you forget about the anxiety, and just put your mind into what you have to play”.

Dag Midstkog of Chinas Comidas 1979

“It was a challenge for me, but I got better and better equipment which made the sound change quite a lot” Dag says. “Mark Smith of The Beakers was competent enough-he’s never called himself a musician- but he was good enough to play his parts.  The Beakers played some pretty wacky songs with wacky progressions and complicated rhythms. We did the same thing in Chinas Comidas mostly thanks to Rich and Brock.  They were very inventive. I know that Rich was really into Captain Beefheart who was also pretty obscure, wacky and unusual at the time. As time went on we got better and better shows. We opened for The Ramones.  We opened for The Dils, Black Flag, D.O.A. The Dead Kennedys, Fear, The Germs The Bags, Zippers, The Plugz, The Crowd and a lot of other well-known bands. There was also that famous Seattle gig at the Oddfellows Hall with The Mentors, Violent World, The Lewd, The Feelings, Roland Rock and Jim Basnight”. (the show put together by Ed Shepard).

Many musicians have bemoaned the Seattle music scene at the time as a wasteland, but there were early punk bands working, and underground promoters (mostly band members or their friends) putting on shows with local bands. On May 1, 1976 the seminal TMT show was held at the Oddfellows Hall on Capitol Hill. The TMT Show was ostensibly a benefit for the fictitious Telepathic Foundation.   Some believe it was the first real punk event put together by punks in Seattle.  The TMT stood for The Telepaths, The Meyce and The Tupperwares who made up the bill of the show.

The Telepaths would later become The Blackouts and have a major influence on Seattle music. After The Blackouts breaking up Bill Rieflin and Paul Barker went on to form Ministry with Al Jourgensen. Rieflin stayed on until around the time Filth Pig was released before leaving Ministry. His job was then replace Bill Berry of R.E.M.  Rieflin also worked with KMFDM, Pigface, Revolting Cocks, Nine Inch Nails and dozens o f others bands.  He is currently a member of the reformed King Crimson.

Barker, who was essential to the sound associated with Ministry lasted 18 years before leaving, it’s said, because of regular disputes with Jourgensen.

The Meyce was led by Jim Basnight.  His later band The Moberlys has been cited by many critics (past and present) of being one of the greatest American power-pop bands in history.  The Meyce included Jenny Skirvin, Lee Lumsden and Pam Lillig (later of The Girls).

TMT Show Oddfellows Hall, Seattle, May 1.1976

The Tupperwares was a punk trio headed by the founder of an early 70s drag performance troupe called Ze Whiz Kidz.  The founder’s  name was David Xavier Harrigan (a.k.a.Tomata du Plenty). The Tupperwares had formed in 1975 and included ‘Tommy Gear’, ‘Tomata du Plenty’, and Rio de Janeiro. On occasion they were backed by Pam Lillig and Ben Witz of The Girls, as well as the aforementioned Bill Rieflin and the teenaged Eldon Hoke (‘El Duce’).

The Tupperwares would eventually rename the band to The Screamers (after threats from the Tupperware Corporation) and move the core trio to Los Angeles.  Despite a few personel changes they became one of the most popular draws during the heady days of California punk, and were often cited as influential to bands like The Germs and The Dead Kennedys.  Tomata himself would go on to be an actor, a painter and a performance artist until his death in 2000.  In an ironic but touching twist, Tomata du Plenty died in San Francisco where his old Ze Whiz Kidz and punk compatriot J. Satz Baret (formerly of The Lewd) took care of him during his final months.  Tomata du Plenty died of complications from AIDS on August 21, 2000.

Down the hill from The Oddfellows Hall in downtown Seattle The Enemy  started their own all-ages club, The Bird, in 1978.  It didn’t last long, but it helped get things rolling. Also playing around town was Clone whose members included Gordon Raphael, Jeff Gossard (cousin of Stone) Mike Davidson and Dave Drewry (the former members of The Lewd that Dag Mitskog had met).  Clone was led by the infamous Upchuck (Chuck Gerra) who would later go on to become the lead singer of another very influential Seattle band, The Fags. The Fags also had hardcore guitarist Paul Solger as a member. Paul’s guitar travelled back and forth and concurrently with his hardcore and more melodic styles.The Fags left for New York City in the mid-80s and promptly broke up despite some success there.   Gerra stayed in New York City and was on the verge of “making it” with his partner Shlomo Sonnenfeld in the NYC duo Such before his death from AIDS on May 28th, 1990/May 28, 1990.

There was The Meyce ,The Pudz, The Feelings, The Cheaters, The Refuzors, The Fartz, The Moberlys and dozens of other short-lived bands that would rotate members, coming and going all the time. In some ways Seattle was a wasteland, but it wasn’t for lack of talent.  There simply were not enough venues for alternative and punk bands to play.  Only a few clubs could be convinced to cater to Seattle’s small but very tight punk crowd…but as we know that scene would continue to grow and grow until it exploded onto the national scene in the late 1980s.

Chinas Comidas at The Bahamas Undergroud Club. Seattle

Cynthia remembers “There was no infrastructure. No real spaces for practicing and recording.  There was very little management.  It was totally DIY, for us at least.  We rented halls, made our own bookings, and created our own posters…the whole 9 yards.  However there seemed to be a moment; a convergence of ideas and energy. When we started doing our music along with some other punk and experimental bands, in some immediate way we were the scene.  Everybody came. We got reviewed in major papers. That was the greatest thing about it. It was new. It felt like everybody was waiting for something to happen”.

Rich Riggins also remembers “The punk-bar thing didn’t really open up before WREX and The Gorilla Room in 1979″.  Earlier the gay bar TUGS Belltown was playing a sort of punk-oriented music some nights of the week, but no live bands.  By that time Chinas Comidas had already left Seattle.  “Another all-ages place was Danceland ” Rich says. “It was a dance studio during the day but also let punk bands book it at night.  We also played at The Edmonds Theater a couple of times.  Cult music films and new bands were being paired for shows put together by promoter Norman Caldwell….he managed us for a short time.  I think The Cowboys, The Girls, The Heats, Red Dress and The Moberlys played there too”.

Despite the frustration of finding venues and audiences Rich Riggins says “We did a lot of different things, and that was beautiful in the beginning; the experimentation. It was a great time but of course we weren’t successful with the majority of people. By and large most people wanted to hear pretty much what they listened to on the radio at the time but we got things going really well and connected with a lot of people in Seattle at that period of time-about 1976.  Things were just kind of opening up for us, but disco was going on and nobody was making any money in Seattle.  It was really dead as far as original music”.  Bands like The Screamers, The Lewd, The Mentors and Penelope Houston who co-founded The Avengers had to leave Seattle to get heard.

“Seattle clubs were contemplating getting DJ’s because bands were too expensive and too noisy” Rich tells me. “This transition of “what the fuck?” was a period in Seattle where you saw the signs that Seattle was dead or the famous billboard ‘Will The Last Person Leaving Seattle Turn Off The Lights?’.  There was just nothing going on, and punk was that ‘let’s spur it on!‘ thing.  With the fiery force of a lot of people, people started piecing together little scenes.  What we and most of the other bands like The Enemy and The Mentors had to do was go to clubs and bars and convince them to let us do a show.  We’d  tell them we’d bring in enough people to get the place packed and get them to drink so the bar would make the money.  We would play and do all the advertising, all the promotion and design and put up all the posters.  Everybody in the bands did everything. So did their friends.  It was a real grassroots organization, and that’s what became the scene that Seattle eventually developed into; Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Green River, Mother Love Bone. Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and all the others.  What we developed was fragmented, but it still had this growth of strength that developed into something in the later 80s. The records we put out back then are still holding their own.  It’s great to see in the digital realm  people are listening to our stuff and going ‘Wow! That’s pretty cool, man!’

Cynthia Genser  The “Chinas” of Chinas Comidas

“The first few Chinas Comidas gigs were at lofts and parties” says Riggins.  “Then we rented out the Ethnic Cultural Center Theater in the University District. It was Red Dress and Chinas Comidas.  Then certain bars opened up like The Rainbow on N.E, 45th in the University District.  That became an easy venue for everybody.  There would be Kidd Afrika and those kind of ’70s bands, and later that’s where you’d find Green River in the early days and where you’d find the Soundgarden guys hanging out around the time they formed.

“I was still alternately called Chinas or Chinas Comidas” Cynthia tells me. “Then it was my real name Cynthia because people actually felt the band was Chinas Comidas. We didn’t have a logo so I just painted one. I think Carl Smool put the little star on the ‘i’.  Then he took the whole thing with my face and that became the whole trademark. We’ll have to let it go someday, but for now it’ very recognizable. Carl also made that poster that was so great we had to use it over and over again. Carl has been a great friend and a great supporter; another great guy and a magical person. A talented person. He was definitely part of the ménage that we travelled around with.”

Combining poetry with free-form music wasn’t exactly what Seattle rock audiences were looking for in the late 1970s  Even so, a small but dedicated following was growing up around Chinas Comidas, as it was around the new punk rock scene in general.  In 1979 Cynthia told the influential underground, punk magazine Slash about the struggles the band faced trying to create their own art in Seattle

“If you knew what kind of shit I’ve gotten in the past in the last 2 ½ years, I don’t think anybody’s ever been treated like that in every way.  That’s why I’m a bit scared on stage.  Once in some club some guy came up and blew the contents of a whole ashtray in my face.  Right down my throat; I got a plate of food smashed on my head, now I get scared”.

The interviewer from Slash asked her why she thought people would do that?

She answered;

“I think it was men reacting to me as a woman, upset by me being there”

Mark Wheaton offered his own perspective, sayingIt was seeing a woman standing there, aggressively singing…I think people felt personally confronted by what she said. When she got that plate of shrimp she was doing a poem about relationships.  It was very direct and this guy must have taken offense to it”.

There’s no doubt that Cynthia’s lyrics and poetry could sometimes be caustic, and it’s clear she wrote from a feminist punk perspective. It’s not surprising that many men-even young, supposedly punk men, would take this attitude in the late ‘70s.  Despite believing social norms were changing, the fact is that misogyny was rampant in the ’70s…and still is.

Cynthia and the rest of the band found a fellow traveler back in Seattle in the form of Steven “Jesse” Bernstein.  The band and Cynthia considered him a good friend and a poet worthy of listening intently to.

Steven ‘Jesse’ Bernstein  Dec.4 1950-Oct.22 1991

In the same 1979 interview with Slash Cynthia said: We have a friend, Jesse Bernstein, who is kind of a big loud-mouthed drunken poet…He’s wonderful. He opened for Red Dress in Seattle and there was this other band, a boogie band, that was playing all these boring songs about their baby leaving them and drinking vodka or whatever; the down and out life thing. All fraudulent. Then Jessie, got up there and got really hard core, and told them about life and the way it was and they HATED IT! They were yelling and heckling and making fun of him, saying ‘Have a nice day’ and ‘Lighten up! “

Cynthia recalls “Jesse yelled at me too, but I have a letter of deep apology for how he had acted the night he’d done it.  He was very sweet.  He saw me leave and left a note for me that said;

Dear Chinas Comidas, 
I read one of your books standing up. That is some goddamn good poetry. I am the one who gets loud and obnoxious and wrecks things at poetry readings. Most poetry makes my skin crawl, Even the word “poetry” implies a kind of cloistered delicacy which I think is insulting to the human spirit. But sometimes a poet will slip up and say something really grabbing. I’m always thankful when someone says something strong enough to shut me up for awhile. Thank you.
Steven 

“So we hung out and were pals” Cynthia tells me. “But I did not see him in the period where he was sick or he was hanging out with addicts or all that. He was heavier into drugs after I had left Seattle.  It was sad. I was shocked because I actually had not seen the documentary about his life and death.  I hadn’t heard about anything. When I came back to Seattle two years ago Rich had a show with a lot of Chinas Comidas ephemera at the Majestic Arts Gallery on Greenwood Avenue.  They told me the whole horrible story of Jesse’s death. He certainly was the most well-known poet from Seattle, and in some ways the most characteristic. Although he was born in California, he was a son of Seattle, for sure. He was a charming person in many ways. He wanted to be many things that he couldn’t always bring himself to be. He wanted to be existing in a world with other people. He was really social but his temperament was pretty wild”

In 1991 the British paper The Independent had called Bernstein “TheGodfather of Grunge’   He hated it; The description pales in the face of the lyrical and personal integrity as a writer that intertwined with the failure and misery he’d written about since the late 1960s.  It pigeon-holed him into a fad rather than being taken serious as a poet in his own right.

Sadly, Bernstein struggled with mental illness and addiction most of his life. He killed himself during a trip to the Olympic Peninsula on October 22, 1991.  The 2010 documentary of his life, ‘Secretly I Am An Important Man’ is part love letter, part horror story and part deconstruction of an unsettled mind; but it’s also true to Jesse’s ability to be outgoing, loving and very, very funny. Despite their different approaches to style and substance Cynthia and Jesse’s recognition of each others’ talents was inevitable.

Club 82, 1979   Design: Payton Wilkinson 
   September 19, 1952- June 18, 1989

Cynthia mentions another good friend of the band’s  “The guy who did the cover for my book of poetry Club 82, was the cartoonist Payton Wilkinson, who died really young. He had AIDS. He thought that he had been poisoned, though…long before he got AIDS. Years before. When we first met him he had crazily joined the Army at some point. His father made him, and of course he bunked out of Viet Nam pretty fast.  When they brought him back stateside they debriefed him and put him in an institutional kind of building. He didn’t even know where he was.  Something happened. I don’t know if they gave him LSD, or they did other things, but they did something weird. Then they also pushed him out because suddenly there were a lot of guys coming back from Viet Nam who needed treatment.

Payton got pushed out and he felt that he was never quite well after that.  Rich knew that story too.  It was a strange thing because he got sick awfully quick and suddenly. It was bad.  He was such a talented guy and a lot of fun to hang out with.  As I said he did the cover for Club 82, the book that I did when I was in Seattle. I have lovely photos of him that my husband took when Payton came to New York. It’s funny we were in New York together, and he did some studio shots that are really nice.”

In the spring of 1979 the band began making plans for opening dates on the east coast with The Dead Kennedys.  It’s often misstated that this was a ‘tour’ with the Dead Kennedys, but in fact the band was only scheduled to play a handful of dates with the DK’s. Their first gig was to be at Hurrah, a huge venue at 36 West 62nd street that was New York City’s first punk disco.  The club also booked national and international punk, post-punk and new wave bands from from 1976 until 1980.  Bands from the era that played Hurrah included Mission of Burma, Ultravox, The Cure, Klaus Nomi, Suicide, The Slits, Tuxedomoon, The Specials and 8-Eyed Spy-the band Lydia Lunch fronted after the break up of her pioneering no-wave band, Teenage Jesus and The Jerks.  Dozens more important artists played the club, including New Order in their first American appearance. Their previously planned tour of the US had been scrapped when lead singer and frontman of the band-then Joy Division-commited suicide the night before they were to leave the UK and fly to New York.

From 1978 to 1980 Hurrah was managed by well-known promoter and gay activist Jim Fouratt.  His assistant Ruth Polsky took care of booking bands.  Later Fouratt would move on to Danceteria at it’s most well-known four-floor location at 30 West 21st Street in Manhattan.  Jim is still involved in gay activism, music and New York City politics.

Rich Riggins of Chinas Comidas flying to NYC, 1979

When Chinas Comidas went to New York City, Mark remembers they sent their gear ahead of them on a train and the band flew there. They rented a van in New York City, and stayed on the floors of friends’ apartments. They had a few gigs lined up, including Hurrah.  Chinas Comidas’s  manager at the time was Robert Hanrahan who also managed the Dead Kennedys and The Offs.  The Hurrah gig with The Dead Kennedys had been set up by Chinas Comidas, but Hanrahan had promised to put them in more opening slots for the Dead Kennedys.  “Then something happened at the last moment before the Hurrah gig’ Riggins says. ‘Hanrahan dropped the ball on everything and left Chinas Comidas stranded with no gig and  suddenly stopped managing us”.

Mark recalls “Hanrahan went to Jim Fouratt at Hurrah and told him ‘Well, they (Chinas Comidas) really aren’t that good, and you shouldn’t put them on the bill’.  So Hanrahan undermined the show and Jim Fouratt took us off that bill.  By that time we had arrived in New York with our gear, ready to go, but we had lost the Hurrah gig. “We never heard from Hanrahan again” says Riggins. “So Cynthia went down to the club and talked to Fouratt and got it all patched up.  They set up a date for us and we got to play”. Cynthia says she doesn’t remember this, though admits it’s very likely she did go to Fouratt, to complain and get the band a new date.

“I think a band called The Reds were on the bill” says Riggins. “They were a pop band from Philadelphia. We kind of over-blew the crowd. We just weren’t steady enough for them and our tempo-we kind of jerked it around-was  a little bit too much for them. There were about 1500 people out there and at the beginning of the show.  They were right up front. Four songs in and they were kind of backing off. What do you do? How do you pull them back?”

“Then we got another show at Tier 3 at West Broadway and White Street in Tribeca” Rich tells me. “It was one of those Tuesday night things and there was nobody there. Nobody shows up on Tuesday night in the city unless something really big is going on.”

The next gig with the Dead Kennedys was meant to be in Boston at  The Rat Club. (officially The Rathskeller in Kenmore Square). “I really didn’t want to be in Boston with the Dead Kennedys” says Cynthia. The band blew the gig off. “‘It was a big fuck-up” Cynthia says of the DK show at The Rat. “It was a big brawl in Boston as you might expect. That was one thing that didn’t really appeal to me. I loved Jello Biafra and I thought he was a brilliant guy, so hanging out with him was great. But the tour in itself was rough. Especially when you have no money”

Chinas Comidas & The Dead Kennedys Philadelphia

“We drove to Philadelphia and opened up for the Dead Kennedys at The Hot Club“. All I remember is driving there” Rich says about the Philadelphia gig.  “I vaguely remember being in another dark, beer-stink pighole that they called a venue; everything’s painted black, you know that whole deal. The stage is in the corner with some kind of a P.A. set up. That was the last gig Robert Hanrahan had booked for Chinas Comidas.  After we did The Hot Club we just bailed on the thing with the Dead Kennedys because they looked at us as roadies or something.  They wanted us to carry their gear. We said ‘that’s not what we’re here for, so forget it’.”

The tour wasn’t a complete bust for everyone.  In fact, Dag says “Being in New York during the summer of 1979 was pretty much a life-changing experience for me. I’d been a shy, sheltered, suburban white kid from white suburban Bellevue outside Seattle. I was thrust into the New York of the 1970s when it was arguably it’s scummiest and probably it’s most interesting too. I just saw stuff on the streets. We were out on the street all the time, exploring, going places, taking subways, and just seeing all kinds of weird people doing weird things. It was mind-boggling and eye-opening for this sheltered suburban kid. We played some shows that were not especially successful, but it was definitely a great experience for me”

After returning the band knew Seattle wasn’t going to be the place to get to the next level. They had come up to the point of what promoter/label owner Neil Hubbard referred to when he named his Seattle compilation ‘The Seattle Syndrome.  His premise was that at there would come time a band would become too big for Seattle.  The only way to get more success was to move to a larger city…where they would have to start all over at the bottom of the ladder again.  Chinas Comidas had gotten too big for Seattle.  They had tried New York and that didn’t turn out very well, so they all thought LETS GO TO LOS ANGELES!

“By that point we had put out our second single. ‘Snaps (Portrait of a Fan) b/w For The Rich’. We had sent both of our singles out to be reviewed by all the punk magazines”.  says Mark “We’d sent copies  to Slash magazine in L.A. and they loved the singles. They gave them great reviews. A person from Slash contacted us about being on a compilation that was going to be released on Slash Records which was exciting. In New York we had gotten a telegram from Bob Biggs who was the guy in charge of Slash. He said ‘we’re really interested in your band and we’re thinking of doing a recording with you guys. Can you come to L.A.?’ At that point Slash Records was just starting as a label. They had been a magazine, but they were just starting the record thing”.

Hong Kong Café Los Angeles Halloween 1979
      Design: Gary Panter

“So we ventured down to L.A. to see what was going on” continues Mark. “We didn’t move there at first. We just went down there. We went into the Slash office and they were in the middle of a big meeting that was basically about The Germs being signed. Paul Panter who was the manager of The Germs was there. Bob Biggs and Claude (‘Kickboy Face’) Bessy, the editor of Slash magazine and all these other people were there. We just happened to walk into the building right when all this was going on. They turned around and said ‘Oh, we have this gig at The Hong Kong on Halloween.  Are you guys interested in doing that?‘. We said ‘SURE!’  So we were put on the bill with The Germs and Fear and Claude (‘Kickboy Face) Bessy’s band, Catholic Discipline. Gary Panter did  the poster.

“That was a wild introduction to L.A. punk” says Rich. “That was our first gig in Los Angeles. We hadn’t even actually moved there yet.  All I remember is The Germs were there. Darby Crash and Pat Smear, Don Bolles and Lorna Doom…they were just little puppy kids. Really young little things, you know, and drunk. Their success was just LET IT ALL GO!!! They had social destruction songs and were over the top with teen-aged angst. Just flailing around. It was fucking awesome. It had a lot of intensity and power. I remember I left for a drink and  came back at the end of the show. None of the band members were onstage. The only people onstage were their friends playing The Germs’ instruments. It was like a high school party. That’s kind of what their whole deal was”.

“We played a lot of little bars. L.A. was really happening and it was doing the bar thing. Seattle wasn’t doing that. Seattle was just trying to get that going. Bands like The Heats were trying to cross over into the ‘80s and asking ‘How do we get more commercial and get business-oriented and make some money?’  “You know a lot of bands are given grief”

Rich tells me “because they try to get commercial success. People did that to me. ‘What are you doing man? Are you trying to get commercial?‘   I have to tell them “I’m trying to make a living. Fuck you! What does that mean? You’re the guy who goes out and buys the new Van Halen record that sounds like corny-pop-metal. Gimme a break! Then you buy Elvis Costello and you don’t like me because…I don’t know..Anyway there were lots of little clubs opening in L.A.” Rich says. “The Viper Room was starting to do stuff. All over L.A. there were these little places that were opening up and certain people were doing stuff, like Slash Records and Brenden Mullen. He was a heavy promoter of punk down there We just kept going and going. We played a lot of great shows and kept busy”.

“We left Seattle for L.A. in 1979” Cynthia says “Rich and I got a place in Silver Lake. It was a cute little bungalow. It was possible to rent because it was very cheap. It was on the wrong side of Silver Lake; it wasn’t  the side that looked out at the city. We lived on Hyperion Drive. We were poor but we could afford it then because the area was just not as desirable as it is now. We had an old banger car, and I could walk to the Griffith Observatory and walk around there, sketching and writing.  It was pretty there. I was happy in the bungalow.  I just wasn’t happy about greater L.A. particularly.  The music scene was just insane. It was getting to the point that things were pretty much ‘violence for violence sake’. I was not very comfortable there.”

One of the bands who were very good to us was The Plugz” Cynthia says. “Maybe they were a little disappointed that I wasn’t actually Hispanic because of the name Chinas Comidas.  I didn’t think about it at the time but it was just so polyglot in New York that everybody ends up speaking English in whatever way they could speak; but out west it probably had more meaning, and maybe a more political meaning because of the history of Los Angeles”

Dag remembers coming back to Seattle before making the actual move to Los Angeles.

“In the beginning of 1980 we permanently sold most of my records, sold a lot of my music gear and as much stuff as I could. We packed the rest of it up. By this time Sheli Story had broken it off with Brock and she and I were together. Sheli and I got in a U-Haul van with our cat and Mark Wheaton, then drove to L.A. We had a house lined up in West Hollywood in The Fairfax District. It was a shitty, flea-bitten, dusty, dirty house. I think we were there for about a week, maybe two, when we got raided by the West Hollywood Sheriff because we were squatting…We had paid money to somebody to stay there but they had totally scammed us.  We had to get out with an half an hour’s notice. It was pretty traumatic, so we were trying to find places to go and all that. Rich and Cynthia had a friend who let them stay there. I can’t remember what Mark did…I think he and his girlfriend Susan Nininger got an apartment straight away.”

“Sheli and I lived out of Brock’s van for a week or so.”Dag says. “Later it was pretty nutty, staying in these cheap fleabag hotels. We got turned away from one of them. They told us ‘you guys are too sweet. You’ll get killed in this place, so I’m not going to rent you a room‘. We ended up getting a place in Hollywood at the St. Moritz Hotel at Sunset and Bronson. We didn’t have any money. I think I was on unemployment for a little bit. Sheli finally got a job as a seamstress in Beverly Hills. We literally had no food. We were pretty much starving. We had a little black and white TV and see advertisements for ‘Sizzler’ and say ‘Oh my god, that looks so good!’ Sheli finally got her first paycheck and what we did was to run across the street to get food from the Thai restaurant and pigged out.

Chinas Comidas    The Whiskey a Go Go Los Angeles 1980

Rich describes the first night they played The Whisky A Go Go. “We were all excited. There was our name on the marquee and of course that’s where bands showcase. That’s what the Whisky has always been. The Doors, The Byrds, Love,  Buffalo Springfield and all the great L.A. bands of the ’60s got connected there.  Well, we had a wonderful show. We played really fucking incredible. After the show we were at the top of the stairs backstage and a guy from Slash Records comes up to me and he says ‘Fuckin’ Awesome! You guys are really fuckin’ great. I can see exactly what you’re trying to do. I can see you guys as the new Motown of punk’ ”

Then he says. ‘That’s it! It’s that pop feel buried with all this other weird shit on top’  Then he says ‘I’d love to sign you to ‘Slash Records’ but I just signed The Go-Go’s and they’re taking off and we’re putting everything into the Go-Go’s. If it wasn’t for that I would have signed you tonight.’

 “Things kind of fell off to the side after that.” Rich says.  “Life is an emotional ride…we all know that. If you stay alive long enough it’s and incredible little thing that goes on….or a big deal that goes on. That was one of those ‘well fuuuuuuck!’ things. But you know if you stay together things do continue on and bands like X…they survive and they’re fucking awesome. There’s something really gritty, and it has that westerny survival thing. You know, ‘We came across America‘  The manifest destiny thing. The Germs and Alice Bag and the others-we were right in the mix with all those bands”.

Bags, Johanna Went, Chinas Comidas, Eddie & the Subtitles
Hong Kong Cafe, LA

Cynthia and Rich always had a lot of friction in their relationship and it was getting worse.  “At the time Cynthia and my relationship got to be too much and things started dissipating” says Rich.“We didn’t get along so our relationship fell apart, and so that meant there was no Chinas Comidas. Cynthia eventually moved back to New York in 1981 and stayed. We realized there was a pretty giant scene of people from L.A. that were vying for a position on the Slash Records backlog.  We probably would continue to be given the news of another band like The Go-Go’s being signed. Chinas Comidas were newcomers to town so they got shoved to the side, because Slash Records were more interested in The Germs and X, so they put us on hold. Cynthia didn’t like that. She said ‘Well, fuck it! If that’s what they’re going to do, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them‘ and shortly after that she decided she didn’t want to do a rock band anymore”.

“She wanted to go back to New York and be a poet” says Mark. “That was basically the end of Chinas Comidas.  At the point she said that, we had already gone back up to Seattle and got all our gear and made all our arrangements to move down to L.A. We found places to stay which was hard, then she left”.

Rich says “We had done a lot of shows and we were just on the verge of opening up and getting things going. When Cynthia left, I stayed in L.A. and got a hard-working grease monkey gig like everybody did. Mark got some job and so did Dag. We tried to keep it together but then I thought ‘ I’m down in L.A. and I’m on my own and we’re all on our own’.  I started thinking ‘maybe we can keep something together’. So I decided ‘I’m going to keep Brock and I’m going to keep Dag and Mark and maybe we can do something, and I’ll sing’.

“I tried to do that but it was difficult and hard to maintain. I think I just fired everybody. First Dag and then Mark. Brock and I tried to keep it going, but I didn’t like living in L.A. It was really just another created environment for me. There was too much stress and anxiety so maintaining life down there and dealing with a lot of aggressive Type A neophytes and male aggression. A lot of game playing. You know when you’ve got a jillion people trying to be a star overnight, people are pinching each other and they’re squeezing each other. Although there are beautiful things that pop out of scenes that are legitimate, I decided ‘I can write songs wherever I’m at. I moved back to Seattle at the end of 1981”.

Dag says that when Cynthia told them she was going to back New York, and Chinas Comidas was no more it was kind of a relief because of him being the youngest one in the band.  “I was the most intimidated by Cynthia because she was so assertive” Dag continues.  “I felt like I had to walk on eggshells around her at times. So I said to myself ‘It’s OK. Now we don’t have a singer but we can still carry on as ‘Exquisite Corpse’ a band that Rich, Brock, Dag and Mark had been doing since the earliest days of Chinas Comidas back in Seattle”.

“Back in the early days Cynthia and Rich were in this little apartment that was above The Comet Tavern in Seattle” says Sheli Story. “This was when they had a rehearsal studio on the main floor which became Blue Room Studios. At one point Richard started a band called Exquisite Corpse who would open for Chinas.  Exquisite Corpse would come on and do their songs and then Chinas (Cynthia) would come on.”  Sheli also adds that despite Dag feeling intimidated by Cynthia, he was broken-up when she left. Sheli says Dag had become close to Cynthia.  As for Sheli, Cynthia says “I really liked and still like Sheli. She gave me my only real hardcore dye job-we went for red and it came out black with a red sheen which was totally bitching for L.A. so to speak. I do remember we had fun although it’s all in the very far past”.

After Cynthia left, Mark, Dag and Sheli  ended up moving into another apartment in the Fairfax District on Ogden Street. Dag started working at Canters Restaurant. “It was literally on the same block as Canters, but two streets over” Says Dag. “I didn’t have a car, so we’d take the bus to rehearsal which was straight down Santa Monica Boulevard to Brock’s place. He had kind of an old office space on the second floor. That’s where he lived and that’s where we rehearsed”.

“We practiced for maybe a week or two” says Dag. “I went to rehearsal one day and I got the news from Rich and Brock ‘We’re going to look for some other musicians to replace you and Mark‘….so that was it. I was crushed. I think they said ‘we want to get really serious, we need some better musicians‘. I came home an hour later and Sheli said ‘Wow! why are you home already?‘ I told her ‘I got kicked out of the band’ and she burst into tears.  She’d been along with us the whole time and Brock’s lover first and then she and I started hanging out. There was chemistry going on.”

“Eventually Mark moved out” Dag says. “I thought ‘Sheli and I should get married because Mark has all the cookware, so if we get married we’ll get cookware’. So we came up to Seattle and had a big fancy wedding. Then we went back to L.A.  I think the guy who would become Sheli’s second husband, Case Armour, had been to England and doing bands and partying and all that. He had met this kooky 17 year old guy from Los Angeles named Danny Glickman.  I guess Case and he had a fling together.  Danny was an avid record collector and somehow he found out Case knew people who were involved with Chinas Comidas that lived in L.A.  He was rabid to meet us, which he did. When he got back to Los Angeles I think he just cold-called us, or maybe Case was visiting and he came along.  Danny was very exuberant and loud and very energetic” Dag continues. “He asked if we wanted to do a band with him, so I said ‘yes’. So I played guitar and Sheli played bass and he was a very creative songwriter…singing about really wacky stuff.  Suburban teen-aged angst stuff along the line of Modern Lovers meets X-Ray-Spex. Somehow we got a drummer and the four of us just tore up Hollywood for the next couple of years. The name of the band was Jerry’s Kids. We had some label interest, and did some recording…the recordings weren’t all that great.

Sheli Story of Jerry’s Kids    Al’s Bar L.A. 1980

  • “Danny was a teenager who would go to school, come home and have nothing to do but call clubs and bug people for gigs” Dag tells me. “So we played all the time and we rehearsed all the time. We got to be pretty good. I remember seeing Rich and Brock at the Cathay de Grande, an underground club at Argyle and Selma in Hollywood. The place was packed…they had a lot of bands.  I’m sure no one was really there to see us specifically, but Danny was so showy.  He would connect two or three microphone cords together and then he’d connect to the house cords. He’d go into the audience and sing in people’s faces while we were onstage playing the songs.  That was a night when he was all the way back to the bar where there were a lot of people”.

“Brock and Rich looked bewildered, not knowing what to think” Sheli says. “I loved Brock so much. We all went through a lot together. Moving to L.A. then Chinas Comidas breaking up. Then me and Dag starting a new band. When they came to see us at the Cathay de Grande their faces looked like they were just heartbroken. Dag and I were, in a band that was getting a lot of attention at that time. They were just devastated because they had let Dag go from Chinas Comidas after Cynthia left. Brock was close to Cynthia”

Jerry’s Kids was a lot of fun” Dag says. “But the demise of the band was when Sheli and I started bickering and arguing a lot. It got too much for Danny and he had kind of a breakdown and said he didn’t want to do it anymore. Then Sheli and I split up and I moved on the other side of the Hollywood Ridge and got involved with other bands.  Sheli and I had lived in Beechwood Canyon on a dead end street and I’d been hired away from Canter’s  to work in this super-trendy hot spot, a nouveau-Chinese restaurant called ‘China Club‘ Of course you make friends with people you work with,  and I met a waiter there and a friend of his-a woman-had a three-bedroom house.  They knew Sheli and I were breaking up so they said ‘we’ve got an extra room’.  I moved just literally out of Beechwood Canyon to the Cuanga side. It was still in the Hollywood Hills. I ended up staying there for 15 years“

Mark and Brock Wheaton had also chosen to stay in Los Angeles.  “When I was dismissed from Chinas Comidas” Mark  “I thought ‘that’s fine, I’m gonna do something else’. “That’s when I went into recording engineering school”

“At the same time I ran into Johanna Went. It was at an annual party at Waddles Park in Hollywood” Mark says. “It was Tomata du Plenty’s birthday party. Every year people would get together and hang out in a big gathering.  Kind of the L.A. ‘scene’ and I was going to that party. I was walking up toward the park and Johanna was walking along so I said ‘hey!’  We started talking and and she said ‘Oh, I love your brother’s drumming and I love what you’re doing.  Are you guys willing to do shows with me?’  That’s when she suggested that I start working with her. It was 1980″

Johanna Went “The Worm” from “The Club Years”

Johanna Went was a performance artist who grew up in Seattle.  She’d been part of the underground street theater movement that permeated the city in the early 1970s. Eventually she made her way to Los Angeles where her performance went through a shocking transformation. She began making odd costumes that were more like dream apparitions or psychic monsters made from found or discarded objects.  She made liberal use of artificial blood, Jello and any other element that congealed, allowing it to spurt everywhere.  She danced and spun into an almost trance like state.  All the while she screamed, chanted and wailed in a completely incomprehensible language.  Her performance sometimes included religious and irreligious subtext.  The message (if one could say there actually was one) lay mostly in the performance itself, not in any formal sense of communication. Soon after her arrival in Los Angeles she became closely associated with the punk rock movement and performed alongside practically every well-known punk band of the era.  At the same time her performance art also attracted the higher end of the gallery crowd.

Her work was largely improvised but used a rough outline of what she planned. Each performance was unique and could be categorized as primitive or l’art brut.  All of her dream-creations were destroyed in the process.  Her work dealt in an almost ritualistic conversation between herself and her audience, yet at the same time she remained a distant figure from them. According to cultural observer Pat Cammack, ‘Critics have frequently characterized Went’s shows as ‘chaotic’, ‘wild’ or ‘shocking’. Her work is often seen in context of other women artists of the 1980s whose performances are regarded as daring and transgressive, such as Karen Finley, Lydia Lunch or Diamanda Galas’.

“I began working with Johanna Went performing freeform syntheziser on stage with her wild messy and visually stunning shows” Mark tells me. “We attracted large crowds to LA area clubs throughout the early and mid 80’s up until 2007 when Johanna and I did our last show.  Originally Johanna Went’s band was a loose collection of LA rock musicians performing completely improvised unrehearsed noisescapes years before it was defined into a category. The band included my brother Brock on Drums, Greg Burk on Sax and at various times, Karl Precoda on Bass, Kerry McBride on guitar, Robin Ryan on percussion, Danielle Elliot on Drums, Don Preston and many others.  When Johanna began traveling, she and I created a way to improvise sound using multiple tape loops manipulated at the mixing board. We toured to New York, San Diego, Phoenix, San Francisco to Rotterdam and beyond where we performed in an International Performance Festival”.

“Johanna and I have been going through all of her archives lately and trying to get all of the videos that she has transferred to digital”  Mark tells me. “There’s a site online that has all the Johanna Went videos we’ve transferred  so far. As I said I’m working on her archives. The last show was im 2007, but we’ve done hundreds and hundreds of shows.  Most of them in the ’80s and ’90s. Brock was involved in the first round of those shows up until the mid ’80s. By that time he was drumming in several other bands, so sometimes it wasn’t convenient for him to work with Johanna.  We worked with other players. When we started doing shows outside of L.A. we started experimenting with using tape loops and eventually computer-generated backing tracks.

Brock and I were on Johanna’s ‘Hyena’ album.  I produced that record while I was interning at a recording studio.  I would do work for them in exchange for studio time.  I invited a bunch of players, including Brock and some of the people he was working with, as well as other L.A. people that we knew.  They’d come in the studio in different groupings and just jam in the studio; not with Johanna at all. After we jammed we’d pick out something that we liked and Johanna would write something for it, and then she would come in and do her vocal. It wasn’t really a song as such…it ended up sounding like songs.  When you listen to the album they aren’t just free improv”.

Brock no langer had time to work with Johanna, however, if you listen to our live recordings of shows we did, you can hear the raw improvisation side of Brock’s drumming talents. One of Brock’s drumming gigs was with The Ju Ju Hounds (NOT the Izzy Stradlin band of the same name that came long after). Brock also attended The Percussion Institute in L.A. and refined his drum talents further, wanting to join a band that could go all the way.

But with all of the bands he worked with Brock kept running up against the difficulties of breaking out of the underground and having any real success. Finally in the mid ’80s, Brock moved back to Seattle where he pursued his other passions: motorcycles and scuba diving.

“He became a member of the northwest motorcycle club called The Cossacks and became a star as a stunt rider” Mark tells me.  “He was also a high end scuba diver and was into deep dives, diving on shipwrecks and cave diving.   He got this from our dad who was a pioneering Northwest diver.  He had taught us all to dive. Brock decided to get back into it full time.

Brock Wheaton.   March 24, 1956 – March 27, 2003

“From  this point through the rest of his life, Brock did not regret leaving music behind, but in his final year, while he was dying of cancer, he reconnected with the members of Chinas Comidas” his brother Mark tells me. “This was when we began revisiting all of our recordings and decided to release the compilation CD.  Brock  was also able to reconnect with Sheli Story.”  Sheli says “I loved Brock. We’d gone through so much together.  I talked to him about 11 months before he died. Basically he was at home waiting for a kidney transplant but he didn’t make it”.

Cynthia says “I called Brock the moment I heard he was sick, and every day from New York while he was so terribly ill. I spoke to him the day before he died and he told me he wasn’t ready-it was heartbreaking.”

Brock Wheaton died of kidney cancer at home in Seattle March 27, 2003.

Cynthia Genser returned to New York City. “I came back because I had my family here-my mom and dad” she says. My sister is in Massachusetts and I had friends from over the years, obviously.  I continued to write and publish poetry in New York; fiction and academic articles.  I had a poetry series downtown at Sybossek’s (a place where punk and poetry connected).  It had early readings by Eileen Myles, and prime appearances by June Jordan. Ron Padgett read there, Michael Lally, Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein. I reviewed for and worked with Poetry Flash”  (a journal calling itself ‘A Literary Review and Calendar For the West).

 Cynthia’s poems have also appeared in Western Humanities Review, Speechless the Magazine, Open City, Antaeus ,The Paris Review, The Southern Review and the anthologies Ordinary Women (Ordinary Women Press) and New York: Poems (Avon).  She also authored The Mexican Murals, a work she’s described as ‘sense/memory poems written by adapting some acting exercises of Stanislavsky and combining them with William Burroughs’ walking on colors technique’ Her collection, The Touch, was nominated for the 2011 Poets’ Prize.  In 2005 Cynthia wrote liner notes for the release of their first compilation of earlier Chinas Comidas recordings

“Later I got my PhD in England in Medieval Literature at The University of London. I was very happy to do that” Cynthia says.

“I had started at NYU and it was just a terrible system. I had a friend who was doing a degree at The University of London and she said ‘You know, it will be like you go to a Greek island only it will be like Manhattan Island.  You can get an advisor and it will just work that way’ So that’s what I did.  I taught for many years. I loved it. I started at a small college teaching Chaucer and all that stuff and poetry. I loved my students, and I loved teaching. it was a good thing. It was actually a great choice in the end. I taught mostly black kids from the Bronx, Brooklyn and kids near Westchester and from all over. It was a good experience. It was wonderful. I felt good about doing it. I loved them, they loved me. It was good work I was glad to be doing it. I’m sad now because it’s over. When something stops, especially in the first few years, it’s like it never happened.

In 2005 Exquisite Corpse released of compilation CD  Chinas Comidas: 1977-80 Live and Studio Recordings.  Bill White did the liner notes in which he wrote:

“Cynthia Genser was a rock and roll poet. A rock lyric needs music to live; a rock poem already has the music in it. She read her poems with the band Chinas Comidas. And as time went on, the poems became rock songs.  But first Cynthia Genser was a rock and roll poet.  Her arrival in Seattle had an impact on the musicians of the city that was strong and significant. But even with Rich Riggins writing music for Cynthia’s poetry, the verbal attack was too confrontational for audiences that were being lured back to corporate rock…I am reminded of the days that Northwest Rock was something to be proud of.  When it was made, not by no-playing suburban twits lusting after stardom, but by argumentative outcasts with fingers twitching for a guitar.  Chinas Comidas were never scenesters: They didn’t hide behind somebody else’s attitude.  They were the first band to take punk out of the punk clubs and into lumberjack bars where working people danced to country rock.  I don’t know how many times  Cynthia had to listen to some asshole yell at her to “shut the fuck up”.  Now it’s their turn to shut up. Shut the fuck up and listen”. 

In 2007 Rich contacted Dag, Mark and Cynthia about a Chinas Comidas reunion. He set-up three shows but at the last minute Cynthia couldn’t make it to Seattle from New York. Dag had flown up from L.A. and Rich had gotten a drummer, because Brock had died. “They were freaking out” Sheli says. I told them  “I know all the songs, so I’ll step in.  So I did these three shows with them in Seattle as Cynthia! (Sheli laughs) I have video of those shows. We did a show at Bop Street Records, at The Funhouse (before it moved) and at Fantagraphics Books in Georgetown.  When I stepped in to do vocals I was sooo fucking scared. I did not want to fuck it up. After performing the song Isadora at Fantagraphics, Carl Smool, longtime original friend and fan of Chinas Comidas, came up to me with tears in his eyes saying ‘You did it!!!’. You channeled it, bitch!!!’ and then laughed”.  Sheli says she was honored to do it, and says “A huge piece of my heart is occupied by my love for this band, the people in it and the journey I took with Chinas Comidas“.

Cynthia and Rich also did a performance together at The Majestic Gallery on Greenwood Avenue in Seattle on June 13, 2014 as part of the exhibition ‘1977-When Punk Was Punk’.

“Richard and I are still doing music” says Cynthia. “Maybe we’ll actually get something out, but it’s pretty different from what we did before, and it should be. We’re a lot older, but now I write more of the music. There’s actually a song of mine, so I’m excited about that. ‘Oh! I wrote a new song!!!’ exclaims Cynthia.  “That will be fun to get out some day, if we ever do. We’re kind of stuck because Richard’s out there on the west coast and I’m here in New York. It’s really weird so we still have to figure out how to do it, or I just have to get out there to Seattle. He did come to New York and we got some work done, but you know, It’s rough for him to be away from home, and we try to make him comfortable but it’s hard travelling.”

Rich tells me “One day I got a call from the initial set-up person for Take The City Records in Madrid, Spain. Then he messaged me and said ‘Would you be interested in releasing your music on vinyl?‘ Of course I said ‘Yes‘.  I met Mario Rodriguez who is behind Take The City Records in Madrid. He has a record store so he’s selling new and used music. He’s been re-discovering punk bands and researching. That’s how he found Chinas Comidas.  He thought we were amazing.  He said ‘I’m going to put out your music, Do you want to do it?‘ and I said ‘yes’ so we discussed all of the details. Mark Wheaton came in as being a good business associate and brought in information and helped to piece this thing together.  Now we have Chinas Comidas on 12″ vinyl. It looks awesome and the work on it is exceptional and professional. The cover and it’s design are really beautiful.  We’re happy about it

The pressing of the new album is pretty limited”. Rich says” I think they initially made 500 vinyl copies of them. 400 on black vinyl and another 100 on red vinyl. They’re available at discogs.com. You can also find it at ‘Singles Going Steady at 2219 Second Ave. Seattle, Georgetown Records at 1201 S Vale St, Seattle, and Jive Time Records at 3506 Fremont Ave N, Seattle.  Online it’s available through discogs.com for about  $18.60 US, and shipping. It’s also available at CD Baby and Amazon.

The 19 song compilation on CD that we put out in 2005 is still available.” Rich says. “Mark and I spent a couple of weeks putting a collection of all of our stuff at his studio in L.A  We went through it all, archived and re-mastered it. Mark did a great job.  I’ve also  put together a kind of mash-up of Chinas Comidas playing at Tier 3 in New York City.”

Cynthia and I have written five more songs. We’re putting together a CD.  We’re mixing all of it right now. We are about three quarters of the way there, so we’re going to release another CD and then go to Spain! We’re going to fly there and hopefully work something out with Mario Rodriguez at Take The City Records and perform in his record store as promotion. We also want to get gigs in Europe. We want to branch out and make as many contacts as possible and pick up three players over there, tell them to listen to the songs and we’ll meet you in Spain and then carry on.  Perhaps we can make a little bit of extra money and have some fun, keep going on and doing things.”
Things are looking up even after all these years.

Just a few days after finishing this story…or at least assuming I’d finished this story, Cynthia wrote me a short message.  She spoke about Chinas Comidas “We had a cheerful outlook on the whole project. It was camraderie. It was romance, too”  then added;

“Recently I read ‘Glad Ghosts’…a pretty bizarre story from D.H. Lawrence. I came across a little paragraph I liked; of course it’s in an old-fashioned locution, but it captures the feeling I had about hanging with Rich and working with him in the band. It’s written in the masculine narrator’s voice, so it’s sort of Rich speaking:”

She and I had a curious understanding in common: an inkling, perhaps, of the unborn body of life hidden within the body of this half-death which we call life; and hence a tacit hostility to the commonplace world, its inert laws. We were rather like two soldiers on a secret mission into enemy country. Life, and people, was an enemy country to us both”…

 

 

 

 

-Dennis R. White.  Sources:  Rich Riggins; interview with the author (August 17, 2018). Cynthia Genser; interview with the author (September 3, 2018). Cynthia Genser; notes to the author (September 20th, 2018).  Sheli Story; interview with the author (August 18, 2018). Dag Midtskog; interview with the author (August 20, 2018). Mark Wheaton; interview with the author (August 25, 2018). Mark Wheaton; letter to the author (August 30. 2018). Adam Block “Chinas Comidas” (Bay Area Reporter, August 3, 1978). “Chinas Comidas” (Slash Magazine, December 1979).  Gary Minkler; letter to the author ( August 23, 2018 ). Mark Wheaton; interview with the author (August 16, 2018). Fantagraphics Books “Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Association with Georgetown Records Present Punk Pioneers Chinas Comidas” (Press Release retrieved September 9, 2018). Mark Wheaton “Brock Wheaton” (catasonic sounds.com retrieved September 1, 2018). “Brock Wheaton Obituary” (The Seattle Times, March 31, 2003). “The Last Bath [1975,directed by Karl Krogstad]” (IMdb. com, retrieved September 2, 2018).  Jeff Boruszak “Cynthia Kramen: Chinas Comidas Live and Studio Recordings 1977-1980” (Jacket 2,   Mauri Regnier; “Alive In Underground Seattle” (The University of Washington Daily, March 8, 1977). Tom Bolling  “Cynthia Genser / Cynthia Kraman”  (https://staff.washington.edu/kendo/genser.html, retrieved September 7, 2018). Gary Groth “The Spain Interview” (The Comics Journal, November 29, 2012). Bruce Weber “Spain Rodriguez, Artist of Underground Comics, Dies at 72” (December 2, 2012, The New York Times). Hotmovies.com; Templeton Blaine (retrieved September 12, 2018).  Cynthia Kraman Genser “Chinas Comidas” (oetry Flash September 2018).  Patrice Cammack  “Review of Interview with Monkey Woman, by Johanna Went”. (High Performance 9, no. 4, 1986). Ray Freed “Remembering Jack Micheline” (Poetrybay, Spring 2001. Retrived September 1, 2018). The Floydian Device “Upchuck: Gone But Not Forgiven” (Punk Globe, March 2018). Kurt B. Reighley “The Gay Cobain: Eighteen Years after His Death, the Music World Honors “Upchuck” the Man Who Set Seattle on Fire” (The Advocate, Retrieved September 18, 2018).  Anne Matthews “Rage In A Tenured Position” (The New York Times, November 8, 1992).

 

THE HEATS

“The band almost didn’t happen” Ken Deans, former drummer for The HeatersThe Heats tells me.  I’m on the phone with him as he’s perched in his office above the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio California; the site of the most important multi-day music festival in the United States; The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival…or simply “Coachella” as it’s commonly referred to.  Ken, who is now the “Logistics Manager” for Goldenvoice Entertainment  tells me he’s been up for about 90 days, but just as Coachella is being dismantled.

He still has a several  more events to work on. The Bonnaroo Festival held in Manchester Tennessee and then  for the annual Stagecoach Festival, (back at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio)  which is becoming the largest gathering of C&W artists and fans in the country.  In fact, Ken and Goldenvoice works with almost every major outdoor music festival in the United States. They also book top-notch concerts and events.  I’m surprised he’s carved out time for me to talk with him, but he doesn’t rush, he’s full of anecdotes and stories that I don’t need to prompt him to answer.  He’s surprisingly relaxed for a man with  so much to do.

It’s been a long slog from The Heats to where he’s gotten, but he admits he wouldn’t have come so far except for starting out in The Heaters/The Heats a band that was once Seattle’s presumed contender for attaining fame and fortune.

“It was an accident” he says. “Keith Lilly and I were scheming to put  a band together and find a female front singer to go to Alaska to make money.  That’s all we were thinking about.  So, it was Keith myself Steve Pearson, Gordon (“Rothberger…Rosman?… or maybe Craig Roper”) playing bass.  We asked this woman named Kim to come and jam.  It was awful. It was truly painful.  We were trying to be like Burgundy Express; complete lounge bullshit”.

The band at the time consisted of Deans on drums, Steve Pearson on guitar, Keith Lilly on guitar (he’d later become bassist)

Ken remembers;
“Steve Pearson says to me;
‘Hey!” I have no desire to do this but I like playing with you and I met this guy and we’ve been talking about jamming,   Maybe the four of us could jam some night”

The guy Steve was talking about was Don Short, who (with Steve) went on to be an integral part of the band as a writer, player and singer.

Erik Lacitis, was the Seattle Times feature writer who helped make The Heaters/The Heats  a household name. He wrote in one of his early articles championing the band that Don Short and Steve Pearson first met at a Jack-In-The-Box somewhere in the suburbs of Seattle in 1975.  It was late at night and only the drive-thru window was open so Don asked some kids in a car if he could join them to put in his order.  Steve Pearson was one of the passengers in the car.  Soon the chance meeting turned to a discussion on rock and roll between Short and Pearson…a subject both young men were drawn to.  Both Steve and Tom found out they’d been playing in garage bands and had favorite bands in common.

Lacitis wrote:
“The two exchanged  phone numbers and stayed in touch, even getting together a couple of times to jam. The young men found they had the same tastes in music,  They both looked for guidance to the back-to-basics just being released by British rockers. They both despised the bland, formula ‘album oriented’ pap and disco that dominated the airwaves at the time.”
A few days after talking to Ken I’m on the phone with Steve Pearson. He’s heard that some guy in Seattle has been trying to get in touch with him.  He tells me;
“I’m a luddite. I don’t have a cell phone, I don’t do anything but our drummer does all the social media (for his band, British Racing Green).  I don’t know if we have a website or a facebook page. He’ll pass on “call this guy” or “this person said this” or whatever. He sent me a message and said “call this guy” So I called and originally when I called you I didn’t even know why I was calling….if you wanted me to work on your car or whatever (he laughs) I didn’t know”

“When I began playing it was all these “Glorious Seattle Bands”, from ‘Bighorn’ on down’ says Pearson. ‘They were cover bands, They had semi’s full of gear.  They had five road crew.  They pretended they were the bands they emulated. Some of the guys were really good players and wonderful people, but the bands themselves were the antithesis of what you’d think of a rock and roll band”  Ironically The Heats drummer Ken Deans had formerly played in one of the “Glorious Seattle Bands that both The Heaters and Pearson despised.

Deans good-naturedly admits before The Heaters he belonged to a group called Goliath.  

“I had come from being in a glam/metal band and playing the midwest circuit.  We had a Zeppelin tribute. We had a Jethro Tull tribute and we did a bunch of UFO, but at the core of it it was kinda fun because we would also do a bunch of Yardbirds stuff”.

Steve had played a bit with Jim Basnight, Keith Lilly had been in a band called The Daily Planet and Don had just returned from a year living in London. At one time Keith and Ken had been in a band together called ‘Money’.

Although the new band’s first jam was a total failure, their second session went far better.  On Thanksgiving Eve, 1978 Steve Pearson, Ken Deans, Keith Lilly and Don Short met at a rehearsal space below a convenience store in Kenmore called The Night And Day.  The band started to rehearse at 9 PM, playing everything from the Stones to Chuck Berry to what Ken calls “all the usual jam stuff and blues stuff”

After warming up with covers and jams someone said  ‘Hey! let’s learn a song!’ and all of a sudden Don said ‘I’ve got one, wanna fool around with it ?’  Before they knew it it was 10 AM the next morning and they’d come up with six or seven new songs. Deans also remembers all of them looking at each other and saying “Well, fuck, this is kinda weird”

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so natural before in my life” says Ken.“It seemed all of a sudden overnight we’d known each other forever.  In the case of Keith and Steve and I, we kinda had known each other, (they’d all gone to Inglemoor High School) but we didn’t know Don from anywhere before he came into the room that night.  It was really an amazing night so we decided to keep going.  We made a conscious effort to only play the songs we wanted to play,…no matter if it happened to be on KZAM or KCMU we’d do it because we liked the song.”

The rehearsal space also helped the band come up with a name.  Working overnight in a basement in late November made one thing almost more important than anything else; a heater.  The band dubbed themselves The Heaters

The band found gigs fairly soon,  Usually playing to small audiences; but it gave them a chance to work on their own material, and fill it out by playing songs by some of the then up-and-coming artists that had been coming out of England,.  Seattle fans weren’t familiar with most of these songs, and The Heaters never set out to fool their audience but it was clear the kinds of songs they were covering were exciting, took on a whole new approach and were extremely danceable.

“We were very young and very naive”, says Pearson, “but also highly opinionated as far as what we wanted; what we like and didn’t like I might say. And it was great! We followed the vision of Don Short and me. We had a very narrow-minded approach to what we liked,  and what we didn’t like. Anything that felt like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles from the 1960s we liked,  Anything that felt like ‘Arena Rock’ we hated.”





At the time The Heaters came on the scene it was bar bands and cover bands that ruled the clubs and taverns of the northwest.  Another new and alternative scene had begun to coalesce around bands like The Telepaths (later The Blackouts), Jim Basnight’s The Moberly’s and The Meyce, Student Nurse,The Look and scores of others writing their own material….some of whom fled to San Francisco or Los Angeles to be more appreciated and find labels (The Mentors, The Screamers,The Lewd and The Avengers all took this approach)  It was a phenomenon Neil Hubbard would call “The Seattle Syndrome” for his groundbreaking 1981 collection of Seattle’s alternative music bands; Become too big to stay in Seattle and move to another city in hopes of becoming bigger, but in fact becoming a small fish in a new pond. But these were bands had relatively small fan bases in Seattle and the rest of the country at the time.  It’s clear they would help inspire what became known as the Seattle Sound (or “grunge”) two decades later, but local radio and the majority of music fans at the time were ignoring them in favor of “good time” cover bands, industry-fed top 40 music and Heavy Metal.

It’s hard to say why Seattle suddenly burnt out as a hotbed for mainstream talent by the early 1970s.  Seattle and northwest in general had been a hotbed of talent in the late 50s until the mid 60s, Of course Jimi Hendrix had become a worldwide phenomenon, but he was dead by 1970;  but there was one band that would come to be a bigger success than all Seattle bands before it, excepting Jimi Hendrix,  Heart, a band that wasn’t even initially associated with Seattle. seemed explosive when they first hit the big time.  Ironically, on paper they were practically what the The Heaters despise most about “Arena Rock”.  But Heart was distinct in it’s two very talented sisters out front proving that they could do it just as well…and better…than the boys. Besides, as Pearson told me. “They were groundbreaking, Ann’s voice cannot be denied”. The Wilson sisters too, were trying to kick down some doors.

The band that would become Heart was formed in the same suburbs as The Heaters; Kenmore and Bothell Washington, just a few miles north of Seattle. In 1967 bassist Steve Fossen. guitarist Roger Fisher, drummer Ray Schaefer and Don Wilhelm on guitar, keyboards and lead vocals formed a band the called The Army. The band would go through many various line-ups and different names over the years but were first re-named ‘White Hart’. The word ‘Hart’ is an old English term for what Americans call a ‘stag’; specifically a red deer stag more than five years old. The name of the book referenced Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Tales from the White Hart’, a collection of short stories named after a thinly veiled London pub called The White Horse.  During the 1950s the actual  White Horse (The White Hart in Clarke’s compendium)  was the center of the universe for British science-fiction writers and fans. The premise of the collection ‘Tales from the White Hart’ was that tellers of tall-tales met regularly at the fictional ‘White Hart’ pub, and the storied they spun were re-told for the reader by the fictional character Charles Willis, who is in reality Arthur C.Clarke himself.  The tales Charles Willis re-told were actually Clarke’s original stories.

The name White Hart was intended as the name for another local band, but The Army got permission from the band’s leader Toby Cyr, to use the name.  The band originally to be called White Hart became Raisin’Cain instead.  Having secured the name, the band previously called The Army decided to add an “e” making the name White Heart. By the early ‘70s more line-up changes would take place, one of which was the addition of Ann Wilson (the exact year is unclear) resulting in another name change to Hocus Pocus.  In 1973 Ann’s sister Nancy Wilson joined the band and after a few months the band reverted to the name White Heart and eventually to Heart.

Roger Fisher’s brother Mike was about to be drafted when he decided to flee to Canada.  On one of his trips sneaking back across the border to visit friends and family in Seattle, Mike attended a show featuring his brothers’ band Heart  It was here that Mike Fisher and Ann Wilson met and fell in love.  Ann was determined to follow Mike back to Canada so soon she joined him in Vancouver B.C.. Steve Fossen also decided to move to Canada in late 1972, and Roger soon followed. Shortly after the move both Brian Johnstone (keyboards) and John Hannah (drums) showed up in Canada. It was during this period that Roger Fisher and Nancy Wilson (while they were still in Seattle) became involved.  Roger and Nancy joined the rest of the band in Vancouver British Columbia.  When Nancy Wilson came on board as a guitarist the band was complete..,  Johnstone and Hannah would shortly return to the United States, but replacements would show up soon enough.

In 1975 Heart made demo’s with producer Mike Flicker-who would go on to be their long-time producer over the course of the 70s and early 80s.   Howard Leese was brought in as a session player, filling out the demo with guitar and keyboards formerly played by Johnstone and Hannah.  Leese soon became a full-time member of the band.   Producer Mike Flicker also brought in drummers Duris Maxwell, Dave Wilson, Kat Hendrikse as well as Mike Derosier. A host of session players became part of the album. By 1975 Mike Derosier had become Heart’s full-time drummer.

The band’s demo’s made the rounds but no major label was ready to bite.  Still determined to make a splash the band went into Can-Base Studios in Vancouver, again with producer Mike Flicker at the helm.  Without Heart having a label or distribution the Canadian investors who had backed Can-Base Studios decided to take on and release an album on their own independent Mushroom Records, then managed by Shelley Siegel. The album which became Dreamboat Annie was only released in Canada over its first few months,  It’s airplay and sales were helped along by a  particular Canadian law meant to protect Canadian television,the arts and musicians. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) controlled and enforced the Broadcasting Act of Canada. The Broadcasting Act (at the time) demanded at least 25% of Canadian content must be of Canadian origin. Regulations concerning broadcast quotas have become practically un-enforceable in the 21st century because of the advent of online content, cable networks and NAFTA  but at the time Dreamboat Annie was released it was a very important tool for Canadian artists of all sorts. The band and the band’s producer were not Canadian, but Mushroom Records was a Canadian label and the album was recorded in Canada, thus making it eligible for heightened airplay on Canadian radio.  This exposure initially caused the sale of  about 30,000 copies in Canada, Not numbers like major American acts, but more than many Canadian artists.  The music industry sat up and paid attention.

Many northwesterners knew a bit of the history of Heart as a local band, and sales of imports were fair in the region, but most Americans assumed Heart was a Canadian band because of their first brush with success was there.  After their Canadian success Mushroom Records opened a US subsidiary and originally released Dreamboat Annie in the Seattle area on February 14, (Valentine’s Day) 1976,  Dreamboat Annie sold approximately 25,000 more copies in the northwest alone.

Mushroom Records knew it had a potential hit on its hands and began a wide release in the U,S, with a successful city-by-city roll out.  It was time-consuming but Mushroom Records’ Shelley Siegal knew it was the right strategy. The album was propelled by two of the most iconic rock songs of the early 1970s. ‘Crazy on You’ and ‘Magic Man’. ‘Crazy on You’ made it number 35 on the US Billboard charts, and later ‘Magic Man’ made it to number nine.  The album Dreamboat Annie peaked at number seven on the Billboard charts, and eventually recieved platinum status in the United States (over one million units sold) in 1976, and double platinum (400,000 units total) in Canada in 1979.  It has been claimed by some that Heart’s initial success was that Mushroom Records head, Shelley Siegel ended up convincing “the guys that filled jukeboxes” to put ‘Magic Man’ into the slot that was meant for The Rolling Stones “Brown Sugar”.  It’s only rumor and speculation, but if it’s true it was one more fantastically successful move by Mushroom and Siegel

Inevitably success brings lawsuits.  Mushroom claimed they had a two-record deal and demanded another with the band instead of selling their contract on to a major label.   Mike Flicker, who had signed on to be the band’s designated producer quit the label leaving Heart without a contracted producer at Mushroom. This created a Catch 22; No producer, no record. Things were further inflamed when Mushroom released advertising suggesting the Wilson sisters were lesbian lovers. The members of Heart were furious and felt the label itself had broken the contract with them.

Mushroom then released a throwaway album called Magazine filled with unfinished tracks and a couple of live performances (recorded at The Aquarius in Seattle). The band distanced themselves from Magazine as being an unauthorized release.  Lawsuits were filed.  A court ordered Mushroom Records to pull the album from the racks and allow the band to remix it and add new vocals.  The revamped album was re-released in 1978 and made it to number 17 on the US Billboard charts, with a single, Heartless, that made it to number 24 on the US Billboard charts. Eventually Magazine went platinum in the US and Canada.  It’s not a very good album, but today it is somewhat of a collectible since the album was originally printed with a colored vinyl design. After the dust settled Heart signed a multi-album deal with Portrait Records, a sub-label of Epic Records, and later Columbia.

So what does all this have to do with The Heaters?  Well, both bands would soon share the same management, (Albatross) The Wilson sisters became vocal champions of the band.  Ann Wilson produced a demo and a video for them and was instrumental in the release of The Heats album ‘Have An Idea ’on their management’s Albatross Records. The album was produced by Heart’s Howard Leese. Members of the original band ‘The Army’ had also attended the same high school as Heaters members. The Heats would continue issuing singles on Albatross Records and tour with Heart. The Heaters involvement with Heart was unequivocal…and they had an additional tie-in…
Ken Deans says;   

I clearly remember the day I wanted to be a rock guy. The Army (pre-Heart) was playing down in the Kenmore shopping mall in front of Olsen’s drug store. This was probably 1967 and I said “that’s what I wanna do!”

Heart’s story also provided a cautionary tale to The Heaters, and foreshadowed in some ways the struggle The Heaters/Heats were about to wade into.
https://youtu.be/1pgGw1FY5fY

In 1979 The Heaters were playing the ‘Old Mill Tavern’, ‘The Town Pump’ and then got Doug Boad at Farwest Entertainment to book them into the ‘Central Tavern’,‘The Alki Tavern’ and ‘The Shire’-across from the Admiral Theater in West Seattle-the place the band later broke out of. Soon they were introduced to Norm Caldwell and his business partner Don Kellman who were running and managing The Edmonds Theater.  Their formula was to book up-and-coming bands with classic cult films.

In a September 1979 article, Seattle Times rock critic Patrick MacDonald asked the question;

“A movie theater with a dance floor? 

He went on to say “That’s the Edmonds, probably the only one of it’s kind in the world.  For the past few months the old but handsomely refurbished neighborhood theater on Main Street in downtown Edmonds (about 15 miles north of Seattle) has been featuring rock ‘n roll movies with live bands as a second feature,  The concept has been so successful that the theater has been racking up record days at the ticket booth”.

MacDonald pointed out that several of the northwest’s best new rock bands-including The Heaters, The Moberlys, The Cowboys, Red Dress, The Girls, The Jitters and others-had their popularity  boosted by appearances at the Edmonds Theater.

The Heaters first performance at The Edmonds Theater shared billing with the the 1956 film The Girl Can’t Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield in a va-va-va-voom, over the top performance and a soundtrack featuring Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Teddy Randazzo and Fats Domino among others,  The film was and still is a high point in bringing rock and roll to a mass theater audience, as well as being terrifically funny in it’s own right.

“That’s where everything started for us” says Steve Pearson. Ken Deans agrees, adding That’s probably the best gig we ever did in our lives”

Norm Caldwell who was doing the bookings at The Edmonds Theater told MacDonald:

“The bands love to play here as an alternative to playing the bar circuit.  They get to play on a stage to a younger audience that pays attention to them.  Bands turn down higher paying jobs to play here because they like it so much”.

MacDonald, who could sometimes fall into the trap of hyperbole, was spot-on in his assessment of the Edmonds Theater, and Norm Caldwell was not simply saying whatever he could in order to bring in warm bodies.  What both of them claimed was absolutely true.  Kids from all over the region (including Seattle) would make the trek to Edmonds to see these shows.

The Edmonds Theater 415 Main St, Edmonds, WA

According to Caldwell at the time some of the other upcoming pairings would included Nicholas Rogue’s Performance (starring Mick Jagger) with Red Dress, and the film Stardust (starring David Essex) would be paired with the band Citizen Sane.  Later The Heaters would have another prime gig at The Edmonds Theater, playing for the NW premier of The Ramones’ Rock and Roll High School.  

There’s no doubt the Edmonds Theater’s brief period of pairing new music with cult classics helped develop the latest northwest “scene” that was rising in the region’ but sadly very little of what happened at the Edmonds Theater was documented.  Very few photos and no videos of the performances have come to light.  The Edmonds Theater is now The Edmonds Center for the Arts, and hosts a great line-up of exhibits, music and dance.  It also shows first run films at reasonable prices….perhaps the only small, independent theater to do so left in the state.

Soon after The Heaters performance there Ken Deans remembers;
“We were doing this gig playing at ‘The Shire’ in West Seattle.  Wednesday through Saturday for $400 and there were usually twelve people in the room. We were making $100 each a week. So, (after their appearance at The Edmonds Theater) we’re sitting down with northwest rock writers and all of a sudden these guys start deciding what they’re going to do. I thought “this is weird, we’ve got the guy from the Seattle P-I, The guy from the Seattle Times and we’re discussing columnist Erik Lacitis who wanted to do a series, so they said “Erik you do the series”  Erik says ‘I’m gonna need a photographer, we’re gonna shoot some pictures.  Be here tomorrow at 3:00’. So we were “uh..uh..OK” 

Lacitis says he doesn’t remember this meeting with the other writers,  He says only he and his good friend George Arthur (another columnist) saw The Heaters at The Edmonds Theater the night in question.  He says he was inspired to write about The Heaters on his own because “they blew me away”,  There was no convening between writers, although it’s possible they did gather among themselves later and talked about the band.

Nonetheless. Deans recalls the unquestioned truth;

“So we go down there and sit around and talk with Erik for awhile, and the photographer had brought in ladders.  He’s climbing up ladders and taking these shots and doing all sorts of stuff and we’re going ‘yeah, OK’.  Then Erik says ‘I think it’s going to run in Saturday’s paper’.  We’re thinking  ‘Wow.Cool’ but we really didn’t know what that meant at the time. 

“Quite frankly we didn’t know who Erik Lacitis was because we weren’t a bunch of front section newspaper reading people yet.  Then the next Saturday night Keith and I were driving home pretty early in the morning.  We were still living with our parents at the time; over in ‘Arrowhead’ in Kenmore.  So Keith says ‘Hey!  I bet the Saturday morning paper is out.  Let’s stop by the 7-11 and see if it’s there yet’. So I run in and grab a paper, I threw the first two sections away and start going through the entertainment section, and I go ‘Ha! there’s nothing,  I think we got cut’. And then Keith looks at me and goes ‘y’know I think Erik Lacitis wrties ‘real’ articles.  He might even be in the front section’.  I look at Keith and said ‘OH YEAH?’

“So I start flipping the pages.  At the time ‘The Seattle Times’ had a section  called ‘The Page’. I flip the paper over and above the fold is all picture of ‘The Heaters’ and below the fold it’s all an article on us.  Nothing else.  I thought ‘Holy Fuck! How did this happen?’ So we went back to the store and bought every copy we could. Then I called Steve and Don and said ‘Hey guys, have you seen the paper?’ All we knew at that time was that this was amazing”.

“Everybody in Seattle’s going to see this because back then newspapers were still NEWSPAPERS. So the next night Keith and I got back in our car and drove back to West Seattle, to ‘The Shire’ We pulled into the back parking lot. There was only one space open so we thought ‘maybe it’s going to be a good night’. When we opened the back door of the club and it was packed. We walked in and people started cheering  and outside there was a line down the street”.

Steve Pearson remembers something similar.  He says;
“We played at this club down in West Seattle called ‘The Shire’, and nobody came in. We would play to an empty house.and gradually the local musicians started coming in. Then Erik Lacitis, (because of the Edmonds Theater gig) came out and took some pictures of us and wrote an article about us in ‘The Seattle Times’. The next night I was walking in the back door of ‘The Shire’ and people started applauding. I turned around to see what famous person they might be applauding for. I’m not making this up. This is as factual as anything in my life. I had no idea…the club was jam-packed with musicians…people…everybody from Seattle wanted to see this new band called ‘The Heats’ or ‘The Heaters’ back then. And we tore it up. You would think we’d be awed by that-and in a way I was awed by it-but we saw that as our chance to kill. And we did. We were absolutely seize-the-moment teenagers and we never even had to talk about it. We just walked out and said to ourselves “this is gonna happen” and then made it happen.

Around this time The Heaters became acquainted with Buck Ormsby, one of the original Fabulous Wailers.  Buck was a producer and worked occasionally with the reformed Sonics as well as The Wailers.   He had co-founded and run the local label Etiquette that had released The Sonics, The Galaxies, Gail Harris, Rockin’ Robin Roberts, and The Wailers themselves. Ormsby became a mentor to The Heaters, a friend and their first de facto manager/producer.  At the time Ormsby’s label  Etiquette was in hiatus, but Ormsby would go on to revive the label around 1980. It’s no surprise that most of his life Buck spent in the northwest music scene in one capacity or another.  He was also one of its’ biggest and most revered figures.

Steve Pearson tells me his thoughts on Buck;
“Buck Ormsby was great. But most of the the biggest thing we got from Buck Ormsby is that he was basically an overgrown teenager that had picked up an instrument and went out and rocked, just like us. He didn’t go to Berklee School of Music. He didn’t have pretentions. He wasn’t anything more than a cool northwest rock and roll guy.  He thought we were that, and we thought he was that. It’s pretty much as simple as that”.

Ken Deans says;

“You know Buck Ormsby’s ‘Etiquette’ was a label for 60 years, Buck was smart from the beginning,  He started a revolution. He reminded me of the days of The Wailers and The Sonics, Don and The Good Times The Washingtons and the whole slew of  bands that came out of the northwest. We were emulating those guys.  We used to go to ‘Bandstand Music’ in Bellevue just because guys from The Sonics worked there.  I was buying drum sticks from the guy who wrote “The Witch” (Gerry Roslie)  Author Charles R. Cross had called Roslie ‘the Howard Hughes of punk rock’ because of his reticence in speaking to the press.

“When Buck first  came and sat  down with us” Deans says “ he really worked with us. He introduced us to George Peckham from who we took lessons, and Buck spent time with us in rehearsals,  It was at Bob Lang’s studiom before it was famous.  Lang’s studio was a subterranean garage built into a hillside..,”

At the time The Heaters rehearsed there, the studio was notorious because both bands and their equipment had to enter the recording studio by crawling under the control panel.  Since The Heaters practiced theren  Since then Lang’s studio has had clients ranging from Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and The Foo Fighters to Peter Frampton. It should be noted by the time big acts began recording at Bob Lang Studios they no longer had to crawl under the counsel!

“At the time we were there, Lang had was still excavating the garage/studio.  It’s a mystery how he got the city to sign off on his project, It was crazy” says Ken Deans “but he had the money-Bob has never had to worry about money-but you had to crawl under that counsel to get in. It was like a barn red garage.  But you know it was pretty amazing, and it was as garageband as you got”.

Deans recalls that he started playing drums  to become a rock star from an early age;
“My parents were friends with the mother of ‘The Sonics’ drummer” says Ken (it’s unclear if he means Bob Bennett or Dusty Wilson who replaced Bennett in 1972). “They bought me a Premiere drum set…the drum set Rob Van den Akker bought from my drum teacher Bruce Ford who had it given to him by Buddy Rich years before,  Of course I traded it in for a new lovely set But the point of it was Buck came out and saw us at the ‘Central Tavern and I think we were as enamoured of him as he was with us because we weren’t looking up to ‘Bighorn’ we were looking up to ‘The Sonics’ and ‘The Wailers’ and all those bands, The original northwest punk bands”.

“I went and saw ‘The Sonics’ at The Roxy in Los Angeles a couple of years ago (Says Deans who lives in southern California these days), Freddie Dennis has done an incredible job in carrying that torch”. In 1992 Freddie Dennis (formerly of Freddie and the Screamers and The Kingsmen) joined the Sonics as bassist and vocalist.  He had a series of strokes in 2017, sidelining him from the Sonics, but he says he’s recovering quite nicely at this time.

Ken says:

“It was nice because Buck was there and he was putting out a new ‘Sonics’ record.  Buck and I had a very nice conversation.  Buck had wanted to sign ‘The Heaters’ to ‘Etiquette’ but we had higher hopes, although they never really came to fruition.

Buck Ormsby died on Oct. 29, 2016 (his 75th birthday) from complications of lung cancer,  He was in Tepic, Mexico, where he was seeking alternative treatment, The Heats wrote on their facebook page;

“37 years ago we met our first mentor in Buck Ormsby. He believed in us, practiced with us, took us to vocal lessons with George Peckham, and when he thought we were ready took us into the garage, literally, at Lang Studios. It was a one car garage built into the hillside at Bob Lang’s house. You had to crawl under the desk to get into the recording room. We spent a week there working on how to arrange, record, get the basics right and finally mix what became our first record. We owe a lot to Buck as does almost the entire Northwest music scene. His contributions are innumerable and his legacy will be forever embossed in all musicians, whether they know of him or not. We Thank you Buck. Our hearts and Thoughts go out to all your family and friends. Godspeed and may your next tour be one of the best ever”.

When it came time for The Heaters to find management they were torn between Ivy Bauer at Concerts West and Ken Kinnear at Albatross. They even spoke to Erik Lacitis, telling him they were conflicted about who should represent them. Lacitis told them; “it’s not about who you like the most, it’s who you think that will do a better job. Today Ken Deans says ‘hindsight is always 20/20’ but in retrospect I think we went with Albatross because of Heart more than anything else.  Steve Fossen and Roger Fisher were still in the band at the time and they were Kenmore musicians.

After The Heaters signed onto the Albatross roster, most of the day to day duties were handed over to Jon Kertzer.  Kertzer had formerly worked in several radio and promotions capacities including being a music director for Seattle’s KZAM radio and as a promotions manager for CBS Records. Jon admits people are often surprised to hear he was involved in rock and roll during the 1970s.  Today he’s known as a teacher, speaker and explorer in the world of ethnomusicology. From 1984 until 1998  he hosted a radio program on radio station KCMU and it’s later incarnation KEXP, called The Best Ambiance.  Note the spelling here.  Ambience (with an e) has more to do with environment, and Ambiance (with an a) is usually-but not always-descriptive of art, culture or design skill.  Jon didn’t and still doesn’t present the popular “world music” that popular jazz and pop artists have been interested in for the past two or three decades.  He’s  more interested in presenting authentic examples of traditional music, especially that of Africa and Asia, and the organic rise of modern music among artists in those geographic areas.

From 1979 until 1981 Jon handled the day to day operations of keeping The Heaters afloat.  He acted as a tour manager, sold their merchandise at gigs and sometimes ran the lights or sound. He set up small tours, and showcase events.  He was also the one who initially went from one major label to another trying to get enough interest to get the band signed. Jon helped set up a west coast tour with The Knack, and The Heaters (under various names) played the southwest and west coast with them.  The Heaters.Heats also did thirty dates opening for Heart.  Kertzer tells me that although the Heats were able to play New York’s Radio City Music Hall twice with Heart, many of the dates with Heart and The Knack didn’t always present the band at their best due to problems with sound and staging.  He adds that the band was far too pop with some audiences and not pop enough for others.  He remembers the tour with The Knack as being terrible, and uncharacteristically calls  Doug Fieger (the lead singer and guitarist for The Knack) “an asshole”.  He (and The Heats) have much kinder words for Heart, who truly wanted them to succeed, and did their best to help them by taking the band on tour with them, and mentoring them-especially Ann and Nancy.

Just as they were becoming to be called Seattle’s “Next Big Thing” The Heaters faced a couple of missteps in being paired with two bands at two different shows at The Paramount Theater.  One was opening for Alvin Lee, the former leader of Ten Years After on June 27, 1979,  Lee and his band had been totally dedicated to the electric blues and were one of the biggest hits at Woodstock a decade earlier.  Alvin Lee was known as one of the best blues/rock players to come out of an abundance of incredible British blues guitarists in 1960s Britain.  In the early ‘70s Alvin Lee and Ten Years After had found commercial success worldwide through two much more mainstream albums; A Space in Time in 1971 and Rock & Roll Music To The World in 1972.  By 1973 Alvin Lee had disbanded Ten Years After because their American label  (Columbia) had tried to push the band into even more commercial pop territory.  Both A Space In Time and Rock and Roll Music to The World are excellent albums, but the were only meant as diversions from Lee’s ultimate goal of playing pure electric blues.  Alvin Lee ended up working solo, later putting together a highly respected group of blues musicians to record a live album at The Rainbow in London (the double record In Flight) and took part in numerous solo projects and collaborations.  By the time The Heaters opened for Lee he had reverted to his former shred-based blues with the band Ten Years Later.  Most of his fans were keen followers, so The Heaters was not a good choice to warm up for Lee and the crowd responded in kind. They booed them mercilessly.  The Heaters considered it the most difficult show they’d ever done.

They told rock music critic Pat MacDonald;
“After that nothing can faze us”

The band (and their fans) showed themselves in a much better light when they opened for The Kinks at Seattle’s  Paramount Theater on October 29, 1979.  This pairing made far more sense than the Alvin Lee show.

Seattle Times music critic Pat MacDonald wrote:
“The Heaters’ redeemed themselves. This time they were cheered, and for good reason. The sound was much better, the set was tighter, the tunes were well-chosen and well played and the guys were a lot more animated.”

And why shouldn’t they have done better?  The Kinks crowd were exactly the kind of fans that The Heaters could connect with.  The Kinks were also the kind of 1960s band that would be among their influences.

Another less than admirable pairing took place on February 7, 1981 when a local radio station tried to boost The Heats profile just after the release of their album Have an Idea.  They shared a bill with Alberta Canada’s Loverboy.  The Heats, Loverboy and Johnny and the Distractions were doing shows in Vancouver, Seattle and Portland.  Each band was headlining their hometowns. By this time time Loverboy had made Vancouver their base of operations.  U.S. abd Canadian radio programmers were trying to attract more interest in Loverboy who had recently been signed to Columbia Records and were pushing their latest single ‘Turn Me Loose’ from their debut album. It was doing very well, so many of the audience in each city had come to see Loverboy rather than The Heats or Johnny and the Distractions.  Later that year Loverboy (who had based themselves in Vancouver) would have their biggest hit from the band’s follow-up album, Get Lucky, released in October 1981 when they were on tour with Journey. The song was Working For The Weekend and it became a huge radio hit.  Loverboy was getting a great deal of international attention at this point in their career. The Heaters were finding less attention, although still a huge local draw on the Seattle club scene. The Loverboy crowd simply weren’t The Heaters natural crowd.  Loverboy was more in the mold of bands The Heats had disliked so much at the beginning of their career.  And in fact Loverboy did become a major arena draw on the same tour The Heaters played with them on.

But The Heaters also made some clever moves.  They did a free concert at Golden Gardens on Sunday July 8, 1979 and later at the Seattle Center.They broadcast a live concert from the Showbox Theater on Thanksgiving Day 1979; exactly one year from the day of their first rehearsal.  The performance went out over the airwaves and was captured on tape but not released until June 26, 2011 by Tom Dyer’s Green Monkey Records. Tom has spent a lot of time researching, compiling, tracking down and releasing a steady mix of CD’s and digital downloads of past regional underground bands. Green Monkey has done a better job than any other to carry the torch of Seattle’s music of the 1980s,  The Heats and Tom agreed that all proceeds from the recording of the 1979 live performance go to Ronald McDonald House, the fast food giant’s charity devoted to (in their own words) “Keeping families with sick children together and near the care and resources they need”.  Ronald McDonald House has been hailed as on the nations best charities.  Even people who would not patronize the fast food chain recognize this. This act of charity by Green Monkey Records and The Heats is admirable and in keeping with the generosity of both parties.

Shortly before their tour with The Knack, The Heaters became aware of a better-known Los Angeles band using the same name; The Heaters.  The band scrambled at the last minute for a different name to tour under, and ended up calling themselves The Gears.  During tour the newly-christened band,The Gears, found out that that name was also being used.  They re-named themselves The Torpedoes, and just as before, found the name had already been taken. In the meantime Albatross had bought an expensive ad explaining the change in name. The confusion of a series of names could not have helped establish their career in the power-pop world; and it must have been a thankless job opening for The Knack. The Heaters/Gears/Torpedo’s  played their set while fans of The Knack waited impatiently to hear the latest HUGE hit, My Sharona”, must have been excruciating.  It’s unclear if The Heaters evengained fans during these tours.  Some crowds found them a nuisance between themselves and hearing one of the biggest international hits of the 70s and 80s.  During the tour The Heaters should have been the height of their career when they opened  for The Knack at the Seattle Center Coliseum.  Local fans loved them, but how far they’d strayed from the original intentions  The Knack may have been labelled power-pop, but they were actually not much more than a bombastic outfit with mediocre (but catchy) songs.  Their follow-up single follow-up single “Good Girls Don’t” peaked at No. 11 in the US, and reached No. 1 in Canada’s chart but it was not nearly the international hit their debut single was. .It’s no wonder they faded from view just as quickly as they’d made a dent in the billboard and radio charts; especially since The Knack were doing a very distinct American version of power-pop that soon fell out of favor.  It should be noted here that American power-pop bands (like Cheap Trick) have continued to be popular so many years after their founding simply because their songs were better played, do not rely on enforced happiness and they have continuously put out a repertoire of well-written songs that are/were far more entertaining and clever than anything The Knack or The Romantics ever released. It seems the staying power was with bands like The Ramones or Blondie rather than flavor-of-the-moment phenoms.  It’s sad that the Heats were unable to be identified more as a smart power-pop band than simply another clone of what was then in favor.

Finally, the band that had started out as The Heaters chose what should have been obvious to them and their management from the beginning.  They simply dropped the last syllable of their original name and called themselves The Heats.  That’s the name that the band was  referred to from that time until now.  

In 1980 The Heats recorded their first single at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle.  The  record was “I Don’t Like Your Face b/w “Ordinary Girls”  Buck Ormsby produced. Steve Boyce was listed as “Associate Producer’ and the engineer for the project was Rick Fisher (now the owner and principal talent at RFI Mastering in Seattle). The single was released on the bands own HRRR label and ended up selling between 14,000 and 18,000 copies depending who you ask.. It only got modest airplay on the big Seattle radio stations, It was too “pop” for KCMU, the reigning college radio station in the area, but they did not ignore it altogether.  The single found much better reception at KJET who was making a concerted effort to become Seattle’s “new wave” station.

This was The Heats beginning to reach their high point.  The were constantly gigging at local taverns and clubs, and hundreds of fans would show up every time.  Now more than ever they became Seattle’s presumed “Next Big Thing”.  The word kept spreading.
Steve Pearson says;   I think our audience liked us first off because they were ‘told’ that they should like us. Somehow the word got passed down ‘this is a cool band’ and they would go out and see us and the guys would see the girls and the girls would see the guys and everybody would seem to be having fun. Then maybe they thought about other things, I don’t really know, Over the years alot of people have told what they got from us, almost with this juvenile honesty, about how we loved rock and roll.  We loooved the music we were playing, We loooved performing that music for people, and I think they responded to it”

The Heats fans weren’t exclusively “the guys who would see the girls, and the girls would see the guys”
“The Heaters was playing a big club in Vancouver B.C.” Ken Deans tells me. “Joey Shithead came backstage and said ‘I love your fucking band”. Ken says to him “You’re in D.O.A. and you LIKE US?”  Joey replied  ‘I think you guys are awesome, can I jam?’ So the band did the next set with Joey,  Then there was The Dils. Steve got to be friends with them when they became Rank and File. He also got to be friends with Dave Alvin who founded The Blasters and went on to do time in X and The Knitters. Steve had been going to Los Angeles and jamming from time to time.
It seems there were other fans among the hardcore punk scene.  The late Mike Refuzor was a fan and spent time talking to Ken Deans about the state of popular music, it’s direction toward the new, rather than relying on the tried and true. Deans says he always enjoyed talking with Mike and saw The Refuzors on a couple of occasions.

Finally things had started to open up”. Says Ken. “When you go back and listen to those D.O.A., Rank and File and The Dils records the musicianship is really fucking good. A Lot of people told me ‘yeah, those are punk guys.  They’re people that play what they play  because they’re not any better’. I can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve had with music snobs who say things like ‘Keith Richards is a crappy guitar player’ and they’re like, from ‘Julliard’.  They say ‘I can play that stuff in my sleep’. And I tell them ‘yeah but you didn’t invent it, and no you can’t play it in your sleep”.

“They tell me ‘I know how to dial all those tones into my XV-15’.  I tell them ‘Richards plugs into a fucking  AV30 and turns all the knobs up…and good fucking  luck finding out all his tunings’. Then they tell me, ‘that’s just because he’s not a good guitar player’

It’s clearly an attitude Deans despises after years of being surrounded by musicians of all sorts and all genres.

In early 1981 Jon Kertzer abruptly left Albatross (and his duties with The Heats).  He tells me a story that he says The Heats themselves probably have never known;

Each year the Seattle music industry holds a holiday party where people from all walks of life in the northwest music business gather, share stories, and generally network and talk about new artists. In 1980 the party was held on December 8, the same day John Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman outside Lennon’s  NYC home.

Kertzer says he was deeply affected by Lennon’s death.  He was shocked that the holiday party was not cancelled or postponed.  He remembers he couldn’t believe the nonchalant attitude the music industry took.  He says the attendees “acted like they were shoe sales people”. Obviously Lennon’s murder was on everyone’s mind, but still schmoozing was the primary goal of the event.   It completely soured Kertzer to his involvement in rock music, and he soon left Albatross to continue his interest in ethnomusicology.  In 1984 he became station director for KCMU radio.  Since then he’s also been Audio Manager for Microsoft, Director of Social Media and Special Projects for The Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle, Director of Smithsonian Global Sounds, Head of Microsoft’s Zune project, Moved from radio KCMU to KEXP as the producer and host of The Best Ambiance (which lasted 24 years on-air) and partnered with Sub Pop records as the A&R director of their “Best Ambiance” imprint that handles “ethnic” rather than rock music.  

In 1997 and 1998 Kertzer attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS ) at the University of London and received his Masters degree in Ethnomusicology.  In short, he’s done much better after moving on from the world of rock and roll.

.In 1981 Seattle Times critic Pat MacDonald opined on what he believed made The Heats so popular by explaining;
“Coming after the dark days of punk rock movement-which took itself terribly seriously-the Heats were a breath of fresh air. They brought fun back into Seattle rock and the fans loved it”
.

Perhaps Pat never got the memo;  Punk rock enthusiasts were in a distinct minority among music fans both in Seattle and across the nation.  Punk rock was not played on local radio except maybe the occasional spin on college station.  Most venue owners across the country would simply not allow punk bands to play in their premises. Many punk bands had to rent halls and self-promote their own shows where 100 people would have been seen as a great success.  The only punk club that had ever opened in Seattle before 1980 was the all-ages The Bird and even that lasted only about three months.

The Heaters were formed just at the time punk and new wave were establishing roots in the United States.  In 1978 most Americans were still listening to top 40 radio on stations that wouldn’t even play Nick Lowe. They also tended to favor bland AOR (Album Oriented Rock) or Heavy Metal blather instead of the healthy barrage of singles US and UK power pop/punk-pop rock singles that were independently released-or the few on larger labels that were often sold-out within a week.

Pat must not have realized that The Ramones, Blondie, Television and The Talking Heads came directly out of the same branch of the new D.I.Y. movement as The Heaters.  The Heaters  had found success almost from the beginning.  They were born into an era that had never been eclipsed by the“deep dark days of punk” in the first place…and those “deep dark days” never existed in the first place.

In fact the same winds that blew The Heaters in had also blown in other power-pop bands that had a desire to get back to basic rock and “fun” music.  The Jam, XTC, The Plimsouls, The Ramones, Blondie, The Records, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Devo and The Modern Lovers;   None of these bands were “deep dark punk” but all of them rose from the genre, not as antidotes to it but as artists that shared the same rejection of Arena Oriented Rock (AOR) and FM radio excess.  In many ways what became “new wave” or “power-pop” or “punk” had the same affinity for tearing down walls and kicking doors open as The Heats. It’s absurd that the “deep dark days of punk” had resulted in bands that “took themselves terribly seriously” It was the AOR bands with massive audiences that were so self-important.

It was not “the dark days of punk” that had darkened the doors of Seattle music fans. It wasn’t punk music that “took itself terribly seriously” and killed any fun left in local music.  It was the taverns and dancehall that would only hire cover bands playing the same songs over and over to keep people dancing and buying beer. It was the radio stations that stuck to tight genres and programmers too afraid to let anything new and exciting on their playlists.  It was the music industry as a whole prohibiting individuality and their turning their backs on anything that wasn’t already tried and true.

Mostly It was the incessant background sounds of Foreigner, Supertramp, Boston, Styx, Kansas, and their ilk that killed all the fun. They squeezed every bit of the joy out of music and served up music“which took itself terribly seriously” The music had nothing to do with basic three-chord rock and roll that was not only fun,but danceable. The sounds they made were pseudo-intellectual ballads and milquetoast arrangements rather than the booty-shaking abandon of “the devil’s music”.

It’s ridiculous to claim bands like Devo, Blondie,The B-52’s or The Ramones took themselves “terribly seriously”  Even Iggy Pop-often referred to as the “godfather of punk”- didn’t take himself “terribly seriously”,  He’s admitted time and time again that his primary goal has always been to entertain audiences.  If anyone took themselves “terribly seriously” it was the arena bands of the day were AOR bands and those The Heats rejected.

All of this is especially ironic knowing that 10-15 years before The Heats came together the northwest had been a hotbed of regional talent.  The Wailers.The Frantics. Dave Lewis. The Ventures. Little Bill and The Bluenotes.  All of them reigned in the early 1960s…and they weren’t alone. There were literally scores of bands that could fill teen dance halls. By the mid-60s musicians from some of those bands morphed into psychedelic bands like The Daily Flash, Crome Syrcus, Springfield Rifle, Magic Fern or Moby Grape as well as more mainstream hitmakers like Bonnie Guitar, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Gary Puckett and Merrilee Rush.

The Heats had been dubbed Seattle’s best chance of breaking out as a power-pop band….but maybe it would be more appropriate to name them as beneficiaries of Britain’s pub rock movement; another back-to-basics attempt to return to the roots of rock, rockabilly and cleverly written pop…which unashamedly included power pop, but not the overblown flavor the Americans were serving up. Members of the movement included Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker. Wreckless Eric, Kilbourne and the High Roads (who became Ian Dury and the Blockheads) Dave Edmunds, Eddie and the Hotrods, the 101’ers  (an early band of Joe Strummer’s) as well as a slew of others.  These were all artists who relied on carefully crafted songs rather than carefully crafted images….or at least images that didn’t make them seem distant from their audiences. They were also accessible even to the point of attending each others small gigs, rubbing shoulders with fans.  Most of the venues they favored were in and around London. The Elgin in Ladbroke Grove, The Nashville in West Kensington and probably the most well-known pub rock venue in the world, The Hope and Anchor at  207 Upper St. in Islington. These bands’ attitude fit hand in glove with The Heats.  They were well-respected but not deemed “commercial” enough by the record industry.  Because of that they relied on small venues (hence the label pub rock) and turned to independent labels like Chiswick, Albion or the best of all the then-current indie labels, Stiff Records who’s early motto was “If it ain’t Stiff, it ain’t worth a fuck” These were the bands The Heaters would have fallen in with.

Even The Sex Pistols had started out in the pubs. It could be argued that behind the cynical but clever lyrics of The Sex Pistols lay one of England’s most potent power-pop bands; at least during Glen Matlock’s involvement as a member and player on the only actual studio album the band ever released, ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’.  The band would have denied it at the time but remove vocals of “Pretty Vacant” or “God Save The Queen” and what you’ll find is tight, well crafted power-pop created by three accomplished musicians that happened to have an anti-hero out front.  Glen Matlock had written or co-written all but one of the original songs on Never Mind The Bollocks…” Later a sad, messed-up Sid Vicious replaced Matlock and provided a musically inept freak show.  Sid’s encouragement by fans and music industry-types who encouraged his own self-destruction is something John Lydon still resents to this day.  It’s almost unbelievable that an album that affected so many people in the U.S.,Never Mind The Bollocks… it did not reach Gold Record status (500,000 units sold) until December of 1987…over ten years since it’s initial release on on 28 October 1977.  If less than expected sales figures means anything than The Heats were in good company.

Many talented punk bands would fully develop into power pop-based outfits…some even began as power-pop disguised as punk bands.  In Britain Siouxsie and The Banshees, X-Ray Spex, The Undertones, The Buzzcocks, The Rezillos, Bram Tchaikovsky,The Records all had strong power-pop threads running through them.  Listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees  first single -Hong Kong Garden-then explain why it shouldn’t be considered “power-pop.

The British pub rock  aspect of The Heaters becomes even more evident knowing that just before joining the band, Don Short and his girlfriend Caroline had spent a year living in London,  They came back after being exposed to Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Dr. Feelgood,  Elvis Costello, and Rockpile etc.  These were artists that the majority of Seattle music fans had never heard of. The Heaters started including many of their songs into their set.

“In the beginning audiences thought those were our songs”. says Steve Pearson “We’d intersperse our original songs and the unknown covers in between a Dave Clark Five or a Who or Chris Spedding song.  We really worked  to make those songs fit so people would ask “what’s that weird song?” We’d say “Oh! It’s not a weird song, it’s cool!” and that was a natural thing that happened.

“We were the quintessential ‘get-together-in-a-basement-write-some-songs band.  We’d play to our limitations, go out and shove it down people’s throats, And that’s what I believe rock and roll is all about. In that respect we were absolutely that band that every teenage boy says “I’m gonna grow up and be in a band like that. We were that band”.

Finally The Heats went back into Kaye-Smith studios to record their debut album Have an Idea.  This time Howard Leese of Heart produced and The Heats were given a co-producing credit as well.  The album was released on their management’s Albatross Records which was largely due to Heart’s Ann Wilson’s support for the band and their bad luck finding a major label deal.

“We were already at the point where we didn’t want to be known just as the novelty band that did ‘I Don’t Like Your Face’ says Ken Deans. “We wanted to be more known for ‘Ordinary Girls’ and ‘Remember Me’ and ‘When You’re Mine’ and some of the other songs that were-I don’t want to say ‘better crafted’– but less tongue-in-cheek.  And then we did ‘Have An Idea’ and they said ‘you’re going to come out with the same kind of thing we said NO and that’s when we did ‘When You’re Mine’ and ‘Sorry Girls’

They did, in fact, re-record ‘I Don’t Like Your Face’  and it’s original flipside ‘Ordinary Girls’ but most of the album was filled with newer, well-written and captivating pop songs.  In 1981 the songs Ken mentions (‘When You’re Mine’ and ‘Sorry Girls’) were released as a single, but as with all of The Heats releases radio mostly ignored both the album and the single.  Have An Idea was a commendable effort that probably gets as much love today as it did when it was released, even though it’s said to have initially sold only 15,000 copies…but it’s probable most of those sales were strictly regional. In 1996 John Borack compiled a list for Goldmine magazine calling ‘Have An Idea’ as ‘one of the most essential US Power-Pop albums’ of all time.  On a side note Jim Basnight’s 1993 cassette-only release of ‘Retro’ was also included on the list.

Steve Pearson remembers someone from Goldmine looking for a comment about ‘Have An Idea’ being listed among The 50 most essential US power pop albums.

“He called me and asked me if I would give him a quote. He said ‘think it over and call me back’. I said ‘I don’t have to think it over, here it is; “The Heats got to live every high school boy’s dream. But the best part is we never got so famous that we had to see our pictures in the check-out line as we were buying groceries”.

Ken Deans says a stranger approached him a few years ago at a Phish Festival;

“Some gal came up to my desk and said ‘Your Kenny Deans. THE Kenny Deans, OMG!  Your record is me and my boyfriend’s favorite record of all time!”

She was 23 years old.
“Funny how things went through a time-warp in Seattle. The Cowboys and half a dozen other bands were part of it; we just happen to be the ones that got the most notoriety.  I don’t mean to be egotistical-but I think rightfully so.”





In 1998 Mike Stein and his Chuckie Boy Records re-released ‘Have an Idea’ on CD with several bonus tracks under the title “Smoke”,  It sold another 10,000 copies.  Erik Lacitis tells me he’s not surprised.  He believes there are still plenty of followers of The Heats out there.

 

“I think some of the people who originally saw them STILL follow them. When Steve Pearson is playing (in his band British Racing Green) I think Heats fans show up and I think Steve might even do one or two of The Heats songs”.

Pearson readily admits to having The Heats songs in the repertoire of his band ‘British Racing Green’.  Pearson says he doesn’t play them for any nostalgic value.  He plays them simply because they’re great songs.

For a couple of years The Heats had definitely been over-exposed in Seattle. They had done as many local live gigs as they could fit in.  There were ongoing updates from writer Erik Lacitis and reviews from Pat MacDonald in The Seattle Times, as well as occasional reviews and mentions by local music critics in various other journals. They’d opened high-profile concerts, toured and released their album and three singles in less than three years….perhaps not as much exposure a better known band could expect, but for a small back-to-basics rock band from Seattle, all of it was a big deal. They had also garnered two covers on The Rocket magazine-the most important regional music magazine of it’s day in the northwest.  Both covers of the Rocket featured major stories, one of which Ken Deans remembers in a self-deprecating way.  He says;
I think the author called us “consistent” I think the reference was “you always know that you get a cheeseburger at McDonalds and you always know exactly what it is”.

Soon after the release of ‘Have An Idea’ bassist Keith Lilly left the band.  The parting was said to have been “less than amicable” at the time, but that rift seems to have been repaired long ago, since Keith takes part in The Heats reunions. In 1981 The Heats released the single Count On Me b/w Rivals that featured Wayne Clacker-the bassist that had replaced Keith Lilly.  The single was produced by northwest music veteran Pat Hewitt at Triangle Studios in Seattle.  Later, in 1986 Triangle Studios would change hands from producer/engineers Jack Weaver and Bill Stuber to Chris Hanzsek and Jack Endino. Endino acted as in-house producer. It was here that Nirvana’s album Bleach as well as Green River’s Dry as a Bone, Soundgarden’s Screaming Life, Mark Lanegan’s The Winding Sheet and dozens of other ‘grunge’ recordings that the studio and Jack Endino would become famous for.

Eventually graffiti was spotted around town saying “Kill The Heats” partially because of their high profile, but also because there had always been a sense of unease between those following local alternative music and those following local pop or cover bands. Of course there were a few exceptions, but The Heats had wrongly become associated with only the successful cover bands that played a particular circuit of clubs around Seattle.  Alternative music fans had their own original scene and it was rare when any member of one group stepped onto the others’ turf.  The fans of alternative music despised the patrons of certain clubs and the band’s they supported because they believed they were arrogant fraternity boys looking to pick up drunk sorority girls (in some cases that was true).  The patrons of the more mainstream clubs were suspicious of the alternative crowd that hung out in their own clubs because it was assumed they were all punks looking for trouble….or worse, out and out queers (in fact many were!).  It sounds amazing today that such a wide and profound gulf existed between these groups, but it seemed to be the natural order of things in early 1980s Seattle.  A punk was just as unlikely and unwelcome to step into a bar like Pioneer Square’s Hibble and Hyde’s as it was unlikely and unwelcome for a Hibble and Hyde’s patron to enter a place like WREX  or The Gorilla Room only two or three blocks away.

After Lilly’s departure Ken Deans was also getting antsy.  Although his relationship with the other band members had not broken down, it became frustrating to be part of “The Next Big Thing” when nothing was actually happening.  When Ken finally left the group it was for better prospects in management, promotions and productions and booking.  He was replaced by Rick Bourgoin.

In July of 2016 Deans told Seattle journalist Feliks Banel he “felt really bad leaving The Heats”.  He added that “It was one of those experiences in life where you had just spent the last three years of your life pouring your blood and guts out on the floor with these guys, and then you weren’t…That was the hardest point in my life because it was like, ‘Wow, I got to be part of this experience that I know was amazing, but we couldn’t quite grasp the brass ring”.

Bourgoin says he hadn’t really seen or heard The Heats music while he was playing in a band called The Impacts;

“We were a little punk power-pop band” says Bourgoin” We did things like ‘The Ramones’…you know, super fast, We were playing a lot of gigs. So one night ‘The Impacts’ were set to open for ‘The Heats’ at ‘Astor Park’ (a club on 5th Avenue uptown). ‘The Heats’ planned go onstage to do their soundcheck and then we’d put ourselves on the stage and do our soundcheck, so everybody was ready to play…this was probably in late summer of 1981.  Everybody was waiting around for Ken who wasn’t there. We’re waiting and waiting and my band was getting frustrated because we were running out of time to get our sound check. I said ‘I’ll just get up and play the drums so you can go through your soundcheck and then we can get our stuff up there’. So they said ‘OK’ and I did it.  I’d heard enough about some of their tunes so I just plowed through their stuff and then got my band’s stuff up onstage did our soundcheck and we played the the gig that night”

“A couple of months later I got a call from Don who told me they were maybe going to look for another drummer. We talked on the phone for quite awhile and then he got back in touch with me a little bit after that, and asked if I wanted to come out and sit in and play some songs at a rehearsal place…kind of an audition. I said ‘sure’ so I listened to their record a little bit to familiarize myself with the songsm and then went and played with them and had a great time. I think Wayne Clack had a drummer buddy from San Francisco…I think he came up, and they listened to him, and I’m not sure how many else, but I ended up getting the gig from the beginning of 1982 to the end of 1983”

Bourgoin remembers Ann and Nancy Wilson sitting in on at least one of his own auditions.

After Jon Kertzer had left Albatross in 1981 Jeff Trisler (now of ‘Live Nation’) became responsible for The Heats day to day management.  The band became less and less involved with Ken Kinnear because of Kinnear’s frustration that the band hadn’t been signed and a slight rift was developing between Don and Steve about staying in Seattle or moving to Los Angeles.

Ann Wilson tried to get major label interest in the band but had little success.  She finally got a chance with David Geffen at his namesake Geffen Records. Geffen paid for a three song demo that Ann produced at Kaye Smith Studios.  The sessions included participation from other Heart members. Afterward Ann provided Geffen with the demo but never heard back.

One of the demo songs ended up being shot as a video-again, produced by Ann Wilson-intended for broadcast on MTV.  The video of “In Your Town” got a bit of airplay, but not enough to create much interest beyond The Heats own fan base.

The band continued to play gig after gig and recorded what would be their second album, a live performance they did at Astor Park  entitled ‘The Heats: Burnin’ Live.  It was released in 1983 on Sushi Records. It was released in an edition of 1000 vinyl copies.  Reports are that the pressing was very poor,  but later when it was re-mastered for CD it proved to sound much better.
But even a new album couldn’t help the band from an eventual crisis.

‘It was Don’s decision to leave the band” Rick Bourgoin says,” In fact now that I think about it ‘The Heats’ were doing a gig in Vancouver BC…I think the club was called “Outlaws”,  it might have been the New Years Eve  prior to the one when we broke up.  Steve and I had gotten into a little heated discussion about something up in the dressing room between sets and I think some words flew as they do. I went back up to the stage and was standing on the side of the stage,  grumbling. Don came up and at that point he said “If I wanted to leave and start something different would you come and be my drummer? And I said “sure”, That was a year before it actually happened so I think he probably had thought about it a long time before he came to the band and said “I’m gonna go”


In the fall of 1983 Don Short did tell the rest of the band it was time for him to move on. Short told the band he would finish out the rest of their booked performances which included a final New Year’s Eve appearance at Astor Park. Pearson felt shocked and betrayed, vowing to never speak to Don Short again. At the time he said;
“I would think after five years-after our careers being so tied together for five years-that I would be entitled to something more than just walking in and saying ‘I’m leaving”

Don Short told Erik Lacitis;
“I agonized over the decision. The last thing I wanted to do was to have it become personal.  It was a musical decision.  All I want to do in these last shows is go out with a bang.  I don’t want to sound patronizing but I want to say thanks to all the fans because you made us. I don’t want to dwell on all the other crap. I want people to remember we were a good rocking club band.  We wrote and played good tunes”

A few years later Steve Pearson told Lacitis;
“I don’t expect anything I ever do to be as big a thing in Seattle as The Heats were. The Heats was perfect. We were a unique group.  We were honest.  People could see that rock and roll spirit in us.

During my phone call with Steve he says;
“For all our naïveté we were very ballsy and confident. Part of that is that we admired the other members of the band. For instance I would look over at Ken and say to myself (if not to him) “Wow! Ken is great, Ken is really really a good drummer and he really is in tune with these songs”. Then I’d look over at Don Short and I’d say “I can count on Don every single night to play his parts and be right there and he will sing in tune, He’ll play his bits. He’ll play them better than I will cuz I was always the flakey crazy guy in the band. We all knew that we respected and counted on each other….We believed in each other and we believed in the concept of the band.

Then he adds:

The other factor, the one that is integral is you gotta have songs. You can be the greatest band in the world but if you don’t have songs no one will respond. (Before The Heaters)  I had been writing songs for a year and a half, two years maybe, and Don had some songs. I brought my songs to practice and said this is what we’re going to base the band around. Songs. Original songs. I don’t want to do a really good version of “Carry On My Wayward Son”. I don’t give a fuck about Kansas. To this day I believe that if you want to make your mark in the world you’ve got to do it by writing a song. That is the advantage we had over most (local) bands”

After the disintegration of The Heats Pearson joined up with Pat Hewitt, Tony Lease and Don Kammerer (The Pins) to form The Rangehoods.  The Rangehoods turned out to be a decent draw around Seattle, and in 1985 put out one of the era’s best EPs, titled Rough Town.  In 1991 they released the album, Long Way Home.  Michael Wansley played bass and sang with the band from 1985 onward.  Today most people know Wansley as “The Wanz’ who’s featured in Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s  number one hit Thrift Shop.  Pearson also appeared in various outfits over the years, but now shares guitar and vocal duties with his wife Lucette, Frank Johnson on Bass and Jon Newton on drums and vocals.Steve Pearson Guitar and Vocals.  They’re based in Cashmere Washington, but do shows in the Seattle area as well as Eastern Washington. You can find more information at https://britishracinggreen.weebly.com/

Keith Lilly eventually went on to form The Elementaries.  Sadly his wife, Krys died of cancer August 16, 2014.  Keith plays with The Heats when they do occassional reunions. He can be found on facebook.


Wayne Clack joined Maurice and The Clichés, a synth-pop band originally from Vancouver BC.  Before Clack joining they’d had a minor hit with a song called Softcore and one album, C’est la Vie.  Although they never charted after Clack joined they are said to have put on interesting performances and had enough popularity to have a compilation of their recordings re-released in 2007 as ‘Flogging A Dead Horse”  Wayne has returned to his home state, California.  He’s also on facebook.

Don Short and Rick Bourgoin spent about two years rehearsing and writing for their band Avalon.  Rick says they were trying to take a direction similar to The Fix or Simple Minds.  Atlantic Records took an interest in the band and paid for 18 songs recorded at London Bridge Studios.  “But then….crickets” says Rick.  A couple of years later the band was pared down and became ‘Luna Park’.  In 1991 Bourgoin left for Los Angeles and Don continued under the name ‘Living Out Loud’.  That incarnation only lasted a couple of gigs and Don Short removed himself, mostly, from the music business.

In 2006 Mark Mosholder (who had been in Avalon and Luna Park) convinced Don to start playing again.  Rick, Mark and Don got together and formed the band Random Manors.  The band released a self-titled EP in 2008 and began work on a full length album. The trio’s friend, Tom Pfaeffle, who was their engineer and owner of The Tank where they had been finishing up basic tracks was shot and killed in July 2009. ‘It took us two years to finish the tracks at our rehearsal studio at Don’s’ says Rick Bourgoin.  We played our last gig (although we didn’t know it at the time) at St. Michelle Winery in September 2014, opening for Boston. There are videos on YouTube”.

Rick Bourgoin still plays around the northwest.  One of his projects is ‘Two Sheds Jackson’ (named after an old Monty Python skit) The band includes Charlie Morgan, Steve Boyce and Pat Gossan.  They play occasional gigs around the northwest.

Don Short now works at an Eastside lumber store.  He gets recognized by old friends and fans from time to time… say hello if you see him.

Jon Kertzer-who was so critical to The Heats early success, has just started a new show on the low-powered KVRU radio station in Rainier Valley. He’s interviewing and playing the music of many of the bands covered here.  Jon’s currently working on number 17 and 18 of his series, but since the station is still new, his program has only been on the air for a short time, so he has a backlog of shows taped.
He tells me;
“I’m covering everything pre-1985 basically. It’s not focused on any one genre, Yesterday I interviewed Jim Valley. I was at his house all day. I’ve done shows on ‘60s rock and I did shows recently on ‘The Visible Targets’ and ‘The Crazy Eights’ from Portland. The first show I did was on ‘The Daily Flash’ and Jerry Miller from ‘Moby Grape’. The furthest I’ve gone back to the 1940s, I did a show about the Al Smith photo exhibit at MOHAI.

I also interviewed Pat Wright, the gospel singer who did a show with Overton Barry, She just did a show with LeRoy Bell from Bell and James (The thread here is that LeRoy Bell’s bass player/manager Terry Morgan was the long-time bass player for Pat Wright’s ‘Total Experience Gospel Choir’.

“My interviews contain a lot of music” Kertzer tells me. “I mean it’s a two hour show.  I play about an hour that is interview and an hour that is music”.

Jon’s show is on Saturdays and Sundays at 6pm on KVRU at 105.7 but the signal is very weak. This upcoming September the station intends to start streaming online

So do we need a post-mortem?  Probably not, but I’ll include a few opinions anyway.  

What made The Heats “The Next Big Thing” into “Could Have Beens”?

In 2016 Jon Kertzer was asked what went wrong by Feliks Banel.
“That’s the $64,000 question,” Kertzer said. “I mean, I worked really hard to try to make that happen. That was my job as manager to try and get them national attention and we did have several national tours. When we went to places like New York, I would take their music around to all the record labels, and talk to them about getting signed. And they came pretty close.

Our timing was a bit off,” he continued. “By the time we were talking seriously to labels, it was just a little late, and the rage for power pop sound had passed.”

Later, Jon tells me
“The Heats came across better in a club rather than arena rock sorts of venues. They came from a similar DIY background- they certainly were never a punk band, but really not that far away from The Ramones in their attitude and energy on stage. really they were more a throwback to Beatles/Stones British invasion bands, crossed the 70’s British pub-rock like Dr. Feelgood, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and similar bands”,

In a letter former Rocket owner/editor (and now a three time NYT best seller list alumni) Charles R. Cross says;

“At The Rocket, we were boosters, but our coverage only helped them become the biggest local band. In the end the Heats had poor timing — they were too late for the era when a regional band could break out a top 40 hit without a major label behind them, and too early for the Seattle wave that would come a few years later. Seattle was just too far away from the center of culture in that day for them to find a wider audience than our tavern circuit. But that was true for every band from the northwest in that period. The next Seattle act to make it big was, surprisingly from an entirely different genre: Kenny G.”.

Erik Lacitis tells me:

“I still listen to the music, I’ve done a number of rock and roll groups and I remember talking to one guy…it could have been one of the Wailers..one of the early ‘60s northwest groups that had regional success but not national, and he explained to me ‘You know…you can have great music but you’re on a merry-go-round. It goes around and then you happen to get the ring, but most of the time you don’t’ and it’s absolutely true. I think that they had everything but there’s lots of groups that for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen. It don’t mean they didn’t have the talent, but it didn’t mean anything. It just didn’t happen, That’s just the way it is. The other thing is they weren’t getting the radio play that they should have because at that time they were British-type power-pop and that’s not what Seattle rock radio was playing, It just didn’t register. Radio was playing more anthem Heavy Metal stuff and it didn’t register to them.  For some reason radio just couldn’t understand it. They couldn’t understand someone like Elvis Costello or anybody like that…they just couldn’t. At that time radio was so powerful, and you needed that, If you had a bunch of guys…and they were all guys…I don’t think there were any women in radio then…if it didn’t register with them because it was alien the band didn’t get the airplay. It just didn’t register with the radio programmers, so that’s the way it was.

Ken Deans is understandably upbeat about his taking part in ‘The Heats’.  He says;
.I’ve had a very fortunate life all the way around and it all started with ‘The Heats’. It propelled me into a career that I could have only dreamed about. I’ve gotten to do so many things and really I can tie a lot of it back to ‘The Heats’

I used to say ‘come see the Heats: You could come see The Heats and and forget about anything else going on in your life’.  That was really important to me. Part of what we were about was ‘you can come see The Heats and go on vacation.  Forget about your job.  Forget about your fucked-up romance; whatever it is.  Just come out here and have fun. That was really important to us”

Steve Pearson says
Overall I’m very very proud and honored to ever have been in that band and basically 35 years later I’m still reaping the rewards of being in ‘The Heats’. I don’t know how the other guys think about it; I’ve never even talked to them about it. I just know that I’ve been treated special and given a place in the musical world that I probably don’t deserve since I was 24 years old. In a way I look at it as a bit of a responsibility. I still feel like I have to pay respect to what I was part of and would never say anything against that whole time; the audience, the band members, the songs; I would never ever do anything but say “wow. that was friggin’ great and I got to be there, and I loved every minute of it”.

I feel a bit odd making my own assessment here  because my job is to report, not to give my opinion; but I’ve been in or around the music business all my adult life and have seen how random things can be.  Sometime it comes down to ‘who you know’, and sometimes it’s purely arbitrary.  It could even have to do with how screwed-up a day the A&R rep has had when they come see you.
Then I think about reading something somewhere that Steve Pearson said;

“These record company guys are real weird guys. They don’t like telling you whether you are or aren’t a hot commodity. I guess it’s part of their image that they’re supposed to be very cool so they act real cool. I’ve met four or five of these guys.  People just say to me ‘this is so-and-so and he’s from a record company.  I say ‘oh great!’ and they go drink a Coke”.

 

Steve Pearson and Steve Aliment will be doing a show

Thursday, July 12 at 6:30 PM – 9 PM at

McMenamins Anderson School

18607 Bothell Way NE, Bothell, Washington 98011

Please feel free to correct or add information in the comments section below.

-Dennis R. White.  Sources; Feliks Banel “Before Grunge and Macklemore, The Heats rocked the Northwest” (My Northwest (July 13, 2016): Krys Lilly “The Heaters” (pnwbands.com, retrieved June 7, 2018);  Richard Rossi “Live At The Showbox, 1979” (Power Pop News.com, retrieved June 1, 2018); Heather Frye “A Wiser Man Takes a Look Back; Singer Songwriter is Happier Leaving His 1980s Rock Star Life Behind Him” (Lewiston Tribune, June 27, 2003); Erik Lacitis “Hire A Sitter And Get Cookin’ With The Heaters” (The Seattle Times, Friday August 6, 1999); Northwest Underground Rock 1980 – 2021“June 2011-The Heats: Have an Idea (www.greenmonkeyrecords.com, retrieved June 1, 2018); Michael Sutton “The Heats” www.allmusic.com, retrieved June 2, 2018); Tim M. Otto “ Could The Second Beatles Have Existed In Seattle In The Early 80’s?” (A Short Story About The Heats” (No Depression, February 19, 2013); Peter Blecha “ Sonic Boom: The  History of Northwest Rock from “Louie Louie” to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Backbeat Books, 2009); Beverly Paterson “Forgotten series: The Heats – Smoke (1998)” (Something Else!, March 8, 2012);  Ken Deans “interview with author” (May 20, 2018);  Steve Pearson “interview with author” (June 1, 2018); Rick Bourgoin “interview with author” (June 4, 2018); Erik Lacitis “interview with author” (June 9, 2018); Patrick MacDonald “The Edmonds Contributed to Rise of Bands” (The Seattle Times, September 14,1979); Erik Lacitis “Rock of Many Ages, Despite The Top 40” (Seattle Times, May 12, 1979); Erik Lacitis “The Heats: A Goodbye.  It Was Good Rock and it Lasted Five Good Years” (Seattle Times, December 29, 1983); Sandy Graham “Shelley Siegal-A Canadian Success Story Not to be Forgotten” (Cashbox Magazine [Canada] February 11. 2011); Gaye Guida-Dennis “Screamer Freddie Dennis will Rock the House again!” You Caring, https://www.youcaring.com/freddiedennis-961774, retrieved June 12, 2018);

 

LeROY BELL

LeRoy Bell made his first appearance on Fox network’s talent show The X Factor in September 2011  He appeared on the show for five consecutive weeks eventually ended up being chosen for the final 16 and went on to the live X-Factor shows. He was eliminated after the fifth live show finishing 8th overall in the inaugural season of the American version of the show. bottom three Although he did not win LeRoy’s profile was sent into the stratosphere (by the way…whatever happened to season one’s winner Melanie Ann Amaro?).

Although LeRoy had captured the imagination of many viewers via The X-Factor, and the show had kick-started his career rather than launched it, Bell had already had a brush with fame.  In fact he’d had several…first with the 70’s chart topping duo Bell and James and their hit “Livin’ It Up (Friday Night)” The song ended up at number 15 in the Billboard Charts. He was also  a co-author of Elton John’s hit “Mama Can’t Buy You Love” (a world-wide hit which became a top-ten hit in the US) Three Way Love Affair” and “Are You Ready For Love”  He’d also co-written songs for The O’Jays, Rita Marley, The Temptations, The Spinners, Freda Payne The Three Degrees, and a host of others.

LeRoy didn’t become an overnight success because of his X-Factor appearance…but it was a chance for him to perform in front of a massive audience.. He’d spent much of the 2000s touring with the likes of BB King Etta James, Sheryl Crow, Leon Russell, Joan Osborne, B.B King, Etta James, Al Green, Joe Cocker, Michael McDonald, Van Morrison, Mavis Staples, The Temptations, The O’jays and more.  Whether he’d won or lost The X-Factor made little difference, but he seems grateful and it managed to get a whole new audience. The US version of The X-Factor lasted only two seasons, but he may be the most memorable artist of either one of them.

“It turned out to be a good thing in many ways.  It was definitley an eye-opener and interesting to see how TV is totally different than the side of music that I’d grown up with.  It was nerve-wracking. I was the oldest guy on the show”.

“The unique thing about the X-Factor is they have no age limit.  Most of these things like American Idol are all centered on age people  I think you couldn’t  be over 30 years old,  So here was a show that you didn’t have to be a certain age, so it opened up a lot of things. It was fun in that way”

Much was made at the time that LeRoy was 59 years old, even though he looked half that age; not in a baby-faced way, but as a confident, soft-spoken man who’d also seen a lot of what the world was about.  It seems to have been both a curse and a boon to him.  Constantly being reminded of his looks must have reinforced our reliance and the importance of youth-culture.  Even today at 66 and with the look of a man half his age it’s hard not to notice that LeRoy Bell must have been blessed with good genes…and those genes didn’t seem to reflect only his looks.

One drawback of appearing on the show was he was forced to sing familiar songs by other artists rather than the U.K. show.  LeRoy’s voice got him attention and his presentation was great but his real strength was in his  songwriting. Unfortunately he had to perform songs by more familiar figures like  Bill Withers (Lean on Me), U2 (I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For), Sarah McLachlan ‘Angel’).and a knock-em-dead performance of the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down”

But let’s go back to the beginning.

Leroy Bell was born on born August 8,1951 in Pensacola Florida, but found himself living in Germany the first few years of his life.  His father was in the US Army, and he admits he was an “army brat”

“I got my first guitar when I was 13”. He says “ I thought I was going to play guitar, but ended up playing drums. Back in those days we didn’t have amplifiers but we had tape recorders that we used to use as amplifiers. I played with German guys because I went to a German school.  My dad wanted me to learn a language, so I didn’t go to the base school..  At the time we were at the US base in Darmstadt,Germany, but we moved around a lot”

In 1966 LeRoy’s father retired from the Army, and settled in the Northwest. It wasn’t until he was a teenager in Seattle that his grandfather told LeRoy his uncle was Thom Bell, one of the most prominent producers, arrangers and songwriters of the wildly popular “Philly Sound”. Thom Bell. along with producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff created a sound that blended soulful harmonies, lush arrangements, passionate vocals and heavy doses of funk,  In fact Paul Zollo reports in his great book “More Songwriters on Songwriting”  that Fred Wesley, trombonist for the James Brown band and George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic, called The Philly sound  “putting the bow tie on funk.”

Aside from his friendship with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Thom Bell found his first success as an arranger and session man for Cameo-Parkway Records.In 1966, he was introduced to a local group then called The Orphonics; the band soon changed their name to The Delfonics and Thom Bell produced and arranged their first two singles, both of which got local Philly attention.

In 1967, with Cameo Records on its last legs, Thom Bell once again took The Delfonics into the studio to produce and arrange a song written by lead singer William Hart.The result was “La-La Means I Love You”  By now Cameo no longer existed as a label so the single, and it’s follow-up “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time) were released on the Philly Groove label set up by The Delfonics manager, Stan Watson.  After securing national distribution the label became a viable player. In 1968  and The Delfonics became one of the mainstays of the Philly Sound. In 1970 The Thom Bell/William Hart penned “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time), won a Grammy ;

Thom Bell  went on to work for Gamble and Huff’s label, Philadelphia International  Records before creating his own production company. He also founded his own publishing company BellBoy Music and later joined forces with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff to create Mighty Three Music (a totally apt name for the trio’s publishing house).


The music the three were creating almost defined a generation of black artists that found an audience with people of all races and all ages; The O’Jays, Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes (and later Teddy Pendergrass), The Three Degrees, MFSB, The Stylistics  and dozens more became the soundtrack of the early to mid-’70s

In 1972 Thom Bell was signed to produce a struggling band that had just been dropped from Motown.  The band was The Spinners.  Bell created a stronger Philly influence for their music and they became one of the most successful groups of the early 1970s, pumping out hits like “Ghetto Child”, “I’ll Be Around”, “The Rubberband Man”, “Mighty Love” and what may be their signature song,”Could it Be I’m Falling in Love.

It was from this pedigree that LeRoy Bell had come from, and soon he’d be part of it. LeRoy tells how his career began;

“My uncle, (Thom Bell) came out here to visit and loved it out here  My grandfather told him I was playing in bands and interested in writing, so I ended up going back to Philly with him.  I just hung out with him in the studio while he was producing The Spinners and The O’Jays.  So I was emerged into that whole scene, and soaked it up like a sponge.  Then he moved back out here (to Seattle) in the early 70s.  I started songwriting and he had a little publishing company called Mighty Three Music at the time and I started writing under his wing and he showed me the ropes and how to write a song. I got to see him work; I was spoiled that way. It was a unique “one-of-those-things”.  I owe alot to him-I owe my basically my whole career to him really. I think if he wouldn’t have been there, who knows?  I think I still would have been in music because I loved it,  but I don’t know I would have achieved as much without his help and his guidance”.  That’s how I really got started. I owe alot to him.  I mean I’d been playing music but I got real serious about it at that point…about the early to middle 70s”

Leroy continues the story

“Then I got hooked up with my friend and partner, one of the guys I played in the band with (the short-lived Special Blend) named Casey James.  We were good friends because we were in the same band and then we started writing together.  We became staff writers for ‘Mighty Three Music’, so whenever a project came up we’d have a shot at it.  We could submit some songs”.

“In 1977 we landed a couple of songs on a little-known project (at the time); Elton John’s “Thom Bell Sessions”.  It was done at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle (over-dubs were done at Sigma Sounds in Philadelphia) Thom had moved into Kaye-Smith Studio and become friends with Lester Smith (co-owner with Danny Kaye).  Bill Smith wanted Thom to run the studio.  Thom didn’t really want to run the studio per se, but he didn’t mind having offices there.  Anyway we had offices there writing.  We’d go in every day just like a job.

“Elton John had contacted Thom about doing something. So Thom flew to London and hung out with Elton for awhile and they talked and came back and told Casey and I were going to do something  Elton John.  He told us to see what we could come up with. We ended up writing three songs: we got lucky and got all three songs on the record.  It’s got  “Mama Can’t Buy You Love” on it, a song we co-wrote with Thom “Are You Ready For Love” and “Three Way Love Affair”  

The album was left unfinished, but released by MCA in 1979  with the inclusions of “Nice and Slow”, “Country Love Song” and “Shine On Through”
One of the original recordings, “Mama Can’t Buy You Love” became a hit in 1979. It was a top 10 record in the US.and spent one week at the top of the UK charts, even though it remained on the charts there for 25 weeks.

LeRoy tells me “I think they really didn’t know what to do with it (the album) so nothing really happened after that but Elton got nominated for a grammy for “Mama Can’t Buy You Love”





In 2002 ”Are You Ready For Love” got re-mixed by DJ Ashley Beadle and made the rounds of London clubs. Meanwhile Justin Robertson was playing it around Manchester.  Eventually there would be re-mixes by DJ’s Linus Love, Freedom Five and Mylo  Soon afterwards it was picked up as music for a Sky Football TV advertisement that was so popular it was released on Fatboy Slim’s Southern Fried label.  The remixes also catapulted “The Thom Bell Sessions” into the U.K charts (now called “The Complete Thom Bell Sessions)”

“It became a huge hit in Europe because it became a soccer theme” says LeRoy “then it just blew up there and became a way bigger hit than when it had originally come out in ‘79”,

In fact it became a number one UK hit for Elton John; this time selling even more than the original. 1979 release.

Around the time Elton was recording “The Thom Bell Sessions”, LeRoy Bell and Casey James began their own recordings as Bell and James

“We were staff writers and of course we secretly wanted to be a band so we ended up doing a duo thing”

The pair, Bell and James was signed by in 1978 by A&M records based on the previous songs they’d written for Elton John, The O’Jays, Freda Payne, MFSB,The Three Degrees, and others.  Bell and James had a hit right out of the box with  “Livin’ It Up (Friday Night)” from their debut album.  The song made it to #15 in the Billboard charts.
.
“That was the height of disco”, says LeRoy, “but we never wrote the song as a disco hit…but it was a dance hit so we got swept up into that whole genre”

They followed up their debut album with “Only Make Believe (1979) and “In Black and White” (1980), but never found the same kind of success as they had with “Livin’ It Up (Friday Night)”  By 1982 their record deal with A&M fizzled out.

“We did a few more projects with Thom”. LeRoy tells me. “In 1984 he produced a project with the ‘I Threes’ (Bob Marley’s widow Rita Marley, Marcia GriffIths and Judy Mowatt).)  The song, “Calling Out Around The World” was written by Thom Bell along with LeRoy and his writing partner Casey James.   “

“We didn’t do anything for awhile” says LeRoy, adding “ I was a little bit down because of the record deal and didn’t feel like creating music for awhile.  I gave up on writing and went back to playing drums.  I played in a cover bands.  One of them called ‘The Lost Vuarnets’ for quite a few years”

The Lost Vuarnets featured Gary Smith on vocals, LeRoy on drums and vocals, guitarist Al Katz also adding vocals, horn man Craig Flory and bassist Keith Bakke).  The band’s name was a tip of the hat to the popular Vuarnet sunglasses that were ”must-haves” in the 1980’s.  In 1993, Smith,who founded the band told journalist Tom Phalen

“It really was a stupid name but after 10 years we’re stuck with it.  If I’d known we would have lasted this long I’d have come up with something better he would have come up with a different name if I’d known we were going to last so long

Leroy Bell & His Only Friends
Leroy Bell-Guitar, Vocals, Daniel Walker-Keyboards, Terry Morgan-Bass, Davis Martin-Drums,

 

After years of cover bands, and picking up day jobs Bell says “around 2000 I’d started getting itchy to sing and write again.  I wanted to do my own thing again”.

LeRoy began doing solo dates and eventually contacted Terry Morgan for some assistance.

“I’d met Terry before.  I didn’t know much about him, but I knew he booked groups, did productions and that kind of thing” Bell says, “so I contacted him and said ‘hey, would you be interested in booking me as a singer/songwriter?’ Then I sent him a demo tape and when I hear back from him he said yeah I’d be interested, but I’d want to play in the band”

During the 1980’s Terry Morgan, had been one of the original members of Modern Productions and had opened up the downtown Showbox to present some of the best punk/alternative shows Seattle had ever seen.  When the original members of Modern Productions went their separate ways Morgan went on to book shows at the Paramount Theater the Showbox and other venues around town under the name Modern Enterprises, He also worked in band management, booked talent for Festival Sundiata, the Out-To-Lunch series of concerts and the Stillaguamish Festival of the River.

“Everybody in Seattle knows Terry”, LeRoy said…and it’s pretty close to the truth.

Terry remembers hearing from LeRoy around 2000;

“He was looking for some personal gigs, so I said ‘send me a demo’.  We’d known each other since back in the ‘Bell and James’ days, but never really connected to do anything with him.  it was just peripheral. I would go down and hang out at ‘Mighty Three Music’s’ office and was once at Kaye-Smith Studios during the Elton John recordings”.

“So LeRoy sent me a cassette” says Morgan”  and I liked it-I really liked it!  So I said look, ‘I really don’t want to manage any more bands after managing everybody in town”. I said ‘I’ll work with you under one condition, and that’s if I can play in the band.  I just don’t want to be a hired-gun that gets tossed aside once you decide everything is good’.

“So we started playing together and I took over management”. Morgan says “Just putting things together”.“The first act I had him open for was Sergio Mendes at the Moore Theater.”  That was about 17 years ago….2000 or 2001 at the latest”.  Terry and LeRoy have worked together ever since.  After his solo work, the band LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends was formed.  With LeRoy at the center, surrounded by Terry Morgan on bass Davis Martin on drums, and Daniel Walker on keyboards. Later Davis Martin was replaced by Bill Ray on drums.




“From the beginning we started booking ourselves and played wherever we could” says Terry.  “ “We had already been out touring with B.B. King, Etta James, Al Green and a number of other acts before LeRoy did X-Factor. We’d also been out with Leon Russell LeAnn Rimes, Los Lobos, Mavis Staples, The Temptations, The O’Jays, Roberta Flack, Idina Mendel, Bare Naked Ladies, India.Aire, Erykah Badu and Jonny Lang’.

I was aware of the British X-Factor”, Terry says  “and over there you could be any age and you could do your own material. So I said “why not? What have we got to lose? The worst that could happen is you’d get on TV and seen by six million people”.

“So we did the auditions in Seattle, and then  just waited and waited and waited and waited.  Eventually he got the call. Then he went to L.A. for a week and they said ‘OK, we’ll call you back’ Then he got the third call and that was the beginning of it all.  We did all the paperwork and legal stuff. 

By the time LeRoy did his last appearance on the show he ended up in eighth place. He’d also found TV was a whole different thing than the music business he’d been working in for so long “but it turned out to be a good thing in some ways”  he says.

One disappointment of appearing on the show was, unlike the British program, he was forced to sing familiar songs by other artists rather than show his skill as a songwriter. His voice caught the judges and audiences’ attention, but his real strength is in songwriting.  In fact he’d already made a living through writing…and most of the audience weren’t even aware of the songs he’d written.

“After the show became really popular we got a request to go to South Africa” says LeRoy.  “We played there as well.  Terry and I made the trip.  There’s a girl who’s really huge over there-Zahara-we did a live DVD with her, which was really really cool-and we ended up co-writing a song or two. It was kind of odd to be in such a different culture and walk down the street and have someone recognize you.  That’s the magic of TV”

LeRoy and Terry did two shows with Zahara on June 8 and 9, 2012.  The concert also included the Soweto Gospel Choir. When LeRoy, who was already well-known in South Africa, walked out on the stage the crowd went crazy.  The concert was packaged as a DVD called ‘Zahara: The Beginning Live’ and it shipped double platinum. In 2013 it was nominated for a South African Grammy (SAMA) for “Best DVD, Live.

Bell admits he had to google her when he was first approached to work with Zahara. He told The Daily Sowetan

“She is an amazing singer who achieved success within a short space of time, a great singer and an accomplished songwriter. I got hold of her music, and simply fell in love with her voice”.

Zahara responded by admitting  initially she nervous about the prospect of working with Bell as he is the same person who has written songs for music greats Michael Bolton, Elton John and the O’Jays, among other big international names.

“But since his arrival, the chemistry between us has been great” she said. “We connected easily when we were introduced.  Now is the time to work, and I know that we will perhaps fight, as this is inevitable in a creative space, and as long as the fight will be for the improvement of the DVD that is fine with me.  I just love this man’s voice and the fact that I titled a song on my album’ Brand New Day’ just like he has done on his, this is simply an incredible coincidence,”




“Since then we were doing a lot of touring but the past two years we haven’t been touring as much”.  Says LeRoy.  “We’re playing much more regional.  We haven’t been out with as many big names as we were for awhile.  Many of them have passed away.  We did a few dates with Steve Miller and quite a few dates with Huey Lewis.  He’s still around and he has a great band.  I don’t have anything against doing national tours, but it has to be the right kind of thing.  We played the house of blues in Chicago.  It was fun. We used to play with all the older guys, but it’s not the same”.

After so many years in the music business LeRoy is aware how much it has changed.

“It’s a completely different scene than it was.  Some things stay the same but whole marketing is completely different now. Streaming and online and videos.  When I was a kid it didn’t matter what a band looked like.  Now it’s more what they look like than what they sound like.You can create any sound on your computer or your laptop.  Then you get a check for 1000 plays for $2.”

It’s something young bands have come to accept.

“We’ve done about six albums and they do pretty well” He says “We sell them at the shows.  We sell a lot better when we tour with the bigger acts, because you’re kind of co-opting their audiences.  They’re used to buying the main acts merchandise or they may already have it. But we have our own label  There are no middle men. You can really enhance your sales that way”.

“We’ve got some shows coming up and I’ve been writing for a new record.  I’ve also been doing some online digital stuff, releasing directly to streaming services.  I have a tiny studio at my house, so I can program and release “stuff,  so I keep writing all the time”.

“I have a couple of songs streaming right now.  One is ‘Who am I to U’,  The other is ‘Stay Together’  Both are available at ‘Spotify’ and ‘i-tunes’  You can also find ‘Jaded’ off our last album, ‘When That Fire Rolls Around’.

After so many years in the business it’s clear LeRoy Bell and his Only Friends are in it for the long haul…maybe another 17 years.  Meanwhile, they continue to work and though their gigs are regional right now, they’ll probably be out touring again when the situation is right.  LeRoy admits that as he gets older he likes his comfort.  It’s probably true of the rest of his crew.  Every one of them are consummate musicians with decades of work behind them….so while they continue to play the Northwest, you might want to get out and see them soon.

LeRoy and His Only Friends will be appearing at:

Saturday April 14, 7:30 PM,The Marysville Opera House, Marysville WA

Saturday April 21 8:00 PM, Jazzbones, Tacoma WA

Saturday April 28, 9:00 PM, The Tractor Tavern, Seattle WA

Friday May 4, 7:00, Hillside House Concerts, Leavenworth WA

Saturday May 19, 10:00 PM, Sunbanks Festival at Sunbanks Resort, Electric City WA

Advance tickets are available at:  http://leroybell.com/   




-Dennis R. White. Sources: Dave Beck “Singer-Songwriter LeRoy Bell:The Rise, Fall And Rise Again KUOW.org,Mar 21, 2013); Tom Fitzgerald “A Hall of Fame hitmaker finds happiness and harmony in Bellingham”(Seattle Times, February 15, 2018); “LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends” leroybell.com, retrieved April 4, 2018); LeRoy Bell (X-Factor US Wiki, retrieved April 4, 2018); Erin K. Thompson “LeRoy Bell’s Breakout Year.  And he’s only…60?” (The Seattle Weekly, December 6, 2011); Dennis R. White “LeRoy Bell Interview” (April 3, 2018); Eric Cerna “LeRoy Bell (Conversations At KCTS 9,Season 5 Episode 508, retrieved, April 3, 2018); Allison Corneau “5 Things You Don’t Know About 59-Year-Old X Factor Standout LeRoy Bell” (Us Weekly, October 7. 2011); Dennis R. White “Terry Morgan Interview” (April 6, 2018); Ed Hogan “Bell and James” (allmusic.com, retrieved April 6, 2018, retrieved April 4, 2018); Edward Tsumele and Patience Bambalel  “Brand new day for Zahara and Leroy Bell” (Sowetan Live [ South Africa}, June 06, 2012); Paul Zollo “More Songwriters on Songwriting” De Capo Publishing, November 8, 2016); “How Thom Bell Rang Up The Hits For Philly International” (Billboard Magazine, June 16, 2006): Tom Phalen “ Lost Vuarnets Find Success Without Even Practicing” (The Seattle Times, October 8, 1993); Michael Paoletta and Lars Brandle “After U.K. Hit is U.S. Ready for Elton?” (Billboard, September 20, 2003)

 

 

RED KELLY

In an obituary after Red Kelly’s death on June 9, 2004  Mike Lewis of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote

“Red Kelly was “known as a comedian with a jazz problem”

It’s a line Red would probably have used as a self-deprecating joke; but the truth is that Red Kelly was an accomplished jazz bassist first, and secondly known to use comedy onstage and throughout his career as a host in his clubs.  It’s one of the things that brought patrons into his jazz venues both in Tumwater WA and in Tacoma WA.  But a “jazz problem”?  Not in the least!  Red Kelly had spent nearly three decades performing with with jazz and Swing luminaries including  Woody Herman, Red Norvo, Buddy Rich Harry James, Maynard Ferguson, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Charlie Barnet, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton and a host of others.  His career spanned the Big Band era to Bebop and on to the “Cool Jazz” of the early ‘60s  In all, Red Kelly took part in the recording of over 100 albums, all of them with top-notch, bona fide jazz greats.  He’d even played with and developed a friendship with jazz icon Charle “The Bird” Parker. In 2003 Red recounted some of his favorite tales of an adventurous life in jazz to the Tacoma’ News Tribune.

They included a story about Charlie Parker stealing a policeman’s horse and riding it into a club in New York City. The audience (and presumably the policeman) were so amused that Parker wasn’t charged for his theft of the horse.  Red spoke about his friendship with Betty Grable, who, he said “liked the dirtiest jokes” and claimed that Count Basie had died owing him $3 on a 1959 World Series bet.

Another of his favorite stories was about  the time local Tacoma mobsters tried to make one of their rival’s death look like an accident.  They had put their already-dead victim behind the wheel of his car and pushed it into Commencement Bay…but unfortunately had  left his car keys in his pocket.

Two of the bandleaders Kelly worked for, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton were notorious musical foes.  According to Kelly “Woody didn’t trust anything that didn’t swing. Stan didn’t trust anything that did,”  Red was full of tales about the people he’d worked with over the decades, a few imaginary ones, sometimes corny jokes, but more often than not extremely quick with unexpected punchlines..  He punctuated his comedic stories between (and during) the music he led after opening his own jazz clubs. His fans loved him for it.

Thomas Raymond Kelly was born August 29, 1927 in Shelby, Montana to a family too poor to raise him. He was shuffled between orphanages from the time he was a toddler until age 16, There’s not much documentation of his early childhood but we know at two years old Red was stricken by polio. Up to the end of his life Red would rely on a cane due to Post-polio syndrome.  This would also make it difficult when he later decided to take lessons to play the drums-his first instrumental choice.  He and his tutors found out he wasn’t able to play adequately because his polio had made it difficult to use his feet well enough to work the hi-hat pedal. But we also know he became a member of a fife-and-drum corps organized by the St. Thomas Orphanage in Great Falls Montana-a town very near Red’s birthplace in Shelby.  The drum was most probably a snare.

“My childhood was like a Dickens situation,” Kelly once said, referring to being raised in orphanages in Missoula and Great Falls Montana.  “It was rough being a Depression baby,” Various chroniclers point out that Red grew up in Montana orphanages, and was reunited with his family at age 16.  Others claim that at age 16 he dropped out of school, ran away (either from an orphanage or his family) to become a professional bass player.  No matter what the case was, there was a silver lining at the end of his struggles.  One day when Red was a freshman at Seattle Prep high school he came across an old discarded, stand-up double-bass stored away in a closet.  Red took it home and worked hard to become proficient on the instrument.  One of his mentors was Johnny Wittwer, the bandleader at Tacoma’s China Pheasant in Tacoma. Wittwer told him;

“You got a great tone kid, but you don’t know what you’re doing. Follow the pinky on my left hand and you got a job.”

Not long after he mastered that, drummer and bandleader Tiny Hill (born Harry Lawrence Hill and weighing over 365 pounds) was coming through Seattle looking for a bassist. The next night Red was onstage, beginning a touring career that would last three decades.

“I picked the brains of the best players” Red later said. “Ted Fio Rito, Curt Sykes, Randy Brooks, Sam Donahue, Chubby Jackson,Herbie Fields, Charlie Barnet, Red Norvo Stan Kenton,and Les Brown.  “We both hated each otherKelly said of Brown.  Red would eventually work with Woody Herman’s band for 14 years.

In 1949 Red began playing bass in “Chubby” Jackson’s Big Band.  “Chubby’” real name was Greig Stewart Jackson and weighed over 365 pounds when Red met him.  It was through Chubby’s band that Red entered the rarified company of national stars.

Chubby’s band was unique in that it included three bassists, Red Kelly, Curly Russell and Chubby Jackson himself, who fronted the band, sang and provided wild antics and enthusiasm.  The band did a short  stint at one of  New York City’s finest clubs The Royal Roost. The Royal Roost had originally opened as a restaurant called Topsy’s Chicken Shack.  When the failing restaurant became available, jazz entrepreneur Ralph Watkins and his partner, Morris Levy bought the place from a “Boston businessman”  Watkins had strong ties within the jazz community having presented and produced jazz concerts during the 40’s. Levy had the kind of mob connections that could make a lot of unreported  money through the club’s coat check and photography franchises. The restaurant-turned club was renamed The Royal Chicken Roost (eventually the “Chicken” part of the name was dropped).  The venue was not successful at first, but at the urging of jazz disc jockey Sid Torin ( aka D.J. Symphony Sid) co-owners Watkins and Levy agreed to present a Bebop show at the club.

According to Levy “Such a crowd showed up that we had to call the cops. It turned the spot into a progressive jazz joint.  There was a line up the block. We had Dexter Gordon or Charlie Parker or Miles Davis. They did two nights a week, and then it grew to three nights a week, then six and seven nights a week…. It was really fabulous. We became the first Bebop club in the city.”

After that success The Royal Roost began to present the latest jazz performers like, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Tadd Dameron and many more of the pioneers of the new style of jazz. Booking so many Bebop artists led to the Royal Roost becoming known as “The Birthplace of Bop” and “The Metropolitan Bopera House,”  a pun referring to the Royal Room’s proximity to New York’s Old Metropolitan Opera House, then at 1411 Broadway.  By 1948 the club was the place to be for the jazz  cognoscenti and began a decades-long, innovative place for jazz musicians to stretch their chops. It was these players that Red would find himself with.

Although “Chubby’s” band would not last long, he continued to work as  a well-respected side man and even ended up hosting some local (NYC) children’s show on television;  Chubby Jackson’s Little Rascals from 1959 until March 1961, The Chubby Jackson Show during the summer of 1961 (both on WABC TV) and Space Station Nine in 1962 and finally a short stint as host of the  Looney Tunes Show. (the latter two on WOR TV).  Chubby’s son, Duffy Jackson, has gone on to have his own distinguished jazz career.  He worked with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, as both a swing drummer and a bassist.  He’s often delighted audiences by combining his drum solos with bass interludes.

During the early ‘50s Red toured with Herbie Fields, Charlie Barnet, Red Norvo, and Claude Thornhill. During his first outing with Norvo he took on the nickname Kelly and “Red” Mitchell (both bass players) were living in the same apartment in New York City.  Another “Red”-Red Norvo called Red Mitchell to invite him to tour but it was actually Kelly who Norvo was talking to. No matter, though; both Kelly and Mitchell would go on to have successful careers.  Both Red Kelly and Red Mitchell eventually worked with Norvo, and Kelly and Mitchell would find several future chances to play together.

By 1954 Red Kelly found himself touring Europe with Woody Herman’s band.  He recorded and toured with Herman throughout the 50’s, but also took on studio projects with Dick Collins among others. He then returned briefly to Seattle and then on to Los Angeles where he worked with Stan Kenton, Med Flory, Maynard Ferguson and Lennie Niehaus as well as a valued session man for other jazz artists. Red Kelly had spent much of his life as an in-demand Bebop player, but by the late 50’s he began experimenting with “cool jazz”  Today we think of “cool jazz” as a popular, lighter, more melodic and listener-friendly form of jazz.  Hundreds of artists have made and maintained their success by playing this genre over the past few decades.

The truth is that the term “cool jazz” was originally meant as a derisive term describing what many older jazz players thought was an aberration, and the total opposite of “hot jazz” which included experimental, traditional and the prevailing genre of the day- Bebop.  Cool jazz depended on arrangements rather than improvised solos.  The tempo was more relaxed and the palette much softer. It would take several years for the term to lose it’s spike, but the work of many jazz greats like The Modern Jazz Quartet, Gerry Mulligan,Chet Baker,.Stan Getz and most importantly Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool helped the genre become more in vogue.

Although Red Kelly never abandoned Bebop, his involvement in The Modest Jazz Trio saw him move away from the harsher tones and frantic sounds of his earlier work with players like Red Norvo, Dizzy Gillespie and Maynard Ferguson.  The Modest Jazz Trio included Red Kelly on bass, renowned guitarist Jim Hall and Kelly’s old friend and fellow bassist Red Mitchell.  However Mitchell would forego bass with The Modest Trio and provide piano instead.  The trio recorded one great album, “Good Friday Blues”

Down Beat magazine’s gave the album five stars, and critic Ira Gitler wrote:

“In this day of trends and fads, where the jazz we hear is contrived in many instances, this is a revelation. Perhaps it is all the more warming because it is accomplished within the context of a trio. Here, the music just flows out a stream of genuine emotion from three artists who obviously enjoy playing for the sake of playing. This surrounds the album with a feeling that defies rating by stars. It exemplifies the best kind of honest jazz expression.”

There have been several re-issues of the album, most notably in 1979 (which includes a 12 page booklet) and 2011 when 101 distribution re-issued  “Good  Friday Blues” under the artist name “Jim Hall and his Modest Trio”.  It included three bonus tracks featuring Chico Hamilton on drums and George Divivier on bass (recorded February 8, 1956)
Another five of the bonus tracks were recorded on January 10 & 24,1957.  These tracks include Jim Hall on guitar, Red Kelly on bass and Carl Perkins on piano (NOT the Rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins that first comes to mind)

Ironically Perkins had also been stricken with polio as a child. He was unable to play piano without his left hand being parallel to the keyboard and used his elbow to hit the deeper bass keys.  This earned him the nickname “the crab” Perkins had found fame working with the Curtis Counce Quintet, alongside Harold Land, Jack Sheldon and drummer Frank Butler. He also performed with Big Jay McNeely, Tiny Bradshaw, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Dexter Gordon among dozens of others.   After time in the US Army Perkins recorded with The Oscar Moore Trio, the Clifford Brown–Max Roach Group and with Frank Morgan.

Eventually Perkins founded his own trio along with bassist Leroy Vinnegar and Lawrence Marable on drums.  Perkins is practically forgotten these days but during his short life he was considered one of Bebop’s greatest players and writers. Perkins died from a drug overdose on March 17, 1958; he was only 29 years old. He’d only  recorded one album under his own name (“Introducing Carl Perkins”) but he also left the song “Groove Yard” first made famous by The Montgomery Brothers (Wes Montgomery on guitar,and his brothers  Buddy on piano & vibraphone and Monk on bass).  Groove Yard” remains one of the most covered songs from 1950’s jazz.

Red Kelly worked with Harry James for most of the 1960s,  It was during his time with James that Red struck what would be a life-long friendship with drummer Buddy Rich.  The two collaborated on several projects during the late-60’s but by the early 1970s Red’s career was slowing down as he became more reluctant to constantly tour and had quit the double-bass for the much lighter and easier to handle electric bass guitar.  All those years of toting around a double-bass in it’s case had taken a toll on Red-who had Post-polio syndrome almost his entire life.  

Harvey Siders in “Jazz Times” wrote of Red:  

“If ever a musician was made for the road, Red Kelly was the living template: a hard-swinging, hard-drinking, easy-going, what-town-are-we-in-now guy”.

In 1973 Red married Donna Griswold and they settled down near the Washington State Capitol in Olympia. In 1974 they opened their own jazz club in adjacent Tumwater Washington.  The Tumwater Conservatory, as they called it, was just around the corner from the old Olympia Brewery, and barely a stone’s throw from the state Capitol building.  Naturally the club attracted political types as well as local jazz lovers, state workers reporters the occasional oddball looking for a place fit in;.  Red regaled his audience with both his music and his humor six nights a week along with his trio of himself on bass (and comedy), Don Ober on Guitar and Jack Percival on drums.

Another NW jazz great, Ernestine Anderson recalled Red as “one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He was so witty and so quick. To be around Red you were laughing all of the time.”

Anderson also credits Kelly in reviving her career. In the 60’s jazz had fallen out of favor as more and more rock and roll hit popular culture.  In 1964 Ernestine fled to Europe .where it was easier for American jazz musicians and singers to make a living.

“I don’t think jazz ever died” She said. “It suffered a setback during the sixties. I had to move to London in order to work because a jazz person couldn’t work in the United States when rock ‘n’ roll became the music. I didn’t think it would last  long, and I don’t think the rock ‘n’ roll people thought it would last  long…”

Shortly after her returning to the US in the late 60’s Ernestine decided to retire, and she spent several years doing menial labor; but her friends and family that she re-establish her jazz career  By the time Red and his wife Donna opened The Tumwater Conservatory, Anderson says she began sitting in on weekends,

“I worked there for about a year every weekend to get my chops back” she told Mike Lewis of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “ Kelly was phenomenal,  He used to call me his daughter”.





By 1976 The Tumwater Conservatory had become a favorite watering hole for state legislators and all sorts of politicos. One night (after closing time) Red and some of his buddies from the state capitol sat around talking and drinking.  Someone brought up the subject of Kelly running for a state office in the upcoming election.  It was nothing but idle, back-slapping humor, but John White, State Capitol correspondent for The Associated Press happened to be in the after-hours crowd.  By morning he’d sent a piece to the wire service proclaiming that Red Kelly, prominent jazz musician would be running for Washington State Governor.  Within hours print and television media were on his doorstep wanting to know more about his candidacy and under which party he planned to run, all of them not understanding it had been a joke.  At the time Washington law only required 100 signatures backing a candidate, and a nominating convention. Red was game as long as it wasn’t serious. The 100 signatures were no problem at all and the convention was held Tumwater Conservatory.  Red famously said:

”I went to bed a drunken musician and woke up a drunken gubernatorial candidate.”

Red wasn’t about to let his campaign be anything less than absurd.  He and his wife decided to create the OWL Party under which to run.  The acronym was meant to stand for “Out With Logic” or “On With Lunacy”.  In their view, either of them worked. The OWL  party slogan was “We don’t give a hoot” and “Unemployment isn’t working.” Their platform supported being “for everything and against everything else.” It also promised to “call in all the state’s negotiable assets and convert them to cash just to see what all that money looks like.”

In Washington State’s Official Voters Pamphlet Kelly wrote;

“The importance of this election to the citizens of our fair state cannot be underestimated. These issues are broad, high, wide and handsome is as handsome does. I have found, however, that the issues are not the issues for once an issue is made of the issues and the issues are responded to, they no longer are issues but become answers.

“Because of the above mentioned dialectical problem I am responding to some of the more pressing non-issues facing this state.

“1) It has become apparent that unemployment isn’t working but…

“2) Inflation is. I feel we have done a good job of getting inflation off of dead center and back on the move again.

“3) We must get the girls out of those sweaty saunas and back on the streets again. This is gradually being done and I can see the red light at the end of the tunnel on this program.

“4) Because of the energy crisis and potential oil spill non-issues, we have been asked to think tanker. What I propose is the importation of Irish tinkers to fix leaking tankers. In this way, instead of thinking tankers we can think tinkers, thereby solving two problems with the single stroke of a ball-peen hammer: (a) we reduce oil spills and (b) we help wind down the war in Ireland. It is imperative that the other candidates grasp the bull by the tail and face the situation squarely on this issue.

“It will always be my contention that the buck starts here, so remember, a vote for Red Kelly is like taking two giant steps backward so if you believe in my programs say “Mother-may-I” and throw the rascals out.”

1976 was hard economic times for the country and Washington State in particular because of layoffs by the state’s biggest employer, Boeing.  This was the era of stagflation, the gasoline shortage and the state nearly bankrupt.  People were ready for a little fun at the expense of the two major political parties.  In those days conventional wisdom was that both the Democrats and the Republicans were pretty much the same, and the public didn’t think highly of either of them.  Red Kelly took advantage of this and peppered his entire campaign with humor.

With Red in the race for governor it was decided that the OWL party should also field other candidates in several races.  The candidates took on nicknames to make the entire OWL platform even funnier.  Kelly’s running mates included Jack “The Ripoff” Lemon for Lieutenant Governor, “Fast” Lucie Griswold (Donna’s mother) for Secretary of State, Ruthie “Boom Boom” McInnis for State Auditor, “Bunco” Bob Kelly for Attorney General, Archie “Whiplash” Breslin for Insurance Commissioner, and Bob “Earthquake” Ober for Commissioner of Public Lands who  pledged to “go forth and gently commission the land.”  “Fast Lucie” Griswold (Red’s mother-in-law).wrote in the official voters’ pamphlet that:

“It has come to my attention while campaigning across the width and breadth of Tumwater that no Secretary of State has been able to take shorthand or do typing. It is my intention, therefore, when elected to take a correspondence course in typing and shorthand hereby giving this state something it has never had or wanted. Furthermore, I am taking unequivocal stands against the following: (1) The heartbreak of psoriasis; (2) Bed wetting; (3) The big ‘O’; (4) Post nasal drip”

After the election Red later pointed out that “Everyone we ran came in third” The OWL party had won about 250,000 votes statewide.  They still hold the record for the most successful third party run in Washington state history. In fact, the OWL party received approximately 8% of the total state’s votes.  They’d had fun and so had many Washingtonians. The exercise may have found it’s beginnings among politicos at the Tumwater Conservatory, but the legislature in general was not amused.  According to William Bryk, who had followed and reported on the OWL party

The OWL Party on the campaign trail 1976

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The ease with which this frivolous party gained a place on the ballot and polled fairly well apparently embarrassed the professional politicians”

According to the King County (WA) Bar Association:

”The Legislature responded in 1977 by passing a law that made it more difficult for minor parties to place candidates on the ballot. Ten years after the heyday of the OWL party, the law was declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Munro v. Socialist Worker’s Party.”  The new law required  each third party obtain one percent of the vote at the primary before going on to the general election. The number of signatures required was increased to 1000. Minor parties described as more serious than the OWL Party, such as the Socialist Workers Party, unsuccessfully challenged the new law, and lost. None of this should be particularly surprising.  Career politicians don’t like their hold on power threatened or to be made fun of.

And so, Red returned to his focus onstage, playing jazz with his trio and spending about half the evening making wisecracks and telling jokes.  Back in the kitchen Donna continued making large vats of her popular Red Beans and Rice-she said Louis Armstrong had given her his secret recipe.

In 1978 Kelly closed the Tumwater Conservatory and did a bit of local gigging as well as a tour with Jimmy Dorsey’s “ghost band” led by Lee Castle. (“Ghost Bands” are those legacy bands that continue after their leader and prime artists have died. They play the original music of the bands and seem to be more common in jazz). At the time Red signed on quite a few of the original members were part of the band, but as years go on most players aren’t alumni of the original bands.  Most of the players  weren’t even born, or maybe were toddlers, when Jimmy Dorsey died.  Jimmy Dorsey’s “ghost band” continues to tour even to this day.

Eventually Red was bitten by the jazz club idea again. Red and Donna scouted for a new location, and found one in Tacoma. The Roberts-Parker Building, built in 1887 was a three-story edifice directly across from the Tacoma and Thurston County’s City/County Building.  It’s said the top floor was once a brothel…not improbable at all.  The club was built and the couple christened the first floor “Kelly’s” Red and his trio began entertaining once again with the same schtick; part music, part comedy…and the comedy was nearly always “bawdy”.  Donna continued to serve up her famous Red Beans and Rice and the jazz crowd made their pathway to Kelly’s.  Some of Red’s old pals showed up occasionally and joined him onstage.  Tony Bennett would ramble in on several times and the entire Count Basie Orchestra graced the stage-twice.  Local jazz celebrities including Tacoma-native Diane Schuur visited and did impromptu performances.  Touring musicians that were playing the nearby (re-modeled) Pantages Theatre wandered in.  If there was a place to be in Tacoma it was Kelly’s.  Eventually Red cut his performances to weekends only, but the commotion and jazz filled the club almost every night. Saxophonist and bandleader Bill Ramsay called it his second home.

Red Sider in Jazz Times recalls a usual weekend night at Kelly’s

“The music and the chatter continue until the typical Saturday night comes to another typical ending: a tiny, dainty, 97-year-old “chanteuse” named Lucie Griswold (former candidate for the OWL party) gingerly approaches the stage on Red’s cue to “close” her son-in-law’s smoke-filled jazz emporium with the anthem she lives for, “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” She attacks it with such gusto, you’d swear she’s still waiting for someone to book her on American Idol. Bless her soul, “Fast Lucie”, as everyone calls her, has certainly never heard of American Idol. Actually, she doesn’t hear much: she’s not merely stone deaf; she’s tone deaf. Peggy (the pianist) is the only one who can accompany Fast Lucie because Peggy has solved the mysteries of comping in quarter tones by playing in the cracks’.

At the time Kelly’s opened Tacoma was still largely untouched-in fact it was still dilapidated, but there was optimism in the air.  It seemed Tacoma was about to make a turnaround from the gritty, crime-ridden town it had been known for for decades.  More people were moving in.  More of the grand old houses were being renovated.  The downtown core was slowly becoming more tolerable (slowly being the operative word).  Union Station had been renovated and the idea of Tacoma’s Museum of Glass was in its infancy. A Farmers Market opened in 1990 as part of the revitalization of downtown.  Restoration of the magnificent Pantages had already taken places and the Rialto Theater andThe Broadway Performing Arts Center were being eyed for renovation. Things were beginning to make Tacoma a more livable and more cultural city; and there’s no doubt that Red Kelly was early on the bandwagon, and he got to see many of those efforts come to fruition.  In 1989 he threw his hat in the political ring for a second go at it.  This time he was running for Mayor of Tacoma.  In his only public speech he advocated for the return of cable cars and riverboat gambling. He came in fourth place.

Unfortunately Donna Kelly died in 1999. Red took it very hard. They had been practically joined at the hip since they married in 1973. According to Red:

“Donna was irreplaceable. When they made her, they threw away the shovel.”

In 2003 Don Siders also wrote;

“Kelly lost interest in the business at a time when Tacoma lost interest in jazz. In September 2003, Kelly donated his vast collection of priceless photographs of the good old days to the Tacoma Public Library and closed his storehouse of memories. Tacoma’s Official Living Legend/Raconteur still makes guest appearances, still shocks audiences and still waits for American Idol to discover him.

Of course the “American Idol discovering him” part was something Red would have said in jest..  It’s clear he’d had a long and distinguished career as a sideman, a performer in his own right.  He was one of the great bassists of Swing and the Bebop eras who was able to transition to Cool Jazz. He kept generations of jazz fans amused.  He’d lived life on his own terms, had created a political party that unfortunately sealed the fate for other third parties to take part in democracy and ran two well respected hang-outs for jazz enthusiasts…in fact maybe the most respected jazz hangouts between San Francisco and Vancouver BC.

Red died on Wednesday June 9, 2004.  

His New York Times obituary included the line:
The cause was complications of cancer and other ailments, friends and relatives said”

Red’s friend, trumpeter Lance Buller was a bit more forthcoming;

“He burned the candles at every possible end and had a good time. He had a sparkle in his eye. He was very supportive. He lived life to its fullest. It almost seemed like he had nine lives.”

According to writer William Bryk

“He had composed a song, “You and I and George,” which he performed with the Stan Kenton Orchestra in 1959. There’s an LP, Kenton at the Tropicana. Kelly speaks in a doleful voice at the mike: the song had been written by somebody else as it was so lousy. Kelly described the song as the product of a hung-over songwriter who’d finally realized that people didn’t care about lyrics. It was just one sad verse: a trio walks along a brook, George falls in and drowns himself, and the girl ends up with the singer, who’s obviously her second-best choice”.

“David Bowie loved it and performed it during his “Sound and Vision Tour.” He sang it while playing at the Tacoma Dome in 1990. Probably only a few persons in the audience at the time knew that he was paying homage to a local hero”

Hopefully more people today recognize Red Kelly as a local hero, a Northwest jazz pioneer, a somewhat bizarre politician a cut-up and an icon….and that mayoral promise to make riverboat gambling legal in Tacoma?  It came true eventually, didn’t it?

 

-Dennis R. White.  Sources:  “Obituaries, Red Kelly Jazz Bassist” (The Independent, Thursday June 10, 2004);Jason Andkeny “Red Kelly Biography” (AllMusic.com, retrieved March 22, 2018); Washington State Voting Pamphlet, 1976, retrieved March 22, 2018); Various Contributors “R.I.P. Red Kelly” (TalkBass.com, retrieved March 26, 2018); John Goldsby “The Jazz Bass Book; Technique and Traditon” (BackBeatBooks, 2002); Jason Ankeny “Red Kelly” (allmusic.com, retrieved March 24, 2018): Harvey Siders “Old-School Jazzman” (Jazz Times, April 1,2004) Washington State Official Voters Pamphlet, 1976)

 

 

 

NW SONGWRITERS: A STRAW POLL

James Marshall Hendrix, Paratrooper, 101st Airborne Division 1960-1961

Recently I took a straw poll of friends asking:

Who do you think is the most important songwriter to come out of the Northwest? This is not a quiz and there are no wrong answers.

Some of the responses were obvious, many were downright baffling and others were very close to what my personal belief of what a songwriter truly is.  I left my question open-ended as an experiment to find out what others might give their explanation of what and whom constitutes an important songwriter.  I made sure to tell those I polled  there were no wrong answers, allowing them to offer up names without spending too much time or offering up suggestions simply because they thought the person they chose was based on others’ (especially critics’) dubbing that artist as “most important”  Several people went on to ask what I defined as “important”.  My reply was that I did not want to define the term.  Everyone uses different criteria of what is “important”; besides I was more interested in others’ opinions, than my own.  I asked people to decide what was important to them because this was also an exercise was for me to understand what other people considered worthy.  I wanted to learn about how others saw things and challenge myself a bit in what I personally feel is important in a songwriting. I saw this as just as much a lesson for me.  It was by no means a popularity contest.

So here I’ll take my natural tendency to digress.

I am a fan of good songwriting.  I cannot put my finger on what it is exactly but I have certain criteria.  I think when a song’s lyric is written in a way that it may be interpreted universally by listeners is a good start. This is probably why so many songs deal in lyrics about the many states of love; from it’s stirrings, it’s longings, it’s attainment and it’s loss. I believe original, creative lyrics are important, but I know they are not always crucial to good songwriting.  They don’t need to be about love…but they usually speak to the human condition.  Beyond the universality of lyrics, the actual music is just as important.  I think sometimes people put more emphasis on lyrics rather than their combination with melody or arrangement. In my opinion all good songs are founded in the music.  I suppose most people at least subconsciously know that, despite the overemphasis of  lyrics alone.  But there’s no doubt a lyric can as easily set the mood as a melody.

Anyone who’s listened to the work of Frank Zappa might  point to “Peaches En Regalia”  (among others) as an example of brilliant songwriting  without the use of lyrics.  None of us can say what the song is actually about (except peaches dressed in the signs of their royal or noble status?) but there’s no doubt this song-among many other instrumentals-has been crafted, and composed in a way that each and every note seems to belongs exactly where it lies. It seems unlikely that anyone else would compose this particular song other than Frank Zappa. It contains a mix of elaborate musicianship, purposely-cheesy sounding orchestration and themes and a distinct left-of-center pop sensibility, although it’s highly influenced by jazz. For all it’s grandiosity of Peaches en Regalia uses an economy of tones and instrumentation.  It relies more on the unusual juxtaposition of sounds and an exceptional thematic device. More precisely; it’s fun to listen to.





On the other hand sometimes lyrics carry the day…a witty, unusual, or unexpected lyric might save an otherwise mediocre melody, but good songwriting rarely relies on the melody alone  The truth, to me, is that good songwriting is the result of craftspeople who devote their lives to songwriting, with little regard to who records their material….even  themselves.  This is what makes Leiber and Stoller, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Lennon and McCartney (together or separately) soar above the rest.  Songwriting is a craft unto itself to these writers  It goes beyond the performance of others, though there certainly are a large number of songwriters that are best suited to record their own material.  All of this congealed during the mid-19th century “Tin Pan Alley” an actual place in Manhattan on West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues,  “Tin Pan Alley” later became a collective term for the musicians, songwritersand publishers who dominated New Yorks’ popular music up until the mid-20th century.   If you ever visit New York City you will find a  comerrative plaque on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Sixth St. and Broadway.  Later, as songwriters drifted into the early days of rock and pop The Brill Building (1619 Broadway)  was considered their spiritual home.  The building had previously been a hotbed of activity for songwriting and publishing of music for the “big bands” like those of Benny Goodman or  The Dorsey brothers.  In the 1950s and the early 1960s  songwriters like Neil Diamond, Ellie Greenwich, Johnny Mercer, Billy Rose, Bobby Darin and Neil Sedaka Goffin and King, Leiber and Stoller emerged from The Brill building.  It proved to be a very successful time for songwriters pumping out well-crafted songs for teen idols, budding pop-stars and “girl groups”.  During the mid-60s “Tin Pan Alley” and The Brill Building became somewhat outdated.  By this time bands, individuals and those who would become singer/songwriters emerged, as well as the pop music charts becoming extremely influenced by “The British Invasion” The British had styled their s roots in the American blues rather than American popular music in general.  Soon the center of the music world shifted to the west coast even though many New York City-based songwriters were still able to create a hit or two.

 

In many cases the craftsmanship of songwriting is enhanced by the writers’ own renditions of their work..  This is the case with the aforementioned Elvis Costello or the collective work of a band like XTC.  Although I’d say there have been successful interpretations of Elvis Costello songs, it’s Elvis that usually supplies the definitive version.  In the case of XTC, it’s hard to imagine anyone else properly interpreting their work.

Other times we can actually hear and imagine the songwriter’s “voice” when a particular song is covered.  A case in point is The Monkee’s version of Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer”…really, who else could have written this song besides Neil?  Even though Diamond released his own version of it (about a year after The Monkee’s hit version) The song attributed to The Monkees is the one that counts and it should be!  The performance was actually recorded by guitarists Al Gorgoni and Sal Ditroia, Buddy Saltzman on drums, Carol Kaye on bass,  Artie Butler on the Vox Continental organ and the song’s producer, Jeff Barry, adding piano and tambourine.





It is Micky Dolenz’ vocals that add the typical Monkees sound, but the craftsmanship of Neil Diamond is the real star, no matter who played on the recording.  Aside from being a huge hit for The Monkees, Diamond once again shows his prowess as a songwriter because the song has also successfully interpreted by other artists-from The Four Tops to Robert Wyatt (his first recording after the June 1973 accident that left him a paraplegic).  It’s also famously been recorded by Smash Mouth for the film Shrek in 2001 but not quite as inventive or successful as other versions.

Another case may be made for the song “Theme from The Valley of The Dolls” as interpreted by Dionne Warwick.  The song itself was written by André and Dory Previn, instead of Dionne’s usual writers throughout her career, Hal David and Burt Bacharach.  Despite the mighty trio of Warwick, David and Bacharach, The Theme From The Valley of The Dolls remains as powerful an interpretation as anything else she has sung.  Of course it is Dionne’s incredible reading of the song that makes it so heart-tugging and melancholy as well as hopeful.  Another example of an interpretation of brilliant songwriting by another artist is Elvis Costello’s rendition of  “(What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace Love and Understanding?”  I know I’m treading on thin ice here, but I’d say Costello’s rendition of an excellent song written by the gifted Nick Lowe is the definitive version of the song.  I believe this not only a sign of a great interpreter of another’s song, but also the sign of Lowe’s ability to write a near-perfect, unforgettable anthem.

My point (and I know I’ve been exhaustive about it) is that there is an animal called “the songwriter” whose first duty is to write solid, universal themes that combine well thought out lyrics and original, innovative  musical themes. This is a craft that takes hard work….much harder than merely performing the song, although a good song always deserves a good interpreter..  A good songwriter sculpts the song like Michelangelo, who claimed the end product was already within the stone.  It was his job to chip away enough to reveal what was already there.

Getting back to my straw poll, none of the writers’ work included writers included in the “Great American Songbook”. Although Spokane’s Al and Charles Rinker are considered among the talents of the era,  The more famous can be said to emerge out of the Northwest from that era is not someone we’d think or as a songwriter; it is the singer; Bing Crosby. In the late 1920s Bing  joined his Spokane friend Al Rinker  and pianist/singer Harry Barris to form The Rhythm Boys, who were featured as part of Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra. They had phenomenal success with both Rinker and Harris’s compositions as well as others’ writing.  The song below was written by Bing Crosby and Harry Barris. The song isn’t the most memorable of their output, but I’ve included it as an example of Bing Crosby’s early crack as a writer.





Al Rinker’s  brother Charles  wrote twenty-seven songs with Gene de Paul (who’d also written with Johnny Mercer) including “Your Name is Love”, which has been recorded by George Shearing and Nancy Wilson as well as other songs written by himself that have been recorded  by Frankie Lane, Red McKenzie, Shearing, Nancy Wilson, and Alan Dawson. Although both Al and Charles Rinker were capable songwriters who  crafted their music it’s hard to think of them as “important” since they are all but forgotten today.

I admit (once again) that I believe one of the hallmarks of an important songwriter is their ability to affect interpretations and long-term influence.  This can be somewhat confounding, because a composer’s work may be forgotten today, but at some time in the future re-discovered and influence unborn generations.  For my purposes I will only reflect on writers that we consider estimable from any time in the past up to the current era.  We cannot look into the future, nor can we anticipate a great songwriter’s work ever coming to light.

So let’s return to the original question:

Who do you think is the most important songwriter to come out of the Northwest?  

This was the question I asked in my straw poll, but I also invite YOU to ponder this messy question.  After all, the Northwest has a history of producing “important” songwriters, keeping in mind that the question in itself is based not only opinion, but personal taste and perhaps even a history of songwriting on your own part; and as I pointed out, there are no wrong answers

It shouldn’t come as a prize that the most often songwriter mentioned (according to my unscientific poll). was Kurt Cobain.  There’s absolutely no doubt he could write an excellent pop song, and partially wrap it up as something that could be defined loosely as “punk”.  I will refrain from the title “grunge” because I find it a useless and intellectually lazy…Any group of artists who’s output includes songs as diverse as Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow”, Seven Year Bitch’s M.I.A. or Nirvana’s cover of  David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World” does not define a genre.  It might mark a period of successful Northwest bands, but the term itself denies the individuality of the bands who fall under this nonsensical term.  We can’t even compare it to the thread that ran through the 1960’s “San Francisco Sound” which largely relied on one similar electric guitar sound.

So, we know the place Kurt Cobain many people attribute to him. I believe most of Kurt’s talent was in listening intently to what had come before him, whether it was The Beatles or one of his particular favorites, Sonic Youth. He was able to distill everything from metal to punk to Americana and pop in crafting his songs.  The only question we can ask is, had he lived longer would his output have been as high-quality as what he left us?  We’ll never know.





The second most mentioned songwriter was Jimi Hendrix.  This seemed perplexing to me since I have always considered him an innovator and a performer rather than a songwriter; but looking a bit closer I can see brilliance in his writing, even though his output is far less than I’d have liked to see. I’d always seen his real strength as innovating the sound of the electric guitar and his incredible showmanship.   It was possible for him to “ramble” along a riff, playing guitar, with no discernable song structure, and still overwhelm and amaze his listeners.  I will admit I thought  that the core of his guitar pyrotechnics was strong, but were birthed by somewhat derivative standard blues riffs. Looking back this was a common practice among his contemporaries, especially among the British where he spent a lot of his later years.

His strong suit was exploding and expanding from his riff.  Even though I am a huge fan of his playing and performance I consider a handful of his songs contain signs of great songwriting in them.  For instance“The Wind Cries Mary”, “If Six Were Nine” and my personal favorite “Angel”. It’s fairly well-known that “Amgel” was written about a dream Jimi had of his mother coming to him after her death.  The song is considered by many (myself included) as the best song Jimi Hendrix ever wrote.  Again, I understand I may be walking on thin ice here; but the theme, it’s lyrics and it’s lovely melody is so universal that it can mean something special, for many reasons to its listeners.  It’s also telling that Hendrix spent about two years perfecting the song and how he wanted to record it. One other aspect we might consider is near the time of his death, Jimi was contemplating an entirely different approach to his music.





Some folk writers were mentioned, but to be fair I think some of the best folk writers near the Pacific Northwest happen to be Canadian. If Ian Tyson (of “Ian and Sylvia” and “The Great Speckled Bird”) had been born 20 miles south of his hometown of Victoria B.C. he’d  be one of my top candidates for important Norhtwest songwriters.  However, due to the constraints placed on my own choice of covering only the history of NW music of the U.S. I thought it unfair to include anything outside Washington, Oregon and Idaho.  Ian Tyson has written an incredible song book including “Someday Soon” and “Four Strong Winds” His songs have been covered by Neil Young,  Moe Bandy, Johnny Cash, Hank Snow, Bob Dylan,The Kingston Trio  Marianne Faithfull, John Denver, Trini Lopez, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Glen Yarborough, Bobby Bare, Harry Belafonte, Tanya Tucker, Suzy Bogguss, Lynn Anderson and countless others.  Although Canadians could reasonably disagree, perhaps the most popular (and most definitive version outside of Tyson’s) is “Someday Soon”sung by the Seattle-born Judy Collins. But Tyson is a near-mythic figure in Canada, and will always be considered as one of the most important songwriters in Canadian history no matter if we include British Columbia as part of the Pacific Northwest or not.  He is identified and rightly claimed as a purely Canadian artist.

Loretta Lynn was mentioned; an excellent choice.  But Loretta will always be “A Coal Miner’s Daughter” and though she lived in Washington, and her career was kickstarted here with the help of Buck Owens, Kentucky has always been her real home in her heart, and it’s there and Nashville that she’s written the bulk of her output.

Local heroes like Scott MacCaughey, Rusty Willoughby. Alice Stewart, Gary Minkler, Pete Pendras, Jon Auer, Ken Stringfellow, Eric Apoe and Ben Gibbard were were all mentioned as “important” songwriters..  There’s no doubt these artists deserve respect for their work…I’d only add that Gary Minkler, over the past five decades,  is also one of the most dynamic performers the Northwest has ever produced.

Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart got lots of recognition.  Although Heart put out some spectacular music, not all of it was written by the Wilson sisters collectively or apart.  Very early on the two of them brought in the very talented songwriter abnd collaborator, Sue Ennis, to work with them.  Sue would eventually go on to be one of the members of the Wilson’s post-Heart projects; The Love Mongers. We can’t dismiss the Wilson sisters’ work, but Sue Ennis may be the least-known of great Northwest songwriters.  Her work  with the Wilsons helped mere rock songs and ballads become great songs and ballads.

Quincy Jones is another good example of a writer whose output will always be considered genius even though his writing seems secondary to other facets of his career. He isn’t particularly known for his songwriting simply because it is overshadowed by his career as an excellent jazz performer, and later as one of the world’s most renowned producers and arrangers.

Ray Charles was mentioned several times for his R&B contributions.  Although there’s no doubt he was a dedicated and talented performer, he’s often assumed to have written many songs he did not actually write.  The best examples of this are the songs “Georgia On My Mind”, his definitive version of a song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell in 1930. Another of Ray Charles’ signature tunes is “Hit The Road Jack”. The song was written by a friend of Ray Charles, Percy Mayfield. Mayfield initially recorded a demo of the song for Art Rupe, a producer and one of the most influential figures in the US music industry at the time.  Rupe was running  Specialty Records, and “Hit The Road Jack” found it’s way to Ray Charles rather than be fully recorded by Percy Mayfield.  This may be evidence that Charles himself was not as important a songwriter as others, but there’s little doubt he is one of the most influential artists in American music. No legitmate list of the most imortant American artists would be complete without him.

Mia Zapata was also mentioned by many people; a songwriter that left us too early to provide the much larger body of work she otherwise might have given us; still  she certainly inspired one of the most powerful, angry and cathartic songs of 90s Seattle music- M.I.A – a song by Seven Year Bitch that I’ve already mentioned.





It had to be pointed out more than once that there were actual women songwriters who need to be mentioned.  Perhaps it is the male domination of rock fans that prevents more talented women their due.  Aside from the aforementioned Wilson sisters, Mia Zapata and Alice Stewart there is a plethora of women writers that deserve to be mentioned: Carrie Acre, Amy Denio Kathleen Hanna, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, Jean Grey, Kimya Dawson, Neko Case all deserve recognition, and I’m certain there are far more that I’m failing to mention.  What’s more, these women should not be consigned to a ghetto of being “women” or “girls”  Their output is just as important-sometimes more important-than their male counterparts and a good songwriter does not rely on sex

Surprisingly it also had to be pointed out that Portland and the rest of Oregon are part of the Northwest too.  The prolific Chris Newman, Fred Cole, Greg Sage among others got mention.  Eastern Washington seemed to be under-represented too.  Folk singer and songwriter Danny O’Keefe (Wenatchee) got a single mention.  The late jazz great Larry Coryell, who learned his guitar chops in Richland, Washington before moving to Seattle and then on to jazz fusion history around the world only got a single mention.  Jazz players and writers did not make much impact on the list…surprisingly Chehalis, Washington born Ralph Towner (of both the bands Oregon and The Paul Winter Consort) wasn’t  mentioned at all.  Nor was

I had promised not to mention names but I’m going to make an exception.  Penelope Houston (who is a Northwesterner despite being mostly associated with San Francisco). Replied to my question with  a simple “phew”; I assume because it’s so hard to begin listing the “important” songwriters that have come out of the Northwest.  Of course she was too modest to name herself among those important songwriters. Houston’s writing in general deserves mention since her importance can never be overestimated.  But it would be important based simply as a co-author of what may be the single greatest American punk anthem of all time: “The American In Me”  The rest of her output stands above most others during the first wave of west coast punk as well.

As I’ve said there were a few artists named that baffled me. Perhaps it’s because I’m not familiar with their work or that they are in fact not from the Northwest.  One of the artists named in this category was Bruce Hornsby.  I agree that Hornsby is a terriffic songwriter but his bio states he was born in Williamsburg Virginia, and I could find no Northwest ties.  If he does have ties in the Northwest, please contact me with the information.  Another mention was of the Canadian musician and social justice activist Bill Bourne. Bill was closely associated with Scottish traditionalists The Tannahill Weavers during the 1980s.  They were originally based in Paisley Scotland, but considered a world-renowned ensemble. Bill has also worked with various other world-roots and traditionalist artists including ex-Tannahill Weaver Alan MacLeodm, Shannon Johnson, Lester Quitzau,, Aysha Wills, Eivør Pálsdóttir, Wyckham Porteous, Madagascar Slim and Jasmine Ohlhauser. Bill was born in Red Deer Alberta, and grew up in   Besides Alberta, Bill also spent time on the road worldwide, and for a short time in TorontoBill Bourne is certainly worthy of mention, as he’s won the Canadian Juno award several times.  But I know of no Northwest connection outside of  recording with vocalist Hans Stamer and Vancouver, B.C. guitarist Andreas Schuld on the album No Special Rider, released in 1997.  Once again, if you know of ties to the Northwest, please leave them in the comments section.




A less baffling recommendation was  saxophone great Skerik.  I personally am not familiar with Skerik’s output as a songwriter, but definitely familiar with his (often improvised) brilliant performances. Perhaps I am underestimating his output, but I am certainly not underestimating his importance as a player or as an innovator.  Please set the record straight as far as Skerik as a songwriter.  He’s consistently been one of my favorite Northwest artists.

I suspect others were mentioned because they are important figures that deserves all of our respect.  The most notable of these songwriters is Richard Peterson, who is practically a living treasure of Seattle. I was happy to see Anthony Ray (Sir-Mix-a-Lot) mentioned.  The submitter rightly pointed out that Mix-a-Lot has undoubtedly influenced and outsold many of the indie and/or famous Seattle bands of the 1990s.  So often people of color are left out of anything to do with “rock” no matter how much pull they have. Besides Mix-a-Lot, Ishmael Butler and Thee Satisfaction were mentioned because they are probably better known nationally and world-wide than many of the others on this list.

https://youtu.be/4lyUp_Z3t4w

Finally we reach what I consider the pinnacle of “songwriters’ songwriters”  These are the best of the best in my opinion.  I know I have overlooked many great NW songwriters; but I consider these craftsmen to represent the high-water mark (so far) of not only Northwest writers, but among the entirety of ALL American songwriters.  This  list includes Ellensburg, Washington-born Mark Lanegan, Ellliott Smith (who was born in Texas but grew up and first found fame in Portland Oregon), Eugene Oregon native Tim Hardin, and a guy from Shreveport Louisiana who moved to Bremerton, Washington at an early age, the late Ron Davies.  It was satisfying to see each ot these get multiple mentions.

I recognize that everyone has their favorite songwriter, and usually that person writes within at least one of the individual’s musical tastes.  Keep in mind  I said there are no wrong answers in this unscientific quiz or its overview. In fact I hate the Rolling Stone type lists of “bests”.  Many of us know they are B.S. and some publications concoct these kinds of lists to drive circulation and advertising sales.  If that’s not the case they’re often put together by elitist critics and celebrities.  I believe everyone has a right to their personal favorites.  I admit at one time I too was a snotty elitist who looked down on other people’s choices…but for many years now I have looked at music in a far more ecumenical way, and my musical horizons have expanded because of it.




If you have a favorite Northwest artist that you believe deserves recognition as an important songwriter post it in the comments section below. Your opinion is always valid no matter what others think and any additions to this list may well open whole new musical worlds to other people.  I’ve also made a list of every songwriter submitted, since I have left so many talented people out of this story..  You may or may not agree if they’re worthy-but someone else does.

In the sidebar is a list of everyone voted for that I left out in the above article. It’s in no particular order of importance:  Feel free to add your choice in the comments section below.

 

-Dennis R. White

THE BIRD

Writing the history of a band or a venue can be a daunting task; especially when the author knows far less on the subject than many of his or her readers.  It’s with this trepidation that I approach writing about The Bird.  In most cases the music histories I write rely on research, articles, written or oral histories and scholarly reports..  One-on-one interviews and original documentation also helps; but in the case of The Bird, there is not much documentation or  written histories.  Online blogs and books that mention The Bird often repeat the same exact entries word-for-word. This, in my view is a very poor practice and plagiarism.  However this is the internet age where people recycle all kinds of information they don’t need to be accountable for.

There are at least two authors I know that have done independent research on The Bird There are also others who have kept the memory of The Bird alive in their own individual ways.  I did not arrive in Seattle until 1979; almost a year after The Bird had ceased to exist.  Many of the musicians who had played at The Bird had left Seattle for greener pastures even before the advent of The Bird including The Mentors, The Lewd, The Screamers, Penelope Houston who would front The Avengers.  All were no longer on the scene by the time I’d arrived. Still, many of the fantastic friends I would make in Seattle had been involved or regulars of The Bird.

Many of us have foggy memories of our past, and very little ephemera to document The Bird exists, so I have had to rely on incomplete information and small bits I have learned from friends about The Bird over the years. It is in this spirit that I ask you read this story, keeping in mind that what I am trying is to build a history of The Bird…a history that has been seriously overlooked.  I hope what I write here is accurate, but I know I cannot live up to that hope throughout this story.  This is meant to be the basic outline of a realistic, accurate and detailed portrait of one of Seattle’s most important cultural touchstones.  I welcome corrections, additions, suggestions, photos, posters and most of all, memories.  As I’ve said, the history of The Bird has never been properly recorded..  What I have to write is incomplete without as much input form those who were there.  If you have anything to add, please leave comments in the space provided below. This will help me build a more accurate and complete history.

There’s plenty of points of departure that we could begin the story of The Bird.  It came along after punk had established itself in many other cities in the U.S, Canada, Britain and Australia.  We could discuss the dissatisfaction of young people with their future prospects, the D.I.Y. ethic, or what had led up to the need for an all-ages punk club in Seattle or youth culture in general,  But that would take an entire dissertation…which this already nearly is.   Let’s leave it at the well-known impetus that the gay troupe Ze Whiz Kidz who had broken down the door for punk to make headway in Seattle. Let’s  also point to the T.M.T. show, (The Telepaths, The Meyce and The Tupperwares) which wasn’t exactly “punk” but also opened the gateway of the new, alternative and music and a kick-start for the local scene.  There are the early practitioners and promoters of punk rock or new wave; consider that in the late ‘70s the terms were interchangeable.  These would include Jim Basnight, Neil Hubbard, Lee Lumsden, Mike Vraney and dozens of others including Sheli Story, Eldon Hoke,Upchuck, Ralph and Judy Becker who’s store Kitchy Koo catered to the hoards of Roosevelt High School students that would dominate the early Seattle punk scene.  As far as helping to outfit the new “look” it would only be proper to mention the influence (and gear) of Danny Eskinazi’s store, Dreamland, then located in the University District.

But let’s start with two individuals; Damon Titus and George Gleason,  Although they went to separate high schools and lived in different parts of the city they were thrown together as members of the Unitarian Church’s  Liberal Religious Youth (LRY), around 1969 or 1970. According to George Gleason, within a short time after meeting Damon he joined his band Fuzzy Peach.  At the time they were a folk-rock trio  trio with two sisters from George’s high school, Lisa and Chrissie MacPhaden. Once they became a quartet they spent a year or two on the coffee house and all-ages circuit.

By 1972 Damon moved to Olympia WA to study at The Evergreen State College (TESC).  George also moved to Olympia with an eye to starting a more rock-oriented band.  Don Harper, a friend of George’s from high school, would became their road manager. Roger Husbands, an older guy Damon and George knew through the LRY was hired as manager.  The two thought Roger seemed to know his way around business and theater, but in truth, he had little experience in management. Fellow Evergreeners Suzanne Grant, who’d been a jazz singer was recruited as vocalist and Alan Mundial came in on drums. Mundial would later be replaced by Peter Barnes when the band decided to move to Seattle and Alan chose to continue his studies at TESC. John  Adams was the original bassist and later replaced by Sal Paradise. (Walter Szalwinski)  Along with Damon and George they became The Fruitland Famine Band who deserve their own entry here at a later date,  The band was successful doing gigs in and around Olympia and Seattle and eventually moved to a large, old Mansion on the corner of Union and Minor on Seattle’s First Hill.  The band had a fair amount of success playing cover songs in  bars around the Olympia and Seattle area.  Later they moved further afield to play the greater Northwest and Western Canada.  The band did a few originals, but were mostly playing bar patrons’ favorites…slightly FMish music, some popular covers, and venturing into country and boogie classics  They were not the “average” Top 40 band, but they were a cover band nonetheless.

The Mansion at Minor and Union was across the street from the The Summit Alternative High School.  It was through these students, who used the Minor Mansion’s  garage as their unofficial smoking lounge that the the members of the Fruitland Famine Band started to become familiar with the stirrings of punk rock.  George claims that everything changed when the band heard the albums The Runaways, The Ramones and the bootlegged Ramones Live at CBGB’s. “Finally we were hearing new music that was song-based, and infused with manic humor” says George.

Their act began to reflect those influences, and it was not entirely welcome by the bar crowd they playing to.  The band told manager Roger Husbands they were fed up with being a cover band and fed up with playing bars.  So The Fruitland Famine Band joined the now near-forgotten, and always underrated Uncle Cookie (featuring Ernie Sapiro, Mark Sargent, Conrad Uno and Brock “The Rock” Wheaton as their soundman) for a concert at Capitol Hill’s Oddfellows Hall at 915 East Pine.  The Oddfellows Hall would be the location of future punk shows, and was crucial to Seattle’s nascent punk rock movement.  It had also been the venue for Seattle’s first “punk” concert known forever as “The T.M.T. Show” on May 1, 1976.

George Gleason remembers:
As a goof, we started our set dressed in slick lounge outfits,playing disco and changed into leather and jeans, playing punk in the middle of the set”.  George also reports that “This evidently made quite an impression on the delicate mind of Patrick MacDonald, music writer for The Seattle Times”
MacDonald” according to George Gleason “has never since missed an opportunity to describe us as a band that once “stripped naked” on stage.  This would, of course, be only one of MacDonald’s misinterpretations of the rock music he generally covered.  Not only did MacDonald misinterpret and misreport concerts, for years it was rumored that he commonly sent proxies to events, and he’d write his reviews based on their notes…but we’ll never know for sure, and it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time a critic cribbed others’ notes.  MacDonald retired as a local music critic years ago, but he’s still an object of derision among Seattle musicians and the fans who once read his reviews.

On Oct 30th 1977, The Fruitland Famine Band threw an all-night “Come As You Were or Will Be “ party at the Minor Mansion.  The death of the FFB was declared and the birth of The Enemy, one of the west coast’s first punk bands. At this time Sal Paradiso was let go and Paul Hood (onetime member of The Meyce and future member of The Toiling Midgets and briefly with Student Nurse) was given bass duties.  The Enemy rented space in a vacant building in downtown Seattle and began writing and practicing all-original music,

Damon Titus says
“People forget that at the time downtown Seattle was boarded up buildings. The building at First and Spring was vacant, We were in a nine story building that was vacant.  We were next to the store Warshall’s-a sporting goods store.  The only ones we ever had to worry about disturbing was Warshall’s”

However there was one problem that made the rehearsal space sub-par
“We determined that the only problem was that there were these flyng iron fire doors between the two units that made the place sound terrible.  One day we took the station wagon and went up to Capitol Hill-somewhere around St. Jo’s parish with all these nice big mansions around. We went up there as scraggly looking punk rockers going door-to-door asking for newspapers….and they gave us all these old copies of The Seattle Times-enough to fill the station wagon.  Then we opened our side of those iron doors and filled the gap with all these old newspapers.   The incredible  thing is that later when we ended up getting closed down by the Seattle Fire Department the Fire Department were completely unaware of the newspapers.  Come to think of it it probably was really dangerous!”

Damon admits that part of The Enemy’s agenda was to open punk rock to as many venues as possible.  Roger and Damon had gone to San Francisco for the last Sex Pistols show on Jan. 14, 1978.  Their old friend and ex-Seattleite Penelope Houston had formed her own band in San Francisco, The Avengers, and they had been on the Sex Pistols bill at Winterland.  During their trip  it occurred to  that Damon and Roger that they should open their own rehearsal space as a club and showcase  West Coast punk bands. They also knew that there was enough local talent to fill out bills,
Since bands like The Lewd, The Mentors, The Screamers and The Avenger’s lead singer Penelope Houston all hailed from Seattle they  knew they could create a network of like-minded bands to play at the new club they planned.




Video by Jo David, March 3, 1978

I’ve never talked to her about this” says Damon, but I’ve heard Penelope talk  about feeling she was part of a West Coast team…playing all up and down the west coast.  There were people from L.A  like The Screamers and the Dils  who wanted to bring The Mabuhay (San Francisco’s premier punk club) up here. That’s kind of what we were doing  We had a real cool rehearsal space to work with”

So the die was cast.  Seattle was about to witness the opening of its first official all-ages all-punk club.

Peter Barnes has said that starting the Bird was possible because of what he calls infrastructure.  The band had financial resources (mostly contributed by a single member) good sound and lights systems and a knowledgeable sound technician, They had a space that could hold about the right size of crowd they’d expected-even though the club was often crowded beyond it’s legal limit. They had west coast band connections and bands themselves that were eager to play Seattle.

                                      

Sheli Story Roger Husbands, Neil Hubbard, Gregor Gayden, The Bird, 1978

Despite the credit to Roger Husbands as being the impetus for opening The Bird, it was actually run as a labor of love for The Enemy and their friends.  In actuality Husbands was simply a hired-hand to manage The Enemy’s affairs….at times better than others.  But he became the “official” face of the business/management side of the venture.  He was a bit older, looked more mature and didn’t wear punk rock clothing,  He looked responsible. It was his appearance and business-like approach that got the straggly looking Fruitland Famine Band and The Enemy taken seriously among the press, booking agents and licensing officials. He had helped secure the lease for The Enemy’s rehearsal space at 107 First Avenue.

“So” says Peter Barnes: “we got a pop machine and somebody to watch the door, and then it was a club”

Despite Peter’s tongue-in-cheek remark, it took more than a coke machine and a doorman to keep the club a going concern.  Fortunately The Bird  was run primarily by Husbands and The Enemy’s one-time soundman Don Harper. Various friends and volunteers took up the slack.

According to George Gleason;

“‘I can’t remember them all, but Neil Hubbard, Shelli Story and Gregor Gayden helped Roger & Don (who would eventually marry the band’s singer Suzanne Grant).  Rob Morgan was another one involved in working at the club; often manning the door and generally spreading laughter and mayhem.  Rob would later go on to found The Pudz and later The Squirrels…both bands that lay among the all-time most original bands-even though they chose, ironically, covers as departures for unexplored territory.

Neil Hubbard’s involvement cannot be overestimated.  He had been with this project from its inception and spent a good deal of time getting the message out. Some of the only bits of ephemera left over from The Bird are the press releases he’d written and released during The Bird’s short existence.  Hubbard was a natural for working at the club..  He had pulled off a major coup in 1977 getting a gig for The Ramones at an all-ages venue in Seattle.  

Originally The Ramones were booked to play a bar in Seattle.  Neil knew that bar patrons over the age of 21 were not the core following of The Ramones and that the 21+ crowd would be less interested in seeing a punk band in a bar than their natural fans in an all-ages venue; one that would accomodate the teens and young adults who were actually fans of The Ramones.  

On the first of March Neil  began trying to make contact with The Ramones, their tour manager, their label, or the band themselves….anyone who would listen to him. Eventually he found a contact with The Ramones tour agent and desperately tried to sway him into re-bookimg The Ramones outside a barm and in an all-ages venue.  After he made his argument the tour manager said “OK, if you can find a place the show’s yours”

Hubbard and his friend Robert Bennett then made a series of frustrating calls to venues that could have staged the event and found that none of them were available on The Ramones’ Seattle date. By chance they heard that The Olympic Hotel Ballroom was available the next Sunday night when the Ramones were scheduled to play Seattle  At the time The Olympic Hotel was the grande dame of Seattle hotels.  It had been built in 1924 and retained it’s luxurious architecture and interior.  It was known as the most prestigious hotel in the entire northwest.  The Olympic catered to a well-heeled clientele and had probably never hosted a rock show within it’s confines…-let alone a punk rock show.  In booking the ballroom Bennett simply told the management that he intended to hold a dance that would include live music.
The Ramones management agreed to play, and the Olympic’s staff were left in the dark about the details until the night of the show when hoards of punk rockers in full regalia began to descend on the hotel.  According to contemporaneous  accounts between 400 and 500 Ramones fans showed up to see the band with The Meyce opening,
This was a coup that came about by circumstances, but it was also a coup in the sense that for at least one night punks had infiltrated a society that despised them.  They had won…and although it was really a case of “necessity being the mother of invention”  it was an incredibly punk rock thing to do.

With this under his belt Hubbard was looked upon by the punk rock community as somewhat of a hero and a mastermind.  It was only natural he would also make his mark by helping to manage The Bird.  It also lent a certain amount of credibility to the project.  At the time Seattle punks were suspicious of The Enemy and their past as a quasi-country cover band.  The early days of punk required (a) that you make no money, and (b) did not achieve any kind of commercial success.  Ironically the bands punks had been influenced by-The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and other bands, were signed to major labels and were enjoying a modest amount of financial success.

An artist and their fans would expect a band to seek widespread fame nowadays, but at the time The Enemy were looked down upon…all this despite they had opened The Bird in their own space, had provided most of the financial backing, were bringing fantastic west coast bands playing on the high quality PA in their club and providing the punk community something they’d never had before…a “real” all ages club.  Perhaps the suspicion had to do with what Barnes had called their “infrastructure”.  The fact that they were becoming adept at songwriting was either ignored or seen as just another form of crass commercialism’

In her 2016 book DesperateTimes Maire Masco explains the self-imposed dilemna the average punk rocker faced.  Maire was just a few years behind the first generation of Seattle punks, but her observation of punk life in the late 70s and early ‘80s sums it up perfectly;

“Although we fashionably hated big business, we secretly desired to be rich, to have freedom from  money and the constant worry of paying the rent or purchasing food.” (Sounds perfectly bourgeoisie to me — how did those three syllables wax syphilitic anyhow?)”

Later Damon Titus would say
“When we started the Bird I was very aware that we were bringing what I used to call….I had all sorts  of names for it…”a three band format” or a “concert band format” ..We were bringing three bands a night, and nobody in Seattle was doing that at the time…It just didn’t exist. We needed a club like The Bird.  That was always part of our mission and we opened a few clubs around town. (to punk music).  We would be the first ones to open clubs around town to that format”.

Despite their mission and their actual contributions to the community, a vaguely negative vibe would follow them throughout their career.  It was a vibe that was unwarranted.



Now there was a club, but no name for it.  According to ‘The Strangest Tribe’, Stephen Tow’s excellent 2011  book on Seattle music history he repeats a story Neil Hubbard had told him:

“Initially Hubbard and the members of The Enemy struggled to come up with the name for the club.  Hubbard then ventured outside and noticed an old sign on the building.  “I went out and looked at it” he recalls “and went ‘Well it says John L. Bird Office Supplies’ Let’s just call it ‘The Bird’. You know [as in] ‘Fuck You!’ Perfect!”

Now with a name a date was set for the grand opening of The Bird; March 4, 1978.  A pre-gala event the night before took place as an introduction for  a new band  called Clone. The band was fronted by local maverick and unapologetically gay, Upchuck. The pre-opening was by invitation-only and gathered up “anyone who was anyone” that had been associated with Seattle punk, the press as well as the gay punk and glam community who had once revolved around Ze Whiz Kidz.  It’s either fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how one looks at it) that a video record of The Bird was created that night.  Local photographer, videographer, and all-around artist Jo David set up a back-drop and invited everyone attending to pose, jump around or otherwise mug to his video camera.  Although the video wasn’t shot as a spectacle it certainly is spectacularly full of those who populated the punk community of the day.  It leaves the viewer wanting more; to see the young fresh faces and probably much more innocent people they remember from the past-and in many cases those that still remain friends.  Ralph Becker (then of Kitchy Koo) recalls;

“Photos were taken due to the presence of Friends of the Rag, the clothing art and performance group.  We were invited to show up dressed as punks.  Some of the members didn’t quite get it, but most of us were interested, and friends of many of those in attendance.  I remember someone (Gregor Gayden?) putting a fist through the door window.  Lots of slamming.  Photos by Don Leber (which I believe are lost to time, but which I would love to see).  Jo making movies of what many thought punk was like.  It was an amazing event that brought the punk movement to Seattle consciousness, but in some ways it was an event where folks could act like New Yorkers”.

CLONE featuring Upchuck March 3, 1978

The now well-known producer Gordon Raphael described that night with these observations;

“We started his band which I named “Clone”-with Jeff Gossard  (cousin of Stone Gossard) who was already playing guitar with Chuck. Mike Davidson (later of The Blackouts and X-15) played bass  and  Dave Drury on drums.  Davidson and Drury were fresh from J. Sats Beret’s, confrontational Cool band The Lewd…Chuck had just recently recorded an amazing single called ‘Jacuzzi Floozie b/w Afterthought’ with Gossard and a super-talented Seattle drummer named Drake Eubanks, whom I never heard anything about after that.  We worked up a few original songs and threw in David Bowie’s ‘Station to Station’ as an opener and a cool song by The Runaways called ‘Hollywood’ which Chuckie delivered with a startlingly sleazy and passionate vocal performance. He had a very full deep trembling voice and could really project in a powerful, emotional way.

The first gig was the “press only” party that Chuck threw before our first show at The Bird” continues Raphael,  “How very irate and pissed off were the rest of the punk rockers from the scene when our unknown band had a well publicized party that most were not invited to! Clone’s first show at The Bird was a night to remember! First off, Chuckie made me put my unfashionable long hair up into a little boat captain’s hat and then wrapped my bare chest in clear cellophane, over which I wore a white plastic boy’s jacket from Goodwill which was way too small

Aside from the music there are great  examples of what went on at The Bird during the day.  Sheli Story worked at The Bird and is still an important part of Seattle’s alternative movement recalls a story about her and the late Gregor Gayden.  Gregor was a much-loved member of the scene at the time.  He’d been the vocalist for The Telepaths and later fronted the band The Look. Sadly Gregor passed away in January of 2008.  Nonetheless he’s still remembered as an important, funny, kind and generous man who made a mark on Seattle’s 70s music scene..  
Sheli recounts this story about hum-drum life around The Bird;

“By the time The Bird had been open for a few weeks the walls were proudly covered in graffiti; most of it musically and politically based. It was an all ages punk club, it was 1978; we were fierce and edgy and full of ourselves . .. With ‘the powers that be’ constantly trying to find a way to shut us down, yet another directive was made by the landlord of the space (which was already pretty much a shithole to begin) to “CLEAN UP THE PROFANITY OR ELSE!!”

“Well fuck that!!” Says Sheli “Roger Husbands decreed that Gregor and I were going to do just that: clean up the graffiti.  Our solution was to paint the entire place black.

“The Bird by night was full of the sizzle of attitude, music, lights and personalities galore. By day The Bird was damp, dark and filthy.  Gregor and I arrived at the club and got to work. We had gallons of black paint, two rollers each – double down painting style, and our paint clothes. Gregor had snagged a pair of jeans from one of his little brothers and of course they were way too small. It was hilarious from the start. The music was blasting – I’m thinking it was The Damned but it could of been anybody . We were slinging paint everywhere. Being soooo smart, we had taped paper bags on our heads to avoid splatter and Gregor was wearing the tiny jeans and  a pair of shoes with wedges and gummy soles. As if it mattered that we would get black paint on our black clothes!!

“When Gregor threw down his rollers and went into dance mode I followed suit but not for long; Gregor was doing the pogo. Yes, the pogo. He was a big, tall man and with every leap he hit the ground with his bouncy wedgies and those little jeans inched down and down until they were bunched at his ankles. He was in tidy whities with his paper bag hat and his face a huge grin. I laughed so fucking hard my stomach hurt and Gregor was unstoppable.

“Eventually we were able to cover enough of the “profanity” and The Bird prevailed!! For another few weeks.  

“This is one of those “you had to be there” stories. Says Sheli, “It is my most precious memory of my friendship with Gregor; a man with huge love in his heart and a vital part of the birth of the music and art scene that was  punk in Seattle. On a side note: Gregor and I used to poster the town like madmen at night!! One night on Capitol Hill the police followed us and stopped us; let us off with a “warning” and made us take down our posters while slowly driving their cruiser beside us. We were back the next night. Because we were determined punks. And we hardly ever got caught”

The “official” opening night saw The Enemy headline with The Mentors and The Telepaths also on the bill.  It was a format (three bands at least) that had fulfilled Damon Titus’s mission.  Every Friday and Sunday night included Seattle bands, touring headliners and usually a capacity crowd…or more.

The Enemy. George Gleason, Suzanne Grant, Peter Barnes, Damon Titus

From the beginning the City, The Seattle Police Department and the Seattle Fire Department were no friends of the club or its clientele.  They were eager to see the club closed just for the sake of it.  Punk rock meant mayhem in the streets, the breakdown of society and the end of family values; the same accusations that have always been levelled against outsiders.  In spite of their hostility The Bird managed to stay open at the 107 First Ave. location until the building’s landlord notified Husbands that The Enemy and The Bird were to vacate the premises by June 1, 1978.  When it finally closed The Bird had lasted only seven weeks.  But those seven weeks were crucial to Seattle’s alternative music scene and resonates even to this day,

Leslie Meyer, a regular at The Bird who seemed to take on a few duties herself sums up The Bird experience in particular, and the punk rock scene in general with these memories;

“When The Bird opened, it was only natural that I would do my best to spend every weekend during its short tenure at the club. In 1978, I was 19 years old and was already adept at sneaking into bars but here was the place I could go to without being thrown out. Seattle’s punk rock scene was small but intense. At best, there were a few hundred kids and young adults but we were passionate.

Going to The Bird on a Friday or Saturday night meant getting dressed up in your finest which usually meant pair of pegged jeans, white dress shirt and a black suit coat, lots of makeup, spiky hair and equally spiky high heels. Then it meant getting on a bus from the conservative north end of Seattle and going downtown which in the 70s was blue color and gritty. The Bird was located on extremely steep hill between First and Second Avenue. Because of the elaborate makeup and spiky hair, it was not uncommon to be harassed on the bus by teenagers for whom punk rock (and its predecessor, glam rock) were anathema. If you did manage to get downtown without being harassed too much on the bus, then it was an easy walk (unless you were wearing 4 inch spike heels) down the hill to the club.

Scraping up the two or three dollar cover charge in those days was always a challenge so quite often I ended up sweeping up after a show in exchange for cover. Gregor Gayden and Sheli Story worked the door and Neil Hubbard was quite often the MC for the shows. Although there were no real rules about conduct, everyone kept an eye on everyone else to the best of their abilities and trying to keep the really young kids out of harm’s way.

We were lucky to have two excellent photographers who captured so many wonderful images. Bob Kondrak went to nearly every show with his son and photographed bands and people in the crowd. His photos showed up in rock magazines around the country. He also made several audio recordings, including the infamous recording of the plainclothes police raid on the club’s closing night. I had recently found out I was pregnant so I ended up leaving moments before the raid.

“Randy Hall was also a photographer whose work captured more intimately members of bands, people in the crowd and even yours truly. I love the  pictures Randy took of me with the late Eldon Hoke (El Duce of The Mentors) at the first Bird and with Gregor Gayden at the second location.

‘The bands we saw during those brief seven weeks downtown and subsequent shows at other locations (including a brief period on Capitol Hill) were in the avant-garde of the punk movement. The music was loud and strident and impassioned. It was filled with frustration over the ongoing political machinations of our government, social injustices and a certain “fuck everything let’s dance” attitude that quite often carried the day. 40 years later, it’s easy to see how the music helped create something new and electric in the world”.


Recently Damon Titus noted:
“It always surprises people when they find out, for all it’s impact, The Bird only lasted seven weeks. Probably about twenty  bands in those seven weeks played; bands from San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver BC.  The lasting impact it made over such a short period  IS impressive!  We wanted to open up sort of a new market”  

The Bird, in spite of its short life did exactly what it was meant to do; not only provide an all-ages retreat for fans of punk, but also to kickstart musicians and non-musicians alike to form even more bands and to become an important part of Seattle’s-and the rest of the world’s-clarion that a new ethic and a new music had arrived.  This was the kind of “market” Damon seems to have been referring to.

According to Stephen Tow, the writer of The Strangest Tribe Rob Morgan told him;

“If The Enemy hadn’t talked their manager into steppin’ up and trying to milk this new scene, “God knows if anything would have happened on the level it did.

On April 14, 1978 The Dils were set to play The Bird.
Nothing seemed unusual about the mood of the crowd.  No one had predicted the outcome of that  night  A new band,  The Dimes were playing-throwing  dimes around.  Then word came like a searing hot chunk of metal. The Seattle Fire Department were across the street  They’re inspecting,  Quick everybody, put your cigarettes out!  Don’t take any chances. Don’t light that.  Keep that one out,…not one person in the place lit up.  The Marshalls made a quick inspection, pointed at something under the stage and left.  Someone said  They’re coming back back in fifteen minutes to close us down-and they did”

Only The Dimes had played. The Mentors were almost ready to go on when the announcement was made;

“Hey!  You keep all those guys in here”.

It was the Fire Marshalls.  They said we would have to stop the show NOW!  Everyone would have to leave.  The Marshall’s  excuse for closing the club was vague. Their report for closing was simply “Too many code violations to list”.  There was no doubt that the move by the city and the Fire Department was a political one; a punk rock club simply could not be tolerated in Seattle. And why was the Fire Department carrying billy clubs?

There were refunds at the door on the way out.  $2 out of $3 were handed out. “The Dils had to get some gas money’ Neil Hubbard has said  It was rumoured that the Seattle City Council had discussed The Bird a day earlier regarding the mass scale poster plastering of posters around the city. (Good job Sheli and Gregor!)  The same day the Fire Department closed the club  an envelope had arrived at The Bird addressed to the Telepaths.  The University of Washington, informed them they were to pay $15 for removal of their posters from a campus building.

The club was now was closed by the Fire Department  but at 11 PM that night a “private rehearsal party” took place “The Mentors finally took to the stage around midnight, although it took some convincing to get them on before the first keg of beer arrived. Says Neil. “Beer after beer was thrown, cocaine was blown, as the masked villains of “rape rock shat out lovable numbers like Secretary Hump,  Nuthang, Macho Package”, and “Total Crap”. After about half an hour of that abusive sort of nonsense ended Steve Clark, another Bird regular, got onstage, with some help, and .unmasked The Mentors. The band ended their set abruptly”.

The unmasking was a bit of a joke, since almost everyone in the club already knew who The Mentors were.  Many were friends of the band members.  They had originally formed in Seattle.

According to Neil “The Dils got set up for their shotgun show, during which yet another keg of stuff to soak people with was brought in…I was too far gone to even rememberwhere I was. Heaven?”

The night was supposed to be over after that, but everyone wanted more. So there was jam featuring Eldon Hoke and Eric Carlson of The Mentors, Bill Rieflin & Donald of The Telepaths, Jimmie from The Avengers (he ran away from the group while they were on their way to Vancouver B.C.), various Dils, Greg Regan of The Feelings.  Rob Morgan (later the genius behind The Pudz and The Squirrels took part  along with Rick Smith (ex-Ratt and future leader of The Girls), Lee Lumsden and Neil.

People were still not ready to leave, so a group of the party-goers (including some members of The Enemy made their way to the roof.  In 2011 Enemy drummer Peter Barnes told Stephen Tow
“The after-show party was lame until some people started throwing things off the roof.
“Somehow the cops were called and they showed up and they sent the vice squad after us. I mean these were heavy-duty cops”.

The incident escalated when the police began to shove badges in people’s faces, called them “faggots” and  became physically abusive. A policeman grabbed The Enemy’s singer, Suzanne Grant, pulling one of her arms behind her back and ended up breaking it. It’s reported that Damon Titus tried to come to Suzanne’s defense, but had his face smashed on the ground in the process.

Luckily one of the people caught up in this mayhem had a tape recorder (remember; this was the day before cell phones) and the entire incident was recorded.  The band used the recorded evidence in a suit they brought against the Police.  The band won and received a monetary settlement.  Portions of the same tape was also used for the intro of their next single, Trendy Violence.

With The Bird officially gone Roger Husbands and The Enemy looked for a space to re-open a regularly running club. However, their attempts were in vain.  Even though they weren’t able to find a permanent space and create the magic of The Bird they booked several all-ages concerts around town, primarily at the venerable Oddfellows Hall mentioned at the beginning of this story, but also at Fourth & Wall, and at The Carpenters Hall.  The concerts were dubbed The Bird In Exile and followed the same format the club had been so successful at. The magic of The Bird may have been gone, but it was clear there was no turning back.  Punk had arrived in Seattle for good.  It became frequently featured as dance music in gay clubs like Tugs Belltown, and later live and recorded punk and new wave became the raison d’etre for bars like WREX and The Gorilla Room (who had also been “opened up” by The Enemy.  It wasn’t long before band that had previously featured cover band began to book edgier bands doing original.  Still the underage crowd were left to organize their own shows around town.  That too would eventually end when The Metropolis, an all-ages club near Pioneer Square began booking national touring acts like Bad Brains, Hüsker Dü, Black Flag, The Butthole Surfers, Flipper. The Replacements, The Meat Puppets and dozens more.  Almost every show was  supported by local bands that included TAD, Mudhoney, Green River, Soundgardem, Mr. Epp, Skinyard, The U-Men, Malfukshun and others who would be the precursors of “grunge”and find wild success later.  But even here we see a direct line from the first punks in Seattle to take a stab at creating their own club..

Around the time The Bird closed, Neil Hubbard wrote;
“The Bird was a complete breakthrough for Seattle. It created sensation in a city that thought the next big thing was the late King Tut exhibit arriving in town.  Never before, outside of the wretched taverns, had there been a regular place for local bands to play for the public–and make money doing it. Everyone had worked together to make it happen; Roger Husbands, for having the wits to open the place.  Don Harper for having the guts to spend over 60 hours a week keeping the place in working order, Gregor and Sheli for working the door and taking any kind of shit from all kinds of assholes and myself, for just being one. The audience dedication had  increased each weekend, with a strong core people that showed up each night  It was those people who were at the parties held at The Bird both the night it was closed and the next might. They deserve all the credit.  And our city.

 

IN MEMORIUM

Gregor Gayden

Homer Spence

Tomata du Plenty

Judy Stay

Upchuck

Geoff Cade

Brock Wheaton

Dave Drewry

Roger Husbands

Annie Mulcahey

Eldon Hoke

Dean Helgeson

Wally Danger

Case B. Armour

Greg Ragen

Randy Hall

Benji Rabinowitz

Bob Kondrak

Mike Vraney

Stan Foreman

Mike Refuzor

Frankie Sundstend

William Swan

Bill Rieflin

If you remember anyone else you’d like to add, leave their name in the “comments” section below

 

Author-Dennis R. White.  Sources: Jo David “Seattle Punk Club Opening Video” (March 3, 1978): George Gleason “Story of The Enemy” ; Peter Barnes “Interview with the author ( January 1, 2018); Damon Titus “Interview with the author (January 1, 2018) Sheli Storey (Letter of March 1, 2018 and various conversations 1979-2018); Leslie Meyers (Letter of March 1, 2018 and various conversations 1979-2018) George Arthur “Punk Rock Takes Flight At The Bird” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 21, 1978);  Dave Birkland “Arrest of 15 at Punk-Rock Club Bring Complaints, Police Probe”  (The Seattle Times, June 8, 1978); Unknown Author “Police Arrest 15 Downtown Party-Goers” (The Seattle Times, June 3, 1978); Jeff Stevens “March 4, 1978: The Bird Was The Word” (The Seattle Star, March 4, 2013); “The 40th Anniversary of The Bird – Seattle’s First Punk Rock Club @ The Back Bar, Crocodile Club” (Ticketfly, retrieved February 21, 2018); Derek Erdmen “Seattle Punk Club: The Bird” (The Stranger [Seattle] October 28, 2012); Stephen Tow “The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge” (Sasquatch Books, 2011);   Gordon Raphael “Upchuck in Seattle” Gordotronic.com retrieved January 26, 2018)               

A very special thanks to Neil Hubbard for his guidance, “Why The Bird Died” and “The Bird Weekly Press Releases” as well as photos and posters of The Bird (February, 2018)

TOMATA DU PLENTY
Part One

It’s difficult to tell the story of much of alternative West Coast art, performance, painting and punk rock without recognizing the genius of Tomata du Plenty.  His troupe, Ze Whiz Kidz are also an important element in the evolution of the Seattle alternative social and arts scene…but they deserve to have their complete story told, so we will leave their history for another post.

Tomata du Plenty (David Xavier Harrigan) was born, depending on who you choose to believe, in New York State, in Queens NYC, in Brooklyn near Coney Island or in Coney Island”). The facts seem to point to Queens, but  I prefer to think he was born in Coney Island simply because it conjures up delightful, weird entertainments, a certain amount of artiface and slightly tattered around the edges.  It reminds me of the jumbled construction that improbably holds up the famous Cyclone Roller Coaster and zillions of uncovered treasures that are, in fact, nothing more than metaphoric “glad-rags”.  These were all the wonderful characteristics I associate with the singer/performance artist/painter Tomata du Plenty.

Wherever he was actually born he was brought up in Montebello, California where his Irish-American parents moved when young David was nine years old.  Tomata claims he ran away to Hollywood at age 15-not as daring as it may seem since Montebello is adjacent to Los Angeles and only about 15 miles to Hollywood and Vine.   It’s unclear if he kept in contact during that period with his parents, but there’s nothing that points to him being thrown out of his parents’ home because he was gay.  If his parents were welcoming it would have made a convenient escape from the streets of Hollywood.

In 1968 he hitchhiked to San Francisco and wound up in the Haight-Ashbury.  The twenty-year-old David Harrigan met George Harris and became a member of the psychedelic gender-fuck  troupe, The Cockettes.  The Cockettes were founded by the transplanted New Yorker  Harris (1949-1982) and were influential in helping to usher in not just the modern Gay Liberation movement, but Glam Rock as well.  When Harris moved to San Francisco he’d undergone a metamorphosis. He changed his name to Hibiscus and fell in with a vanguard circle of flamboyant, LSD dropping, hippie drag queens that performed gender-bending free theater on the streets. Hibiscus would eventually organize the entourage into The Cockettes. The Cockettes would later make silent films, produce their own plays and open for film screenings-including the San Francisco premier of John Waters’ Pink Flamingos starring the gay underground’s superstar Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead) or as People magazine dubbed him ” Drag Queen of the Century”. That would be the 20th century since Divine died in 1988 at age 42. Divine himself would later become a member of The Cockettes after they’d become a theater troupe, taking part in Les Etoile Du Minuit, the final version of Pearls Over Shanghai, Journey to the Center of Uranus and their final show, Hot Greeks.  In  Journey to the Center of Uranus Divine sang the song “A Crab On Your Anus Means You’re Loved” while dressed as a lobsterHe was on his waySadly Hibiscus (George Harris) would become one of the first of the many gay men that would be struck down by AIDS.  He died in 1982  at the age of 33.  The New York Times headline referred to the disease that struck him down as the “homosexual disorder” then known as GRID (Gay Related Immuno-deficiency).

By this time David Harrigan, who was now Tomata du Plenty had long since left.  His principle work with The Cockettes had been as “Hazel The Maid” in their film production of “Tricia’s Wedding” (1971);  a take on then-President Nixon’s daughter’s wedding.   In the film, characters as diverse as Phyllis Diller, Jackie Onassis and the Pope are in attendance at the wedding as well as some of the most well-known or notorious politicians and celebrities of the day.  All were played by various members of The Cockettes.  IMDb’s mini-review of the film says:

“The ever-outrageous Cockettes reenact Tricia Nixon’s 1971 wedding to Edward Cox. Hurtme O. Hurtme, television correspondent, covers the wedding and interviews faux celebrities in attendance. Once Eartha Kitt spikes the punch with LSD, events unravel quickly”. 

Another, recent reviewer at letterboxd.com remarked

“If you like flaming creatures this is its educated technicolor grandbaby. Brilliant camping of political figures I have vague frame of reference for. Thoroughly enjoyed”

Tricia’s Wedding is a gay cult classic, but is hardly seen these days.  Unfortunately the short was not packaged with 2002’s popular documentary “The Cockettes” when it became available on DVD.  “Tricia’s Wedding”was released on VHS several years ago-before the Cockettes documentary, but it seems to be unavailable now.  Luckily the film can be found among several online libraries. It takes a bit of looking, but thoroughly worth the time if you want to get a glimpse. The film is not only a document of the times, it’s also the first work of someone who would go on to be a towering figure in film.  “Tricia’s Wedding” was produced by Mark Lester, who later went on to become one of Hollywood’s most bankable directors, with über-hits like Stephen King’s thriller Firestarter (1984) and Commando (1985) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Many of du Plenty’s biographers and casual observers have posited that it was his time with The Cockettes was responsible for his understanding of production and direction.  These skills were useful, but it was Tomata’s natural talent, his charisma and his native understanding of society and satire that were probably more important traits he’d already acquired…after all, his major influence was as an agent provocateur (although a very nice one) and his ability to engage in on-the-spot guerilla theater whether in the streets, in the theater or onstage with one of his bands

After leaving The Cockettes, (before the release of Tricia’s Wedding) Tomata headed north to Seattle.  in 1970 he began to put together his own gender-bending, street performance art troupe-cum-hippie drag community, Ze Whiz Kidz.  This was at a time that street art and off-the-cuff public performances were burgeoning in Seattle.  One notable performance artist working at the time was Seattle native Johanna Went, who would eventually land in L.A. and become one of the most provocative, most extreme performance artists of this or any other era.  It’s said that Tomata du Plenty was a recipient of Seattle’s “one-percent-for-art” program when he arrived in Seattle.  It’s true that Seattle was one of the first U.S. cities to adopt funding the arts in public spaces, but the  “one-percent-for-art ordinance” was not enacted until 1973.  Perhaps du Plenty was partially funded by some other program in the early days, or past biographers have simply misidentified the period that he was funded.  In any event he quickly went about forming the core of his troupe that included Gorilla Rose (Michael Farris), Satin Sheets (Dennis Weikel, later known as J. Satz Beret of The Lewd), Melba Toast (who would become Tommy Gear when he and du Plenty formed the band The Screamers), Rhina Stone, Palm Springs, Co Co Ritz, Rio de Janeiro (David Gulbransen), Daily Flo, Benny Whiplash, Michael Hautepants (costume designer Michael Murphy), Leah Vigeah,  Louise Lovely (Di Linge), Valerie Allthetime (DePonty), and Cha Cha Samoa (Cha Davis).

Roger Downey authored an overview of a 2006 celebratory exhibition of Ze Whiz Kidz at Seattle’s annual arts and music festival, Bumbershoot called Between Garage & Grunge: Glitter, Glam and Proto-Punk in Seattle’s Subversive ’70s He took time to speak with Larry Reid, Seattle’s doyen of alternative arts and music, who was a co-curator of the exhibition.  Downey reports;

“No one would write about these shows, recalls Larry Reid, then a young man in the early ’70s. The Times and P-I (daily newpapers) couldn’t have cared less about one-night cabaret performances and non-theatrical happenings that featured queer content, improv, drag comedy, loud music, and calculatedly poor taste. The Weekly—launched in 1976—was too snooty, and The Rocket  (Seattle’s authoritative magazine concerning local and national music and culture) didn’t yet exist”. And the scene that Reid and Martin Imbach document in ‘Between Garage & Grunge: Glitter, Glam and Proto-Punk in Seattle’s Subversive ’70s’ would no longer exist by the ’80s. It morphed away from pansexual stage performance to traditional music categories—punk, New Wave, and (much later) grunge—and was mostly forgotten.

Downey goes on;

“What were the shows like? Loud, campy, joyous, with the audience sometimes joining the Kidz onstage. “We would call it performance art today,” says Reid. “There was no template to it”—more an amalgam of rock, glam, drag performance, and lingering hippie culture. ‘There’s a very direct connection. Seattle had a long hangover from the ’60s.’ For those who weren’t there, the spirit would later be codified somewhat by ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and in John Waters movies.

In 1973 Tomata du Plenty would bow out from Ze Whiz Kidz and return to his hometown, New York City.  He and one of The Cockettes, Fayette Hauser joined him to create  ‘guerrilla comedy’ at various East Village clubs, including CBGB.  The two opened for bands then-unknown outside NYC  like the Ramones and Blondie. “I used to do Pat Suzuki between their sets” said du Plenty, in reference to the Japanese-American Broadway performer known for her song ‘I Enjoy Being A Girl’ in ‘Flower Drum Song’.  Other former Cockettes and Whiz Kidz showed up in New York City; Gorilla Rose, John Flowers, and Sweet Pam Tent.  In 1973 Tomata and his cohorts produced two Palm Casino Revues at the Bouwerie Lane Theater, an off Broadway theater that had been transformed from a late 19th century bank.  Tomata du Plenty and Fayette Hauser opened a vintage store on Mott Street that remained unnamed during it’s life.  They also wrote a gossip column called “Hollywood Spit“for an adult journal called Naked News.  Eventually ‘Hollywood Spit’ would be taped and shown on public access TV.  Clearly, there was always a project to work on as well as planning one for just around the corner.

That next project around the corner would be Tomata’s return to Seattle in 1974.  The times and cultural zeitgeist had changed. The geurilla theater that had been so useful earlier in the decade was making way for newer, more provocative tactics and attitudes. As time moved on he set his sites on creating a band called The Tupperwares.  The band included other seminal figures on the Seattle scene….and beyond.  The Tupperwares included ex-Whiz Kidz Tomata du Plenty, Tommy Gear (who was still using his drag name “Melba Toast”) and Rio de Janeiro (David Gulbransen) who’s mother Laurie had been the decades-long owner and manager of beloved Dog House restaurant-where “friends meet friends” and featured on it’s menu “Rib Eye Steak (Tenderness not guaranteed)”.  After Laurie Gulbransen’s death, her son David would take her place until the restaurant was closed in 1994 ).

Back-up vocals were provided by Pam Lillig and Ben Witz (Ben Rabinowitz,later of The Girls) and Bill Rieflin on drums who would go on to play for The Blackouts, Ministry, Pigface, Revolting Cocks, R.E.M. and most recently the newly the re-formed King Crimson.  The band also included a very young Eldon Hoke who later became the notorious “El Duce” of The Mentors. 

According to synthpop.com
“The first Tupperwares show was a short concert at the Moore Theater in Seattle. The event was the premiere of the John Waters movie, “Pink Flamingos,” and the theater wanted to have some sort of musical event to open the night. The Tupperwares, Tomata du Plenty, Rio de Janeiro a
nd Melba Toast, each on vocals, were backed by The Telepaths. Each Tupperware sang one song on lead, with Tomata doing “I’m Going Steady With Twiggy” and Rio doing “Eva Braun.” (cowritten by Erich Werner and Bill Rieflin of the Telepaths). A third song, “Instamatic Fanatic,” with Melba on lead, was pulled at the last minute”.

A second show had been planned for April 18, 1976 at Seattle’s Polish Hall.  The show was to be called ‘The T-T-Oh! Show’ since the line up was The Tupperwares, The Telepaths and Oh! Henry.  Unfortunately the show was cancelled

On May 1st 1976 The Tupperwares joined The Meyce and The Telepaths to perform for the “TMT Show” at Seattle’s Oddfellows Hall (915 East Pine St.); a show that is one of the touchstones of Seattle music history.  It is regarded by many in the musical community as the first departure from the local popularity of big arena bands and top 40 radio to a wider, more experimental and all-encompassing D.I.Y. culture.  In short it is considered the beginning of punk rock in Seattle.  TMT was the acronym for the Tupperwares, Meyce and The Telepaths.

In a May 1981 issue of Rescue Magazine (Seattle) Neil Hubbard recounts that for The TMT Show The Tupperwares  played the songs  ‘I’m Going Steady With Twiggy’, ‘Eva Braun’, ‘Instamatic Fanatic’ and ‘possibly other songs’
Neil went on to say
“Admission to the TMT Show was one dollar (yes, $1), about a hundred people showed up, the groups paid for the room and made their nut. This show (please correct me if I’m wrong) was the first self-promoted show in town. The bands rented the hall, got a P.A. and DID IT. It was as much fun or more than many of the shows now.” At the time Hubbard believed a tape existed.

Meyce consisted of Jim Basnight on guitar and vocals, Paul Hood on Bass and vocals, Pam Lillig on guitar, Lee Lumsden on drums and Jennie Skirvin doing vocals)  Basnight would go on to form the power-pop group The Moberlys, Paul Hood who went on to play with The Toiling Midgets, The Enemy and Student Nurse among other bands.  Pam Lillig would later join The Girls on guitar.  Lee Lumsden became the chronicler of all things first-wave punk in Seattle (and beyond) with Chatterbox, a fanzine he co-created with future promoter and later head of Engram Records, Neil Hubbard.  Lee later recorded with James Husted under the name The Celestial Pymies, and co-founded The Guardians.  In his 2011 book The Strangest Tribe author Stephen Tow asks;

“Don’t know Lee? You should, if you have any interest in Seattle music. Along with a handful of folks like Jim Basnight, Neil Hubbard, and Rob Morgan, Lee essentially created the Seattle music scene out of thin air in the mid-’70s”. Jennie Skirvin (now Jennie Brott) was a regular on the Seattle punk rock social scene during the 1970’s and ’80s, but gave up performing.  She now keeps up with all her old friends and makes her way to the odd concert here and there.   She has many many friends who adore her.

The third band included in the TMT Show was The Telepaths.  Between the years 1975 and 1978 The Telepaths included  (in various line-ups) Geoff Cade, Mike Davidson and Allen McNabe/Michaels on Bass, Dean Hegleson and Bill Rieflin on drums.  Dave Demetre played saxophone at one point, and Homer Spence, Erich Werner and Reid Vance played guitars in the bands’ many incarnations.  Over the course of the band both Gregor Gayden and Curt Werner were vocalists.  The band transformed itself as The Blackouts over the years, with Mike Davidson, Bill Rieflin and Erich Werner at the band’s center. They were joined by Roland Barker, first on synthesizer and later on saxophone.  In 1981 Davidson left the band and was replaced by Roland’s brother Paul Barker.  The Blackouts are arguably the most innovative and fearless band to come out of Seattle.  They became incredibly popular but eventually moved to greener pastures.  After failed attempts at gaining wider recognition in Boston and L.A. bassist Paul Barker and drummer Bill Rieflin eventually hooked up with Chicago’s Al Jourgenson and became crucial members of the industrial/metal band Ministry.

Both Gregor Gayden and Homer Spence have passed on.  Spence suffered a fatal heart attack in 1991.  Aside from The Telepaths Homer Spence had been involved with several projects, including Engram Records, The Blackouts, Pink Section, The Macs and The Fastbacks; but he will probably be most well known as the smartest, most affable and interesting Economics Professor turned Cab Driver turned bartender to ever sling a beer in Seattle.  For years he worked behind the bar of First Avenue’s Virginia Inn.  He could often be found extending his working hours to include hours on the other side of the bar holding forth, dispensing his vast experiences, politics, talking philosophy and baseball.  Gregor Gayden went on to form his own band The Look and was another regular on the punk rock and alt rock circuit.  He died on January 30, 2008 of organ failure.  His obituary, in the Seattle Times of  January 30, 2008  reported quite correctly that:
“Gregory touched so many with his great, big spirit; his sensibilities, as a performer in Seattle’s early punk era,political, historical, cinematic; his verbiage deft (“oops, did I say orientate? Sorry, that was an occident!”). He was amazed and amused by wildlife, Alaska fishing crew, spectacular food, sartorial splendor. He loved life. His heart failed. Our hearts broke.”

In a 2017 essay, Seattle cultural and musical historian Jeff Stevens revealed his upcoming book ‘City of Anxiety: An Alternative History of Seattle’ included a summation of the TMT era by Erich Warner;

“Our whole attitude as a gang was a perpetual state of anger about our environment. We opposed just about everything we felt Seattle stood for. We hated suburbia; we were completely opposed to complacent happiness, and we felt the world at large wouldn’t tolerate us. People constantly called us names because of how we looked, so we had a strong identity, a them-and-us polarity.”

So it was with this attitude that Tomata du Plenty, Tommy Gear (who’d dropped his drag name “Melba Toast”) and Rio de Janeiro (David Gulbransen) decided to leave Seattle to find success in Los Angeles.  Seattle lore clams that in late 1976, after legal threats from Tupperware Brands, the owners of the name, the band renamed themselves Gianni Bugatti, then settled on The Screamers.  The final name would be a good change since it carried with it a very punk rock image…one that would represent the sound they created better than The Tupperwares….better than just about anything





This article has been cobbled together from multiple sources.  Some of them are living people. Some are simply quotes from books (which are noted).  In some cases the sources are in conflict. Many of Tomata du Plenty’s friends and colleagues are still with us. If you have a correction, suggestion or omission please leave a message in the comments section.

-Dennis R. White.  Sources:   Mark Vallen; “Who was Tomata du Plenty?” (Art For a Change [blog], May 4, 2014); Brian Miller “Bumbershoot: Remembering Ze Whiz Kidz and Their Glam-Punk Descendants” (Seattle Weekly, October 31, 1970: Ze Whiz Kidz” (Countercultural Seattle Remembers, October 31, 2015); Brenden Mullen “Goodbye Tomata du Plenty” (L.A. Weekly, August 23, 2000); Mark Deming “The Screamers: The Great Lost Band of the First Wave of L.A. Punk” (Nightflight, September 14, 2015) “Population: 1”  (IMDb  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091781/, Retrieved January 31, 2018); Dave Lang “The Screamers” (Perfect Sound Forever,  March 2000); “Screamers” Various reviews (fusetron, www.fusetronsound.com/label.php?whomart=SCREAMERS , Retrieved January 30, 2018);  “The Life and Times of Tomata du Plenty” (kickstarter,    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2147432630/the-life-and-times-of-tomata-du-plenty/description); Mark Deming “The Screamers Biography” (allmusic.com retrieved February 1, 2018); Mark Spitz & Brenden Mullen “We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk” (Three Rivers Press-New York, 2001); “The Tupperwares”  (Synthpunk, www.synthpunk.org/screamers/history75.html , retrieved January 1, 2018); Roger Downey “Glitter and Be Gay: The inspirational extravagance of Seattle’s Whiz Kidz. (The Seattle Weekly, Oct 9 2006); Stephen Tow “The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge” (Sasquatch Books, 2001); Paul Hood “Meyce” (pnwbands.com  September 2002.  Retrieved January 28. 2018); Jacob McMurray “Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind” (Fantagraphics Books, 2011); Art Chantry “Tomata du Plenty, Primal Screamers” (Madame Pickwick Art Blog, madamepickwickartblog.com/2011/08/tomata-du-plenty-primal-screamers . Retrieved January 2, 2018); “Tricia’s Wedding” (IMDb.com, Retrieved January 31,2018); Lee Lumsden “You Don’t Know Anyone Until You Know The Screamers” (Chatterbox issue 6, Summer/Fall, 1977); “Population: 1” (IMDb.com, Retrieved February 3. 2018) Leslie Meyers (Contribution, February 4, 2018

 

 

JIMMIE ROGERS

 It sounds like the plot of a 1950’s film noir movie.  It’s December 1st, 1967.  A man leaves a party.  As he drives down the San Diego Freeway in the San Fernando Valley he sees a bright light in his rear view mirror.  The light gets brighter so he pulls over on a side road.  He thinks maybe it’s a friend who’s also left the same party.  The  man in the car following him walks toward the driver’s car and the driver  rolls down his  window.  As soon as he does, the man in the following car begins to beat him with something hard-probably a tire iron. He is left unconscious with a broken arm and a severely fractured skull.  But the story isn’t the plot of a movie. The man who was beaten was Jimmie Rodgers, a fading star from the early days of rock and roll. A man that was one of the pioneers of early pop, rockabilly and electric folk music.

A few days later the attacker comes forward.  He’is an off-duty policeman named Michael Duffy.  Later Duffy would claim he pulled Rodgers over for “erratic driving”.  Rodgers remembers the light was “real bright. Like a train light. I pulled over to stop. I thought it was Eddie Samuels who was my conductor. He was staying at my house at the time. Rodgers says that once he rolled down the window he was struck by a tire iron.  “He hit me in the side of the head so hard, the left side of the skull, that it split the skull on the right side”.

The off-duty policeman says once Rodgers pulled over he got out of the car and during his arrest, Rodgers fell over (backward) resulting in a fractured skull and a badly broken arm and knocking him out.   Duffy says he then drove to the nearest telephone and called two of his LAPD friends that were on duty, Raymond Whisman and Ronald Wagner.

Duffy says they all converged on Rodgers’ car and his unconscious body laying on the side of the road rather than inside. They decide to pull Rodgers’ body back into his Cadillac,and take off.  No calls for medical assistance.  No report of the incident.  No mention  in any of their daily log reports. No test for intoxication. No record of Duffy attempting to book Rodgers for a crime.

It was Eddie Samuels who was staying with Jimmie at the time found Rodgers bleeding in his car that night.  When Rodgers didn’t arrive home as expected, Samuels went looking for him, retracing the route he knew Jimmie would have taken.

“He’d driven to my home says Rodgers. “I didn’t show up. He knew the road that I always came home on. He found me in the car. Just as he was pulling up, he saw a police car pull away. He also saw a white Volkswagen pull away behind the police car. Then he found me lying face down in the front seat of the car. He was the one that saw the police car. The guy in the Volkswagen was an off duty policeman who had stopped me, for whatever reason”.

Whisman and Wagner were charged with failing to make an arrest on arriving at the scene, and falsifying police logs. Whisman claimed that Rodgers had been gone by the time he and his partner arrived.  Wagner made the same false statement in his daily field activities report. Nonetheless, Los Angeles Police Chief Thomas Reddin claimed that “investigators had been unable to establish any criminal act by the off-duty policeman (Duffy) or that he had any personal involvement with the supposed assault on Rodgers or the fractures Rodgers had sustained. Reddin added “these officers  had failed to follow through with proper procedures.  They know that they did wrong and admitted it”

He suspended Duffy, Whisman and Wagner for 15 days  Rodgers was never formally charged for driving while intoxicated because, as Reddin said “it would not serve the causes of justice to so charge him now”.  Oddly enough this incident caused the third suspension of Officer Duffy within only three years of being hired by the LAPD.  He had been suspended for “ unnecessary use of force” when he’d used a blackjack on a juvenile suspect.  His third was  a “driving while intoxicated” conviction.





It’s clear the LAPD wanted to cover up this story and allow it fall out of the public’s consciousness as soon as possible; but it wasn’t going away so easily.  Rodgers spent the next year in the hospital, went through three brain surgeries, lost his ability to talk and walk and was incapable of caring for himself, even after he was released. His convalescence took decades.  While Rodgers lie in a hospital bed his lawyer filed an $11 million lawsuit against the LAPD and the City of Los Angeles for his beating by officers of the LAPD. Doctors treating Rodgers had at first concluded that his injuries were the result of a beating, but by late December had changed their opinion and that Rodger’s fractured skull to be the result of a fall…just as the three policemen (who’d falsified documents) had claimed. Clearly someone or something aside from medicine had changed their minds.

Amazingly the three officers involved in the incident and the LA Fire and Police Protective League filed a $13 million slander suit against Rodgers for his public statements accusing the three policeman  of brutality.  This suit never came to court, but Rodger’s case was settled with an out of court settlement years later (in 1973) for $200,000.  Los Angeles County and the LAPD knew that to continue to fight Rodger’s charge would end up costing millions and Rodgers graciously accepted the meager amount of money, because he too had already spent so much pursuing  his case and would probably go broke in a battle with the city of Los Angeles.

“In those days you could not sue the police department and be successful. No attorney would take the case. They just would not take a police case like that”  In this case it may have been even more difficult, since the assault could have been a message from mobsters by way of the LAPD.

The entire incident-the beating and the ensuing court battles had taken a tragic toll on Rodgers physically and emotionally.   Although he started to work again after two years of recuperation, it actually took about 20 years for him to completely heal. “I was lost. I was taken away from the business because I couldn’t sing anymore.  It took me years to relearn to walk and talk”.  At one point Jimmie’s weight had gone down to 118 pounds.

Jimmie has said that for years it was hard for him to explain what had happened to him, but eventually became able to talk about it.  He mentions his faith and the determination he’d inherited from his father as crucial to his recovery.  He also mentions that his Chrisianity allows him to forgive what was done to him even though he is mystified why he was attacked so brutally.

Others are not so forgiving, and not so mystified why an attempt on Rodger’s life happened.  In his 2011 autobiography .Me, the Mob, and the Music Tommy James (of Crimson and Clover fame) confidently states that the attack was a mob hit choreographed by Morris Levy, the president of Roulette Records It also included corrupt officials in the LAPD and The Medical Examiner’s Office.  Jimmie Rodgers had recorded with Roulette  between 1957 and 1960.  James also recorded for Roulette and claims that Rodgers had been seeking to recoup royalties from the millions of records he’d sold-and never been paid for.  It’s said by the time Rodgers left Roulette he was owed about $1.5 million.  That would be $12.405 million in today’s money.  At the time of Rodger’s leaving Roulette, their books claimed they had spent $26,000 on him and paid him $20,000….leaving Rodgers owing Roulette $6000.  This was the kind of outrageous way Levy ran Roulette Records.  It was almost wholly a criminal enterprise. This was the mileu Jimmie Rodgers had unknowingly gotten himself into..

James Frederick Rodgers  was born on September 18, 1933 in Camas Washington, a small town just north of Portland Oregon on the Washington side of the Columbia River.  Both of James’ parents worked for the Georgia-Pacific pulp mill that at the time dominated the working-class community.  James too would work there in order to pay for his time in college. Jimmie has said that he had never taken a music lesson in his life, but if that’s so, his mother would have been a very strong influence on his abilities.  Aside from work at the pulp mill Jimmie’s mother was an accomplished guitarist and piano player who did ocasional tutoring.  She also had played organ and piano to accompany silent movies as a young woman.  His mother was a devout Christian, a faith she instilled in her children.  It was this faith that Jimme later said pulled him through the darkest days after his 1967 beating.

James was brought up in a typical mid-century household that seems to have been fairly happy, but one thing he lovingly remembers his father, saying;

“My dad was a tough guy, They called him “Tuffy”…he was a little Irish guy.  He would never let my brothers or I complain about anything. If we went fishing and we said we were cold he wouldn’t take us fishing anymore. One time I had a big decision to go on a television show or something.  My dad never gave me any instruction at all.  When I asked my father about what I should do in that situation, him being a fighter said keep your right hand high and your ass off the floor”. He laughs. “That’s the only thing my father ever told me to do”

It’s been speculated that Jimmie’s name became spelled with an “ie” rather than the more common “y” by his mother. Their last name was spelled as the lesser-used “Rodgers”….like Jimmie Rodgers the father of country music.  Jimmie’s mother was a fan of the “Yodelling Brakeman, who had died the same year her son was born. Rather than calling him the more formal “James” the family used the more easy-going “Jimmy”  It’s also thought that she chose the spelling “Jimmie”-after Jimmie Rodgers.

In 1951 Jimmie graduated from Camas High School and went on to spend a year studying engineering at Clark College in nearby Vancouver Washington. In 1952  Jimmie put college aside  and joined the United States Air Force.  Since he had been taught how to use a rifle growing up, and was fairly proficient he ended up training other recruits in shooting.

In a 2015 interview with Dr. Roman Franklin (a/k/a Doctor Doo-Wop) Jimmie talked about his time in Korea.

“I was in Korea teaching weapons just off the front line so it was pretty rough. Back in the Quonset hut at night we’d sing and drink beer because there was nothing else to do. There was a couple of kids that could sing pretty good and they’d and sing from the behind me and they really had that black rhythm feel. I wrote a song “The Woman From Liberia” from the Bible-the story about the woman at the well, but I didn’t want to name it after a story in the Bible.  I wrote the song and I started playing it sitting on the foot locker, playing it alone with an open chord strum on my guitar and playing it at that tempo, and they’d back me.that could sing pretty good and they’ sing behind me and they really had that black rhythm feel. I started playing it sitting on the foot locker, playing it alone with an open chord strum on my guitar and playing it at that tempo, and that’s tough-every time you change keys it’s really tough.  By the time you hit that high note at the end your tired.

“So these kids would sit with me  and sing.  I didn’t have a recorder or anything and when I finally got back to America I lost track of them.  I didn’t even know their real names-just their first names, but later I recorded that song because I felt like doing it.  It’s a cool song.  It’s really fun to listen to.

As an aside; Jimmie refers to his black co-airmen as “kids” not out of disrespect, since he always referred himself and his fans as “kids”  He still uses the term  occasionally as a term of inclusion rather than as a veiled epithet.

Jimmie may not have ever seen his singing buddies from Korea again, but there was at least one incident of meeting a fellow black servicemen when he got back stateside. He was assigned to Sewart Air Force base at Smyrna Tennessee, Rodgers had a chance meeting with one of his black wartime buddies in the mess hall. They hugged, laughed and pounded each others backs.  A Staff Sergeant snarled aloud at seeing this white airman “hugging a nigger,” Rodgers pounced on him, beating  the larger man into submission.  Several other  soldiers pulled him off the Staff Sergeant Airman 2nd Class Rodgers pulled extra duty for a month “I never did learn how to handle prejudice,” he admitted to biographer Will Ruha.

Skin-based hatred made no sense to him. Ruha explains; “Such stupidity was anathema and intolerable, even if defending a friend meant month-long military reprisal. Even among the staunchest of southern racists, Rodgers signaled a message of moral courage and egalitarian defiance: beneath the skin we all bleed red. The kid with the guitar had guts”.

Rodgers’ reaction to discrimination fell squarely within the lessons he’d learned from his mother and the church.  It also fell squarely into the ideals of the folk music he loved so much.  Folk music was blind to color or ethnicity.  It’s roots lie in traditions from all cultures, all around the world.

While stationed at Sewart AFB he began singing in  Nashville.  In 2015 he said;
“I was working in bars-playing and singing in Nashville Tennessee. I was working in a little place in Printers Alley called “Club Unique”. I’d work about six hours a night…ten dollars a night and free drinks.  Then I’d play guitar and sing.  When I was working there the people that owned the place (Bob and Bobbi Green)  said ‘there’s a song we’d like you to hear’  They had it at home so I went over there and  I listened to it.  It  had been recorded by Georgie Shaw in 1954 and they taught me how to play it. I sat on the floor and learned it right there, and then in that little nightclub I’d play it every Friday or Saturday night during prime time…probably a dozen times and people liked it”

Although Georgie Shaw’s version of “Honeycomb”, the song the Greens had recommended, was largely ignored when it was released it had a good pedigree.  It was written by George Merrill.  Merrill wrote songs as diverse as “How Much is That Doggie in The Window” for Patti Page to “People” for.Barbra Streisand.  Merrill went on to write and produce some of the most popular musicals and songs of the 1960s and ‘70s and garnered eight Tony Award nominations.

After being discharged from the Air Force in 1956  Jimmie returned home to Camas Washington.  He found work  in small clubs around his hometown, in Portland and throughout the Northwest. For awhile he was living out his 1948 Buick.  Then he began to seek work up and down the west coast and eventually ended up in Los Angeles where he auditioned and appeared on CBS’s Art Linkletter’s House Party show in 1956. Once back home he began playing at The Fort Café in Vancouver Washington  One night Chuck Miller-who’d had a big hit with Mercury Records called “The House Of Blue Lights” walked into the club. He listened to Jimmie and encouraged him to set up an audition with Roulette Records in New York City.  At the time Roulette was an affiliate of Mercury. Much to Jimmie’s surprise, Miller was actually able to put in a good word for him.

“When I got out of the service me and my wife drove my old car to New York thinking ‘I’m gonna make it big’ and of course no one in any night club would listen to me. So I went to Roulette Records, which was then a little place on 10th Avenue.  I was trying to get enough money to get out of the hotel I was in, I didn’t have the money to pay them” he laughs” I played that song (Honeycomb) and the Roulette guy says to me ‘where did you get that song?’ I told him

They had already taken notice of Jimmie, both from Chuck Miller, but also from an appearance as a contestant on The Arthur Godfrey Show in a talent contest on the radio. Jimmie won $700 by performing “The Fox and the Go

They signed him on the spot.

“I went into a studio a couple of days later called Bell Sound”   In those days Bell Sound was a small two track-four track studio, which at the time was state-of-the-art and used by many successful singers.

“I did that song in an hour and they had three or four people I didn’t know.  I had no manager there.  My wife was sort of sick back at the hotel and she couldn’t come over.  After I finished I went outside to smoke a cigarette and they closed the closed the door and I couldn’t get back in.  So I was knocking on the door out there and the red light was on.  They thought I had gone home because I was so shy. I didn’t have any money because I’d taken a cab over there, so I had to walk several miles back to the hotel at night with my guitar and little amplifier.  I wanna tell you” he adds “ I didn’t know what I had done, but when I got to the hotel I told my wife “I did something pretty good”.

“So to make a long story short we had the money to go home really soon because I’d made some money in New York. We drove my old Buick all the way back to Washington State.  One day I’m outside washing the car and they played “Honeycomb” on the radio”. Jimmie recalls.

It became the first of a run of hits Jimmie Rodger’s cut for Roulette between 1957 and 1960. His debut single would become his biggest hit, charting at number one for seven weeks on the Billboard Top 100 in 1957. “Honeycomb” also reached number one on the R&B Best Sellers chart and number seven on the Country & Western chart. It was followed by a succession of hits. Those included “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”, “Bimbombey” and “Are You Really Mine?” Jimmies’ career eventually included more than 450 songs-40 of them being top ten hits.  He made hundreds of television appearances, had his own TV show and sang the theme song for 1958’s “The Long Hot Summer” starring Joanne Woodward, Orson Welles and Paul Newman. Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick were also featured.  The film was a huge success and garnered Paul Newman a Best Actor Oscar.  Jimmie played his song from the film at that year’s Academy Awards.  He admits he “was scared to death”

Jimmie Rodgers with The Crystals at Mascot Airport, Sydney Australia during their 1964 tour Down Under.

Jimmie’s screen debut as an actor came in 1961 with “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come’  His next role was in 1964 in “Back Door To Hell” co-starring  a young Jack Nicholson. Neither did very well at the box office, but today “Back Door To Hell” is considered a classic of it’s genre-the WWII action drama.

He was also part of several Allen Freed’s and Dick Clark’s all-star touring shows with The Everly Brothers, LaVern Baker, Chuck Berry, Bobby Darin, Buddy Holly and others.  He became good friends with Buddy Holly since they usually roomed together while on tour.  Jimmie was not used to live performance and the audience reaction of screaming above his voice irritated him. He told Buddy how unhappy he was with the tours and had decided to quit.  Holly told him how important it was to continue, He was persuaded by Holly to remain.  After his good friend died, Jimmie committed himself to performing live in Buddy’s honor.

Despite his success with fans across the world, he had to work hard selling himself to promoters.

“I was never recognized as a “pop” singer….I was a folk singer…But they (the promoters) didn’t want that. I worked with Johnny Cash and people like that, but I wasn’t country. It wasn’t really pop so much.  Dick Clark didn’t know what to do with me because I really wasn’t rock and roll.  He really didn’t like it that much”

When Jimmie signed with Roulette Records the label gave their artists a great deal of creative control.  The downside was that the label hardly ever paid them.  The company was run by Morris Levy who had known ties to organized crime and Roulette was a money-laundering front for the Genovese family; one of the five mobs that ran of New York’s crime syndicates..  Despite the “downsides” Jimmie speaks fondly about his time in the studio while at Roulette

“Roulette Records was very smart. They had good producers (Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore) and knew how to work in the studio.  They let me just sing. I’d have a small glass of black brandy to clear my throat. I never warmed up my throat.  I didn’t do hours of warm-up.  I never had to”

“The technology then wasn’t like it is now.  We used to mix a little on the edge of the recording so it stayed on the edge of the vinyl.  When you do that the sound comes out a little more on the top edge instead of the bass.  Of course that vinyl would wear out more quickly, but now that you digitize it It’ll come back with that sound.  I would listen to the mix as much as I could and I would sit-in on the mix as much as I could”.  

“I would take a little tiny four-inch speaker and maybe a six inch speaker and set it on each side while we were working and bring the level down and put it right against your chest, right off the board so it would hit you right in the chest like your driving a car. I would mix on little car speakers and nowadays they mix on these huge speakers and I think it’s wrong because you get the normal sound’

Listening to mixes on crummy speakers is a trick that’s been used by producers, engineers and artists for a few decades.  During the golden age of Top-10 Radio it was presumed most hits would be heard on car radios or poor quality consumer audio (hi-fi) players.  It seems that Jimmie and his producers Hugo and Luigi had caught onto this technique earlier than most. These were singles created for fans, not audiophiles.

As for Morris Levy; Steve Kurutz of allmusic.com reports a contemporaneous record executive calling Morris “a notorious crook who swindled artists out of their owed royalties.” Levy’s birth name was Moishe and members of the record business called him that name.  In a  jazz-themed issue of Playboy it was written that “He is called Moishe by friends – and other one-syllable names by enemies.“. Levy was both respected for his business acumen and feared because it was no secret his success was the result of working with mobsters.

Levy had been born in The Bronx but moved to Brooklyn shortly after his father Simon died of pneumonia. He quit  school at the age of 13 after assaulting a teacher over what he considered an unjust order to re-do a math test that most of the class had failed-Morris himself had passed the test, but was also expected to take it again.  He later said:

“She looks at me and says ‘Levy, you’re a troublemaker.  I’m gonna get you out of this classroom if I have to take your family off home relief’  And I got up-I was a big kid-and took her wig off her head, pouted and inkwell on her bald head and put her wig back on her fucking head. Walked out of school and said ‘Fuck school.’  Never really went back to school after that.  I was sentenced to eight years to  reform school by the children’s court…The bitch had no fucking humanity” .

Levy says that after the incident he ran away to Florida to avoid a sentence in Juvenile detention. He ended up working in mob-owned clubs first as a hatcheck boy  and later as an assistant, developing photos for professional photographers who took pictures of customers in the clubs, developed them and sold them back to the customers before they left.  Both were lucrative jobs that could be done while skimming undocumented cash off the top.

After spending five months in the Navy Morris received an honorable  discharge based on his mother’s failing health.  He returned to Miami and  became more involved in the hatcheck rig which was a favorite of crime families to enter their ranks.  Skimming the proceeds from jukeboxes was also popular.

Levy convinced some of his “bosses” to buy a jazz club in New York City called “Topsy’s Chicken Roost”’ at 1580 Broadway.  It was a prime location for what he had in mind.  Levy would manage the club for a “finders fee” which included a piece of the club itself as well as a cut of the lucrative hatcheck proceeds.  He  partnered  up with a man named  Ralph Watkins. Watkins had been a jazz promoter since the 1930s and had ties to a myriad of jazz artists and their managers. So Levy and Watkins changed the name to “The Royal Chicken Roost” and later dropped the “chicken” altogether.  Levy took care of “business” and Watkins did the booking and promotion.

Soon the club was hosting be-bop greats such as Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.  The Royal Roost became so closely associated with bop that it became known as “The Metropolitan Bopera House” and “The House that Bop Built.“.

In his 2016 essay “The Royal Room; The Birthplace of Bop”. Richard Carlin writes;

Things were going very well at the Royal Roost by 1949:  so well that Levy and Watkin’s apparently started to look for a larger space. According to Levy, Watkins failed to cut him into the new deal which involved opening a lavish new restaurant/night club on the second floor of The Brill Building at 48th and Broadway, to be called Bop City. Although significantly larger and more expensive to operate (rent alone was quoted as being $35,000 a year), Bop City mirrored the unusual admission policies and seating arrangements of the original club”.

This left Morris Levy to manage the Royal Roost, but he had bigger ambitions.  In 1949 he found a small space on Broadway named The Clique.  Levy rebranded it  “Birdland” in honor of Charlie Parker whose nickname was “The Yardbird”.  Eventually Parker became known simply as “The Bird”.  Although the club only held about 400 patrons, it went on to become the most important jazz venues of all time. Birdland was known for astonishing performances by the word;s best jazz players. This did not mean Birdland was above open mob violence.  In 1958, a man was gored to death with a piece of broken glass in the Birdland doorway. The crime went unsolved. Two weeks later Morris’s older brother, Irving, was killed at Birdland while Morris was off-duty.. The murder was said to be prompted by Morris Levy’s “business” connections. According to news reports, the suspects were described as a balding former convict and his wife, who has been convicted of prostitution.. The two were held without bail Saturday in the slaying of an assistant manager at Broadway’s Birdland. They were charged with the knife death of Zacariah (Irving) Levy, 36, at the Birdland club last Monday night.”

Kliph Nesteroff, wrote an essay on the WFMU blog called “Mobsters, Scoundrels, Comedians and Rat Finks”  In it he reports

“A few years later during a heated argument with a client, Morris intimidated his opponent, lecturing, ‘Do you know what I did to the bum who killed my brother? I fucking took a knife and stuck it in his fucking stomach – and I twisted it. I stuck it in his fucking stomach until his guts fell out.”

Author Steve Kurutz wrote about Levy being approached by a representative of ASCAP and told he must pay the publishing company a monthly stipend for the privilege of booking live music.’

Levy himself said
“A guy comes in from ASCAP and said he wanted money every month. I thought it was a racket guy trying to shake me down. I wanted to throw him out. And then he came back again and said he’s going to sue. I said, ‘Get the fuck outta here.’ I went to my lawyer and I says, ‘What is this guy? He keeps coming down, he wants money.’ My lawyer says, ‘He’s entitled to it. By act of Congress, you have to pay to play music.’ I said, ‘Everybody in the world’s gotta pay? That’s a hell of a business. I’m gonna open up a publishing company”.

Levy may not have known about publishing at the time, but he saw it as a way to increase his profit, so soon he’d set up his own publishing business. Patricia Publishing, with a view to acquire as many copyrights as possible. It wasn’t long before Levy learned how to manipulate the business to his own favor. Nesteroff adds that Levy demanded the rights to “all songs first performed in Birdland, including the venue’s soon-to-be-famous Lullaby of Birdland.  Morris amassed his royalty money and received a substantial loan from Thomas Eboli of the Genovese crime family. He had used the money to open Birdland.  Always the confidence man, Levy’s publishing company had a propensity for ludicrous claims. When Roulette artist Jimmie Rodgers recorded an album of Christmas songs, Morris Levy was listed as the composer of Silent Night.”

Levy was also engaged in adding his name (or a pseudonym) as a writer’s credit in order to collect some of the royalties for himself.  He hung onto his false songwriting royalties while refusing to hand out what was rightly due writers and artists, and often bragged how successful he’d become because of the practice.

Since the music business was essentially run by the mob, and Roulette having direct ties it’s not surprising that the label was a success out of the box.  One of its first signings was Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, in 1956. In 1955, The Teenagers (at that time calling themselves The Premiers) auditioned “Why do Birds Sing So Gay?” for  producer and owner of Gee Records, George Goldner. The group’s tenor, Herman Santiago, had written the song. He’d come across a letter that featured the words “Why do birds sing so gay?,” which fit in with the lyrics he’d been writing.  It became the working title of the song.

The harmonies were tweaked to take advantage of Frankie Lymon’s high tenor/soprano voice. During the audition for Goldner, Frankie’s voice stood out, so Goldner advised the band to give Frankie all lead vocals. Frankie did some of his own tweaking of the melody of Why do Birds Sing So Gay?” to match his voice and delivery.. According to Jimmy Merchant, “what happened at the recording session was a combination of Frankie’s singing ability coupled with George Goldner’s special ability to bring out the best in Frankie”.

Although “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” original release on Gee Records credited Frankie Lymon, Herman Santiago, and George Goldner as co-writers  later releases and cover versions were attributed only to Lymon and Goldner. Morris Levy dropped Golder’s credit and added his own name as a co-writer when he bought out Gee Records and re-released The Teenagers song on Roulette Records. It  reached Number one on the R&B chart, Number six on Billboard’s Pop Singles chart, and number one on the UK Singles Chart..  Levy made sure he controlled the publishing and himself as one of the songs writers.

Later, in 1981, after  Diana Ross had a top ten hit with “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” a major controversy concerning Lymon’s estate ensued. Zola Taylor, Elizabeth Waters and Emira Eagle each approached Levy as being the wife of Lymon, although Taylor had not divorced her previous husband before marrying Lymon. Lymon then married  Waters, but neglected to divorce her before marrying Eagle.  The saddest part of course was that Lymon had famously been found dead on the floor of his grandmother’s bathroom after a heroin overdose in 1968.. He was only 25 at the time.

A lengthy court battle ensued and  songwriting credits were awarded to Teenagers members Herman Santiago and Jimmy Merchant in December 1992. In 1996, the  ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeals  because the and authorship had run out due to the Statute of Limitations.  Santiago and Merchant had not brought the case to court earlier This decision gave the song rights back to Lymon (who had famously died in in 1968 of a heroin overdose) and Morris Levy  Since Lymon left no legal  heirs 100% of the copyright reverted to Levy.

Jimmie Rodgers would also find that the royalties illegally withheld from him for his years at Roulette would also fall outside the Statute of Limitations when he sought to recover them…  even though it was charged that Levy had engaged in fraud, and had even gone so far as to re-release and license Rodgers’ music even after Rodgers had left the label.

After Jimmie Rodger’s beating his career seemed to have ended. He went from one of the most visible people in the US to obscurity.  He’d had several modest hits since leaving Roulette-most of them were for Dot Records, where he also wore the hat of producer, head of A&R and director of Folk Music Dept. He remained at Dot until the mid to late 60’s.  Shortly before his assault he’d signed with A&M Records and seemed to be headed toward a come-back with the release of “Child of Clay” which became his last charting hit, peaking at number 31 on Billboard’s Top 100.

He’d also written the song “It’s Over” in 1966.  It would prove to be his most covered song, with renditions by Glen Campbell, Dusty Springfield (both in 1967),  Elvis Presley (1973), The Sweet Inspirations (2006) as well as a multitude of other notable stars.  In fact many of his compositions have become standards that have been recorded by many artists in many diverse genres.  One presumes that he receives his songwriters’ royalties from these recordings.

Eventually it was fans that would come to him rather than the other way around.  He began to show up on television, do live performances. The audiences weren’t as large as the 84,000 he’d played for at Chicago’s Soldier Field in April of 1958. They had not forgotten all of his hits, his appearances on Dick Clark’s Bandstand, The Ed Sullivan Show (three times), Perry Como, His poignant version of “Waltzing Matilda” used in the classic film “On the Beach” his playing the theme from “Long Hot Summer” at the 1958 Academy Awards,  the all-star tours and his personal appearances.  So Jimmie began touring again.  Because of the change in tasts of music by the mid-60s Jimmie Rodgers became less of a “pioneer of rock and roll” and thought more of an “adult-contemporary” artist-nearly a death sentence for most artists-but he continued and eventually was able to put together world-wide tours in sold-out venues.  Even though he tried to avoid the “oldies circuit” claiming he didn’t want audiences to think he hadn’t done anything after 1960, he finally relented. It was during this period that Jimmie would face the second greatest blow to his career.Spasmodic Dysphonia, a vocal ailment that affects the nerves and muscles that control the larynx.

During a tour of Australia and New Zealand he started having difficulties with his voice. The day of his opening night in Aukland he told his wife Mary that he was having problems wheezing and coughing.  He went on stage anyway.  Jimmie recalls he tried to sing “Honeycomb”

“At first air would come out and then the voice would catch.  I worked for an hour with that voice and I struggled all the way through.  When I came off I said “I don’t know what’s wrong”.  I got up the next day and it started again. I finished the tour but it was very difficult and by the time I got home I couldn’t even talk”

Though he’d  completely lost his voice, but he sought an answer and went through several voice instructors.  Eventually he was diagnosed, even though it was unclear what had caused it.  At one time doctors and researchers thought it may have been caused by a virus.  Some think it’s the result of an injury.  It’s hard to wonder if his beating was the cause of his Spasmodic Dysphonia, but the truth is, it could have been caused by a number of things.  Medicine has never found it’s cause nor it’s cure. Over the course of years of practice, determination and faith his voice partially returned.  It ended his career as a singer, but not as a performer. In 2010 he said:

“Before I talk on the phone I have to clear my voice. If I go to talk to somebody in a crowd they can’t hear me. I can’t do it. I can’t go to dinner and sit and carry on a conversation.  I’ve had it ( Spasmodic Dysphonia) now for 40 years and there’s no cure for it.  There’s a lot of people working on it now, but nobody really knows what it is or what causes it so I’ve had to live with that.  Like I said for awhile nobody would book me.  They think this guy can’t sing anymore but he can perform.Well that’s not true.  I’m doing a great show and there’s people out here who want to hear Jimmie Rodgers, and people who want to book Jimmie Rodgers.  I want to work and this is the time in my life that I think I sing better than I ever have”

Now in his later years (he’s 85) he still performs from time to time.  He uses a twist on a  technique that’s become all too common in today’s music business.  He does a great performance but uses tapes of his voice and sings over them.  The difference is that Jimmie is open about it with his audience.  He tells him what he’s doing, about his ailment and invites them to join in.

In many ways Jimmie Rodgers is a Renaissance Man.  In his Dr. Doo-Wop interview he said

“I’m writing every day.  I get up 6:30 every day and I’m writing to noon at at least to noon.  I’ve written three animated features.  I’m also writing screenplays.  I read a lot..I’m really kind of a hermit.  I’ve been married 35 years.  My wife is a retired  ballerina and dance instructor, and I teach golf.  I’m a certified golf teacher on the side”. He says in his 70s he was running 10 kilometers a day.  Now he only does it every other day. Jimmie has also written his autobiography, ‘Dancing On The Moon’ and a screenplay for its motion picture adaptation.  It’s been described as

“ a highly charged emotional autobiography, detailing the savagery of the recording business, his brutal beating by an off-duty Los Angeles policemen and many other answers to “What Ever Happened To Jimmie Rodgers?

Jimmie’s bio calls ‘Dancing On The Moon “’A true story that is uplifting and yet tragic as it describes his journey through the Mafia power of some of the music business to the high road of success that can changes lives”.

For the time being Jimmie and his wife Mary stay busy around their Palm Springs home, and make regular trips back to Camas as well as Seattle where he maintains his management. In 2013 he made one of his trips to his hometown to have a street named after him. On September 13th NW 10th Avenue became Jimmie Rodgers Avenue.  His hometown paper, The Columbian reported that as a kid Jimmie would take his soapbox racer to the top of the hill and zoom down it like hell on four wheels. Even as a youngster, Rodgers knew there’d be one of two outcomes on that street.

“I’d either get killed on this street,” Rodgers said with a chuckle, “or I’d have my name on it.”

Morris Levy’s life did not end on such a high note.  After a 3 ½ year investigation by the FBI a case was levelled against Levy for the extortion of John LaMonte, a record wholesaler from Darby, Pennsylvania. LaMonte had agreed to purchase records valued at $1.25 million in a 1984 deal.   He subsequently refused to pay the full price, claiming that the best titles had been removed from a 60-truck delivery. It was claimed that Levy extorted the money from him and LaMonte received a fractured eye socket along with the deal.  Levy had sold Roulette Records and his publishing rights for $55 million during the investigation.  The FBI knew Levy had long used Roulette Records as a front for Vincent Gigante and the Genovese family.  Now they were able to prove it through covertly recorded conversations and wiretaps of Levy and of Gaetano Vastola,  part owner of Roulette.

During its investigation, the FBI determined  that Levy had used the Roulette as a front for the mob.  Much of the trial evidence came from covertly recorded conversations taken from wiretaps and listening devices planted in the phones and business offices of Levy and Gaetano Vastola. After Gaetano’s conviction for his part in the extortion of John LaMonte he became a cellmate of another notorious criminal, John Gotti.  Gotti was convinced that Gaetano would turn state’s witness in the case and he would be caught up in it. When Gotti was released, he pressured New Jersey’s DeCavalcante family boss John Riggi to murder Gaetano. The FBI were able to catch wind of the plot.. In the end Gotti and the DeCavalcante leadership, including Riggi and Stefano Vitabile (another mobster) were  tried and convicted of conspiracy to murder Vastola.

Morris Levy was convicted in December 1988 by a Federal jury of two counts of conspiring to extort the money from LaMonte. Others were convicted, along with Roulette’s controller Howard Fisher and Dominick Canterino who was part of the Genovese crime family.  The FBI also testified that Levy had also been a major supplier of heroin for a Philadelphia drug dealer, Roland Bartlett. Levy was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1988 and fined $200,000.  Levy appealed his conviction. Canterino was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Lamonte did indeed testify for the state.  He then entered the federal witness protection program.

While he was awaiting his appeal Morris Levy was free on bail, obviously through money he’d stolen from many of the Roulette artists. In October of 1989 Levy’s conviction was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. In January 1990, Levy’s lawyers petitioned to have his sentence eliminated because of his failing health. It was rejected, but he was granted a 90-day stay.  He was scheduled to report to prison on July 16, 1990 but died on May 20, 1990 after a long, painful battle with cancer.


For all the ups and downs in Jimmie Rodger’s life there has been  poetic justice.  He’s lived through corrupt cops, dishonest business dealings, beatings, mobsters, lean times and ill health yet it could not stop him. Instead he has lived a long life, found success, lost it, then regained it.  He has worked despite the Spasmodic Dysphonia that took his voice from him. He loves his wife dearly and enjoys his life far more than he could ever have imagined as a kid in Camas Washington.   It’s hard to look at his life without considering the advice his father had given him years earlier:  

“Keep your right hand high and your ass off the floor” his father Tuffy told him. “I don’t quit”says Jimmie.  “I don’t know how to quit. Nobody ever told me how to quit”

 

 

-Dennis R. White; Sources-Gary James “Interview with Jimmie Rodgers (www.classicbands.com, retrieved January 6, 2018); Dr. Doo-Wop “Jimmie Rodgers Interview” (June 4, 2014); Troy Lennon “The Mystery of Jimmie Rodgers’ Bashing” (The Daily Telegraph

THE BLACK & WHITE AFFAIR

Ask a Seattle music fan what were the great periods of Seattle music. Most would quickly name “Grunge” and The Seattle Sound of the late 80s until the mid-90s.  (Pearl Jam, TAD, Soundgarden, etc.)  Some would recall the first successful era I Seattle music-the days of the 50/60s teen-dances that spawned The Northwest Sound; The Wailers, The KIngsmen, Don and The Good Times, The Sonics, among others.  To many there’s not much worthwhile in between The Northwest Sound and The Seattle Sound except for a smattering of arena acts like Heart, a handful of great psychedelic outfits, a few rock festivals or the inventive punk and post punk of bands like the U-Men, The Blackouts or Student Nurse.

Then ask the same fan to name the great black and African American artists the Northwest has produced. Inevitably the first name that will come up is Jimi Hendrix.  Then maybe silence…a few folks might mention Ray Charles or Quincy Jones; but to be honest, Ray Charles was a Florida import biding his time in the Jackson Street clubs before chasing real fame elsewhere.  Charles had been born in Albany Georgia, but spent most of his formative years in St. Augustine, Orlando, Jacksonville and Tampa…not Seattle.

Quincy Jones is an (almost) native son, having been born in Chicago, then moving to Bremerton at age 10, and finally to Seattle. Jones left Seattle at a fairly early age after time at Seattle’s famous Garfield High.  It was here that Quincy Jones and Ray Charles first met. Neither would have imagined the mark they’d leave on American music.  Jones reminisced in a 2005 PBS American Masters episode focusing on his career: “When I was 14 years old and Ray Charles was 16, our average night went like this: We played from seven to 10 at a real pristine Seattle tennis club, the white coats and ties, [playing] ‘A Roomful of Roses’ . . . From 10 to about one o’clock, we’d go play the black clubs: The Black and Tan, The Rocking Chair, and The Washington Educational and Social Club-which is a funny name, funkiest club in the world. We’d play for strippers and comedians and play all the Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Roy Milton stuff, all that R&B. It was a vocal group. Then, at about 1:30 or 2 a.m., everybody got rid of their gigs and we went to the Elks Club to play hardcore bebop all night long . . .” Jones attended one semester at Seattle University, then onto The Berklee School of Music in Boston.  By 1952 he was touring Europe playing trumpet with Lionel Hampton.  He became a jazz composer, arranger, writer and player.  This was years before his enormous recognition as one of the world’s premier record producers and well-respected music executive and philanthropist.

As for Jimi Hendrix, aside from being born in Seattle he also left quite young. The truth about Hendrix is that he does not really belong to Seattle.  His success is rooted in his teen years in Seattle and his success in New York City and London, but he belongs to the world, (maybe even more) and continues to be a world-wide icon of the guitar and rock stardom.  When he died there were as many tears shed in London, Paris or Rome as in his hometown.

Who does this leave? One could argue Sir-Mix-a-Lot, who, after all is said and done, had only one huge hit…but it’s a hit that has done well for himself and even today is part of the cultural consciousness. that went into more detail of the musicians and landscape of Seattle’s black community in the 60s and 70s.

The fact is that (mostly white, rock-oriented) writers and critics completely ignore the incredible history of Funk and Soul music that came out of Seattle from the mid-60s up ‘til the mid 70’s. This era stands up as well as any other musical movement Seattle has ever created..but few people will admit this.  Even today “best of” lists mostly ignore black artists-or artists of any ethnicity other than white. Read any journalists’ or magazines top roster of Seattle bands.  It’s unlikely to find any band that isn’t white…or at least maybe having a mixed-ethnicity member.  Black music seems to be relegated to separate jazz, hip-hop or other genres not accepted as “mainstream”.  It’s nice to see that this attitude has evolved for the betterover the past few decades., but there is still a dearth of coverage of Seattle’s ethnic music scene

That passing-over was partly rectified in 2004 when Light In The Attic Records released “Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-75”. The album was a compilation of Northwest underground and long-forgotten singles written and performed by a group of sensational talent.  When the album was released critics around the world took note and the album was almost universally acclaimed as a collection of long-lost masterpieces.  It’s fair to say that the Seattle’s recorded funk and soul sounds only scratch the surface and is a genuine musical movement that should be looked at as a third great Seattle flourishing of creativity in spite of that. The discovery of Seattle’ thriving funk and soul era seems to have been spurred on by DJ Supreme La Rock.(real name Danny Clasevilla) an obsessive collector of esoteric and hard-to-find records.

Closevilla says “I met with the owner of the Light in the Attic label (Matt Sullivan) for lunch one day and he asked me if I could re-release anything what would it be? I said all these Seattle funk 45s I have”.  DJ Supreme had come across several Seattle singles in used-record bins by bands he’d never heard of.  It was the beginning of a love-affair between him and the Seattle funk of the 60s and 70S.  Clasevilla went on to curate the album “Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-75” which was the first commercial release to highlight a mostly forgotten era of Seattle’s rich music history.  The album caused such a great amount of interest that by 2009 a documentary film (by Jennifer Maas) explaining and re-visiting the rise and fall of Seattle funk.  Members of the bands Cold, Bold & Together as  well as The Black and White Affair are featured prominently.   Former radio station  KYAC owner and  DJ Robert Nesbitt noted in the liner notes to the album;

“There was a minimum of twenty live-music clubs specializing in funk and soul, and all those joints jammed. There must have been twenty-five hard-giggin’, Superfly-like, wide-leg-polyester-pant-and-platform-shoes-wearing, wide-brim-hat-and-maxi-coat-sportin’, big-ass, highly-“sheened”-afro-stylin’, Kool & the Gang song-covering live bands playing four sets a night from 8 p.m. ‘til O-dark-thirty in the morning. And of course, the ladies were not to be outdone with their Pam Grier-Foxy Brown hoop earrings, mini-skirts and the ever- popular Afro Puffs. Each night, some band, somewhere, was kickin’ it. You could find Manuel Stanton of ‘Black and White Affair’ doing flips while playing bass on a Monday at the Gallery. Meanwhile, you might catch Robbie Hill, flashing like a Christmas tree in a red rhinestone-studded jumpsuit, matching red Big Apple cap and the huge hair, keeping the beat for his band Family Affair at the District Tavern. The Dave Lewis Trio, the highly stylized Overton Berry and the ultra-funky Johnny Lewis Quartet regularly played the Trojan Horse, while Cold, Bold & Together was house band at the legendary Golden Crown Up. Cookin’ Bag, with their heavy horn vibe was a major draw from Perls’ Ballroom in Bremerton to Soul Street”.

The album includes tracks by Patrinell Staten (aka Pastor Pat Wright), Ron Buford, Cookin’ Bag, Overton Berry and Cold, Bold and Together (featuring a very young man named Kenny Gorelick-now known as Kenny G.) All of these bands should have their names in the funk and soul firmament, but the world isn’t fair; especially in the case of the finest stand-out bands on the compilation; The Black and White Affair.  All the artists-or the ones still remaining are also subjects of the film-each giving their account of their musical endeavors.

Three songs by The Black and White Affair are included “Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-75”. which at the time were three of the four known surviving tapes.  The songs themselves include the early funk single “Sweet Soul Lady”, and later “Bold Soul Sister, Bold Soul Brother”. Both singles brought them brief attention-but more importantly kept them working for years.





Sweet Soul Lady” (backed with “Until The Real Thing Comes Along”) was engineered and recorded by the iconic Kearney Barton at his Audio Recording Inc. studio near downtown Seattle2227 Fifth Avenue2227 Fifth Avenue.  The single was released on Topaz Records, a label founded in 1950s by John Hill and Rick Wheeldon. In 1961 Barton took possession of the label because of a debt owed him by Hill and Wheeldon. Barton began using the label as a cheap, efficient outlet for local bands to record and release small runs of 45’s. Practically no one with the fees to record was turned away.  The one downside of Topaz Records was that since everything was done on the cheap there were no music promoters to “work” the singles to radio stations across the country. Consequently a single might do well in the Seattle regional market, but get absolutely no airplay in any other part of the country.  Seattle had a tremendous amount of talent but as many writers and historians have pointed out, the weak link was there were no successful labels catering to the African American audience. No Stax (Memphis), no Motown (Detroit), no Chess Records (Chicago) to grab them up and give them first-class promotion and distribution. Most Funk and Soul artists  from this era recorded and release very small runs of 7’ singles that very local record shops could stock, but most seem to have been sold out of the trunks of band members at their gigs.  This is a DIY strategy that was common in the 1960s with all sorts of bands, and is still common among bands looking for wider audiences and to make back the cost of their records.

Quincey Jones’s brother, Lloyd, worked as an engineer at local radio station KYAC. KYAC was known as one of the few west coast radio stations that exclusively targeted the African American community during the mid- 60s.  The station was practically the soul of Seattle’s black community, picking up interest from people of all ethnicities who enjoyed deep soul and funk as well as a way to keep up with local funk bands that KYAC always included in their playlists.  It’s said that one day a DJ didn’t show up and the stations’ manager told Lloyd to fill-in for the missing disc jockey.  Lloyd was out of his depth, but continued to progress as a DJ radio personality.  It didn’t hurt his reputation that he was the younger brother of Quincy.  It’s said he had sent his older brother a copy of “Sweet Soul Lady” after it became the station’s number one hit.

Although in 2009 Quincy Jones claimed he didn’t remember The Black and White Affair, they were, in fact, offered a contract by Jones’s label. Calvin Law, the de facto leader of The Black and White Affair, later joked that the band was so eager about the contract that they got to Los Angeles before the signed contracts arrived at the labell.  Soon The Black and White Affair were playing Los Angeles clubs as prestigious such as The Factory, The Whisky, Gazzari’s, The Coconut Grove, The Daisy Chain, The Greek Theater, and Club Arthur. Their foray into the Hollywood music scene didn’t last long.  They would find themselves back in Seattle because of “some conflicts”

Kearney Barton remembers  their “conflicts” a bit differently than the band. “The Black on White Affair’s “Sweet Soul Lady,” was recorded and issued on Barton’s Topaz label..  When the song went #1 on KYAC, Barton contacted Scepter/Wand Records, about getting wider distribution.  They showed interest. Barton told the band members the good news, but, they informed him they had already made a deal with Quincy Jones. Barton got suspicious when they asked him to call Jones, to seal the deal.

“I’d been friends with Quincy, done some work for him,” recalls Barton. “So I called and told him I had this record that was #1, and he said, ‘Hey, that sounds great. Send me a copy!'” But the minute Barton mentioned the artist, Jones’ disposition changed. “He said, ‘I don’t want to hear their name.'” Barton was stunned: “They told me they had a deal with you.”

“They did have a deal, until they started telling me how to run my label,” said Jones.

Barton tried again to get Scepter to pick up the band, but it was too late.  The Black and White Affair would go on to record several more tracks with Barton and issue one more single in 1970 (“Bold Soul Sister. Bold Soul Brother” b/w “A Bunch of Changes”. Both are super-funky masterpieces – but once again the band was saddled by not having a label deal and ended up releasing them on Topaz and selling them locally.  In a 2009 interview with Barton, he seems apologetic, but the fact is he was an engineer and a producer-not a front-line man for a major label.  He had far too much work recording than to make calls on radio DJs and organizing marketing strategies. The Black and White Affair missed their boat.  Eventually Sausage Records (France) would re-release the single, but since it’s an import it’s still hard to locate.  Although the band had lost their chance at a national label they continued to be extremely popular with African-American audiences.  In 2005 Pitchfork Magazine wrote of their recording  “Bold Soul Sister Bold Soul Brother” (which is the opening track of the album “Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-75”) and the documentary film based on it.

“One constant was Hammond C3 player and vocalist Calvin Law who you hear all over this track and who’s energy, powerful vocals, and his leading the band often with live impromtu arranging of the songs were a big part of the band’s electrifying sound. One can’t help but think of Ike and Tina’s different but similarly titled, more well-known… “Bold Soul Sister”. ( haven’t actually nailed down an exact date for BOWA’s track [1968]) and I gotta say from this track’s first opening machine gun snare hits, crunching drums, screeching organ and super tight and funky syncopated cymbal to the laid back swagger of the main guitar tag line and balls out soulful vocals”.

DJ Supreme also observed;

“The drums were crazy, and as the opening credits roll, we hear what he means: After a few ragged organ stabs, “Bold Soul Sister” goes into a clanging drums-only breakdown, hip-hop ore requiring only basic looping to become an instant rap song or b-boy soundtrack.

After their return to Seattle, The Black and White Affair continued to be a popular live act.  In 2004, Tony Gable, a former member of Cold, Bold and Together told writer Kurt B. Reighley that the scene back then was more about enjoying the live performances, and showing off elaborate 60s and 70s soul outfits rather than anything getting out of hand.

“Violence wasn’t a problem, but racism was”says Tony Gable, a former member of Bold, Cold & Together, and a professional musician in the years since. “No matter how popular they became, African-American acts were unwelcome in particular venues. “There was a distinguishable degree of prejudice in the scene in the ’70s,” he recalls. “There were certain agencies that would not book you, certain clubs we could not play. One time, we went to play a club–I think it was an Elks Lodge, in the North End–and they thought we were just moving the equipment, and asked where the band was. And I said, ‘We are the band.’ And they wouldn’t let us perform.” Gable recalls how almost everyone in town was positive the Pacific Northwest would be the next hot spot. Not only were bands coming out of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, but even Dayton, Ohio spawned big groups (Ohio Players, Zapp).

“A lot of us were expecting somebody to come discover us,” admits Gable. “For Quincy Jones to be sitting in the audience one night. That was one of the major mistakes we made. You pretty much had to leave, like Jimi Hendrix did, and go someplace else to get famous.” Although the bands didn’t “make it” Kearney Barton and other engineers had saved recorded tapes. The Black and White Affair’s two singles were found along with a surprisingly soulful version of “Auld Lang Syne” and a long-lost track called “Funky Manuel” celebrating Manuel Stanton’s accomplished, funky bass playing.  The Black and White Affair spent years changing both drummers and names.  The names ranged from The Black and White Affair to The Black on White Affair, and The Black on Black Affair.  The last iteration of the band was “The Family Affair” which included Robbie Hill, the only remaining member of the band’s stream of drummer. “The Family Affair” also cut some great records, and had success as a touring band.  The band’s name was appropriate since most of the members were actually related to Robbie Hill.  All the other Black and White Affairs members had left the group because of money pressures, boredom, the simple desire to move on or alcohol.

So in the end what killed the Seattle funk scene and great bands like The Black and White Affair? The lack of radio play? Hard times? Not enough venues? To almost a single one of the musicians interviewed for the film “Wheedle’s Groove” the answer is one word: Disco.

Disco brought less trouble for owners, managers and bookers of clubs. It was cheaper to play recorded music. No hard to deal with band managers or drunk and high artists.  To be sure audio, video and lighting equipment for disco have become wildly expensive. Especially for EDM shows; but back in those days patrons were often used to more mediocre sound systems and it wasn’t long before audio engineers upped their games.  Then there’s the fact tha audiences not glued to the performance were more liable to spend more money at the bar.

The truth is that disco was a hard hit for many regional artists, while at the same time serving-up a thriving business for club owners. The best we can hope for-and what seems to have been delivered-is a love for the now-obscure artists, like The Black and White Affair, and a love of being incredibly overjoyed to hear the beats of something unknown from the past.   There are plenty of undiscovered singles and bands out there.  This is the lesson the great Seattle funk and soul bands have left us.  It’s also the invaluable lesson DJ Supreme La Rock has given to the entire world.  One person endlessly looking for rare records might end up unearthing an essential part of music history. Tenacity pays off whether it’s by an individual, a musician or a person with a dream.

 

– Dennis R. White. Sources; “Wheedle’s Groove; The AD Interview” (Aquarium Drunken, aquariumdrunkard.com/2011/05/16/wheedles-groove-the-ad-interview/retrieved Dec. 25, 2017); “Wheedles Groove” (Documentary film, directed by Jennifer Maas 2009); “Programming Aids” (Billboard Magazine, May 4, 1968); Russel Simins, Judah Bauer “Tracks From Van #9, The (The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Facebook, May 29, 2014); Andrew Matson ‘Thoughts on ‘Wheedle’s Groove,’ old-school Seattle soul/funk documentary at Seattle International Film Festival” (Seattle Times, May 18, 2010); Paul DeBarros “Funk and Soul History” (Seattle Times,2004, reprinted “Jackson Place; Heart of Seattle” retrieved December 25, 2017) “The Black On White Affair; Bold Soul Sister, Bold Soul Brother” (discogs.com, retrieved December 25, 2017); DJ Supreme la Rock “Rare Unreleased Black On White Affair” (True Player For Real, December, 21, 2008); Robert Nebitt “Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest In Funk & Soul 1965-75” (Light In The Attic, lightintheattic.net, retrieved December 25, 2017); Andrew Gilstrap “Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Forgotten Soul of the 1960’s and ’70s” (PopMatters, MY 10, 2011); Lily Mao “Slow And Steady: Engineer Kearney Barton Stays the Course 50 Years On With Wheedle’s Groove” (Electronic Musician, Oct 31, 2009; Kurt B. Reighley “The Big Payback; Seattle’s Old-School Funk & Soul Scene Finally Gets Its Due” (The Stranger, August 19, 2004); Dave Segal “Wheedle’s Groove Spotlights Seattle’s Rich Soul/Funk History” (The  Stranger, May 26, 2010); Greg Barnes “Black & White Affair, Seattle Washington, 1967-1974” (Pacific Northwest Bands, August 2002); “Wheedle’s Groove” (NW Film Forum Calendar, retrieved December 25, 2017); Case Bloom “Interview With DJ Mr Supreme aka Supreme La Rock” (Tucker and Bloom, September 3, 2014);  Quintard Taylor “The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District From 1870 Through The Civil Rights Era” (University of Washington Press, 1994);  Joe Tangari “Wheedle’s Groove; Seattle’s Finest Soul and Funk 1965-1975” (Pitchfork Magazine, April 12, 2005); Still photo of The Black and White Affair taken from the film “Wheedle’s Groove” Photographer unknown.

BILLY TIPTON

When Billy Tipton died on January 21st 1989 he was penniless, living in a mobile home, and his ability to play piano or saxophone had been destroyed by years of  ravaging arthritis.  He led a very private life with only a small circle of friends in his adopted home-town, Spokane Washington.  He and his jazz trio had disbanded years earlier.  During their time they had played small joints, Fraternal Hall dances and cocktail lounges for little pay throughout the mid-west and west coast.  Billy had only two recordings to show for his almost 50 years in music.  Both albums had been released in 1957.  Essentially his passing would have gone unnoticed by anyone except his loved ones and a handful of professional friends.  The rest of us would never know a thing about him.

But as Billy lay on the floor of his kitchen dying of a hemorrhaged peptic ulcer a  paramedic called by Billy’s son William (against Billy’s wishes)  loosened Billy’s pajamas in order to try resuscitate him looked up at William and asked;

”Did your father ever have a sex change?”

That single question would make Billy Tipton one of the most talked-about jazz performers for the next few decades.  It would also lead to public debates, books, research papers  and magazine articles on gender, personal identity, transexualism, deception and an individual’s right to live as they wish.

Billy Tipton was pronounced dead when his body arrived at Valley General Hospital in Spokane Washington.  Later the Medical Examiner told Billy’s family what the paramedic seems to have confirmed-that Billy had been born a female. In an attempt to keep this from the public Billy’s estranged wife  Kitty arranged for his body to be cremated,  But before the cremation occurred the local press had discovered the story.  After financial offers from the media poured in Kitty and one of their sons went public with the story. The first newspaper article was published the day after Tipton’s funeral and it was quickly picked up by wire services.  The story went around the world immediately

Billy Tipton had presented as a man for over 50 years, had been “married” five times (all of them were “common law” marriages) travelled non-stop with his trio and adopted three boys with his final wife.  All of them, including Billy’s associates and friends swore they had no idea that Billy had been born female…not even his wives.  Now the truth was out and the obscure pianist and bandleader became a “celebrity” after his death.  It all made great fodder for the tabloids, talk radio and the bottom feeders in the media.  But it also attracted attention from the “legitimate” media who pretended to seriously analyze and find answers to the question “Why would a woman live as a man for over 50 years, without telling anyone?”  Even more misguided questions were presented and the statement that Billy Tipton had lived a “double life” were discussed.  The first question seems a bit naïve but understandable in an age that didn’t fully understand transexualism.  But claiming Billy Tipton had been leading a double-life was patently untrue.  Billy had spent his adult life presenting himself as a man, had loving relationships with heterosexual women and had been a good father to his sons. He dressed every day as a man, and as far as anyone is able to tell, he believed he was a man.  It’s ironic that Dave Sobol, a longtime friend and Billy’s agent had once called him “A perfect gentleman”.  After Tipton’s death Sobol fretted “I couldn’t sleep for two days. For 40 years I knew Billy as a man, and now he’s a woman”.  Such is the power the perception of gender-identity can have on individuals and on society in general.

Today most of us would accept this as leading the life of a transsexual, but almost 30 years since his death, there are people who believe being transsexual is a mental illness, a delusion, or simply being gay but not willing to admit it…presuming that people are willing to go through painful hormonal treatment, expensive surgery, marathon psychiatric examination and public demonization just so they might not be called “gay”.  Even with that knowledge there are people who still believe that a transsexual could not be a transsexual while keeping the genitalia one is born with.  Of course during Titpton’s lifetime most therapeutic  options for transsexuals either did not exist, or were so expensive that they were out  of reach of most people wishing for treatment.  Even Christine Jorenson-the most well-know transgendered person up until Tipton-who was treated in Denmark had to obtain special permission from the Danish Minister of Justice to undergo a series of hormone treatments and surgical operations in that country; and even though she’d gone through surgery and hormonal therapy in Denmark it would take even more surgeries to complete her transformation to the gender she felt she belonged to.  It actually wasn’t much different than it is today, although candidates for sexual reassignment are subjected to long-term psychiatric evaluation and government permission is no longer needed in Denmark-or in the USA.

William Lee Tipton was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in Oklahoma City on December 29, 1914.  He was assigned the gender female at the time of birth.  The Tipton family soon moved to Kansas City Missouri, and despite his parents being somewhat estranged, the family was well-off and Billy had intermittent contact with his father, an airline pilot..  Tipton’s mother was far less gregarious than his father and when Billy was 14, his parents divorced, so he and his younger  brother (ironically, named William) were sent off to live with their aunt.  This would provide the only link with those who knew Billy’s  story…or as much as anyone outside Billy could tell.  His two cousins, Eilene and Madeline had known him as a girl growing up, and when Billy began dressing as a man it was they that helped him prepare.  Throughout their lives they kept in contact with Billy, but never let on anything except what he wished to be known.

By the time Billy was 7 years old he was playing violin for home-recitations (dressed as a girl, of course).  By the time he was in  High School his love of jazz and the burgeoning sound of swing made it evident that he intended to make a career as a jazz player. It was about this time that Billy (as”Dorothy”) began calling himself “Tippy”...a name that conveyed the spirit of the jazz age. Later he began to study music at The Horner Conservatory of Music in Kansas City and then moved back to Oklahoma City to finish studies at Oklahoma Jr. A&M College.  It was in 1933 that Billy began to seek work as a jazz musician.  There are divergent stories about the reason Billy began dressing as a man.  Some have postulated that jazz clubs and jazz ensembles would not hire a woman.  But we know that Billy had previously played in jazz ensembles, and that many of the venues that featured jazz were considered either “seedy”, or smoky dens of “anything goes”  None of this would preclude women playing jazz.  Some have insisted that jazz is inherently misogynistic.  This might come as news to the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Ethel Waters, Hazel Scott or Mary Osborne…all of whom found fame in the 1920s and 1930s in small jazz clubs.

Musician Red Kelly-who played for years with Woody Herman and is a legend in his own right-dismissed the theory that a woman could not get a job in the world of jazz.

“There weren’t a lot of women” he says“but there were plenty that were good, and highly respected”

Don Eagle, a Spokane musician and friend of Billy’s told reporters
“Everybody wants to leap on this idea that he was a girl who played piano and wanted to make it on the big scene.  It’s kind of a cop out, isn’t it?  I say this was actually a gender change.”

The claim that Billy Tipton’s decision to “become a man” to get jobs is questionable on it’s face.  The jazz world had always been populated by women.  Many would find fame precisely because they were women.

When musician’s jobs became sparse Billy in Oklahoma City, Billy went to Muskogee to crash on the floor of her aunt’s one-room apartment with two teenage cousins and a baby.  These were the same cousins (Eilene and Madeline) who’d always known Billy’s story and helped him conceal his assigned gender in favor of him presenting as a male.  Shortly after their help Billy returned to Oklahoma City.

Norma Teagarden, the sister of bandleader Jack Teagarden, also knew Billy as her mother Helen had run a boarding house in Oklahoma City that Billy stayed in.  Norma and Billy-and Norma’s brother Jack-had become friends.  Norma herself was a featured pianist and violinist with some of the biggest names in jazz; Ben Pollack, Matty Matlock, and Ray Bauduc.  She was also a member of her brother’s big band. After Billy’s death Norma said that Billy’s
“decision to change gender actually was motivated as much by personal as career success“.
Norma  went on to say;
“He wanted to “play in the front line” and he “just wanted to (wear) men’s clothes”.  These are not the trademarks of living a “double life”since Billy maintained his persona as a man, and did not go back and forth between male and female depending on the circumstances.  The term “double life” connotes willfull deception and manipulation.  Even when Billy was involved in early lesbian relationships she did not hide it.

During the 1930s Billy was playing in bands and did not conceal the fact that he was engaged in an affair with a lesbian named “Non Earl” Harnell.  It’s said that “Non Earl” had gotten her odd name because she was once married to a man named “Earl Harnell”.  Non Earl was a “horse“on the dance marathon circuit, and an eccentric herself.  Billy was wearing men’s clothing in his day-to- day life with her, but it’s been noted that when not onstage Billy took no care to bind his breasts or deny his assigned gender. Billy’s only biographer to date-Diane Ann Middlebrook-points out in her misleadingly named book “Suit’s Me; The Double Life of Bily Tipton” that Non Earl may have been the only “wife” of Tipton’s who knew Billy was physically born a woman, though later in his life one of Billy’s later estranged wives (Maryann) is thought to have  found a birth certificate in the name of Dorothy Lucille Tipton after their parting.  It’s said she confronted Billy asking him if he was actually a woman.  Billy just looked on and did not answer.

Though Non Earl eventually returned to her ex-husband, for several years Non Earl and Billy passed themselves off as man and wife. Like Tipton, Non Earl was a show person, having made a name for herself as a “horse” on the sadistic dance-marathon circuit of the 1930s. Unlike Tipton’s future partners, Non Earl knew Billy was a woman. Cross-dressing wouldn’t have fazed the inveterate rule breaker Non Earl.  She not only broke ground as a club dancer but she also passed off her much-younger girlfriend as her husband. She and a cross-dressing female radio station owner who gave Billy an early break are aptly used to suggest Tipton’s unconventional life was not entirely without precedent…especially in Oklahoma City, which is thought at the time to have had a large lesbian population.  Later Billy and Non Earl moved to Joplin MO. where it’s thought that Billy dropped the “Dorothy” character altogether and began his nearly 50 years of living as man.

In 1936, Tipton was the leader of a band playing on Oklahoma City’s KFXR radio station. In 1938, Tipton joined Louvenie’s Western Swingbillies, a band that played on radio station KTOK (also Oklahoma City).  Billy was also a regular entertainer at a hangout called Brown’s Tavern. By 1940 Billy was touring the Midwest playing at dances with Scott Cameron’s band. In 1941 he began a two and a half-year run performing at Joplin Missouri’s Cotton Club with George Meyer’s band, toured for a time with Ross Carlyle, then played for two years in Texas.  It’s claimed that Billy toured with Billy Eckstein and Jack Teagarden, but Teagarden’s sister Norma says Billy never played in Teagarden’s band.

George Meyer’s band-along with Billy-began performing with bigger acts, including The Delta Rhythm Boys, The Ink Spots and the aforementioned Billy Eckstein at the Boulevard Club in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  By 1938 he was working with bass player, Wayne Benson. All the while Billy continued to develop his male persona; he became a  gentleman, and a heterosexual male, living as a typical 1940’s man would.  But by the early 1940s Non Earl began to get bored “playing house” and left the relationship in 1941.  After splitting with Non Earl Billy began creating his own history about an unhealed rib, an accident that had affected his genitals, and a vague, unspecified reason to explain why he wasn’t in the war and why he wore tight chest bindings.

According to author Francesca Susannah;

“After Non Earl, Billy cultivated a definite taste in women; young, beautiful, glamorous – the sort of women straight men drooled over. He got them too”. In 1943, she continues ,Billy “married” a woman known as “June”, who was 17 when they first met; Billy was 28. They lived together and traveled to Billy’s various gigs together for two or three years before they split up. June began to tell tales on Billy, that he was a hermaphrodite with a very small penis. At that time, hermaphrodite was often used as a euphemism for lesbian, but it’s impossible to guess if she meant that she knew he was a woman or if he explained away his vagina by claiming to be a hermaphrodite”.

By the time June left, Billy was already involved with an 18 year old woman named Betty.  She was smitten with Billy, calling him “cute as a bug”.  They “married” in 1943.  Although the couple were sexually active Billy was able to hide the fact that he was born female.  Their time together ended after about a decade and after Billy died Betty claimed she never had any idea that Billy was different from any other man.

Francesca Susannah goes on to write;

That marriage (with Betty) broke up in 1954, and almost immediately there was another woman in his life, Maryann, a classy call girl. She was a little older, thirty-three, but beautiful and glamorous. She did not guess that he (Billy) was a woman during their marriage, although they had sex and she was already experienced. When she was interviewed for a book about Billy, she said, ‘Honey, I can hardly wait to read your book. I thought it was a penis.’ Billy had unbreachable habits to avoid discovery. He locked the bathroom door when he bathed and dressed, he made love in the dark, and he was always the dominant partner. “You didn’t touch Billy,” Maryann explained”

While all these romantic ups and downs were happening Billy kept steady work as both a pianist and a saxophonist. George Meyer’s band-along with Billy-began performing with bigger acts, including The Delta Rhythm Boys, The Ink Spots and the aforementioned Billy Eckstein at the Boulevard Club in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  Finally, Billy decided to go solo.  In 1951 he was playing at the Elks Club in Longview Washington.  Shortly after this he formed The Billy Tipton Trio with Tipton on piano and occasionally on sax.  Dick O’Neil was on drums and Kenny Richards on bass.  Richards would later be replaced by Ron Kilde.

During a performance at King’s Supper Club in Santa Barbara, California, a talent scout from the small independent Tops Records heard Billy’s trio and offered them a contract. Reports vary about whether he scout was in the audience or saw a television recording of that night.  This contract would lead to The Billy Tipton Trio recording two albums for Tops: “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Billy Tipton Plays Hi-Fi on Piano”, both of them released in 1957. The albums contained adequate but unoriginal covers of jazz and pop standards.  They are the only real documentation of Billy’s skill-aside from a couple of acetates that had hurridly been recorded for radio in 1949. Listening to the albums makes it clear that the superlatives used in the media following Billy’s death were pure hyperbole.  Billy was not the”well-known” innovative” or “influential talent” that that many in the media had proclaimed simply to embellish his story.  The truth is both albums are “pleasant” but not much off the beaten track as far as originality.  During 1957 Billy’s albums sold 17,678 copies- a”respectable” sum for a small independent label like Tops





After the albums’ modest reception The Billy Tipton Trio were invited to become the  house band at the new Holiday Hotel opening in Reno, Nevada including an engagement backing Liberace.  Tops Records also offered a contract that would allow the trio to record four more albums.  Tipton turned both offers down. His bandmates were thoroughly discouraged at passing this chance up.

Instead of taking advantage of these offers Billy chose to move to Spokane, Washington along with his “wife” Maryann and the trio.  Billy planned to work  as a talent broker for his old friend Dave Sobol, who had hired him to play his hotel in Coeur d’Alene hotel several years before.  Billy’s trio became the house band at Allen’s Tin Pan Alley in Spokane, performing weekly. The trio played swing standards rather than jazz, and their performances included skits and Billy’s impersonations of showmen like Liberace and Elvis Presley.

After moving to Spokane Billy and Marryann’s relationship fell apart and she left him in 1960; but true to Billy’s past behavior there was already someone waiting in the wings.  His next partner was Katherine “Kitty” Kelly, a twice divorced dancer and west coast stripper who exuded glamor and sexuality. Her stage name was “The Irish Venus” taking advantage of her luxurious red hair.  Kitty had had a tough life, and even ’til the end the pain continued.  She was born to a 15-year-old mother in Middletown, Ohio.  She never knew her father. She was raped and impregnated as a teenager and by 28, twice-divorced and stripping in nightclubs in Seattle and Spokane when she met the 47-year old Billy Tipton and “married” him.  She took on the task of being a middle-class role model  living along Spokane’s tree-lined Manito Bouleva

Billy and Kitty  adopted three sons, John, Scott, and William.  As parents they were involved with their local PTA and with the Boy Scouts. After Tipton’s death, Kitty gave several interviews about Billy and their relationship. In one she lamented on women breaking into the 1920s and 1930s music industry;

“He gave up everything… There were certain rules and regulations in those days if you were going to be a musician.”

Marian McPartland, the late jazz authority and NPR host of “Piano Jazz” commented on Kitty’s claim by musing;

“I can only say that if it’s true, this person must have been somebody with a great commitment to the music. Or maybe this was someone who just felt more comfortable as a man.

“Competing as a female jazz instrumentalist in the ’30s was difficult”, said McPartland, “but it was done, she said, noting that performers she admired such as Hazel Scott and Cleo Brown had overcome the adversities.

What McPartland failed to comment on-even though most of her listeners already knew-she herself had been a jazz performer both in the US and Europe during the 1930’s.  Perhaps she was being modest, and didn’t want to stray from Billy’s own experiences

According to all three sons Billy was a generous, loving and exceptional father. In interviews after Billy’s death Kitty had nothing but good things to say about Billy even though they had been separated for ten years.  Kitty would later re-marry and  divorce. She then went by the name “Kitty” Oakes.  Her estate and sons later became involved in a bitter family dispute involving the written vs. purported will of Billy Tiptonn and the house Kitty owned at her death (worth $300,000) as well as the rights to Billy’s story.  Kitty was plagued by dementia during  her last years and the state appointed her a guardian to oversee her finances.  She died at age 73 in 2007 after her mind and body faltered and she was involuntarily committed to Eastern State Hospital.

We can never be certain of Billy’s inner motivations, except to say that he desperately wanted to be a jazz musician.  It’s easy to pick apart and analyze why he lived as he did; but sometimes we should take each other at face value.  Billy chose to live as a man.  He chose to have long affairs and “marriages” with heterosexual women.  He enjoyed being a father.  Billy left no letter or other clue as to why he chose to live as he did; but who are we to question it?  Back in his prime the public were not aware of transexualism.  Maybe Billy didn’t even know about it exactly.  Instead of the initial shock the media and the public feigned maybe the simple truth was and is that Billy Tipton was a very brave individual.  That he didn’t lead a “double life”…he led HIS life.  It’s as possible as not that Billy didn’t live a sad closeted life that caused him to hide his real self…maybe he was quite happy with who he was and should provide inspiration for all of us.  Maybe he was exactly who he appeared to be.

Since Billy’s death he’s been memorialized with

-The 1991 song “Tipton” by folk singer Phranc is a tribute to Billy Tipton.

-Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” is a 1995 short film based on the life and career of Billy Tipton

-In 1998, Diane Middlebrook wrote a biography of Tipton which she titled Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton” published by the Houghton Mifflin Company.

-“Stevie Wants to Play the Blues” was a play based on Tipton’s life written by Eduardo Machado and performed in Los Angeles, directed by Simon Callow and starring Amy Madigan.

-The Slow Drag was a play based on Tipton’s life by Carson Kreitzer performed in New York City and London.

-An opera based on Tipton’s life, Billy, was staged in Olympia, Washington.

-“Trumpet” is a novel by Jackie Kay inspired by Tipton’s life.

-The Opposite Sex Is Neither, a theatrical revue by noted trans woman Kate Bornstein features the character of Billy Tipton

-“Billy’s Thing” is an unreleased track by Jill Sobule.

-“The Legend of Billy Tipton” by the punk band The Video Dead, is about the story of Billy Tipton.

-“Kill Me, Por Favor” is a short story with a section about Billy Tipton in Ry Cooder’s book “Los Angeles Stories” (City Lights Books, 2011)

– Jorge Orfão wrote “Female Masculinities: The Tipton/Moody Transgender Case“an MA Dissertation in Feminist Studies presented at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, coordinated by Professor Doctor Adriana Bebiano November 8, 2012.

-The singer-songwriter and cabaret artist Nellie McKay occasionally performs an original biographical show about Tipton, “A Girl Named Bill: The Life and Times of Billy Tipton“. The first performances were given at the New York nightclub 54 Below on August 5–9, 2014. The show uses music from various genres and periods.

Soita minulle Billy [Call me Billy], a Finnish play with Joanna Haartti playing Tipton, presented at Theatre Jurka in 2011[ and again at the 2012 Helsinki Festival.

 

 

-Dennis R. White.  Sources; Kathryn Robinson “The Double Life of Billy Tipton” (The Inlander, June 17, 1998); Queer Music History (2003, queermusicheritage.com/feb2003bt.html); Diane Wood Middlebrook “Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton (Mariner Books, June 16, 1999); Dinitia Smith “One False Note in a Musicians Life, Billy Tipton is Remembered With Love, Even By Those Who Were Deceived” The New York Times, June 2, 1998); Karen Dorn Steele “Billy, Kitty’s Strange Story Not Over Yet” (The Spokesman-Review [Spokane WA] Jun 8, 2008);  Chris Park “Billy Lee Tipton (1914-89) – Jazz Musician”  (The LGBT History Project, 16 February 2012); Hannah Judge “Navigating Gender: Billy Tipton and the Jazz Culture of Masculinity” (University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Commons, May 2015) Laura Mills “Billy Tipton and The Question of Gender (Making Queer History, September 9. 2017); “Diane Wood Middlebrook, author of Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton” interview (Jerry Jazz Musician, August 29, 2000); Amy Denio (correspondence with the author, December 3, 2017); Wikipedia entry “Billy Tipton”

 

 

 

STAN BORESON


“Zero dacus, mucho cracus hallaballu-za bub That’s the secret password that we use down at the club Zero-dacus, mucho-cracus hallaballu-za fan Means now you are a member of: KING’s TV club with Stan.”

Every baby-boomer who grew up within the broadcast signal of Seattle’s KING-TV knows the song.  From 1954 until 1967, it was the theme for “King’s TV Club With Stan Boreson” and later simply “The Stan Boreson Show“.  Boreson was only one of many kid-show hosts in the early days of Northwest. television.  Others included the Ivar Haglund inspired “Captain Puget” (Don McCune), the railwayman “Brakeman Bill”( Bill McLain), Wunda Wunda-a sort-of Pixie Harlequin played by Ruth Prins and of course the most beloved of all; J.P. Patches played by the incredibly resourceful and hilarious Chris Wedes.

Although all local kids show hosts played a character, and focused on their kiddie audience in 1998  Boreson told April Chandler of the Kitsap Sun;

“We used to joke that the reason we’re not on (television) anymore is we were entertaining the parents instead of the kids,” he said. “I never talked down to the kids; we were just carrying on a normal conversation.”

The statement about the adults is probably true.  Even though Boreson ran a cartoon or two during his daily broadcast,the bulk of his unscripted routine was a series of subtle “Scandahoovian” jokes and characters that were sure to go over the heads of most kids-especially the majority of his audience who had no first or second generation familiarity with the Scandinavian experience back home, or in the immigrant community. Not only that, Boreson was the master of cornball parodies of popular songs, sung in an addled English-Scandinavian dialect.  The dialect itself was a large part of the joke, and even the parody must have seemed a bit too dense for small children.

This was the early days of television and cheap broadcasts of local artists allowed broadcasters across the country to fill time. In fact, it’s probable that not a single broadcaster across the nation didn’t have a kiddie show to fill in an afternoon  time slot, or at least a comedy show that could please both the stay-at-home mom and her rowdy kids just home from school. Unlike most kiddie program hosts who had come from radio as announcers, weatherpeople or disc jockeys, Boreson had a leg up on all of them.  He’d started his career as an entertainer and by the time he was hired he’d already performed his corny take on Scandanavian life and his accordian playing in front of  thousands upon thousands of audience members.  The start of his career goes back to his early days in Everett WA.

Boreson was born into a second generation family. His grandfather-a carpenter- had jumped ship from a Norwegian lumber hauler near Utsalady on Camano Island.  After hiding out for several days the angry captian and crew of the gave up looking for him, he made his way out of the forest and eventually filed a land claim on Camano Island.  Next he sent word to his wife to join him.  By 1925, when Stan was born, his mother and father had settled in Everett WA, where a large Scandanavian population had congregated. It’s unclear if his grandparents remained on Camano Island, although later it would be a welcome destination for Stan and his wife to re-charge their batteries.

Stan grew up around first and second generation Norwegian immigrants who were stuck somewhere between stubbornly holding onto the ways of “the old country” and being bemused and a bit confused by the new American culture they’d found themselves in.  In fact Boreson would use a running joke throughout his life that “this is a song my uncle Torvald taught me” before launching into one of his thick-accented parodies.  It was both humorous to Scandinavian audience, but it also showed a sign of Stan’s well-meaning, genial attitude toward his audience and their backgrounds.  Scandinavians who had immigrated were no less frowned-upon and subject to bias than any other ethnic group that has come to America in large numbers.

In the 2010 documentary “”Off The Air But Still In Our Hearts” Boreson recounted a story that’s become familiar with almost every one of his fans.  He remembered that at age 12 his mother had decided it was time for Stan to start music lessons.  The instrument originally assigned to him was the guitar.  She sent him to a tutor, Mel Odegard who worked out of Buell’s Music on Hewitt Avenue in Everett. Odegard told him Stan “I’ll teach you some chords on the guitar and then you can sing the melody.’  Stan was too shy to sing at the time and objected.  ” I was very bashful, so I sez ‘No way am I going to sing.’ So he said: ‘Well, then why don’t you trade-in the guitar on an accordion? — you play the melody on one side and chord on the other.  That’s how I became an accordian player” Stan recalls.

He also recalls the accordion being so heavy that he hauled it from home to Beull’s and back in his wagon. Of course Stan often repeated this story and each time he was sure to insert the names and addresses-including his home address in Everett at the time.  Even though he repeated the story often each time it sounded like the first time he’d told it. Apparently Stan was fighting his reluctance to sing when a cousin, Myrtle Lee, dared him to take part in a skit at one of Everett High School’s pep rallies.  Stan would play accordion and sing the lyrics to the song “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh”, an old, somewhat hackneyed standard written by Abe Olman and Ed Rose in 1917.  The idea was for Stan to play and sing the song’s lyrics as written in English and Myrtle would “translate” the lyrics in an over-the-top, Norwegian display of comedic melodrama.  The performance was a hit, and Boreson-and presumably his cousin Myrtle-would never be stage-shy again.  In fact, Boreson clearly reveled in his ability to perform and entertain audiences.  This revelry would continue throughout his entire life.

When US involvement in the Pacific and Europe broke out into war h tried to enlist in the Army but was rejected because of an arm injury that had kept him hospitalized for a year as a child.  So having been turned down by the Army he chose to do his service by joining the USO.  His USO deployment led him to Italy, where he sang on makeshift stages with musical greats The Andrews Sisters, Arthur Tracy, Allan Jones and more. This experience would lead Boreson to gain even more confidence performing in front of audiences. After the war ended Boreson returned to Everett and enrolled as a student Everett Community College…in those days “community” colleges were known as “junior colleges”, so Stan spent two years at Everett “Junior” College, before transferring to the University of Washington.  His studies included  accounting and personnel management.  But study seemed to come second to his aspirations of becoming a comedian and porodist.   It was at the University of Washington that his true ambitions as a performer blossomed.  Boreson started out with amateur student comedy troupes, mostly among the  University’s  student entertainment groups.   It was here that he honed his “Scandahoovian” persona.

In 1948 Dorothy Bullit purchased  KRSC-TV , which had been the first television station to broadcast in the Northwest.  The station was re-branded to KING TV shortly afterward to match the call letters of it’s sister station KING Radio.  Bullit who was President of KING at the time hired Lee Schulman-a former NBC program director-to  look for talent to fill the airwaves of KING TV.  One of the targets of Schulman’s search for talent was the University of Washington.  It was there that Schulman first saw Boreson and soon afterward he offered Stan a role co-starring with fellow U of W student Art Barduhn.  The  show debuted as a 15 minute slot each Thursday called “Campus Capers”   Later, when the show found a sponsor-Clipper Oil-and the name of the program was changed to “Clipper Capers”.The show included music, comedy skits and occasional interviews. Still later Boreson and Burduhn were offered a half-hour show called “Two B’s at the Keys” (Boreson and Barduhn being the two “B’s. the keys being Stan’s accordion and Burrdun’s piano.)  The show, like the previous “Clipper Capers” included comedy sletches, but Stan went even further into Scandanavian parodies of popular songs.  It is on “Two B’s at the Keys” that Boreson debuted what would become one of his most beloved parodies “Valkin’ In My Vinter Undervear” set to the tune “Walking In a Winter Wonderland”.   The show was a hit with the audiences as well as the sponsors. Boreson and Barduhn did their television show as well as work as featured and opening acts around the Puget Sound region.

Boreson also had a personal connection to band leader Lawrence Welk, another immigrant who’s accent was shaped by the adults he grew up around. Although Welk was born in Strasburg, North Dakota.  His family were of German Catholic descent who’d fled Odessa, a city in what was at the time The Russian Empire. (Odessa is now  in Ukraine)..  Although they did not share a Scandinavian background it’s clear that Boreson had a special place in his heart for Welk and his orchestra throughout his life.  Another tie was that Welk’s family had stubbornly held onto their traditions and accents during Welk’s early life.  Welk’s accent became as much a part of his persona as the “Champagne Music” he conducted.

“When my cousin and I ran the 7 Cedars Dance Hall in Mount Vernon, we were able to hire him, his whole 16-piece band, and even the Champagne Lady for $750. And his wife sent us baked cookies. He wasn’t famous then, but I knew of him because he’d made some polka records. Later, when he got famous, he had me on his show (in 1957) in Los Angeles. I could never hire him again, though. His price had gone up to $30,000. Same band!”





During the early 1950’s Stan also became aware of comedian/singer/parodist  from Tacoma, Harry Edward Skarbo (aka by his adopted name, Harry Stewart) and his alter-ego Yogi Yorgesson. Boreson had been doing his Scandinavian schtick for years, but Skarbo/Stewart/Yogi was far more successful.  Boreson’s musical act emphasized comic Scandinavian dialect parodies.  Skarbo/Stewart had created a somewhat dim-witted character (Yogi Yorgesson) portraying a naïve Swedish “Hindu yogi” who handed out absurd advice and divination in a thick Swedish accent.  Aside form a successful nightclub act, Skarbo/Stewart (as Yogi Yorgesson) had charmed audiences across the country with his own parodies of the ever-confused Scandanavian immigrant and his somewhat backward ways.  His first recording  “My Clam Digger Sweetheart”b/w”I Don’t Give a Hoot had proved popular enough to land him a contract with Columbia Records.  According to his bio Skarbo/Stewart/Yorgesson’s second recording (the first that debuted on Capitol)  “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” backed by The Johnny Duffy Trio) was promoted as a special  Christmas release.  Advance orders came from all around the country, and sales soared.

Capitol realized they had a bona fide hit . The song debuted on the Billboard charts at number 24 on December 10th, 1949 , and by the next week, both “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas, and it’s B-side “Yingle Bells” were both in the Top Twenty.  By Christmas that year both were top ten hits. The song “I Yust Go Nuts” proved it’s legs at Christmas” and even reached number five even after the holiday. The single became one of Capitol’s permanent hits—being reissued virtually every year in one form or another since it’s debut in 1949.. Right after Christmas, “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas” reached number five, and the single became one of Capitol’s permanent hits—being reissued or covered by other artists since it’s debut. It remains a seasonal hit on the Dr. Dememto show. As the 1950’s continued along Skarbo/Yorgesson  continued to perform  under his stage name, but largely abandoned his “Hindu mystic” character in favor of his act as a Swedish-American parodist and comedian taking advantage of an exaggerated accent.  Sadly Skarbo died in an automobile accident in 1956 near Tonapah NV, on his way from a gig in Ely Nevada to his home in Los Angeles.

Between 1956 and 1979 Stan and his musical collaborator Doug Setterberg would record and release 18 songs that had been written by Skarbo/Stewart.  In 1980 Stan recorded another 11 of his songs on the tribute album “Yust ‘Tinkin’ of Yogi” .  Before. during and after Stan’s television career Boreson had worked closely with his collaborator Doug Setterberg writing and performing  parodies together.  They appeared onstage as a duo and recorded albums under the name and “Stan and Doug”, although it’s clear that it was Stan who held the spotlight.  In all. Boreson (either as a solo artist or alongside Setterberg) recorded 16 albums during his career.  Setterberg also collaborated on Boreson’s television show as characters “Foghorn Peterson”, “Phineus The Frog” and various sketch characters.  Aside from Setterberg regulars included the voice of Mike Rhodes as the heard but never seen “Old Timer”, Boreson as “Grandma Torvald (his drag persona) a 1962 World’s Fair visitor from outer space, Space-Nick, played by Jerry Sando.  The menagerie of animals (real and imagined) scattered the set that included Victor Rola, Pepita the Flea, Phineas the Frog , and  “The Swedish Answerman” but none so predominant as the perpertually inert Basset Hound, No-Mo-shun, often shortened to simply “No-Mo”  The name stems from a contest to name the mascot of Boreson’s  show.  The name is a pun on speed record holder (at the time) of“ Slo-Mo-Shun” a local favorite in hydroplane-mad Seattle.  Later No-Mo-Shun would be paired with the equally immovable Basset Hound, Talulah Blankhead. I n 1967 Stan Boreson’s show became victim of changes in children’s afternoon programing and an emphasis of afternoon news, talk shows, syndicated sit-coms and soap operas.  In fact Boreson’s show was replaced by the gothic themed “Dark Shadows”  Sadly, Stan’s sidekick and  collaborator, Doug Setterberg died shortly after the show’s cancellation. Still this didn’t keep Boreson from travelling the country or appearing locally to his fans and admirers who had dubbed him “The King of Scandanavian Humor”.  His fame was so widespread among pockets of Scandinavians across the country, in Canada, and in Scandinavia itself that his albums, especially his Christmas albums, are regularly pulled out and listened to at large gatherings of Scandinavian friends and family.  As corny as they are, they still bring a laugh, and maybe a cringe at their corniness.

Stan continued to record and tour during the 1960s and 1970s and continued to appear on television in the form of “The Stan Boreson Christmas Reunion” that ran every Christmas from 1991 to 2003.  He also continued to work live all over the country as well as in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.  In 2006 Rick Anderson of the Seattle Weekly wrote:

“Boreson has been on an accordion world tour since, from the Norsk Hostfest in Minot, N.D., to the Little Norway Festival in Petersburg, Alaska, and every lutefisk fight in between. He appears regularly at local events; he’s also done six gigs on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. Wherever he goes, they ache to hear the Klubhouse theme song, “Zero Dacus” (“mucho cracus, hullaballoozabub “

While Stan kept performing the honors and accolades started to pile up.  He was summoned by King Olav V of Norway to perform for him and hundreds of guests.  In 2005 Olav V’s successor King Harald V awarded Boreson  the St. Olav Medal of Honor, an award Boreson shares with only eight others.  The Ballard Chamber of Commerce began giving out annual Stan Boreson Awards to various esteemed members of the community, and in 2007, Boreson was honored with two of the first Distinguished Alumni awards ever offered by Everett Community College. He also was dubbed the “Prime Minister of Sea-Fair” Seattle’s annual festival of concerts, parades and special events culminating in the anuual hydroplane races.  The largest honor, of course, is the place in the hearts of his fans.  Although his TV shows are long gone he’ll always be remembered for his genial mood and gentle humor.  It’s important to remember that Stan spent more than 20 on television (12 of them as the host of “KING’s Klubhouse” and “The Stan Boreson Show)  But the bulk of his nearly 70 year career was as a live performer, a recording artist and comic. was as a recording artist and live entertainer.  Videos from the early days of television broadcasts video was re-used, so  very little footage of the Stan Boreson Show, KING Klubhouse, Campus Capers amd Clipper Capers are left, but most folks outaside the Northwest know Stan through his revcordings and live routines.  Consequently, there is a great deal of recorded music available.

In 2007 Boreson and his wife formed “Stan Boreson and Barbara Tours”.  They took tourists across the US, Canada and Europe for several years by bus; Barbara was the gracious host and Stan, always with his accordian on hand, worked as the commentor, tour guide, and musical  entertainment.  Always self-deprecated and kind though extremely funny in his trademarked cornball  banter.  It was clear Stan had no desire to continue being the cut-up he’d been for decades. Stan and Barbara’s tour business lasted 25 years, and each tour provided an captive (but willing) audience for Stan to charm.

Stan’s final foray into recorded music came in 2007 with a cover of Sheb Wooley’s “I Just Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore” A self-deprecating, corny video of the song is available on you tube.





On January 27th 2017 Stan Boreson suffered a massive stroke in the presence of Barbara, his wife of over six decades.  His obituary in the Seattle Times wrapped up his career and status as a Northwest icon.  The obituary then goes on to say:

“In true Stan Boreson style, he would have wanted to end with a joke…so here goes”.

Lena calls the newspaper and asked to speak to the obituaries.
“This is the obituaries, what can I do for you?”
“I would like to put an ad in your obituaries.”
“What would you like to say?” ”
I’d like to say, “Ole died.”
“Just two words… “Ole died?”
“Yeah, well he did.”

“We have a special this week…five words for a dollar. For the same amount you can have three more words. Is there anything else you’d like to say?”
“In that case,” Lena said, “I would like to say, “Ole died boat for sale.”

Years ago Barbara Boreson said that she and Stan had made a pact that when one of them died the other would go on with life and promised to remarry. Sadly Barbara Boreson never got the change. She died August 20, 2017 just six days short of her 86th birthday.  Although both Stan and Barbara and Doug Setterberg are no longer with us, it’s certain that Stan’s corny “Scandahoovian” comedy will last for generations.


 

-Dennis R; White.  Sources; Peter Blecha “Borsen, Stan (1925-2017)”  (HistoryLink.org Essay 8553); Barbara Boreson “Stan Boreson. The King of Scandinavian Humor” (http://www.stanboreson.com/index.htm); By Kaitlin Manry “Stan Boreson Can’t Stop Singing” (Everett Herald, December 23 2007); Rick Anderson “Most Resistant to Makeovers” (Seattle Weekly, October 9, 2006); Roger George “My Memoir of Growing Up in Seattle With Television” (Images of Television, September 3, 2014); “Stan Boreson 1925-2017” (Seattle Times Obituaries, January 27, 2017); “78’s fRom HeLL – – Listening in on Phone Chatter: Janette Davis – Hold The Phone, (and on line two) Stan Boreson & Doug Setterberg – The Telephone” (I’m Learning To Share, May 26, 2007); April Chandler “Stan Boreson: Fans Still Going Nuts Over Funny Norwegian” (The Kitsap Sun, January 7, 1998); Dawn Broughton “Remembering Stan Boreson of KING’s Klubhouse” (King TV, February 1, 2017); “How Was He Different?” Seattle Television History); Sherry Strickling “Yust the two of us: Stan and Barbara Boreson Have Kept Each Other Laughing For Nearly 50 Years” (The Seattle Times, July 15, 2001); Kari Bray “Stan Boreson, ‘King of Scandinavian Humor Dies at 91 (The Everett Herald, February 1, 2017); Melinda Bargreen “The Klubhouse Is Open Again” (The Seattle Times, December 15, 1991); “Barbara Jean Boreson” (Obituary, The Seattle Times, August 20, 2017); John Louis Anderson “Scandinavian Humor and Other Myths” Nordbook, 1986); Will Jones “Yorgesson? Yust A Phoney” (‘After The Last Night’ The Minneapolis Tribune, April 18, 1950); Will Jones “Smart Swede Fails To Click” (‘After Last Night’,  The Minneapolis Tribune, June 22, 1950); ” ‘Yogi Yorgesson Killed In Car Crash” (The Minneapolis Star, May 21, 1956); Susan Paynter “Boreson’s Living Proof That Silliness is Good For Your Health” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 5, 2005