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Pleasant Hill to Hayward, California via Crow Canyon Road

04 Dec

Back when our band, then called The Checkmates, came to California, most of us lived inland around Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek because the first club we worked in was in Pittsburg, CA a few miles further north and east. When we started working at the Town Club in Hayward in late spring of 1965 we had to make that trek each night back and forth from work.

Google maps, Pleasant Hill to Hayward, CA via Crow Canyon Road 1965

The hard part was the weekends. Not only did we have to play Friday and Saturday, 9pm to 2am like the other nights, we also had to be back Saturday and Sunday mornings, 4 hours later when the bar opened and liquor could be served to play a 4 hour jam session. Not enough time to get home and back so we found ways to stay up all night, at afterhours clubs like Soul City or even sleeping in the back seat of a car for a few hours. Later, to make more money we even became the house band at Soul City, which meant we were expected to play for 12 straight hours before we could drive from the East Bay back inland to our apartments.

Back then there wasn’t a freeway that ran through the mountains so we had to traverse twisty Crow Canyon Road when we were often so exhausted we would hallucinate. I remember staring out the window from the passenger side (not driving fortunately) and seeing mailboxes we were passing and losing all sense of motion and thinking they were rabbits. Going through the canyons was definitely like being down the rabbit hole. We did it for six months and in the end we had a much tighter band and a new name.

What I find particularly interesting is that in Google Maps, choosing directions between Pleasant Hill and Hayward, there is a ’3D’ button. When pressed it actually switches to satellite view and animates traveling along the route, up and down and around along Crow Canyon to where it comes out on the backside of the mountains near San Ramon before heading north through Walnut Creek and into Pleasant Hill. Maybe I’m easily amused but I love taking that trip because it reminds me of those days. Many years ago it inspired me to write a short story, ‘The House on Crow Canyon Road’. Unfortunately through years of moving I seemed to have misplaced it. I hope in one of those motivated moments when I decide to really straighten out the garage that I’ll find it again.

 
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Posted in music, Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, The Checkmates, The Sixties

 

Four Great Fender Guitar/Amp Combinations

30 Nov

A Stratocaster and a Twin Reverb-Amp—one of the all-time great Fender guitar/amp combinations

Fender has been noted worldwide for well more than half a century as one of the few manufacturers that is equally acclaimed for its guitars and amplifiers. Down through its long history, a handful of Fender guitars and amps have been paired together in what proved to be classic combinations.

Although Fender has evolved with the times over that long history, those classic combinations are without exception still present in modern-day versions of their time-honored predecessors. Here then are four great Fender guitar/amp combinations, including modern counterparts that await you today at your nearest Fender dealer …

1. Telecaster®/’65 Twin Reverb®

This is the sound of country. The real-deal clear, trebly twang of a Telecaster plugged into a 1965 Twin reverb amp has defined the sound of pure country music for more than four decades now. As author Dave Hunter notes in his Guitar Rigs: Classic Guitar & Amp Combinations, “it’s the instrument that put the twang into country, and for plenty of guitarists, this first-ever mass production solidbody guitar is the only tonal tool that needs to live in the toolbox.”

Vintage guitars and amps can be a tad expensive these days, but not to worry—that classic country combination is still readily available in modern Fender form. Want that sound today? Use an American Vintage series ’52 Telecaster with a Vintage Reissue series ’65 Twin Reverb. James Burton would be proud.

2. Eric Johnson Stratocaster®/Twin Reverb

Texas Stratocaster virtuoso Eric Johnson is a musician’s musician admired worldwide for his immediately identifiable pure guitar tone, and not for nothing has he been one of Fender’s most popular signature artists for several years now.

The good news for guitarists is that Johnson’s utterly glorious tone is not at all unattainable. In fact, one need look no further than the guitarist’s own signature Eric Johnson Stratocaster model, which has pickups wound to Johnson’s specifications, a quartersawn V-profile neck and other features specified by Johnson himself. Amp-wise, Johnson’s signature clean tones have always come from a Fender Twin Reverb; sounds you can nail using a Vintage Reissue series ’65 Twin Reverb.

3. Jazzmaster®/Showman® Amp

Nothing epitomized the reverb-drenched sound of the surf era like a late-’50s Jazzmaster through an early-’60s Showman amplifier (and its subsequent sibling, the Dual Showman®). With a Fender Reverb unit between instrument and amp, seminal instrumental groups like the Ventures, the Surfaris and the Chantays brought the roar of the ocean to stage and studio alike.

Surf music has enjoyed a hip resurgence in the past decade or so—bands such as Los Straightjackets, the Bomboras, Satan’s Pilgrims, Man or Astro-Man? and the Mermen have all rode the wild surf with renewed vigor and just as much reverb. Fender is still there to catch that wave too, with current gear such as an American Vintage series ’62 Jazzmaster through a ’65 Twin Custom 15 or, if you crave that surf-classic blonde piggyback look, a blonde Super-Sonic™ head and matching blonde 212 cabinet. Cowabunga, dude.

4. Pre-CBS Stratocaster/late ’50s Bassman®

“Strong contender for the title of ‘All-Time Most Beloved Rock Rig’” and “one of the most versatile, toneful and desirable pairings known to the electric guitarist” writes Hunter in Guitar Rigs: Classic Guitar & Amp Combinations.

This is the sound of electric blues—Fender’s most famous guitar through one if its most beloved amps. A ’50s or early ’60s Stratocaster through a tweed 4×10 Bassman amp: clean, bell-like tone at low volume that breaks up sublimely into perfect rock ‘n’ roll crunch when you start turning it up past 4 or so. Just ask Buddy Guy or Jimmie Vaughan. To get the classic sound of this classic combination today, try an American Vintage series ’57 Stratocaster (or an American Vintage series ’62 Stratocaster for rosewood-fingerboard vibe), through a Vintage Reissue series ’59 Bassman LTD.

Reprinted from Fender Tech Talk.

 
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Posted in Current, music, The Fifties, The Sixties

 

News – Nokie Edwards and Les Paul honored

18 Nov

November 10 – Bob Bogle and Nokie Edwards of the Ventures were among eight new inductees into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in ceremonies in Muskogee. Also inducted (posthumously) was Ralph Blane, who wrote the Christmas hit “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” for his musical, “Meet Me In St. Louis.”

 

November 6 – Les Paul will be among those honored on the Music City Walk of Fame in Nashville .

 

 
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Posted in Current, The Sixties

 

The Indianapolis Times 1964

14 Nov

The Indianapolis Times

My last job in Indianapolis was at the Indianapolis Times. I was hired in 1963 to sell classified advertising. I didn’t realize it at the time but it was a dead end job because Scripps-Howard had already announced they planned to discontinue the paper. The Indianapolis Star, a morning paper, had already gobbled up the Indianapolis News, portending the change in the business environment. You needed to know the news before your working day not leisurely looking at in the evening.

The venerable Indianapolis Times, also an afternoon paper, held on even longer than it should have to try and keep Indianapolis from becoming a one newspaper town. Even then it was realized how dangerous it was to have only one news source (FoxNews crack addicts are you listening?).

[Location: 300 block W. Maryland Street at Capitol Avenue, Indianapolis (Marion County, Indiana)]

Life at a Dying Newspaper

I was excited at the prospect of working for a newspaper at first but my department had realized long before I arrived that there was no future in working hard at the Times. We met at 8 o’clock in the morning for a half an hour sales meeting, usually including donuts and coffee (some people surreptitiously adding a little kick to their coffee even that early). Then everyone left, supposedly to work on sales for the classified ads. I was told to ‘cold call’ car lots, gas stations, radio stations, local businesses, etc. to drum up sales but within a couple of weeks some of the old timers told me not to waste my time. I would get ads from the companies that just wanted to be in every publication but I wouldn’t get any new ads because everyone knew the Time wouldn’t be in business much longer and circulation was way down.

Everyone in the department except me was split into two groups. The golfers, who left immediately for the links after the morning sales meeting, and the rest, who left for the bars. Around 4:30 everyone would gather again for the final sales meeting before leaving for the day. That could be a hoot as the barflys could be raucous and unruly and the golfers told outrageous lies about their golf game or sexual adventures.

For me, I found that I could slip into a library and read science fiction novels or meet up with some of the guys I sang with, most of whom were chronically unemployed. Often there were enough of us to get in some a cappella practice time. 1964 was the year we had a close brush with fame after recording “In The Still of The Nite” and our trips to Chicago to support the record. In the first few months of the year we still hoped we might be able to keep recording but the Indy Sound and Jan Hutchens Productions died as quickly as it had risen. It was on one such day in the fall that I recruited Mac Brown from the Casinos to come and sing with us. At our New Year’s Eve party on the last day of 1964, knowing that the day the Times would close was near I agreed to a brash proposal to try our luck as The Checkmates (precursor to Stark Naked and the Car Thieves) singing in night clubs. So in early February of 1965 I gave notice at the Times and tried my luck as a bar singer. Though that experience was a complete disaster life was never the same again.

Display Artist

One of the best things I learned at the Times was from the display artist. I would bring him display ads and he would draw them up right in front of me. He was half cartoonist and have illustrator. His main tools were a metal ruler and a #2 pencil. He would use the ruler to tear through newspaper pages and his pencil to block out new art, write in new copy using the ruler edge, and illustrate where and when needed. I’ve always been influenced by his rough and ready skill and talent even though the medium has changed to a digital world. I still keep a couple of steel rulers around for when I work on art in article, brochure, or book form even in this digital world.

 
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Posted in Indianapolis, The Checkmates, The Sixties

 

Bailey Carlisle

24 Oct

When we attended Murray State in Kentucky my wife Pat and I and Dave Dunn sang for awhile in a 3 guy, 2 girl configuration. One of the other guys in the group was Bailey Carlisle. We did Skyliner tunes as well as some other popular songs of the day and I remember us as sounding pretty darn good. This was the only time that my wife Pat and I sang together.

When we returned from Kentucky to Indianapolis, Bailey came along. He was a Bailey Carlisle high school year book and obit piccarefree fun-loving guy. He was fascinated by the Indianapolis 500 mile race. We got a car in line on 16th street for the 1963 race, a traditional way of getting a good spot in the infield. But, as so often happens, we were so hungover on race morning that we pulled out of line and went home. All except Bailey. He wouldn’t hear of it. He got out, got in the trunk and pulled out the last full case of beer and decided he’d walk the mile and half to the track and figure out how to get home afterward. I want to point out that these were long-neck glass bottles and the case was one of those old-fashioned heavy cardboard reusable ones. It was HEAVY.

Sometime just before dusk of race day after sleeping off the heroic beer drinking of the previous night and after watching the race on television, I was sitting on the porch to cool off from the day’s heat when I see a figure trudging up the middle of our street, carrying something. It was Bailey and he had lugged that case as he’d emptied the bottles inside with him all day. He was red as a beet but only on on the front. He was so tired after he finally got into the race and had drunk so much beer that he had fallen asleep and slept through the entire thing. But still he dragged that case home full of empties so that he could cash them in.

Bailey, Dave, Chuck Tunnah and I sang together for awhile during 1963. One day we got a phone call from a guy who said he was a record producer in New York City and if we came to the city he’d be interested in recording us. He’d heard an audition tape we’d sent to California for Jimmy O’Neil’s Shindig TV show. So with my wife’s blessing, I joined Dave and Bailey in taking the train to New York City with high hopes. We arrived to find that our potential record producer was some 16 year old kid running on pure hutzpah. It was very disappointing. On the plus side we got a tour of Bell Sound studios where some of the most classic music of the 40′s and 50′s was recorded. The walls featured groups like the Platters on posters as we walked through the corridors. Much later Stark Naked and the Car Thieves would record for Bell Records (Amy/Mala/Bell), and though I haven’t researched this, I am almost certain this was the record label’s original studio before it was sold.

Dave and I went to a to a 50′s rock revival at the Brooklyn Fox theater. I remember we got separated on the subway yet found  each other somehow at the theater just in time to get good seats through some out-of-towner magic. It was a great show with groups like Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Supremes, the Chantels and lots more. We had very little money so we were staying at the YMCA in downtown Manhattan in rooms like closets. Bailey hadn’t told us that he came with us virtually penniless so we had to try and keep him alive as well as ourselves. After 3 days, Dave and I had to phone home for bus fare. But not Bailey, even though he didn’t have a nickel to his name he was determined to stay and find his fortune on the Great White Way. He was always an optimist. I thought there was a good chance we’d never see him again. He was such an innocent soul with an outrageous belief that he could walk into any lion’s den and walk away unscathed. After another week or maybe more he somehow got himself back to Indy. He never explained how. That was Bailey in a nutshell.

Recently I stumbled across an obituary for Bailey posted online at his high school. Since Dave and I remember him and he was in a couple of renditions of our singing group and one of the more original and colorful characters I have ever known I wanted to remember him here on our site.

Bailey died November 4, 1998 where he was living in Earlington, KY.

He was survived by his mother, Francis, a daughter Irish, a son Evan and brother Bill. He was preceded in death by his father Elmo.

He was a member of the Kentucky All State Chorus, a member of the Campus Lights at Murray State University and was a Methodist. He was a retired Theater Manager.

Larry Dunlap

(This post was originally posted on 10/24/11 and updated on 1/3/12)

 
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Posted in Current, Recording, The Fifties, The Sixties, vocal groups

 

Funk legend Sly Stone homeless and living in a van in LA

28 Sep

By WILLEM ALKEMA and REED TUCKER
Last Updated: 12:10 PM, September 26, 2011
Posted: 2:05 AM, September 25, 2011

In his heyday, he lived at 783 Bel Air Road, a four-bedroom, 5,432-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion that once belonged to John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas.

The Tudor-style house was tricked out in his signature funky black, white and red color scheme. Shag carpet. Tiffany lamps in every room. A round water bed in the master bedroom. There were parties where Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Miles Davis would drop by, where Etta James would break into “At Last” by the bar.

Just four years ago, he resided in a Napa Valley house so large it could only be described as a “compound,” with a vineyard out back and multiple cars in the driveway.

SOUL SURVIVOR: Sly Stone, now 68 years old, shows he can still get funky -- brandishing a Taser for a photo session in front of his Studebaker.

John Chapple
SOUL SURVIVOR: Sly Stone, now 68 years old, shows he can still get funky — brandishing a Taser for a photo session in front of his Studebaker.

'I like my small camper. I just do not want to return to a fixed home ... I must keep moving,' Stone says.

John Chapple
“I like my small camper. I just do not want to return to a fixed home … I must keep moving,” Stone says.

But those days are gone.

Today, Sly Stone — one of the greatest figures in soul-music history — is homeless, his fortune stolen by a lethal combination of excess, substance abuse and financial mismanagement. He lays his head inside a white camper van ironically stamped with the words “Pleasure Way” on the side. The van is parked on a residential street in Crenshaw, the rough Los Angeles neighborhood where “Boyz n the Hood” was set. A retired couple makes sure he eats once a day, and Stone showers at their house. The couple’s son serves as his assistant and driver.

Inside the van, the former mastermind of Sly & the Family Stone, now 68, continues to record music with the help of a laptop computer.

“I like my small camper,” he says, his voice raspy with age and years of hard living. “I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving.”

Stone has been difficult to pin down for years. In the last two decades, he’s become one of music’s most enigmatic figures, bordering on reclusive. You’d be forgiven for assuming he’s dead. He rarely appears in public, and just getting him in a room requires hours or years of detective work, middlemen and, of course, making peace with the likelihood that he just won’t show up.

There was a time when Sly was difficult to escape. Stone, whose real name is Sylvester Stewart, was one of the most visible, flamboyant figures of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/the_rise_and_fall_of_sly_stone_qijyKoYzmAqer1PA0YogSJ#ixzz1ZIJ1NiyV

 
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Posted in Current, The Seventies, The Sixties

 

Dave Victorson – Caeser’s Palace First Entertainment Director

30 Jul

LAS VEGAS SUN

Joe Delaney

Fri, Sep 1, 2000 (10:39 a.m.)

In Thursday’s column we mentioned Caesars’ first entertainment director, Dave Victorson … Victorson was a visionary; he brought in Nelson and King as headliners and introduced the Checkmates and the Fifth Dimension … The “Late, Late Shows” were Victorson’s, as was the Nero’s Nook concept with the Ritz Brothers, Xavier Cugat and Charo as headliners.

—————————————————-

And ahhhh, lest we forget, responsible for hiring to open Nero’s Nook along with the Xavier Cugat, The Ritz Brothers, Mort Sahl, and the Checkmat3es Ltd. was, wait for it …. THE BIG SPENDERS! aka STARK NAKED AND THE CAR THIEVES, the first rock band to play in a major Las Vegas Strip Hotel!

Was it because STARK NAKED AND THE CAR THIEVES was too big to fit on their sign, or no, wait maybe because that name was too rude for the time though of course naked show girls paraded all the hotel showrooms. And, of course, that dandy 3 year contract the band signed with Caesar’s Palace that somehow disappeared somewhere between when it was signed and Musician’s Union local #369. But that’s a story for another time …

 
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The Owner we never knew

29 Jul

PUSSYCAT A-GO-GO

TV pitchman ‘Happy Harry’ Haneman dies.

Tue, Jul 30, 2002 (8:20 a.m.)

Harry “Happy Harry” Haneman, a longtime Las Vegas businessman and colorful local television pitchman known for the catch phrase “I make everrrrybody happy!” died Sunday at his Las Vegas home. His age was not released.

Haneman operated the Pussycat-A-Go-Go nightclub on the Strip in the mid-1960s and opened Quality Liquidators furniture store at 4000 W. Harmon Ave. in the 1990s. He opened Happy Harry’s Eatery eight months ago in the Flamingo-Arville Plaza.

Services are set for 5 p.m. today at Palm Mortuary-Jones.

Wearing a bushy black wig, a shirt open to mid-belly and lots of gold jewelry, Haneman’s television commercials for his store that sold discount furniture from area hotels would typically end with him extending his arms to the heavens as the camera pulled back to display his wares and he shouted his slogan.

In the mid-1960s, Haneman made his first mark on Las Vegas by opening the Pussycat-A-Go-Go on the corner of Sands and Las Vegas boulevards, on what is now part of the Desert Inn property.

The club was a hot spot that gave many new bands their first taste of performing on the Strip. Among them was the Checkmates, which became a Las Vegas lounge mainstay.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Haneman operated restaurants in California, where he named sandwiches after celebrities who frequented the establishments. He continued that tradition when he opened Happy Harry’s Eatery last November.

Among the local celebrities to have a Happy Harry’s hot-baked designer submarine sandwich named for them were Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, magicians Siegfried and Roy, and comedian Marty Allen.

Haneman was born in Berlin, Germany. He zealously kept his age a secret. His family asked Palm Mortuary not to include his birth date in the death notice released Monday.

Haneman is survived by his wife, Rita Haneman, and a sister, Ruth Royak, both of Las Vegas.

 
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Got my copy of In The Still Of The Nite

21 Jun

In The Still of the Nite released on Indianapolis-based Tigre Records in 1964 by The Reflections

I haven’t had a copy of this record since leaving Indianapolis for northern California in 1965. I found a copy on eBay and it is supposed to arrive either today or tomorrow. It’s good to be able to retrieve a few of the things you took for granted and let slip away when you’re young. I’m excited to own it again. Can’t wait to fire up a turntable and hear it. I’m going to take a better digital copy of this then the one that’s on the site.

I’m thinking about trying to do some kind of music video to this song if I can think of some interesting way to do it.

 
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Posted in Current, The Reflections, The Sixties, Uncategorized

 

Dave Cornwell and the Hawiian Look Back in Love video

23 May

In thrashing about on the Internet and just plain dumb good luck I came across David Cornwell Photography in Hawaii. On occasion in the past I had searched for ‘David Cornwall’ and never thought to try this name but now that I did there were several websites to pick from. From what seemed the most recent website, this seemed to be the same David Cornwell who had filmed our music video for Look Back in Love in Hawaii. I sent a couple of emails waiting each time for several days in between. No reply.

Finally I picked up the phone and called. Dave’s address is in Waipahu. I got him on the phone and after a polite conversation we did determine that Dave’s business at the time was on Kalakaua Ave and that he was the one to do the video. I had kept my expectations low as we know something like 44 years have passed since this video was filmed. Dave is now 74 and told me that he had left the islands for about 8 years in the eighties to live in Connecticut and then did some traveling before returning to Hawaii. A few years ago his offices were robbed and he said he lost the majority of everything he had. In short, he didn’t think he had anything left from those days.

I asked him to please check as well as he was able. I have had an email or two from him since but so far he has been unable to find anything.

That’s pretty sad but for those as intensely interested as I have been there is at least some resolution.

 
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Posted in Current, The Sixties, Video

 
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