The Blog of Randy Sparks

The Blog of Randy Sparks Copyright 2012, 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation
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Randy’s Blog 19 April 2013

Affordable Housing

I can't believe I've lived this long.  Life was so much easier when a hotel room cost $5.  Of course, nowadays we have companies that seek out bargain rates, so that those of us who dislike leaving too much of our accumulated wealth in one or two locations can still feel good about getting 'special consideration.'  I have just now received one of those messages, this one titled 'Top Ten Travel Deals.'  Ten cities were listed, and one to which I could relate was San Francisco.  These people claimed to have a bargain rate for the Fairmont Hotel, and just reading the name made me nostalgic.  I used to go there every night to see the great Nat King Cole.  He was a friend of mine.  Later on, my group performed in The Venetian Room.  What memories!  Okay, so how much is a room up there on Nob Hills these days?  I pressed the the green box, the selecting field, the one promising 'More Details,' and there it was on the next page: '$54. per night.'  "My word, that is a bargain," I said to myself.  Motel 6 can't even match that rate.  I was beginning to feel better about having lived past all the affordable good times.  "There are still bargains out there," I told myself.  Wow!  

Then I noticed that the $54. was for Valet Parking.  The room prices were on the next page, and the cheapest was a mere $186., their bargain basement deal of the day.  They also showed 'reduced rates' of $280., $369. and $849., and I had to think to myself, 'reduced from what?'  I also began humming one of my favorite self-penned ditties:  'You don't understand, I don't want to buy it, I just want to use it for the night!' 

Copyright 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 11 April 2013

Dianne's Birthday Bash

Time certainly flies when we're having fun, but I cannot believe I would have married a woman that old.  She turned 78 on the last day of March, and I offered her a choice of how to celebrate.  We could have a nice dinner at any restaurant she preferred, or we could revive an old tradition, having a cookout at the Cowboy Cabin on the ranch.  That's a special place to me.  It's far enough away from civilization that it's an acceptable substitute for the domain of the trail-herding cowhands, and therefore an excellent place, theoretically at least, to write songs about leather and cactus and stars and sweat.  In earlier times, I made made a ritual of doing the cooking out of doors at least once every week, and I could water my trees in the heat of summer.  She chose the rustic setting for her celebration, and Becky Jo volunteered to do the cooking.  The weather report for Easter Sunday, Dianne's birthday, promised serious storms, so we delayed the private party by a day.  By the time all of the prepping was completed, it was after four PM, and it was unanimously decided that a cookout in the driveway next to the ranch house would mean a lot less hassle.  So we did something that anybody could do, have a barbecue in the driveway.  It was a delightful party, and it couldn't have been more personal, just the three of us.  Becky Jo is Dianne's private tutor for computer and internet skills, and nobody could possibly cater a meal any better than we had.  Steaks and ribs and barbecued chicken and smoked salmon, asparagus, salad, and a huge birthday cake.  My little joke was that the candles had cost me $200., but in reality, there was only one.  

Three best friends dined and laughed together today, and I learned something.  I had never heard the story of how my wife had landed one of her most meaningful roles in the business of show.  She told us how, at the age of seventeen, she auditioned for Jimmie McHugh, the songwriter.  He was going on the road with a troupe of performers to sing and play his music, and she was the very last candidate in a Hollywood 'cattle call.'  She was toting her tap shoes, and the conductor told her that she was in the wrong place.  They weren't looking for dancers, she was informed, just singers.  "Okay, then I'll sing," she said.  She was the youngest, least prepared, and therefore, likely the most honest of all those being considered.  Wow! 

Copyright 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 4 February 2013

Nudity In San Francisco

San Francisco has just now banned nudity in public, and that's a step forward, I believe, but I'm pleased to have experienced one of the more entertaining moments of my life there.  The story is longer than it needs to be, but you'd be missing interesting trivia if I simply cut to the chase.  

I had been actively searching for appropriate replacement cast iron columns for my Gold Rush Era building in Mokelumne Hill, and I'd heard about a man in San Fran who had squirreled away all of the iron parts and pieces of an old hotel that had once stood in North San Juan, an argonaut village a hundred miles to the north of my three-story edifice, the earliest high-rise in the interior of California.  The Highway Department, long before it was called Cal Trans, had ordered the hotel demolished, but had saved the hardware with the intention of rebuilding the landmark elsewhere, but there weren't enough caring individuals in North San Juan, and the state's good intentions were soon forgotten.  One of the people in charge of the demolition had ended up with the treasure trove of ancient metal, including hand-wrought brackets and iron shutters from all of the exterior windows and doors.  There were no iron posts, but the booty was exciting enough that I made a deal on the phone, sight unseen.  

I needed a flatbed truck to haul this load, and I thought about renting, but then I remembered that my friend Gene Benson had one that he wasn't using, as he had recently died, and his widow also was a friend of mine.  She sang in my group, so I knew her well enough to ask.  Her answer: 'Yes, you may borrow the truck, but it doesn't go on any excursions to San Francisco without me."  I hired Steve Hanson for the day to help with the load, and we were on our way.  

There were at least a couple of trivial facts about this outing that I consider truly amazing, as in small-world.  One was the meeting place in the city.  I was directed to a prominent hotel on Nob Hill, The Huntington, and that name was familiar to me.  Early in 1955, when I was working my first job in the business of music, The Purple Onion, Phyllis Diller had said to me one night, "Take a look here in the paper.  This is the girl that you should marry.  Both of her parents just died, and she's a very rich young woman at the age of 19.  She owns the Huntington Hotel."  Her name was Fritz, and she was pretty enough in the photo, but I told Phyllis that I had no interest in making my fortune the wrong way.  I wanted to earn my keep, not marry for money.  That's how I honestly felt, but I will admit that after I finished work that night, I drove up to Nob Hill to see the young woman's hotel, and I was impressed.   I told that story to Steve and Becky Jo on the long drive to the city, and when I mentioned the name of the man I was to see at the Huntington, Becky Jo said, "He was one of Gene's best friends.  They were in the demolition business together, and he was married to a woman who owned Hotels in San Francisco."   

Becky Jo came with me to meet the man about the iron, and that was most interesting.  The two of them had so much in common, but had never before crossed paths.  We also met the sons, who were now running the hotel.  Their mother had died early on.  

The iron was stored in the basement of another hotel property on Nob Hill, adjacent to the Fairmont, and the three of us spent a few hours hauling and hand-carrying heavy metal.  When the load was complete, as we were driving down the hill, I looked at the approach to the Bay Bridge and it was one long string of taillights.  It was just five o'clock, and I knew that we'd be a while getting out of the city, so I said, "Hey, Steve, I'd like to buy you a beer.  I won't buy you whiskey, because I've seen the way you act on that stuff, but we need to kill some time, so I'll buy."  We began looking for a small bar in which to waste time, and just south of Market Street, in the Mission District, we happened upon The Eagle Tavern.  It appeared to be an old Safeway building that had been remodeled into a biker bar, and it was huge.  The decor was parts and pieces of motorcycles, and it was fairly active, but I didn't see any women.  Most of the guys were in leathers, and loud music was playing on a background sound system.  We found seats at the bar, and I said to Steve, "That fellow in the chair next to the wall seems to be wearing no clothes at all."  This person was barely visible to us because of the backbar, but a bit of neck stretching offered more of a view than anyone might want.  Becky Jo, who is short, began jumping to catch a glimpse of the subject matter, and I commented, "This seems to be a different kind of place."  The bartender said, "It's a Gay bar…do you have a problem with that?"  "Do you serve straight people?" I asked.  "As long as you behave yourself," he replied.  I was thinking that the rules didn't seem to be very strict.  

We were enjoying a round of beers (I would drink one or two on occasion back then), when a loud motorcycle pulled up out front, and a very small biker in leathers walked through the front door.  He was strutting, posing, and removing his gloves with dramatic, exaggerated movements, and as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness of the interior of the place, he seemed to be looking around to see how his entrance had been received by the crowd.  When he spied Becky Jo sitting on one of the barstools, he began throwing a tizzy fit, a tantrum.  "Now, Michael," said the bartender, "these people are our guests."  The diminutive biker obviously wasn't pleased that there was a woman among the clientele.     

This distraction having been dealt with, our conversation went back to the naked guy sitting on the chair.  "He's not actually naked," Steve said.  "He's wearing sandals."  "What do you suppose the collar and chain are all about?" Becky Jo asked.  I hadn't seen it previously, but the man had a tiny red velvet collar around his penis, just above the head, and the delicate gold chain led away from the collar to places unknown.  "The other end of the chain is likely attached to his gerbil," I offered, and we all laughed.  The bartender wasn't pleased with us.  

Eventually, Becky Jo asked the bartender if there was a ladies room in this establishment, and he said, "I suppose you mean one with a door?"  "That would be nice," she answered.  He directed her to a seldom-used convenience room quite a distance away, and when I asked about a men's room, he pointed.  This place had no door, and every flat space was fitted with a mirror.  As I walked in, the background music swelled to anthem strength: 'Getting to know you, getting to know all about you…'

This wasn't anybody's typical afternoon, and I must admit that we had a good time, and no animals were harmed in our visit to that other world.  The naked stranger's days are numbered, though, I fear, and that's kinda sad.  I'm supposing that he'll be done-in by the new law.  Our visit wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining without him.

Copyright 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 2 February 2013

My Form Of Capitalism Explained

The New Christy Minstrels was, from the very beginning, my personal songwriting opportunity, and any view of me as the filthy capitalist, the fat cat who reaps the profits of everyone else's hard work is grossly inaccurate.  I had never intended to sell the ownership of the group that I invented.  I did so only after the well had been poisoned for me, largely by one unhappy individual.  

Yes, I insisted on personal ownership of my invention, but this wasn't for the sake of outlandish profit.  It had only to do with artistic control, to avoid the awkward and expensive transition that The Kingston Trio was then currently experiencing.  Dave Guard and his two partners, Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane, were divided as to how their group ought to proceed, and it was decided that the pair should buy-out the individual.  Their situation was a wake-up call to me.  My group plan originally involved fourteen members, and I realized that if I allowed each participant to own an equal share of my personal enterprise, there'd be no future in it.  I also didn't care for rule by committee.  'Bootstrap Capitalism' is probably the best term that I can offer for what was going on.  I had very limited funds to risk in the 1961 start-up company, and I also didn't go looking for investors, so it really wasn't much of a capitalistic scheme.  The initial recording project promised AFTRA and AFofM session money, and I unilaterally offered an equal division of any royalties to be received from Columbia Records.  When the company insisted upon my also readying a performing group to aid in their selling of our product, I still had in mind sharing any and all proceeds with the musicians on an equal basis.  The record company also demanded that I enlist progressional management, threatening to drop my recording act from the label's roster, if I did refused to follow their advice.  I was opposed to doing so, but eventually contracted with Greif & Garris, Columbia's number one choice, to guide my group's career.   I then, on my own, awarded these managers a percentage of ownership in the corporation that was formed, not for the sake of unreasonable profits, but to discourage any attempt to steal from the enterprise.  This goal, sadly, was unattainable.  

I had designed a system that precluded anybody's being able to cheat the performers out of their rightful share.  I was in control, at least I thought I was, but I found myself constantly under attack by dissident members of my group, and when the turmoil reached an uncomfortable level, I was no longer in a position to mind the store.  The two hoodlums-in-suits, disguised as personal managers, absconded with the big bucks.  They ought to have been content with their generous management fees, but they had in mind to steal all the money.

Once the group was in concert full-time, it was management's desire that I get off the road, officially, 'to concentrate on writing and to run the new-talent program,' but I later learned to my own satisfaction that this move had only to do with keeping my eyes away from the money trail.  I received none of the concert money, and I assumed that it was being divided equally among the troops.  They weren't talking to me, so I was unaware that they were being cheated.  I really only cared about the writing and publishing income, and those finances were well guarded.  I began asking questions when news stories stated that my invention was earning more than a million dollars a year, and I had received none of it.  I demanded an examination of the books, and the thieving managers said, 'We have a better idea: we'll buy you out.'  

I'm pleased to have lived long enough to understand that happiness within a group of people has everything to do with choosing the right people.  My restored group has retained the same personnel for three years, no changes at all, and we're family.  This is also, in my opinion, the very best ensemble that has ever been billed as The NCM.  I now know that one angry communist can spoil all the good in any capitalistic scheme, and I'm persuaded that nearly all of the negativity in my early group effort originated with one non-union organizer.  I'm still seen by many only as the fat cat profiteer.  My invention of the big folk group has given meaning to the lives of hundreds of performers, the rebel-rouser included, but I'm still perceived negatively by many, and this is only because of his undermining efforts.  

Copyright 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Growing Up 1.

 Walt Bryan and I talked a lot about growing up, becoming men.  We'd been children forever, and we strongly felt that we were nearing the age of manhood.  We knew about the 'rites of passage' in tribes of so-called less-civilized people, and those probably served as models for the assignments we would originate.  We hiked a lot, so we knew the wilderness area quite well, and there was one especially intriguing spot that offered an exciting possibility as a challenge.  It was a small island in Lake Chabot, the regional domestic water supply above Oakland, California.  This island was fairly close to the shore on the north side, maybe sixty yards, and our combined mental process gave the place a special status.  It was well-guarded, private property, and nobody would have stood a chance of gaining access in the middle of the day, but late at night, maybe.  We decided that it would be our manly goal to swim the lake to the island, spend the night, then make an early-morning escape, attending classes as though nothing had happened.  We designated this activity as our rite of passage.  We'd be men at 15, if we could do it.  We even fixed a date for the adventure.  

I was there, right where I was supposed to be, waiting for Walt at about 11 that night, but he was a no-show.  I waited around for a while, then decided that he could have been confused about the meeting place.  'Maybe,' I told myself, 'he's already at the lake.'  I began my epic journey solo, and when I discovered that he wasn't at the wilderness location, the thought of going back home without a victory wasn't appealing, so I continued as planned.  The water was a lot colder than expected, but not unbearable, and the swim to the island was exciting, even fun.  I had brought along a towel and warm clothes, and those items, along with my tent and sleeping bag, were towed behind me on an army surplus air mattress.  The challenge specified swimming, not inner tube-floating, and I was careful not to make use of the nautical trailer for buoyancy, doing the the swim as prescribed.  I also spent the remainder of the night in the tent on the island, escaping before the morning shift of the EBMUD Rangers might begin.

Thinking back on this episode of my long life, I now realize what a nightmare I likely was to my mother.  She knew that I had box traps set for raccoons and opossums here and there, so she wasn't so much upset by my occasional late night wandering, but would I have been that accommodating to my sons?  That's a tough call.  Probably not.   

The next day at school, I asked Walt what happened, and he explained that he'd been caught going out the door, that his mother wouldn't hear of his becoming a man in such a primitive way.  Her idea was to have him live on, in order to go to the prom like everybody else.  I felt bad for him.  There I was, now a confirmed adult, and I had only children for friends.

Growing Up 2.

Growing up is such a challenge.  We assume it's going to be easy, mostly because so many totally unqualified people have already done it, but most of them probably just got lucky, and then again, some didn't.  My transition from a bike with fat tires to a '32 Chevy wasn't painless, but there was a lot of everyday Norman Rockwell imagery that helped to make the journey memorable, if not worthwhile.  I didn't date, at least, not in the accepted sense.  I had no money to fritter away on girls, and I already knew that they weren't going to be excited about riding on my bike.  Yeah, I guess that may have been one of the reasons that I eventually made the effort to get a job to buy a car.  My first incentive for working, however, was to buy a guitar, but that's a different chapter.  

I was a late-bloomer in high school.  I was only five feet-three inches tall, and that only bothered me when I set my sights on a girl who was five-five.  The other problem about being vertically challenged is that every bully wants to achieve personal fulfillment by paring-up with the most vulnerable of students.  My arch nemesis was an oversize ruffian in history class.  He was also a bit older, likely from having been held back a few grades because of underachievement.  That class was mandatory for him, but he never cracked a book, paid no attention to the lectures, just sat there looking surly.  Come test time, he would lean over my shoulder and copy my answers.  He'd also get noisy and belligerent if I protected my papers from his view.  He had successfully copied my answers for three tests, and the teacher, pretty and young, lauded his efforts.  I was sick of his bullying, and I'd already decided to make a stand in a unique way.  

He would come around where I worked at Zesto, a frosty franchise operation much like Foster's Freeze, wanting freebees, threatening to get physical if he was refused, and I simply ignored him.  That worked well enough as long as I was inside the service window, but eventually I had to leave the place to go home, and that's when he was at his worst.  One night he was waiting by the back door when I came out, and he promised to beat me senseless if I didn't give him a free milk shake.  "Okay," I said, "but I get to choose the flavor."  That was fine with him.  The business had just expanded to include the selling of hot dogs, and there was no shortage of mustard, so I very creatively crafted a vanilla and mustard milkshake for the bully, and he was pretty excited at first.  It looked good.  Then he took a big gulp, and became even more belligerent.  I had to stay inside a bit longer that night.  

When the time came to take the final test of the year in the history class, I had already set in motion my plan of action.  He was demanding that I sit a certain way in order to allow him to copy my answers, and he began his menacing act.  "Mister So-and-So," the pretty teacher said to him, "are you having a problem?"  He stood up.  "Sparks was just telling me that he likes the way you stand," he announced.  Wow!  Of course, I hadn't said anything to him, and that came totally from left field.  It was especially embarrassing to me though, as my sister was also in that class, and I knew that there'd likely be a full report delivered to our parents.  Downright mean.  

The test papers weren't handed out in this class; instead, they were stacked on the teacher's desk, and each person took one on entering the room.  I had very calmly snagged two of them, and I was totally prepared.  I knew every answer.  I hurriedly marked my test paper, then began working on the second one, marking EVERY multiple choice question in a wrong space, offering wrong, deliberately stupid answers to the questions requiring written response.  I offered token resistance when the bully insisted on copying my answers, then gave in, making the second test paper, the one with all the wrong answers, available to his line of sight.  

The next day, the pretty history teacher said to the class, "In all my years of teaching (which was pretty funny in itself, as she was only 23!), I have never before come across a test paper with ALL WRONG ANSWERS, and Mister So-and-So has managed to do it."  

What happened next was a most pivotal moment in my life.  I once asked my father why he didn't own a pistol, and his answer confused me: "Because I'd be afraid I'd use it."  I thought about that for the longest time.  I still think about it.  I couldn't see any drawbacks in gun ownership.  Wasn't I smart enough to make use of a weapon only in an emergency, a desperate moment?  Where does one draw the line?  I was very suddenly confronted with all such questions when the same Mister So-and-So, the bully, rapidly approached me as I walked along the street in front of my high school on a cold late afternoon.  He didn't say a word, but he growled like a wolf just before he punched me in the face.  'That really didn't hurt so much,' I told myself.  'I'm still alive, and even if I get a black eye, he's done me no real harm.  I can take it.'  My problem was that I was just coming back from a trading session with a street-wise friend, and I had paid two army surplus air mattresses and a gasoline engine for a .38 caliber police special revolver.  It had come with a bullet in every chamber, and it was in my coat pocket.  In fact, when the bully hit me, I had a firm grip on it.  I could have shot him dead on the spot, but all at once I knew what my father had meant by 'I'd be afraid I'd use it.'  I quickly thought of all the questions I'd have to answer in simply defending myself.  A better solution was to accept whatever well-deserved punishment the idiot decided to give me, and live to fight another day.  Did it help to know that I could have blown him away?  Yes.  That was one of only a few such key moments in my life, though I barely knew it at the time.  This small experience was a huge rite of passage for me.  

Growing Up 3. 

There's one more instance of personal achievement that I consider monumental, and it was the most difficult.  I had always wanted to be everybody's friend, and maybe being a wishful thinker somewhat impeded my progress as a person, clouding reality for me, but at the age of 29, I was painfully ill-equipped to deal with the real world.  I had invented an entertainment format that promised success, and there were only a few more steps to take in the right direction, I was told.  Among the first, was getting the act onto a stage as a show, and my performers were excellent.  I had personally selected most of them for their talent, and I was well aware of the Clyde Beatty-like challenge, being an in-the-trenches overseer with only a whip and a chair among the wild beasts.  Everybody in my group had an ego with which to deal, and I was no exception.  I was proud of my accomplishments to date, but I had also struck out a lot.  I was totally committed to fairness, and I had compromised my own preferences in at least three directions.  I wanted nothing to do with one of the performers simply because he was an avowed communist, and I believed in capitalism, my country's official policy.  This same person was also having an on-going personal relationship with my ex-wife, and that was somewhat uncomfortable, if not outright painful.  There was another member who had been thrust upon me because of his partner's steadfast loyalty, and, like it or not, I felt obliged to respect such righteousness.  The third issue was with my ex-wife.  She'd been in the group plan from the very beginning, and I could find no defensible reason to exclude her.  We were no longer partners, but she deserved the right to continue being an NCM member.  Those aren't the worst odds I can envision, three out of ten, and I also had tremendous belief in people.  I recognized that almost anyone has the potential of rising to the occasion, and it would be unfair of me to scuttle anybody's lifeboat.  This wasn't a totally happy, 100% committed-to-the cause aggregation, but we all seemed to get along quite well, and we shared the inspirational thought that we might actually achieve some sort of prominence, maybe even fame and fortune.  

I owned the group.  It was my concept, and I had carefully, thoughtfully explained this to one and all from the very beginning, so there ought not to have been any sort of conflict, but there was, and I was the target.  The negativity came in dribs and drabs, one sour comment at a time, and I really didn't know the source of the unhappiness, but it was disheartening to me.  At one point, I had bought a gift for each person in the group, and it was a totally sincere gesture.  I wanted to feel more like a family.  Out of the blue, Barry McGuire said to me, "You can't buy my friendship."  I was crushed.  Yes, maybe I was making such a gesture, but that's not how I perceived it, and this was hurtful.  The next day onstage at the Troubadour, in one of our endless rehearsals, somebody offered a rude anti-establishment comment, and the situation spiraled out of control from there.  I was the enemy, and this was debilitating.  I only wanted to be everyone's friend.  In fact, I was so unhappy that I had already made up my mind to walk away, to leave this band of ingrates.  I even took a couple of steps toward the back door, but then something magical happened, and I made the conscious decision to stand my ground.  An inner voice asked a question: 'Where is it written that these people who work for you also need to be your friends?'  That thought was powerful.  I had never really considered tolerating an enemy, but that's closer to reality than the pollyanna plan I'd always had in mind.  "No,' I said to the group (only in the privacy of my thoughts, of course), 'I'm not leaving, and you don't have to be my friends, but you're going to help me become rich, and I'll be laughing all the way to the bank!'  I stayed right there, absorbing their anger.  The slings and arrows soon fell away, and I had achieved personal fulfillment in that defining instant.  This was my final rite of passage.  

It was only recently that I learned to my own satisfaction the cause of the unhappiness in my group 'way back when.  Some of it may have been justified, especially considering the times in which we lived, the times that were a-changin', but most of it was needlessly provoked by one person who seemed to enjoy turmoil, and he's still at it.  He'll be an angry, meddling force forever, in my estimation, and although he denies this, I know that he's absolutely guilty, as charged. 

By the way, Barry recently apologized.  "You were never my enemy," he said, "but I didn't know that.  All I heard was how devious you were, and how you were the evil capitalist."  

Copyright 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

John Wilkinson and Elvis Presley

Randy’s Blog 12 January 2013

John Wilkinson RIP

Billy Smith, our pal and bus driver for The Oak Ridge Boys has just now forwarded a story about the death of John Wilkinson, and I am both saddened and relieved.  It's interesting that John is credited with having performed with The New Christy Minstrels, and I'm certain that's the reason that Billy sent the article, but the information is not totally accurate.  
John had come to see me shortly after Elvis died, and I felt a terrible sadness for him.  He had achieved beyond his ability, and he wanted to continue, but would have had to reinvent himself, and couldn't.  With considerable pride, he told me that Elvis had paid him $1500. a week, whether he worked or not, and he only needed to remember the chords to perhaps thirty songs, not much pressure there.  There he was at age 33, not old enough to retire, any capacity for forward progress having atrophied years earlier.  

I vividly recall the phone call I received late at night from Kin Vassy of The Back Porch Majority.  "Hey, there's a guy up here in  McCook, Nebraska, who sings and plays guitar, and he has one song that he's written that's pretty good.  Everybody in the group likes him."  That was a good enough recommendation back then, so I sent him bus fare to Denver and paid for his flight to LAX.  McCook, Nebraska to Los Angeles was a quantum leap for raw talent from Springfield, MO, and he was ever so grateful, but I did notice that he seemed to think his troubles were over simply because he'd been 'discovered.'  "My program is only a stepping stone," I explained.  "Yes, I like your one song, but you need to spend time working on your writing, your singing, your playing, your solo act."  He did none of the above, and I noticed that he couldn't approach the stage without having a shot of whiskey, and that was verboten in my coffeehouse with only a beer license.  We then worked on his stage fright, feelings of inadequacy.  I recognized that he needed much more help than the simple opportunity I offered, and I lacked the time, skill and willingness to serve as his psychiatrist, so after a couple of weeks of failed effort, I gave him travel money to somewhere, not McCook.  

John came to see me after he'd been hired by Elvis, and I was pleased, even excited for him.  What a nice milestone to have in anybody's life.  He'd been discovered, and his troubles were over.  

Was he ever a New Christy Minstrel?  I don't think so.  His name is not on the list of NCM alumnae.  I also have a nagging feeling that the tale about his having criticized Elvis' playing at age ten is likely apocryphal.  Yes, it's an interesting bit of human interest trivia, but I'm wondering why this was never mentioned in the time we spent together before Elvis died. 

I knew about John's cancer, and I had promised to visit him.  What's sad to me now is that I had every intention of doing that just a few days ago.  We were driving to Florida, and I'd planned the trip to include a stop in Springfield, but we got a late start, and didn't reach there until nearly midnight.  Too late to visit or even call him.  "We'll stop on the way back," I said to myself.  

Copyright 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 9 January 2013

Wardrobe Malfunction

When everything seems to be going entirely too well, be fearful.  It was the first of two sold-out concerts in Englewood, Florida, a matinee performance on a Tuesday, and I was ready.  Becky Jo had made her timely visit to the men's dressing room, and it was business as usual.  There were my show clothes, the black Neru shirt and the black pants, nearby to the colorful shoes and hairbrush.  I had tuned my guitar again, and was patiently waiting in the wings of the church's thousand seat auditorium.  I did notice that my stage uniform seemed a bit loose, but I've been fairly careful of my diet lately, so why wouldn't it be?  The lady who read the announcements concluded her visit, and it was time for my opening act.  As I carefully made my way through the instruments and sound gear, I nearly lost the pants a couple of times before reaching my microphone in the middle of the stage, but I managed to counter gravity with a free hand, and by pushing my belly outward.  That's a different feeling, as I generally spend so much time holding it in.   

As I was singing a rousing song, and using both hands to play the guitar, I felt the pants beginning to slip southward, and I made a desperate grope to avoid giving the crowd too much of a show.  This, of course, negatively affected my playing, but I've watched Dolan Ellis play one-handed on a daily basis, so I knew it could be done.  Eventually, of course, after the group had joined me on the stage, and after I had suffered the distraction far too long, I felt the need to explain my problem to the audience.  Dolan offered me his belt, but this was just ahead of the intermission, so I muddled through.  

It took a while to correctly identify the source of the clothes that I had worn for the first half of the show.  Becky Jo showed me where she'd deposited my shirt and pants that I ought to have worn, and our first thought was that I had latched onto the clothes of some member of the clergy, but then Dave said, with much surprise, "That's my shirt and those are my pants."  "So, Dave, what size pants do you wear?" I asked.  The answer was 42.  I wear size 36.  No wonder they wouldn't stay up.  He's huge!

Dave and I have been best of friends for the four years that we have known each other, but now we have a special bond.  Remember the old aphorism, 'Walk a mile in another man's moccasins?'  How about, 'Do half a show in the shirt and pants of mister big and tall?'

Copyright 2013 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 31 December 2012

Last Blog of 2012

Here's my last blog of the year.  It has been a fun day here...

This is the very last day of 2012, and it's also John Denver's birthday.  He was born in '43, ten years after I surfaced, and that means that he'd have been 69 years old today.  It saddens me to think of how many songs he wasn't able to write, how many memories he might have made for millions of more people.  

It snowed much of the day here in Leavenworth, Kansas, but it wasn't unpleasant.  Yes, it was a bit worrisome that Becky Jo Benson and I had made and paid for reservations at Llywellan's Irish Pub in Overland Park, Kansas, and that place was 45 miles away on fairly slick roads, but I'm the person who drove the length of Canada in the wintertime doing one-nighters all the way, and never missed a show.  My act was also the main attraction in St. Paul when a blizzard hit the city, and the hotel was miles away.  I was the only driver who braved the storm.  Minnesota people were impressed.  

Mark Kellerman and Joe Van Hook had also been invited to Overland Park today, but both were no-shows.  The roads from Hays, KS and Claremore, OK were too dangerous, we were told.  They missed a wonderful evening of entertainment.  Being an Irish pub, these folks celebrated New Year's Eve at midnight in Dublin, and that means 6 PM here on the prairie.  That was different.  

I had been invited to this happening by an ex-neighbor, a fellow who used to live across the street from our World Headquarters.  I had seen him and his main-squeeze (wife, girlfriend, who knows?) on the day that they moved away, maybe the end of November.  I saw the banjo case, and I asked if he was a musician.  He gave me his group's CDs, and I was sufficiently impressed that I felt the need to tell him so.  We almost saw his trio, The 3 Dollar Band, in Weston, but couldn't make their gig fit with our schedule, and today was our last opportunity in 2012.  What a joy they are!  What talent!  Each member constantly amazes, with not a beat or a note out of place.  Three gloriously gifted individuals, any one of whom could easily walk away with American Idol or X-Factor trophies.  BJB and I sat there in awe of these three thrilling performers.   

When it came time to toast the new year, champagne was distributed liberally, and of course, I don't drink alcohol of any kind, and haven't done so for fourteen years.  I didn't want to make use of water, so I asked the waiter if he possibly had a non-alcoholic Guinness.  The answer was yes, Kaliber, a dark ale.  I'm now fully capable of fitting in, and I read just a couple of days ago that the dark brews are healthful. 

Let's all make the effort to at least live for another year...

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Joyce Kilmer (1886 - 1918)

Randy’s Blog 17 December 2012

I'm now in a most peculiar time of my life, and I'm very much aware of the importance of every moment.  It hasn't always been this way, of course.  I frittered away so many of my days and precious hours.  I know that I might have been much more productive in my so-called productive years, but I also know that I had much less to say back then.  I had yet to live long enough to understand much of life.  That's still the case, but I'm so much wiser than I once was, and I have plenty to communicate nowadays.  I can recall my wishful thinking as early as the seventh grade, yearning to be important, wanting to find a niche in the scheme of things, wherein my abilities might be appreciated.  I wasn't big enough to play football.  I knew that.  I wasn't especially fast or gifted around the baseball diamond, and I was a long way behind Johnny Weissmuller as a swimmer, but I could fast walk and hike for days without resting.  Not much glory in that.  I could sing rather well, and I fancied that I'd eventually be able to write the perfect song.  I was a wannabe songwriter that long ago.  One of my text books included Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees, that had been set to music by Oscar Rasbach, and I became terribly depressed thinking of this person who had made his mark in literature, lauded to be the very best at what he did, yet having to go off to war like an ordinary person, and being killed in France at the age of 31.  That's so unfair, I thought to myself.  If he was that special, couldn't they have arranged for someone else, say an ordinary person without such talent, to go in his place?  I still worry about all of the poems he might have written, had he not been shot by a sniper in  1918.   I always felt bad about Joyce.  I also think I'd have changed my name.  His first name was Alfred, so why didn't he call himself Al?  Al Kilmer…that's not bad.  I also thought about him when I received my draft notice in 1955.  I carefully considered all of the songs I had yet to write, and I was leaning toward thinking how unfair it was that I was being drafted when there was so great a promise of brilliance that I had yet to share with ordinary people.  That's how wannabes think.  I got over it.  I hit on a bit of healthier reasoning.: I'm going off to war to put new colors in my paint box, to provide myself with unique and exciting vistas for writing and singing about life and the world and people and things.  Now, here I am only seven months away from being eighty years old, and I can sing better than ever, and I write songs everyday.  I don't want for subject matter, as I've been everywhere, done everything, met all the people, played all their games, and laughed nonstop for at least sixty of those nearly eighty years.  The best song I ever wrote was the one I finished earlier today, or was it the one I wrote yesterday?  I know I'm on borrowed time, but this has to be the best part of life.  I'm having fun.  I get excited just remembering that I'm still here, still doing my thing.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 16 December 2012

Christmas Spirit In Leavenworth, Kansas

A policeman knocked on the door last night and told Becky Jo that he was red-tagging the van out front, as it had no visible license plate.  She explained that it's fairly new, and probably in the process of getting registered.  She scurried around to find the paperwork, and thought she'd found it, but what she'd found was for another vehicle.  She stopped by my room to let me know what was going on, and I told her that it was registered, but that I hadn't found the time to mount the license plate.  She walked with the officer to the van, and right where I had told her to look, she laid hands on the plate.  The cop then took the time to attach the new plate, and Becky Jo was so impressed by his kindness that she told him who we are, and tried to give him a couple of CDs .  He said that he'd always liked out music, and was indeed impressed that I have a banjo sign and the Foundation Headquarters in my birth city, but told her that he couldn't accept a gift.  He then reached into his pockets and said, "All I have is eight dollars, and I know that's that not nearly enough, but I'd like to have them.  I cannot accept a gift," he repeated, "but I can make a donation to your Foundation, can't I?"  

Wow!  I didn't even have to get involved to show him my 'Get-out-of-jail-free-badge' from Wayne Stenehjem, the Attorney General of North Dakota, or drop the name and rank of Gary Kuntz, the Sheriff of Calaveras County, who was my ranch hand when he was sixteen.  I know it seems hard to believe sometimes, but those keepers of the peace, the ones who put their lives on the line everyday in our behalf, are decent, caring human beings, just like most of the rest of us, and ought to be appreciated.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 11 December 2012

The Wheeler Dealers

Our Official NCM Historian Tom Pickles sent me copy of the sheet music for The Wheeler Dealers, a rarity that he'd recently purchased on eBay, and I was forced to live through that whole drama once again.  It wasn't the happiest moment of my life.  The year was 1963, and I had a full plate in writing for the group and rehearsing for our weekly appearance on The Andy Williams Show, when the assignment came to me.  An MGM producer named Marty Ransohoff wanted a title song for his new movie, and I was elected to write it.  A script was provided, and I was given a deadline: the following week on a Wednesday.  I puttered with the images and sang a few licks that seemed to fit with the tale being told, but I was seriously lacking in quiet moments to do the good work required.  We had concerts on the weekends, and every hour, it seemed, already belonged to others.  I decided that the best I could do, under the circumstances, would be to throw together all of my half-baked ideas, and make a rough recording to show some progress, then plead for additional time.  Just a day or two would have given me a finished product, I believed, but the man needed to hear where this exercise was headed.  I made my deadline meeting, as scheduled, and took along my stall-tactic tape.  When I played it for him, he just sat there looking at me.  "I know I can do a much better," I told him, "and I can have a completed demo to you by Friday."  "I don't want you to touch it," he said.  "That's my title song."  "No," I complained, "it's not finished."  "Yes it is," he declared, and then handed me his check for $10,000.  I was very unhappy with this turn of events.  I knew that the song would be so much better with just a wee bit more time to fix all the problems, but he took my simple tape recording and walked away.  

'What kind of business is this?' I asked myself.  I tell the producer that the song isn't finished, that it's not yet marketable, and he not-so-politely disagrees, then overpays me for my less-than-admirable efforts.  How confusing to a person born in Kansas.  Looking back, I have several thoughts.  Thankfully, I didn't have to listen to this imperfect musical romp on the radio every hour, as it wasn't a hit; neither was the film.  But then, there's the obvious possibility that, given the additional time, I might have crafted a superior product, one that perhaps would have garnered enough respect and airplay to speak positively for the group and the movie.  Who knows?  

I mentioned my displeasure to my two personal mangers at the time, and they both said, in effect, 'Take the money.  It's his problem, not yours.'  They were supposedly in place to represent me, and I guess I wanted them to make a stand in behalf of the quality of my art, but they wouldn't.  Many years later, after these hoodlums-in-suits had both passed away to that great marketplace in the sky, I received an errant message from MGM's publishing arm.  'Where should we send their share of the publishing for The Wheeler Dealers song, now that they have died?' was the gist of the enquiry.   That's called double-dipping, it seems to me.  Not only did they snag a piece of the initial payment from MGM, their contracted share of income, 15%, but they'd also very quietly demanded a kickback from the publisher.  One of my handicaps from having been born in Kansas is called trust.  I used it a lot.  I still do, but I'm getting better at the game, I think.  Nowadays, when I hear the word 'manager,' my natural inclination to accept all people at face value instantly shifts into reverse.  I've only had four 'personal managers' in my long career, and not one was an honorable person.  Each pretended to be a dear friend, but I'm persuaded that all ought to have gone to prison for grand theft.  I now know the numbers and how it was done, too late smart.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Mokelumne Hill, California

Randy’s Blog 28 November 2012

This is a message received from BJB this afternoon:

To Becky Jo: This is from Steve Hansen. Thank you for asking Randy to write his blog. He is such a wonderful person with so much to share. As time goes by, I realize that I have seen things in this life that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. He has enriched my life more than my simple words can tell. Thank you. You have both inspired me to speak out: LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME.' 

What a nice message from Steve.  The only valuable lessons that I gave him are the same ones that I imparted to my sons:  1. That it's a joy and a privilege to work, 2. That the most routine job can be made fun by attitude, and 3. Every day is a new opportunity to learn and accomplish.  We never work just for the money.  Steve worked for me as a carpenter's helper for several years, and he was right there with me on the fourth floor of my three-story building in Mokelumne Hill on January 16th, the twins' birthday, and we were doing the last of the major improvement tasks in the historic building's restoration, nailing down the T & G flooring in the attic.  This was when we heard the sound of an oncoming freight train.  We looked at each other in a very confused way, as there are no trains in that small Gold Rush town, never have been.  What we were hearing, of course, was the approach of a devastating tornado.  The stone building shook violently, then light poured into the dark space where we were working, and Steve ran to the hatch leading to the roof, and stuck his head out.  "Whatever it was," he said, "it didn't do any damage; everything looks okay."  "Steve," I corrected, "the roof is gone.  Otherwise, there'd be no sunlight coming through the hatch."  I quickly descended the ladder and ran down three flights of stairs to the street level, and there it was, half a block away: my roof.  The heavy timber framing, joists and rafters, the underlayment, the steel sheathing, were all still together in one massive piece of debris, completely covering the street.  One of the men at our Volunteer Fire Department had witnessed this event, and was on the phone, quietly summoning the work force that would disassemble this out-of-place relic.  The edifice was crammed full of priceless antiques, museum pieces all, but now it had no roof, and the rain was coming down.  The skilled crew required less than an hour to separate all of the pieces, and these were carefully stacked in my parking lot nearby.  Nobody but the crew knew that my precious building was now open to the sky, as the building looked no different from ground level.  This was terribly important to me, as I had a deal with Ted Brubaker, head of the County's Building Department.  "If anything ever goes wrong with that historical structure," he had said to me, "I want you to fix it.  Don't involve the County."   That's what I did for the next eight months of my life.  I built a new roof.  It was hell-for-stout, and this time it was anchored to the stonework with a ridge of reenforced concrete, even sealed against the free-tail bats with modern grout.  

"Y'know," I said to Steve, "there's something awfully ironic about this incident.  I was born in Kansas, supposedly the 'tornado capital of the US.' and I was never the victim of a tornado there.  Here in California, however, I have now suffered the ravages of two such storms, one here in Mokelumne Hill and another at the ranch in Jenny Lind, both terribly costly,"  I, quite naturally, figured this was the end of my personal tornado experience, but there would be two more at the ranch later on.  That's amazing.  

My favorite Steve Hansen story took place one afternoon at the bar, Adams & Co. (our saloon was named for the express firm that built the building in 1854; they sold out to newcomers Wells-Fargo).  I had gone to the Post Office to get my mail, so Steve, who was also on a break, did the same.  I was going through some checks from various record companies, and I was pleased to have received a few dollars in my postal box, so I was smiling.  Steve wasn't happy with his mail, as he had only bills, and he made an interesting comment.  "It just isn't fair.  I do everything right, well, almost everything, and I can barely pay my bills.  I see you getting money all the time.  It just isn't fair."  I didn't have an appropriate reply, so I said nothing.  He then went behind the bar to get a beer flat, and he grabbed the laundry-marker we used for Monday Night Football.  I watched as he bent over his art project, and he showed it to me upon completion:  'WILL WRITE SONGS FOR FOOD.'  "I'm gonna get myself a busy corner in San Francisco," he announced.  Now, that's funny.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy’s Blog 28 November 2012

Gun Safety

My mother was right.  This is a nice time to be alive.  There's not a question that can't be answered swiftly by letting Mr. Google know what's on your mind.  About ten years ago, I bought a very nice Ruger rifle, a good weapon to use if I needed it on the ranch, as we were troubled by a pack of wild dogs, likely feral animals.  They were menacing the herd of cattle, posing a real threat to calves, and although I have always owned enough weapons to equip a small army, most of those guns are precious to me, not field models, so I bought an everyday rifle for protection of the property.  I also allowed the seller to supply a trigger-locking mechanism, and because I misplaced the key, I have never fired it.  I've always had it close at hand, mind you, but I may as well have bought a baseball bat for a lot less money.  Today, I found the key, and I was ecstatic.  Now, if I needed a rifle, I would be ready.  Well, not quite.  I tried the key, and it turned in the lock, but the lock refused to open.  I began to think there must be some sort of trick to removing it, and of course, I hadn't taken the time to ask the gun dealer how one removes the lock.  I didn't have to ask questions; I'm a trained killer.  My government put me through Boot Camp in the Navy, so I learned everything there is to know about weapons, right?  Well, not quite.  I couldn't get the damned lock off the damned gun, even with a key!  That's when Mr. Google began to help.  I entered the brand name of my gun lock, Gunlok, and voila!  Plenty of others, I learned, were just as inept as I, and the messages from experts brought comforting words:  'Do this, do that…and there you go!'  I now have a fully operational weapon, and I really don't want to use the locking mechanism again, mostly because I could easily lose the key again, or probably won't remember the procedure for getting it open.  Isn't it amazing that we're all here together, and that we can instantly profit from the expertise of others, simply by asking for help.  What a nice time to be alive.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 21 November 2012

'What's the best song you ever wrote?'  That question has been asked of me a few times over the years, and I have forever been hesitant to respond.  'I don't know,' I would say, and it's true that the very nature of songwriting would seem to promote a personal hall of fame built on shifting sands.  Wouldn't it often tend to be the most recent product, an accomplishment currently promoted?  Now, at the age of seventy-nine, I have a long-term answer.  If anybody should want to know, I do believe that 'Look At Me' is the best song I ever wrote.  All of the pieces are magically in their right places.  I'm now old enough to objectively see and hear the full scope of my creativity, and I have tasted and appreciated the near-perfect wares of others for a healthy modicum of comparison.  'Look At Me,' in its own way I believe, is nearly as good as John Hartford's 'Gentle On My Mind,' Leonard Cohen's 'Suzanne,' or Carolyn Leigh's 'Young At Heart' lyric.  Those are three songs for which I have the most respect.
I feel just as good about 'Look At Me,' maybe even better.  

Look At Me

If I could be an eagle I would fly so high 
That you couldn't help but see me when you looked up to the sky 
If I could be a lightning bug I'd shine so bright
That I would be your beacon in the dark lonely night 

All the creatures in nature have a way to say 
Look At Me  Look At Me  Look At Me 
And if you ever looked my way-ay, what would you see? 
I wonder if you'll ever Look At Me  

If I could be an oriole high up an alder tree 
I'd show my brightest feathers, but I'd hope that you could see 
I'm much more than a flash of color on a sunny day 
And when you heard my song I would steal your heart away 

All the creatures in nature have a way to say 
Look At Me  Look At Me  Look At Me 
And if you ever looked my way-ay, what would you see? 
I wonder if you'll ever Look At Me  

If I were a timber wolf I'd howl so loud 
That you couldn't help but hear me even in a noisy crowd 
If I could be a peacock I would offer my display 
And you would be astonished every time you looked my way 

All the creatures in nature have a way to say 
Look At Me  Look At Me  Look At Me 
And if you ever looked my way, what would you see? 
I wonder if you'll ever Look At Me  
(Copyright 2009/12 Cherrybell Music)

This lyric has become our most important message to youngsters in our school shows.  We all need to believe that we're special, that we have something positive to offer the world in our brief stay here.  Each of us needs to say, 'LOOK AT ME.' 

I have just now come back from the basement studio where Becky Jo Benson is mixing our recording of 'Look At Me,' and I am thrilled just to be singing such a good song.  How special it is to consider having a knock-yer-socks-off record like that at my age.  If someone else had written it would I still like it as much?
Yes, I think so.

How sad it is to imagine how good might be the late-in-life works of Nick Woods or John Denver or Roger Miller.  That's the only tragedy I see in death.  What they didn't get around to doing when their capability was possibly at its best is mournful to me.  I'm grateful now for ever moment that I'm alive, glad to still be wondering what the weather shall be tomorrow, still making a conscious effort to write the best song anybody ever heard.  What a joy it is just to think.  Why would anybody ever want to dabble in self-sedation?  Aren't being at the very top of the food chain and gifted with reason and meaningful communication rewards enough for the effort required?

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 11 November 2012

Nostalgia In A Junque Shop

I had dealt with most of the junque shops around the Mother Lode, but there was one in Pine Grove I had never visited, and when I finally did, sometime in the 'nineties, it was a rare moment, as the proprietor and I quite obviously had similar tastes in antiques: authentic, bold, brassy, entertaining, etc.  I came upon one item that stopped me in my tracks.  It was an ancient ship's wheel, the steering device, and it was labeled as being from The Delta Queen.  That boat and I had a history together.  In 1964, I had an idea about making an album titled Riverboat Days, and I wanted to sail upon the last of the great sternwheelers to get the feel of what my group and I would be singing about.  I called the Greene Steamship Company in Cincinnati and made them an offer.  If you'll supply our passage, we'll entertain your passengers.  Done!  By the way, this was also the germ of a similar enterprise.  Remember John Denver's song Calypso?   He was living with my family when I hatched the plan to make use of The Delta Queen, and he wanted to go with us, but he wasn't in the group.  He actually said, "If I ever get the kind of power that you have, I'm going to do the same thing.  All you had to do was figure out where you wanted to go and make a phone call."  John eventually called Jacques Cousteau.

I asked the shop proprietor how he knew for certain that this wheel actually came from The Delta Queen, and he told me that the man who had done much of the restoration work on the vessel lived in Lodi, California.  "I'm a little older that you are," he said to me, "and I have some pretty good sources."  "I doubt that you're older," I told him, then asked, "When did you graduate from high school?"  "I didn't," was his answer.  "I went off to Korea instead."  "Okay, when would you have graduated?"  "1951," he replied.  "January or June?"  "June," he said.  "We're the same age, " I assured him.  "By the way, where did you go to high school?"  "San Francisco."  "What school?"  "Well, actually, I say San Francisco, but that's because most people know San Francisco, and not so many people know Oakland."  "You went to Oakland High?"  "No, Castlemont, in East Oakland."  "So did I," I told him.  That's about the time we began to scrutinize each other more carefully.  "What's your name? I asked.  "Roy, Roy Ramaciotti."  "You also went to Elmhurst Junior High, and I remember the first day you came to PE class.  You were two days late, but you were also bigger than the coach, so he didn't give you a bad time about it."  Wow!  What a coincidence.  "Did you know Don Masonich?"  I asked.  "He was one of my best friends."  "And Chuck Osuna?"  "Yeah, how about John Ek?"  "Sure, and John Minney?"  "Yep."  "Hey, wait a minute, " he interjected, "if we both knew all of those people back then, how come we didn't hang-out together?"  "Let me tell you something, Roy," I explained, "In high school I was five-feet three-inches tall, and I wrote poetry..."  "I'd have knocked you on your 
f--king ass!" he roared with a menacing frown.  "I know that," I told him, "and I knew it then."  A moment or two passed before we shook hands, even hugged each other.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 31 October 2012

Halloween In The Country

Our first Halloween in the wilds of Calaveras County, California was an altogether
different event than had taken place in Stone Canyon, Bel Air, Los Angeles.  There we were on the ranch with almost no neighbors.  How does one manage a Trick or Treat operation without willing subjects?  That was the question we asked Martha Gregory on the telephone.  She was our nearest neighbor, maybe a quarter of a mile away, and we had already been invited to ask Martha about anything.  She was ancient by our standards, and she ruled the roost with an iron hand.  Les, her quiet husband, might have had differing opinions on issues, but nobody would ever hear his side.  "We had lots of neighbors in Los Angeles," Dianne told Martha, "and Halloween was easy, but what do people do around here?"  "You bring your children to my house." the old woman said; "I'll take care of everything."  So we drove down the ranch road to where the pavement began, then made a left onto Gregory Road to Gregory Ranch.  These weren't ostentatious people by any means.  We assumed they were well-off, as
they owned the land, but there were no frills, nothing to indicate pride the way
we'd known it in the city.  Their house had been Les' parents' house, and likely a
couple of generations beyond.  

Kevin, our oldest, was six years old at the time, and the twins, Melinda and
Cameron, were nearly four.  Amanda had been born in May, and this was the end of October, so she was cared for by Glennie, our Nanny from Scotland.  This was the kids' event, so Dianne and I watched from the car like respectful parents as they knocked on Martha's door.  "Trick or Treat," they shouted to the woman dressed as a witch, and she gave them licorice and apples.  Then she began doing sign language to us, and we weren't understanding the message, so we approached her front porch. 
"Have them go 'round to the back door," she whispered.  We did that, and several
knocks on that door brought a ghostlike figure clad in a sheet.  The apparition gave the children walnuts and candy corn.  "Try the front door again," the creature said, and the process continued.  There was nothing fancy about the costumes, and all of the attendants seemed strangely familiar, but children are naturally good sports, and nobody complained.  In fact, later on, they would remember this as one of the best Halloweens ever.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 8 October 2012

Bass Banjo

I have a Gibson bass banjo. It was famous at Ledbetter's and among my musician
friends at the time, as it was directly connected to the song Today and MGM. When I went on the interview with Ted Richmond, the producer at MGM (Advance To The Rear), he said, "The reason I picked you to create the music for my soundtrack was that I noticed on The Andy Williams Show that you have a lot of banjos in your group, and I love the banjo." Then he became slightly nostalgic. "Years ago, there was a Vaudeville act billed as The Blue Belles, and they were two sisters, one played plectrum and the other played tenor, and they were the damnedest thing you ever saw! They wangled away on those banjos, and just when you thought you couldn't handle any more banjo music, they'd play higher and faster, and at the conclusion of their act, they had an old grandpa come out with a banjo so big that it had wheels on it. Then from the opposite side of the stage there came a little kid, maybe four years old at the most, and he was playing a banjo uke. They brought down the house! Did you ever see a bass banjo," he asked. "No, I never ever saw one."

About five days later, in mail addressed to to me in care of The Andy Williams Show, I received a postcard from Richmond, VA, which read, 'I have a Gibson bass banjo for sale, and I want $750. for it." I called the man on the phone, told him I wasn't made out of money, that money doesn't grow on trees, and that I couldn't pay $750., but I might be able to send him $600. We had a deal, and he said, "I'll even ship it to you at my own expense. It'll travel in its original coffin case." A week or so later, the instrument arrived in California, and there on the case was painted in ancient lettering: 'The Blue Belles.' This had to be the very same bass banjo that Ted Richmond had told me about having seen in the 'twenties.

I've often thought about what an amazing set of circumstances it took to create such a drama, and the question arises: might I have been set-up? No, I don't think so. This sale would have represented nickels and dimes to Ted Richmond. He had just completed an Elvis Presley movie, so he had plenty of bucks, and had he wanted to sell me a banjo, he simply would have asked me if I wanted to buy the thing.

It was charred in the fire at Ledbetter's, but I was able to save some of the wood
and all of the hardware, and I had Bernardo (B.C. Rich's father), restore it for me.

Weird!

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Andy Williams (1927 - 2012) Above Dave, Lori, Randy, Becky Jo 2011 visit

Randy’s Blog 7 October 2012

Bittersweet

I has been a very bittersweet journey in the past couple of weeks. The shows at
Deadwood and Minot went well, but we lost Andy Williams to bladder cancer, and our beloved Lori Brandon has just now died of colorectal cancer. I told the audience in Deadwood that we likely wouldn't be there entertaining them, had it not been for Andy, and that's the truth. He played a vital role in our achieving success as The New Christy Minstrels. Without the exposure that his show offered weekly in 1962 and '63, we'd be just another pleasant musical memory, a collection of wannabes.

Lori was a lot closer to our hearts. She'd been one of the essential building
blocks in the restoration of the group, and her love story with Dave Rainwater was very much a musical family affair. The year was 1999, and we had just returned to California from Leavenworth, Kansas. Dave said to me, "I have fallen in love with a member of the group, and I need to tell you about it." I had no idea that there wasany such relationship budding among us, and I can remember saying to him, "Oh, please tell me it's not Lowell." He laughed. "No, it's Lori," he said. 'How was that even possible?' I wondered. We'd been together night and day for nearly a month, and there was not a hint of impropriety. I had rented a lovely old mansion in my birth city, and we'd dedicated every waking moment to learning and rehearsing a show about the California Gold Rush. I had written 'Bring A Broom' for the stage in Sonora, and from my perspective, nobody among us had any time to play the love game. The answer, I later learned, was that Lori and Becky Jo roomed together, and the latter is a sound sleeper.

My most favorite Lori Brandon moment happened at Bear Valley in the High Sierra. We were in concert, and it was one of our best performances, especially satisfying that early-on. The overflow crowd was a joy to behold, and their unbridled enthusiasm helped to make us better than we likely were. That show was fun. Everything we tried succeeded, and somewhere in the middle of the performance, I noticed that Lori had broken one of the twelve strings on her guitar. She did that quite often, as her style was brutal. She always wangled away at her instrument with a vengeance, Hoyt Axton in a dress. I caught a gleam from the broken string as it danced through the air, and what I did next was a bit bizarre, but totally predictable. You can't give a jokester that kind of opportunity and not expect fulfillment. She was positioned, as usual, to my right, and I very calmly grasped the end of the broken string when it came near enough to me, and continued to strum my guitar with the same hand. Nobody noticed that I had a firm grip on the wire that led back to the headstock of Lori's instrument, and she became only slightly disoriented when I began leaning to the left, towing her with me. I knew that she would be suspecting the altitude, 7000+ feet, as vertigo is the first symptom one experiences when being manipulated by a guitar string. She was certain that was the problem, especially since it came and went so quickly. She was becoming dizzy, and I was feeling such pride in my accomplishment. Eventually, of course, she saw the errant string and followed it with her eyes to behold a grinning Svengali, who had taken control of her performance. The whole episode was hilarious, especially since much of theaudience was in on the gag by the time she realized what was happening to her. We all laughed forever.
I miss her already.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 6 October 2012

Ring Of Muddy Water

I found an old Glenn Yarbrough LP in an antique shop a couple of days ago, and I was amazed to see that a song titled Ring Of Bright Water was included thereon.  It was my understanding that this cut had been deleted from Glenn's record (It's Gonna Be Fine-1965).  

Tom Campbell and Steve Gillette were wannabe songwriters sponsored by my publishing company in the 1960's, and they had already created a promising ditty titled Darcy Farrow when Tom came to me to ask a question: "How old does a poem have to be before it's in the public domain?"  I told him that the answer at that time was pre-1909, then I asked him why he wanted to know.  "Well," he said, "you know that song that I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the one that Glenn Yarbrough wants to record?  I found the words in a magazine."  "What magazine?" I asked, clearly hoping that it was an ancient publication.  "I don't know…Look or Saturday Evening Post," he replied.  I instantly put the program in reverse, but deferred sounding the alarm.  I urged him to locate the periodical from which he had obtained the plagiarized lyrics, and it
was soon determined that the poem seemed to be attributed to Gavin Maxwell. With considerable effort, I was able to reach his solicitor in London or Glascow, and I stated my case that one of my writers wanted to make use of his client's poetry, and was seeking permission for the uninvited collaboration.  "I'll get back to you," the lawyer said.  He called back to let me know that no matter how promising the revenue might be, there would be absolutely no chance of our making commercial use of his client's intellectual property.  'Permission denied,' and that was the end of that, at least I thought so at the time.  I immediately called RCA, Glenn's recording company, and made a complete disclosure of all that had transpired.  I also forbade them in writing to make use of my company's credits, and I refused to sign the release form for a first-use copyright.  I wanted nothing to do with this invitation to a lawsuit.  I had played no role in presenting the song to Yarbrough, and I certainly hadn't been aware of the composition's supposed illegality prior to the disclosure by Tom Campbell. 

Fast-forward to 2012.  I was shocked to find a recording of this song, even more
surprised to discover the entire lyric, the Tom Campbell/Glenn Yarbrough version,
offered online by mudcat.org.  How is this possible?  Was theft of intellectual
property unexpectedly reevaluated somewhere along the way?  Was the lawyer's claimed representation of the lyrics inaccurate, or could it possibly be that a breech of intellectual property rights has flown beneath the radar for the past forty-eight years? What wasn't so clear back then is that the plagiarized poem was actually written by Kathleen Raine, and Maxwell had merely borrowed one of its lines for his title. There's zero chance that it was somehow in the public domain. Kathleen, one of the UK's most celebrated poets, didn't die until 2003.

Helping promising young songwriters wasn't a totally original idea of mine; it had
been an accepted practice in Tin Pan Alley long before I dedicated my seed money to the likes of Cass Elliot and David Crosby.  Songwriters, it was thought, needed nurturing, having their basic needs supplied on credit against future royalties, but nothing much came of my good intentions prior to the song Darcy Farrow.  We knew it was a good song, and I was pleased that we finally had a winner.  Newcomers Ian & Sylvia recorded it, and that bit of minor success was encouraging, but later on, seemingly for no reason at all, I was summoned to court to defend my ownership of the copyright.  Steve Gillette's father, I learned, was a lawyer, and he had taken it upon himself to nullify my contract with his son (and Tom Campbell), even sanctioning the inappropriate selling of the song to another publisher.  A judge eventually asked him why he had done this, and the barrister said, "Steve was young and impressionable, and ought not to have signed the original publishing contract."  The judge noted that Steve Gillette had been of age, older than twenty-one, when he entered into the arrangement with my company, then told the elder Gillette that he really needed to "go back to law school."  I was reaffirmed as the publisher of Darcy Farrow, and I also learned why the Gillettes were so eager to negate my ownership.  The song had been very quietly recorded by John Denver, and it was suddenly much bigger-business.  Then came the next problem.  The other publishing firm had already been paid for the initial pressing, and those in charge had spent the money.  I foolishly agreed to accept status quo, as I hoped to erase the animosity.  I even granted the greedy participants in this scheme the then-current polite explanation for such inexcusable behavior: 'They quite obviously had received
bad advice.' 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 5 October 2012

 Trek to Tok

Tim Whitman's tale of a trek to Tok when he was younger reminded me of an identical journey of mine just a few years ago. I wanted a load of those diseased spruce trees from that same location, so I dragged BJB with me to drive the AlCan Highway. The outrageous gasoline prices seem quite modest nowadays, but the wildlife along the road made the excursion worthwhile. We stopped at one of those fuel outposts along the way, two pumps, a toilet, and a shack filled with locals, smoking and discussing their plans and grievances, and I waited in the pickup for Becky Jo Benson to exit the building. She came out looking somewhat embarrassed. "What's wrong?" I wanted to know. "I asked them for a roadmap, and they all laughed at me," she said. "The proprietor went looking for a map, and he only had one. It was all dusty and shelf-worn, but I bought it anyway. It's unnerving to have strangers laugh at you when you don't know why." "Look at your map," I told her, "There's only one road, and it doesn't go anywhere else. Nobody needs a highway map up here."

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 4 October 2012

 Sick Of Birthdays

I'm sorry that I have not kept up with the obligation that has been dealt to me by
Becky Jo Benson. She insisted that I write a paragraph or more everyday, and I was willing to tolerate that assignment, but there comes a time when living one's life takes precedence over someone else's idea of a good time. I've been busy.

I'm so SICK of birthdays. It started this year on Thursday, the 26th of July, with
a surprise birthday party at Pietro's in Lodi, California. GREAT Italian food and
wonderful humor. Everybody in the group in our private room took a turn at stand-up comedy, and it was precious. Our host, as usual in this part of the world, was Claude Brown. Then on Friday, we worked in concert at Micke Grove, the event sold-out @ $75. a seat (ALL the money for the worthwhile cause), and it was another birthday party. On July 28th, in Fair Oaks (East Sacramento), we did our first of two concerts, and that became a birthday party. Surprise, surprise! Then, on the 29th, it was actually my birthday, and I was celebrated with my eleventh birthday cake (or pie). The next day, the 30th, was a similar story. This was my birthday, according to my birth certificate and passport. I was born on the 29th, but the doctor didn't get to 18th and Dakota until the next day, so he wrote the 30th, but my mother was there, and she said that I was born on the 29th, hence the discrepancy. It's unbelievable that I have suffered 158 birthdays to date, and there's a threat of more to follow.

It should be noted that this small essay was delivered in a timely fashion, but the
person who posts my blogs on the website has been busy, so it's no less than three months late in being shared.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Born
20 April 1805
Menzenschwand, Germany
Died
8 July 1873 (aged 68)
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Randy’s Blog 3 October 2012

Winterhalter

I was chatting with Pete Henderson, and he mentioned meeting me when I fronted The Back Porch Majority in a show on Vancouver Island.
The only time I remember playing Vancouver Island was for a man who had gambled everything he owned on a big extravaganza, his own music festival, and the crowds stayed away by the hundreds, maybe even by the thousands. He had to mortgage his house to pay the acts, and I felt bad about taking his money, but I also had mouths to feed. I especially remember the goats grazing on top of houses. The place was charming; they had lawns called sod roofs, and the goats were a cheerful sight, not so much like Beverly Hills.

We also played the Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver, and this was at the end of a long trek across Canada, one or two nights here, a week over there, all the way from Winnipeg to BC in the dead of winter. Never missed a show, and drove one of the worst vehicles ever, an International pickup that had genuine health problems, but it also had four-wheel drive, and it just kept chugging along. Some of the worst weather on the planet, I might add.

When we did our last program in Vancouver, I went shopping. Often we were paid in cash, and I had a load of Canadian money. I didn't want to lose so much in the
currency exchange, so my plan was to buy a genuine antique, no less than 100 years old (this to escape duty at the border), and it had to be worth more than the amount I was paying in cash. These were my rules. I went to Dealer's Antique Shop, a HUGE operation that regularly brought container loads of heirlooms from Europe. There was an oil painting of Queen Victoria on sale for, as I remember, about $2000. (Canadian). I told the owner that I thought the piece was interesting, and he gave me a history lesson. "When we bought it we thought it was the genuine article, a Winterhalter, but the signature is wrong. It's signed Francois Winterhalter, and the Court Painter to The Queen was named Franz Winterhalter. He was German. This was likely painted by a relative who was cashing in on his kin's fame. If it were the real thing" he said, "it would be worth three or four times that amount." I then took a break from my shopping and visited the public library. It took about three hours of concentrated effort (we had no internet back then), but I finally found it: 'Franz Winterhalter was so disillusioned by the new Impressionist movement that he left England and became Court Painter to Napoleon III. He was so pleased to find a new home for his Realism Style of painting that he even, out of respect, changed his name to 'Francois.' At the end of his long life, he became nostalgic and painted a few portraits of Queen Victoria. After all, she had been his greatest claim to fame. He sealed these pieces that he considered his finest work into a crate and left instructions in his will that the crate should not be opened until fifty years after his death. 'By then,' he estimated, 'the art world shall have returned to its senses, and people shall be better qualified to judge my artistic ability.' His relatives reportedly opened the box moments after his death, and the treasures were hastily sold or simply discarded.

I went back to the store and spent another half an hour contemplating the purchase. The longer I took to make up my mind, the cheaper the painting got. I still have it, and I'm told that it's worth more than most people's houses.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 2 October 2012

Terrorist Attack

I recently shared with my friends an article about diptera, the tiny, two-winged
flies that look and behave like miniature mosquitoes, some species of which swarm by the millions. Well, I now have a personal connection to these critters. Some are called 'blind mosquitoes' and are known to be non-biting. That's comforting. Thenwe read on to learn that the non-biting flies are only the males, that the females don't mind making a meal of anything, anyone. We were in the backyard painting 'NCM' on various pieces of Foundation sound gear and carrying cases when I was viscously attacked by some unknown agent of nature. At first, I thought it might be that I had brushed up against poison ivy, as my arms began to itch, then I looked at the back of my hand to see a wee creature drilling for blood on my seventy-nine-year-old skin. That's elder abuse. These things are so small that they can hardly be seen, but they are wickedly effective, annoying, even painful. I returned to Wikipedia with the image of this tiny insect etched into my memory, going about her business, a mere nothing attacking the grandest invention in God's entire arsenal. Consider the disparity. I weigh two-hundred pounds, and I have the advantage of thinking, reasoning. This annoying individual is practically weightless and mindless, going about her evil business without pathos. What a joke she is! And what meaning can there possibly be in her existence? From egg to maturity in her genus takes only two to three weeks, and then the adult fly lives perhaps only three days, maybe as long as six weeks. Why? And what causes some of them to suddenly congregate in numbers so vast that they darken the light of the sun? Why do they whirl in a column that resembles a biological tornado? They are called gnats, midges, muckleheads, chizzywinks, punkies, no-see-ums, etc. I wish Monty Python had discussed this subject in the Meaning Of Life. Those boys made the
difficult topics so easily understood.

Click here for more information

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Bruce Lee (posing for the camera), Melinda and Bruce Lee

Randy’s Blog 1 October 2012

Woh, Nee & Bruce Lee

Daughter Melinda wrote to me a week or so ago asking if I wanted a Chinese Crested Dog, as she had found one at the animal shelter. She remembered that we had a couple of these naked dogs when she was a toddler, but she had never heard how that came to be. I 'won' the first one in a 'drawing' at a pet shop on Hollywood Blvd. That's where I went to buy food for my other three dogs, a Poodle, a Greyhound and my American Dog, Willy.  He was in a cage with his sister, and they were for sale @$300. and $350. each.  I liked him a lot, and he really seemed to enjoy my visits, so I eventually thought about buying him.  The man who ran the store said, "Can't sell him now, because we have just offered him as the Grand Prize for our Christmas Drawing.  Anyone who spends $10. or more gets a ticket."  I went in twice as often after that, and as we had shows to do around Christmas time, I told the man that I wouldn't be in town when the drawing was to take place, so I gave him a number for where we'd be.  The pet shop owner looked terribly uncomfortable. "It would be a genuine travesty," he said, "if you didn't win him, because there have been only 24 tickets given out, and you have 20 of them. You're the only one who really likes him, so I'm declaring you the winner."  Later on, I found an ad in the paper from people on the other side of LA who were seeking a stud for their bitch in heat. 
These dogs were totally rare back then, 1959, and I took Woh (named for woh won ton soup) to where they lived, and I was given pick of the litter.  I took the cutest of all the puppies, but Nee was never quite 'normal' or as bright as his father.  Reason: We learned much later that through a couple of moves that we didn't know about, the female had come from the same Hollywood pet shop, and was Woh's sister.

When we moved to Bel Air, Dianne didn't want them having the run of the house, so they were lodged in a heated brick doghouse that I built especially for them. They both died of old age.

This story has a happy ending, as Melinda, Jeff and son Wyatt now have BruceLee, their adopted Chinese Crested Dog.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 2 November 2012

(I placed this Blog above Randy’s ‘New Facial Hair’ Blog because
I wanted people to see the similarities in the facial hair.) Becky Jo

We Welcome Percy French!

I knew that Dorothy Ives would appreciate my song 'I Love You In Irish,' so I sent
the lyric to her when it was still warm from the oven. She immediately called me.
"Oh, how Burl would have loved that song," she declared, then proceeded to tell me of his overt appreciation for Percy French, the Irish bard mentioned in my lyric. This was news to me, as Burl and I had never discussed Percy. I knew nothing about him, except that he had written the divine poetry in
'Mountains Of Mourne.'
"He loved Percy French so much that we looked all over Ireland to find a portrait of him, and Burl bought it. It was one of his favorite possessions." A few days
later, Dorothy called me again. "I think you should have Burl's painting of Percy
French," she said, "I know that he would want you to have it, but you'll have to
come and see me in order to get it, and you'll be required to sing the song to me."
Who could possibly argue with an invitation like that?

When we completed our September NCM assignments in Deadwood, SD and Minot, ND, Becky Jo Benson and I (along with Vecca-the-Showdog and Green Monkey, the vociferous yellow-naped amazon), drove the new group van to Missoula (to meet with website partner Barbara Evans and husband Allan) then on to Anacortes, WA, to share quality time with dear Dorothy Ives, now 86 years old. We spent a glorious few days at Burl's last mansion, and Becky Jo still had her same room, but my long-time basement retreat, the place that was so comfortable, where I could sing and play all night long without disturbing anybody, had been commandeered for storage, so I was assigned new and supposedly better housing on the main floor. I kept having the
urge to sing the theme song from The Jeffersons: 'Movin' On UP!'

When we finally got around to my singing of 'I Love You In Irish' and the viewing of the Percy French portrait, which had been hidden away in one of Burl's closets, I was amazed to take note of how similar we looked, Percy and myself. My hair isn't quite as long as his was, but he also had the lower-lip mustache, that additional facial hair that I had intentionally cultivated in response to my being mistaken for an 'old gray-haired lady.'

Percy now has a prominent place on the living room wall of The New Christy Minstrels Foundation's World Headquarters.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Photo by Becky Jo Benson

Randy Sparks

Randy’s Blog 3 September 2012

New Facial Hair

I now have more facial hair than I had just a few weeks ago.  This is not really an important topic to anybody, I realize, but since I have been repeatedly asked why I now have more facial hair, I thought I might take a few moments to explain.  This all started at one of our concerts a few weeks ago.  Joe Van Hook, who sells the performers' CDs, could hardly wait to make a big announcement to the whole group: "An ancient woman who was obviously sight-impaired said, 'I couldn't hear all of what that old gray-haired lady in the middle was saying about the group's CD…where is it?"  I had just told the people in the seats that we were about to take an intermission, and I called their attention to the product table.  Yes, I have a high voice, but I also have a mustache, and I'm not Italian, so I needed to do something to protect my fragile psyche.  It was easy enough to let the hair grow just beneath my lower lip.  

I'm reminded of one of my short songs: 'You're a long-haired boy or a very ugly girl…either way, I think I love you!'  Now, that's a love song for the new century, but it's not autobiographical.  It's just humor for the new age, the confusing time in which we now live.  Maybe it'll help if I use some shoe dye on my gray mustache.  That poor woman has a sight problem.  Maybe I'll have Dave Deutschendorf make the announcements from now on.  She wouldn't have the audacity to call him an 'old gray-haired lady.'  He sings bass; there'd likely be no sexual ambiguity. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 2 September 2012

Wear & Tear

I was recently asked by an IRS agent to prove that I purchased a certain guitar that was listed on my depreciation schedule, and as annoying as such a request is, I found a perverse sort of humor in the it.  Some might argue that good guitars don't depreciate, that their collectors' value offsets any loss of worth from their being used on a daily basis, but I have an excellent example of devastating loss.  My black composition-Martin, that company's so-called break-through in new, space-age materials, is totally unplayable and unrepairable after only three or four seasons on the road, as the body is warped so that the strings no longer relate to the frets.  The last authorized-factory repairman I visited asked me not to bring it back to his shop.  Any successful concert act, I believe, is tough on instruments, and the best solution to the problem would seem to be to own several and rotate their time in the trenches.
 
How much do I know about the abuse of accounting practices relating to the business of show?  Too much.  One of my earliest agents operated in Beverly Hills, and he was the son-in-law of the owner of the company, so I enjoyed a certain amount of extra clout, at least in theory.  He had married into big money, and his office was like a museum, oil paintings on the walls, the finest antiques for furniture, Persian carpets on the floor.   I enjoyed my time there, and I had a favorite picture of a grand fighting cock, obviously much celebrated in the 1800s.  One day I noticed that this piece was missing, and then I saw that his desk was different too.  Even the precious carpet was gone.  "What happened to all of your treasures?" I asked.  "It's the end of their three-year depreciation schedule," he replied (with entirely too much information).  He then went on to tell me how this was the greatest gimmick in the history of grand theft, how his mother-in-law was a pioneer in the transportation of container loads of old-world bargains from Europe to America, how she owned the ritziest, high-end antique retail store in Los Angeles, and at the conclusion of their three-year cycle, ALL of the furnishings at the agency and studio offices were declared worthless, worn-out, discarded, but in reality, sold for obscene profits to eager wealthy buyers, many being their own showbiz clients.  Ask me if I feel bad about claiming wear and tear on a guitar.  I don't make the rules.  The laws are written by slick fat-cats to the advantage of other slick fat-cats, and the rest of us ought to refuse to play that game, but we go with the flow.  We do the best we can. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

The Stetson belonged to Burl Ives, and was a gift to Kenny from Randy

Randy’s Blog 1 September 2012
Kenny Rogers & Green Green

A very nice member of Kenny Rogers' management team called on Becky Jo's phone a short while ago and wanted my permission to reproduce a few lines of the lyrics of Green Green in a book that tells the story of Kenny's remarkable life, and although I didn't bother to explain to this man all of the details, I instantly saw the humor in BJB's serving as my secretary in the telephone meeting.  'Of course, it would be all right with me' if Kenny made use of the words that I wrote, but all he really had to do was talk to her, as she runs the Foundation, and that entity now owns and operates all of my music publishing businesses.  That's funny.  

We immediately called Barry McGuire, my co-writer, not really to ask his permission (his creativity had to do with the music), but to share with him the exciting news that somebody in the world still cares about a ditty that the two of us put together forty-nine years ago.  Predictably, he was tickled, even thrilled, to be included in Kenny's book, especially since Kenny tells of making use of Barry's performance on our biggest hit record to audition for the managers of The New Christy Minstrels.  I hadn't known this.  I was aware that Dolan Ellis had discovered Kenny in a stage show in Houston, and had given him my number and the contact information for the NCM office, but I had no idea that KR had prepared himself for the opportunity by emulating Barry.  That's as exciting to me as the news that The Beatles had asked to meet my group when they worked in London in '64.  It also puts into better perspective Kenny's words when we met at the Jackson Rancheria Casino in Amador County, California a few years ago.  He had invited me to his show, as I lived nearby, and introduced me to his band backstage.  "Boys," he said, "we wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for this man."  That embarrassed me, and I politely disagreed.  "No, I appreciate the thought," I said, "but you'd have simply gotten your start somewhere else."  I had presumed he was speaking of Ledbetter's, my rustic nightclub in West Los Angeles.  It had served as a launching pad of sorts for The First Edition, their first appearance anywhere, and I was pleased to lend them my stage when Ken Kragen called to say he needed a place to showcase the act, but now I realize Kenny's message had to do with the bigger picture.  The group that I invented, The NCM, was a much more important link to his success.  

One of my best pieces of memorabilia is the very first paycheck ever written to The First Edition.  There's a note on it that explains why it's ten dollars short.  It details that Kenny Rogers took a draw, and this had to be repaid.  I don't suppose that ten dollars was ever again that important to him.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 31 August 2012

Phyllis Diller

Farewell, Phyllis

On the day that Phyllis Diller died at age 95, we were appearing at the Chautauqua Institution theater in Western New York, one of the grandest concert opportunities there is.  We had been there three years previously, and the audience was wonderful both times.  I mentioned in my opening act that I had just received the news of Phyllis' death, and I also told the crowd that it's okay to talk about the demise of someone of that advanced age, mostly because she had lived life to the fullest, and she was a dear friend.  Of course, nobody even feels sorry for you when you check out at 95.  

What a joy she was.  I was her opening act the very first time she ever stepped onto anybody's stage as a stand-up comic.  I was into my first job in the fast lane, and she joined the show a few weeks later.  Did I say 'stand-up' comic?  She was so much more than that.  I'm thinking of one skit in particular, wherein she played the role of a torch singer, draping herself onto the baby grand piano, then crawling on top of it, all the while manipulating a cocktail glass and cigarette holder with a lighted cigarette.  She was hilarious onstage, but even funnier in the dressing room.  I had never met anybody like this.  She'd had five children, and her earliest greeting to me was, "Wanna see my stretch marks?"  With this line she hiked-up her blouse, and the shock value was extreme.  Nobody in my household or circle of friends had ever done anything like that, and I didn't know where to look.  What a funny lady.  I could go on and on, but I won't.   

We talked on the phone a few times before she died.  We had been pan pals for years, and she finally expressed her frustration about having to write what she had in mind to tell me, and asked me to call her.   I did, and she was exactly the same as I remembered her from the very beginning.  It's interesting to me that we have in common where we began, The Purple Onion in San Francisco, and the significant career boost that comes with discovery by Bob Hope.  He had brought me out of The Blue Angel in New York in 1958, and discovered her in the early 'sixties.  Phyllis loved my group's recordings, and I had wanted her to see us work on stage, so I invited her to our major concert in Cerritos, CA in January of 2010, even offered to send a limo for her, but she had already reached that point in her life when she much preferred to stay home, no matter who was asking.  I had the feeling that I might have been able to coax her into the visit, but left the matter where it was.  She was delightfully crazy and is missed by so many, myself included.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 26 August 2012

Summer & Barnacle Geese

I'm so grateful for summer.  What a blessing it is to visit a fruit stand to share in the bounty of nature and creative botanists.  Now that I'm a dedicated eater of only beneficial foods, mostly a vegetarian, I very much appreciate the glorious variety August offers.  Between Harrisburg and Mt. Gretna, there in Pennsylvania, I visited an emporium of fruits and vegetables that offered white peaches and white corn and old-fashioned watermelon, real watermelon, the kind with seeds, heritage tomatoes, and all the colors of bell peppers, etc.  Think January, and there's grateful applause for August.  

I've been really good with the promise to myself to consume only healthful foods, with only a couple of Irish moments, one being the wonderful green beans that Eddie's wife Chris served me at our first meal  together.  I didn't realize that they had been prepared with bacon grease, and of course, that's why they were so tasty.  Ummm!  On the way from Youngstown to Toledo, we'd stopped at a Bob Evans restaurant (which I lovingly call Bobby Vaughn's), and they had just sold the last of their daily output of chicken pot pies, so I opted for the chili.  Yes, I know that red meat is perhaps high on the list of ingredients, but taking my Irish approach, there's little, if any, guilt involved.  I had already crossed that line with chicken pot pie in a previous Bob Evans stop, and I had openly excepted this culinary delight before commencing my diet.  Some old habits, of course, aren't meant to be broken, and what good is a healthy life without BE's chicken pot pie?  I did share a lot of the delicious chicken pieces with Vecca-the-Showdog, and that fact keeps me somewhat righteous; any other residual guilt is greatly softened by my reliance on Irish tradition.  
I recently learned that when the Irish Catholics felt unfairly burdened by the church's ban on eating meat in the time of fasting, some of the more creative countrymen made a habit of feasting on the barnacle goose, their reasoning being that the name 'barnacle' identified the creature as sea food.  Breeding and nesting of the population of barnacle geese that wintered in Western Ireland took place in faraway Greenland, so the creature was thought to be born of shellfish on driftwood, a bonafide product of the sea.  Oddly enough, that's how barnacles got their name, not the other way around.  It took a thirteenth century papal bull from Innocent !!! to put a stop to the eating of barnacle geese on fasting days, and if Inny-the-third wants me to refrain from eating Bobby Vaughn's chicken pot pie, I fully expect equally proper notice. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 25 August 2012

A Better Class Of Women In My Dreams

There was a time when every song I wrote was with Burl Ives in mind as the musical narrator.  I still write for his approval, but no longer for him as the singer.  One of those ditties from his imagined point of view was titled A Better Class Of Women In My Dreams, and it was a  fairly common approach: 'I'm old, barely functional, but I can dream, can't I?'  My song talked about always having exquisite taste in females, and therefore meeting only beautiful ladies in dreamland.  It was a fun romp, and Burl immediately like it a lot, but said I'm the wrong person to sing it.  It was his opinion that this would be the perfect piece of material for George Burns, and he called George on the phone.  "I'm sending you a song that Randy Sparks has written," he said, "and I think you should sing it."  I knew George from Palm Springs.  He was always on the front porch of his cottage at Marion Davies' Desert Inn, where I performed nightly, and George's son Ronnie Burns was a friend of mine, so I saw George everyday.  I wouldn't have had the audacity to send him a song, but I certainly didn't mind that Burl was doing so in my behalf.  It took a few days for the mail to reach George, and I was there at Burl and Dorothy's house when he called back.  Burl put him on the speaker phone.  "It's a nice song, Randy," he said, "and, Burl, I appreciate your sending it to me, but I could never sing such a song.  Then there was a moment of silence.  "The only woman I ever dream about is Gracie."   Wow!

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 24 August 2012

Scott McKenzie & The Mamas & Papas?

Scott McKenzie died on Saturday, but I'm in Harrisburg, PA, so I didn't learn of his death until today, four days later.  What ever happened to high speed communication?  Scott and I don't go all the way back to 1967/San Francisco/Flowers In Your Hair, but we do have a history together.  

I was rehearsing my cowboy group, The Bear Back Riders of America, one night in Mokelumne Hill, when I received a telephone call from Don Thomson of Great Performances.  This was after our New Christy Minstrels/Kingston Trio tour of February 1997, and my hundred-year-old mother was still alive, so it was likely late in '97 or very early '98.  Don said to me on the phone, "I need your help.  Can you be in Hayward tomorrow night?"  I pressed him for details.  "I'm in San Mateo, with the so-called Mamas and Papas," he said,  "and I've just finished refunding more than half the money we took in.  There's not one original member, and they have a rock and roll drummer and bass player who won't tone it down.  The people are old, and they can't handle the noise.  The whole audience got up and walked out, and I need to have you open the show."  "You mean my group?"  I asked.  "No, just you."  "Well, how's that going to help?" I queried.   His reply stunned me.  "The rules say that if the audience stays past the intermission, they can't get their money back, and I need to have you do the whole first half."  'What a mean thing to do to unsuspecting people,' I thought to myself, but this was the producer who'd presented my many concerts with Burl Ives (of course, I mean The Burl Ives Show with Randy Sparks), and I owed him at that point.  "I'll be there," I said.  

I'm now continuing this tale a day later, and I learned just last night at our Mt. Gretna concert (in the Green Room over dinner) that Dolan Ellis might have spared Don Thomson much grief, had he been able to communicate what he learned in Sierra Vista, Arizona just ahead of Don's Northern California concerts presenting the bogus Ms&Ps.  Dolan had known Scott McKenzie from their working same venues together, when Scott and John Phillips and Dick Weissman were billed as The Journeymen.  Dolan was paying his personal respects by attending the concert billed as The Mamas & The Papas.  He was the reigning regional folk artist, and everyone who bought a ticket to hear California Dreamin' and Monday Monday quite likely knew Dolan Ellis' work.  Dolan's description of the concert was amazingly familiar.  "The drummer and bass player were loud beyond belief, and older folks in the seats were covering their ears with their hands.  Scott came slinking onto the stage in a purple cape, and he exuded hubris.  He seemed to be doing the audience a huge favor by simply being there, and when someone in the audience yelled 'Turn it down!,' he burst into a diatribe about the rights of the musicians.  'It's rock and roll for Christ's sake!  And if you don't like it, why don't you leave?"  At that point, Dolan Ellis and wife Rose, genuine celebrities in Sierra Vista, stood up.  "We're outa here, Scott," said the official Arizona Balladeer to his friend, and they led the exodus of those who felt punished by the blaring sounds.  

Dolan Ellis has forever displayed unbelievable respect for fellow musicians, but in this case, he was feeling the pains of the folks who had unwittingly bought tickets to a trashy heavy metal recital.

I had never heard this part of The Mamas & The Papas story, and Dolan had been equally unaware of my involvement with the same show a short time later.  Amazing!  "Did you ever see Scott McKenzie after that?" I wanted to know.  "No, nor did I want to," came his reply.  

Scott McKenzie, R.I.P.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Eddie Boggs

Randy’s Blog 23 August 2012

Hardanger Fiddle

Those wonderful surprise moments, unexpected encounters, situation comedy at its best and worst.  Eddie played the hardanger fiddle tonight, and for those who don't know, that's a Norwegian folk instrument.  It's similar to a regular violin, but has additional strings that resonate by sympathetic vibration.  The name is a bit confusing because it's pronounced hard-donger, and tonight, wouldn't you know, there was an ancient woman assigned to our hospitality detail, and she happened to know and appreciate classical folk instruments.  She literally ran into Eddie as he was exiting the Green Room.  He was carrying his instrument, and she said loudly, "You've got a HARD-DONGER!"   The place burst into uncontrollable laughter, and she had no idea why.  What a delightfully insane encounter.  That one was worth the price of admission just to see how red Eddie's face became.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 19 August 2012

Amazing!

Just when you think you've seen it all, there comes along a very different wrinkle, or in this case, lack of wrinkles.  A fan at last night's concert in Sellersville had brought with him to our show an unopened mono copy of Presenting The NCM.  He explained that he bought it because he loved the group, but had waited 50 years to open it, as he wanted to have the group autograph it.  There were only two of us who'd participated in that recording, but that was enough for him.  I mentioned the retail price, $3.99, and he affirmed it.  For another dollar or two, he could have had stereo.  Wow! 
Cheers! RS

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 17 August 2012

Egg Yolks--Who Knew?

Eggs are typically considered a ‘superfood,’ full of protein, vitamins and fatty acids.  However, a new study suggests the cholesterol in egg yolks is almost as dangerous as smoking cigarettes, Fox 31 Denver reported.
Researchers found that eating egg yolks regularly increased plaque buildup approximately two-thirds as much as smoking would.  
Using data from more than 1200 people in London, it appeared those who ate three or more egg yolks a week had significantly more plaque in their arteries than those who ate less.  
“One large egg has 100 calories, 230 milligrams of cholesterol in the yolk,” registered dietician Jessica Crandall with Denver Wellness and Nutrition in Englewood told Fox Denver.
She said people should have no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day, but added there’s conflicting research on whether eggs affect people’s cholesterol levels.
The study did not take into account factors such as exercise, waist size and genetics.

(end of canned data)

It's a good thing that I'm now into my 'healthy foods only' diet.  I love eggs, and I have enjoyed my ritual egg-cup breakfast forever.  I can't do that anymore.  

Today I had black coffee at Denny's, and the only 'healthy food' I could find on their breakfast menu seemed to be a short stack of pancakes.  Yes, they're promoted as 'Buttermilk Pancakes,' and that implies dairy products, but I'm taking a practical approach.  Such a miniscule amount can't be harmful.   I ordered a wheat bread onion soup bowl at Panera this evening.  They were out of the loaves used to cradle the soup, so they gave me whole wheat rolls instead.  I had forgotten about the melted cheese that floats on top of the onion soup, and I took the time to fish it out of my meal.  I couldn't remove 100% of it, but my 'only good foods' diet isn't as total as my ban on alcohol.  It's my assertion that slight amounts of banned foods don't matter so much.   

So far so good. 
Cheers! RS

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 15 August 2012

Good Food & Reflections Of An Ancient Songwriter  

Well, here we are in Terre Haute.  Four of the boys are spending the night in Carmel, eighty-five miles ahead of us, and I'm pleased to have a home here on the western end of Indiana's I-70.  This is the second day of my 'good food only' diet, and I must admit that the vegetarian Subway sandwich I had for a late lunch in Mid-Missouri wasn't as filling as junk food I might have consumed, so I welcomed the bin of gourmet goodies from the ice chest.  I had blueberries and pears from CA, cherries from WA, and smoked salmon from AK.  What a wonderful dinner I had tonight.  

I had promised myself that I would never go to unusual lengths to keep myself alive, but all at once, at age seventy-nine, strangely enough, I'm much more interested in continuing along this path.  Yes, I have lived quite long enough, and I really ought not become a drain on community resources, but I have also, just now, written the best song ever.  Okay, it might not be quite as good as Gentle On My Mind or Young At Heart or South Of The Border or Suzanne (and her tea and oranges that come all the way from China), but I do believe it's better than any song I'd written previously.  We may have to change the rules.  Old guys who are still productive can stay, all others depart.  That's self-serving, isn't it?  But that's the story of our fragmented society.  We have lobbyists to look after our welfare, not for one and all, but just for factions, the ones who have the bucks to preserve their cushy deals.  I love my life as a songwriter.  It's not everyday that I am able to write the best song ever, but I've done it a few times, and I did it again a couple of days ago.

One of my goals as a Tin Pan Alley-person was to write a song in the morning and sing it on a concert stage in the evening of that very same day, and I have done this.  The year was 2005, and the place was Queen Creek, AZ.  My group and I, The NCM, were doing a Christmas show, and we'd been singing red and green for a few days of rehearsal, so I was already in tune with the season when I chanced upon a nice idea for a Christmas love song, a unique approach:  'Merry Christmas, I Love You.'  That's as basic as it gets, the two strongest sentiments of the season.  It was a fun song to sing, and I wasn't singing it to rehearse; I was singing it because it was fun to sing.  I found Becky Jo Benson near the girls' dressing room, and she began singing it with me.  She added her nice, high harmony part.  Then the two of us met Harp Linda in the hallway, and she said, "I'll play behind you, if you'll come to where my harp is."  We did, and it sounded really good.  Like I said, it was fun to sing.  I could hear all of the harmonic possibilities in my mind, and I asked Todd Hallawell to join us on guitar, but he declined.  I think he was afraid of being part of something less than perfect.  I explained to him that we were just having fun, but he wasn't going for it.  Clarence and Art and Jackie, The Los Angeles Sewing Circle, had one of their usual small conferences and decided to boycott any effort to include this song in the evening's performance.  They were my friends much of the time, but not when it came to learning new material, especially mine.  They had only allowed one new song since 1964, and they didn't seem altogether pleased about that one.  I invited them to simply sing the chorus  with us in unison, but the answer was no.   I guess they thought that without them I couldn't possibly sing this new ditty, so they were caught off-guard when I explained to the audience that one of my goals in life was to write a song in the morning and sing it onstage that night.  I begged their indulgence, and the three of us, Becky Jo and Harp Linda and I, performed the song.  It was magical.  The crowd loved the rarity of the moment, and they also seemed to like the song.  What a thrill for an aging songwriter.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 14 August 2012

Incognito Patient

There was a nice moment here in down-to-earth Leavenworth, Kansas, and I felt bad for the folks who had no clue that their canine client was special.  In a place where seatbelt tickets are only $10.(recently escalated from $5.), it's to be expected that a visit to the veterinary clinic would be only $9.75, and there are likely few special occasions for the staff therein, so why not offer a ray of sunlight from showbiz?  Q. What's our mission in life?  A. To travel here and there and entertain whenever possible.  Vecca, of course, exudes humility and patience, even when she is a patient.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Randy Sparks wrote:
Randy Sparks has used the Broadway Veterinary
Clinic contact form to send a message.

From: Randy Sparks
Pet Name: Vecca
Subject: Broadway Veterinary Clinic Contact Form

Message: Thought you might like to know that you
had a pet celebrity at your clinic for removal of
her stitches. Please visit our website for her
photo & story. She's on stage with us
regularly, has only missed 4 concerts in nine
years.

Thanks for being there.
Cheers! RS
visit us on-line; thenewchristyminstrels.com

From: Samantha Braswell
To: Randy Sparks
Subject: Re: Broadway Veterinary Clinic Contact Form
Date: Aug 14, 2012 7:09 AM
Very exciting!! We were happy to see her! Good luck to all of you!

Samantha, BVC Staff

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 12 August 2012

My uncle Jake Arrington of Twin Falls, Idaho, my mother's brother, was a pioneer in that part of our country.  He and his brother Grover owned and operated one of only two grocery stores there.  They were really decent people, and they extended credit to folks who were down and out.  When the Great Depression came along, NOBODY had any money, and the whole community was hungry, so they did what they could to help everyone.  The business went belly-up when they no longer had funds to replace the groceries they sold on credit, and Jake walked away discouraged.  That's when he happened upon someone in worse condition, a shepherd and his dog, lying together on the frozen sidewalk.  The shivering shepherd was attempting to strike a match to build a fire, just to stay alive, and Uncle Jake reached out to help him by cupping his hands around the flame, shielding it from the winter wind.  He couldn't help but observe that the man had a money pouch, which meant that he wasn't totally poverty stricken.  That's when he asked the shepherd why he was there on the street if he could afford a room, and the shepherd explained that no innkeeper would rent to anyone with a dog...and no shepherd would sleep without his dog.  Uncle Jake invited the man and his dog to his home, then built rows of cabins that he would rent to nobody without a dog.  When Jake Arrington died, shepherds came from four or five neighboring states to celebrate his unique, longterm humanity.  Here's the song that I presented when my group and I played in Idaho a couple of seasons ago.  The first lines were spoken...my introduction: 

Jake's Cabins

It's my job as a folksinger to celebrate heroes, and I have enjoyed this calling forever.  Heroes, of course, always seem to be from a long time ago and ever so far away.   It's very seldom that we would ever have occasion to sing about someone we actually know, especially a member of our own family, so it is now with great delight that I tell you about my Uncle Jake Arrington of Twin Falls, Idaho.  He was the very best of heroes.  

You could not live in Jake's Cabins if you didn't have a dog 
Though he'd be pleased to join you in a friendly dialogue 
How he built this place for shepherds and folks who were down and out 
A helping hand to the helpless was what he was all about 
And you could not live in Jake's Cabins if you didn't have a dog  

The times were hard and folks were deep in debt 
Dear jacob owned the old grocery store 
One day he said, "It is with deep regret, 
I can't do it anymore" 
His IOUs from everyone in town 
Were proof that those indeed were hungry days 
His very last act before he shut 'er down 
Was to set that box of credit slips ablaze  

There was a prayer beneath his frown of doubt 
"Lord, Lord, why do you treat me so?  
You've put me here and left me down and out 
To shiver in the cold of Idaho" 
And then he saw a shepherd lying there 
With his dog on the snow-covered street 
He watched as the man tried to light a warming fire 
And he stared at the near-frozen feet 

Then all at once a thought lit up the dark 
Circumstance could always be worse 
Jake's trembling hands reached in to cup the spark 
He couldn't help but spy the shepherd's purse 
"Pray tell me, Sir, as you are not without 
What has put you in such peril now?" 
"No shepherd," he replied, "would lie down without his dog 
No dog will the innkeepers allow"  

And with his hands, Jake built a one-room shack 
A rope bed, three windows and a door 
And there was space, both in the front and the back 
So he quickly added forty-one and more 
The word was passed, 'A new day was begun' 
But vacancy was never guaranteed 
No, Jacob's Cabins were not for everyone 
You had to be a shepherd or in need   

You could not live in Jake's Cabins if you didn't have a dog 
Though he'd be pleased to join you in a friendly dialogue 
How he built this place for shepherds and folks who were down and out 
A helping hand to the helpless was what he was all about 
And you could not live in Jake's Cabins if you didn't have a dog  

And when he died, from many miles around 
Shepherds came to say a fond farewell 
He would be touched to see their smiles abound 
And hear the loving stories each would tell 
He was their friend, his words their guiding star 
'It's never what you say, it's what you do' 
'Brighten the corner where you are' 
And 'Jesus was himself a shepherd too'  

Oh, you could not live in Jake's Cabins if you didn't have a dog 
Though he'd be pleased to join you in a friendly dialogue 
How he built this place for shepherds and folks who were down and out 
A helping hand to the helpless was what he was all about 
And you could not live in Jake's Cabins if you didn't have a dog  
   
Copyright 2010 Cherrybell Music

This simple musical tale absolutely stunned the audience, and what a thrilling moment it was for me to be singing it for the first time to my kinfolk.
They loved it.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Photo by Becky Jo Benson

Randy’s Blog 11 August 2012

An Unexpected Milestone

My original thinking was that we ought to have Barry McGuire doing the vocal punctuation marks in the re-recording of Ride Ride Ride, a 50 year-old song that he and Dolan Ellis and I recorded together as a New Christy Minstrels offering forty-nine years ago.  How could we properly perform the ditty without Barry's signature Hyaaaahs?  Becky Jo and I had planned to take the portable studio to Barry and Mari's home in Fresno to snag some wild lines, but Barry had a better idea.  "We'll come to where you're all set up in Lodi, and make a holiday of the venture, as it's Mari's birthday on Thursday, August 2nd."  Here we go again, more birthday madness!  "Okay, if you're coming all that way just for us, then you'll have your own solo in the album, correction: the CD."  We had recorded Missouri (When The Red Buds Bloom) as an Eddie Boggs solo, but Eddie wasn't yet comfortable with the song, so the idea of pushing the assignment off onto Barry was fine with him.  Eddie would sing Back In Bakersfield Again, which was better suited to his blue grass ability.  

Barry's sojourn in the makeshift studio was certainly worth the effort.  It took both of us back in time, and with all of the murky water under the bridge, turned out to be the perfect way to conclude a musical venture that began in 1962.  We hardly knew what we were doing back then.  Now, we're seasoned veterans, old pros eager to please, laughing all the way.  This record is as good as the one-take gems of Louie Armstrong's late-in-life production.  I thought I'd never again have the opportunity to record my friend Barry, and I'm much pleased with his additions to our wonderful collection of homemade sounds.  

There were seven of us at Mari McGuire's birthday bash at The Dancing Fox on School Street in Lodi, and what a special moment it was.  That place is a kind of European boutique bakery, but they don't make cakes, so Mari was persuaded to make-do with a birthday peach pie, a dessert for which any real gourmet would willingly die.  Mari, we learned, like myself, also has two birthdays per year.  She was born in New Zealand, beyond the International Date Line, so when she achieves her annual growth-ring here in the States, she's already a day older down under, the birthday greetings from relatives having arrived twenty-four hours earlier.   What an absolute delight it is that we're still alive, still functional.  I'm assuming that some kind soul shall alert us when we become hopelessly irrelevant, but I'm pleased to report that this hasn't happened yet.  In fact, I now have evidence that we've once again achieved main-stream status.  Hyaaaah!  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 10 August 2012

House Calls

I've done plenty of shows in and around Lodi, CA, and many of the same eager faces generally appear in the front row of seats or tables, so it becomes an uncomfortable issue when these folks aren't visible.   That's what happened this year at our annual event, Sparks In The Park.  I didn't name it that, by the way; that handle was conjured-up by Claude Brown, the same mover/shaker person who recruited me for these fund-raisers seven years ago.  Buck Harris and his wife Mary could be always be counted on to support whatever cause we were representing, and when they were conspicuously absent this year, I asked Becky Jo to call their house for a welfare check.  That's funny.  I don't suppose either one of them had ever received a 'welfare check' before Becky Jo called.  'What was the problem?' we wanted to know.  Claude told me that they had tickets.  Turns out that both of them were ailing, and rightfully so.  Mary has had a bad back for years, and Buck, my long-time veterinarian, is 96.  At that age, one doesn't actually require a specific reason for lack of attendance.  Cause of absence: advanced age.  "Okay," I heard Becky Jo say, "we'll be bringing the show to you."  

This was our third house call to the Harris residence, as I remember.  Becky Jo and Jennifer and I paid a musical visit when he was 91, on the occasion of his having lost most of his vision, then I went solo last year, when he had taken a spill in the yard.  He actually seemed much healthier this time, July of 2012.  Mary was busily attending to the menagerie, all the strays and left-overs, the formerly homeless dogs and cats, and then there were the grandchildren.  What a fine zoo their place has always been.  There always seemed to be room for one more.  

We did our impromptu show, our home invasion happening, and Buck was all smiles.  Mary's back likely didn't hurt so much in the time that we were there.  They sang along with the songs that they knew, and eagerly received the new additions in our performance repertoire.  It was business as usual, but a bit more convenient for them.  What a time we all had together.  My musicians were most gracious and wonderfully entertaining.  I know that the world is a slightly better place because we're here.  

It's hard to remember a time that Buck Harris wasn't my veterinarian.  In the early 'seventies, when I was new at the ranching game, my prize Galloway bull had broken through a strong fence to reach the hayfield, and he'd bloated on green alfalfa.  I knew that he needed medical attention right away, and it was a weekend, so I went to the Yellow Pages, leaving phone messages for the nearest vets.  My calls for professional help, it seemed, were for naught, and a kind neighbor, a 'good-ol-boy' from down the road, came to my assistance, but it was too late when we were finally able to relieve the pressure.  The bull died, and it was a sad day at Sparks Ranch.  Buck Harris called that night, as he said, "To make certain everything was all right."  "Hell no, it's not all right," I told him, "My bull died!"   "I'm so sorry," he said.  "This won't ever happen again.  You call only me from now on, and I'll be there."  Then he went on to explain what had happened.  I had summoned the two nearest veterinary offices, and unbeknownst to me, both vets had responded, but each one, when seeing the other at the entrance to my property, figured that the problem was being handled, so each went back home.  Buck Harris was always in my corner from that day forward. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Photo by Joe Van Hook

Barry McGuire, Jennifer Lind
recording in NCM portable studio, Holiday Inn, Lodi, CA 8-2-2012

Randy’s Blog 9 August 2012

When I took leave of Barry and BJB in the studio in Lodi the other day, I said, "Barry, don't screw it up, like you always do."  Those were his words to me forty-nine years earlier, as he was leaving the studio in Hollywood, just minutes after recording the verses of Green Green in one take.  Those words hit me the wrong way, mostly because I regularly spent days in the studio getting each recording exactly right, fixing flaws, mixing to perfection.  I was feeling under-appreciated, so I decided to have some fun.  I used the last few minutes of studio time to record my own version of Green Green on another track.  I did it in the style of Johnny Mathis, a wee bit 'gay,' but sung well enough so that nobody could find fault with the recording.  I then transferred this to a dub, and sent it to the group at Harold's Club in Reno.  It had the Columbia label on it, and they were certain that I had decided to do the verses myself.  They were upset for no less than two weeks, thinking that I had destroyed an excellent recording.  It was the perfect practical joke, and they didn't know it was just a joke until they heard Barry's voice on the radio...on EVERY station!  That's the problem with those little snide remarks.  They're hurtful, but strong people know how to respond appropriately.  Tom Pickles found that recording, the 'gay' Green Green, in the Columbia vaults.  What a hoot!

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Photo by Becky Jo Benson

Randy’s Blog 8 August 2012

A long time ago, just before I became amazingly successful in the business of music, 1962 to be exact, at a minute after midnight, a huge tree in my front yard in Tarzana, CA fell onto the house and onto the only new Cadillac convertible ever to be parked in my driveway.  It belonged to an agent friend of mine, Ralph Riskin, and he was there to celebrate our record deal with Columbia Records AND the album that was about to be released.  A HUGE limb scored a direct hit on his car, pinning it to the pavement.  All the men at the party spent much of the night jacking up the tree to free the vehicle, and despite that the top was pushed all the way down to the level of the seats, the only real damage that was sustained was two broken windshield wipers.  That was amazing, especially when one considers that I owned the property until midnight...then it became the problem of the new owners.  Now, scroll forward fifty years, and take a look across the street where I parked the van, not the new one, the old one, the 1997 Ford Econoline deluxe conversion.  A HUGE limb from one of the trees on the property of the retirement home has fallen on my vehicle, and it wasn't as lucky as Ralph's Cadillac.  The windshield is broken...not bad, just crunched in one place, the hood is perforated enough to reveal that it's fiberglass, the luggage rack on the top rear is shattered, and there are big dents in the top and sides. It's a mess, but except for the tree that has completely closed the street, it looks drivable.  It never was much of a thing of beauty, and now it has evidence of character.  That was a helluva storm that came through Leavenworth.  We needed the rain.  I'm wondering if this might be a sign that we're about to win our second Grammy.  Could happen. 
Cheers! RS

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Ernest Borgnine

Randy’s Blog 8 July 2012

Ernest Borgnine died today.  Pete Henderson and I had a conversation about him just the other day, and I wondered if he was still alive.  I looked him up on Wikipedia, and sure enough, I learned he was still chugging along at 95.  Pete travels with his own personal pepper mill, as he's a gourmet person who is fond of pepper, and when he began making ready his meal at The World Headquarters, I mentioned the value of pepper in the preservation of ancient Rome.  It was one of the precious items demanded by Alaric for the ransom of the city.  I even have a short song about it: 

Five thousand pounds of gold 
Thirty thousand pounds of silver 
Four thousand tunics of silk 
And three thousand hides dyed scarlet 
Three thousand pounds of pepper 
And forty thousand Gothic slaves 
All this was paid for the ransom of Rome 
Who cares that the words don't rhyme?  

Three thousand pounds of pepper is a lot.  Just think of it.  

After I had concluded my educational lecture, Pete told of being in the Hollywood Squares Green Room back when he and his partner, Bill Skiles, Skiles & Henderson, were regulars on the show.  "I was putting pepper on my sandwich," he said, "and Ernest Borgnine told me not to do that.  He said it has no nutritional value, and the sharp points from the grinding process can put holes in your intestines."  That's when I asked if he was still alive, and Pete assured me that the world would know when he departs.  Now we know.  When a person is 95 we don't ask the cause of death, but I think we can safely rule out pepper poisoning.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 23 June 2012

Money Makes The Chicken Dance

Timing is so important, especially for fleeting fads and one-of-a-kind moments.  I was in Las Vegas several decades ago, and I don't recall what show I was doing there, but I can assure one and all that I wasn't on vacation.  The explanation here is that my life has been one long vacation, and I don't need to take time off for bad behavior.  I wandered into Circus Circus, and there in a kind of alcove was a dancing chicken.  'Yeah, sure,' I said to myself, having been on the planet long enough to not believe everything I read.  I peered into a tiny window in the brightly painted apparatus, and there was a live chicken, along with a sign that read, 'Fifty cents makes the chicken dance.'  I had two quarters, so I scheduled an impromptu audition, and sure enough, as soon as my coins hit the bell inside the contraption, a lively recording began to play, and the bird commenced to boogie, and she wasn't bad.  'How did they teach her to react to the music,' I wondered, 'or was her cue the sound of the money dropping?'   

A very short while later, Merv Griffin was alerted to this agrarian Rockette at Circus Circus, and he booked the act for his TV variety show.  "We only need an a.c. line," the chicken's manager said, and Merv's producer told him that the live orchestra would be playing the music, so he wouldn't need his tape player.   "Naw, it's for the hot plate," the man said.  Wow!  What an invention that was.  A seven-dollar electric hot plate became the stage for the chicken, and the space was so small that there was no other place for her to stand, so when the heat was applied, she appeared to be joyfully dancing, and she had the routine down.  Merv Griffin had the man arrested right there on his stage. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Frank Sinatra's Learjet

Randy’s Blog 22 June 2012

I was too busy with other issues on June 19th to write the blog appropriate to that day, so I'll do it a couple of days later.  It's still valid, still meaningful.  

I don't very often remember dates, but I know this one.  It was 19 June, 1967.  The year is memorable, as The First Edition was about to be presented at Ledbetter's, their first engagement.  The arrangements had been made, and I was on the road with The New Society, my pop-folk group contracted to RCA.  We were doing a show in Victoria, Texas that day, and I had just learned about 'Juneteenth,' the blacks' regional day of celebration that's historically linked to the announcement of the end of slavery.  It was only a Texas event back then, and the name is telling.  'Juneteenth' meant nineteenth of June, and this had made perfect sense to a body of folks who had been denied the blessing of a formal education.  There was no rowdy partying involved, just quiet celebrations in appreciation of freedom.  I think it was after our show that I said to the group, "I would like to invite you to celebrate 'Juneteenth' with me.  It'll be something we're likely to remember."  

We drove to the black part of Victoria, and discovered the most activity around a tired building that had perhaps once been a supermarket.  The place had been reformatted as a crude nightclub, and the crowd was large and fairly loud.  There were eight of us, all embarrassingly white, except for Del Ramos, Larry's younger brother.  He was Hawaiian of Filipino heritage.  When we entered the oversize, noisy arena, the place got totally quiet, and every brown eye was upon us.  I saw only one empty table in the center of the room, and I led the way to it.  No one said anything to us, but the near-silence of the crowd told us that we seemed to be in the wrong place.  It was terribly uncomfortable, so I stood up and said, "We came here to celebrate Juneteenth with you.  Is that a problem?  If we're not welcome, we'll leave."  The place erupted in applause, and the joyful crowd noise instantly returned.  Then the drinks magically began to appear at our table.  "This round is on that party over there," the waitress would say, and I don't recall our having to spend any money at all.  The people were kind and caring, and we met most of them, one by one, two by two.  They expressed totally enjoyment of our respect for their largely unheralded annual event.   

I was feeling pretty good by the time I crawled into my rented bed at the motel, smiling as I drifted off to sleep, then the phone rang.  "Randy Sparks?" the man's voice said.  "Who is this that's calling me at three o'clock in the morning?" I demanded to know.  "Never mind who I am.  You only need to know what I'm about to do.  I'm taking over your group, The New Society."  I had heard enough, so I gave the person a two-word departure speech and hung up the phone.  He called back.  "I'm in Los Angeles," he said, "and I'll fly over there to discuss it with you in the morning."  "That's bullshit," I replied.  "There's no flight that can get you to Victoria, Texas by morning."  "We have our own plane," he said, "it belongs to Frank."  This conversation made no sense to me, so once again, I signed-off with a not-so-friendly greeting, then told the desk person to block my phone.  Disruptive as the telephone conversation had been, I had no trouble sleeping, nor did I even think on the subject until our group vehicle arrived back home in Southern California.  That's when the group said to me, 'We've had a better offer, and we're going to work Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.'  I had no individual contracts with any of the members, nor did I believe in this restrictive way of doing business, but the news came as a shock.  I felt that we had at least some small amount of loyalty in the relationship, and the group was hardly ready for Las Vegas.  The whole scenario was most peculiar.  In the brief discussion I'd had with the members, I told them that they were free to do whatever they wished to do, but that the name of the group was my property, and I promised a memorable conflict if anybody even attempted to make use of it.  

The only real conflict had to do with my signed contract for the group to play the Orient for six-weeks, an assignment that was to begin in just a few days.  This obligation put my remedial efforts into high-gear.  I had promised on paper to deliver The New Society to Tokyo and Hong Kong and Taipei and Saigon and Bangkok, and the show must go on.  I quickly summoned my best performers, Fats Johnson being the first one I called.  I knew that Fats and I could do a show anywhere at anytime, and entertain the crowd.  The next appointment was Michael Johnson (famous for his hit record of 'Bluer Than Blue' later on), and Jim Wingert and George Blackwell.  Just about the time that I began thinking on the subject of who might be the token female vocalist, Carol Stromme of the mutinous New Society suddenly, unexpected returned in tears.  "I want no part of that bunch," she said.  "I'm afraid the group has made a deal with the wrong people.  When I asked our handler what they would do if Randy Sparks sued them, he told me that they'd simply have you eliminated."  She was terribly upset, and it took a while to get around to asking her if she'd still like to play the Far East.  Her answer was positive, and we had our replacement group, not perfect, mind you, but capable, accomplished, dependable, and well-seasoned.   

From the very beginning, this petty drama had all the markings of a mob heist, but I reasoned that the heavies would have gone to great lengths to disguise such a connection, if there truly was one, but taking no chances, I called the FBI to report that a threat on my life had been communicated to a third party.  "There's really nothing we can do about a simple threat," the agent told me on the telephone, "if, however, they take steps toward implementing the threat, then call us back immediately."  Oh, that's comforting.   

All these many years later, I know nothing more than I knew back then, but there's a pattern that I recognize, and I now have a theory as to what was happening and why.  George and Sid, the 'hoodlums in suits' that Irving Townsend of Columbia Records had chosen to represent my group, seemed to fancy themselves as outlaws, and I forever had the opinion that they'd have been card-carrying members of the Cosa Nostra, had they been Italian…or simply smarter.  With the advantage of hindsight, I now believe that they actually blamed me for the unrest in The NCM which resulted in the loss of Mike Settle and Kenny Rogers and the other members who bailed to form The First Edition.  I hadn't been in touch with anybody from the group, but when the word got out that their former members would be playing Ledbetter's, it's reasonable to believe that all of the blame was loaded onto my shoulders, and they would set in motion a convoluted plan to punish the offender.  I often wondered where The New Society's invitation to play the Orient had originated, as it seemed to come from nowhere.  One day a man called my office and said he would like to have us perform at military bases and civilian concerts and nightclubs in several Asian countries, and I thought that might be interesting and fun, so I signed-up.  The timing was such that the call to inform me that my group was being stolen happened just ahead of our departure for Hawaii and Japan, and the airline tickets had already been bought.  I'm now fairly certain that G&G mis-Management were sure that I'd be unable to keep my appointments, thus putting me on the wrong side of organized crime.  Although I cannot make the case that Sid and George were connected to the Black Hand, the Asian tour organizers seemed fully involved.  I later learned to my own satisfaction that, although playing for the troops seemed a righteous goal, the real motivation was actually money-laundering and profiting from the exchange rate between countries, especially those in chaos from the Vietnam War.  This whole melodrama was likely hatched on Beverly Blvd., but in the end, the joke was on them, as we had a wonderful time, and those few weeks were like another full year of my college education.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 10 June 2012

The Fat Lady

In our discussion of handles, a few days ago, I promised to explain all that there is to explain about 'The Fat Lady.'  That's Dianne Sparks, and I haven't misspelled her name.  Yes, she was Diane (with only one N) Jergens in the movies and on television, but that was her stage name.  She was born Dianne Irgens (Norwegian), so it was 20th Century-Fox's logical move to the more familiar Jergens, and simplifying the name to one N made sense.  I was her second husband, and she was my second wife, so each of us had already learned valuable lessons about mating when we met and married in 1962.  2012 makes fifty years and counting.  

We were in New York City, and Dianne was eight months pregnant when she earned the name Fat Lady.  The group was appearing at The Latin Quarter, which, by the way, was owned by Barbara Walters' father, Lou Walters.  There was a joke making the rounds back then, and that was before the internet, so sharing a new joke took a lot more effort than is required nowadays.  The setting of the story was New York City, of course, and it was a beautiful Spring day, which meant that everybody wanted to walk, and cab drivers were desperately looking for paying customers.  A rotund woman stepped off the curb to hail a cab, and two cabbies spotted her simultaneously.  One was headed downtown, so he had to race past the woman and make a u-turn.  The other was headed uptown, and he sped-up to get there first.  As it happened, they both arrived at exactly the same instant, and they both came rushing out of their cabs to claim the oversize woman as a customer.  "I saw the fat lady first," yelled the driver who had made the u-turn, only to be corrected by the other cabbie.  "No, I saw her from two blocks away…the fat lady is my fare!"  "By God, that fat lady is riding with me," said the other driver.   "No, I won't have it!  That's my fat lady!"  Then they both turned at exactly the same moment and said, "Okay, fat lady, whose fare are you?"  For some reason, that was a very funny story back then.  Maybe it's because cab drivers are such a funny lot anyway…and maybe it's because New Yorkers are so peculiar.  The joke was told quite often to anybody and everybody, and whoever was telling it would first look around for any oversize women, then apologies were made to Dianne, who being eight months pregnant, certainly fit the description, in fact, so much so that eventually we all began referring to her as 'The Fat Lady.' 

The backstairs at the Latin Quarter, the artist entrance, were steep and many, a story-and-a-half in height, and the area wasn't well-lighted.  Poor Dianne hadn't seen her shoes in weeks, and when she walked, she had to trust her instincts that her feet were headed in the right direction.  At the very top of that dangerous staircase, she missed a step, and that put her into a downward slide, her fanny hitting every step, a jolting hard collision, all the way to ground level.  She wasn't noticeably injured, and though the ambulance was likely on alert, there was no premature delivery, so incredibly, all was well.   

Back home in California, I was still calling her The Fat Lady, even after our first child was born, and she accepted the title in good humor.  Of course, when I bought the personalized plates for her car, she objected.  "People keep staring at me in traffic," she complained, "and heavyset women aren't pleased."  Okay, so I took the joke a step or two too far, and when her plates were up for renewal, I bought her the ones with regular numbers and letters.  Then she really got upset.  "I'm no longer worth the few extra dollars?" she wanted to know.   How does anybody manage to please women?  I had to exchange the regular issue plates for the ones advertising Fat Lady.  No harm done.  Of course, this wouldn't have worked had she ever been even slightly overweight, but she was always the same.  She ran our small saloon in Mokelumne Hill, and everybody lovingly called her The Fat Lady.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Django Reinhardt

Randy’s Blog 9 June 2012

It has been a different kind of day already, and it's only two in the afternoon here in Leavenworth, Kansas.  I'm typing this message using mostly my right hand, as the other one is largely incapacitated.  A couple of hours ago, I was working on the Grand Avenue house, putting the finishing touches on the new door (which happens to be an old door), installing shims to make the jams as plumb as possible, when I somehow depressed the pneumatic brad nailer's trigger a millisecond too soon, and put an inch-and-a-half brad (finish nail) through the first finger of my left hand and into the second finger.  My two fingers were nailed together.  There was no blood, but I could not separate my fingers, and I reasoned that I might require a bit of medical assistance with this unfortunate situation. To my credit, I did not panic or pass-out.  Instead, I calmly drove to the World Headquarters (less than a mile away), and asked Becky Jo to drive me to the Emergency Clinic at the VA Hospital.  

The staff there was first rate.  My doctor, whose name is Muhammed, asked if I had any ideas about how to remove the brad, and I said, "I'd have no problem getting it out of there with a pair of pliers, but I might wish to know if it has penetrated the bone."  He agreed, and ordered both a tetanus shot and x-rays.    

The nice lady who ran the x-ray camera said, "Place your hand flat on the surface and spread your fingers."  "If I could do that," I told her, "I wouldn't be here."  She settled for my gnarly, cupped fist.  She also shared the x-rays with Becky Jo and me, and when I saw that the brad was bent, I knew that this wasn't a simple flesh wound, the kind that Gene Autry had survived almost daily.  The screen clearly showed that the steel fastener had penetrated the bone of the second finger.  

Dr. Salamat administered two shots to deaden the pain in both fingers, then used his fancy pliers ($250. at the medical supply house, I'm supposing) to wrestle the brad from its hiding place, and I happily concede that he did a much better job than I'd have done with my similar precision instrument (made in China, $1.99 at Harbor Freight).  

Now, here I am, quite anxious to get back to work at the Grand Ave. house, and I can't even feel sorry for myself.  Django Reinhardt (Hot Club Of France) long ago taught us the folly in using a simple physical handicap as, well, a handicap.  When he was but eighteen years old, he survived a caravan fire (a 'caravan' is European for the equivalent of our 'trailer trash' domicile), which left him with first and second degree burns on more than half of his body.  Sadly, because he had been a promising guitar player, the second and third fingers on his fretting hand were fused together and partially paralyzed.  Prognosis:  He would never play guitar again.  'How then,' you ask, 'did he eventually become one of the world's GREATEST players?'  Answer: determination and extraordinary effort.  He taught himself a new way to make the chords that are so easy for most of us, and he played solos with only two fingers.  As I was sitting there in the VA clinic, my mind began plotting how I might play the chords of Sheep Songs, if, for some reason, the piece of steel couldn't be removed.  Mostly, though, I was beginning to worry about getting past that screening machine at the airport.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 30 May 2012

Probable Cause

Just now read an essay titled 'Can a Cop Pull You Over Without Probable Cause?'   That one received a chuckle from me for the subject matter alone.  In a small, rural California county, where I have been headquartered for so long, I once knew everybody, and the only real problem seemed to be rogue deputies from the Sheriff's Department.  Most of these law persons were good guys, but there were a few who seemed to fancy themselves Barney Fife-crime fighters on the scale of The Lone Ranger and Batman.  One day I was coming away from the post office when Crazy Charlie waved at me from his old Pontiac, and he double-parked in the street to have a conversation about nothing.  Crazy Charlie was an old biker, who kept pythons as pets, and he had a silly laugh, which he used all too frequently, sometimes for no reason at all.  I don't suppose I ever knew his name, other than Crazy Charlie, but in a small town, that's sufficient.  The system worked quite to identify Midget Ted, Dirty Ernie, Unbelievable Dick, Crazy Donna, U-Turn Chuck, etc.   Everybody had a handle.  I noticed that a patrol car was observing us from up the hill, but no alarm was sounded.  In San Jose, there might have been a concern about holding up traffic, but not in Mokelumne Hill.  When Charlie and I finished our discussion about nothing, he slowly drove away, and the sheriff's car came speeding to where I was standing.  A young deputy, that was unknown to me, said, "Who was that guy?"  "Crazy Charlie," I replied.  "What's his last name?"  "I don't know, Charlie, I guess," was my answer.  "You know what I mean," he growled.  "He looks like he might have warrants," the deputy said, and I began to laugh.  "Looks like he might have warrants?" I repeated.  "Most of us probably fit that description," I told him.  I then began to lecture the young officer about law and order and unreasonable searches and seizures and presumption of innocence, whereupon he said, "Back away from the car!  I'm going after him!"  

The next time I saw Crazy Charlie at the Post Office, I asked if he had been hassled by the rogue cop, and his answer was a negative (which would, of course, have likely been attributed to 'probable evasive maneuvers, tantamount to resisting arrest').  I never saw the deputy again, and I don't know for certain that my descriptive letter of complaint to the Sheriff had played a role in his obviously having moved on, but I certainly hoped that was the case.  

P.S. I sent the above blog to daughter Melinda, and she replied: 

'That’s funny! 
 
Remembering handles…  Handy Randy, Handsome Hanson, Pat the Hat, Hippie Pat, Grand Theft Otto, Roll-Over Joe, Sky Eyes, Scary Larry, Catfish, etc.'  

P.P.S. Maybe I'll do an additional blog to tell about The Fat Lady.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy’s Blog 29 May 2012

Charlie Hansen

Charles H. Hansen was our publisher of NCM companion folios and sheet music, and at some point along the way, we became fans of one another. I appreciated what he was doing in getting our music out there, and he was on record as being forever in awe of my writing ability.  Charlie called me one day, and said I'm coming to California tomorrow, and I'd like to have lunch with you.   I'm buying.  Is the Brown Derby in Hollywood okay with you?"  "Sure, why not?"

We had a lot to discuss.  One of our projects together was the Folk Giant music book, mostly my own songs, and a lot of public domain rewrites, with old fashioned woodcut prints to decorate the typeset pages.  In those times, the only real source for graphics that hadn't been used in everybody else's books was ancient, pre-copyright, pre-photography volumes, and I had fun illustrating the musical stories.  "I want you to try a local person as an arranger for your book," he said, "and if he works well for you, I may have a job for him." He then gave me the man's contact information, and I pledged to give him a try.  "What are you driving nowadays?" Charlie asked. "I know you like cars."  "I still have the Silver Cloud," I told him, "and I'm restoring a 356 Porsche coupe, but I really like the looks of the Jaguar XKE, so I'm thinking about getting one." "I have one," he said. "Is it as much fun to drive as it looks like it would be?" I wanted to know.  "Sure is."  "Do you have the rag-top or the coupe?"  "The convertible," he said. "Tell you what, Randy, if you'll fly down to Miami, I'll sign it over to you, and you can drive it back to California."  I was stunned.  "Are you wanting to sell it?" I asked. "No, it's not for sale, but I'll give it to you.  Mind you, it's not new.  It's a year old, and I'm not delivering it to you.  You'll have to come and get it."  "Why would you want to give me your car, Charlie?" I needed to know.  "Well, let's just say that I owe it to you.  We have just now locked-up the printed music account for The Beatles, and what made them choose my company was the music books that we're doing for your group.  Do you have any idea how much money we're about to make for very little effort?" 

I flew to Miami three days later, and took possession of my sporty blue Jaguar.  I also received a speeding ticket on the new Florida Turnpike in my first twenty minutes as an XKE owner. Yes, it was fun to drive.

By the way, the former music teacher who wanted to do arrangements for Hansen Publications was John Brimhall.  His work for me was excellent, and when I gave him a good review, Charlie hired him full-time, and he and the company lived happily ever after.  Brimhall's Music Series made a fortune for both the company and himself.

And those graphic prints I spent my time collecting from old books tell a wonderful story about how the times they are a-changin'.  In those days, the early 'sixties, I had to buy the antique books and cart them to the printing company. They had a giant camera for taking black and white photos of the woodcuts that I wanted, but the charge was $12. a piece.  When Kinko's came along, that expensive game came to a screeching halt, as we could then get instant gratification for as little as four cents as copy.  Wow!  This work tended to take its toll on the old books as well.  If the binding was stiff, the camera couldn't get a clean shot of the subject, so the page had to be removed from the book.  That's a terrible sin in antiquarian book circles.

One of those woodcuts I'd used I recognized in an old book one day.  I was visiting my rare book dealer in Jackson, CA, and he was showing me his latest find, a first edition Huckleberrry Finn, with all of the right flaws and peculiarities.  "It's worth $3000.," he told me. "I think I have that book," I said. "No, you may have a later edition," he explained, "but these are very rare, and here are the tell-tale points that make this first edition so valuable…." He then went into detail, page by page, and all I could think of was that I may have had a valuable first edition, but I quite likely had defaced it, just to make it fit under the camera.  I raced home to find the book that I had bought for a dollar, and there it was.  No pages were missing, and point-for-point, all of the identifying issues indicated that it was the genuine article.  Glory be!

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 28 May 2012

This Ol' Riverboat & Poop Deck Patty

I am inspired to tell the story of This Ol' Riverboat because of timing.  On the same day that I'm scheduled to sing my part on a new recording of it, for a second serving of Recycled, our NCM CD, I'm also in receipt of an inquiry from filmmakers asking about the use of the tune for a low-budget production, as a theme under the credits.  I find it interesting that two such events find a way to coincide more than forty-eight years later.  Somebody, please cue the Twilight Zone music.  

It was fairly late in the evening when Hugo Montenegro called me to ask why I hadn't sent him the riverboat theme.  We were heavily engaged in providing the music for the MGM movie, Advance To The Rear, and Hugo was my orchestrator. his first motion picture.  At one point in the film, Stella Stevens has a line that says something about 'this ol' riverboat,' and that's what I had written in my notes.  I was to create an instrumental piece to capture the mood, and Hugo's job was to chart what the musicians would play.  "You're a couple days late on this," he complained; "I need it by tomorrow morning."  I worked much of the night trying various ideas, but nothing seemed to fit.  Hugo was perfectly capable of supplying this theme without my guidance, but I was contracted to write the score, and handing the job over to him would be admitting defeat.  I had to come up with an appropriate melody and the right chords, and I was suffering greatly at the time from 'pozo seco syndrome,' the dreaded dry-well-of-the-mind-disease.  

It was about three AM when I hit on the idea of borrowing from myself.  I had earlier received an inspirational piece of fan mail via The Andy Williams Show, a letter from my favorite Elmhurst Junior High educator, Milford R. Lundgren.  'I'm so glad to see that you've made it to the big-time,' he wrote, 'and how about helping out your old science teacher?'  What a strange winding road this was.  I had become a songwriter because of Mr. Lundgren.  I didn't realize at the time all the forces that were at play in my life, but each was fraught with significance.  My Homeroom Teacher, Mrs. Lowe, was apparently worried about my sexuality.  I was still a boy soprano at fourteen, I collected butterflies and wrote poetry.  What was wrong with that?  I'm now certain that she incorrectly assumed that I lacked a father figure, so she'd promoted the idea that Mr. Lundgren should spend time with me.  He was thirty-something, happily married, and he also collected butterflies.  On our very first outing, he said, "I hear you're also a singer."  "Yes, I am."  Are you a good singer?"  "Yes, of course," I replied.  "Well, what would happen if you couldn't sing anymore?" he asked.  "That couldn't happen," I assured him.  "I sing too," he said, "and I play the piano, but if ever I couldn't sing and play, I'd still be a musician, because I write songs.  Did you know that the man who wrote 'Detour' gets a penny a record, and he has already earned more than ten-thousand dollars?"   That got my attention.  "Yes, sir, that song is a million-seller, and one-cent, the writer's share, times a million is ten grand."  Wow!  'I can do that,' I told myself, and that's when I became a songwriter.  Now, fifteen years later, he was asking for my help.  'My wife and daughter and myself went on a boating trip, and I wrote this poem titled Poop Deck Patty.  How about setting it to music for me, so we'll both make some money?'  I owed this man a lot for his timely guidance, but the poem he offered was dreadful.  The worst!  'That would be a total waste of time,' I had told myself,' but my debt to him was compelling, so I had sat down and put music to his drivel.  I hadn't yet shared my creativity with him, so the music I had written was still mine, and I had the right to borrow from myself.  The tune I'd conjured up for 'Poop Deck Patty' would serve as the Riverboat Theme.  All I needed was a valid lyric, but that for me was the easy part.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Click here for the original movie trailer for Advance To The Rear

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Randy's Blog 27 May 2012

Current Event

I have been a dumpster diver for much of my life.  I generally like what other people don't want anymore.  A few months back, I exited the Foundation's World Headquarters in the early evening on a Tuesday, and as that's just ahead of the Wednesday morning trash pick-up, I happened to see in my neighbor's pile of unwanted items an 1890's era door with stained glass windows.  This bothered me, as I had just paid a lot of money for a door that was very similar.  I sought out the neighbor.  "Are you meaning to have that door hauled away as trash?" I wanted to know.  "Yeah, he said, it's old, and it would be too expensive to repair."  "Would you mind if I collected it ahead of the city workers?" I asked.  "Be my guest," he said.    

On Saturday, I was visiting one of my favorite architectural salvage businesses here in Leavenworth, and the proprietor, a friend, introduced me to one of his customers, my new neighbor, a fellow who had just recently bought the house from which I had salvaged the fancy door.  Somewhere in the ensuing conversation, I mentioned that I had spared one of his house's original doors from the trash truck, and my new neighbor shared his side of the story with me.  "We found the place on-line," he said, "and one of the assets I valued most was a door with stained glass windows.  It was in the photos on the web, but when we got there to see the place, the door had been replaced by a Home Depot modern door.  The seller told me that it had to be replaced."  I was beginning to feel guilty that I had played a role in this petty drama, but he assured me that he would have done the same thing.  

Later that evening, I very quietly placed the door with the stained glass windows inside my new neighbor's fenced yard.  Yesterday afternoon he came calling on me at The World Headquarters.  "You've made my wife and me happier that we could even imagine we'd be.  When I saw it there, leaning against the fence, I recognized it immediately from the photo I had seen on-line, and I can't thank you enough for the gift.  He then gave us his family's favorite meal, the fixin's for what is called Beer Butt Chicken.  

There are some of us who take much pleasure in resisting change.  I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to serve as the middleman for the return of my neighbor's property.  Everybody on the block is smiling tonight.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 26 May 2012

What A Diff'rence…

To quote Dinah Washington (and Stanley Adams), What A Diff'rence A Day Makes.  Hold that thought; I'll get back to it.

In high school I was too small of stature to play football (five-foot-three in the tenth grade, five-five in the eleventh), and I craved some of the attention that jocks seemed to receive so effortlessly. When I sang and played the guitar at assemblies, I tasted that same kind of success in smaller doses, but it was enough to appease the hunger.  Later on, in my first attempt at higher education. I checked into a school in Susanville, CA, Lassen JC.  Their handbill showed photos of a happy student body, and the setting was ideal for me, beautiful mountains, wilderness all around.  "How many people are in this school?" I asked one of the students on the day that I enrolled.  "About fifty," he replied.  "And how many are girls?" I wanted to know.  "Oh, I think maybe five or six." Do you ever have assemblies?"  "We had one last year."  I was horrified. Where's my audience?  I transferred that day to San Mateo JC.  I really wanted to make music my life, and there's no point in being a farmer without market day.

I experienced the same frustration in the Navy.  I was stuck on a base with no performance opportunities, and it wasn't lawful, I learned, for a person in the military to work on his own time as a union musician.  When I successfully auditioned for a local amateur stage production, my prospects brightened a bit, but I had wanted to proceed by the book, and my request to volunteer was denied by my commander, while at the same time (and unbeknownst to me), enthusiastically approved by the base Commander.  I was in deep trouble, and it mattered not the slightest that I was totally innocent.  My first day back on the job was predictable. "Your ass is mine!" yelled Chief Swanson, "And you know what's coming, don't you?  You're gonna clean toilets for the rest of your time in the Navy!"  "I'll clean your toilets," I told him, "because the Navy owns my body, but you don't own my mind, and I'll make a wager with you that I can make more money in the short amount of time that I'm on latrine duty than you make in a whole year."  That's ridiculous!" he roared.  "Do you have any idea how much money I make in a year?"  "It's published," I said.  "And how do you propose to make that kind of money and clean toilets at the same time?"  "I'm a songwriter," I told him, "and I can do it anytime, anywhere, and you can't even tell that I'm working."

The song I wrote that day was titled 'The Hangman,' and it was one of my better efforts.  I had most of it completed when John Valva walked into my creative space, the head, the toilet, the men's room.  "Sparks," he said, "what are you doing?"  "Oh, I think it's fairly obvious what I'm doing," I told him.  "I thought we had an understanding that none of us college guys would do this kind of work."  "That's a nice thought," I told him, "but things happen."  "Don't go anywhere," he ordered, "I'll be right back."  "Oh, I'll still be here," I assured him.

John Valva was smart and well-educated.  He's the one who'd reached out to all of the older draftees when we first arrived at NTC, especially the college-educated sailors.  "I'm the Captain's orderly," he had told us, "and Captain Lynch will not tolerate abuse of educated people.  There are some who intentionally target the bright minds among us, and I've been appointed to see that this doesn't happen."  How fortunate that he should have gotten nature's call that morning.  He was back in a flash with the Captain, himself, and a great storm blew into my quiet workspace. "Sparks, what are you doing?" Captain Lynch demanded to know. He knew what I was doing.  "And who's responsible for this? Who has taken upon himself to waste the talents of one of my brightest people?"  "I'm in charge," answered the now-defensive Chief Swanson. "How dare you? You have no right to play your little games with enlisted personnel, just because there're smarter than you are.  From now on, you don't even speak to this man.  Henceforth he'll take his orders directly from me."  Wow!

That little speech leveled the playing field.  I was still encamped in enemy territory, but now I had rights. I was reborn as a person, not just a dog tag number.

Fellow-Navy draftee John Valva would be heard from again. When I was at the Blue Angel in New York, he came to see me work. I hadn't known that he was gay, and of course, it didn't matter, but he introduced me to his domestic partner, Roddy McDowell, and the two of them invited me to guest at their luxurious apartment overlooking Central Park. That was different. They were both nice people, and I was honored to be there.  When Elizabeth Taylor got together with Richard Burton, his ex-wife Sybil nested for a time with this same John Valva.  'How does that work?' I remember asking myself.  'Not very well' was the answer.  When the dabbling in heterosexuality was over, John tried to repair his relationship with Roddy, but that effort went nowhere.  Sad.

Captain Lynch came to my performance in Caught In The Act, and we had photos taken together. The Navy was now 'officially' proud of me.  I also found a way to work around the union rule.  I discovered talent contests.  In those days, just about every San Diego bar had one, and they paid well.  First prize was generally $25., and it took some doing, moving from place to place on a Friday or Saturday night, but I made a comfortable living winning contests.  I never lost one, also never ever came in second or third.

Many years down the road, I was working a beautiful room, a private club called 'Diamond Jim's' in St. Paul, MN, and on a Saturday night the waitress brought me a note from the audience.  'Great show,' the handwriting said, 'I'm here with ten of my friends, and would appreciate your taking the time to say hello to us.'  It was signed 'Chief Swanson.'  I approached the large party at the center table, and pretending to read the note, I said, "My eyes deceive me.  This message reads, 'Great Show,' and it's signed 'Chief Swanson.'  Could this be the same Chief Swanson I knew in San Diego?"  The Chief stood up.  "Back then, I never said you weren't a good singer.  I said you were a piss-poor sailor!"  The people howled with laughter, and we shook hands, even hugged one another.  I met all of his friends, and it was refreshing that this relationship had come full-circle.  What were the chances?  He was a nice man after all.

There was one piece of unfinished business, and I promised that night to conclude it with Chief Swanson by mail.  "Remember when I said I could make more money cleaning toilets that you could in a year?  Well, I missed the mark," I confessed, "but I came close."  When I got back to California, I sent him a complete accounting for my song 'The Hangman.'  My solo recording of it had been banned from the airways, as it was deemed 'too morbid' for pop stations, but the censorship only called more attention to it, and there were also several other recordings, including a Jody Miller album.  The take was a few thousand dollars, not bad for a creative effort of only about twenty minutes in duration.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Dolan Ellis
one of the Original members of The NCM who won the Grammy in 1963
and continues performing with the group
Arizona Governor appointed Official Balladeer of the State of Arizona
for over forty years

Randy's Blog 25 May 2012

The Hat Trick 

It began innocently enough.  Becky Jo and I began collecting cowboy hats in our travels.  There's often a bargain Stetson or Resistol in the antique shops that we frequent, and we simply initiated a program to acquire enough cowboy hats for everyone in the group, everyone, that is, except Dolan.  He already had one, and he wears it all the time.  Dolan really doesn't want anyone else wearing a cowboy hat on stage; that's his thing.  My question to myself was, 'What would happen if we decided to introduce a new dress code, just for Dolan's solo?'  It might be fun, I reasoned, if he were to look around in the middle of Ghost Riders In The Sky, and see that ALL of us were wearing HIS uniform.  Well, that night we did it, and I don't think we could ever improve upon the homemade humor that was unleashed on our stage in Willow Street, PA.    

Becky Jo very quietly passed out the hats a few bars into the song, and Dolan didn't notice anything at all.  He's ALWAYS too busy being Dolan, concentrating on his delivery of the words and chords, and it's my theory that as far as he's concerned, the rest of us are not even there.  

We had Hoss Cartwright on bass for that show.  The ten-gallon hat was oversize, and the grin on his face super-comical, with or without an ill-fitting hat, and it was a jolt to see this.  I'm sure Dolan was certain that it was a one-person sight gag, and he began chortling between lines, trying not to laugh, but finding the task difficult.  Then he took a swift glance across the stage, likely for affirmation about how ridiculous the bass player looked, and EVERYONE of us was wearing some sort of cowpuncher bonnet.  He began to gasp for air between phrases, and his bottled-up laughter destroyed whatever timing he still had.  He was red in the face and out of control.  It was far better than anybody could have imagined it might be.  What a moment, though it must have seemed like a lifetime to Dolan.  

The most fun anybody can have is trying to get bulldozer Dolan to break-up, and we did it.  The good news is that the venue, an upscale retirement community, had asked our permission to shoot a video of the program for their shut-ins.  We'd agreed to allow this, and they gave us a copy of their raw footage.  We have the entire hat trick on tape or film or microchip, so the fun in this sight-gag was captured and preserved for posterity.   

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Above photo of partially unloaded inside of trailer

Randy's Blog 24 May 2012

The McKinney Caper

Remember how I told you that life is for our personal entertainment on a daily basis, and all we have to do is tune-in and take notice? Well, here's proof of that statement.

I had bought some taxidermy on eBay, and I'd noticed that the seller was located in Denton, Texas, near Dallas, just down the road from where we were to play in McKinney, so I'd made arrangements for a personal pick-up. That saved a whole lot of money on transportation. The transfer went smoothly enough, and all was well until I got back to the hotel in McKinney. I had to clear the trailer to make the musical equipment more accessible, and I didn't want to parade my animal heads through the lobby, so I decided to pass them through the window into my room. There was one huge elk head that was difficult to maneuver, and three of us were wrestling with it, two of us from outside and one person inside, and that's when the cops showed up, demanding an explanation. I didn't want to claim to be on a safari, as that would have invited all sorts of questions about weapons, so I told them it was their annual migration, and we were merely helping to facilitate the herd's movement from place to place. They had their hands on their guns all through this conversation.

Our McKinney concert went well enough...a full house and two standing ovations...what's not to like?

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 23 May 2012

How I Lost My Billing In Thunder Road

Robert Mitchum told me that he had seen me on The Bob Crosby Show.  I was in my Navy uniform, and he liked what he heard and saw well enough to choose me to play the role of his kid brother in Thunder Road.  My manager told me that there had been some talk about asking the Navy to make me available for the filming of the pix, but of course, the way it happened, I didn't require a special arrangement with the Navy, as all of us draftees were unexpectedly booted-out six months early, and the timing could not have been better.  I flew from Washington, D.C. to Asheville on my first day as a civilian.  I had also been assigned to write and sing the title song, but when I arrived at The Battery Park Hotel, the movie's location headquarters, I learned that major changes in plans had taken place.  I was anxious for Bob to hear the song I had written, but he said he couldn't, as he and Don Raye had gotten together to craft the song that I would be singing instead of my own, and he also informed me that Jim, his 16-year old son, had asked to play the role that had been promised to me.  "But nothing has changed.  You'll still be here with us for the duration," he said.  Then he wanted to know who was playing guitar on the dub that I had sent him.  The answer was Ralph Grasso.  I had been given a script, and I had experimented with one of the themes, Whippoorwill, and Ralph and I had made a simple recording of it.  "Let's get him down here," Mitchum demanded.  "He's still in the Navy," I told him, "so he might not be able to get permission."  "The Secretary of the Navy is a friend of mine," he said, "and if I have to, I'll call him."   Ralph was there the very next day.  "How difficult was it to get leave?" I asked.  "I didn't.  Couldn't take the chance that they'd say no, so I'm AWOL."  That bothered me a lot.  

We had a wonderful time playing and singing, the three R's, Robert, Ralph and Randy, and life was good.  No, it wasn't quite as promising as it had been, but I had no complaints.  

The atmosphere there at the hotel bothered me a bit.  The people all seemed to be like jackals on the prowl, a singles bar, a meat market.  That first day I was hit-on a couple of times, and the word that came to mind was 'tacky.'  It must have been on the third day that I took notice of the pretty girl there in the lobby.  She appeared to be lost.  "You don't look happy to be here," I told her.  "I think I've been brought here for the wrong reason," she replied.  "I'm to play the role of Robert's love interest, and he wants me in his room for dinner and a private reading of the script.  I'm not that kind of girl."  She was nearly in tears.  "How would you like to have dinner with me?" I asked.  "That's the best offer I've had all day."  

We were having a quiet repast in the hotel's dining room when Mitchum suddenly appeared.  He didn't look at me at all, just stared down at her.  "I thought we were supposed to be having dinner together in my room," he said gruffly.  "I had a better offer," she replied.  He walked away, and that, I later learned, was the end of my billing in the movie.  

Sandra Knight was a nice girl, a good girl, and we had the best time together.  The planners who'd put together the location budget hadn't anticipated the rain that seemed to be an everyday event, and the filming that was to have been completed in a couple of weeks took a month instead, but the Battery Park Hotel was a nice place to hang-out.  We sang and played and listened to her Sinatra records and talked a lot.  She was accompanied everywhere she went, and no harm came to her.  Tim Wallace, Mitchum's stand-in, had quietly watched the proceedings from the beginning, and at one point mumbled to me as he was passing by, "Keep up the good work, kid."  She later became Mrs. Jack Nicholson.  

The singing of the title song had nothing to do with Asheville.  The recording session took place in Hollywood, and the arranger was Jack Marshall.  Jack had played the hot guitar licks on my first hit record, Walkin' The Low Road, and he's the person who picked the key for my performance of Thunder Road.  That was unfortunate.  He wrote the charts about three full steps too high, and when I complained, his answer was that the film was already over budget, and he wasn't making any changes.  My wife still howls when she hears the singing of the title song.  I sound like a boys choir castrate.  I make all the notes, but there's zero testosterone, and the effect is less than admirable.  Maybe it's actually a blessing that I lost my billing in the picture.

Life long friend, Ralph Grasso

For anyone needing closure on the Ralph Grasso AWOL issue, I recently asked him if he'd gotten in trouble for his sojourn as a movie star.  "No," he said, "I had good friends, and they covered for me, marked me present everyday."

Mitchum was never my overt enemy.  It was more like we were simply no longer friends.  There was a brief moment of reconciliation of sorts that took place at Ye Little Club a couple of years later, and that was a strange event.  I had done a good set on a Saturday night, the whole audience being on my side, and Bob came to the stage as I was stepping down.  "Good show," he said, "I'm very proud of you.  You've grown a lot since we worked together."  That was when Freddy Martin, the old-time big band leader, joined us, and began taking credit for my success, saying that he had given me my start.  I, of course, had no idea when that might have been, but maybe he was on one of the TV shows that I'd worked.  Mitchum instantly took offense, saying that he had discovered me.  The two of them, both over-served and each one old enough to know better, got louder and louder, and I had to physically insert myself between them to avoid fisticuffs.  How bizarre.  Only in Beverly Hills.

Click here to view the entire movie of Thunder Road, and see the credits, and hear Randy Sparks singing the opening song

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Above photo USS Princeton off the Puget Sound Navy Yard, 1 Jan. 1944

Randy's Blog 22 May 2012

The Princeton

Sometimes I ask myself if all the crazy things that happened to me in the Navy are really as interesting or as funny as I think they are, and I take the extra step of imagining that they happened to somebody else...and I say, 'Is that funny?' or 'Is that interesting?'  This one passes such a test.

In late 1956, or it may have been early 1957, I suspect the latter, I was aboard the Princeton at North Island, and I could see my houseboat, a converted landing craft/personnel carrier, which was tied up at Point Loma.  When I finished my daily shift aboard the carrier, I wanted to go home, not to dry land, but to my private space aboard my own boat.  It was anything but luxurious, but it was mine.  The trouble was that I didn't have a car, and I had to ride the bus to the ferry (I remember this as being before the bridge was built), catch the boat into downtown San Diego, then transfer to the Point Loma line, which took at least an hour and a half, usually longer.  It was very frustrating to be able to see my destination from the ship.  I hit on the bright idea of buying a rowboat, and I did just that.  I could then get up in the morning, and row to the ship in about twenty minutes.  I tied-up beneath the Enlisted Men's steps, and nobody seemed to notice.  I did that for about a month, I think, and after I'd saved enough money (at $92. a month), I even bought an outboard motor.  Maybe it was the motor that called additional attention to my small boat, but whatever the reason, all at once I had a critic.  A Boatswain's Mate said to me one evening, as I was leaving the ship, "I ought to put you under arrest for the way you're treating Navy property," pointing to my boat.  "That's not Navy property," I replied, "I bought and paid for it myself."  Then he was off and running, "Let me tell you something, Mister, anytime you're in uniform and in command of a vessel, that vessel is considered Navy property!"  He then went on and on about my not having chocks to keep the boat from banging up against the gangway, and the whole issue was so stupid that I wanted to laugh at him, but this was his small amount of power over me, so I had to endure it, even offering a polite, "Yes, Sir," when he seemed to be winding down.  His last words were, "You won't be tying-up here again."

I took a trip to the Library that evening, just to research what he had said about Navy property, and I remembered that he'd mentioned it's having something to do with making use of civilian craft, commandeering during wartime.  I got a copy of the rules and regulations, and sure enough, there was such a statute, but as I read it, I began to chuckle out loud in the silence of the Public Library.

The next morning, as was my routine, I rowed to the ship. I could have made use of the outboard motor, but if I wasn't late for work, I preferred the exercise in the short trip across the bay.  I had been told not to tie-up at the Enlisted Men's Gangway, so I didn't.  I tied up on the starboard side instead, at the Officer's Gangway.  I mounted the stairs and saluted to the Officer of the Deck, and he saluted back, but then said to me, "Hey, Sailor, what are you doing here?" "I'm Captain Sparks," I told him, "and I'm reporting for duty aboard my ship." He was speechless.  I'm certain nothing like that had ever happened on his watch.  I was a Seaman in uniform, and I had just climbed the Officers' Gangway stairs, and I was acting as though I was completely within my rights.  I let him stew in silence for a few moments, then I explained it to him. "Sir, the Boatswain's Mate on the Enlisted Men's side of the ship has informed me that, because I'm in uniform, my small boat is Navy property, and as the Captain of that vessel, I'm asking you to pipe me aboard." He began to sputter the most unintelligible rhetoric, and he did the only thing I'm certain he could think of to do.  He called for back-up.  All sorts of people suddenly convened there at the Officers' Gangway, and the entire matter was discussed at length, 'round and 'round.  Finally, my boss, The Flight Officer, Commander McHenry, came to where the crowd was gathered.  He pulled me aside. "This is all pretty funny, Sparks," he said, "and you're probably technically within your rights, but you've got to live with these people." "Sir," I replied, "would it help to know that this is my last day aboard the Princeton?" He smiled, almost laughed.  He then told the Officer of the Deck that I should be allowed to leave my small boat tied to the Officers' Gangway for that day only, and that I would henceforth use the Enlisted Men's entry.

There was quite a crowd gathered around the Officers' Gangway at quitting time.  It seemed that everyone was anxious to see me disembark.  The Boatswain's Mate that had started the ruckus in the first place was on hand, barking stupid orders that had no meaning, and as I saluted the Officer of the Deck and took my leave of the ship, all the heads were at the rail.  I rowed out about fifty yards, then took a surprise package from beneath my seat on the boat.  It was a Captain's formal coat, replete with tails, that I had borrowed for just his purpose from the wardrobe department at the Old Globe Theatre. "Don't get caught wearing it," the prop master had counseled.  I put it on, then stood up in my small craft, ala George crossing the Delaware, saluting my ship as I sailed off into the sunset.  That's what I wanted to happen, but all at once, all of those law and order folks who were still gathered at the top of the Officers' Gangway began flying down the stairs toward the launch.  I had finally, clearly broken the rules, and they could hang me for this one.  Impersonating an officer because of a glitch in the rule book was one thing, but wearing an officer's uniform was quite another matter.  All at once, I knew that this was where my outboard motor would come in handy.  I fired the engine and flew towards my houseboat, and I watched the launch leave the Princeton in my wake.  I took no time for careful docking this trip; I rammed the boat between the dock and my houseboat, and sailed through the air and into my private quarters.  The Princeton's launch made a wide turn, then sat idling off my bow, as the men aboard quite obviously were discussing their rights and my rights, what they could and couldn't do.  Eventually, they left, and I watched them return to the ship.

That was my last day aboard the Princeton.  I left the next morning for New York and the All Navy Talent Show, the Ed Sullivan Program, and the tour for Navy Recruiting.  Did I have a good time aboard my ship?  You bet, I did!  I was heartbroken to see her in the last moments of her existence, being scrapped along the riverfront in Portland, Oregon.  I had a sad, long last look at my ship, and the fellow who ran the scrap yard told me I could buy any part of the vessel for a souvenir.  I bought the Officers' Gangway. True story.  I still have it on my ranch in Northern California.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 21 May 2012

Dishonesty, Part Two

The first and only time I ever had star-billing in a movie, the company hired a publicity agent for me. I lacked name recognition, they reasoned, and people needed to know who I was. That first day on the job, the flack (that's what these folks used to be called) handed me a copy of The Hollywood Reporter. The tiny article was cause for celebration, I was told, but I was incensed. 'Actor Rescues Puppy From Oil Well,' the caption read. We were filming west of Downtown Los Angeles, and such a scenario wasn't beyond reason, but it didn't happen, and I expressed my displeasure about anybody's lying on my behalf. "It's just a little white lie," was the man's defense, and he wanted to know why I was so upset. "I know this is probably standard operating procedure for you, but I'd like to think that I have a chance to actually be such a hero one day, and who would believe me? To me, this is like the boy who cried wolf. Don't write anything about me that's not the truth." The publicity agent wasn't pleased.

I meant that, and I have always been careful not to enhance my resume, onstage and off. There was, however, one brief moment of departure from the rule.

I had transferred from San Francisco State to U.C. Berkeley, not because it was more prestigious and might look better to a prospective employer, but simply because it was a two-hour bus and train ride from my folks' house in East Oakland to San Francisco, and less than an hour to Berkeley. I had missed the first few lectures in my required biochemistry class, and I was never able to catch up, so it made perfect sense to take a leave of absence, rather than fail and lose my tuition money altogether. I could always go back, I reasoned. I had begun to lose interest in acquiring an education, as I much preferred working on my newfound musical career, and I told myself that by being able to prove I was a professional entertainer, I'd be allowed to join Army Special Services when I was drafted. I'd heard this was cushy duty, and I knew that I had very little time to create such an image, so I worked at my craft night and day, writing and rehearsing the songs I would share with my audience. Of course, everything changed when I was drafted into the Navy instead of the Army. Or did it? When I was in Boot Camp, back in San Diego, where I had served most of my college time, I learned that the Navy also had a Special Services unit, and when the time came to apply for the job I wanted, I requested Special Services. I had aced the GCT test, so I ostensibly had a right to be assigned to whatever unit I chose, and I was not disappointed. My orders read: 'Special Services, NTC, Naval Training Center, San Diego.' Could my future be any brighter? That first day on the job I was assigned to an office at the front gate. The civilian workers were very nice, and I asked them when we would be doing our shows. "Shows?" "Yeah," I said, "isn't that what Special Services is all about?" "Not on this base," came the answer. We man the office here at the front gate, and receive the parents of recruits who are having trouble adjusting, and occasionally we run a movie." "Don't we ever have shows here on the base?" I asked. "Nope, Lt. Commander Seeburg is against that sort of thing, calls it an unnecessary waste of time. Drats! All my good planning down the drain.

Totally frustrated, I went into San Diego and paid a visit to The Old Globe Theatre at Balboa Park. Somebody had told me they were having open auditions for Caught In The Act, a musical variety show. I auditioned, and was enthusiastically welcomed to the cast. "Hold on a minute," I said, "I think you should know that I'm in the Navy." "We knew that by the haircut," said the Director, "and that's not a problem. Your base Commander, Captain Lynch, is a good friend of mine, and he's keen on good public relations with the civilian sector. He'll be thrilled that one of his sailors is in our show. " "Well, just to avoid violating the chain of command," I explained, "I'd like to run it by my boss, Commander Seeburg. If I don't seek his permission, I think he's likely to be offended."

I went to Seeburg's office the next morning. "Sir, I have a chance to be in a civilian show on my own time, and I'd like your permission to represent the Navy." "Permission denied," he said coldly, "If you have any entertaining to do, you do it right here on base." "But, Sir, we don't have any shows here on base." "That's right," came his sarcastic reply. What an asshole! I was familiar with that term prior to having become a sailor, but I began using it with much more regularity thereafter, always for good reason.

I went back to The Old Globe Theatre that night. "I'm so sorry that I wasted your time," I said, "I've been denied permission to participate." "That's ridiculous," said the Director, "I've already spoken with Captain Lynch, and he couldn't be happier to have you perform with us." Oops!

What happened next shall be covered in a separate chapter, as it's that compelling, I think. It's a slice of petty drama all on its own. Now we return to my regular duty there at the front gate.

One of our jobs was to receive and separate the mail addressed to Special Services and Lt. Commander Seeburg, and I came across a post card that was confusing to me. It read, 'Dear Lt. Commander Seeburg, by now you've had your first elimination in the All-Navy Talent Contest, and we'd appreciate your supplying the name(s) of the winner(s) in the space indicated, returning this card to us at your earliest convenience. Please direct your winner(s) to appear at the San Diego YMCA, on such-and-such date, for the Eleventh Naval District competition. This show shall choose the acts to represent the E.N.D. at St. Albans in New York, where the winners shall be selected to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.' "What's this all about?" I asked one of the civilian workers, "Did we have a talent contest?" "No," she said, "the Commander hates that sort of thing, and won't allow the base to participate." Please refer to next to last sentence, three paragraphs back.

I wrestled with my conscience on this one. I always believed wholeheartedly in always telling the truth, and I wanted no part of winning or advancing, except on my own merits, but this man had stolen a wonderful opportunity from me. The All-Navy Talent Show meant EVERYBODY, but in reality, not us, not me. I knew full well how fraught with possible danger was the overt act that I was contemplating, but I also knew how the system worked. We regularly put the sorted mail into two piles on Commander Seeburg's desk, the important items requiring his review and a signature in one pile, the relatively unimportant pieces needing only initials in the other. I wrote my name in the blank space labeled winner(s), then buried the card near the bottom of the pile.

No alarms were sounded, so I kept the appointment at the YMCA, and my name was on the schedule fairly near the end of the program. Calmly, I stood backstage watching and listening to my competitors, and all at once I realized there was a major flaw in the plan. I noticed that when an act finished, there'd be one small knot of friends and family, shipmates of the person(s) performing, that would cheer loudly, while everybody else sat quietly, unwilling to join in. Every destroyer and carrier had an entry, and if the duty station was close enough, there'd be a lively crowd of partisan supporters. I had nobody. Nobody even knew that I was the winner representing the Naval Training Center, which was only a few miles away. I was about to be found-out, and I became desperate to find a way to level the playing field. I considered withdrawing my name, claiming sudden illness, whatever, but quitting wasn't in the script for me. I would have to think of something.

Just before it was my turn to perform, I hit on an idea. It wasn't quite as honorable as I would have wanted it to be, but I decided that in this case, I would bend my self-imposed rules against mendacity. Remember Big Daddy's speech in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof?

"I'm so glad to be here tonight," I began, "as I have just now learned that the song that I'm about to sing, a song that I wrote, is to be Harry Belafonte's next record." The crowd went wild. 'He's one of us,' they seemed to be saying, 'our hero!' I won. I wasn't proud of how I'd won, but I'd be going to New York, and most of the people who hadn't lied were going back to their ships.

Wouldn't you think that somebody might have later on asked me about that song that was supposed to be Belafonte's next hit? It was never mentioned by anybody. It's the same song that I eventually sang on The Giselle Mackenzie Show, the clip that's seen on YouTube.

I took comfort in not having to cheat in New York. The contest there was to be judged by professionals in the entertainment business, not an applause meter reading of a factional audience, no leveling of the playing field required. I won, fair and square.

Click here to see Randy Sparks on The Giselle Mackenzie Show

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 20 May 2012

Dishonesty, Part One 

I have always wanted to conduct my life in such a manner that I could never be accused of lying, cheating or taking advantage of others.  That's a worthy goal, I think we'd all agree, but in the real world, things happen, and we're sometimes pushed in directions that we couldn't possibly have anticipated.  Take, for example, my first job in the music business.  My partner and I had auditioned for Don Currie at The Purple Onion, and after a long delay, he'd offered us one week's work.  We were compelled to join the Musicians' Union, and the cost in 1954 was $102.  The good news was Union scale was $101.50 each, so our net loss for the week ought to have been only fifty-cents per musician.  Then came the bad news.  At the end of the week, I was handed a pay envelope containing $110. in cash, $55. a piece.  When I asked about the discrepancy, I was told that nobody in San Francisco could afford union scale, and if I were to make a fuss about it, I'd never work again, not only there, but anywhere in the city.  Disappointing.  Then there was a bit of good news.  We had done well in our performances, they said, and we'd be held over for an additional week, another $55. each.  Then it was over.  My partner and I split-up, and I began searching in earnest for another place to ply my new trade as a saloon singer.  I copied the names and addresses of the few theatrical agents listed in the phone book, and I even entered a contest out on Geary Boulevard, the place where Rusty Draper had gotten his start.  I went by in the afternoon to ask about the contest, and there were only three or four people in the room.  The place was dark, and didn't seem very promising.  "I wanted to find out about your contest," I told the bartender.  "What's you name?"  "Sparks," I said.  "Okay, Sparks, go ahead, there's the stage."  I sang a song, and nobody applauded, so I put my guitar back into its case and left.   A couple of weeks later, when I had all but given up in my search for opportunities, I visited an agent on Market St., an old actress from silent movies.  Her office was run by Foster Weeks, an apprentice in the agency game.  When I told him I was looking for work and that I sang and played guitar, he asked if by chance I had entered the contest at The Rumpus Room on Geary, and I was somewhat hesitant to admit that I'd been there.  "They've been looking for you all this time.  You've won two weeks of work at that place, and it pays $150. a week."  Wow!  

When I stopped by The Purple Onion one afternoon, Don Currie had heard about my good fortune, and he asked why I was working at that place and not The Onion.  "Well, to begin with," I said, " I wasn't offered a job here, and the Rumpus Room is paying me considerably more money."  "What you need is a long-term engagement," he said.  "If we made a deal to guarantee you eight months of work, you'd have a chance to build an act and create a demand for your show.  We couldn't pay you any more money, but at least you'd have steady work."  That somehow made sense to me, and I promised to come and see him when my job across town was ended. 

 I was offered two contracts by The Onion.  One was the union agreement, $101.50 a week, for a total of eight months, and the other read $55. a week, same duration.  I signed-up, and expected to receive a copy of each piece of paper, but that didn't happen.  "These go in the safe," the man said, "they can't be floating around, you know."  "About the eight months," I said, "what does it mean at The Purple Onion's option?"  "It means that every two weeks we evaluate your progress and if it's good enough, we pick up your option for another couple of weeks."  "Well then, your offer of eight months work is really only a guarantee of two weeks' work, isn't that right?"  "Well, as long as you work at your craft, you ought not have any worries."  Tricky business.  I promised myself that every set I did would be just a wee bit better than the previous set.  I made a commitment to become an act, maybe not a Josh White, but a good musician.  Every time I walked onto that stage I was a stronger, more confident performer.  

It was likely only a couple of months into my longterm assignment that one of the insiders suggested that I might want to attend the club's regular audition on Tuesday.  "Why?" I wanted to know.  "Just be there," he said, "and you'll understand why."  

I went.  I sat in the back of the room, and I was astounded.  I watched and listened to a performance of the most incredible talent I had ever seen.  This was a young man, and he sang in a high range, just like I did, but he exuded excitement in every note, every word.  His pitch was flawless, and he was fun to watch.  He was also depressing to me, as  the handwriting was on the wall.  There'd be no way that the two of us would share a bill, simply because of the vocal range.  We were too much alike, but also different as night and day.  He was Mr. Excitement, and I, by contrast, was boring.  I knew that my longterm job opportunity was about to come to a screeching halt.  The honorable side of me wanted nothing more than to rush up to the stage and congratulate this person who, I knew, was about to occupy my spot in the show.  But there was another side of the musical warrior who'd been taught to behave himself in Kansas.  That same law-abiding citizen had learned to compete on the streets of Oakland, California, and the game is called survival.  'How important to you is keeping this job?' I asked myself.  'What might you be willing to do to make it happen?  Lie, cheat, steal?'  A reluctant answer: 'All of the above.'  

Don Currie, the man who had hired me was gay, and he admittedly only cared about the talent part of showbiz, and that bothered the family who owned the place. "If only he would pay more attention to the dollars and cents part of the business, " they complained, but not much changed.  Then they had an opportunity to employ one of their relatives.  'Cousin' George was straight and had recently managed a five & dime store in Contra Costa County.  He was out of work because that place had gone belly-up, so they hired him as 'Co-Manager.'  George knew all about the numbers, and Don knew talent, so this was the new team.  They were polite to one another, of course, but they quietly hated each other with a passion, and I knew this as I approached Don Currie.  "Don, I want to thank you for the opportunity you gave me.  I've been able to make real progress here, I feel…"  "Wait a minute," he said, "this sounds awfully final; what's this all about?"  "You know about the new guy coming in, don't you?"  "I'm co-manager here," he roared, and nobody hires anybody without my consent.  Stay put; you're not going anywhere."  

"I didn't get to know you very well, George, but it's been nice working with you."  "What does that mean?" he asked.  "Oh, I'm sorry.  I guess you don't know about the new guy that's coming in…"  "Over my dead body!" he shouted.  "Stay put; you're not going anywhere."  

Like I say, they hated each other.  They also refused to talk to one another.  Am I proud of what I did?  Hell, no!  Absolute honesty is always the best policy, but my job was saved, and nobody was greatly harmed by the slight chicanery.  The manager of the promising young performer was totally confused.  "First we have a job, and then we don't have a job," she complained.  No real harm done,  She arranged for him to open instead at Ann's 440 on Broadway.  I had only set-back Johnny Mathis' career by maybe a week and a half, two weeks at the most.  How would you like to have to compete with him?

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy's Blog 19 May 2012

One of my new goals is to teach and share vocabulary via music.  It's a small game that I have invented mostly to entertain myself, and if it pleased anybody else, that's fine with me.  I have pledged to learn at least one new word everyday, and it's nearly an impossible task to retain all such data in an elderly brain.  I have found, however, that if I take a word that is new to me and make it into a song, I can usually remember it.  Today I discovered the term stridulation.  I had no idea what it meant.  The subject was snakes, and the article told me that some snakes actually stridulate.  Stridulation is the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts.  Typically, this is done by insects.

Okay, how might this word be used in a song.  Here's my answer:

Come on, Baby, let's rub our body parts together 
You really turn me on for someone whose legs are so few 
Yes, I like listening to your voice 
But your body is my instrument of choice
We can make beautiful music 
By rubbing our body parts together like the crickets do

Stridulation
Can you hear beyond the hush? 
Stridulation 
It could make the devil blush 
Oh, the noises of the night! 
Let me tell you that this is, by far, the best 
And to hear it close-by can make any creature feel blest
Stridulation  
The ultimate in personal communication
Cellphones are wonderful and skyping is great 
But it's a lot more fun to stridulate  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music

You'll have to take my word for the claim that it has a catchy tune. I've only sung it once or twice, but the new entry to my vocabulary is now semi-permanently installed.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy's Blog 18 May 2012

Ed Sullivan Story, Part Three

"Now, Broderick," she said, oozing charm, "we must behave ourselves.  We have a guest."  She was Marion Davies, the still-beautiful actress for whom Hearst Castle at San Simeon was built, and she was addressing Broderick Crawford, as drunk as he possibly could have been.  She was at head of the long table, and he was at the other end, just the two of them in her private dining room there at her Palm Springs hotel, The Desert Inn.  The occasion was a command performance of sorts.  I was the paid entertainment at her resort's showroom, and she elected not to join the crowd, so I was summoned to perform for her privately.  What a thrill!  Of course, I had no clue back then.  I only knew that she was in her eighties, quite lovely, and, if rumors can be believed, very rich.  I did my whole show for them, no, for her.  The head man at Highway Patrol likely didn't even know I was there.    

That turned out to be a very special Saturday night.  I did good shows, and after the second one in the show room, a very nice elderly Jewish couple said to me, "We think you're just about the best singer we have ever heard, and we want you to meet our son.  He's the Producer of The Ed Sullivan Show."  "That's so nice of you," I told them, "but I'm not quite ready for such a wonderful opportunity.  I have a lot of work to do before I'll be good enough, but thank you so much."  I would never intentionally have made them ill at ease because of my problem with their son's program, but the irony was not lost in my being polite to older folks.  This encounter happened in the winter of 1957-'58, less than a year after my mutiny at The Ed Sullivan Theater.  Marlo Lewis had told me that I would never work again, and he couldn't even keep his own parents from liking me.  What are the chances?  Wow!  

Just after my non-appearance on Sullivan, a music publisher friend in New York asked if I understood what was going on, why I had been commanded to sing the song, and I admitted that I failed to comprehend any part of the arrangement.  "Rumor has it," he said, "that Sullivan and his Producer, Marlo Lewis, split between them $10,000. of payola money, for three plays of Freight Train on their show, and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."  That sounded far-fetched to me.  How would anybody know that, and how could it possibly be proven, even if it had happened?   Then came the internet, fifty years later, and lo and behold, by my crude calculations, there were only two songs that were ever performed more than once on Ed's show. and one of these was Freight Train.  The other was Sixteen Tons.  Both of these songs were performed exactly three times.  Bo Diddley had run afoul of Sullivan by refusing to sing and play Sixteen Tons.  They ordered him to sing that song, instead of his own blockbuster hit that was Number Two on the national charts at the time.  

When The NCM left The Andy Williams Show, the agents promised to put us on Sullivan.  "It makes sense," we were told.  "CBS and Columbia Records are family."  I knew it wouldn't happen, but nobody ever found out exactly why we were never allowed on The Toast Of The Town's program.  I knew.  Then, when I was doing the music for a picture at MGM, The Singing Nun, I learned that Ed Sullivan would be playing himself in the movie, and I was fearful that it might get to be embarrassing, so I sat down and very quietly penned a personal letter of explanation to Ed.  'I don't apologize for what I did,' I wrote, 'but I would likely handle the situation a bit differently now.  I was unable to make a good showing back then, without having better learned the song, but I'm a quicker study nowadays.'  The following Sunday night, he announced that he'd be appearing in the MGM film, and he added, "and Randy Sparks is writing the music."  He had obviously accepted my explanation, and the feud was ended. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 17 May 2012

Ed Sullivan Story, Part Two 

This part of the saga had its beginnings on a rainy night in South Carolina.  Our Navy bus was on the way back to Washington, DC from the show in Columbia, and I noticed that we were being tail-gated by a Cadillac.  "Why is that car right on our bumper?" I wanted to know.  "Why doesn't he just pass?"  One of my shipmates (that's what we were called, even though there was no ship involved) said, "Don't you know who that is?  Take a look around the bus and see who's missing."  I did a hasty survey, and there were two people conspicuously absent:  the the Commander and an enlisted Wave, a hospital corpsman (we weren't so gender-sensitive back then).  "Yeah, he confirmed, that's the Commander and his little honey.  Homely face, nice body."  He then went on to relate how she had been the 'runner-up' in the Navy talent competition in Hawaii, and there was much talk about how her having been the person caring for the Commander's wife when she unexpectedly died of an undetermined cause.  "A lot of eyebrows were raised," he said, "but nothing ever came of it."  'Interesting,' I thought, and tucked this tidbit of information away in the suspicious part of my brain.  After Sullivan had ordered me off the stage, and when the Commander said to me, "You know, of course, this means you are no longer on the tour," I said, "No, I don't believe that is correct, Sir."  "What you mean?" he demanded.  "Well, if I'm no longer on the tour, there'll be questions that I don't want to have to answer…about your relation with Miss X, and how she was the only one present when your wife died mysteriously in Hawaii.  The whole subject makes me uncomfortable," I told him.  All was silent, but his color changed from a suntanned-pale to bright red.  After a few seconds, he said, "Okay, if there's no publicity about the Sullivan Show, you can continue on the tour."  

The very next day, the story was featured on the second page of every newspaper in the country: 'Sailor Mutinies On Sullivan Show.'  I had no idea at the time how it had become public knowledge, as the entire issue had been very quietly handled at the theater, but looking back, I'm now quite certain it was planted by Steve Allen's people.  Why not?  Anything to embarrass the competition.  I was heartsick, as this obviously meant I'd be going back to my duty station, the Princeton, which was then deployed to the Far East.  I was already packing my seabag when the Commander came to see me.  "Well, there's no publicity, Sparks," he said, "so you're still on the tour."  I was stunned.  All I could think of was, 'I guess they really did kill his wife.'  

Nobody ever mentioned the Sullivan fiasco thereafter, and it was as though this hadn't happened.  We did our next concert, somewhere west of New York City, and all went well, until I found myself in an ambulance on the way to Great Lakes Navy Hospital north of Chicago.  They had no idea what the problem was or how to treat it.  All I knew was that I was suddenly deathly ill.  It was a couple of days and a few assorted tests and treatments before they said, "We think it's mononucleosis, but we're not certain."  Then they wanted to know if I had been kissing anybody.  "Hell no!"  

I hadn't been sick, and wasn't disease-prone, but there I was, dreadfully ill and effectively retired from the tour.  I don't know how this was managed, but I do believe it was evil and intentional.  Two weeks later, when I finally felt almost well enough to begin plotting my return, I waited for the shift change at midnight, and took my guitar to the Captain's office.  "Sir," I said, "I would like to play and sing for you and ask your opinion as to my being well enough to rejoin my touring company."  I then sang a couple of rousing ditties, and said, "Whatd'ya think?"  "Sounds good to me," he said.  "Then I'm well enough to rejoin my show?"  "Sure, I guess so."  "Good, because I need your help in obtaining transportation on a civilian airline.  The show is in Sacramento tomorrow, and if you'll sign my orders, I can get the Navy to buy me a ticket."  He was pleased to be of help, and my new orders, signed by a Captain, put me back in the show."  As luck would have it, my plane landed at the very same time that the Navy craft touched down, and as the Shipmate Varieties personnel were filing across the tarmac, I joined the back of the line.  I had my guitar case, and I fit right in.  One by one, the other performers turned to see the excitement at the end of the queue.   Needless to say, the Commander was not overjoyed to greet me, but there was nothing he could do about it.  I had been ordered to Sacramento by a Captain, and that trumps any plans of a Lt. Commander.  I made a point of staying out of reach, far away from his medical-specialist girlfriend.  

The rest of the tour went well, and when we had done the last show, we were sent back to Washington, DC for deployment back to our regular duty stations.  I heard a rumor about a planned radio show that was to be recorded and syndicated, and one of the participants shared with me the list.  My name wasn't on it.  I didn't know how effective a simple request might be, but thought it was worth the effort.  "I'd like to be on the radio show," I told the Commander.  "No, your orders are to return to your ship," he replied.  "That's unfortunate," I said.  "That means we have to go to Plan B."  He stopped me.  "Okay, I'll rewrite your orders," he said angrily.  I hadn't said anything about the murder of his wife, but that thought clearly hung in the air.  

About this time, several members of the cast began asking questions.  "What the hell is going on with you and the Commander?" they wanted to know.  "Yesterday, he was bragging about finally getting rid of you, and now you're doing the radio show with us.  What's the deal?"  "I don't know what it is," I said, "but he just can't seem to say no to me.  In fact, to show you the sway I have with the Commander, I'd be willing to make a bet that I can accomplish the near-impossible."  "What does that mean?" they wanted to know.  "Try this.  I'll bet five bucks I can convince him to keep 'The Amazing Blaesing' on the radio show."  "That's ridiculous!" they all said, nearly in unison.  The money came flying out of their pockets, and I had three or four wagers in the works.  Alan Blaesing had won a spot on the Sullivan Show by riding a unicycle, and there wasn't a lot of logic in demanding a spot for his act on radio, but I had money riding on it.  "Commander, this is very important to me.  I want you to reconsider not having The Amazing Blaesing on the radio show."  "That's ridiculous!" he shouted.  "That the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of!"  "Sir, hear me out.  It's very important, I think.  See, all we have to do is describe what he's doing here in the studio, and we'll paint a picture for the radio audience.  They'll see him with their imagination, riding down the aisle to the stage, and when he gets off his unicycle, he'll give the 'Thought For The Day,' just like he does on the bus every morning.  The people will love it."  I won the money.  The Amazing Blaesing was on the radio show, and his first 'thought for he day' was: 'It's good to see people getting along, and the sooner some people get along, the better."  After just one show, he came to me and begged to be allowed to go home.  "I feel so stupid going along with this," he said.  I gave him my permission, and the Commander rewrote his orders.  

Our lives were quite enjoyable for a couple of weeks.  Our only official duty was showing up every Wednesday to do a half-hour radio show.  The show was transcribed, on tape, and this was of great advantage to me.  I could write a song on Monday and make a useful demo of it on Wednesday.  Each of us had to do only a song or two, and it was fun.  We didn't have to wear a uniform to do the show, so we lounged most of the time in our civilian clothes.  Then I encountered a problem.  I had blown a chord in one of my solos, and I asked the engineer if I could repair it.  I knew how to cut and splice, and all that was required was a copy of one of the other isolated chords, the right one, taped where the wrong chord was.  "Don't worry about it," he said.  "Whatd'ya mean don't worry about it?  I don't want people to hear me play a wrong chord."  "Nobody's gonna hear it," he said.  "What?"  The engineer looked both ways, then told me, "This isn't a real radio show.  It's not going anywhere.  We're just going through the motions, so that the Commander and his girlfriend can continue to cohabitant at his house here in DC, so she doesn't have to go back to Hawaii."  Wow!  

That night I told the other participants that I had a new plan for housing.  "Remember when we first came to DC, when we lived at the Sheraton Park Hotel for five-bucks a room, special price that the Navy had gotten for us?  That was good duty, and I'm thinking that we ought to live there again."  "The Commander will never go along with it," someone said.  "All I can do is try," I replied.  

"Say, Commander," I began, in a private conversation.  "The boys and  I have been talking, and we want to live at your house. "  "What the hell is this all about?" he demanded to know.  "It's very simple," I explained.  Miss X lives there, and it's a matter of equal treatment.  If she gets to live there, we ought to be able to do the same."  "Okay, where is this going?" he asked.  "What do you really have in mind?"  "Well, if we can't live at your house, how about the Sheraton Park?"  We were all moved in the following day, and life was so much better.  There was only one remaining annoying obligation: showing up to be paid, once a week, and in uniform.   "I think I can fix that," I said.  

It was now hotter than blazes in Washington, and muggy.  My only usable uniform was the wool dark blues, as my whites had been dyed for the TV cameras.  To get paid, we had to ride the bus across town, and that was downright painful.  There had to be a better way.  The first thing I did was mail my wool uniform back to my home address in California, then when I called the Paymaster I wouldn't be lying when I told him that I lacked a uniform.  I identified myself as being with the Navy show, then said, "I can't come over there to get paid, because I don't have a uniform, and your rules require that I show up in uniform."  "I saw you in uniform on the Ed Sullivan show," he protested, "what happened to that uniform?"  "Oh, I have it, but I didn't know if I should wear it on the base."   "I'm ordering you to wear it on the base," he said.  "What's your name, Sir?  And you're a Captain, is that right?"  I wrote it down.

I then rode the bus across town in my baby-blue uniform, and the looks I got from the people were quite humorous.  I was arrested at the front gate, and I demanded to speak to the Paymaster, by name.  He came to the front gate, and began railing at me for desecration of the uniform.  "I'm here in this uniform on your orders, Sir," I said, and he got irate.  "That's a damned lie!" he shouted.  "Sir, I told you that I had only my Ed Sullivan uniform, and you ordered me to wear it.  This is my Sullivan uniform."  I then went into a bit of the explanation of the cameras and their intolerance of white, but he stopped me.  "From now on," he said, "we'll send a paymaster to your hotel."  Well, okay then.   

The Navy got fed-up with draftees.  We had a totally different attitude than the boys who'd willingly enlisted.  They had each signed-on for four years, and we were only obligated for two, so we were forever by comparison short-timers, and most of us had better places to be.  The Navy, in fact, became so annoyed with our constant insubordination that they gave us the boot six-months early.  I was on my way from DC to Asheville, North Carolina after only eighteen months of protecting my country, and, as George used to say it, 'Not one enemy combatant ever got past San Diego when I was wearing the uniform.'  

The last appointment a discharged sailor has is with the doctor, to get the shots the Navy deems necessary to reenter civilian life, and there I was waiting in line to get my mustering-out shots.  I was always slightly bothered by the sight of the needle piercing my flesh, so out of habit I closed my eyes and waited for the assault,  I heard someone moving about just beyond where I was trying not to look, and opened my eyes to see an over-large needle descending upon my bare arm.  On the other side of the syringe was none other than Miss X, the Commander's evil main-squeeze.  I began yelling my head off, and she ran out the door, carrying her mystery potion with her.  She hadn't touched me with the needle, but it had been a very close call, inches.  The officer of the day came out of his office, wanting to know what the fuss was all about.  "That woman was trying to kill me!" I shouted.  "What woman?"  He then turned to the wimpy hospital corpsman whose duty it was to administer the shots.  "She told me she missed being on duty," he said, "and I didn't think there'd be anything wrong with letting her help out."

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 16 May 2012

Ed Sullivan Story, Part One

I didn't ask for the outrageous adventure that began on that Thursday morning, just ahead of our much anticipated appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  We were on tour for Navy Recruiting, doing our best to entertain the people in our road show, Shipmate Varieties, and it was on the schedule for us to return to New York City to meet with the Sullivan production crew for the planning of the Sunday event.  I had already been asked what song I'd like to perform, and as I had my first record on the market, that is what I much preferred to promote, but just like in the previous year, my song list had been offered to the show, and they were welcome to choose any tune thereon.  On my first appearance on the show (as a winner of The All-Navy Talent Contest), the Producer had me sing Ugly Woman, a Calypso song, and I wasn't altogether comfortable with that choice, but it came off okay, nothing special, just okay.  At least, I didn't embarrass myself.  'If I ever do this again,' I promised me, 'I'll insist on performing material that I do well.'  It was a shock when someone handed me a copy of Weekly Variety, the showbiz periodical, and there in the very middle was a two-page spread advertising a song that I'd never heard, and my name was across the top of the page: 'See and hear the USS Princeton's own Randy Sparks perform this song on The Ed Sullivan Show this Sunday.'  I read it in disbelief.  "Aren't you excited?" the staff member asked.  "Aren't you pleased that your appearance is being promoted?   Ads like that cost a lot of money."  "Yeah," I guess so, I replied, "but I don't know the song.  I've never heard it."  "We'll get you a copy," he said.  

Before we left for three more days of our stage show, I was given a 45 rpm recording of Freight Train.  I had no way to play a record, so I used $60. of my $92. monthly pay to purchase a battery-operated, new-fangled phonograph, and I began listening and learning.  It was folksy and simple, so I reasoned that I'd be able to easily handle this assignment, but I had no idea what the chords were, and we had very little time between shows.  By Saturday night, I expressed my frustration to the Commander.  "I'm not at all comfortable singing this song that I don't know," I told him, "and I worry that I'll look like an idiot to forty-million people."  "Just explain it to them," he advised, "I'm sure they'll let you do something else.  Tell 'em you gave it the good ol' college try, but it just isn't working."  That's what I did on Sunday morning, but there were no conciliatory words to be heard.  "We've advertised that this is the song you'll be performing, and it's what you'll be doing."  Then the Commander reenforced the order.  "Looks like you're not going to get out of it," he said, "so get back to work and learn it."  "What happened to the 'good ol' college try'" I wanted to know.  "Well, I found out it's a little more serious than that," he offered.   

About this time, Sullivan's Producer, Marlo Lewis, went to work on me,  He was friendly at first, attempting to cajole me into compliance, but when that didn't work, he told me, point blank, "If you don't sing this song, I'll see to it that you never work again."

The next person to confront me was a Navy Captain.  What he was doing there on the Sullivan Show stage I have no idea.  "Now, Son, I've been in The Navy a long time, and in the Navy we follow orders.  You must do this song."  "With all due respect, Sir," I replied, "I'm a draftee, and I don't believe that you have the right to order me to sing a song that I don't know."  He walked away without another word spoken, and half an our later he was replaced by an ancient officer with still more stripes and bars.  "I'm so-and-so, Rear Admiral from The Brooklyn Navy Yard," he announced.  "I've been in the Navy a long time," he said, "and in the Navy we follow orders."  His speech sounded like an echo with extended delay, exactly like the Captain's, so why should mine have been any different?  "With all due respect, Sir, I'm a draftee, and the rules of conscription don't mention that you have the right to compel me to sing a song that I don't know.  You can order me to kill someone, and I'd be obliged to do it, but I honestly believe you have no authority in this matter."  "You're under arrest!" he said angrily.  "You're confined to your hotel room until further notice."       

I walked back to the Henry Hudson Hotel, and I sat on my bed for a long twenty minutes, but the whole matter was so stupid that I had an overwhelming urge to laugh.  How could this be happening to me?  I then looked up the address of NBC in the phone book and, defying the Admiral's orders, walked there and asked to speak with someone from the Steve Allen Show.  It was well-known that Sullivan and Allen were bitter enemies, opposing each other in the same prime-time slot every Sunday, and I naively supposed that Steve might be interested in my unusual situation.  Unbelievably, a member of the show's staff came to the lobby to greet me, and when I told him why I was there, he got all excited, and I went with him to meet Steve and his Producer.  "You can be on our show," they said to me, and they wanted to know what song I would like to perform.  I was on my way out the door, going back to fetch my guitar, when someone from Legal put the screws to the plan.  "It's kinda messy," the lawyer said.  "They don't appear to have the right to order you to sing a song you don't know, but they absolutely have the right to prevent us from presenting you on our show.  You're Navy property, and we'd have to formally seek their permission, so we'd best leave this alone."  

I watched our show that night from the bar next to The Ed Sullivan Theater, and my roommate, Don Wyatt, the guy who'd told me all along how unfair these people were being to me, had two solos.  He played the trumpet and also sang Freight Train.  

I walked to the artist entrance of the theater, and was welcomed by the guard, as I was wearing my Sullivan uniform.  'What's that?' you ask?   In early B&W TV the cameras couldn't tolerate white, as it reflected too much light, so white clothing had to be treated with dye, in this case blue, which made it appear white on the screens at home.  Our Ed Sullivan uniforms were dyed baby blue, and anyone connected to the show knew we were participants.  I walked onto the stage just as Ed was congratulating the performers, shaking everyone's hand.  A long line had formed, and he was about halfway through when I joined at the end of it.  He had the same speech for each person: "Nice job, Sailor," and when he grabbed my hand that's what he said to me.  "Wait a minute," he growled, "What's you name?"  "Sparks," I told him.  He threw my hand away from his and said, "Get this sonofabitch off my stage!"  My show's Commander came rushing over, telling me that I would have to leave, but I just stood there.  I was feeling numb, but the lawyer at the Allen show had emboldened me with news that the Navy's rights had limits, and I had one more card left to play.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Ledbetter's Night Club-----------------The young Steve Martin

Randy's Blog 15 May 2012

A New, More Practical Formula

My nitery on Westwood Blvd. caught-on as a place for spawning new acts, and I slowly found myself being regarded as some kind of expert on talent.  All sorts of wannabes flocked to my door, and I soon recognized that I had a problem.  I wanted EVERYONE to succeed, but that's not possible.  Statistics tell us that most applicants fail; only a tiny percentage of them become successful acts, stars and superstars.   I personally agonized over the prospects of these dreamers, especially the youngsters.  'What should I tell these people?' I asked myself.  I tried using the same kind of praise I had yearned to hear when I was stumbling along at the bottom of the pile, but I'm uncomfortable as a fudger of truth, and my over-the-top encouragement wasn't especially helpful.  It was the same shallow kindness being delivered by their friends, and all that seemed to do was cause them to slow their efforts.  'If I'm that good, why am I working so hard?' they likely asked themselves.  I then thought about my own upward progress, and how the negative forces had actually been so much more meaningful in my propulsion, and I hit on a formula that I wished I had discovered sooner.  They would, of course, request an audition.  'I want to know,' they would say, 'if you think I have a chance,' and I would listen to their singing, playing, whatever, and then I'd tell them, "No, you don't have a chance."  Their reaction to my announcement would be varied, from quiet, suicidal disappointment to anger, even violent outbursts, and I would say, "Hold on a minute…allow me to explain.  The way I see it, you should not be asking me if you have talent; you should be telling me.  And how you handle my statement that you don't have a chance has everything to do with whether or not you have a chance.  If you think I'm right, then I'm right, and you don't have a chance.  But if you come across the desk after me and say, 'Listen, you sonovabitch, I'll show you who has a chance…,' then you may actually have a chance, because drive is much more important that talent, and if you want success badly enough, you'll magically find a way to achieve it."  I gave this same speech to many, many would-be performers, at least a few dozen, and a few came back to thank me for my thoughtfulness, my tough love, but at least a couple of them apparently failed to hear the explanation, and are supposedly still mad at me for my discouraging words.  One even said, "See, I proved that you were wrong."  No, you proved that I was right.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 14 May 2012

Top Twelve Quotes

I was recently asked what it takes to get fired from The New Christy Minstrels, and that's an inappropriate question.  We are an association of performers, so technically at least, there's no boss, no underlings.  I'm a volunteer, and I haven't hired anyone, so I cannot fire anyone.  There are limits, however, and although I don't fire people, I can refuse to share my stage with someone who has pushed past a certain limit.  Okay, to put the question another way, what are the comments, if any, that have earned my scorn and caused me to refuse to share the stage?  This is an interesting subject, I think.  We can do it as Letterman might, with a Top Twelve List:

12.  "Hey, I just figured out we're icons!" 

11.  "I don't think you invented the big folk group.  I don't think you invented anything.  I've never regarded you as the leader of the group."  

10.  Q: "Well, how do you like being a member of The New Christy Minstrels?"  
A: "It's a job." 

9.   "I don't stay at Motel 6."  

8.  "Randy Sparks doesn't play guitar very well, and I think I need to give him lessons."  

7.  "I won't stay in any hotel that doesn't have a hair dryer on the bathroom wall."  

6.  "Since you're new to the group, I need to tell you that the rest of us pay no attention to what Randy Sparks says.  We pretend like we agree with him, but we go ahead and do whatever we want. " 

5.  "I don't think you should talk to the audience.  We'd have a lot better show if we just stood there and sang."   

4.  "I'm not helping with the equipment.  That's why groups have roadies."

3.  "I slept with every girl singer that was ever in The new Christy Minstrels."  

2.  "Randy Sparks doesn't actually write songs.  He just puts his name on old public domain tunes."  

1.  On the phone to Barry McGuire:  "Randy has cancer, and we were wondering if you would like to join the group.  We're gonna take over and keep it operating."  

Another related category might be communications with applicants who somehow failed to make the cut:

On the phone:  "I'm fifty-five years old, but I look thirty."  
"Lady, if you can't order from the back of Denny's menu we don't want you."  

"I'll work the bigger concerts, Carnegie Hall and The Hollywood Bowl, but I'm not available for smaller shows.  Theaters yes, but no auditoriums."   

Q.  "I'm a good singer, but I have Alzheimer's.  Would that be a problem?" 
A.  "Not at all.  I paid you last week, remember?"

Then, there are two that have been added by Becky Jo Benson: 

"No, I don't play any instruments, but with everyone else playing an
instrument, why would I need to?"

"I don't sleep well with another person in the same hotel room.  I'll always need to have my own room.  You can ask the others to double-up."

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 13 May 2012

Talent?

Somewhere in my overwhelming pile of invaluable stuff I have a simple tape recording, a homemade offering of a song by a would-be songwriter, and I regarded it as being one of the worst such performances I ever heard.  As you might imagine, I've heard more than my fair share over the years.  It was given to me by Scott Turner, a friend and fellow singer/songwriter.  The song was titled A Travelin' Man, and beyond the ridiculously poor performance on the demo, I heard some promise in it.  Yes, I thought the melody sounded a wee bit too much like Steve Allen's Gravy Waltz, but the concept was interesting, and I liked the title.  I shared my thoughts with Scott, and asked about the source.  "No, he's not a good singer," said the transplanted Nova Scotian, "but he's a good friend.  He's not happy working at a bank, and I've been trying to help him.  I think he has promise as a writer."  We then sat down and rewrote the song that had been offered to me, and through Scott Turner, I made an agreement with the young writer to become its publisher.  I took no credit for my effort in improving the ditty, but Turner would be shown as his co-writer.   A Travelin' Man would be one of the gems from our NCM Ramblin' album.

Later on, this same struggling wannabe just happened to have huge hit records as a singer, and I wondered how that could possibly be.  What had happened in the relatively short time to bring such laurels to a person with so little visible talent?  Scott Turner shared his opinion with me:  "He's terribly insecure, and he can't seem to sing a song all the way through and hit all the notes, but if he sings one line at a time, and puts enough effort into the intonation, he has a nice sound, and he's a whiz at operating the tape recorder.  He locks himself in his studio, gets high, and puts together a recording the same way someone might build a house, one board at a time.  The only problem with what he's done," he continued, "is that he  can't perform in public, so you won't be seeing him in concert, taking financial advantage of his hit records."  Wow!  I never met the man, and I have no idea how accurate this appraisal was, but I did notice that he seemed to be conspicuously missing from the touring circuit, and of course, that's how most acts make the big money.  How sad.  In another way, this tale offers hope to the quiet ones, and it also lends credence to my theory that drive is more important than talent.  

The 'non-singer' with so much achievement on record was (photo above) Harry Nilsson, and I was his first publisher.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Maya Angelou

Randy's Blog 12 May 2012

Reinvention

Not everybody is everybody else's cup of tea.  We know that, but situations can change and so can people.  I have forever been in awe of those who are somehow able to reinvent themselves.  When Frank had seemingly gone as far as he could as a singer, he became an actor, and that reinvention helped to stoke the coals for his reemergence as an even more successful musician.  When Maya Angelou, the former Porgy & Bess road-company dancer, figured out that she wasn't especially gifted as a Calypso singer, she reinvented herself; she became the world-class poet.  I know about Maya, as I was her bongo player.   I have forever felt bad about Gene Clark, the young man I brought to California to replace Dolan Ellis in The NCM.  He was overwhelmed by the fast lane, and he failed to impress anyone as a Minstrel, but he became a productive Byrd.  Gene was laid-back, unobtrusive, boring perhaps, and those were exactly the qualities that served him well in the company of Jim McGuinn, later known as Roger.  That kind of showbiz wasn't my favorite, but I also wasn't their audience or their qualified critic, and they were amazingly successful.  Another of my failures was a singer/guitarist that The Back Porch Majority discovered in McCook, Nebraska.  They called me on the phone and said, "We heard a guy tonight that sings and plays really well, and he has this one song that he has written that is excellent."  They recorded him and sent me a tape, and I sent him an airline ticket.  He was a promising performer, and the audience liked him a lot, but I began to notice that he couldn't walk onto the stage without having a drink of something stronger than beer, and that bothered me.  I mentioned this to him, and he said he would make an effort to lose this crutch, but then I discovered that he wasn't as friendly and warm to the audience without the booze.  I also asked him about his writing.  He had the one good song that everybody liked.  Might not there be others where that one came from?  The expression 'one-trick pony' came to mind.  What a sad state of affairs.  He seemed constantly depressed, and I worried for his mental health.  Eventually, I felt I had to dismiss him from my roster of performers.  I wished him well, but I no longer wanted his future on my conscience.  I was quite pleased when he eventually emerged as Elvis' guitar player.  He seemed happy, and all of his friends were overjoyed that he'd found his niche.  

The last time I saw him was at my rural nightclub in Northern California, Lloyds of Linden.  He stopped by to say hello, and he seemed lost, totally depressed, and for good reason.   Elvis had died just a few months earlier.  The lifetime job had only lasted for eight years, and there wasn't much chance that he'd ever find a comparable situation: $1500. a week, whether he worked or not, and no special effort required, just play the same songs over and over, the tunes the fans expected to hear.  I listened in horror as he told me about 'the good life,' and I became even more depressed than he seemed.  The term is atrophy.  If you don't use it, you lose it.  How sad.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy's Blog 11 May 2012

How Do You Know When You've Made It?  Part 2. 

I remember being young and wanting to be somebody.  I even considered courting one of the Dionne Quintuplets, just to be important enough to have my name in the paper.  I'm really glad I got past that idea.  They all lived terribly unhappy lives, it seems to me, and I can't remember the names of the husbands, if they had any.   I think I'd even rather be Willis Hammett.  He was famous in my county for getting arrested for drunk driving on a horse.  He made People Magazine.  

I liked poetry a lot, and I noticed that every published poem, no matter how few words it used, always had the name of the author.  'What a thrill that would be,' I quietly said to myself at age eight or nine, 'to see my name in print as an author.'  I had yet to learn that those published authors likely had no time to enjoy their fame, as achieving success seems to come with a solemn obligation to repeat.  Without a second win, that first one proves nothing.  It means only that you got lucky.  On the other hand, if you win repeatedly, you have a chance to become a recognized author, and that's meaningful.  

I had  already won a load of enviable prizes for my work on record and in the concert halls, and my music was being sung in coffeehouses and cathedrals all around the world, so I was already feeling good about personal achievements, then one day it happened.  I received a letter from a publisher of text books.  'We'd like to make use of some of your lyrics in one section of a book that teaches about poetry, and the offer is such-and-such, a few cents per copy printed and sold in the California school system.  I guess I was wearing my business hat that day, as I made no connection to my dreams as a child; it was just another transaction.  Of course, that changed eventually.  

The twins, Melinda and Cameron, were in the third grade, I think, when the subject for discussion was lyrics of songs as poetry, and the teacher said, "I want each of you stand and read one of these song verses as poetry."  Melinda stood and read the verse assigned to her, then said, "This was written by my father."  The teacher became instantly annoyed.  "Just because you have the same last name as the author," she said, "that doesn't give you the right to disrupt the class."  At that point, ever-protective Cameron, her twin, stood and said, "You'd better not be calling my sister a liar."  They were then both sent to Mr. Hofsteder's office, he being the Principal.  He called me on the phone.  "I think you'd best pay a visit to the school," he advised, "and bring your guitar along.  We need to smooth some ruffled feathers."  

He returned the twins to the classroom, and quietly, carefully verified to the teacher that those words did indeed originate with their father.  I then paid a visit to explain what a songwriter does for a living, and we all lived happily ever after.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy's Blog 10 May 2012

How Do You Know When You've Made It?  Part 1. 

I can remember faithfully reading the record charts on a daily basis.  I had plenty of time to do that, along with much wishful thinking, when I was still at the bottom of the barrel.  Oh, how I longed to have a record on the charts.  Then one day, all of a sudden, I was too busy to read the listings of successful recordings, the Hot One Hundred, and those special ones with a bullet.  I had my own records in demand, but I was never able to rest on my laurels.  There was simply too much to do.  I can clearly recall one defining moment that is still special to me.  

After my chance meeting with Norman Granz and The Kingston Trio, and after Howard Miller announced my record of Walkin' The Low Road as his Pick Of The Week, all the doors magically began to open, and I was getting regular airplay on every pop station.  I already had a close relationship with KFWB in Hollywood, and they were publicly celebrating in my behalf.  Yes, I would much rather have gotten to this point without the pay-off that I was certain Granz had orchestrated, but airplay is airplay.  I was just about to get too busy to do my chores, and I remember thinking that I should enjoy my time-off while I still had some.  I decided to spend the weekend in San Diego working on my houseboat, The Chickenship.  That was fun for me.  I painted and moved a few boards around, generally had a good time, then crawled off to my nautical bed that gently rocked me to sleep.  The next morning, as usual when I was there, I went to the local no-frills restaurant, nothing fancy, just breakfast.  The clientele was made up of fishermen and dock workers, families on vacation, cab drivers and cops, anybody and everybody, but mostly workers.  I had my usual, and towards the end of my meal, I saw an older man in work garb walk across the empty middle of the room to the juke box.  He studied the songs for a while, then dropped a quarter in the slot for three record plays.  As he was headed back to his seat, I heard the very familiar opening of my song Walkin' The Low Road, and I got so excited that I could hardly contain my joy.  This man hadn't been paid to play my recording, and that made all the difference to me.  What a thrill, but there was nobody there to share my small victory.  When the song finished, it played again, and it also played for a third time.  This nice man had invested 25 cents in my talent, and I was very quietly ecstatic!  

After I'd paid my check and was leaving the place, I stopped briefly at his table, just to express my appreciation.  "I want to thank you," I said, "for playing my record."  "It's a free country," he snarled, "I can play any damned record I want to play!"  I guess he thought I was chiding him for playing one song three times, and I thought about attempting to convince him that I was the singer and the songwriter, but quickly assessing the way I looked, I knew he wouldn't have believed me.   I probably wouldn't have believed me either.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy's Blog 9 May 2012
 
Mr. Schoper

It has been a long time since I have thought about Mister Schoper.  That may not have been his name, but when you're four years old you don't ask him how he spells it.  Shoper?  Schopper?  He was 94 years old, and he lived in a tiny shack next to our (by comparison) modern house on Pawnee St. in Leavenworth, Kansas.  I can remember talking to him almost every day.  My sister was in school already, and I was too young, so I would pass some of my time with the old man who made a habit of sitting on his porch.  My folks told me that he was in the Civil War, but they also suggested that I shouldn't ask him about it.  Once in a while he would mention being in battle, but he never did tell me which side he was on.  I guess it really didn't matter.  What an interesting person he was.  My paternal grandfather lived less than a mile away, but he wasn't much fun to talk to.  He was a sad character, it seemed to me.  He'd been happy on the farm until the Great Depression came along, and my grandmother had made the decision to move into town.  This wasn't his lifestyle.  My other grandfather, my mother's father, lived in Twin Falls, Idaho and I did get a chance to meet him a few times, but he also wasn't much in tune with the program of talking to small people.  I remember being chosen to sing A Perfect Day for his funeral.  He was 77 years old.  Ancient.  Now that I'm nearly 79, it doesn't seem so old anymore.  Mr. Schoper was a better grandfather, I think.  He lived by himself, and he didn't bathe very often, if at all, but that didn't bother me.  He knew all the birds that flew past his cabin, and he could tell you when it was about to rain.  He told me one time that he had met Abraham Lincoln, and I didn't know who that was, so he pulled a penny out of his pocket to aid my education.  I was impressed, and he also told me to keep the penny.  I think that was the first real money I ever owned.  

Mr. Schoper faded away very quietly.  He was always there, and then one day he wasn't.  I don't recall how that happened.  He might have been carted off to the hospital before he died, but then he also could have been discovered in his shack.  I suspect my parents didn't want to overload my mind with an explanation.  My father then bought the tiny lot next door to our house, and I really hated watching the old man's cabin being removed, board by board, but this meant that we had a little more room for the family garden.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy's Blog 8 May 2012

Recording

As my focus for the past month or so has been on recording, I've had occasion to think about the long and winding road that has led to where we are today.  I officially began my recording career with the purchase of a Webcor tape recorder in 1952, and in 1953, although I wasn't actually enrolled in his class at San Diego State, I accompanied Ken Jones of the newly-founded Sound Department to McGregor Studio in Los Angeles.  This place hadn't changed since the very beginning of sound recordings.  They still produced their square dance records using obsolete 1920's machinery.  I was the recognized singer on the field trip, so I was offered the chance to record at 78 rpm.  

That same professor, Mr. Jones, was totally excited about something new called stereo, and he demonstrated it for us.  Wow!  That's the last time I actually heard stereo, as the hearing in my right ear was essentially lost aboard my ship in the Navy in 1956.  

My first recording as a writer was by Amos Milburn, a black blues singer, and I was told at the time, likely 1955, that it was available as both a 45 and 78.  When I participated in my first for-real Verve Records solo sessions, March of '57, I was still in the Navy, and I was also able to work at length with Ralph Grasso, who had his own home studio in New Jersey.  At about the same time, Ralph and I recorded every week at US Recorders in DC, ostensibly for a radio show for Navy Recruiting, but this turned out to be bogus, a waste of money for the Navy, intended only to enable our widowed Commander's young main-squeeze to remain stateside.  In each of these situations, I insisted on learning about the process, and kind audio engineers taught me both theory and practical application.  I learned to edit by splicing and taping.    I learned overdubbing, crude though it was at the time.  My solo career continued, even though I was barely bumping along the bottom, commercially, and I continued to learn my craft.  When the trio became a record act, we played Las Vegas, and it was there I met a salesman for a new company.  He said, "I enjoyed your show, and I couldn't help but think that you need one of our new tape recorders.  It's smaller, much lighter than your Web-cor, and cheaper.  It's going to retail for $99., and I can sell it to you for about $60. bucks."  He showed it to me, and I bought three.  These machines solved a problem for me.  I was working on three-part harmony for my new group, The NCM, and by having the trio sing parts simultaneously into individual microphones, I was able to supply harmony-part-specific tapes to the other members back home in California, or elsewhere on the road.  The company, brand new in the electronics market in the US, was represented by this sole salesman.  It was called Sony.  What irony that it would one day own our future label, Columbia Records.  

I had no great urge to own my own studio, but that changed with the major problem I encountered in recording John Denver in 1964.  He was a total embarrassment for me at Capitol Records, and I decided what he needed was therapy for his studio insecurity, his inability to perform just because it was for keeps.  I made a list of the equipment we were using there at The Tower, and I purchased identical gear, recorded him everyday for weeks.  This effort paid dividends, but not for me.  It helped John get past his nervousness, and he was much better prepared when the thieves were ready to steal an act.   

The studio was moved to my own building on Santa Monica Blvd., and I found a young man who wanted to learn audio engineering.  I sponsored his education, and he soon had plans for improving the mixing board.  We built our own, and it was state-of-the-art.  Money was no object, and I enjoyed this process as much as he did.  Unfortunately, when he was at the top of his form, ready to make use of his expensive education and the new equipment, he came to me with the news that he'd had a better offer.  I told him, "If it's a matter of money, that can be dealt with."  "No," he said, "where I'm going is just a much better atmosphere.  They recognize that dope is actually creative, and I want the freedom to do whatever I want.  You won't even let us smoke in the studio."  He was dead within a year, an overdose.  Yeah, that freedom is a wonderful thing.  

In 1967, while on an Asian tour, a military friend told me about a new machine that was only available in Japan, and he offered to buy one for me at the Post Exchange.  I became the first person in my neighborhood to own a Sony cassette tape recorder.  What a breakthrough!  It was smaller than a box of Grape Nuts.

I had worked my way through Ampex mono to two-track stereo with Verve, and from three-track to four-track machines at Columbia, and one day I took notice of a huge machine behind the door at Studio A on Sunset Blvd.  "What's that," I asked Bill Britain, the engineer.  "It's a useless pile of junk," he told me.  "The company has been trying to get us to use it, but there are eight tracks, and there's no way that any engineer worth his salt will ever be able to handle more than four."   "Maybe the company would sell it to me," I suggested.  "Sure, why not?" he replied.  We almost had a deal for $5000., but then the folks in charge back east changed their corporate minds, and the bargain was nixed.  All of the engineers at Columbia Records/West Coast were in complete agreement that four tracks were the absolute limit.  That's very funny now.  

My home studio was eventually upgraded to 16-track, using two-inch tape.  I bought Ghostbuster Ray Parker's machine, and that worked fairly well, but the state-of-the-art got smaller, and I next moved to an analog Tascam machine that did much more with less tape.  It was purchased for me by a bank in Virginia.  I was doing their commercials, and they sponsored one of my solo albums.  Then the big technological breakthrough happened, and I put money down on a promising new venture, a cutting-edge 8-track digital recorder.  I reasoned that I needed such a critter to properly record Burl Ives' new children's album, Little People.  The schedule was fixed, and all was in readiness, but there was a set-back in the delivery date, so the company refunded my $4000.  Isn't it ironic that much better machines can be had now for less than a hundred dollars?   

One of the over-qualifications of our proposed manager a few years back was the fact that he was a self-proclaimed genius of the recording industry.  He owned his own studio, and was a master of the Pro-Tools system, self-taught.  Of course when the Queen Creek Bandit's house of cards began to crumble, when we were finally able to see him for what he was, a wannabe, a charlatan, a con-man and thief, his recording credentials also went out the window.  We had wondered why he spent so little time in the studio across the street from his house, then one day, the studio was gone.  "I sold it," he said, but that wasn't quite the truth.  We learned that the real estate, an upscale tract home, had been rented with an option to purchase, and he simply hadn't made the payments.  The expensive recording gear also belonged to others, companies that had bought into his fictional financial statement, and even when the studio was operational, there had always been an engineer-for-hire on hand to do the actual work.  'Why was that,' I needed to know.  One of the hired hands explained it to me.  "He may own the equipment, but he doesn't know a Goddamned thing about operating it!"  When his own studio had gone bye-bye, this man turned to Jason Barney of Gilbert, AZ, a wonderful musician and operator of his own studio.  That's where we went to record The NCM Recycled, and it's where Jennifer Lind recorded her delightful first effort CD.  We also made a plan to engage this facility for our latest recordings, but Jason became much too busy, and his partner, equally-talented Richard, offered to stand-in.  We were all set to record in January, and we settled into our rooms at Motel 6 in Mesa, rehearsing and getting ready to record.  Then Richard got deathly ill, and couldn't accommodate us.  It was too late to back away from our rented rooms @ the weekly rate, so we kept up the pace of rehearsals, and I made the decision to capture as much as we could on our Roland machines.  Becky Jo Benson became our audio engineer, and the product is surprisingly excellent.  She even became sufficiently encouraged to make the transition to the ProTools system.  She holds classes for herself everyday, and it's thrilling to know how much she now knows about what all of us ought to have learned years ago.  She has saved us a few thousand dollars already, and she'll probably want a Christmas bonus.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

From left to right: 'Twin's Gift', 'McDougal', 'Duo', and 'Friday-The-Fern'

Randy's Blog 7 May 2012

McDougal

McDougal is alive and well.  When my first real experimentation at what we then called love ended up on the rocks at San Francisco, she was off to New York City to become the great actress that we all knew she would someday be, and I moved back home with my folks in East Oakland.  We hadn't carelessly littered the planet with offspring, but we did have one dependent, an arrowhead plant, and I was given custody, since she couldn't very easily take it with her on the plane.  I transferred from San Francisco State to U.C. in Berkeley, and my mother took charge of her green grandchild.  The first thing she did, of course, was cover the pot with aluminum foil, a fairly recent innovation at the time.   Mom was a proper Mormon lady, and it was not deemed acceptable to have a coffeepot in the house; it had to be covered, disguised.  My girlfriend and I had found the ancient coffeepot in our exploration of a Gold Rush encampment called Dogtown, which was very near the now-extinct village of Altaville, California, and the plant was procured at a nearby dime store, just to make use of the coffeepot.   

The plant thrived in my mother's care, and my father took a special interest in it when it had filled the kitchen window with runners and leaves.  He decided to measure the vine, and to do this, he unwound and stretched the plant from the pot through the dining room, through the living room, up the stairs into their bedroom, and back down to the kitchen.  It was more than sixty feet long!  No 'miracle-grow' or vitamins or special potting soil, just the same dirt we had put into the pot in 1954, and tap water.  

My mother called me sometime in the early 'eighties, to let me know that they were moving to Utah, and she was concerned about the change of climate for my plant.  I was amazed that it was still alive, and on my next visit, I collected it and carried it home to my flourishing domestic scene at our ranch in Calaveras County, not so far from where the coffeepot had been collected.  My wife then became its custodian, and it continued to live a happy and productive life, even though I still spent much of my time on the road.  

Sometime after Becky Jo Benson joined my restored New Christy Minstrels effort in 1997, she and my wife Dianne worked-out a new arrangement for the care of McDougal, and it became a fixture in my office, but not without life-threatening difficulties.  Dianne had left a message for Becky Jo, letting her know that she was going to be away for a few days, and that she was leaving the plant in the coffeepot next to the driveway at the ranch house, so that Becky Jo could get it the next morning, when she came by to feed Red, the horse.  The problem was threefold: I was away in Kansas, and Becky Jo didn't receive the message until three days later (she generally only went to the ranch house to visit or to get carrots for Red), and this was the hottest time of year, July or August.  When she finally did discover the plant, it was almost gone away to botany heaven.  Amazingly, it recovered.    

It now resides at The Foundation's World Headquarters in Leavenworth, Kansas, where it has a grandiose and colorful Mexican pottery habitat.  My niece, Jane, regularly stops by to look after it when we're elsewhere.  Even now, fifty-eight years into it's incredible life with me and my extended family, although it's not quite as robust as it once was, McDougal is still alive and quite lovely.  We should all be so lucky.  We should all have that strong a will to live, and be capable of producing new leaves when we begin to look wrinkled and shabby, starting over, regenerating.  Long live McDougal!

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 6 May 2012

Today

One of our fans sent me an e-mail message asking if there was a story behind the writing of my song Today, and here is my reply.  It's a bit longer than most of these posts, but it's a truthful bit of trivia.  

Yes, indeed there's a story behind Today.  I was deliberately trying to write a hit record, and that is mind-boggling to me now.  A few years earlier, I was astounded by a statement that my manager, an insider in the music game, had made about Johnny Mercer.  He said that Johnny was part-owner of Capitol Records, and that if they ever needed money he would simply write a hit song for the company.  'How could anybody write a hit song on demand?' I asked myself.  I have always been a prolific songwriter, and of course, that's how and why The New Christy Minstrels came to be, as an outlet for my original songs (that nobody wanted).  Our first hit was Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land (not a big one, but a turntable hit, nevertheless), then Denver was a hit in Denver and a few other places, and Julianne was also big in several markets, but not nationwide.  We needed a hit record, and Barry McGuire and I wrote Green Green together.  It was huge.  I then wrote Saturday Night as a follow-up to Green Green, and that definitely qualifies as an effort to deliberately write a hit song.  Amazingly, it worked, but not as well as Columbia Records had hoped, so when it began to decline on the Billboard Hot-100 Chart, I was instructed to write our next hit song.  I remember sitting at a table in Nickodell's Restaurant on Argyle St., Hollywood's diminutive Tin-Pan Alley, trying to write our next hit, and the well was dry.  That's a fairly common feeling among songwriters.  In fact, that's where the name of Pozo Seco Singers came from; it's Spanish for 'dry well.'  As I sat there drinking my coffee and coming up with NOTHING, the room suddenly darkened.  A huge delivery truck had pulled up out front, and the plate glass window couldn't receive its usual sunlight.  The truck belonged to the second largest newspaper in LA, The Herald Examiner, and their slogan was painted on the side: 'Today's News Today.'  That word was very significant to me, and I immediately began churning it through my receptors and filters.  Most pertinent was a conversation that I'd had with my mother.  She had said, "I may not be happy here, but I know I'll be happy in Heaven."  My response had been, "If you're not pleased with all that we have here, right now, I can't imagine that you'll be better served anywhere else." 

All of this was coursing through my brain as I quit Nickodell's andclimbed aboard my motorcycle, a Honda 305, for the ten minute ride home to Encino, and by the time I walked through the door I was singing the chorus,  'Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine, I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine, A million tomorrows shall all pass away, Ere I forget all the joy that is mine Today.'  I sang it for my wife, Dianne, and she seemed pleased, not overly impressed, just pleased.  I completed the verses that night, and the very next morning at Columbia's Studio on Sunset Blvd., in one of our rehearsals, I sang it for the group.  Nobody said a word.  "Well, what do you think?" I asked.  All was silent.  Finally, my ex-wife Jackie said, "I kinda like it."  "Thank you for that, Jackie," I said, "and what about the rest of you?"  After a couple of awkward moments, Larry Ramos spoke up.  "I think I can speak for the rest of the group.  It's shit, the same kind of shit you always write!"  "Is that the way the rest of you feel too?" I asked.  Not a word.  Everyone was looking straight ahead, and the chairs were in a circle.  "You may not love it, but you'd better get used to it," I told them, "we're all going to sing it together."

The song took a few months to become a record.  We tried recording it in LA, then New York, and again in LA, and there wasn't much enthusiasm for it.  The resistance was not my imagination.  The whole group resented my insistence that we sing this song.  Finally, after they wearied of arguing with me, I suppose, it began to sound better, and we achieved an acceptable performance on tape.  The solo lines had been intended for Ann White, but she just couldn't get it right, and she begged out of the assignment in the studio.  As we were about to run out of time, and as the finished product was already late, I stepped in to do the opening phrase and the one-line solo part in the middle, just to get past the deadline.  I shipped it off to New York, and in a couple of days, Bill Gallagher, head of A&R, called me on the phone.  "I have listened to what you sent me, but there's a problem," he said, "It doesn't sound enough like Green Green."  After all I had been through to get the recording to him, that reaction hit me entirely the wrong way.  'What a stupid thing to say,' I thought to myself, 'of course, it doesn't sound like Green Green!'  "Oh, don't worry about that, Bill," I assured him, "I can fix it."  I then went into the studio, cut Nick's opening 12-string guitar run off our recording of Green Green, and spliced it onto the opening of Today.  Green Green was in C, and Today was in F.  I made a dub, labeled 'Columbia Test Pressing,' and sent it to him.  When he called me I fully expected him to be laughing, but he wasn't.  "It's better," he said, "but there's still something wrong with it."  "Better?" I screamed over the phone, "better?  Bill, it's a joke!"  All was silent on the other end.  "The point is, Bill, I have already sent you our next record.  You don't like my song, do you?"  "Let me tell you how I feel about that song, Randy," he railed, "If that's a hit record, I'll eat my hat!  I hate that song so much that I wish it was on Roulette!"  "Well, you better start liking it," I told him, "because it could be the last record you get from us."  

That was a fairly undiplomatic position to have taken, but I had finally figured out that there are no geniuses in the record business, and one person's gut-instincts are perhaps as valid as another's.  I had a feeling about this song.  Part of that feeling was that I was following a pattern, not intentionally maybe, but it would be as close as I ever want to get to fatalism, living a charmed life.  Stephen Foster had become famous and popular for Oh, Susanna and Camptown Races, but he wanted to be known for Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair and Beautiful Dreamer.  I was following in his footsteps.  Green Green and Saturday Night were my uptempo, rousing songs; now I wanted a ballad.  In the same vein, Bobby Darin gave the industry what it wanted, meaningless rhythmical prattle titled Splish Splash, then caused his well-orchestrated career to evolve by offering Mack the Knife and Beyond the Sea.

Bill's final words to me were, "Okay, you have me in a corner.  I'll put out the record, but this I'll guarantee you.  Nobody will hear it!  I'm going to sit on this record like no record has ever been sat on.  My salesmen will be instructed not to sell it!"  Then he hung up!

When the record of Today by The NCM, MY record, came onto the charts at #20, five weeks later, Bill Gallagher, to his credit, called me on the phone.  "Where?" he asked.  "Where what?" I asked back.  "I told you I'd eat my hat if it was a hit.  We have ourselves a hit, and I'm ready to eat my hat.  Where?"  "You're in New York," I replied, "how about Times Square?"  Then we laughed together and cheered our good fortune.

I attended a reunion-of-sorts of my group members at Oakhurst, California, in 1994, and had the incredible experience of hearing Larry Ramos introduce my song Today as "the most beautiful song we perform..."  Then he proceeded to sing MY SOLO LINES, and I had to ask myself, 'What happened to the same shit you always write?'

What I've left out of this rambling essay is any mention of the movie.  I was contracted to write the score for Company Of Cowards at MGM, the production later titled Advance To The Rear, and I found a place in the soundtrack that was exactly right for my song Today.  Hugo Montenegro was my orchestrator (his first picture assignment), and the song was infinitely more successful than the film.  My writing credit was somewhat ambiguous on the posters: Words and Music by The New Christy Minstrels.  Somewhere along the way, I really needed caring management.  I remember paying dearly for just that, but it was not received. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Mar-crest Oven Proof Stoneware

Randy's Blog 5 May 2012

Sparks In Sparks

Now, I've mentioned this before, but I consider it worth repeating: Everyday is an adventure.  Today's adventure found the 'too-busy-to-go-with-you' Becky Jo Benson there in the passenger seat of the F-150, the destination being Sparks, Kansas.  This place, no doubt named for an ancient relative of mine, is in the northeast corner of the state, and has a usual population of only nine people, no Liberals.  Today, however, the count was considerably higher, say several thousand, maybe three percent Obama supporters.  The occasion is the annual Spring Flea Market Event, Thursday through Sunday, and there's something for everyone.  Vecca-The-Showdog was invited along (attendance compulsory), and at one point she said, "If I see another cast iron skillet, I'll puke."  It was hot and humid there amid the makeshift booths, and there were several times when she opted for a shady spot to rest while the adults in her family ogled and haggled.  Our Leavenworth friends Jan and Junior have a booth there, and with four to five hundred dealers I worried that we might not find them, but I have excellent recall of objects, and I knew immediately which junque collection was theirs, despite that Jan was elsewhere visiting.  

Today's bargains include a wooden wall crank telephone, a Craftsman two-wheel grinder on stand, eight ornate shelf brackets, a couple of pieces of Mar-crest stoneware, two more wheeled luggage carts for Becky Jo (this makes a total of more than 20 that I know of), and dishes and glasses, etc.  Vecca was worn out and has asked to stay home from now on.  

It's interesting to me that Sparks, KS is less than fifty miles from Leavenworth, and fewer then forty miles, as the crow flies, is the near-ghost village of Arrington.  My mother was Pearl Arrington when she met my father Lee Ray Sparks in Easton, thirteen miles northwest of Leavenworth, even closer to Sparks and Arrington..  Cue theme music from Twilight Zone.  

Editor's note: The reason why I am so busy lately is because we are in the middle of our intense recording sessions for two (2) upcoming CDs. BJB

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 4 May 2012

Serendipity = Accidental Discovery

This is a strange set of circumstances.  A few days ago, I wrote a blog about the Serendipity Singers, how they sat in the front row at The Troubadour and copied our act, and then had hit records and won a place in the business of music.  I have always been disturbed that they flagrantly stole my format, my invention, but it wasn't something that I could have patented.  I typed a few lines about that group, and the blog was in the hopper, not yet on the website.

BJB and I left Yanceyville about noon today, and when we had traveled about twenty miles over the back roads that the GPS picked for us, we came to a country church with a lighted sign, the kind used for those clever, feel-good messages, and this billboard advertised The Serendipity Singers on Sunday the 29th. What are the chances of having The NCM and The SS in neighboring towns only a week apart?  As soon as we settled for the evening in Knoxville, I went on-line and Googled The Serendipity Singers' website. Here's the link: 

http://www.serendipitysingers.org/default.html 

I also read the Wikipedia piece about this group from the '60s, and all at once it makes sense. I had no idea how they had made use of my format to become successful so quickly. The answer is in this article. Fred Weintraub owned the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, and his sister was in the group.  He pulled all the strings.  Wow!

The Serendipity Singers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
'The Serendipity Singers were a 1960s American folk group, similar to The New Christy Minstrels.
This nine-member folk-oriented group started at the University of Colorado with seven original members of a group called the Newport Singers. The members (Bryan Sennett, Brooks Hatch, Mike Brovsky, John Madden, Jon Arbenz, Bob Young and Lynne Weintraub) had, with the exception of Weintraub, all previously worked together in various trios before coming together to form the Newport Singers.
In 1963, after working extensively in the Rocky Mountain Denver-Boulder Front Range region, the Newport Singers moved to New York City based on a telegram offering a record contract from a William Morris agent. Fred Weintraub, Lynne's brother and then-owner of the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, agreed to manage the group. Weintraub, also at the time the talent co-coordinator for the popular ABC Hootenanny television series, felt the group needed two more people to round out the sound. He invited Tom Tiemann and Diane Decker, two University of Texas students whom he had heard, to New York for an audition. It was Weintraub who proposed the name change from the Newport Singers to Serendipity. After some considerable discussion the compromise became the Serendipity Singers.
After several months of rehearsal and work with Bob Bowers who became the group's musical director, the Serendipity Singers opened at Weintraub's Bitter End café. They played in Greenwich Village and landed spots on the weekly Hootenanny show.'

Dolan has reminded me that 'It's not who you know, but whom you know.'

When we worked the Rialto Theater in Loveland, Colorado in 2007, I was told that Serendipity co-founder Brian Sennett, one of the movers and shakers in the restoration of that grand showplace, was in attendance, somewhere in the building, but he didn't bother to attend our mixer with the other High Plains Art Council members, nor did he introduce himself at the autograph table.  I felt bad about that, even worse when he died last year.   

I have made an effort to discover the origin of the group appearing at the rural church in Reidsville, NC, and apparently it's not the women from South Carolina, the ones who claim to have made use of the SS name for seven years, rather, some other aggregation from a neighboring Methodist church in North Carolina.  I wonder if these good Christians ever bothered to read The Ten Commandments.  Number eight tells us 'Thou shalt not steal.'  I also wonder how many of these regional weekend wannabes are calling themselves The New Christy Minstrels.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Shirley Jones

Randy's Blog 3 May 2012

Teacher Antiques, Small World

The time was perhaps mid 'seventies, and Shirley Jones needed a back-up group for her Starlite Opera Tour.  She liked what I was doing with The Back Porch Majority, but her people felt that we needed more bodies to better take command of the over-size stages, so we added a couple of well-qualified performers, both highly recommended as friends of friends.  The rehearsals went well, and we were behind Shirley when she launched the show in Kansas City, where I had appeared as Tom Sawyer in 1958 and '59.  By Indianapolis, the next stop, we were all much more confident, and the reviews were excellent,  I even began feeling 'smirk' (a confused biker friend of mine regularly made use of this term in place of 'smug'), until the last night there, when a uniformed policeman came to the stage in the middle of the show and very visibly ordered me to come with him.  He hadn't seemed to notice that I was busy doing dance steps and singing, along with the ten other performers.  I refused to obey his verbal commands and body language, and he just stood there waiting for the song to finish.  "What's this all about?" I demanded to know.  "You come with me, and we'll talk about it," he said.  "I'm not going anywhere with you until you tell me why you've disrupted our program," I assured him, and he said that I had performed in concert in Greenville, Indiana, and hadn't paid the rent-a-cop.  "Didn't happen," I told him; "You have the wrong person."  "You're Randy Sparks, the country singer," he charged.  "No, I'm Randy Sparks the folksinger, and I have never even been to Greenville, Indiana."  Turned out that there indeed was a regionally successful musician named Randy Sparks, and his self-produced show had run out of money.  Getting past the confusion and clearing my record took a few weeks, but in the end, the Musicians' Union compelled the younger Randy Sparks to change his name, and that's one of only two instances in my more than forty years as a member wherein the AFofM was on my side, actually helpful to me.  Don't get me started!

When the The Shirley Jones Show reached Pittsburgh, we were all in good form, wearing our 'seventies-fashion jump suits proudly.  We also had more time for exploring, and I spent my off-hours visiting the junque shops.  I found two keepers.  One was an ancient brass band instrument, which I later learned was a rare and valuable museum piece called an 'opechlide' (I bought it because I liked the look of it), and the other a shaving mug.  These mugs are wonderfully educational, as each has a story to tell, usually offering the name of the former owner and his occupation.  This one depicted a vintage Cadillac, perhaps a 1910 model, and the name 'Kaysing,' which just happened to be the same family name as one of our two extra group members, Jill Kaysing.  The price was $40., a hefty sum back then, but the coincidence was a compelling motivation.  "Hey, Jill, I have something for you," I said, handing her the mug.  "Wow!"  That night she called her father, Bill, the same Bill Kaysing semi-famous for his writings, including 'We Never Went To The Moon.'  Yes, they did have a relative, either Jill's grandfather or Bill's, who had owned the Cadillac agency in Louisville, Kentucky, and when the business went belly-up, he disappeared; they never heard from him again.  Now, apparently they had. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 2 May 2012

The Grandstanding Preacher

Burl Ives tolerated a whole list of folks who, in my opinion, ought not have been offered a kind word, but that's who he was, honorable to a fault.  Some people say, 'It takes all kinds to make a world,' but I don't believe that.  It doesn't take all kinds, but they're here.  Okay, so he was a lot nicer than I ever could have been.  He had limits, mind you, but you had to be a full-blown idiot or obnoxious megalomaniac to ever get on the BI shit list.  He put much effort into being a truly nice person, and some quite often mistook his charitable kindness for acceptance.  One of the people in this category was a self-styled preacher, a non-affiliated evangelist, who had read just enough of the Scriptures to become dangerous.  I'm not certain that he actually believed all of the rhetoric he spouted, but he was a showman, and most of what he said and did was for the audience.  I hated to be around this man, mostly because I constantly had an urge to stick him with a pin, just to see if if would he would fly around the room as his hot air was being expelled.  I couldn't trust myself not to candidly evaluate his performance.   

When Burl was dying, when he was in the self-induced coma that we all knew was his final preparation for departure, the grandstanding preacher arrived and was welcomed into Burl's private chamber.  This clown dropped to one knee and began loudly ranting a soliloquy supposedly addressed to the Higher Powers.   "Oh, God," he roared, "I beg you to recognize this person who is about to join you in Heaven.  He's a faithful servant, and he deserves Your pity…"  The sermon detailed much of Burl's life and considerable accomplishments, and ended with another personal request by the speaker not to ignore The Wayfarin' Stranger.  I had to leave the room before I could be asked to join the charlatan in prayer.  

Later on that day, Dorothy Ives asked me what I thought of the preacher's performance.  I would very much have preferred not being asked, mind you, but I also couldn't refrain from offering my appraisal.  "I know you may not believe this, Dorothy," I said, "but I too have a relationship with God.  Mine, of course, is a bit more informal.  I too had a conversation with Him just after the preacher left, and He told me how disgusted He was with that idiot.  "Imagine," He said, "having to listen to such unacceptable prattle all day long.  It's non-stop.  He wants Me to recognize Burl Ives.  What a joke!  I have all of his records.  I know who he is, and I don't have to give him My pity.  He's a Saint.   What I don't know is how that fool has the nerve to grandstand in Burl's or anybody else's behalf.  What a waste of pompous protoplasm."  

I know that Dorothy had an urge to give me her usual reaction to one of my off-the-wall lectures, the obligatory 'Oh, you!,'but she didn't.  She just smiled and changed the subject. 

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 1 May 2012

Thieves In The Front Row

Every once in a while, somebody apparently feels the need to link my act, The New Christy Minstrels, with that upstart rival copy of my historic innovation, The Serendipity Singers, and I feel compelled to set the record straight, to announce that they were but a cheap imitation.  I don't hate those people. In fact, I'm appreciate of their efforts to successfully launch a near-duplicate enterprise, but I wouldn't ever want anyone to be so confused as to suppose that we copied them.   The occasion was momentous, although we didn't realize it at the time.   We were doing our show at The Troubadour, our very first gig, and we noticed the eager youngsters there in the front row.   We thought they were either reporters for a college newspaper or fanatical worshipers of our music, as one of them had a clipboard, and appeared to be taking notes.  Fans?  Maybe, but definitely thieves of my invention, my act, and it took precious little time for them to get their competitive recordings on the radio and on the charts. 

Many years later, I went to see an act billed as The Serendipity Singers, and that was humorous. This had to be in the 'eighties, twenty-some years later, and I watched in disbelief as a mere child of about nineteen years of age, likely the senior member, came out of the ensemble, now down-sized to five individuals, to say, 'Hello, we're The Serendipity Singers, and here's one of our hits…' I was sufficiently upset to write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, and one of my few enemies furnished a copy to the hoodlums-in-suits to whom I had sold my group.   In my letter, I accepted some of the blame for what was going on in the marketplace, the bait and switch, and I claimed to know the ethics of the two men who once had served as my managers.   I hadn't specified good or bad ethics; the fact is, I don't believe they had any at all. They had pledged to retain the original members of my group after the sale, but had all too quickly dumped the expensive personnel and replaced them with eager, cheaper wannabes.   These people promptly sued me for eight million dollars for libel.  I was never worried about this action, as I could easily have proven anything negative I might ever have had to say about them, but this became a major distraction for a while.   The resolution came about when I let them know that I was most anxious to go to court.  They hurriedly dropped the lawsuit. 

A big folk group, a folk chorus, is a familiar format nowadays, as there have been many copies of my prototype, but a hoard of performers, all playing and singing together in an organized manner, was indeed a radical thought in the early 'sixties.   There were several occasions when I was asked to describe the group that I was attempting to promote, and I became conspicuously silent, rather than be subject to ridicule.   Even I sometimes thought it seemed like a harebrained idea, but then there was that magical moment when my invention came to life in Tarzana, California, when I first heard the powerful sound of so many voices and instruments all together.   I would have bet the farm on it, if I'd had one.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 30 April 2012

Three Good Friends

I didn't know it then, but it was my last time to work The Blue Angel in New York.  I'd been there on four, maybe five previous occasions, a month at a whack, and I always fared well with the crowd.  Not a bad record for someone who was told to go home in the first ten minutes.  I had been warned that there'd never been a folk act at the posh nitery before I arrived, and when I was doing my sound check in the afternoon of that first night, Herb Jacoby, one of the owners, said, "This isn't going to work.  I don't present shit-kickers in my club."  "I'm not a shit-kicker," I told him politely, "I'm a folksinger."  "It's all the same to me," he argued, "and you won't be performing here."  "I have a contract," I reminded him.  "I'll pay you off," he said gruffly, "but you won't work in my room."  I was stunned, as I'd never encountered this kind of treatment before, but I hadn't flown to New York just for a holiday.  I intended to work there as planned.  "All do respect, Sir," I said, "I believe you owe it to me to allow your audience to be the judge of my act.  If they say go home, I will, but I insist on being heard by them."  "Okay," he said reluctantly, "but I'll tell you right now, it's not going to work."  I opened that night, and quietly became one of the acts that appeared there with some regularity.  There was never another mention of my being a shit-kicker.  

The crowds were mostly respectful.  They watched and listened without a lot of loud conversation or other distractions, and when there were rude or thoughtless people in the seats, management usually did a good job of bringing the individuals to their senses with a polite word or two.  On this particular occasion, it was a loud table just beneath where I worked on the stage, and nobody bothered to shush them.  I began to wonder why, and then I realized who they were.  It was a threesome: Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher, and Eva Marie Saint.  They had no interest in what I was doing, and management obviously lacked the will to attempt to curb their bad manners.  The rest of the audience certainly understood, I think, and this table of celebrities became the better show.  I was reduced to background music.  

I suddenly realized that two of these three people were holding hands beneath the table, and I was the only person in the room with a vantage point to see it.  I was directly above them, and this came as a shock to me, as every showbiz magazine carried stories of Eddie and Debbie, not Eddie and Liz.  Debbie wasn't there.  Eva was obviously along just for cover, three good friends out for an evening stroll, nothing more.  If I'd had a camera, I could have earned a fortune that night.  The rest of the world had to wait another week or so before the news hit the rags and the mags and the front pages of respected newspapers.  That happened in my first week, and at the end of the month, at the conclusion of my booking at the Angel, I just happened to fly back to LA on the very same plane that Eddie and Liz boarded on their much publicized trip to be married.  I had to pass by their First Class section on my way to the cheaper seats, and I thought about asking if they'd consider allowing me to come along with them and talk through their act, just as they had done through mine.  

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 29 April 2012

What Kind Of Fool Am I?

Nick Woods was one of the best voices ever associated with The New Christy Minstrels. He was a wonderful singer, with a deep resonant baritone sound, and he exuded masculinity, as in testosterone. He wasn't quite a pretty boy, and he was unusually quiet, more like solemn, but he had a well-developed sense of humor, and when he laughed, there was no visible shyness. He also had a devilish habit of creating situation comedy. His thinking seemed to include a lot of, 'wouldn't it be funny if we did this or that?' Always professional, when he did stray from the path of righteousness, it became a newsworthy event. I can think of only a couple such occasions. One was with my trio at the Playboy Club in Miami Beach. That was terrible duty for serious folksingers, as the audience was mostly men who were there to ogle the Bunnies, not hear our three-part harmony, but we did our best to entertain them. One night, Nick seemed to have had enough of the whole charade, and when I started one of our songs, he began playing and singing another. I thought perhaps he hadn't heard what I was doing, so I sang a bit louder, but all he did was continue his performance of the second song, and he too got louder. Then he proceeded to become a strolling musician, leaving the stage and wandering through the audience, stage right. The crowd wasn't laughing, but they did look confused, and I couldn't think of any graceful way out of the situation, so I began singing a third song. Jackie stayed at her mike still singing a harmony line of the initial song, and Billy Cudmore, the banjo player, continued behind her. I left the stage to cruise the audience in the middle of the room, working my way from front to back, confidently performing my own choice of material, totally unrelated to the other songs filling the air. When I neared the back row, I heard a familiar voice. "Randy?" I looked in horror to see our agent, the one who had booked us at The Playboy Clubs, and that was the end of that.

Nick totally behaved himself from that day forward, that is, until The NCM had been on The Andy Williams for most of the season, and we were all feeling much more comfortable in the job. Kate Smith was the special guest one week, and she was celebrating having her first hit record in decades. It was an Anthony Newley song titled What Kind Of Fool Am I, and Andy thought it would be a good way to start the show, with just old 'Leather-Lungs' Kate singing a cappella. That opening was scripted for her to sing the first line solo, then we'd be gathered around a microphone offstage for the oohs behind her (we did a lot of oohs on that show), and the orchestra would join in a few beats later. The rehearsals went well, but when we were on the air live, it was a different story. All was quiet, then we heard Kate sing: 'What kind of fool am I?' There was a planned slight pause before we were to begin singing, and in that instant of silence, Nick Woods obviously felt compelled to answer her musical question. He leaned into the microphone and said, "FAT!" There were nine of us who couldn't sing a note. We could barely breathe for fear of laughing. I was biting my tongue so hard that I feared of its safety. The audio engineer didn't hear us sing, so he raised the volume of the microphone to near-feedback level, and all he heard then were snorts and gasps. What a dreadful moment.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 28 April 2012

An Acting Lesson

The occasion was the annual Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, and the time was likely
early 'seventies. The Department Of The Interior had built a Johnny Horizon float
to commemorate all the good we were supposedly doing on behalf of the environment.
Burl had been chosen to headline the campaign, and he'd recruited me to write the
theme song and perform with him all across the land. It was fun, and we had the
warm, fuzzy feeling that our efforts actually mattered. The job didn't pay very
well, zip, zero, nada, but we treated every outing as though it was the Hollywood
Bowl or Carnegie Hall. It was a dismal morning in Pasadena, a bit cold and
overcast, with plenty of moisture in the air and on the street and the floor of the
float. I had no idea that we'd have to be in place so early just to ride in the
parade, but that was the procedure, and we followed the rules. My firstborn son,
Kevin, who was about twelve years old at the time, wanted to come along with us, so
it was a three-person team that greeted the people on behalf of Wally Hickel's
branch of the government.

When we began this slow-moving odyssey, the sun was threatening to appear, and the
air had warmed a bit, but it was still winter in California, and the moisture had
yet to evaporate. The three of us were waving helter-skelter, to the crowds of
spectators on both sides of the street, when Burl suddenly had a better idea. "Let
me give you an acting lesson, Kevin," he said. "People tend to get excited if
you're excited, and if I wave at these people over here, they applaud and wave back,
but if I turn and show excitement in pretending to suddenly discover these folks on
the opposite side of the street, they react accordingly." There was, indeed, a
noticeable and dramatic surge in the appreciation level when he feigned discovery of
one knot of spectators or another, and we all began to work that ploy. It was
entertaining to see how effective this silly device affected otherwise bright
people. Burl was really into it. He'd seduce one side of the street, then swiftly
whirl about, a three-hundred pound ballet dancer on a moving vehicle. I remember
thinking how dangerous this seemed, especially since the steel deck of the float was
still slippery from the morning dew, but Burl was as graceful as a tiger. Then it
happened. One of his feet went south and the rest of him slammed to the floor,
straight down. He was on his back, doing a new dance called the turtle, all four
giant limbs clawing at the air. Kevin looked at me with the obvious question in his
countenance: What can we do? The crowd couldn't see much of what was going on, as
there was a barrier around the space built to be occupied by Burl and me, but they
knew something was wrong. He'd been there just a few seconds ago, and now he was
gone.

The lad and I began tugging on his arms, but that went nowhere. The old man was
HUGE, immovable. Then I remembered my lessons early on with inverted tortoises.
Their instinct was to roll out of similar precarious positions. The two of us, the
pre-teen and I, began pushing this international treasure, both from the same side,
and slowly, methodically, we brought him to his knees, then with near-superhuman
strength, we pulled on both of his arms, and he lunged foreword and upwards.
Thankfully, he wasn't hurt, just humbled a bit.

That's funny to me as I look back nearly forty years later. One of the songs that
we're now recording is about Burl, and in one of the verses, the lyric says:

'Yes, I've been up, and I've been down
And I've been humbled, but nobody ever knew'

Well, there were two of us who knew that day in Pasadena.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 27 April 2012

One More Day

I have just now received a message from a person named Linda Donaldson, the subject being Today:  
'A woman was singing it a cappella over the Grand Canyon as I was
considering suicide, and your song saved my life.'  
All at once, her story has poignancy for me.  

I had appeared at The Blue Angel four or five times, and was about to return.  The year was 1958, and I always felt just slightly unqualified, as my guitar-playing was barely adequate, nothing fancy.  I considered taking a couple of lessons, but I knew that what was lacking couldn't be dealt with overnight, and I was only a week or so away from my trip to the east.  I also had another problem.  My hair had gotten too long for the kind of music I performed, so I scouted out a new barber shop on Hollywood Blvd.  The barber was Hispanic, and I took note of a classical guitar leaning against the wall in one corner of the room.  "Is that yours?" I asked.  "Oh yes," he said eagerly, dashing over to where the instrument rested.  "You want hear me play?"  I somehow got the feeling that I was about to be serenaded, even if I said no.  "Sure," I told him.  It took him only about three licks at the strings with both hands for me to realize that this was no amateur musician.  He was flashy, but all the notes were right, and the rhythm was exact.  "You should be playing music in stead of cutting hair?" I told him.  "I came here from Colombia to play the guitar," he confided, "but I do not find work as a musician, so I have to cut hair."  "How would you like to go to New York?"  I asked him.  "Si," he said with a broad smile.  I gave him my address, and told him that we'd have to rehearse together, that he would need to learn all of the songs that I was singing and playing in my act, and if it worked as well as I thought it might, he'd have a job with me.    

The rehearsals were a joy.  He was bright and eager to please, and fully capable.  He made my instrumentation sound like an orchestra, and all of the dynamics were there in the right places.  He played softly through the ballads, and he rocked the room on the uptempo tunes.  What a pleasure it was to finally have suitable help.  The deal I made with him was fair to a fault, and I spelled it out for him:  "I get $500. a week, but I must pay for transportation and lodging, so I'll pay you $150. a week, buy your roundtrip airfare, and we'll share a room with two beds.  We can also rehearse everyday, and the act shall only get better."  

On the flight from LAX to Idlewild, Victor sat next to me, but he kept going to the back of the plane, as if to the toilet, and I began to think he might have a bladder problem.  Then, about the tenth trip, I watched where he went, and he wasn't visiting the facility.  He was having conversations with a brassy blond woman in the last row of seats.  "Who is that?" I asked him when he returned.  "That's my girlfriend," he said, "She's never been to New York City."  I was furious.  "We agreed that we'd be sharing a room to save money," I told him, "and now you'll have to have your own room, and all the practicing we were going to do…now your friend needs you for a tourist guide."  "She's a very nice person," he assured me, and of course, I let him know that wasn't the problem.  The issue was mostly financial.  When I met her, I couldn't get past how much she reminded me of a streetwalker, and I'd seen more than my share on Hollywood Boulevard.  Victor eventually let me know that he was in the process of rescuing this woman from the street.  Nobel thought, but that wasn't one of my goals.  

We opened at the Angel with minimal preparation, but the job went well.  I seldom saw Victor except at showtime, and we were civil to one another, but the gig wasn't as much fun as I'd anticipated it would be.  The Blue Angel management asked him not to bring his date to the job, and that further distanced the two of us.  He felt that I ought to have defended her, but I was on their side.  We got through most of the month without incident, then Bob Hope and his wife Dolores showed up, and everyone in the cast was excited to see them in the audience, in the very middle of the room.  What a thrill to actually be performing for someone so famous and beloved.  I felt that I had done a good show, hit every note, played all the right chords, etc., and I was in the dressing room when Carol Burnette told me that Louis Shurr, Bob's agent, was coming up the stairs.  I looked out, and there he was.  "Ranney Spahks, Ranney Spahks," he was calling out.  "I'm right here," I told him, only to be literally pushed out of his way.  "I'm here to see Victor," he said, and there was my guitarist right behind me.  "Victor, Mr. and Mrs Hope would like to have you come to their table and play the guitar…"  Victor gave me a strange, victorious look, then clambered down the stairs to the showroom.  The lights came up, and the guitar virtuoso began his command performance.  Every eye in the room was on him and the Hopes.  I carried my guitar case out the front door, and I had never felt more defeated in my entire life.  I had been working here for nearly a month, and had only debt to show for my labor.   

I went back to my room, and I was so depressed that I couldn't think of any reason to continue.  I was newly married, but there was seldom an answer when I called home, and I knew that my bride had trashy girlfriends who constantly preached to her that she deserved better than a struggling folksinger.  I actually went to the roof of the hotel, twenty-seven floors up, and I stared down at the street for quite a while before returning to my room.  My total thought was, 'Maybe I'll give it one more day.'  I sat there on my bed, and I heard Victor and his female friend come down the hall.  He pounded on my door.  "I'm the star of the show," he gloated; "I want a raise."  I opened the door.  "You couldn't just leave it alone…you had to rub my nose in it…well, let me tell you this.  Not only don't you get a raise, you don't work with me anymore.  My contract is for only one performer, and here's your airline ticket."  I then went back to sitting on the edge of my bed, and I began quietly singing all the lowdown blues songs that I could remember.  It was a long night.  

The next day, purely out of habit, I called my manager, and he mentioned that he'd heard that Bob Hope had paid a visit to The Blue Angel.  "Yeah, he was there," I said.  "Well, how did it go?" he wanted to know.  "I thought I did a good show, but he had Victor play for Mrs. Hope and himself at their table, and now Victor says that he's the star of the show."  "You must have done something right," he told me, "because Bob Hope has just now offered you a long-term contract for eight TV Specials."  "I can't accept," I told him. "I refuse to work with Victor ever again."  "He doesn't want Victor."  What?  Am I crazy?  He doesn't want Victor, and I was thinking about killing myself?  

That December, on the flight to Europe for The Bob Hope Christmas Special for the troops, Bob came to where I was sitting, and planted himself in the seat next to mine.  We talked about one thing and another, and I finally worked up the courage to ask him about that night at The Blue Angel.  "You had Louie Shurr ask my guitar-player to come to your table.  What was that all about anyway?"  "That wasn't for me," he said, "that was Dolores.  I can't stand that shit!  And I'll tell you one more thing…if you had insisted on bringing him along, you wouldn't be here either."  

Is it worth one more day?  You bet it is.  Always.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 26 April 2012

Ronnie Was A Friend Of Mine

I don't remember who called me, but I was asked to provide music for an impromptu get-together for then-Governor Reagan at the BelAir Hotel.  The occasion was a thank-you gathering for B-list friends of the administration, not a political event per se (I don't take sides), so I was pleased to participate.  In fact, I felt honored, and it couldn't have been a more convenient assignment, as this was just down the road from my house on Stone Canyon Blvd.  I summoned The Back Porch Majority, and we arrived on time, but the room was already occupied, so we had to set-up working around the people.  I remember meeting Ronnie and Nancy, and he didn't seem altogether pleased with the look of us.  I was okay, but the hair of my boys, Mike Clough and Mike Crowley in particular, was too long for a Republican event, and in those times, hair spoke loudly about values and who you were.  We were business-like and respectful enough, but I watched the Governor as he took stock of these rag-tag invaders, and he wasn't quite certain that we were a blessing.  Then came showtime, and we won him over.  The crowd loved us, and they were a most demonstrative audience.  Our program had been delayed to allow for milling and mixing, so it was fairly late when we performed, and as we were winding down, savoring our second standing ovation, Ronnie came to the makeshift stage and quietly said to me, "Randy, let's get rid of these people and have some fun."  He used one of our microphones to thank everyone for attending, and my musicians were about to put their instruments away, when I stopped them.  When the last of the guests exited, when only the Governor and Mrs. Reagan remained, he locked the door and the two of them joined us in song.  We sat in a circle and played and sang whatever came to mind.  This was a happening, and nobody wanted to quit.  When we finally did pack up the gear, it was three o'clock in the morning, and everyone heartily agreed that a good time was had by all.  "We'll do this again," the Governor said to me.  "Nancy and I have thoroughly enjoyed your company, and I want you to know that you'll be welcome in Sacramento any time."   He then gave me his private number.  
 
I often wondered if my standing invitation also applied to Washington, DC, but never felt the urge to push my program on this nice man and his wife.  What decent people they were.  Those were better times, especially because whoever was President was older than I was.

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

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Randy's Blog 25 April 2012

Boys Will Be Boys

What's the Secret Service/Colombian prostitute outrage all about? I've lived around it for most of adult life.  Send any red-blooded American male to a foreign country, and see what he does.  He, first of all, has a quest for knowledge, carnal knowledge.  He revels in the thought that he's elsewhere from his home, where he's constantly being observed.  There's a special kind of freedom in a place where nobody knows your name, likely doesn't care who you are or what you do.  I felt that incredible sense of liberty the first time I was in Spain with Bob Hope in '58.  'I'm here where nobody knows me,' I told myself, 'and I can be as bad as I want, and nobody'll know.'  Just as I was thinking that thought, I heard a woman's voice say, "Randy?"  "You know me?" I asked the pretty lady, as I walked up the front steps of the Madrid Hilton.  "Not really," she replied, "but I saw you last week at Ye Little Club in Beverly Hills."  Say goodbye to all that freedom I supposed I had.   

The next lesson was related to the first.  A couple of the boys in the band, Les Brown's Band, and the expedition's make-up artist met me on the street and asked if I could speak Spanish.  "A little," I told them, "just what I learned in my high school and college classes, enough to get by."  "Well, we want to hire a prostitute or two, and we need somebody to do the bargaining, to get the price down to an affordable level."  I wanted no part of this routine, but they begged for my assistance, and just as I was about to give in, a pretty woman walked up to us there on the sidewalk, and said, "F**ky-f**ky?"  "You don't need my help," I told them.  "She speaks perfect English."

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation
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Randy's Blog 24 April 2012

How I Almost Met Elvis

The first time was in 1955.  I had been sent by my new agent to entertain the folks at The Florentine Club, a private enterprise in Shreveport, Louisiana, and somebody told me about the youthful singer who had just joined the cast of performers at The Louisiana Hayride, a radio show that happened every Saturday night at the Municipal Auditorium.  This wasn't very far away from where I worked, but of course, that was my big night too, so I couldn't attend the Hayride.  I was there for a month.

The next opportunity was at Ream Field NAS in San Diego.  By now, I was in uniform, and a guitar-playing friend, who just happened to be the Skipper of that base, invited me to see Elvis' show for the sailors and marines.  There was a full house, maybe three hundred seats, and the singer was interesting enough, but nothing sensational.  When he began his radical body movements, the boys in the audience seemed embarrassed for him, and he became embarrassed too.  There weren't any women, so all that suggestive stuff was wasted.  Nobody wanted to see it, and this included me.  I could have met The King when he was still a prince, but who knew?  

My most interesting Elvis near-meeting happened fairly late at night in Hollywood.  I was on a first outing with a young lady I had met at one of my shows, and we'd gone to dinner.  I was driving her home, when we came to a four-way stop, and a long Cadillac sedan came to a halt on the street to our right.  There was Elvis in the driver's seat, and my otherwise lady-like date leaned out the window and gave him her middle finger.  Immediately, the rear doors of the Caddy flew open, and the goons for which Elvis was famous, his henchmen, came running towards my car.  I gunned it through the intersection and began a series of left and right turns to hopefully disappear, and fortunately, it took enough time for the gang to reassemble in Elvis' vehicle, so that there was no harm done, except to my nervous system.  "Why did you do that?"  I asked her.  "I really don't care for him," she explained.  I had seen quite enough of this woman.  

In late 1964, maybe early '65, Bernie Silverman, a PR man and a friend of mine, came to where I was working at Columbia Studios in Hollywood, and told me he had just had a meeting with Elvis.  "I let him know that I was on my way to see you," he said, "and Elvis told me to tell you that Today is just about the prettiest song that he has ever heard."  Wow!   

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 23 April 2012

Remember where this exercise began, with Gail Roberts directing me to make a list of events that other people likely wouldn't have experienced?  Try this one.  Has this ever happened to anybody else?  

My wife has difficult remembering that I played any roll in the rearing of our four children.  She says that I was never there when the kids were growing up, that I was always away on tour, but I know for a fact that I was home on at least one occasion, because I remember receiving a phone call.  The man's voice said, "Cameron Sparks, please."  "Who are you?" I wanted to know.  "I'm the Porsche dealer in Stockton, California, and Cameron apparently wrote a letter to Dr. Porsche in Germany, telling him that he really likes Porsche automobiles, and pledging to have one as soon as he can afford it.  Dr. Porsche has gotten in touch with us, as he wants Cameron to have free use of the Porsche of his choice for a weekend."  "He's only twelve," I told the man.  "He doesn't even have a driver's license."  "Well," the voice on the other end said, "then he'll have to bring a legal driver with him when he comes to our showroom to take delivery of the car."  "That would be myself," I assured him.  Wow! 

We drove to Stockton as soon as son Cameron, future Sailor-Of-The-Year, came home from his seventh grade classes, and it was no trouble at all for him to choose an understated, classic, bronze-colored coupe.  I drove it home to the ranch, and he piloted it briefly on our private roads.  What a thrill for a youngster.  What a thrill for a jaded, older youngster, myself.  

As luck would have it, I had a show scheduled close to home that weekend, The Winemasters' Winery Concert Series in Lodi, an outdoor event, and Cameron and I drove in 'his' car to the edge of the stage for my dramatic entrance.  I was able to tell his amazing story to the overflow crowd, and people loved hearing of the good fortune of this wide-eyed youthful dreamer.   He'd scored a grand prize with the famous carmaker.  Does it get any better than that?

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Josh White

Randy's Blog 22 April 2012

I cannot minimize the importance of the role of one person in putting me in position to become a performer by trade.  Maybe it would have happened another way, but I recognize the value of perfect timing, and this was that, to be sure.  Walter R. Stump was a friend of mine in San Diego.  I'd rented a room, a screened porch, from his family at their railroad worker's house along the tracks in downtown San Diego, and we were both students at City College.  It was cheaper than other institutions.  Walt liked the notion that I was a promising singer/songwriter, and he had grand ideas about my being discovered, with his help.  One of his schemes was for me to meet Frankie Laine.  "You can write songs for him," he told me, and he had a friend who would invite us to a fraternity house where Frankie had promised to carouse after his performance in concert somewhere in the city.  I wasn't much enthused about this plan, but Walter was sure it would work, and I'd become important and famous almost overnight.  When Frankie walked through the front door of the Lambda Chi Alpha house, Walter was right there with his hand out, blocking the singer's entrance.  "Hello, Mr. Laine," he said, "I want you to meet my friend Sparkie, who can write terrific songs for you."  The fraternity members immediately began pushing my self-appointed promoter aside, and there were loud calls for his expulsion from the place.  It was somewhat laughable, because Frankie Laine was so drunk he could barely function, and he was in no condition to hear anybody's musical gems.  How awful for my friend.  They belittled him, and alcohol-fueled mob mentality ruled, as he was pushed out the front door.  I hadn't been overtly identified, so I casually left on my own.  I had seen and heard quite enough.

That scene was very sad for me.  My girlfriend and I in Oakland had been devoted Frankie Laine fans, and I had always dreamed of meeting him, but not this way.  I could sing and play most of his hit songs.  I hadn't figure out the chords to Jezebel, but I had the rest of them down.  Later on, at Hollywood's version of Tin Pan Alley, I became friends of sorts with Frankie's brother Sam, the music publisher, and when I worked The Joe Franklin Show in New York, which I did fairly often, Joe pulled me aside one day to warn that Frankie intended to sue me over my alleged theft of Mike Nesmith's songs.  Apparently, there was an ethics issue.   Frankie told Joe that he had bought and paid for all the songs that slippery Michael had later sold to me.  I would never have knowingly interfered in the business of my hero.  

Walter R. Stump's next promotional venture unfolded five hundred miles away from the Lambda Chi house.   I was enrolled at UC Berkeley, and Walt was either in school in San Francisco or vacationing, but he said to me, "I just now received $20. from my mother, and I want to take you and your girlfriend to the hungry i.  You could work at a place like this, a coffeehouse, and you need to see what goes on there."  We went to see Josh White, not Josh White, Jr., the folksinger, his son, who would later on make a name for himself, but the old man, the folk and blues singer, the incredible dynamo on percussive, impolite guitar.  Walt was right.  I needed to see this.  The man was compelling, captivating, fascinating.  He dazzled the audience with his playing and singing of what had always been ordinary songs to me.  Not an eye dared to stray from his form on the stool in the spotlight, and when he broke an E-string near the end of his closing song, St. James Infirmary, we all stared in disbelief as he kept the beat going, pounding on the remaining strings, never letting anyone rest, as he pulled a new string from his shirt pocket, then one-handedly replaced the broken steel wire.  On the very last note, he pulled the head of the guitar to his mouth and bit-off the extra length of string that was vibrating in the air.  The audience went wild.  So did I, and when I learned that this man, all by himself, earned an astounding eight-hundred dollars a week, I was encouraged to believe that I might be worth fifty, and that would be enough to keep me in school.  

This encounter with artistic genius led directly to my audition for Enrico Banducci, the hungry i's impresario.  I was actually foolish enough to believe that I might be as good as Josh White some day.    

I was so taken with his talent that I wanted to meet him, and my girlfriend and I stood in line for a while, as he held court with adoring fans.  When it came my turn, I told him who I was and how much I appreciated his performance, and while I was still shaking his hand, he said to my girlfriend, "Hey, Baby, let's you and I ditch this guy."  I was hoping it was a joke, but of course, it wasn't.  He followed her outside, still trying to sell his personal program, and I was disgusted.  Talented?  Yes.   Civilized?  Hardly.  He was still somewhere in the jungle.  Idiot!  

A week or so later, I heard people discussing Josh White, and I interrupted to mention that I had been there the night that he broke a string.  These folks laughed.  They had seen several of his performances, and it would seem that the broken string was a regular part of his routine.   "He does that every show," they told me.   Wow!

Copyright 2012 Cherrybell Music/New Christy Minstrels Foundation

Randy's Blog 21 April 2012

What a thrill it is to have the information highway.  Thank you, Mr. Gore!  I get smarter on a daily/nightly basis, and I'll offer a small sampling of where my journey has taken me in the past few hours. 

I came up with a line from folk tradition: brown cow pissing on a flat rock, and I Googled that expression to see what others I might find.  One site offer 800 folksy sayings, most of them interesting in the same way that people are interesting.  We're all going about the business of life in such different ways.  My one line led to a complete Redneck song: 

Brown Cow
(a love song)

Brown Cow Pissing On A Flat Rock 
I love you 
One thing has nothing to do with the other 
But that doesn't mean it's not true 
Some people say the cow I shouldn't mention 
But I had to have a way to get your attention 
Brown Cow Pissing On A Flat Rock 
I love you 

Nervous as a tick on dip day 
Yes, I love you 
A whore in church would feel more at ease 
I've read the book, and I know it's true 
You can tell what they are by the way they run 
It's not as much fun when the rabbit's got the gun
Happy as a gopher in soft dirt 
Yes, I do love you 

Rednecks have a way to say what the rest of the world never could 
There's a whole lot of pride in a new double-wide in my neighborhood 
Happy as a coon in a cornfield with all the dogs tied-up 
I haven't had such a good time, y'know, since Hector was a pup  

A long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers 
I love you
A bull dung salesman with a mouthful of samples 
One hardly knows what to do
Subtle as a pig on a sofa, of course 
You can see me smile from a galloping horse 
Brown Cow Pissing On A Flat Rock 
I love you 

Copyright 2011 Cherrybell Music  

Uneducated people make use of these expressions without questioning their meaning, and that's fascinating to me.  Why do we do that?  I guess I'm different.  I have a need to know what it's all about.  For example, 'since Hector was a pup' is a line I have heard for years.  What does it mean?  It's thousands of years old, and it may just be the origin of our term SOB.  Hector's mother was turned into a dog, hence his being called a pup. That had to be a kind of simple, convoluted joke early on.  Another country saying led in a different direction: 'Face as red as a jaybird's ass in pokeberry time.'  Don't we need to know what that means?  Pokeberries are poisonous, and birds eat them without dying because their digestive systems deal only with the pulp of the fruit, not the seeds.  The song Poke Salad Annie ought to have been banned, because the leaves are poisonous and ought not be eaten.  Wow!  Why don't they tell us that?  They do.  Wikipedia does.  This one plant satisfies a lot of curiosity I have had over the years about what early man did in developing a