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"Murder
at the Busted Bird Cafe"
by Claude Hall
Chapter 18
Los Angeles is a weird city and only crazy people live
there. Robert Montgomery, the late University of
Texas economics professor who was a contemporary of
cattle drives and prairie dogs and the days when all
strangers passing through Texas were considered
suspicious, once said that, when younger, he and his
friends used to hang all they could catch. "As for
the ones that got away, well, they went on out to
California and that explains California."
Dr. Lou Dorren at UT--who talked often about
Montgomery and folklorist J. Frank Dobie--lived on in
their image. He was the personification of them both.
Dobie had been fired from the University of Texas when
he raised too much of a fuss about the tower on
campus. He insisted they put it on its side and build
a verandah around it.
Lou Dorren, shortly after an ex-GI had killed more
than two dozen passersby from the roof of the tower
and inspired the song by Harry Chapin, became
convinced Dobie had the right idea and spent a year
collecting names on a petition. Like Dobie, no one
had paid much attention to the bearded, balding Dr.
Dorren.
Dorren would have loved Los Angeles. But, of course,
would never have lived in a city he referred to as
permeated with "sin, gin, and fin."
Fin was his version of French, but Dorren had his own
translation; it meant everything else, not the end.
I knew that "everything else" had worn me down, along
with perhaps a little too much "gin." One can never
get too much sin, of course, if there actually is such
a thing. However, I was emotionally, physically, and
mentally drained. Jo was so tired, she went to sleep
as soon as her head touched my shoulder and slept for
at least two hours.
We had nothing to hold us back.
A friend had once mentioned Agua Caliente State Park
to me with vague, but good enough, directions. I
pulled onto the San Diego Freeway and headed south.
At San Juan Capistrano, I turned east toward the
mountains and we drove through a sleepy,
just-waking-up Julian high in the mountains and bought
some apples, a couple of gallons of apple juice, and a
couple of bathing suits after a store opened up, then
headed down the mountain to a state road that led
toward Mexicali, Mexico.
Agua Caliente State Park is off the main road in the
low desert. The park nudges some low hills. Our
campsite was by an old tree alongside a draw, the
ranger said. He warned me not to feed the raccoons
and don't hurt the snake. "An old racer. Kids
sometimes play with it."
"I guarantee not to play with the snake," I said.
He told me the thermal pool would be open in an hour
or two. "Not many people around this time of year.
Spring and fall, we get quite a few. Meanwhile,
there's the Indian Pool up on the hillside." After I
paid for a couple of nights, he walked outside and
pointed the Indian Pool out. "And up over there on
the south side of the camping area is a very nice
trail."
I asked him where the trail went. He told me that I
would have to find that out for myself. "That's what
desert trails are for."
The campsite was very pleasant and it was comfortable
enough in the sunshine after the sun climbed high into
the sky. I warmed some of the apple juice on the
stove in the camper and mulled it with cinnamon
sticks. We sipped at the hot apple juice while
sitting in some canvas director's chairs and watched a
very red racer snake twine from limb to limb in the
tree. If he was begging for food, I didn't know what
to feed him and I certainly wasn't about to play with
him.
After the pool opened, we put on our bathing suits and
walked over there and bathed. The highly mineralized
water comes out of the ground only lukewarm. It's
heated for the Jacuzzi which is large enough to hold
maybe 30 people and quite a lot more if they're close
friends. There was no one else in the pool, although
an elderly couple came in just as we were ready to
leave.
The bubbling water smelled slightly like rotten eggs.
But the overall effect was immensely soothing; it
cleansed the spirit.
"They tell about a woman who couldn't walk. After a
few days of this water, she was able to jog back and
forth from her trailer," said the white-haired old
gentleman.
"Yes, but can it heal the old brain cells?" I said.
"Try the Indian Pool tonight," he said. "That'll do
it fine."
Regardless, I felt a lot better as we walked back to
the campsite. The red racer had twined on to better
pickings or some kids to play with.
We crawled into two sleeping bags I'd zipped together
and slept until late afternoon.
When I awoke, Jo was at the little two-burner stove.
"Pancakes," she said.
"I'd planned on baked apples."
"Tough," she said. "Anyway, these are apple
pancakes.
That couple we met at the Jacuzzi gave me the mix."
"How long you been up?"
"An hour or two. Went out and ran a couple of miles,
then Jacuzzi'd down."
"What a ridiculous way to start the day," I said.
"Wait'll you sample these pancakes."
"I didn't know groupies could cook."
"This groupie can. Home economics. I can also
scramble eggs and toast bread. After that, forget
it."
I'd stocked the camper with some essentials. Not
much. But we had paper plates and a few odds and
ends, including almost a case of diet Pepsi and a lot
of hardtack stuff like rice and can goods. We
wouldn't starve.
After a few of the pancakes and three cups of coffee,
food was the last thing on my mind. So, I took care
of the first thing.
Watching her at the stove, very domestic, very pretty
in spite of the fact she was wearing the jogging suit
in which she'd been kidnapped, I'd developed an
interest in more basic physical needs.
One nice thing about a jogging suit. It zips off.
All she had on underneath was a pair of blue panties.
I do admit, however, to a growing concern about
panties. Some brave soul--not me, of course, because
I'm a confirmed coward--should stand up for the
inherent rights of mankind and demand that panties
come with zippers. At the very least, Velcro.
After about 17 or 18 years, I got the panties off.
She has the most phenomenal breasts I've ever seen,
including the pictures in all those magazines parents
used to abhor and now ignore. They seem to point up.
Maybe it's an optical illusion or maybe I suffer from
a weird sense of perspective.
To tell the truth, I'm a leg man. And Jo's legs look
like she has just stepped out of an advertisement for
silk stockings. Not nylons. Silk. The finest,
purest, most expensive ancient Japanese silk.
She is beautiful when fully clothed. Without clothes,
she becomes a goddess. Not those statues of Diana or
Minerva you find in the gardens of the foreign rich,
but a living, warm, sensuous goddess whose head comes
up to your chin and whose hand fits so perfectly in
your hand and whose body virtually melts against you.
It's difficult to understand how someone who runs a
few miles every day can have a body so soft. And not
just a little soft, but willing and as if she's trying
to become a part of you.
I've never become used to making love to her. It has
been different every time. And different in many,
delightful, wonderful ways impossible to describe,
almost impossible to even talk about.
I felt immensely good after it was over, ready to go
conquer the world. Jo, however, was drowsy and ready
to stay in bed for a month or two. It was already
approaching night. The sun had long been gone. Some
stars were peeking out of the dusk of the evening.
We compromised by putting on bathing suits and walking
up to the Indian Pool.
I suppose that I looked a little funny in a bathing
suit and boots. But boots are great for walking.
These had been custom-made at a shop in San Angelo,
TX, and had walking heels. Once you get used to
boots--and some people can't--they're the most
comfortable things in the world.
The Indian Pool turned out to be just large enough,
really, for a couple. And they'd better be friends.
The elderly couple was just leaving as we climbed the
last few feet of the hillside.
"We warmed it up for you," said the woman. "How
were
the pancakes?"
"Tremendous," I said. "Made a new man of me.
My
problem is that I liked the old me pretty good."
The water was lukewarm, but pleasant and the small
pool was almost chest deep and a nice place to be in
the cool of the desert night. With the stars above
growing brighter by the moment, you couldn't have
found a more beautiful place in the world. Out in the
desert, the stars actually do twinkle. In Los
Angeles, they do not twinkle; you seldom get to see
them anyway because of the smog.
"I met your parents the other day," I said.
I would have said "father," but I thought that might
be too specific. While it's true that I wanted
information about her father, general information
would tell me more or less what I wanted to know.
"I wondered why father wanted to talk to you
yesterday," she said.
"Someone had to tell them you'd been kidnapped," I
said. "I figured I would be better at that sort of
thing than a cop."
"That was very sweet of you."
"They seem like very good people. They were quite
concerned about you."
Far off in the desert, a coyote howled. I have only
heard a coyote howl like that a couple of times. I've
often wondered if they're talking to another coyote or
the moon. For a moon was just now climbing over a
distant butte far to the west; the moon outlined the
rim of the butte and the low terrain. It looked like
a painting. Nothing seemed real.
"The only-child syndrome," she said.
"I would surmise they do not feel the record industry
is a fitting career for their daughter."
"Father is old-fashioned. A woman's place is in the
home, cooking and raising grandchildren for him to
take to the park on Sunday afternoons. I took home
economics just to please him. I sing to please
myself."
"How long have you lived in California?"
"You knew we weren't natives?"
"There's no such thing as a native Californian. I'm a
voice man, remember? I caught a Bronx accent in your
dad's voice."
"We moved to Los Angeles when I was quite young. I
remember father saying something about New York being
no place to raise a kid."
"He really dotes on you, doesn't he?"
"Don't all fathers dote, as you quaintly put it, on
their daughters?"
"As Sawyer would probably say, quien sabe? I guess
so."
The moon suddenly leaped, some form of optical
illusion, above the distant butte. Or maybe I'd just
failed to notice it for a moment. But now it was
there above the rim of the earth and the desert took
on a ghostly, strange, mystic glow.
"Well, you certainly don't have the typical Bronx
accent," I said.
"I've never been in the Bronx. I only know we have an
apartment there because I overheard father talking
about it a few years ago. So far as I know, he never
uses it. In fact, the only time I've been to New York
City was the other day when I was there to visit the
offices of Starwarp Records."
"Your dad help get you the contract?"
"No. I told him that this was something I had to do
myself...or not at all. He understood that."
"The president of Starwarp heard one of your masters
somewhere, I guess." I tried to make my voice as
casual as possible. But, since she wasn't a disc
jockey, she heard nothing more than the words.
"No way. Harold Massina said he'd heard about my
singing from a record man in Los Angeles and wanted a
tape. I sent him a cassette of things I'd done.
Viola! A record contract."
"Just like in the movies," I said.
"Hey! Starwarp may not be the biggest and best record
label in the business, but it's a place to start.
Neil Diamond started on a small label. So did Bobby
Vee. So did Elvis, come to think of it."
"Sun Records," I said. "Memphis. The same
label
where Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison started."
"Know it all," she said and kissed me on the cheek.
"Stop that. This is an Indian Pool. Indians don't
kiss."
"Where did you hear something silly like that?"
"College. You're talking to a college-educated disc
jockey. Didn't you know that?"
She leaned in close. "I know all about you."
"Who talked?"
"Freddie DiSippo."
"Remind me to talk to that guy," I said. "With a
stick."
Arms around each other, we watched the night sky.
Orion banished his sword. Ursa Major seemed to be in
the wrong place, but that was because my sense of
direction out here in the desert was all messed up.
The white-hair elderly gentleman had been right.
Indian Pool soothed the mind. All of my worries faded
away and became, instead, just concerns.
However, they were major concerns.
"What did this guy Massina say when you told him you
were going to sing a duet with Bobby Vee at the Busted
Bird Cafe?"
"He thought it was a good idea and asked me to make
sure I got a few pictures to send him. I had to
cancel the photographer, of course, when the charity
thing came up."
"Was it Chuck K. Davis who asked you to do the
charity?"
"No. Ernie Farrell...the guy who used to be head of
promotion for Reprise Records when it was owned by
Frank Sinatra...asked me. You know Ernie?"
"One of the legends."
"You just can't say no. He takes it for granted
you'll do something like sing at an event like that.
But it was okay. I had a great time. Great audience
response. I did two songs and got a standing ovation
for 'Don't Be Cruel'."
"Great song."
"Hey, I wasn't bad."
"What was Chuck K. Davis doing at the benefit?"
"Nothing, so far as I know," Jo said. "He was just
there. I saw him standing beside the stage at one
point."
"Lucky for me that Ernie asked you."
"Lucky for me, too," she said.
"What's Ernie doing these days?" I asked.
"Real estate, stocks," said Jo. "I met him through
my
father."
After a while, we toweled down and walked back to the
campsite. I built a fire in a small circle of stones
and we sat there for an hour watching the flames race
into the dark of the night.
When we turned in, it was with considerable
reluctance. Mostly because I knew tomorrow was going
to be hell.
(To be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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Commentary
by
Claude Hall
September
8, 2003
Quad is dead. Long live quad! Better yet, long live
the successor to quad.
In a few days, although I've been asked not to print
any of the specific details at this time, a new
"record system" developed by acoustic scientist Lou
Dorren, xytar@netscape.net,
will be unveiled. As I
write this, it's slated to be introduced to the public
at the annual convention Sept. 13 and 14, 2003, of the
West Coast Songwriters Association at Foothill College
in Los Altos, CA. Lou's new play-only system
supposedly makes quad sound like your kitchen sink and
could end up replacing the CD.
More details about the convention and the 1,200-member
association, which was founded in 1979, can be seen on
the website www.ncsasong.org.
Because I've long been
a Lou Dorren fan, Lou wanted to fly me into the
convention. Tempting, but I shall not be going.
Regretfully so, perhaps. Because I enjoyed the
enormous fray of quad when it was here. I believe
that I still have the second-largest collection of
4-channel records in the world, second only to Lou
Dorren himself.
I don't know who really killed quad. In spite of that
battle of systems circa 1960-70 between Columbia
Records and RCA Victor Records, I've long been of the
opinion that it was Hal Cook, the publisher of
Billboard who actually destroyed one of the best
things that happened to records since Sid Frye
produced a Louis Armstrong album in stereo on Audio
Fidelity Records. One evening after I left work for
home, Hal Cook cleared my desk of stacks and stacks of
papers and pamphlets and notes. Most could never be
replaced. If I had a filing cabinet, it was full with
other things. The source material about this
startling new and enormously exciting invention
quadrasonic sound was being used every day. I had
everything in order on top of my desk where it would
be handy for the stories that I was writing. After
that incident, fewer stories. By far. And to this
day I don't know what in hell a "phase-lock loop" is
and when Lou Dorren tosses out "L minus R" and "R
minus L" my mind goes blank and I can't look it up.
Hal Cook, previously a veteran record executive before
coming to Billboard, seldom threw a hissy. Once, I'd
gone with him to a shop to pick up his repaired drum
set which had been smashed in, the heads, evidence of
a fit of anger. And there was that time on the train
in Grand Central Terminal when he obviously made the
decision in an explosion of anger to move the
headquarters of the magazine to Los Angeles because of
a three-hour delay. Another time, Florence Greenburg,
owner of Scepter Records, came to his office
complaining about something and he tossed her out in a
fit of anger...shouted...demanded she get out of his
office.
In those days, we had our offices back behind the
Paramount Theatre. That was the way it was described.
The address was 146 W. 46th Street, but everyone just
said Billboard was "back behind the old Paramount
Theatre" where Frank Sinatra had once crooned to tons
of bobbysox'd teenage girls. Variety magazine was in
the area, although I didn't know anyone on the staff.
La Strata across the street from Billboard was a
little Italian restaurant where we ate all of the time
and could even have a staff meeting of sorts without
behind tossed out. The restaurant was so Italian that
once a year it closed for a couple of weeks and
everyone went home to Italy.
The first time I heard stereo was around 1957 from a
reel-to-reel unit owned by a college student I knew at
the University of Texas in Austin named Frederic
Whitaker. The music was a classical version of
"Bolero." I listened on earphones. It was
astonishing! At that time, however, I thought it was
a toy; the music was on two tracks of the tape. I've
read something that said this tape was released by
Vanguard Records, but I don't know that for a fact.
Many years later, I picked up a copy of a Louis
Armstrong album in stereo on Audio Fidelity; it was on
sale cheap at the Colony Record Store on Broadway in
Manhattan. Literally, dumped. I'd bought a little
Emerson stereo record player. Quite quaint. I heard
virtually no stereo separation until years later when
I had a much better stereo system.
Mono FM radio was a wasteland. You had a few owners
slough them off with classical music, a couple with
jazz formats. Most FMs in America simulcast their AM
counterparts. Gene Autry even gave his FM station in
Los Angeles to a local college. And when stereo came
along for FM, it had problems; you drove behind a hill
or a building and you lost signal. There was,
potentially, only one FM radio station that did not
have this problem. KPEN-FM in San Francisco, soon
renamed for the nearby highway K101-FM. Jim Gabbert,
the owner, had obtained permission to install a series
of bounce antennas on hills scattered far and wide.
The Federal Communications Commission stopped him just
before he was planning to install these small antenna
towers all of the way to Los Angeles. Regardless,
K101-FM had the best FM signal in the world. Without
question.
Several experimental broadcasts had been made with
quad. Usually, some public station in the area was
persuaded to broadcast the two rear channels and the
commercial station broadcast the two front signals.
The listener had one FM radio tuned to the first
station and placed the other FM radio behind. It was
makeshift at best.
Lou Dorren entered this fray haphazardly. One day, he
phoned Jim Gabbert, who owned K101-FM, and told him
that he had invented a way to broadcast quad on a
single FM radio station. Jim, as I recall, hung up on
him that first call. But Lou persisted and K101-FM
broadcast the first real quad in the world, to the
best of my knowledge. With the permission of the FCC,
I believe, because there was an engineer at the FCC in
those days who was interested in projects of this
nature; I used to know him well; I cannot presently
recall his name.
The first time I heard quadrasonic sound, I was merely
impressed. A roll of thunder started somewhere in
front of me and boomed off behind me, then rolled
again before me. There was also a whirring noise
around a room. Supposedly, a flying saucer was
landing...or taking off. This demonstration was at a
convention. Washington, perhaps. The National
Association of FM Broadcasters, perhaps. But when I
first heard music in discrete quad, I was enthralled.
Matrix was perhaps better than stereo. But discrete
quad was something else far beyond. Never again could
I listen to mere stereo without feeling cheated. The
Doobie Brothers! Elvis!
A lot of crap was remastered, of course, for a
makeshift form of quad. This added to the confusion.
And more than a few record producers didn't know what
in hell they were doing. I recall criticizing one
album by, I think, Joan Baez, and everyone leaped on
me, believing that because it was quad I should have
praised it. Just for the record, I always tried to be
kind, but I also always tried to tell the truth.
About everything. Before Billboard. During my years
with Billboard. Then and now.
I believe I was personally introduced to Lou Dorren in
the 60s at a convention of the National Association of
FM Broadcasters in Chicago. He was a kid. Yet
white-haired engineers converged on him after the
panel session like moths to a hot candle. The word of
Lou's invention of a system for the broadcasting of
4-channel sound on an FM station was spreading
throughout the acoustic world.
You've probably never heard real quad. To tell the
truth, very few people--proportionally--have. Yet, an
awful lot of people possess to this very day a quad
album of exceptional quality and importance amidst
their collection although it's probably growing quite
dusty by now because of the advent of the CD. It's
the Elvis Presley album of his live Hawaiian
performance. It wasn't labeled as a quad album.
However, RCA Victor did not press any stereo albums on
this one. They were all discrete quad. And it's a
mindblower if you listen in quad. Guarantee you!
The problem that developed with quad was a systems war
basically between Columbia Records and RCA Victor
Records. Memory here is going to be severely taxed,
but I think the engineer for Columbia Records was
named Ben Bauer, CBS Laboratories, the man who, in
fact, developed the album as a competitive factor
against RCA's 46 rpm single. Bauer's quad system was
a matrix system called SQ much like the Sansui system
which was called QS. On the other side of the combat
line was the RCA Victor system, which was actually the
Japan Victor system that had been developed by the
Japanese.
For some reason, by the time we moved the headquarters
of Billboard to Los Angeles, I was the focus of quad.
Jumbo Mouchizuki, American representative for Japan
Victor, was instrumental in me being invited with 16
other journalists from around the world for a tour of
Japan. The only other journalist from the United
States was a pompous ass from Audio Times who seemed
more interested in whiskey than in sound. We visited
labs and factories. We dined in a very spacious
company dining room in Osaka at, I think, Matsushista,
and the president of the company came around, bowed to
each of us in turn, and presented us a gift. For me,
a cultured pearl on a necklace for my wife Barbara.
One factory revealed a sea of young Japanese girls in
blue skirts and white blouses assembling radios in
stretching production lines. We were guided
throughout the tour by young Japanese who spoke
English better than I did and we dined on tempura in
Kyota, saw Mt. Fuji up close on top, sailed on a lake
up there, dined in a geisha house (the geishas were
all older than my grandmother), did all of the things,
too, that a real tourist would love to do. Visited a
recording session of an orchestra. That silence lab.
Etc. The trip was an honor accorded to few human
beings on this planet. I still have photos. I wonder
if that was really me, a mere Texas boy born in Brady
and high-schooled in Winters by farmers' wives, who
once chopped cotton as a kid and later picked boles.
My own children will never pick cotton, but neither
will they more than likely receive the kind of honor,
the enormous tribute that I received in Japan.
In the states, Dr. Bauer personally came to my office
in 9000 Sunset Boulevard with an assistant and
installed a Sansui quad system with his new Columbia
decoder. Later, a Japanese scientist flew to Los
Angeles to present to me his new "black box" decoder
for QS. It was often a crazy scene because they were
trying to prove their systems to me as if no one else
mattered. And that was probably true at the time.
Lou Dorren, about now, was one of the most important
acoustic engineers in the world, although very few
knew it. He was coming up with invention after
invention and the huge discrete quad demodulator box
developed by the Japanese grew smaller and smaller and
better and better. At one point, Japanese scientists
followed Lou around a lab in the bay area and when he
dropped something, one of them picked it up; when he
said something, one of them wrote it down. You
couldn't not get in the front way. Nor would you wish
to. It looked like a vacant building no one wanted to
rent or buy. You wandered around to the back and if
you got lucky someone raised a garage door and let you
in. Inside, of course, was spotless. People.
Equipment.
I don't know how many patents Lou had for quad.
Doesn't matter now. Quad became passé. In my Bel Air
home in Los Angeles, I had quad in my study, quad in
the master bedroom, and stereo on the swimming pool.
Bobby Vee, many radio guys such as Jonathan Fricke and
David Moorhead, record producer Brad Miller (Mystic
Moods), others, visited, heard real quad.
But quad faded. Died. Because the two major quad
systems were not compatible. There was even a
confusion of terms--i.e., quadrasonic and
quadraphonic. People were trying to play matrix discs
(CBS, etc.) on discrete systems...and vice versa. The
result in either case was merely stereo. I feel the
public thought it was some kind of hullabaloo and gave
up. A pity.
Now, however, this new music system. Quad? Lou
Dorren says no. Something better.
* * *
Michael Lucas, mjlucas@austin.rr.com:
"Ahh,
conventions...great and interesting stuff in your
column. I remember my first Billboard convention in
LA. I was at PD at KNOW in Austin and because I was
looking forward to meeting you, a fellow Texan, for
the first time, I stuck some Lone Star beer in my bag.
When I got to the hotel, it had leaked all over my
socks and undies. What a mess. Damn those bag
handlers! I wasn't able to get the beer to you, but
you were gracious anyway and I appreciate it. Thanks
for the memories."
Just hope it wasn't long necks, Michael!
You people who aren't Texicans won't understand the
mystique about Long Star in long neck bottles. Matter
of fact, I don't think I can explain it either!
Think I mentioned Jonathan Fricke, studio2812@msn.com,
above. For those of you who know Jonathan: He and
wife Nancy are working on a cruise ship. Selling
paintings. About this time, they are probably
visiting Mallorca in the Mediterranean or drifting up
some fjord of Norway. They've done Hawaii and the
Mexican Riviera. Now and then Jonathan looks in upon
his e-mails. Somewhere around this house, I still
have a photo of Jonathan with a very young and quite
foolish Willie Nelson back when Jonathan programmed a
Lubbock country music station.
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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