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"Hurt"
by Claude Hall
Chapter Six
We put Doris in her father's car. J.D. told her she'd
had enough excitement to last a day or two.
She didn't agree.
"Excitement is like chocolate," she said. "There's
no
such thing as enough."
She looked so sad--maybe it was her eyes--that I
turned to J.D.
Before I could even ask, he shook his head no. It was
only a slight movement, but he did it with just the
right emphasis so I would know there was no chance of
debating the issue. I also sensed he wasn't telling
me something.
"Women!" said J.D., as if that explained everything.
He stood with his hands on his hips.
She snapped back at him: "Male chauvinist!"
"That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in
weeks," J.D. replied, undaunted. "But the correct
term is male chauvinist pig. If you're going to throw
compliments at me, please at least be accurate."
She leaned slightly out of the car window and kissed
me on the cheek. It was a very nice kiss. "I will
see you tomorrow," she said. "We're going to a
concert on campus." Then, without another word, she
quickly sped away.
As we walked back toward the side entrance to the
hospital, J.D. told me the truth.
"Which do you want first, the bad news or the even
worse news?"
"I don't see that I've got much choice," I said.
"Nap was shot."
The news stunned me.
"Is he dead?"
"What an absurd question! Of course not! At least
not any more than usual. Something worse happened: it
scared him. He took off running. Doubt if he's
stopped yet. Last time I saw him earlier tonight he
was heading down a side street like a whipped cat."
"But...."
"I know. I know. How could a creep like that be
afraid of anything. I can't answer your question."
J.D. and Nap had gone out on a trouble call over in
North Las Vegas while Doris and I were up in
Brownstone Canyon. Just as they were putting an
accident victim into the ambulance, someone fired at
them from the dark. Nap had taken a slug in the
chest. It had knocked him down.
"You didn't see who it was?"
"No. I started to go after them, but then I thought
about what Braun said the other night--all that
business crap--and I got into the ambulance and came
on back. So, he--or they or it--got completely away."
"Maybe it was just some thug."
"Guano!" he snarled.
"Yeah," I said.
"Worse, they knew about me," said J.D. "I smelled a
faint odor of garlic. I probably couldn't have caught
them anyway."
"The dervish," I said softly, then quickly looked
around to make sure no one else had heard me.
"An audacious guess," said J.D. "But I've never
liked
guesswork. Takes the pain out of reasoning."
The dervish were a filthy crew. Where they had come
from and what they really were, no one yet knew. To
tell the truth, none of us had even seen one. They
operated strictly in the dark of night and from dense,
deep shadows. They disappeared as soon as someone
gave chase. One nurse, almost in a whisper, voiced
the opinion that they hadn't been there at
all--ghosts.
I looked at J.D. He shook his head.
"I saw something move around the corner of a house.
That was all," said J.D. "But it was no ghost."
The name dervish had been stuck on them by Gertrude
out of lack of anything better. She'd actually said,
"whirling dervish," but J.D. argued that only
dustdevils, tornados, and hurricanes whirled; that
people just danced. Actually, J.D. hadn't argued the
matter at all. Just made a statement. No one dared
contradict him. Certainly, not me.
The attacks started with a rock. The rock narrowly
missed a hospital attendant walking to work one
evening after dark. She reported the incident to
Gertrude.
When it happened a second time, a warning memo had
been issued. It alluded to "the possibility of
various gangs" operating in the neighborhood.
And that, it was hoped, was the end of that.
But it hadn't ended at all. It had merely been the
beginning of a series of random incidents. They
weren't real attacks, because no one--not any
thing--was ever seen doing anything. A rock crashed
through the window of an apartment of a nurse one
night. A bullet hole in a house door before dawn one
morning. A car of someone who worked in the hospital
lab was found with two front tires slashed shortly
after midnight.
When some of the staff got together to talk about the
situation, it turned up that maybe--just maybe,
because no one really knew for sure--there had been
other incidents. An attendant had been found dead
about a month ago; it was thought that he'd had an
accident; probably hit by a car. And a nurse had been
killed in the parking lot one Sunday evening when not
many people had been around.
Someone thought it was just the usual sort of thing
going on these days. Violence had blossomed
throughout the United States these past few years like
some evil flower. Some said because of drugs. Others
said because of rising proverty.
One person at a recent meeting muttered the opinion
that perhaps someone was angry about rising medical
costs...an awful lot of people couldn't afford
hospital care these days and were being denied
treatment, while, at the same time, doctors were
buying fancy cars and homes on the island of Barbados
or condos in Hawaii.
"Nyah! If that were the case," someone in the back of
the room commented, "the congress would be getting
paid off not to pass a bill...but at least there would
be a bill trying to regulate medical costs."
The meeting had eventually floundered because no one
really knew anything for sure about the dervish and,
either because of that or in addition to that, didn't
know what to do.
"There's something else I haven't told you yet," J.D.
said once we were inside the lounge. "The hospital
had a bomb threat this afternoon. The caller
mentioned you."
He quickly tucked in his shirt and adjusted his tie
even though his tie did not need adjusting.
"Me?"
So this was the "even worse" news he'd mentioned
earlier.
"In all probability," J.D. said. "More or less
anyway. What they said was 'that flea-bitten
ambulance attendant'."
I had to think about that for a while.
We reached the lounge. I poured myself some coffee,
then went over and stood by the open window. The air
was clean and good tonight. For some reason, I
couldn't even smell the honeysuckle at the moment.
Far away, I could hear a small, scraping sound as if
someone was pushing a grocery cart with squeaky
wheels. The sound came from the direction of the
supermarket across the plaza.
"Sounds like they meant me, anyway," I said.
"Either
that or I've been insulted."
I turned away from the window. J.D. had returned to
his favorite place at the end of the couch. He took
off his sunshades and wiped fitfully at them with his
pocket handkerchief.
"I wonder why the caller didn't mention Braun," J.D.
said softly, looking at me and not at his task of
wiping his sunshades.
"Is he a...." I let the sentence die before finishing
it.
"No. I don't know what he is," said J.D. He seemed
to have found the answer for which he was searching.
He put on his sunshades with a certain amount of flair
and tucked away his handkerchief in the vest pocket of
his suit. "That's one of the things bothering me at
the moment."
"Thanks," I said, "for getting Doris out of here. I
don't want her around if there's been a bomb threat."
"Her? What about us?"
"I don't know what to do about us," I said. "Maybe
we
could take the night off."
"Fat chance!" said J.D. "Braun's secretary said
something about expecting a trouble call within the
next hour or two. We'll be needed."
"Seems a bit weird, them expecting trouble...as if
someone could order it up on a platter like a pizza."
"Yeah. Doesn't it." J.D. sat down and shook open
the
paper. "I forget to ask earlier. How the first date
go?" he asked after a long pause.
I told him about us going up into the mountains west
of town.
He shook his head back and forth with a snarl of
disgust.
"What ever happened to the simple life? Like taking a
pretty girl to a movie!"
"All the good movies are on TV these days," I said.
"No one ever saw the movie, dummy."
"Oh."
"So, when's your second date? I'll write down
instructions for you."
"We've already had a second date. Last night when we
went to that bar."
"That fight scene in the bar was not a second date,
you runt of the litter! That was a disaster.
Violence. Combat. A date is entirely different.
Don't you know anything at all?"
"I guess not," I admitted. "I thought a date was
when
you were with a girl. You know."
"No. A date is when you take a girl somewhere and you
put your arms around her and then you try to go as far
as you can go."
"Go where?"
He just scrowled at me for a few seconds.
"I thought you watched a lot of movies on television?"
"I do."
"Then they've all been edited!" he said, his voice
cracking like a whip. He added, after a moment of
silence, more softly: "Well, maybe the girl will know
what to do."
I let him off the hook at that point. "She's inviting
me to a music thing on campus," I said.
I asked what Gertrude had said about the bomb threat.
"Said it was nothing serious," he said. "She said I
should mention it to you, but not to make a big deal
out of it."
"Any bomb threat seems serious enough to me," I said.
"Came from a kook, they thought."
"A kook! How would a kook know about me?"
J.D. picked up his coffee cup and poked at the wings
with a finger. "Simple," he said softly, just as if
the walls might have ears. "Someone told the kook."
"Who'd do something like that?"
This time, it was almost a whisper: "Braun."
J.D. doesn't make statements lightly. That was twice
tonight he'd said something negative about Braun. I
thought about his statement for a moment.
"That doesn't make sense," I said.
"Why not?" said J.D. He took a quick glance at both
doorways.
"I sort of got the impression the other night that
he's depending on us."
"Did he say that? All I heard were threats."
"I just can't believe it," I said.
"Puppy!" snapped J.D. and hid himself behind the
newspaper. I could tell he was hiding and not reading
it; the newspaper was right side up.
I smelled it then. The odor seemed to come from the
direction of the Strip. When I mentioned the
possibility of an accident on the Strip, J.D. merely
shook his head.
"Not for us. Too risky. Too many lights."
He was right. Because the phone in the lounge didn't
rang and there was no message over the radio that
concerned us. I can't always smell trouble on the
wind. Especially if the wind is blowing the wrong
direction. Because less than five minutes later we
were on our way toward Henderson to a traffic
accident. And I didn't know anything about it until
the phone rang and J.D. answered and told me about it.
The night went like that. I suppose we handled five
or six accidents. One of them paid off rather well.
One was a complete washout. The rest were somewhere
in between.
Then, at 2:17 a.m., all hell broke loose. This time,
we were on our way out to a traffic accident on
Decatur when instructions came over the ambulance
radio to turn north and get over to Industrial.
"Industrial? I don't think we're going to have a lot
of fun on this one."
"You smelling blood again?"
"I can't smell anything in a car. Except sweat and
things like that."
"I don't sweat," J.D. said.
"I know. I know."
I whipped the ambulance about, driving over the median
in the center of the boulevard, and doubled back on
Martin Luther King toward Sahara.
"What kind of smell do I have?"
"I'd rather not say. You'll just get mad if I tell
the truth and I'm not a very good lier. Anyway,
you'll just deny it."
"Tell me the truth then."
"You promise you won't get mad?"
"I'm not going to promise anything."
"Lilies," I said very softly, hoping that he might not
hear me.
"You're right. I do not smell like lilies. Lilies do
not have an odor."
"To me, they have a very distinctive odor."
"Lilies! Those pale things people toss on graves.
What a cruel thing to say about someone."
"I knew you'd get mad."
"I'm not mad. Would you please try to be a little
more careful about your driving? I don't know why you
had to take that short cut a moment ago."
"The dispatcher said to hurry."
"Hurry is one thing. Crazy is another. You drive
like a nut."
"You should wear a seatbelt anyway," I said.
But, of course, he never wore a seatbelt; he said that
in his case it wasn't necessary and a seatbelt
wouldn't have done any good anyway.
If I get into a car, I put on a seatbelt. I feel
uncomfortable without one. But, like J.D., I realized
that in a lot of the accidents we covered in and
around Las Vegas, seatbelts didn't seem to matter one
way or another. There was something almost ominous
about those accidents.
Except for the siren, which I had wide open with all
of the bells and jingle jangles, it was silent in the
ambulance for a few minutes, but by the time we reach
Sahara, I could hear him still muttering under his
breath about the lilies, but now he seemed to be
pleased about the idea. He's like that: disliking
something one moment and changing his mind the next
and liking it.
The police pulled us to a stop just a block south of
Charleston on Industrial.
"War," said a policeman. He stood at the side of a
building near an impromptu barricade set up from one
side of the street to the other.
"Can we get to the wounded?" asked J.D.
"I wouldn't advise even trying," the policeman said.
"If I were you guys I'd get that ambulance behind that
building here out of the line of fire."
Just then a bullet ricocheted off the wall of an auto
repair shop to our left.
"Good advice," said J.D.
I parked the ambulance on the other side of the
building and got out. J.D. didn't move. He sat in
the ambulance with his window open, leaning his head
against the side of the door jam as if in complete
repose. I walked around to his window.
"What do we do now?" I asked J.D.
"Nothing," he said. I think he had his eyes closed,
but I couldn't tell because of those ever-present
sunglasses.
"It's a gang war of some kind."
"Beats hell out of a real riot," he said.
I went over and took a quick look around the corner of
the building. A young woman in a long ponytail ran in
a low crouch from a doorway. She crossed the street
and ran into an alleyway. A gunshot reverberated from
between the two brick walls.
The cop came over to join us.
"What's going on?" asked J.D.
"Some kind of religious group fighting some other kind
of religious group. We think. But, hell, we don't
really know anything yet. Except that quite a few
people have probably been killed already. A SWAT team
is on the way."
"What's a SWAT team going to do out there?" J.D.
asked, his voice only half a snarl because he was
talking to a police officer. I think he was slightly
nervous just being near the officer.
I nodded. "Nothing much a SWAT team can do out there
but die."
"Then we'll call in the National Guard and if that
doesn't work...."
He let his sentence trail off.
"Rambo," I said in a feeble attempt to ease the
tension.
"You've definitely been watching too many movies,"
J.D. told me. But he opened the door of the ambulance
and stepped out, rolling the window half way up and
closing the door carefully behind him. The cop didn't
notice, but I saw J.D. walk over and disappear into
the darkness.
I wondered what he wanted me to do. But, of course,
it was too late to ask him.
After a couple of minutes, I realized J.D. wasn't
coming back for a while. So I went over and stood
beside the policeman.
A no-man's land existed from one side of Industrial to
the other and almost half of the way toward
Charleston. I found this out the hard way--a hail of
gunfire erupted out in the street just as I started to
step out into view.
Guns were creating a storm of noise up the street,
too, but we were evidently out of the direct line of
fire. At least at the moment.
"What the hell are we supposed to do now?" I asked.
Just then, a rattle of bullets fell against the front
of the building.
"They must be coming this way," the policeman said.
I sort of got the impression real quick that he didn't
know what to do either...that he sort of wanted to
run, but knew he couldn't. He had his gun out of its
holster. I don't think he really wanted to use it.
Following the wall, I went around the building to the
back and up a narrow passageway to the street. There
was a streetlight on the far corner; in the light from
the streetight, I could see a body sprawled over the
curb. Two bodies were in a doorway down the street. I
saw a shadow move over the bodies. Then it was gone.
Another shadow down the street disappeared behind a
couple of used cars parked in a lot. One of the used
cars immediately burst into flame. Other shadows
darted around a distant corner.
A tow-haired kid peaked cautiously around the far
corner of a hardware store. He appeared to be about
12 or 14 years old.
I was just about to yell to warn him to stay out of
sight, when he spotted me and stepped out into full
view with an automatic weapon in his hands.
A rain of bullets poured from his gun in my direction.
Fortunately, while someone may have taught him how to
shoot an automatic rifle, he wasn't a very good
marksman.
Too, the virus I'd had as a kid had changed my
muscular structure. This is just a guess on my part;
I don't know anything for sure and maybe even a couple
of scientists would have trouble figuring it all out.
But in addition to becoming immensely strong, very few
people that I've ever met are as fast as I am. For
fun--and out of sheer boredom--I used to toss several
pebbles into the air right above my head. I got where
I could grab three or four of them before they hit the
ground. Once or twice, I grabbed all five. I've
always surmised that during a full moon I could have
grabbed as many as ten pebbles, but, of course, I
don't know if I've ever tried that sort of thing.
Probably, I had other things to do.
I leaped back out of view, then ran to a barrel
against the wall of the building. Standing on top of
the barrel, I was able to leap and grab the top of the
wall and pull myself up.
Once on the roof of the building, I kept low and ran
across to the other building.
The kid was very surprised when I dropped off the roof
behind him. He heard something--or sensed that
someone was behind him--and turned and bumped into me.
I took advantage of his temporary shock to take away
his gun.
"The war's over," I said.
More shots sounded from across the street.
"Tell them that," the kid said.
"In a minute."
"Where did you come from? You a ghost?"
"I don't think so. You seen many ghosts?"
"Never seen one," he said angrily, "but I've heard
about them. They come and they go. You can't shoot
them. But they're around just the same."
"No, I'm no ghost."
"That was some trick anyway."
"Thanks," I told him.
With one hand holding his teeshirt at the shoulder, I
led him between the buildings to the alleyway and back
to the ambulance. The police officer was there. He'd
been joined by two other policemen. One of the
policemen was on a cellular phone. Gunshots continued
up and down the street. He had trouble hearing
whoever was on the other end of the conversation.
"Where's your friend?" the police officer asked.
"The honest truth is that I don't think he can stand
the sight of fresh blood," I said.
"Chicken?"
"I wouldn't put it exactly like that," I said.
He handcuffed the tow-haired kid with his hands behind
him.
"Well, he didn't seem like the coward type, but I
wouldn't blame him if he was. That's a damned tough
mess out there. How'd you catch this one?"
"Accident," I said. I handed him the kid's weapon.
"God! An AK47. How in hell did these kids get a
weapon like this! Better let us handle this," he
told me. "We've got backup coming. They'll be here
in a couple of minutes."
"I want to check something out," I said. "This kid
here mentioned ghosts."
"Name of a street gang probably."
"Never can tell," I said. "Didn't you see the movie
'Casper'? Or how about that film with Whoopi
Goldberg?"
He rubbed a palm over his forehead, but continued to
look at me with steady, searching eyes.
"In other words, you're some kind of screwball."
>From long experience, I've discovered how to response
to statements like that.
"Without question," I said.
The truth was, I needed some information. The
tow-haired kid was too young; he might have been a
member of a gang, okay, but I needed to find someone
old enough to be a leader. Or at least old enough to
know what was going on. I wondered if the girl with
the ponytail might still be out there in the war zone
that existed for several blocks up and down the
street. She had seemed to be somewhere around 19 or
20 years old. If I could find her, maybe she would be
able to answer some questions. She might refuse to
talk with the police, but she would never be able to
turn down a question from J.D. Not likely.
No one protested when I ran back down the alleyway
and, certainly, none of them followed. At the end of
the alley, I cut back to the right to Industrial.
A store front suddenly exploded across the street. I
ducked back against the side of the wall to avoid
flying debris and shards of glass, but I almost wasn't
fast enough. A piece of glass flew past within a few
inches of my arm.
The roar of the blast hurt my ears.
Through the broken plate window of the store, flame
gushed out, immediately spilling into the sky and
shooting upward. Sparks fell on the sidewalk in front
the store.
As the street fell into silence, I heard someone
crying out in the street. It was a young girl huddled
against the curb. In the light thrown by the flames,
I could see that she'd been wounded and was bleeding.
Up the street a few yards, a barebacked youth in baggy
pants stepped out into view. He had a revolver in his
right hand and he began to bring the gun downward, arm
outstretched, to line the girl in this sights. At
that distance, he could easily kill the girl.
I picked up the first thing I could find lying in the
street and threw it at the youth. It was a piece of a
brick, I think. Regardless, I was fairly accurate and
the chuck of masonry hit him in the side. Instead of
pulling the trigger, he dodged back behind a car.
That gave me enough time to run over to the girl. She
still had a knife in one hand, her fist clenched
around the handle in spite of everything. But she
didn't try to stab me with it. Maybe she was in a
state of shock or maybe the wounds caused by the
broken pieces of glass were too painful.
In just a few seconds, I had her in my arms and was
running down the alley.
I sat her down against the rear bumper of the
ambulance and pulled out a stretcher. A moment later,
I had her on the stretcher and was tending to her
wounds. Only a couple of them were serious. Then I
rummaged through the back of the ambulance and found a
medicine kit. You could tell it hadn't been used all
that often because it was completely packed. I was
able to get the bleeding stopped and a couple of
bandages in place. She'd be okay, but I gave her a
shot to knock her out just in case.
Three policemen, including a couple of SWAT guys, had
watched me without saying a word. Finally, as soon as
I'd given her the shot, one of them came over. He
gently took the knife out of her clenched fist and
dropped it on the concrete.
"Is she one of the good guys or the bad guys?"
"I don't think there's any such thing out there," I
told him. "Just a bunch of kids trying to establish
pecking order."
"With automatic rifles?"
"That's the way it's done these days," I said.
"In my day, we played football," he said.
"Let's hope that in some parts of the United States
that's still the way it's done," I said. I nodded my
head at the girl on the stretcher. "I gave her a
shot. She'll be out for a while."
As I started back down the alley, the two SWAT guys
trotted at my side. Both carried their rifles
shoulder high, ready to shoot at anything that moved.
I stopped.
"I'd rather not kill anyone unless it's absolutely
necessary," I said. "These are just kids."
Without taking his eyes from the scene up the
alleyway, one of the SWAT men said, "Okay." The
second man just nodded. He seemed very calm and very
poised. But you never can tell about the calm ones.
More shots rang out on the other side of the building
as a firefight broke out. There was the ear-hurting
noise of metal on metal and I could hear glass being
broken.
We ran across the youth in the baggy pants about a
hundred yards down. He was intent on something going
on out in the street and never noticed us approaching.
I hit him on the back of the neck with my fist, but
was careful not to hit him too hard. He slumped to
the concrete. One of the policemen knelt and quickly
handuffed the youth's hands behind his back.
That's when one of the police officers, the one who'd
appeared calm and poise, shot at someone running
across the entrance to the ally at the end of the
street.
I took his rifle from him and threw it on top of the
roof.
He glared at me, half in disbelief and just a little
afraid now that he was without the very thing that
made him as big as everyone else.
"You can't do that!"
"I'm sorry," I said. "My hand must have
slipped."
He began to shake. For a moment, I thought he was
going to get sick on me. Then, his jaw clenched, he
turned and began walking in sort of a stiff-stick
motion back down the alley from the direction we'd
come.
I tooked questioningly at the other SWAT guy.
"I get the message loud and clear," he said.
"Thanks," I said.
We cornered two youths in a doorway. At the command
of the policeman, they laid their weapons down and
stepped away from them. While the officer covered
them with his rifle, I handcuffed both of the youths,
interlinking their handcuffs so they were bound
together, back to back. Them I took their weapons and
tossed them on the roof.
"Someone could climb up on the roof," the officer
said.
"Let's hope they don't have time," I said.
At the end of the alley, two cars had been set afire.
Up the street, three youths were breaking car windows
with the butts of their weapons and pouring gasoline
from a can inside the car. As they finished, one of
the youths would toss in a lighted match.
"I'm a marksman," said the officer. "I could hit
them
in the legs."
I guess so," I said.
In an instant, he was lying prone on the concrete and,
the barrel of his rifle supported by the V of his left
hand and arm, squeezing off a couple of rounds. Two
of the kids fell down to the ground, one of them
crying in pain and clutching at his right leg. The
third youth ran up the street, darting from side the
side.
"Good shooting," I said.
After making sure that we were not in any immediate
danger, I ran out into the street and grabbed the
ankle of one of the youths and pulled him behind the
building out of danger.
The officer immediately understood what to do. He
soon had the other youth also propped against the
brick wall.
"Just flesh wounds," he said. "They can still
walk."
"Can you get them back to the command post?"
"I don't think I should leave you out here alone," he
said.
"We do make a good team," I said. "But I really
would
hate to see these kids here get killed by someone
passing by."
"Okay," the officer said.
He helped the two youths to their feet. One was
crying. At the prodding of his rifle, they began to
limp back down the alley.
I thought I saw J.D. once. A mere shadow somewhere
near the roof of a building further down the street.
But I wasn't sure that was him. I knew he was out
there, though, and busy. I found two youths laid out
like sticks, side by side, in a dark nitche behind a
diner. One twitched, so I knew J.D. hadn't killed
them.
Then I ran into a stumbling block.
Every time I looked around the corner of the auto
parts store, a hail of bullets was thrown at me.
I shouted as loud as I could that I just wanted to
talk to them, but they either didn't hear me or didn't
want to listen.
I couldn't see who was firing the shots. The bullets
came out of the darkness from an open doorway of a
photography shop across the street.
"I could throw some lead that direction," said a voice
beside me.
It was the SWAT guy.
"Can't get rid of you, huh?"
"Looks that way. I delivered the kids and thought I'd
trot back up here in case you needed help."
"I was hoping they'd run out of bullets over there," I
said.
"In a year or two. Maybe," he said.
"I've tried to talk to him, but all I get is more
bullets."
"The problem is you don't know their language. Nobody
does," he said.
I introduced myself. We shook hands. His name was Ed
Esposito. We decided against shooting into the open
doorway.
"To tell the truth, my friend is out there somewhere.
I was hoping he'd find a way inside the building from
the rear."
"I haven't seen him," said Esposito.
"That's because he's wearing a black suit," I said.
"Difficult to see him in the dark."
"How'd he get over there? Sprout wings and fly?"
"I wouldn't put that sort of thing beyond him," I
said. "He's rather amazing."
Just then, three youths--one with his hair tied behind
his head in a ponytail--ran past a burning car and one
of them tossed something through the doorway of the
photography shop. An explosion immediately erupted
like some giant yellow flower from the doorway. Black
smoke poured out.
I was able to knock down one of the youths as I ran
toward the doorway of the photography shop. But I was
too late to help the kid leaning inside against the
doorway. He was dead. His face was a mess and one
arm had been mostly torn off by the blast.
As I came back out, I didn't see Esposito at first.
Then I noticed the limp form sprawled near one of the
burning cars.
Fortunately, he was only wounded in the leg.
"Jesus! I feel dumb."
I ripped a piece of rag from my shirt and used it to
wrap around his leg.
"Right. A smart man would have dodged," I said.
"Proven fact. Police officers with high IQs never get
shot."
"That's because they're all sitting behind a desk
somewhere," he said.
A stiff wind had come up. It whipped the dying flames
from a burning car. I don't mind the cold, but I
could see the Esposito was shivering from it. Or
maybe he was suffering from shock.
"I don't think I could stand a desk job," I said,
tying the ends of the cloth together.
"Me, neither," said Esposito. He grimaced from the
pain as I helped him to his feet.
I slung him over my back and started back across the
street as a couple of shots zipped past.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Hell, no!" said Esposito. "One of those shots just
hit me in the flack jacket."
"You're supposed to dodge," I said.
"It's you who's not dodging," he pointed out.
I never stopped running. I darted into an alleyway,
but it was the wrong one. Someone shot at us from the
far end. The bullet hit the wall at my right.
I ran back around the corner onto the street and a
moment later found another passageway not quite so
crowded.
A few minutes later, I laid him down gently on the
concrete by the rear of the ambulance just as J.D.
came out of the dark.
"I had trouble finding an entrance to that building,"
he said. "Then I got inside almost a touch too soon.
Sorry."
"Good thing," I said. I introduced J.D. to Ed
Esposito. "This guy just earned himself a Purple
Heart," I told J.D. "He did well out there."
"Purple Hearts are for soldiers," J.D. told me.
"Policemen only get a day in the hospital. If they're
lucky. Sometimes."
Esposito laughed.
"I'm not the hero," he said. "This guy here is the
hero."
J.D., whose natural tendency was to remain in the
shadows whenever possibly, stepped forward into the
glow of a distant streetlight. I could almost make
out the features on his face. I'd swear he was
laughing.
"Yes, he does seem to have that kind of natural
disposition," he said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
This time, J.D. actually laughed. It was a very small
laugh, but definitely what you'd have to assume was
laughter. It was the first time I'd ever heard that
sort of thing from him.
That was the end of the evening. To some extent the
gang war just faded away on account of the chilling
wind that now came searching along Industrial, blowing
dust and scattered pieces of trash. Some of the
figures laying along the street began to stir. One of
them was wounded seriously, but most of the others had
gone down with flesh wounds or injuries of one kind or
another. This had really been the gang that couldn't
shoot straight. One crawled around the corner of a
building, but I think he'd only sprained his ankle. A
couple of others simply got up and ran into the dark.
Too, just like in an old B western, the calvary
arrived. I've never seen that many policemen. Of
course, some of them weren't policemen. Some of them
were members of the National Guard, I was told. And
others in shirts and ties were city officials. It
became pretty crowded after a while. And even colder.
As for the gang members, they'd simply disappeared in
the smoke and the noise down one alley or another,
down the street, behind a building. Except for the
five or six wounded, and two of them were awfully
young, there wasn't anyone left.
J.D. and I ended up with the body in the doorway of
the photography shop. And only then because J.D. told
a soldier the youth was still alive and needed to be
rushed to a hospital. That was a lie, of course.
Braun was madder than the devil as a result. I think
he'd expected, at the very least, an ambulance full of
patients. I believe that.
"What happened to all of the wounded?" Braun demanded,
staring accusingly at J.D.
"They were arrested," I said quickly.
"What for?"
"Creating a nuisance," I suggested, but immediately
wished I'd kept my mouth shut. Braun turned to glare
at me. I swear to you, I thought his eyes had little
red dots in them. They seemed that way. And it was
very difficult to meet his eyes. I won't say that I
had to glance away, because I know that trick from
back in my farm boy days when the farmer wanted to
know why I wouldn't go to church with him and his wife
on Sunday morning. I looked at the tip of Braun's
nose and kept from looking directly into his eyes.
We just stood there beside the ambulance as four
attendants took out the limp body of the kid and
rolled it away on a stretcher.
Funny, but at the moment I wasn't even worried about
Braun. I began to really wonder where they took
bodies like that. J.D. had said somewhere below.
Below where?
And I wondered why Braun wasn't affected by the cold
wind. Heck, even I had begun to feel it.
"We had reports of several bodies," Braun said.
"I did see a couple of bodies when we first arrived,"
I said. "But they weren't there later."
"They had to be there," he said. "In all of that
gunfire, several policemen should have been wounded
and maybe even killed!"
I shook my head. "I don't think anyone was hurt all
that bad. Frankly, I think some of the gang members
actually got up and walked away before all of the
police and the military arrived."
Braun turned his attention to J.D. "And what were you
men doing all of this time, I'd like to know?"
"Dodging bullets," said J.D.
You can't believe the fit that Braun threw! He yelled
at us for a while and then yelled at some of the
attendants and then even yelled at Gertrude when she
came out to see what all of the yelling was about.
It wasn't a very pleasant scene.
Braun insisted there should have been at least a dozen
dead from an "incident such as this."
Finally, when there was a break in the yelling--I
don't think he needed to pause for breath, but had
merely run out of things to yell about momentarily--I
suggested that we wouldn't have been able to get the
bodies even if there'd been bodies to get because of
all of the cops around.
And that made Braun even madder, for some reason.
The only reason we were able to eventually escape his
wrath was because it got sort of close to sunup and
even Braun realized that we were, figuratively and
literally, off duty with the end of the night.
Even then, J.D. had to flee for his bicycle, coattails
flying.
(to be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
|
Commentary
by
Claude Hall
November
25, 2003
New York City
1964-71
A journey by Claude Hall
Part Three
He may never receive credit for it...certainly not as
much as he deserves...but Paul Williams played a very
important role in the rock music that was happening in
New York City at that time...mostly the Greenwich
Village stuff. A guy who would have gone unnoticed
except for the flattop straw hat he wore and he was
still unnoticed to a great extent, Paul Williams was
the founder and publisher of Crawdaddy, a magazine (it
was typed on a typewriter, but printed, per se) that
had very limited circulation in those days, mostly in
Greenwich Village of Manhattan. He was the first
person to actually write about rock music as serious
music which, in effect, pushed "I Want to Hold Your
Hand" type music into "Strawberry Fields
Forever." In
my first meeting with Felix Pappalardi at the
apartment of Bud Prager in Manhattan (Bud had invited
me there to meet an act called Smokey and his Sister),
I mentioned the possibility, even the inclination,
that rock music performers could use other instruments
and Felix, undoubtedly a genius when it came to music,
thought I was being sacrilegious. I advocated that
rock musicians needed to experiment or the music would
grow dull, which it had already to some extent, i.e.,
the tedious music of Elvis Presley in those horrible
movies he was making in Hollywood; Felix, however, was
at the time locked into the electric guitar, the
electric bass, the acoustic drum set even though the
Blues Project was experimenting with a flute and you
had some very strange groups around such as Lothar and
the Hand People. Later, of course, Felix played a toy
piano right out of "Peanuts" on one of the Cream
album
masterpieces he produced (yes, it's really there,
although there has been some discussion, of course,
whether it contributes to the overall effect). I
think many rock musicians ventured afield about this
same time. I remember the first amped drumset and the
discussion about whether it actually achieved
anything. The Beatles, I believe, led the way with
"Act Naturally," a song that had been a country hit by
Buck Owens. Regardless, Paul Williams in Crawdaddy
talked of rock music with the same passion, the same
expertise generally associated with classical music
and I think this helped push rock music in that
direction; he helped lift it above the usual genre. I
met him a few times during my early Billboard days.
He was accepted among rock musicians and could "hang
out." I saw him everywhere.
I only met Fred Neil once. He performed one night at
the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village and for some
reason I went down there to review the show. Great,
deep voice. Great songwriter. He performed with two
backup men. His set included mostly his own material:
"Candyman," "Just a Little Bit of
Rain." After the
set, he asked if I wanted to go out for a beer with
him and a couple of others and I said, no, because I
wanted to get home to Barbara and the two boys and it
was a long train ride. I still regret to this day not
going out for a beer with Fred Neil. To hell with
sleep. I would have liked to have known him better.
I never saw him again. Eventually, the owner of the
Cafe au Go Go closed it down and I understand went
down to Coconut Grove, FL, to live with Fred. Fred
had the deepest singing voice I ever heard, but was
better known among rock groups for his songwriting.
This includes "Candyman" for Roy Orbison (I
heard he
was screwed out of his rights on the song and this
turned him off against the record industry) and
"Everybody's Talking" for the movie "Midnight
Cowboy."
I soon learned that Fred Neil was almost a myth among
other rock musicians. Felix Pappalardi, who produced
the Cream albums and later formed Mountain, knew him.
As did John Sebastian of Lovin' Spoonful. Neil was
finally persuaded to cut an album for Capital Records.
It's called "Sessions" and is literally that.
He
evidently just walked in, put the songs down, walked
out. I still treasure that album. I was a Fred
Neil
fan the first time I heard him and I still am, but I'm
not the only one. A few years later, I ran into John
Sebastian at the Palomino in Los Angeles just about
the time he'd written and recorded "Welcome Back,
Kotter" for the TV series. I asked him about Fred
Neil and he told me that Neil was trying to teach
dolphins how to sing. Everyone big in rock knew Fred
Neil and admired him. I recently attempted to track
down Fred Neil on the Internet and floundered. Found
a website. Not much else.
I also liked the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (which
rocked but from a blues idiom driven by Paul's
phenomenal harmonica playing), Bob Dylan, the Blues
Project, and a few other groups. There was something
being born about this time in rock music and these
were the people giving birth. Essentially, it was
like jazz performed with rock music instruments to
some extent, but it also lifted from the folk music
idiom. Barbara and I and Hal Cook and his wife and
Hal's youngest son were at Forrest Hills Tennis Club
the night that Dylan went rock and this event upset
the fans like you wouldn't believe! When he came back
on stage with an electric guitar after the
intermission, he was boo'd.
I caught the Blues Project a couple of times. Their
music was a blend of jazz and rock and sometimes
featured the flute. Quite good. Definitely music
ahead of its time. One night at a small nightspot on
the upper east side called the Phone Booth, Al Kooper
was stretched out backstage sweating. Overdose. I
think they got a replacement; the group went on
anyway. Later, Al Kooper was to form Blood, Sweat and
Tears and I heard the group at the Cafe Au Go Go in
its first performance as largely a blues band. Later,
they added David Clayton Thomas as a vocalist and the
act changed more toward pop. It was big for a while.
By this time, Al Kooper had moved on. The last time I
saw Al was at a "private" party thrown by Elton
John
for 3,000 of his closest friends on a back street at
University Studios, Los Angeles. I asked him how he
was doing and he said "trying to get my act
together,"
i.e., free from dope was the general translation at
the time. That Elton John party was the largest party
I ever attended; he took over the entire western
street of the movie studio. But this was after we
moved the headquarters of Billboard--me, Hal Cook, Lee
Zhito, and Don Ovens--to Los Angeles. I believe I
also caught the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the Phone
Booth. One act I specifically remember was Bobby
Fuller--another product of Bob Keane who seemed to
have a black cloud above him in regards to acts. Sam
Cooke, for instance. Fuller was found dead not too
many weeks after I caught his act. Good band. Good
music. Well rehearsed. As I remember, one of the
songs was "I Fought the Law" (Sonny Curtis?)
and, yes,
I know that another major name had a big hit with this
song, but that was years and years later.
Parties in Manhattan in the 60s, by the way, were not
too shabby, if sometimes a bit unusual. I attended an
introduction press party for Sonny & Cher that
Atlantic threw regarding "I Got You, Babe" when
the
act was wearing their fur suits. Sewn by Cher, I
think. It was the sort of thing the record industry
did in those days...often a little ridiculous...but
everyone went who was invited because it was the thing
to do. And a guy who's professional name was Popsie
usually took the pictures; it wasn't really a party
unless Popsie was there and doing the photography.
Popsie once offered me a pair of spectacles, sans
lenses, he'd used to shoot a Buddy Holly cover. I've
always regretted turning those down; that album is
still around. We hired Popsie to take pictures at an
International Radio Programming Forum at the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel one year (this was the
convention where Buzz Bennett held sway for about four
hours talking about programming before at least a
hundred people including, I believe, Frank Zappa in
the audience; there was another session scheduled for
the room, but Buzz had everyone hooked and nobody
wanted to stop him; when I glanced in the room, he was
squatting on a straight-back chair like an old farmer
might up against the side of a barn when talking about
crops and the weather). Anyway, at the end of the
convention, Barbara was picking me up streetside in
the VW Beetle that we owned and she had John, 4, and
Darryl, 2, with her and there was Popsie, head in the
window, talking to them. He'd convinced the kids to
take a puppy he was trying to give away. The
following Tuesday, he showed up at the office with a
cardboard box and three puppies. I said no and he
said yes and I asked him which was the male dog and he
pointed and I grabbed it and ran! Popsie had told us
it was a small dog "just like its mother."
Unfortunately, "mother" must have kept growing.
We
named the dog Popsie, of course, and although he
didn't end up as big as a German Shepherd, I saw him
whip one once in a Bel Air dog fight. Another time, I
clocked him doing 35 miles an hour and I had the
feeling that dog hadn't even shifted into third gear
yet! He was tough! Yet, my kids and the Vee kids and
the next-door neighbor kids could pound on him with
fists and he would still lick them in the face.
Adults? I don't think so. When he was still a pup,
he snapped at me once and I picked him up and threw
him about six yards into a hedge and so he treated me
politely thereafter. My wife Barbara, he loved. I
think it was because she'd placed a package of
hamburger meat on the kitchen counter once and made
the mistake of turning her back, then looked around to
find it gone and he was always hoping for another
mistake like that.
A great many of the press parties in Manhattan
featured entertainment. One of the biggest in that
city during those years was in the Waldorf-Astoria and
featured Tex Ritter, Leroy Van Dyke, and maybe Eddy
Arnold and Minnie Pearl. In those days, country music
was not too well appreciated in Manhattan and, matter
of fact, looked down upon in a great many regions of
the United States. There was a Nashville contingent
out to change this image...especially on Madison
Avenue with the advertising crowd. Billboard, of
course, was involved. I believe that "Big Wide
Wonderful World of Country Music" was written by Gene
Nash specifically for this show, but I don't know that
as a fact. Regardless, the entire show was performed
with a great amount of class and with good production
qualities and thereafter the advertising world,
invited en mass, began to think that country radio
stations were okay after all.
One fun event for me was in a dingy nightclub
decorated with a cockroach, live, on the wall in an
uptown hotel and I went there with Mike Gross, the
talent editor of Billboard, not expecting much. At
that time, I would suppose that I knew a good bit
about rock and quite a lot about country and maybe a
dab here and there about other musics such as blues,
r&b, classical. And I was into Mexican music in the
worse way and still love mariachi music as well as
Cuco Sanchez and Virginia Lopez, etc. I had never
heard of Andy Russell. Before my time. Out of my
spectrum. That evening, I received an education!
Andy, of course, was a legend of legends and well past
his prime, but he was, quote, making a comeback of
sorts and extremely gracious and entertaining. He
asked people to get up and dance while he was singing
and they did and he did "Amor, Amor, Amor" and
many of
the great standards that he'd made hits during his
younger days. Great music! And I had some fun
keeping a reporter from Cashbox involved in
conversation while Mike Gross interviewed Andy for a
story for Billboard about a new Latin record label.
By now, Cashbox was beginning to slip. We were
hitting with strong news stories, they were featuring
news releases. When banks began to subscribe to
Billboard, we considered it a major victory. And then
our radio subscribers climbed past that of Cashbox.
Record World and Music Business were never really a
factor. In fact, the Gavin Report published by Bill
Gavin was a much stronger factor in the business and
eventually it also took over second place until Radio
and Records started by Bob Wilson gained strength and
was a major factor. When it came to record
executives, however, I think that Billboard was No. 1
by far. Recording artists even designated Billboard
advertising in their contracts.
I gave Glen Campbell his first-ever award, a plaque of
his song hitting No. 1 on the Billboard country chart.
The site was a would-be nightclub featuring country
music in the basement of a hotel on Seventh Avenue in
Manhattan; it didn't last long. I think it was called
the Nashville. I've still got a photo of the
presentation on stage. Glen looked awfully young and
from this distance of years, so did I!
I did a pilot magazine called SoundMakers that lasted
one issue and was the forerunner to Rolling Stone,
etc. There's a great article in the magazine written
by Paul Ackerman. The publication drew letters from
around the world for about a year...approximately 200
letters...but sales didn't turn over fast enough on
those little corner stands in New York City and
Billboard decided not to go with a second issue.
Incidentally, I wrote most of the magazine and helped
produce it and still met my deadlines for the weekly
Billboard. But I was always doing something extra in
those days, including a nationwide talent contest with
the grand finale in the Press Club in Washington, DC,
for the Tea Council of the United States that earned
Billboard $50,000 plus expenses and gained me a
Smith-Corona electric portable typewriter ($200). We
hired an assistant for me during that campaign. Bob
Glassenburg. Always wondered was happened to Bob;
last time I saw him he was doing some kind of movie
thing at Warner Bros. and driving a white Spider
Porsche, my favorite car.
You got invited to a lot of major events in addition
to parties during those days. I was there in the
studio at Atlantic Records when Felix Pappalardi was
producing one of the Cream albums. Got to hear him
work with Eric Clapton on a piece of music. Another
evening in some recording studio, I think a Mountain
album was being unveiled, John Zacherle, sort of a
nutty deejay on WNEW-FM at the time, asked me if I
would like a map of Transylvania and I nodded and he
sat down and drew something with a pencil on a scrap
of paper and handed it to me!
I once drew the wrath of the head of radio at ABC when
I refused to do a glorious huge story on his new
syndicated programming concept for FM, which was just
getting into rock at the time. I did a story. He
wanted it bigger. I nixed that. He hired a fancy New
York public relations office and they tried to force
me to do a bigger story. I nixed this, too. I think
they even went to Hal Cook, the publisher of
Billboard, but I held my stance because I wanted
everything in my section true. Result, this guy named
Neil or something like that didn't like me very well
the rest of his life. The funny thing is that I'd
worked for ABC hosting an FM program for about six
months (yes, I still have a copy on reel of five of
the shows and, no, you'll NEVER hear it). And I
considered TV chief Wally Schwartz a good friend, then
and now. Rick Sklar, program director of WABC, I knew
pretty well, too. I had some other buddies in the
corporate office. Alex Smallens and Bob Mahlman,
among others. Barbara and I got to know Smallens and
wife and family and they visited us once after we
moved to Los Angeles. His father was one of the
world's great concert pianists and the family knew
Picasso; Picasso gave the family a double-sided
canvas; Alex and his wife inherited this painting. It
hung in their living room, incognito, not even a light
on it. They couldn't afford to tell anyone about the
painting; how can you insure something like that?
Alex and Bob--great second lieutenants under Wally. I
just checked in "This Business of Radio
Programming."
The guy's name at ABC was Hal Neal, once head of
radio. A really big varmint for his day. But that
programming service featured "Brother Love" or
"Brother John" as a personality on a full-day basis
and I considered it pretty stupid and so pretty soon
did the listening public. It disappeared. Good
riddance. (to be continued)
* * *
In memory of Jan Basham, 70, Nov. 16, 2003. Cancer's
long goodbye was brief for her. While here, she
brightened the lives of many and these many will miss
her and are grateful she didn't suffer long nor hard.
Her name will be added to the poem "Gone and
Also...."
She was not of radio, but she indeed was one of us.
Shalom, Jan.
* * *
OTHER MATTERS
Joe Nick Patoski, joenickp@yahoo.com
missed seeing
Commentary a couple of weeks back and I emailed it to
him, then: "That's pretty great. I'm sorry I missed
it the first time around. I've been traveling 'way
too much doing a Voices of Civil Rights oral history
project for (I'm wincing as I say this now) AARP, whom
I thought pretty highly of until this week. That's
great writing. Looking back is not as easy as it
appears from the outside looking in. I remember when
I went on staff at Texas Monthly in 1985 after five
years as a rock and roll band manager (Joe King
Carrasco and the Crowns) the editor wanted me to write
about the experience. For two months, I hemmed and
hawed and finally threw in the towel. 'Can't do it', I
told the editor. 'I was too busy living it to
remember it'. I'm glad to hear Hollis fed you well.
One thing's for sure: There's no barbecue like Texas
barbecue, tho Kansas City and Memphis will do in a
pinch. Did the steak house in Lowake have a landing
strip? I seem to recall a couple West Texas
steakhouses had guests who flew in. I've just
returned from Van Horn, Marfa and Balmorhea--what I
call mythic Texas because the ideals of Texan-ness
still seem to exist out there. That part of the state
does something to me, seeing all that land and all
that sky."
Yep. A landing strip out there somewhere. My brother
Buddy said he flew in for a Lowake steak a few years
back. I envy you for the trip out around Van Horn. I
would dearly love to prowl around all of that country
west of Kerrville and what's really funny is that it's
difficult to explain why. I suppose I would like to
see if the ghost of J. Frank Dobie still meanders
around out there somewhere near Fort McKavitt.
Bruce Miller Earle, ingbme@hotmail.com
"I am sad to
inform you of the death of Bill O'Brian at 56 years of
age this past Friday after a brief illness. Most
recently Bill had been the morning man on John
Walton's KWES-FM in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Bill was one
of the original staff announcers at XEROK in Juarez/El
Paso. It seems like only yesterday--it was 1977--and
the three of us were sitting in my living room in
Juarez. I vividly remember Bill scolding me for not
having limes in the fridge to adorn the beers we were
about to drink with our house guest Claude Hall.
After quickly identifying me as 'Pendejo Grande', Bill
was out the door and back with fresh limes before we
could pop the first top. I first met up with Bill
while he was working for Chuck Dunaway at KIKX in
Tucson. From there we both wound up at XEROK where
Bill had the mid-day shift. We stayed in touch over
the years and our friendship never faded. Two of our
mutual friends were the late Gary Perkins and Ray
Potter. Gary had been the PD at KSON in San Diego and
Ray Potter had been the national PD for the Walton
Stations. While we were all close, the friendship
between Bill and them was extremely tight. Both
Potter and Perkins died a few years ago within a short
time of each other. Oddly enough, the last time I
spoke with Bill was this past September when he
brought up our departed friends. He told me that the
Lord worked in mysterious ways like with Potter and
Perkins. He said he knew the only reason God had
taken them both was because He had checked His list
and was running short of Ps. According to Bill, God
had taken the best when he filled his P-list vacancies
with Potter and Perkins. I concur with that and I
know that the Lord now has chosen the best he could
ever hope to find for the O list. Se descansa en paz
mi querido Bill O'Brian. Dios Ben Diga."
Thanks, Bruce, for the stuff on Bill. I still
remember us dancing around with that bright neon tube
under the XEROK transmitter tower in the dark of the
night. Strange night! But we were all a bit strange
in those days, eh! As for Ray Potter, I always
wondered what happened to him. This is the first I've
heard that he was dead. Always liked that son of a
gun. Good radio man.
Tommy Noonan, Tenoonan8@aol.com
"Hey, Claude, so
happy to connect with you (via the email that I
received today) and I have gone back and have read
some of your previous columns--re New York promotion
people. There were Marv & Carl Deane, brothers
who
eventually moved to LA but were back in NY in the 60s.
Other black promotion men were Red Allen, Joe Medlin,
and one other very notable one (and I forget his name
for the minute--will get back with you with his name).
Also in promotion were Bernie Lawrence, Steve
Lawrence's brother, Bill Spitalsky, Joey Grippo, Ray
Free--who pushed you into the gutter when talking to
you--Mel Touroff, Herb Rosen, Gene Armond at Kapp--and
then there was Ben Rosner at RCA, plus others that
just don't come to mind right now, but I'll think of
some others--a la Augie Blume, John Rosica, Stan
Monteiro, Frank Campana, Joe Senkiewicz, Matty
Mathews, etc. Secondly, yes, I left Billboard (after
15 years there) in 1965 but Steve Popovich had not
even come to New York yet--I hired Ron Alexenburg
while at Columbia AND I hired Carl Proctor as the
first black promotion head of a major label--first
ever at a major label who did not have blacks in
promotion, except for Columbia who had a token--but a
great institution in Granny White (Granville) in
Chicago before I hired Carl Proctor to head up a black
staff which he went out and hired. Wasn't Joe
Martin still at Billboard when you joined the staff in
NY? Maybe he had already left Billboard to open up a
distributing firm in New Jersey, which he owned,
called Apex/Martin. But, we will reminisce some more.
Just wanted you to know that I am alive and well and
that I head up (for the past eight years) the
Columbia/Epic Records Alumni Association--of which we
have 430 active members, including Paul Drew, Clive
Davis, Bruce Lundvall, Bob Jamieson, John Rosica,
Morris Diamond (even though he was never with, but
wanted to join anyway), Al Gallico, and tons of
others. I put out a newsletter every two months and
have been doing that for the past eight years. Send me
your address and I'll send you a copy to look at.
Next newsletter due out Dec. 1. In the meantime, have
a great Thanksgiving--great to be reading you again.
Take care, stay well and stay in touch."
Tommy, I owe you an immense apology (and I personally
emailed him to that effect) for my inconsistencies.
When I became a college professor, I adapted quickly
to the ancient stereotypes...i.e., became absent
minded...I could deliver a 50-minute lecture virtually
without notes, but walk out of the classroom and
wonder what my name was! You talk about esoterics, I
knew them all! But the real world gave me trouble.
I'm grateful you're setting the record straight.
Then, another email from Tommy: "Hey, Claude, no
sweat. The line of promotion at Columbia was Bob
Thompson, then Gene Weiss, then yours truly
(1965-1968) then Ron Alexenburg, followed by the
ever-deserving Steve Popovich, when Ron moved to
become head of Epic, and eventually to be followed by
Popovich as head of A&R, to be followed in promotion
slot by Stan Monteiro, etc., etc. I am in close touch
with Ronnie, Steve Popovich, plus many others (like
Hal Webman from BB, NY years ago), Paul Drew, John
Rosica, Clive Davis, Don Dempsey, etc., etc. I left
Billboard in '65, left Columbia in '68 to go to Motown
Records in Detroit, etc., etc. But it's great to be
in touch with you. How are you and your wife doing?
I suffered a terrible setback in December 2001 when my
second wife of 26 years, Sandy, died suddenly--only
sick one day and she was only 54 years of age...it was
a horrible shock at the time. Do you ever get to LA?
If so, let me know. In the meantime, have a great
turkey day this coming week."
(to be continued)
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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