A while ago we asked the question, What would you like to see on our website?
The universal answer was (of course,) more stories about the ‘good old days.’ Some stories we’ve told over and over, like writing ‘Should I Say Yes’ in a full-blown [pun intended] tornado.
Is there anything left to say?
Valerie and I sat down and brainstormed, and came up with a pretty good list. We’ll take them in the order that they occurred to us. Here’s story #4.
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.
The ‘Best Location in the Nation,’ or the ‘Mistake on the Lake.’
Choose one.
I was raised by kind foster parents, the Sheldons, till I was ten. That summer, they shipped me and all my belongings out to L.A. to live with my mother. The first thing we did was go to Taco Bell, where she turned me on to Mexican food. They didn’t have that in Cleveland in 1966. (It’s off-topic, but Taco Bell at that time had about six items, and they all cost 24 cents.)
We rented a tiny house in San Pedro, the Port of Los Angeles. My mom, she insisted that I call her Dorothy, worked three jobs. So I was suddenly on my own. That suited me fine.
Wandering the neighborhood, I met a half-Filipino kid named Michael. I wouldn’t say that we were exactly friends. For a while, he used to beat me up when I got off the school bus. Gradually, I got to know the family, Betty, a single mom, and Michael’s older brother, Philip.
Philip was a follower of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. He turned me on to the black A.M. station, KGFJ 1230, “The Sound of Black America.”
Back in Cleveland our musical tastes ran more toward Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and the Baja Marimba band. (Uncle Tony was a professional trombone player.)
For Christmas I got a portable radio complete with a three-speed turntable. I carried it everywhere and became an overnight convert to the Church of Soul Music. KGFJ was a window into another planet. This was the Golden Age of Soul. Motown, Stax, and regional labels like King and Brunswick were putting out their greatest work.
(Image by Joe Haupt)
There was a black family who lived up the alley from our house. With Dorothy gone all the time, I started hanging out there. Frank and Amanda Miller had five kids. Two of them were deaf/mute. Frank was building a supercar in the garage, a souped-up ’49 Plymouth. Amanda taught me how to dance the ‘Popcorn.’ I could go on and on about them, but anyway…
One day Amanda says, “I’m going to the record store. What song do you want?”
I chose, Say A Little Prayer, recorded by Dionne Warwick.
And she bought it for me, my first Soul 45.
Others would follow. James Brown had a new single out every other week. I loved Smokey and the Miracles, The Four Tops, and The Meters. A new record would come out of my portable radio on the morning trip to school. As soon as school was out, I’d get 69 cents in my sweaty paw and run down to the little black record store, Jesse’s Records, on Gaffey Street.
Fast forward twenty years.
Our band, Nu Shooz, is appearing on Solid Gold, and the host is…
Dionne Warwick!
My first Soul 45.
The camera’s rolling. The red light is on.
She says, “Now here’s Nu SHOOZ, with I CAIN’T Wait.”
