“Yes,” said Walt Disney to the speechless woman, “I do.”

Walt may have surprised the woman in line, but to May and his Disneyland co-workers during the Park’s early years, Walt’s presence was a regular—and often unpredictable—occurrence. In fact, he would often appear and be gone as soon as he learned what he wanted.

“I was testing the Skyway one morning soon after the installation of the new cabins” May recalls. “I was watching them come in when Walt appeared and asked how they compared to the old models. I said that they were much better, and that our line was moving much more quickly. He said, ‘That’s why we spent the extra money,’ and then he was gone.”

“That was just his way,” explains May. “Most of the time he would walk through the Park alone—no security or anyone with him—with his hands in his pockets and his hat brim pulled down low. It was his way of getting a feel for how people were reacting to his park, and finding out what could be done to improve the show.”

Disneyland employees who worked in the Main Street area would often be the only ones with any advance notice of Walt’s visits. That clue was always his big grey Lincoln, which he parked backstage near his private apartment above the Disneyland Fire Station.

Many times he would use the apartment to spend the night in his Park. On those occasions, it was not uncommon to see him walking down Main Street after closing time, coffee pot in hand, en route to a casual meeting with the late-night cleaning crew to fill them in on his latest trip or project.

“Walt was so aware of people, so aware of quality,” stresses May. He gave the final approval on everything–from major construction projects right down to the portions served in the employee cafeteria. He could do this because he cared so much for everybody and everything at the Park.”

It was this facet of Walt’s personality that caught May’s attention, and more than any other, has stayed with him through his own career over the years: Walt’s desire to give the public what they wanted, and his insistence that they always came first.

“I was in charge of the Rafts one day,” May remembers, “and here came Walt through the area on one of his walks. As he was passing, a man recognized him and, after running to catch him, grabbed him firmly by the upper arm. Before Walt could utter a word, the man literally dragged him over to where his wife and child were sitting and said, ‘Here, Walt, I want my kid to meet you.’ And Walt knelt down in front of that little boy and made over him like he was the only child in the world.

“Walt really loved this park,” concludes May. “For him, it was nothing but a labor of love.”

- Originally published in the Disney News Magazine, Fall 1988 (Volume 23, Number 3). A Portion of it was also used in Howard Green’s wonderful book Remembering Walt (Hyperion 1999, page 44). Copyright TWDC. All rights reserved.

To another, he was the voice of “King Louis the Most.”

To Sam Butera and the Witnesses, he was known simply as “The Chief.”

Louis Prima was born one hundred years ago today—December 7, 1910—in the Little Palermo section of New Orleans’ French Quarter. It’s fitting that he came into the world surrounded by a tossed salad of nationalities (his neighborhood was home to Italians, Jews, Middle Easterners and African-Americans), because the music he made throughout his remarkable career was embraced by fans the world over.

For more than five decades, Louis Prima played it pretty for the people, and the people loved him for it.

Originally a violinist, Prima switched instruments following the early success of his older brother Leon, who played trumpet with Jack Teagarden’s orchestra and several others.

The switch to brass made sense for a cool cat with more than nine lives. While Prima may have found his greatest success in the late 1950s and early 1960s fronting Sam Butera and the Witnesses along with wife Keely Smith—creating arguably the most popular Las Vegas lounge act of all time—he had already hit it “big” at least two other times in his mercurial career.

Musical trends (and audiences) have always been fickle. Today’s “Toast of the Town” can just as easily be “toast” by the weekend, something the young Prima grasped early on. He was talented, driven and resilient, and his career was marked by constant re-invention. Beginning with his training in the musical hotbed of New Orleans’ local clubs, he navigated a meandering musical course, leading a small 1930s jazz combo and a 1940s big band before putting Las Vegas (some would suggest “single-handedly”) on the entertainment map in the late 1950s. Along the way, he recorded hundreds of 78s, 45s and LPs, appeared on film, radio and television, and headlined popular nightclubs on both coasts.

For those who remember  his crazy Vegas duets with Smith and Butera, or  the animated antics of King Louis in Disney’s 1967 hit, The Jungle Book (his final career re-invention), check out Swing Cats Jamboree, a Vitaphone short from 1938 featuring Prima and Frank Frederico on guitar. The shuffle rhythms, scat lyrics and crazy antics which made Prima’s music and voice famous decades later are both clearly in evidence during the band’s renditions of “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans” and “Loch Lomand” which bookend this fun film.

As a special treat, we even get to see Louis—who later sported a series of toupees onstage—perform wearing his own hair.

If that isn’t enough evidence of his jazz chops, then take a look at this short segment from Louis Prima: The Wildest, the fine 1999 documentary of his life and career still available on DVD. This particular clip features Prima’s “call and response” duet method, something he perfected with sax great Sam Butera two decades later. Here he works out some musical mayhem with clarinet legend Pee Wee Russell in a scene from Rose of Washington Square.*

—

When jazz combos faded in favor of big dance bands, Prima cast himself in a new light. Building on his strength as a composer (he had penned Benny Goodman’s huge 1938 hit Sing, Sing, Sing), he mounted a big band of his own by the advent of WWII, releasing several original novelty tunes trading on his Italian heritage and language, including Angelina, Felicia No Capicia, Please No Squeeza Da Banana, Eleanor, Baccigalupe (Make Love on the Stoop) and others. In addition, he recorded many popular numbers (including his theme song, Robin Hood and Oh, Marie) which kept his name on the charts.

By the early 1950s, however, musical tastes had evolved again. Even though he had hired a talented 17 year-old Keely Smith as his vocalist in late 1947 (she became his fourth wife in 1953), gigs for the “big” band were few and far between. Within a few years, Prima and Smith found themselves working a diminishing number of dates backed by house bands.

That all began to change when brother Leon reminded his younger sibling of an even younger sax man in their hometown of New Orleans: Sam Butera.

Butera was a local prodigy who’d been named the “Best High School Saxophonist” in 1946 by Look magazine. Prima had recently wrangled a three-year deal to play the lounge at the Sahara Hotel & Casino in nascent Las Vegas, and he needed a band. He put in a call to Sam and his group. Prima re-named them “The Witnesses,” and they joined Louis and Keely on December 26, 1954.

Honed in the harsh and unforgiving environment of the Las Vegas lounge scene, Prima and his new band soon developed a large following, leading one gaming official to complain that while Louis, Keely and the Witnesses were holding court in the Sahara’s lounge and other local spots, “No one gambled.” But what the casino bosses may have lost in gaming revenue, they made up for in beverage sales from the overflow crowds. After blowing away (literally and figuratively) standing room only Vegas audiences for two years, Prima signed the whole gang with Capitol Records. In 1957, the rest of the world was introduced to what the Vegas crowd already knew…that Louis Prima was “The Wildest Act in Show Business.”

And what an act it was.

With Sam and the boys driving the shuffle rhythm, and Keely providing a stoic counterpoint alongside Prima’s exuberant glee (a bit which dated back to Prima’s shtick with his big band vocalist Lily Ann Carol), audiences couldn’t get enough of it. The group mixed re-arranged popular standards, up-tempo medleys and novelty numbers with solos by Keely and Sam and non-stop hi-jinks. It was musical vaudeville, with enough energy to power the lights up and down the rapidly growing Vegas strip.

—

A few of the Louis Prima LPs in my personal collection

Over the years, Prima recorded for a variety of labels, large and small, including Brunswick, Decca, Majestic, Vocalian, RCA Victor, and Columbia, but it was his LPs for Capitol—intentionally recorded to capture the group in a “live” setting”—which really put him on the map. Because Prima was afraid to fly, he and his band didn’t travel far from their home on the range, so successful recordings were a must. Soon, multiple appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and other nationwide programs helped his star move higher in the pop culture firmament.

Here’s a great clip from one of those televised performances, with Sam Butera (sax), Lou Sino (trombone), Bobby Roberts (guitar), Tony Luizza (bass), Paul Ferrara (drums), Willie MacCumber (piano), and a dead-pan Keely pitching in on vocals:

In addition to their recordings with Prima, Smith and Butera (and the Witnesses) released several solo LPs, with Smith’s being particularly popular. Smith also recorded two vocal duets with Capitol label mate Frank Sinatra (something he rarely did) and appeared in a couple of films, including Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum. Butera played the title track and played a small role in the Tony Curtis/Debbie Reynolds film, The Rat Race. But most of their time was spent alongside The Chief, playing it pretty for the people.

Because of their growing popularity, Prima and the band were asked to star in a feature film. Prima agreed on the condition that they could shoot it in Las Vegas around their performing schedule. The resulting feature, Hey Boy, Hey Girl (1959) co-starred actor James Gregory as a local parish priest. Shot in two weeks (with the thinnest of plot lines), it is sought by Prima collectors for songs not available elsewhere.

Later that same year, Prima leveraged his popularity into a unique deal with Dot records. Prima received the proceeds from his LPs and 45s, and paid Dot a royalty! In 1963, he even launched his own label, Prima Microgroove Records, based out of his sprawling estate on Warm Springs Road in South Las Vegas, a huge parcel of land which also included Prima’s private golf course named “Fairway to the Stars.”

Unfortunately, in 1961, at the height their professional success (much like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz), Prima and Smith divorced. Keely went on to a solo career (she signed with Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label), and although Louis continued to perform and record with Sam and the Witnesses (and eventually with his fifth wife, Gia Maione), the combination of the loss of Smith from the act, changes in Vegas entertainment tastes and new musical trends diminished his popularity once again.

Louis Prima in the 1960s

But Prima soldiered on.

In 1965, he provided the voice for “King Louis the Most” in Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book, a gig which renewed his popularity AGAIN, leading to voice work on some additional spoken word Disney LPs.

Songwriter Richard Sherman, who co-wrote most of the film’s songs with his brother Robert, tells of how he flew to Las Vegas to pitch Prima on the role of King Louis. With Prima, Butera and the band standing beside a rehearsal piano, Dick performed the soon-to-be hit, I Wanna Be Like You. Sherman didn’t know that Louis had decided to play a trick on the Academy Award-winner by remaining stoic throughout the comedy number, and he told his band to do the same.

When Sherman finished the number, he was met with seven expressionless faces, until Prima sternly asked, “Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?” When Sherman offered him a weak, “Yes,” Louis and the boys broke into raucous laughter before Prima finally answered, “Well, you got me!”

Even though his personal star was on the wane, his influence continued to be felt in pop music circles. When Sonny & Cher hit network television in the early 1970s,  their on-stage personnas could be easily traced to Prima and Smith.

By the early 1970s, Prima and Butera had returned to New Orleans to entertain at local hotel lounges. In 1973, he experienced a small heart attack. In 1975, a tumor was discovered surrounding his brain stem. He fell into a coma during surgery to remove the tumor, and he never regained consciousness.

Prima died in his native New Orleans on August 24, 1978.

Today, Prima’s music lives on in many ways, from covers by more recent artists (including Brian Setzer’s version of Jump, Jive & Wail and, perhaps more famously, David Lee Roth’s note for note ripoff of Sam Butera’s arrangement of Just a Gigolo/Ain’t Got Nobody) to TV programs, movies and commercials, which continue to license his songs (Elf, Mr. Saturday Night, Casino, etc.). He also figured into the plot line of the film, The Big Night. Setzer even wrote and recorded a song titled Hey, Louis Prima.

At least two of Prima’s children are carrying on the family act, including his son Louis Prima, Jr. and his daughter Lena. Keely Smith also continues to record and perform.

Prima made the news recently, when he received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in July of 2010.

—

* Another great film scene (not currently posted on YouTube but available on DVD) features Prima singing and playing Johnny Mercer’s classic “I’m an Old Cowhand” alongside Bing Crosby, Bob Burns, Martha Raye and Frances Farmer in the 1936 film, Rhythm on the Range.

—

Personal Note: I never saw Louis Prima perform live (my parents caught his act a few times up at Lake Tahoe’s South Shore), but I was fortunate enough to see Sam and Keely perform together in 1992 at Las Vegas’ Desert Inn. A few years later, I spent a couple of weeks in Las Vegas on business. Each night for those two weeks, I made a beeline over to the Desert Inn to catch both sets of Sam Butera and his new band, The Wildest. They were as hot as ever, with Sam taking over Louis’ vocals as if he had sung them all of his life.

After seeing me in the audience at multiple shows, Sam came over to my table to say hello. He introduced me to his band, and let me hang out with them between sets the next couple of nights. What a thrill to hang with Sam and hear his stories about Prima and the early days of Las Vegas.

Sadly, Sam Butera passed away at the age 81 on June 3, 2009.

Note: The post originally appeared on my blog, “Get it. Got it. Good.”

It’s really all Joseph Henry Jackson’s fault.

In June of 2002, I picked up Jackson’s Continent’s End: A Collection of California Writing (1944). As a collector of western lit — specifically on my native California — I regularly thumb through anthologies which expose me to writers unknown to me. And Jackson, a long-time critic and book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, didn’t disappoint. Alongside authors I’d already read and collected (the hugely underrated George R. Stewart as well as Fante, Steinbeck, Corle, Saroyan and Schulberg), were excerpts from Hans Otto Storm’s “Count Ten,” Royce Brier’s “Reach for the Moon” and Idwal Jones’ “China Boy.”

Joseph Henry Jackson's Continent's End (1944), where I first discovered Frank Fenton's work. I was too lazy to take a photo of my copy, so I borrowed this one from eBay.

The excerpt I enjoyed most, however, was a chapter from Frank Fenton’s “A Place in the Sun.” I’d never heard of it, or Fenton. The only “Place in the Sun” I knew was the unrelated film of the same title (adapted from Theodore Drieser’s “An American Tragedy”). So, with the info on it and the other books which piqued my interest, I fired up the computer and hit Bookfinder.

I found everything on my list but Fenton’s work. “A Place in the Sun” didn’t seem to exist. Anywhere. Not on Bookfinder, ABE or Alibris. Not for $15,000 or in dog-eared paperback. Not even — collectors may shudder — an ex-library copy.

I’d been shut out on Bookfinder only once before, searching for the elusive “But He Doesn’t Know the Territory,” Meredith Willson’s wonderful 1959 memoir about the gestation, casting and staging of the Tony Award-winning The Music Man (which I eventually tracked down — signed!). I’m used to finding books I can’t afford, but not finding a hint of one? Where to look?

Then I remembered that Jackson had written in his brief chapter intro that Fenton had “revers[ed] the common progression, [and] began writing movie scripts and worked up to a novel.” Hmm. Movie scripts, eh?

Off to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

On the usually reliable IMDB, I became confused again. Was he the Frank Fenton who wrote or co-wrote more than forty motion pictures, including “The Sky’s the Limit,” plus some Saint and Falcon programmers? Or the actor who appeared in more than eighty films, plus “The Philadelphia Story” on Broadway with Kathryn Hepburn? Were they the same guy? The IMDB lists their credits as one and the same.

But how could a guy who died in 1957 (IMDB again) continue to write for film and TV through 1968? I’ve heard about building up a body of work, but that’s a bit over the top.

So I simply Googled “Frank Fenton.” Aside from the IMDB-related stuff (and a bunch of links to the Fenton Art Glass Company), I found a couple of short quotes from A Place in the Sun which intrigued me further as they were NOT from the excerpted chapter in “Continent’s End.” One website attributed a Fenton quote to the book “Southern California Country: An Island on the Land” (1946) by author, lawyer and activist Carey McWilliams (Volume 14 of 28 in the “American Folkways” series edited by Erskine Caldwell). I picked up a copy and continued sleuthing.

McWilliams mentions Fenton’s novel several times…even uses pull quotes from “A Place in the Sun” to introduce two of his chapters. Upon further study, it turned out that each Place quote I’d read on the Internet is from the Fenton material quoted in McWilliams book, so the websites weren’t quoting directly from Fenton’s novel either.

Didn’t anybody have a copy of it?

McWilliams obviously admired “Place,” and lists Fenton in some heady company:

“No region in the United States has been more extensively and intensively reported, of recent years, than Southern California…And yet, offhand, I can think of only four novels that suggest what Southern California is really like: “The Day of the Locust” by Nathanael West, “Ask the Dust” by John Fante, “A Place in the Sun” by Frank Fenton, and “The Boosters” by Mark Lee Luther.” (pg. 364)

High praise for a novel which no one seems to have read in more than fifty years except through excerpted second or third hand sources.

Months later, something “Fenton” did turn up on Bookfinder. It wasn’t “A Place in the Sun,” but his second novel titled “What Way My Journey Lies” (1946).

Frank Fenton's second (and final) novel, What Way My Journey Lies. The inscription reads: "For Gen -- A good eschatologist from another of the neo-Hypochondriac schools -- Frank Fenton, 6-11-'46." I'd sure love to know what that means.

I ordered it, hoping to enjoy it and learn more about Fenton. Unfortunately, the publisher (low-ender Duell, Sloan and Pearce) offered almost no author information on the dust wrapper, other than that he’d written Place. It was a very good read, about a WWII veteran returning home to a life filled with changing worldviews and difficult choices. When an inscribed first edition (see above right) showed up on Bookfinder a couple weeks later (for a ridiculously low price), I snapped it up as well.

How desperate was I? I discovered and actually bought a German language translation of it (“Platz an der Sonne,” printed in Switzerland in 1945), a purchase which still makes me laugh, since I read very little German. My Fenton library numbered three volumes, but still no (readable) “A Place in the Sun.”

Finally, in May of 2004, almost two years after I read the excerpt in “Continent’s End,” my visits to Bookfinder finally paid off. A bookstore in the Pacific Northwest (no, not Powell’s) listed a stated first edition. I called the store directly, and spoke to the owner, who said she’d just gotten it in that morning. I was unable to keep my tale to myself, and she was genuinely happy for me (maybe she just wanted to get me off the phone), saying “clearly, you deserve this book.”

I couldn’t have agreed more, especially when it arrived the next day in a bright and colorful (unclipped) linen-like dust wrapper with just a bit of chipping to the head of the spine.

The book itself is a surprisingly hefty wartime volume, but Random House was a major publisher, and large scale paper rationing didn’t begin until after it was printed in 1942. It also occurred to me that the wartime pulp drives of the mid-forties may account for the lack of extant copies, and, thusly, my protracted book hunt.

Damn Nazis.

The long-awaited volume. It exists, and it's mine.

A final anxiety was allayed when the story met — and in many ways exceeded — the expectations created by the excerpted chapter. Although “Place” parallels Fante’s “Ask the Dust” in a few ways (each lead character was a writer who’d sold a single story, and each takes a love interest to the ocean at night), it remains unique in many respects. And though I’m not ready to place it alongside “Day of the Locust” just yet, it is a fine work, and it just doesn’t make sense that it remains out of print.

—

And what of Fenton the man (or was that TWO men?)? A quick glance at the dust wrapper answered that question. Frank Fenton the writer and Frank Fenton the actor were NOT one and the same, despite the IMDB listing.

One was an actor — born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1906 — who graduated from Georgetown University, starred on Broadway (alongside Katherine Hepburn) in “The Philadelphia Story,” and who came west to appear in more than eighty large and small screen productions before dying on July 24, 1957. Ironically, his birth name was Frank Fenton Moran, but he dropped the “Moran” to avoid confusion with a more established stage performer.

The other was the writer of “A Place in the Sun” and a pretty large body of other work.

Frank Edgington Fenton was born in Liverpool, England on February 13, 1903, emigrated to the United States in 1906, and graduated from Ohio State University, where he studied journalism. After working his way out to California in the early thirties, he wrote for several magazines (most notably “Collier’s”), and — to quote the author himself from the rear book flap — “kept writing movies and gradually began eating in better restaurants.” He sold his first movie scenario in 1932, and proceeded to write one Broadway play, two novels, nearly twenty magazine articles and more than fifty screenplays and teleplays before dying on August 23, 1971.

It seems that the Fenton confusion goes back several years. In a brief May 6, 1957 Los Angeles Times article about a divorce filing, the writer’s age is accurately given as 54. But in his own obituary, published fourteen years later (August 25, 1971) in the same paper, it is given as 65, the age he would have been if he was born in 1906, the year Frank Fenton Moran was born.

Oops.

It seems that all of this identity confusion may be traced back to some shoddy fact-checking more than three decades ago at the Times obit desk.

Mystery solved.

Not surprisingly, Fenton is mentioned as a contemporary friend of both McWilliams and Fante in multiple scholarly studies of the latter author, and in a recent interview, Fante’s son Dan cites Fenton as a source of his father’s early screenwriting work. In the final installment of his Arturo Bandini stories, “Dreams From Bunker Hill” (1982), Fante also (at least partially) based a character on Fenton, a Hollywood screenwriter named Frank Edgington.

In “Material Dreams,” (1990) noted California Historian Kevin Starr — attributing McWilliams — also lists Fenton as one of the “Boys in the Back Room” (“writers of the minimalist hardboiled school”) who were habitues of Stanley Rose’s Bookshop/Musso & Franks Grill.

In addition to friendships with writers John Fante and Carey McWilliams, he enjoyed a long-term partnership with Lynn Root, with whom Fenton wrote 21 produced film stories and screenplays. They also partnered on the Broadway play, “Stork Mad,” which opened at the Ambassador Theater in New York on September 30, 1936 and ran for a scant five performances.

Ironically, Root — who died in 1997 — really WAS an actor/writer. After appearing in five different Broadway shows, he wrote the stage comedy “The Milky Way,” which was also filmed twice, in 1936 with Harold Lloyd and ten years later with Danny Kaye (Kaye’s version was retitled The Kid From Brooklyn) in the lead role. He also wrote the book for the Broadway musical “Cabin in the Sky” (1940-41), which reached the screen in 1943. Root and his wife Helen served as Best Man and Matron of Honor (and the sole guests!) at Fenton’s wedding to Martel, which took place at the Robertson Community Church in Hollywood on February 27, 1941.

Fenton married twice (in 1941 to actress June Martel and in 1945 to actress Mary Jane Hodge) and was the father of two children (a son, Mark, and a daughter, Joyce, both with Hodge). He was also a fine amateur golfer who often placed high in the standings of studio tournaments and who participated in at least one Southern California Amateur Championship (1943).

In his five-decade Hollywood career, Fenton wrote the screenplays for “Station West” (1948), “Walk Softly, Stranger” (1950), “River of No Return” (1953), “The Wings of Eagles” (1957), and several 1960s teleplays, including the first feature length western produced for television, “The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones” (1966).

Perhaps more importantly to movie buffs, he was finally given posthumous credit (twenty years after his death) for doing the lion’s share of the writing on the screenplay for “Out of the Past” (1947), a film many consider to be a prime example of film noir cinema.

—

I’ll close with a few paragraphs from “A Place in the Sun” (which — trust me — you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else).

Enjoy Fenton’s description of (just) pre-war Los Angeles:

“Down the foothills into the city the air changed. The lingering mist of morning fog was rising and in the fog there was the salt flavor of the sea. Then the shreds of fog melted and the great yellow and white city lay at the mercy of the sun.

He drove down one street after another. It was all beautiful. A million bungalows and mansions of all conceivable architectures; flowers he could not name, and trees he had never seen before. Strange races on the sidewalks: Mexicans, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese.

A strange and wonderful city.

It was not like some Middle-Western city that sinks down roots into some strategic area of earth and goes to work there. This was a lovely makeshift city. Even the trees and plants, he knew, did not belong there. They came, like the people, from far places, some familiar, some exotic, all wanderers of one sort or another, seeking peace or fortune or the last frontier, or a thousand dreams of escape. And all these malcontents had joined in a dreamy effort to create a city of their dreams…

This was a city of heretics. A themeless city with every theme. Chicago, St. Louis and Denver had each been different; each had its own sordidness and strength and fury. Each was lusty and titanic in its own way, joyful and somber in its own way, and each was indubitably American. But not this Los Angeles. It had the air of not belonging to America, though all its motley ways were American. It was a city of refugees from America; it was purely itself in a banishment partly dreamed and partly real. It rested on a crust of earth at the edge of a sea that ended a world.” (pgs. 101-102)

Now, if I could only afford first editions of “Ask the Dust” and “The Day of the Locust”…

—

Postscript: Shortly after I acquired “A Place in the Sun,” I took it to one of my favorite bookstores — Mystery and Imagination/Bookfellows in Glendale, California — to show owner Malcolm Bell. I’d mentioned it on a previous visit, and though he said he had a copy somewhere, he couldn’t remember ever seeing it in a dust wrapper. I figure that if a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of “Firsts” magazine (and frequent contributor to their “Points” column) hadn’t seen the wrapper, I am fortunate indeed to have actually found one.

NOTE: This post merges two previous posts on Frank Fenton and his elusive first novel. Both originally appeared on my blog  “Get it? Got it. Good.”

The landscape of popular music changed dramatically during the final two years that Bud & Travis were back together. Even the year they chose to reunite was pivotal. In 1963, folk music went prime time with the launch of ABC-TV’s Hootenanny! show, but it was also the year that the mighty Weavers — one of the most influential of all folk groups — finally called it quits.

Of course, Bud & Travis had never referred to themselves solely as “folk singers.” Travis had even gently protested that classification at their heralded 1960 live concert in Santa Monica:

“One of the things that is frequently said of Bud and myself is that we’re folksingers…I guess if we sing, and we’re folk…it fits. But we like to do anything that we like. We don’t like to…just stay on one kind of material, but anything that pleases us.”

But this was merely a semantic argument, for no matter what they performed from their vast and varied repertoire, they did it acoustically, which became somewhat of a hindrance on the pop scene after The Beatles crossed the pond in 1964 with their Rickenbackers and Hofners, and “plugged-in” was suddenly “in.” So when B&T disbanded for good in 1965 — the year Dylan went electric — the two returned to solo club dates, where an artist with an acoustic guitar and a song could still find an appreciative audience. Edmonson headed back to the Southwest. Dashiell remained in Los Angeles.

Bud Dashiell’s I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today (W/WS-1731)

—

The times really had changed by 1968, when Dashiell released his final solo album, I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today (W/WS-1731). Instead of the record shipping out alongside LPs by The Kingston Trio (who disbanded in 1967) and The Chad Mitchell Trio (drawing a last breath as Denver, Boise & Johnson), it was marketed alongside Dashiell’s new Warner label mates The Beau Brummels, Harpers Bizarre, The Tokens and — in perhaps the most obvious evidence of a new musical day — The Grateful Dead.

Warner’s top folk franchise Peter, Paul & Mary were still touring, but even they had gone partly electric on 1967′s Album 1700 (on the satirical “I Dig Rock ‘n Roll Music,” among others), and were in the final months of their own Act I.

But Dashiell knew his mind, what he enjoyed and what he wanted to do musically. He’d retained his artistic integrity, and — like Edmonson — was an intelligent man with a good sense of humor and strong opinions. Following popular tastes of the day had never been a big factor for either man, and Dashiell’s liner notes reflected that:

“Who is speaking for the people who don’t get glassy-eyed and snap their fingers and say ‘yeeaahhh, baby’ when one of the paisley crowd drops some obscure verbal hallucination? So many noisemakers have been telling the American people to ‘listen’ that the American people really have started to listen. There are a lot of noncompartmentalized people who like to listen, and I like to talk to them.”

Singers speak through the language of song, and this LP offered up ten tracks for listeners to chew on. The variety is good, with one number from his B&T days, a couple blues chestnuts, three foreign language tunes (two in French from the late, great Gilbert Bécaud) and three songs from younger composers (Randy Newman, Jesse Colin Young and Gordon Lightfoot). Dashiell’s version of “Seasons in the Sun” (with a very tasty guitar intro reminiscent of B&T’s “Raspberries, Strawberries”) predated the schmaltzy Terry Jacks version by six years, but both of them learned it — as Bob Shane used to say in concert — off an old Kingston Trio album (1963′s A Time to Think).

Here’s the songlist as it appeared on the LP:

Side One:

1. I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today (Randy Newman)
2. Et Maintenant (What Now My Love) (Sigman-Delanoe-Becaud)
3. Black Coffee (Webster-Burke)
4. Vereda Tropical (Gonzolo-Curiel)
5. Better Than Anything (Wheat-Loughborough)

Side Two:

1. Seasons in the Sun (Brel-McKuen)
2. Lullaby (Jesse Colin Young)
3. Au Revoir (Gilbert-Becaud)
4. Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
5. Baltimore Oriole (Webster-Carmichael)

As with parts 1 & 2 of this essay, I’d like to offer audio of a few tracks since they are currently unavailable anywhere. Just click on the arrow/triangle in each individual “player” to hear the full-length tune. You won’t even have to leave the page.

First up is the title track, Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today.”

Next is a song that Bud first sang with Travis on ...In Person, a live LP recorded in 1964 at the Cellar Door in Washington D.C. The co-author of the song was with them on stage that night, since David “Buck” Wheat, late of the Kingston Trio and Whiskeyhill Singers, had recently joined the duo as bassist and Arranger Extraordinaire. The song? “Better than Anything.” So here is Bud’s solo version, sans Buck and Travis:

Third, a nylon string tour-de-force by Dashiell on Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain.”

The lovely “Lullaby” is a Jesse Colin Young tune, but Bud makes it own with a gently spoken intro to his own daughters.

Following the release of I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today, Dashiell continued to perform and teach guitar in Westwood through the early 1980s, when he suffered a seizure which severly affected the right side of his body. Less than a month later, Edmonson had a similar stroke, which incapacitated his left side.

Oliver Hassard Dashiell — who was born on September 28, 1929 (amazingly on the very same day as Edmonson) — died on June 2, 1989. Because of his distinguished service as a Battery Commander in the Korean War, he was buried in the Los Angeles National Military Cemetery, which borders the 405 freeway just north of Wilshire Boulevard. He was survived by his wife Mary and his two daughters.

Here’s Bud with a last word, once again from the …Gonna Rain liner notes:

“Right now, I’m an itinerant, a journeyman, a communicator, who wants to do things not because they are in vogue (I’ve been there) but because I am ready to talk of what I think, where I’m at, and how I feel a closeness to ideas like love, children, and my life.”

And with that, I say “Au Revoir” to Bud Dashiell.

(l to r) Michael Johnson, David Boise and John Denver circa 1968

With national politics in the air once again (whether or not you like what’s “blowin’ in the wind” is up to you), it seems more than appropriate to revisit a tiny portion of the 1968 presidential campaign, specifically this musical ditty from Denver, Boise & Johnson, a group which evolved from The Chad Mitchell Trio. This cut (subtitled This Year’s Model) and Take Me To Tomorrow (the flip side of the Reprise 45) are the only known commercial recordings of DB&J. The stereo track below is taken from an early 70s Warner Bros. “Loss-Leader” 2-LP set titled Hard Goods.

The CMT had a history of mixing humor and political satire into their tight vocal harmonies (starting with the classic The John Birch Society), and the tradition continued through a series of personnel changes. In 1964, they became The Mitchell Trio (to become more egalitarian), and recorded a couple more LPs under that moniker before namesake Chad Mitchell left for solo pastures. He was replaced by a “jaunty lad” (as he was described in the That’s the Way it’s Gonna Be LP liner notes) named John Denver.

Yes, THAT John Denver.

In 1966, member Joe Frazier (no, not THAT Joe Frazier) moved on as well, and was replaced by David Boise (pronounced “boyz,” not like the city in Idaho). When the final original CMT member — Mike Kobluk — left the following year, he was replaced by Michael Johnson, and the group became DB&J until 1969, when the three went off to solo and sideman careers.

Of course, history also tells us that Richard M. Nixon won the 1968 election despite the vocal efforts of DB&J. Maybe it was that “Sock it to me?” appearance on Laugh-In…

Other links to DB&J performances:

Click HERE for some Denver, Boise and Johnson performances on YouTube

Click HERE for some wonderfully rare live recordings of DB&J as well as a few early solo sets by John Denver.

NOTE: This site (cincinattidancingpigs.com) also has some great photographs, marvelous song-by-song notes of each concert set, and excellent fact-filled personal stories. If you’re a fan of John Denver, the Chad Mitchell Trio (or, for that matter, DB&J), you should check it out.

Read Joshua 1-4

Some stories recall triumph and victory. Others evoke hardship, brokenness and pain, and leave us wondering “if only, if only…” But all stories have at least one thing in common: they take us to a place in time – sometimes to a time before our own – to experience a moment, learn a lesson, or examine a decision.

God uses stories to teach us His truth.

Joshua knew all the stories. He was God’s handpicked successor to Moses. He’d stood beside his mentor to celebrate the triumphs over Pharaoh, and mourned the willful disobedience of the people. Because of his faithfulness, he was chosen to lead the new generation into the Promised Land. Just as significantly, he was instructed to tell the stories – stories he had witnessed and heard – so that the people would remember God’s mercy and grace, and His great love for them.

The Israelites must have had mixed emotions as they looked across the Jordan River. The joy of seeing God’s promise about to come true filled them with excitement, and yet their anxiety was most likely at an all-time high. Taking the land and conquering its inhabitants would not be an easy task. But if Joshua had learned anything over the years, it was to obediently follow God’s word. So while the people rested, he made final preparations.

Imagine some of the conversations as the people looked across the Jordan to the Promised Land.

When three days had passed, Joshua called everyone together. The night before he’d said that the Lord would do great wonders among them, and his instructions that morning were more specific as he reminded them of God’s wonderful promises. When the priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the river – he told them – the water would part, and everyone would cross the riverbed on dry land. The people were amazed. They had heard the miraculous story of the Red Sea crossing. Now they were about to live it for themselves.

When the crossing was completed, Joshua instructed one man from each tribe to select a stone from the middle of the Jordan and construct a monument in their camp. An identical pile was created in the riverbed. When these memorials were completed, Joshua made sure there was no confusion regarding their significance.

“When your children ask, ‘what do these stones mean?’” he instructed simply, “tell them the story of what happened here, and about the power of the Lord.”

Stories continue to serve a vital function in our lives. Through them, we learn vastly more than we could ever experience alone. And yet we must constantly remind ourselves to listen closely, for – much like the Israelites – we are a forgetful people. If we ignore the stories, we will probably miss out on some essential truths that God is trying to teach us.

What great stories have you heard or experienced lately?

Who are YOU going to tell them to?

I was a corporate speechwriter in a past work life, so writing books for others was a smooth and logical transition for me. Why? I’d become adept at writing in voices besides my own.

But even if you haven’t written speeches or scripts, you can do it. All you need is skill, a collaborative spirit, an open mind, and a good ear. Oh…and an assignment.

Need more encouragement?

Here are five good reasons to become a ghost:

1. People with good book IDEAS outnumber good writers at least ten to one (no hard data here, just a gut feeling based on dozens–possibly hundreds–of conversations with prospective “authors”), and the world is full of subject matter experts who can’t write to save their intelligent souls. This translates to potential job security for you, a person who CAN write.

2. Good writers write to learn. As John McPhee has said, “the fresh eye is a distinct asset.” Ghostwriting for a subject matter expert in a genre outside your own will broaden your experience and personal knowledge, which may expand the market for your own work.

3. Publishers don’t care who writes the book. They just want it to be written so they can package, market and sell it. Publishers keep lists of “can-do” writers, women and men who have proven to deliver the goods. If you make it onto one or more of these lists, you can celebrate Reason 1 above.

4. Writing a book for/with a subject matter expert automatically gives you a partner in the process. Your collaborator may not have your writing chops, but they WILL have passion for the subject AND getting the work to market. One improves the final product, and the other drives the process to completion.

5. Finally, learning the structure and process of producing a book manuscript–and how the publishing world operates–while writing for someone else will absolutely help you when you pitch your own book projects.

That said, your work needs to be good…but that’s a given for ALL of your writing.

- Craig

“If a person saying he was something was all there was to it, this country’d be full of rich men and good-looking women. Too bad it isn’t that easy. In short, when someone says you’re a writer, that’s when you’re a writer…not before.”

Good advice. But where do you find some “someones” who count?

A few years ago, I entered my first feature-length screenplay in five reputable contests. All things considered, it fared well. The PAGE awards chose it as a Semi-Finalist in the Drama category, and three others (including Scriptapolooza) rated it as a Quarter-Finalist. These honors gave me the inalienable right to do, well, pretty much do what I just did.

Boast about it a little.

No studio deal, no sack of cash flung toward my front door from a passing stretch limo…just some very limited bragging rights.

But was my experience limited as well?

In retrospect, I don’t think so. At the very least, a writing contest guarantees that your work will be read by others, and that’s at least part of the goal, right?

The best part of any writing contest is that none of the readers know you from Adam or Eve, which guarantees some level of honest assessment. Sure, a reader may have a hidden agenda, hate your log line, or love slasher films (when the only knife in your script is used to spread Camembert sensuously across French bread), but so what?

Their coverage will–at the very least–balance out the biased input from family and friends who suggest that walking on water would be a snap for someone with your writing chops.

Quite frankly, I re-read that first screenplay recently, and was surprised it fared as well as it did!

So until the studios come calling (or emailing, or…whatever studios do when they like stuff), I’ll be satisfied with the judgment of several astute contest readers who — by virtue of their positive reaction to my work — consider me a writer.

(adapted from an earlier blog post on “Get it. Got it. Good.”)

Richard “Dick” Lane was born in Rice Lake, Wisconsin on May 28, 1899. After early success as an announcer and emcee (and as an “iron jaw” act in various circuses…an odd occupation for such a gifted talker), he came to Broadway in 1928, where he appeared in the long-running comedy Present Arms. In 1930, he appeared in the Vanderbilt Revue alongside eventual film and radio co-star Joe Penner (the subject of my Wanna Buy a Duck? website, where you’ll find plenty of info, video & photos of Lane).

Lane made his film debut beside Bob Hope in the 1935 comedy Shop Talk, and following 110 stage performances of George White’s Scandals of 1936 (where he appeared with Bert Lahr, Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards and Rudy Vallee, among many others), it was off to Hollywood for good.

In this rare autographed photo from the set of RKO’s 1938 feature I’m From the City, Dick Lane (third from right) receives a birthday cake from star Joe Penner. Also in the shot to the left of Penner are (l to r) director Ben Holmes, Kay Sutton and Lorraine Krueger. Co-star Kathryn Sheldon is on the far right. Check out stuntman/gorilla performer (yes, you read that correctly) Charles Gemora’s sketch of himself at far left.

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Starting with RKO’s New Faces of 1937 (where he portrayed a conniving stockbroker opposite Milton Berle), he appeared in six of Joe Penner’s feature films, as well as on the comedian’s CBS radio program, The Park Avenue Penners. In the 1947-48 season, he starred as Oliver Anderson in his own syndicated radio series, The Anderson Family (to stream or download an episode, click HERE).

Frequently cast as a fast-talking con-man, carnival barker or grifter, he was also at home in roles on the good side of the law. From 1941 (when Penner passed away) to 1949, he portrayed Inspector Farraday in thirteen Boston Blackie program pictures for Columbia Studios. He also was cast as a baseball coach in The Babe Ruth Story, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and The Jackie Robinson Story.

Lane was born with the gift of gab, and could keep up a steady patter with the best in the business. By the late 1940s, he’d largely returned to his first love, the announcer’s booth, both in film roles and the new medium of television.

Dick Lane at work in the KTLA broadcast booth

As Dick Lane, he is perhaps best known to 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles sports fans as the ubiquitous broadcast voice of wrestling, roller derby (The Los Angeles Thunderbirds) and midget auto racing, among many other sports. He was a regular on The Spade Cooley Show, and his work for station KTLA’s weekly variety show, Dixie Showboat, earned him an Emmy nomination in 1951. He is also fondly remembered for his Chevrolet commercials, where he slapped the fenders of the cars to accentuate his sales pitch.

He frequently used the phrase “Whoooaaah, Nellie” to punctuate the action on his wrestling and roller derby broadcasts, and it was soon adopted by a young Keith Jackson. To his credit, Jackson has always attributed the phrase to Lane.

Dick Lane made his final film apearance in Kansas City Bomber (1972), starring Raquel Welch.

For two brief recordings (and a really bad screen capture photo) of Lane in the broadcast booth (including a terrific “Whoah, Nellie” at a “Gorgeous George” wrestling match), click HERE for a brief article with two Dick Lane audio/video links.

Here’s a short scene from The Day the Bookies Wept, starring Joe Penner. That’s Lane on the left:

For a video clip featuring Lane and Penner from I’m From the City, click HERE.

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Lane died on September 5, 1982 in Newport Beach, California. He was inducted into the Southern California Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2002.

(adapted from an earlier blog post on “Get it. Got it. Good.”)