This is a work in progress

Attila’s “When/Come Out” is one of my fave West Coast private 45s. The top side, “When,” is the one that gets all the attention with its two-note, Count Fivey fuzz intro, close-to-acid punk organ, and bee buzz-soloing. When the adenoidal vocals kick in, it gets a kind of a primitive, garagey Strawberry Alarm Clock sound, before going into a marching beat break with an improvised distorto-guitar lead, followed by a sped-up Ray Manzarek organ solo and then back into the two-note intro fer the outro. Totally incredible. The flip, “Come Out,” is even better. Again kicking it off with two notes (this time on organ), it’s a moody teenage attempt at being heavy with poetry class rhymes like “Give me one more try before I die.” Then they guys rip into the riff from the Four Seasons “C’mon Marianne” (which the Doors would also rip off for “Touch Me”) with another great Manzarek organ solo over it. Then it’s back to the verse and adieu with a fuzzy rave-up outro.

We tracked down Attila Galamb (who was listed as the writer of “Come Out”) a couple years ago and he was happy to fill me in a little on the story of that record and his musical career. When this record came out, Galamb was only fourteen and living with his parents in North Hollywood. He’d already had a full career in the music biz. A child prodigy, he came to Canada from his native Hungary after the 1956 revolution. His father, a bandleader back in Europe, began teaching him music and the younger Galamb picked it up quickly. By age eight he was the sole source of income for his family, playing about eleven different instruments, including sax, clarinet, piano, harmonica, and accordion. At ten he’d performed at the Hollywood Bowl, Radio City Music Hall and was sponsored by the Hohner company. He’d even appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show playing his saxophone in 1964 just a few months after the Beatles.

In late ’66 Galamb’s father decided they should be releasing some music. “I recorded my first couple of records in 1967,” Galamb recalls. “I couldn’t get a record deal so my dad and I just started our own label, I joined ASCAP, recorded our own masters at Gold Star and pressed up a few thousand 45s and sold them at my personal appearances and concerts through out the country.” The first release on Attila Records is “Sax-O-Phun/Bonanza” (A-1000). We haven’t heard this one but the a-side is a cover of an old Rudy Weidoeft jazz song, while the flip is a Galamb original and not the theme song from the tv show. The artist is listed as Attila Galamb playing alto sax on one side and accordion on the other. Next was “A Lonely Day/Banana Split” (A-1001). The A-side is a moody easy-listening instrumental with Galamb on clarinet while the flip is more of a groovy instro with tenor saxophone. Again the artist is Attila Galamb. Neither of these records are very “rock.”

At some point in ’67 however, Galamb fell in with a new crowd. Like most kids in the mid-’60, the teenager was inspired by the new sounds coming through the radio. Already a more-than-proficient musician, Galamb knew he could do it too and looked to get in on that scene. “I met 14-year old drummer Randy Ezratty who introduced me to his 13-year-old buddy, guitarist Art Laboe Jr. (son of Art Laboe of Original Sound fame). The three of us started a rock group.” They decided to call the group Attila.

The three teens went to work immediately, rehearsing and working out song arrangements. “I co-wrote six original tunes that we recorded in Hal Mooney’s home studio in Glendale somewhere,[1] Galamb told me. “We pressed them up and I continued trying to sell them.” The best of the lot is the aforementioned “When/Come Out” 45 (A-003). “I recorded that in a home studio with Art Laboe Jr. on guitar in the summer of 1967 when I was 14 and he was 15.” Of course the senior Laboe had released the Music Machine on his Original Sound label and it’s feasible that Galamb and Art Jr. witnessed some of the magic happening at the Original Sound studios on Sunset with Paul Buff at the board and Keith Olsen’s fuzz box in full effect. Clearly the guys were influenced by the Doors, especially Galamb who was already a wiz at the organ thanks in part to his sponsorship by Hohner. “I was one of the first to play a Hohner ElectraVox, a precursor of the Accorgan and other electronic keyboards,” he told us. Galamb’s tune “Come Out” (Laboe wrote “When”) particularly shows a Doors influence and is especially reminiscent of “Touch Me” which didn’t come out until late ’68. Of course the Doors stole the riff from “C’mon Marianne” which was released in June of ’67. Unless Galamb is wrong about when he recorded “Come Out,” he and and the Doors both had the same idea, Galamb just beat them to it by a year!

It seems to me that at least two 45s on the Attila imprint came from these sessions. We know “When/Come Out” did, and its follow-up “Sound of Love/Rock Rhapsody” (A-004) sounds like the same group. “Rock Rhapsody” is just arranged by Galamb so it may be based on a classical composition. It’s an instrumental with heavy organ, sax, and what sounds like some of that same distorted guitar from “When.” “Sound of Love” features Galamb singing over some prominent organ. It’s a slow number with some fuzzy guitar bursts, sort of a “Come Out” part two. This had to have been released at least by mid-‘68 as by February of ‘69 (as we shall see) Galamb was out on tour. We’ve never seen (A-002) but possibly it contains the other two songs Galamb remembers co-writing in ’67. Details of the group are few (hopefully Galamb can fill in a few more) but it seems they were in existence from the summer of ’67 to the end of ’68 when they split. Remembers Galamb, “After the records did not do particularly well, we just broke up the band. We never had a chance to perform live but once or twice that I can remember around town.”

When the band broke up it seems that Galamb went back to his old ways and went out on tour for a few months to make some money playing more “traditional” music. A newspaper article from a Florida paper dated Feb. 23^rd ’69 shows the 17-year old looking pretty straight-laced, in a suit with parted hair. There is no mention of any acid rock recordings, instead he’s just “a teen-age boy who has been thrilling school children, their teachers and parents throughout America with his musical genius.”

When he returned from the ’69 U.S. tour, Galamb told us he settled down in Highland Park, a neighborhood along the Arroyo Grande, halfway between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena, and most famous for being home to Jackson Browne before he made the big time. There Galamb settled down for a while. “I lived there from 1969 to 1973 and built an 8-track garage studio where I recorded a lot of singers, artists, and produced a lot of cheap B-movie soundtracks up until about 1970 when I relocated it to Hollywood. That is where I recorded tons of stuff for records, for other people and for some of the world’s worst movies such as the 4-D Witch. That was a funny experience.”

An occult softcore doozey, Psyched by the 4-D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) was released in 1973. Galamb laughingly calls it an “abomination.” The film appears to have been shot on 16mm on and around what looks like the USC campus. It’s pretty umm, “psychedelic” and seems to have been shot earlier than ’73, what with all the liquid light show effects. Galamb’s theme song “Beware of the 4-D Witch” features driving guitar, effecty keyboards and some schmaltzy singing credited to someone named Johnny by the Way. The words and melody are not Galamb’s either, they were written by one Joe Bisko, an aspiring blue movie producer whose sole release, Dingle Dangle (1966) was advertised as a XXX tale “from the land of the Golden Gate.” It featured a couple of “actresses” from Behind the Green Door and guest appearances by our man Johnny by the Way and one Ed Sanders, who may or may not be the poet/Fugs founder. Interestingly, Sanders was in San Francisco in November of ’65 as the Fugs played the first benefit for Bill Graham’s Mime Troupe with the Jefferson Airplane and Sandy Bull, so who knows what he got up to!

The theme song was released on a promotional two-sided 45 with an instrumental version on the flipside. Galamb’s name is nowhere to be seen and the only info listed is a Hollywood Blvd. address and phone number for Coastline Music Publication. Possibly this was Galamb’s new studio. We’re still looking into what else Galamb recorded in his studio(s) and whether or not anything else was released, as he told us, “I actually wrote some great material that never saw the light of day, but also some crap that got some pretty wide release.”

By the time he was of legal age, Galamb was done with Hollywood business. “I worked nonstop in music until I was about 21,” he told us, “When I finally got burned out of it, got married, moved to Reno, Nevada with my wife and got into the business of running a productions studio producing radio and TV commercials and eventually owned and operated a full service advertising agency.” Drummer Randy Ezratty would later become Vice President of Sirius Satellite Radio. Laboe Jr. may have been one of KRLA’s “Hitmen” who in the ‘70s who were sent out hand out cash to people who displayed a KRLA sticker on their car. Rumor has it he died of a drug overdose.

It seems like there are at least four Attila 45s on the Attila label.
Bonanza/Sax-O-Phun (A-1000)
A Lonely Day/Banana Split (A-1001)
? (002)
When/Come Out (A-003)
Sound of Love/Rock Rhapsody (A-004)

[1] Hal Mooney was the staff arranger at Mercury up until about this time when he moved to Universal Studios to work on tv shows.

Thanks to Westex for posting the audio!

Paul and I have been digging around lately trying to get the scoop on a guy named Tony Harris. I’d been noticing his involvement on some interesting records over the years and thought maybe it’s time to put together what we know and cast it out there to see what comes back.

This is a work in progress…

The Tony Harris were talking about here recorded a pair of fantastic 45s for a Los Angeles-based imprint called Dee Gee Records in the mid-‘60s. Harris’s Dee Gee output is a little hard to pin down stylistically. His first two-sider is “Honey/Scorpio,” with “Honey” being a solid sort of leftover teener kind of sound and “Scorpio” a completely different animal. Beginning with a cryptic spoken word intro, Harris kicks in with some hard protest-style acoustic guitar strumming, and begins piling on some freaky downer Dylan-influenced lyrics (“Just remember watchers are all waiting and blue lemmings pick apiece my brain”). It’s a pretty heavy trip. The second Tony Harris record on Dee Gee is “Super Man/How Much Do I Love You.” “Super Man” is a raw and snotty folk rock ode to the superhero in the vein of the Turtles best work. The flip is even better, moody and introspective—a great piece of baroque-Sunset Strip songwriting, very Mystic Males.

Then I remembered I had another Dee Gee 45 and dug it out. It’s by a guy named Darrius. I’d had it for a few years but somehow never noticed that its “How Much Do I Love You” was the same song. Doy. The production and writing credits belong to Tony Harris too. The final straw was placed in the Luxuria Music studios. I was just finishing up my show and Howie Pyro was getting ready for his show, Intoxica! He handed me a 45 and said, “You should have this. It took me years to find my copy and I just found a second. It’s amazing.” I quickly recognized that familiar Dee Gee silver and black, and yep, there it was, Deborah Walley’s “Sometimes in the Darkest Hour,” written and produced by Tony Harris. As soon as I got home I emailed Paul and told him it was time to start sleuthing.

While other folks have casually attempted to unravel the Tony Harris mystery by speculating in forums and elsewhere, no one seems to have gotten very far. First off, we’re pretty certain that our Tony Harris is not the same Tony Harris who recorded three 45s for the Los Angeles R&B label Ebb Records in the late ‘50s. That Tony Harris, we have been assured, was Black. Soooo….

•••

The earliest appearance of our Tony Harris seems to be as a co-writer on a song called “Carmen P.” which showed up on the flip of “Do the Philly” by an L.A. group called the Citations (Princess 54). It’s an instrumental number and Harris shares writing credit with John Marascalco and Richard Delvy. Marascalco was a producer and co-wrote some of Little Richard’s hits including “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Rip it Up.” Delvy was the drummer for surf groups the Bel-Airs (“Mr. Moto”) and the Challengers, as well as an up-and-coming producer for the Vault and (his own) Triumph imprints. Sometime in ’63 Marascalco and Delvy partnered on a label called Princess. The only other releases we can find on Princess are the Surfaris’ “Surfer Joe/Wipe Out” (P 50) and the Travelers’ “Spanish Moon/Everywhere I Go” (P 52) though the catalog numbers suggest there were at least a couple more.[1] A German researcher named Andreas Grabsch posted something interesting on a Harry Nilsson site that Marascalco kept a stable of young writers at hand— including Harry Nilsson and Tommy Boyce—to write numbers for him. Nilsson in fact is one of the writers credited on “Do the Philly,” so Harris’s first release may also actually be one of Nilsson’s earliest as well! Grabsch also claims “there also was a pool of musicians from the surf genre around Princess Records (the Challengers, the Surfaris, Tony Harris, and Richard Delvy himself), who were often used for studio work and also for some [thrown together] instrumentals, which filled the flip sides like ‘Carmen P.’ behind ‘Everybody Philly’.” There are a couple things fishy about this statement. First off, there really was no Princess records scene. The Surfaris were from way inland in Glendora and probably never even met Marascalco and Delvy, who licensed the record from another label. Likewise the Travelers were an Arizona-based band and their record was licensed from a Tucson label. Westside musician/Western actor Ron Heiss, who wrote a couple sides for the Challengers, does recall bringing Travelers guitarist Ron Story up to California a few times. He told artyfactsinwax.blogspot.com last year, “Ron and I spent quite a bit of time in Hollywood as we cut deals with the Vault and Princess Record labels,” and he possibly could’ve been around long enough to lay down some tracks. Mostly though it would have been the Challengers who would have been around and available for studio work. As for Harris, nobody seems to remember him as being part of that South Bay surf group scene at all. It is quite possible however that he was one of the aspiring “writer” types hanging around Marascalco’s studio, especially considering his later achievements and the fact that he appears to have been studying music at USC at the time.

The relative success of “Do the Philly/Carmen P.”—which would eventually be picked up nationally in June of ‘65 by Roulette Records (R 4623)—apparently gained Harris enough clout with Delvy to release his own record on Triumph. “Go Go Little Scrambler/ Poor Boy” (T 60) saw the light in May of ’65, credited to Tony Harris with the Woodies. It’s a great proto-garage/hot rod 45 with the top being a vocal cash-in on the Southern California motorbike craze (i.e. the Sandells “Scrambler!”, the Beach Boys “Little Honda,” and Ronny and the Daytonas “Little Scrambler”), while the flip is an attacking proto-garage teener. Both songs were penned by Harris and engineered by Mike Lietz who’d go on to produce Spirit, Fever Tree, and the International Submarine Band. A double-sided acetate of this single recently popped up on eBay. It featured a generic Richard Delvy Productions/Miraleste Music Co. label. Miraleste, by the way, was the name of a street (and later a school) in Palos Verdes where most of the Challengers grew up. Could Harris have South Bay roots as well?

Wherever Harris was from, he seems to have slipped in and out of the studio without much fanfare as I asked Challengers bassist Randy Nauert (who usually remembers everything!) about the session and it didn’t ring any bells. Delvy unfortunately passed away a couple years ago so we can’t ask him. We do know that we know the Woodies was just another name for the Woods, a group that sang on several folk rock and surfer-style sides—a great one for Triumph in xxx of ‘65 (“Broken Marionette/Can’t Seem to Get Over You”) (T 62), the theme for the television show Ninth Street Beat, and a couple sides for GNP Crescendo after that. The Woods were a Hermosa Beach vocal group consisting of Richard George, Ray Duron, and John Mead. There were close connections between the Challengers and the Woods, specifically “Can’t Seem to Get Over You” was written by Challengers guitarist Ed Fournier and the Woods provided vocals on some Challengers recordings. In fact, the same recording of “Can’t Seem to Get Over You” was released as the flip of a Challengers 45 “Channel Nine” (Vault 918) in the spring of ’65 and San Bernardino/Riverside Top-40 station KXFM even spotlighted the release in its “Tiger Touts” the week of 6/5/65. The song also appears on a Richard Delvy-issued Challengers e.p. that was passed out by the band in soliciting gigs.[2] We recently tracked down Woods member Richard George but he too remembers little of the mysterious Harris, saying, “We met him at Sunset Sound when we recorded the vocals for “Go Go, Little Scrambler” and “Poor Boy.” That was it. I never saw him again.”

Sometime in the summer of ‘65 a Richard Delvy Productions acetate came out credited to Tony Harris. RDP 63 has a Harris composition called “You Know What You You Can Do”—a brooding Stones-style punker with a “Time Is On My Side” bridge—on top. The flip of the acetate is another Harris number, a Beatles-ish jangler titled “I Love the Words.” In September these songs were officially released on Triumph (T 63) as the Lincoln Greens. Interestingly, the exact same recording of “You Know What You Can Do” also showed up on the B-side of a Dylan cover by a group called the Bows And Arrows that same year. “I Don’t Believe You/You Know What You Can Do” (GNP 356) was released by GNP Crescendo on Sept. 4^th, 1965 and produced by Delvy. It seems that the Bows and Arrows and the Lincoln Greens may have been the same group, or more correctly, both studio lineups manufactured by Harris and Delvy, possibly a trick Delvy had gleaned from Marascalco. I would further that it’s a pretty sure bet that Harris singing on these cuts. Oddly, a Sept. 4 issue of KRLA Beat magazine has an article entitled “West Coast Clamors for Dylan Tunes” which mentions that the Lincoln Greens will be releasing a cover of Dylan’s “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” backed by “You Know What You Can Do.” As far as we can tell this 45 was never released but instead GNP Crescendo picked it up and released it as the Bows and Arrows, while Delvy put his friend Harris’s  “I Love the Words” on the flip instead. The GNP issue seems to have been released only promotionally though the Triumph release is stock.

•••

Meanwhile, on July 17^th , 1965, Billboard magazine announced that “Tony Harris has signed a contract with Dee Gee Records as writer-producer for the label’s artists and recording sessions, and for acts under Dee Gee Productions slated for tours and night club engagements.” Not to be confused with Dizzy Gillespie’s Dee Gee imprint outta Chicago, this Dee Gee was L.A.-based and started by a woman named Doris Gilbert. We think she’s the same Doris Gilbert who was a television writer in the ‘50s. If it is her, she had basically retired from the biz by the early ‘60s; married actor Harry Lauter; taken up landscape painting in Ojai; and backed a small record label. There are several Hollywood connections to the label and a couple of releases were musical efforts by actresses. As we shall see Harris too had Hollywood movie connections. Gilbert it seems had some Hollywood pull and for extra insurance brought KRLA Beat columnist Julian Portman on board as an iterant staff producer, perhaps as a reward for plugs like, “Business woman in a field normally reserved for tough-minded men, will be the theme of an article to appear in Vogue magazine. The story is on Doris Gilbert, prexy of Dee Gee records, and should be a model for all our female teen readers.” In its year-plus run, Dee Gee released fifteen or so 7” releases ranging from early folk rock and garage to girl group/soul and more pop vocally kind of stuff. Producers for the label included Jerry Styner and Norm Ratner, who produced the Leaves and would go on to start Penthouse Records. Some folks over at the G45 Central forum put together a complete Dee Gee discography you can check out if you’re curious but here we’re gonna try and deal only with the releases that Harris was directly involved with and/or are relevant to our sesh.

To get things rolling, Dee Gee execs (Harris? Ratner?) began auditioning acts at a club called the Crescendo Tiger’s Tail located in Hollywood next to the Playboy Club. It had been Gene Norman’s club (hence the name of his label GNP Crescendo Records) and would later become the Trip and launch the Byrds career, but in the summer of ’65 the management let local djs have their own night. Dave Diamond’s (KHJ) night showcased the Turtles and Reb Foster (KFWB) had his own night as well. It is not known who all Dee Gee auditioned but we do know that on August 14^th Billboard announced that along with Nat King Cole’s little brother Ike, “new pactees with Dee Gee Records are Jeannie Haywood, the Messengers, Frisby Clemens and Darius.” Actress Deborah Walley put pen to paper a week later and Harris went to work quickly booking the label’s groups into the studio that summer.

Dee Gee’s first release was the aforementioned Darrius record, “How Much Do I Love You/Lonely Boy” (DG 3001). Both sides were produced and the top was written by Harris, while the flip was credited to Harris and Darius (the song’s publishing credit actually reads “Darius, pseudonym of Robert J. Ott, & Tony Harris”). A native Ohian, Ott apparently moved to Los Angles sometime in 1964. How he met up with Harris is unknown—possibly through the audition night at the Tiger’s Tail—but the two soon went into the studio and began writing together and publishing (at least one song) through Harris’s Bolinger publishing company. Darrius’s version of “How Much Do I Love You” has a very similar arrangement to what Harris’s would later have, but with a brisker paced backing track; the main difference being the singer’s higher, dreamier voice and soulful outro. The single warranted a Chart Spotlight in Billboard on Sept. 4^th, the same week the Bows and Arrows’ Dylan cover did as well. Harris was getting face time all over the trade mag charts in L.A. that summer!

Things were still going Harris’s way in September when KRLA Beat magazine announced Dee Gee’s second release, Tony Harris-“Honey/Scorpio” (3002), fawning, “Tony Harris, Dee Gee Records’ young bundle of talent, wrote, arranged, produced and sang the label’s hot-off-the-press release of “Honey.” Dee Gee even pushed this one by taking out an ad that ran concurrently with the plug. By the end of the month they further announced that that “’Honey,’ Dee Gee’s latest release by talented Tony Harris is quickly becoming a d.j. favorite around the country”—hot topic no doubt thrown out there by their pal Portman. Again at the end of October in “Portman’s Platterpoop” column the writer directed music fans to the “Do Yourself a Favor Dept.” and to “Do buy yourself a copy of ‘Honey’ by Tony Harris on Dee Gee records. It’s getting huge airplay in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Chicago. It’s getting big!” On Nov. 6th the record was even being pushed as a Billboard Chart spotlight. Of course few of these deejays ever flipped the disc to discover how gnarly the flip “Scorpio” was.

Next up for Dee Gee was Jean Haywood’s “Flowers Die/Pietro the Prince of Patience,” (3003) both written by Tony Harris and arranged by Gene Paige. “Flowers Die” is doomy Spector-ish girl group stuff and Ms. Haywood sings almost as low as Nico. “Pietro” is very similar to “Scorpio” with odd “beat” poetry spoken dramatically over some Fahey/Takoma-esque guitar.

Apparently not one to rest on his laurels, Harris went right back into the studio for a post-Mersey folk rock record (“Got a Feeling/Tonight’s the Night for Love” [3004]) by a group called the Fenians… or did he? On Sept. 11^th, Billboard announced “We’ve had the English sounds, now be prepared to dig the Irish sounds. Dee Gee Records just recorded The Fenians first stateside release “I’ve Got A Feeling” b/w “Love Our Love.” An ad was placed the same week in KRLA Beat reading “You don’t have to be Irish but it helps! America’s newest imported sound.” Both sides of this record are produced and arranged by Tony Harris. This leaves us with three possible conclusions. 1. Harris licensed the record from an Irish group. We know he’d seen his pal Delvy have some success licensing, though Delvy generally picked up things already making a splash. These Fenians songs were apparently unknown. 2. Harris flew to Ireland to produce the group… highly unlikely. Or 3. The Fenians were Irish but living here in L.A. In the KRLA Beat ad there’s a Westwood fan club address where you can write in for a free shamrock. It seems this was the Dee Gee office (the building had been a machine shop up until the early ’60s). It is close to UCLA. Were the Fenians Irish students studying there? Their names were Dillon and Deeham. Of course right about this time, Delvy was marketing his version of the Travelers as a “British American Rock and Roll Band” with two of its members “arrived in the United States a year ago from England” and now “residing in Lomita and Harbor City.” Students too? An English (or Irish) band member would have been great attribute and draw, case in point Limey and the Yanks. Or was this all a fleece job, a part Harris and the Fenians were playing? Richard George recalls that when his group the Woods met Harris, “We thought of him as possibly being part of the British invasion at the time, as we thought he had a little bit of an English accent.” Whatever it was, the novelty didn’t seem to gather much steam. Even though by the end of October KRLA Beat was reporting that “Dee Gee records is being swamped with requests for the Irish shamrock they offered in last week’s BEAT ad in introducing their imported Irish folk-rock group The Fenians,” not a peep was heard of them after that.

The next Harris appearance on Dee Gee is by none other than actress Deborah Walley, “So Little Time/Sometimes in the Darkest Hour” (3006). This one’s absolutely fantastic. Again we’re sold by KRLA Beat’s description, “Deborah, the pixie of Gidget that went Hawaiian and now of the Bikini-type movies, has a Marianne Faithfull-type voice. She’s readied a socko single for release by Dee Gee records.” Harris produced and wrote just one side, but it’s the good side. Windy storm sounds back this dark ‘n moody beatnik number about being depressed about being depressed in the middle of the day, the end of the world, rain, etc. This is absolutely incredible stuff. Came in a picture sleeve too. Walley of course starred opposite Elvis in Spinout (1966) and appeared as Suzie on the Desi Arnez-produced tv show Mothers-In-Law. You can see her dancing to the Warts (the Seeds) singing “Pushin’ Too Hard” on the episode where her brother becomes the group’s manager. At the time, Walley was married to actor/singer John Ashley, “handsome hero of teen movies” like Dragstrip Girl and Beach Party. Ashley lost out on the lead to I Was a Teenage Werewolf to Michael Landon. Harris may have been looking to sign the heartthrob to Dee Gee as the same KRLA Beat article also mentions that Ashley “has two labels seeking his musical services.” Again, big thanks to Howie Pyro for slipping me his extra copy of this 45!

“It had to happen. The Batman comes to television and Superman goes on Broadway…” wrote KRLA Beat on Nov. 27^th, “Tony Harris, Dee Gee records fair-haired youth, has written and recorded a gassy-tune titled ‘Superman.’ If the b’way producer doesn’t hurry, he may have to change the name of the show.” We already talked about Harris’s “Super Man/How Much Do I Love You” 45 (DG 3014). One other thing I noticed about “How Much Do I Love You” is that on Harris’s version here there seems to be louder tambourine crunching and there’s a really cool tape edit at the very end where everything just sort of drops out except the beat and some kind of flute. There are rumours of a third Tony Harris 45 for Dee Gee (DG 3016) but little evidence to prove it, and in fact much to disprove it—that catalogue number was reserved for Jefferson County’s “Organized Confusion/City Billy” produced by who else… Julian Portman! Harris’s Bolinger publishing company does list a pair of unknown compositions—“Blue Boy” and “You Don’t Love Me Enough” from around this period. Could these make up the mysterious does it/doesn’t it exist third single? Or were these tunes recorded by another artist, or just never released at all. We’ve also seen mention of another 45 credited to “Darius DePaul” but have no info on song titles or label. Were any of these tunes related to that? Darius did go on to record a remarkable LP that was released on the Chartmaker label in ’69 but alas, it seems to have no Tony Harris connection.[3]

In the last weeks of 1965 Harris arranged and produced 45s for Bob Walker and Friends and the Magnificents, whose “On Main Street” is somewhat of a soul collectors fave. Then it seems the Dee Gee empire crumbled. There were a few more releases but Harris’s name was not on them. Press coverage in the Beat stopped and the releases died out. An announcement in Billboard in April ‘66 tells us that Dee Gee (along with Monument, Hanna Barbera, Tower, and Crescendo) is now distributed by Privilege Distributors. Unfortunately by then it seems they had nothing left to distribute.

•••

As Dee Gee’s run ended, it seems Harris was busy immersing himself in a new venture—breaking in to the soundtrack biz. The first cinematic venture he was involved in was an exploitation flick titled The Black Klansman, released in June of ’66. The film was produced by Joe Solomon who would go on to produce classics like Hells Angels on Wheels, Werewolves on Wheels, and the Curious Female—each having fantastic soundtracks by the way, though none Harris-related.[4] There was a one sided promotional 45 released for The Black Klansman, written and sung by Harris. The melody, Paul points out, sounds a lot like Lee and Nancy’s “Sand,” while the lyrics predate the Ramones by more than a decade!

The Ku Klux Klan killed my little girl
Now I’m alone in this hostile world
My plan for vengeance may seem odd
But with the help of God
I will destroy them from within
Disguise myself and be the Black Klansman

And the Klan will ride this night
Living their big lie
Burning cross upon a hill
Guiltless people die

Why can’t they learn to love and understand
What type fool could find it in the Klan
My life will not be complete
‘til the Klan has their defeat

It’s likely that Harris’s connection to the film world was through his father, movie producer Jack H. Harris, who produced The Blob, Astro Zombies, and The Eyes of Laura Mars amongst others. The younger Harris penned the theme to the elder Harris’s The Unkissed Bride (also known Mother Goose a Go Go), which was released on Oct. 12, 1966. Dig the synopsis!

 “Newlyweds Ted and Margie Hastings immediately begin to have marital problems on their honeymoon at the hotel of Margie’s uncle, Jacques Phillipe. Margie, to overcome her nervousness during lovemaking preliminaries, picks up a copy of Mother Goose and begins to read aloud from it, whereupon Ted faints. A secret visit to psychiatrist Dr. Marilyn Richards reveals that Ted has a “Mother Goose” complex. Hotel detective Ernest Sinclair complicates Dr. Richards’ treatment (conducted for convenience’s sake in the hotel) by his overzealousness–he believes that Ted, like his employer, Jacques Phillipe, is being unfaithful to his wife. Dr. Richards solves Ted’s problem by treating him with an LSD spray while he sleeps, causing him to hallucinate and thus incorporate into reality the fairy tale characters from his fantasies.”

The title track, “Mother Goose à Go-Go” has words and music by Tony Harris, sung by Tom Kirk while another number, “Queen of Soul,” has words and music by Tony Harris and is sung by Barbara McNair, an actress and singer whose career took her from the tiny stage of S.F.’s Purple Onion to the pages of Playboy.

Interestingly the summer of ’66 also saw old partners Richard Delvy and Harris’s names still connected. An August 13^th Billboard chart spotlight announces the Great Scots’ new 45 “The Light Hurts My Eyes/You Know What You Can Do” (Triumph 67). Unlike the Bows and Arrows 45, this is a completely new version of Harris’s song, done in a more Animalsy, show-group style. The Great Scots were originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia and were working in Los Angeles when Delvy signed them. After a few 45s on Epic and appearances on Shindig and other television programs in ‘65, the group had grown cold and Delvy apparently thought he could revive them, first issuing “Ball and Chain/Run, Run For Your Life” (T 66) and then “Light Hurts My Eyes.” It’s unclear whether or not Harris had any involvement in this resurrection or if Delvy just suggested the group record the Harris tune as a b-side because he had the rights to it. Interestingly, Challenge Records concurrently released a pair of Delvy-produced Great Scots’ tunes “Blue Monday/Show Me The Way” (Challenge 59339) as the more-hiply named Free-For-All on Challenge that same summer.

•••

Harris’s next job was over at Vance Music Corporation, then aspiring talent agent Steven Vail’s new label. A December 9^th article in Billboard announces that “Vance Music and VMC Records have been formed to develop as a full-line record company. First act signed by 23-year old Vail is the David, a male quartet he formerly managed and had on the 20th (Century) Fox roster. Vail says his financing comes from a wealthy scientist-silent partner.” Aside from the David (incidentally produced by Gene Paige who Harris had worked with before), VMC had some other pretty hip acts as well, and even Electric Prune Jim Lowe landed himself a job there as an artist-producer in ’69. VMC had a pretty good string of garage/psych rock and pop records in the late ‘60s with highlights being the outsider ego trip LP by Dennis Olivieri, the spooky flower power 45 from Redondo Beach’s Paper Fortress, some 7” California toytown madness frwom Morley, and the heavy vibes of John Guess’s “Up From the Sea” 45 split with Magnus Opus. Harris’s participation at VMC began with him arranging and producing Milton Berle’s novelty version of “Yellow Submarine” (V 726). Over some sunshine pop and acidy guitar, Berle does a little comedy routine referencing all sorts of maritime movies and jokes. It’s pretty funny actually. Like several VMC 45s, this one came in a hiply-designed monochromatic picture sleeve.

Next up Harris gave his own music a shot again. His 45 “The Oldest Profession/Love Mantra” (V 727) featured songs from the soundtrack to a 1967 film called The Oldest Profession, a French production directed by six different film directors (Jean-Luc Godard being one of them!) each one doing a segment on prostitution through the ages. It features cameo roles by Anna Karina and Raquel Welch, who graces the 45’s picture sleeve. Harris’s father was a producer on this as well, which is undoubtedly how this ended up on VMC. It seems Harris graduated from USC’s Thornton School of Music in 1968 with BA in Music around this time. The film was released in the U.S. 8/68 dubbed into English. It is doubtful that the original featured Harris’s music.

Another VMC group Harris had a hand in was Eastfield Meadows, a decent Buffalo Springfield kind of fusion group without the talent pool of their mentors. The group was signed in October of ’68 and managed to have their debut LP out before the end of the year. The first single pulled, “Silent Night/Love’s Gone,” (V 734) features some tasty guitar leads and Steven Stills-influenced vocals. Our man gets production credit on the A-side and arrangers co-credit on the B-side label. On the self-titled album (VS 133) Harris wrote one of the songs (“Weekend”) and is mentioned on the back cover both as producer and in a column with band members leading some to speculate that Harris was actually in the band. There are six members listed, but only five in the photo. Would it make sense that he could be doing a “fifth Beatle” sort of thing, maybe?

Smooth soul singer Hal Frazier did a version of Harris’s “Flowers Die” on his self-titled LP (VS 136) in 1968. Harris produced this record at TTG Studios in Hollywood at pretty much the same time the Velvet Underground were recording their third LP there (they also recorded/remixed much of the Velvet Underground and Nico here as well). Wonder if Harris ever crossed paths with Lou and crew during these sessions?

On May 3^rd, ’69 Billboard announced that Harris had been named general manager of Vail Publishing and VSAV Publishing. At that time he was working with the group Pacific Ocean, featuring a young Edward James Olmos on vocals. Their 1969 LP Purgatory (V 135) may feature Harris as a band member as well. There are two songs credited to him on it, “The Road To Hell” and “My Shrink.” “My Shrink” was also on a 45 backed with “16 Tons” (V 738). Another 45, “I Can’t Stand It/I Wanna Testify” (V 732) has both sides arranged and produced by Harris as well. I’ve never been very impressed by this record… too late and too souly.

Also in 1969 Harris produced a 45 by a group called Morning Sun—“Together / Little Girl You’re A Woman” (V 739). “Together” was a Harry Nilsson cover. Morning Sun featured some of the members of former Dunhill recording artists, The Thomas Group, specifically lead singer and organist Greg Gilford. “Tony Harris produced three recordings I performed for VMC,” Gilford informs us, ‘Together,’ ‘Little Girl,’ and ‘Someone.’ ‘Someone’ was the best cut—an original by moi, which Tony got the master of from Steve Vail at VMC. Tony sold that master to Epic Records. As luck would have it, a guy named Pete (don’t recall his last name) who was the head of A&R at Epic loved the tune, but then Epic got bought and the single was shelved. After our Epic Records master was shelved, I never saw or heard from/of Tony Harris again.” I think this was recorded in ’68 but when the Thomas Group splintered it took a while for it to come out.

Harris’s biggest success at VMC involved a singer named Duke Baxter. Baxter’s Everybody Knows Matilda LP (V 138) The 45 “Everybody Knows Matilda/ I Ain’t No School Boy” (V 740) peaked at #52 on the Billboard charts in 1969. Harris gets production credit on both sides and Hal Blaine and Larry Knechtel play on it. A couple more singles were pulled from the LP as well, “Superstition/Crosstown Woman” (V 749) and “John Q. Citizen / Don’t Hurt Us” (V 750). The Duke Baxter story deserves an investigation all its own as he was kind of a mysterious character. His real name was Dudley F. Baxter and though Apparently Canadian, he was in L.A. by ’66 and working with the Rob Roys on their great “Do You Girl?/Yes I Do” 45 for Accent (AC 1213) which was featured on Pebbles Vol. 22. He’s also the guy behind the incredible Combine Records 45 by a group called Revelation—“Kiss Your Mind Goodbye/Dorplegank” (Combine 45-12). The A-side is a trippy anti-acid number featured on Sixties Rebellion 11. The flip is just as wild. There’s involvement on it also from one Kerry Hatch, who may be the same guy who later played bass for Oingo Boingo, not at all unlikely as Boingo guitarist Steve Bartek was in the Strawberry Alarm Clock. I know I’ve seen a Hatch credit on something else too, just can’t remember what. Anyone? There’s a second Revelation 45 too, “Cotton Candy Weekend/Wait and See” (Music Factory 412), it’s a more of a pop-psych/bubblegum type thing, again with both sides written by Baxter.

But that’s getting away from the subject of Tony Harris, which I guess it’s time to do anyway, as by late ’69, sounds had changed for the worse and Harris left VMC and went elsewhere. We’re sure there’s more Harris involvement in other later records but it’s pretty much beyond the realm of West Coast Fog. He had a good run of it though! Tony Harris, if you’re out there, drop us a line!

Thanks to Brett Hosier, GM Gilford, Randy Nauert, Richard George, Colin Mason, and Howie Pyro.

In the late ’60s Douglas Adams was a member of the El Paso, Texas psych group Wailing Wall, playing rhythm guitar and singing. When the group split in the early ’70s, Adams made his way out to California in his VW bus. At a folk club called the Holy City Zoo he met his future wife, De Ann, forming a troupe that combined De Ann’s dancing with Middle-Eastern-inspired instrumentals. The two eventually got married and moved to Marin County.
Meanwhile Adams was still concentrating on his own compositions, both on guitar and on the fiddle. In 1977 he booked some time at a recording studio in San Anselmo called the Church (where Country Weather had recorded a couple years earlier). He called the resulting album Light Rain. It’s a pretty fascinating record, full of some rootsy, still-Texas inspired numbers, but also with tinges of exoticism and echoes of English folkies like John Martyn. I’ve been playing the album’s final track “La Vienta” on my show the last couple weeks and getting lots of positive response re its fine writing and Adams’ haunting voice. His next record, Dream Dancer, combined Adams’ interests in folk and Middle-Eastern music and is a fine example of the “ethno-psych” sound that the kids are so crazy for these days, yuck yuck. We love it. Adams didn’t stop there either. He’s continued to record music in that same vein up until this day. If this sounds good to you (and it should!), check these pages here and here for way more detailed stories of Adams’ adventures. Pretty cool stuff.

Check out this footage of Douglas and De Ann down by the Embarcadero in San Francisco in ’73.

There’s a great little piece on the Sopwith Camel over at the Pondering Pig complete with cool news clippings like this ‘un. Our good friend Stephen Ehret of the Wildflower claims them as the best band on the scene. Unfortunately their in-town trajectory was halted for being out in New York for too long recording; for actually having a “hit record;” and for being on the same label as the Spoonful when Zal Yanovsky and Steve Boone ratted out Bill Loughborough for selling them weed. In a Flamin’ Groovies interview for Cream Puff War way back in ’91, Roy Loney claims to have been in jail that night too, also for pot. “I was with the guy they turned in I think,” he says. Was Loney friends with Loughborough? Who knows? Cyril Jordan goes on to claim the guy “had an in with (Bill) Graham” and that’s what got them blacklisted. I remember also reading somewhere Loughborough being cool about the whole thing… kids will be kids, or something to like that. There’s a image of the court report for the case I saw somewhere online a while back but I haven’t been able to find it again. Someone?

Anyhow, this group’s omission from the “head” canon is a crime. The Camel should not be overlooked!

For a listen check out the Fog podcast from June 22 for a bunch ‘o unreleased demos the guys did in ’66.

A film exploration of the work and aesthetic concepts of Yayoi Kusama, painter, sculptor, and environmentalist, conceived in terms of an intense emotional experience with metaphysical overtones, an extension of my ultimate interest in a total fusion of the arts in a spirit of mutual collaboration.

I was introduced to the Citizens for Interplanetary Activity (C.I.A.) through my old friend Ted Berk. Ted was a poet and occultist, and lived in Brooklyn near the Pratt Institute in the early 60s while I was living on St. Marks Place in the Village. I lived down the street from what became the Electric Circus, around the corner from the Fillmore East and across the street from The Five Spot. From 1961 to 1964, I had done several early film projects, in regular 8mm and in 16mm, with Ted before he had gone to Mexico, and then moved to California.

The C.I.A. (I believe they added the “Change” to their name when they went on the road to come to New York) was founded some time in early 1966, Ted and I believe, by Win Hardy*, the lead guitarist and vocalist. He was originally from Lexington, Kentucky, where his father owned a funeral home. Ted first performed his poetry with the band at a gig in Portland, Oregon at the Pythian Hall on Friday, March 3, 1966, on a bill with The Jook Savages and the Multnoman Electric Band, with lights being done by the Retinal Circus. Later, from March 21-26, the band performed at the Rock Garden on Mission Street in San Francisco, on a bill with Big Brother and the Holding Company and Arthur Lee’s Love.

The C.I.A. Change came to New York perhaps around September 1967, just as I was finishing up the editing of the visual for the “Kusama’s Self Obliteration” film, which was scheduled to be premiered at the Fourth International Experimental Film Festival in Knokk-Le-Zoute, Belgium, that December. As we remember, the band came to perform at the Fillmore East with another group, from San Francisco called the Salvation Army. C.I.A. Change stayed on to perform at the Fillmore as an opening act for Procol Harem, and then later for Simon and Garfunkel. (!) After my meeting with the band, they agreed to do a soundtrack for the edited film. I arranged an after-hours session at the Apostolic Studios of Vanguard Records with Matt Hoffman, and old friend and fellow filmmaker, who worked as a sound engineer there.

We screened the film in the studio on a 16mm Bell and Howell and the band improvised as we ran the film a second time. We recorded it on 1/4” tape. On piano, sitting in with the band, was Paul Kilb, an actor / writer / friend, who was the star in “Twice A Man”, a short film by Gregory Markopoulos. One or two others, whose names we cannot recall, who occasionally worked with lighting behind the band as “aurora Glory Alice”, provided “Liquid Sounds” for the mix. What these “liquid sounds” consisted of, we have no idea. We were prepared to record other takes and do remixes, but upon hearing playback, everyone agreed that the track was perfect as it was. That track was what was married to the visual in the release print and it is what you have on this record. The band returned to San Francisco after this, and their spell at the Fillmore “self-obliterated” there, as it were.
-Jud Yalkut
Dayton, Ohio, August 2000

More here on an LP issue of the soundtrack

Fantastic interview with singer Dorris Henderson from a 1968 issue of the British magazine Zigzag.

Eclection page 1 Eclection page 2

Henderson grew up in Los Angeles and decided to pursue a folk singing career after seeing Odetta perform at the Ash Grove. Armed with an autoharp and a copy of Alan Lomax’s The Folk Songs of North America, she began performing wherever she could. At a health food restaurant in Topanga Canyon she caught the attention of Lord Buckley, and she became part of his act in Hollywood. A move East to New York City threw her into the same Greenwich Village melting pot as Fred Neil, Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon, (whose “Leaves That Are Green” she covers on her first single). You can even catch a glimpse of her in Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back. Visiting her brother in England (he was stationed there in the Air Force),  Henderson met up with John Renbourn at the Roundhouse pub in Soho. The pair hit it off and went on to record the albums There You Go (1965) and Watch the Stars (1967). When Renbourn formed the Pentangle with Bert Jansch and Jacqui McShea, Henderson became a free agent and was quickly snatched up by Trevor Lucas’s group Eclection, to replace the Australian singer Kerrilee Male who’d had enough of show biz.