Hart REMEMBERANCES

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GERRY MCGEE - LARRY TAYLOR - BILL LEWIS

 

 

It was the summer of 1962. Joey Dee & the Starliters had lines around the block at the Peppermint Lounge in Manhattan. Chubby Checker was twisting again like he did the previous summer.

In L. A., my third record release "Girl In the Window" had become a hit on KFWB and KRLA, the L.A. top-40 stations.As a result, I was playing most weekends at radio sponsored rock & roll shows in high school auditoriums around town.Backstage at one such show in Malibu I met another performer, a tall Anthony Perkins look-alike named Barry Richards, and we became friends.

Since I still couldn't afford a car, Barry would often give me a ride home from the shows.One night on the freeway back to Hollywood in his tiny MGA roadster I remember saying, "You know, Man, some people actually get paid for doing what we do every weekend."

Barry said "What do you mean?"

I said "Night Clubs! I can play the Hammond Organ" (which I had done since Jr. High back in Phoenix churches) And I can play the bass pedals, so we won't have to hire a bass player.What can you play?"

Barry thought a moment then replied, "The tambourine."

But it turns out that Barry's real instrument of expertise was the telephone.He had a deep authoritative voice and a way with words.The following week Barry got out the yellow pages and started calling night clubs.We hired a drummer and a guitar player and Barry convinced the owner of a small jazz club in the Valley to come down to the Musician's Union organ practice room and audition the wave of the future: the hottest new twist band on the West Coast!

Barry Richards & Bobby Hart were signed for one week and we opened at the Prelude in August 1962.By the weekend the dance floor was packed, the place was jumping and they held us over for 4 months.I quit my factory job.

Dance Panorama magazine was holding a dance contest at the Thunderbird Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and they asked Barry and I to attend as judges.On September 8th we took a Greyhound to Vegas and stayed up all night since we didn't have the money for a room.

 







Only one mental picture vividly stays with me from that trip.I'm standing in the back of the packed Thunderbird Lounge at 2 o'clock in the morning to see Teddy Randazzo.Teddy sat at the piano singing one dance number after another while his Dazzlers, three good looking boy singers in mohair suits, fronted a stand up mic across stage doing rhythm steps and singing oos, ahs and harmonies.Then the lights came down and the band broke into an instrumental.

I saw that the incredible sound behind Teddy's piano was coming from just a trio of musicians.I watched in awe with some other L. A. musicians who stood with me in the back of the room. after a few minutes they reverentially whispered the players names.

Gerry McGee was standing on stage with his back to the audience, lost in the Louisiana riverbank swamp guitar style that was uniquely his, as he played his hypnotizing tribute to John Lee Hooker.It must have gone on for 15 minutes.Larry Taylor, Randazzo's incredible young blues bass player was grimacing and jerking his head with every pull of the string; and laying down an explosive beat like a metronome was drummer, Billy Lewis.

Sure, Barry and I had fibbed "Direct from Las Vegas" on our hand-out fliers for the Prelude.But here were the guys who had really made it, good enough to play the entertainment capitol of the world.

Gerry McGee had followed his Louisiana contemporary, James Burton to Los Angeles after Burton became known as Ricky Nelson's guitar player on the Ozzie & Harriet Show.McGee and Burton's styles would often be compared over the years.

Larry Taylor was a personable Jewish kid from Fairfax High who loved the blues and took up playing the electric bass.He and McGee hooked up to play local clubs and soon became regulars at the Seawitch, a tiny but jumping club on the Strip.Unhappy with their drummer, they held auditions, another local teenager won the gig, and Gerry McGee & the Cajuns was born.The drummer's name was Bill Lewis.

The Seawitch, located in what is now the trendy Sunset Plaza area of the Strip, shared a wall with Dean Martin's Dino's Lounge, famous as the opening shot of the TV show, "77 Sunset Strip".One night famed producer/arranger, Don Costa was in the men's room at Dino's.  Taken by the mesmerizing sound of the Cajuns coming through the thin wall from the Seawitch, he made his way next door and asked to cut some demos with the band.




Costa played the tracks for Teddy Randazzo, the co-owner of his New York publishing company, South Mountain Music.Teddy had just been offered the long term Las Vegas engagement and was looking for a band. He offered the gig to the barely twenty-one year old Gerry McGee and the Cajuns.

How, only two years later, I came to be standing on that same Thunderbird Lounge stage as one of Randazzo's Dazzlers; and how, by 1966, Gerry McGee, Larry Taylor and Billy Lewis would be the core sound of the band that Tommy Boyce and I used when we produced many of the Monkees biggest hits; and how they became the Boyce & Hart band when we toured the country in support of our own hit records...are stories for another time.Let it suffice to say that I have never worked with more exciting musicians.




Gerry McGee recorded and toured for many years with Kris Kristofferson and others and is now a member of the Ventures.Larry Taylor became a founding member of Canned Heat, connecting with hits like "On the Road Again" and "Going Up the Country".Bill Lewis toured for many years as a member of Sweet Marie and did club work.I showed him a copy of this piece shortly before his passing in early May, 2005 .You may write to Gerry or Larry c/o bobbyhart.net.




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