Luck or Something Like It (7 page)

The Christys were basically a folk group, but not of the Joan Baez or Bob Dylan political bent. They were more along the feel-good folk lines—more like the Kingston Trio. That was how they’d always seen themselves, and that’s how they wanted to remain. Going in, I was excited that I’d gone from the complexity of singing jazz to finding the beauty in songs that didn’t have to be complicated. What the folk music of the time said was important worldwide. I also liked that it was uplifting, about the strength and tradition of this country, and not just more love songs. The group at that time consisted of Thelma Camacho, the girl with a pixie haircut who TV legend Ed Sullivan later fell in love with, along with a Japanese girl, Kyoko Ito. Kyoko spoke no English but sang English song lyrics with absolutely no Japanese accent. Then there was Michael McGinnis, who was the Barry McGuire of our era. He actually carried a shillelagh, an Irish walking stick, wherever he went. This guy was proud Irish. Finally, there were Mike Settle, Terry Williams, and me. Soon after I arrived, the group started changing. Kim Carnes came in to replace Thelma Camacho. Kim’s husband-to-be, Dave Ellingson, also took Michael McGinnis’s place as banjo player.

To be perfectly candid, when I had the chance of going national with the New Christy Minstrels, I was hungry to join because they were an accepted group and so I’d be accepted, too, by both the commercial music business and by their fans. In a way, it was a calculated gamble to get my name out there, always in the context of a group, of course.

We played mostly places where you would find folk singers—some little theaters, but generally state fairs and big venues. We traveled hundreds of miles on a Greyhound bus with just regular Greyhound bus seats. If you want to make friends, just try that sometime. You have no choice. Even with all the hardships we had to endure, we generally loved it.

I think Kim Carnes got a little depressed sometimes. She had no female friends to talk to. While Kyoko was an incredibly sweet girl and we all felt very protective of her, she couldn’t really carry on a conversation in English and we couldn’t speak Japanese. So there we were. We were like a Double A baseball team—no perks included.

I do think it was a special time for all of us. The shows were exciting, and we were all learning our trade. The first show that included me, in 1966, however, was a bit of a disaster. Here I was doing a show with the world-famous New Christy Minstrels—Kirby would be proud of me. I knew those folk songs backward and forward. What I didn’t know was the choreography, because no one told me there would be choreography. You don’t have moves in a jazz band. You just stand around and play. So here we are, doing a command performance for Michigan’s then governor George Romney, and at the end of one number, we were all supposed to jump in unison. No one had told me this and so I just stood there like a dummy, watching as everyone else jumped.

The shift in musical styles was not as hard as you might think. Jazz was a complex form that I had to learn from the bottom up. The folk music I was learning to sing and play, like Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” wasn’t a whole lot different from standard hymns like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away” that we sang on my grandfather’s front porch.

In late 1966, we appeared at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, Canada, with the Smothers Brothers. Called “The Ex,” this is Canada’s largest fair, and we were excited about being in Canada and performing with the Smothers Brothers. We were all big fans. It was a special Veterans Day performance and required some unique staging. We were asked to walk along with the crowd on the street, then one by one gradually merge with the veterans’ parade before our show. I don’t know where the signals got crossed, but I assume someone had cleared this with the veterans. So here we come, long hair and all, proud and excited to help Canada celebrate its special day. The moment we appeared to be moving into the crowd, the vets among them took us for hippie protesters and started beating us on the head with their signs. What was this about? They hadn’t even heard us sing yet! Somehow we instinctively knew this was not the time to start singing “Green, Green . . .”

We had some fun times on the road, but within a few months I realized that, other than making the move to Los Angeles, my career was never going to go anywhere with the New Christy Minstrels. We had two big issues. One, we realized they were never going to record Mike Settle’s original songs, and two, even if they were recorded, the powers that be would use studio singers and not us. “I guess they don’t want to pay us royalties,” Terry surmised. Since Kim Carnes and I both went on to make hit records, maybe they should have been more accommodating. Our names in the 1980s would have helped them sell a lot more albums.

With the writing on the wall, Mike, Terry, and our first female singer, Thelma Camacho, began putting a new group together in early 1967. They started practicing and rehearsing some of Mike’s songs whenever they could. They sounded great—kind of an early fusion, I guess, of folk and rock—but a three-piece vocal group couldn’t do the full harmonies we had all gotten used to hearing, and they knew that because of my background in jazz, I heard those harmonies better than anyone they could find.

It was clear that they didn’t want me in the group originally. Nothing personal, mind you, but I was a good deal older than the others and probably looked a little staid for the hipper group they had envisioned. But guess what? I decided there was no way in hell I was going to let them escape “Christy Prison” without me. I would make them want me. This became another defining moment in my life. In much the same way I felt when auditioning for the Christys, I wanted to be accepted in the group. And I wanted to be accepted
by
the group—peer approval mattered more to me than public acceptance.

So I went about changing my look. I started parting my long hair in the middle, put a gold earring in my ear, and found a pair of rose-tinted glasses to wear. This would ultimately become my ’60s trademark—I mean, I was
stylin’.

The good news is, it worked. They lowered the bar and let me in. This was a great day for me that I knew I was going to remember for a lot of reasons. “Onward and upward,” we said.

Now we had a group with no lead performer and a plan.

Our contracts with the Christys were up on July 10, 1967. We had decided we would shoot for that date to make our move. So tell me, what are the chances of an as yet unformed, unnamed group getting a record deal? It took some incredibly good fortune, that’s for sure.

Terry Williams was our guitar player, and his mother, Bonnie Williams, happened to be secretary to Jimmy Bowen, the A&R director at Warner Bros. Records. Lucky break number one. Bonnie had once been the female singer with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra when Frank Sinatra was the male singer. She had maintained her friendship with Frank over the years. When Frank merged his own label, Reprise Records, with Warner Bros. in the early ’60s, he saw to it that Bonnie was hired to be Jimmy’s secretary, and Terry had actually worked for a stretch in the mailroom as well.

The only problem, Terry said, was that Bonnie herself was a little concerned for her job at Warner Bros. Their sales had been lagging and everyone was feeling really insecure. But, as the story goes, once Jimmy produced “Everybody Loves Somebody,” a huge record for Dean Martin, everyone there felt more secure, including Bonnie. Break number two.

Both Frank’s Reprise Records and Warner Bros. Records were housed in the same building in L.A. So, as any mother worth her salt would do, Bonnie marched into Jimmy’s office and told him that her son, Terry, was starting a band. Jimmy, in his ultimate wisdom, said, “Well, bring ’em over and let me hear ’em.”

Chapter Eight

Just Dropped In

Okay, here we are,
heading off to Warner Bros. Records like four elementary school kids going to our first “invited” school party. We were all at least an hour early and we were excited. We were about to meet and possibly record with the guy who had produced records for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin. And maybe he was going to produce us!

None of the rest of us had actually met Jimmy Bowen, but when Terry had been working in the Warner Bros. mailroom a couple of years before, he had encountered him a time or two. The rest of us had all seen pictures of Bowen on the back of Dean’s, Sammy’s, and Frank’s albums, so at least we knew who to look for. This would be one of those moments none of us would ever forget. We went into his office, sang for him, and he signed us. I guess Terry knew him better than we thought.

Our plan was to leave the very day our New Christy Minstrels contract was up, on July 10, 1967, and head to Warner Bros. to begin our new album at nine
A.M.
on July 11. What else did we need?

Oh, yeah. We needed a name. We must have thrown around a thousand different ideas, but none of them felt right. Then Mike Settle was looking through an old book from the library hoping to find something unique, and in the front were the words
First Edition.

That was the first name that had everything we were looking for. It had an image. It was then we all decided it would be in keeping with the name if we would wear all black and white on stage, like newsprint. Now we had a name, a dress style, a record contract, and some great Mike Settle songs to record.

It was only after we got to the studio and started rehearsing the band for our first song to record, Mike Settle’s “I Found a Reason,” that we noticed a guy our age or younger directing the operation. It didn’t take long to realize this unknown kid, and not the legendary Jimmy Bowen, was to be our producer. His name was Mike Post, and I’m not sure anyone, even the musicians, knew who he was at the time. As disappointed as we were, we realized very quickly that this guy was very good and very contemporary.

Jimmy Bowen had now given us two gifts: our first record contract and Mike Post.

Once we started to perform, the group immediately realized that two guitar players, a bass player, and a girl singer did not an exciting group make. There
was
something else we needed. We needed a drummer. So we started asking around for suggestions. The name Mickey Jones kept coming up everywhere we turned. He had great credentials. He had been the drummer for Trini Lopez for many years and had most recently spent a few years playing with Bob Dylan, accompanying Dylan on his first world tour the previous year. We set up an audition for this guy we had heard so much about and played songs with him for several hours that day. Mickey was amazing. He was a flamboyant, energetic, stick-twirling, hard-playing rock drummer who kept incredible time. We knew we wanted Mickey with us after the first song he played. He was just what we needed.

Over the next several years, we all came to appreciate Mickey not only for his musical talent but also for his willingness to jump in and lend a hand, no matter what we needed. He was the ultimate team player, and when you’re in a start-up group, that’s crucial.

Mickey was there from the beginning to the end of the First Edition, and we never got a review that didn’t praise him. He has since become a very accomplished actor and has been in many commercials; movies, such as
Sling Blade
and
Tin Cup
; and TV shows, such as
Home Improvement
and
Entourage.

Once we added Mickey, we felt more comfortable playing clubs around L.A. One of our frequent stops was a Westside club called Ledbetter’s, a good place to be seen in L.A. by people who could make things happen in the music business. We played it often and almost always drew really good crowds. This was about the time comedians like Steve Martin and Pat Paulsen and groups like the Carpenters were coming up and were working at Ledbetter’s as well.

In the audience at Ledbetter’s one night was a guy named Ken Kragen, a Harvard-educated businessman who had become the manager for several well-known acts, including the Smothers Brothers, John Hartford, and Pat Paulsen. By this time our old friends from the Veterans Day parade in Canada, the Smothers Brothers, had begun the
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
on CBS television and were stirring up quite a following. Ken really liked what we were doing and insisted the Brothers come see us. That chance encounter would become the catalyst that exploded the First Edition onto the national stage.

Almost immediately they invited us to appear on their show.

Ken Kragen not only signed on to manage the First Edition, he also became my personal manager for the next thirty-three years. He was the driving force in developing my career and giving me the stature I would later acquire.

Ken was a very dynamic person, and the fact that he was managing the Smothers Brothers certainly gave him credentials. We liked that someone was interested enough in us to say, “Hey, let me work with you. Let me help you if I can.”

Ken was a manager with vision—not just locally, but globally. He was a big-picture guy. He never thought small. He began by getting us every television show he could. People knew they could trust Ken, so he had access to everybody. This was the era when there were variety shows on TV almost every night, a great platform for a new band. During the first year alone, 1968, we were on
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Perry Como Show, The Pat Boone Show
, and
Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.

Shortly after Ken became our manager, he worked out a deal with Reprise Records, our record label, to give us a promotional budget of twenty thousand dollars to promote our name. We did the only sensible thing we could with our newfound wealth—we threw a party.

And what a party it was! We invited more than three hundred writers, deejays, record-store owners, booking agents, distributors, and all the Warner Bros. staff. We tried to include anybody who had any tie to the music business who might be instrumental in helping us on down the line. Tommy Smothers secured us the free use of a CBS soundstage and hosted the party. We had all the hors d’oeuvres and cocktails anyone could want. At one point we stopped the food and did a thirty-minute concert for our guests, complete with a backdrop of huge blown-up individual photographs of the band. It was great. People in the industry were talking about that party for months afterward—and, more important, about us.

Tom and Dick Smothers became close friends of the First Edition, so we ended up on their
Comedy Hour
quite frequently. I can’t stress enough how much Tom and Dick helped us during that time. You have to remember, we had little name recognition and no big hits when they began having us as guests on their show. We also became Pat Paulsen’s official “Presidential Band” when he ran for the office in the ’68 election. He actually blamed us for not being elected. We all loved his warped sense of humor.

As a group, we thought we had a great sound and a big company behind us and we were ready to set the world on fire. The first song we rehearsed was “I Found a Reason,” a terrific tune by Mike Settle. Mike also sang lead vocals. We watched the charts daily, to no avail. Our first try went nowhere. However, we weren’t all that worried. Mike had been writing songs since he was in diapers, and we knew how good he was. To this day, some of my favorite Mike Settle songs that the First Edition recorded were not the hits they should have been. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t wonderful songs. They were and are.

When we started looking for songs for our first album, one kept coming back to me over and over. And it started in high school.

When I was a senior back at Jeff Davis in Houston, I met a guy named Mickey Newbury. Mickey started school at Jeff Davis in our junior year. He would come around every now and then to listen to the Scholars practice. He begged us time and time again to let him be a part of our group, but there was one small problem at the time: he couldn’t sing or play an instrument.

But Mickey liked to write music, and one day when he brought us a song he had made up, I honestly don’t think we took him seriously. You’d have to know Mickey to appreciate this, but he wasn’t insulted in the least. This guy never met a problem he couldn’t solve if he put his mind to it. His solution was, he would go home and lock himself in his bedroom for a month or two and practice. No one saw him for the entire summer.

I don’t know how he did it, but the next time he sang and played guitar for us, we were dumbfounded. He could play and he could really sing!

He was now way too good for our group, and he knew it. For those of you who don’t know him, Mickey went on to become one of the premier singer-songwriters in any genre of music in his generation. In 1966 alone, he pulled off the incredible feat of having written three No. 1 songs and one No. 5 song across four different categories—Pop/Rock, R&B, Country, and Easy Listening. If you have never heard Mickey sing, you owe it to yourself to find one of his albums and just sit down and listen to this guy.

Mickey sang and played one of those songs for me years later, long after high school. It was called “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” I was with the Christy Minstrels at the time, but it was way too bizarre and psychedelic for their image, and it had apparently already been promised to Sammy Davis Jr.

But the song kept coming back to me. There was something about it that I thought made it perfect for the First Edition’s first album. Remember, I had long hair, an earring, and rose-tinted glasses, and our drummer, Mickey Jones, looked like a wild man. We kind of fit the image of a song about altered consciousness. Once I got in touch with Newbury, he said he was sure it would be fine for us to record it. Sammy never did anything with it, and Jerry Lee Lewis had already recorded the song, but never released it.

An interesting side note: Glen Campbell played guitar on the recording of “Just Dropped In” as a studio musician not long before he began singing on his own records. Several of the best-known musicians of that era became regulars on First Edition records. Aside from Glen Campbell, there was Hal Blaine, probably the best-known drummer in the country at the time; Glen D. Hardin, who later played piano for Elvis and also produced a couple of our records; and my favorite electric bass player for studio work, Joe Osborn, who took great pride in not changing the strings on his bass for over a year and would not let me wipe them off with a cloth in fear of, as he put it, “wiping off some of his cool licks.”

Another interesting side note: Mike Post, the unknown producer we met that first day in the recording studio, did not stay unknown for long. He would go on to enormous fame and success, writing and producing theme songs for many of the country’s biggest television series, including
Hill Street Blues, Law and Order, L.A. Law, The Rockford Files,
and
Magnum P.I.,
to name a few.

After all was said and done, “Just Dropped In” was released as the First Edition’s second single and the first with me on lead vocals. I’ll never forget when it started to make its way up the charts. We were playing in St. Louis at a place called Ruggles’ Cabaret, a joint so small it didn’t have a public phone. This was obviously before cell phones, so every day for three weeks, at exactly six o’clock, we got on the office phone at Ruggles and called Terry’s mom at Warner Bros. to find out how sales were going.

“You sold ten thousand records today,” she would say, and every day the figure went up. Fourteen thousand, then sixteen thousand, until finally one day it reached thirty-eight thousand. This was an unbelievable figure to us. It climbed to No. 5 on the
Billboard
charts, and we were ecstatic.

And the song has continued to hang around for the more than forty years since its release as a kind of anthem to the drug era of the 1960s. When the Coen Brothers wrote and directed the cult classic
The Big Lebowski
in 1998, they reportedly had “Just Dropped In” in the back of their minds the whole time. A new generation of young people know of the song only from that movie.

With a hit record, our TV exposure only increased. The legendary creator/producer of
Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,
George Schlatter, found a way to use us and our psychedelic hit song.
Laugh-In
was strictly a comedy show with no music acts prior to our appearance. George put the First Edition in a taxidermy shop, in our black-and-white outfits, and shot some bizarre angles of us singing “Just Dropped In.” It was a weird song with an even weirder approach, and reputedly the first music video. The weirdness was right up
Laugh-In
’s alley. They loved it.

But the success of “Just Dropped In” all came back to the original sound. We were originally signed by Jimmy to Amos Productions, which was his production company, and then he signed us to Reprise Records. It turned out that Mike Post ended up producing our first three albums and was responsible for the unique sound of our first hit. In a song that heavily referenced the LSD experience, Mike made the whole feel of the recording psychedelic. It was unlike anything the record business, or radio for that matter, had ever heard.

Mike was always striving to do something innovative and different. Typical of his willingness to take chances, one day, while rewinding the tape, Mike heard and loved the sound of Glen Campbell’s guitar “backwards.” He compressed these backward licks, added a tremolo effect, and that was it—the “something different” that he had wanted. The sound for “Just Dropped In” and the First Edition was born.

It was an exciting time to be in the music business, right at the beginning of a wave of new ’70s groups. Los Angeles was then a hotbed of new bands like The Byrds and new singer-songwriters like Gram Parsons, Jackson Browne, and Warren Zevon. The First Edition was right in the middle of the L.A.-based musical style that became known as country-rock. I’ll tell you about the origins of one of the biggest of all ’70s country-rock groups.