I moved to LA in 1949 with my parents, I was 16. And I went to high school for one semester here at Belmont High School, which was largely Mexican-American. And uh, I joined a band, the Vascos Brothers Band, and we played different gigs, um, a lot of jazz, but also some Latino music. And um, then I graduated high school and went to Los Angeles City College. And I was playing some gigs on occasion, you know, not too many. I wasn't really that good. I loved jazz, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't good enough for my own taste. And um, about that time I decided, since I loved music, I would get involved and study, and I began to study privately with a composer orchestrator to study composition. And that's about the same time that, uh, I met Jerry.

So you're writing these blues lyrics and when you got together with the idea of writing and not performing, correct?

Oh, there wasn't any question about performing. I, uh, I never, uh, never dreamed of performing. I was writing essentially primarily for blues singers, black blues singers. And I wasn't really interested in anything else. I wasn't interested in pop music, I wasn't interested in country music, I wasn't interested in any, jazz, even in jazz, vocal jazz. I enjoyed it. I liked to listen to it, you know, for my own pleasure. But I was not interested in writing it. I was only interested in the language and the humor and the, the, uh, the pain, whatever, of the blues .

We felt that, uh, for us to perform would be totally inauthentic because we weren't black. However, for some reason we forgave ourselves that when it came to writing.

So there was never any real question of performing.

No.

Okay.

It was also a tradition. I mean, pretty much. Except, there were a few exceptions like Johnny Mercer sang, a few people sang once in a while, but by and large the tradition of songwriting was the songwriter wrote the songs and he was a behind the scenes kind of character. Now, George L -- George M. Cohan for instance was a great performer. I know about this. But mainly, the songwriter was mainly a behind the scenes guy.

Except, oddly enough, in the blues. Because most of the blues performers wrote their own material, and uh, or at least many of them did. And I guess to some extent, our material was accepted because a lot of these performers who did write were not as good as some of the other ones. And they wrote the same song pretty much over and over.

When you first started placing these songs, getting these songs recorded, what kind of experience was that? Did you find it satisfying or frustrating or what?

Deeply frustrating. Because um, the first, the first sessions, the first meetings were set up by Lester Sill with Modern Records, who, at the, who, uh, which was owned by the Harry Brothers. And the Harry Brothers were completely amusical. I mean they just… they had a business. They could've been in the junk business, it didn't matter, you know. And uh, they had this record company. And they were affable guys, they were easy to get along with, but they really didn't know much about music and didn't care much about it either. And uh, we had some meetings with some, uh, artists -- we met with the Robins, you know. And uh, it was, it was, in the very beginning it was hard to get things straight. You know, it was hard to get things down. And um, it was hard to get things right. And we struggled with that for a long time. And in a funny way, we started to, to produce, really, in self-defense. Because a lot of the songs that we had written -- well, firstly, the first songs we wrote were lousy anyhow, so it didn't matter how well they were produced, they just came out badly. Uh, later on, when we started writing some good songs, they were not produced adequately or properly, or they were misinterpreted. You know, you'd get a swing band arrangement on a blues, right? By a Hollywood arranger instead of the right kind of stuff that you'd get out of someone like Bumps Blackwell or Maxwell Davis, right? So as we went along we learned the different ways, the different styles and so forth and we started producing.

Also, the key to what success we had was in rehearsal. Because we used to rehearse our groups that we worked with, the Robins, the Coasters and so on, for weeks on end before a session. And the traditionally, these people came together in the studio and learned a song on, on the date and, uh, and performed it. And there were some wonderful bands that could, like Johnny Otis's, that could do head arrangements right, uh, you know, from the git, and they'd come off sounding very professional. But there hadn't been any time for real exploration in rehearsal.

Did "Kansas City" or "Hound Dog" come first?

"Kansas City" came first.

Do you want to --

Well, wait a minute, they were about the same time actually.

The release dates were different, but they were both cut in '51.

Both cut in '52 actually. And I'm trying to remember when, "Kansas City" came out the end of '52. Uh, Big Mama's record was recorded in August of '52 but didn't come out until '53, February or March.

Let's address each of those. The one thing about "Kansas City" did you feel at the time that that was sort of a breakthrough in terms of the craft of songwriting, because I know, when we talked about this before, the idea that this was a blues with a melody hook, almost like a pop song, can you say that?

I can say part of it and Mike can say the rest of it. Originally, uh, I was singing the words to "Kansas City" to a conventional blues shout pattern, you know? I mean, just [sings] I'm going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come. Something like that, right? And I gave it to Mike and I said, I think this is the way it ought to go. And he said, yeah, and he started playing it on the piano and he put it to this, and he put it to that. And then he put it to a shuffle. And I said, well, and he started to play a little of, you know, I'm going to Kansas City, he started playing a tune, and I said, no, I don't want that. I want, and I went back to the straight blues. And he said, yeah, yeah, I know. Because Mike is very polite you know. And he kept playing around with the idea and I finally said, you know, I really don't want that melody, I don't want a melody, I want it to sound like a traditional blues. I don't want it to sound like some, you know, smartass songwriter is tampering with the melody. And he said, who's writing the music, you or me? And there was like a standoff for a minute and I looked at him and he looked at me. And I thought, hmm, I don't know how to write lead sheets.

And the boy is crazy anyway, you better humor him.

I said you're writing the music. He said, good, it's going to go like this. [hums melody] And that's sort of the way it went.

Only the song came out and the A and R man from Federal Records, Ralph Bass, said, you know what, I love the song, it's great, but you know what?

It's not sexy enough.

No, he said, KC is hip. KC is really hip. So when they released the record, he just changed the title on the label to "KC Loving." It took seven years before somebody else remembered the song and recorded it under its obviously title of "Kansas City."

Now "Hound Dog" has the -- Let's, can we get the story on "Hound Dog" and since this is like sort of being in the show, we're going to be building up to hearing it, so on and so forth, maybe in this case, instead of saying well we wrote "Hound Dog", just this once, these guys suggested holding off on the name of the song you're talking about until the end.

All right. It went like this. Lester Sill gave us a call, and said he set up an appointment for us to go down to listen to a rehearsal one afternoon at Johnny Otis's garage where he rehearsed his band. And listened to his singers. He had a number of different singers down there. He had Mel Williams and Little Esther and Big Mama Thornton and a group, were the Three Tons of Joy down there --

I don't think, yeah, a little later.

A little later, I think, yeah. And we went down and uh, you know, Lester told Johnny that we were young guys that were comers and we wrote the blues.

Well, Johnny knew us at that time.

Yeah?

Sure. Because we'd worked with Little Lester.

Oh, I forgot that.

I know.

Um, so we went down, we went down to listen to his people, and uh, Big Mama got up and sang a song. And she just knocked us out. We thought she was great. And um, I turned to Mike, I said, let's get out of here, this is it, let's go and write it. And we left, and on the way to Mike's house, I'd got maybe 50 or 60 percent already of a lyric. Because I was looking --

On the way to Mike's house we ran into Bre'r Rabbit, and Bre'r Rabbit said where you going, and I said we're going to Mike's house to write "Hound Dog".

One thing you didn't get with Big Mama was why did she impress you. You said, she impressed us.

I was trying to cut it short.

Well, I mean, I think, Little Lester sang a number, and uh, Ray, Ray Williams, they were both really good. Big Mama got up and she just blew everybody away. She was just such a great blues singer. She was so nasty. She was, she was really evil. I loved her. I thought she was great. She had all these razor scars all over her face. Because somebody down there, was, uh, somebody listening said that she was a lady bear, and I didn't know what that was. And I found out maybe five or six or seven years later that, that was a very big female who was a lot of trouble. Um, and she acted that way, but actually she wasn't that way, it was a big front. Like most bears, you know. Um, she just sang her ass off, you know, and impressed us very much. And uh, we looked at each other and decided to take off immediately, and uh, we jumped in Mike's car and headed for his house. And I'd say about, maybe half way to his house I'd already gotten about 50 percent of the lyrics to the song. And uh, we landed, and Mike went to the piano, and I started yelling, you ain't nothing but a hound dog, and it all came together in about eight or ten minutes. And we got back in the car, went back to the garage, and we laid the song on Johnny Otis. And uh, he told us to perform it for Big Mama. Which we did. And I started, I think maybe I got through about four bars, and she said, give me that, give me that piece of paper, give me that. And she sort of grabbed the paper out of my hand. It was not written on a brown paper bag, mind you, it was written on a piece of spiral notebook paper. And uh, she started to sing it. And um, actually she started to croon it. And I said, um, it don't go that way. And all of a sudden there was a hush in this garage. The entire band, I think there were 11 or 12 guys on the stand, and they're usually jerking around, you know, high jinks and locker room stuff -- it became quiet as a mouse. And she said, it don't go like that, it don't go like that. She says, I tell you how it go, it go like this -- ahhhhhhhhh. White boy, don't you tell me how to sing the blues. So I looked at Mike, he looked at me. And Johnny Otis came down and said, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, cool it, just wait a minute. He said, Willie Mae, she looked up at him and said, yes sir? She was very polite when she's doing business. [LAUGHS] She wasn't doing business with me. Yes sir. He said, now, we got to stop that stuff, you know? We're here to take care of business, right? She said that's right. Now, give me that song. And hand it to me. Now, sing the song the way it's supposed to be for Big Mama, all right? I looked at Mike, Mike was ready to split. He didn't want to have anything to do with this. He's looking at the back door. I said, Mike, play the piano. He did one of these, who me? [LAUGHS] Finally he went over to the piano, and uh, I sang the song, Mike played the song. And uh, the band went nuts. They loved it. They thought it was funny. These two white kids are in here singing the blues, they both must be crazy, what are they doing, you know? And Big Mama finally broke into a smile. I came down, she made up with me, I made up with her, she took the song, and she started singing it. Johnny got on the drums during the rehearsal, and it sounded great. It was just dynamite.

And Pete Lewis on guitar, the late Pete Lewis, just a genius. It was great.

How'd you sing it?

How'd I sing it? You ain't nothing but a hound dog. Like that.

That's how he sings.

That's how I usually talk. I'm being especially quiet today because Mike said don't do that. Don't do that on the camera and don't do that on the microphone, you're going to scare the people out of the studio. Can you just like imitate somebody who has manners.

Au contraire.

Au contraire. You been living in New Orleans.

I think that we're ready to talk about "Riot in Cell Block #9" and the Robins -- all right, a technological --

Getting to "Riot in Cell Block #9" and obviously this is a departure that introduces us to this whole idea about the playlet song. So I wonder if you might give us a little background on this idea of the playlet. What's the background to what we here, which is a very fully formed idea, right?

Well, the background is radio. And how I was, lyrically anyway, how I was sort of influenced by programs like I Love a Mystery, and The Shadow, and Nick and Nora.

Could you just say "Riot in Cell Block #9".

Well, "Riot in Cell Block #9" was, um, influenced, uh, primarily in Jerry's work but also in mine, in terms of, uh, the radio programs that we listened to as kids. And the characters speaking, because radio, let's face it, was much more interesting than television is because you could imagine all these things. And so using the kind of, uh, radio technique, non-visual but dialogue is the way in which these songs evolved. And this was probably the first one in which, uh, the narration was done in that style. And also, of course, we enjoyed putting in sound effects, which were like things from, uh, what was that program?

Gangbusters.

Gangbusters and stuff like that with the sirens and the machine guns and so on and so forth.

You could sort of sum it up in a way, I think, sort of, like this. I think it's maybe a little bit more complicated, but I think this hits it enough. The form musically were the blues. Because Willie Mabon, you know, Little Walter, those blues breaks, that was the form and that was the sound. The content was something that we made up and was very much influenced by early radio, but filtered through a blues idiom in terms of language, in terms of vocabulary, in terms of dialect.

What kinds of different problems in terms of preparing these songs to be recorded did working with this kind of material present? It seems like it would almost be a whole different ballgame almost rehearsing like for a play.

To some degree maybe, but you know, there were precursors, there were other groups doing things before we did.

The Clovers used to do things where the bass would have the end line of the bridge or something like that, and we loved their work.

And the Dominoes. And Jimmy Rix and the Ravens. We were influenced by all these groups. And uh, really, and we tried, I guess we sort of synthesized a lot of these influences with the Coasters.

Now, by this time, you're working with this label, Spark. One of your, if you could tell us, what led you to get into having your own record label, and what was unattractive enough about it to make Atlantic look very attractive.

Well Spark Records was a label that we started with Lester Sill, who was really our mentor and advisor. And the reason that we started it was so that we would be unencumbered when it came to the creative production of the records. We could take it from beginning to end including the mastering and all the editing and so on and so forth, which is really what we wanted to do, to protect the notion or the integrity of the idea of each song. And the reason that ultimately Atlantic seemed so attractive was two fold. Number one, we loved the Atlantic Records. We admired many of their artists, the Clovers, Ruth Brown and so on and so forth, LaVerne Baker.

Joe Turner.

Joe Turner.

Ray Charles.

But also because we were under-financed and we couldn't, uh, we couldn't as Jerry says often, we couldn't cross the Rockies. So we'd have a big smash in LA, selling even a hundred thousand records, singles, and nothing on the other side of the country, zero. So that seemed to be a good idea, which they suggested to us. They said, listen, make the records. We'll pay you a royalty, because we know how to sell them and you don't.