Was that Tutti Frutti session really something special that stood out in your memory?

Well I don't... any... at that particular time, ah, I'm pretty sure will agree, there wasn't nothing really special about those particular sessions we were doing. We were just doing them and doing them as best we could because we knew it was different from what we were used to doing musically and ah, it was different from what we prefer to play, but we did our best to... to make it as different as we possibly could and as commercial as we possibly could, but we didn't consider it anything special because as you know, we... we had no idea th... what they were going to be as ______ we had, we'd ask for double scale then, but ah, we had no idea. We just doing a job as well as could.

Usually when we went into a studio, ah a lot of times we had other things on our minds, ah, other than the session. It was a situation that they were going to play a gig later on that night, you know, something like that. It wasn't necessarily oh a big event. We had no idea. Like I said earlier, if it was a hit, we remembered it. If it wasn't a hit, we forgot it.

So when Little Richard went into Tutti Frutti, you had no idea that this was really going to be a monumental...

You know something strange about musicians, the tunes... the cut that we think is going to be the hit, doesn't necessarily always work. Sometimes it's too hip, you know and because we like it and the public don't like it so for us to sit up and say, hey this is going to be a hit, we were quite pleased after we heard what we had done. We were really pleased.

... with Tutti Frutti because... because of Richard being the way and as exciting as he is, this was another one of his exciting... this was really wild. This... he's gone out there again on this one, you know. But that's what I remember about it specifically. I can't tell you which date it was that we did it on frankly. Ah, other than that, what made us... we didn't... prior to doing that, we didn't think it was going to be anything, but when you heard it, once you did it, you got into doing it, but this was a mark of the kind of guys we were that we enjoyed whatever it was we were doing specifically for something we knew right off the bat, it was different and ah, it was. This one was because the words were... when he said wop ba ba loo ba, ba loop ba bam. We said what the hell is that! But it was special, but we had no idea it was going to be and wasn't looking for it to be.

Yeah a lot of times you'd do a recording session and ah, after you heard the fi... what you had done on that particular cut, you were happy, you know and some things that were... we thought were rather mediocre became mega hits too, you know. So it's hard to determine what's going to be good and what's going to be accepted by the public you know. You just when in and you did it.

That's why we were one of the two M's. We were musicians as opposed to millionaires because we didn't know what was going to be and what wasn't.

We're all sorry that Lee Allen couldn't be here. I just wanted to ask you a little bit about his saxophone playing. He was really something special.

Ok. I'd like to say something about Lee Allen and a lot of people don't re... really knew it. Lee Allen is originally from Denver. Ah, I was in the army at the time, the first time I saw Lee Allen. I wasn't playing music at the time. In fact, I didn't start playing music until I got out of the service and went to music school as an adult. I started playing music as an adult and Lee Allen was playing with Paul Gate's band. I was playing with Dave Bartholomew's band. We were both playing tenor, ah and when they decided they wanted to use ah two horns it was decided that Lee Allen would play tenor and they would like me to play baritone so I bought a baritone saxophone and ah, it was a happy marriage.

Earl what was so special about Lee?

Well what was special about Lee to me when I met him, he was here already, but I knew he had came from Denver to Xavier University on a scholar... an on athletic scholarship and he was a tremendous athlete, and he dropped out of school. He got busy playing around town and I didn't know him before he came here, but around town, got to know him as a terrific ah honking type of tenor playing for that er... for that music today... of that day, he was about the best there was, at it the honking tenor solos and very uncomplicated solos, but strictly around the melody but real gut bucket and hard and intense, which is what... what his main forte, but ah he came here as... as an athlete on a scholarship and dropped out for his grades were bad.

Hey my name is Alvin “Red” Tyler, New Orleans musician, like talking to you. Hope we'll do it again soon.

I wanted to ask you one more thing. Look at me this time, if you had to say how did rock and roll begin, what would be a short answer to that?

No. Really, I really don't know how it started. You have to realize that I came along in music and... as an adult. I had listened to ah swing bands all my life, second line bands so when I came along it was there as far as I... I was concerned. It was ah... it just something that you did, I mean you didn't ah try to figure out how we going to do this. You went on the bandstand or you backed up a artist by making what their singing fit with...wh... what you were playing. You made it fit. That's all I can say. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it didn't. That's it.

... and a lot of funny days. Sometimes hard and ah, but yet fun. It was so much fun because we didn't have any better sense. We were too young.

Yeah when you're at that age, I mean, you going to live forever and everything ah that comes into your life is a new experience usually, you know after awhile you start doing things and it becomes ah boring ah maybe if it's not the same people. We've always had fun together, you know, so it's... it's not like ah.

Well it's kind of easy for us.

You know I remember some of the things that ah we did maybe would stick out in my mind more than in... in your... than in your mind because of ah situations you know, but ah I remember like we used to come here and a lot of guys used to wait around for us because they knew we were going to spend money, remember.

Buy the drinks.

Yeah we would buy the drinks and they...

Not that they didn't like us or anything like that, but it was a free ride you know what I mean.

And the thing is we enjoyed it.

Right we shouldn't have, but we did.

Yeah, because we weren't making a whole lot of money where we were.

That's right.

We just spent a lot.

That's right.

But we were ... we were luckier than most people to... to...

.... through the windows.

Yeah.

The perfume.

Oh yes, oh yes.

That was their choice ... their choice, but we were lucky to have the fun we did Red because we ... you and I had more fun maybe than most guys because besides the music we worked together when we weren't playing, you know...

And that's important you know. It was ah, but I think musicians were closer than. Don't you think so..

Because they had something in common. They were creating something in common.

Exciting. It was exciting time. New music, you know what I mean and ah we had the kind of a thing that ah you were looking forward to seeing these people

Yeah, yeah.

So it was...

It was like ah you couldn't wait to get out of the house to get... get out to do that again. Not even considering it work.

Yeah we were... we were luckier than... than most because ah, ah even when we were not playing music we were hanging together all the time. You know music school and...

And then during that time too we had the best gigs in town.

Oh yeah.

You know, really... when you really got down to it...

State of mind was... was happy and adventuresome. We always looking to create something. We had the leisure to do so and having us good gigs.

And ah, like I recall... I don't know if for some reason to me that drummers are closer than other musicians because you talked about your sticks to head (?) that you were using and cymbals and things like that.

Like you said, we had that in common as opposed... how much could... could guys talk about except their horn, the make of it and everything. The keys were all the same and everything... difference...

There was a difference yeah.

Different drummers used different drumsticks, different cymbals, different makes of drums. The horn players were all trying to get a hold of Selmas, so there wasn't a lot of different things to talk about in... along those lines, not making it any less important but ah just less to compare you know.

I'm Earl Palmer and I play the drums.

What would you say to the question of who started rock and roll?

Well if you're going to qualify that by who started it without ah determining what instrument started, I would say people like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and ah they started I would say.

Could you say it again because had a bus go.

I would say um people like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Laverne Baker, such people as that, I would say were the starters of what we call... now call rock and roll.

Just say your name one more time.

My name is Earl Palmer and I play the drums.

Tell us that you were the drummer on the "To Know Him Is To Love Him" session and then go on to tell us.

Well what was impressive abo... it was the very first time I met Phil and at this point, he was just a member of the Teddy Bears, but apparently the leader. There was Phil Spector and Marshall Liebman and Carrol Conner, I think her name was... with the Teddy Bears but ah, he later became, even then he was very opinionated about what they were doing, simple as that song was, he seemed to... it was a great project with him and it was... it was very interesting and I didn't... I didn't see him or work with him again for a long time until we began doing Righteous Brothers things and Tina Turner things.

Could you just say that you were the drummer on that "To Know Him Is To Love Him" session, so we have you singing and then go on to say whether or not you though Spector was really a precocious talent.

Well at ah, my first meeting with him was on the Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is To Love Him" and ah, he was somewhat precocious then... they were all pretty young but he was a leader even then you know and ah if you could say that you could see some potential in somebody as a hit maker then, I'd say you could see that in him then. I didn't know it at the time, but I did see a leadership quality in him that later proved itself that he was somewhat of a leader and... and very creative and non-compromising completely. For example when we later did the Righteous Brothers, I think it took us three days to do that thing because he would not compromise on that very slow part, do, do, do do. He wanted it to sound like a retard but not a retard and it took three days to do that and luckily I didn't play in that particular segment, so I sat around for a while, collecting without playing, but he wouldn't compromise until finally he got... they got it to what he thought was you know, exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it and then I later did ah To Kno... "River Deep Mountain High" for him and ah, and the Righteous Brothers "Ebb Tide" and "Loving Feeling" and those things and by then, he had become what had become known to some people as somewhat of a tyrant, but I never... my dealing with him ah I never had those kind of problems with him. Actually I wasn't his original drummer that he used on most of things, Hal Blaine was, but at the time I began working with him, they had had some kind of falling out, which was the case with Phil. He'd fall out with somebody now and then all the time. At this particular time, I began working for him when he and Hal had some kind of hassle between them, but ah...

I also later the next time I saw him, was during the time we did ah, "I Love How You Love Him" with the Paris Sisters and ah I did notice quite a change in... in him. He had become what I would consider had manifested this potential that I saw in him as... as this youngster with the Teddy Bears and by then he had all of this confidence in the world and ah, much of the creative genius that I, you know that he later became… beginning then.

Do you remember that tune, what was it very similar to his first one to the Teddy Bears.

I seem, I seem to remember it was similar, very similar, only a little more musical. It had become more... more musical and a little more the product of a better production, better producer, more confident, more confidently done from his standpoint you know and ah, as I said, this is when I began to notice what I originally felt to him that he had become this... this genius of a producer. I had really, you know venture to say. This wall of sound that he developed was something awesome that was... was wonderful.

... between them but ah...

I also ah later, the next time I saw him, was during the time we did ah, " I Love How You Love Him" with the Paris Sisters and ah I did notice quite a change in... in him. He had become what I would consider had manifested this potential that I saw as this youngster with the Teddy Bears and by then he had... he had all of this confidence in the world and ah, pretty much of the creative genius, that I, you know that he later became, beginning then.

Do you remember that tune, was it very similar to his first one to the Teddy Bears.

I seem... I seem to remember it was similar... very similar only a little more musical. It had become more... more musical and a little more the product of a better production better producer, more confident, more confidently done from his standpoint you know and ah as I said, this is when I began to notice what I originally felt to him that he had become this... this genius of a producer. I had really you know ventured to say, this wall of sound that he developed was something awesome and that was... was wonderful. He was quite a producer. He seemed to have had a finger on what wo... would sell and what wouldn't. His record would prove that you know.

Well this wall of sound idea, I mean you as an instrumentalist become a very small little cog in this big machine. Did it feel like that to you?

It was all a swimming... a big swimming echo and ah even the... even the after beat, for example on "Loving Feeling" where I played the... the after beat on the snare drum and the tom-tom, he wanted the depth of the tom-tom and the sharpness of the snare dr... drum on those aft... on the after beats so you could hear the impact, but yet on the tom-tom you hear this big swimming sound which from the drum standpoint which was a wall of sound in itself, this lot of echoey sound and it was... it was something of his own doing that ah, that wall of sound was. You hadn't heard it from anybody before and I don't think since the same duplication.

How did you react to that, I mean the whole idea of not hearing individual instruments, just hearing this big massive sound?

Well in a case like that, I remember... I remember not the... the music wasn't... wasn't complicated. It was simple enough so that you didn't have to concentrate on matching anything you just had to plow straight ahead without that after beat and... and know that this was your part in that whole thing... in that whole scheme of thing, this was your part to... to keep that after beat just pumping and... and nothing complicated just plow it right in there because it... what you later heard is that everything was built around that and ah... it was easy.

As a musician though, was it frustrating to be just one little tiny piece of this thing?

No, no because ah my then I had come to understand that however simple or whatever you did, there was... it was an important part of the record because it was the drums. It was important. Whatever you played it was important to the record or you wouldn't have been there.

Let me ask you a little bit more, you mentioned earlier about the Righteous Brothers and the so-called blue eyed soul, did you feel any kind of animosity or like they were trying to take these white guys and really make them sound black?

No I didn't... I didn't get that at all because if you listen to the difference in the two voices of the Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley's voice is naturally deep like that and Bobby Hatfield's voice is naturally high so it didn't see to me that they were trying to emulate any... any type of black artist. I just thought that this was a guy that... that ah sounded black without really trying and Bobby Hatfield sounded very vanilla because he sang in the... in the voice level that you would normally expect ah white guy of that particular time to sound like and I think it was Bill Medley not... not minimizing Bobby's part in this whole scheme, but Bill Medley's voice was the... the unique thing about the Righteous Brothers, that big sound he had and that was a natural big sound, if you listen to him talk you'd hear... you would imagine this is the way he would sound singing. The way he did sound.

Tell me that story about Sonny when Phil...

Well at this particular time... [INTERRUPTION] Well there was ah everything that had been said about Phil, there was an aspect of loyalty in him. He was very loyal to a friend of his Sonny Bono who ah wasn't doing anything particularly at that time. This was before he and Cher got together. It was Che... Sonny and Cher. Sonny would be around the studios Gold Star, for example to ah try to get on the contract playing tambourine or shakers or something for Phil so he'd get on the contract and be paid and he later became the contractor for Phil prior to Steve Douglas who recently died, I don't know if you know but at any rate, ah there was one anecdote that ah sometimes Sonny would say Phil don't you need tambourines on this. He'd say, I don't need tambourine on everything Sonny, no I don't want tambourine on this but ah, Sonny would do that and now he's a great aspiring congressman Sonny Bono.

Let's talk a little bit about the "River Deep Mountain High" session. I mean that was like the extreme Phil Spector session.

Wall of sound.

Tell me about what that was like.

That was ah... that was the first session that I... I had done with Phil but he used so many musicians. We did at the ah United Studio A, which is a big studio and it was full of people. I mean just full of musicians and, ah, Tina was at her best, at her best on that. And that was an example of that wall of sound which was, I kind of wondered how he was going to get that wall of sound. It would seem to me that he had a wall of sound by so many musicians in that room but he still got that same sound even without musicians there. And I thought it was a wonderful record. Tina was just awesome in that, she was just marvelous. And I think it was one of his best records, I really do. Maybe that's because it was the biggest production I had been involved with him but I think it was one of his best records. It showed a versatility in him, you know, how versatile he was.

How did he control this huge number of people?

He was able to control the session at all times. Either you respected him or you hated him so that you didn't want to have any confrontation with him so you did what he said or he controlled the session by telling everybody, if I hear another sound in there at all while I'm trying to talk or give instructions, everybody is out and the session is over. And he meant it. He meant it. And you knew he meant it so you went and you did your job. It's not that you didn't have fun doing it 'cause he, he wasn't dictatorial to the extent where he didn't want the musicians to be happy but he didn't want a lot of chatter when he was trying to tell you what he wanted done, which is right. How are you going to hear what he wants if you're talking, you know, over the mike. So, ah, I wouldn't call that dictatorial I would call that precise in what he wanted done and the only way to get all these people to listen to him is to let them know that you're going to listen to what I'm saying 'cause I'm, I'm going to raise hell with you if you don't hear what I'm saying and you make a mistake because of it.

He threw Ike Turner out of the room, what's that story?

On that particular session? I don't remember that.

... carrying guns, he ended up throwing ...

Well Ike, Ike always carried guns. When I first met Ike when they came to LA, he carried a gun. Phil didn't carry a gun around till much later. At the same time he was carrying a gun he didn't need to, he had bodyguards running around. We didn't, with guns already. I couldn't figure out what he was going to, start World War III or what but I don't remember him using that gun on anybody. I think that was just a childish aspect of Phil that being able to carry a gun by having bodyguards with him that had guns gave him an opportunity to play cowboy a little bit.