My daily regimen consisted of waking at dawn, grabbing some breakfast, and walking to the city bus stop for my twenty-minute ride down Wilshire Boulevard to the May Company. I put in my eight-hour workday, then arrived home by 5:30 p.m. to get ready for my 6:00 p.m. night class. My net take-home pay was $80.00 per week, half of which I gave to my mom. It was an adjustment to get used to the May Company job and all the faces and experiences that came along with it. And I know it was scary for Cathy to adjust to her new school. She had been an excellent student at San Dieguito High and now had to catch up at Beverly Hills High, which had a much more advanced curriculum and a huge student body. Most of the students came from very wealthy backgrounds, and many were the sons and daughters of Hollywood actors. But we both managed. Our family was picking up the pieces, and the three of us managed to keep moving forward in the face of some big changes. None of us complained; we just did what we had to do.
It was music that really helped me get through that time of transition. I was listening to and learning from every resource I could find. Fortunately, the Ash Grove was mere minutes away from our new apartment. It was an amazing club that was known for presenting traditional folk, blues, and bluegrass. In fact, I was well aware of the Ash Grove before we even moved to Los Angeles. I used to make the trip up with my friends Kenny Wertz and Gary Carr to see Flatt and Scruggs, The Stanley Brothers, and Bill Monroe—all of whom we saw within a six-month period. That’s also where we saw The Kentucky Colonels, who were then called The Country Boys. The last time we saw them, their mandolin player Roland White was in the Army, stationed in Germany, so a Berkeley student named Scott Hambly was filling in on mandolin and vocals.
He was so good that I went up to him after their first set and asked if he gave lessons. “I do,” he responded, “and if you can get up to Berkeley, I would happy to teach you some basics.” All of sixteen years old—with just a change of clothes, my mandolin, and a round-trip ticket, I took the train up from Del Mar. Fortunately, my sister Susan had moved to Berkeley, so I had a place to stay. Arriving in the early evening, I called Scott and arranged for our first lesson, which would be the next morning. What a great guy Scott was. He showed me the right pick to use, how to play scales, all the chords I would need to know, and how to develop a good strong tremolo with my right hand. After two days of lessons he said, “Now you’re on your own. Practice, learn off your records, and practice some more.” The next time I got together with Kenny and Gary, I was able to hold my own.
Once I moved to LA, I became an Ash Grove regular on most weekend nights. I also managed to meet some guys from Pasadena who were bluegrass players. I’d been playing with Kenny and Gary some down south, which I missed, so when those Pasadena guys occasionally invited me out to play with them, it was a much-needed boost. By that point, I’d finally gotten a much-coveted Gibson F2 mandolin, and my skills had improved considerably.
After a few months, I realized I needed new wheels. The bus was all fine and good, but I needed some real transportation—a way to physically escape when not burdened with the daily drudgery of the May Company. By that point I’d finished night school and had finally gathered the credits for my diploma. In celebration, I started saving some cash to buy a new Honda 305cc Super Hawk motorcycle. Amazingly, my mother gave me permission and even co-signed a small loan so I could buy the magnificent machine. It was black and looked like an English Café Racer. Now that I had my cool bike, the door was open for many exciting adventures.
By the end of the year, things were getting better. I had met a sweet young lady who worked in the May Company’s cosmetics department. We became fast friends, and she offered just the right amount of affection to soothe my wounds. I can’t even recall her name now, but she made settling into a new life much more bearable. Cathy, too, adjusted to the rigid atmosphere of Beverly Hills High, and even Mom grew happier than I had seen her in months. Feeling that we’d stabilized, and having just turned eighteen, I decided perhaps it was time for me to move out and begin my adult life.
In January of 1963 my bluegrass pals Kenny and Gary invited me to move back down to San Diego and join their new band, The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers. I sat down with my mom to explain how I was feeling and to discuss the new opportunity. I didn’t want her to feel like I was abandoning her, and it was important for me to have her blessing. Thankfully, she was very encouraging and believed in me enough to let me go.
I gave notice to the May Company, and probably right in the nick of time. I’d been shoplifting Levi’s on the job. Fortunately, a very kind fellow employee, who was also a floor walker, took me aside one day and told me I was being watched. Had he not done that, I probably would have been arrested. I’ll never forget his kindness in not turning me into the authorities.
With my mother’s blessing and the May Company behind me, I stuffed a few pieces of clothing into a duffle bag with my mandolin, strapped it all down on the back of my motorcycle, and hit the highway. I was excited and scared to be embarking on a new and unknown path.
Kenny and Gary’s bandmates in The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers were Ed Douglas and Larry Murray, who ran a place called the Blue Guitar shop. It was Ed who was responsible for the group’s memorable name. He had been born in Scottsville, Kentucky, and used to talk about “squirrel barking” back home. The way it worked was that a fella out hunting for his supper would run a squirrel up a tree. Once it froze, he’d take careful aim and shoot at the bark of the tree just below where the squirrel was perched, knocking it out of the tree and onto the ground in a semi-conscious state to be picked up completely intact and ready to become that night’s meal.
The first step upon arriving down south was to figure out where I was going to stay. Ed had a little tiny shack out behind the Blue Guitar that had no furniture, no hot water for showering, and no amenities other than a broken-down little cot for sleeping. Sometimes I’d crash with one of the guys, but I usually stayed out in the shack in those terrible conditions, trying to figure out how to find a proper place to live.
The Squirrel Barkers rehearsed every day and played every Saturday night at the Blue Guitar. Ed and Larry worked it out to have intimate shows every weekend. In addition to our group, they’d bring in local folksingers, a couple of Flamenco guitarists, plus an occasional Flamenco dance troupe. The Blue Guitar stage is where we really learned how to play. It was a great time of musical growth, but living behind the guitar shop and having limited funds wasn’t exactly the best situation. Other than our shows on stage, it was a tough haul. I was rapidly becoming a burden to my friends as I was a functional borderline panhandler in those lean times.
I was finally saved from my shack after a couple months when I moved in with a guy named Juan Martin, which I think was actually just a stage name. Juan was Cuban and had been a member of The Jose Greco Flamenco Dance Troupe. Known throughout the world, Jose Greco brought the art of Flamenco to America. Juan had grown up in Cuba and barely escaped with his life the day Castro rode into Havana. On his way to the Havana Harbor to make his escape, some of Castro’s troops opened fire on the car Juan was riding in, killing his best friend. He managed to get to the harbor and to a safe passage on the next boat leaving for Miami.
When I met him, Juan was actually living across the Mexican border in an apartment in Tijuana. Since he wasn’t a citizen but occasionally worked in the US, Juan had a day pass to come across the border, but it was only valid until sundown. I had gotten to know Juan through a guy named Yuris Zeltins, who was a Flamenco guitarist and instrument repairman—as well as Ed and Larry’s third partner in the Blue Guitar. They shared the Tijuana apartment, which happened to have a spare bedroom. Three stranger people never rode across the Mexican border every night: a Cuban dancer, a Latvian Flamenco guitarist, and a half-Jewish teenage bluegrass mandolin player. But, hey, I didn’t mind. I had upgraded to the luxury of heat and a decent bed to sleep in. Juan took Yuris and I around to the nice parts of the city to the good restaurants and clubs that featur
ed the best Flamenco music. He also taught me enough Spanish to navigate the streets of Tijuana on my own.
My living situation had improved a bit, but I was still living for those Saturday nights at the Blue Guitar. Just getting up to play was a thrill. If we made any money, that was an extra treat. Our reputation began to grow around San Diego, and soon we started booking some other gigs. Ed played bass but also handled all our business and served as the manager. Larry was our emcee on stage, played the dobro, and sang baritone. Gary played rhythm guitar and sang lead, while Kenny sang tenor and played banjo. Gary Carr was a great guitar player and an exceptional singer, as was Kenny; they had the Stanley Brothers duet harmony down. I, of course, handled the mandolin. Being the youngest and still extremely shy, I only sang occasionally.
As our reputation grew, we even got the chance to perform on live television. It was a local morning show hosted by a very young Regis Philbin. One of his other guests on the show the day we appeared was Frankie Avalon, whom I distinctly remember standing in front of us while we were warming up and just staring, transfixed at what we were doing. I’m guessing he’d never encountered bluegrass music in his hometown of Philadelphia.
The band was starting to sound really good. We began branching out, not confining our activities to San Diego County but venturing up to Los Angeles, too. The Troubadour in West Hollywood, right up the street from my old haunt, The Ash Grove, was the premier folk club in LA. Every Monday night was the “Hoot,” which was basically an open mic night. This was the place to be seen and possibly move up a rung on the ladder. We would pile into Ed’s Volkswagen van and make the 130-mile trip up to LA to play the Monday night “Hoots.”
This was around the time Herb Pedersen entered my life. Herb was in a bluegrass band called The Pine Valley Boys that had moved down to LA from Berkeley. We immediately hit it off and became fast friends. Herb would later become a very important figure in my musical life.
Everyone we met who was anybody in the burgeoning folk music scene told us we had to have an album to get any real work. So, during one of The Squirrel Barkers trips, we all decided it was time to focus on getting some kind of a record deal. Ed had seen the name Jim Dickson listed as the engineer and producer on the back of an album by The Dillards, who had recently moved out to Los Angeles from Salem, Missouri. Ed called up World Pacific Studios in West LA, where Jim worked, and it just so happened he was in the building at that particular moment. Jim invited us to come down and play him a few songs. He liked what he heard, but Jim wasn’t ready to take on The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers just yet. He was, however, very encouraging and steered us toward Crown Records, which he said might be another possibility. He called up Crown and arranged for us to drive over and audition right then.
Crown Records consisted of a very small office and tiny recording studio, but we played a few songs and they loved us. In fact, they wanted to start recording an album right away. This was exciting stuff, but Crown was a very small independent label. Their distribution network wasn’t even record stores, but supermarkets and five-and-dime shops. A deal with Crown Records meant you got to make one album, and all the songs had to be public domain material so there were no song royalties to be paid. Plus, we had to record the entire album live, with no overdubs. We literally set up—right then and there—and cut the whole record in four hours. They even mixed it straight to two-track tape as we recorded it. To top off the day, we headed out to Griffith Park right after the recording session for a photo shoot for the album. We were all dressed in matching vests and boots, looking every bit the part of a proper Kentucky bluegrass outfit. Talk about streamlined! We had a complete, fully mixed album, including the cover art, within a total of eight hours. The album was titled Bluegrass Favorites.
Within a few weeks we had actual copies, a box of ten albums for each band member plus a small stipend for each of us. I still hold up this record, my very first, as one of the best I’ve ever been a part of. We played without fear, just pure unbridled passion. I even got to sing lead vocals on one song, “Reuben.” That’s the earliest recording of my vocals. It would be a few years before I’d get the chance to do it again.
We were still making our weekly appearances at The Blue Guitar, but on one of our trips to LA to play the Troubadour Hoot we met a man named Tom Campbell who worked at Disneyland, booking talent around the park. Tom offered us a three-week summer showcase in front of the Mine Ride, taking over for a band called The Mad Mountain Ramblers. Every afternoon we would dress in our stage clothes, which resembled miner’s outfits—boots, scarves, suspenders, and hats like the one worn by famous cowboy sidekick Gabby Hayes. We got to play music, meet girls, and get free passes to the Disneyland rides. As soon as our engagement was over, Herb Pedersen’s band, The Pine Valley Boys, came in and took over the gig.
Another big opportunity for the Squirrel Barkers was the chance to play the Sunday afternoon show at Smokey Rogers’s Bostonia Ballroom in El Cajon, just south of San Diego. Smokey was a local country singer who’d had a few regional hits. He performed at the Bostonia on Friday and Saturday nights, but the Sunday show featured guest acts, and Ed managed to get us the booking. It was a big deal because The Bostonia Ballroom, along with The Palamino Club in North Hollywood and The Foothill Club in Long Beach, was part of the Southern California touring circuit for a lot of the bigger country acts.
The day came for our appearance at Smokey’s club, and I was sitting outside in the back of the main stage practicing my mandolin to warm up for our portion of the show. All of a sudden, I felt a hand on my shoulder as a huge shadow descend over me. “You sound real good, son,” said a deeply resonant voice. “Keep playing, work hard, and you may find what you’re looking for someday.” I looked up. It was Tex Ritter. The Tex Ritter, the cool singing cowboy whose movies I’d watched as a kid. Receiving a dose of approval and encouragement from a childhood hero meant the world to me.
In the fall of 1963, Kenny and Gary got their draft notices and, not wasting any time waiting to be called up by the army, decided to join the air force. So much for The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers. We still had a few shows booked that we had to honor, so Doug Jeffords, an active navy officer, filled in for Gary Carr on guitar. We invited Bernie Leadon, who was still in high school at the time, to fill Kenny’s spot. In fact, Bernie, who I had met a few months earlier, was a Squirrel Barkers fan and was really inspired by Kenny’s style on the banjo. It looked like we might even be able to figure out a way to carry on beyond the dates we’d booked.
Bernie was an incredible banjo and guitar player, but his family soon moved on to Gainesville, Florida, where he continued his music. It was there that he met Tom Petty, who was just beginning his own musical journey at the time. Fortunately, Bernie and I kept a close friendship and reunited a few years later in The Flying Burrito Brothers before he left to form The Eagles with Glenn Frey, Don Henley, and Randy Meisner. Without Kenny, Gary, or Bernie in the Squirrel Barkers, however, our group splintered. I eventually got back on my Honda Super Hawk and headed back to LA the same way I’d headed down to San Diego six months earlier—with nothing more than duffel bag of clothes and a mandolin. I was on the hunt for my next musical adventure.
I wasn’t back home but a short time when I ran into Ross Blackledge, an old pal I’d grown up with in Rancho Santa Fe. His father was the insurance agent who had fought for my family after my dad’s death, so I thought a lot of Ross and his family. Ross was working driving trucks—big trucks—and I found out he was taking a load on a flatbed rig to San Francisco in the next few days. I managed to hitch a ride. We met up at 10 p.m. off the Golden State Freeway, loaded my Honda on the flatbed trailer, tied it down, and headed north. I didn’t know what I was looking for—let alone what I was doing—but now, as I look back, it was as if I was wandering down a long road full of blind corners, just trying to figure myself out. We arrived in the Bay Area very early the next morning, where Ross unloaded his truck at the freight receiving area in Oakland. We
pulled the motorcycle off the bed of the truck, cranked it up, and took off for San Francisco. Ross was a big guy, so him riding behind me on my Honda must have been quite an interesting sight for other travelers on the road.
Ross went on his way the next morning, while I stayed several days with some high school friends. My next mission was to find a job—any job. I applied at Swift’s Packing Plant in South San Francisco but failed the math test and wasn’t hired. Good thing because that wasn’t meant to be. Somehow Ed Douglas from the Squirrel Barkers found out where I was and sent me a telegram telling me that Don Parmley, the leader of The Golden State Boys, was trying to find me. They needed a mandolin player and he thought of me. Having watched different variations of The Golden State Boys on the weekly Cal’s Corral TV show on Channel 13 when I was in high school gave me a pretty good idea of the band’s sound. Cal was Cal Worthington, a famous car dealer who let the bands on his show use a new Dodge station wagon. I immediately called Don who asked if I could come to his house to audition. Don lived in Norwalk, all the way down in Los Angeles County, where I’d just come from.
But this was The Golden State Boys! I was on a plane for LA within the next six hours. I left the Honda with another old high school pal who swore he would take care of it for me. The next day I showed up at Don’s garage with my mandolin, hardly any clothes, and definitely no money. He introduced me to his bandmates, brothers Vern and Rex Gosdin. We huddled in Don’s garage to begin our first rehearsal, which went fine. It was mostly bluegrass songs I knew and some others I learned very quickly. The band’s manager, a man named Bob Flowers, stopped by to let us know we had been scheduled to play in Jackpot, Nevada, for two weeks. That was a place in the northeastern part of the state, on the Idaho border, that neither I, nor any sane human, had ever heard of before. I guess that meant I passed the audition. The best thing I heard that day was when Bob Flowers asked, “Chris, do you need any money? I can advance you a little.” Boy, did I need some money. I took him up on his offer and bought some decent clothes and basic necessities for the trip to Jackpot.
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