Coleman, Kestin & Smith – The Vinyl Knights
It began, as most remarkable stories do, with an envelope.
Sometime in 1979, Linda Lou Kestin handed Kenny Smith a simple packet holding more than twenty-five handwritten lyrics — songs that had lived in her notebooks, her imagination, and her heart for years. She’d been planning to send them off to several songwriting contests, but that day, she entrusted them to a friend and fellow dreamer.
Linda’s history in music was already seasoned with rare opportunities. Her first record came through the legendary Lee Rogers, when he recorded “Love and Life,” a single she co-produced under CKS Productions. The label found distribution with Claridge Records, releasing its lone single “Train of Desire” by Total Force featuring Demene E. Hall. Not long after, Paul McCartney’s MPL Communications acquired Claridge and dropped the small label — an all-too-familiar turn in the music industry’s wheel of fortune.
Rogers came back strong in 1980 with “It Must Be Love,” written by Kestin, affirming her growing voice as a lyricist. Then, in 1986, Smith recorded one of Linda’s early works, “You Make My Life So Beautiful,” performed by a group called Better Half. Though the vocals turned out lighter than intended, the track still made its way onto their album of the same name — a sign that Linda’s songs had a way of finding their place in the world.
Through the late seventies and eighties, Linda balanced art and responsibility with equal grace. She was raising two teenage daughters in Santa Ana, working as vice-principal at a leading magnet school, and teaching — all while nurturing her creative soul. Writing lyrics and singing were her private sanctuaries, the stress relief that kept her heart open in the long hours of an educator’s life.
Meanwhile, in 1987, Smith released his first of four albums, “Raw and Nasty,” deeply inspired by his move to Las Vegas. Three of its standout tracks — “Love Thang,” “Sweet Gypsy Woman,” and “Heartbreaker” — drew lyrical spirit from Kestin’s writing.
By 1988, Smith had settled in Colorado, carving out a new chapter. There, in the quiet rhythm of the mountains, he began composing relentlessly. He also became fascinated with the emerging frontier of Artificial Intelligence, experimenting with PG Music’s PowerTracks MIDI software and an old Commodore 64. He cataloged and coded five volumes of Kestin’s works but never reached out to her directly.
In 1994, Smith tried once more to reconnect, writing to Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) and asking that a letter be forwarded to her. The letter came back unopened — BMI couldn’t forward mail to another member. “I just lost out on keeping in touch with her,” Smith later recalled. “But she was never out of my mind.”
He carried her words with him for twenty-five years — her lyrics like old friends in the back of his mind. The pages vanished and resurfaced through the years, turning up again in 1993, sparking a new creative wave. Around that time, he began collaborating with Jamie Zikowitz, his co-writer and demo vocalist. Together, they recorded “I Just Want to Thank You” and “Never Deny Love.”
Four years later, in July 1997, Smith released “Kenny Baby.” The album featured several of Kestin’s lyrics brought to life — “I Got Your Love,” “Just to Be With You,” “Run to the River,” “Run to Kiss You,” and “Love Thang.”
Then, in 2004, Smith began pairing old tracks with new melodies from his database — musical fragments aligning like planets. Out of this creative storm emerged “One Time Love,” a song stitched from decades of unspoken collaboration. He laughed about how unreal it felt — “like the music had been living in my head, waiting for the words to find it.”
But the story didn’t end there.
In 2005, while sorting through boxes of personal effects, the long-lost Kestin Songbook tumbled out — lyric sheets and CD masters scattering across the floor. “They’d been gone almost a year,” Smith said. “Seeing them again felt like finding treasure.”
He wasted no time. The first two revived tracks — “Roadrunners” and “What About Love” — had debuted earlier on the Rosamond High School 30th Reunion CD (2001). Now, they were remixed for LLK Songbook Volume Four (“Roadrunners”) and LLK Songbook Redux Volume Two (“What About Love”). That second song carried a question that still resonates: When you have it all… what about love?
Smith immersed himself once more, matching lyrics to music as if guided by instinct. “The songs just fit,” he said. “Like butter melting on hot popcorn.”
In late October 2005, Smith finally mailed the first finished CD — “The Linda Lou Kestin Songbook, Volume One” — to an address he hoped was hers. Fourteen songs, wrapped in silence except for a simple card. No message, no explanation. Just the music.
He never waited for confirmation. Instead, he hit the road again — this time to Memphis, where Al Green and Willie Mitchell were recording their first album in over twenty-five years. Smith watched as they worked on the same equipment that had once defined the sound of soul, a moment that would inspire his own track “Come On Honey” on the LLK Songbook Volume One CD.
Soon after, Platinum Sound launched “The Linda Lou Kestin Songbook, Volume One” as an iPod station on iTunes and GarageBand.com, letting a new generation discover the warmth, hope, and humanity in Kestin’s words.
For Smith, producing five full albums of Linda’s lyrics became the defining challenge of his creative life — “very close,” he said, “to Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.”
He smiled as he reflected, “I just looked up, and twenty-five years had gone by.”
Kestin went on to win both national and international songwriting contests twice in her career — proof that true art finds its way home, even if it takes a lifetime to do it.
— InterNetics Magazine, 2005
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