VINYL KNIGHTS - PURPLE OLIVE - BY KENNETH HOWARD SMITH

VINYL KNIGHTS - PURPLE OLIVE -

BY KENNETH HOWARD SMITH

In the summer of 1969, I got a chance to play at the Hollywood Teen Fair with my band  Purple Olive. 

I was hell bend on taking Purple Olive to the big time.

Mary Beth Broderson was our photographer.  We wanted to document that we actually played at the fair.  We were scheduled to play at the Kustom Amplifier Booth just out side of the main stage, but our time had come and gone.   There were five bands still in front of us waiting to play.  The people who came to audition us had left hours ago and we were just standing around – waiting.

Several other bands were standing in line with us to play in the Kustom's Electronics booth.  Kustom was the leading manufacturer of electronic equipment for musicians.    We had to wait for about three hours before we got a chance to go on stage.

Talking to the band director, I had enough of the waiting, and I was getting tired of this.  Lynn and I confronted the director, and we told him that we had traveled along way to get here and play, and as it was stated in our contract, we were several hours overdue and what was he going to do about it.

He promised to get back to us within a couple of minutes.  It must have been over an hour. What was happening to us was also happening to the other groups.  On the same waiting list with us were groups with names like Steppenwolf,  Genesis, and Earth Wind & Fire.  Lynn and I just happen to protest more greatly then the other groups.

The only stage available to play on was the main stage in the Palladium itself.  The featured artist was Johnny Rivers, who was late getting back from San Francisco, and the music director ask if we wanted to play on this stage until Johnny got to the fair.

We were asked to just keep the audience company.  The stage was set up very differently then what we were use to.  All we did when we played was just to set up and get a general sound check and start playing.

The drums were pre-miked.  Every drum, all of the toms, the hi-hat, all of the guitars, everything.  It all feed into a studio mixing board in a room overlooking the audience and main stage.

The volume of the stage monitors was just enough to hear yourself and an overall mix of the total band and the vocals.

We plugged into the system, and with 10,000 people milling around on the floor looking at different wares the vendors had on display.  All we had to do was keep the audience at bay until the real star of the show got there.

Terry, Lynn, Ricky and myself just looked at each other, and we decided to pull the hammer down.  We started out with a Buffalo Springfield’s song,  entitled "Pretty Girl, Why".  Very slow and easy.  It was just the kind of song that the crowd would recognize, and it was away to get a sound check.  As we played, we kept signaling to the engineer to come up on the drums and bass.  Eventually, we had the mix we were use too.  Bass and drums up high and out front.

We didn't knock the house down, and we barely even got notice.  The crowd was still looking at the vendors products and we just stared at each other on  stage.

It was very obvious that we were not going to move these people in the least, and we just decided that we were going to play for ourselves, and to heck with everyone else.  Lynn took one look at me, and I in turn looked around at Ricky and we decided to go for broke.  Our second song was the rocker "Stove Gas" written by Lynn.  It was a crazy and wild tune.  Lynn had this Mosrite Wah Wah pedal that had a  build-in siren, and boy, that got the crowd's attention really fast. The old saying of never scream fire in a crowded theater would probably be true here.

We kept up the heat, and finally everyone realize that we were the one's on stage with the siren, they started to get into the music. But for a second there, I thought they were going to tear the exits downs trying to get out of there.

We didn't give the music a break, we immediately transcended in the next song, and keep the heat up.  By the time we had finished with our fifth song, we had the audience going crazy at the foot of the stage, and we were not ready to stop.

By this time, Johnny Rivers and his band had gathered at the sides of the stage entrances and were just looking at us.  It was about that time we started to end our set and give up the stage to Rivers. 

But the crowd had something else in mind.  They begin to chant "more, more, more" and we just stood there basking in the glory that the audience had chanted upon us.

I looked to the side of the stage and I saw Rivers, giving us the one more sign.  It was very genius of him and we decided to take full advantage of it.  We ended the night with Jimi Hendrix’s Stone Free.

When we got off the stage that evening, we new that we had accomplished something, but we didn't know what.  The girls were screaming and that was different.  We came home that night, and decided it was time for us to record a record.

Back in Rosamond at the first practice, we just could not believe what was going on.  It was just too much.  We were very high on life.  It was like we had won the first Super Bowl game.  After a couple of days, we had come down from our first taste of Hollywood.

The band had $500 in its treasurer chest which was under the protection of Mister Rocky Perrine.  We asked him if we could record and press the group a record.  Thus was born the label Heavy Rock Records named for Mister Perrine. 

Down at Cherokee Recording Studios in Hollywood, we recorded our first commercial record, Love, What A Bring Down and Terry’s Song.  I believe that everyone hated that record.  We should have recorded one of Lynn’s songs instead.  To this day, a copy of that record  still surfaces from time to time.

 

The beginning of football was here, and I was not eligible to play anymore.  Lynn went off to play football and Terry left the band to go back east for college.  The band was down to just the original players, Ricky and myself. 

As Purple Olive, we never played the Hollywood Teen Fair again. 

We decided to bring in Mark Montijo to replace Terry and then we decided on something radical, we wanted a new group and a new name.

Robert Mandolph, Jr., had a great voice.  On his commercial recordings, for Vault Records and Columbia Records, he used the name “Bobby Mandolph”.  Bobby was going to Antelope Valley College with the rest of us. 

Upon our next practice, the group had a meeting and we wanted to bring Bobby into the group as the lead vocalist.  Bobby wanted to bring into the band two other new members.  I guess Lynn and Bobby really didn’t get along, and Lynn wanted to play football and forget the business.  Lynn left after the first practice and never returned.

Bobby came from a very talented family.  Everyone in the Mandolph family played the piano and sing.  The Mandolphs arrived in California sometime around 1955, with Robert “Bumps” Blackwell.  They came straight to Los Angeles, where Mister Robert Mandolph Sr., played the keyboards for Sam Cooke, Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls and many others as a studio musician.

Bobby’s two brothers, Harold and Melvin were two handsome young men on a fast track with the ladies and partying  for their own good.   Hollywood had pushed the two brothers way off the tracks, and their greatest talent went into pushing needles into their arms.

But on the other hand, were their talented sister Margaret Mandolph who was the real ticket  to Hollywood.

With his wife, two children and $200 in cash, a young songwriter and arranger by the name of David Gates hit Los Angeles in late 1961. Within weeks he was playing weekly at a club in the San Fernando Valley called The Crossroads where Robert Mandolph, Sr., often played in the local jam sessions there which included a young Glen Campbell, fresh from Arkansas, Louisiana transplant James Burton, high school classmate Leon Russell, and such future session stars as Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Steve Douglas and Jim Horn.

 

By late 1963, Gates as a songwriter had these songs for a girls type group.  Mister Mandolph told the young Gates about his 14 year old daughter Margaret.  With a couple of rehearsals at the club, Gates placed her in this girls group to record a couple of these demonstration songs.  He had written this charming little song entitled Popsicles and Icicles.  The record company loved the song so much that they wanted to release as it was.  So was born The Murmaids and a national top ten record. 

Gates was one of a kind.   He knew rock ‘n’ roll, country and rhythm & blues and classical music. By the end of the 1970’s Gates would arrange songs for Bobby Darin, Elvis Presley, Ann-Margaret, Duane Eddy, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Merle Haggard, Hoyt Axton, Bobby Vee, Buck Owens and Captain Beefheart.

For Steve McQueen’s movie theme Baby the Rain Must Fall, Gates came up with the captivating sound that became a Grammy nominated top-10 hit for Glenn Yarborough in 1965.

Gates would write and produce and record three single releases for Margaret on Dot Records as a solo artist.

By the end of the  1960’s, rock groups were the rage. Gates knew that the best way to get his songs recorded was to sing them himself. He formed Bread in 1968 with Jimmy Griffin and Robb Royer, with most of the hits coming from Gates. Beginning with his Make It With You, If, Baby, I’m-a Want You  and It Don’t Matter to Me in 1970.

Margaret Mandolph continued to write and record with her brother Bobby, but soon lost interest in the recording business, and by the end of 1969, Margaret moved to Oakland to finish her college degree.  She never really attempted to record again after her father passed away.