The 'Spots and the 'Dale
“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”― Oliver Sacks
I am a huge Ink Spots fan. For years I avoided their records assuming their sound would be pure sappy drivel that belonged in the bargain bins along with Sing Along With Mitch or Percy Faith records (leave snarky comments below about how I am missing out on either). But at one point, I was taken in by one of their more pop-art styled covers at a garage sale and I snagged it for one dollar, assuming I would damn myself later. But instead, I was introduced to their quintessential jazzy bluesy laid back sound…the sweet vocals of Bill Kenny, the classic dah-dah-dee-dah guitar intro of Charlie Fuqua, and of course, the signature low down groovy soliloquies of Hoppy Jones that show up around the bridge of every song (and in my mind are a precursor to Hip Hop). The Ink Spots recorded classic ballad after classic ballad, defining the sound of the WW2 years…whose massive record sales were stymied do to the lack of shellac (needed for the war effort) and yet who nevertheless crossed over the charts and were beloved by a huge, diverse audience.
This story is not about the classic Ink Spots, but instead about one of the many off-shoot Ink Spots that toured around the US after their heyday…wayyyy after Hoppy had passed away and even after his replacement, Bill Kenny’s twin brother Herb, had come and gone. By the late 50s, there were several Ink Spots traveling around, playing and recording, each boasting at least one somewhat-original member (very much the Blue Man group business model of today where you never know which group you are actually seeing). In 1962 an Ink Spots that featured Adriel “A. M.” McDonald on “talking bass” (who was initially Herb Kenny’s replacement) took a residency at the Brookdale Lodge just north of Santa Cruz. It is this story…or the questions behind this story…that are intriguing to me.
The Brookdale Lodge, which is still open, is a more run-down version of where Jack Torrance went “all work and no play” crazy in The Shining. It features a one-of-a-kind restaurant that was built around a rushing river, a night club/bar, and at least one ghost. My wife and I once stayed in a room where no matter how high we turned the heater, the room stayed deathly cold. It was only the next morning when we were told that it was the very room that a young girl had died years before (one of at least two young-people-deaths in the lodge’s history). By the 1960s, Brookdale was a rundown landmark and a haunt for gangsters and colorful others who were seeking a dark, foresty low profile. And for some reason, that was the time the Ink Spots had a long running residency there.
I learned about this history the same way I learn about most things, through record collecting. I was bin-diving in a dump of a thrift store in Salinas when I came upon an Ink Spots record called “Thanks To You” with a drawing of Brookdale’s river-restaurant with the heads of the ‘Spots over it and typeface that read Beautiful Brookdale Lodge in the lower right corner. While wondering where Brookdale Lodge was (it was the first time I heard of the place), I flipped the record over and by golly: there was a map of directions to it drawn into the back cover along with signatures from each member of the band…and there was even a song called “Beautiful Brookdale” featured with all the Ink Spots classics, rerecorded for this record, by this alternative alternative version of the band (the record is one of the better post-classic-Ink Spots releases).
Their time at the Brookdale was long enough to record and manufacture a record to promote it; recorded in Los Angeles at AV Studios, the record’s existence begs the question as to why and how it was made in the first place. How did the Ink Spots end up with an extended residency at The Brookdale Lodge? How long were they there and did anything interesting happened during their tenure, while they had plenty of time to hang around awaiting the night’s performance? I have been searching for stories but have so far come up empty…but my imagination takes me to Bubba Ho-Tep meets Mystery Train dramatics. Maybe there is a mystery involved…with a ghost story element that would work well behind the band’s music (which seems to be featured on so many television shows these days).
This is the last recording…and one of the only recordings…of McDonald as an Ink Spot. While his tenure was fairly long with Bill Kenny’s classic Ink Spots, he was not named when they were inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame because he was not on their classic cuts. There is much ado about his being left out in various Ink Spots chat groups. But in the end he got a chance to lead an Ink Spots band…and if you happened to be in the dark deep mountains above Santa Cruz in the early 60s, you might have seen him in all of his glory. I wish I had.
If you have a story about the Ink Spots time at Brookdale, please let me know!
Jay Babcock of [Landline] sent me this article. I recognize Mendes’ art from my times eating at Cha Cha Cha down in Los Angeles…and for some reason I think I had been in her gallery before, maybe more than once, which was located near my apartment in the outer crust of Beverly Hills. Life is but a dream. Regardless, I was totally blown away by her body of work. Great article.
Inside the ‘Chitlin Circuit,’ a Jim Crow-Era Safe Space for Black Performers
Atlas Obscura published a great history of the Chitlin Circuit this past week…a circuit that is still around today with stars like Bobby Rush keeping it alive.
“Next week’s lineup includes an assortment of subjects that are meant to demonstrate Webb’s range as an all-purpose space telescope that can show us the universe in infrared, a wavelength invisible to our eyes. There’s a pair of nebulae, radiant regions in interstellar space. The Carina Nebula is a billowy cloud of gas and dust located about 7,600 light-years from Earth, and home to radiant stars many times more massive than our sun…”
Bob Dylan’s One-of-a-Kind Version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” Sells for $1.7 Million at Christie’s
While I am happy for my friend Lawrence Azerrad (TRULY!!), who did a masterful job designing this release—as he does with everything he touches, this whole 1% meets record collector bullshit really pisses me off.
Music, When Soft Voices Die
By: Percy Shelley
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Ozymandias
By: Percy Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
***200 years ago yesterday, Percy Shelley left Lord Byron after spending a week talking about a new venture they were putting together, a journal called The Liberal. He left with his friend Edward Williams aboard his sailboat The Don Juan and was lost at sea, his body found days after completely decomposed. This newsletter is dedicated to his memory and the poems he left behind.
My parents used to rent a place for our summer vacation, just a few hundred yards from the Brookdale lodge. As a kid (maybe 12 years old, circa ‘64) I used to sit in the lounge, mesmerized by the Ink Spots’ sound. Despite growing up in the Haight Ashbury, (a crossing guard at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury in 1966), with my love for Jefferson Airplane, the Dead, and the whole 60’s genre, I have always had a large chunk of my musical heart owned by the Ink Spots. There is no instrument that evokes the emotion of the exquisite harmonies of the human voice championed by the Ink Spots.
“A spiral etched into it by music” or a record.