Home E-mail: Mike Smith

My manager, Abe Olman, told me that he might start a record label, and this session could be the first songs released. He didn't and they weren't, but New York City was a blast. I did not know at the time I was there that the legal drinking age in New York was 18, and that's probably a good thing. I stayed at the Hotel Wellington, within walking distance of Times Square, and it is true that the city never sleeps.

There was a variety of possibilities for sale in or near Times Square, but I settled for a potato knish. I had been told that it was a simple as a cab ride, and there was no way to get lost, so I did go to Rockefeller Center and watched some people ice skate. Since I had flown in on December 19 and it was the season, I also caught the Christmas show. The Rockettes, yow! And Auntie Mame was the featured film.

Other thrills were riding the subway and taking the express elevator in the Empire State Building. Oh, yeah, we recorded too.

The Session

While in Mr. Sid Bass' office we had a visit from a man doing radio promotion for a record label and he mentioned that he had "finally sold that girl group." The Shirelles - The Shirelles

We did the session in a large theater that I was told was the Decca Studio with the band set up on the stage - a very big room. The band was: piano, upright bass, drums, and guitar, with a chorus of two men and two women from the Ray Charles Singers. Not that Ray Charles, these were white folks.

We did four songs at the New York session and three of them fell into limbo. The only survivor was "Sarah Ruth." My high school friend, Sarah Ruth Gracey, said to me, "You're always writing songs for your little girlfriends. Why don't you write one for me?" So I did. Sarah and I were not romantically linked, so the words "Sarah Ruth, you're such a naughty child, Sarah Ruth, you justa drive me wild," were written as a joke. But it was rockabilly and everybody liked it, so there you go. Decca chose this for the Hollywood session and spelled it "Sara Ruth".

This session was not released, but was the audition that led to the contract with Decca Records.

Sonny Burke   Sonny   Sonny   was the A & R man at this session and Bob Bain was the arranger and guitar player. At the time I had no idea that I was in the company of such brilliant and esteemed talent.

The instruments were: drums, upright bass, electric bass guitar, piano, vibes, and electric guitar. The upright and the electric basses doubled their parts on all of the songs. On "Week of Loneliness" the vibes, piano, and tremolo guitar all played the same parts. The vocal chorus sang the same part on top of this and it was beautiful. A very simple, but very effective arrangement.

I had to learn "Sara Ruth" all over again. In New York I was told that I was singing my own song wrong and the timing was changed. At this Decca session I was told that I had done it wrong in New York, and we changed it back to the way I had originally written it. Both ways worked and gave the song a different feel. There's more than one way to rock!

"Intuition" was what was called a Calypso beat at that time, and was supposed to have been on the first release. I remember that Abe Olman was not happy to have spent the money on the sheet music for "Intuition" and then not have it released.

Both "Week of Loneliness" and "Sara Ruth" were Spotlight Picks in Billboard and this was a very big deal. I'm still looking for that Billboard issue. These songs were released almost two years to the day that I had done my little demo session in Wichita, KS.

"Week of Loneliness" reached number one in Stockton and was in the Top Ten in the Bay Area and charted in some scattered test areas, but never charted nationally. Due to some other factors I parted ways with Decca Records and Abe Olman.

Oro Records of Modesto, CA was an uninsulated one-car garage, and I did a session there in about 1961 and can hear the kids playing next door on my "master." That session was Mike Smith, vocals and D-28 rhythm guitar, and four great girl singers from Stockton, still in high school and named "The Hollies", because Holly Quick was the leader - Myra Zwingleberg is the only other name I remember - sang the backup vocals on "Pretty Little Baby", a rockabilly song, and "The Meaning of Love", a rock and roll ballad. Great record, still pending release. The copyright has been renewed, the singers were paid, and these songs will be for sale. Watch this space!

I did not have a clue as to what to do with this recording, and I would not have the tape if my cousin had not saved it for me. But my next move was to pound the streets of Hollywood again, which led to the session at RCA Victor and the story is strange.

Gary Paxton is now into Gospel, and this is a good info page - Alley Oop hitting Number One on July 11, 1960. Here is a page showing people connected to the Byrds, including the Hollywood Argyles. Here is the best biography of Gary Paxton. The list of songs he wrote is amazing. Gary was born in Coffeyville, KS, current home of Mike Smith. Here is a great interview of Bobby (Boris) Pickett of Monster Mash fame. On a PBS Special called John Lennon's jukebox it was shown that "Hey, Baby" by Bruce Channel on Smash Records was one of the 40 songs on Lennon's jukebox and Delbert McClinton's harmonica playing on that record is a "clear influence" on John Lennon.

So, there's a plaque on the wall as an award for a Bobby Helms - Bobby Helms song - I think "My Special Angel", but it could have been "Fraulein" - and I have since searched the Web for Briarcliff Music to find out, with no luck - but anyway I say, "Do you want to buy some songs?" And the guy behind the desk says, "Yeah, I just sold my catalog to Imperial Records."

So, I'm back in business.

Fred Stryker had to have been the consumate Hollywood hustler. He took me into Columbia Studios where a session had just ended and a trombone player was listening to the playback of his solo. Then I stood in the middle of that Big Studio with my Martin D-28 and beat on it and sang a Rockabilly song of mine called "Coast To Coast" which was along the story line of Rick Nelson's "Traveling Man," but with a strong back beat. I might do that song yet.

Fred tells me that the red-headed guy in the studio booth is Doris Day's son, Terry Melchior, who is here described in an interview of Roger McGuinn:

Roger: I’ve been recording on computers for the last ten years. I was introduced to it when the late Terry Melchior, who was the Byrds producer, invited me out to California to do a Beach Boys album. I went to Carmel where he lives, expecting to go to a studio with a big board and a 24-track, and instead he had a computer set up in his living room with really good mikes and a board, but no recording machine. It was an early version of ProTools. His engineer had optical storage. I think he had twelve gigabytes of storage, and that was enough for back then. He did a whole Beach Boys album on this set-up and released it. I thought, That’s really great, I’ve got to get this together.

And now, back to Columbia: The producer (don't recall his name) liked what I did, but said that his budget was full for that fiscal quarter. As we were walking out I asked Fred if we were going to wait, and he said no. So next:

The RCA Victor Session

Fred Stryker gets me what was called a split session at RCA. This meant that I had 1 1/2 hours to do two songs, and another singer had the other half. I do not remember her name now, but I did know, and she was great, and never heard from again. At least under that name, which I now forget.

What I do remember was that the guy from AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) was there to get money to join that organization. This was a must for recording artists, and he was a tad disappointed to learn that I was not only already a member (from the Decca session) but that I was also paid up.

I vaguely remember the session musicians, drums, bass, piano, guitar and Plaz Johnson, a respected sax player who was a star in his own right. Here is an article with Duane Eddy speaking of Plaz Johnson on one of Eddy's records.

We did two of my songs, "How The Mighty Have Fallen" which is a quote from the Bible and has absolutely no other connection, and "The Bride Wore Black." What I definitely remember was the musicians making fun of the beat of "Mighty" - which was a jazz waltz, and Fred Stryker much later telling me that the board of review in New York City thought "The Bride Wore Black" was "too morbid" I remember those words exactly. Could have been the first Teen Tragedy song. Oh, well.

So we're done with RCA and Fred takes me to Herb Newman, the president of Era Records. Columbia Records, RCA Victor, and Era Records, all within a few months. Mr. Fred Stryker knew his stuff.

Fred Stryker took me to Herb Newman at Era Records and I was given the tapes to "By the Time You Read This Letter" and "That's What I'd Do." My job was to learn the songs overnight and the next day we went into:

Gold Star Studios

Phasing was invented at Gold Star Studios. The first record with phasing was "The Big Hurt" by Toni Fisher, and this page shows an interesting connection to Jimi Hendrix. The tracks for my session were ready and this was my first time to be alone at a session. I was told that Donny Brooks had recorded "By The Time You Read This Letter", but a more baritone voice was wanted. So I overdubbed to the tape, and also learned how to punch in, which made for seamless phrases.

The other song was "That's What I'd Do" written by Joy Byers and we used the demo cassette tape of the song as the backing track. Joy Byers has 95 songs listed in the Copyright office. I recognized "That's What I'd Do", Mike Smith, and "It Hurts Me", by Timi Yuro. Many of her songs are from Elvis movies. Good for her.

On the record Steven Howard is given the credit as writer of "By The Time You Read This Letter", but it was my understanding that Herb Newman wrote it.

I met Era recording artist Larry Verne who did the novelty hit of 1960, " Please Mr. Custer ." The song was funny and he was a funny man in person.

Link to Era releases: Mike Smith - Era 3092: By The Time You Read This Letter / That's What I Like To Do - 1962, which is incorrect.

"By The Time You Read This Letter" topped out at Number 25 on the Modesto, CA charts and promptly disappeared. I was living in Modesto at the time.

Time passes - I emerge from the melting glacier - and I'm in Reno again. I think had been there before when I abandoned the Rambler. This time a friend of mine, Bob Parsons, had called me in Stockton and asked me to join his band as vocalist so I must have taken a bus and I moved in with him and his wife. He even supplied me with a car to drive. The band was an interesting mix of musical and chemical influences: the lead guitar liked smoke and Hendrix and the drummer had a tendency to speed. Bob Parsons was Mr. Clean and played and sang Ray Charles, the bass player was very laid-back - for some unspecified reason - and I was a non-entity with a heavy thirst. We never did get a groove going.

Bob worked at the Reno airport and came home one day to tell that a plane had landed which had been hijacked, and it is the only way I know when I was where: D. B. Cooper did it on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971.

Somewhere in this time frame Bob calls my attention to a newspaper ad wanting musicians to promote and that's how I met Prewitt Rose.

LOST SESSION: Berkeley, CA
Maybe December of 1971: We drove from Lake Tahoe to Berkeley, CA, and how Prewitt finds these places I don't know, but we ended up in what I vaguely remember as somebody's closet and I did a couple of songs of mine with just my current brutal guitar. "It's more of a percussion instrument, Smith." Two things: One - I showed Prewitt that a mis-firing engine could be remedied by pulling the appropriate sparkplug and B - it was a holiday season, surely it was still 1971. Do I need to say that we did not release the record? I'm not sure exactly why we did these sessions, but I guess our craziness protected our sanity.

He gets me bookings with various combinations of bass players and drummers and we job around the Silver Circuit: Winnemucca, Elko, Lovelock. Blank here.

I remember Prewitt telling me that he produced Jay as "Andrew Jay" so here is some info about Andrew Jay Goulart, that just amazes me. Prewitt also told me that Jay had tuned a Volkswagen to do 140 miles per hour and liked to ski down the steep highway from the top of the pass above Lake Tahoe. A fun-loving guy that played "The Star-Spangled Banner" like Hendrix. He was 17 or 18 at the time.

Jay Goulart lived in Gardnerville, and I had met him through Prewitt while I was still living in Reno. I had since moved back to Stockton where my friend Ben Morales and myself worked as a duo and called ourselves Smith and Morales. Ben played drums and I played a brutal box guitar, with strings gauges 15 on top through 60 on the bottom end.

We had one microphone plugged into an ancient Bogen PA head with no reverb, which sat on top of an enclosure with one 15" speaker in it. Voice and guitar came through that one mic. It was a primitive rig, but the total freedom of irresponsible guitar backed by irrepressible drums led to interesting arrangements and powerful noises. We boogied - we rocked - we played night and day. Friday night - Saturday morning - Saturday night - Sunday morning - Sunday night. All without chemical assistance. Bummer.

Prewitt called us up to Jay's house and we set up in the pool room. Jay did not know the songs and we did not rehearse. Why spoil the spontaneity? We recorded "Pictures" - a great song which I later rewrote in 1998 with the hopes of recording it then - and "Lightin' Up Behind The Barn." Guess what people tried to make of that!

Here is the true story behind the song. I was preparing a fence to paint and the tool-of-choice was a wire brush. When I looked down the fence it seemed to just disappear into the distance. So as an incentive I would throw my pack of cigarettes as far ahead as I could and when I got there I would receive my reward. When I got to the cigs I was at a shed and I lit up "behind the barn." A harmless little song really, but some folks got the wrong idea. It helped sales, though.

After the session Ben and I go back to our bookings in Stockton, and somehow - don't remember, so it must have been Prewitt's doing - we are booked into the foothill town of Mokelumne Hill. As we were setting up, Prewitt Rose and Jay Goulart walk in. This was a typical Prewitt Rose manuever; time and distance did not seem to apply to Prewitt. Now that I think of it Prewitt must have brought the 45s with him. We played and sold copies of our 45. We sold ten records and that is a record in itself.

LOST SESSION: Lexington, KY

BEFORE Feb 5, 1972:
Pretty sure I'm in Reno and Prewitt rose is booking me around the Nevada circuit, and two of the clubs I remember are The Gem Bar in Winnemucca and The Ranchers Inn in Elko (the very place I had been in the backup band for Bob Luman.) This time at the Ranchers I worked with a drummer we had brought from Lake Tahoe and a great guy who was the house musician, playing the organ. He played bass with me, and was just right. We played alternate sets with another band, which meant that we started at 10 p.m. and ended at 5 a.m. - a long night.

Prewitt took 25 per cent for booking the trio, which meant that each of us had an equal share. The wise business plan was that I did not have my hands on enough money to liquefy our assets. By this time Prewitt had decided that we needed a refit, so I was Carson Smith - no doubt influenced by all the Carson whatevers in Nevada - "City" and "Sink" for example. I do remember the night in Reno in a heavy snowstorm when Prewitt declared "enough" and we prepared to Go To Nashville.

Nashville finally arrived and we spent a day there amusing ourselves with the locals. The most fun was a "record producer" by the name of Johnny Capps. Prewitt had been entertaining me with stories of this Nashville Legend and at the risk of litigation here is what we did. "You will be a dumb kid with talent and I will represent a group of business men who are investing in you to become a star and we will go see Johnny Capps." So, OK, I got my part.

Prewitt and Johnny blew smoke at each other, Johnny showed us his studio, mutual lies and promises were exchanged and everybody had a good time.

Then we went to Lexington and did a session that took six hours for two songs, was never in tune, I went to Houston, somehow ended up in Reno I'm sure, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

Two local musicians - bass and drums - who had been on the road came back into town, Joe got us together, and we set up to play that weekend. As it turned out the bass amp had been damaged on the bus trip - BUS TRIP - and when the bass player tried to turn it on it didn't. He had been back for a week and had not even checked it out. I was told of a guy in Oxford - about 15 miles away - who "played the bass" and since he didn't have a phone we called the law in Oxford and they sent him to us with a working bass amp. That's how I met My friend Bob Bales

The next night - Saturday - the bass player and myself had a disagreement at 15 minutes till show time and I fired him on the spot. So we sent the law looking for Bob again, and he played his first professional gig that night. "If I say 'A' just beat on an A, don't go wandering off." An interesting evening. Within a couple of months Bob was playing the parts and singing high harmony.

Somehow Terry Mort joined us on the drums - we called ourselves "Jailbreak" - and now that we were a semi-rehearsed band it was time to Make A Record. I had been working on a idea that I called the "Jayhawk Symphony" which would be an album with one side as vocals of story songs of Kansas, and the other side as an instrumental medley of all of those songs. The scheme was that after hearing the stories the "symphony" side would recall the vision. Hey, it coulda worked! Since we needed to have the songs segue, we rehearsed "Son Of The Other Gun" and "Arkansas River" as one song to be recorded in one pass. A total of 6:49.

Story behind the songs:
Arkansas River: While living in Stockton I had the idea for one line - "There's a lot that depends upon that river - It's part of the very lives we live." That line came and went in my mind for 12 years until I'm in Joe's barber shop in Ark City and some people are talking about the ever-repeating-annual-flood damage to their house, as they lived in the lowlands along the Arkansas River. Every year they get a house full of mud - every year they remodel - which is OK if you have insurance. There it was and the song about a bottom land farmer was written in only 12 years and one day. "Sometimes the river takes - sometimes it gives."

Son of the Other Gun: This began as three songs, and all of them were carefully researched. One was to be about the Dalton Raid on Coffeyville and I knew what they wore, what they rode, and how they were armed. Another was to be a big shootout by the ghosts of every Wild West Legend, good or bad, and after a while it was hard to tell which was which - the Pinkerton Detectives for example weren't always on the side of the angels - but I digress. The third song was the one I went with. Wild Bill Hickock wasn't one of the nice ones all the time, either. The story goes that he was hired to intimidate a "nester/sodbuster" - take your pick - so I touched the story up a little and it became a gunfighter ballad about a killer with a conscience. "Deadline, showdown, God's mercy on the slow gun."

We rehearsed at Bob's house and the only way I could keep the arrangement simple - and to save time in the studio micing the drums - was to strip Terry Mort's set down to bass, snare, hi-hat and ride cymbal. He adjusted and found a way to make the song dynamically interesting. We changed the name of the band to "Harvest" to appease a bunch of Blue-Noses, went to Tulsa and got the thing done.

It turned out that Bob is a salesman and we sold our little record at the gigs. Bob also got us radio play in Ark City, Winfield, and Wichita, and this began to feel like a possibility. So we went to a distributor in Wichita and he pops our bubble with the facts of life. "Why should I put a box of your records on my trucks, when I could put another box of __________'s records instead?" He had a point, but we were insistent and asked him if 5,000 records would be enough.

Here's the good part, kinda. He told us that he had only sold 500 copies of "Luckenbach, Texas" in his area, and we had already sold 600 copies of ours. We broke even and called it good.

Between these lines we lost Terry Mort - added Dennis Johnson on drums - went to California - changed the name of the band to "Hard Times" and jobbed around the San Joaquin Valley and the Delta. I had an ongoing thing with Dennis about his capacity compared to mine. When I thought that his intake was affecting his playing I would challenge him - "race you around the block." I remember one instance of Dennis falling down. It was funny.

Then one besotted afternoon on the Delta I said "race you across the creek." The "creek" was a slough, one of the inlets that connected the Pacific Ocean to rivers and ports, and therefore subject to the tides of the ocean. It was the changing of the tides. Dennis immediately dove in and I just had to. We were fully clothed, including jeans and tennis shoes which quickly tripled in weight. Not funny.

When we reached the other side - a long 100 yards or so - I held on to a boat's mooring line and Dennis was already 50 feet downstream from me. The current was so strong that my body was laying straight out and almost on top of the water. Then Dennis pushed off for the return trip and was swept on down the slough. To my way of thinking I could only win if I returned to where I had jumped in. So, in order to compensate for the current I set off upstream. I won't keep you in suspense - we survived - but Dennis and I drank a lot of nasty water that day.

Then Dennis and Bob went back to Kansas and I probably went to Reno again. I don't know. But at the time of this next session I was back in Stockton living in a tent and I do remember that I had a broken hand when it came time to perform this next song.

John Reed, of the Music Room Publishing Group. and Music Room.us was one of the publishers I had contacted and he paid for the session in Stockton. My good friend, George Harrison (not that George Harrison) did the session for me. We put rhythm guitar and vocal on tape and sent it to John Reed, who added electric guitar and keyboards. John then had a booth set up at the Council On Aging convention in Sacramento, and these 45s were offered for sale. We sold not a one. All of the delegates were carrying cassette recorders and by this time in music history the 45 was history. My mother purchased 100 copies later, but it didn't get me on the charts. Mommas, God bless 'em!

However, I did get to sing (sober and with a broken hand) the song for the governor of California, Jerry Brown, who had many contacts in the music industry, and was at that time an item with Linda Ronstadt. The unofficial but very good Linda Ronstadt page. Here is a great Picture of Linda with good links.

Between these lines things took a dire turn. Since I was expecting "We Have So Much To Give" to bring me fame and fortune I wanted to be ready to go to The White House when it called. I still have the letter on which I pinned wild hopes and when I find it I will - found it.

Now that I've read it again, I see that I didn't really have enough information on which to base my drastic action. So I've changed my mind and I'm not going to Smileyberg. Think I'll go to Reno. Wrote a little song about Reno and it goes somethin' like this:

I hit the city limits drunk, high and wired and head and tires a'screamin'.
Below me were the city lights and in the middle was the hot spot brightly gleamin'.
I shut it down to 80 when I saw the red light flashin' in my mirror.
Pulled that Rambler on the shoulder - rolled down the window just to hear.

He said, "This here's the garden spot of the Silver State and we make it hot
For folks who won't take a friendly warnin'.
So sign the ticket if you please, and this time I won't take your keys
And you can see the judge in the mornin'."
Then as the smokey walked away, he turned back to say "Welcome To Reno."

---

It was easy to convince me that since Kansas was halfway to Washington, D.C., it would be a small matter to go to Smileyberg, KS to fixup the store that my mother had bought sight unseen. I arrived there in September of 1980, Reagen did me dirty in 1981 and it was the first of three cold winters I spent at not-so-Smiley.

In August or September of 1981 the whole world shifted. I was playing as a single at a club called Raggedy Ann's in Wichita and was trying to quit alcohol - again. On that Friday night I had a beer at 10 and and another at 1. The proverbial "couple of beers." When I got back to the motel even my toenails were thirsty, but I knew that another drink would be the wrong one.

Do you remember the scene in "Forrest Gump" when he and his sergeant with no legs are out on their fishing boat and the sergeant is cursing God? Well, I wasn't doing that, but I said - to myself really - "how much can I drink and it be OK?"

And right then God showed up!

"Not one drop" is the loudest thought I have ever experienced - I don't know any way to explain it - but alcohol was gone. No withdrawal, no desire, and that Saturday night I went back into Raggedy's as a non-drinker. Lots of adventures to follow, but outside the scope of this timeline.

Suffice to say I go back to California for a while - the eighties do their thing and I do mine (including a couple of albums of inspirational songs that were such good news about the simplicity of life that they got me thrown out of the churches that prefer to keep it complicated) - and back to Kansas in 1990.

In 1992 I go to my 35th class reunion and through all that occurs from this I am reunited with my high school sweetheart after 34 years. Six weeks later we are married and lived happily ever after. Like I said, if it ain't true, it ought to be! And during one of our time-outs:

Yes, there is a Smileyberg, and here is a band, Street Survivor that knows it! Another page of Street Survivor And a band named Danger Bob wrote and recorded a song about Smileyberg. Had their picture taken on the front porch.

Here is some info about Prewitt that I did not know until the invention of the World Wide Web. (Thanks, Al.) An article about Prewitt producing Ral Donner, and doing a session with Pat Boone - funny.

We did "I Can Help" - "Suspicion" - and - "I Don't Want to Talk About It" - which I had never even heard of. Talk about dark years. That song was covered by The Indigo Girls, Rita Coolidge, Rod Stewart, just to name a few, and had been a hit for Crazy Horse, Neal Young's band. The band was originally The Rockets, and Danny Whitten, who wrote the song had gone to high school with Prewitt Rose. Danny later lost his life to heroin.

The idea was a tribute record - I had written a recitation about Danny to include in the song - and Prewitt had a mailing list of his classmates for promotion. It turned out that the list could not be used for blind mailings, so oh well.

It took me over three months to get my voice into shape to hit the high note in "Suspicion" - Why torture me?

Prewitt took a plane into Kansas City and rented a car to drive to Smileyberg. We headed out at about 6 p.m. and in the evening we decided to drive through to Nashville - about 750 miles. We talked all the way, stopping to smoke outside the rental. When we got to Nashville I was too hoarse to talk. This was about noon on Saturday and the session was at 11 a.m. Monday.

The session was at the home studio of Carson Whitsett, writer of "Mississippi Moon" - John Anderson - and "Dear Me" - the first hit for Lori Morgan, and he had all of the tracks ready except for the lead guitar which would be overdubbed after I sang.

It was hard to do.

Been down, baby, but never dragged. Hey, there's a song! I Watched the Y2K pass us by online at midnight starting 2000 at Smiley and then returned to my hometown of Winfield.

Bob outfitted me with two perfectly set up instruments - guitar and bass - a little four-track cassette for practising arrangments - loaned me an electric drummer and a superb acoustic guitar - and introduced me to another talented musician, Bob Dorman, who had just built a recording studio in Arkansas City, KS. All of this went together to record a very talented young singer, Meg, whom I had heard at a tea party. When I put up Meg's page I will tell her full story.

It was 1 1/2 years from the day I began to work on the arrangement of "Candy Cane Lane" until we recorded - about six years since I had written the first version.

We walked into Bob Dorman's studio, I put down the drums, rhythm and bass, then asked Meg to "sing it like a kid" and she nailed it in one. Meg was 11 at the time. One person who heard the CD asked Meg's age, and when I told her she responded that it sounded like a 30 year old singing like a kid. It is very hard to hide true talent.

The total time in the session was over ten hours, as I still had more guitar and keyboard parts to add, and Bob Dorman mastered it perfectly. "Candy Cane Lane" was only ten years in the making and I expect it to outlive me.

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