Before we leave the Dry City Scat Band, it may be interesting to examine a phenomenon known as The Pepsi Hootenanny. Darrow explains: “During my last days with the Scat Band, we were managed by a guy called Tom Campbell, who wrote ‘Darcy Farrow’. He was also head of booking entertainment at Disneyland…. and he was hiring all sorts of interesting people – including us. Disneyland was really great around that time… you had people like John McEuan from the Dirt Band, working in the music shop, Steve Martin was working in the magic shop, Denny Brooks was working at Coke Corner, and also compering the concerts of hootenannies, as they called them.

“These Hoots were basically to advertise Pepsi Cola, but they used to attract about 3 or 4000 people, because the bills were always very strong: you’d have, say, The Modern Folk Quartet, Joe and Eddie, Sam Hinton, the Clara Ward Gospel Group, Steve Gillette, and the Ry Cooder/Pamela Polland Duo.

“Tom got together with this guy from Pepsi Cola and put a touring Hootenanny on the road – playing colleges to publicise Pepsi. We were all getting 100 dollars a week – which was actually the first time we made any money.

“There were a bunch of really good people involved with that scene… like Steve Mann, who was a legendary guitarist. He used to play with Hoyt Axton (who wrote ‘Snowblind Friend’ about him), but he died a few years back…. Just too sensitive and fragile to survive, some say. He took the part of a guitar playing clown in the show. Steve Gillette was working with this chick as a duo, and Mike Post, who later did a lot of TV work in Los Angeles, worked with a couple of really beautiful tall girls (about 6’2”, dressed up in space suits) as the Wellingbrook Singers. Then there was Albert and Shannon…. Linda Albert co-wrote ‘2-10 Train’….. and I remember Roger McGuinn being around too. He had longish hair and those funny glasses – and he wore Beatle boots before they were fashionable, and was going on about this “great new group from England called the Beatles”.

“After a short time the Pepsi scene fell apart – mainly to do with the lack of commercial success. Everyone split off and went their own ways….. it was the end, and the beginning in a lot of ways”.

“Meanwhile, I decided to curtail my bluegrass career in favour of continuing college and starting a part-time rock group called THE FLOGGS – that being a reference to a totally worthless person, a vagrant layabout….. a typical college-type term of abuse meaning you were OK, but you were useless, you know?”

Once more, Darrow called on stalwarts BILL STAMPS on lead guitar (11) and ROGER PALOS (bass), brought in a local guy called TOMMY SALISBURY on drums, and fronted the group as lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist – singing hot classics from the Animals/Rolling Stones/Them catalogues.

“We did folk-rock stuff too, and we were sounding really good, though our early gigs were never bigger than local clubs and parties – but we decided to lift our horizons and brought in HUGH KOLA, from Texas, on keyboards. Then we began to introduce original and traditional material into the set – including songs like ‘If the Night’ [ed – of which a taste can be had here] and ‘Hesitation Blues’, which found their way onto the first Kaleidoscope album some 1 ½ years later.

“The transition to electric instruments demanded an almost total rethink of my musical education, and I had to work up a rock’n’roll point of view after years of being a bluegrass freak….. and it was a period of growing up for a lot of us – 1964/65. Suddenly, pop music was good again, in fact it was better than ever – and we all wanted to be part of it. Up in Pasadena, Lindley was apparently doing the same – spending hours practicing electric guitar and fiddle, and trying out ideas with different permutations of people.”

(He was also, I subsequently discovered, deriving income from the spluttering tail end of the folk boom – contributing to a 5 string banjo ‘sampler’ album on Horizon Records, turning down a lucrative offer to join the New Christy Minstrels after enduring a trial gig with them, and working odd short lived accompanist gigs).

”In many respects, the Floggs were pioneers: we were doing bluegrass tunes electrically, we were singing country harmonies, Bill Stamps was using finger picks on electric guitar, and nobody really knew how to take us – because we didn’t sound like any well-known group we could relate to. Nevertheless, we often tried to adopt a Top 40 formula so we could play at dances; we did a lot of popular stuff, and favourites like ‘Gloria’, but we always ended up sounding like ourselves”.

At this point, the interview was interrupted by a turbulent phone call. “Oh no, you’re not driving all the way up here, are you?” I heard Fenrus whining in desperation, before replacing the receiver and returning with anxiety written on his face. “The stupid sod’s broken down in Encinada (Mexico) and doesn’t expect to get here before tomorrow night” he told Darrow, where upon they shook their heads in disbelief and began muttering abuse. “Do you know who that was?” asked Fenrus, anticipating my ignorance, :….. it was Solomon Feldthouse”.

“Is he coming here?” I asked.

“”That appears to be in the lap of the gods”, Darrow said, getting back to the Floggs as if nothing had happened.

“We had a respectable following, especially among other musicians in the area, but the record companies successfully concealed any excitement they may have felt when they heard out demo tapes.

“Roger Palos had left by this time to support his family with more secure employment, and we’d trimmed down to a quartet again – with me switching to bass. We cut 7 tunes (including Dylan’s ‘Walking down the line’ – the only non-original) in a two track studio in Pomona, but Peter Stark (the son of Broadway show producer Ray Stark), who attended Claremont Mens College with me, had no success when he tried to sell us to A & R men.

“It eventually got to the point where I thought that I was the only one in the band who really wanted to make it musically….. you know, people were coming to rehearsals late and so forth – a lot of niggly little things which, when added together, influenced me to pack it in.

“My plan, at that stage, was to concentrate on getting my degree – whereupon I could devote all my energies to music in the secure knowledge that I had something tangible to fall back on if necessary.

“Of course, theoretically the idea was sound enough – but in reality it led to total depression. I was at graduate school, working on a master’s degree in painting, as well as teaching art and art history a a girls school a couple of days a week. On top of that I was giving guitar lessons in the evenings – so I had 3 or 4 scenes going at once……. And it suddenly dawned on me that satisfaction was slipping through my fingers, that music had gone from my life….. I can remember that terrible feeling of despair”.

It only took a phone call to pull him out of it.

“Like a bolt from the blue, David Lindley called me….. he said he was in a group called KALEIDOSCOPE, which had a record deal, with Epic. ‘We need you’ he said, ‘…. Can you come and play?’

“Intinctively and instantaneously, I told him I’d be right over”.

MAC

Next issue: Face to face with Feldthouse, Lindley and the re-formed Kaleidoscope!