SoCal FM radio casualty

tablejockey---The Foothill Club WAS a dive, but some great Blues and Rockabilly artists played there in the 1990's. I got a gig with Specialty Records artists Don & Dewey when they played there in the late 90's. They had a couple of hits in the late 50's, "Justine" being a Little Richard-style screamer.

There was a great radio station at the community college in Northridge, playing a lot of roots music (Traditional Country, Hillbilly, Bluegrass, Blues, etc.). Some people felt that "type" of music was beneath an institution of higher learning, and the station's format was changed to all Classical. Well la de freakin' da!  

Nope tj, not The Golden Bear. Never even been to a show there as an audience member. I worked at a bunch of places in Long Beach, and up and down the coast in Surf clubs, like Toes Tavern in Redondo Beach. Surf clubs have great audiences! Cute Surf bunnies, too! On the drive home ya gotta watch out for the Highway Patrol and local cops though---they’re everywhere on Friday and Saturday nights! After drinking two beers a set for four sets, you may have a little trouble staying in between the lines on the highway :-). Speaking of beers.....at clubs like Toes, the band’s pay is a percentage of the business the bar does that night (sometimes against a guarantee, sometimes not). The more the audience likes the band, the longer they stay. The longer they stay, the more they drink. And the longer they stay, the more they dance, and the more they therefore drink. The more they drink, the more the band makes.

Speaking of The Blasters, did you happen to see them backing Big Joe Turner at Club Lingerie (on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood) in the mid-80’s, shortly before he passed away? Fantastic! Joe was imo the first Rock ’n’ Roller, and at the time Lee Allen, Little Richard’s original sax player, was a member of The Blasters. Yeah baby, a night of great, great music! Rockabilly was created in Memphis, but Rock ’n’ Roll came out of New Orleans and Kansas City. When everyone came back from WW11, bands went back to work. The Jump Blues Bands simplified the Jazz music they had been playing, putting a heavy 2/4 backbeat to it, for the dancers in the audience. Voila, Rock ’n’ Roll! That Jump Blues that Elvis and the rest of the Memphis white boys heard, when mixed with their other main influence---the Hillbilly music of working class Southern whites, created Rockabilly, the original version of white Rock ’n’ Roll. Elvis’ original drummer, D.J. Fontana, was plucked from a Memphis strip club, where he was playing bump-and-grind music for the dancers to disrobe to. Salacious!