Mom's Sugar Blues Band...and the rock and roll manager.

The Sugar Blues Band: one of our first gigs in the lobby of the Schwab House (74^th and West End Ave). Left to right; Philip, Michael, Jose, Howard, George. 1966- My dream come true, Nehru jackets and all..

In total, I ended up cutting most of my first year in high school, I hated it.
I was left back, trying the ninth grade again at Charles Evans Hughes.

I was totally into my band…. "The Sugar Blues Band.” My brother Philip had a kid in his 7th grade class named Howard Knight (another latchkeyer). He was teaching himself to play guitar and he loved The Beatles and all the cool music of the time. I was struggling to teach myself guitar and loved The Beatles and all the great music of the time too! We started together our beloved Sugar Blues Band, my mom loved the idea that we were teaching ourselves music and starting a band. At my urging Philip became the lead singer, was an absolute natural, he was 13 years old, wore those red and blue hippie spectacles, a Beatle haircut and the Nehru jacket behind that mic....he knew he was cool and sang like it too!

Howard and I got together just about every day. Listening to everything we could get our hands on. Drawing, cutting out pictures of Rickenbackers and Hoffner guitars, posters and records of our favorite bands, getting down to w. 48^th street…to Manny’s, Jimmy’s music stores, every weekend. …I was mesmerized, we were mesmerized. It seized me like nothing else. I was in love, I loved all of it. Just like my mother and father loved their music, I loved mine. During an early evening sojourn to 48th street, we stood outside, on the sidewalk of the Metropole jazz club in its last days and caught a glimpse of Gene Krupa hammering away on the Ludwig skins. I vaguley knew he was a well-known drummer from my mother's era, rushed home to tell her. Although, it wasn't her kind of music she told me alot about him.

The Beatles…no compare, they were at the top of the list…they grabbed my heart with awe and wonder. The Animals, The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clarke Five, The Beach Boys, The Young Rascals, Clapton, Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, The Remains, …to name but a few. Its hard for me to get the depth of feeling and nuance of this time. It was an awesome period...one of the few sustained happy periods of this time, it became deeply tragic when the drugs took hold and where many, including Philip and I, took to heart the Timothy Leary credo; "Turn on, tune in, drop out." maybe one day I will able to write about it.

The Cafe Wha? has a storied history, located on the corner of MacDougal street and Minetta lane in Greenwich Village, the Wha? was a "beat/rock" club of the 1960's at which one could find "soul" food for mind, ear, and body. In addition to a house band that played covers of contemporary popular songs, CafeWha? was famous for both its regular customers - Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Bob Dylan (his very first gig in New York was at the Wha?) among them Jimi Hendrix (Jimi played the Wha? as ‘Jimmy James and the Flames’. Chas Chandler, bass player from The Animals, caught Jimi’s act at the Wha? took him back to London forming the “Jimi Hendrix Experience” in 1966 and the rest is history… I remember Chandler coming down one evening as I sat in the stands) Bruce Springsteen, Richie Havens, Kool and the Gang, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and many others all began their careers at the Wha? Even the staff had its notables - Mary Travers was a waitress at the Wha? until she joined up with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey to form Peter, Paul and Mary.

Our first gig at the Café Wha? Wib was appearing in Man of La Mancha at the Anta Theatre two blocks from the Wha? We had just kicked out Jose the drummer, An Ecuadorian kid who had no beat-sense, we kicked him out and kept his drums (odd). I became the drummer (overnight, literally)…I could keep a beat.

Holy shit! We were playing at the Wha?! Every weekend, we were the day-house band, were too young and not quite good enough to play at night with the heavy hitters. But we were there. George, Toby, Howard and me. We made some good music. Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall and the Blues Breakers, Barry and The Remains, The Cream, The Who, The Kinks, Albert King, Otis Redding, The Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, The Troggs, and James Brown to name but a few. Sadly, the drugs were along as well, and any other mind-bending substance we could find.

My father came to see us at the Wha? with several of his La Mancha cast members. Philip fronted the band, I smacked the drums as dad sat on a bleacher-bench against the brick wall, under the day glow lights…I was proud.

The Sugar Blues Band did have some small measures of teeny-bopper success. We were the chosen day band for the teeny- bopped set, appearing every weekend for the ‘little teenagers.’ Oh, I don’t know…I was barely 17 and most of the girls that fawned over us at the ‘Wha?’ were not more than 15 and there were ‘a’ plenty. Matter of fact, Howard (what a musical ear!) our wonderful guitarist (who taught me a lot) is still with Patti whom he met at the Wha? She was 14 he just 16.

Michael on stage-The Cafe Wha? circa 1968, seventeen years old

(boy, my mother and I had quite the combat, with a pair of scissors over that hair!).

“Tex” the ‘manager’ of the Wha? If you want to call him that loved playing the barker role up on the side walk to get people to come downstairs, sit in the Wha’s bleacher type seats, drink ‘Green Tigers’ under the day-glow lights and listen to the blasting music (some of it very fine) in the cavernous Wha? ‘Tex’ was a fat greasy guy with oily black hair and a pencil thin mustache, he seemed to ‘bark’ at everyone and everything whether he was up on his Wha? dais doin' his spiel or shadowing Minnetta Lane sharing a toke. I was scared of him and stayed out of his way. It seemed he liked young boys and always seemed to have a young hippie one in tow. Although at the time, I was oblivious. I just didn’t like him.

Philip just didn’t have the love of the band thing as I did and quit the Sugar Blues early on. I was the drummer with Howard on guitar and George on bass. We became a threesome and I wasn’t too happy about it. Then maybe a week or two later we met Toby, a Puerto Rican kid from Queens who happened to be visiting his cousin on Eighty Deuce.

Toby was the best drummer we had ever heard. He had Dino Dannelli licks from the Young Rascals DOWN, with the sharp, crisp beats to the spinning sticks and all. This kid was good. But he was from Queens and was a ‘greaser.’ Howard and I turned him on to The Cream and Ginger Baker, The Who and Keith Moon and The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Mitch Mitchell. Toby easily morphed into these drummers and then SOME. And what a showman! To the eyes and ears of this sixteen year old, easily mastered Krupa as well. My mother loved Toby. That’s when I became the singer…had quite a quartet (Toby was one of the numerous highly talented kids, including my brother, that would become tragically lost).

All my friends would visit our little apartment, my mother would welcome our friends, would listen to our music (she became a great Beatle fan), loaned money to Howard when his guitar was stolen and just about everybody got their astrological charts done. My friends probably became the best astrologically schooled latch-keyers on the islamd of Manhattan.

The rock and roll manager --

Every rock band had a ‘manager’ that was going to rocket them to stardom, 'Al Hirsch' wanted to be our manager, so we let him, it sounded cool. Al Hirsch lived at the Hotel Breton Hall on 86^th St and Broadway. Al was a tall, thin man in his forties, well it seemed anybody who was a 'grown man,' who wanted to manage a cluster of fifteen year old soon-to-be- the- new Beatles, Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits and Dave Clark Fives’ must see a lot of potential… and besides he was proud of his dad who was in Vaudeville, so he had to know what he was doing! Balding with a kinda goofy upper lip that seemed to shroud.... his lower one. Something was odd and not right with this guy. He lugged our amplifiers around and became an easy target for a goof or two. One night we were packing up from a gig at the Ansonia Hotel and he fell down the stairs carrying one of our amps, it was more like a 4 step stumble, where the amp landed on his foot. Holding one foot and hopping around on the other cussing through a flapping lip like Sylvester The Cat, we thought this was hilarious. He always seemed dirty, not the dirty look of a construction worker or garage mechanic but a sort of jaundice-like day-glow that haloed his every move. We would enjoy hanging up in his hotel room where we’d have free reign. The goofs became more serious and disbelieving after we found half eaten cans of cat food ( he didn’t have any cats). Al would tell us with a straight face they were “tasty”. One day my brother was up in Al’s room (minus Al) with some of his buddies, they found in his closet boxes of magazined photos of young boys, nude, half dressed. On many of the photo’s there were penned (after-the-fact) drawings of whips and red-inked dripping blood. My mother left us no choice but to never have anything to do with Al again. Not too long after this, Al was found floating and dead in Castle Lake (Belvedere Castle-Turtle Pond) in Central Park.

On stage at the Beacon Theatre at 2am (74th and Bway.)- when it was a movie house. We had a friend Allen Gault, a Tenneseean, first southern boy I ever met, who worked as an usher- he had the keys-let us in at 2 ‘o’clock in the morning so we could be on a “stage” he got a Polaroid. At the time, as a very proud band leader, I gave the photo to my dad (he was missing in action for five years/briefly appeared back on the scene via Man of La Mancha). Philip was glad that we were sending it to our father. He said, "Dad's gonna see us on a real stage!" Photo was among the few boxed items I received after his death (1987). His writing on it- (pointing to) “Mike, (pointing to) Phil- “I love em! Poor, poor boys”

The Beacon today (2004)

New York Dailey News November 12, 1967

Ex Hunts La Moola

From Mr. La Mancha

By Alfred Albelli

NEXT JANUARY Wilbur W. Evans will be quitting his $750-a-week singing job with the musical triumph, “Man of La Mancha,” to become the U.S. government’s Deputy Chief of Entertainment in Vietnam. Before he goes, Susanna Foster would like him to make some arrangement to pay the $18,402 she says he owes her.

Stated that simply, it hardly seems like a suitable plot for the stage, where Wilbur has done so well, or the screen where Susanna has glittered. But some good playwright might do something with it.

Both started out like balls of fire. In 1927, when he was 22, Wilbur won the nationwide Atwater Kent radio audition, which gave him $5000 and a flying getaway.

He began with concerts, got into musicals and sang an all time record of student princes, Texas rangers and Canadian Mounties in almost every operetta and light opera ever written, And in all (then) 48 states.

HE WAS acclaimed on Broadway in “Up in Central Park” and “Mexican Hayride,” and went to London to play opposite Mary Martin in “South Pacific” for a two year run, then back to New York to be with Shirley Booth in “By the Beautiful Sea.”

Meanwhile Susanna, the daughter of Les Larson, a one time University of Chicago football star, was demonstrating in Minneapolis that she could sing every note above middle C on the piano except the last two—and that was when she was 11. The following year she was signed by MGM.

About all she remembers about her Metro career is that she attended the studio school and, during a sandlot football game during recess, tackled Mickey Rooney and got into a fight with him. But Paramount picked her up and gave her the lead in “The Great Victor Herbert,” which made her such a star that her picture adorned page one of The News Coloroto. She was sixteen then and preferred horses to boys.

By this time Suzanne Larson was calling herself Susanna Foster, not because she was a descendant of Stephan Foster, as her aunt contended, but just because she liked his music.

In 1943 Universal put her in a film called “Phantom of the Opera” and shipped it to Army camps all over. The boys wrote in for photographs and received pictures of Susie in a bustle. Their indignant letters resulted in an edict that she would have to pose in a bathing suit, which she said she didn’t want to do because her legs were to thin, but she did, with a whole squad of marines directing the proceedings and that’s how she became a pin-up girl.

Susanna was making so much money that her father refused to work and her mother left him so Susie had the court appoint a legal guardian for her and went off to live by herself in a rented house where she scandalized her peeking neighbors by preferring to walk about the place in a pair of panties.

Her film career progressed to a point where her only rival among the younger canaries was Deanna Durbin but then in 1948, she made the mistake of taking a role on the Los Angeles stage in “Naughty Marietta.” Evans sang “Falling in Love With Someone” to her with such effectiveness that they were married. He was divorced and 43. She was 24.

Susanna has let other things go to take care of their two sons, Michael and Philip, now 16 and 14. There was divorce in 1956 and then, in 1962, a bitter custody fight. The boys were living with their mother in New York and Evans was teaching at the Drexel Hill Conservatory of Music in Philadelphia where he said he could bring them up in a nice home instead of the “squalor and unadulterated chaos” of the New York apartment. Susanna said she was doing the best she could as a switch board operator.

Evans said the boys, when he visited them, told him that a soldier from Fort Dix slept with mommy whenever he was in New York, but Susanna denied it and eventually there was a settlement in which she was given the custody and $420 a month for support. But the alimony only lasted a couple of years, her attorney Michael J. McNulty, charged the other day in Manhattan Supreme Court. Evans made some payments on the rent after that, the lawyer said, but since last spring, he has paid nothing.

AT THE height of his career, Evans was noted for his remarkable resemblance to former New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, but a little over a year ago, looking more like an aging Don Ameche, he won a lead role in “Man of La Mancha.” Two months ago he went on the road with the musical, now appearing on the west coast.

Susanna has come up a bit in the world—her take home pay is now $99 a week—but she thinks her former husband ought to be made to pay the more than $18,000 he is behind in alimony. She asked the court to order Albert Selden, the co-producer, to take some of it out of Wilbur’s $750 weekly paycheck.

Furthermore, she pointed out that something had to be done right away-like holding Evans in contempt of court—because when he takes that government job he will be entirely out of jurisdiction.

The judge said he would act on her petition as soon as possible.