Six Degrees of Inspiration
Six Degrees of Separation?...Kevin Bacon?...INSPIRATION!
As I think about my musical coming of age that took place between Elvis’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and The Beatles’ first seven years later it makes me smile to think of how many musical memories are connected by a few degrees of inspiration to The Brothers Four.
For instance the first song I remember being infatuated enough to play over and over on a turntable at home was Minnie the Mermaid sung by the bass singer, Larry Hooper, on a Lawrence Welk album my folks bought. That song was part of The Brothers Four’s repertoire when they were starting out at the Colony Club in Seattle in 1958.
The first album I remember buying with my older brother, Mike, was Buddy Knox’s Party Doll. Before the Colony Club days The Brothers Four went by the name The Party Dollars. That was a clever connection to the Buddy Knox song and the dollar parties that were common at the time. (Everyone putting in a dollar so an upperclassman could buy booze.)
Brother Mike introduced me to jazz with Dave Brubeck’s Take Five in 1959. (He was a sophisticated 14 at the time.) That was the same year that Brubeck’s manager, Mort Lewis, saw The Brothers Four at the Hungry i in San Francisco and agreed to be their manager. (This was after Mort had turned down offers to manage The Kingston Trio and a former track athlete named Johnny Mathis.)
The Brothers Four’s early success inspired The Chad Mitchell Trio to try their luck in New York City. A few years earlier Brothers Four member John Paine had been Chad’s campaign manager when he ran for Freshman Class President at the University of Washington. It was Brothers Four member Mike Kirkland who recommended an unknown nightclub singer named John Denver to Milt Okun as a replacement for Chad Mitchell when Chad decided to leave the group.
One of Bob Dylan’s first television appearances was in March of 1963 on a show called Folk Songs and More Folk Songs featuring The Brothers Four. The group was also one of the opening acts at the Palace Theater for an Ed Sullivan fundraiser featuring The Beatles. And who can forget The Brothers Four in the movie Hootenanny Hoot with Johnny Cash?
After Sounds of Silence became a hit Mort Lewis became Simon and Garfunkel’s manager and for a number of years the two groups had the same New York business address. When the Columbia Records contract ended The Brothers Four signed with Fantasy Records, a onetime jazz label famous for offering Dave Brubeck Trio LP’s in colorful vinyl.
Shortly thereafter Saul Zaentz, the head of Fantasy records, took money he made from Creedence Clearwater Revival to produce a movie called One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest but not before Saul and his entire office staff joined The Brothers Four in the recording studio for a rousing chorus of The Hippopotamus by Flanders and Swan.
When I adjust the rear view mirror a few degrees this way or that way it is amazing all the connections that appear.
