Then Again

by Rick Boling

  I waited until the song faded, then said, “We put that together right here with only three musicians and Sarah. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but I think you can hear the potential.” They looked at each other and Dad shrugged, so I went on.

  “The reason I wanted to explain all this to you both, is that we’re going to need some help getting it off the ground before others jump in and beat us to the punch.”

  “And by help, I suppose you mean money,” Dad said. He tried to sound skeptical and reluctant, but I could see a smile crack the corner of his mouth.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But more than that. We could also use Mike’s expertise and advice, plus his connections in the electronics supply industry. And I’d like your permission to expand our operation into the other storage room so we can have space for a larger recording booth.”

  Again, they looked at each other, and after a moment Mike glanced back at me and nodded. “I think they’ve got something here, Al,” he said. “This could represent a major breakthrough in recording technology. It’s given me some ideas as well, ways I might be able to help. You’re always asking me to keep my eye out for investment opportunities, and quite frankly, I can’t think of a better one.”

  So, with Mike—a successful businessman—as our adult advisor, and Dad as our venture capitalist, we founded Blue Note Studios, a combination recording studio, production company, and incubator for new talent. We eventually took over the entire garage complex, knocking out walls, enclosing the front where the garage door had been, and installing an air conditioning system. While Sam and Mike worked on refining the recording technology, I spent hours with Sarah, writing songs and choosing others, and nurturing her stage persona.

  Meanwhile, I set about trying to locate Kenny and Billy. That job would have been a lot easier in the Internet age, but the musicians’ grapevine served almost as well. When I found them, I sent Jimmy to make the initial contacts, and he talked them into coming over to check out some of our recording capabilities. After I introduced them to Sam and Sarah, the five of us jammed for a while, and, not surprisingly, things clicked much as they had when we’d met at the Skyway Lounge in my first life. This time, however, instead of forming a band, my goal was to bring them on board as part of our core group of studio musicians and creative advisors. I spent the rest of the afternoon demonstrating some of our production techniques and talking about our vision for the future, then asked if they’d like to join us.

  My offer did not include money, only a promise to let them in on the ground floor, with salaries to come and maybe even a small percentage of the company. I explained the creative autonomy we would have by being in control of production, distribution, and promotion, and by the time I finished they were so excited about the potential they agreed on the spot. So, in a roundabout way we did bring The Madisons together after all.

  Before they left, we had a little brainstorming session, and one thing everyone agreed on was that we wanted to create a different kind of operation, one that would treat visiting musicians and artists like family instead of hired hands and celebrities. The only studio I knew of with a similar philosophy was a place called Sound City in California. Sound City would not be up and running for another decade in this dimension, but I’d recorded my second album as Rix Vaughn there, and I wanted to model our operation on theirs.

  Unlike other studios of the day, which could be cold and technical, with strict rules and authoritarian producers and engineers, Sound City was a homey place, where musicians were free to fully participate in the entire production process. I’d been impressed by the way everyone—from the stars to the sidemen, and sometimes even invited guests—was encouraged to offer their creative input. The atmosphere was laid back and unpretentious, allowing for a free flow of ideas that often resulted in productions of unprecedented authenticity and quality. Add to this the fact that they had state-of-the-art equipment and the best engineers in the business, and it was easy to see why some of the most famous acts in rock had recorded there, producing more than a hundred certified gold and platinum albums.

  One piece of equipment for which the studio became famous was an incredible analog mixing console built by the British engineer, Rupert Neve. The Neve console was one of only four in the world at the time, and I already had Sam working on building our own version.

  Another thing that had impressed me about Sound City was the way they treated traveling musicians, making sure they were comfortable and often providing temporary accommodations, including rooms and food, at no cost. This, I felt, added something special to the down-home feel of the operation, and one of my ideas was to try and duplicate that same feel at Blue Note Studios.

  Before we started remodeling, the garage complex had contained a space for three cars and a workshop on one side, plus two large storage rooms and a half bath on the other. Above this was a three bedroom apartment, with a kitchen, living room, dining room and full bath; perfect for what I had in mind. All I had to do was talk Dad into letting us use the apartment as a place to put up our guests, which I figured would be a piece of cake.

  I also started working on building a network of contacts in the radio industry, sending out short demo tapes, not intended for airplay, but as teasers. With each tape, I included a gift; sometimes a bottle of scotch—bought by Jimmy who had recently turned twenty-one—and sometimes an expensive diamond stylus for the DJ’s turntables that Mike provided at wholesale. The Congressional Payola Investigations were just getting underway in Washington, but Dad’s lawyer advised us that since we were not asking for airplay, our promotional gifts wouldn’t fall into that category.

  We continued to expand our library of looped samples, though for our final recordings—except for the strings and some choral background vocals—we used only live, overdubbed performances. Sam and Mike eventually abandoned the cumbersome, multi-level tape machine in favor of four Ampex 8-track recorders, synchronizing them perfectly to give us one of the first 32-track systems in the world. And Sam’s mixing console was far and away more sophisticated and versatile than anything on the market at that time.

  To help with the financing, we started booking outside jobs, mostly writing and recording jingles for car dealerships and retail stores and working with ad agencies to create signature audio logos and commercials for a few corporations. I also began searching for local and regional talent, enticing the artists and bands I felt had promise with offers of lucrative recording contracts once we had perfected their acts.

  We soon became self-supporting, which gave us a little breathing time to perfect our sound and copyright a number of songs before releasing what I hoped would be the first of a long list of top-forty hits. Finally, after months of intense work and long hours in the studio, I announced that Blue Note Records was about to burst onto the music scene with the introduction of Miss Sarah Love as the first white female R&B artist to hit the airwaves. I was still worried about her being accepted as a white blues singer, but since I did not plan to have her make any personal appearances for a while, I figured no one needed to know about her ethnicity until I decided the time was right.

  Sarah’s first single, a tune I wrote called I Think I’m Ready, was a bluesy, double-meaning song that played on the subtle sexual innuendo that would one day sell Gary Puckett a few million records. It told the story of a young girl on the brink of womanhood, as she finally gave in to her lover’s demands for sex. Of course, there was nothing said about sex or deflowering or anything else the censors could object to. But as with Puckett's This Girl Is a Woman Now and Neil Diamond's Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, the meaning was clear. And when I sent the 45 out to the two-dozen big-city radio stations I’d been teasing with advanced tapes and gifts, it got so much airplay we were caught off guard.

  I had set up a small record pressing operation and distribution network, but the demand was so strong, I had to quickly negotiate a deal with EMI in London to handle worldwide distribution. This necessitated the first pl
ane trip of my new life, on a Boeing 707 that rattled and shook and reminded me of the prop plane I’d flown home in from Muscle Shoals after that botched effort to sell Sunday Morning Sentinel. Thankful to have survived, I hailed a taxi at the airport, looking forward to my meeting with the EMI executives. Unfortunately, that meeting turned out to be even more stressful than the plane ride.

  The sticking point came when I demanded our own private label imprint, which was unprecedented at the time. It took several hours of contentious negotiation, but with the instant popularity of I Think I’m Ready as a bargaining chip, I finally convinced them that Blue Note Records should become one of the first independent record labels on the planet. The song had already hit the US charts at number 36 with a bullet, and five weeks after I signed the deal with EMI, I Think I’m Ready made it to number one and was rapidly gaining international exposure. The year was 1962, and we were right up there with Ray Charles, Chubby Checker, and Elvis. And I was working frantically to finish mastering Sarah’s first album.

  Before long, the day-to-day details of the business were taking up far too much of my creative energy and time, and even though Mom had been helping out where she could with bookkeeping and other financial matters, I knew I was going to need someone to take over and manage the entire operation. And I also knew who I wanted that someone to be.

  Vatican Roulette

  Doris and I had continued our affair, miraculously managing to keep it a secret, while enjoying a few more platonic encounters when Mom would invite her over for dinner or a swim. During these visits I made it a point to talk enthusiastically about the business, so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary for Doris to take an interest in what we were doing. After a while, she started coming to the studio, listening and commenting on our progress, and often making creative suggestions and offering constructive criticism. Her opinions were always insightful, and I soon began to wonder how we’d ever gotten along without her.

  One day, while we were working on an exceptionally challenging arrangement, I found myself wishing she were there to add her input. It was then that I came up with a plan I thought might turn out to be valuable in more ways than one. I knew a career in medicine was first on her list of priorities, so when I hit her with the idea of becoming our general manager, I fully expected her to turn me down flat. Instead, she went silent, and I could tell she was considering the idea. We were lying in bed on a Saturday morning, after a particularly varietal and passionate exchange of bodily fluids, and before she had a chance to answer, I decided to sweeten the pot with the other half of my idea.

  “You know,” I said, “I’m thinking we’ve been going about this affair of ours all wrong.”

  “Mmmm,” she murmured, obviously still contemplating my proposal.

  “Hey!” I said. “Pay attention for a minute, will you?”

  She turned toward me and blinked. “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said, I think we should reconsider how we’re handling our affair.”

  “Oh?” she said, scratching her head. “How so?”

  “I know this is going to sound a little crazy at first, but please hear me out before you jump in with any objections. What I’m thinking is, instead of all this skulking around and trying to hide, maybe we should make it so obvious that no one would suspect. I’m working sixteen hours a day trying to hold the production company together, and the only breaks I get are when you and I steal a few minutes here and there to have sex. Not only do I need help managing things, but I’d like to be able to spend more time alone with you. Mom and Dad both know how much you’ve been contributing to the business without getting paid, so if I tell them I want to hire you, and that I need you close by, I don’t think they would suspect anything out of sorts was going on.”

  “What reason would they have to suspect something out of sorts was going on?” she asked.

  “Because I’m going to suggest that you move in with us.”

  She looked at me and frowned. “You’re nuts. What makes you think they would agree to something like that? More importantly, what makes you think I would?”

  “They are not going to be a problem. I’ll take care of that. As for you, I think you’d love being an official part of the operation. And then there’s the minor fact that we’d be paying you at least three times what you make now, plus a percentage of the profits.”

  By then she’d gone glassy eyed, and I wondered if she’d grasped the full implications of what I was proposing. So I decided to go ahead and put the icing on the cake. “You do realize, don’t you, that we’d be living less than twenty paces from each other, isolated up here about as far from Mom and Dad as you can get in this house? From what I can tell, no one has even begun to suspect anything’s going on between us other than friendship and an exchange of creative ideas, so we’ll pretty much be free to do whatever we want whenever we want.”

  Dad had originally bought the house, with its four large upstairs bedrooms, so we could bring Grandpa Voniossi and Grandma Davis down from Indiana to live with us and still have one room free for guests. But Grandpa had died of a stroke three years earlier, and Grandma was in a nursing home, so three of the four rooms—one of which had a private bath—were now vacant.

  “Listen,” I said. “The reason I’m sure Mom and Dad wouldn’t object to my hiring you and having you move in with us is that the only other option would be to hire a full-time business manager from outside the company, someone who wouldn’t have one tenth of your brains, creativity, or insight into the business. Not only that, but he would be a nine-to-fiver, and that’s not what I want. I want someone who’s going to be dedicated to what I’m trying to do, someone who’ll be available twenty-four-seven if need be. You’ve been in on things almost from the start, and you’ve helped out in so many ways already, it’s a shame you’re not being paid for your efforts. What I need is a partner, Doris, not an employee, and there isn’t anyone on the planet I can trust as much as I do you to put their heart and soul into the business.”

  “But what about my medical career?” she said, sounding a little whiny, as if she were arguing with herself over the two possibilities.

  “Put it on hold for a couple of years,” I said. “Just until I get this thing going full speed. Then if you still want to pursue a career in medicine, you should have enough money saved up to put yourself through med school in style. And don’t forget, we’ll be right down the hall from each other.”

  “Well, then, what about your Dad? He’s not going to like the idea of my leaving the office.”

  “Not to belittle what you do for him,” I said, “but you and I both know there’s no shortage of nurses around here. And when I get through explaining to him how important this is, I guarantee he’ll go along with it. I’ve already talked to the rest of the gang, and they’re all for it. Everybody loves you, kiddo, you know that, don’t you?”

  Although she tried to make it seem like pulling teeth, I could tell she was thrilled with the prospect. And when she finally agreed, I presented the idea to Mom and Dad. Dad went through all the objections he could think of, but I was ready, countering each one with my own talking points and rhetoric. Eventually, Mom came over to my side, and, together we beat down his arguments so thoroughly that later on he would claim the whole thing had been his idea in the first place.

  As soon as Doris was settled in the room next to mine, we set up an office for her in one of the other bedrooms. Sam installed an intercom system that connected to the studio, and we finally got private phone lines with extensions in both locations. Mom took over as our combination hospitality director and concierge, seeing to it that visiting artists were well fed and cared for, and before long we had gained a reputation as the most musician-friendly studio in the south. Sarah’s next two singles went gold, and the album was on its way to becoming platinum, while we worked on several new releases for the other artists we’d signed.

  The work was grueling, even after we hired an operations manager to handle s
cheduling and serve as my personal assistant, but at least Doris and I could wind down with sex at the end of the day. After we’d worn each other out, we always spent a little time talking quietly, though not in the way infatuated lovers talk after satisfying sex. On the contrary, our conversations were almost exclusively about the business, or industry trends, or some new idea one of us had for promotion. And this was indicative of the rather unemotional relationship that had evolved between us.

  Even though Doris seemed at times to worship me like a god, we were not at all what you would call a loving couple. The sex was sensational, and we’d become so familiar with each other’s needs and desires our physical compatibility bordered on the miraculous. Still, we were more like what would one day be referred to as ‘friends with benefits.’ Why this was, I couldn’t quite figure out, although it suited me fine.

  Perhaps our lack of a deep spiritual connection had to do with the fact that I was—as one woman in my past had put it—emotionally unavailable. I’d never been able to get over losing Aurélie, and although I didn’t speak of her, Doris could probably sense that my true emotional allegiance lay elsewhere. Or maybe our spiritual disconnect had to do with the difference in our ages and the impossibility, at least in her mind, of our ever being openly together as a couple. Whatever it was, the words “I love you” never crossed our lips, nor did phrases like “You’re my one and only,” or “I want this moment to last forever.” We did love each other, of that there was no doubt, but our love felt more familial than romantic, which at times made having sex with her seem almost incestuous.