Was this racism? Or was he just afraid I'd show him up? Maybe take his job? I don't know and I probably never will. But I suppose we're even, Frank and me.
Because later I did take his job.
Not that night, and not because of anything that happened that night. And my knowing Frank had nothing to do with it.
It would have happened even if I hadn't gone to the Corral that evening.
Javier Batiz & "The Finks"
On TV with Javier and his sister "La Baby"
My first R&B gig with American Black Musicians
After the religious ceremony, with my family
By now, Sonja had graduated from college and gotten a job as a teacher, so we rented a house on Woodman Avenue in the San Fernando Valley. Tony was living with The Sensational Queen of Watusi in North Hollywood and we scrounged gigs in beer joints and pool halls with pickup bands of drifter musicians.
These guys were always from someplace else, Denver or Tucson or wherever, new to L.A., hoping to make it in the glamorous city where movie stars live. We were all from out of town. Tony and I just came from farther than most. I knew they weren't as experienced or professional as we were, but I told myself it was a new life, a new country and it made sense to start at the bottom again to pay my dues.
There was always the pull of going home. I could be in TJ in two hours, where life was a daily combat zone, but where I had a good reputation in a tough world. Or I could go back to Mexico City where I could be in movies, appear on TV and make records. A whole generation of Mexicans knew my name; I was a home-town star. But I was determined to make it in the U.S., not just playing for beer and change; I wanted to be a respected musician in the land of rhythm and blues, the cradle of rock n' roll.
It was what my friends and I talked about late into the night over cigarettes and beer, while rain puddled the dark, empty streets outside the all-night cafes in Mexico
City. Except for Tony, the others who started out with me were gone now, lapping up teenage adulation or toughing it out in the border honky-tonks. But I was in love with an American girl. And I was going to show her I could take care of her in her own country.
The civil ceremony with my father, Sonja's Mother, family members
Our wedding day with my dear Grandmother Pilar's picture in the background
One night in a Long Beach beer joint, I got some encouragement. After a drum solo backing a rhythm and blues group called The Rivingtons, the lead guitar player turned to me and asked: "What the hell is a guy like you doing in a place like this?"
I didn't know enough English yet to recognize the question as an American cliché, something you say to the nicest girl in the whorehouse when you want to cheer her up. But I still think that guitarist meant it as a compliment.
Tony and I decided to team up with two guys from Tennessee named Larry Barnes and his buddy Jerry, along with Dewey, a saxophone player from Dallas. The band was called Larry Barnes and the Creations. Somehow the combination of white southerners and Mexicans came out sounding like a black band. We landed a six-night-a-week gig as the house band at the Tom Cat Club, a big, funky joint at 198th and Hawthorne in Torrance, south of L.A., which generally hired black musicians, even though the audience was mostly Anglo and Latino. Each Thursday was "Celebrity Night," which gave us the opportunity to back some of the greatest rhythm and blues artists of the times: The Coasters, Etta James, Jimmy Reed, Troy Walker, the Platters, the Rivingtons and the Shirelles, to name a few.
No more pretty boy bands. No more arguing for less pop and deeper soul. No more singers who want me to be one of Herman's goddamn Hermits. I'm home. I'm in America, playing rhythm and blues with the real article. I'm in the country legally and I'm in the musician's union. By Christmas of 1967, I had a new Pontiac Firebird and I'm in love with my wife. Life is cool. My American dream is coming true.
Like most immigrants' American dreams, they came with a price, a lot of work. I was in three bands at once. Although the Creations were my main gig, I also played in an excellent group called Bluesberry Jam, featuring a black singer named Al Walton and Ted Green, a virtuoso guitar player who went on to become a very famous teacher and jazz guitarist.
One sunny California day, Sonja mentioned that a friend of hers from Phoenix had called. She knew some musicians from Tucson who were new in town and needed a drummer. The group was called The Sot Weed Factor, which struck me as a real hippie kind of name. I was still pretty straight then and didn't have a clue as to what that world was like.
Sonja took me to an address in Hollywood, which turned out to be an old abandoned movie set built for Rudolf Valentino in the 20's. The band had rented it for living quarters. They were young, crazy and the incarnation of the hippie life style. Each band member had an odd-shaped room in a corner of the set. The place was always full of music, beautiful girls and reeked of pot. Between their constant pot smoking and dropping acid regularly, I couldn't understand how they could function, but they did. We recorded a single, "Bald Headed Woman" and "Say It's Not So," for Original Sound, an old Hollywood label. Jeff Addison, the lead guitar player, would eventually sit in with Canned Heat years later. We were regulars at The Sea Witch on Sunset Boulevard. Then we started playing as the house band at The Topanga Corral. So there I was, playing in the same place where Canned Heat was becoming a fixture.
Meanwhile, Canned Heat was having a problem with Cook. The other band members wanted someone with more of a rhythm and blues orientation rather than jazz, which Frank was into.
Alan and Bob started Canned Heat in late 1965. Both loved and collected old jazz and country blues records, two of the few things they had in common.
Alan was other-worldly, a fragile poet, a genius, and a shy nerd tortured by the demands for exhibitionism in the entertainment business. He was lovable to those of us who knew him well but very, very weird to most everyone else. His singing voice was high and delicate. He hungered for some kind of solitary, inner peace.
The Bear could not have been more different. He worked in record stores in the San Fernando Valley and West L.A. and was an encyclopedic resource for anyone interested in old blues music. He was large in body and soul, a mountain of appetites. He was Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, sex and theater. He would eat, smoke, drink or fuck anything he could get his arms around. He yearned to be on stage because that way he could start a party. He sang for money when he could get it but was perfectly willing to perform all night for free if there was anyone else awake to party with him. His singing voice was like gravel going down a steel chute. He hungered to be loved by everyone, or at least everyone who would have a drink or a joint with him.
Henry was another blues record collector and he introduced Bob to Alan, whose scholarly works on the blues
