Guitar Archeology

I was back in The Game. Norm and Con Sundholm had asked me if I could use my “extensive contacts” in the music business to get their Sunn clinician a record deal. Buddy Fite was a Portland jazz guitarist that had been demonstrating Sunn amplifiers for a while and created a sensation at the ’67 NAMM Show in Chicago when h…e strung his guitar with two bass strings and four guitar strings and played both parts at once. Les Paul came over from the Gibson booth with his entourage and sat-in for an hour, and then spent the next two days steering people to the Sunn booth. Jazz wasn’t really my bag, but with my new friend Howard Roberts, who co-incidentally, was a big hero of Buddy’s, I thought I would broaden my game. Buddy arrived in Hollywood with neatly trimmed hair, wing-tips and a business suit. You’d never guess he had been an active member of the Hell’s Angels. He had some great stories and became an instant favorite in the office. After signing my Sinatra-lawyer management contracts, we went into the studio to cut a demo. We also recorded Buddy’s two bass, four guitar-string solo. Back in the office, the stunt solo got most of the attention. Our next-door neighbor on the fourth floor was Robert Mersey, an old school producer at Columbia and one of the first to go independent. He now produced Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis and was setting up his own label. Our two offices shared a wall and we listened in on each other’s playback. I knew he was looking for a guitar player for Johnny Mathis, so I sent him Buddy’s tape and his reaction was positive, but he was skeptical about one person playing both parts simultaneously, so I invited him down the hall to see Buddy play it live. We had a deal before he left the office.