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.

Howard Roberts

I met some interesting people passing through the Sunn office. Our policy of free amplifier loaners to professionals drew a wide variety of players including guitar giant, Howard Roberts. HR was already legendary in the Hollywood music business. Born in Phoenix, he started playing professionally at 15 and moved to Los An…geles at 20. A couple of years later Downbeat named him “Jazz Newcomer Star of The Year” and shortly thereafter he left the clubs and moved into Hollywood’s recording studios to help usher in Rock-n-Roll. HR played on Ricky Nelson’s “Bee-Bop Baby”, Eddie Cochran’s “Sittin’ In The Balcony” and Peggy Lee’s “Fever” He played the iconic opening notes to “The Twilight Zone” television theme and did albums with Chet Atkins and Duane Eddy. He had Top 20 hits with Elvis, Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Bobby Vee, Larry Williams, Gene McDaniels and a dozen others. He became the first-call guy for rock guitar in movies and TV and was a regular on the recordings of the Beachboys and the Monkees. He also had his own career as a Jazz Guitarist with four albums on Verve and nine on Capitol by the time he showed up in the Sunn office. Howard’s interest extended way past borrowing an amp. HR thought the only thing Sunn didn’t have in the line, was a small studio amp, and he had an innovative design that involved interchangeable equalizer modules. He and one of his students, Ron Benson, had built several dozen for HR’s studio contacts. Howard was also helping a friend up in Los Gatos named Bud Eastman start the first magazine specifically for guitarists called “Guitar Player”. Eastman joked that people asked “what are you going to write about after the first issue?” Howard also had an idea for a trade-school for professional guitarists that grew out of his seminars. He was working on that with another student of his named Pat Hicks. This was an active time in Howard’s career. He was tired of grinding out elevator-music jazz albums for Capitol and dazzled by my stories of the average album front-money deal for this new wave of guitar stars. Howard was ready to make his move. I’ll have to admit I was a little stunned when he asked me, would I consider being his personal manager?

Buck Munger