Lawrence Cohn is a former record executive, producer and author from Brooklyn, New York who now resides in greater Los Angeles area. In his youth, Larry would scan the radio dial to tune in his favorite radio stations. He would also frequent the local New York City record stores. Education was very important for the Cohn family and Larry would eventually earn a law degree. After taking a job with the government, he decided that this type of career wasn’t for him. Going on a hunch, Larry applied to CBS records for an entry level position. Not only did he get the job, but within six months, he became the director of the Epic Records division. Throughout Larry’s productive career, he has discovered/produced or signed artist such as: Billy Joel, Johnny Winter, Willie Nelson, Redbone, Tammy Wynette, REO Speedwagon and many others. Larry has also produced two books. “Nothing But The Blues: The Music and the Musicians” and “Movietone Presents The 20th Century.” He has also written for various music publications and record liner notes. I recently spoke with Larry about his career.
R.V.B. - Hello Larry?
L.C. – I hate people who are on time.
R.V.B. – (Hahaha) Well there’s nothing worse than waiting for somebody.
L.C. – I know (Hahaha)
R.V.B. – Have you had any issues with the fires by you?
L.C. – I live on a mountain about a mile and a half from Sunset Boulevard. No… We’ve been very lucky. The Malibu fire… and some of the others were relatively close to us. Some of the ash came down on top of our house, but thank God we’ve had no problem. I’ve been here 26 years. We’ve never had an earthquake problem here either. God is looking down on me and saying “I’ll get this MF, with the next one.”
R.V.B. – (Hahaha) Do you miss Brooklyn?
L.C. – Oh God… yeah. Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. I’m originally from Lebanon Pennsylvania - a small coal mining town - but I grew up in Brooklyn. I went to City College… Brooklyn Law School.
R.V.B. – What did you do for fun as a kid?
L.C. – Basketball and music were my two passions. I hated school and was forever getting kicked out. I wasn’t a bad person, just mischievous. I spent a lot of time in the library and I wanted to be a pro basketball player. When I was in the army, I was on the army team. We played two games in Madison Square Garden before the Knicks. One of them featured Cliff Hagan. He was an All-American at Kentucky. He played professionally for the St. Louis Hawks. He was 6’ 4” and built like steel. I was 6’ !”… 180. I had to guard him. First half, I held him to nothing and was so full of myself. In the second half, I guess I pissed him off because he got 35 points against me.
R.V.B. – You weren’t turning out to be the next John Havlicek?
L.C. – No. It was the first time my parents had seen me play organized ball. Here was Madison Square Garden… 18,000 people… after the game my mother said “I think you outta give it up.”
R.V.B. – (Hahaha) Did your parents introduce you to music or did you do that on your own?
L.C. – I took that up on the radio. I started when I was about nine years old. I could never stand the popular music of the day. I had an Emerson radio. I used to surf a lot. Saturday was my favorite day for that. Woody Herman had a live broadcast which I would listen to. I think it was on at 7:30. Then WWVA (Wheeling West Virginia) – who was 2nd to the Grand Ole’ Opry – I was able to pick them up around 10:30. If I could stay awake until midnight, I would find the Baltimore/Washington church services. That was my initiation. I would follow leads if I heard boogie woogie piano. I would try to find records. By the time I was 12, I already had a pretty good record collection.
R.V.B. – What were some of the first records that you purchased?
L.C. – Jelly Roll Morton, Louie Armstrong’s Hot Five and Leadbelly. I also bought the boogie woogie pianists… Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson. These were some of the first.
R.V.B. – Do you remember the names of any of the record stores you used to visit?
L.C. – Sure, because I used to cut school all the time. One was The Jazz Record Center on West 47th Street. I used to go there around the age of 15. I was very fortunate… the guy that ran the place liked me and kind of adopted me. Some of the older folks who went there also adopted me. I learned a great deal from them.
When I got a little bit older, I would hang at Jack Crystal’s Commodore Music Shop on 42nd Street. He was very kind and like a mentor to me. I was only 16 or 17 years old so I never had any money. He would let me have a booth for the day and let me play records off the shelf. I had never met Billy Crystal but he called me a short while ago and said that he had been to talking to some people about his dad. One person said if you really want to hear some stuff about your dad, get in touch with this guy Larry Cohn. Jack was great to me. I met my first wife at one of his concerts. I told Jack “I’m getting engaged to someone I met here and he said “No. Not until I interview her.”
R.V.B. – (Hahaha)
L.C. – She was standing a little bit away so I waved her over and said “Jack wants to talk to you.” I stood there and Jack said “Take a walk.” So I walked away and he talked to her for about 10 to 15 minutes. He waved me back and said “I really like her. You can get engaged.”
R.V.B. – That’s a nice story.
L.C. – His brother-in-law Milt Gabler was at that time, a Decca producer… producing Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong and others. Billy asked me “Did you know my uncle?” I said “Yeah.” He said “How did you get along with him?” I said the only thing I ever got out of your uncle was “Uhhh… Hello Larry. How are you?” Not very much dialog from him. Jack was very much different.
R.V.B. – Did you ever realize that the records you bought would become collectible?
L.C. – I’m gonna say something right now. I have tremendous holdings regarding music…. Blues, jazz, cajun and early country music. I have 10,000 LP’s… 20,000 CD’s… thousands of 78’s and thousands of books. I never considered myself a collector. I always considered myself as an aficionado… a lover of various music styles. I’m always interested in finding new sounds. I never thought “This is going to increase in value and I’m gonna sell it off to make a profit at some point.” Those things never entered my mind. I was part of the Blues Mafia so at that time they were talking about rare people like Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson… I began to realize there is gold in them there hills. To this day, I’ve never sold anything.
R.V.B. – The blues mafia was a group of fellows who all had the same interests”
L.C. – We all had the same interest but we also in a way didn’t have the same interest. Some of the guys drew the line at… when Charlie Patton died, that was the end of it. That’s ridiculous. We used to have meetings every week at different apartments of different homes.
R.V.B. – Who was in this group that you are talking about?
L.C. – Pete Whelan. Like I said, we used to rotate. When they came to my house, they ended at 1933 or so. I was playing Lonnie Johnson from 1940 or Blind Boy Fuller. In some instances they would say “We don’t want to hear that stuff, it’s too sophisticated. I would laugh because They were depriving themselves of listening and being acquainted with such great music. “What’s wrong with listening to Johnny Cash or Bill Monroe?” I wasn’t against Patton, Johnson or Son House. I once wrote an article in Pete Whelan’s 78 quarterly and the heading was “The blues didn’t end with Charlie Patton’s last record.”
R.V.B. – Do you think that you are a bi-product of the folk revival?
L.C. – No. I was there before the folk revival. If you’re talking about the 60’s when we started finding people like Mississippi John Hurt and Son House, yeah… I was part of that. It never dawned on me that these people would still be alive. They were just mythological to me. Then people started cropping up. I would talk to Big Joe Williams and we became friendly. I would run a list of blues artists down to him and he would give me the skinny on them. Big Bill Broonsey said that “Sleepy John Estes died a long time ago. Big Joe would say “That’s not true. He’s alive and I can tell you where he’s living in Tennessee.” I took advantage of that because it was great to meet these people. I was fortunate when I interviewed people like Son House and Brownie McGhee. Gary Davis was a friend. For 8 years, I was a music critic for The Saturday Review… from 60 to 68. I really had my hand in the whole thing.
R.V.B. – Did you ever go on a journey to specifically search for records?
L.C. – Sure. I wasn’t like Gale Dean Wardlow or the other heavy hitters like John Tefteller. I remember a trip to Salem, Massachusetts and Memphis. If I was out of the New York area, I would make it my business to try and find records at Goodwill stores or other thrift stores. Most of the times I struck out but there was occasions that I picked up some pretty good stuff. There’s a blues artist that recorded around 1930 named “Freezone.” He recorded for Paramount. He only made one side. The other side is a guy named Raymond Barrow. There are only three or four known copies in the world. I was in Memphis and going through a whole bunch of stuff. The first record I pulled out was a mint copy of Mamie Smith’s Crazy Blues. The caretaker guy says “Do you like that?” I said “Well, I don’t know much about it.” He says “Go down the other end. I think you might find some things.” The first thing I pulled out was this Freezone record. It cost me 25¢.
R.V.B. – So your collection started growing and you were writing for publications. Were you a lawyer as well?
L.C. – I have a law degree but I never practiced.
R.V.B. – You took a job for the government?
L.C. – Yes. I was a Federal agent. I worked for Bobby Kennedy. It was a group devoted to monitoring the Mafia. Some things are better left unsaid. Basically they put together a list of the most important criminal - divided us into five man teams – and the mantra was get the anyway that you can. I was still doing music stuff during my 8 years as an agent. I had permission to write for the Saturday Review. I did countless liner notes. During that 8 year period I had some Grammy nominations. Because of my love of music, I always kept my hand in it. I never intended to stay with the government for a long period of time. Originally it was one year and one day I woke up and it was eight years. I had to get out of it because it was a road to nowhere. I had no skills. I went right from law school to the government. A guy named Sid Fields - who used to used to write a column in the Daily News – wrote a page about me, about music and a federal agent. At one hand it was music and culture, and the other hand, running after the mafia. They had a cartoon of a Dick Tracy type guy with a guitar in one hand and a gun in the other hand. I thought “What am I going to do?” So I sent a letter to William Paley… the owner of CBS… of course he’ll never respond. I put together a paragraph and all I said was “I have no business experience… I think I’m smart and I know something about music. To cut to the chase, he called me in and he hired me. I couldn’t believe it. “Why would you hire me???”
R.V.B. – You’re a go-getter and you took the chance. Things happen when you take chances.
L.C. – Yeah… exactly. If you’re static, nothing happens. Nothing is wrong with striking out. The sin is not trying. I left the government on October 7th and I started at the Epic Record division as a trainee. In mid April, the head of Epic. The director left the company and Clive Davis said the job is yours. In six months I went from trainee to the head of a division.
R.V.B. – Epic records had guys like Terry Reid?
L.C. – I signed Terry Reid.
R.V.B. – Who were some of the other people that you signed?
L.C. – Billy Joel was the first guy I ever signed. I signed Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon, Johnny Otis, Edgar Winter, Johnny Winter, Ivory Joe Hunter…
R.V.B. – When you signed these guys, did you oversee things through the recording to the art direction?
L.C. – The art direction, no. It didn’t work out for me, the one time I complained about it at CBS. The art director didn’t talk to me for two years. I said to them “I know the artist, I know the music, I signed them and I think I can help with the artwork as building a persona for the artist. Especially in country music… because I was one of the two heads of country music also. The country music covers and artwork were shameful. They never changed. They kept to themselves. When things were going into production, it was too late for me suggest things. It was too bad.
R.V.B. - Being involved in the country division, did you make trips to Nashville?
L.C. – Oh yeah. I never liked Nashville very much. Billy Sherrill ran our Nashville operation. I would go down there once a month and talk over things with Billy. David Houston and Bob Luman were two of the artists down there and I became friendly with them. They both died early, unfortunately.
R.V.B. – Dealing with an artist that is successful is great and rosy but how did you find dealing with an artist that just didn’t quite make it?
L.C. – I gave everyone the same effort. Here’s an example… I signed a girl named Brenda Patterson. She was a white girl from Arkansas who had the biggest, blackest voice you’ve ever heard. She sounded like a white Bessie Smith. I produced two albums of hers. Billboard had her on the front cover when the first album came out and said “She was a superstar waiting to happen.” I sent her out on tour with another group that I signed called “Redbone.” Everybody loved her! She was the background singer on Dylan’s Heaven’s Door. Bob did that himself. Patterson was just great. The company did get behind her but it just didn’t happen. I’ve been asked this question numerous times. I don’t have an answer to the formula. The people in the company at that time thought that she would eclipse Janis Joplin. I thought so too, although Janis Joplin had a stage presence that no one could touch. I thought that Brenda would really make it. Even Billy Joel… he was the first person I ever signed. I couldn’t get the company behind him. They said “Who is this young guy?” I said “He’s a great song writer. He’s going to develop.” I showcased him once in front of all the promo people and they said they liked him, and get behind him, but they didn’t. At the end of the year, I told him I wasn’t going to pick up his option because I thought he’d be better off at another company. As it turns out, he came back to CBS anyway. The rest of course is history.
R.V.B. – What were some live performances that you may have enjoyed seeing?
L.C. – Redbone was one. They were great on stage. Patterson was another one. Both Johnny and Edgar were great.
R.V.B. – Clive signed Johnny right after seeing him at the Fillmore, I understand.
L.C. – Johnny was showcased at the Fillmore in New York. He tore the place apart. The whole town was talking about him the next day. I had tried to get him signed before the Fillmore. Everyone at CBS was saying “He’s just a blues guy… who cares?” Finally, Edgar came into the picture and we signed the two of them on the same day. Other people that I signed were Jo Ann Kelly, who was an English blues singer. She played a convention. It was hard to get a spot at the convention because heavy hitters like Santana, Streisand and Blood Sweat & Tears were involved. I said, I want a spot for Jo Ann Kelly. They said “She’s a girl blues singer… she’s nothing.” I said “I want a spot… I earned it.” They begrudgently gave me a spot on one of the nights. She tore the place apart. There were a couple of thousand people… mostly sales people screaming. It was one British girl with a six string and twelve string guitar. She was amazing. John Hammond ran over to me and through his arms around me and said “You found the next Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie.” He started kissing me. I said “Calm down. People will talk.”
R.V.B. – (Hahaha) What an artist Memphis Minnie was.
L.C. – I brought Fleetwood Mac to the company also.
R.V.B. – They were still a blues based band back then.
L.C. – They were a blues band. I put out seven LP’s with them. We made a deal with the small label that they were recording with at the time. As things started to change, I told them – I’m the blues person at CBS – I told Mick, things are changing and you might want to do rock and roll if you want another term. He said “No… we’re a blues band.” When the contract was up, I thought we would negotiate something but they went to Warner Brothers. They had some change in personnel. Peter Green was going through some problems. Jeremy Spencer joined a religious cult. Mick never spoke to me about what we might be able to do.
R.V.B. – During your tenure as a record executive, you were based out of New York?
L.C. – Yes. I was in New York.
R.V.B. – Was it just an office setting or was it a warehouse for masters as well?
L.C. – The warehouse was a different location. We had an archive location that stored all of the recorded items.
Whether it was on metal parts from the 20’s or tapes. CBS was notorious for destroying stuff. I went down to the basement one time at the CBS studios and there were two girls sitting on either side of a barrel breaking test pressings. I went bezerk!! I said “What are you doing?” They said “You can’t play these things.” The guy I was with said we better leave because you’re getting out of hand. As we walk out, I see a pile of 15” reels about two feet high. On top of it, it says trash… throw out. Out of curiosity, I start going through the 15” reels. I find a Louie Armstrong concert from the 40s. I find Memphis Minnie’s last full session for Columbia with all the studio chatter. Everything was being thrown out. I found Redbone’s first two albums being thrown out. I found Dylan’s first two albums being thrown out. It’s insane!!! One problem with American’s is where not preservationists. I lived in Paris for five years. I can tell you there’s quite a difference between how the Europeans handle things and how we handle things.
R.V.B. – Were you able to save any precious pieces?
L.C. – I saved what I could. Hammond - who had been with the company since the 30s - told me that one time they needed space at the archives where they were holding all of this stuff and arbitrarily just destroyed stuff. Anything that survived, did so by accident. They destroyed Blind Willie McTell sessions… Charlie Patton stuff… I could go on and on. They didn’t pay attention and they didn’t care. They never did any kind of backups. If something was recorded on a 16” transcription disc, that was it. So if it was destroyed, it no longer existed.
R.V.B. – That’s why some of these 78’s are so valuable. They are the master now.
L.C. – Exactly.
R.V.B. – With that said… how did the Robert Johnson stuff survive on the Complete Robert Johnson series?
L.C. – It was in the archives. The person that was really responsible was Frank Driggs. He was the caretaker and the one that got the masters. Then the masters disappeared. Frank had sent them to a company engineer to do some work on them and they never came back. They finally came back but not in time for me to use them. They came back after I left the company. I had some test pressings that Frank had given me. Then I borrowed some 78’s from some of my collector friends. Frank had reduced everything that he found to tape. He cleaned some of them up. When I came to use the stuff, I didn’t have to do too much cleaning up. Frank did such a superb job that it made my job much easier. Sony was showing some interest for working with Robert Johnson re-issues and other blues artists. When I would come back from France I would go by Sony and give them a presentation of what I could offer. They would say “Nobody is going to buy this shit.” After a year and a half, finally they called me and said “We don’t believe in your proposal but we’ll give you one shot.” They projected the Robert Johnson box set to do 15,000 units over a five year period. It did over 300,000 in the first week. In Japan, they did over 100,000 in the first week also. They made a lot of money with the stuff I produced… and I produced over 100. Some of the blues stuff they would do, if they were lucky, would sell 9000. My Lonnie Johnson, Fuller and Memphis Minnie issues all did over 100,000. The Cajun set that I did from 1933 had over 60,000 sales. Any prior Cajun release never did over 7,000. They finally woke up and found that the archives were full of things that could sell. They didn’t care about art or preservation. All they cared about was making money. I showed them how they could make money.
R.V.B. – How underrated do you think Memphis Minnie is?
L.C. – I think she was the best. Of all the women… even with a little reluctance, I would say Bessie Smith was a step behind her. Bessie Smith was not a musician. Minnie was a great guitar player. She wrote great songs. Some of the duets she did with her various husbands are magnificent. She’s the best… no argument.
R.V.B. – I agree with you totally. I believe she was one of the first females to record with an electric guitar.
L.C. – I think you’re right. There’s a legendary story about a blues competition in Chicago. Broonzy, and some other heavy hitters were there. They said that Minnie wiped them out and won the competition.
R.V.B. – I can believe it. The book that you came out with “Nothing but the Blues”… you have a lot of blues collectors, historians and other writers involved with the publication. How was the process of working with people and publishing this book?
L.C. – Virtually everyone that I chose were friends. They had the chops to do the right thing. I was satisfied with about 90%. The book has done well domestically. It sold over 50,000 copies. It’s available in Japan and Europe as well. In Spain, it’s in its third edition. Again, the writers were friends. I knew Charters for a long time but we were not friends. We had differences of opinions and approach. For the most part it was a great experience. The publishing company was terrific. I walked in cold, off the street with a one page outline and in one week, I had an advance and a contract. I was lucky because they led me to a gal editor and she knew who I was. She was a big blues fan. The art director for the company happened to be her sister, who was also a big blues fan. Everything went terrific with the publisher. I tried to get them to do an update. There was only one chapter that has to be revised. The bibliography and discography needs to be brought up to date. They mulled it over for a couple of weeks and thought they didn’t want to it. If they ever delete it from the catalog, everything reverts back to me. Bill Ferris wants to put it out at University of North Carolina Press.
R.V.B. – What are some of your favorite liner notes that you have written?
L.C. – I wrote a couple of things about Son House and a couple of things about Hurt. Some were liner notes and some were articles in magazines. They’re probably my favorite ones. I spend a day and night with Hurt and it was just wonderful. Here I am as a jerky kid asking Son House all these stupid questions… about Robert Johnson and other people. He was great and took time to explain things to me.
I wrote an article about B.B. in a jazz magazine. I didn’t know B.B. at that time. The point of the article was, here was this giant who was not getting his due. B.B. called me and said it was the nicest thing that anyone had ever written about him… up to that point in time. We got to meet each other and we got to be friends. A quick story… He was recording for ABC and I was running Epic… two distinctively different companies. One evening I was working late and Bill Szymczyk – the producer of B.B.’s stuff for ABC – called me and said “Are you going to be there for a while?” I said “Yeah.” He said “B.B. just finished an album and he wants me to bring over an acetate for you. He wants you to listen to one song in particular. He wants your opinion.” The song was The Thrill is Gone. Szymzcyk said “What do you think?” I said “What do I think??? Tell B.B. that his whole life is going to change from now on. This is going to put him in front of a white audience and playing big arenas.” That’s what happened. B.B. was just the nicest person on the planet.
R.V.B. – Bill is an excellent engineer. I loved his work with The James Gang. Who were some of the producers that you worked with?
L.C. – Jim Dickenson… I did most of the work myself without other producers. I was also busy running the company. The last thing I did before I went to do the Playboy thing was Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders. I signed them and I produced them. As I said to Wayne “I sent them into oblivion.”
R.V.B. – What was your gig about at Playboy?
L.C. – I tried to sign Jim Croce for one year over at CBS. The demo that Jim and his producers brought to me had most of his hits. Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, Time in a Bottle, and others. I filled out the paperwork and made the deal and I just needed the uppers to sign it. They wouldn’t sign it. They said “Let’s send it around the Blackrock building and see how people react. We had never done that. If I wanted to sign someone I signed them. If they succeeded great, if they didn’t it was my problem. Everybody said pass on him. This went on a few times. I took Jim into CBS studios and did a four hour interview and nobody wanted him to be signed. Playboy was going into the music business and I received an offer from them. I really had no desire to go to Playboy. I didn’t think that they would be taking things seriously. When I gave notice, they said “If you feel that you have to leave CBS, that’s one thing… but this is not for you.” Joe Smith – who was a neighbor of mine and chairman of Warner Brothers at the time – actually jumped out in front of my car and said “You can’t go to Playboy!” I said “Well there’s a lot of money involved and I have a family.” He said “Larry, they’re not for you. They’re not your kind of people.” I got the same thing from Ahmet Ertegün and Jerry Wexler. They said “We have a big job waiting for you. If you could hold out for six months were going to build an Atlantic office in LA and we want you to run it.” Me… being the Brooklyn wise guy - thought I knew better than everyone else - went there and it was a disaster! I was there for two years and had my own little label. I couldn’t break Abba. they were recording as "Bjorn and Benny." I did a few things. I put out a Leadbelly live concert that I was quite proud of. I made a production deal with Sam Philips. Sam built a studio in Tupelo, just for the Playboy stuff. But I couldn’t get anything done! Then one day I was at one of the monthly meetings in Chicago and it dawned on me that it was time to leave. I told Hef “It’s just not working out.” He said “We’d like to keep you. How about if I give you a job as an attorney for Playboy?” I said “I decided a long time ago that I didn’t want to be a practicing lawyer. No thank you.” So I left.
R.V.B. – Is that how you ended up on the west coast?
L.C. – There were a few other reasons but yeah, that was one of them.
R.V.B. – How are you enjoying yourself now? Are you retired?
L.C. – I’m old but I’m not retired. Last year I did and album with Scarlet Rivera. She did the Dylan sessions on Desire. She’s a close friend of mine. She’s part of a band I put together. We did an album of Cajun, country and blues music. The lead guitar player and the real personality of the band was a fellow named Mike Freas. He was just an extraordinary musician. A week after we had everything pressed, he died. I was not able to keep them together. I did liner notes for Chuck Leavall. He did a piano blues album and asked me to do the liner notes. I never want to be considered retired. That’s the pathway to death.
R.V.B. – Do you think that someday you may come out with another book?
L.C. – I have some ideas. It’s possible. I’m working on some stuff. Hopefully I’ll still be around. I did a book before the blues book. I did a book on Movie-tone news reels. It was called Movietone Presents the 20th Century. That came out in 1975.
R.V.B. – That’s another preservation area in itself.
L.C. – Exactly. I had a brief tenure with Fox. They wanted to sell the Movietone library to the government of Canada for 2 million dollars. The chairman of the board of Warner Brothers was a guy named Dennis Stanfield. I was very friendly with him. I said “This is crazy. You have an asset that is unbelievable here. You have things that go back to 1896 and you’re going to give it away for 2 million dollars? Sit down with me and Ill show you how to make money.” Thankfully they never sold it.
R.V.B. – When you look back to your career up to this point… what are you proud of.
L.C. – I’m proudest of one project that I did called “The Retrospective 1925-1950.” It had 4 CD’s and a big booklet that I wrote. The point of it was to show the interchange between white and black styles. There was everything from boogie woogie, to country banjo players. There were 45 unissued tracks. Most of them were from the 30s and the 40s. When I look back I think I did something that will stand the test of time, with the Roots n’ Blues series. People started paying attention. I didn’t even touch the surface. I did it for 11 years and then I left because things had changed. There was so much stuff. There was Cajun music that was recorded in the 20s - in Nova Scotia - that I wanted to put out. All kinds of unissued blues and country stuff… loads of white string bands from the 30s and Gospel stuff from the 20s and 30s. It’s stuff that will never see the light of day. I got in touch with Sony about a year ago to see if they were interested in reviving the Roots n’ Blues series. The person said to me “We don’t do your kind of stuff anymore.”
R.V.B. – What a shame.
L.C. – It’s everybody’s loss. Eventually the stuff is going to be destroyed.
R.V.B. – I hope not. How does somebody like the Bear Family get a hold of some of this stuff?
L.C. – Richard is a very astute guy. We’ve been friends for 30 years. He knows music cold. He knows how to manipulate record companies and license stuff. He would find out what was in their archives and he would see what was still available. He was a completest’. The record companies that he dealt with were happy to have him come along because the stuff was just lying fallow. He was doing these lavish boxes for $250 - $300. Everything he did was great. When it comes to re-issues, he’s the best. He invited me to his 25th anniversary in Hamburg, Germany. He said “You know Hamburg right?” I said “Yeah I know Hamburg.” I had been there about 30 times. He said “I’m sending you directions how to get to my farmhouse… to come to the party.” Me and my girlfriend fly into Hamburg and we’re following his directions. He said it will take us 20 minutes. So here we are an hour and twenty minutes. We near this field with cows dumping whatever they dump. We were totally lost. I said to my girlfriend. “There’s a guy over there… maybe he speaks English and can tell us where we are.” So she went over there and the guy spoke fluent English. He said “You’ve gone an hour the wrong way.” We turn around and when we finally get to Rich’s place, the party is in full swing and there’s a lot of food. My lady walks up to Rich and says hi. He embraces her and I see him looking around. He said to her “Where’s Larry?” She said “We’ll after the directions you gave me… he died.”
R.V.B. – (Hahaha) The internet really set the recording industry into turmoil at one point. Do you think they are going to recover?
L.C. – They say they are coming back. They said last year, LP’s outsold CD’s. If in fact that is true, that is a sign that things are coming back. I tried to do a big box set of Johnny Mathis and have a big re-issue campaign. Sony was not interested. I said to them “People haven’t vanished off the planet. If they know that material that they like exists, they’ll buy it. You’re making a terrible mistake.” Johnny happens to be a neighbor of mine. When we talk about it he says “Larry… I don’t care. It’s so much work.” I tried to have them do what they did with Tony Bennett. I used Tony Bennett as the example. He was a dead issue but people wanted to hear his large catalog. Mathis is the same. They just wouldn’t go along with it.
R.V.B. – Mathis still performs in the New York area on occasions.
L.C. – He told me that he had so many work offers, that he can pick and choose. He looks great. He’s in his 80’s and looks like he can get out on the basketball court tomorrow. He was All-State first team in high school.
R.V.B. – He has an incredible voice.
L.C. - How many babies were conceived as Johnny was singing???” that was one of my selling points.
. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you for your candid answers.
L.C. – I was reading your story on Shirley Jones. I bought Shirley Jones music director of 26 years house. I’ve been living here for 26 years now.
R.V.B. – Very interesting. It is a small world. Have a nice rest of your day.
L.C. – You too.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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