Read Online Little Girl Blue by Randy L. Schmidt - Free Book Online

hair in the park. Now, I grant you we did a lot of other things that did not please them before that time, but that actually caused us to be fired.”
    According to Guder, the duo was never fired, the season merely came to an end. “Heck no, they weren’t fired,” he says. “Richard was hired for the summertime. He went back to school in the fall and didn’t plan to work full time. Coke Corner is a spot that is a part-time summerjob. They’d come back when we’d use the Coke Corner pianist at night for private parties. It’s not a full-time gig.”
    Seeking musical revenge, so to speak, the two set out to write a song about the incident immediately upon termination. “ We got all the way to the bridge and didn’t finish it because I wasn’t at all sure that it was something that we ought to be doing,” Bettis said. “Richard really felt so strongly about it and liked the music well enough that he actually wrote the bridge to that, lyrically, and finished it.” Like many of their early musical collaborations, “Mr. Guder” was set aside and would resurface several years later.

    F OLLOWING HER brother’s lead, Karen enrolled at Cal State Long Beach as a music major in the fall of 1967. Despite the beauty of her newly discovered chest voice, she was expected to use her head voice as it was better suited to the classical art song repertoire required of private voice students. She was also required to sing before a panel of professors called a jury for evaluation at the end of each semester. Such a critical review proved stressful for even the most accomplished musicians. With Larry Peterson, head of the music department, and several other members of the voice faculty present, Karen performed selections from her repertoire before Pooler interrupted. “Look, this is all so serious,” he told his colleagues. “This girl’s really versatile. Do you guys want a laugh?” Pooler urged Karen to do one of many impersonations he had witnessed in their lessons. In particular he requested the “spastic, harelipped singer.”
    â€œThey’ll kick me out of school,” Karen objected.
    She was surprised and embarrassed by her teacher’s request, especially before such an esteemed gathering. “The thing that really endeared me to Karen,” Pooler recalls, “was the sense of humor she had about everything and how she could imitate people. She could do anything with her voice.”
    Pooler was a bit of a maverick in the choral music world, displaying an eccentric approach to his style and work. He was never predictable—at least not musically. Opening the floor to members of the A CappellaChoir, Pooler would allow students to suggest music literature and styles. The subject of black spirituals surfaced. “I don’t want to do a piece that’s foreign to me,” Pooler told the choir. Though he was experienced in music sung in foreign languages, spirituals and gospel music were unfamiliar territory.
    â€œWell, if you can’t show them,
I’ll
show them,” a voice said, and out stepped Wanda Freeman, one of the few African Americans in the choir. She faced the choir and began to sing.
    â€œI had never done spirituals or black music,” Pooler says. “I just didn’t feel it, but she did. She was sensational. She was the start of a whole host of first-class gospel musicians that came out of that choir.”
    Unlike other college choirs in the area that specialized in one style or another, Pooler’s groups tackled a wide range of choral genres. “Frank was very innovative,” Freeman recalls. “We were doing avant-garde stuff and things that other choirs had never done before; songs with just sounds and things. He was very open to trying gospel.”
    Made popular by Blood, Sweat and Tears, “And When I Die” was one of several contemporary hits the choir performed.