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

characteristic of most sibling relationships. But as a seventeen-year-old young woman, Karen was five feet four inches tall and weighed 145 pounds. Her classic hourglass figure was a common trait among family members, including her mother and aunt Bernice. “ I was heavier ,” Karen said in a 1973 interview. “About twenty pounds heavier, to tell you the truth. I was just tired of being fat so I went on a diet. . . . I found this sweater I used to wear in high school. Good Lord, I think I could get into it three times today. I don’t know how I ever got through a door.”
    Frankie Chavez recalls Karen as only slightly overweight in high school, but if she had body image issues at the time, he never noticed. There were no warning signs during the period they were close. “She never gave any indication that it bothered her that she carried a little extra weight,” he says. “She always seemed very self-confident, and I don’t think she ever even contemplated dieting when I knew her. Karen was a perfectionist as far as her performances were concerned, and she set the bar very high for herself, but there was no indication that she had any problems at all.”
    During the summer of 1967 Agnes took her to see their family doctor, who recommended the popular Stillman water diet that was introduced that year by Dr. Irwin Maxwell Stillman. The plan promised quick weight loss through limiting intake of carbohydrates and fatty foods while increasing daily water intake to eight glasses. Karen hated water, but after only six weeks she shed twenty-five pounds and was determined to maintain her new figure. When Spectrum’s late-nightrehearsals ended, everyone in the band was hungry and went for dinner, which was frustrating for Karen. “ All the guys would want to go to eat at Coco’s,” she said, “and I would sit there with my hamburger patty and cottage cheese while the guys ordered forty-seven-layer cheeseburgers and giant sundaes.” From the summer of 1967 until early 1973, Karen remained at or around the comfortable weight of 115 to 120 pounds.

    I N EARLY 1967 Richard had received a call from a local singer named Ed Sulzer, whom he had accompanied during a gig back in 1963. Sulzer heard Spectrum was recording in Joe Osborn’s garage and offered to shop their demo to various record labels around Los Angeles. He quickly became acting manager of the group. With rare exceptions, Sulzer’s enthusiasm for Spectrum’s distinctive sound was not shared by the record labels and venues he approached. “ People hear what we accomplished , and it sounds like such a natural now,” John Bettis explained. “Back then, what we were recording and what we were writing went completely against the grain of what anyone else was doing. And they told us so.”
    Leslie Johnston describes Spectrum’s sound as rich, thick, tight harmony, but she feels the group’s creativity was out of sync with most of their audiences. “Here’s this middle-of-the-road group with this great sound,” she says. “We were such an in-between kind of group. Back then it was either hard psychedelic rock or it was elevator music. We had this pretty sound; it was nice to listen to us, but we weren’t a dance group. Agents that would come to the Troubadour just kept telling our manager, ‘They’re
terrific
, but where do we put them?’ Radio stations were afraid to play us because we were too mild for some and yet we weren’t the old style either. We were having a tough time, and we were getting discouraged. We really were and should have been a recording group exclusively.”
    Sulzer secured Spectrum a block of studio time at United Audio Recording Studio in Santa Ana. The group cut several demos of original songs, including “All I Can Do,” “All of My Life,” “Another Song,” “What’s the Use,” and