{"id":18736,"date":"2020-05-19T05:30:12","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T09:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=18736"},"modified":"2020-05-20T09:33:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T13:33:37","slug":"before-the-family-stone-age-the-viscaynes-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/19\/before-the-family-stone-age-the-viscaynes-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Before the (Family) Stone Age: The Viscaynes (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a> …<\/em><\/p>\n

Belying his eventual reputation as an erratic personality, the young Sly Stone was considered an engaging fellow. \u201cHe was a great guy,\u201d Gebhardt says. In addition to being in the Viscaynes together, he and Sly \u201cdid plays together \u2013 he was a pretty darn good actor \u2013 and we played basketball and football.\u201d Gebhardt says that Sly and Arellano in particular became very close friends. \u201cOur group was like a family,\u201d he says. \u201cIt wasn’t one of those things where you just come in and sing. We actually did things together all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gebhardt’s memories of the teenage Sly Stone do, however, comport with one characteristic that would come to define the celebrated musician. \u201cHe did<\/i> have a tendency to be late for things,\u201d Gebhardt allows. \u201cOne of the reasons why we almost didn’t get to go to audition for the Dick Stewart Talent Show was that he was late.\u201d Sly was late to arrive at some of the dances the Viscaynes had booked as well. \u201cBut we got to him to be a little more punctual,\u201d he says. \u201cWe fixed that. At least until he left our group. Then, I think he went back to being \u2026 a little bit late.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Looking back at the group \u2013 and viewing it from the outside \u2013 The Viscaynes seem remarkable for a number of reasons. Years before groups like The Rising Sons, The Mynah Birds and Love (and of course Sly and the Family Stone) would feature integrated lineups, this teenage vocal group was made up of a cross section of society. Gebhardt says that though the group included males, females, whites and African Americans and people of different faiths, \u201cit wasn’t a big deal to anybody. Nobody cared; we just did what we did. We sang and we enjoyed life. The world might think it was a big deal, but we didn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gebhardt allows that Sly and one of the other group’s singers, Maria Boldway \u201cdid have a little bit of a thing going on, but nobody [in the group] ever cared. That’s all I can tell you.\u201d The idea that people of various races and ethnic backgrounds were somehow different never seems to have occurred to the Viscaynes and the friends in their orbit. \u201cMy dad was a football coach at the college,\u201d Gebhardt explains. \u201cHe was always trying to recruit people, to get them to play football for him. So we had people at my house of every different race and breed that you can ever imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n

That kind of thinking meant that it wasn’t a big deal when \u2013 after the Viscaynes had ended \u2013 billed as The Hart Brothers, Gebhardt and brother Vern, were booked at the Milwaukee 13 Club in Hayward, California. \u201cIt was an entirely black audience,\u201d he recalls. \u201cBut they liked what we were doing.\u201d As far as the Viscaynes, Gebhardt says, \u201cI’m very proud of the fact that we had that relationship and that whole deal of not worrying about ‘who’s who and what’s what.’ We just enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though the group members were all in their teens, The Viscaynes scored some high profile gigs. \u201cWe played at the Carpenters’ Hall, which was gigantic,\u201d Gebhardt recalls. But the young (and more than a little green) singers ran afoul of the grown-up world at that particular show. \u201cI picked up a tambourine during our performance,\u201d Gebhardt recalls with a chuckle. \u201cAnd I got fined $50 \u2013 a lot of money back then \u2013 for picking up that tambourine, because I didn’t belong to the Musicians’ Union. You don’t break those rules when you’re in a union hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gebhardt says that The Viscaynes played at the Ranger’s Hall in Vallejo almost every weekend, and they performed a number of times at the Solano County Fairgrounds. \u201cWe did a lot of dances and proms and weddings,\u201d he says. \u201cWe’d actually go up to other high schools and perform for them in their big auditoriums.\u201d<\/p>\n

But they ventured out of town quite often as well. \u201cWe did a number of shows at Travis Air Force Base,\u201d Gebhardt says. \u201cAnd we played a lot of places up in Lake County.\u201d Even in small towns like Clearlake, The Viscyanes \u2013 all of whom were 16 or 17 years old \u2013 were booked together for overnight stays in in motels. \u201cI guess they didn’t care that we were a mixed group, either,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Once the group had cut some records, there was demand for performances as far away as Los Angeles, more than 350 miles to the south. Everything happened in a whirlwind for the group; that may help explain why Gebhardt is a bit fuzzy on a few details. \u201cI think we were at the Hollywood Bowl,\u201d he says, \u201cBut I can’t remember.\u201d He is, however, sure that the group appeared at the famed Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to cut records came about through winning of talent shows. \u201cThey were like the American Idol<\/i> or The Voice<\/i> of today, in miniature format,\u201d Gebhardt explains. The Viscaynes scored a trophy for taking first place at one hosted by TV personality Dick Stewart of KPIX Dance Party<\/i>. \u201cWe had to [complete] every weekend up and down the state of California,\u201d Gebhardt says. \u201cI still have the trophy. It’s about six inches tall.\u201d After the group won that contest, a record contract was inked. \u201cWe didn’t get involved with that,\u201d says Gebhardt. Parents and lawyers took care of that stuff; I don’t even know what the contacts were.\u201d He notes that the members of the group \u201cnever made any money\u201d off of the contract. But they did earn the right to record a pair of songs.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1961, Gebhardt had a summer job with the Vallejo Unified School District, cutting grass. One day he was mowing a lawn when his parents showed up. \u201cWe’ve got to go to record,\u201d they told him. They headed to a studio in the basement of the Geary Theatre in San Francisco’s Theatre District.<\/p>\n

Several hours passed before the group \u2013 backed by The Continentals \u2013 waxed suitable recordings of \u201cStop What You Are Doing\u201d and \u201cI Guess I’ll Be.\u201d \u201cIt took awhile to get what [the producers] wanted,\u201d Gebhardt says. \u201cBut they finally got it.\u201d Viscaynes vocalist Charlene Imhoff took the lead on the latter song. The 45 r.p.m. single was released in October ’61 on the tiny Tropo Records label, and it soon got some airplay on Bay Area Top 40 station KYA-AM.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One … Belying his eventual reputation as an erratic personality, the young Sly Stone was considered an engaging fellow. \u201cHe was a great guy,\u201d Gebhardt says. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,60],"tags":[3580,1980,1981,4192],"class_list":["post-18736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-rb","tag-org-music","tag-sly-and-the-family-stone","tag-sly-stone","tag-viscaynes","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-60-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18736"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18874,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18736\/revisions\/18874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}