Eric ‘s Early Musical Influences and Performing with Judy Henske

Eric was driving a 48 Chevy, “yellow, chopped and channeled,” to San Diego High and stopped to pick-up a hitchhiker, Bill Tollefson.  They became friends. 

Bill had the largest record collection that Eric has ever seen.  He also had a Martin 28 guitar.  Bill taught him how to play chords, melodies, and who to listen to and play along with.  There was Django Reinhardt, Sabicas and Segovia from Bill’s private record collection.  Bill had some Chicago blues . . . Big Bill Broonzy and some folk blues . . . Josh White.

On the hillbilly station he heard Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe.  From WULA-Texas he could pick up Wolfman Jack’s program with Lightning Hopkins.  On television he saw the “Bostonia Ballroom: with Smokey Rodgers.  He saw Spade Cooley and his Western Band and the Town Hall Party with Mel Travis and Clancy Snodgrass.

Eric decided he needed his own banjo as well as a guitar.

Eric talked about nights spent in the drive-in coffee shop eating salad with blue cheese dressing and deep dish apple pie with lot’s of vanilla ice cream on top.  There he would listen to the overhead radio playing songs from the Grand Ole Opry with the Delmore Brothers.  Kitty Wells sang “It ‘Wasn’t God Who Made Honkey Tonk Angels,”  the Crows sang “Gee,”  Ella Mae Morse sang “Wheel of Fortune,” Patti Page sang “Shrimp Boats Are Coming,” Hank Thompson and the Brazos Valley Boys sang “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette,” and Earnest Tubb sand “Walking the Floor Over You.”

When Eric got home from school he went straight downstairs to the rumpus room to listen to and play along with Mel Travis, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Laurindo Almeida.  He practiced scales, arpeggios, chords,  and suspensions.  Thumb, first finger, second finger, “boom shakalaka.”

Eric even liked to study the musicians playing on the street in Tijuana, just across the border in Mexico.

He hung out at Thearle’s Music Store near the high school.  They had listening booths where you could listen to records or you could even try playing the instruments they sold.  The clerks liked him to demonstrate either a guitar or banjo for their customers, until the day he left a lit cigarette stuck into a fret board and burned a banjo badly.

Then he moved on to Ratner’s Music Company and listened to rhythm and blues and jazz and folk music.

Eric was friends with the O’Conner family (Maureen O’Conner eventually was a council woman and then Mayor of San Diego).  There were thirteen kids in their family and they lived in the Mission Hills area.  Eric met some of Maureen’s older brothers at St. Augustine Catholic High School before he got kicked out for smoking.  They would drive around with Eric in his Chevy.  The brothers got lifeguard certificates and Eric hung out at the beach a lot then.  That is where Eric met a longtime friend, Mark Ashmore.

In college Eric played music with Mark, who played drums,  Lester MacIntosh who played bass,  and a fellow named Bob who played flute.  They performed in a play in theatre arts.  Mr. Neumann and his living theater was putting on “As You Like It.”  The whole cast went to a party at a big house out on Sunset Cliffs owned by two guys who owned a record label.  That’s where Eric met his next music partner, Judy Henske. 

Judy was a tall good looking girl from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.  Eric used to call her a young white Bessie Smith.  She was the best white girl blues singer ever.  Nobody could sing the blues the way she could.  Her voice was so powerful that she didn’t even need a microphone.  Night after night of putting it out eventually led to a vocal cord operation.

Eric would accompany her to songs like “Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” “Empty Bed Blues,” and a North Carolina murder ballad called “Little Ronny.”

Fred Gerlach also would accompany Judy.  Eric said he was the greatest twelve string guitar player alive. Fred showed Eric a lot of finger-picking style blues licks.

Judy and Eric put an act together at Bob Stane’s Upper Cellar.  It was located on 60^th and El Cajon Boulevard and featured local acts for an audience of about forty people.  It was the typical coffee “expresso”  house to go to in the post-beatnik and poetic time of the late 50’s.  The ladies would wear black leotards, long skirts, long hair, sandals and turquoise rings.

Beside coffee, you could order good teas, hot chocolate with whipped cream or hot cider with a cinnamon stick.  Some patrons played chess and discussed the poetry of Miles Payne, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Eric “Big Daddy” Nord.  There was usually an astrologer or a Tarot card reader in the group as well.

Bob Stane eventually moved the Upper Cellar to University Avenue.  It was a larger, feature act night club with black décor.  Judy and Eric played on the same bill as the Tarriers and Ted Markland who was doing Lenny Bruce style comedy.  Eric met Nick Woods who got together with Randy Sparks to form the large “Christy Mistrel” group.  They wrote “Green, Green.”  Barry McQuire was in the group.  Eric would eventually record an album with Barry.

Eric also got to know Paul Sikes, a San Diegan artist with a beautiful voice, and Mason Williams, a sailor stationed in San Diego who sang “Classical Gas” and was featured on the Glen Campbell show.

Eric talked about hanging out with the poets until dawn, drinking wine and smoking weed that he got from Chango in T.J. for thirty-five dollars a kilo.  With the profits he bought his first Fender electric guitar.

After playing the local San Diego clubs, Eric and Judy gave Los Angeles a shot.  They played at the Troubadour, the Ashgrove, and two clubs owned by Herbie Cohen; The Unicorn and Cosmo Alley.  Herbie’s brother Martin (Mutt) Cohen managed them.

At the Unicorn there was Gat, the bartender and Freddie Engelberg singing “Ragtime Rabbit” and “Somebody Finked to the Fuzz and We All Got Busted.”  The owner of the Ashgrove, Ed Perl, wouldn’t let Judy sing at the club for awhile claiming that her music wasn’t traditional.  Finally, he did let them perform.  At the Ashgrove Eric met every performer that was in the field of traditional folk music, night and night.

They lived on Hayward Avenue, right off the Sunset Strip.  Jessie Fuller would come over and stay with them.  Harry Dean Stanton and Michael Green lived nearby in the hills.  They stayed there for awhile.

They would always eat at Barney’s Beanery . . . the watering hole for anyone with creative talent and a night time schedule.  Artists were there like Genie Riley, Freddie Engelberg, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bankston, Edward Hewitt and Tom Ewing, to mention a few.

Martin Cohen booked Judy and Eric into the Barvacquie Club in Scottsdale, Arizona and then the Gate of Horn in Chicago.  Martin drove them to the Scottsdale gig and boy did they get lost.  They arrived just in time to do the date. 

They then took the train to Chicago.  Then on to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin to meet Judy’s mother who was an avid cribbage player.  They spent the winter playing cribbage and eating fresh hot sausage and drinking lots of beer.

Then back to Chicago to play the Counterpoint Club and the Old Town School of Folk Music.  Then they went back to Oklahoma City and then back to the Buddah Club in El Cajon in San Diego.

Eric and Judy “broke up,” and Judy went on to become a famous recording star.  She recorded many albums until she retired to become a homemaker.

In 1959 When Eric was all of 21 years of age, he was back in San Diego playing solo dates at many clubs:  the Upper Cellar, Mantiki, Sip and Serve where he met Fred Thompson of the Fred Thompson Duo), the Poor House and Circi’s Cup.

Eric sang and performed the blues and bluegrass.  Some songs he performed were “Lady of Spain,” “Bill Bailey,” “The Wild Goose,” “Just Because,” “Dark As a Dungeon,” and “Streamline Cannonball.”

He lived in South Mission  Beach and played congo’s many nights with David Boyle and Mark Ashmore.

Fred Thompson, who also happens to be the world’s greatest ukulele player, called Eric from St. Paul, Minnesota with a job offer.  The Fred Thompson Duo (with Bob Casto) was a San Diego based folk group a lot like the Kingston Trio.  They wore bright red cardigan sweaters and Eric wore a red one. 

The “Twin Cities” St. Paul and Minneapolis are next to each other in Minnesota.  St. Paul was dry.  You couldn’t buy liquor there, but in Minneapolis you could.  The bars were in Minneapolis but the coffee houses and the coffee house scene were in St. Paul.

That is where Eric first saw Bob Dylan.  He also saw Sonny Grover, a white blues harmonica player, who later wrote a book called “How To Play Blues Harmonica.”  Spider Koerner was another one of the better blues guitar players in St. Paul.

It was that winter when the Duo played a club called the Padded Cell that Eric met John Phillips who would eventually form the Mama’s and the Papa’s.  His group, the Journeymen,  was  booked into the act with the Duo.  After the gig Eric went to John's motel room and there was a party.  They all played music together.  John said to Eric . . . “If we ever break up, I’ll give you a call, Eric.”

After the Fred Thompson stint, Pat Garvy, Ivan Kubista and Eric joined together to become the Highland Three.  They had seen each other on stage and decided to audition for a job they had heard about in Duluth.  They set out in a small Fiat, three men, three guitars and a banjo.  Duluth sits on the southern tip of Lake Superior.  When they arrived the temperature was twelve degrees below zero, not including the strong wind chill factor.  The first thing they did was fix the heater in the Fiat and then call to find out that the auditions were called off.  So they decided to take their act to New York City.

Fort Wayne, Indiana was on the way to New York and they knew about a coffee house there.  They were hired immediately and stayed on for two months and sharpened up their act for the big city.  Their act was well polished and they had a shot at it.

Meeting Eric (The Doctor) and the Start of His Story

It’s time in my story to tell the story of “The Doctor.”  He isn’t around to tell his story anymore and so it is up to me to tell it for him.

One afternoon I got a call from one of the Hollywood gang of friends named John asking me if I could help a man named Eric get back into the music scene.  He had been the lead guitarist and band leader for the Mama’s and the Papa’s in the late sixties but had been up in Portland for quite awhile since the famous group had broken up.

I had heard about Eric from a friend who had referred to him as an “old salt.”  I said that I would help and arranged for Eric (otherwise known professionally as “the Doctor” or Doc) to perform at the Hollywood Canteen and I invited many people that I thought would like to know he is back in town.

On the night of the concert the venue was filled to capacity.  I was wearing a long southwestern type of hippy dress with long hair and put burning incense here and there.  The concert was well received and Eric decided he should move in with me.

I was not sure about that but he showed up with a mattress and what could I do? 

He continued to play at the Hollywood Canteen weekly.  The usual following act was Charlie Daniels.

Eric was born a little before his time being that there was no internet and there are very little Youtube videos to remember him by. 

We eventually got married and raised a wonderful son, Alan, together.  Eric switched between hard labor types of jobs and the music business, back and forth but did not make any major breakthroughs.  Much later, a song he co-wrote did make the charts in Europe and initially earned him some money before the song was downloaded for free on the internet.    He was extremely talented.  He entertained thousands of people, making them so happy.

But let’s go back to the beginning as he told me about his life.

Eric Glen Hord had been born in 1935 at Mercy Hospital in San Diego.  His father was in the Navy and his mother was a one-time teacher, but now a stay-at-home mother.  Eric was the third child with an older brother, Ned, and older sister, Mary Jane.   He went to Catholic school until he reached high school.  Then he went to San Diego High.

Eric loved San Diego.  He loved to fish, he loved the mild climate and how it was next to the Mexican border.  The zoo was world famous.  There were cliffs and coves and beaches.  You could watch trains, planes and boats.

Back then there weren’t so many freeways.  Pacific Coast Highway was a four lane road … two lanes on each side.  Mission Valley was a large river bed with cows and the Town and Country gold course.  Driving south and catching “the strand” up or a ferryboat took you to Coronado Island.  “BB” … before the bridge.  The Cabrillo Highway went through Balboa Park and there was no Padre Stadium, which is now called Petco Park.

Eric was a skilled tennis player who was just this short of going professional for lack of a sponsor.  He had an extreme intensity that he applied to whatever he was doing, even ping-pong, and including guitar and banjo playing.  He learned the banjo from his father, who was brought up in the South.

Eric was close to his mother as his father had been deployed quite a bit.  He was also close with a neighbor lady who was half English and half Mesquite Indian, Mrs. Harbottle.  She told him of her affairs with Billy the Kid and Black Jack Pershing.  She would name chiefs and show him pictures of her in Silver City, New Mexico on a military outpost.  She knew every dance for that period and could sing in Indian dialect. 

She went with his mother to Saint John’s Catholic church at five o’clock every morning.  Eric had been an altar boy there.  He liked the mysticism of Mrs. Harbottle’s stories and the Catholic ceremonies with incense and robes.

Eric was seven years old when his father got off a gray colored ship coming home from World War II, which ended in 1945.  His dad, Cliff, was dressed in Navy blue with medals and stripes and it seemed like he was seeing a God. 

Eric remembers his father screaming in his sleep for awhile after the war.  He had been transferred to San Diego from Guantanamo where he was serving on the Rueben James destroyer.   Three months later the destroyer was sunk by a torpedo and it sank with almost all on board.  He also had good friends on the Arizona ship that was destroyed in Pearl Harbor.

Eric’s dad only had a sixth grade education.  He went to work at the Lee Cotton Mill and Pencil Factory.  He sang country songs and played real good harp.  Sometimes he would start talking about cotton mill girls being raped or murdered by company bosses then putting the blame on some poor black laborers.  His dad would start singing a ballad about an incident but his mom didn’t want him telling the kids these stories.  She had been a school teacher from Vermont and was very strict about his dad’s drinking and storytelling.

There were many parties at Eric’s house.  Anybody with a fiddle, banjo or guitar was there.  His father’s buddies from the Navy sang and played old time music.  There was liquor and cigars and stories about buddies they would never see again.  The men let out lots of emotions.

Eric’s Dad had taken the family to North Carolina to visit his kin where he grew up.  They went to Kings Mountain, Gastonia Junction, just outside Charlotte.  Cliff was the fourteenth child born to Richard M. Hord and by his third wife, Mary Jane Towery Wilson.  The other wives had died.  It was customary for families to have a lot of children begot by different mothers.  A man needed a woman to raise the children and a woman needed a man to have a place to live.

On the trip, Eric and his family first stayed with Aunt Mary.  Eric helped her be a lookout for whoever was stealing her hogs.  He saw here take out her shotgun and yell at two figures in the moonlit distance, “get out of my field!” and then she shot two big blasts toward them.  But it was her brother, Uncle Leroy.  She told them not to use the field anymore and to warn everybody else.  Aunt Mary had a black cook named Sarah who would sing while she cooked.  Eric was very impressed with the music he heard there.

After they left Aunt Mary’s they went through Rock Hill to Carpenter’s Knob.  When they arrived at the cabin where his dad was born, he saw lots of multi-colored children running around.  There were grave markers nearby.  Some of them had dates going back a long time ago.

Uncle Luther and Aunt Kathy lived at the cabin.  Uncle Luther was out in the hills when the family arrived so Aunt Kathy fired off a couple of shots from a gun saying, “he’s on his way now.”

There were four small rooms with no lights.  A banjo was on the wall and a bible on the desk.  Uncle Luther was everything on Carpenter Knob; minister, policeman, and moonshiner.  He was a big family man. 

Aunt Sarah lived there also.  All the people there had on worn down handmade clothes.  The men wore old boots and the women and children didn’t seem to wear any shoes at all.  The children were a blend of white, Indian and Black, being a result of intermingling since early times when the white man came from Europe a came to the Piney Wood Mountains.

Later on Eric’s dad and uncle climbed up the knob to the still.  Luther took his shotgun and big knife saying, “You get fifty cents a piece for a good cottonmouth and you’ve picked the right time of year to come for that.”

Uncle Luther would be in the stream below the rocks where the snakes were sunning themselves and Cliff would scare them into the water.  Luther would slice their heads off as they glided by.  Eric saw about twenty skins frying in the sun in the back of the shack.

Uncle Luther told Eric about a young boy who jumped into a pond that had a whole family of cottonmouth moccasin snakes and when the boy came out he had snakes sticking all over him.  He’s up in the cemetery behind the shack now.

When the group got to the still, Eric saw barrels and tubes and a small stream of smoke coming from on the stacks.  Luther came out of the lean to and offered Dad and him a sip of his finest whiskey corn liquor.  Luther told Eric, “Boy, don’t drink it like pop.  Just a little bitty sip.”  After he sipped it, a burning sensation happened in his throat.  After a few sips Eric began to watch the world go round.  His dad had to get him up off the ground.  The men thought it was pretty funny.

Luther decided they could go coon hunting later that night.  On the way down the hill there were two crosses off in the trees about fifty feet from where they were at.  Luther says, “Them’s the police, son.  They said they were going to take my still and land away.  Ain’t right for the government to take away a man’s lively hood and land just because they ain’t getting rich off us folks.”  Dad said, “Ain’t gonna change none.  Never has, never will.”

The dogs were kept behind the shack.  Coon dogs waited for the night when they would be off with their masters in search of possum or coons.  On the night Eric went hunting the moon was full and hanging high up over the Knob, illuminating the forest.  Eric carried the sacks and they lit out with the dogs leading the way.  You could hear their barking far off in the misty moonlight. 

Luther said, “Ole Saul’s got something over in Indian Gully.”  Everyone spotted their flashlight up into the trees and caught a glimpse of something moving up there.  Before dawn they had gotten six possums but two of the dogs had gotten hurt, but not too bad.  Uncle Luther asked Eric if he wanted to come live with him and go coon hunting all the time.   Eric said, “I don’t know,” and Luther laughed.

Back at Aunt Mary’s again, the evening was filled with gospel singing and instrument playing including a song by Blind Willy Johnson.  Aunt Mary, cook Sarah and Eric’s dad must have sung “over a thousand” soulful songs.

The next day Aunt Mary sent the family on their way back home with three cooked chickens, potato salad, corn, biscuits and gravy, watermelon and pickles.

Eric got to see the richness of the poor and the beauty of the country on his trip to see where some of his roots came from.