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.