23Aug 2011

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – R.I.P. Ashford, Leiber and Ragavoy

23Aug 2011

Allee Willis’ Soul O’ The Day – R.I.P. Ashford, Leiber and Ragavoy

What are the odds of losing two of the most influential songwriters of all time on the same day?  That’s what happened yesterday. First, Jerry Lieber, whose “Hound Dog” got the Elvis-not-to-mention-Rock-‘n-Roll train rolling, and then Nick Ashford, a songwriter whose influence on me was immeasurable. I never met Jerry, though I wrote  a bunch of songs with his son, Oliver, in the early 90’s. But Nick I knew and loved. Not just as a songwriter who wrote my favorite song of all time but as one of nicest guys around. His eyes always sparkled, he was always smiling and soul oozed out of him as naturally as breath.

Along with his brilliant wife and collaborator, Valerie Simpson, Nick turned out the kind of songs that made my songwriting head spin. Can you say “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”?! How does a song get any better than that?? In any of the zillions of versions of it that exist? And that’s just the tip of the hitberg.

When my musical, The Color Purple, opened on Broadway, Nick and Val were there. And when Chaka Kahn came in as Sofia a couple of years later they were there again. I don’t know where Valerie was for this shot with me, my Color Purple collaborator, Brenda Russell, and Patti LaBelle, the singer who first started regularly doing my songs back in the day, but that big smile was typical of how Nick always walked around.

Nick and Val also came to the Broadway opening of Hot Feet, the Earth Wind & Fire musical I had seven songs in. Here we are with Maurice White, founder and lead singer of EWF and who gave me the biggest break of my career with “September” and all that followed, and LaChanze, who won a Tony for playing Celie in The Color Purple.

Nick and Val were among the most supportive songwriters ever. I can’t even tell you how incredible it made me feel as a songwriter every time they told me how much they loved my music.

Which is amazing because the only time I ever got to work with them was on a really stinky song in a really stinky movie. In 1987, Scott Sanders, who later produced The Color Purple, managed Ashford & Simpson and asked me to write and produce a song for them. My collaborator, Danny Sembello‘s, mom got very sick right after we began and he had to bow out of the project. I was in way over my head without him. If you know bad movies and didn’t know I did the song that everyone dances to in the infamous McDonalds scene,“Down To Earth”, in the kitschingly horrendous Mac and Me, I know you’re plotzing now. And you certainly can’t imagine royalty like Ashford & Simpson gracing that mess either. So even more impressive that they remained so kind and supportive of me through the years. But I shouldn’t be talking about bad songs when honoring such an iconic being as Nick Ashford. Everyone should be as blessed to have such a joyous soul in their life.

Just a few weeks ago another iconic songwriter and friend passed, Jerry Ragovoy. Not only did he write such gems as “Piece Of My Heart” and “Time Is On My Side”, but he discovered an unknown songwriter named Allee Willis and produced her one and only album, Childstar, in 1974.

This hasn’t been a very happy month for songwriters. Though if I think about the jam going on upstairs it makes me smile. Besides, these are the kind of guys that live forever. R.I.P. Jerry Leiber, Nick Ashford and Jerry Ragovoy. If ever there were Rock ‘n Roll royalty this is it.

 

12Aug 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bye Bye, Milly… Off to deliver a eulogy…

12Aug 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bye Bye, Milly… Off to deliver a eulogy…

No new aKitschionado posts until tomorrow as I have to leave early this morning to go to Milly Del Rubio’s funeral where, as I did for both of her sisters, Elena and Eadie, I’ll be delivering the eulogy. Normally this would be a very upsetting task, but as all three of the Del Rubio Triplets were fond of saying, they were “three people with one head” and never could live with the thought of the group not being together. I’m at peace that they’re finally reunited, as Eadie passed in 1996 and Eleana joined her in 2001.

I thought about dropping ‘Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day’ from the title of my post today but if ever I were to worship at the throne of Kitsch it would be at the base of three magnificent thrones with gold nameplates that say “Del Rubio”.

I should also mention that Holy Cross Cemetery, where the triplets are buried next to each other by the time you read this, is right across the street from the Fox Hills Mall, where I got this:

I constantly get complements on how gorgeous this microphone pendant is. No doubt the complement flingers think it’s real diamonds but all that bling only cost $39.99. Not that I need a funeral as an excuse to go to the Fox Hills Mall, but if anyone would appreciate fantastic music-themed jewelry like this it would be the Del Rubio Triplets.

Milly, I know how long you’ve wanted to go and be with your sisters so I’m not sad to lose you now.

I trust that the three of you are already assembled in front of glowing diamond microphones, singing the out-of-this-world harmonies you sang even here on earth, and standing in the order you were born in, stood on stage in and did everything in life in; Eadie on the left, Elena in the middle and Milly now joining on the right.

Peace out.

21Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – R.I.P. Alex Steinweiss

21Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – R.I.P. Alex Steinweiss

Alex Steinweiss passed away last Sunday. Even if you don’t know his name there’s no way you don’t know his work. Steinweiss literally invented the album cover. Before the 1930’s, records came in brown paper sleeves. At 23, he was hired by Columbia Records and suggested that the music be accompanied by poster art. Thus began the singlemost prolific and influential record jacket design career the world has ever known. Not only did Steinweiss give life to the record industry but he made the burgeoning Atomic Age visible to the public, creating the first wave of freeform design that designers still ride today.

Everything Steinweiss did burst with color. You could hear the music without listening to it just by looking at one of his covers. He was as great at what he did as it gets. His style is still imitated, though I’ve never seen anyone nail it like Steinweiss, who makes even the most successful designer of modern graphics look like a copycat.

And those aren’t even his most famous covers. But it gives you an idea of the rhythmic and lyrical style that still influences modern design today. This was the first time this stuff was being done. Just look at the Google image search page for an overview crash course.

I was lucky enough to have a piece of art in an album cover show at the Robert Berman Gallery in LA a few years ago that featured hundreds of Steinweiss’ LPs. It was a tribute show to him with a wide variety of artists designing their own album covers.
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One of my favorite Steinweiss covers was Porgy and Bess. When I was (co)writing The Color purple musical, I listened to that soundtrack a lot. MP3s of course but that record cover was still in my head as I saw it so much as a kid. I hadn’t been a musical theater aficionado before I got the Color Purple gig. To bone up, I started listening to every theater soundtrack I could get my hands on, especially studying Black musicals. Hearing Porgy and Bess again was what put the genre over the top for me and made me excited about writing a musical myself.
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Here’s Steinweiss’ cover:
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And here’s my Color Purple-tinged take on Steinweiss for the gallery show:
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My piece not only interpreted my musical but commented on the fact that both Porgy and Purple were two of the very, very few all Black musicals on Broadway ever, and that one of those was (co)written by me. That’s a lot to stuff into a piece which was at times torturous to design. I could feel the incredible artistic journey I took making it once I stood back and saw it hanging on the wall. Especially with hundreds of actual Steinweisses, not to mention the man himself, only feet away.
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I got to meet Steinweiss too, which was a THRILL. I know we took photos together but I can’t find them for the life of me. So I’ll settle for being thankful for the life of Alex Steinweiss. His artistic influence on me was MASSIVE. Without him, all there was was the record. With Steinweiss, came story and concept and full expression of the artist and art form, without which I would die. R.I. P. Mr. Steinweiss.
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15Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – I’m Back!!

15Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – I’m Back!!

Well, it only took close the four decades for me not to be stage fright and have absolutely one of the best nights of my life when I sang and told stories about the songs I’d written live on stage Monday night at The Songs Of Our Lives concert to benefit the Fulfillment Fund. After being hung up about performing ever since I walked off stage after only six songs in 1974, to say I’m ready to come back is an understatement!!  Well, in relatively small doses but I’m willing to try. Thank you SO MUCH, Charlie Fox, for insisting I perform. I feel like a massive weight has lifted and I’m very excited to see the shift that’s going to occur in my never-ending rollout of what I’m going to do next.

As if that massive psychological breakthrough of being terrified and forgetting very word in my head wasn’t enough, I got to experience three incredible hours of sound check and four incredible hours of performances by some of the most legendary songwriters on the planet. I’ve long cherished songwriters’ versions of their own songs over the records made of them. If you’ve never had a chance to hear a songwriter sing one of your favorite songs you’re missing out on a truly soulful experience. Regardless of whether their voices are as powerful as the artists who made the records, the deliveries are so authentic and heartfelt you could die. Not only do you get the power of the song but the intention with which it was written. All I did was swoon for seven hours, and having my own performance thrown in there with the bonus of having an  absolutely insanely wonderful time on stage –  how can I even be saying those words??!? –  this experience was seriously was one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given.

It was the first time ever outside of a friend or two’s living room that I sang “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, and “I’ll Be There for You (theme from Friends)” in public. I nipped one previous mental saboteur in the butt by carrying out a fistful of lyrics so I didn’t have to panic about forgetting the words.

A huge epiphany: The difference of singing songs that everyone in the audience knows from singing the first ten songs you ever wrote that no one in the audience has even heard of, which was the case in 1974, is massive. It gave me confidence that I never knew as a singer before.  Added to it was that this was an audience who truly appreciated songwriters, and hearing the stories behind the songs was what they were there for. And if there’s one thing this blog has finally hammered into my brain, I’m a good storyteller.

Of course, now I’m kicking myself that I didn’t tell everyone I know to come. I knew that would make me more nervous and I really accepted the gig to try and get over this hideous weight of stage fright. So I only told those absolutely closest to me, and was very relieved when most of them had conflicts for the evening as Michele Obama was in town and they were going to a dinner for her. But the party faithful were here. L-R- me, Nancye Ferguson, Prudence Fenton, and Laura Grover.

Mark Blackwell trailed me on video, a routine we have worked out to a science by now, as Bob Garrett arrived.

I shared a dressing room with legendary jazz singer, Dianne Reeves. How I blanked on taking a photo with my fellow Detroiter I don’t know, but at least I got the shot of our dressing room door.

There were also a ton of legendary producers and players in the audience, not the least of whom was Michael Boddicker, probably the most lauded synth player who’s ever lived. Like he played on every Michael Jackson record and a trillion other classics.

Michael always tells the story of one time we worked together and I was trying to describe a particular sound I wanted him to make on a duet between Herb Alpert and Lani Hall, who I wrote for and produced in 1981. Now I make no secret that I know absolutely nothing about music other than how to write a great song. I couldn’t tell you the definition of a specific music term like measure, adagio or anything. But for a player who’s excessively visual – and trust me, in those days there weren’t a whole lot of them – describing the sound I wanted as “a ping-pong ball being crushed underneath a seagull’s wing” was perfectly clear to Boddicker.

Right before I went on I did some major bonding with the evening’s emcee, Tony Danza.

I’d never met him before but he knew I was nervous and not only was a very encouraging daddy backstage but gave me a great set up line when I walked out so I could talk about the lunchroom debacle and why I had shunned doing anything on stage ever since. It got an immediate laugh, which was like a Valium rolling down my throat, and I was on my way.

But it was the songwriters themselves who made the evening shine most. Jeff Barry went on right after me.

Here are just a few of Jeff’s gems: “Da Doo Run Run”, “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Be My Baby”, “Baby I Love You”, “Tell Laura I Love Her”, “Chapel of Love”, “Iko Iko”, “Remember (Walkin’ In The Sand)”, “Leader of the Pack”, “River Deep, Mountain High”, “I Can Hear Music”, “Montego Bay”, “I Honestly Love You”,and “Sugar Sugar”. Not to mention the theme from The Jeffersons, “Movin’ On Up”, my favorite TV theme song (next to, of course, Friends). And literally, those are just a few of them.

Someone I had never met before but whose songs I always loved and who is sure to become a great friend now was David Pack.

He had/has one of those killer voices that made the songs he wrote for his group, Ambrosia, have that classic ring. Last night he sang “You’re the Biggest Part of Me”, “You’re the Only Woman”, “Holdin’ On To Yesterday”, and “How Much I Feel”.

But the guy who put me over the top even more than those pillars of masterful songwriting was Felix Cavaliere, writer and lead singer for The Rascals.

How do you write a song as classic as “Groovin”?! And “It’s a Beautiful Morning” and “People Got to Be Free”?! Felix was the first writer to do a sound check when I arrived in the afternoon. They didn’t have most of the mics set up yet so I got to hear that most incredible “Groovin'” bass line, probably one of the most used and imitated in the history of music, over and over again. I literally was sitting there with tears dripping down my face it was so exciting for me as a songwriter to be in the presence of such greatness. That we became fast and thick friends backstage only added to my joy.

Thank you, Chris Price, for accompanying me. You were PERFECT!

So, all in all it was a pretty classic day and night for me. I can’t believe I wasted all these years being nauseous at the thought of doing anything like this. But I’m back and that’s all that’s important.

13Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Jukebox Tip Tray and My First Time Singing On Stage In Mannnnny Years…..

13Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Jukebox Tip Tray and My First Time Singing On Stage In Mannnnny Years…..

Mere days after my first and only album, Childstar, was released on Epic Records in 1974, I walked on stage in front of 10,000 people to open in Boston for folksinger David Bromberg.

The only other time I had been on stage before was when I played a little fur tree in a school play when I was 8. Now here I was singing soul music, the first 10 songs I ever wrote, plus a Mary Wells medley and Brenton Woods’s “Oogum Boogum”. My band, the singers of whom would go on to become Chic, were dressed as sequined vegetables and I was in a satin suit that I’d autographed from head to toe. This is a really crappy photo of part of the costumes on mannequins but it’s all I’ve got;

Me and The Angle Babies aren’t in costume here but you can get a pretty good idea that between us and our costumes we weren’t what the folksinging crowd came to see.

I didn’t have a very good time on stage. I never could remember my lyrics and I always spent more time designing the sets and costumes than I did rehearsing or getting comfortable being on stage. After five performances on the East Coast we were booked into a lunchroom at Ohio State, the only way the college could also get Joni Mitchell to play in the main auditorium because we had the same agent. Our only audience were three people at a bridge table eating hot dogs and a psychology class being conducted in the back of the room, with the professor telling us to lower our volume after every song. I walked offstage after six songs and made the decision to just be a songwriter, where at least if I was being tortured it was in the comfort of my own room.

Through the years I’ve gotten much more comfortable performing – in my own unique way of doing so which doesn’t include singing live – mostly because I’m a big party thrower and walk around on mic the whole time.

Almost every conversation I have comes through the speakers and I’m literally directing and producing the party as I go. Throw in the thrift shop auctions and stupid party games that I lead the guests through and I’ve gotten very relaxed holding that cold metal thing in my hands.

But I still never have gotten it together to sing anywhere other than in the studio.

So the fact that in mere hours I will be up on the stage for the first time in almost four decades and I’m not sitting here throwing up is a MASSIVE ACHIEVEMENT! Me and five other well oiled songwriters will be singing our greatest hits and talking about how they were written. It’s just with a keyboard – Chris Price, who I’ve been writing and recording a song with and shooting a video all on iPhones, is accompanying me –  but I’m singing and remembering lyrics and lines nonetheless.

And if I can get through the evening not thinking about soul singers dressed as vegetables, psychology professors and hot dogs I will have made a big breakthrough.

I’ll be performing “September“, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, and “I’ll Be There for You (theme from Friends)“. At least radio has regaled me with these songs thousands of times over the years so I’m hoping that for once I can remember my own lyrics and be happy I’m up on stage.

Wish me luck!

06Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cheesy Friends Billfold with Rhinestone Necklaces

06Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cheesy Friends Billfold with Rhinestone Necklaces

Despite the fact that I co-wrote the Friends theme song, “I’ll Be There for You”, I’ve never collected the plethora of merchandise associated with the show. It’s too new and mass-produced to have the soulfulness of merchandise I collect that came from TV shows of earlier decades, and instead just plops the logo or photos of the stars on the same old cups, T-shirts and keychains that every other post-1990 show on TV stamped their likeness on. Like this keychain that the manufacturer was even too cheap to stamp the name of the show on.

Or this coffee cup:

Despite the fact that I really liked/like the show – and not just because I get a teeny-tiny-minuscule-for-which-I’m-eternally-grateful royalty every time it’s on – I never liked the tragically 90’s font of the show title. The only exception is on this incredibly cheaply made purse where the font is beautiful because they left the ‘s’ off of Friends.

My billfold has the teeny tiniest most minuscule of rhinestones on it, only about 1/16th of an inch in diameter.

And why was poor Jennifer Aniston gipped out of her necklace?  Although the manufacturer includes one spare rhinestone should the other girls’ jewels be compromised through normal use.

The inside of the billfold has none of the up and frothy sprit of the show:

The back isn’t any better:

I’d rather glue the edges of the sheet music together and at least have something distinctive to carry around. And I’d never have to worry about losing it as my name is right there on it

09May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 14, THE VIDEO

09May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 14, THE VIDEO

As I’ve been blabbing about for weeks now, I had the extreme pleasure of conducting my high school marching band playing a medley of some of my greatest hits in the lobby of the theater I grew up in in Detroit with the cast of the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple, singing along. I meant to post video of our performance as soon as I got home but to my horror, one of the three cameramen only shot the students from the back and the other both forgot to turn his camera on for parts of songs and babbled over the footage like he was the subject of a documentary. So it took quite a lot of editing to get something where you could even begin to see the  warm, wonderful and uplifting-higher-than-the-sky feeling that permeated the theater that day.

The performance was a benfit to buy new marching band uniforms for the Mumford band. The last time they got new uniforms was in 1984 when Jerry Bruckheimer, also a Mumford grad, bought them so they could play at the premiere of Beverly Hills Cop in Detroit. I got a Grammy for Beverly Hills Cop so this entire extravaganza was tied up in one fantastically organic bow!

Also organic was my shoes and socks combo in the Mumford school colors.

I had an excellent time wearing my hat, color coordinated to The Color Purple, the matinee of which started immediately after the closing notes of the marching band. Though my hat ecstacy only lasted a couple of bars. Too wobbly on my head.

If the music was wobbly at all it’s only the charm of a high school band and a songwriter who’s never learned how to read, notate or play music despite her songs selling more than 50 million records.

That’s the innocence of youth. I hope you enjoy our youth as much as me and the kids did. It was a VERY special experience indeed.

03May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 12, My Speech

03May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 12, My Speech

On April 7 I was the closing keynote speaker at the Rust Belt To Arts Belt III conference in Detroit. Every year the conference takes place in a different city that’s faced with the task of reinventing itself in the ongoing transition from the Industrial Age into the Digital Age and beyond. Loving Detroit and having been in the heat of designing communities since the dawn of the commercial Internet in 1991, I wax on about all this in my speech.

I didn’t do any kind of visual presentation so showing a video of me moving my mouth for a half an hour isn’t going to cut the cake. It would be far more interesting to watch me moving my mouth cutting another foodstuff:

But seeing as I have no hot dog footage, here’s a link to the speech.  I’m very proud of it.  And mean every word I say.

 

27Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 9, The City By Car

27Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 9, The City By Car

Wednesday, April 6, had tremendous potential. (L-R) Mark Blackwell and Laura Grover, both of whom worked on putting the whole Detroit extravaganza together with me, and I were being driven around the city by Michael Poris, one of the architects leading the charge to rebuild Detroit. The Majestic Theater is one of his projects.

Here’s a detail of The Majestic’s majesty:

Unfortunately, the skies weeped steadily throughout the day, making decent photos next to impossible unless one was out to amplify the decay of the city, in which case the incessant downpour added just enough teardrops to slam that sentiment home. Most of my shots look like this:

Which is a shame, as to miss the details of a combo Church and car wash is a waste of excellent kitsch:

Just about the only clear shots I got was when I got out of the car,…

…or some of my car-mates did,…

…or when the rain wasn’t spitting into the car, with the window rolled down. Thankfully it stopped for a few minutes when I snapped these murals at the Eastern Market:

Sometimes the gloominess of the skies enhanced the experience of what we were looking at.

Perfect for a place that’s a Home For Funerals as opposed to merely a Funeral Home. Then again, it’s right next door to the happiest place on earth, Motown.

Growing up, I spent many a Saturday afternoon planted on this front lawn, trying to catch a bass note or background vocal seeping through the walls.

I make a pilgrimage to the front lawn every time I go home. In the early 1980s I even got into the actual recording studio when The Detroit Free Press did a story on me growing up in Detroit and how, as a songwriter, I was influenced by Motown.

But, alas, fate was not as kind this time. Had I stashed the three video cameras and four still cams away I could have marched through the studio again. But I had no interest, especially on this trip, in having any significant moment of my life pass by without being digitally preserved. So the closest I got was the hallway as no filming was allowed.

The woman at the desk was really nice. She knew who I was as soon as I walked in as she had seen me on the news the morning before. But rules are rules. Even though I’ve collaborated with some of Motown’s greatest songwriters, like Lamont Dozier…

… and Ashford & Simpson, seen here with me and Maurice White, founder and lead singer of Earth Wind & Fire, and LaChanze, the Tony-winning actress who played Celie in the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple.

So we piled back in the car and were off to enjoy more of Detroit.

I would have enjoyed it more if the BBQ joint in front of that mural were still open:

Michael had been over to my place in LA about nine months earlier so I wasn’t worried about him showing us the usual tour suspects – The Detroit Institute Of Art, The Detroit Historical Society, The Spirit of Detroit, etc. All completely beautiful and historic but I wanted to see the spirit of the city as evidenced through how people express themselves via their homes, lawns and businesses. I’ve long believed that one’s immediate environment is a canvas for self expression. And places like this would be off the beaten track of any normal tour guide:

Talk about expressing yourself via your home…:

This is The Heidleberg Project, named for the street that artist Tyree Guyton took over 25 years ago and decorated houses, lawns and empty lots on two blocks of.  SPECTACULARLY INSPIRING:

 

One of the great promises of Detroit is that artists can live cheaply and express themselves in novel ways not possible in other cities. Like Ice House Detroit, a 2010 project where two photographers took over an abandoned house, hosed it down til it was an ice cave and then photographed it melting, symbolizing the building up and subsequent melting away of the once great Detroit.

Detroit is full of such self expression:

Artists see the future first – their way is to dream and paint that picture for everyone else. Reinvention and constantly shifting one’s perspective to stay inspired is as vital for places as it is for people. There’s a great effort in Detroit to redesign the city the artists’ way. In fact, one of my reasons for being there this particular week was to be the closing keynote speaker on that very subject at the Rust Belt To Arts Belt conference happening the next day.

But back to the streets… Rain-soaked as this photo is, I hope you can see the use of industrial materials on the facade of this otherwise traditional brick building. Up close it looks like a bunch of sawed-in-half hot water heaters. I love stuff like this.


There are so many beautiful abandoned buildings, waiting for artists to see their beauty and reinvent their once greatness.

And it’s not like artists can’t afford to live in Detroit.

Thankfully, someone bought the old Michigan Central train station. From what I understand, there are plans to renovate.

Forgotten by time, vandalized by squatters and ravers, its internal beauty still shines through.

It was getting late so we headed back as I had to go over my speech about the rejuvenation of Detroit I was giving the next day. I was pretty sure I had it down but wanted to make sure there were no crucial mistakes or  misspellings to trip me up. Sometimes even the most straight-ahead missives go awry. Like at this McDonalds, just a couple blocks from Vince’s, where we had dinner and which I’ll blog about tomorrow. I know they mean a 20 piece chicken McNugget dinner for $4.99 but if I’m to believe the sign it’s 20 P’s of cchcken uggets for four hundred ninety nine dollars.

Which makes it just slightly cheaper than some of the houses in Detroit. Calling all artists!!

14Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 3, The House

14Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 3, The House

I know… I promised that Part 3 was going to be about finally getting into the house I grew up in on Sorrento Ave. in Detroit after trying for the last 46 years. But, as someone who’s conscious of her evolution and creative process every waking moment, this finally-going-home experience was BIG for me. Also, it’s not like I can go posting detailed photos of someone else’s stuff, which is inevitable if one is photographing a room. So this isn’t so much about documenting the actual house as it is about what I felt like being back in it.

I remember when I finally went to Disneyland for my 50th birthday, after I had only been there once when I was 14, I was shocked that everything was so small. The same thing, of course, happened when I walked into the house I lived in from 5 to 16 years old last week. It was like walking into a dollhouse. Like here’s me with the banister that in my head was a giant slide, down which I rode every morning en route to breakfast:

The house now is, of course, filled with other people’s stuff and taste, but it still had the same soulful vibe I was aware of even back then. Here’s the living room corner in 1961:

And here it is in 2011:

Thank God I finally got out of those heels and into more comfortable shoes.

My shoes were also very comfortable in this photo taken in my driveway around 1957. I remember testing my penny loafers on my pink and gray Columbia bike against other shoes I had for the firmest peddle grip.

Albeit slightly worse for wear, the driveway remains intact today.

This is the Magnolia tree that was the subject of one of my earliest songs, “I Fell Out Of The Magnolias”.

No one ever released it but it was one of those songs that impressed all of my singer and songwriter friends back in 1974 when I cowrote it with David Lasley (who I would later write “Lead Me On” with) and one of those songs that when I bump into any of them they still sing a little of. Forget about “September” or the Friends theme, “Magnolias” is the classic. Here I am back in the ‘Magnolia” days:

When I first  set eyes on the house I live in now in LA back in 1980, my realtor had heard about it at a dinner party the night before we went house hunting. I didn’t want to live in the Valley but after looking at and hating a bunch of square boxes in Hollywood I decided to drive over the hill and see the house described in the brochure as a miniature Hollywood Palladium. This was a day before it officially went on sale. There was a party going on in the backyard but the back gate was open so I just ran in and raced up the stairs into the house, with the owner chasing behind me. My realtor caught me just as I entered the living room but I remember turning my head and not only seeing a curved wall in the living room that reminded me of a curved wall in the living room on Sorrento but I was dying at the bathroom, just off the living room, because it was filled with gorgeously aged vintage maroon tile. Here’s the bathroom floor as it was that day:

I didn’t know what it was about the tile but looking at it made me dead certain this was MY home. So I almost died when I walked into the bathroom on Sorrento to see the exact same tile there. I had totally blocked it out of my memory but there it was with that deep almost orange hue that only hugs tile that old.

Another unbelievable thing is the people who live in the Sorrento house. First of all, it’s the same folks who bought the house from my father in 1965. Second, their last name is Broadnax, a name I’ve  only heard once before because it’s the name of one of the characters in my musical, The Color Purple, and one of the only characters’ names mentioned in song. As soon as I walked in, the Broadnax’s, both Reverends, told me that my mother, who passed away very suddenly when I was 16, was still in the house. They hear her walking down the steps, and growing up their kids often told them there was a white lady in the house. In my youth, I may not have believed this but when  my co-writers and I first started working on the musical, Alice Walker, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning book, told us that it was all she could do to keep her hand moving fast enough to scribble down the thoughts in her head she was certain her ancestors were dictating to her. The book was written in one quick draft. Alice told us her ancestors would be contacting us. I swear to God, there were times when I would just move my mouth and words or a melody would tumble out, as if someone else was dictating them. It happened to me, Brenda (Russell) and Stephen (Bray) throughout the four years we were writing the show. So I definitely believe that my mom could still be hanging around Sorrento. I hope she was home when I came over.

One last little bit of synchronicity, throw in that the person who sang the “Magnolias” song demo was the only old friend of mine cast in The Color Purple, Charlo Crossley, former Bette Midler Harlette and Church Lady Doris on Broadway. She’s been talking about that Magnolia tree for decades now.

Friday night, the Broadnax’s sat next to me at The Color Purple, where it was playing over the weekend at the Fox Theater.  I totally got a vibe that my mom was there.

It’s pretty overwhelming to be in spots where you have very specific memories and to see it through adult eyes. Especially for me, as I have so few photos and zero movie footage because all of it got tossed after my father remarried. Which I’m sure is why I so obsessively document now. I don’t ever want my past thrown away again. And now at least I can visit it more often.