David Mac (DM): I thought we would cover or at least try and cover your long and distinguished career in music as best we can. With that in mind let’s start at the beginning when and where did you join us here on planet earth?

Larry Taylor (LT): (laughs) That would be Brooklyn, New York, June 26^th 1942.

DM: I thought you told me once that you grew up in Tennessee.

LT: We kind of toggled back and forth for a few years. It was kind of a culture shock going from eastern Tennessee back to Brooklyn and back to Tennessee. We also moved out to California and Texas.  

DM: What was some of your early exposure to music?

LT: It was through my brother. He was nine years older than me. There was a time when I was living with him and his family. It was kind of a poverty stricken situation. That is just what it was. My mother sent me back to Tennessee from California because I was an incorrigible child or what they would now call a juvenile delinquent. In Tennessee, back in those days, they had mandatory R.O.T.C in schools, so my mom figured that would help, maybe that would be a good place to straighten me out.

DM: Great, so you got to be both incorrigible and impoverished. How did that work out?

LT: I did go to school for about a year and then I dropped out. I would just take my lunch money down to the local coffee shop and put it in the jukebox. They had the jukebox right on the counter. I would just plop down there, have a cup of coffee, put in a quarter and listen to ten songs. I would just soak up all the 50’s music which was going on at the time.

DM: Do you remember some of your first exposures to live music?  

LT: I would go around with my brother and he was playing guitar back in those days in a bluegrass band. We were in an area near Bristol, Tennessee, that was right there in the middle of that melting pot of the bluegrass world. That was huge back in that part of the country. He also played drums and ended up playing drums on a local T.V. show. I would hang out with him on the set of the T.V. show. I would go to gigs with him. So that was my first exposure to live music.

DM: Your brother’s name is Mel and he too became a well-known musician in his own right.

LT: Thanks for bringing this up. He was with a band called the Ventures. I don’t know if you remember them or not.

DM: Are you kidding me? The Ventures were one of my favorite bands growing up. I know all the Ventures by name and to me Mel Taylor was like my Ringo Starr. I still listen to their music.

LT: They made over 100 albums. They are the biggest selling instrumental group of all time. I was like a lot of people, as I was influenced by instrumental music. It was very big back in those days.

DM: Let’s talk about some of your earliest experiences out playing music.

LT: One of my first gigs was at a club right on Sunset Boulevard near La Cienega called the Sea Witch. It was a little joint that served hamburgers and beer. It was right next to Dino’s Lodge. I was playing guitar at the time.

DM: When and under what circumstances did you start playing bass?

LT: One night I was at the Sea Witch and there was this long haired guy named Wesley Reynolds playing. When I got to the gig there was an electric bass leaning up against an amp. On the break I asked him if I could pick up that bass and play it during the next set. As it turned out the regular bass player on the gig had some sort of health issues and couldn’t make it. At the end of the night he asked me if I could come back the next night. I did and that’s how I got my first gig.

I ended up running away from home and going back to Oklahoma with Wesley Reynolds to play music. He said we could get all kinds of gigs back there. So we ended up driving back in a 1955 Pontiac “rake.” Dave, do you know what a rake is?

DM: No

LT: It had a lowered front end and the back was raised up. They did that back in the day to old 50’s and 60’s cars. Anyway we stayed back there for nine or ten months got some gigs, but weren’t all that successful.

The name of the band was Wesley Reynolds and the House Rockers. We made a couple of records. One was called Shut Down which was kind of an instrumental thing that started off with some shouting... “SHUT DOWN...SHUT DOWN.” It was recorded at the Gold Star studios in Santa Monica where years later Phil Spector made his “wall of sound” records. Anyway, I drove back to Oklahoma in a rake without a bass and hitchhiked back to California with a bass that Wesley’s father bought me.

I ended up back in La Puente, you know off the I-10 east of L.A., living with my family and not doing much but practicing on my new bass. One day my mother asked me to go to the store for her to get a pack of cigarettes, so off I went to this little market. Right next door from this small grocery store was a little nightclub. I poked my head in and it was Gerry McGhee playing.

DM: What kind of stuff was he playing?

LT: It was kind of a country, bluesy type thing. I never heard anything quite like that. He was doing some finger picking. I ended up playing with this guy at the Sea Witch about six months later. We played just about any type of instrumental music. We played surf songs, rock&roll, blues shuffles...any type of instrumental music that was popular at the time. I was playing at the Sea Witch all the time and living at this place called Normandy Village that was an apartment complex right on Sunset that looked like some kind of European Village. It isn’t there anymore, but it would have been right down the street from the House of Blues.

I got paid $4.00 a night and my rent was $16.00 per week. The Sea Witch was a popular place where celebrities might come by and hang out. Even some musicians might come by and sit in with the trio. Glen Campbell came by and jammed with us. He knew Jerry and he was a real good guitar player. Sometimes we would get hired to play at a private Hollywood party, which was great because we might get paid $25.00 a piece.

DM: I must admit that the nostalgic aspect of music doesn’t work on me the way it does on a lot of people, but if I do have one major nostalgic proclivity, it is towards the instrumental music that was popular in the 60’s. It kind of went away with the folk singer/songwriter movement where the lyrics were what became important.

LT: The appeal of that music is the innocence and simplicity. It isn’t jazz, there aren’t a lot of complicated changes, which gives you freedom to just play.

DM: At some point during this phase of your early career you hooked up with Jerry Lee Lewis. How did that come about?

LT: Some girl came into the Sea Witch and told me that Jerry Lee Lewis was playing down the street at Jimmy Maddin’s Sundown Club on Sunset. She knew Jerry Lee somehow and told me he was looking for a bass player. She set up the introduction. I had to put on a suit to look presentable which at the time meant you had to wear a suit. We met. He hired me and I ended up going on the road with Jerry Lee Lewis.

DM: That must have been quite an experience.

LT: We played all these joints in the south. The places had chicken wire in front of the stage and had pianos with some of the strings hanging out. He would get there early to see which keys worked and then tune the piano himself. We traveled all over in his 1959 Fleetwood Cadillac. It was me, Jerry Lee, of course, and our drummer Russ Smith.

This would have been around 1961. I was with him for about a year. We went to Australia. We also did some shows out here in California including the Pioneer Club in Long Beach and the Palomino in North Hollywood.

We did a big show up at the Oakland Auditorium. Check out this line-up Dave...James Brown, Duane Eddy, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Larry Williams and B.B. King. So it is important to note that before Michael Bloomfield came along and all the 60’s British artists got hip to these various influences, I had already been there. It is hard to put it in words, but I would love to paint a picture of what all of that was like in those days.

DM: Now would be the time to try.

LT: By the time these guys got hip to this stuff, I already had a ten year head start with this music. I was on the chitlin’ circuit with Jerry Lee at the same time Hendrix was playing with Little Richard. I don’t think too many people know that about me.

I went to Australia with Jerry Lee Lewis on that tour with promoter Lee Gordon. We had not only the great Jerry Lee Lewis on the bill, but Johnny and the Hurricanes, Freddie Cannon, Jack Scott, Tommy Sands and others. We came back and toured the south some more. I actually lived with Jerry Lee and his family in Lafayette and in Faraday where he actually started his career.

I came back to the Sea Witch after things just stopped for Jerry Lee. He was being hounded by lawyers, ex-wives and the I.R.S. He had all kinds of problems.

DM: The Sea Witch on Sunset sounds like it was good place to be, as you were kind of in the right place at the right time. I mean there was even a T.V. show back in the day called 77 Sunset Strip.

LT: That is true. One day Don Costa came into the club and wanted us to make an instrumental record he could put out on Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label. The song actually went up the charts. It was called Walkin’.

Don Costa booked us in Las Vegas where we got a gig at the Thunderbird Hotel backing up Teddy Randazzo.

DM: For our readers who may not be familiar with Teddy Randazzo, he was a famous performer and a songwriter whose career got started in earnest in the 1950’s.

LT: That's right. He had a band in the 50’s called The Three Chuckles that appeared in the famous Jayne Mansfield rock&roll movie, The Girl Can’t Help It. Anyway, by the early 60’s he was performing regularly at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas. He hired me and Gerry along with Tommy Hart, Vince Megna, Billy Lewis, Kenny Rankin, Bobby Vincent, Bobby Weinstein and Billy Barberis. He also brought in background singers and they were doing vocal arrangements that were reminiscent of groups like the Hi Lo’s and the Four Freshman. He would rehearse those singers three hours a day...every day. We all rehearsed like crazy. We also played in Reno and Lake Tahoe.

We even flew back to New York to perform and it is there we cut sides for Rod McKuen. Don Costa got us the gig with Rod. The sessions we did for Rod McKuen turned out to be his album called, The Oliver Twist. This was during the twist craze of the early 60’s.

DM: Rod McKuen was huge back in the day. He was another songwriter who in the 60’s started to perform his own material. Don Costa was famous for his association with these songwriters.

LT: That’s right and it leads us to Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. They co-wrote some of the hits with Teddy Randazzo back in the 50’s and then started writing and performing under the name Boyce and Hart. Boyce and Hart along with me, Gerry and drummer Billy Lewis formed a band called the Candy Store Prophets.

DM: What years are we talking about here Larry?

LT: This would be about ‘64...‘65...right around that time. Boyce and Hart were brought in by Don Kirshner to write songs for the Monkees and our band the Candy Store Prophets performed the songs that became the first two Monkees’ albums. We even toured with the Monkees opening up for and backing the band on stage for their first tour in 1966. We were flying all over the country in Lear jets and playing in these big arenas.

DM: How did your association with the band Canned Heat come about?

LT: I came back to L.A. and kicked around awhile when I got a call from Henry Vestine to play bass in a band they were putting together called Canned Heat. I had known Henry from the early 60’s and we played together off and on. We even had a topless bar gig on Sunset. We would play instrumentals, you know shuffles, Jimmy Reed stuff, Freddy King inspired instrumentals, that kind of thing while the girls did their thing. It was a day gig; we played from 2pm-6pm. One day I remember Frank Zappa coming into the club when our set was over to pick up Henry to take him to a gig. Henry was playing with Zappa at the time.

Anyway, Henry told me it was himself, Alan Wilson and Bob Hite. Bob was a record collector and Alan was a musicologist from Boston. He was brought out to California by John Fahey. They started out as a jug band. I know that there are those who put us down because we had some commercial success, but let me tell you Alan Wilson was as much of a bad ass mother fucker as anybody out there. We were the band that took country blues and introduced it to white people.  

DM: You guys became a big damn deal with hit records and two high profile gigs that we should probably talk about. 

LT: Our management, Skip Taylor and John Hartmann, got us hooked up with the Monterey Pop Festival. This was the first Pop Festival ever. They had all the connections. They knew Lou Adler who put that thing on. Skip Taylor had a lot of experience in the music business. He was the one who gave all of us in the band names like Alan Wilson was the Owl. Bob of course was the Bear, Adolfo (de la Parra) our drummer was known as Fito and I was known as the Mole and so on. Skip always had these wild ideas. He was the guy behind the Chipmunks, if you remember that.

DM: I do remember the Chipmunks. Come to think about it you could have been a chipmunk and not the mole. I think maybe you dodged a bullet there Larry.

LT: (laughs) You are right about that. Anyway, our management got us that big gig at Monterey.  

DM: This is pretty heady stuff we are talking about here.

LT: It really had to do with a certain time and place. It was an era which lasted from say about mid 65’ to 1970. There was the Vietnam War that was going on and that kind of served as a backdrop to everything. There was rebelliousness in America and the music kind of reflected that. Everybody was doing their own thing. People played whatever they wanted to regardless of what others might think. We were sort of that in our own way, but we weren’t like the Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead. I had no idea what they were all about.

Canned Heat was in the middle of all of that. We did our thing. For instance our first hit was On the Road Again which came from a Floyd Jones tune.  We added our own lyrics and put it to kind of a 60’s vibe with a tambura. It had that kind of droning sound which opens and closes out the tune. This was Alan’s musicology coming out. He not only had studied and knew more about blues than anybody, but he was studying different kinds of Eastern musical ideas as well. Alan even played a sarod.

DM: I have to be honest I hadn’t heard Canned Heat’s music in years. I got that Alan Wilson retrospective two disc box set in the mail from Severn Records which came out in 2013. I listened to that music again for the first time in years and from a new perspective. That is some pretty heavy stuff going on in there.

LT: That’s what I’m talking about. Skip and Fito were responsible for that CD coming out. That CD was our idea.

DM: Let’s talk about the song Going Up The Country.

LT: That is essentially Bull-Doze Blues by Henry Thomas. Alan added his own lyrics. It had a real subtlety that a lot of people just never picked up on, which kind of irks me to this day. People just don’t realize how heavy this guy was. Alan created his own idea of what blues could be using elements of country, folk and jazz. It was very creative stuff that often gets overlooked. I mean there isn’t anything like that today. There wasn’t anything like that then.

DM: I ask about that as it was Canned Heat’s biggest commercial hit and had kind of a second life as the unofficial theme song for the Woodstock Music & Art Festival, as it appeared prominently in the movie which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film.

LT: That song kind of fit the whole mood and the country vibe of the event. After all it was held in a country setting. That song represents the kind of freedom and creativity that was taking place in those days.

DM: At the time you were performing on that stage at Woodstock, in front of that massive crowd, did you ever think this would be something people would still be talking about almost fifty years later?

LT: I had an idea that it was going to be some kind of historical thing simply because of how big it was. It was just so big and unprecedented. A lot of people wanted to go there and (laughing) ended up in a lot of mud. It was pretty special being part of that moment. This event had some kind of special power. It was a very powerful thing. People keep trying to recreate it in some form or another. They try and put on festivals and give it that same kind of vibe. Hell, we still play these things. Let me tell you the God’s honest truth, we could play these things until the end of time. That’s how important that whole thing was to people. The period represented two things, rebellion and freedom. It’s a powerful thing and Woodstock epitomized all of that. 

DM: Just getting to that gig must have been a challenge.

LT: Let me tell you a story. We were on tour and that date was just one of the stops on the tour. We played at the Fillmore in New York City the night before. After the gig we jumped in our cars and started to make the relatively short drive. Early on we realized if we were going to make the gig a car wasn’t going to get us there. So we found a little airport and rented a couple of Cessnas and flew onto a landing strip in Bethel, New York. From there we got picked up by helicopter to take us to the gig. We flew right over the festival site. We couldn’t believe the amount of people that were there, the enormity of the whole thing. We were stunned. It was unbelievable.

DM: You left the band shortly thereafter. Why?

LT: That’s a good question and one that is kind of hard to explain, but there was beginning to be a lot of dissention in the band. There were various reasons for that, but essentially we were over worked. We were playing too much. We had no time for ourselves and I got kind of frustrated. So I figured it was time to do something else.

DM: Is this when you hooked up with John Mayall?

LT: That’s right. I needed a gig. To be honest, I never thought much of the music we made together.  Musically I never was too excited about that music. We made a lot of records and none of them excited me much, but it is what I do, so I did it.

After I left John I came back to L.A. and started studying and learning to play upright bass. I studied classical music. I had no idea where this would take me. I knew I wasn’t going to play classical music. I just studied the instrument. I wasn’t trying to learn about blues or any other style. I would use my own influences and applied my own abilities later on to fit the musicians and the type of music I was playing at the time.

From there I started working with Rod (Piazza). That is when I first played with Richard (Innes). I left the band when Honey joined. I had to leave.

DM: Why?

LT: She couldn’t play. She was horrible. I should point out she did get a little better but she is no Fred (Kaplan) that’s for sure. She was Rod’s girlfriend so I get it. It was with Rod when I played the hard core blues for the first time.

DM: Your departure from Rod and his band more or less led you straight to the Hollywood Fats Band.

LT: It started out as you probably know as just Al (Blake), Fred and Fats. Richard joined up and I replaced Jerry Smith, who was a bass player that Richard knew.

DM: Let’s talk about Hollywood Fats. His stature has grown as a legendary figure through the years, but he really isn’t as widely known and appreciated as he should be.

LT: Let me put it this way; I play in a four piece band right now with a Hammond B3 and I’m playing strictly guitar. I’m influenced by Fats a great deal. I’m doing some of those old songs. His influence resonates to this day and he has been dead for coming up on thirty years now. His playing represents an endless stream of ideas executed to perfection.

DM: Let’s talk about the one album you made as the Hollywood Fats Band.

LT: We just wanted to go into the studio and make a little demo so we had something to share with club owners who might be interested. We just kept going back into the studio recording more and more. Al wanted to keep recording and he was willing to foot the bill for the whole thing so that’s what we did.

Nobody was really interested in putting the thing out, but my brother, Mel, was working at a small Indy label called PBR and they agreed to put it out. I was the person who was solely responsible for the initial release through my brother and for the subsequent re-issues that have come out through the years. I want people to know this. I think a lot of people don’t know that and I think they should know this. I was responsible for getting all of these re-issues and releases of this record out there. There have been a total of four releases on that record. The Fats Band was really, really important. The music was really, really important and it still is today. The Fats Band was the first to bring these concepts and musical ideas back.

The artistic thing that Al was doing back in those days really stands out. He is really a great singer within the context of his own style. Fred is the best. There are piano players out there that can play this, that or the other, but Fred just hovers over all of them. He has such a relaxed feel in his playing and he, like Al, has such a vast knowledge of the music. 

DM: ...and then there is Richard; I would like to talk about him in a moment, but first, you have logged a lot of miles and played on several recordings as a member of Kim Wilson’s All-Star Blues Band. Let’s talk about Kim for a moment.

LT: I can sum it up real fast. He is one of the greatest singers and one of the greatest harmonica players in the world. You don’t have to say any more than that. His harmonica and singing is just ridiculously good. Nobody out there can touch him.

DM: Richard Innes was also part of that great ensemble which Kim put together.

LT: Nobody ever was like him and nobody will ever be like him. I miss him tremendously. Even though he was so great too few understood that because he never put himself out there. He kept to himself.

Let me tell you a story about Richard. We used to get these gigs at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pasadena. Chef Dénis was putting those shows on and they were great. I mean we would get paid $300.00 per man get dinner, a room and the next day the lavish Sunday brunch. You couldn’t ask for much more to play the music you love. Richard would play the gig and split. He never hung around. He had a free room in one of the most luxurious hotels in L.A. and a sumptuous Sunday brunch the next day. Who could or would want to turn that down? He would play and drive home, which wasn’t close by the way, in the middle of the night. He was a one of a kind guy. 

DM: The real tragedy is that when he died he took that language with him. That whole style of drumming died as well.  

LT: That is so true. You aren’t going to hear anybody play like that. What Richard did is so hard to explain to other drummers. I mean I have an idea because I played with him so much, but you don’t hear drummers like Richard out there. He had a real sense of jazz and he fused that with the blues in a way that nobody even cares to attempt. Young drummers don’t have a fucking clue what that’s all about.

DM: Even though he is kind of an enigmatic figure, I found Richard to be a very engaging individual.

LT: He was a real scholarly type guy, but you would never know that because he never shared much. I never met anybody who knew so much about this music. He was a voracious reader. He was as versed in rock&roll, blues and jazz as anybody I had ever seen. He kind of reminded me of Henry Vastine or Bob Hite in that respect.

Richard played his ass off on every gig. He was so incredibly focused. Let me tell you a story that kind of sums up Richard’s approach to music. We were traveling with the Kim Wilson’s Blues All-Stars some years ago. We had been on the road for a while and we were all getting kind of tired. We got booked into some club in Northern California and there were about 20 people in the joint. That’s it. Richard was doing his thing as if it was a packed room of 500 people. It made no difference to him. He was determined to give it his all. Kim was the same way. He takes a harmonica solo and throws it to the guitar player…and we have had a few through the years, all of them outstanding, so I won’t mention his name; he took this solo where he really wasn’t putting his foot down to the floor board so to speak. He kind of phoned it in as they say and Richard got up in his face. He said, “Are you going to play with this band or what?” He was pissed. That’s Richard. He called him out right on the bandstand. When he was on stage it was serious man. He didn’t care how many people were out there. He was on...period. That’s Richard.

DM: What are your thoughts as it relates to the contemporary blues scene?

LT: Modern blues has become this big guitar battle. It is so gluttonous....let me tell you nobody could touch Fats....NOBODY. Today you have Junior Watson, Duke Robillard and Jimmie Vaughan. Anson (Funderburgh) is right in there as well. That’s pretty much it. Actually Rusty Zinn had a pretty good handle on the whole thing before he went off onto reggae. I should put Billy Flynn in that group as well. That’s just my opinion of course.

DM: Are there any new bands or players that you have heard that have made an impression on you?

LT: You probably know Dave that Lynwood Slim went down to Brazil and made a record with this Igor Prado Band down there. He came back raving about those guys. Junior (Watson) went down there and cut some tracks with those guys as well. What stands out to me is the bass player in that band, Rodrigo. Let me tell you something, he is a bad ass mother fucker. I mean it. He’s got it all going on.

DM: I concur....so, in recent years it seems like if I turn on the television there is a pretty good chance I’ll say to myself, ‘Hey it’s Larry. I know that guy.’

LT: That comes from my long association with Tom Waits.

DM: How did that gig come about?

LT: I was playing with the Fats Band in L.A. at Club 88 on Pico. We had a good crowd that night as this entire retro music scene was just beginning to take hold. We had opened up shows for the Blasters and we were finally starting to get fairly well known. Anyway, we played a set and this guy comes up to me. I didn’t know who he was, but he introduced himself. He told me he was recording in L.A. and said he would like to use me on upright bass on the session I said, OK and I’ve been with him ever since.

DM: He is a real iconic figure in American music.

LT: It is his songwriting that makes it. He is a unique figure...very original. We played on David Letterman, The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart’s show. I’ve got to be honest and say I feel real fortunate that I’ve been able to play with a person like this. It was a first class experience all the way.

DM: You played in the house band for another big time event that took place at Radio City Music Hall which, like Monterey and Woodstock, was made into a movie that came out in 2004. It was called Lightnin’ in a Bottle. How did that gig come about?

LT: I got that gig through Kim as he knows the musical director of that concert, Steve Jordan. That led to some gigs at the Beacon Theater in New York City, which was called the Rainbow Alliance, which led to me getting mixed up with Keith Richards. He even recorded a couple of Tom Waits tunes on one of his solo albums many years ago. I played on them. They were never released, but I got paid.

DM: OK, I’ve got to ask, what was it like working with Keith?

LT: He was a real straight ahead guy. He does what he does. Nothing earth shattering. He is very meticulous on what he does on guitar. It is really well done. He has his own feel and his own way approaching his instrument. That is why there is nobody quite like him.  

Through that connection with Steve Jordan we did the soundtrack to the film Cadillac Records and that led to us playing at one of the galas for the Obama inaugural.

DM: That’s a long way from the White House in Laguna Beach.  Larry this has been quite a journey for you. From rather humble and very modest living conditions as a child and young man to playing with some of the world’s greatest and most highly acclaimed musicians on some of the world’s biggest stages. You have really been at the crossroads of American music for well over 50 years now.

LT: There was a guy over here shooting footage for a documentary film the other day and he said the same thing, but you know what Dave, I’m not done yet.

DM: Let’s talk about what you are doing musically these days.

LT: As you know I’m playing more and more guitar these days. I’ve been doing this over the last several years. Music just keeps going on. It really is not what happened. It is about what is happing. It’s about what is coming next. I’m 74 and am still studying, growing and learning.

DM: Thanks Larry for sharing with our readers your odyssey through the world of music.

LT: You got it Dave.

Recommended Reading: Living the Blues by Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra

You can also find in our archives here at BLUES JUNCTION Interviews with Al Blake, Fred Kaplan and Richard Innes as well as a feature on the Hollywood Fats Band in our Re-Visited section.

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