The Wrecking Crew (12 page)

Quickly teaching himself three simple chords, Peake worked up his courage and volunteered to accompany a fellow student while she sang “Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair” on a local TV show called
Spotlight on Youth.
Thrilled with the experience, a couple of other times he even tentatively stepped forward to play a few tunes on his guitar during the school's morning “nutrition break.” Nothing fancy, but all performances nonetheless, a way to show off. And it felt good.

With Peake's sudden, if modest, public exposure also came an unexpected yet welcomed bonus: girls. They were now actually
noticing
him for the first time, even hinting about going out on dates. Seriously heady stuff for an introvert whose main instrument until then had been his trusty wooden slide rule. The notion of perhaps someday playing music as a career option began to ever so subtly creep its way into his imagination.

Don Peake's parents, however, very much wanted their only son to be practical, like them. They urged him to consider going into the family business, a thriving upscale retail establishment called William Peake Men's Clothing, located in downtown Los Angeles. That had a guaranteed future, some security. Having scraped their way through the Great Depression, they knew just how tough things could really be out on the streets. A young man needed a solid profession to rely on. The life of a professional musician was foolishness, a meshuga way to earn a living.

With their old-world views firmly in place, Peake's mother and father had never been encouraging about his musical aspirations anyway. And they especially loathed rock and roll, a genre far too primitive for their cosmopolitan tastes. They much preferred composers like Chopin, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff. The only music they ever allowed Don to listen to in the house, at least when they knew about it, was classical.

But Peake had a mind of his own. He had already worked in the clothing store during summers as a kid, enough time to know that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life folding shirts and chalking inseams. Maybe, just maybe, there was some way to merge his love for all things mechanical with his passion for music.

One hot afternoon in the summer of 1959, just after his high school graduation, Don Peake heard his parents' doorbell ringing several times in rapid succession.

Looking out the dining room window to see who on earth it could be making all the noise, he saw one of his best friends, Stan Hall, standing on the front porch, clutching something under his arm. Opening the door, Peake stepped aside as Hall practically leaped inside the large, well-kept home.

“Stan, what's the rush, man?”

Wasting no time, and with a big smile on his face, the visitor answered by quickly pulling out a 45 rpm record.

“Donny, here—put this on.”

“What is it?”

“Just play it,” Hall instructed. “You'll see.”

With his parents fortunately away from home for a couple of hours, Peake did as he was told, carefully loading the seven-inch vinyl disc onto the family's record player. By now he was used to Stan's exuberance over the often mundane.

But what happened next would change Don Peake's life forever.

As soon as he heard the deep, buzzy tones of a Wurlitzer electric piano begin delivering an impossibly raw, blues-inflected, boogie-woogie-style series of notes, the hair on the back of Peake's neck stood up.

“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. “What is
that
?”

“That, my friend, is Ray Charles.”

Exploding onto the national seen in 1959 with his risqué, hip-shaking “What'd I Say,” the Georgia-born Charles caused a minor sensation among American teens, both black and white. The song's genesis came courtesy of a show he had played one evening in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. While running short on material, Charles had begun vamping on his keyboard to fill some time, in the process initiating an impromptu call-and-response with his backup singers, a female quartet called the Raelettes.

“Listen,” he told them. “I'm going to fool around and y'all just follow me.”

Each time Charles would moan out an “oh” or an “aah,” the Raelettes would respond in kind, with an ever-increasing sense of urgency. Sending the crowd further into a dancing, pulsating frenzy with each chorus, the sex-drenched message of it all was impossible to miss. Not one to ordinarily try out new song ideas on his audience, Charles nonetheless immediately recognized that he was on to something big.

After adding some formal lyrics to go along with all the ohing and aahing, Charles managed to squeeze out a quick break from the road to cut the song in a hastily arranged session at a New York City studio, where both he and his record label (Atlantic) felt sure they had a hit on their hands. And they were right. “What'd I Say” shot to number six on the national pop charts, despite being initially banned by dozens of stations around the country. It also became Charles's first gold record.

For Don Peake, “What'd I Say” was a stone-cold epiphany, the revelation of a lifetime. The song had spoken to him like no other. What the ukulele had started Ray Charles had now finished.
Emphatically
. There could be no turning back, no more second-guessing about what he might want to do with the rest of his life. Peake instinctively knew at that moment that he had been presented with the blueprint for his musical destiny.

But what Peake couldn't have known that day, however, was that Ray Charles—a blind R & B musician from the Deep South whom he had never even heard of just ten minutes before—would soon, quite literally, save his very life.

*   *   *

Within seconds of walking into the Rag Doll nightclub in North Hollywood, nineteen-year-old Don Peake knew he had made a big mistake. Having recently returned to his parents' home after a six-month stint in the U.S. Coast Guard, Peake still very much had guitar playing on his mind. While enrolled at Los Angeles City College in early 1960, he had heard about an open audition over at a place in the San Fernando Valley for a singer named Jackie Lee Cochran and decided to give it a try. The rough-hewn, Georgia-born Cochran—known among his fans as Jack the Cat—was looking for a guitarist to fill out his small-time rockabilly band during their two-week gig at the club. With a recent single on the tiny Jaguar record label called “I Wanna See You” stirring up a bit of local airplay, Cochran had unexpectedly found himself in the position of needing a replacement rhythm guitar player, someone who could step in and help him capitalize on his hard-won momentum. And Don Peake very much wanted to be that guy.

But as Peake waited his turn in line in the club's run-down lobby, he watched one guitar-toting hopeful after another come and go. And he started to sweat. If all these guys couldn't cut it, what chance did he have? Why was he even here? After all, Peake had no experience, knew all of five chords, and could play exactly one song. Not the sort of foundation normally associated with obtaining a paying job as a guitarist.

Just as Peake was about to turn around and join the growing parade of rejected guitar players streaming out the front door, Cochran's manager suddenly motioned him inside.

“Okay, kid—you're on. Do you know ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula'?”

Don Peake couldn't believe his luck. Out of all the songs in the world this guy could have possibly asked for, he had chosen the one Peake actually
knew.

“Do I,” he blurted.

As he excitedly plugged in his guitar and amp, Peake called out, “Key of A,” and he and the band launched into a fevered version of the old Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps hit that rocked the room like a hurricane. With Peake having already played the tune dozens of times on his own in front of several friends (and girls) he wanted to impress, his well-practiced three-chord rhythm playing was spot-on. And it got him the job.

During his short run in Cochran's band, Don Peake learned more about playing the guitar than he ever thought possible. After he nervously faked his way through the first evening's show, Peake's more experienced bandmates immediately took him aside and showed him the chords needed to correctly play all the songs on the set list. And though Cochran could have easily fired Peake for his obvious lack of skills (and for misleading everyone to begin with), he and his band instead generously chipped in to send Peake over to the Clara Joyce Sherman School of Music on La Brea Boulevard in Hollywood for a quick batch of daytime guitar lessons. It was here, too, that Peake learned to read music, a skill that would prove to be a valuable and distinguishing asset down the line.

Later in 1960, following the Cochran gig, an increasingly confident Peake gradually fell in with a bunch of ambitious young musicians who regularly jammed late into the night at a local nightspot called Sun Valley Rancho. From there, Peake joined up with an R & B outfit playing at a popular club in Van Nuys (also in the San Fernando Valley) called the Crossbow. Going by the name of Lance and the Dynamics, they were fronted by Elvis Presley's movie stand-in and good friend, Lance LeGault. A particularly tight blues-oriented band, they specialized in performing a wide range of Ray Charles songs, something near and dear to Peake's heart ever since he had first heard “What'd I Say” in his parents' living room.

Don Peake was now not only starting to make some decent cash; he was also playing the music he loved. And he was rapidly gaining a reputation around town as a rock-solid rhythm player who could lay down a groove fat enough to land a plane on.

By mid-1961, on the heels of a surprise phone call from his old pal Marshall Leib (Phil Spector's former co-singer in the Teddy Bears), Don Peake suddenly, stunningly, found himself ensconced as the new lead guitarist for one of the best-known bands in the country: the Everly Brothers.

Though Phil and Don Everly—the singers behind classics like “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” and “Cathy's Clown”—were just past their hit-making prime, they still had a very big following around the world, especially in the UK. And that's exactly where they wanted Peake to travel with them first.

Playing the Odeon Theatre circuit throughout England with the Everly Brothers from 1961 to 1963 proved to be Don Peake's professional coming-out party. With heavyweight supporting acts like Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and the Rolling Stones regularly on the bill, Peake soaked up every ounce of musical wisdom he could. And in the process he became known as a guitar player's guitar player, impressing the likes of both Keith Richards and Eric Clapton with his technique and deep knowledge of the blues. Even the Beatles, who hadn't made it big in the United States yet, could be found on more than one occasion standing backstage, watching Peake and the Everly Brothers perform.

But in the music business, all good things too often come to an early, disheartening end. By the middle of 1963, with Don Everly experiencing a nervous breakdown compounded by unregulated prescription drug use, Peake's run on lead guitar for the famed duo came to an abrupt close. The Everly Brothers were no more.

Back in Los Angeles, and looking for work, Don Peake discovered to his surprise that his newfound reputation as a skilled lead player had preceded him. He joined Local 47, the musician's union, and promptly found session work through a well-connected arranger named Jimmie Haskell, who employed him whenever he could. Peake's studio career was on its way.

One day, in early 1964, as Don Peake made his way down the main hall toward the back door after another session for Haskell at Gold Star, he heard a familiar voice call his name from behind.

“Hey, Don, hold on a minute.”

It was Arthur G. Wright, a black session guitar player mostly known for cutting sides for soul and blues acts. He was standing next to the studio's one and only pay phone.

“What's up, Arthur?” Peake said, turning around.

“You need to talk to this guy,” Wright replied, holding out the receiver.

“Who is it?”

“It's Ray Charles's manager, man. Ray needs a guitar player right away, and I'm booked.”

Peake paused. Ray Charles was his idol, of course, and one of the biggest, most highly respected entertainers in the world. By that time in 1964, Charles had twenty Top 40 hits to his credit and countless more on the R & B and even the country charts. The guy was practically an industry unto himself. He also had, to Peake's knowledge, a 100 percent black band.

“But, Arthur, I'm white.”

“Take the call, Don.”

Peake did as he was told, grabbing the phone from Wright.

“Hello?”

“Don, this is Joe Adams. I'm Ray Charles's manager. We've heard some good things about you. Can you come down here right now to the corner of Washington and Western for an audition at Ray's studio?”

Peake hesitated.

“But, Joe, I'm white,” he finally said, still unsure as to whether Adams and his famous client were actually aware of his ethnicity. Brother Ray
was
blind, after all.

“But can you
play
?”

“Yes.”

“Then get yourself down here.”

*   *   *

On January 21, 1963, George Wallace, the newly elected governor of Alabama, made the citizens of his fair state a solemn promise. Standing in front of the state capitol on the very spot where Jefferson Davis had declared an independent Southern confederacy just over one hundred years before, Wallace ominously proclaimed during his inaugural address that “in the name of the greatest people that ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Making national headlines, the defiance and barely concealed vitriol contained in the speech served to further inflame an already racially charged atmosphere in the South. It also helped anoint Alabama, a roiling cauldron of church bombings, bus boycotts, and lynchings, as the virtual ground zero of the civil rights movement. A place where blacks were clearly to avoid mixing in any meaningful way with whites. Or else.