Want an escape from the conventions? Run, don't walk, to
the Kirk Douglas Theatre to see
"Recorded in Hollywood".
You'll feel like dancing from ten seconds in; it's a
sexy, catchy break.
The music draws you in right away. And it's a good story: Before
Motown and Chuck Berry,
John Dolphin dreamed of opening a record store in Hollywood. He m
ade appointments with
leasing agents, but it was 1948, when Trump thinks it was great,
and blacks couldn't rent in
Hollywood. Dolphin opened his store anyway, on Central Avenue
in East L.A., deliberately
naming it "Dolphin's of Hollywood." Dolphin's grandson, Jamelle, writ
es in the book,
"Recorded
in Hollywood: The John Dolphin Story"
that Dolphin wasn't being sarcastic: "He was telling the
public that Hollywood was a state of mind." Dolphin's became th
e most famous record store in
the U.S.
Dolphin dazzled at marketing; he was the first with the
idea of staying open 24 hours, so people
could come over whenever they felt in the mood to buy a
record. He hired a DJ to broadcast live
from a glass booth inside the store. He promoted the stor
e as a place to hang out with music
lovers. And he dreamed up "Buy One Get One Free" to get more cus
tomers. Big laughs about
integration, the vertical kind.
In the 1950's, Dolphin imagined the future as rhythm and blues; he
dreamed of creating his own
record labels. With an ear for talent, he nurtured youn
g people from local high schools; he
promoted stars like Sam Cooke, luring them to appear in his st
ore by getting 3,000 fans to show
up. All this while his DJ's beamed his sound out beyond the segregat
ed boundaries of East L.A.
Stylish acting by Stu James as John Dolphin, Eric B. Antho
ny as Percy, and the incorrigible Matt
Magnusson as DJ Dick "Huggy Boy" Hugg.
On opening night I saw two policeman in uniform entering the s
tage from the left and I braced
myself. Was this then, or was this today? I felt surprised t
o realize I had leapt to contemporary
headlines and felt alarmed. Is there a
déjà
vu
for future events? Was my brain recognizing a
pattern from today, while I watched this play set in the earl
y 50's?
Déjà vu
is the illusion of having experienced something before, when it's
actually being
experienced for the first time. Precognition is a form o
f ESP where you believe you can see
the future. Was I having a moment of backward precognition, if yo
u can keep up with my
awkward explanation of what I felt, sitting in the audience?
It was frighteningly prophetic to see police hassling Dolphin throu
ghout his career; sadly, still
going on in contemporary America. He did everything to com
ply; Officer Krupke-style
baiting this wasn't.
Stu James told me: "What I love is that they're tellin
g a story, which happened in the 40's and
50's, and the parallel is still going on right now. That's
the amazing thing to me.
We get to see the sassy Ruth Dolphin, acted by Jenna Gillespie.
In the play, we glimpse the
hot courtship between Ruth and John, at a time when
male-female relations were old-fashioned
and sweet - so sweet that when Ruth says yes to Dolphin's mar
riage proposal, the whole audience
claps! I
n real life, Ruth kept the record store alive for decades af
ter John's murder by a
frustrated singer.
The music was just plain fun! The audience clapped spontaneo
usly with the music when Sam
Cooke (Thomas Hobson) sang "
Jes
us Gave Me Water".
Hearing
"Earth Angel",
suddenly I
wanted to dance! You could hear whoops from the audience duri
ng
"Don't Stop Now"
with its
contemporary issues; by the finale "Let The Good Times Roll",
you're happy.
A live band six-piece band plays smartly right onstage, but in
shadows. Y
ou keep looking for
singing parallels - Was that Frank Sinatra? Nat King Cole? Th
e Beatles? The Beach Boys?
There was so much dancing. The choreography was complex, nat
ural yet thrilling at times.
Choreographer Cassie Crump did a class job; she's done t
he dancing for all productions of the
play.
I was struck by the clever use of palm trees in the set by B
ruce Goodrich; the background color
kept changing from pale to pink skies, then darker palm trees.
Watch those palms! The c
ostumes
evoked 50's dresses in the prints, with layers of crinolines
(does anyone still know what that
is?) I particularly liked the gold-clad cigarette girl's cos
tume.
Erroll Dolphin, eldest son of John Dolphin, was there openin
g night. I asked him how many
times he's seen the play.
"It feels fantastic to sit in the audience; I come every
week. I'm going to be back tomorrow," he
told me.
Dolphin helped his mother Ruth run the record business and the
store until 1989; it grew as a
music publishing company and became the top ticket-selling agency
in L.A. He says Ruth had
two million-selling records: Make Me Yours, by Bettye Swann, and T
he Jerk by the Larks (you
can see both on YouTube).
When guns, violence, murders, police killings, and the atr
ocious choices presented by current
politics bring you down, you might detox by going to see this s
weet, old-fashioned story of what,
below the surface, seemed more innocent.
Or...you may enjoy the tension-relief of Wendell Berry's
enduring cool poetry:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
______________________________________________
©Carole Bell 2016 Carole Bell is a writer interested in ever
ything.
You can write to her at:
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