“We started out to make a record, and ended up with a band.” The saga of Dr. C. Or, the end of my fantasies of my pop recording career.
Well, not exactly. The appropriate quote should have been, “We started out to make a film, and ended up with a band.” And, in my case, pretty much the end of the idea that I would become a pop music producer.
My friend, partner and brother-in-law to be, Alan Goodman, was in film school at Columbia in New York, and sometime in 1976, one of his professors was making a short film. It was about... well, it doesn’t really matter. But the star, a character called “Dr. C”, was played by pianist/singer Rusty Cloud. The doctor had a soul band and we recorded a demo that Alan asked me to produce.
Rusty Cloud, photographed by Charlie Reilly, circa 1976
I was more than eager. After a few years of recording blues and jazz musicians, I was eager for pop, my comfort zone. And soul? Yes! Rusty had written an original, the band –keyboards, bass, guitar, drums, saxophones and trumpet– was modeled after the classic Memphis powerhouse Stax Records. Rusty brought some guys, Alan and I did too (in fact, Alan played trumpet on the soundtrack).
The demo hit the right notes for me (pun intended) and right then and there we started thinking about making Dr. C a working band that might have a chance to be signed to a actual record company. My indie company, Oblivion Records, had just crashed and burned, and anyhow, I wanted to taste the real thing.
Dr. C, performing at "Home," upper East Side, Manhattan, New York, circa 1977 (L-R) Irv Waters, guitar; Cleveland Freeman, bass; Rusty Cloud, vocals & piano; unknown, trumpet; Jim Clouse, saxophone; Bruce Kapler, saxophone; David Longworth, drums
Long story short, we shuffled a few folks in the group, started playing “showcases” around town. Alan and I presaged the branding and advertising we’d do during the 80s and put together some hype materials.
Written by Alan Goodman, Designed by Mark Larson
And? Nothing. I couldn’t pull it off. At least, that’s how I looked at it. It wasn’t that we weren’t good enough, I thought, the band was great! So what if Rusty couldn’t really reach all his notes? We rocked. Soul music fronted by a white guy? Perfect! We just needed to hustle. And hustle more.
I was a decent producer. The material was decent. The hustle? In retrospect, it wasn’t me. At least the get-a-band-signed type of hustle wasn’t.
Dr. C quickly ran out of gas. My hopes for a pop recording career did too. I didn’t realize it at the time, but soon enough I was working in radio, then television, where I belonged.
PS: Not for nothing, Rusty was also a talented jazz musician and composer. I leaned on my friends and former employers, Mike Mantler and Carla Bley to give us a day in their Grog Kill Recording outside Woodstock, NY to put some of Rusty's work on tape. Frank Olinsky, who in the future would part of the design collective Manhattan Design that designed the MTV logo for me, illustrated an awesome album cover, that like Dr. C., was not to be.
Fred Seibert
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RCQ
