Would-Be Stars Lay Hope, Money on Line for Fame : Small Recording Studios Offer Singers Chance to Seek Big Time on the Cheap

If your name was Herman Schmerdley and you had $1,000, what would you spend it on? A new name, you say?

The real Herman Schmerdley found something better to do with his hard-earned grand. He cut a country song. In fact, he cut four country songs, although he only has enough money to get two of them made into a record. The other two will wait until he’s a star.

Herman Schmerdley a star?

The singer, known more for his boogie-woogie piano than his math, puts his chances at 50-50, which is pretty good. Why 50-50?

Either you make it or you don’t, he explained.

While there is only one Herman Schmerdley, there are plenty of people like him--people with lots of musical ambition and not much money. They want a hit record but don’t have a record company contract. They need a studio where they can do high quality recording on the cheap.

The songs then can be sent on cassettes to record companies in hopes of landing a contract, or, as in Schmerdley’s case, pressed into records and released by the artist.

Luckily for struggling musicians, there are many such studios.

“There must be hundreds in the Valley--I know of 50 to 100,” said Dave Pearlman, owner of Rotund Rascal Recording Studio, the converted Van Nuys garage where Schmerdley cut his songs one recent Saturday.

Pearlman, 32, fits the profile of many small studio owners. He is a musician who began buying equipment to record his own music. Soon the investment grew costly and he began looking for ways to make money from it.

Garage Put to Use

He enlarged and remodeled his garage, soundproofing a small booth for singers and a larger one for a control room, and went into business.

Customers come, but competition is fierce.

“I’ve got a $40,000 investment that you can only charge $15 an hour for,” Pearlman said. “There are a few charging $10 and $12, so you really have to produce that good product for the least amount of money.”

Fifteen dollars an hour gets you not only the equipment, but also Pearlman as engineer. For a little extra he’ll play guitar. He makes part of his living performing and recently finished a tour with a group led by ex-Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer.

But for his recording, Schmerdley has rounded up his own eclectic band. Keyboard player Skip Edwards is a veteran session man and member of the Palomino Riders, house band at the Palomino nightclub. Drummer James Cruce says he makes a living “working dumpy lounges.” Bassist Don Falzone is new to country, having played jazz in nightclubs and classical music with the Boston Civic Symphony. Background singers Ree Van Vleck and Anne Harvey appear on the recent country anthology album, “Town South of Bakersfield II.”

The guitarist is Mark Thornton, Schmerdley’s partner in the recording venture. The two are splitting the costs. They will spend under $1,000 each and end up with 1,000 copies of their record.

One side of the single will be Schmerdley singing “Come on Home and Sing the Blues to Daddy,” which was a hit for Bob Luman in 1969. The flip side will be Thornton’s instrumental version of “Walk Right In,” a hit for the Rooftop Singers in 1963.

Thornton is 19 and shy. He works in a Venice frozen yogurt parlor.

Schmerdley is 49, outgoing and hungry to become a star.

“I’m not one of those people who say, ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me,’ ” he explained. “It means everything to me.’

Schmerdley stands 6 feet, 5 inches--tall enough to bump his head in parts of the Van Nuys trailer he calls home. He wears an earnest expression that lights up when he discusses his successes, such as an appearance this spring on CBS TV’s “People’s Choice Awards.” He plays music at talent nights and makes a living as an extra in movies and television, sometimes playing Abe Lincoln. The role inspired his Elvis Lincoln act, where he dresses like the 16th president and does Elvis songs.

Schmerdley abandoned his real name, Tom Willett, because “it just doesn’t have any ring to it.” His most recent country music performance was at Leisure World, where he shared the stage with the Dixie Belles, a group of women singers over 65.

His plan for the recording session is economy-minded. The two songs for the single will be laid down a track at a time, standard studio procedure. Then, if there is time, two additional songs will be recorded live, with everyone performing at once.

Pearlman’s garage has none of the extras of studios that cost $150 an hour an up, such as video games, a Jacuzzi and a bedroom. But the walls are plastered with posters and other rock memorabilia. The musicians feel at home.

Laying Down the Beat

The bass and drum tracks for the two songs are laid down first. Pearlman and drummer Cruce have a hard time getting a drum sound they like. Cruce attributes this to the smallness of the garage, yet he sees the proliferation of inexpensive studios as a godsend to musicians. If professional-sounding music can be produced without record company funding, he believes, musicians will have more artistic freedom.

“You can see with all the small studios, there’s a proletarian revolution and the control is being taken back by labor,” he says. “Whether it will succeed is another thing.”

What makes the revolution possible is an advancing technology that brings down equipment costs while improving sound quality. Many of the fledgling businesses are so-called MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) studios which replace many instruments with synthesizers, percussion machines and computers.

“Home studios have advanced to the point you can hear some of this stuff and not know it was recorded in one,” says keyboard player Edwards.

Pearlman’s customers include bands who record their music and make cassettes, which they sell directly to fans at live performances.

Next the lead guitar and lead keyboard tracks go down, followed by Schmerdley’s lead vocal. The recording goes smoothly. The group rehearsed a few days earlier, and the tracks have to be repeated a few times at most. The voices of background singers Van Vleck and Harvey are added last.

Novelty Tune

There is ample time to record the second pair of songs. One is the old Elvis hit, “That’s All Right.” The other is a novelty song about smog, written by Schmerdley and sung to the tune of “Green Green Grass of Home.”

The old town smells the same,

Just like a clogged up drain,

Los Angeles has a special air about it.

Down the freeway I look and there crawls Mary,

She’s breathing the exhaust from a red Ferrari,

It’s good to smell that green, green air of home.

Four songs are finished in five hours. The musicians scatter. Pearlman is pleased with the recordings, but he wants to expand nonetheless.

“The thing is, I’ve got most of the necessary items to move up into the next bracket of studios,” he said. “Right now it’s 8-track. For another $10,000, I can go to 16-track and charge $30 an hour.”

Schmerdley will return for another hour or so of studio time to correct any minor flaws, but his big job now is the promotion of his record.

“The country singles market is somewhat limited,” he says, “and that’s going to hurt us because we’re putting out country singles.”

His plan is to send copies of the record to country radio stations in small markets--towns like Victorville, Barstow, Las Vegas and Lubbock, Texas. He intends to tour--definitely in California and Nevada, maybe throughout the South--twisting arms at stations and performing at honky-tonks. He also will place records on consignment in as many stores as possible.

If all goes according to plan, there will be a groundswell of demand for Herman Schmerdley’s music. One of the big labels will see a good thing in the making and buy the masters of the Schmerdley sessions at Rotund Rascal Recording Studio.

And move over Jerry Lee Lewis, here comes Herman Schmerdley.