Boardwalk Beat : Recording Captures Free-Spirited Sound of Venice’s Beach Musicians

Sonny, better known on the boardwalk as the King of Venice, can usually be found playing his tie-dye guitar and singing the blues on a grassy spot in front of the Fig Tree Cafe.

It’s a popular spot. Boardwalk musicians swear that you can find the spirit--a magical energy that, over the decades, has drawn hundreds of performers from around the world to Venice Beach.

Then there is Daisy, the 80-year-old crooning gospel on a bench, a lost look in her eyes; there’s Peter Demian, a Canadian with a guitar and dreams of a pink Mercedes, and Ted Hawkins, whose haunting soul sound makes tourists cry.

And of course, there is Dr. Geek, with his spontaneous rap:

“What you gonna do? When the vibes of Venice getta hold of you!”

These free spirits have been brought together on “The Spirit of Venice,” a record that will be available in stores this week. It is the first-ever collection of some of the performers who, over the years, have given the Venice Boardwalk its wacky and wild melody. “We are giving the world a document of a real interesting part of California culture,” said Hilton Rosenthal, president of Rhythm Safari Records, the label that is marketing the recording.

The same spirit that moves the artists seems to have touched producer Harlan Steinberger.

Steinberger, himself a wild-haired drummer, tried to keep the recording sessions in sync with the world of his artists. He found a studio at the top of a mountain in Topanga Canyon “where you could step outside and see the stars.” He gave the artists, some of whom had never set foot in a recording room before, herbal tea for their nerves. One of his most difficult tasks, he said, was persuading one of the artists to leave his cart full of possessions for a few hours.

Special sounds, said Steinberger, are as much a part of the boardwalk as the sight of musclemen and girls on skates and the smell of churros and suntan oil. So, in between the songs, he has included the beat of bongos and boomboxes, the cries of children, peddlers, and sea gulls, and the roar of the tide.

Included on the release is a song crooned by one man who is said to be the first artist to sing for his supper on the boardwalk.

When he took the blues of North Carolina to Venice in 1946, “Uncle Bill” Crawford recalled recently, the boardwalk was a gambling mecca crowded with young GIs like himself. Before long, the gambling moved to Las Vegas, and more and more young musicians moved to the boardwalk, where Uncle Bill says he gave guitar lessons to Rickie Lee Jones and Janis Joplin. A generation of musicians continued to drink and play hard, to dress in platform shoes and beads and to test the limits of an artistic freedom that soon came to be synonymous with Venice Beach.

“It was one big wild party,” recalls Jamie Segal, a singer on the album who once donned a bikini to belt out her songs next to a piano on wheels. After someone took a baseball bat to the piano, Segal went on to record with Ian McGlaglin, Richard Perry and Desmond Child. But many more musicians stayed behind.

Some, like Sonny, live and sleep on the beach. He keeps all of his belongings in a cart attached to a blue bike, a rejection of the pounding life of drugs and rock ‘n’ roll that nearly ruined his career.

The fame that could come with the release is nothing new to blues singer Ted Hawkins, who is well-known in England.

Hawkins says he has survived stints on drugs, in prison, on skid rows and a nervous breakdown. He thinks redemption will only come when he has made a name for himself in this country. “I’m willing to sit here and sing until I die,” he said.

In recent months police, under pressure from nearby neighbors and merchants, have been cracking down on some of the musicians, ordering them to move from their favorite spots.

The musicians also complain about competition from more commercial acts, like the look-alike Madonna with the amplifiers who drowned everybody else out last summer. And the Chain Saw Juggler who just last weekend overpowered Daisy, sitting nearby with a grocery bag of donated dollars.

Hawkins and at least two other performers on the album now prefer to play at the Santa Monica Promenade, where they say they are allowed to solicit donations that can total $100 a day.

The musicians warn that it is they and the kind of music captured on the new release that have helped to give Venice its spirit--and that if they are pushed out of the neighborhood, the boardwalk will suffer. “People come here for us,” Sonny said.