CLIQUES : Seems Like Old Times

Mitch Miller is onstage telling the audience how Frankie Laine’s “Mule Train” was cut in three hours. Then Kay Starr follows and belts out a swing tune and Frankie Laine accepts the year’s tribute. 1949? No, it’s 1994 and the annual gathering of the Vine Street Irregulars, a reunion of those who walked that golden musical crossroads when Ciro’s ruled the Strip, Billy Berg’s jazz joint swung on Vine and life seemed to be one “Make-Believe Ballroom.”

“The West Coast was starting to come alive and Vine Street was the musical mecca,” says regular Irregular Lee Zhito, Billboard’s former publisher and editor.

Irregular originator/emcee Randy Van Horne tells it like it was: “You could walk down Vine Street at 2 in the morning, across from ABC, NBC, Capitol Records/Music City and Coffee Dan’s, and meet everyone you knew.”

Drinking cocktails at the bar here at Studio City’s Ventura Club are old-style promo men, song pluggers, former secretaries and three waitresses from the Brown Derby, mingled with early DJs and VIPs like Mercury Records co-founder Berle Adams and bandleader Billy Mays. There’s Milton De Lugg of the ‘40s Swing Wing, “Cry of the Wild Goose” writer Terry Gilkyson, as well as Laine’s manager, Seymour Heller, who once drove a mule train down the Strip. (Missing was my father, the late Fred Raphael, head of Disney Music for many years. Songwriter Johnny Lange gave him “Mule Train,” which went on to become one of Laine’s 21 gold records.)

Van Horne, whose well-known vocal groups date back to the late ‘40s, started the event in 1986 with wife Sherrill to “gather memories about the good old days.” The first meeting drew 20 people; last month’s drew more than 300.

“It’s a happening. A miniature Woodstock for music people,” said Michael Goldsen, owner of 53-year-old Criterion Music.

“It’s really a private party,” says Van Horne. “It’s a great chance to see old friends at something besides a funeral.”