KCRW’s acclaimed music documentary podcast, Lost Notes, returns for its fourth season. Co-hosts Novena Carmel (KCRW) and Michael Barnes (KCRW / KPFK / Artform Radio) guide you through eight wildly different and deeply human stories, each set against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of LA’s soul and R&B scene of the 1950s-1970s. Support KCRW’s original programming like Lost Notes by donating or becoming a member.
On Wednesday, July 17, Lost Notes welcomed the legendary Larry Mizell to KCRW’s Annenberg Performance Studio for an incredible evening of stories and music about his pioneering work with his brother Fonce in 1970s Los Angeles.
Anyone who’s been keeping up with the show will already know about the Mizell Brothers … but if you’re new to the family, we encourage you to stop right now and back up to our episode on Larry and Fonce Mizell from earlier in the season.
The Mizells’ story is so rich and amazing that it deserves to be heard from the very beginning. And if you know their story, then this week’s episode is going to be extra-special. Today we bring you our live, in-person conversation with a man who, along with his brothers, helped create the sound of Los Angeles in the 1970s: Mr. Larry Mizell.
For the heads, we’ve released a longer version of the interview here:
All photos by Larry Hirshowitz.
Michael Barnes
Our episode, and most of what we're going to talk about tonight, is really focused on the times that you and your brothers spent in Los Angeles, and created what we nowadays – those of us who love your music – consider the classic Mizell Brothers sound. But the story of the Mizell Brothers goes further back than that: You guys were making music as young teens. And that was also when you met somebody whom I almost think of as an honorary Mizell brother: Freddie Perrin. Could you talk a little bit about the house you grew up in, and especially also about meeting Freddie and the music you guys made together when you were young?
Larry Mizell
Well, we're from New Jersey and New York City, where we finally moved from New York City to Englewood, New Jersey, which was just across the George Washington Bridge. And that's where we met Freddie Perren. Around fifth or sixth grade, we started a singing group. We stayed together all the way through late elementary, junior high, high school, and eventually college at an HBCU, Howard University.
Michael Barnes
And when you were at Howard – I think this is, in some ways, more of Fonce’s and Freddie's experience, though I know that you were also sitting in – but they were able to study under Donald Byrd, the great jazz trumpeter. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Larry Mizell
When that happened, I had finished my engineering degree. So, towards late ’65, ‘64, Donald Byrd came in for their last year [of] their Bachelor’s, which was mostly about the bones of building a rapport with music through actual hard work and appearances. So he was able to bring another aspect of the real life of a musician.
Michael Barnes
And while Fonce and Freddie were studying with Donald Byrd, and eventually made their way to Los Angeles, as you were saying, you were studying engineering. Could you tell us a little bit about what you ended up working on? Because the engineering side of this would be a story by itself, just that part of your life.
Larry Mizell
It was interesting. The company I worked for was Grumman Aerospace after I graduated. And I chose them because, at that time, NASA was putting out requests for designs for a ship that would land on the Moon. Once we got to the Moon and were orbiting, we had to have a ship that dropped down from the main ship. And so they ended up getting into a contract. That's what drew me to them. I got accepted as an employee there, so I worked on test equipment for the Lunar Module. It helped me get a fellowship at NYU, and I was able to complete my Masters in Engineering. But all the time, I had an R&B singing group, a rock band, several different bands. In those days, I would always have to change clothes to bell bottoms and all of that for what was happening in the era. It was some interesting times. We were just going to space and looking at landing on the celestial body. So it was a great time, and I enjoyed the bands that I did have for that period of time in my life.
Novena Carmel
So basically: engineer by day, rock star by night on the East Coast. And then the rest of the fam moved over to the West Coast. But you were still there for a little bit.
Larry Mizell
I was there for a little bit after Fonce and Fred. They finished their degree a year after mine. And one of the teachers at the Fine Arts music building had a cousin who was living in LA. He had a construction company, but he wanted to start a record company. So the instructor said to Freddie and Fonce, “My relative in LA is a construction guy, but he wants to start a record company.” So by the time they got their two degrees, they eventually moved straight out west to be the one of the originators with this record company. I went on to Grumman Aerospace, they got to LA, and it turns out the guy didn't really know anything about the record business. But he wanted to find a pathway in. It wasn't too long before they discovered that they were on their own, because he had them working in his construction company, and the record company never materialized.
Michael Barnes
Can you imagine what might have happened if they decided they really loved construction work and gave up songwriting?
Larry Mizell
They could’ve been monsters!
Michael Barnes
But thankfully, Donald Byrd comes back in and puts in a call to Deke Dickerson, who was related to Motown Records. And this is a period of time where Barry Gordy is changing some of the ways that Motown works. You had the creation of the Corporation, which then becomes the songwriting monolith at Motown. And Fonce and Freddie, Deke brings them in, and they have some demos, got some songs, and they are excited. And they think they're going to work with Gladys Knight. And then Berry Gordy is like, “She's not going to sing the song, actually. We have this group of kids that we're going to bring in. And we want you to change the song for a group of kids.” Those kids, though … They turn out to be the Jackson Five. And so Fonce and Freddie, as part of the Corporation, wrote “I Want You Back,” wrote “ABC.” All those early Jackson Five hits come from Fonce Mizell, Freddie Perrin, as well as Deke Dickerson and Berry Gordy. And that success is eventually what pulled you to Los Angeles, right?
Larry Mizell
Absolutely. And Berry had moved Motown from Detroit to LA during that period. He was building a brand new location and sound from Detroit, so they were in brand-new ground. And Suzanne de Passe, one of the executives, had found these kids. And they moved to LA at the same time. I think they were at the Apollo in New York doing the different shows that they had. And you’re correct: They were bummed out when he said “forget Gladys Knight, we want you to do these new kids.” And they were like, “Oh….”
Novena Carmel
…Rugrats …
Larry Mizell
Yeah, right. Brand-new, and what are we gonna … And they took some of the same songs, changed the name, especially the first three. But it turned out that Berry Gordy said, “Well, you guys have set it up so I have a foundation here now.” And what a foundation that turned out to be. Motown took on a “phase two” when it came out this way.
Novena Carmel
I liked that you said the word “foundation,” because it was like they set the foundation and then you're like, “Alright, I'm finally going to make my way out to LA from the East Coast.” There are so many details to this story, you need to listen to the whole episode, we could be here for hours! But I do want to get us to a really special house in Los Angeles that you all ended up in. And these are recent images of your house in the Hollywood Hills that you lived in with your brother Fonce. Can you tell us a little bit about how you found this house, how you got here, what was special about it for you?
The Mizell Brothers’ Hollywood house today. Photo courtesy TheMLS.com
Larry Mizelll
To preface the story, I eventually finished my Masters degree. And we were up to Apollo 12 or 13. And I was having fun at Grumman. I was doing technical work on liquid crystals. And that changed my life in a lot of different ways. I was able to give lectures in Germany and other places in the US and around the world. So I was able to do a lot of really interesting things on the technical side. And Fonce had been saying, “Come on out here, we're getting ready to leave Motown and do our own thing.” So everything was kind of in flux in those early years of the ‘70s. So after I finished grad school, a year or two after that, I put my car on a train and got on the plane and moved on out. And I finished my Masters degree at NYU, so I had something to fall back on in case things didn't work out. So Fonce and I got together. He had a small house in Hollywood, and when I came out, I stayed with him. And then we decided, “Let's look around.” We saw a lot of houses up in the Hills, but we ended up with this house here. We said, “This was the one.”
Novena Carmel
Why was it “the one?”
Larry Mizell
Well, first of all, it was on a private road and a private hill. And so it was isolated, to a certain extent, where we weren't really [pissing] off the neighbors because of the noise. And the studio was right there on the bottom with the glass doors, right at the corner. And so we looked directly out, and we had that view. You guys have good pictures!
Michael Barnes
I have to give a shout-out to Melissa Dueñas, because all we had was a basic period of time where they bought the house. And she went to the office where they keep all the microfiche stuff and went through all records until she found Fonce Mizell. So that's why we have this.
Larry Mizell
Wow. It really took me back.
Novena Carmel
Does that view look how you remember it, too? The view onto the city?
Larry Mizell
Yes. And that's where we made probably 80-90% of our music, right through those glass doors right there. And, then, bit by bit, we chose certain players who would be our crew through trial and error. And Fonce and Freddie worked at Motown with lots of greats there. So we picked from there, we saw guys at different clubs, we found these guys who looked like they could handle it, improvisational-wise. One thing that we did – that may not have been unique to us, but at the time, it was the way we worked – was that we would normally take a song that we wrote. And typically, you would have it set up on music paper to different sections: A, B, C, D, E, and F, with the correct repetition clauses and all of that. But we got to where we were looking for emotional-type stuff. Not for any reason other than that’s how we used to create together spontaneously. So we would go into the studio, and we had picked the guys who could fly by the seat of their pants. So, instead of having a chart written out that they had to be glued to, a typical song is going to have verse, chorus, second chorus, back to verse, blah, blah, blah, bridge. We would tell the guys, “Look, what we're going to do: We're going to write each part of the soundtrack and label each one.” So we would take maybe four or five sections like that. And we would call them A, B, C, D, and E. And we would rehearse the guys on each of the different letters. “Okay, let's do part A,” we go through Part A ‘til they really had it down. Say, “Okay, cool. Let's go to track B, sheet B,” have them learn that. And then we said, “Okay, cool. Everybody knows their part.” And then we’d say, “Look, you don't know which card we're going to throw up. So be ready for that.” So we had guys who could do that. And it gave us - we thought - uniqueness of presentation. And we hadn't even thought about how we were going to work with the finished track. But it gave it a kind of spontaneity that we liked. And the guys really got into it after a while, because most of the recording sessions in Hollywood were straight-up by the rules. Which was great. And we found that the guys that we had chosen, and musicians in general, like the type of freedom, somewhat restrained freedom, to express themselves. And they would get so conversational that sometimes the bass player would look over at Harvey Mason, the drummer, and say, “Harvey, when you play those sixteenths down, I'm gonna follow you.” They would be able to be coming up with ideas: “I'll follow you down on those licks that you're doing across the drums.” And it would just be something that you couldn't write down, but you could create on the moment. And they got into that. So much so that the engineer would be signaling through the glass, “We’re running out of tape! We can’t change tape here.” But by that time, we would have four or five, maybe six minutes. But they were digging it the whole time. They were enjoying the experience. So our obsessions took on a special type of flavor.
Novena Carmel
And you can hear it in the music.
Michael Barnes
Absolutely. Let's hear some of the music. This is music from the first album the brothers recorded with Donald Byrd, the first album they recorded when they moved into this house: Black Byrd. And “Black Byrd” is the song as well.
Michael Barnes
Right there from the beginning, a lot of the elements that are there later on come in. That's one of the things that always surprised me. Every time I discovered a new record that the Mizells produced was the consistency of sound. So much of that was connected to you and Fonce jamming in the house, working this music before you got to the studio with the musicians. And the story you were telling answered a question I always had, because it was never just “produced and arranged,” it was often “produced, arranged and conducted by Larry Mizell.” And so a lot of that seems like it was connected to “A and B and C,” that kind of thing. Was that the case?
Larry Mizell
Exactly. During our jamming sessions with each other, we would just flip the tape on. [It was] a lot of spontaneity for us. Fonce might go in, for whatever reason he had, and just start playing something. Whatever I was doing, I would get inspired … or not. But when I did, I’d go back and we’d see where we … We would just have, not verbal communication, but we would get into it. And I said, “You know what, let's write some of this down.” And we might use it, or it would give us an idea to go to another step. But we kinda were breaking rules all the time. But not purposely: we would just go with the feel that we had, and the musicians seemed to enjoy it.
Michael Barnes
And with this record, was it a situation where you guys made the music with yourselves at the house, then you communicated those ideas to the musicians … Was Donald Byrd a part of that, or was it like you laid the tracks out, got the backing tracks, and then Byrd came out and blew that beautiful trumpet all over it as well?
Larry Mizell
The only people who worked in the studio were Fonce and I. We didn't have anybody hardly up at the house. We were either spending most of our time doing that spontaneous combustion of ideas, or we were hiking through Griffith Park, or riding bikes on the beach, with the overall thing being like, “Let’s get back and make some music on the tape and just see what happens.” Not for any particular purpose other than that's what we liked to do.
Michael Barnes
That fluidity and that movement really comes through in the music.
Larry Mizell
Thank you.
Examples of the Mizells’ sheet music from Bob Ross Music Service. Photo courtesy Larry Mizell.
Novena Carmel
So you would start out, just the two of you, as you mentioned, at the home studio, working on ideas to start. And then you'd need to get them into sheet music form, so the musicians could have an idea. We have some of the sheet music as an example that you worked on. Tell us about the process from creating demos or ideas with your brother at home to then getting it into sheet music form.
Larry Mizell
There was one company owned by a gentleman named Bob Ross.
Novena Carmel
Bob Ross, not the painter.
Michael Barnes
Yeah, not that Bob Ross. Different Bob Ross.
Larry Mizell
So, his setup was that he knew if you had a session coming the next day, you needed to get your sheets into him, however you wanted it done, by five or six in the morning. He worked on our type of time, where we would finish late at night and take it down to Bob Ross's office. And when we got to the studio, it was ready to go. He would get it right so that it was however you wanted it. He was a big help. So, if we had a session the next day, we'd be up late doing that. And that would be another type of enthusiasm as well
Michael Barnes
So, you and Fonce, you create this music. The two of you together have all these notes connected to the sheets. That's the night before. Then, in the morning, they'd make all the notations for all the musicians. And from that, then, the arranging and conducting and the recording. All of that is what produces these amazingly-engineered songs and rhythms. Why don’t we get another example of one of these tracks, “Blacks and Blues,” that comes from Bobbi Humphrey’s record from 1973 of the same title.
Michael Barnes
There are so many elements connected to the music that you guys produced. The vocals, I think, are one of the most distinctive things. And it seems like it connects back to those old days, because the vocals you hear are Fonce and Larry and Freddie Perren singing together, harmonizing like they did when they were kids. And it also strikes me, especially thinking about this song, to think about a lot of your songs that you wrote – these are lyrics that you wrote, Larry – how much nostalgia gets into the lyrics. This sounds like some things my grandma would tell me: “You can sing and fly again, it's on your mind / You can't let things go by, you never really try / Keep all the new things that you’ll use / ‘Cause when you know your facts, you can't lose / You make your many moves until you find your groove / You'd rather win than lose, but chances don't come in twos / If you paid your dues, they come in blacks and blues.” I mean, my god, it's so beautiful. And I wanted you to talk a little bit about that choice of deciding to bring those harmonies in, because they seem connected to the doo-wop years. You really didn't hear a lot of harmonies like this in the 1970s.
Larry Mizell
Again, it was a mixture of styles where we would have elements of funk, of soul. But at the same time, we were big fans … We had a singing group at Howard, at undergrad. But we weren't singing doo-wop, we were singing more Four Freshmen. Complex-type harmonies.
Michael Barnes
Barbershop quartet kinda thing, in some ways?
Larry Mizell
Yeah, but they were on a jazzy edge, the Four Freshmen. We would do that. And we would go up against … at homecoming show[s], we would have some significant artists, Donny Hathaway, who also played piano for us sometime, and other people. And a lot of the other groups were doing the standard hits of the time. But we would do our own thing, not out of any other reason than that's what we liked. So Fonce and I ended up bringing that to the point that you made about the choral style that we settled with.
Novena Carmel
That particular song with Bobbi Humphrey, it's so beautiful, the way she's doing the flute along with what you all are singing. In that situation, was it where she wrote the melody first on the flute, and then you create the lyrics around it? Which part came first, I'm curious?
Larry Mizell
All of our artists would not know the song or be exposed to the song until the very first time they got to the studio.
Novena Carmel
Okay. So you had that melody in mind already,
Larry Mizell
We’d give them the melody. And it worked great like that with the artists that we had, who were flexible and who wanted to embrace that style. Because basically, we were pretending to be artists that we were getting to get our music out. And that's just a metaphor, but we enjoyed doing that. And it wasn't everybody's cup of tea. But the ones that were would gravitate to us, or we'd gravitate to them. But our main passion was songwriting, and not looking for hits either. We were able to do okay with our approach.
Michael Barnes
But we failed to mention, not looking for hits, but Black Byrd – the first proper collaboration between the Mizell brothers with that sound – that was the biggest-selling record that Blue Note had ever had. This label had been around, I think, at that point for at least 25 years or something along those lines, and actually was kind of in a state of decline at that time. In some ways, that music is part of what allowed Blue Note to continue into the 1970s and beyond, and still existing today. And opened the doors for them to work with Bobbi Humphrey and Johnny Hammond and Gary Bartz, all these artists whose name is on the title of the record. But again, all that music was made by Larry and Fonce – a lot of it written by you, especially in those early days. And it's again, that consistency of the sound, and the fact that these records were recorded sometimes right up on each other. Blacks and Blues, you recorded that in the first week of June, the whole album, and then Street Lady from Donald Byrd was the third week in June. And it's mind-boggling when you actually lay it all out. This period of time in the 1970s – 1973 to 1979 – there's almost twenty records that they create. Some of them more in collaboration with other artists, but especially this early period, 1973, 1976, ‘77, there are thirteen, fourteen records like that. And the ability to do that is extraordinary, but it's clear from the stories you've been telling how much of that is connected to you and your brother and this tight bond that you formed. And then this tight bond you formed with the musicians to be able to have that pace. It almost seems impossible to record that much quality music in such a short period of time. The musicians are like, “What, we're back in the studio again?! We just cut a record, we're back?!”
Larry Mizell
Right. They were happy with the constant booking. And also, they seemed to dig coming together with the type of environment that we had. It wasn't a hardcore recording session by the book. And everybody could do that. Anybody who is in the record performance business could play every dot on the page. [But] the musicians dug it. They really enjoyed the sessions, as did we, of course.
Novena Carmel
Let’s pop up another image, having fun in the studio. There we go. Who do we have here? Tell us about this picture.
Freddie Perren and Fonce Mizell in the Mizell brothers’ home studio, December 1973. Photo courtesy of Freddie Perren Beats and Grooves Inc. / FreddiePerren.com
Larry Mizell
So that's my brother, Fonce, with the drumstick. And this is Freddie Perren. You guys did some great work on stuff I haven’t even seen before!
Novena Carmel
So, you have your brother with the drumsticks. You've got Fred on the keys. Where do you think you would be? Are you at the board? Are you at another instrument?
Larry Mizell
Well, we would have multiple keyboards. So I will be playing either a synthesizer or another acoustic, maybe an upright acoustic piano.
Michael Barnes
And so you played piano and electric piano [and] synthesizers. Fonce primarily, I think, on Clavinet; Freddie, also piano. So this layering of the keyboards. The next song we want to play is the keyboardist Johnny Hammond, and one of the collaborations that you did with him. And I’m going to ask you: Was this overdubbed or what? Because, when you listen real closely, there's so many different things that are going on. So let's take a listen to another song that Larry wrote from Johnny Hammond’s album, Gambler’s Life, called “Star Borne.”
Michael Barnes
There's so many elements that are going on with this music, and so much of it was recorded live in the studio. But what was there any overdubbing that was done, or was that all of you in the studio, all playing these different pianos and synthesizers together?
Larry Mizell
Somewhat. But typically we would max out at two keyboards, sometimes three keyboards, where we would always use an acoustic piano, typically 88 keys, and then we would add some type of synthesizer, be it an ARP or a Moog.
Michael Barnes
And you were also playing a Solina here too, which was a different kind of synthesizer, right?
Larry Mizell
Solina, yeah, that was invented by Arp. It was a keyboard violin-sounding device. It was okay. It was trying to be strings, but it had its own thing. We would also have a Hohner Clavinet D6, which was more like a drum. Stevie Wonder used lots of D6s. So yeah, good point, we definitely had various keyboard things going on. And that was the main change. The rest of the group would always be pretty typical: drums, bass, we did use two guitars. And we had a percussion player, maybe one or two percussion players: one in the booth, and another one in another booth so we can get that isolation. And at the time, we were just switching from 16-track tape, 2” tape recorders, but we went to 24 tracks. Whereas today, you can have 100 tracks at home. Which is insane. And actually, it's a funny thing about when you get a wealth of something. It changes your focus. Even when you're cooking, you start throwing in every spice you can come up with. It's not always for the better.
Michael Barnes
But it definitely was a nice spicy meal you were cooking up, both you and Fonce. And you guys had success with Donald Byrd and Bobbi Humphrey on Blue Note, and with Johnny Hammond and Gary Bartz on different labels. And your continued success also was connected to when the other Mizell brother – the youngest, Rodney – made his way to LA. And then Rodney was a part of the LTD record, which was one of the biggest hits with “Love Ballad” and Jeffrey Osborne singing. And also with A Taste of Honey. And those records are In the late ‘70s. Can you talk a little bit about Rodney?
Larry Mizell
Rodney was about 11 years younger than the two of us, give or take. And he could play drums, bass, mainly, and he brought a different style. And when he came in, he would stretch out, and the three of us would be grooving then. And he got right into the style. Because actually, before I left Grumman Aerospace to move to LA with Fonce, Rodney and I would be jamming a lot. And he had his band. He also played with one of the Isley Brothers, who lived around the corner in Inglewood.
Michael Barnes
So much talent. It’s amazing, all the synergies of talent. The 1970s is this amazing period of creativity. As things go into the ‘80s, though, things start to wind down, and you eventually sell the house. … Why?! Just thinking especially about housing prices now, why did you decide to leave that Hollywood Hills sanctuary?
Larry Mizell
Well, one thing was, we moved our parents out here and rented out the house that they had in New Jersey. And we got a nice piece of property in Altadena. And we had plenty of space, we weren't disturbing any neighbors, and it was almost like we were back to our New Jersey days. We had Mom, Dad, Rod, Fonce, and myself. It was just some great, great times. And in fact, we did an album with a great guy named Bob Krasnow, who was Vice-President of Warner Brothers. And he came to us early on, saying, “Look, you guys can be stage phenoms.” And we were like, “...okay?” He was a great, great guy. And we thought about that. We played all over the world with the Blackbyrds just on a lark, just to have some fun. But we loved getting back to the studio. And one thing is that, as a performer, you sacrifice a lot. When you're not making music, you're stuck wherever you are. And we were used to not having that type of conformity. We did an album called The Mizells on Warner Brothers. And they were all enthusiastic about it and very forthcoming – whatever we wanted, we spent a couple of years at least on this album. And for those very reasons, we were lukewarm on the concept as far as, “Yeah, we can make this album, but going on the road…” And Warner Brothers said, “Yeah, we can do this, we could do this, we could do that.” But it took us away from our comfort zone, just as far as time wasted waiting for the next show location and all of that would be prohibitive. But we went ahead and did this album on Warner Brothers, and there's still some copies floating around for a few thousand [dollars].
Michael Barnes
Because it was never actually released. So there are acetates, test pressings, that are out there. But it's one of these, I don't know, musical tragedies in a way, to a degree, I guess. All this music that the Mizell Brothers made, and made for other artists, carries those other artists’ names. And those artists are now in the Hall of Fame and got Grammys and all this. And the one record that had y’all’s name on it is the record that never got released. That's part of the reason why I really hope you're able to record some music, finally have that name on it. And hopefully this episode also: greater recognition for all these amazing things that you and your brothers created. And yeah, just extraordinary.
Larry Mizell
Thank you so much.
Novena Carmel
Should we pop up one more image? Just to leave you with?
Michael Barnes
One more image, one last story. What do we have going on here, Larry?
The Mizell brothers’ matching Porsche 911S convertibles. Courtesy of Larry Mizell.
Larry Mizell
So, you brought up the story about these cars and about the significance of them.
Michael Barnes
In the original first interview we did before we worked on the episode, I asked you about, “Was this music inspired by you guys driving around?” And you brought up these Porsches. But it related back to a real early memory, didn't it?
Larry Mizell
Right, right, right. The summer of one of my school years, I had a part-time job at this appliance store. And one of the owners, he and I were going somewhere, and he wanted me to go with him. And he had this Porsche, and it was a 356, which is an old model. Sits low to the ground, so the point of gravity was … you couldn't hardly flip the car, because it was low, it was heavy, and wide. We went riding, and I was saying, “This car is amazing!” We would make almost a right-angle turn in those cars, which always stuck with me, it was so impressive. So, at some point, after a couple of years, we had bought some brand new Grand Prix’s, Pontiacs, which were great. But I mentioned, “Let's go take a look at some Porsches.” There was only one real Porsche place in LA called Beverly Hills Porsche. And we went out there, and … we were done. And you match this with the Hollywood Hills, or any of the hills in LA…
Michael Barnes
One Porsche for each of the brothers.
Novena Carmel
Matching Porsches.
Larry Mizell
Matching Porsches. And we would race through the hills of Griffith Park, which was a blast. Coming home from the studio late in Hollywood, there were a couple of times ... I remember one incident. Fonce and I were coming back from the studio and we saw these LAPD cars, who got curious when we went buzzing by them. And so, without even talking to each other – we had phones and stuff to go back and forth, but – I said, “Okay.” So we got to our street, which was Kings Road up off Sunset Boulevard. So I just dropped it all the way down. And we went up this hill so fast … these guys just disappeared, because they tried to make the turn with us. And I don't know if Dr. Porsche envisioned that.
Michael Barnes
And could not have imagined the music that driving around in those Porsches would inspire as well.
Larry Mizell
Absolutely.
Michael Barnes
It's been such a pleasure spending this time with you, Larry, thank you so much for all the music you created with your brothers. Thank you for being here. Just thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Larry Mizell
Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.
Larry and Yvonne Mizell at KCRW HQ, July 17, 2024. Photo credit: Michael Barnes.
Lost Notes is a KCRW Original Production. It’s made by Michael Barnes, Ashlea Brown, Novena Carmel, Melissa Dueñas, and Myke Dodge Weiskopf. Special thanks to Gina Delvac, Jennifer Ferro, Nathalie Hill, Anne Litt, Arnie Seipel, and Anthony Valadez.
Extra-special thanks to everyone who made this event possible, including Krissy Barker, Katie Gilchrest, Jason Groman, Larry Hirshowitz, Dru Lojero, Joel Marshall, Phil Richards, Devon Rosen, Emma Rothenberg, and Liv Surnow.
And, of course, extra-extra special thanks to Larry & Yvonne Mizell for coming out west and spending so much time with us and our audience.
MORE:
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. B2: Crying in the Club (from “Primer”)
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. B1: Nia Andrews and Terrace Martin on Reggie Andrews
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 8: Do What You Want To Do: The Legacy of Reggie Andrews
Lost Notes S4 - Ep 7: Dear Ruth: How Ruth Dolphin (Re-)Built A Musical Empire
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 6: Go with the Flow: Community, Virality, and the Politics of Dancing
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 5: Places & Spaces: The Mizell Brothers’ LA Alchemy
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 4: Viva Tirado: The South/East LA Connection
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 3: My Lady’s Frustration: How Fela Kuti Found Afrobeat in LA
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 2: Mojo on Trial: The Seedy, Greedy World of Ruth Christie
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 1: Tainted Love: Gloria Jones and the Half-Life of a Hit