Abstract

Lou Ragland is a musician, singer, and record industry veteran. He was born in 1942 in Cleveland. The interview covers his childhood in segregated Cleveland and his life in music.

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Interviewee

Ragland, Lou (interviewee)

Interviewer

Aritonovich, Dana (interviewer)

Project

Rock and Roll

Date

11-7-2009

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

99 minutes

Transcript

Lou Ragland [00:00:00] And how do you pronounce your name again?

Dana Aritonovich [00:00:02] It's "Donna". It's spelled like Dana, but it's "Donna."

Lou Ragland [00:00:05] Donna.

Dana Aritonovich [00:00:06] There you go. Okay, why don't we start with you introducing yourself? Just let us know your name and where you live and what you do currently. Yes.

Lou Ragland [00:00:19] All right. My name is Lou Ragland. I'm the lead singer with the world-famous Ink Spots. Third generation. I produce and record records, CDs, music videos and so on.

Dana Aritonovich [00:00:40] And where do you live?

Lou Ragland [00:00:42] Las Vegas, Nevada, at this time. Been out here for 28 years.

Dana Aritonovich [00:00:46] Okay, and what year were you born and where were you born?

Lou Ragland [00:00:52] 1942, Cleveland, Ohio. The Mary B. Talbert Home down on Woodland.

Dana Aritonovich [00:01:01] Okay, and what neighborhood did you grow up in, or neighborhoods?

Lou Ragland [00:01:04] Well, I grew up in two neighborhoods, basically, or three: 36th between Central and Scovill, down near 22nd and the bathhouse, and 39th and Central. And when I became an adult, I moved to 88th and Hough.

Dana Aritonovich [00:01:27] And what do you remember about those neighborhoods? What were they like?

Lou Ragland [00:01:31] Well, in those days, we were next to the first public housing project in the United States, I am told. And as far as my recollection, it seems that it was that way because the Chinese man actually had the laundry and so on. The butchers were different people. And all the ethnic groups were together in this neighborhood. I guess that was a government requirement. And we grew up with a social mix, like a really American background in that area.

Dana Aritonovich [00:02:13] Okay, and what schools did you attend?

Lou Ragland [00:02:19] I attended R. B. Hayes Elementary, Central Junior High, East Tech for two years. And then I finished the last year at East High School.

Dana Aritonovich [00:02:33] And what were your schools like? Were they integrated at all or no?

Lou Ragland [00:02:38] Yes, but not- It was off balance. I imagine it was about 90% Black and 10% other folk.

Dana Aritonovich [00:02:50] And were there any racial tensions in your school that you remember?

Lou Ragland [00:02:55] Probably, but not as much as there were in the southern areas that I can recall. Because I was raised and played and paddled around with a Polish family. Ronald Cutlery was a white guy who I didn't find out he was white until I was 16 and in the shower. And some of my peers who were chocolate wanted to wake me up, that I always was palling around with this white guy, which I didn't know he was white.

Dana Aritonovich [00:03:32] And what did your friends say to you about that that made you realize that there was an issue?

Lou Ragland [00:03:37] Well, he just said there was a difference in color. We didn't care anyhow. I liked his sister, he liked mine, and my mother could whip him just like his parents could beat me. So the neighborhood raised your kids in those days. And so I had a real strict upbringing compared to today's. I was actually freer to do intellectual things, not foolishness and carry on. But I could do just about anything that made sense and was productive around my house. So I never got to be a person who was out and get exposed from my environment. Like they say, your environment can influence you. Well, my parents evidently knew this, so they made an environment for me to fit in and didn't let me out until after I was 16.

Dana Aritonovich [00:04:37] And tell me about your family.

Lou Ragland [00:04:40] Well, my father started off working at the Swift Packing Company, and then he ended up with a job as a precision grinder at Warner & Swasey Co. and became like a supervisor or somebody very important because he could- He had excellent talent and skills. And then- But my family operated a home business called Ragland Enterprises, which was a filmmaking business, back in the '40s. I imagine it had to be '46 or '47 because I was in the films then when Harrison Dillard came home from winning the Olympic hurdles.

Dana Aritonovich [00:05:26] And what kind of films did they produce?

Lou Ragland [00:05:30] They would produce social, film shopping. They would take us downtown Cleveland, dressed in our vest, and we would follow him about 25 feet away while he walked in front of us with cameras hanging around his neck. And he would film people shopping at Higbee's, Halle's, the, you know, May Company, you know, all those places downtown like that. And most of the people were not chocolate folk who were down there shopping. And then naturally, you're kind of offended to see this Black guy walking around with this camera filming them and their families stopping and walking down Euclid or Superior, Ninth Street, around in there. But as we would come along, while they had frowns on their faces, they would kind of straighten them up a little bit and accept a card from us or a pamphlet. And the pamphlet said, if you would like a copy of the film that was just made of you and your family in Downtown Cleveland, please contact Ragland Enterprises. And by the time we would get home- In those days, there was a real person that answered the phone and gave you your messages, the phone answering service, which they should get back to that nowadays. But we would have three or four or five orders for footage.

Dana Aritonovich [00:07:08] And so that was just kind of like a side business?

Lou Ragland [00:07:11] Oh, yes.

Dana Aritonovich [00:07:11] Okay.

Lou Ragland [00:07:12] Well, he had a job, like I said, working at Warner & Swasey. My mother was just a housewife. And us kids would help with making money around the house.

Dana Aritonovich [00:07:25] And how many siblings did you have?

Lou Ragland [00:07:28] One older brother who's four years older than me, and then a sister who was two and a half years younger than I.

Dana Aritonovich [00:07:37] And what kind of things did you and your siblings do when you guys were just kind of hanging out and having fun?

Lou Ragland [00:07:44] Well, we would mostly listen to the adults and hang around them and watch them make all this money in the living room floor and share some of it with us. Because we were. My family was. They were productive people. So they made all kinds of things. Crochet dollies, handkerchiefs, suits, and clothes. My mother was a seamstress, and my father, he played piano and guitar a little bit, and my mother sang. So we were- Would always have something to do in the house in our neighborhood. I realize now that we were the first one to have a television. And we were the first one to get a color TV later on down the line. And when I was born, I was born, I lived in a house, and I didn't get to live in an apartment until I thought I was an adult. I hurried up and moved back to the house. My family owned three houses when I was about 4 years old, 5 years old.

Dana Aritonovich [00:09:03] So you said your father was very musical and your mother sang also? So was that something that- Were your siblings also musical?

Lou Ragland [00:09:12] No, my father also was an artist. He drew. So my brother took on that part. And my mother was the actual musician who sang. So I ended up taking on that part. But they never influenced us anyway. In that line, we got influenced by the radio and the music that they played. We would always listen to pop and very little blues. I don't think we ever had blues in our house, but we had some soul music, but mainly pop music by Big Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole, Al Hibbler, and folks like that, Johnny Ray. Symphonic music was always played in the house. And they took us to concerts at Severance Hall. Orchestras and stuff like that. And every summer we would travel someplace out of the state, out of the city, and spend maybe two weeks out getting culture. We were up in Crystal Beach, Canada, Niagara Falls, and the caverns and the covered bridges, all in Ohio. I think we covered every historical and cultural place in Ohio. 

Dana Aritonovich [00:10:38] What? What kind of music did your father play?

Lou Ragland [00:10:41] I have no idea, because he and my mother got divorced by the time I was eight.

Dana Aritonovich [00:10:47] Okay.

Lou Ragland [00:10:48] But I had my father's, because when I got 16, I went back and found him, continued relationship between he and I, live with my mother.

Dana Aritonovich [00:10:57] Okay.

Lou Ragland [00:10:59] So. And when I got in my 20s, I guess I was 23, when I start feeling the real prejudice of what happens in the United States, and especially in the music business or entertainment period. After the guy told me that I was taking a shower with the white guy and I didn't know it and I did it all the time and we palled around. I started paying a little attention to other folk and mainly what was on television and who was on television. And so mostly all of our heroes that we in our neighborhood wanted to emulate were all white guys. Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, you know, we all wanted to be cowboys and we Superman or whatever in there. But all our heroes happened to be white at that time. I don't think it was any kid who didn't want to be Roy Rogers.

Dana Aritonovich [00:12:04] And how old were you around that time?

Lou Ragland [00:12:07] I was 16, 17. As we would go to the movies and we would talk about, I'm going to be Buck Rogers, and we would say who we wanted to be. We wanted to be Victor Mature and all of the stars that were in the movies that we could see. None of us wanted to be Stepin Fetchit or Rochester or any of the buffoon-type folks at those days, even though that's the only roles they could get were made to butlers and comedy-type of stuff. But we all wanted to do want to be Tony Curtis and all of that. And we didn't know you couldn't be it. But.

Dana Aritonovich [00:12:51] What kind of things did you and your friends do when you guys hung out?

Lou Ragland [00:12:57] Like I said, during those days, I wasn't allowed out of my yard very much, but I could have friends in. So we practiced jumping off roofs with umbrellas, trying to make parachutes. I learned to drive when I was 8 years old, stick shift. And I practiced in the backyard in old cars and became affluent in changing tires and water pumps and gas fuel pumps and mechanical things like that. Because my grandfather lived with us and we'd take clocks loose and take them apart, alarm clocks and put them back together and make sure they work. During junior high and high school, I participated in some sports, but they didn't really let me participate too much. So I ended up getting into band. That's where I got my musical training from. I guess maybe the eighth grade.

Dana Aritonovich [00:13:59] And what's the first song that you? Because you said you mainly listened to pop music. What's the first record that you remember either that you bought or something that you heard on the radio that made an impact on you?

Lou Ragland [00:14:10] "Sixteen Tons of Number-Nine Coal," by Tennessee Ernie Ford, I think.

Dana Aritonovich [00:14:15] Okay, and what was it about that that affected you?

Lou Ragland [00:14:18] The story and the way the music went. And it was played all the time in the radio and around the house. So it was those type of things like that before The Drifters and the- This was the music that we listened to, especially on the radio. That's what you heard.

Dana Aritonovich [00:14:45] And what radio stations do you remember listening to back then?

Lou Ragland [00:14:48] When I was a kid, I couldn't even tell you as a child. When I became an adult, I started listening to WHK. That was the downtown Cleveland station, WJMO, WABQ and CKLW out of Canada. And one station that played every type of music was out of the South. And it was called- John R. was the disc jockey, Randy's Record Shop. He played everything. So we tune in and get him. So you could hear anything that you'd like to hear. All of the good songs, no matter whether they were white or Black, you could hear them.

Dana Aritonovich [00:15:34] And what record stores do you remember going to?

Lou Ragland [00:15:38] Well, Record Rendezvous was the only store that we went to. But mainly we'd trade records with our neighbors in the neighborhood. And most of all, our neighborhoods had jukeboxes and what they call speakeasies or after-hour houses. During the weekends, in the nighttime, some people would open up their houses and having card parties and drinking sessions and playing the money records on their jukeboxes. And that's when I got a chance to hear the Drifters. I live right next door to Johnny Moore, who was one of the lead singers of the Drifters in the late '50s. He made sand in My Shoes under the Boardwalk up on the Roof or something like that. 

Dana Aritonovich [00:16:37] Cool. What- So you listened to records at these parties and stuff. And where did you go, if you remember, like the places like maybe nightclubs or any place else that you might go to see like a live band perform?

Lou Ragland [00:16:48] After I became an adult, I went to almost every club that you can go to. And I integrated the West Side mainly because I wanted to know something about it. I went to the Heidelberg, the West Town Mary's Lounge. Let's see, there was another one that was on Brookpark in Pearl. It had a name like a satellite or, I forgot what it was. Brookpark, mainly white place, but our band played there and it would be Poochie and Ejo. And we would go across the bridge and play on the west side.

Dana Aritonovich [00:17:31] And what kind of response did you get from the crowds over there?

Lou Ragland [00:17:34] Well, it's almost like today. Our biggest audience has always been white folk who like Black music.

Dana Aritonovich [00:17:44] And what about when you played for Black crowds? Did you notice that the response was different in any way?

Lou Ragland [00:17:51] Well, you couldn't play a variety of music until The Beatles came out. They just only wanted you to play Black music. And if you played any white rock music or anything in there, there wasn't- The Chamber Brothers hadn't came out who were Black musicians who played rock music. And so all the big artists were usually big white rock groups. And Black artists wanted you to do the blues and R&B. And that's it. You know, you had to do. Well, The Temptations came along and spread out a little bit. They crossed over when they were on television. You know, Ed Sullivan and Bandstand and all of that. But up until that point, we could do almost any type of music for a white crowd. But you'd have to do a specific type of music for a Black crowd. But both of them were just appreciative of your talent.

Dana Aritonovich [00:18:50] And what was the name of the band you were playing with at this time?

Lou Ragland [00:18:54] The Van Dykes was the band. It was four brothers, all musicians, who were there. One was the road manager. I think his name was Willie. And a guitar player. His name was Danny. And the drummer, I don't know. I forgot who he was. Oh, Bill Matlock. Called him Wild Bill Matlock. He was a drummer. He wasn't one of the brothers or nothing. So they had the bass and two guitars and drums and two singers, George Hendricks and myself.

Dana Aritonovich [00:19:29] Okay, and how did you guys all get together?

Lou Ragland [00:19:35] I don't know. It just sort of happened from our weightlifting club, I think.

Dana Aritonovich [00:19:41] Okay.

Lou Ragland [00:19:42] When I was 19 and 20, like that. We were weightlifters. We were in the weightlifting contest and all that. We had a weightlifting club called the Spartan Chains. And we just happened to talk to the guys who lived in an apartment complex where we lift weights in the basement. And they told us that they needed some singers. And we told them we sang. So George and I started singing with them, and they liked it, and that was them.

Dana Aritonovich [00:20:17] So what do you remember about maybe the first Motown song you remember hearing?

Lou Ragland [00:20:25] I guess the first Motown song was "What Love Has Joined Together." Now, I don't know if it was Mary Wells or not, but that's the first one I remember in the '60s. And she had "My Guy" and a couple of other songs. And then I started becoming aware of Smokey Robinson - "Got a Job" or something like that, or "Get a Job." I think that was the first Motown. But up until then, we had The Coasters and The Platters and The Drifters to listen to, and Billy Ward's Dominoes. That music grabbed ahold in the late '50s. And especially the Moonglows' records in '53 and '54. And one especially made me start singing real and wanted to sing, and that was Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

Dana Aritonovich [00:21:35] And what was it about that particular style of music that appealed to you at that time?

Lou Ragland [00:21:41] It was that it was a guy my same age who had achieved fame and had talent and I could mimic him. So I thought that I should put my saxophone down and pick up a guitar and start singing, okay, and that's what happened.

Dana Aritonovich [00:21:59] And what was that like? The first time you did, the first time you grabbed the mic and started singing this music, what was that like? How did you feel?

Lou Ragland [00:22:05] Well, the first time I- It was not in public. I started performing that way, singing in front of a microphone and not depending on anyone else. It was easy with a group with a guy pushing you along, like George, because he was already exposed to it. He came from an environment where they did that a lot. And I really didn't think that I could sing that good, but I thought that I was a good performer and all of that. And I liked the stories. And I wouldn't sing a song that I didn't like the story. It was all positive type of music, you know, I wouldn't sing anything that was negative to my lifestyle. No blues at all? Hardly. Because in those days the blues was all sad and heartbroken and somebody's cheating and you're going to get like, Stagger Lee Shot Billy and all that. We wouldn't sing that. We sing for your love to be loved up on the roof, under the boardwalk all types of nice, happy songs. We did sing "Goody Goody" because that was a song where the guy could laugh about getting even. That Frankie Lyman in the teenager song, that was a great one. And he did a lot of pop songs then. You know, he sang real adult songs as a youngster. The first Michael Jackson was him, Frankie Lymon. And the rest of it was just about listening and then thinking about some songs that we could make up and do them. And I guess that's when I decided that it was something that could really happen. I started in my living room with a couple of my first wife's friends. The they would come over and visit her, and I would sing and play and practice on them. And they started putting money in a cup on my table when they left.

Dana Aritonovich [00:24:27] That works.

Lou Ragland [00:24:28] Sometimes I had $30 or $40 and I was like, oh, you'll pay me to do this? So I would find a club that would let me come in and take the door and put a group together and try to see if that could work. But I followed Most of the groups I thought were successful in those. Pities, The Miracles, Marvin Gaye and all these folk like that. Enough to know that you had to be a musician. You had to have musicians in order for you to perform live. In those days, you didn't take the tape or. Or the canned music that we have now. Or the computer that plays the music back with the backing tracks and all that. You had to have at least three pieces of trio. And that started me playing guitar. After George told me I could. He showed me three chords and then he let me go. And the rest of it was putting my musical training from school on the saxophone over to the guitar.

Dana Aritonovich [00:25:39] And what's the first live performance you remember doing? Where was it? When was it? What kind of stuff were you doing then?

Lou Ragland [00:25:48] My first live performance probably was when I was about 17. A real contrast, and that was with a group called the Mic Players. And we were in a contest at WHK Auditorium. The schools then, all schools had groups, and all of them had friendly rivalry. Maybe 17 high schools or junior high schools and people after this guy named William Burwell recorded the song "Julie" at about the same time that Frankie Lymon had his song out, it hit us real close to home, almost all of us, because we knew this guy. We played basketball and swam with him at the POC and Portland-Outhwaite Recreation Center. That's what we called it. And they would have contests. Some lady named Ms. Ross, she started giving out prizes for the best groups. And so you would have competitions. And that fueled us to go on.

Dana Aritonovich [00:27:02] What was the next thing I was going to ask you? What other local bands? Do you remember around that time that when you were starting to perform around Cleveland?

Lou Ragland [00:27:10] The Apollos, the Hornets, the Moonglows, the Futuretones - that's where Edward Starr came out of, that group, the Futuretones. Kim Tolliver and her band - I ended up playing music with her. Don Gregory and the Montclairs. Eddie Woods - he was a single artist. Little Jimmy Scott. And all the jazz guys, because Cleveland was a stopover for people going from New York to Chicago. So all of the jazz guys came. These are not local people I'm talking about now. These were the big people, you know. Got to see Dave Brubeck and Sonny Stitt, Bird, while he was, you know, still doing his stuff, and John Coltrane. All of these folk, especially Nat King Cole and his trio, they would be at a place called the Tia Juana. It was on 105th, on the Gold Coast. So it was a very musical town, and the union was good to us.

Dana Aritonovich [00:28:52] Okay. Yeah. Tell me about the union a little bit. I was actually doing some research earlier and I read a little bit about that.

Lou Ragland [00:28:58] Well, in the early '59, '60, up to about '68, there were two unions: a Black musicians’ union and a white musicians' union. And there was a guy named Nappy Bismuk — who was a bass player — who was in charge of the Black musicians' union. And somewhere around that time, they integrated and put the two together into Local 4 with Mike Scigliano. And he allowed us to talk to him and negotiate a rate that Black club owners and East Side club owners, whether they were white or Black, could afford so they could have live music. The Music Box, Little Herman's, the 100 Club, the Brothers Lounge, Circle Ballroom — all these places had live music. From about 97th and Euclid to 107th and Euclid, on both sides of the street, were musical places where we could work and perform. And downtown, where the Theatrical Grill was, with Mushy Wexler and those folks, every now and then they would let some of us perform down there. It was off East 9th and Prospect. Short Vincent was the name of the street.

Dana Aritonovich [00:30:31] Yeah, actually, I know where that is. That's right across from the National City parking where we park for Indians games. My mother pointed that out to me a couple times. She used to work downtown, so she knew a lot of those places.

Lou Ragland [00:30:42] Oh, good for her. And there was a music store downtown. I don't know what it was called now, but one of the attendants was a Black guy named Whitey Parker. He was a tenor saxophone player. And this music store guy would allow us to lay our instruments. That way, it helped us put all the things together in that day. And it was near Record Rendezvous.

Dana Aritonovich [00:31:13] So what did you ever open for any of the bands, like Motown acts or anybody from, like, Stax Records or anybody like that? Anybody really, really big?

Lou Ragland [00:31:24] My group was called the Bandmasters, Lou Raglan and the Bandmasters. And when our vocal group broke up, the Saheeds, two of us became musicians. The bass singer, Joe Yancey played bass and I played guitar. And we put a band together with two saxophone players, a drummer, basic guitar, no keyboard. And we would play behind almost every Motown act or with every Motown act that came through then who did not have their own rhythm section. We were the house band at the Music Box, which allowed people to come in there on Sundays when there was no liquor being served. And we cover it up and you would have a Sunday matinee so you could go and be exposed to all of this. Music, I mean, you know, we would play behind Marvin Gaye. He would come to Cleveland for $75 a night. Can you imagine? The ticket price usually to get in, was 99 cents. I have a couple of newspaper articles that talk about it. You spoke about my first gig. The first paying gig we had, I think we made $10 for the whole group. And it was at the Call and Post Ballroom when they paid us. It was a beatnik dance. Beatnik. I said beatnik. And I still have that newspaper article with that price.

Dana Aritonovich [00:33:08] Yeah, that's amazing. That's a bargain.

Lou Ragland [00:33:20] But I used to open as a sing. Well, because in 1961 or '62. I recorded a record called "Never Let Me Go." And they changed my name from Louis to Lou. That's how I became Lou Ragland instead of Louis Ragland, like I was all through school. And this record set me up for life. Because right now, it's one of the most popular records I've ever recorded. And it allowed me to open for the Temptations. And in places like Toledo. Whenever they would come to Ohio and they need an opening act. They would use me because I was a recording artist. Also, I think it was a place in Toledo called the Green Light. Or the Gas Light or something like that. And I played there. And then I would play up at the 20 grand in Detroit. I traveled a lot, all the major cities and minor cities in Ohio. We would do tours with Kim Tolliver. Once the Bandmasters started getting good, we became her band. And we played Gleason's Show Bar on 55th and Woodland regularly. And then we would travel up to Pennsylvania, up into- There was a resort up, a summer resort we would play up in. And we would go to Mr. Lee's in Detroit. And we just move around with her. We'd play Springfield, Steubenville, Coshocton, Toledo. Where's the Air Force base, at Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati. Just about all the places that could support music, we played there.

Dana Aritonovich [00:35:26] And did you notice a difference between the crowds? Or at least the reaction in those other cities in Ohio compared to Cleveland?

Lou Ragland [00:35:34] You could hardly- Because if you had a record on radio, you were a star, or a feature. And you were treated like that. No matter where you went. As far as the crowd was concerned. They would only come to see you in that volume. At those theaters, the Palace and the State and the Loew's. And all those places that we would play down there in the fairgrounds. When we would open for Al Green with my group, Hot Chocolate, it would be thousands of people, 30 or 40,000. People would come to see you.

Dana Aritonovich [00:36:07] Wow.

Lou Ragland [00:36:08] So it wasn't- You didn't make any money like you should have, but you sure got fame, your name got in the paper and did all the good stuff. And when you got back home, you was wondering, well, should we have got paid for that?

Dana Aritonovich [00:36:29] Yeah. That's something else that I've noticed when I've been reading a lot about these artists. Even a lot of the Motown artists, they didn't get what they probably deserved.

Lou Ragland [00:36:40] No, they never got what they probably deserved. And if they had, they probably would have self destructed before they did. I mean, almost the great- All the great Motown artists, including Marvin Gaye, they were so talented, they self destructed. That was it. They made it hard for us for other people to believe in us. Who wanted to take a chance on you because they knew you were going to do something off the wall. And the bigger the stars were, the more off the wall things they did. David Ruffin, Marvin is the thing. And you can see it at today's thing. What happened to Michael? He should not be dead at this time. But could nobody tell him, yeah, you get fired and that's it. Yeah, lock you up. So when you can't, your parents can't tell you anything anymore. It's over for you. There was a lot of tragedy around this music business. White and black artists. I mean, look at the plane that had the Big Bopper and Valenzuela on, that La Bamba guy. And all those Otis Redding in the plane crashed it. One of the stars, I think he made Summertime. I can't think of it. He was the one that did an up version of it. And he had a phrase that would do.

Dana Aritonovich [00:38:15] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know who you mean.

Lou Ragland [00:38:17] Stewart. Yeah, he got killed. And so you were kind of getting conscious about the life that everybody was living. That something might happen to you that. And then that Cook gets stabbed, isn't it?

Dana Aritonovich [00:38:30] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [00:38:31] Wonder what happens. The bigger the town it look like the sooner they leave the planet if they were chocolate. Some of the white ones lived on until they just faded out like Blue Eyes, you know, Frank Sinatra. And now you have the guy who wrote "My Way," Paul Aker. He was just going on. He never had been a tremendous vocal talent. But he was a great writer in my. Absolutely, he is a great writer. Not was. He is, he is. And the same thing about the Beatles. There was nothing exceptional about their singing. But the machinery that they put behind the hoopla and all the stuff that they did. The first records we heard that made them the Beatles wasn't even played by them. Were played by studio. Your musicians, Chicago. That's the same way with their group, the Motown acts. Same way with them. Look at the Funk Brothers, how little credit they got. And all of them died. The bass player, James Jameson, he should not have gone this fast. He should be around like me. Unlike Harvey Fuqua - he's 80 years old, and he's still around and viable. He's got some stories that he corroborates with me about how it was. We have a mixed life. Because being a musical star young, you could do things that layman people could not. Regular folk who work a job. Anytime you play an instrument, that same you kind of could go in any neighborhood because of your talent. You may not have gotten paid equally, but you could get there.

Dana Aritonovich [00:40:27] And what do you remember about your. Maybe, like, personal interactions? Even if you weren't in the club and you interacted with your white fans? What kind of conversations did you have? What kind of stuff did you guys talk about? Was it just about music? Did you have anything else in common with them?

Lou Ragland [00:40:44] No, nothing. Nothing. Nothing else in common. Because you would come from a whole other side of town. They were a little bit afraid of you, but it was all about your talent. They would buy your records and they would support you. They'd pay the tickets and they'd talk about that. But it seems like nothing else was. I think in those days, white folk were more afraid of Blacks than anything. Not for no reason other than their peers would tell them, man, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't be with this guy and socialize with these folk. And, you know, it probably was something about their job and their economic balance, too. Just like it is now in Vegas, we having a problem because all of the Strip and the billboards right now are strictly white faces, except for one, and that's a comedian. And the rest of them, if you have a giant star come in like Beyonce, it's all right. But locally, Black musicians don't hardly can make a living here. Because the way that the economics and the political structure is the money comes in to be spread among people with talent in the art, but they segregate the money. It's no longer the segregation of the skin. It's the economic segregation. But they base it on skin and relatives and all that.

Dana Aritonovich [00:42:12] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [00:42:12] There are no Black producers in Vegas that I know of. And as long as I've been here, I have never seen a Black show produced in one of these casinos or a Black entertainment director with power, you know what I mean? Who can choose who he wants to put in the club and that you have sympathetic white guys who know talent and all that who break the line and they do it and become very successful. But there are no Black ones who do that out here. And I suspect it's the same way in Branson, Missouri. Yeah, I don't think in Dollywood you got anybody talking in there running anything and talking about there's a venue that supports the type of music that we like. And most of the time white artists have written the songs that make Black artists famous. It's just a quandary to see that it doesn't work like that. I mean, when I came here, Sammy Davis Jr. Was struggling, was the comedian. Red Fox was having a hard time. Fats Domino owed the tax people and he had work off money. And George Kirby was in problems. And, you know, the Checkmates were having a rough time and some of the groups wouldn't be here. And then BB King didn't want to be here. He you had to go out of this town to really make big bucks and get a few things together. You know, I had medium success because it was a Black group that was supported by 90% white artists. And it's still today. The Ink Spots' brand is supported by mostly white Black people. Know something about them, but they fly by night fans. They whatever's the trend, that's what they're on. You can tell by the way the neighborhood kids are wearing the idiot pants, I call them, that when they have their butt out, sagging underclothes showing. It's just that you have to be an idiot if you don't know how to wear your clothes. And then you're going to wear them like that. So that you have to concentrate on anything other than getting ahead and improving yourself. You have to concentrate on just keeping your pants on your thighs. What is that about? You know, so it's really- It sounds like I'm against it, but I'm not. It's just that there are so many followers in the trends that are not of substance.

Dana Aritonovich [00:44:59] Well, you know, part of what I'm talking about in my paper is young people. And you know, this kind of music was really popularized by young people. And when it became marketable, it was all about what young people were looking for. And it became a fashion trend, you know, in clothes and the way you wear hair and what you listen to. And it became very trendy with white and Black kids.

Lou Ragland [00:45:23] I don't think that it became- I think it was put upon them. Okay, Just like I was influenced by the media, the media promotes that. They allow guys to come on to the Grammys looking like that, acting like that and talking like that. Starting with Prince with the foul language getting in the radio. The censors didn't do their jobs. I mean, you got records that just are horrible, but they are not- They're only making 10% of the money compared to the established big white artists and promotion machines that push that, you know, we don't push it. The establishment say, oh yeah, this is what we're going to do. We're going to make this happen. And they get behind it. You know, that's the thing that I'm talking about. And it's friends and Fly by Night and they promote it and they just keep it going. Now the young folk who are on American Idol, they get a chance to do it classy because there are no hip hop artists on American Idol at all. None of them get elected because there are nobody who's going to make a hip hop artist a classic artist where the song lasts 50 years. Nobody's going to do that. They're going to make their money for the time period that they can make it. And it's in the self expression. They want to say something, they just don't know what to say. And the easiest thing to do is wrong and negative. So they do it. It's hard to do right stuff. You can prove it, by our God. I was wondering when we was going to get a bump inside of our review.

Dana Aritonovich [00:47:16] Yes.

Lou Ragland [00:47:21] Hope they quit soon.

Dana Aritonovich [00:47:26] Well, you know, when I'm conducting my research on like the early, like in the early '50s or so, when rhythm and blues started kind of crossing over to young white audiences. And the controversy really wasn't about the music itself. It was more about the fact that white kids were listening to Black music. And that's what parents were upset about.

Lou Ragland [00:47:48] That they had found out that Black people weren't all that bad, didn't have tales and didn't do the things that they had been fed and that it was okay to have a Black friend.

Dana Aritonovich [00:47:59] Yes.

Lou Ragland [00:48:00] It was okay to shake their hand and mingle with and dance and live with and talk and all of that, because that was America.

Dana Aritonovich [00:48:07] Yep.

Lou Ragland [00:48:08] The real Americans are just emerging right now. And you can see what I mean is that if you go to South America or Brazil, it's hard to tell who doesn't live there because there's a rainbow and they don't have this. It might be politically status or class separation, but they don't go so much on skin color as we did here. Just the color and the stigmatism that the folk who could have changed it helped promote. And I mean, Hollywood is the biggest culprit of them all. There was a Black cowboy who still is alive today. I can't think of his name right now because of. But he was Gene Autry and he was or is. And he sang and had his own films and everything all the way from the 40s, but don't nobody talk about him. But it's partly his fault also, because when these folk, as a team or as a race of folk get these millions and millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, they do not put their money together to do anything. I mean, Magic Johnson talked good. Michael Jordan, he talked good. But shoot, it takes another race of people to come out and to improve the position of Black folk in America. And that's the same shame of it. But it's good. I mean, Agassi - that's my hero.

Dana Aritonovich [00:49:52] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [00:49:53] He comes in the neighborhood that needs it and gives the money. Money, not promises. He gives the money. You have Michael Jackson, who broke the record being a person who was giving in his book of world records. He made more money than Gates. And then you have this guy who's up in New York who gives scholarship money for these people who get good grades. He's a wonderful person. It takes folk like that to make it happen, to cross those things. And in the '50s, I imagine there's a lot of unsung white heroes who helped. And I know my career happened bigger and more because of the whites and not the Blacks. Because of the support and the buying power and the inquisitiveness and the really genuine caring. And more so overseas than the United States.

Dana Aritonovich [00:50:53] I've heard other people say that.

Lou Ragland [00:50:55] Yeah, because of the economics and the marketing overseas, they don't care so much about the money as they do the art. In the United States, it's all about the dollar and the marketing of that dollar and the making of that money and the capitalism of it. If it was Americanism, it would be probably better. But it's capitalism that means that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That's it. All of the laws and the rules and the systems and the things that they're taught in the colleges and the schools and everything is to make the rich people rich and the poor people poor. And that's it. Middle class just going to be middle class from now on. And usually when somebody breaks out of the poor class and they get to be rich. They join that club and they don't look back and they don't do anything for the neighborhood, say anything. You can't touch them, you can't call them on the phone. They don't visit. They don't influence the kids. No matter whether they're white, Black or Hispanic. They just don't come around. A few of them do. And when they do come around, they're broke. When they have plenty of money, they come in the neighborhood at all. So in the 50s, like I say, there had to be Alan Freed who made. Yes, he took advantage of some people about the songs and the writing and everything. But he made more Black stars than anybody except for John R. Randy played the music when he was a kid, against the rules across the Black music over. And Black radio stations would play white records that sounded Black all the time. Tom Jones first records broke bigger in the Black market than they did in the white market. Elvis Presley's records sold more in the Black rock market than they did the white at first.

Dana Aritonovich [00:52:57] I was going to ask you about Elvis too, because a lot of people's perception these days, especially a lot of young people, have the perception that Elvis didn't have any Black fans.

Lou Ragland [00:53:08] Oh, he had tons of Black fans. And he had a Black backup group that he treated royally, bought them cars and everything he gave. He was more liberal to Black people than any of the other artists that I know of, period. They don't promote it because they don't keep it in his biography. They try to keep that out of him. But I mean, he had the. What is the name of those groups? Whitney Houston's mother was playing background in the group with him. I forgot what the name of that group is. And the drummer who I see right now for Touch of Silk, Elvis helped him buy his house, gave him the jackets, 18 karat gold watch, the TCB logo. He's got everything and pictures with him. All of that. You know, he got treated so well by Elvis because Elvis came from a position and a place. And Elvis biggest music writer was a Black guy. Otis Blackwell, return to sender All Shook Up Fever. This guy wrote all these songs that Elvis sang and sounded like Elvis. Elvis poured himself into this guy's. He would send a demo in and Elvis would mimic this guy, Otis Blackwell. If you bought any Otis Blackwell record right now, close your eyes, you hear Elvis.

Dana Aritonovich [00:54:49] And why do you think there are so many people who don't want to acknowledge that, you know, there were some white artists who just, you know, blatantly ripped off Black music and made it their own and didn't give anybody credit?

Lou Ragland [00:55:03] I don't know if they did anything like that. Like again, you go back to the establishment. Artists are usually just artists. They're not business people. They have nothing to do with Pat Bones. They don't have anything to do with what they tell them to record. The record companies, these guys who sit back there and scheme up on that stuff who are doing it today to promote people like 50 Cent and Lil Wayne and all these guys running around looking like they just crawled off of a. I don't know what. So I mean, you know, they took the class out of it. So, you know, Whitney Houston is about the only person standing up with clothes on and trying to sing and that type of thing like that. Beyonce is in between. I mean, she gets raunchy and naked and don't have to. She can sing good enough. Mariah Carey is the only one that holds it right to the line and it proves it. What? Sold more records to anybody. Yeah, well, that lets you know she doesn't have to get all naked, a little pink and when all those little people look evil and whatever their names, whatever their names are, I mean, you know, the talent should be enough. I mean, Snoop Dogg, what I guess. How do you make this guy a hero like that? Yeah, I mean, okay, everybody have to be somewhere. But man, not in the head of the class. You know, I can see you got these ice teas and ice cubes and my favorite hero of all time is Queen Latifah. Yeah, if I could take down anybody and marry them and have them belong to me and I get belong to them, it'd be Queen Latifah. She is just too sharp with her mother on in tow and where she moved from all the way across the board through the movies.

Dana Aritonovich [00:57:01] Yeah, that's the talent.

Lou Ragland [00:57:04] Just a talent. And I love it. And I mean, Ice Cube is right there to go all the way from the hip hop stuff and make the movies. His mouth is a little too raunchous. But comedians like Chris Rock and all them, I can't stand them to be able to influence the people and all they can do is spew out vulgar profanities. I mean, you have Bill Cosby giving you the example who made all this money by saying intelligent things that can happen. Why everybody want to be Richard Pryor? Well, that's enough for my soapbox. But I'm just saying the, the youngsters nowadays, it's not their fault. They're just influenced by the marketing people. That's it. And some of those marketing people have a real unscrupulous reason. Because in the economics of capitalism, poor people only get a chance to use the money. Once they make it, they spend it and go right back into the pool of the people who are rich. Rich people use the money four or five times. They don't pay their taxes hardly and they get everything. I mean, you go to the Grammys, everybody in there does not need them. Packages, give them to the poor. Same thing about our president. I mean, let me get on his case, because if you're going to give $860 billion out to the industry, why don't you give it to the people? It would have got spent back in three weeks, right back in the economy. We never would have had this downfall. That's right, because we wouldn't been investing. We would have been just paying our bills, doctor bills, buying food and groceries and new cars and all that kind of stuff. Wouldn't nothing happen. I mean, you'll give it to the same guys, buy it and hoard it and rue it and all that stuff, and then pretend you don't know how to get us out of it. Easy. It's our money anyway, right?

Dana Aritonovich [00:59:03] Yep.

Lou Ragland [00:59:04] Taxes. Give it back to us. Until you decide on what you're gonna do. We'll show you. Three weeks we would have had this money would have been flowing so much, they would have never even knew it was a depression or anything. Our music money is just another part of it. It's a little part now compared to movie money. Getting your songs in the movies and using our tunes like that, we're deliberately being left out. You got the same people who get all the money all the time. Smokey Robinson, he's got enough. He's not. Bring somebody up sober. Smokey Robinson, he went, I ain't mad at him, but he went. Got four white guys, call him Human Nature. He didn't get even a mixed group. I mean, he should have had two white or two black or something. Maybe he went and got these guys and put them in show and he backed them and that's it. No other group is doing anything. The Temptation don't have a new group. They're bringing to all the Drifters don't have anybody new. They're bringing on the Coaster. The only group that's bringing on new folk is the Ink Spots. Because of the third generation. And now, and I'm going to make sure we have a fourth generation. The brand name should go on. And even the Beatles did not have the New Beatles, they got tribute groups and all that. But they never did have another group that they brought along with. Look at all the people. Elton John. Elton, because he got helped by other people too. You know, you reach back and you make this thing flourish and you put some wheels on their cart so they can roll a little smoother. Especially in this business. It's going to be a while before it diminishes. My collection agency just spent the demeanor $900 million this year in recession. Wow. Emi, they sent me a paper out. They had a nerve to tell me that. But they won't come to Vegas and help me. This is my organization too, by the way.

Dana Aritonovich [01:01:14] Okay.

Lou Ragland [01:01:15] They won't come here, not one time and have any affair in Vegas where we could participate to hold our heads up. Not at all. Los Angeles, in New York and Atlanta, wherever else they going, but not Vegas. They won't come here. I don't know what the reason is. We got members here. Come on. Yeah, ASCAP, somebody come through here. BET comes through and they do that little thing here. But now he sold out. Bob Johnson belong to Viacom or somebody?

Dana Aritonovich [01:01:46] I think so.

Lou Ragland [01:01:47] Yeah. Yeah, that's one of those things. So it's a struggle in- I'll say it's 30, 70 fault. 30% fault of the Black entertainers and 70% of the establishment. Because we should have had our own museum, our own hall of fame, something to show the fans and the people who supported us. Other than three Cadillacs and four Jeeps and the Raptor and all the stuff that they got. I mean, how many cars you going to drive?

Dana Aritonovich [01:02:28] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:02:32] It's just one of those things. You just have to reach back and help people and get them involved. And Cleveland is a system that needs infusion of something in the entertainment business to help that flight out there. Now they don't know where to go. You have the O'Jays from Canton who give out scholarships and try a little bit, but their presence is not visible. And then they don't know the history. So you don't have Way out records being talked about, don't have Bodies records, Soul Kitchen or any of that thing being talked about. And these were the stepping stones everyone used to to get out, including myself. But I'm back there trying to make it work. If I had the big, big bucks, it would be presence that you would not believe. Because now the O'Jays recording and bodies recording. Howard Hewitt, James Ingram, just so many folk who recorded their Face and they got a break. They didn't pay the full Price, this guy wanted to see. And it was before Motown.

Dana Aritonovich [01:03:47] Why do you think we didn't have our own Motown? We had all this music going on here. We had a lot of talent in Cleveland at that time. Why didn't we have somebody like Barry Gordy in Cleveland? Do you think you have one?

Lou Ragland [01:03:57] But the knowledge wasn't here, okay? And wherever the knowledge was, they took it and sent it out. The Belcom Brothers grabbed people and they pushed around to Cleveland. They had Lord Lee and, you know, they just had all these people that. The Agora pushed Grand Funk Railroad away from us and sent them to California. You know, they cut my record off. Instead of having it worked from Cleveland. They cut it off and sent it to California. All the Motown people came over and grabbed folks and took them out. So they just didn't establish the industry here. I guess it was because the network was set someplace else. But you have New York that has its Atlantic Records that did something. You have the southern state that had Stax records that did something. And right next door was Motown. We should have had ours. But no. And it's not too late. Because if it's never been born, there's a chance for it to happen. For Cleveland to become a music mecca. You have so many people who's out of there who should come back and work with it. I thought that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was to be that entity, but it's not. They don't even have a Cleveland corner. How do you have a place in Cleveland, then? You have all these historical people who- Out in Cleveland. I mean, they finally put Bobby Womack in, okay? Harvey Fuqua is there. Because he might as well be from Cleveland. Because that's where the Moonglows established themselves at. And you have the Ohio Players and James Brown and all these folks. There's no reason why 100 square feet or 10 square feet is not dedicated to a permanent display for these talents. There's no reason for it.

Dana Aritonovich [01:05:57] You mentioned earlier when we were talking about people being kind of like a positive influence. You know, once they make it and they go back to the community and they try to do something. You know, because there are a few people who remember where they came from. But, you know, you're right. Most people, they make it and they're just. They're happy to be where they are and they're special, spending all their money. And one of the points that I made in an earlier version of this paper. I talked a lot about James Brown. And I talked about his concert in Boston the night that Martin Luther King was assassinated and how they aired it on the public radio or on the public television channel to try to keep everybody at home so there wouldn't be any riots. And, and actually when I mentioned this to somebody else I was interviewing last week and I hadn't heard about this, but I've since read a little bit. I think it was WABQ actually talked to the FCC, you know, at that time and got permission to be on air 24 hours during that time to try to do kind of a similar thing and keep people in Cleveland kind of cool and you know, so that we wouldn't have the same kind of issues. Of course we ended up having the issues anyway.

Lou Ragland [01:07:07] But it wasn't about that. And it really wasn't started about Black folks. It was about white folk who had insurance on properties around there and wanted to use that as the COVID to burn them up to get out. From what I remember and know a lot of people got compensated for setting stuff up and fire. If you look who owns, who owned the houses and the real estate and everything in the inner city of people where the riots was, it was, was not Black folks. Renters, renters. So and after that riot, you know, people got compensated and they got out and neighborhoods changed not for the better, but for the worse. Now Hough is has some million-dollar homes and everything and since Cleveland Clinic took it over. But what about when the folk who lived there and after that. Right. Why didn't one of the improvement in things to come in from it there wasn't designed like that? They didn't want it to be.

Dana Aritonovich [01:08:05] What do you remember about like the Hough Riots, the Glenville Riots? And part of my research, I'm looking at old issues of the Call and Post and the Plain Dealer and I'm comparing the way that each of them reported, you know, the events that led up to those riots. And in the Call and Post they were, especially in the Hough Riots, they were predicting that something was about to happen. And, and it was on the front page every week. There was somebody saying we got to do something before this explodes. And in the Plain Dealer, which is a daily paper, it was like all of a sudden there was a riot and nobody expected it. And it was such a huge difference in the way these two and I mean obviously they're going to have a difference. But it was just so ridiculous to me that the Plain Dealer just seemed to have no idea. There weren't even small stories saying, oh this is how happening this happened in June, you know, blah, blah, blah, and it's bizarre to me that, you know, and. Well, the Cleveland Press, too. I haven't looked at them yet. But what do you remember at that time, people talking about before those riots happened and even, you know, during the riots and, you know, the feeling in the air that, you know, white people didn't seem to think there was a problem. What was your impression before the riots happened? Did you think something might, you know, be stirring up? 

Lou Ragland [01:09:22] I didn't even know. And I was in the heart of it right there in Hough when the riots took place, off. And they never affected me because I wouldn't participate. The. The papers made it bigger than it was, okay? And I could sympathize with the Plain Dealer. Unless you have somebody living in the area or coming down there to see what's going on. How would you know? The Call and Post wanted to. Had another alternative motive for reporting some things, and they didn't come down there either. I mean, I lived on 88th and Hough, and I told the guys who were down there, and I owned the theater at that time at 105th, 105 and Superior with some guys, and we didn't have any problem. They went around us. There were pockets of issues that they tried to say was the entire neighborhood, and it was. Now, if you take anything that's negative and blow it up past the righteous stuff, you got what we have overseas right now about Afghanistan and all that kind of stuff. It cannot be all of what they're talking about, as everybody would be dead. You know what I mean? There are the good stories over there that should have come out. Anybody telling them? No. So neither one of them told the good stories. A friend of mine got killed in the Hough Riots in the '66 and then '68 riots was supposed to be all this. And then the Glenville riots, when they called it a riot, it was almost just a little spark compared to what could have happened. It wasn't like Detroit or Chicago when all those folks got killed and all that kind of stuff over there or down in Texas, Brownsville. It wasn't none of that, but to sell papers and to do whatever they were doing and push some other ideas over, that was it. Some people pulled themselves up by the bootstrap and got out of it and made it happen like that. When did Carl Stokes become the mayor of Cleveland? 68.

Dana Aritonovich [01:11:35] Yeah, he was elected '67. He took office like, I think January '68.

Lou Ragland [01:11:39] Okay? So now the Call and Post was trying to push for that. So they were making things happen. And if he could have did this and all that. Once Stokes got in there, he didn't do nothing for nobody hardly. I mean, it's just a shame about that. I mean, when I went to him, he was still the same old guy from East Tech who had a few things, but he played ball with other folk. And then when he got out, he still had the law office down there. He wouldn't help you. You know, he's almost the same thing now. You got Don King sitting up in there, right? Okay. Where's the help that he's going to give you as an individual? You can't sit down and talk and discuss anything intelligent with him because you ain't going to do it. Get yours like I got mine. And like he didn't have any help. That's it. He stands. When Don King stands on the podium, you see any friends with him, he stands alone.

Dana Aritonovich [01:12:33] That's true.

Lou Ragland [01:12:34] It's not even brothers and uncles. And you can't even see the growth around Don King. He should have an industry of people growing out of what he has done. He's got the Call and Post itself. I tried to go get archives about my travels through the Call and Post, and I had not kept them myself. I wouldn't have any history. You know, they threw this stuff in the garbage can. Wow. Our legacy. The only Black paper in Ohio of note. And they threw the history in a way before they made the move off 105.

Dana Aritonovich [01:13:08] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:13:08] And I don't even know why they had to get rid of that building. I thought it was theirs. So it's just amazing to me, the way you look at it and the way that people say it. And I. I'm not the average, so I couldn't. I don't even have a good. I'm not a good barometer. You can't say that. What I'm saying is it because I realize I'm special, that special things happen to me. And it started all the way back with my parents and my grandparents and how they treated me. And when I talked to other guys about what they did and what had to happen for them, I don't get the same story. I get this hardship and the prejudice and the fighting and all the things that had happened, you know, and I got the opposite of the story. Look, white folks helped me. And if it hadn't been for them, you know, I was saying like that because now some black folks was around me, but shoot, they didn't have anything to help me with. They had the desire, but they just didn't have anything to help me with. And when they did give it, they gave the support by being a fan and buying your records. But I think now, if you was to go in the neighborhood and try to find out anything about me, I'm gone. There's no place to find it. You, if the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not talking about all the stuff that I've done there. And I don't hardly believe it myself, except for I got newspaper articles that say it. First person to produce a record entirely in the entire city from A to Z, without going out to anyplace else was me. I made history, okay? The paper said it. I didn't see it. I didn't even know that's what it was.

Dana Aritonovich [01:15:03] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:15:03] I was just trying to do it the cheapest, most economical way I could. And everything was right there in Cleveland. And I must have introduced at least 30 people to BMI. How to get paid from your royal visa. I must have filled out over a thousand copyrights for folks just to try to get them in it and establish the Cleveland Music Association so that they could learn the business of it. Because it only take you to have one record. One record. And it doesn't even have to be a hit. It's just in the right place and you can live very good. I only have 20% of a good record. It's in the movie Vegas Vacation. And it's only played 1 minute and 8 seconds long. But, boy, that's a good 1 minute and 8 seconds for my royalties. And the images that were owned by other folk. I mean, I don't know how laws can do that. They take a picture of you and you can't get use of it anymore. And they have it. And even if they sign it away, somewhere along your image should belong to you or portion of it. You go to New Zealand and try to open up a company and own 100 of land and something in New Zealand, you get kicked out of there. You have to have a Maori, Indian or a native New Zealand person as your partner. You can come to the United States and buy the Empire State Building, right?

Dana Aritonovich [01:16:38] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:16:41] So I'm just saying what our rules and regulations had a little polio. We haven't had the vaccine. It's like that with me. I mean, this music business should be flourishing in Cleveland right now. And Superior, when I rolled down it, when I was there, just in September, Labor Day, I was there. Is that what it was? Labor Day? Yeah, Labor Day. I was amazed at how St. Clair and Superior looked compared to all of the things that are happening out Here in Vegas, these congressmen and council people out here are still saving the rich. They have a complex out here. I think it's 5 billion, maybe getting ready to be 10 billion. City Center, 18,000 jobs. 18,000 jobs. They saved it. They had the banks come. No, you're not going to let this project fold up. And it was one of the richest men in the world, two or three of them who own it. They're not even using their own money. They don't have to because the club of the politics or whatever it is say, oh, we can use this other money that's coming in. Obama, come on.

Dana Aritonovich [01:18:08] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:18:11] So there they there. I hope that I can help you with your paper, you know.

Dana Aritonovich [01:18:19] Oh, no, no, it's, it's. I mean, my paper covers a lot of different topics. So I'm asking everybody questions about music and about society and race and all kinds of stuff. So it's all going to fit in in some way. So you're good, you're good.

Lou Ragland [01:18:32] Well, the music is the only common thread that holds almost all of the folk together. I remember one time that I went with the O'Jays back in '68 or '69 to Stone Mountain, Georgia, which was the home of the Ku Klux Klan at that point. Do you know they ushered us in with machine guns, had us sing at a dance for the Grand Dragon's son?

Dana Aritonovich [01:19:01] Wow.

Lou Ragland [01:19:02] And paid us very well and ushered us out.

Dana Aritonovich [01:19:05] Wow.

Lou Ragland [01:19:08] They probably won't even tell nobody they did that, but it did.

Dana Aritonovich [01:19:13] How did you guys feel about that?

Lou Ragland [01:19:15] Yeah, I mean, the other thing that happened to me in 1967 was when I was with Grand Funk Railroad. Well, I wasn't with Grand Funk Railroad. I was with Terry Knight. We had a seven-piece band. I was the seventh member and I was the only chocolate guy in the group. I would travel with them and we would go play and do things and all that. And I remember they took me down South one time somewhere and I couldn't get served. They wrecked that place. They tore it up, put some money on the floor, $2,000 and said, here's the money they paid for it.

Dana Aritonovich [01:19:54] Wow.

Lou Ragland [01:19:55] Served the next person that came in there with some white guys, six white guys and me, Shoot, they wrecked that place. He can't eat in here, ain't nobody eating in here. They tore that place up. I wonder, did that ever make the news or anything?

Dana Aritonovich [01:20:08] No.

Lou Ragland [01:20:09] But $2,000 was a lot of money there themselves. They probably needed the repairs. Thanks for the demolition and repair money. Amazing. And I did learn the difference between white pay and Black pay in those days. The heaviest thing I carried in 1967 was two guitar picks. They tuned my guitar. I had two of them onstage. They carried the guitars; they put them in place. All I had to do was just go onstage and play. And I met Sammy Davis Jr. I met Ed McMahon. And I saw how they would buy acts up in New York at a club called the Bitter End. It was a dinky little place with just elementary-school desk-type desks in them, with the arm that comes around, you know, that comes around so you have a place to write. Yeah. And all of these buyers were triple-parked with limousines and drivers and cars, came to see this guy sing every night. And they hired him. And I think that was the first year he must have made his million dollars. And then he came back and he bought Grand Funk Railroad. Well, then it was the Pack— Terry Knight and the Pack. And all this happened in 1967. So when I left them and was waiting for the next gig, I came back, and I had enough skill to manage the O'Jays. I was able to become their road manager for two years and be able to negotiate contracts and set up billboards and marquees to welcome us in, get draws so that we didn’t run out of money in the middle of the week. We could actually go pick some up, you know, improve the salary and the income. And then I wrote a little booklet on them. So it's a lot of good things, like I said, that happened to me along with the bad things. Billy Ward and His Dominoes was one regret that I have, where he paid me $400 a week, $300 for rent and gave me $100. He just said that that's how he was. And because I asked to have my name on the record is the reason why I wasn't in the group anymore. Yeah. And it’s the only group that I know of that don't have two people running around talking about Billy Ward and His Dominoes. One group, maybe many members, but it’s the only guy that owned everything. And the day I joined Billy Ward and His Dominoes was the day the Hough riot broke out. Oh, 1965, whatever day that was. The Hough riot started. I came in on a train and went straight to 1721 Hollywood Boulevard, the Garden Court Apartments. Still remember the address, Dana. See that?

Dana Aritonovich [01:23:23] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:23:23] Because that was impressive to me to see that this Black guy owned this building in the middle of Hollywood. Like, oh man, right across from the Roosevelt Hotel. I couldn't believe it.

Dana Aritonovich [01:23:42] What's the first song that you remember hearing that had any kind of like a political or a social message that was kind of reflective of the times?

Lou Ragland [01:23:55] Sly and the Family Stone Stand.

Dana Aritonovich [01:23:57] Oh, yeah, that's a good one. And what do you remember about the first time you heard that?

Lou Ragland [01:24:07] I wish I had wrote it. I wish I could have been in the group and singing it with him. How did this guy come up with these songs? Almost all of his I Am Everyday People. Wasn't that nice talking about the Black one. Different Folks. I mean, he just. He had to be a giant in those days about that. And then the rest of it started with Kenny Gamble and now Love Training. You know, all of the stuff that they did where they talked about that, but Sly and the Family Stone them. They were the first ones that got it. The first sexually record that was too expensive for them to pick up the radio at first. And they had to play it with 60 Minute Man. If you listen to it now, it was just. You can't even hear the sexual connotation in it. Yeah, you better be compared to Prince.

Dana Aritonovich [01:25:15] What do you think is the- I can ask this in, like, kind of two parts. What do you think the legacy of this music and all of this music is? You know, it comes from Black roots. You know, whatever form it took, you know, over the years, it all comes from, you know, from Black roots. What do you think the impact of that music has been on society in general and, you know, and on the Black community as far. You know, as far as helping to create sort of a Black identity? Do you think there's any relationship there between the music?

Lou Ragland [01:25:50] I don't think that there has never been a doubt about Black identity. I think that from the Black music, the whites established a white identity. That's what the difference is. I think it went the other way. They took part of the music and adapted it and made their own. It's sort of like how bluegrass comes from the classical and country and all that stuff. They just got it and liked it and nurtured it and kept it going just like Motown should have. They did once. Very good. He sold it. It fell off the class. And the kind of music and all that. It'll never be another Motown like that. It can be. I mean, Gamble and Huff kind of took it over. And then they got knocked off the pedestal, too. They. They were the next ones. Each one of them had a Solar Record, Stax Records. And what was the name of Sound of Philadelphia?

Dana Aritonovich [01:26:57] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:26:58] Well, for some reason they stopped. They ended up being the club. They're still competing with the new guys that day, that ain't helping nobody do anything that I can see. You can't even talk to them. You can't call them up on the phone after you've been talking to them for all these years. You can't call them up and talk to them. They don't let no new members in the club talk to their sons. And the sons don't like it. You don't get to them. Look at this guy, just paid out half a million. I mean, he. He fought for $10 million and he gave 500. He gave 5 million points up there up to the government for taxes. Before he could even see the check. Somebody did something wrong. And that's Mayweather.

Dana Aritonovich [01:27:47] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:27:48] How can you not do the right thing and have this money come back through the community and do something that. But he don't even care, does that. You got a record company with no artists in it and won't let you in, and they don't give you any call. You hit the ball across the net and your ball is just still on the ground. And when they see you don't even spend enough time adding a function that he's supposed to be at for kids to get autographs of the Seat of Nothing, and all of them end up doing the same thing after they make hundreds of millions of dollars, they forget about the folk who made them and they won't come back and deal with them. You look at Holy Field, the only person that I know that still goes on and does something for him is the guy out of Easton, Pennsylvania, Larry Holmes. He went back and did the whole town over. And this other guy. Who? This Black country singer in Texas. Got two banks down there. Oh, I can't think of it now. He was the only Black. Charlie Pride.

Dana Aritonovich [01:28:59] Charlie Pride? Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:29:01] Charlie Pride must have a heck of a story.

Dana Aritonovich [01:29:04] Yeah, he must. Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:29:06] How he do that? You know what I mean?

Dana Aritonovich [01:29:10] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:29:12] How did you do that? Charlie Pride. But you did it and I'm glad. Something else. And he comes to Vegas.

Dana Aritonovich [01:29:22] Oh, yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:29:22] But he won't come and talk to our kids. No, you know, just. Just a few people who come through. We got Antonio Fargus. He comes through.

Dana Aritonovich [01:29:34] Oh, really?

Lou Ragland [01:29:36] He comes through and talk to our kids and everything.

Dana Aritonovich [01:29:39] Oh, I love him.

Lou Ragland [01:29:40] You got D. Cobbs. He comes through and talk to our kids. Just stops and talks to him.

Dana Aritonovich [01:29:48] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:29:48] Give them some insight. You know, he. I took him out to lunch the other day at the Texas station and everybody in there knew who he was and he acknowledged everybody talked to Him. He said good night to him as we left and hello to him. And that's a real type of guy. You know, he comes in hotel, but do you think the hotel owners even want to know who he is and want to see him? No. Don't even care if he was in there. It's really amazing to me about the way this business is. It can be better. I'm going to try to do my part and I see you doing yours. And I'm glad that you letting somebody like this old man express himself in rage, get a little bit out of it and hopefully that you can use some of this.

Dana Aritonovich [01:30:43] Absolutely. I mean, part of what I'm trying to talk about is what the role of art in general and music specifically is supposed to be in society. And it sounds like you think that these artists do have an obligation to go back and help the people who made them what they are.

Lou Ragland [01:31:01] The art and the music help save mostly everybody I know from penitentiary, being poor, off the welfare lines legitimately. And I can see why they said they're going to put some money in the Arch, but they need to take the politics out of it so that the money gets down to the folk who are in the Arch, not the administrators. Hardly any of that money for the arch trickles down to us at all. And if you try to do something for yourself, they put on so many stipulations, you can't. I mean, if you look at the Grammy roll and listen to the same people over and over and over and over and over. We still battling Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones. What have you got to do in this? Back up, get out. You have enough of it. I mean, you know, come on, you guys. Bring some new guys on. It should be a rule that if you get a Grammy the next year, you have to bring somebody else in. And then you need to take off four years or five years or something just like the mayors. I don't get your, your government officials have so many years they can run.

Dana Aritonovich [01:32:18] Yeah, term limits. Yeah, yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:32:20] But in this, this field, after I make $10 million, I won't need any more money to do anything with, you know, and almost everybody around me is going to be saved.

Dana Aritonovich [01:32:33] Exactly.

Lou Ragland [01:32:35] And that's probably why they won't let me make it so that I can do that, because they need four people to make. To blame something on. You gotta have the half gun, sea crime and all that. It amazes me that when you can bust a little guy for 2 or 3 grams and maybe an ounce or 3 ounces, or whatever it is. But you can't stop the guy from two tons of whatever comes in from on the ship and get until it gets to the little guy. You don't even want to put enough people on the shipping containers to even look inside them. There's no telling what might come into this country from them. And the people who investigate us for our health and the food and those things that really would make society be much safer. Airlines and all that, they're understaffed. Just the things that will help us do something. We just lucky. I mean, how did this guy get in to kill these people in the army?

Dana Aritonovich [01:33:42] Yeah.

Lou Ragland [01:33:44] I mean, look at what the guy hollers. And look at him. I mean, I mean, somebody should have been standing beside him all the way through. How you going to get in to kill our boys right on in the training ground when they're supposed to be the happiest and you got a guy and holler and a loud walk by shooting folks. Get out of here. I mean, this just like I'm saying, again with the music business, there's no need for a lot of people to complain about the hip hop ness. If they're not going to help the judge and they're not going to help the real music folks do anything, they just don't say anything. And that's the reason why he's flourishing, that Simon Cowell. He's got something going.

Dana Aritonovich [01:34:30] Absolutely.

Lou Ragland [01:34:31] His music is music. I mean, everybody come on there, sing a song. They're singing real music and real songs. I see why the ratings are so high on it and all that. It's just magnificent what they're doing.

Dana Aritonovich [01:34:47] And what do you think it is about the music that, that you play and that you grew up with? What is it about that music that, you know, we still listen to it because a lot of, you know, most of the people who are on the radio now, we're not going to be playing the records in 40, 50 years. Why do you think that that music from, you know, '50s, '60s, '70s is still with us?

Lou Ragland [01:35:07] Because they have great stories, great melodies, and they relate to something that the people people know about. That's why I told you I love "Sixteen Tons of Number-Nine Coal." I mean, when he did that another day over deeper in debt, I mean, everybody recognized that. That's what's happened to us. You know, when this coal miner was out there getting on these bricks, the chain game. When it came out, you sent me every. Everybody wanted to be in love, right? So is it my girl Everybody wants to talk about My girl. The way you do the things you do. Everybody can sing that. Whether you sing or not, the story is true. You have somebody you want to tell that to. It's such good messages and it's almost like the classical music without any words. The Mozarts, the Chopins, and all of those folks like that. When I turn on that and listen to that music, it's so much to it. You can just hear the guy and you wonder how did he sit at this age and put all of that music down? Did he even know it was going to sound like that or what the people who interpreted playing. It's both. It's both. Marvin Gaye. What's going on? How does rascal like that bad as he was. If you got to be something, if you got to make your father kill you, right? Yeah. He didn't want to shoot him in the leg or the toe or nothing. He just want to kill him. I mean, you know, you got a son that you're trying to get him off you or whatever it is. You do not have to shoot this death shot unless you just want to kill him. And maybe he did something enough to. To make that happen, you know. And how do you be Michael Jackson in the room with a doctor and die? Yeah, that's what that one out, you know, four or five people investigating that. The FBI should be in the middle of that.

Dana Aritonovich [01:37:20] Absolutely.

Lou Ragland [01:37:23] Somebody else is going to get that catalog. It's going to get dispersed. And no matter what they said he still had most of all the big music in his catalog. At any time you could, you could arrest. What's this guy's name? Rollover Beethoven.

Dana Aritonovich [01:37:41] Oh, Chuck Berry.

Lou Ragland [01:37:42] Chuck Berry. And you can lock him up for some of the stuff that he did, and you can do all that, other things. But you can't stop Michael and the doctors and all these people. And you see what's happening. You got him - you got this child thing on him - and you had to see he was- He just came from the hospital in his pajamas. Now, somebody had to know. Yeah, this guy wasn't standing on the right ledge. All these folk around him, to let that happen at 50 years old, that's just - nah, I don't like that one.

Dana Aritonovich [01:38:18] Well, it's, it's the same thing that happened to Elvis. Elvis is only 42. He had the same kind of people around who don't want to say anything because they're, they're getting a lot of money off this person. You know, whether they have, you know, true love for that person, but they're making their living off that person. And it's kind of to their benefit almost to keep them, you know, kind of messed up like that, you know, and sometimes people, when they're addicts, they don't want to hear it. And it's unfortunate that. That people don't want to, you know, kind of separate themselves in that. In that situation, you know, and it's-It's a tough thing, but when you're famous, you can get whatever you want. If. And if, you know, you don't like somebody, you can just get rid of them like that and not think twice about it. And that. That's, you know, that's. And that's not even the industry. I mean, it's the industry's fault, but it's not. I mean, some of those people were probably messed up before they became famous, and they didn't have real people around them their whole lives, you know, and like. Like Michael Jackson, I mean, he was five years old and he was working and supporting his family, and he never had it. He never had a normal life. He didn't know how. He didn't know it was normal. That was normal for him. You know, It's- It's a sad way to live.

Lou Ragland [01:39:42] Well, I'm thankful for folks like you, and I hope that they helped you. I'm gonna get off of you and get to my little dinner.

Dana Aritonovich [01:39:47] Okay. Well, thank you so much. I really. I really do appreciate you taking the time out tonight. And I got some- I took like, five pages of notes and we talked for a little over an hour and a half. So I think I got some good stuff.

Lou Ragland [01:40:01] And I hope that when I get my little financing, that maybe I can convince you for us to do a book together.

Dana Aritonovich [01:40:07] Absolutely. I would love that. I would love that.

Lou Ragland [01:40:10] I think we can get it financed and I think we can pull something together. We can start with that. You did this interview, and I get a sponsor to put us some bucks in our hand and sit down and really get it together.

Dana Aritonovich [01:40:24] I could use that. For sure.

Lou Ragland [01:40:26] We'll work on it.

Dana Aritonovich [01:40:27] Thank you, Lou. I appreciate your time tonight.

Lou Ragland [01:40:30] Okay. Bye. Bye.

Dana Aritonovich [01:40:31] Thank you. Bye. Bye.

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