TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL: I WAS A TEENAGE BOOKING AGENT, SNARING LEGENDARY 1960s BAND KALEIDOSCOPE for my High School Prom!

(now out of order, but what was second in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with their own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.) 

I was a teenage booking agent! Or at least I flexed the right connections and pulled it off. My reluctant date for my high school (prep school) prom (see above yearbook photo of body language miserableness, the fellow second from right next to yours truly teenaged edition, faces disguised to protect the innocent. The curious may follow this LINK* ) was the nephew of Classic Hollywood actress Loretta Young, in a large Catholic family of good looking cousins, one of whom was David Lindley. 

Lindley remains well known for his versatility on assorted instruments which has bolstered his career as solo artist and side person/session person for assorted A List musicians like Jackson Browne. In the 1960s, he graced the now legendary band Kaleidoscope, known for pleasantly foisting its extremely eclectic tastes in myriad styles at unsuspecting audiences, as well as earned reputation for fabulous musicianship in also pleasantly foisted exotica instruments like ouds for their mideastern selections, or fiddles and mandolins for country songs, then as rare as hen's teeth in '60s psychedelic rock bands.  They released four albums of eclectica for Epic Records, a reasonable legacy.

I was dancing and trying to recalibrate my miserable prom date so no photos by me. But the one above does document my classmates trying to boogaloo and frug to Kaleidoscope tunes like "O Death," (Ralph Stanley's bluegrass classic) or to the tabla rhythms of "Egyptian Gardens." Our equally unlikely locale for this great band? How this happened escapes my Swiss Cheese memory, but, dear readers, it was indeed The Daisy Club in Beverly Hills, only the the most exclusive private club for exclusive entertainment biz types in the exclusive 1960s. Courtesy of  Michael Snider, for directing one and all to showbiz archivist extraordinaire Allison Martino's "Vintage Los Angeles," well illustrated  Daisy history piece, see LINK**

 

 

*  http://fastfilm1.blogspot.com/2010/06/charisma-asserts-early-in-hollywood.html

** https://martinostimemachine.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-daisy-in-beverly-hills-daisy-which.html

KARIN SPRITZLER SINGS and EVERYTHING!

 

(Tenth in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with its own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.)
 
She was my immediate classmate at the Westlake School for Girls but she was more everything than me: a better, purer fine artist, prettier, better hair, better figure, more outgoing, more eccentric, with an even more dysfunctional family than my own, chock full of catastrophic deaths, evil step-parents and utter abandonments. With a class full of non-artistic science, literature, history and maths scholars, we just had to click as friends and did. As yearbook art director, I even made her photos the "theme" of every section's graphics with my friend doing something interesting each time.

Despite the machinations of our unaccountably inept college advisor who sent every  student as far away to hither and yon no matter how inappropriate the locale to each one -- arty Karin had been sent to the rust belt of Pittsburgh PA (!) and promptly skedaddled as had virtually every other student transferring away immediately -- we managed to keep somewhat in touch over the intervening 45+ years since graduation and class diaspora.

So imagine the delight when my friend from prep school all those eons ago invited me to her solo singing debut. I had known she had a resonant, bigtime pro voice, something of an improbable mashup of Nina Simone and Patsy Cline with just a soupÇon of melismatic trill: I had recommended her to my late friend Mason Buck to sing on his demos as far back as the 1970s. What I didn't know, despite her frequent jams with Los Angeles mainstays like singer/songwriter, slightly retro, all exuberant Suzy Williams, is that my friend never had tackled a solo gig heretofore.  

So on 8.22.15 at the Unurban Cafe in Santa Monica, California, Karin Spritzler sang a great, genuinely eclectic repertoire of unusual covers and originals backed by a jazz trio consisting of Peter Marshall on standup bass, John Rosenberg and Brad Kay on keyboards, drummer, and Karin on keyboard for two of her own compositions.  The sterling material absolutely transported her and the audience along with her via very emotional delivery of works heretofore associated with Peter & Gordon, Randy Newman and Perry Como!

Set List: GOSPEL SHIP - gospel standard
CATCH A FALLING STAR - Paul Vance/Lee Vocknis
I'M SORRY- Ronnie Self/Dub Albritten
I'M JUST WONDERIN' BABY - Suzy Williams
MAYBE -- Freddie Ginns
LOVER MAN -Jimmie Davis/Roger Ramirez
NAKED MAN - Randy Newman
IF YOU CAN DREAM - Karin Spritzler
WHO YOU ARE - Karin Spritzler
WHAT KIND OF MOON - Karin Spritzler
WORLD WITHOUT LOVE - Paul McCartney/John Lennon
DON'T KNOW WHY - Norah Jones

Entitled "I'm Singing For You With A Heart That's True," it really was a pretty cool show. She exhibited a performing tic similar to one I observed in the late, extremely great Laura Nyro: she babbled a trifle neurotically before the show began, disarming the audience who then would be ill-prepared for the full-throttled blasts of vocals and emotions to come. But respond they did and how: two flower bouquets and an on their feet audience for her encore. Note that happy girl above! Of my photos herein of my contemporary from the paisley mists of the 1960s, a former major label PR bigwig noted, "She looks like Stevie Nicks wishes she looked today."

Two snippets of her next to last song:

TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL 9.0: FAUNA

 (Ninth in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with its own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.)

Tales told out of school: above, Orville the Westlake School for Girls goat mascot. Orville had been trailered from the ranch of Cindy C.'s family, and when mature enjoyed running through the halls and upstairs, plus butting his head against hapless students. He thrived until joined by other goats, which inevitably attracted the predator coyotes ensconced around the wilds of Holmby Hills and Bel Air, California.

Above, the new section I instituted in the school yearbook, "Kennel" for all the dogs on campus owned by the staff and on site headmaster's family. I was art director for the yearbook: imagine the surprise of the staff photographer (because she had the most sophisticated gear) when commanded to take portraits of all the resident dogs...

R.I.P. SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK- Tales Told Out Of School 8.0

(Eighth in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with its own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.)

Highly accomplished, wildly popular actress and United States Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslavakia Shirley Temple Black passed away today. She not only was sufficiently trustworthy to represent her country as ambassador, but also survived extreme child stardom with her head on straight. After a brief teen marriage to handsome John Agar, (an understandable quest for an adult identity,) her next marriage to Charles Alden Black lasted for 54 years, with a normal family life, much philanthropy, work for the Republican party and, to her infinite credit, she was amongst the first celebrities to speak openly about her own breast cancer in 1973.

Ms. Temple as child star with equine friend.

My mother's aunt's daughter went to the Westlake School for Girls at the same time as Ms. Temple Black. The main stories filtering through were that a) she was nice and b) the school stables and horses were situated at the nearby Bel Air Hotel grounds, with students riding down Sunset Boulevard. Ancient history: today Sunset Blvd. is just another winding, congested corridor of West Los Angeles so dangerous that pedestrians can not even cross for that same span from school to hotel; however, the Westlake school uniforms did not change from the tenure of Shirley (pic at top in prep school mufti, circa the 1940s) to my own era (below pic, yours truly circa the 1960s, posing with the school newspaper reporters. I was staff cartoonist.) Carrying hefty bookloads of homework appears to have been a common denominator from the 1940s through 60s...

TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL 7.0- R.I.P. PETER O'TOOLE

 

(Seventh in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with its own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.)

Today brought news of the death of rightfully acclaimed, international stage and screen actor Peter O'Toole, aged 81, and with it wistful memories circa 1962/3 at my prep school. For those were the salient years following the release of David Lean's epic film Lawrence of Arabia starring the young and then unknown O'Toole. The above photos from our 1963 yearbook chronicle the immediate fad of Arabism blossoming at alma mater solely due to the O'Toole charisma, what with wearing of keffiyeh headgear and bernooses galore to class amidst much quoting of T.E. Lawrence' "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom."  

Why?  Take a gander at yon vintage heartthrob below left, all Valentino eyes and exotica. 

Left, Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia; right, the real T.E. Lawrence

The Lawrence portrayal with all his intensity, otherworldliness and youthful tall, blond, blue-eyed great looks may have launched a sixty year career of the RADA-trained actor inclusive of many a lively period piece like Becket and The Lion in Winter, but his later canon excelled as well. 1982's My Favorite Year with his comic turn as a soused Errol Flynn-alike on a 1950s variety show and 2006's study of the complexity of elderly emotions in Venus remain personal faves. 

Bonus points: his father was an Irish bookie named Spats O'Toole; his first wife Sian Phillips often specialized in acting roles of delicious wickedness, as in her Livia of I, Claudius and Anne, wayward wife of George Smiley in the Alec Guinness series ("love to Anne. Everybody's love to Anne!") 

Tales Told Out Of School 6.0: the professional teen model

(Sixth in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with its own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.)

I googled the name of a onetime Westlake School for Girls classmate, and found these. At the time I knew she was a professional teen model and she seemed quite worldly, as opposed to faux mature, with her sultry voice and scenester presence alongside known musicians on the Sunset Strip of the mid-1960s (a good place to be in the world then.) I admired her retaining her ultra-long-haired, hipster signature look in a business that mandated cookie-cutter similitude of ultra-square beauty queens thought to appeal to Middle America, even in the swingin' '60s (think teenaged Sally Field. Not her fault, Ms. Field wanted to work. And has.) 

It indeed is she, Denny Howard (not Sally Field,) in the above photo (photographer unknown) plus the first actor seen in this music video below and go-go dancing throughout. She sports brunette pigtails to look more "wholesome" although belied by the arched eyebrows over those smokey eyes and her longer than surfer-girl hair. Both the video star and subject matter remain, strangely after 47 years, still relevant. I have no idea what became of her after her singular semester at Westlake in 1966. Behold, a video starring a well-known Vulcan with Denny and the Malibu-ettes frugging and ponying their shingalings off in the tv show "Malibu U," a clip that is both groovy and awful...

 

Click:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC35cQKHwzg

 

NOTE: link directly back to http://fastfilm1.blogspot.com if all elements such as photo layouts or videos aren't here.

TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL 5.0: SALLY RIDE, two solutions, and mortality

Handwriting reads: Pig (?!?) this drawing repays you for the 5 weeks I had to suffer in lab. Say hello to Jerry (Gerald P. Mathers) for me. Sally

I won't pretend that we were friends, in my understanding of the word now. We were classmates in prep school wherein everyone knew one another because of small class sizes. Today, Sally Ride became, to my knowledge, the third person from my graduating class to pass away.

Earlier this afternoon, former astronaut Sally Ride rightfully was celebrated and eulogized by the President of the United States for being role model extraordinaire as the first female American astronaut in space. After getting a passel of graduate degrees and doctorates at Stanford University, she had applied to NASA as a lark and the rest, literally and figuratively, is history.

At top is her inscription in one of my school yearbooks. The oblique sentences refer to 1) my torturing her with bad puns or humming the song "Mustang Sally" (with its chorus of "...ride, Sally, ride!") during our stint as lab partners in dissection of a fetal pig (named Sir Francis Bacon) (no opt out in those days) and 2) my having set her up on a blind date with my then friend Jerry Mathers, star of the Leave It To Beaver television series.

There's an actual correlation. Most checking the obits won't read that Sally even as a teen had a sense of humor as advanced as her other attributes. For her Senior Personal Quotation underneath her official Senior yearbook portrait, she further mangled surreal existentialism a la Sartre/Descartes into, "I do not think, therefore I am a mustache." Jerry, an acting pro used to his place in the center of attention, proffered great wit for a young person as well. As God is my witness I thought they'd get along great. And I couldn't have been more wrong. Disastrous double date, with half the parties attempting to smoke bananas. It was, after all, the 1960s.

The first classmate to check out from our class did so within a few years of our graduation, dying in a motorcycle crash abroad. The second, married to a State Dept. bigwig, herself a journalist and personal assistant to Hillary Clinton, at least managed a further four and a half decades after our prep school for her own life of myriad accomplishments.

I remember many fun times at school with the first, and also with Sally, a great sport in two senses of the words as she was there on a tennis scholarship, plus she and I shared being the two youngest in class, her from skipping grades and me from the wacko bible elementary school I first attended not being able to calculate age properly.

My memories of the second in our class to die however are impeded by her tacit disapproval of me all throughout our school years. Ultra-bright and multi-talented in all the curricula, she was rewarded scholastically as she would be later in life: her intelligence was quantifiable.

In retrospect, I was off the radar for someone like her, since I excelled in something undervalued in that environment, visual creativity. Besides one measly art class, there was neither attention paid to nor rewards to be garnered for being as talented in the arts as there would have been for someone with 800 scores on each of the English and Mathematics S.A.T. tests.

No mentors, no recognition for the arty gifted in this "corporate culture" which pervaded student body and faculty alike. (Warm and witty Sally either didn't buy into it or didn't care, hence our personal interactions.) It fell upon a few of the more observant teachers here and there even to perceive this undercurrent.

There was a French teacher who playfully would mis-translate texts (e.g. "I'm worried my wife's baby is not mine. And it's not. It's a baby dragon") which made me sufficiently comfortable to offer novel twists on his homework assignments to complete same, translating songs of the era like "Hey Mr. Spaceman" by The Byrds into French to watch the class and him giggle at les petits hommes verts.

I wasn't even aware that he'd seen through my joking to get myself through the school days and back to my art (I drew all the time at home with rock music playing for much needed distraction/counterbalance to tune out copious badness, and tried to teach myself photography without having any suitable equipment) until he wrote the following yearbook inscription (same page as Sally's) below. He was right: I did find it more and more difficult. And I never forgot him either.

Excellence is excellence, no matter which solution. Rest in peace, Dr. Sally K. Ride, justly celebrated for her accomplishments, rightly honored in history.  She had a great sense of humor.

Handwriting reads: A dreamer like you will find it more and more difficult to face reality so here is the advice of someone who knows, either face reality or don't. There are always two solutions. It took me many years of wise teaching to come to this conclusion. As for your notion of time, well we have that in common. But then there are many other people who divide time for those who don't. As for your imagination, you have it. It may turn out to be your greatest asset or your greatest peg leg. It was wonderful to have you in class. I will not forget you and I thank you for all your spirit and dreams. You are a very rare person. Bonne chance et merci. Marco Hauert

TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL 4.0, extended musical edition with ad hoc lighting tests

Rare 1966 shot of teenaged, school uniform-clad Fastfilm camping it up at as an uber-hippie and scattering flower petals for Gentle Thursday, a made up holiday to celebrate all things Flower Power fabricated by a student body who loved to make up bogus occasions and actually carry them through (see LINK.)

It was a song from this era that influenced my two years in the future nom de plume/guerre when I first was published locally and nationally. The exact track is LINK with its invocation of purple heather. My beleaguered teenaged self really liked the idea of pairing escape and romance (albeit ephemeral-- note he's got contingency lassies lined up) alongside the exotica of a far off land of cool mists instead of heatstroke-inducing L.A.

It wasn't quite so popular a name back in the Pleistocene when I chose it. For that I blame Louise Lasser's monotone intoning, with bonus diphthongs, to her character's daughter, "Heather...He-a-ther..." on the popular Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman faux soap tv show of the late '70s.

Vintage '70s apparel in selfsame '70s Venice home with Lucretia Borzoi and houseguest Francoise. Photo by Olivier Vuille.

More late '70s musical rumination: LINK a rare example of superb arranging in background orchestration of a pop hit. This so serves the great elements already there- sardonic lyrics of denial vs. dreams underneath that radio-friendly melody, crying seagulls lead guitar riffs and that glistening saxophone solo that still gives me chills every time I hear it.* Compare to live version LINK- still atmospheric, but invariably less so. Denial vs. dreams loomed all too large in my late 1970s preoccupations. Frequent nightmares of watching helplessly as canyons burned out of control so mirrored lives close to my own.

Mr. Twister and me emerge from the 1970s, summer 1980, "...when you wake up it's a new morning..."

Cut to another rare snapshot of us together at a photo exhibit opening in the mid-2000s above, since we are far more likely to be photographing one another separately, as with both shots below, taken in our current studio. My picture of Twister in the early 2000s was a Polaroid taken as a test shot to eschew guesswork for Agfa Portrait medium format negative film before it was processed. His of me tried out some of my newer digital upgrades in 2009.

Such portraits are ad hoc light tests or that of new camera/studio equipment, hence our tres casual appearance (and in my case disheveled since I'd been moving lighting and backdrops around on the most sweltering night of that year in preparation for the next day's shoot LINK. The A/C in the studio only hits the portrait subject.) But these days it's far better to be exhausted from working on my own art in real life than to be daydreaming of cool, misty exotic escapes as in my teenaged years...

Photo (C) 2009 Kurt Ingham

*the casual U.S. radio fans were probably unaware of the ironic backstory of the iconic sax part. The 1978 hit earned its writer/performer a comfortable 80,000 pounds per annum for the rest of his life, but its session paid saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft 80 pounds for his own contribution to that perfect pop moment with a checque that bounced, eventually framed by his solicitor.

TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL 3.0: in which we hear a jazz great

(Third in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with its own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.)

Shhhh, I'm trying to reconstruct a memory here, as there's no verification online, nor in the pertinent school yearbooks nor amongst those left alive to tell the tale.

I really think it was Les McCann who gave a performance/seminar on jazz piano-playing for one of our school assemblies (meeting hall-type confluence of the entire student body for mandatory entertainment: "chapel" was the morning intel gathering for same.) It was a friendly, powerfully funky, improv-jazz pianist with massive groove to spare that I recall, the timeline fits, and hey, like, who else?

Further clarification: chapel featured the procession by music of the entire school into an auditorium for announcements, all to live piano accompaniment of Protestant Christian hymns. The one time I was asked to play, I proffered "Mellow Yellow" by Donovan (a very druggy chart hit of the 1960s) in order not to be asked again. McCann aside, school assemblies followed more along the lines of the pictures below (photographers unknown) mixing lectures, travelogues, science talks or humorous skits. Wooly Bully!

Although this was a lilly-white exclusive private school for girls at the time, Mr. McCann would have been the epitome of a good sport for even showing up much less wanting to entertain us. Or maybe it was his sense of humor at play, as he was associated with the Westlake School of Music (no relation.) He was witty, gracious beyond comprehension, and so very engagingly warm to a student body 98% bereft of jazz knowledge (the percentage reflects the smallness of the school, the 2% sole exception being "Ms. R.F." whose senior yearbook personal profile description included "Yusef Lateef...Pensativa...A Love Supreme...the melodic, lyrical, powerful sounds of jazz" and for bonus points of a good topical, Malcolm X-ish fervor, "...Burn, baby, burn!" [motto of the Watts riots.])

Now you can un-shhhh, turn up the sound and listen*: fuckin' A this is great!! Sit back, enjoy, and don't let those uncontrollably stompin' to the beat feet knock over your furniture. There's two Youtubes forthwith for your Eddification ( hah hah, more later ) the first being the actual performance, and the second just a still photo for visuals but with far better stereo sound. ( Amazing backstory follows both. )

The cut was recorded live at the 1969 Montreux, Switzerland Jazz Festival pretty much ad hoc when its promoter brokered a jam combining separate acts. This band had never played together with all heard here--Les McCann: piano, vocals; Eddie Harris: tenor sax; Benny Bailey: trumpet; Leroy Vinnegar: bass; Donald Dean: drums,--had no sound check whatsoever, and didn't know the material planned for the set. McCann really hadn't been a full-time singer in his musical forays at all. And Eugene McDaniels' song of casual frustration from the African-American community boiling over into rage at society at large had been written two years before by a former pop crooner (then Gene McDaniels recording "100 Pounds Of Clay," etc.) turned activist, and only previously recorded as a sincere but plain piano, midtempo ditty by Roberta Flack.

 
And yet...this erupted. Wowza! Lashing, slashing, hunk of funk stabbing staccato beats born of righteous indignation and talent delighted to be playing with fellow superstars. So instantaneously classic at its inception that the album of same, "Swiss Movement" charted bigtime immediately and this cut became an improbable crossover singles hit. This was the first mainstream radio broadcast song I for one ever heard with curse words left intact within. And I even love it despite its stray anti-dog-owner lyric. Such remains the power of its torrid groove.
 
McCann, much constrained by the infirmities of old age, still performs live with a band, bless his heart. And now, for some conjecture concerning the late Eddie Harris (no relation.)
 
Insofar as we visual artists often try on another's style to see how it's done, I've always suspected musicians do the same. It can be unknowingly ( i.e., George Harrison having to cough up royalties to "He's So Fine" for his similarly tuned "My Sweet Lord," ) or completely unsubstantiated, obscure, subjective speculation such as my contention that "Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground might have been influenced by Eddie Harris' "Listen Here."** Again, the timeline certainly fits. The Harris' also improbable crossover singles hit here:

and below***, for brevity's as well as humor's sake (the original V.U. "Sister Ray" runs about 17 minutes) is the clever Lawrence Welk mashup with the Velvet Underground (with John Cale a much changed man...)

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsHtO_i4qzM
**** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i48BP1PUoFI

TALES TOLD OUT OF SCHOOL, 1.0, A BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION: COUP D'ECOLE - ONE DAY THAT SHOOK THE SCHOOL

Revolting seniors, commie
books and protest signs in hand,
identities protected,
photographer unknown

(First in a series of tales told out of school, both literally and figuratively, how my Swiss Cheese brain remembers such events which may or may not be accurate at all. Preface: I attended a girls' private prep school in the 1960s with a student body who often mimicked the creativity of that era with their own high spirits, a pendulum reaction to the heavy course load and voluminous homework from which many of us still haven't caught up on lost sleep some forty-plus years on and from which many of us still retain permanently stooped posture via carrying heavy textbooks. Well, it's not like there existed alternatives to those heavy textbooks. We didn't have personal home computers because no one on this particular planet in this galaxy had them yet. So let's roll back the roiling mists of time to The Pleistocene of my youth.)

(And you've probably forgotten the original sub-title by now, it was A BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION: COUP D'ECOLE - ONE DAY THAT SHOOK THE SCHOOL.)

Yes, we had our own 1917-style Russian Revolution at the school, a successful Coup d'Ecole that imprisoned the administration and faculty while liberating the students. Its genesis sprang from myriad complaints from the John Birch Society contingent of the Parents' Club. Then as now, the mega-rich proved mega-alarmist. (The whole era anyway reeked of protests amid placards decrying Failsafe Doomsday being nigh, the Viet Nam war still existing, and/or Bob Dylan going electric.)

They'd complained bitterly of the inclusion, nay, even the mention of communism in the school's new modern history curriculum which outlined the Bolshevik Revolution's place and consequences in 20th Century global affairs. They were terrified that private school girls somehow would be influenced by the innate commie-ness of it all and foment their own revolt.

That year's senior class decided obligingly enough to prove their fears well placed and correct. They then overthrew the school.

They picked the day of an all administration/faculty meeting, and locked the latter inside. Re-editing the October Revolution's slogan into a more applicable mob chant of "Peace! Land! Bread! Sleep!" the seniors then called an emergency assembly of the student body wrested from their classes, declared a successful Coup d'Ecole or overthrow of the school and pronounced that we were liberated from academic tyranny and could all go home.

Which we then did.

To stifle the embarrassment of it all, the administration censored any account of the prior day's activities and school proceeded as usual the next day. No mention was made thereafter, save the lone photo commemorating the revolution (see above at top) that appeared without explanation in the yearbook and a very anti-climatic French Revolution staged somewhat later, sloppy seconds indeed involving little activity except very malevolent glowering while knitting tri-color mufflers.