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HAROLD KUDLETS : THE MAN WHO
BROUGHT ROCK-A-BILLY TO CANADA
By Bo Berglind
One of the unsung heros of rockabilly is Harold Kudlets as without him this vibrant form of music would have had a much tougher time getting established north of the American border. It is open to speculation but the career of quite a few of those who we regard to today as originators may well have taken a different course without the business courage and backing of Harold. One wonders if Conway Twitty would have written "It's Only Make Believe". But of course this is academic as it did happen and here's the story of how and why.
Glasgow-born Kudlets has lived in
Hamilton, Ontario, since he was eight and schooldays bring back
memories of the old Cannon and Hess Street School and Westdale
Collegiate. Then came a number of jobs, mostly in his own, in the
promotion business. In fact, the only time he has worked for
anyone else was after Second World War when he went to Stelco for
a spell, a job about which he commented:
'
-I think I was more a hindrance
there then a help.
Steloc was otherwise known as The
Steel Company of Canada and was one of the nartion's major
employers. However like allsteel manufactuers the world over, it
has now contracted in size.
Anyway, he got his start in 1946 as
a manager of the Forum, the old Hamilton, Ontario ice palace on
Barton Street between Sanford Avenue and Wentworth Street when it
was a summer rolling rink. The Forum had an audience capacity of
between 3,500 and 4,000 but was demolished in the mid seventies.
In July 1947 Harold booked the
original Glenn Miller Orchestra with Tex Beneke. Kudlets also had
his own act, a colored piano team known as "Mr. And Mrs.
88". That was the time when the issuing of liquor licenses
to restaurants heralded the start of the bar industry:
-I think The Grange on King Street
West was our first. You could only buy a drink if you ordered a
meal. Beers cost 75 cents and an all-you-could-eat smorgasbord
cost you 99 cents.
Kudlets went on to book acts like
Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Jack Teagarden, Bobby
Hackett and The Jack Benny Show in places like the Flamingo
Lounge, the Golden Bell, the Armouries and the Forum.
-I remember when Louis Armstrong
opened the Dundas Arena for me in May 1951. I though I was going
to be a good promoter, and limit the crowd to about 3,500. Of
course, by 8 oíclock, the tickets were all sold out, and there
were thousands of people outside. Well, hell, they got in anyway.
Dundas was atown near Hamilton and
had a population in excess of 20,000 people.
Harold Kudlets was the man to find
work for starving musicians, he had them working for 40 to 50
weeks a year. Over 125 musicians have cause to be grateful to
Harold. When interviewed in 1965 he said:
-There ís only a handful of agents
who are honourable in this business. The business is built on
honesty. A crook may gain some profit in the short run, but an
honest man will make more profit for himself and others in the
long run.
In the late 1950s Kudlets got the
chance to book Conway Twitty (aka Harold Jenkins) a southern boy
who patterned his tyle after Elvis Presley. Twitty wrote his song
"It's Only Make Believe" at the long-gone Flamingo
Lounge in downtown Hamilton, although some other sources have the
location as Fischer Hotel in the same town. Conway was so
impressed that he painted a picture of Canada as the promised
land to another Arkansas rockabilly wildman, Ronnie Hawkins:
-Conway was booked into a hotel in
Washington and after the third day, the club threw him out. He
was not right for the room. Don Seat asked if I could keep Conway
working for a few weeks until they got the contract sorted out.
He stayed with me for two years and never had a day off.
-He never counted the money he
made. Heíd just point to the pile and said: "Take your
share". To be honest, I donít know whether to could or not
-Conway's group was entirely
different to that of Levon (Helms) and The Hawks. Conway's group
were all typical country boys. They were gentlemen all the way,
particularly with women. Whereas Levon and his boys just give
them a party.
Kudlets first brought Ronnie
Hawkins & The Hawks to Canada via Hamilton. Hawkins made the
pilgrimage to Canada with his backup band the Hawks to the Golden
Rail Tavern in 1958 and found a new home. In return, Hawkins and
his Hawks nicknamed Kudlets The Colonel.
But there is one accomplishment of
which Kudlets is more proud and this is his help in establishing
Levon And The Hawks.. This is course the legenday Canadian outfit
although initailly fronted by Levon Helm from Arkanas, who went
from backing Ronnie Hawkins to backing Bob Dylan and then onto
ensconcing themselves as one of the premier rock groups known as
The Band.
-Says Kudlets at his Robinson
Avenue bungalow: I was the one who started them, and I was the
one who was there when it ended for a while.
Harold ws the guy who Levon Helm
and Rick Danko approached when they became disenchanted with
Hawkins:
-I had my office those days at the
Royal Connaught Hotel. One day, Levon and the boys were sitting
in the lobby waiting for me at 9 o'clock in the morning. And I
thought, what gives? These guys did not usually go to bed until 9
a.m. in the morning.
During the course of their meeting,
Kudlets agreed to take on Levon And The Hawks as a client. About
a year later, he booked them for a New Jersey gig and someone
from Bob Dylan's office heard them. Dylan gave Helm a call and
hired the group as his backing band as he moved from acoustic to
electric music.
In his heyday as a booking agent he
had his office on the eighth floor of the Royal Connaught Hotel
in downtown Hamilton. Behind the door bearing the lettering
"Harold Kudlets Agency" was a room stacked with piles
of promotion material, newspaper clippings and a desk full of
contracts. This was the heart and nerve centre of Kudlets
business empire. In the office were photos of the stars of the
day along with busts of Chopin and Beethoveen. He was constantly
on the look out for new acts with the end result that he had
several that were the equal to any others on the Canadian
entertainment scene. Among them were Ray Smith & His Rockin'
Little Angels (ex-Sun/Judd artist) and Matt Lucas, both from the
mid south of the USA.
In the mid sixties, Kudlet had a
ready market for Canadian groups in the USA but getting them
there was another thing. This was a source of constant irritation
to him. Despite this,the majority of his acts in the sixties were
Canadian, a fact about which he was and ishe was very proud:
-We can get an American group over
here at almost ten minutesí notice. Canadian immigration bends
over backwards to help. But it takes from three to ten weeks to
get a Canadian group into the US. There are mountains of red
tape.
Any group than can make it in
Canada can make it anywhere. Stateside, most of the clubs have
dancing and audiences only want to hear the beat. But here, here,
there is very little dancing. Entertainment is the thing. As a
result, the groups have to work very hard. They have to
entertain.
Kudlets later had his business
tentacles stretching throughout the United States and he became
the booker for the Freemont Hotel in Las Vegas, the Golden Club
in Reno, the Trophy Room in Sacramento, the A-Go-Go Room in
Seattle and the chain of Peppermint Lounges in cities such as New
York, San Francisco, Miami and Honolulu. He said the key to being
a successful agent was putting the right group in the right room.
These New York agents, they could
not care less. If the room called for classical music, they would
send a rock band. Finally, the owners got so burned that when an
agent came along whom they could trust, they would stick with
him.
At one time, I was the one of the
largest independent agents world wide. I am very proud of that.
And about 95 per cent of the acts I booked were Canadian. It was
a feather in my cap of being a little Canadian agent, and being
with the big boys.
When disco became the rage in the
mid-sevties, Kudlets found his livelihood diminishing as clubs
looked for dick jockeys instead of musicians ans o went into a
period of semi hibernation. However he came back into business in
1983 to help book the reformed Band, but retired again when his
wife Pauline fell ill. Sadly, she passed away in April 1994.
Today, Harold wistfully says:
I am old enough to collect my
pension - but if I had the opportunity to go back to the
entertainment scene, I would jump at it. To leave the business
cold, you just cannot do it.
If that is not possible, perhaps
Harold will set about writing his memoirs, it will be a
fascinating tale that is for sure. For now, thanks are due to
Harold for his share in the founding of the music we all know and
love, rock 'n' roll.
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The man who brought rock ‘n’ roll
to Canada
Whitby columnist tells the Harold
Kudlets story
Whitby This Week
In music management folklore of the
‘50s and ‘60s, Colonel Tom Parker managed Elvis Presley. Brian
Epstein managed The Beatles. Pioneer agent and promoter Harold
Kudlets had the wide open musical territory of Southern Ontario,
resulting in the American invasion of rock ‘n’ roll into Canada.
Kudlets was born in Glasgow, Scotland
in 1916. When he was eight, his family moved to Hamilton, Ontario.
In 1946, he started out in the
promotion business, when he became manager of the Forum Palace in
Hamilton.
In 1947, Kudlets booked the Glenn
Miller Orchestra with Ted Beneke as leader. From there on, he signed
major big band and jazz acts like Tommy Dorsey, Stan Kenton, Duke
Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Bobby Hackett, to name a few.
By the late 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll
was in full bloom. Kudlets, through his Harold Kudlets Agency, booked
singer Conway Twitty at the Flamingo Lounge in downtown Hamilton.
This resulted in great success for both. The song, It’s Only Make
Believe (1958), was composed by Twitty with his drummer Jack Vance
during a short performance break. It was an enormous hit record that
instantly established Twitty as a major recording star.
Twitty was very appreciative of Canada,
so much so that he spread the word about Harold Kudlets to fellow
rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins from Arkansas. With his backup band
The Hawks, Hawkins traveled north to the land of opportunity, guided
by the free hand of Kudlets, who wasted no time in arranging a stint
for them at the Golden Rail at Diamond Jim’s. Shortly after,
Kudlets took Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks to New York and had them
sign a contract with Roulette Records.
Another notable milestone in the career
of Kudlets was when he helped organize and manage Levon (Helm) and
The Hawks (The Stones That I Throw - 1965). The group morphed into
The Band and the famous Music From Big Pink (1968) album, after
having served as backup band for Bob Dylan.
Singer Matt Lucas also benefited from
Kudlets. Lucas’s biggest hit was a radical, rocking cover of Hank
Snow’s I’m Moving On (1963).
When I recently spoke to Matt Lucas he
said, “I talked to my old friend Harold Kudlets yesterday. He was
the man who brought rock ‘n’ roll to Canada. Yes, he brought all
of us to Canada when there was no rock ‘n’ roll in Canada. He is
still sharp as a tack and turned 97 on November 9th, 2013.”
Lucas quipped, “I’ve got a pretty
good memory also as I remember his office phone number from 55 years
ago, JA 20-900!”
Kudlets, who still lives in Hamilton,
retired in the mid-80s. During a brief phone conversation with him I
sensed a yearning for the past. He now has the accolades and warm
memories of a fantastic career.
-- Andrew Merey is a Whitby resident
who’s interested in music and movie history. He has contributed
articles to This Week since 2003. You can reach him
at amerey@rogers.com .
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MAHONEY: Book ’em Harold — oh, he
did
Hamilton Spectator
By Jeff Mahoney
Many of the big names he represented
are gone, too often before their time. Sadly, that's sometimes the
flip side of tall candles; short wicks and high flames that burn
fast.
But Harold Kudlets, impresario
extraordinaire, is alive and well (as they used to say of Jacques
Brel) and living in Shalom Village, where his cheesecake is
legendary.
At 98, you're going to outlast a lot of
people. Still, Harold wishes people like Conway Twitty (he died at
60) and some of the "boys" he helped bring along — you
know them as The Band — hadn't left quite so soon.
Often with creativity, says Harold,
come oversized energies and money blindness. "The alcohol and
the drugs," says Harold. "They (some of his clients) would
go through money. It's an attitude that the picnic will never end.
Levon Helm (drummer for The Band) would tip five people before he
ever got to his hotel room."
He sometimes had to send airline
tickets to fairly well-known acts because they'd blown through
fortunes.
"Do you like cheesecake?"
Harold asks me, in his handsome apartment with the memorabilia and
the numerous pictures and articles mounted on the wall, chronicling a
career that began in 1947.
That's when he found himself booking
the Glenn Miller band into the old Barton Street roller rink, which
he managed for an owner who "won it in a card game, I think."
(Before that, he'd run a short-lived hamburger joint on the beach
that got eclipsed by another you might have heard of, Hutch's.)
"A couple of gentlemen came in to
the rink one day with these big window cards for the band and told me
the promoter had quit; would I like to take over the contract?"
says Harold. He had no idea then where his answer, yes, would take
him. All over the world.
On the wall there's a picture of Harold
in New York City in the early 1980s with Bob Dylan and Levon Helm. He
either represented or booked everyone from Jack Benny ("great
man, not cheap at all like he made out"), Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington and Harry James, to Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks, Bill
Haley and the Comets, Billie Holiday, Jerry Garcia and The Grateful
Dead (but no, not Jacques Brel).
He booked Frank Sinatra into the Barton
roller rink, but then got served a cease-and-desist order from the
Mutual Street Arena in Toronto, whose contract with Old Blue Eyes
stipulated no one could book him within 10 days, either side, or 50
miles, any direction, of his performance there. Otherwise he could've
added the "Chairman of the Board" to his roster.
"I love cheesecake," I tell
Harold.
"I'll keep a piece for you. I'm
making some for Passover," says Harold, who remembers his mother
finding an apartment in the east end in the 1920s, after they'd
arrived from Glasgow (where he was born); neighbours took up a
petition to keep the Jewish family out.
Times have changed, but Harold
remembers it all.
If he remembers, Harold is in turn
remembered, probably best for representing Conway Twitty and The
Band. He was celebrated in 2006 with lifetime achievement honours at
the Hamilton Music Awards.
"I got a call. A club owner in
Washington cancelled Conway's contract and could I help by booking
him in Hamilton?" Harold remembers.
"I booked him for $375 and it
changed both our lives. He was held over and he ended up living in
Hamilton for a time. It's where he wrote "It's Only Make
Believe," which went on to make millions."
Harold built on that rockabilly
strength with his next act, Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks.
"They were such a show group,"
says Harold. "Ronnie did back flips and somersaults and his
camel walk (precursor to Michael Jackson's Moonwalk)."
Harold pulls more yarn from the endless
spool of his memory. I listen, along with Harold's friend, Jim
Kennelly.
"Oh, I had some novelty acts too —
a one-legged tap dancer; Tiny Grimes, who played the piano with his
feet, from a bench high over the keyboard." And, of course,
Chesty Morgan.
Jim shakes his head, smiling. He's
heard so many of the stories, before but there's always something
new.
"You've really gotta try his
cheesecake," says Jim.
jmahoney@thespec.com
905-526-3306
DEO: Legendary promoter Harold Kudlets
The Spec's Jeff Mahoney sits down with
Harold Kudlets, former show promoter for the Royal Connaught
HAROLD
John Rennison,The Hamilton Spectator
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