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PW: And what kinds of things did you guys do for fun? Would you go to the movies?

PY: No. Once I was sixteen, just like... I pretty much insisted that I wanted to make my own pocket money, so I had a series of part-time jobs. So I ended up working for the last two years in high school at a place called Ah Fong's in Encino, which was run or owned by Benton Fong, who was a prominent Chinese American actor. Most notably -- at least in my universe, and you had a different... was that he was Warren Owen's number one son in the Charlie Chan series.

PW: What made you decide to go work there?

PY: I literally walked up and down Ventura Boulevard, that was kind of the major commercial strip closest to us that had a lot of restaurants. And just kind of walked... I wasn't specifically looking for a job at Ah Fong's but that's the place that ended up hiring me. It turned out to be a pretty good place to work because management was, we'll say, tolerant of a lot of behaviors. And it gave me pocket money, and my dad's father gifted me his car, it was a 1956 Bel Air Chevy. Which I thought it was an old car at that time, but it was only eight years old at that point, or ten years old, whatever. But it gave me the freedom to go after work. That was the other thing about this. Like I worked on Friday and Saturday nights and so you get off at nine or ten. Oftentimes I would head over the hill to Los Angeles and most frequently to a place called the Ash Grove.

PW: I know that music has been a lifelong passion for you, and I'm kind of curious, what was that soundtrack in your mind of your childhood, from the point that you really started becoming conscious of music. And now you're at the point where you're going to Ash Grove all the time to go...

PY: The reason why Ash Grove was just slightly before then, I'm doing household chores around on a Saturday, and I'm pretty much the typical Top 40 kid, you know, that's kind the extent of my musical knowledge. But I just happened to have on this FM radio station that day, had this radio on playing loudly. And they were playing... the DJ, and I'm trying to find, actually, I haven't been able to find the name of this DJ. He was doing American roots music with an emphasis on the blues. But the specific cut that he was playing that kind of, like, really opened my head up and what became a lifelong passion was Paul Butterfield's "East-West," and he was still playing that long cut where... so that was an amazing introduction, and it was followed up by this same DJ. I think, playing basically everybody that Willie Dixon produced for Chess Records. So that's Muddy Waters, that's Howlin' Wolf, that's James Cotton. Just the whole stable as well as Willie himself, and they all played at the Ash Grove, as well as a great variety of other American roots music. So I saw Sonny & Brownie there, John Hurt, Doc Watson. So I'd get there for, kind of like, I guess, late set, and just come home. And the other fortunate thing about that, even if I didn't stay long there, there was a place called Canters', good Jewish deli where you could get pastrami. And the thing about Canters', although I couldn't take advantage of it at that time, is it's one of the few delis that had a full bar, which I did take advantage of later in life.

PW: Did you date in high school during this time?

PY: No.

PW: Not at all.

PY: No, not at all.

PW: Were you starting to collect vinyl at this point, too?

PY: Barely. Just started... I think when I left for San Francisco, I had a couple Ray Charles things, I had a couple, Frank Zappa. But I didn't spend a lot of money on vinyl at that point. The last thing I did with the money I had earned was I bought a little portable stereo, but continued to kind of, like, add stuff and spend time in record shops. I probably spent more time in record shops than bookstores.

PW: Was there a favorite place that you liked to go?

PY: No, but it was, I mean, the Ash Grove was really the thing that I felt most fortunate about, I'd been really fortunate. So when I came up here and started working at City Lights, one of the last of the classic jazz clubs was just two blocks away, Keystone Korner's. So I'm working on Saturday nights by myself, and it wasn't uncommon to see Max Roach comes in between sets, Cecil Taylor would come in between sets. Because it was just two blocks away, and so clubs in those days, and particularly Keystone was really music oriented. And the sets would be long or short depending on how the musicians were playing. So I got to spend a lot of time there. And people that I've worked with for over forty years here at City Lights, Scott Davis specifically, were, on the basis of we were people who were music enthusiasts, hanging out there and got to see each other frequently.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.