They climbed the charts, and fell off...

[Christiern]

Someone over at Blindman's started a thread about August Darnell and the King Creole group that briefly blossomed in the disco era. It started me digging for a piece I did for Stereo Review in 1980. That was a time when the record companies were raking in the money, throwing lavish parties and, in general, spending a lot on promotion of the latest hot act or artist. It was also a time when the same companies treated an artist's diminished bottom line as spoiled inventory to be thrown in the dumpster. My good friend, Genya Ravan, was signed by Columbia and given $100.000 upon signing, with another $100,000 going to buy her old contract from Polydor. When the album turned out to be something other than what they wanted (it was too jazz oriented), they simply stopped answering the phone. Genya had no idea what was going on, but to be dropped so suddenly after a promising promotional push was traumatizing. Genya rented a mountain cabin in California and spent a year wondering what happened.

Cory Daye had a similar experience at RCA and it occurred to me that we shouldn't just cover artists when they are in the spotlight. So I told my editor at Stereo Review that I wanted to interview a descending artist rather than one on the rise. He liked the idea, and here is the 28 year old article. I thought it might stimulate a discussion on how record companies--who once spent time and money on the development of new performers--began to regard the music as "product" and treat it as such. Of course, the whole scene has changed, few record companies are signing new artists and the name of the game is to get more mileage out of old material. Clearly, the record companies--run by accountants and attorneys--was too busy looking at the bottom line to look up and see the future. They could not have stopped the onslaught of the internet, iPods, iTunes, Limewire, etc., but could they have prevented the crippling (perhaps, collapse) of the record industry that we are witnessing?--CA

A TALK WITH CORY DAYE

As we enter the Eighties, some of us are gripped by a need for change, a compulsion to alter in some measure the pattern of our lives. We don’t make specific resolutions, as we have been programmed to do each ordinary New Year, but history tells us that the birth of a new decade traditionally sets societal attitudes and behavior on a new course, and few of us want to be left behind.

Ever since the phonograph and electronic media made the music industry’s direction a factor, however slight, in the determination of how we live, the sounds of the times have become a decade’s most enduring distinguishing mark. Would the Twenties really have roared if the flappers hadn’t had the Charleston to animate them? Can we imagine the Forties without big-band swing, the Fifties without the simple message and the hard drive of rock-’n’-roll, the Sixties without protest songs and the calculated earthiness of “folk” singers from the Bronx and other urban boondocks? And how will we remember the Seventies if not by the steady thump of disco?

Many people think that disco’s days would have been numbered under any circumstances, though the looming new decade surely inflicted the initial wound. But disco is not dying the natural, gradual death that may have been in its cards. Rather, it is being forcefully strangled by the painted punksters of something we are told is “New Wave” but that seems to have a decidedly old wrinkle—a disdain for quality and a passion for mediocrity.

The acceptance of mediocrity is not a sign of spreading deafness (though over-amplification has undoubtedly taken its toll in recent years); it is part of our conditioning. This is a new decade, so we must have new music, even if we have to force it into existence. If you thought disco fostered questionable talent—and it did—you ain’t, as Al Jolson once, said, heard nothin’ yet! And so, as many a disco diva wipes the glitter off her bewildered face and brushes her clothes free of the dust thrown up by the chauffered limousine that’s rapidly disappearing out of her life, as she discovers that her framed hit record was just fool’s gold, a fickle industry opens another door and yells “Next!”

One undaunted soul left on the curb is Cory Daye, the lively vamp of Dr.Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, who branched out on her own last year with “Cory and Me” on the RCA-distributed New York International label.

Though a disco sound dominates that album, Miss Daye has never considered herself a “disco singer,” and so she feels that her step into the shadows is only temporary. “I was always against disco,” she says, “but they made me do it. They said, ‘Cory, put out a solo album, just do some disco, you’ll make it, you’ll go platinum.’ Then—when was it, six months later?—the word was out: disco’s dead, Casablanca’s folding. I mean, give me a break!”

Cory Daye’s first break was purely a matter of happenstance. She grew up in the same Bronx neighborhood as Stony Browder Jr., August Darnell, Mickey Sevilla, and Andy Hernandez, the cocky kids who became the Savannah Band. She reminisced over a Bloody Mary at One Fifth Avenue, a New York hangout for late-Seventies disco/rock stars: “Stony used to tinkle on the piano while I sang,” she recalls, her eyes getting misty. “We were just highschool kids doing whatever gigs we could find, and Stony’s father carted us around. We used to call him ‘the Doctor,’ and we were like the elixir of life, so he became ‘Dr. Buzzard,’ which was a name for the medicine men who went around in the South with little bottles and said ‘Here, drink this, it heals all wounds’.”

It was while attending James Monroe High School that the five youngsters formed a band and began working locally under such names as the In-Laws and the Strangers. Their first professional break came in 1975, when they had started calling themselves Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, and producer Tommy Mottola heard their unusual blend of Copacabana echoes and current sounds, a busy mixture containing dashes of Glenn Miller and Xavier Cugat swirling around in a mad tempest of coconut rhythms and hustle thumps. Where did it all come from? “From the Million Dollar Movie,” says Cory Daye. “Growing up in the Bronx where money was tight, you watched television, and I always leaned toward the musicals. I loved the pretty ladies, the Andrews Sisters, Abbott and Costello—I loved all of that. They say children soak it all in; it’s true. So it was easy for me to pick up on what Stony wanted when I was chosen to sing the leads.”

Cory’s chance to be heard up front came when the band made its first album. She had previoudy been kept in the background because “Stony wanted a crooner, someone to be the next Frank Sinatra. But the male singers couldn’t cook, so I stepped in. I knew all that old Hollywood stuff, but I also liked modern music, r-&-b, and I loved James Brown—all that rhythm. I love rhythms because I don’t have a wide range. My voice is really very limited—I think maybe I could stretch to two octaves on a good day—so I have to rely on the rhythm to keep things going musically.”

When it comes to keeping things going in person, Miss Daye takes advantage of her penchant for the campier side of Hbllywood and becomes an unlikely cross between Bette Midler and a Pointer sister. Wrapped in a Salvation Army print dress, her lips painted the color of a ripe tomato, a large flower in her Maria Montez hair, she stomps her feet in Joan Crawford pumps and delivers the lyrics with a Carmen Miranda rapidity. Range or no range, audiences love it. Why, then, after three albums with the Savannah Band and one of her own, is Cory Daye out in the cold? That is a question to which she is still seeking a plausible answer. She has been told that RCA dropped her because one of the company’s high-ranking executives “didn’t understand” her solo album, but she finds that hardly a logical explanation.

Relations with RCA were actually somewhat awkward from the very beginning. The Savannah Band, an undisciplined, unproved group of cocky kids brought to the company by an independent contract producer, spent a full six months in the House of Music studio (a converted New Jersey basement) making an album that few people at the label thought would have any chance in the market. “The people at RCA heard the album and thought it was something from the deep blue. It was something they couldn’t fathom, so they didn’t do any promotion on it. It was all word of mouth.”

The first real sign of appreciation came when the New York gay community—specifically, the summer crowd on that thin strip of sand known as Fire Island—embraced the album’s Cherchez la Femme. “When Fire Island closed that fall,” says Miss Daye, “they brought the word back to the island of Manhattan. It was the Bicentennial year, and we were an American group with a new sound. It was great, everyone was gung-ho, and RCA finally decided to put us on Amtrak for a trial promotion in Washington, D.C. The whole band went, and we sold fifteen thousand units in one week. So then RCA said,’Hmmmm, it shows promise,’ and they sent us on to a few other major cities—before dropping all promotion again. We thought they were just as mad as hatters.” Miss Daye concedes that neither RCA nor Mottola exactly had a group of angels on their hands: “We were brats, we were bad, and our way of showing unhappiness with the RCA people was to do things like shooting jelly beans into the lobby of the Hyatt-Regency Hotel in Atlanta. We went nuts with squirt guns and that sort of thing—a little immature, maybe, but very effective.”

Despite such antics, and even though the success of the first album was mainly in the New York area, RCA went ahead with a follow-up. After all, those seemingly hopeless recordings from the New Jersey basement had not only registered healthy sales but also garnered a Grammy nomination (the award went to the Starland Vocal Band, another RCA group). As so often happens in the music business, the second album, “Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band Meets King Penett,” released in 1978, did not live up to the expectations generated by the first.

Unpleasant memories are attached to that album. Its release coincided with the breakup of Miss Daye and Stony Browder, whose relationship dated back even before the time when she was a “respectable, no-nonsense waitress” at Hungry Hilda’s, an Eighth Avenue topless establishment. “I left, but a good part of me will always remain with the Savannah Band. At that time it was just more than I could take, and the only person I could turn to was Tommy Mottola. He took me in, made a solo deal for me with RCA, and everything was hunky-dory.”

The result of that deal was “Cory and Me,” a lonely experience for Miss Daye. The only familiar face in the studio was that of the Savannah Band’s mascot, her cocker spaniel Mr. Limelight. “I opened my eyes and Stony was not there, Darnell was not there, and Andy was not on the floor kicking his heels up in the air. It was very strange not having them around. I felt very insecure.”

Despite these insecurities and some reservations regarding the direction of her first solo venture, Cory Daye is not ready to dismiss it: “I did it, and I’m always very happy with my babies. You might have ten children, some ugly, some pretty, but you still love them all the same, and that’s how I feel about my albums.” RCA launched “Cory and Me” with a boat party that reputedly cost $50,000.

“While we were making the album,” she says, “the people at RCA told me, ‘Cory, you have to clean up your act, you have to get the word out that you are not a brat any more,’ So I became an angel, a saint; I was really good, paid the RCA brass compliments—the whole bit. Then they threw that boat party for me, and the president of the company said, ‘Cory, look at all this,’ as he pointed around at the people dancing and the big neon sign with my signature. ‘Do you think you deserve it?’ ” Diplomacy not being one of her virtues, Cory Daye replied, “You’re damn right, and more.” But there was no more. “I’m sure it wasn’t his fault,” she says, referring to the label’s subsequent cut in the promotion budget for her album, “but you do have to wonder why they sign you up and record you if they aren’t going to give you the push you need.”

Cory Daye is, of course, the victim of a system rather than any individual or company, and if there are any hard feelings on the part of RCA, the current staff is not showing them. “Cory was not as difficult to work with as she herself would lead you to believe,” says one executive, “but this is a business, and when a product does not register satisfactory sales, you either look to improve it or you replace it.” And so, when the promotional materials dwindle down to a Xeroxed few, when the phone calls from the office stop and nobody from the record company team shows up at an artist’s performance, the writing on the wall might as well be flashing neon. It is a humiliating ordeal that more and more artists are experiencing as pop music once again seeks out a new direction.

“The worst part of being on the ladder of success,” says dory Daye, “is when you have made it to about the third rung from the top and you can see just what it’s like to be successful. You can look down and say ’Unh, unh.’ Then you look up—you’re so close you can smell it—and someone up there is saying ’Unh, unh’ to you.”

What would Cory Daye do if all of her career decisions were hers alone to make and money were no problem? “I’d pull Stony back into the studio and try to beat some sense into his head,” she says, smiling as she relishes the thought. “I’d try to make not only a fusion of sounds and eras, but a fusion of sounds for ears, for people. They’re the ones buying the records, so let’s take them into consideration. I don’t think I’ve done enough ballads, for example. I haven’t done enough.things that people can relate to. I would do an album totally related to human beings, to what we all experience, believe, and see.” Would it be another echo of Million Dollar Movie?

“Yes—if you mean Cecil B. De Mille! I don’t want to be just a recording artist, I want to be an entertainer. People love to be entertained—if you go to a party and there’s no life in the crowd, you walk out. ‘Cory and Me’ was what I had to do at that time. I realized I had to prove something, not to the public, but to myself. I had to prove that I am my own person.”

She has also realized that it is hard, if not impossible, for her to sever the connection with the old gang completely. Though she was contracted independently, she is now back with the Savannah Band on an Elektra album (“Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band Goes to Washington,” 6E-218) that captures the flavor of the celebrated first album and even improves on it, though it may well be too sophisticated to catch on commercially. Recently the Bronx Bombshell has also been heard with August Darnell’s Kid Creole and the Coconuts (the Savannah Band minus Browder), a group Darnell uses to back up his stable of acts. It is an odd mélange of talents, but the overall effect is just far enough out for Cory Daye to fit in, and the rebellious atmosphere created by Darnell’s music and antics suits to a tee a woman who has been known to register in one of New York’s finer hotels under the name Polly Esther. And, though the New Wave may have swept her temporarily out of the limelight at home, Cory Daye still has a place stage center abroad. She has twice been summoned for appearances in Holland, and at this writing she was planning a South American tour. It looks to me as if we still have the dawn of a new Daye to look forward to. ∆