THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 9, 1994 TAG: 9410080050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUE SMALLWOOD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 215 lines
BEFORE A RAPT throng and with the earnest blessings of Norfolk city officials, Frankie's Got It Records and Tapes got the big, steel wrecking ball on Tuesday, making way for Tidewater Community College's campus.
Though the once-popular record shop had been vacant for years, its good-naturedly boastful sign remained a constant reminder of Frankie's two-decade heyday at 317 Granby St.
For some, the demolition heralded a hopeful rebirth for downtown. For Frank Guida, the Frankie behind Frankie's Got It, it was the grand finale of one chapter in his venerable musical history.
From the outside, the Rockmasters International Network compound on West 25th Street resembles a maximum-security prison in miniature. Penetrate the chain-link armor surrounding the low-slung building and you enter the colorful world of Frank Guida. Gilt doorframes, golden statuary, framed memorabilia and a multitude of mirrors adorn the complex he shares with operations director Rosetta Burns, his assistant of the last 24 years.
Guida's office is appointed with family heirlooms - a century-old desk and hulking armoire from Italy - an oversized vase of brilliant Italian glass, a phalanx of velvet armchairs.
Guida is a good-looking man, with classic Italian features, alert greenish-blue eyes, a hearty handshake and an imperial presence. He's a relentless marketeer and tireless businessman, having parlayed a lifelong passion for music into a five-decade-long career of singing, songwriting, record production, retailing, distribution and publishing.
A compilation of his production work, ``Frank Guida Presents the Norfolk, Va., Rock 'n' Roll Sound,'' was recently released by Ace Records of England. ``The Norfolk Echo,'' an international newsletter based in England ``for the serious collector of Frank Guida productions,'' has been in regular publication since 1986.
Guida was born in Palermo, Italy, and raised in New York City's East Bronx. His interest in a musical career was piqued while he was stationed in the West Indies during World War II.
He relished the exotic rhythms of calypso, absorbed the words and melodies, and vowed ``I was going to make it a hit when I got back.''
Indeed, Guida became a calypso singer upon his return to New York, while holding a job as a canned-goods salesman. ``On the weekends, I'd sing calypso in Harlem,'' he remembers with a fond smile. ``The unfortunate thing was that prejudice worked in reverse when I was singing: A white person wasn't supposed to sing with a black band and vice versa. So I couldn't get black musicians to go on TV with me or to perform on some of these things because they didn't integrate at that time in show business.''
Guida did, however, place the Carib-flavored song ``Rum and Coca Cola'' with the Andrews Sisters (via Morey Amsterdam). The song became a wartime best-seller.
After a visit to his sister in Hampton Roads, Guida moved his wife and young daughter to Norfolk in 1952, where he bought an ailing record store at 817 Church St., in a largely black section of town.
``It was known as the Groove record shop at the time and I changed the name to Frankie's Birdland because I wanted to be jazz-oriented,'' he recalled. ``I took this shop that everybody thought was going under to No. 1 in the state. Everybody knew about Frankie's Birdland.''
The entrepreneur also launched his own distribution firm, covering the mid-Atlantic territory for several premiere jazz labels. Locally, he introduced the area to the latest jazz with his Friday night radio show on WLOW and a weekly TV show called ``Frankie's Jazz Workshop.''
In 1954, the Five Pearls, a young black vocal group, approached Guida with the idea of recording. He took them to the WTAR radio station studio and waxed a pair of songs, which he released on his own EF-N-DE record label. Response was so enthusiastic that Guida was able to sign the group, renamed the Sheiks, to major label Atlantic Records' Cat imprint. It was just a taste of things to come.
Collaborating with Joe Royster, an ex-salesman at Shulman's in Norfolk, Guida penned a clever ditty called ``High School USA'' and recruited ex-Blue Cap Tommy Facenda, ``an all-American-type boy,'' to sing it. Guida's novelty song had a sure-fire commercial hook: It was written in 28 region-specific versions, each mentioning the names of local high schools. Atlantic snatched up the song, which lingered on the pop charts for 13 weeks in 1959, peaking at No. 28.
By 1960, the production bug had hit Guida hard. ``I knew that was where I wanted to go,'' he says. ``I knew that if I didn't record, I had to make other people record. So I decided to buy this recording studio,'' a near-bankrupt facility at 408 W. Princess Anne Road. ``The gentleman I bought it from said, `What are you going to do with it, Frankie?' I said, `I'm going to have a hit here in three months.' He looked at me like I was crazy. But almost to the day, in three months, we'd put out `New Orleans.' ''
The calypso-inflected ``New Orleans'' was a tune Guida had originally penned for local singer Leroy ``Bunchy'' Toomes. When Toomes didn't work out, ``I remembered this nice-looking kid that used to come into the store. He had a very thin, slim voice, but he projected the kind of image that I felt would be very good for the recording if it was a hit. It worked out that way.''
The kid was Gary Anderson, renamed U.S. Bonds by Guida, and the song, released on Guida's Legrand label, would spearhead what music scribes dubbed the ``Norfolk sound.''
At a time when languid Presley ballads ruled the airwaves Guida's raucous ``New Orleans,'' with its exuberant double-tracked Bonds vocals and giant double bass drum beat crashed into the Top Ten with all the force of the Frankie's wrecking ball. The song rose to No. 6.
The record's success was aided by a stroke of Guidan marketing ingenuity. ``When I recorded Gary U.S. Bonds, I thought: How am I going to get the radio stations to play this song, `New Orleans'? After all, who knows about Legrand Records in Norfolk? So I put on the label and marked on the outside of the envelope `By U.S. Bonds.' When the radio stations got this record, they thought it was a public service record so they put it on. A couple of weeks later I got an order for 5,000 records. Then I knew, God, my dreams have finally come to pass.''
The Guida-Bonds collaboration would result in almost a dozen charting singles through 1966, including the No. 1 smash ``Quarter To Three.'' Again, the Guida production was raw and innovative, with the sound of 14 kids partying it up in the studio overdubbed five times behind Bonds' doubled vocal. It topped the charts in 1961.
Guida enjoyed another chart-cresting placement in 1963 with his West Indian-seasoned ``If You Wanna Be Happy,'' performed by former child preacher-turned-singer Jimmy Soul on S.P.Q.R. Records, another of Guida's labels. The irresistible song, co-written with Royster and Guida's wife, Millie, sported Guida's hot-'n'-dirty production and featured a young Bill Deal (of Rhondels fame) on organ.
Guida would be among the first of a new generation of auteur producers, audio impressionists who would conceive, create and wholly control their recordings; the musicians seemed almost incidental.
``Sam Phillips (Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis), for example, would bring people in and have machines on and just record them,'' Guida explained of the careful planning that went into his production. ``We didn't do that. I told (the musicians) this was what we had to do and so on and so forth. It was all produced very deliberately.''
Dick Clark, on whose American Bandstand television show Guida proteges would appear many times, composed the album notes for Bonds' 1961 LP debut, ``Dance 'Til Quarter To Three.'' Clark was a huge Bonds fan and credited the album's title track with rescuing his show from cancellation and rock music from extinction, Guida says.
Guida's influence was far-flung, even stretching across the Atlantic. ``(Beatles manager) Brian Epstein used to write to me asking me, `Please, would you come to Liverpool, I have all these artists for you to record,' '' Guida recalls, chuckling. ``His kids (the Beatles) would write me letters telling me how great our recordings were and would I send them copies of our records.
``When Gary (Bonds) went several times to England, John Lennon would follow him around like a shadow trying to put tapes in his hand to bring back to me. Gary listened to it and he says, `Frank, it was so bad that I wouldn't even bring it to you.' But three years later, this was the same band that backed us up in Germany - and they were still asking me. I didn't pay any attention to them.''
Guida rattles off a litany of artists he's affected, indirectly or directly:
Phil Spector, ``that creep, my rubber stamp. . . even Rhino (Records, the esteemed rock 'n' roll reissuers) has now finally admitted that he was, in reality, a student of Frank Guida.''
Dion, whose ``Runaround Sue'' was a ripoff of ``Quarter To Three'' and resulted in an out-of-court settlement, Guida says.
Ben E. King, whom Guida turned on to an old gospel song, ``Stand By Me,'' when King stopped by the shop complaining of a dearth of hit-making material.
And Beatles producer George Martin, who on Guida's trips to England ``tried to learn everything he could from me,'' pestering Guida with endless questions.
Latter-day devotees of the Guida sound include Bruce Springsteen, who at one time routinely included Bonds hits in his live sets and who co-produced Bonds' 1981 comeback LP, ``Dedication.''
Guida opened Frankie's Got It on Granby Street in 1969. Throughout most of the '70s, Frankie's was hopping. Often, three different songs would be playing at the same time, one outside and two in the store, bombarding shoppers with the latest hits. Inside was music ranging from rock 'n' roll to soul, R&B and jazz. Upstairs was a recording studio.
Guida was often behind the counter, ready to talk records and the music business. The animated voice that delivered the ``Frankie's Got It'' slogan on commercials - ubiquitous on the AM and fledgling FM stations of the early 1970s - was his. Above all, Guida made his customers feel welcome.
``Frankie was always friendly and enthusiastic, especially to musicians,'' recalls Randy Pope, a veteran local musician and former member of the band Hot Cakes. ``He is very musician-oriented and treated us a cut above.''
``When I was a kid, I'd take the Edgewater bus downtown just to go to Frankie's,'' remembers Louis Drake, a Norfolk native and music enthusiast. ``It was the only hip record shop around. They had the best selection and the prices were better than any department store.''
By the late '70s, stiff competition arrived in the form of record chains such as Peaches and Tracks. Frankie's was dealt a devastating blow when downtown Granby Street was converted to a walking mall, prohibiting cars. ``When you build a wall around something,'' Guida notes, ``no one can get in.''
Frankie's remained open until 1989. And though Granby Street was eventually reopened to traffic, the area's deterioration was the death knell for many merchants, including Frankie's Got It.
Beyond his music business - he shrewdly retained the publishing rights and masters to nearly all of his material - Guida's penned and published a children's book, is active with the National Italian American Foundation and is working on a black opera rendition of ``Les Miserables.''
Outside Guida's office, a painting of Leonardo da Vinci hangs next to a collage of photographs - Guida with Frank Capra, with Sophia Loren, with Henry Mancini, with Rosalynn Carter. Guida painted the da Vinci likeness, an homage to a man who also pursued many different callings.
``He's my hero,'' Guida says, contemplating Leonardo. ``He did so many things. He went 50,000 ways and more.'' MEMO: Correspondent Scott McCaskey contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Photo
Left to right: Guida, Dick Clark and Gary U.S. Bonds. Clark credited
a Bonds' song with rescuing American Bandstand from cancellation and
rock music from extinction, Guida says.
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
The wrecking ball begins demolition of Frankie's Got It on Granby
Street in Norfolk.
A compilation of Guida's work was recently released.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY ROCK AND ROLL
MUSIC by CNB