HOLLY
By Steve Mann

“Holly” was written in San Jose California about 1964 or 65. It started out as a strictly finger picking piece, with no bossa nova part. Here is the story behind the song, as told by Steve:

LOS ANGELES

When I was living in Los Angeles (I grew up there with my folks), I was performing a lot in my early twenties and doing studio work with lots of well –known musicians and I confess I loved the bright lights and flashy girls and just general excitement and the nightlife. Holly was my girlfriend and she was about the flashiest, fanciest exotic dancer and everything else imaginable and I would do anything she wanted me to. I even let her drive my car, (an old green and purple (that was the color out-of-the-box) Pontiac convertible. Holly always needed more money. One day she answered and ad for exotic dancers way up in Seattle Washington. The job paid really well. It was a huge one-night stripping gig in a big palace of some kind in Seattle.

THE PLAN FOR SEATTTLE

The plan was for her to drive my convertible up the west coast all the way to Seattle. I would go up by train to San Francisco, where I had friends, call her when I arrived and she would come down and join me. I was getting a little strange at this time, and whatever condition eventually landed me in the mental health system was already beginning to dog me around a lot, especially when I became stressed out and feeling abandoned. So as much as possible I liked to be around somebody who knew me, rather than all alone. I also don’t like being bored.

Holly took off before I did in the first week of September 1964. I packed my bags and took a train one and a half days later, going up to San Francisco, where I had heard there was a good music scene going on. I got off the train hoping that Holly would be there, but this didn’t happen, so I got out the number she’d given me and called her gig place in Seattle. Somehow I got in touch with her up there (Holly was not hard to describe) and she said she would come right down to be with me in San Francisco. Oboy.

SAN FRANCISCO

Sure enough she came down, but not driving in my convertible. It seems she had crashed my car along the way up to Seattle, so she flew down to San Francisco and called me from the airport. She had made big bucks at her Seattle gig and was ready to celebrate.

I loved her so much I didn’t care about the car, and I was just glad to hear from her when she phoned me from the airport. She got herself into town and met me at the corner of Columbus and Grant and we checked into the bridal suite of the Dante Hotel, for about $20.00 a week (outrageously high for those days), We stayed in San Francisco for two months and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly for the whole time. I mean, I was exhausted! : )

We went to hear Elmer Snowden, (who used to play banjo behind Lonnie Johnson), at the Coffee and Confusion in North Beach, plus we ran into Tom Hobson at the Coffee Gallery. We also met Paul Kantner (later of the Jefferson Airplane) and David Freiberg (later in Quicksilver Messenger Service) and hung out at a lot of music parties. Paul and David offered to take Holly and me down to Redwood Estates, six miles outside San Jose so we could check out the South Bay music scene, especially at the Off Stage, run by Paul Foster in San Jose.

SAN JOSE

OK so down we went to the San Jose area where we stayed with Paul and David together in a sort of communal house with Paul Foster in Redwood Estates, a suburb of San Jose. I played one show at the Off Stage, opening for Dino Valenti, and made $10.00, which covered us for a few days. Holly, bless her flashy, fringed wardrobe, and her Special Walk also worked Very Hard to earn us some extra money and we did OK for awhile, but the money ran out eventually. While we were in Redwood Estates, Holly met someone else and took off for parts unknown. What a bummer.
I was just broken-hearted, to say the least, and probably turned into a blob of jelly and agreed with Paul Kantner and David Freiberg that maybe I should just go back to my folks’ house in Los Angeles to get my bearings.

BACK TO LOS ANGELES

In December of 1964 the two of them put what was left of me in a car and both of them drove me down to 6301 Cold Water Canyon where my parents lived, in North Hollywood. I hung out there for awhile, tried playing guitar a little, and eventually put together the finger picking part of the instrumental, “Holly.” This picking-only version is what I performed at the Ash Grove at that time for awhile.
While staying at my folks’ house, I gradually got in touch with my old music scene in Los Angeles, and started doing gigs and recording sessions. I bought a book of jazz chords by Mel Bay but didn’t apply them too much to my playing until after working with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention—(and lead singer Ray Collins). I played mostly blues harmonica with the Mothers, and occasionally guitar as well, but often they wanted a jazzier sound. Not being a real jazz guitarist at that point, I went home and started leaning more jazz chords to include in my repertoire. With a few more cool substitutions from a Nick Maniloff guitar book my ear started to get turned on to new jazz voicings for old chords, and this gave me ideas for many other arrangements from then on.

At some point I added a second part to “Holly,” using a bossa nova beat. The new section, with jazz versions of the original chords, was added some time about May of 1965, just before I started doing recording sessions with Sonny and Cher. Sometimes the bossa nova part of “Holly” starts up at the beginning and end of the piece, while the original picking style section is in the middle. On the version I recorded for Eric Frandsen, (on this CD) the reverse is true. “Holly” on the “Alive and Pickin’” begins and ends with the picking part.

—SM


COMMENT ABOUT THE HOLLY STORY

Oysters have the right idea.

If we get a hard grain of sand in our shell, sometimes we have to figure out how to deal with it because we don’t know how to get rid of it. If we figure out a way to cover over the rough edges, and shape it a little in our own way, it can turn into something we can live with. Some day it may even come in handy.
That covered pebble may even turn into good a story one day, or a picture, or a poem, or a piece of music that someone else really appreciates hearing. It might help someone else deal with their own sandy problems.

Or maybe that old pearl can just help us become a wiser person, like knowing how to shut up when the water gets cloudy.
—JS

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