Ellery Eskelin Shares His Father's Music.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 01, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 080101NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: James Ellroy
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

James Ellroy is a popular crime novelist whose obsession with crime dates back to his childhood. His mother was murdered -- strangled to death in 1958 when he was 10. Her body was discovered on the side of the road in a suburb of Los Angeles.

Ellroy's parents were divorced. He was living with his father at the time of the murder. Ellroy wrote a memoir called "My Dark Places" about his mother's murder and the impact it had on his life.

Ellroy's crime novels include "The Black Dahlia," "White Jazz," and "American Tabloid." Next month, his book My Dark Places will be published in paperback and a movie adaptation of his novel "L.A. Confidential" will be released.

Ellroy still doesn't know who killed his mother, although he reopened the investigation with homicide detective Bill Stoner in 1994. The case remains unsolved. When Ellroy started investigating the murder, he found a photograph in his mother's files of the body, which he reprints in the book.

I spoke with him last December and asked him to describe the photo.

JAMES ELLROY, AUTHOR, "MY DARK PLACES": My mother is lying face down in an ivy thicket on an access road adjoining Arroyo High School in El Monte, California. The date is June 22, 1958. Geneva Hillecker Ellroy (ph) was 43 years old at the time of her death. Her back is modeled with post-mortem lividity. There are two ligatures lashed around her neck: the stocking taken off her left leg and a clothes line cord.

GROSS: How did you get this photograph?

ELLROY: I first saw them in 1994 when I was 46 years old, in the office of the L.A. Sheriff's Homicide Bureau. I went there to see my mother's murder file and write a piece about it for the magazine GQ.

GROSS: What impact did this photograph have on you coming decades after the actual murder?

ELLROY: Seeing the file and seeing the photographs of my mother dead -- and I saw the file first, and saw the photographs of her dead last that day -- made me realize "oh, this isn't over." I had always understood the extent to which my mother's death had formed me intellectually, but now I could feel it in my bones.

GROSS: Now there's another picture that's of great interest in your new book, and it's a picture of you that was taken by a press photographer one day after your mother's murder. Would you describe that photograph?

ELLROY: The photograph was taken of me that same day, June 22, 1958. I had come back from spending the weekend with my father in Los Angeles; came back to the house where I lived with my mother in El Monte -- crummy, small town 14 miles east of downtown L.A.; pulled up in a cab. There were uniformed men, cops, and plain-clothesmen in the front yard and I sensed immediately that she was dead.

Cop took me aside and said: "son, you mother's been killed. Where's your father?" I told him he was at the bus depot waiting to go back to L.A. A few minutes later, an L.A. Times photographer led me diagonally across the yard to my landlord's tool shed. He posed me at a woodworking bench with a woodworking awl in my hand and took several pictures of me.

GROSS: Were you ever doing real woodwork at that bench?

ELLROY: No, I've never done woodwork in my life.

GROSS: Was there anything authentic about that picture at all?

ELLROY: No.

GROSS: It's so interesting to see it. You look like the all-American kid.

ELLROY: It's my life at ground zero, and as I say in the book, I am too lost in calculation or just plain dumbfounded thought to evince signs of simple grief.

GROSS: You know, this photograph was taken on the day when you found out your mother was murdered.

ELLROY: Yes.

GROSS: So it's not really registering on your face. How did it register on you that day?

ELLROY: I was happy. I hated my mother. I lusted for my mother. My parents were divorced. My father had been systematically poisoning my mind against my mother for the three and a half, four years since the divorce.

At the time of her death, and I was 10 years old then, my one great wish was to live with my father exclusively and on June 22, 1958, that wish came true.

GROSS: Now, you were a little kid and you were questioned by the cops.

ELLROY: Yes.

GROSS: How did it feel as a kid to be questioned? And what'd you think of cops? Did you think of them as, you know, cops were a kid's friend? Or did you think of them as -- did you have any predisposition toward cops?

ELLROY: I like them. They were deferential to me. They were respectful. They may have been somewhat dumbfounded by the fact that I wasn't showing signs of grief or evincing much emotion toward my mother.
But they were nice.

Cops questioned me and they wanted to know about my mother's boyfriends -- the men that she was seeing. And I had been predisposed by my father to think of my mother as a promiscuous drunk.

And I told the cops she was a promiscuous drunk. I may have used the words "she was a drunk and a whore," which were the words that my father used to describe my mother since the divorce.

GROSS: Did the cops ask you any questions that really set your imagination reeling?

ELLROY: They just asked about men, and it forced me to look back and recall the two times I found my mother in bed with strange men that I had never seen before. It got me living again in that poisonous world that my father created around my mother and her memory.

GROSS: What impact did it have on you to walk in on your mother and a boyfriend?

ELLROY: It was shocking. It was almost horrifying. It was 1956 and 1957 when this occurred. I was eight and nine years old. I was a kid of the time. I was a kid going to Lutheran Church.

Sex was shocking. Sex was perverted. Sex was titillating. Sex was wonderful. I knew it was something to look forward to. I knew it was the big bad ugly groovy thing that people giggled about and talked about and really wanted to do all the time.

GROSS: Your mother's murder was sexually related. I wonder how that affected your sexual fantasies.

ELLROY: I was interested in sex early-on. In My Dark Places, I describe my parents as a great-looking cheap couple, along the lines of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell in "Macao." They stayed together for 15 years. It had to be sex. They were sexual people. They didn't flaunt it in front of me, but it was there. I understood it early-on as subtext and went crazy with it.

That my mother died in the course of a horrific probable rape, later a sex killing, only added to the texture of my fantasies.

GROSS: Did you find yourself gravitating toward women who look like your mother?

ELLROY: Yes.

GROSS: And did that bother you? Did you think that that was odd or?

ELLROY: I felt like I was working out my own sexual dynamic. I liked older women, rather than girls my own age. I seized on another murdered women from before my birth -- Elizabeth Short (ph), the Black Dahlia. The Black Dahlia murder case is arguably America's most famous unsolved woman killing.

I first read about Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, in 1959. My father got me a book called "The Badge" by Jack Webb of "Dragnet" TV fame. And the book contained a haunting 10-page summary of the Black Dahlia murder case and I went crazy with it.

And Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, became my stand-in for Geneva Hillecker Ellroy. And again, this was my means of explicating everything pertaining to my mother's death. And not surprisingly, many years later, I wrote a novel called The Black Dahlia.

GROSS: Yeah. Now, you write in your new book that you soaked up crackpot ideas wholesale, and you even became a neo-Nazi for a while. What was the attraction of extremist propaganda to you?

ELLROY: There was no essential attraction. I was an extremely youthful, stupid, callow, dufuss, iconoclast. The junior high school and high school I went to were 97 percent Jewish. The only way that I stood out is that I wasn't Jewish, thus I became a Nazi. As I said in the book, I was the poster-boy for the "if you can't love me, notice me" chapter in all child psychology textbooks.

My wife says the funniest line in My Dark Places is this: "most of my friends were Jewish and predisposed to distrust my Nazi shenanigans."

GROSS: So you were willing to become somebody utterly despicable in order to get attention?

ELLROY: I was a buffoon. I was a clown. I was never dangerous.

GROSS: Well, being a neo-Nazi is not exactly a buffoon, though. That's becoming, you know, dangerous and hateful, whether you really take those beliefs to heart or not, just the fact that you'd be mouthing them, you know, turns you into somebody despicable.

ELLROY: Yes, as a 14, 15 and 16-year-old, and you have to look at me then as a kid: six-three, 130 pounds, 50 pounds of it acne. My pant-legs terminated several inches above my ankles. I was dangerous to myself only. I was an acquired taste that nobody ever acquired.

GROSS: Do you think you ever stopped becoming dangerous to yourself only and started to become dangerous to other people too?

ELLROY: I was never dangerous. I was always incapable of perpetrating violence even when I lived on the streets for years and broke into houses and sniffed women's undergarments; drank and used drugs; and stole things out of stores.

I was incapable of rolling drunks and I could have done it and gotten away with it. I planned to do it one time and always faltered at the last second. I planned on doing it several times. I just couldn't do it.

GROSS: You just didn't have it in you.

ELLROY: I couldn't be violent to another human being.

GROSS: Why was part of your M.O. sniffing women's undergarments?

ELLROY: I wanted Hancock Park and I wanted love and I wanted families and I wanted sex. I had lived on the edge of this affluence for a long time with no family, with no sex, with no money. And I had friends, buddies, that lived there and I was obsessed with the sisters of a couple of these guys.

And one night, it was very late in 1966, I broke into a friend's house and I describe this in My Dark Places. I bopped around there late at night. I went in through a dog access door.

I got down on my back and reached one of my long skinny arms and popped the latch on the door inside and opened it from the inside; scooted in; walked around; checked the medicine cabinets for some dope; found some -- some pills to take; drank bourbon out of cut glass decanters; made myself a ham sandwich; filched a $10 bill out of a wallet; went up to girl named Heidi's bedroom and sniffed her undies.

And it was a way to be in a hermetically-sealed, safe, affluent, sexual, family-derived inner world. And it fueled my imagination and I did it and did it and did it. I went back to that house repeatedly -- always covered my tracks.

Never stole things that would be noticed; was very cautious; was very circumspect; did it at a place across the street; did it at several more places in Hancock Park; did it, perhaps, 20, 25 times total over about three years.

GROSS: My guest is crime writer James Ellroy. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with James Ellroy. His book about his mother's murder is called My Dark Places.

How did you become involved in the reopening of your mother's murder case?

ELLROY: I saw my mother's murder file in March of 1994. She was 36 years dead at this time. I saw it because a friend of mine, a reporter, said that he was going to see the file as part of a piece he was doing on five unsolved San Gabriel Valley homicides and I realized I had to see the file and write about it for GQ.

I saw my mother's murder file. It was just as shocking and revelatory an experience as you'd think it would be. Man who showed me the file was a soon-to-retire L.A. sheriff's homicide investigator named Bill Stoner. He had nothing to do with my mother's case and in fact wasn't even a cop in 1958. He impressed me -- impressed me greatly.

I saw my mother's murder file. It was like a gear clicked in my head and it was like the little gear had a voice that said: "oh, now you know. Now you can't go back."

GROSS: How did the reopening of your mother's murder case change your feelings about your mother?

ELLROY: To begin with, I started to see that I came directly out of her. My mother, Geneva Hillecker Ellroy had a strong profligate side. She was alcoholic. She liked cheap men.

Well, I had a strong profligate side. I was a housebreaking misanthrope, an alcoholic, and a drug addict, but I was able to clean up. And she never had that chance.

She had a puritanical Midwestern Protestant hard-case streak that I developed later in life. I began to see how much gender-bias favored me. My mother was murdered back in 1958 and she was a woman.

I was able to drink and use drugs and whore to a far greater degree than she ever probably could have or probably even imagined in the 1970s, and I was a man, and all of this was condoned by society.

GROSS: You know what I found really interesting -- you used to assume that your mother was raped by her murderer 'cause there was evidence that sex had occurred right before she was murdered.

ELLROY: Yes.

GROSS: But after reopening the investigation, you and the detective investigating the case Bill Stoner concluded that she had consensual sex with her killer; that they were most likely, you know, making love before she was murdered. Do you find that...

ELLROY: We've actually ...

GROSS: Yeah, go ahead.

ELLROY: We've actually gone back and forth on it...

GROSS: Oh, OK.

ELLROY: ... quite a few times.

GROSS: So, you're not convinced that it was consensual.

ELLROY: No. Stoner's most recent perspective is that it was a date rape and it occurred on the grounds at Arroyo High School. I initially in my GQ piece came to the conclusion that it was consensual sex. Stoner and I have been over the two nights, June 21, 1958 -- June 22 of '58. a million times hypothetically. We've analyzed the evidence. We have gone over it with a fine toothed come.

And in the end, we haven't been able to make a judgment.

GROSS: You still haven't found your mother's murderer. The case remains unsolved.

ELLROY: Right.

GROSS: Do you have any theories?

ELLROY: Yes. I'll tell everybody out there in radioland the physical facts of the case, and then extrapolate a little bit. I spent the weekend with my father in the City of Los Angeles.

My mother remained in El Monte. She left the house between 8:00 and 8:30 Saturday night. She was seen poking her head into "Mama Mia's Pizza" there in the Five-Point (ph) section of El Monte around nine o'clock.

It looked like she was looking for somebody. She was seen alone at a bar called "The Manger" between 9:00 and 9:30. She was seen in a '55 or '56 Oldsmobile at Stan's Drive-in Restaurant around 10:15 with a dark-haired swarthy white man. She was seen an hour later with the dark-haired swarthy white man and a blond woman at the Desert Inn Bar six blocks from Stan's Drive-in.

At 2:30 in the morning, she was seen back at the same drive in, waiting on by the same car-hop with just the swarthy man. And her body was found on the grounds at Arroyo High School at 10:10 the next morning.

On her second trip to Stan's Drive-in, her top was slightly unbuttoned and one of her breasts was half exposed. She was giddy. The swarthy man looked sullen. He was being uncommunicative. It was the car-hop that told sheriff's detectives this.

Initially, I had thought that they made love between the visit to the Desert Inn where they were seen with the blonde woman and the second trip to Stan's drive-in; that my mother wanted more from this man -- more love; more sex; more affection; more male attention. And that the swarthy man had gotten what he wanted and wanted to ditch this desperate woman and get on with his life.

The conflagration occurred because she wanted more. I felt that -- I thought that when I wrote the GQ piece and it made me love my mother fiercely because wanting more has been, in many ways, the subject of my life: more love, more recognition, more literary glory, more of the ability to write profound books -- more, more, more.

"This is me, James Ellroy, coming out of Geneva Hillecker Ellroy -- the murder victim, the farm girl from Tunnel City (ph), Wisconsin.

When stoner and I began the actual hard, re-investigation of my mother's murder, Stoner took me aside and said: "I have to tell you what I think happened, and I have to be very blunt."

He proceeded to lay out the scenario of a last-second horrible, ugly, date rape with my mother unconscious -- hit in the head, perhaps with the swarthy man's fist; perhaps with a lug wrench -- and it all went down right there on the access road, which was a lover's lane beside Arroyo High School.

Parenthetically, Stoner has also said: "you can't lock yourself into any hypothesis. You always have to remain open to new theories, and you have to remain open to he prospect that new evidence will blow out everything that you thought before.

GROSS: I wonder what it's like for you. I'm sure you're giving a lot of interviews about your new book and about your mother's murder and it's a subject you've actually spoken about already for several years. And so in some ways your mother's death -- the kind of centerpiece of your life, in some ways. You know, the event...

ELLROY: Yes.

GROSS: ... that most shaped you is -- it's a book. In a way it's a performance too because it's something that you've had to talk about publicly for a long time. So in a way, you're still -- I mean, you're immersed in it and yet constantly distancing yourself from it by packaging it in a way? Do you know what I mean?

ELLROY: Yeah. She's with me now. I think about her continually. I discuss my mother with my wife and my wife is easily the single most brilliant human being that I've ever met. We talk about my mother. I see my mother's face. I can smell her. I swear, I can smell her from 38 years back.

I think about her -- I've had a lot of thrills as a writer. Nothing comes close to giving my mother to the world. I think it's ironic that she was such a private woman. She had an imperious quality to her. She had a charisma. She drew people to her.

She was a handsome woman. She possessed, as I say in the book, "a severe and breathtakingly implacable beauty." I want to crash the mask of that beauty. I want to know her.

Thus, she's with me continually. Thus, I think it's ironic that to an extent I robbed her grave. I invaded her hidden time and gave her to the world because it was the only gift of love that I could give her.

GROSS: Well James Ellroy, I want you a lot for talking with us.

ELLROY: Terry, it was my pleasure.

GROSS: James Ellroy's book about his mother's murder is called My Dark Places. It will be published in paperback next month to coincide with the movie adaptation of his novel L.A. Confidential. Here's the movie's theme composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, ORCHESTRA PERFORMING THEME FROM MOVIE "L.A. CONFIDENTIAL")

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: James Ellroy
High: Crime novelist James Ellroy. Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. After his mother was mysteriously strangled to death when he was 10, he grew up obsessed with crime. His life spun towards booze, drugs, theft, and jail. He eventually, at the age of 27 cleaned up his life and began writing. He has written several novels, many of which were international best-sellers, including "American Tabloid," "Clandestine," "The Black Dahlia." His most recent novel, "My Dark Places," in which he tells the story of his mother's murder, how it has effected his life, and his search for the killer is about to come out in paperback.
Spec: Books; Authors; Family; James Ellroy
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: James Ellroy
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 01, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 080102NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: I Died Today
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:30

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

You know those ads in the back of magazines that said: "send us your lyrics and we'll set them to music." Don't you wonder what the results sounded like? Well, Ellery Eskelin recently found out that his late father, Rodd Keith, was one of the composers who was hired to set those lyrics to music, then perform and record the songs.

These unusual records, now collectors items, are some of the best clues Eskelin has about his father's life. Ellery Eskelin's parents divorced shortly after he was born, and his father died in a mysterious accident or suicide when Eskelin was a child.

Nevertheless, Eskelin has kind of followed in his father's footsteps. He's a composer and saxophonist, but the music he plays is jazz and free improvisation. Recently, Ellery Eskelin compiled a CD collecting some of his father's songs. The CD is called "I Died Today."

When I spoke with Eskelin last December, I asked him to describe his father's music.

ELLERY ESKELIN, TENOR SAXOPHONIST AND COMPOSER: It's called "song poem" music, and I consider it a genre unto itself. It's the result of those ads that people have probably seen in the backs of magazines in which companies solicit the public to send in their lyrics. Their lyrics then get the full studio treatment by Hollywood's finest, set to music and recorded. And with that, you're on your way to fame and stardom.

GROSS: So the idea is you write a poem; you write a lyric; you mail it in; and for a fee, the composers who work for his company will set it to music and give you a studio recording of it.

ESKELIN: Exactly.

GROSS: So your father would crank out up to 30 melodies a day for these lyrics?

ESKELIN: Yeah, he was -- he was a very gifted musician and he was able to do this kind of work very easily. It was sort of his, oh, I guess you might call it a day job in as much as it was his means to make a living while he pursued -- I'm not quite sure what else he pursued -- but this is what we have left.

GROSS: While don't we hear the title track of the new record that you've produced of the songs that your father did while working for one of these companies -- actually, while working for several of these companies. And the title track is called "I Died Today."

Tell us what you know or what you find interesting about this track before we hear it.

ESKELIN: It's simply one of many records that I recently came across. My uncle, Gerald (ph) Eskelin, who is an active musician in Los Angeles, Rodd's brother, has been keeping a box of records over the many years, and I recently found them. And this was one of them. I don't really know what to make of it.

When I sit back and think about the person who must have sent these lyrics in, it's sort of chilling on the one hand, or maybe it's just someone's imaginative take. I'm not sure what their intent was in this being a hit record, but it's one of my favorites.

GROSS: Well, let's hear the title track of "I Died Today" -- the anthology that you put together of your father's songs -- the melodies that he created for other people's lyrics. And we'll hear your father, Rodd Keith, singing and at the keyboard.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, SINGER/COMPOSER RODD KEITH PERFORMING TITLE TRACK FROM CD "I DIED TODAY")

KEITH SINGING: It was a dark and a rainy night
The headlights were really too bright
I was thinking of my kids
Of my darling wife

My sales were down
My pay was small
And I needed money bad
I couldn't pay the mortgage
To even keep the things we had

Then through the night
There came a light
A hobo wanted a ride
I brought my old car to a stop
He got in by my side

We continued on, just we two
His presence seemed to calm my nerves
But the road was wet, and my vision blurred
And I didn't see the curb

SOUNDBITE OF A CAR CRASH

When I awoke, I saw the flames
And the people through the trees
I knew from their conversation
They thought the hobo was me

GROSS: That's I Died Today, the title track of a new collection that was produced by my guest Ellery Eskelin. And Ellery's father, Rodd Keith, wrote the melody to the song we heard. It was also his voice that we heard. He was at the keyboards. And he was basically paid by this music house to set lyrics that were sent in through the mail -- to set those lyrics to music.

Now your father was sent lyrics that were supposed to fit into every genre, so he had to write songs around every genre -- dance crazes, novelties, romantic ballads, patriot anthems -- patriotic anthems...

ESKELIN: Right.

GROSS: Let's hear one of the kind of hippie dance tunes that he did. This is one that's called "Hippie Happyland"...

ESKELIN: Right.

GROSS: ... an again he's singing and I guess on keyboards. Anything that you know about this song? Or any feelings that you have about it?

ESKELIN: Again, just that I'm -- as is the case with most of these songs, you know, they're just sort of just what they are. But I think Rodd really brings to each one a surprising little twist or just a little bit more than you might expect from these proceedings if you will.

When you listen to the words, sometimes they can be funny or even a little inane, but he really brings himself to it with a lot of vigor and 100 percent of himself, even if it might be a little tongue-in-cheek.

And you know, that's certainly the case with this one.

GROSS: Let's hear it. This is "Hippie Happyland."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, KEITH PERFORMING "HIPPIE HAPPYLAND")

KEITH SINGING: We're a hippie happy family
Now shake the hip for me
Now hop and skip and twirl your girl
We're livin' in a happy hippie happy world

We're a hippie happy family
Now shake those hips for me
Now hop and skip and a-twist your girl
We're livin' in a hippie happy world

What are those hippies asking me?
The funny-looking folks you see
Who with their heavy, thick beards
And their wavy long hair
Well, that's the life for me

GROSS: You know, I think if I was a composer and I was sent those lyrics to put to music, I'd just want -- you know, I'd just kind of call it quits.

LAUGHTER

I would be in such despair. I mean, you must often ask yourself: what was your father's frame of mind when he was getting all these inane lyrics?

ESKELIN: It's a very intriguing thought, because the more of these pieces I hear, the more I really appreciate that. They're really from the entire spectrum of pop music, plus a lot of hybrids that I think he created himself due to these lyrics.

GROSS: My guest is jazz musician Ellery Eskelin. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

My guest is jazz composer and musician Ellery Eskelin. He's compiled a CD of his father's songs -- songs he wrote around lyrics mailed in by the public in response to ads in the back of magazines saying: send us your lyrics, then we'll make them into songs.

Now, you never really knew your father. Your parents separated when you were very young.

ESKELIN: Yeah.

GROSS: And your father stayed in Los Angeles. You and your parents moved to Baltimore, I believe?

ESKELIN: Mm-hmm. That's where my mother is originally from.

GROSS: So in a way, I mean, the only information you have about your father is what relatives have told you and what you've heard from these records.

ESKELIN: Yeah.

GROSS: Have these records changed your idea of who your father was?

ESKELIN: I guess they haven't changed it so much. I think they represent an accurate, if only partial, picture of who he was. When I was growing up, I was told many, many stories of my father's talents and idiosyncrasies. He was described as being quite the charming eccentric.

And as I became serious about music myself and began playing saxophone at age 10, these stories really started to have a profound effect on me. Unfortunately, Rodd died in 1974 very tragically, and before I ever had a chance to really make his acquaintance or communicate with him in much of any way.

You know, it -- that was -- it was over. So I've had these stories as part of my life now. I'm 37 and this music has recently come to my attention only in the last maybe two years. I was aware that Rodd did this kind of stuff and I had even heard a few examples when I was a teenager.

And at the time, I wasn't that impressed because it just didn't seem to sort of coincide with the sort of genius that everyone had been talking about.

But now that I've heard so many of them and I can put them in a context of just exactly what the nature of the business was and just imagine what it must have taken to be able to accomplish the task, I'm actually quite impressed. He has had to have been quite an imaginative guy.

GROSS: Well, as I said before, he wrote in all kinds of genres -- novelty dance tunes like "Do the Pig" and "Do the Turkey"...

ESKELIN: Right.

GROSS: ... and romantic ballads. There's even a patriotic number -- a patriotic anthem that you have on the new record called "I Am a Real American." And for listeners just joining us, again, my guest is Ellery Eskelin and he's a jazz musician.

His father, who died in 1974, specialized in setting other people's lyrics to music. He basically worked at a house where this is what they did. They advertised in the backs of magazines and asked people to send in their poems and lyrics and they'd tell you professional musicians would set it to music and mail the results back to you.

So here's one of the results. This is a lyric that was mailed to your father -- I Am a Real American -- and we'll hear your father doing the voice on that.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, KEITH PERFORMING "I AM A REAL AMERICAN")

KEITH SINGING: First of all, allow me to make myself
Perfectly clear
Dear Lord help us to love each other
Instead of fear

I believe in the Constitution of the U.S.A.
I respect the Holy Bible, every word it says
I believe in human rights, regardless of color
And I will not allow myself to mislead others

My utmost aim in life
Is to love and respect my wife
My family, neighbors -- love them all as one
For this God gave his only son

I believe utmost in integrity
And unity
Educational equality, with divine obligation

GROSS: Are these records the only times that you've heard your father's voice?

ESKELIN: Yes, they are. They are.

GROSS: Your father was such the mystery man, in a way. I mean, you never really knew him because he died when you were young.

ESKELIN: Right.

GROSS: The music that we have of his is this -- these melodies that he set to other people's lyrics. He even died in a really mysterious way. In fact, you've printed a copy of the obituary, so I think I'll read it.

It says -- this was December of 1974: "leaping or falling from an overcrossing onto the Hollywood Freeway, a man identified as Rodney Eskelin, 37, address unknown, was struck by numerous cars and killed. Police said the victim plunged down the Santa Monica Boulevard overpass onto the northbound freeway at about 5:10 a.m. and drivers could not avoid him."

Does your family have any clues about whether this was an accident or suicide?

ESKELIN: I guess there are clues either way, and at this point it seems to be equally divided. I've never met anyone -- well, I've met very few people, let's put it that way, who have a definitive opinion one way or another. And it seems that the best that anybody can come up with is that it could have been either. It could have just as easily been an accident or it could have just as easily been intentional.

But that's been another very profound aspect of this story for me, just because of the circumstances of his life, especially in the last few years. He was very much into hallucinogens -- almost in a religious, mystical kind of way. I think he had a very -- someone put it -- a very naive curiosity towards spiritual matters.

You have to remember that he comes from a very strong religious background which he then sort of rejected, at least inasmuch as the formal part of it -- the church itself -- although I think he retained a very deep spiritual feeling. And drugs came into his life and I think he integrated that into who he was.

And so, a lot of what he was trying to do or what he thought he was trying to do might have been an experimentation or a flirtation with life on the other side. On the other hand, it could have very well been a very careless act. He was known to walk on high balconies just to sort of freak people out.

GROSS: Do you think he might have been manic depressive?

ESKELIN: That's a theory of one of Rodd's close friends from the end of his life. Yeah, she, in retrospect, seems to recognize some of those attributes. At the time, I don't think people quite knew, or maybe they did, but she was very young at the time and I think now she has a strong feeling that he may have been.

It may have been something that was exacerbated by constant drug use or it may have been something that he was trying to self-medicate against. I can't -- can't truly say.

GROSS: You know, if your father was depressive and prone to suicide -- if this really was a suicide. Then I can't help but think what it must have been like for him to always have to set to music lyrics written, one would imagine, by often lonely, not very talented people.

ESKELIN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: I mean, that could be -- that could be a really depressing experience.

ESKELIN: I would -- I agree with you. I mean, you have to -- he did this for a long time. I understand that he was frustrated that he couldn't seem to find more legitimate work, but then from what I know, his lifestyle became more and more avant garde inasmuch as he just was sort of undependable.

And even the people who were closest to him towards the end found it harder and harder to even deal with him. He was just not showing up on time; sessions were late or delayed. He would just drop off the face of the Earth for days or weeks at a time.

So that right there, I think, interfered with his -- any plans for aspirations he might have had to make it in the larger music world.

GROSS: Your mother told you that before your parents separated, your father would play music for you when you were, what, two years old or something. He'd play his favorite progressive jazz records for you.

ESKELIN: Right.

GROSS: Any idea of what those records were that he'd play for you when you were very, very young?

ESKELIN: Well, he liked jazz. Jazz was his favorite music at the time. My mother plays Hammond B3 organ and they had a duet, and they played music together. And she tells me that they played a lot of things. But jazz was -- is his sort of love. I know he liked "The Four Freshmen" and other things at that time.

The only record that I can ascertain for certain was played in my crib was Stan Kenton's "City of Glass," and I heard about this record all my life.

Whenever anybody wanted to sort of allude to the most far-out thing they could think of, it was invariably Stan Kenton's City of Glass. And my mother was just sure that Rodd was going to frighten me with this music; that I was too young and that -- it frightened her.

And so, it's ironic because I never did really get to hear that piece of music until recently. I think it was just reissued on CD, and I've always been a big Stan Kenton fan myself. And I finally got that music some months ago and listened to it, and I was pretty impressed. It's -- I think it was written sometime in the '50s and at that time, especially, I'm sure that it really just was the end to most people.

GROSS: Now, do you think that those records that your father played for you when you were in your crib helped develop your ear and interest in music?

ESKELIN: It's funny, isn't it? I mean, I guess honestly, I can't really say for sure, but it's a very attractive idea, isn't it? I think it's something that I've always kind of held special, because it's one of the few ways that I can say I really had a contact with my father.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

ESKELIN: Aside from that, the only other one was indirectly through my grandmother, Rodd's mother. She began writing us letters when I was around 13 or 14 years old and sort of, you know, making the connection between the families again, and there was plans of sending me out to visit and meet Rodd.

And I had -- I guess I had sent her a letter and I told her all about my love of the saxophone and what I was doing, and she wrote me back saying that she had showed the letter to Rodd, and that he had said that he was proud of my talent in the music field.

And you know, I look back at that as being maybe the only sliver of communication, you know, besides those records in my room when I was one and a half years old, that I still have to hold, you know, dear to my heart. And, you know, I really do.

GROSS: Ellery Eskelin's collection of his father's songs is called I Died Today: Music of Rodd Keith. It's on the Tzadik record label.

Next month, Ellery Eskelin will have a new CD of his own called "One Great Day." Here's music from one of Ellery's earlier CDs, "The Sun Died."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE SUN DIED")

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Ellery Eskelin
High: Tenor saxophonist and composer, Ellery Eskelin. He's been called the most inventive American tenor player in creative music. His father, Rodd Keith -- also known as Rod Rodgers -- was killed when he was struck by cars on the Hollywood freeway after leaping or falling from the Santa Monica Boulevard overpass. Eskelin only knew his father for the first eighteen months of his life. As he grew up he was inspired and intrigued by the continuous stories he heard about him and his musical talent. He produced a collection of his father's recordings titled "I Died Today: Music of Rodd Keith" -- for the Tzadik label's "Lunatic Fringe" series.
ESKELIN's new release comes out in September, "One Great Day." He'll be touring the Southeast this September.
Spec: Music Industry; Deaths; Ellery Eskelin
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: I Died Today
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 01, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 080103NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: In the Company of Men
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:55

TERRY GROSS, HOST: The ideal Hollywood movie is designed to leave everyone feeling the same way. Not so with independents. One such new low-budget film that has already left audiences disagreeing is "In the Company of Men."

Our film critic John Powers first saw the film at this year's Sundance Festival and has this review.

JOHN POWERS, FRESH AIR COMMENTATOR: The great advantage of making movies on a shoestring is that you're free -- free to tackle tricky material; free to adopt a weird style; free to offend the audience. Made for a piddling $25,000, In the Company of Men does all of these things.

It's a genuine provocation. The movie centers on two businessmen. There's handsome dimple-chin Chad, wonderfully played by Aaron Eckert (ph). And there's the superior Howard, played by Matt Mulloy (ph), who's both kinder-seeming and dweebier than Chad.

When we first see them, they're heading off on a six-week trip to a branch office. Both are frustrated by work and, more important, they're angry at having just been dumped by their girlfriends. And so, Chad proposes a scheme that will let them take revenge on women.

The two will find some lonely woman who's not used to being courted, and they'll overwhelm her with affection until she feels loved by them both. Then, they'll suddenly dump her and laugh all the way home. Howard agrees to this plan, and the two men start wooing their chosen victim -- a lovely deaf secretary named Christine, who's played by Stacy Edwards (ph).

This demonic tale was written and directed by newcomer Neil Labute, a 34-year-old playwright whose previous work has all been for the theater. Although In the Company of Men is not a filmed play, Labute's style carries a strong whiff of the proscenium arch. He pushes his story forward with flurries of macho, Mamet-style dialogue. And he gives everything a stylized look.

Chad and Howard are defined by their white shirts and ties, just as their lives are defined by the neutral spaces they inhabit -- airport lounges, office cubicles, restaurants with no personality.

These aren't realistic characters. They're stencils, whose monstrous ways of thinking are revealed by their soaring cadences of spite and their chortling relish in their own viciousness.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "IN THE COMPANY OF MEN")

AARON ECKERT, ACTOR, AS CHAD: This is John Merrick. The only thing I can think of the whole time -- I'm sitting across from "The Elephant Man"

LAUGHTER

MATT MULLOY, ACTOR, AS HOWARD: But she's attractive, though, right?

CHAD: Yeah, I guess. Yes, I would say, yeah.

HOWARD: Tall?

CHAD: No, kind of average. But you should see her going at it -- working to put the simplest sound together.

HOWARD: Oh.

CHAD: I mean, an "A E I O U sometimes Y" is like the holy grail to this poor creature. After about 15 minutes, I can't watch any more saliva pour from the corner of her mouth, or I'm going to lose my taco salad."

HOWARD: I mean it...

LAUGHTER

HOWARD: But was she nice? I mean...

CHAD: Nice? Yeah, sweet and giving, all those things.

HOWARD: That's good.

CHAD: In fact, one of the kindest people I've ever had spray spit in my face.

LAUGHTER

POWERS: Last week, I mentioned that the strongest thing about "Air Force One" was its catchy premise. The same is true of "In the Company of Men."

Chad and Howard's decision to single out a frail, innocent woman and then shatter her is the most viscerally compelling hook of any movie this year. You simply have to know what's going to happen next, even if some of the scenes become so painful that you want to avert your eyes.

Labute makes us feel the true weight of human heartlessness, and he doesn't stop there. He suggests that the male capacity for cruelty is intensified by the very nature of corporate competition. Chad and Howard, after all, work for a company of men.

Because the movie was made on the cheap, the lighting is ugly, the acting's uneven, and the boom dangles into the frame. But these are the kind of flaws that you have to forgive in a low-budget picture. What's harder to forgive are the lapses in overall vision.

Despite himself, Labute seems enthralled by Chad and Howard's meanness and by his own ability to shock us. He turns some of the most vicious remarks into laugh lines. In attempting to give the movie a wicked edge, he sometimes pushes too hard, as when Chad humiliates a black employee by making him show his private parts in his office.

When the movie premiered at Sundance, it left audiences wildly, even angrily, divided. Viewers who hated the film were often mocked for being PC -- for not grasping that Chad and Howard's offensive behavior wasn't being celebrated, but dissected.

But what bothers me about the film is not that it isn't PC, but that it is. Although the misogynist dialogue makes it sound as if Labute's boldly violating taboos, he's actually serving up just another one-dimensional look at the flawed psyche of white men, especially white men in corporate culture.

What could be more politically correct? In the Company of Men may hold us in its clutches from beginning to end, but its bleak picture of the American male psyche is the stuff of shopworn slogans, not cutting edge art.

This is one movie that manages to make men seem even worse than we actually are.

GROSS: John Powers is film critic for Vogue.

Dateline: John Powers; Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: Film critic John Powers reviews "In the Company of Men" the new low-budget film by newcomer Neil Labute.
Spec: Movie Industry; In the Company of Men
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1997 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1997 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: In the Company of Men
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.