This “fly on the wall” story begins with my oldest son Joe and his audition with rock star “hall of famer” Ike Turner. In 1972, a year after graduating from high school in Manchester, Conn., Joe left the East for Los Angeles. He had been playing with a band from New Haven, Conn. since he was a junior at Manchester High, and this band had made a decision to go where the action was and see if they could “make the big time.” A short time after the four guys in the band arrived in California, the band member who played keyboard heard about an audition with Ike Turner for a keyboard musician to go on a world tour with his band. Joe decided to go along with him to see what happened at an audition. When the audition was over, Ike Turner turned to Joe and asked him what he played. Joe said guitar and Ike handed him his own guitar and said, “now show me what you can do.” Joe got a job with the band for the world tour, but his friend on keyboard did not.

    At the young age of  20, Joe was the only white band member traveling around the world with Ike and Tina Turner. We received postcards from all over Europe, then from Australia and finally from Indonesia, where armed police confiscated all the band’s equipment and put the musicians, who had no idea what this was about, under house arrest. They were released and, without their instruments, returned to the United States.

    Ike got right to work setting up another tour, this time in his own country. One of the first stops on the tour was Denver, where we had recently moved from Connecticut. Joe hadn’t seen his family in three years and I was delighted when he called to let me know what time the band would arrive at Stapleton Airport, so that I could be there to greet him. (Those were the days when you could wait at the arrival gate). First out of the gate were the support staff and then a parade which included Tina.  She was dressed in furs and walked out like a queen with her handmaids following, toting bags and boxes. Behind this entourage came the backup girl singers known as “The Ikettes,” and finally the musicians, including Joe, with their instruments. I had only a minute with Joe before he had to follow the group. He handed me tickets to the Denver concert.

    We didn’t see Joe again until the first Denver appearance of the “Ike and Tina Turner” show. After the show, we finally got together and he was able to come home with us that night. “By the way,” he said, “if we bring all the food and beer, could we have a cast party here at the house on Sunday afternoon?” We had hosted many theater cast parties,” and feeling up to the task, I agreed, never considering the impact of this mostly black company on our all-white Cherry Creek Village neighborhood.

    The cast and support team all showed up except for Tina Turner, who, according to Joe, never attends parties. Everyone was having a great time in our backyard, while neighbors peeked out from their windows at the sight and lewd sounds of this black cast playing a wild game of croquet on their knees. Joe stayed with “Ike and Tina Turner”  until  they split up when Tina left Ike at a gig in Texas. If you watch old videos such as “Proud Mary,” you can easily find Joe. He is the white guy in the group playing backup for Ike Turner.

Hanging out in the

Sea of Cortez

    When we were living in Denver in 1988, we were given an opportunity to spend three weeks in Mexico, at Las Cruces on the Sea of Cortez. We were invited there by Charlie’s friend Tom Doer who owned a big sporting goods distributorship in Caldwell, Idaho, and who had recently purchased a home in this private compound on the Mexican Baja. Tom’s personal  thing was fishing, and acquiring the best place to do this, his priority. In 1987 Tom had fallen in love with fishing in Mexico, and in particular, with fishing on the Sea of  Cortez. Las Cruces translates as “the crosses”  and the name derives from two crosses at the entrance to the bay. This private compound was built in the 1950s by movie star and crooner Bing Crosby. It has private homes, a private airstrip, a chapel and a vacation home for the Crosby family. There is also a small hotel for famous people who can afford it and desire private vacations. The spacious Doer home had a guest house and a resident handyman. It was closer to the beach than the Crosby house, whose residents needed to walk through Tom’s property to get  to the beach. Tom Doer kept two boats by the dock, one used for everyday fishing and another for longer trips to Cabo San Lucas.

    Tom had heard that my mother, Grace Tyrell Bedell, was once a respected fisherman and said we should bring her with us to Mexico. Grace came with me from Lake Placid to Denver and a couple of days later we all flew to Mexico City, then on to the town of Cabo Del San Jose, where we would transfer to a bus going to La Paz. The next day the Doer’s handyman would pick us up in La Paz. The plans went well until Charlie picked the wrong bus, with a route over a rugged mountain pass, instead of along the Pacific shore. We had tickets for seats but they were occupied by persons who would not move, so we ended up in the back seat where nearby passengers were carrying  iguanas, chickens and other animals. The back seat was angled so that every time we went around a curve or hit a bump, we slid off the seat. We put Grace between Charlie and me, in order to hold on to her, while I occupied the center opening. It was a long tortuous ride with only one pit stop, so by the time we reached the city of La Paz, Grace was exhausted and after downing a stiff whisky, she went to bed without her dinner.

    We were picked up in a four-wheel-drive vehicle for the trip to Las Cruces and thought that it would be better than the bus trip. We were wrong! The road to the Sea of Cortez was an old, badly maintained dirt road through the desert. Instead of pitching forward as we did on the bus, we were now thrown up where our heads bumped the ceiling. It was worth it, however, for when we arrived at the Doers we thought we had found paradise.

    At dawn every morning in Las Cruces, Tom was ready to take off in his fishing boat, and keeping him company was Grace. The second day out she had caught a 30-pound Dorado. Every morning, Lorraine Doer cooked for breakfast fresh caught fish, (yellow Jack), and by the end of the first week, Charlie, Grace and Tom had caught a giant squid. One morning I finally agreed to accompany Tom and Grace and, as we were cruising quietly along with our lines in the water, Tom abruptly gunned the throttle on the boat, and we almost fell over. “Pull in your lines”  he shouted as we ripped through the sea. As he slowed down, he pointed at a phenomenon in the distance where we saw hundreds of circling birds, and a huge dark ball of fish that was  visible under the water. “Put in your lines” yelled Tom. We did, and as soon as a line hit the water, we had a fish, as did the birds and sea lions who had appeared. We soon had a boat full of fish and as we headed back home, Tom spoke to us for the first time. “You have just witnessed a ‘feeding frenzy’ he said, and that is something few people will ever have a chance to see.”

    This was, for me, a  “a fly on the wall” moment.