LES DUDEK

Born on the naval base at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, Les Dudek moved to Auburndale, Florida, the year he turned seven. For Dudek, the move was marked by Buddy Holly’s plane crash. “That’s all I heard on my little nine-volt transistor radio,” he said. Orange blossoms, pine trees, and guitar chords made up the ethos of Dudek’s upbringing in the south. He remembers trips to Carlton Music and getting out of school to smudge pot orange groves when temperatures threatened to drop.

His sister was about four years older than Les. “She was always up on the latest and greatest” when it came to music, he said. He’d hear what she was listening to through their bedroom walls. As a result, Dudek was raised on a steady diet of Elvis Presley and the Beach Boys. As her musical tastes shifted towards the “Stupid Cupid” and “Lipstick on Your Collar” pop songstress Connie Francis, Dudek drifted to the guitar-heavy sounds of the Ventures and the unequaled songwriting and harmonies of the Everly Brothers and the Beatles. The British Invasion gifted Les with the Who, the Rolling Stones, and Cream.

By then, music was heavy on his mind. “I was about ten years old when I got the guitar bug,” Dudek said. He still has his first twenty-dollar 1965 Silvertone 604 acoustic guitar hanging on his wall. Disaster struck when he attempted to tune it for the first time. “I was turning the keys too high until I popped the string, and I thought it was the end of the world.” It turned out to be an easy fix. Taylor’s Drug Store in Auburndale stocked Black Diamond guitar strings right behind the counter.

His first electric guitar was a Silvertone 1446L hollow-body. It had black and white trim, reminiscent of the Gretsch Country Gentleman that Beatle George Harrison played. Dudek had spotted it in a Sears and Roebuck catalog and had to have it. It was a Christmas gift from his parents that year. “I have a picture of my mom and me on Christmas morning with that guitar – it’s a fond picture,” he said.

The future guitar great eventually discovered Carlton Music Center, a music mecca of 1960s Polk County. “I can remember hanging out at Carlton Music Center, running into Gram Parsons and Jim Stafford, Jon Corneal. We were all kind of a product of music back in those days.”

Later he’d go to other Florida music stores like Thoroughbred Music in Tampa and the Music Mart in Orlando, where he got a sunburst Mosrite Ventures electric guitar. He remembers showing it off to Carl Chambers. When Chambers leaned down to look at it, a Zippo lighter tumbled from his pocket. “It was like slow motion, how it drifted all the way down my guitar and put a big dent in it,” he said. Chambers felt terrible, but there was no harm done, Dudek was able to trade it out for a black one. Les would go on to do the same to Jim Carlton’s bass with his belt buckle. Jim still teases him about it.

The first band Dudek played with was a group of other local boys. “I don’t even think we put a name on it. It was just a bunch of kids in the neighborhood,” he said. Ricky Erickson was on lead vocals with Butch Buchanan on lead guitar, Rick Burnett on drums, and Gerald Enfinger on bass. He referred to this group as the ‘Marjorie Avenue Bunch.’ Erickson’s mother was the manager for the Dale Drive-In, where the boys would rehearse in the concession stand. A man walked up to the boys at the drive-

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in one day and said, ‘Hey! How’d you guys like to make some money doing that?’

He owned a trailer sales business next to what was Club 92. “The guy wanted us to set up in front of his trailer sales so we would attract people coming and going by the freeway there,” Dudek said. “He paid us each five bucks – that was our first gig.”

The young guitarist graduated to another band, the Steppin’ Stones, with David Shoemate on drums, Chuck Corneal (brother of drummer Jon Corneal and former mayor of Auburndale) on guitar, Butch Buchanan on lead guitar, and Dudek on bass.

He hopped out of the Steppin’ Stones into United Sounds, a ‘mirror image band’ of another Auburndale garage band turned legends – Ron and the Starfires. Dudek’s first mentor was an original member of United Sounds, Mitchell Smith. He would go watch Smith play with the band at the Auburndale teen center. After the show, Smith would show him things on the guitar and eventually taught him how to play “Johnny B. Goode” on his 1964 white SG Custom.

Carl Chambers was another local musician he looked up to. Dudek would skip school, pick up cheeseburgers from Taylor’s Drug Store, and show up at Chambers’ house. “I’d trade him burgers for some guitar licks,” he said. The Polk County music scene was like a game of musical chairs with young musicians changing bands, forming new ones, and joining established ones – and Les was no different. “We were kids forming bands and playing teen centers and frat houses,” he said. “It was better than doing anything else criminal.” However, they would occasionally steal colored flood lights from motels to illuminate their band. They had a makeshift light bar where they’d screw in their freshly lifted flood lights.

After the Derry Down moved to Cypress Gardens Boulevard, the original building became the Pied Piper for a time. Les remembers playing the Pied Piper. The building had no air conditioning. “I remember it being a hot box,” he said.

The last time he saw Gram Parsons was outside the Pied Piper. “I could tell from the way he was looking at the Derry Down he was kind of reminiscing what it was like when it was his place,” he said. Les, some six years Gram’s junior, struck up a conversation with the older musician.

Dudek moved on from the United Sounds to Blue Truth, followed by the third or fourth iteration of the band Power, playing high school dances, frat houses, and the Florida teen center circuit that was white-hot with rising stars. Back in the day, Florida “was like the east coast version of California, but not quite as hip yet,” he said.

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Following Duane Allman’s death in a 1971 motorcycle crash, a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, Dickey Betts, called on Dudek to play with him. Eventually, Betts and Dudek linked back up with the Allman Brothers Band, and Les played guitar for their hit song, “Ramblin’ Man.” He co-wrote and played some acoustic guitar on the song “Jessica” for the same 1973 Allman Brothers Band album, Brothers and Sisters. The success of “Ramblin’ Man,” which ascended to No. 2 on the Billboard charts, ignited Dudek’s career.

Dudek thinks back on that night in front of the Pied Piper occasionally. “I wonder if Gram got a chance to hear me play on “Ramblin’ Man” before he died.” The single was released in August 1973, and Gram died in September.

In 1973, Dudek met Boz Scaggs and went on tour with him for about five years, later playing on his 1976 album, Silk Degrees.

At the end of their The Joker tour, the Steve Miller Band tapped Dudek to work with them in Seattle. There, the band and Dudek cut songs that would end up on albums Fly Like an Eagle, Book of Dreams, and Living in the 20th Century.

The Steve Miller Band even covered the song “Sacrifice,” which Dudek had co-written with guitarist James Curley Cooke. “Sacrifice” made it onto the Book of Dreams album and Dudek’s first solo self-titled album, produced by Boz Scaggs and released on Columbia Records in 1976. This wouldn’t be the last of his songwriting successes either. Dudek co-wrote “Sister Honey” with Stevie Nicks for her 1985 Rock a Little album. The two also co-wrote the song “Freestyle” together, which Dudek would go on to name his 2003 solo record with E Flat Productions.

While living in California circa-early-70s, another offer would come Dudek’s way. Manager and musician Herbie Herbert approached the guitarist about a new band he was forming. Herbert told Dudek, ‘I want to get the two guitar heroes from the San Francisco Bay area to be in the same band.’ Dudek thanked him for the compliment and asked who the other guitar player was. It was none other than Neal Schon, guitarist, for Santana, along with bassist Ross Valory.

Dudek was set to meet the other would-be members at a rehearsal hall called Studio Instrument Rental in San Francisco. He received a call from Columbia Records’ A&R department requesting a meeting at one of their studios which happened to be right across the street from the rehearsal hall. “I was going to be on that side of town anyway that day rehearsing with this new band called Journey,” he said.

Two hours into the Journey jam sesh, Dudek stepped across the street to take the meeting with Columbia Records. He was offered a solo deal on the spot. Weighing his options, Dudek decided to go solo. He laughed, recounting the story, “It turns out I was one of the founding members of Journey for about two hours.”

Following his debut album, Dudek worked on Say No More with audio engineer and record producer Bruce Botnick, famous for his work with the Doors, the Beach Boys, and Eddie Money. This era of Dudek’s career garnered him offers from various artists and bands, including the band Chicago after the 1978 death of member Terry Kath. The manager for Little Feat offered Dudek the job when Lowell George passed away in 1979. Around the same time, Bob Dylan and Eddie Money also sought out Dudek, but he was already immersed in his own projects. Dudek recorded five albums with Columbia – four solo and one with a band. In the late 70s, he linked up with Mike Finnigan and Jim Krueger. The two had been working with Dave Mason. Krueger wrote the song “We Just Disagree” for Mason. Their band would be called the Dudek, Finnigan, and Krueger Band (DFK).

The promotion for this band was a bit ‘ass backward,’ as Dudek would say. Instead of cutting a record together and touring to promote it, the three were each promoting their solo albums. “It was really a confusing thing for the audience,” he said. DFK did go on tour with Kansas for about four months and worked with artists like Kenny Loggins and Dave Mason. “Then we got the bright idea – why don’t we do a DFK album,” Dudek said. The Dudek, Finnigan, and Krueger Band released their first and only self-titled album with Columbia Records in 1980.

While on hiatus with DFK, after he’d cut his third record, Gypsy Ride, Dudek got a call to go to an audition for Cher. The Goddess of Pop was looking to start a rock band called Black Rose. DFK’s Mike Finnigan turned up at the auditions along with Steven Stills of supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame. “We turned it into a big jam session,” Dudek remembered.

After the auditions, Cher invited them all for dinner at Nick’s Fishmarket in Beverly Hills. She asked Dudek if he was serious about helping her start a band. Sure, he told her. “I wasn’t doing anything else.” Les Dudek became the Black Rose band leader and recommended esteemed composer James Newton Howard, whom he had worked with on the DFK album, to produce the Black Rose record.

In the interim, Cher and Les (or LD as she sometimes called him) began dating. “We had already been dating, and she said, ‘LD, why don’t you just move in?’” Dudek said. He lived with her for the better part of three years.

Dudek named the founder and president of Casablanca Records Neil Bogart as the short-lived band’s biggest champion. Black Rose would release one self-titled album in 1980, appear on The Merv Griffin Show, and host The Midnight Special alongside the Rolling Stones and the Everly Brothers the same year. Cher also appeared on Tom Snyder’s Celebrity Spotlight to promote the record. Black Rose wilted following Bogart’s death and Dudek and Cher’s breakup in 1982.

According to Dudek, he encouraged Cher to pursue acting post-Black Rose. A few years after parting company, she called him up and said, ‘Hey Les, I’m doing a new movie, and they’re looking for a guy that’s got long hair, sings, plays guitar, and rides a motorcycle. Do you know anybody like that?’ That’s how Les Dudek got his first film role as Bone in director Peter Bogdanovich’s 1985 movie, Mask. Dudek followed that up with a television movie, Streets of Justice, released the same year.

The highly sought-after southern rock guitar god continued to tour around Europe and the United States in the 1990s. He released three albums through his own record label, E Flat Productions, including Deeper Shades of Blues in 2001, Freestyle in 2003, and Delta Breeze in 2013. He still tours around Florida, including appearances at Gram Parsons Derry Down.

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