10
PEOPLE
fred friedman
kcbx jazz dj and so much more By Will Jones Life is a lot like jazz…it’s best when you improvise.—George Gershwin Fred Friedman, one of those happy people who seems to always have a smile on his face, accented by his ample Fu Manchu mustache, first started listening to jazz when he was sixteen. He lived and worked in an integrated neighborhood in Los Angeles, and the people he worked with at a White Front discount store listened to jazz in the morning before the store opened. He was introduced to Miles Davis, the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, John Coltrane and other jazz greats, especially one of his all-time favorites, Ray Charles. “One of the guys I worked with said his brother-in-law was having a Christmas party and asked if I’d be interested in going. When I asked him who his brother-in-law was, he said, ‘Ray Charles.’ I said, ‘Heck ya!’ I went to the party in Leimert Park where I ended up playing gin rummy with Ray using braille cards!” Fred was born in 1947 and attended both Los Angeles High School and Hamilton High School, graduating from Hamilton in 1965. Always good at mathematics, he majored in mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara. “During the summers I worked for Hughes Aircraft as a draftsman and in the machine shop. I knew that I didn’t want to work in aerospace after working at Hughes, so I did my senior project in an area of biomedical engineering, a small field at the time. I went to work for Beckman Instruments where I was hired as an engineer in the clinical instruments division.” Back in Los Angeles, Fred was listening to the jazz radio station known as KBCO 105, at the time, before it became KKGO 105. “I was a regular at clubs like Shelley’s Manne Hole in LA and The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. At Shelley’s I saw Miles Davis right after he released ‘Bitches Brew’, one of the more interesting concerts I attended. The performers came on one-at-a-time and started playing, and finally Miles came out without any introduction. As he was famous for, he played with his back to the audience. Ninety minutes later one musician after another walked off the stage until no one was left and that was it.” In 1973 Fred and his then wife traveled to Avila Beach to meet family and camp out. Driving around, they saw how beautiful it was on the Central Coast and thought, “Man, this is nice. We found a two bedroom one bath house on Castaic Street in Shell Beach for seventeen thousand dollars. We came up for a couple of weekends and loved it, so we both quit our jobs and moved. I got a job as an engineer at Diablo Canyon and my wife as a secretary at Cal Poly. Fred transitioned to teaching not long after moving to Shell Beach. “When Cal Poly advertised for a teaching job in the engineering technology department, I applied and was hired as a lecturer.” While working for Beckman, Fred attended night school to earn a graduate degree, and in 1975 he applied for a tenure track position and got it. He taught at Poly until he retired in 2000. Not content with just teaching and enjoying his new home, Fred, urged by a neighbor, joined the Pismo Beach Fire Department. Like the other N O V E M B E R
2017
Journal PLUS