CHAPTER 2 CPR, or the Cowan-Noga Express takes off

One day while I was promoting records at Pasadena Radio Station KRLA, I met Beverly Noga, whose mother Helen had been a San Francisco jazz night club owner (The Black Hawk), and who had discovered and was now managing the singing sensation Johnny Mathis. Beverly, had grown up in the entertainment business, as I had, and after a short lunch, decided to open a publicity company. Contemporary Public Relations began over her Mom's garage in Beverly Hills, with one phone, one desk, one typewriter. Our clients were Sonny & Cher, Dobie Gray, and The Turtles, who had been Sonny & Cher's back-up band at theSunset Boulevard Club The Red Velvet. Little did we realize, or give any thought to the fact that we were the only "female-owned" PR company in the business. We specialized in contemporary music, but didn't consider ourselves "pioneers" or particularly "liberated, " just two young women going into a decidedly male-dominated business. We did record promotion, representing, among others, New York label Cameo Parkway Records, headed by the legendary Neil Bogart. Some of the records we worked on were JJ Jackson’s “But It’s Allright,” and a Melanie record or two. But when he sent us “96 Tears” by Question Mark & The Mysterians, we were embarrassed to go to our friends at Radio with it, as it was quite the worst record either of us had ever heard. Needless to say, it became a giant hit, and we were again amazed at Bogart’s ability to make a hit from such a piece of shit. The world was later to see his finely honed talents in major ways.

We visited all the radio stations on promotion days, just like all the guys, hyping our records. We went to Martoni's restaurant and bought drinks for program directors and deejays, dinner for visiting writers and journalists. Those jocks & writers left us with enormous bar bills, but we got the airplay, and we got the stories in print. We had adventures too numerous to detail here, and some day, before one or both of us kicks off, we will write The Book, or perhaps The Sitcom... Suffice it to say, that we were making it up as we went along, and we were having a ball.

We publicized a great Toronto band called The Mandala, which was managed by a gent called Randy Martin. Actually, his name was Rafe Markowitz, and after several years producing TV, surfaced in the last ten years, as "Riff" Markowitz, the Palm Springs Entrepreneur who produces and stars in “The Palm Springs Follies.” Receiving national raves, the long-running fabulously successful show is part Zigfield, part CB DeMille, and plays to SRO houses about 8 months a year.

Bev and I were hired to publicize two pivotal LA Clubs, The Trip on Sunset Blvd., the place which gave birth to Teddy Neely, who went on to star in the loooonnnng-running “Jesus Christ Superstar,” including the movie, and as far as I know, never did much else. We handled The Kaleidoscope, which was LA’s answer to Bill Graham’s Fillmore and Winterland Ballrooms. Kaleidoscope, a sensational concert room that had been home to 30’s landmark Earl Carroll Theatre, was run by the late Gary Essert, who went on to start AFI’s annual FILMEX festival, and his partner John Hartman the very successful agent & Manager, whose brother was TV star Phil Hartman.

We were the publicist for local heroes the Leaves (“Hey Joe”), and The Seeds (“Pushin’ Too Hard”), not to mention Canned Heat, who performed as house band at The Kaleidoscope. Over the four and a half years Beverly and I were in business, we represented a wide array of musical talent, including Eric Burdon & The Animals, the Chambers Brothers, John Mayall, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Chad & Jeremy, Them, and Three Dog Night. We broke a Chicago band called The Buckinghams and enjoyed a good working relationship with the dapper manager of The Buckinghams and Chicago, James William Guercio.

Later, we worked with more British bands when Chrysalis Management hired us for their new bands Jethro Tull and Ten Years After. We were also engaged by British entrepreneur Robert Stigwood to break his new band Cream and his very hot hitmakers The BeeGees.I flew to San Fransisco to see this trio of British Superstar Musicians, and was literally blown away. Cream was the best band I had ever seen, critics were falling all over themselves to get to these three men, and I managed to get a set of Ginger Baker's drum sticks as a souvenir. Cream had lots of internal conflict, well documented, despite their critical success. We hung in with them through their re-grouping as Blind Faith.

CPR was the first company on the West Coast to specialize in Rock'n' Roll, and soon we were joined by others, most notably, the Beatles' friend and former publicist Derek Taylor. Our offices, only a block apart on the Sunset Strip, were constantly buzzing with clients and managers, and at the end of the day, we would meet Derek for drinks at a local deli to commiserate about our rotten clients, who were largely delinquent with their fees.

Derek was integrally involved in the planning and execution of the West Coast's first great pop festival, at Monterey, California in the summer of 1967, and we(CPR) were engaged to do publicity for several of the festivals which followed, including a massive melee in the San Fernando Valley at Devonshire Downs that preceded Woodstock. Jimi Hendrix played many of these festivals, the Chambers Brothers played nearly all of them. Groups such as the Doors, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Love, and The Iron Butterfly ("In A Gadda Da Vida"???) were the mainstays of these festivals, which took place in the period between Monterey and The Big One at Woodstock, after which, the whole concept seemed done and overdone. Cream metamorphized into Blind Faith, an ironic name for one of the first real supergroups, a band whose members hated each other, but whose tour grossed major bucks. By then, I was ready for a change, and left Beverly to sort it all out. She ended up managing the Chambers Brothers, and, a couple of years ago began managing them again. Derek returned to England, where he stayed close to the remaining Beatles until his death in 1997.

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