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around listening to ‘Norwegian Wood,’ and we were all saying what a great production the album was and how great the songs were. Karen and Richard were good students of the art form.”
    Karen also sought the guidance of Frankie, with whom she may have been smitten. “There wasn’t a romantic interest on my part,” Chavez says, “but I always felt there may have been on hers. I had a girlfriend at the time, so Karen and I just became very good friends.” Karen’s only steady boyfriend during her high school years was a clarinet player by the name of Jerry Vance. Although the two dated for several years, most recall the relationship to have been nothing serious and more of a “buddy” situation than a romance.
    As for Karen and Frankie, they too remained “just good buddies,” he says. “She had that little tomboy streak to her and used to talk like a beatnik. I loved that she would talk like a jazz player. What developed was a very good friendship and a mutual interest in drums and music. She’d come over after school and we’d talk drums. She always had a ton of questions about playing so we used to talk about the most effective ways to hold the stick, traditional grip versus matched grip, stick control, playing technique, drum styles. We’d talk about different drummers and listen to jazz records and big bands. Karen took to drumming quickly, and it was very natural to her. She showed great ability, had good timing, and kept getting better and better. She ended up being one of the better snare drum players in the drum line in no time.”
    Given Karen’s track record with musical instruments, her parents were skeptical. They were quite sure it was just another passing fancy. Additionally, Agnes and Harold were already struggling to pay for Richard’s new Baldwin. But thanks to his urging, their parents agreed to invest in a basic drum kit for Karen. Karen loved the sound of Ludwigs and wanted them because two of her favorite drummers, Joe Morello and Ringo Starr, played Ludwigs exclusively. Agnes wanted Richard’s input, and he felt Ludwig drums would be a good investment since they were known to have a higher resale value than most other lines.
    On a Sunday afternoon the family drove to the San Fernando Valley with Frankie Chavez in tow to the home of a music teacher who dealt instruments on the side. They settled on an entry-level set that wasdark green with a yellow stripe around the center of each piece. Karen contributed some of her own savings to assist with the three-hundred-dollar purchase. “Ludwig makes a great product,” Chavez says. “It was a good move.” And with that purchase Frankie became Karen’s first drum teacher. Although the rudiments of drumming, time signatures, cadences, and fills came naturally to her, she wanted to know more. “A lot of what she picked up early on was influenced by what she heard on recordings,” Chavez explains. “As her interest in certain portions of the art of playing came up, I would try to teach her the concepts and answer her questions.”
    Karen soon began studying drum technique under the tutelage of Bill Douglass at Drum City on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Douglass was a well-known jazzer who played with the likes of Benny Goodman and Art Tatum. “Bill was well respected and a great teacher,” says Chavez, who also studied with Douglass for eight years. “We used to play on practice pads reading concert music. Bill had Karen reading very complex material and thought she had become quite a reader.” The lessons continued for the next year and a half.
    After only two months of playing, Karen was convinced she had outgrown her first drum kit and by Christmas persuaded her parents to trade in the entry-level set toward the purchase of a show set identical to one belonging to Joe Morello—a 1965 Ludwig Super Classic in silver