Caribou Tales

Welcome To The Ranch!

I’m going to record all the Fun, Goofy, and Unique things I remember about my years at the Caribou Ranch Recording Studio in Nederland Colorado.  Caribou was one of the state-of-the-art professional music recording studios in the 70’s, and I had the privilege of working there as a Second Engineer and Assistant to Al Burnham as one of the Technical Maintenance “guys”.

Being intimately involved in the recording of many of the best-selling albums by many major artists of the time, we witnessed & experienced first-hand a whole lot of great material to call “The Tales of Caribou”.

I don’t know how often I will get time to write a story for you to read, so if you’ll subscribe to this blog you’ll never miss a new story.

While you’re here,  read them, enjoy them and feel free to leave comments.  Thank you, and I wish you the best in whatever you’re doing.

“Dan left us this morning at 6:00am . He fought a brave battle with cancer and died peacefully at home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side. His strength, dignity, and grace in the face of the daunting challenges of this disease were an inspiration to all who knew him.”  Dan Fogelberg’s website. 

I first met Dan when he was recording Captured Angel. Since he lived nearby, he visited the ranch often, and we all knew him.

A Few of My memories:

I remember helping Al Burnham design and build a home stereo for Dan’s mountain home. Al installed it there, too.  I also remember an evening of pool, beer, and chit chat in Nederland at the Pioneer Inn.  I believe Joe Walsh, Jeff Guercio, John Carsello, and Dan were all there. And, one of my slides of the ranch shows Norbert Putnam in a blinding snowstorm.

He will be greatly missed in the music world, because he wrote such great songs.  It seems like almost anyone you talk to has a memory associated with one of Dan’s songs.  I know I do!

Be sure to visit his website, Dan Fogelberg.com , and if you’d care to offer your thoughts or message of condolence, you can do that here: http://www.thelivinglegacy.net/wishes.html 

Also, Dan realized he had made a huge mistake by not checking his health more diligently. (He was only 56 years old.) And he became an advocate for regular PSA screening, and you can donate in his name at the Prostate Cancer Foundation. 

Dan, we’ll miss you.  My hope is that you are now lending your beautiful voice to a choir of angels in Heaven.

Please take a moment to sign the petition to have Dan inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Petition started April 4, 2010.

Naturally, most of the stories here are about famous recording artists. However, there’s one story about one of the non-famous employees who went on to become famous after leaving the ranch. I thought that would be fun to tell, too. 

One of the girls who worked at Caribou was a beautiful young lady named Lydia Korniloff.  

One of her jobs was to meet the artists at the airport in Denver and drive them up to the ranch.  She would help them get situated and show them around. Although I remember stories, innuendos and whispers regarding her services, I personally think that’s all they were.

She was always pleasant to talk to and was usually smiling and laughing and taking care of business. 

Why am I telling you about Lydia?

Because when she quit her job at the ranch, and we asked her, “What are you going to do?” She said, “I’m going to Los Angeles to be an actress.” And we said, “Oh. Great. Good luck”. Little did we know!

Well, it wasn’t long after that, that I got a call from Al, and he said, “Turn on the TV. Lydia is the star of a new show called “Too Close For Comfort”. There she was, in “living color”!

Yes, Lydia Korniloff we all worked with at Caribou, had become the famous Lydia Cornell. She’s gone on to have a very successful acting career, written a book, does stand-up comedy, and hosts a talk show. 

You can learn a lot more about her here:  Lydia Cornell

 Where have I been? Well, I’ve been busy building an internet business, and have planned to post here a thousand times! My how Tempus Fugits! 

Then the other day I saw a long Infommercial advertising DVD’s with all the performances from this late-night TV show in the 70’s.

It just brought back so many memories, I thought I’d comment on it.  If I wasn’t busy, or occupied in some way, I remember watching this show quite a bit.  It would come on Friday night (actually Saturday morning, I guess) after the Tonight Show. Oh, and the Tonight Show was hosted by Johnny Carson in those days. (look him up)

This show was great because the music acts would play “live” – no lip-synching allowed! Plus, the best comedians of the time appeared as well. People like Bill Cosby, Red Foxx, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor.

Almost every “major” act of that era appeared on the show. And it was a mix of pop, rock, country, jazz, R&B – something for everyone. 

It’s too bad there isn’t anything like that today. Anyway, I don’t know of anything. If you do, please leave a comment and tell me all about it.

Here’s a link to the DVD’s if you’d like to get them: The Midnight Special  -  not sold in stores!

And here’s a link to a list of all the acts that appeared:  Artists  -  fun to look at!

Who sang the theme song?

If you know anything about the history of Rock & Roll, you probably know that Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash in 1959. There’s an interesting story attached to that story, and that is that Waylon Jennings was playing bass for The Crickets at the time, and was scheduled to be on the same plane. The story goes that Waylon gave up his seat to The Big Bopper because the Bopper had a cold.

When Waylon was recording at Caribou,

I was working in the control room with him. When we finished, late one night, Waylon was waiting for his ride to the Denver airport. He was sitting on a bench in the studio, and I seized the opportunity. I sat down beside him, we both had a swig, and I said,  “I’ve always heard you were supposed to be on the plane with Buddy Holly, but you didn’t get on it for some reason.  What really happened?”

Here’s what he said, “Yes, I was supposed to be on the plane, but one of the roadies had a girl friend, whom he hadn’t seen for a while, waiting for him in Fargo. The roadies traveled by truck, so it would take them a lot longer to get there than it would in the plane. So I let him have my seat, and I rode in the truck.”

There it is, “straight from the horse’s mouth”.  You decide for yourself – was he fooling with me, or was he telling it like it was?

As a side note:  Years later I was working with a lady in Denver named Diane Hughes, and she told me that she grew up in Iowa, and it was her grandfather who owned the plane that Buddy Holly chartered that fateful day.

As you know, James William Guercio owns Caribou Ranch.  But you probably don’t know what he’s been up to for the last 20 years, or what he’s doing now.  Well, Al Burnham (aka A.B. Deluxe – see “About Me”) sent me this article last week. It was written by Mark Brown of The Rocky Mountain News so I’ll just send you to it:

Music isn’t the only thing…

Reading about his daughter Kate was fascinating to me because I remember when she was born!

If you follow the link above, you’ll find more links leading to all kinds of great info about the ranch. I hadn’t even found this before, and I’ve been searching a lot for related info. If you enjoy my little blog, you’ll love this!