Going through records again tonight, I found my Eddie Daniels autograph. Man, Eddie “Ghetto Baby” Daniels was a trip.
Eddie Daniels made a bunch of great R&B and rock ’n’ roll records in Los Angeles in the 1950s, including a really good revamp of Professor Longhair’s “Goin’ to Mardi Gras” and others, like “Hide Go Seek” and “Whoa Whoa Baby.” Eddie wrote “Little Lou” for Eddie Cochran, and his name would turn up in odd places, like writing the surf vocal number “Hot Rod Racer” for Dick Dale. He played piano on hits like “Rockin’ Robin” by Bobby Day, and “Pretty Girls Everywhere” by Eugene Church.
Eddie also teamed up with Jewel Akens (known for his hit “The Birds and The Bees”) to make a really great Black Everly Brothers record (really, that’s what it is, and it’s great), called “Opportunity.” Eddie Cochran played guitar on it. Later in his career, Eddie would work with later versions of the Coasters and the Amazing Platters.
Some of you may remember that I used to back up lots of different acts at the now-long-gone Ponderosa Stomp Festival in New Orleans. I was always excited to learn who I’d be backing up each year. Some years my band and I would back up four or five acts, sometimes we’d be working like mad, backing up eight to ten acts on the festival. It was great. I miss that festival so much.
One year I learned that my band would be backing up Eddie Daniels, and I was stoked. I thought his original records were cool. My band and I worked on the tunes, and I talked to Eddie briefly on the phone. Seemed like everything was going to be fine.
When I went to the airport to fly to New Orleans for the festival, there was an older African American man in a wheelchair, waiting to board. He was wearing what you might call a pimp suit, with “GHETTO BABY” embroidered into the sleeves on his shirt and the cuffs of his pants. He was also wearing a turban, and if my memory serves me correctly, the turban also had “GHETTO BABY” embroidered on it. As he was wheeled in, he carried a diamond-encrusted cane on his lap. This dude means business, I thought to myself. I didn’t realize at the time that “Ghetto Baby” was none other than Eddie Daniels.
It was a Southwest flight, so, no assigned seats, but the wheelchair entrance ensured he would get the aisle seat on the front row. I boarded the plane and walked past him.
As the plane started to taxi, the stewardesses did their standard airplane safety announcements, then one of the stewardesses made an announcement.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE ARE SO EXCITED TO TELL YOU THAT WE HAVE A REAL ROCK ’N’ ROLL LEGEND ON OUR FLIGHT! TODAY WE HAVE EDDIE DANIELS OF THE PLATTERS SITTING RIGHT UP FRONT!” People gave some applause. Then Eddie grabbed the microphone away from the stewardess and started to work the crowd. He sang, a capella, as loud as he could, into the mic:
“ONLY YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU… CAN MAKE THIS WORLD SEEM RIGHT…
ONLY YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU… CAN MAKE THE DARKNESS BRIGHT…”
The stewardess looked at Eddie. Eddie looked at her. Was he done?
“ONLY YOU AND YOU ALONE, CAN THRILL ME LIKE YOU DO…
AND FILL MY HEART WITH LOVE, FOR ONLY YOUUUUUUUU…
O-ONLY YOU… CAN MAKE THIS CHANGE IN ME…
FOR IT’S TRUE… YOU ARE MY DESTINY…
WHEN YOU HOLD MY HAND, I UNDERSTAND
THE MAGIC THAT YOU DO… YOU’RE MY DREAM COME TRUE… MY ONE AND ONLY YOU”
The plane was taxiing and getting ready to take off. The stewardess looked at Eddie and reached out her hand to take the microphone away from him. Eddie was having none of it. He continued:
“OH-OH-ONLY YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU,
CAN MAKE THIS CHANGE IN ME…
FOR IT’S TRUE, YOU ARE MY DESTINY…
WHEN YOU HOLD MY HAND, I UNDERSTAND
THE MAGIC THAT YOU DO…
YOU’RE MY DREAM COME TRUE…
MY ONE… AND ONLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU”
The plane erupted in wild applause. Eddie took a bow just as the plane was getting airborne. I was laughing at the whole scene, hollering and clapping too, thinking to myself, man, this is gonna be good.
As soon as the plane was at cruising altitude and the seatbelt sign was turned off, Eddie began working the room. Well, it was a plane, but he was going to work it just the same. He went one by one down the aisles, introducing himself to every woman on the plane, giving them his business card and telling them to come see him perform when they were back in Los Angeles. I was hoping to talk to him, but sure enough, Eddie was talking to grandmas, moms, college women, hanging on their every word. But he didn’t stop to talk to me, he just kept going down the rows of the plane. He worked the plane the entire flight—walking, no less—I guess he didn’t need the wheelchair after all, convincing everybody of his greatness. This dude is awesome, I thought to myself. I wish I had more of his showbiz flair!
When we got to the hotel, I finally got to introduce myself to Eddie, and we hit it off just fine. One thing I have always found with real old-school musicians and singers, if you know the tunes and you know your role in the whole presentation, everything is fine. Doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with white or Black or Latino or whatever, male or female, the old-school musicians just let it flow—as long as you’re up to snuff. It’s a professional thing. It’s much different with many younger musicians, I’ve found, a lot more hand-wringing and rehearsing and talking about how things should sound. Not the old guys—they knew they were there to entertain, and if the band made mistakes or even trainwrecked a song, they’d just make that part of the show. Eddie and I had a brief talk in the hotel lobby, and I knew the show was going to be great. He was an old-school pro.
Now, when I say that Eddie Daniels was a nut, I mean that in the very best way. There’s a thing about almost all the 1950s rock and rollers and rockabillies that I’ve worked with. They are crazy! I mean, in the best possible way. They had to have been crazy, I guess, to play that wild music when the mainstream was still candy-coated pop music and lots of white people getting upset about rockers like Elvis and Little Richard. Eddie worked the festival and the conference and the hotel lobby and the rehearsal room and the people on the sidewalk harder than anybody I’ve ever met. He introduced himself, he told them all his life story, he told them what time he would be playing, and he’d hand them a business card. If people didn’t know who Eddie “Ghetto Baby” Daniels was going into it, the diamond-encrusted cane and Eddie’s sales job made them realize they were in the presence of greatness.
This went on for two days. When it finally was time to hit the stage, Eddie was on fire. He sang, he played piano, he lit the crowd up with his stage banter. It was his moment in the sun, and he delivered. I got to sing the harmony with him on “Opportunity,” which was a real thrill. And most importantly, even though Eddie Daniels was never a big star and never had big hit records, when he got done with that set, everybody knew they had seen a star. They had been in the presence of greatness. It was a good showbiz lesson. Eddie brought it.
I got to work with Eddie a couple more times, at Viva Cantina in Burbank and at a New Orleans–themed show I produced at Joe’s in Burbank. I wouldn’t say that Eddie could be a pain in the ass, but I had a friend lend his motor home that night that was supposed to be the dressing room for all the artists playing on the show. My friend who brought the motor home told me Eddie had assumed it was for his use only, and wasn’t letting anybody else in to get dressed or anything. He was just sitting in there, holding court like a king on his throne. I had to be the one to go on the bus and explain to him that it wasn’t just HIS bus, there were about ten or twelve other people who needed to get on and change clothes and get ready.
It was always something funny like that with Eddie—you couldn’t get mad at the guy, because he was just kind of crazy and excitable and trying his best to let everyone know who Eddie “Ghetto Baby” Daniels was. I loved him, even though he could test your patience. And somewhere along the way, I got him to sign the sleeve to my copy of “Opportunity” by Jewel and Eddie, something I deeply treasure. A Black Everly Brothers record! It really is unique. If you haven’t heard it, go to YouTube and listen to it right now.
I wrote this about Eddie back in 2020:
“Eddie was definitely a product of another time, and he wouldn’t hold up too well in the ‘woke’ era of today, but goddamn, he was a total character, and even though he really WAS a giant pain in the ass, he was hugely hilarious and entertaining at the same time. And he was great! Regardless of what sort of hijinks that he might put you through, if you showed up at a club and ‘Ghetto Baby’ was there, you knew you were going to be thoroughly entertained by the end of the evening, through both musical entertainment and the general disturbance of air that his presence in the room dictated.
“And yes, there are a lot of things about the modern era that I like, and a lot of things about the old days that I don’t like, but one thing is for sure—our wild rock ’n’ roll music was created by wild men and wild women, outcasts from a civilized and pleasant society who somehow hustled and bullsh***ed and forced their way into some version of a musical career in the dingiest corners of show business you could possibly imagine. Some of them became famous. Others, like Eddie Daniels, became a footnote, but they were no less entertaining than the biggest stars.
“If you saw the first ten minutes of the recent Dolemite movie, where and young, unknown Rudy Ray Moore walks the streets of South Central Los Angeles, trying to hustle R&B records that had failed to sell when released years earlier, desperately searching for his show business break—that could have been Eddie Daniels. There were a lot of characters like Eddie roaming around South Central back in those days.”
There’s a sad ending to the story. Eddie was one of the casualties of COVID-19. He contracted the disease as he was being transported between several different medical care facilities, just as COVID was starting to become a huge nationwide pandemic. Eddie “Ghetto Baby” Daniels died in August 2020, and the world has been just a little bit tamer and lamer since he’s been gone.
I’m just hoping that wherever he’s at up in the clouds, he’s grabbing the microphone away from Saint Peter or whoever runs the jam sessions up there, and singing “Only You” at the top of his lungs, all three minutes and fifteen seconds of it. Rest in peace, Ghetto Baby.
