SDC PAPERDREAMS | Vinyl Knights: Curb And Smith
WHEN TWO YOUNG MEN LOST THEIR GIRLS ON THE DANCE FLOOR TO OJ SIMPSON & USC FOOTBALL TEAM
By Kenneth Howard Smith
The desert wind in Lancaster, California, had a way of scouring everything clean, leaving nothing but the grit of ambition and the scent of sagebrush. It was the autumn of 1968, a year that felt like the world was vibrating at a frequency high enough to shatter glass. At Antelope Valley College, the atmosphere was electric. The Marauders were 3-0, the student body was buzzing with the energy of the "Save Our Planet" slogans and "Stop the War" buttons pinned to denim jackets, and in the middle of it all was Kenneth "Kenny" Howard Smith.
Kenny was a freshman with a foot in two worlds. By day, he was a student-athlete basking in the glow of a three-game winning streak. By night, he was a rock-and-roll dreamer with a guitar strapped to his back, haunting the small clubs and garage studios that defined the era. He lived in Rosamond, a place where the roads were more dirt than asphalt and sidewalks were a luxury nobody had heard of yet. To the urbanites of Los Angeles, Rosamond was the frontier. To Karen Linda McCray’s mother, it was the middle of nowhere, and Kenny was the "uncivilized" boy who had somehow captured her daughter’s heart.
Karen was a city girl through and through, a student at Loyola Marymount with the polished grace of someone who grew up with pavement under her feet. She and Kenny had been a pair since they were fourteen, a high school romance that had survived the transition to college. But the distance between the desert and the city was growing, and the cultural tremors of 1968 were creating cracks that neither of them could see yet.
Kenny’s life had recently taken a surreal turn. His cousin, the legendary Lou Rawls, had just inked a deal with a small, hungry production company on Irving Street in Hollywood. The word had traveled down the family pipeline: they were looking for fresh blood. Before Kenny knew it, his parents were signing a one-and-one contract with A&M Productions. It wasn't the kind of deal that came with a limousine or a mansion in the hills. It was a "paper, ink, and plastic" affair—a box of 45s, a big tax write-off for the company's research and development, and a dream pressed into black wax. There was no glory yet, just the smell of fresh vinyl and the quiet pride of being a recording artist.
The collision of these worlds happened on a Friday night in Palos Verdes Estates. Karen’s fraternity sisters were throwing a house party, a lavish affair that overlooked the shimmering lights of the Pacific. The air was thick with the scent of expensive perfume, salt air, and the underlying tension of a generation on the brink.
The guest list was a "Who’s Who" of Southern California royalty. Among the crowd were the titans of the USC Trojans football team, fresh off their own third victory of the season. The center of gravity in the room was a young man named O.J. Simpson. At the time, Simpson wasn't just an athlete; he was a cultural phenomenon, a charismatic force of nature who seemed to glide through the room as if the floor were made of silk. He was already a star of television and film in the making, and every girl in the room, including the Sigmas, was drawn to his orbit.
Kenny sat at a corner table, feeling every bit the desert boy without a sidewalk. He watched as the music shifted—a heavy, soulful beat that commanded movement. Simpson approached the dance floor with the same grace he used to evade linebackers. He reached out, took Karen’s hand, and spun her into the fray.
Kenny watched his girlfriend’s face light up. She wasn't just dancing; she was being swept away by the momentum of a different kind of life. For a few songs, Karen was part of the USC royalty, a city girl finally finding her rhythm in the brightest lights possible. When she eventually returned to the table, the desert heat in Kenny’s soul met a wall of ice.
"That was amazing," she said, her voice distant, her eyes still lingering on the dance floor. She sat down, but she wasn't there. The warmth they had shared since they were fourteen had evaporated in the span of a three-minute record.
Kenny wasn't alone in his exile. Sitting next to him was another young man who looked just as displaced. He was sharp-eyed, carrying an air of quiet intensity that suggested he was already thinking five moves ahead of everyone else.
"Lost yours to the dance floor too?" the young man asked.
Kenny nodded. "Something like that. I’m Kenny."
"Mike," the other said. "Mike Curb."
In that moment, under the dim lights of a Palos Verdes party, a different kind of history began to write itself. Mike Curb wasn't the Lieutenant Governor of California yet, nor was he the mogul of Curb Records, but he had the hunger. He looked at Kenny and asked, "Were you at the Hollywood Teen Fair?"
Kenny’s eyes widened. "Yeah. I played the main stage at the Palladium. We opened for Johnny Rivers. 'Secret Agent Man' was number one on Billboard that week."
The conversation shifted from lost girls to the mechanics of the music industry. Curb was fascinated. He wanted to know how a kid from the desert had managed to land a deal with the Irving Street group.
"My cousin, Lou Rawls, helped me get the foot in the door," Kenny explained. "It’s a small start, but it’s real."
Curb leaned in, his mind whirling. "I saw something in CashBox Magazine. They said your stuff was being licensed to RCA Records. Rick Jarrett, the A&R chief over there—he’s the one who can sign anyone he wants. If he’s looking at you, you’re in the middle of the explosion."
If it was an explosion, it was because the major labels were running out of product that was being produced by the label. Research and development of an "idea" to a finished master exceeded their release times, and not enough product to put into the lineup on a regular schedule.
The studio releases were just garbage and the small independent record producers had a briefcase full of wax demos to let them listen to.
On the RCA Records label above, you will notice that the production was by A&M Productions. A&M Records a month later. They also got Lou Rawls signed to Capitol Records.
Frank Slay was a prominent American songwriter, producer, and the founder of Claridge Records. Initially based in Hollywood and later San Diego, his label famously achieved major hits independently before its catalog and rights were sold to MPL Communications in 1980.
They talked about the changing sound of America. Kenny mentioned how his fellow students in Rosamond were coming back from trips abroad with boxes of albums—American artists he had never even heard on the radio. The world was shrinking, and music was the bridge. Curb spoke of his own dreams, of starting a label that would capture the heart of the country. They were two twenty-somethings on the edge of greatness, ignored by the beautiful people on the dance floor but building the foundations of their own empires.
As the party began to wind down, Karen pulled her high school yearbook from her bag. It was a relic of their shared past, a book filled with the scribbled promises of teenagers. She pushed it toward Kenny.
"Sign it," she said. Her voice was flat, the "ice sheet" still firmly in place.
Kenny took the pen. He wanted to write something about happiness, about the four years they had spent together, about how he hoped the USC stars wouldn't blind her to the desert sun. But as the pen touched the paper, something strange happened. Kenny would later describe it as a "spirit" taking control of his hand, a moment of auto-writing where he became a spectator to his own thoughts.
He didn't write about love. He wrote something "from left field," a message that seemed to come from a future he couldn't yet see. It was a farewell written in the code of the changing times—a recognition that the sidewalks of her world and the dirt roads of his were finally diverging.
The breakup came two weeks later. It wasn't a explosion; it was a fading signal. Karen stayed in her world of pavement and prestige, and Kenny returned to the Antelope Valley, the sound of his RCA deal ringing in his ears even as the shadow of the draft board loomed over every young man in 1969.
The next twenty years were a whirlwind that transformed the map of the world and the lives of the men at that table.
The Vietnam War didn't care about record contracts. Kenny was drafted and sent to Southeast Asia, swapping his guitar for a rifle and the Palos Verdes breeze for the humid, heavy air of the jungle. He saw the world at its most fractured, away from the "Free Love" posters and the Hollywood lights. But the music never truly left him. When he returned, he didn't go back to the desert; he went to the heart of the sound. He became a songwriter and producer at Motown Records, working in the hallowed halls where hits were forged like steel. Eventually, he rose to become the president of D-Town Records, a titan in his own right.
Mike Curb’s trajectory was equally meteoric. He built Curb Records into a powerhouse, discovering stars and shaping the soundtrack of a generation. He moved into the political arena, eventually serving as the Lieutenant Governor of California, proving that the quiet kid at the party had indeed been five steps ahead.
And O.J. Simpson? He became the icon everyone expected him to be, for better and then, much later, for worse, his name etched into the American consciousness in ways no one at that 1968 party could have predicted.
As for Karen, her life and Kenny’s didn't cross for two decades. The city girl and the desert boy had become strangers, separated by a war, a cultural revolution, and the vast expanse of their own successes.
But the music business is a small world, and history has a way of circling back on itself.
In late 2005, a rumor began to circulate through the industry—a story of two "old timers" who had found themselves in a studio in Nashville, together after nearly forty years. One was a former Lieutenant Governor with a legendary ear for hits; the other was a Motown veteran who had survived the jungles of Vietnam and the boardrooms of Detroit and Hollywood. It was several weeks later, that Smith received an advance copy of the CD single, where it was first played on his KDTN Radio One country station in late 2006.
They were working on a track for a singer named Steve Holy. The song was a catchy, lighthearted tune that seemed to echo the spirit of a long-lost Friday night in Palos Verdes. As the speakers in the studio kicked to life, the melody filled the room—a song called "I Got A Brand New Girlfriend."
As the story goes, as the track played, Mike and Kenny shared a look. They weren't thinking about the charts or the royalties. For a brief second, the smell of the Los Angeles smog and the salt air of 1968 returned. They were nineteen again, sitting at a corner table, watching a football hero dance with a girl who was already a memory, unaware that they were about to change the world.
Kenny Smith, the boy from the town without sidewalks, had finally found his way home, and he had done it one record at a time. The desert wind had scoured away the heartbreak, leaving only the music and a story that was, in every sense of the word, epic.
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