BURIED TREASURE
A passing shower
Acid-folk Cali dreamers who went from high school to nudist camps.
Weather report: Ken Kusudo (left) and Jeff Worth at UC Riverside, April 19, 1969.
Kusudo & Worth
Of Sun And Rain
SELF-RELEASED, 1969
IT WAS all going swimmingly for folk-rock schoolboy prodigies Ken Kusudo and Jeff Worth, a kind of Riverside, California Simon & Garfunkel. In 1968 they’d graduated from high school and church events to proper auditoriums. A year later, they’d captured their translucent harmonies and phantasmagorical lyrics on a debut album, Of Sun And Rain, albeit one they’d had to nail in just three hours, on a minuscule budget of $300.
The first seed of doubt was planted by their manager, the son of Bobby Darin’s tour manager. “This guy, who was our age – he thought we could be his door way to management,” says Kusudo. “He asked us to spend the night at his place… and then if we’d join him at a nudist camp. He was unner ving, just like his friends. He did get us an audition with [TV producer and DJ] Wink Martindale, who said we were depressing, and nothing of ours would sell. It painted a bad picture of what the music business might be like.”