David Covey

Robert Racouillat and Mal Warner sensed a hit and they started to prepare.

“It's far superior to the Twist,” says Mai Warner. “We simulate the steps people do while bike riding. It’s fun and has excellent therapeutic value. My grandchildren are crazy about it.” Warner, who’s real name is Weiner, turned a robust sixty-three in January. His voice is still strong, his smile wide, and his hair, at least on top, is a thing of the past. Bouncing excitedly in his seat, he talks about a new dance called the “Bike Hustle.” The step, which Warner points out is now an “Arthur Murray’s exclusive,” was adapted from a song entitled “Bi-Cycle.” The song was recently published and energetically promoted by Warner and his thirty-six-year-old partner, a former Xerox executive named Robert “Rac” Rucouillat.

Ron Jay, a disc jockey at KITT, about “Bi-Cycle”: “It’s a pleasant song, but not one of high-energy disco quality."

David Covey

“Bi-Cycle,” with a flip-side called “Lady Rhythm,” was released here last September as a forty-five single. Both tunes have made several San Diego radio station playlists, and have inspired encouraging nibbles from the music industry at large. Cash Box, a record-industry magazine that reportedly receives and evaluates more than 300 new singles per week, selected both songs as “Singles to Watch.” The partners are proud and enthusiastic; they talk in terms of a hit. “It has mushroomed.” they explain. “It’s really unbelievable.”

“There are fourteen discos in San Diego right now. By the end of March there will be twenty.”

David Covey

Equally unbelievable is the history of the song and its publishers. The chronicle begins with Mal Warner, the inveterate music man. He began his career on radio in 1936, and soon became known as the “baritone of the airwaves,” crooning his theme, “Parlez-Moi D’Amour,” over New York City stations such as WRNS and WNYC. He has performed at “top” resorts such as Grossinger’s and the Concorde in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Warner has entertained on singles cruises and has done stints as an emcee and social director. Over the years, he sang at senior citizen hotels like the Elmhurst Manor in Queens. Recent engagements for elderly audiences include one at La Mesa’s Regency Park, and another for a group at the Temple Beth Israel in Hillcrest. He says he has appeared on television. “I’ve made money on my voice in the past,” notes the baritone. “People have told me that my voice has the sound of Ezio Pinza or Nelson Eddy. I studied voice under Albert Clerk Jeannotte for fifteen years. Music,” he repeats, “has been part of my life since childhood.”

When Warner and Racouillat did their own distributing, they were grabbing a twenty-five-cent profit per record sold.

David Covey

In 1963, while living in New York, Warner produced a song called “The Bicycle Hop. ” Written by Sir Lon DeLeon and Fran Brownlee, it was performed by Billy Adams and the Pedal Pushers on the Ra-Ra Records label. “I felt at that time we really had something,” Warner recalls with a smile. He says that Morris “Moishe” Levy of Roullette Records thought the song had promise, and wanted to plug it into a film called Two Tickets to Paris. But the film deal never worked out, and “The Bicycle Hop” lost money when it was initially released. Warner hastens to add that the loss occurred during the days of radio “payola,” when some disc jockeys were accepting, and even soliciting, money in exchange for air play. “It was so corrupt,” fumes Warner, his voice trembling. “You have no idea. We had already invested over $20,000 legitimately. Let’s just say we lacked the additional capital for promotion.”

But other things did work out for Warner. He became the manager of Joey Dee and the Starlighters, the group responsible for the Sixties hit, “The Peppermint Twist.” “I had them under contract for three years,” says Warner. “As far as the dance, when Dorothy Kilgallen got Arlene Francis and those kinds of people to come to the Peppermint Lounge, which was a little two-by-nothing on West Forty-Fifth Street in Manhattan, the dance got to be quite a craze.” But not so for “The Bicycle Hop.” Its time had not yet come.

Warner kept right on promoting. In 1966 “The Bicycle Hop” became simply “The Bike.” That year, sixty-six “go-go girls” pedaled bicycles around Yankee Stadium to open an event titled Sound Blast ’66. The girls dismounted in unison and danced “The Bike” as a preliminary to headliners Stevie Wonder, the Beach Boys, and Ray Charles and his Raelettes.

A few years before this, Warner had spoken with John F. Kennedy about tying his record in with the President’s physical fitness program. ‘‘I even coined the phrase, ‘Ride a bike, dance a bike.’ ”

The Top 40 remained out of reach for Mai Warner’s bicycle song, but he did not forsake the project altogether. Through a complex quid pro quo arrangement that involved releasing Joey Dee from his contract, Warner secured sole publishing rights to “The Bicycle Hop.” “I wanted it absolutely clean all the way through,” he says. “When the time came to do something with that tune—and I knew it would—I didn’t want any parasites or leeches on my back. I wanted it as a completely new venture.”

When the full force of the radio payola scandals shook the airwaves in the mid-Sixties, Warner stepped quietly out of the music business at the urging of his wife, Helen. He was unfulfilled, but untainted. “I refused to consort with gangsters,” he says tersely, closing the subject.

In 1966 Warner sold his home in Brooklyn and moved to San Diego. “I said to Helen, ‘Listen, while we still have each other, let’s enjoy it.’ ” Bag and baggage, the couple took off for California, eventually settling in at the Oakwood Gardens Apartments on Ingraham in Pacific Beach. The bicycle song survived the trip nicely and was never far from Warner’s lips or keen eye for promotion. A few years later things would finally click for Warner at Oakwood.

Robert “Rac” Racouillat stands a foot taller than his partner, and is almost thirty years younger. He has wavy, coal-black hair, and a smiling, open face. Racouillat is articulate, organized, and ambitious. He handles a briefcase as if he’s never been without one. Starting out in 1966 as a sales and marketing representative for Xerox, Racouillat raced up the corporate ladder. By 1971, at the age of twenty-eight, he was the firm’s youngest branch manager in the entire country. He left Xerox in 1976 rather than be transferred to the company’s headquarters in Rochester, New York. “They offered me a significant promotion,” he says, “but I just couldn’t make the trade-off. I didn’t want to live on the East Coast. Besides, San Diego enhances my creative juices as an artist.”

Juices flowing, he wrote a successful book in 1976 titled Management-Leadership Development: An Executive Digest. Racouillat says that he now lives off the book’s royalties. The money allows him to pursue his “first love”—music. “I am finally able to make my hobby my profession. It’s very fulfilling.”

Indeed, Racouillat's background is not all portfolio and three-piece suit. In the late Fifties he was lead singer, guitar, and piano player for a Sacramento group called The Legends. He was offered recording contracts from Imperial, Demon, and Mercury records. While a student at San Francisco State College he entertained at concerts and events. A “performance tour” in 1963-64 took him to twenty-three countries throughout Europe. He has written dozens of songs. “It was hard for me to believe,” Mai Warner says of his partner, “that somebody could leave a $70,000-a-year job to pursue a career in the music field.”

Racouillat began to conduct weekly “Song Evaluation Workshops” at Oak-wood in 1977. His purpose was to “develop the craft of songwriting in San Diego songwriters.” People would come downstairs to the party room and gather around a small piano to hear and critique each other’s efforts. One Tuesday evening in September of 1977, Mai Warner shuffled into a session, plopped his portable record player down in front of the group, and spun “The Bicycle Hop.” He wanted to know if anyone there thought the fifteen-year-old ditty had contemporary possibilities. “They laughed at me,” he says dryly. “It was pretty doo-wop-doowop,” explains Racouillat.

But when the snickering had subsided, Racouillat was left with an idea. “When I heard it, I wanted to update it, to give it a disco feel and some Bee Gees harmonies.” With Warner’s approval, he collaborated with two workshop regulars—BeBe Gonzales, twenty, and Donnie Singer, twenty-one—and “Bi-Cycle” was bom. “They changed everything,” says Warner with a wide grin. “Music, lyrics—it was the difference between night and day. Only the idea remained. ”

• I just got a bicycle,
• built for two
• And I like ridin’, my
• bike with you
• We go out ridin’, on a
• summer night—Ride
• I’m right behind you,
• gonna make it right.

This time out the song surfaced as what Racouillat describes as “disco-pop crossover.” This means, he says, that the tune is appropriate for dancing and listening. “Some people hear the word disco and think it’s jungle music. Those that don’t know disco turn off to the word. But it’s just up-tempo music.”

Almost before the ink was dry on the lead sheets, Gonzales and Singer were at JEL studios in Newport Beach recording “Bi-Cycle.” Donnie Singer and his brother Bruce, who coproduced the single, hastily garnered a group of musician friends and cut the record. “It was the buddy system, ” laughs Racouillat. “Just a natural thing that sort of flowed together. And the engineer up there had just expanded his studio from a sixteen- to a twenty-four-track capability.”

Gonzales and Singer, then both music majors at San Diego State, had met while members of the Aztec choir. They began to sing together, doing “Top 40” for a time -at Quinn’s Pub in Pacific Beach. Currently, they are studying at the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles. When “Bi-Cycle” came along, they hopped on, wide-eyed and hopeful.

Warner and Racouillat sensed a hit and they started to prepare. A partnership was struck and they created Mai and Rac Music Publishing as well as Crown Point Records. Regal Productions, Limited, had already made the trip from Brooklyn with Mai Warner. Papers drawn up and battle plans sketched out, the partners shook on it all and launched their promotional attack—which was more like a blitzkrieg. They made countless phone calls and knocked on doors and raced all over town. They played the record and talked the record and lived the record. The men pushed themselves sixty hours a week for six months. “We had all barrels smoking at one time,” recalls Warner. “A hell of a lot of work went into it. Rac was saying the other day that if we had employed twelve people we couldn’t have gotten more accomplished.”

They tried to come up with some financing. In October of 1978 they sought the good offices of local restaurateur George Bullingsworth, who was to put them in touch with his “personal friend,” Burt Bacharach. The plan met with no success. By virtue of Mal Warner’s connections as “Western Representative” of Spotlight Magazine, an Asbury Park, New Jersey, publication concerned with “people, places, and things,” the pair found themselves sipping drinks at Sea World on “All-Star Night,” October twenty-second. Warner spied Padre owner Ray Kroc across a crowded room and went at him with a firm handshake, a full-on smile, and a mouthful of ideas. He managed to secure an audience with Kroc for himself and his partner for the following Tuesday morning, the day of the All-Star game. At the meeting the pair talked with Ray Kroc about a promotional brainstorm to involve Padre players Rollie Fingers and Dave Winfield riding bikes around San Diego Stadium. Racouillat claims that Kroc liked their ideas and wished the promoters luck, but explained that he was already too busy with baseball and Big Macs to take on any disco interests. “But that man saw us on the most important day of his career, so to speak,” adds Warner, noting that he still has his All-Star souvenir glass.

Outside capital was not quick to materialize, so the partners produced $5000 apiece, took deep breaths, and dove back into promotion. They went to eighteen radio stations in San Diego County. Some were put off by the slinky disco beat they heard on the demo cassette. “Jesse Bullet of KPR1 gave it all of ten seconds and told us to shut it off, ” says Racouillat. “He told us they wanted listeners who were stoned out of their minds. He wanted acid rock, not disco.”

But other stations were more receptive. There were interviews on KSDO and San Diego State’s KCR. XHRM added “Bi-Cycle” to its playlist and linked a bicycle giveaway promotion to the record. KITT, San Diego’s new “all-disco” radio station, added both the bike tune and “Lady Rhythm” to its playlist, spinning each nine times a day.

Ron Jay, a disc jockey at KITT, strikes a bit of a sour note when asked about “Bi-Cycle.” “It’s a pleasant song” he replies, “but not one of high-energy disco quality. It’s light and airy, kind of Sixtyish and bubblegum. The song doesn’t really ring my chimes. It’s cute, but cute doesn’t always make it. I mean, ’Disco Duck ’ was cute. If it were out of L. A., I’d say it was a hamburger and forget about it. But I’m pleased as hell that anybody in town has done this. And these guys are professional promoters. Rac seems like a pleasant enough fellow, but that guy Warner is like a virus that keeps coming back. I like his enthusiasm, but I mean hype is hype. But I’d like to see the song go. It’s danceable. And I want to see more of this. Local guys. I’ll push them as hard as anybody.”

• Do the bike—Do the bike—
• Do the bike—Do the
• bike—Disco!
• Do the bike—Do the bike—
• Do the bike—Do the bike
• Ride—Ride—Ride!

Things had been taking shape on the dance floor. Warner and Racouillat approached three different dance studios with the intention of persuading someone to create a new dance step for “Bi-Cycle.” Arthur Murray’s went for the idea and the “Bike Hustle” was the result. The dance was “previewed” by its originators, Nikki Remler and Frank Caruso, at Crystal T’s Emporium in Mission Valley in July of 1978. According to Warner, Arthur Murray’s is now solidly behind the “Bike Hustle.” He says that Chuck Carr, who “controls four Arthur Murray studios in San Diego,” told him recently that “the more he thinks about it, the more he likes it.” And although the relationship with Arthur Murray’s is strictly promotional, and no money changes hands, Carr wants to enter the step in the “Superama Dance Contest,” to be held this November in Miami. “He’s going hot and heavy on it,” says Warner.

In September of that year there was a “Super Disco Dance-Off” sponsored by Flanigan’s, and featuring the Arthur Murray dancers and the “Bike Hustle.” Billed as “A search for the best disco-dancing couple in San Diego,” the contest ran for ten weeks and each week boasted a $150 first prize. “It’s beautiful to watch,” Mal Warner says of the dance. He bobs gracefully in his chair. “I’m from the Victor Herbert era, and it’s exceptionally exciting for me now to see disco. I call this uninhibited dancing. They just let themselves go. The Twist never brought that out.”

The project took on a distinct aura of success. Stories appeared in the Tribune, SDSU’s Daily Aztec, UCSD’s Guardian, and the Sentinel. BeBe and Donnie were photographed, interviewed, and fawned over. The golden phrase “hit record” began to circulate locally. Arthur Murray’s studios ran a series of newspaper ads offering dance lessons for the “Bike Hustle.” Record World's “Single Picks” called “Lady Rhythm” a “slick and professional debut.” “Steady high-hat work,” said Cash Box. The forty-five single started to sell.

• Well, I jusi got a bicycle,
• built for two
• And I like tidin’, my
• bike with you

Seated at a table in the otherwise deserted party room of the Oakwood Gardens East, Warner and Racouillat discuss what’s happened over the last year. The younger man wears a “Bike Hustle” T-shirt, black leather jacket, and five o’clock shadow. The older wears a turtleneck sweater and sports coat. His skin is a scrubbed and reddisk pink. He grins. A silent piano stands against the wall behind the men; and a soft, splashing sound drifts in from the garden fountain just outside the room’s glass doors.

“In the beginning,” says Warner, “I didn’t care whether we sold a record or not. We wanted to bypass L. A. and make it happen right here in San Diego. That’s what the radio people said to us—make things happen and we'll gladly put the record on. Nobody wants to take a chance; it was kind of a rough road. But except for one or two, we never got a total negative, from the top man down. And that’s what kept us going. Now,” he smiles, “they’re all coming to us.”

Racouillat, crisply Xeroxed press clippings, fact sheets, and newspaper ads spread out on the table before him, chooses a frank tone in which to reminisce. “Some will stroke you and say they like your record when really they wouldn’t play it in a million years. I know this game; I’ve been working a long time to get my own music commercially released. I’ve presented over one hundred songs. With ‘Bi-Cycle’ I’ve finally got record company executives, producers, and publishers saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got a hit there!’ ”

He says that what the music industry wants is promoters who will “make it happen.” He settles in his chair with a slight sigh. “But it’s like digging for oil. I’m ten years older than I was a year ago. You’re creating a child; you’re painting a picture. Look,” he says, “the music business is a huge industry. To make it takes talent, persistence, hard work, and a whole lot of luck. And nothing’s constant. I know guys in this business who are afraid to take a vacation for fear their desk will be gone when they get back.”

Racouillat notes that the name of the game is timing and promotion. “Without those two things, the Hula Hoop would still be in the closet. ” He smiles across the table at Mai Warner. “And no one but us,” he continues, “has taken a serious step to tie a song and a dance together from the ground floor. We can make it happen. ” The topic shifts to the disco phenomenon. Will it last? Is it a force in conservative San Diego? “Well, it’s the hottest thing going,” muses Racouillat. “People still like good music, but today they want to dance. By 1980 disco will be a $10 billion industry. The real market for disco is international. There’s no cultural barrier on tapping feet. Think about China,” he says, the faintest gleam in his eyes.

The partners are convinced that the disco market in San Diego is palpable and strong. “There are fourteen discos in town right now,” says Warner. “By the end of March there will be twenty.”

“And six now in Mission Valley alone, “adds Racouillat. “The word disco is becoming synonymous with nightclub. That’s why Arthur Murray’s was so excited about creating the ‘Bike Hustle.' But most people just go to discos for the lights and energy. Most of the room there is for sitting and drinking. The clubs don’t make money when people are dancing.”

But the folks behind the “Bi-Cycle” stand to make some money if people are buying. Warner and Racouillat initially made the rounds of local record stores “on a personal basis,” attempting to convince store managers to stock and sell the single. Once, while the pair stood playing the record for the manager of a local Licorice Pizza outlet, a young disco enthusiast strolled up, listened for a minute, and promptly purchased the disc “right off the turntable.” Though the promoters were able to place a small number of records with local Tower and Target record stores, they recognized that the door-to-door approach had its drawbacks. So they recently signed on with Eurpac, a local record distributor. The signing gives them a shot at the wider San Diego and Tijuana market, to include military bases and all the “mom-and-pop” record stores. Racouillat says that “Bi-Cycle” was added to Eurpac’s Top-40 list, along with the new Neil Diamond and the new Bee Gees record. Shops determine which records to purchase based on this list, he explains. “I called them and found out that we just sold eighty records in two days.”

The serious money will come by cracking the national and international markets, and for that, an alliance with a major distributor is necessary. Negotiations with two such companies. Record Merchandisers and Pickwick, are underway. Furrowing his glowing brow with all the concern of Cy Vance contemplating the SALT talks, Mal Warner states that they are “not at liberty to discuss this until a deal is consummated.”

To start out, 5000 records were pressed by Al Shire in Los Angeles. “Shire does all the Bee Gees stuff,” says Racouillat. “Anyway, there are no pressing plants in San Diego.” Four hundred of that batch are in stores right now. If the disc moves, more orders will come. Hundreds of copies were sent out as “promos” to radio stations, discos, record companies, reviewers. and the like. Many were awarded as dance contest prizes. The men acknowledge that free records are all part of the cost of doing business.

The subject of profits comes up. Racouillat reels off figures and percentages with the casual assurance of a CPA. He uses the pie analogy to explain where the seventy-eight to ninety-nine cents you shell out for a forty-five single goes. First, he says, the writers and publishers split six cents; the artist and producer both get a nickel; the record company gets twenty cents; and a quarter goes for the cost of pressing the record and printing the jacket. What’s left of the pie belongs to the distributor and the record store. The former executive adds that the profit margin on singles is generally slight, and that the really heavy money comes from album sales. When Warner and Racouillat did their own distributing, they were grabbing a twenty-five-cent profit per record sold.

Racouillat leans back in his party room chair and expands on the topic of big bucks and weighty moves. “Well,” he says, narrowing his eyes, “there are all sorts of cross-contracts on this thing, but if “Bi-Cycle’ were to make it to Billboard's Top Ten, Crown Point Records would stand to net between one hundred and two hundred thousand dollars. An album is definitely a prime objective. And we want to add more artists to the label and build. We want to keep it on Crown Point Records all the way.”

He is also BeBe and Donnie’s manager, and says that he has their long-range interests in mind as well as everything else. “But it’s the record which is the key. All of our efforts are one hundred percent into this record. None of my projections mean a thing unless this one breaks. When it does, it automatically follows that BeBe and Donnie will get a major recording deal. When you’ve got hit material, you can really bargain for things.”

Finally, the men talk of the future. On the immediate horizon, big things are developing. A videotape of BeBe and Donnie “lip-synching” “Lady Rhythm” on a television show entitled The Great American Disco Experience is being screened for local network affiliate TV stations, with an eye toward “regional or possibly national syndication.” As yet, the show has no buyers. Warner will take the tape, in cassette form, to New York City this month to “Disco Forum V,” a sort of disco convention, where he will rub elbows and palaver with as many key executives in the field as he can. “I’ll be meeting and talking with anyone and everyone there,” Warner says enthusiastically.

There is talk of a three-minute film short called San Diego Fever. A “Bike Hustle” contest for prize money will kick off this month at Rasputin’s on West Point Loma Boulevard. The song’s name, ‘“Bi-Cycle,” will soon go the way of “The Bicycle Hop” and “The Bike.” It will henceforth be known throughout the land as simply “The Bike Hustle. ” And on and on. If and when things level off, Racouillat says he will write a book on the music business. “I plan to use the entire experience as a case study, to help give people shortcuts on how to make it in this business. ”

For the “baritone of the airwaves,” the experience has “created an excitement.” Warner says he would like to sing for senior citizens. “I’ll keep busy,” he grins. “I’ll be able to do the things I like. I can see the end of the rainbow.”

Crown Point Records, reports Warner, will most assuredly remain in San Diego. “People told us to sell off to a major label and maybe make twenty-five or fifty thousand, and then get on to another project. But we said no. There isn’t another record label whose home is San Diego. This is exactly what San Diego needs. And. in all humility, Rac and I are the ones that made it happen. As for myself, if I could become another Beverly Sills, I would be very much interested in promoting myself along those lines.”