Korla Pandit
John Malveaux of
writes:
"America’s First ‘Indian’ TV Star Was a Black Man from Missouri"
Zocalo
Stymied by Hollywood Racism, Korla Pandit Reinvented Himself as a Mystical Brahmin Pianist
By John Turner |
Turning on the TV in Los Angeles in 1949, you might have come
face-to-face with a young man in a jeweled turban with a dreamy gaze
accentuated by dark eye shadow. Dressed in a fashionable coat and tie,
Korla Pandit played the piano and the organ—sometimes both at
once—creating music that was both familiar and exotic.
According to press releases from the time, Pandit was born in New
Delhi, India, the son of a Brahmin government worker and a French opera
singer. A prodigy on the piano, he studied music in England and later
moved to the United States, where he mastered the organ at the
University of Chicago. Not once in 900 performances did he speak on
camera, preferring instead to communicate with viewers via that hypnotic
gaze.
He became one of the first TV stars, ever, with friends like Errol
Flynn, Bob Hope, and Sabu, the Elephant Boy. He eventually ceded his TV
performances over a contract dispute to the young pianist Liberace. And
the way he came to fame is one of those only-in-America fables where the
audience and the performer are both invested in the illusion
I first got to know Korla Pandit in 1990, while I was working at KGO
TV in San Francisco. I was producing a series on Bay Area eccentrics and
a colleague at the station mentioned that Pandit had a live show on KGO
in the ’50s.
I tracked Pandit down to a private residence in the Napa Valley,
where I was greeted by a man who appeared much shorter than the pianist
I’d seen on faded television clips. He was elegantly dressed in a grey
Nehru jacket, a turban, and highly polished shoes. As he spoke to me in a
soft but high-pitched voice, Korla regaled me with stories of India,
Hollywood, and sold-out concerts, cleverly salted with “Indian pearls of
wisdom.” He told me that in India a song never dies but materializes
into beautiful forms and that he had played at the funeral of his famous
friend Paramahansa Yogananda. I had no reason to doubt his integrity or
question his philosophy. He seemed like a gentle soul.
Although his face was sunken and his gaze less alluring, he was able
to take me back in time, much like the character Norma Desmond in Sunset
Boulevard. After we got the necessary footage of him playing the organ
and a great shot of him walking off into the sunset, we left, promising
to stay in contact.
When the piece ran a few days later on the evening news, Pandit
called me at work to say that he was happy to reconnect with his Channel
7 fans. He continued to call me every four months or so for the next
seven years. We usually talked about the clubs he was playing at in Los
Angeles. He told me he had a new audience of tiki hipsters who canonized
him by calling him the “godfather of exotica music.” And he told me
about his cameo appearance in Tim Burton’s film about cult film director
Ed Wood.
When he called, I’d pick up the phone and hear a woman’s secretarial
voice asking me if this was Mr. Turner. Then she’d say “Korla Pandit
would love to talk to you.” After an acknowledgment, the line was
usually quiet for 15 to 20 seconds until he came on with his familiar
greeting of “Namaste, John.” It was straight out of a ’50s noir film.
In 1996, he invited me to attend a San Francisco concert held at
Bimbos 365, an atmospheric club with ’50s-style booth seating. This was
the only time I got to see him perform before an audience and boy, was
he great. He played songs from his 29 albums. The crowd was on their
feet for the whole performance.
In October of 1998, a viewer called the station to say that Pandit,
age 77, had died that day at a hospital in Petaluma, California, of
heart failure. We showed 20 seconds of him playing at his height in the
’50s, as well as something from the interview. I thought that closed the
chapter on Korla Pandit. It didn’t.
He told me he had a new audience of tiki hipsters who canonized him by calling him the “godfather of exotica music.”
In June of 2001, a friend sent me a story in Los Angeles Magazine
written by R.J. Smith called “The Many Faces of Korla Pandit.” I
started reading the article with excitement, which was soon followed by a
clouded curiosity and later capped with a disclosure that shook what I
knew about him (which apparently wasn’t that much because the name he
was born with was John Roland Redd). I shared the article with a fellow
KGO producer, Eric Christensen, who grew up in San Francisco and
remembered his mother saying she was mesmerized by Pandit’s eyes, which
seemed to see right through her.
We agreed that Pandit’s true story was astonishing, tragic, and yet illuminating—the foundation for a movie
and a true American archetype of self-invention. Unbeknownst to the
rest of us, he had actually been one of the first African-American
television stars. Twelve years later, when we were both retired, Eric
and I decided to use our pensions and social security to make that
movie.
We started by filming Smith, the author of the magazine piece, who
had known Pandit in the early ’90s. Only years later, as he was
interviewing musicians for a book on L.A.’s great African-American music
clubs in the ’40s, did Smith begin to uncover Pandit’s true history.
When Smith complimented a piano player of note, Sir Charles Thompson,
Thompson said offhandedly that while he thought he was a decent piano
player, there was another musician from Columbia, Missouri, who was much
better, a fellow named John Redd. He went on to say that when he was
working in L.A., he turned on the television and lo and behold, there
was John Roland Redd, running over the keys while wearing a turban and
going under the Indian name of Korla Pandit. Well, this was a real
shocker to Smith, and of course to us.
Smith confirmed that Pandit was indeed John Roland Redd, one of seven
children born to Baptist pastor Ernest Redd and Doshia O’Nina Johnson,
in Columbia, Missouri. His love of music took hold in childhood and he
played a mean boogie-woogie piano. Smith learned that Frances, one of
Redd’s sisters, had preceded him to Hollywood, where she found work as
an actress on an all-black film called Midnight Shadow in which a
shifty villain wore a turban. When he first came to L.A., Redd changed
his name to Juan Rolando, because at that time, Mexican music was in
vogue and Mexican musicians had an easier time then African-Americans
getting studio and club work.
Frances had a white roommate who was a Disney artist named Beryl
DeBeeson, whom she set up on a date with her brother. Their relationship
eventually led to a Tijuana marriage, as interracial marriages were
illegal in California at that time. Beryl helped John become Korla
Pandit, doing his eye makeup and designing his sets and wardrobe.
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