Martial Arts

I started in Martial Arts when I was in my 20’s in Bakersfield. I took up Shotokan a Japanese Martial Arts originating in Okinawa. When I moved to Los Angeles I used to go to Valley Arts Guitar on Ventura Blvd in Sherman Oaks, and a few doors away from there Chuck Norris had a Dojo in Sherman Oaks which was also Shotokan style, and I went there. He had really bad luck with a manager and eventually had to close almost all of his schools and Sherman Oaks was one of them. But Chuck knew Ed Parker, a teacher of a style he termed American Kenpo Karate and it was in Pasadena. It was like Shotokan on steroids and I could not give it the proper effort because of my involvement in the music business. In 1978 I met David Chow at Electronic City in Burbank, and when I moved to the parent store Pacific Radio, in Hollywood, David was my customer there, and we became good friends, he invited me to his home several times, and he had a private studio in his home and gave my son Shawn some lessons, not many people got the chance to be in David Chows private studio in his home. What got me interested in Martial Arts was the 1970’s show Kung Fu with David Carradine. David Chow did allot of work on that show, choreography, directing, and acting, and it was incomprehensible that I would ever meet the very person who got me interested in Martial Arts, let alone spend time in his home and become friends with, unimaginable, but the same thing happened to me in music, it was also unimaginable that I would ever meet and work with the people I did, David Chow also worked in production, choreography, and acting in Bruce Lee’s “Enter The Dragon” and too many others to mention here. I was invited to the Grand Opening of Benny “The Jet” Urquidez Dojo in Van Nuys called the Jet Center. I will never forget the demonstration of two Navy Seals with 12″ knives going at it throwing each other all over the place, all the while I thought they were rubber practice knives , but at the end of the demonstration, they demonstrated that those knives were actually very very real, Gee Wiz. I went to Frank Dux Dux Ryu studio behind Burger King on Vanowen and ColdWater Canyon in North Hollywood close to Van Nuys. Let me set the record straight for those who know me, Frank Dux is not a fraud. I will leave it right here for the moment with this part of my life, just to say that I thought that instead of just going to a gym and pushing weights to stay in shape, you might as well learn something while you are at it. I always wanted to learn Akido, but I didn’t. Steven Segal is listed here because I did some work on that movie.