In the sweltering heat of late August 1983, a small theater in San Diego known as the Marquis resounded with the sound of black voices in song. The creator of the work and director of the show, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, alternated between anxious pacing, exuberant outbursts of direction and support, and the kind of eyes-closed listening that seemed to shut out the world. The show was just two weeks away from opening.

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On a chair at the back of the house, Bob Schleeter sat entranced, fully under the spell of the music, the sound, the raw power of the unamplified voices -- and the unrestrained passion barely contained by those four walls. He had come to explore the possibility of filling the show's need for guitar and bass, and he was hooked.

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At the time Ricardo and Bob were both 29. There wasn't much evidence that Pitts-Wiley, a Black actor from a small town near Detroit, and Schleeter, a White musician from the west side of Des Moines, IA. would have the chemistry and camaraderie that would last nearly four decades;

But they have,,,
 

More to follow