At the age of fourteen, during my last year in junior high school in Gardena, I began to realize that if I were ever to get a date I ’d have to revolutionize my musical point of reference. The faux folk music and light pop I ’d once cherished had to be exchanged for something completely different. I was among mostly Japanese American kids who took their cue regarding dance music not so much from the new rock ‘n’ roll coming out of England—the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and other mopheads—or even the catchy tunes from East Coast rockers like Dion and the Belmonts, but from love ballads sung by Black artists from all over—what the guys I ’d wait with at the bus stop near the McDonnell Douglas railroad tracks on 186th Street and Normandie Avenue called slow-dance music.
