I connected with Jamelle Dolphin in 2010 when I was working on “Brothers & Sisters.” At the time, Jamelle was working on a biography of his grandfather, the prolific music producer and record store owner, John Dolphin. I was brought on to adapt the story into a feature film. It was an exciting project. I absolutely love the music of that era. The story covers an entire decade as music evolved in the 1950s from jazz, gospel, soul, doo-wop, rhythm and blues, and rock ‘n roll.
We had written the outline, and when it became clear that independently producing a feature film that involved so much music, including songs from Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, and Jesse Belvin, we decided to go in a different direction.
We connected with Andy Cooper, a musician and hip-hop artist with a great respect for music history, and we got to work developing an ambitious new musical production. In 2015, the show sold out the Lilian Theatre and the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood and earned a number of Ovation Award nominations. In the summer of 2016, “Recorded In Hollywood” moved to the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City and continued selling out.