Mr. Chuck Sullivan talks about the early days when Mr. Parker lost his advanced class to Jimmy Woo

(from an interview with Mr. Sullivan on the Art of One Dojo YouTube page)

We have two techniques that I got from Jimmy Woo. Because I don't know if you know about what happened with Ed Parker during the early days when he lost his entire advanced class. I can tell you about this, I was there, there's not many people around today who were there. 

Ed Parker was writing his second book, the Secrets of Chinese Karate and he was visiting San Francisco picking the minds of some of the Chinese elders up there and he ran into Jimmy Woo who was nine years his senior. 

Ed thought it would be a good idea to have him collaborate with him on the book so he invited him to come down to southern California and stay with him at his house. So he supported him, I mean he just supported the man at his stay there. So they were collaborating on the book. 

Well, Jimmy Woo obviously looked at what Ed Parker had, and looked at what he had, and there was no comparison. And then Ed Parker made a very serious tactical mistake. He put Jimmy in charge of the class whenever he couldn't make it, and he couldn't make it more often as time went on. So Jimmy Woo got to teach the class and learn, and get acquainted with all of the guys and start "wooing" them, pun intended, away from Ed and onto his own thing. 

And one of the things he told, that he sold the guys on, because I stayed in contact with one of the guys that went with him after he was there. So I got to know what they were doing, and how they were doing it, a little further down the line. Not much but a little further. And one of the things, I asked Leonard, this friend of mine, I said how did he get these guys? Because he didn't get me. I wasn't as close to the hierarchy of that class, I was kind of on the lower end, I had just joined the class as a brown belt. I was expected to be part of the move. Because he got every single person in the advanced class except me, I was the only one. But I didn't care for some of the things he was doing as he was doing it. I mean how do you expect somebody that lies in the corner with a cigarette in his mouth and teaches your class. 

Yeah, yeah, just smoking while we were working out!

There were just things about the man that, that I just couldn't get behind. Some of the things I liked, some of the stuff I liked. But I didn't like it as an entire system. I liked little bits of it. So I stole 'em, we have them in the system today, they're wonderful.

Anyhow, so that all happened, and they split. One of the thing he sold them on was, he said Ed Parker has taught you everything he knows. Come with me and I'll teach you the real thing. Well, he didn't have the real thing to begin with. And he said another thing is Ed Parker is moving too slow, meaning that he should be, his schools should be all over the country. You should be in charge of the East Coast, this guy should be in charge of the North East, this guy should be in charge of the Mid-West, this guy should be in charge of the South. That didn't happen at all, that never happened, the furthest they ever got was the crappy end of Hollywood Blvd. That's where the dojo lived, and stayed, and died, and whatever.

Anyhow, Jimmy Woo had some really good stuff, but selectively, not as an entire system. As an entire system it was horribly lacking. But the thing he impressed upon these guys was Ed Parker taught them everything he knew. 

So Ed Parker obviously said to himself at that time, you want more?, I'll give you more. I'll give you so much you can't handle it. 

And that's what happened. 

A small mystery solved

Over three years ago I posted this photo of Mr. Parker in an Aikido dojo,

https://kenponotes.blogspot.com/2021/09/mr-parker-in-aikido-dojo.html

I had no information on the photo, it was just Mr. Parker in an Aikido dojo shaking someone's hand. Well, we can all sleep a little easier now. Thanks to a recent interview with Mr. Chuck Sullivan the mystery has been solved. 

Mr. Sullivan talked about how he got started in the martial arts and how he met Mr. Parker for the first time. Turns out that Mr. Sullivan had been out of the Marines for a few years and he was out of shape, and was looking to get back into shape. As a kid living in Chicago he had always wanted to study Judo but there were no Judo schools accessible to him. Then one day his brother-in-law told him that a Judo school had just opened only a couple of blocks from their house (Los Angeles area) so he went to check it out.

On the dojo's exterior it had the words "Aikido, Judo, Karate." Apparently the building was being shared and used a couple of nights a week by each martial arts instructor. 

That same week he was able to go observe one of the Kenpo classes which was being taught by James Ibrao and he was hooked. At the next class he went to observe he met Mr. Parker himself.

"It had been an Aikido school and it had been run by an Air Force sergeant who would train the guys and then when he would get transferred he'd leave his most advanced student in charge. And at this time he didn't have an advanced student advanced enough and he sold it to Ed Parker. He said you know, I got nobody... if you want it you can have it at a decent price. Whatever it was, I don't know what their deal was, but uh, he said why don't you do a demonstration for my guys and if they like you enough... they'll come over... he got every one of them. I mean he did a demonstration, he got every one of 'em, I mean they transferred right on over."

Then Mr. Sullivan talked about how later Mr. Parker closed up that school to open up his Pasadena school, and the rest is history.

A new book by Mr. Chuck Sullivan

Amazon link 

https://www.amazon.com/My-Sixty-Four-Year-Kenpo-Journey/dp/B0C9KCHNBL/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38UTAZN0FU27E&keywords=chuck+sullivan&qid=1694486085&sprefix=chuck+sulliv%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1

Mr. Sullivan on the Karate Connection and learning the basics

(posted on Facebook several years ago)

It was 1980 that things looked up again. Vic LeRoux, who had been a student of mine from the time he was fourteen years old and later a co-worker and fellow instructor at Mr. Parker’s West L.A. school, came to me and said he’d like to get the “Old Gang” back together and open a dojo on his side of town.

I told him he’d never get the “Old Gang” back together but chances are he’d create a “New Gang”.

He asked me to be the Head Instructor. It felt good to have a steady thing instead of just an occasional get together with old friends. And I was right about the Old and New Gangs. But the New Gang of the Karate Connection School is now the Old Gang and the Old Gang from the Crenshaw school is now the Over the Hill Gang. If that’s too hard to follow, don’t worry about it. It just means we’re all getting old.

When Vic was about to open the Karate Connection I asked him exactly what it was he intended to teach. He said, “The whole thing, all the techniques I taught at the West L.A. school.” I told him it was too much.

Then I asked him if he had ever taught anyone all of that material. He said, “Practically none, nobody ever stayed long enough.” I asked if that didn’t give him some sort of clue, maybe something was wrong.

I told him how, in the early days there weren’t but a handful of techniques, so we concentrated on the basics. And the guys of that time were some of the finest practitioners of the Art I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with and learn from. They were focused, the system was lean and the Old Man wouldn’t allow anyone to advance without impeccable basics.

Kenpo techniques have always been and still remain, the most fascinating part of the Art. It isn’t hard to understand why techniques won favor over strong hard basics and it was my observation that the instructors doing the actual teaching wanted still more.Their appetites seemed insatiable. The basics were still there but they seemed to be gotten through as quickly as possible in order to get to those “Fabulous Kenpo Techniques”

As the demand for techniques grew so did Mr. Parker’s ability to create them. He once told me that with the number of basic moves he had to work with, the number of combinations was virtually limitless. The only problem is, not all the combinations are worth putting together. Some things just don’t blend and flow.

If it doesn’t work don’t do it!

I told Vic, if I was to act as the Head Instructor we were going to have to go back to basics and cut down the number of techniques taught up to black belt. My feeling was and still is, when a student got his or her black belt they could go and learn all the techniques they wanted from wherever they might choose. But we weren’t going to turn out black belts who didn’t have the strongest basics we could give them.

The sum total of the Art is in the basics.

There’s never been a great practitioner in any style or system who didn’t have great basics. Can’t be done..."

Mr. Chuck Sullivan in action back in the day

 

Chuck Sullivan interview

Chuck Sullivan, Gregory Satterfield, and Mr. Pakrer

(photo from the Ed Parker Photos Facebook page)