CREDITS: Yellowbird Media presents Higher Grounds, a scripted audio drama written and produced by Kimberly Conway. Higher Grounds contains mature themes and topics that may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
REPORTER: The body of Elle Harrison, former child star turned lead singer of the rock band Wilder, was found before dawn this morning outside the Nashville Coffee House Higher Grounds, where authorities say she fell from the building's bell tower sometime in the overnight hours. At this time, officials are not yet commenting on whether foul play was involved. In a brazen shooting outside a Nashville coffee house, notorious mobster Carmine D'Razio was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest. D'Razio was found early this morning slumped over the wheel of his Cadillac in the parking lot of higher ground.
KAT: It was one of the biggest scandals of the early nineties. Elle Harrison, America's sweetheart gone sour, and Carmine D'Orazio, Las Vegas mobster, the devil in a Versace suit. They both turned up dead, six weeks apart at higher grounds, an old church turned coffee house turned international obsession. Elle's death was quickly deemed a suicide. She climbed into the bell tower of the coffee house one icy January night, drank herself to oblivion, and jumped.
No note, no explanation. At least, that's the story. At the time, her solo album was number two on the charts, and she was days away from kicking off a sold out tour. Why would she jump? Carmine's death was easier to swallow.
A mob hit, they said. It made sense he had a lot of enemies. But what was he doing at a coffee house in Nashville? Authorities closed both cases in record time, fueling speculation. Fans poured into Nashville demanding justice.
Reporters swarmed the city. But the truth got buried right alongside the bodies. Thirty years later, we still don't have answers. But beneath the headlines and the speculation, there's another story. The story of four women, Sylvia, Roz, Joni, and Elle.
Lifelong friends, sisters in every way that counts. They built higher grounds together and turned it into a cornerstone of Nashville's music scene. If anyone knows the secrets that live inside the walls of that coffee house, it's them. For decades, Sylvia, Ross, and Joni have been courted by every major media outlet, but they've never given a single interview until now. I'm Kat Singleton, journalist, storyteller.
I'm here at Higher Grounds to speak to the women behind Nashville's most iconic coffee house and finally, to get some answers. The first thing you notice walking into Higher Grounds for the first time is the light, the way it filters through the stained glass, spilling color onto the old wooden pews by the entrance. There's so much history in this place. Some of the biggest artists of the last thirty years were discovered right here on this stage.
JONI: Cat?
KAT: Yeah. Hi.
JONI: Good to see you made it. How was your flight?
KAT: That's Joni McKay. Platinum silver hair, easy smile. The kind of woman who looks like she's seen it all, twice, and still finds something to laugh about. It was Joni who reached out to me in an email. Two lines that simply said, we're ready to tell our story.
Give me a call.
ROZ: Kat, it's good to finally meet you in person.
KAT: And that's Rosalyn Mitchell. Though most people remember her as Roz Richardson, the soul singer who dominated the charts in the seventies and early eighties.
ROZ: I've got to get a hug.
KAT: She came from behind the counter and hugged me like she meant it. Standing in the coffee house that morning, it felt strangely like coming home. I was completely swept up by the charm of the building, the warmth of these women. And then she walked in. Sylvia Richardson, five foot nothing, dressed to the nines, and drop dead gorgeous.
She's the kind of woman who can quiet a room just by walking in. I know, because I witnessed it. Look who made it. Sylvia didn't so much as glance in our direction when Joni spoke to her. She cut straight through the crowd, right past us, and headed toward the stairs and back.
Lord, help us. Joni followed Sylvia upstairs. Roz stayed with me, both of us at a loss for words.
ROZ: Are you ready to go up to the office and get started?
KAT: She seemed intense. Is she always like that? Am I missing something?
ROZ: I'm going to be honest with you, Kat. Joni would kill me if she knew I was telling you this. But I feel like we owe it to you after dragging you all the way out here and putting you in the middle of this. Okay. Sylvia didn't know anything about the podcast until a few days ago.
And when we told her, she was more upset than I've seen her in a long time. She said she felt like we'd betrayed her by reaching out to you behind her back. I'm not sure she's wrong. I don't know if this was the right thing for us to do.
KAT: It's not often that I question my instincts as a journalist, but in that moment, I wondered if I'd made a mistake. I followed Roz to the office, and halfway up those stairs, I considered calling the whole thing off. But I couldn't. I was already in too deep. From the moment I set foot in that building, something about it, about these women was calling to me.
I couldn't walk away if I tried.
SYLVIA: Catherine, I'm Sylvia Richardson. Up close, Sylvia was stunning.
KAT: Bronze skin that seemed lit from within, dark brown eyes, and a disarming smile. We stood there a moment, both of us trying to get a read on each other. As she reached to shake my hand, I noticed hers was trembling. Her eyes filled with tears. She refused to let fall.
And that's when I knew the heart of this story lies with her.
SYLVIA: Joni, Raz, give us a moment alone, would you? I apologize for my behavior earlier. That had nothing to do with you. I'm still getting used to the idea of this. It's it's a lot for me.
KAT: No. It's me who owes you an apology. Roz told me you didn't have any idea about this. I should have spoken to all three of you before I came. She crossed her arms and studied me.
I had no idea what she was thinking, but I kept talking to fill the space between us. I think it's important that you tell your story, Sylvia. All these years, people have been telling it for you. We've never heard from you. But you do have the right to back out, so if you don't want to
SYLVIA: do this. I'm not backing out. Joni and Roz have brought you all the way out here. Obviously, they know what's best for me, so Let's do it. But before we go any farther, I want to make sure we're clear.
If you've come here expecting some final piece of the puzzle, I can't give you that. I don't know what happened to Elle or to Carmine. Neither do Roz or Joni. Did they tell you that before they brought you all the way out here? No,
KAT: They didn't.
SYLVIA: I didn't expect they had. They mean well, Roz and Joni, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That's what they say. Let's sit down. I've tried to make sense of what happened to Elle.
I suspect I know what led her to the Bell Tower that night, but there are pieces of the story I just don't have. I have my suspicions about why Carmine was in the parking lot on the night he died. But as for who pulled the trigger, I I don't know.
KAT: The way she sat there chipping at the polish on her perfectly manicured nails. I knew there was something she wasn't saying. I didn't know what it was yet, but I could feel it. When all this
SYLVIA: is said and done, when you've conducted all your interviews and our darkest secrets have come to light, you'll find your story. But you should know. It may not be the one you came here expecting to do.
KAT: Sitting with Sylvia in the office that morning, I let go of whatever agenda I had walked into that building with. There was a story here that ached to be told, and it ran far deeper than any sensational headline the world had been chasing. The following oral history is a compilation of nearly two years of interviews. I spent dozens of hours with these women, followed the story from Nashville to New Orleans, Las Vegas to Los Angeles. I talked to everyone who had insight, everyone who remembered.
This is Higher Grounds episode one, the '62. In order to fully understand what happened to Elle and Carmine, we have to start all the way back in 1961 when eight year old Sylvia LaRonde and her mother Marie left their home in New Orleans and moved to Nashville.
SYLVIA: Sylvia Richardson, former owner of Higher Grounds. My mother was following a boyfriend up here, Jimmy. I never understood what she saw in him. He was a drunk, abusive, couldn't hold a job. But she said she loved him.
And love doesn't always make sense. I can say that from experience. So Jimmy ended up with a little piece of land out here. I don't think I ever heard how he got it. I can't imagine he had the money to buy it.
So maybe family left it to him. Maybe he wanted gambling. Anyway, he talked mama into moving to Tennessee with him. She wasn't real big on the idea, but Jimmy was a slick talker. He made her all these promises about how he was gonna build her a brand new house and buy her a diamond ring.
He told her he'd take care of us and she'd never have to work again. When we got here, he bought this old Airstream camper and had it hauled onto the property. He got a job and then he lost it. And it took all of three weeks before mama had to start working again. Needless to say, she never did see that house ordering that he had promised.
You know, a lot of times we'd have to stand in line at the food pantry around town just to make ends meet. There was this big church, Greater Mount Zion. Mama would go to their food pantry because she had sort of hit it off with the pastor's wife, Claire Richardson. Claire would always make sure to give mama enough food so we could get by for the week without having to stand in line anywhere else. One Saturday, I went there with mama to get our food for the week.
She and Claire sent me out to the playground so they could talk for a while in the office, and that's where I met Rob's.
ROZ: Rosalyn Mitchell, recording artist and owner of Higher Grounds Coffee House. Sylvia was a scrappy little thing and no bigger than a minute, but she had a big personality. I remember the first time I ever saw her was out on the playground at Mama and Daddy's church. I wanna say I was nine, so that would have made her about eight. My brother Charles and I were playing on the teeter totter, and here comes this little girl had it right for us.
Her hair was in pigtails, didn't look like it had ever been taken care of. She was wearing this worn out dress, two sizes too big, scuffed up patent leather shoes. I'm quite sure her mother had gotten it all from a donation bin. But even looking a mess like she did, you would have thought she ruled the playground. The way she walked right up to us with this big smile and said, Hi, I'm Sylvia.
Who are you? I'm ashamed to tell you this, but I didn't really want her hanging around at first. Charles and I, we grew up with a lot of nice things. Fine clothes, big house. We were well off.
And I'll admit, I looked down on Sylvia. Charles had been itching all morning to go play baseball with his friends, but Mama told him he had to stay and play with me at the playground so I wouldn't be out there all by myself. When he saw Sylvia walking up, I could just see the light bulb going off in his head. I remember giving him this look like, You better not stick me with her. He just grinned and slid off the teeter totter, held it down for Sylvia so she could take his place.
He shot me this little smirk as he headed off to the ball field. I could have killed him.
SYLVIA: Roz wasn't the first little girl to turn her nose up at me. I was used to it, from kids and adults alike. I knew people looked down on me, but I just made up my mind that I wasn't gonna let anyone discount me so easily. You know when you walk through the world and everyone is looking down on you, you really only have two options. You can accept it, shrink back and disappear the way they want you to, or you can stand up and make them see you.
I guess I've never been one to shrink back. So I learned to be charming. I learned to make people like me.
ROZ: That little girl was gonna make me be her friend no matter what. And you know what? She did. I was real shy and quiet back then, but Sylvia was able to coax me right on out of my shell. In no time at all, the two of us were running around the playground laughing and having ourselves a big old time.
We ended up talking our mothers into letting Sylvia stay over at my house that night. I could tell Mama was a little hesitant, but she said it was all right. I think she was just happy for me to finally have a little friend to play with. I didn't really have many friends back then.
SYLVIA: I had never been inside a house as nice as the Richardsons. I think my mouth fell open the first time I stepped inside. I had never seen a black family so affluent. And sometimes, you have to see a thing to realize it's possible, you know? All I'd ever seen at that point in my life was struggle.
But standing in that house, I saw a whole new world of possibility.
ROZ: Sylvia got real quiet when we got to my house. She clasped her hands together in front of her like she was afraid she might break something. She just kept looking around, taking it all in. You would have thought she was in a museum.
SYLVIA: The first thing Claire did when she got me over to her house was put me in the bathtub and scrubbed me down from head to toe. Then she set up a makeshift beauty parlor in the kitchen. I was so tender headed back then. I think that's why mama never bothered much with my hair. After working them long hours she did, she rarely had the energy to fight me over it.
But Claire, she was real intimidating to me. She was proper, sort of stern. I wasn't about to put up a fight with her the way I did with mama. So I just sat there, oh, biting my tongue and holding on to the kitchen chair for dear life while she ripped that comb through my hair. When she finally finished, I hardly recognized myself.
ROZ: I remember being irritated. Here I finally had a friend over to play with me and mama was wasting all our time on this makeover. Just when I thought she'd finished, she took Sylvia upstairs and started giving her my clothes. I thought, she's going to be at this all night. Now, I had long since outgrown anything Sylvia could wear.
I was a little butterball back then, and I was also about a year older than her. So it wasn't Mama giving her my clothes that bothered me. It just was the fact that she took so long with it, making her try everything on, pinning and marking it all so she could alter it to fit her. But when I noticed the way Sylvia lit up as she tried on all those pretty outfits, I realized it was important what mama was doing for her. So I piped down and waited as patiently as I could.
SYLVIA: The next morning, I went to church with Raz and her family, all dressed up in my fancy new clothes with my hair all done. I will never forget that day. The way people looked at me, the way they talked to me, it was altogether different from anything I had ever experienced. All my life, people had looked down on me like like I was nothing. And it's it's hard not to internalize that, especially as a child, you know?
But dressed up in roses, expensive clothes, I didn't have to work to make people see me. Everyone was so nice. And I remember it was like it was like this weight got lifted off me that day because I realized it wasn't actually me that people had been looking down on. It was the way I presented myself. And now I had some capacity to change it.
I felt like I had been given a key, you know? The world unlocked for me on some level that day. Anyway, that evening, Claire dropped me off back home at the trailer, helped me carry all the clothes she had given me inside. Mama acted like she didn't recognize me. She kept asking, who are you?
And what have you done with my little girl? I thought she was talking about the way I looked. But when I think back on it now, I wonder if she was talking about something more. Because after I came back from the Richardson's house that first time, I was a different little girl inside and out. That night, I couldn't stop talking about the Richardsons.
Mama let me go on and on about them. But the more I talked, I started to notice her smile wasn't quite so enthusiastic. And although I didn't fully understand why at the time, I had enough awareness to know that it was making her feel inadequate somehow. After that night, I I never talked much about the Richardson's to mama. I didn't want to make her feel bad, you know?
I knew she was doing the best she knew how to do. But I also knew that the life we were living in that trailer wasn't for me.
ROZ: After the first weekend Sylvia spent at my house, I think she came back just about every week. When school let out for the summer, she practically moved in. I loved it. I'd always wanted a sister and I was starting to feel like I had one.
SYLVIA: It was complicated for me back then. It was a hard position to be in as a young girl because I did love my mother, and I wanted to be with her. I don't want you to think I just stayed with the Richardson's because they had nice things or whatever because that wasn't it. The reason I stayed there is because things were really toxic at home. Jimmy was he was a mean drunk, and he stayed drunk.
He and mama fought every night, cursing and yelling at each other, making all kinds of threats. I'd be in my bed and the whole trailer would get to shaking when Jimmy would start pushing mama around. I was terrified to be alone with him because he was very inappropriate with me when we were alone. He never put his hands on me and I thank God for that, but I have no doubt he would have if I had stayed around more if he had had the right opportunity. So yeah, home was, it was rough.
But I felt safe at the Richardson's. I was able to just be a kid there, you know?
KAT: While Sylvia and Roz were becoming close friends, there was another friendship already formed at the house next door between eight year old Joni Levy and nine year old Elle Harrison.
JONI: Joni McKay, owner of Higher Grounds. I was the only girl in my family. I had five older brothers. So I guess that's where I got my loud mouth. You gotta be loud to be heard in a house full of boys.
You know what I mean? I had to learn to take up space or there wouldn't be any space left for me. My mother died when I was four years old. So my father raised us. And I say that loosely.
Mostly, we raised ourselves. I know it sounds like a sob story, but it wasn't like that. We had a nice place to live and all the necessities recovered. My father was a sound engineer. He worked on some of the biggest records of the fifties, sixties, and seventies.
Everybody wanted him on their albums, so naturally, he was gone a lot. Most evenings, us kids had to fend for ourselves when it came to dinner. And a lot of times, what I do is go across the street to the Harrison's house and play with their granddaughter, Elle. And when Elle's grandma called her in for dinner, I walked right on into the house behind her and pull up a seat at the table. Her grandma would give me this look like, don't you have a home?
But she never said anything. She just set an extra place for me. I guess she must have known my situation at home because eventually, she got to the point where she'd always set a place for me, even when Elle was with her mother in California. She was a real saint, Elle's grandmother.
KAT: Elle's parents divorced when she was two years old, entangling her in the middle of a fierce custody battle. For the majority of her childhood, Elle's time was split between living with her mother, Gretchen Lewis, in Los Angeles, and her father, Walter Harrison, in Nashville.
JONI: I don't think either one of Elle's parents wanted her. They just used her as a pawn to get at each other. Actually, that's not entirely true. Walter used her to get to Gretchen. But Gretchen, she used her for the money she could make off of her in show business.
Thank god Elle had her grandparents. Sometimes it seemed like those two were the only ones who actually cared what happened to her. They kept her while she was in Tennessee because her dad couldn't be bothered. I just wish they would have advocated for her a little more when it came to the whole acting thing. You know what I mean?
Petitioned the courts something. Elle never wanted to be an actress. She hated everything about it. She used to cry when she'd have to go back to California. Sometimes she'd cry so hard she'd choke on her own tears.
But no amount of tears ever made a difference. Gretchen would put her in the back of a cab at the end of every summer just before school started, and they'd head off for the airport. We wouldn't see Elle again until Christmas if we were lucky. Of course, she did a lot of commercials back then, so she was always popping up on the television, selling dog food or bread or peanut butter.
YOUNG ELLE: If you like peanut butter, you'll love Judy Bell's peanut butter. Get it in creamy or crunchy. But if you ask me, I think you should get both.
JONI: When Elle was home in Tennessee, she never talked about anything that went on in California, never talked about her work. I didn't even know she was on the Ed Warner show until I sat down to watch it with my brothers, and there she was.
ROZ: The Warner show starring Ed Warner, Liz Coburn, Marty Hyatt, and Elle Harrison.
KAT: The Ed Warner Show starring famed actor and comedian Ed Warner as Richard Miles was a television sitcom that debuted in the 1959. Originally airing in the 8PM time slot on Thursday nights right after Leave It to Beaver, the show found immediate success and was soon moved to Monday nights to compete with Gunsmoke on CBS. Elle Harrison, who was only seven years old in the first episode, became the breakout star of the show, playing Richard's youngest daughter, the sassy and lovable Marcy Miles.
YOUNG ELLE: Whatever you say, Mikey.
KAT: Marcy's catchphrase, whatever you say, Mikey, became a pop culture phenomenon, and it was on the tip of everyone's tongue throughout the show's five year run.
JONI: Before Ed Warner, no one really recognized Elle when she was home. Tennessee was her refuge. It was the place she could just be a regular kid. But after the show took off, she could hardly walk down the sidewalk without someone stopping her asking for her autograph. And that was hard.
SYLVIA: The Ed Warner show was one of my favorite things to watch on television. I used to watch it every week with mama and Jimmy in the trailer. Later when I started spending most of my time at the Richardson's, I watched it with them too. Every Monday night, Claire would pop us a big bowl of popcorn, and we'd watch it together. We had no idea Marcy Miles spent half the year living in the house next door.
ROZ: My family and I lived in an affluent white neighborhood. A lot of the white neighbors weren't too happy when daddy first bought the house. They were real concerned about black folks bringing down their property value. Needless to say, there was never a line of neighbor kids knocking down my door asking me to come out and play. I was used to keeping to myself, so it really didn't bother me much.
SYLVIA: But
ROZ: Sylvia, she was a social butterfly. Every time she hear other kids playing somewhere in the neighborhood, she tried to talk me into joining them. One afternoon, it was probably around the first few days of summer break. The two of us were out in the backyard jumping rope and listening to the radio. We were trying to jump rope with one end of the rope tied to a swing set.
Sylvia wasn't having it. She kept saying we needed another person. Well, about that time, we started hearing a couple of girls playing in the yard next door. Sylvia looked over in that direction and I knew what she was about
SYLVIA: to do.
ROZ: I said,
SYLVIA: leave those girls alone.
ROZ: But before I could even get the words out, Sylvia had climbed her scrawny behind up on the privacy fence and poked her head into the neighbor's yard. She hollered, hey, y'all like jump rope? Next thing you know, I've got two little white girls in my backyard and we're having ourselves a double dutch contest.
SYLVIA: Roz was so mad at me. But after the girls had been over a while, I I could tell she was happy they were there. Roz was just so painfully shy back then. You had to give her a little push sometimes.
KAT: The girls had only been together a few minutes when Sylvia recognized Elle from television.
SYLVIA: I kept thinking that girl looks just like Marcy Miles. But I just thought they looked alike, you know? It didn't occur to me that that could be the same person. Not until I heard her laugh, and that's when it clicked. I said, hey, you're Marcy Miles.
And immediately, you could see the wall just go right up.
JONI: I looked at Elle to see if she was ready to go. By that time, I was real protective over her. It seemed like nobody else was looking out for her, so I had appointed myself to the job. You know, kids can be so cruel. Whenever we would go around other kids, they'd pick on her.
They were ruthless little devils. Jealous is what it boiled down to. I once punched a girl at Centennial Park because she pulled Elle's hair and shoved her down. Elle was just so much smaller than the other kids and so meek. They would have steamrolled over her if I didn't put them in their place.
SYLVIA: Joni sort of stepped between us. She was looking at me like she was ready to fight.
JONI: -It may have been a bit of an overreaction, I'll admit, but we didn't know those girls. I was looking out for my friend.
SYLVIA: -I told her I didn't mean to upset her. I just thought I just thought they looked alike. I said forget I said anything. And then real softly, Elle said, I'm not Marcy Miles. That's just acting.
My real name is Elle. I had so many questions, but I didn't want Joni coming for me and I didn't want to make Elle uncomfortable, so I dropped it and we went back to jump and roll.
ROZ: We ended up playing until the street lights came on. The next day, Joni and Elle came back over and we all spent the day together again.
SYLVIA: I don't think I talked to Elle about her acting for at least a couple of weeks. It was, it was just her and I. I honestly can't remember why the two of us were alone together. But for whatever reason on this particular afternoon, it was just it was just the two of us. And I remember that day so vividly because Elle and I really talked.
I mean, we were kids, but we had some real grown up problems. She told me that she hated acting, and the only reason she did it was because her mother forced her to. And I told her about Jimmy, How I was scared to be alone with him. I told her things I hadn't even told Roz. And it felt good to get it off my chest, to have someone who understood.
From that day on, we just clicked in this profound sort of way that you really only do with a few people in your life.
KAT: There's a kind of freedom in being seen, truly seen for the first time. Sylvia and Elle were about as different as two little girls can be. Sylvia was poor, but spirited and scrappy. Elle was wealthy, but meek and yielding. Both of them were magnetic in their own way.
Both had been swept into the undertow of their parents' instability. And in the swirl of that current, they grabbed hands, steadied each other, and they found a solid place to stand at Claire and Roland Richardson's house that summer. Elle, Sylvia, Roz, and Joni. They stood together. It was the 1962, just two years after the lunch counter sit ins made Nashville the first southern city to begin desegregating its public facilities.
The nation was divided, the chasm growing a little wider each day, And in the midst of it all, four girls forged a friendship that defied the cultural norms of the time. They jumped double dutch in the backyard while a transistor radio crackled out the soundtrack of their youth. They didn't know it yet. They couldn't have known. But something sacred began that summer.
And if you listen closely, you can still hear the echoes, even now.
CREDITS: The company. The of is the The name theme song, Everything Changes by Laura Jane Jones, is available now on Apple Music and Spotify. Shows like Higher Grounds are made possible by the support of listeners like you. If you've enjoyed the show, we'd be so grateful if you could take a moment to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Stay connected with Higher Grounds and be the first to know about upcoming Yellowbird productions by following us on social media and signing up for our newsletter at www.yellowbird.com.
Higher Grounds is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental. This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.