When she died in July at the age of 98, Pamela was an international cult heroine. A beauty contest winner. A musician. A radio personality.
And for years she lived on Clinton Avenue in southeast Fresno on the edge of obscurity.
"There is this mythology that surrounds her," said Mallory Moad, a local performance artist who, along with a crew of local musicians, presented "Beyond the Moon: the Music of Lucia Pamela," 8 p.m. Feb. 28 and 1 p.m. March 8 at the Starline.
The shows paid tribute to Pamela's 1969 album "Into Outer Space."
For the musicians and performers who took part, that album started it all.
In the early 1980s, KFSR radio manager Kirk Biglione found Pamela's album at Tower Record's and put it in rotation. That's where musician Mike Newton first heard it. Newton, along with Biglione and several others, became intrigued with finding more about the myth of Lucia Pamela.
Part of the tribute was keeping Pamela's name in lights, Newton said.
"Lucia should get some press," he said.
Pamela's mystique is so grand that Moad must break it into two categories.
Things that can be proven: She was a childhood piano prodigy, a member of the Musical Pirates -- the nation's first all-female community orchestra -- was Miss St. Louis in 1926, and the host of two radio shows for young women, "The Encouragement Hour," and "Gal About Town." She was the mother of Georgia Frontiere, the first female owner of a major American sports team -- now the St. Louis Rams.
Locally, she was the first manager of Storyland Park in 1962, and was known to drive her huge pink Cadillac down Blackstone Avenue to peddle her album at Tower records.
The rest Moad would rather not prove.
"It's just so much fun believing it's true," Moad said.
Like believing that at the age of 2, Pamela had her fingers fused together on a hot stove -- later to be surgically altered, making her a better piano player.
Or that she played piano with Charles Kunkel -- reputed to be a distant relation to the great Beethoven -- who died while on stage.
Pamela continued to play on.
Blake Jones, a local musician who took part in the tribute, describes it as the musical equivalent to Dr. Seuss.
"It's like if you'd never seen a Dr. Seuss book before," he said. Pamela had that same childish creativity, drawing you in despite its obvious weirdness, Jones said.
He remembers his first experience with Pamela's music.
"I didn't know if I should jump up and down for joy, or run screaming from the room," he said.
The 1969 album was so odd, in fact, that it earned a place in a book and companion album "Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music," for which it gained attention in 1992.
So the tribute, working on Pamela's cue, was not your traditional American pop music.
But people shouldn't be afraid of outsiders, said Moad, a woman who might be considered one herself.
"People are afraid of new things or afraid of different things. There is nothing to be afraid of in 'Into Outer Space,' in the music of Lucia Pamela," she said.
As for the show, Moad says though the songs were interpreted differently -- and perhaps with more musical proficiency than the originals -- the feeling of Pamela was still there.
"I am amazed with how 'Lucia Pamela' it is without trying to be 'Lucia Pamela,' " she said.
Readers may e-mail reporter Joshua Tehee at jtehee@fresnobee.com.
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