Of course they were terrified. Bud had to post bond before they would turn them loose. One of the officers was a real hard case in spite of all of our pleadings about being from out of state and that it wouldn’t happen again. Tony and Paul were going to have to go to court, necessitating obtaining legal representation and making a return trip to California to face the charges in the future.
As it turned out, they had to do neither. The agent who wrote up the arrest papers wrote down the wrong law number, which meant they were charged with something they hadn’t done. After we got back to the East Coast, they actually sent affidavits releasing the agent from liability. Tony and Paul could have sued the State of California, but they signed the affidavits and sent them back, glad to have it behind them.
In the meantime, it severely curbed the number of venues available to us in California, limiting us to places that had significant food service or didn’t serve alcohol at all. But Bud found us enough work to get us through the rest of the tour.
Don Johnston called me and said that the instrumental we recorded with him in Fort Worth had been picked up by Epic Records, and we needed a B side before they could release the record. Well, that was just about the greatest news I could have gotten. We changed the name of the band from The Rockets to The Jaguars in honor of what we hoped would be our first hit record.
We were scheduled to open back at the Dixie Pig in Bladensburg, Maryland, after we finished our California run. So we headed out a couple of days early to go through Fort Worth and cut another side for “Jaguar” that we called “Exit Six.”
The only bad part about our stop in Fort Worth was that we got the news about the plane crash that had taken the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. You can’t help but wonder where Buddy Holly would have taken his music if he had lived a few more decades.
It was February 9, 1959.
CHAPTER 10
MIDNIGHT MADNESS AND WILD OATS
We returned to The Dixie Pig to find ourselves billed as The Jaguars, “Just returned from the West Coast.”
The Dixie Pig was a big old honkytonk where the blue-collar crowd came to party, dance, and sometimes fight. It had a nucleus of regulars that were fair but fearless when pushed. They brooked no foolishness, and if their dates told you that they didn’t want to dance with you, it was wise not to ask again. But the rowdy bunch at The Dixie Pig, who for some unknown reason called themselves The Dirt Buzzards, loved the band, and we loved them, and a good time was had by all.
We dove back into the club scene with a vengeance, knowing our new record would soon be released. If it took off, we were going to be in demand in a lot of places besides the D.C. area.
Up until now, we had not had a regular booking agent. I had handled getting most of our work, but if we were going to take a big step, we needed to play outside the limited area we’d been appearing in and we needed representation. So we signed with the Norman Joyce Agency in Philadelphia. This would significantly expand our territory since the Joyce Agency handled a lot of club bands and pretty much had the Eastern Seaboard covered. But home base was still the D.C. area.
When Epic released our long-awaited record, it took off like a house on fire, being added to radio playlists all over the country. The most popular Top 40 stations in the D.C. area added it in regular rotation, which at one station meant it played every two hours.
We did the local version of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, The Milt Grant Show, and played the hops and teenage dances. It looked like our first record was going to be a hit, and it was. It was what was called a “turntable hit,” which means it got lots of airplay but did not sell through in the record stores.
Bobby Mellin, who had placed our Jaguar record, wanted some more music from us and sent Don Johnston to town to make it happen. It would entail writing songs, arranging and rehearsing, and recording them, all the while working until almost 2:00 a.m. in a nightclub six nights a week.
The only time available to do this was in the mornings. We’d work our five hours at the club, tear down the instruments, and go to our apartment and sleep a few hours. Then we would go to a rehearsal hall or a recording studio, set up the equipment, rehearse or record until the afternoon, tear down the instruments, go back to The Dixie Pig, set the instruments back up, play our sets, and start the whole thing all over again.
Musicians, especially young musicians, are nocturnal creatures who like to sleep most of the day, but that all came to a screeching halt when Don Johnston came to town. We got up early and worked all day and most of the night.
I learned a lot about life and about myself during those hard-working days in Washington. If you want something bad enough, you’re willing to work a little harder and make some sacrifices. Those days helped to shape my work ethic and built toughness. You need plenty of both if you’re going to make it in the music business.
We released a few more singles, and nothing significant happened. But the studio experience I gained was to be a plus for me in the years to come. Don Johnston, who later changed his name to Bob Johnston, was to become a whole chapter in my life.
When we added a terrific trombone player named Robbie Robinson, it gave us a bigger sound and some decent three-part vocal harmony and enabled us to explore new musical horizons. We started leaning more and more toward a jazzy sound we called “Rockhouse,” which was a grooving, shuffling, highly arranged type of music. It was much more polished and sophisticated than the raw driving sound we had become known for.
Actually, it was musical self-indulgence and worked for a while, but it would turn out to be a mistake in the long run.
Jazz had been king in the Washington area. Legendary names like guitarist Charlie Byrd and saxophonist Vi Burnside called Washington home base. Jazz played on the radio, and there were lots of combos playing the clubs around town. But insofar as being the dominant music around D.C., in the late 1950s jazz was in its death throes. It was being pushed out of the way by Elvis, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee, and the copy bands that played their songs.
We had come to town a four-piece band of wet-behind-the-ears kids who pushed it to the red line every time we got onstage. Now we were a six-piece band wearing black tuxedos, playing Frank Sinatra and the Four Freshmen, and trying to sound like some Miles Davis offshoot. I would soon learn my lesson that self-indulgence in the music business is a dangerous thing, especially when you’re supposed to be playing dance music and the hits of the day in clubs that hire you for that reason and that reason alone.
I don’t blame anybody for following their own creativity and their own musical tastes, playing whatever genre or style of music they want to. But there’s a good chance you’re going to end up sitting in your living room playing by yourself.
I was not a jazz musician. I was a Carolina boy with Southern roots, germinated in country, and one of the first passengers when the rock and roll train rolled through town.
And here I was trying to play music that I really didn’t care that much about for no other reason than trying to be cool and trying to impress the out-of-work musicians who frequented the clubs and talked about Miles, Bags, and Kenton.
I was soon to learn some much-needed lessons in more ways than one.
CHAPTER 11
BURNED FINGERS AND BURNED BRIDGES
In 1961 I met and started dating a girl named Lee. She was fun to be with, and we started going steady, if you could define hanging out with a musician who had one night a week off as going steady.
She started talking about getting married right off the bat. I had never thought too much about marriage. I guess I just assumed that one day I would, but I was only twenty-four years old, and I had a lot I wanted to do in my life. That’s why I can’t figure out why I let myself get talked into it, but I did.
We tied the knot at my parents’ house in Wilmington, went to Myrtle Beach for a couple of days, and lived in marital bliss all of two weeks before I reali
zed I had made the biggest mistake of my life. We just didn’t get along. She was always threatening to leave, and we came right to the edge of going our separate ways a few times. I’m old-fashioned about marriage and was determined to give it my best shot, but it was taking a toll on me. I have always hated arguing and dissension, and when you have it at home, you never get away from it. I kept hoping that things would get better, but I think I knew in my heart that they never would.
Robbie Robinson, our trombone player, stayed with us for about a year and then gave up the itinerant life to marry a wonderful girl named Barbara, whom he is still married to.
Tony and Billy married two great ladies named Sandy and Jan. Everybody in the band seemed happily married except me.
Paul King, our sax player, left the band to go with another outfit, and I hired a guy who played in bands around the D.C. area. His name was Adrian Swicegood, but for obvious reasons he went by the nickname Switchy, and we continued to play the club circuit.
Due to changing the style of music we played, we lost some of our popularity. We just weren’t playing what the people wanted to hear, and I learned a hard lesson about dancing with the one who brung you.
Dissatisfaction and restlessness started creeping into the band. Norman moved his family back to Wilmington. Tony and Switchy went with other bands. Billy quit the music business and went back to doing the sheet-metal work he did before he became a full-time musician.
I formed a new band with a drummer from Wilmington named Ronnie Piner, a bass player named Boogie Nolan, and a sax player named John McGraw. We started doing one-nighters with Dick Obitts’ Capitol Talent Agency, and things started getting hard. We had to drive long distances, set up the equipment, play until late at night, tear down, and drive back. I probably could have handled it if things had been good at home, but they weren’t. The combination was getting to me. For better or for worse, I needed a change.
A singer named Barry Darvell needed a band to take on the road, and his first stop was Indianapolis. I got back together with my old drummer and sax player, Tony Hinnant and Paul King, added a bass player, rehearsed a few times, and got ready to go to Indy.
Lee and I gave up our apartment, sold our furniture, and took off with Barry Darvell in one last attempt to save our ailing marriage. We had no home base or permanent address. We had a car and what we could pack in it, and that was it.
Our first gig was for two weeks in the Tiki Ho Lounge at the Antlers Hotel in Indianapolis, and the next engagement was in Virginia Beach, but a hurricane got there before we did and badly damaged the club. Here I was, broke, out of work, and without any immediate prospect of finding any.
I called my daddy, and he sent me some money. Lee and I headed west, not really knowing where we were going, just looking for a place where we could fit in. We made a dartboard decision and headed for Denver, Colorado. We didn’t have the money to stay in motels, and Lee couldn’t drive, so when I’d get sleepy I’d find a place to pull over and sleep for a while and drive on. We ate cold-cut sandwiches and just kept moving west. When we got to Denver, we were so broke that we couldn’t even get a place to stay.
I took what meager possessions we had left to a pawn shop. We got a room in a cheap motel and started looking for work. Lee didn’t have a problem. Due to her secretarial experience, she got on with Manpower, the temporary employment agency. But with me, it was different. I couldn’t even get anybody to listen to me play. I tried but couldn’t find anybody who needed a guitar player in all of Denver.
I took a job separating metal at a junkyard, the only thing I’ve done that was not music-related between 1958 and the present day. It was a real low point in my life, not because I’m too good to work in a junkyard but because I was spinning my wheels, not doing what I had devoted my life to. But, looking back, it was probably a good lesson for me to learn.
I was desperate to get back to my music. After five weeks of working at Sam Barter’s junkyard, I contacted my old drummer friend Bill Belcher, who had moved his family to El Paso, Texas. He was working days at a used car lot. He said to come on down, and we’d put a band together and get something going.
Since Lee could get a temporary job through Manpower just about anywhere and it seemed that things had slightly improved between us, we packed up and headed for El Paso, traveling on expired car tags.
A Colorado highway patrolman noticed and pulled us over. I told him our new tags were waiting for us in El Paso, which was an out-and-out lie. But he let us go.
The tags weren’t the only thing expired on the car. I hadn’t made a payment since we’d left D.C. and would never make another one. I would leave the car parked on the street and it would be picked up and repossessed, and they didn’t even know where I was. That was one of the many things I did during that period of my life that I’m certainly not proud of.
CHAPTER 12
NEW BEGINNINGS OR LAST STAND
Bill Belcher’s family had grown; now in addition to his son, Kyle, they had a daughter, Lisa. When Lee and I moved in with him and Nita, they had a full house. In the daytime Bill was working at a used car lot, and at night we went pub crawling, looking for work and for musicians to play in the band we intended to put together.
We got a young bass player named Joe Johnson and a sax player named Jimmy Arceneaux. With Bill on drums and me on guitar, we started picking up a few gigs and building a local reputation.
Lee went back to work for Manpower, and we scraped up enough money to get a two-room apartment for fifteen dollars a week. But we were back to having serious problems again. All we did was argue, and I hated it. Things were coming apart at the seams, and the cheap wine and Mexican rum we consumed so much of weren’t helping things. We were both drinking way too much.
One night during one of our frequent marital spats, I went across the border to Juarez and partied all night. I got up with a couple of Mexican guys who were about as looped as I was, and we were walking down the street being loud and boisterous and got picked up by the Juarez cops and hauled off to jail.
I was so out of it that I lay down in the cell they put me in and went to sleep until I was woken up early the next morning. I was put in the small claustrophobic back of a van and hauled over to the big jail, which is actually a prison with a holding cell for wayward Gringos, who they figure will eventually be bailed out.
As I sobered up, it started dawning on me what a mess I was in. I was in jail in a foreign country, where American due process doesn’t apply, completely at the mercy of a judicial system that could make up the laws as it went along if it wanted to.
Nobody knew where I was. But in those days, when somebody didn’t show up around El Paso, the first place the streetwise people checked was the Juarez jail, known for picking up Gringos for any trumped-up charge it could come up with to collect the bail money.
This is what happened, and some folks came over and bailed me out later in the morning. I went back across the border with my tail tucked and a strong resolve to stay out of Juarez, which worked for all of about three days before I started going back again, with a weather eye out for anybody wearing a badge.
The band was starting to pick up speed. We called ourselves The Jesters. At first we worked two or three nights a week, but a guy named Bill Barnes, stationed in the army at Fort Bliss, started booking us, and we got busy.
It seemed like the better things went for the band, the worse they got on the home front. I had no peace, and after a long and tedious night of fussing and arguing, at about three o’clock in the morning, I walked out of the apartment. I just couldn’t take anymore. I didn’t even know where I was going, but I just had to get away from that woman. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her; I just couldn’t live with her. It was killing that part of me that had always been happy.
This time there would be no reconciliation. A few weeks later, we made it official with a Mexican divorce.
I started sharing a room with our booker, Bill Barnes, whose marriage was als
o on the rocks. I dove into my newfound bachelorhood with a vengeance. Most nights after work I was across the Rio Grande in Juarez, Mexico, boozing and carousing around. In those days it cost two cents to cross to the Mexican side and one cent to come back to the American side. I have been so broke after a night in Juarez that I had to borrow a penny to get back to the United States. Then I’d have to walk a couple of miles back to the place where I was staying.
One morning I woke up with a cop shaking me, not even realizing that the sun had come up and that people were walking all around me. I had fallen asleep on a bench in front of the El Paso Public Library.
We were working hard, and I was living even harder. It was a wild, unprincipled, and irresponsible time in my life. I slept the biggest part of the day, partied all night, and spent every cent I could get my hands on.
During the week we worked lounges and sometimes the service clubs at Fort Bliss and Biggs Air Force Base, but the weekends were a killer. They started with a Friday afternoon jam session at a funky joint called Chaplains on South El Paso Street, a few blocks from the Mexican border. Then we had the Friday night gig. Saturday started with an early afternoon television show at a used car lot, and then we had the Saturday night gig. We didn’t have roadies; we humped our own equipment. I once walked several blocks carrying a Fender Twin amplifier because I didn’t have the money for cab fare.
During the week the schedule let up a bit, but the partying stayed hot and heavy. Waking up with a hangover got to be par for the course. It was enough to wear down even a feisty twenty-five-year-old.
We started taking Preludin, a Mexican amphetamine you could buy over the counter at the drugstores in Juarez. I don’t know what it had in it, but after a weekend of popping Preludin, you felt as if all the insulation had been stripped off your nerves and you were just about to explode.
Never Look at the Empty Seats Page 7
