“So you want to be a rock and roll star?
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time and learn how to play”…The Byrds 1967
After the family moved from Fort Worth to Wichita Falls for six painful months and then to Plano, Texas, I met a classmate and fellow guitar player who was also bitten by the “rock-a-rolla” bug. He knew another guy on his block who played guitar and owned a Fender Bassman amp, which automatically made him a band member, and he knew a neighbor across the street who was a drummer with a snare and one cymbal. He also knew a kid with another cheap Japanese guitar that would part with it for $10.00 bucks. I snatched it, bought his Sears amp for another $15.00, and was back in “the biz.” Hours of practice produced twenty songs, which we could repeat at least once or twice if they were shuffled around and changed singers and keys. Our first gig was at the Harrington Park Swimming Pool, Plano, Texas, early summer of 1965.
Guitar tuners were not invented yet, so we used a pitch pipe and got as close as possible to A440, and apparently not close enough; we sounded like hammered Racoon crap on grandma’s china plate. It was a humiliating experience. In my playing frenzy, I broke my B string and had to play with five strings, and then our amplifiers went south because the outside temperature was over 100 degrees, and we were in the direct sun. Then, the drummer’s head on his snare split, his cymbal fell over and cracked, and Jerry Nelson, another guitar flanger, tripped on an extension cord and fell flat, damaging his Silvertone guitar. Our third guitar player, Warren, came into contact with water splashed from the pool onto the concrete while touching the strings of his electrified, ungrounded guitar, resulting in a bad electrical shock. Hair frizzed out, smoking from his ears, and burns on his fingers; he finished the gig, not knowing who or where he was. The grand debut ended with sympathetic applause, and the pool manager refused to pay us, which, per our contract, was free burgers and shakes. Warren, our previously electrocuted guitar player, got into a fight with our drummer, and the two rolled around in the gravel parking lot for a while with no clear victor. We thought Warren was a trooper, considering the amount of electricity that had almost fried him an hour before. Bad music tends to piss folks off. The final curtain was when my pal Jarry discovered his Mustang had a flat tire, so we had to call our parents to rescue us. Welcome to the rock n’ roll music business.
From 1966 into 1967, the band continued with better gear, a new drummer and bass player, and a different name. We were now known as “The Orphans.” A strange pick since we were all middle-class guys with full sets of parents, but Barry Corbett, our drummer, thought it sounded tough and a bit rebellious. Barry may have been the biggest rebel of the four members, listening to Frank Zappa and Spike Jones and teaching himself to play the Sitar. George Harrison’s influence led him into the realm of Indian music, which he fully embraced to the point of obsession. He developed a strange Peter Sellers-type accent, wore the red dot on his forehead, and had two high school girls follow him around town wearing white robes, playing with small cymbals attached to their fingers. He was also a rudderless musical genius and would soon lead us into the semi-big time and the really big show.
Alice Davis, Jarry’s mother, was now our official manager and did a wonderful job of it. She knew people and had connections and was not afraid to use them or to press a business contact into hiring her band. We were booked around Dallas and Fort Worth most Friday and Saturday nights. We made some good cash for high school kids but spent all we made on new equipment and clothing. Band members were in constant rotation. Teenage musicians proved to be an unreliable commodity.
Our keyboard and bass player left us for high school football, again, leaving three of us. Calls went out, Alice worked the phones and contacts, and we auditioned two musicians from McKinney, Texas. Danny Goode, a bass player/singer and former member of the Excels, and Marshall Sartin, church organist, classically trained pianist, and blues guitar player. We played a few songs as a five-member band and almost passed out. It was as if the ghost of Phil Spector had brought us into that practice room at this appointed time in the universe, which was strange because Spector was still alive and kicking in Los Angeles.
Miss Alice was religiously overcome with musical emotion and experienced a spell of the rock n’ roll vapors that led to seating herself with a double Jack Daniels and branch water. Barry, our drummer and musical genius, had an epiphany and went to work on arranging our music and vocal parts, showing Marshall how to play them on his Farfisa Organ, which was another strange thing; Jarry and I didn’t know Barry could play the piano, or as we soon found out; the guitar, the trumpet, the sax, or the vibes. We dubbed him “Lil Spector” in honor of the famous Wall of Sound producer.
After the Miss Janelle Bobbie Gentry-infused tenure that ended in a puff of hair spray and perfume, the band took a vote: no females allowed. Marshall was still recovering from a severe case of the Love Fever Hubba Hubba’s, and we needed him in good condition for our upcoming gigs.
Miss Alice grew weary of working the phones, dealing with clubs and booking gigs, her realty business was suffering and needed her attention. She arranged for us to be managed by an upstart agency called Mark Lee Productions of Dallas, Texas. Mark was a go-getter and had more connections than Bell Telephone. His one and only main band, Kenny And The Kasuals, had just released a great 45 that was climbing the charts, so we were excited about working with him. We signed on the dotted line of a ten-page contract that not one of us read. Why bother? We were young and full of piss and vinegar: point us in the direction of the stage and plug us in!
Within twenty-four hours, The Orphans were booked into some of the hottest venues in the DFW: The Studio Club, LuAnns, The Pirates Nook, Phantasmagoria, and Teen A-Go-Go and The Box in Fort Worth. Mark Lee was turning down gigs because he had only two bands. We wouldn’t have a Friday and Saturday night free for two years, and even less free time in the summer when the bookings took up most of each week.
We were booked to play a Christmas party for Parkland Hospital at the famous Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas. Pulling up to the front in our 57 Caddie Hearse caused a stir. The bellman politely told us the bodies were picked up at the rear. We got the joke and proceeded to the loading docks. The party turned out to be for the doctors, nurses, and administration folks. In the next ballroom, Braniff Airlines was having their Christmas party, but with no band. It didn’t take long before the airline partiers spilled over into the hospital party, and that’s when it got crazy.
These people, supposedly responsible adults, were dancing on the tables, had a conga line going on the bartop, and we had our own go-go dancers on either side of the stage. Three of us were under the age of 18, but that didn’t stop the inebriated partiers from pumping us full of hooch in the form of cute little airline bottles. By the last set, we had gone from charming and talented to stupid drunk and were glad the gig ended. We couldn’t locate our keyboardist, Marshall, so we loaded up his gear and headed out. He showed up a few days later with some dumb-assed story he couldn’t talk about: the Hubba-Hubba’s got him again.
More to come in Part 3
Notes From The Cactus Patch 