| FRANK SINATRA (THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD) Major Bowes of the Amateur Hour introduced them as the HOBOKEN FOUR. One of the kids, a skinny one named Frank went on to become an American Idol. I don’t remember this radio show, but I do remember the TV version with Ted Mack. My early days in radio, when AM was king and the 78RPM record was swing, Sinatra was the artist you could always fall back on. If the pace of the DJ show was faltering, I’d just put on a Sinatra disc. He had many recordings. He was with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, the Harry James Orchestra, the Benny Goodman Orchestra and after he went on his own, there was a picnic of veritable favorites to play for your listeners. What Bing Crosby started in the way of bobby soxer idolization, Frank took it to the hilt. Whether it was the press agent or him, he had that street thug and punk image in the beginning that helped propel him into super stardom. And he was smooth. Hey, he did okay in the movies also. He showed everybody how to do television back when nobody really knew what it was all about. His cinema role in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY won him an Oscar for best supporting actor and he deserved it. And through it all, he apparently had the support of his family. Sure, there were sensational headlines, but an artist needs that from time to time to keep the public from forgetting. Record company executive, music publisher, he did it all, his way. When Elvis recorded the Paul Anka song, MY WAY, Elvis said “this is Frank Sinatra’s song“. I think that says it all. I wrote a song called Ding-A-Ling Swing and use it as my theme Where did I get the idea for such a song? Yep, it came from an old rat pack saying the guys used to throw out. “I am a fan of the man. A legendary singer, actor, film and record producer and label owner. He did it all. From a skinny young kid to the top of the entertainment world, “Ol’ Blue Eyes” staying power was phenomenal.” “One year in Miami when the NARM convention was underway, Sinatra was appearing at the historic Fontainbleau Hotel. I was working with Stan Lewis, who owned Jewel and Paula Records. Stan got us good tickets for the Sinatra Dinner Show and we had a full table of associates, including both of Stan’s brothers, Ace and Ronnie. The evening started off wrong, when the waiter brought the wrong drinks to our table. Then, the steaks were late and mine was undercooked, so we had to rush to get through with the meal before the show. I really hate rare or medium rare steaks, but I really didn’t get to finish the complete meal, before the waiters started clearing off the table.” “That’s one thing about a Sinatra Show or an Elvis Show, the show always started on time. So, the diners are still complaining about the lousy dinner service, when the lights go down and here is Frank. Even in this frame of mind, we all left our disgust behind and got in the best of moods as Sinatra sailed into his repertoire. When I was a rock and roll DJ star for one and a half hours a day in Fort Smith, Arkansas, at the beginning of my disk jockey career, I also programmed a two-hour block of pop music records and I depended on the recordings of Frank Sinatra to give the show life. When Frank first started in the business, he was one of the few singers of that era, who did not try to sound like Bing Crosby. He was skinny and young and he had a certain magnetism that eluded many vocalists, but with Frank, there seemed to be an endless supply of it, readily available. To put it mildly, everyone enjoyed his show that night to the hilt. We were in an upbeat, happy mood as we left. On exiting the building, a limo pulled up and Sinatra came up behind us. Stan, who was as big a fan of Sinatra as my wife was of Elvis, opened the limo door for Frank and spoke to him, only to be pushed aside by one of the biggest goons I ever saw. For a while, I thought we were getting mugged. Sinatra entered the limo, the doors closed and he sped away. Someone in our crowd said, “Damn, Stan, what did you say that made Sinatra’s bodyguard so mad”. Stan smiled and replied, “Hi Frank”! I don’t know what the people around Frank were thinking about or why there reacted as they did that evening, but we were not offended, just amused and Stan has probably told this story many times to acquaintances. I never saw Frank perform in Las Vegas, but Stan, Pauline and his family did several times.” In 1960, Tommy Sands, a product of the Louisiana Hayride, married Frank’s daughter, Nancy Jr, in Las Vegas. Sands knew Elvis from the Hayride and had several releases on RCA. Elvis was offered a staring TV role on a Kraft Theater Presentation that the Colonel turned down for Elvis. Elvis suggested Tommy for the part and Sands got it. Overnight, this TV show made him the singing idol to the nations bobby sox teens and for a short time his popularity equaled that of Elvis. His record label, Capital, spread the bread on clever promotions and advertisements and Sands career blossomed with the marriage to Nancy and he received help and accolades from his father-in-law, “Ol Blue Eyes”. Then things soured in their marriage and Tommy and Nancy split. Sands attempted a singing comeback some years later at a famous San Francisco landmark and the critics crucified him and he was out of the music business forever. Logan remembers that, “Al Hart sent the review that he had cut out of the newspaper in San Francisco to my friend and associate Vern Stierman and Vern shared it with me. We both felt a tug in our heart for the young Mr Sands, as the review was tenacious. Vern had worked with Tommy at KCIJ radio before he came with McLendon at KEEL. Tommy and Vern would knock out windshields on brand new autos on live TV commercials in this area, so Vern was especially appalled at the critics review. Critics can be cruel. I have had articles written by so-called critics that blasted one of the covers I did on Lightning Hopkins. They called it a “Shit-Cover”. My boss, Stan Lewis, was offended and I started sharing the album cover credits with Jo Wyatt, but I always liked the cover referred to and the songs inside this “shit” cover were exceptional and on top of that, the album sold well. Gee, it may have sold two million if I had not put it in a “shit cover”. I never took anything a critic wrote personally. And that is good, because since I have been known to sing a few of the “Old Songs” here in my twilight years, the critics have had a field day with “he sings archaic songs that no one has ever heard of” and “if you are a hundred years old, you might remember the songs he sings”. They have a job to do and they must do it the way they do, to keep the public reading their columns and listening to their programs.” There’s a saying in the music business that you have to pay your dues to be a star. I never paid my dues in the music business. That’s why I am a singer, but not a star. I never spent weeks and months out on the road entertaining, doing one-nighter after one- nighter. Sinatra did. From the “Amateur Hour” tours as the "Hoboken Four” to the unending one nighters of the Harry James Orchestra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Sinatra stayed in there pitching, singing his heart out. And then, Sinatra appeared with Benny Goodman on December 30, 1942 at the Paramount. American went wild over Frankie and the bobby soxers fell in love with this skinny fellow with the strange phrasing, lilting voice and youthful look. This was the beginning, my friend, of the story of a true musical icon. His success buoyed the record industry. The industry moguls could now see that you didn’t need the big band to sell lots of records. You just needed a good looking, skinny, young guy who could wail.” PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS © 2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - all rights reserved - Media may use with permission when used in conjunction with publicity on Frank Sinatra or Dandy Don Logan. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000069/bio MICKEY GILLEY I had been busy in my office trying to tie up loose ends with Buddy Hackett in 1974 when Stan Lewis informed me that Ronnie Lewis had told him that Mickey Gilley had a new record out on the Astro label called ROOM FULL OF ROSES, that had started to sizzle, selling like hot cakes in Houston according to the Don Daily One Stop. I was told to call Mickey and see about picking it up and putting it out on Paula which had national and international distribution. The thing I was into with Buddy Hackett was time consuming. Hackett, a comedian who had cut a comedy version of ITSY BITSY TEENY WEENY YELLOW POLKA DOT BIKINI for a California producer, had threatened to sue us if we put the record out. The producer had leased it to us legally, but we did not like trouble and tried to avoid the courts. So, I put off calling Mickey, as I was having much trouble trying to get through to Buddy Hackett who was playing one of the Las Vegas Casinos. I didn’t get the business with Hackett finished until the next day and then I called Mickey. I dialed 913 UN9 3527 and Mickey answered. When I stated my business, he replied, “ you should have called yesterday, I just went with a new label called, Playboy Records“. As we all know, Mickey’s record was a smash going all the way to number one on the country charts and reaching number 49 on the popular charts. Eddie Kilroy, a DJ in Houston, had helped us with our Paula artists many times over the years. He and Gilley developed an association that benefited both of them during his Playboy years. The last time I called on Kilroy, he gave me a fake glass eye, so I could see a hit when I found one. I took an unfinished Gilley album into session, completing it and it was released by Paula when they were distributed by MCA. However, when the movie, “Urban Cowboy” came out, Stan took the tapes back into session in Nashville and came away with a more polished product.” Later, the urban cowboy movement propelled Mickey Gilley into a superstar. Gilley first came to us in a deal that Huey Meaux had put together. The masters were cut, the plates were already made, all we had to do was put out the album. Huey had fallen on bad times and was in jail, so the rapidly growing company he was putting together had crumbled. Our album on Mickey received good reviews and we started the build process. Cowboy Jack Clement produced Mickey in Nashville. Gilley was raised in Ferriday, Louisiana, the same place a co-worker of mine, Joe Brocato is from, and it wasn’t until his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis put out his first Sun single, "Crazy Arms," that Mickey showed any interest in pursuing a career in music. Mickey was a club favorite and recorded for many independent Texas labels with some success. Musically, Gilley was living in the shadow of his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis. Business wise, no musician could touch him. He was successful with big bucks coming in on a regular basis from a very profitable club and recording studio. We had several good producers boosting him on his way to country stardom, but it was the 70s when he became associated with the urban cowboy movement, that he became a superstar. Our build up approach to Mickey’s career paid off. In 1968, we gave him his first national hit with “Now I Can Live Again” which charted in the country charts of all three national music magazines of the time. That success brought on the opening of Gilley’s in Pasadena, a club of international repute. “The first album that we produced and released on Mickey had so many good songs on it that I was sure we would hit with at least one of them. I had Mickey fly into Shreveport in his private plane. I met him and his pilot at the Downtown Shreveport Airport and we did some fantastic photos in the bank vault of Commercial National Bank in downtown Shreveport for the album cover. There were armed guards standing by, as we had Mickey out in the middle of four million dollars cash and the bank vault in the background. Terry Atwood or Paul Skipworth was the photographer. However, at the request of the bank CEO, we never used the photos, as there was a fear that publishing them would be inviting bank robbers to try to knock off the bank. It was a good idea, but it didn’t float. That was a little like the time when Justin Wilson was doing Cajun comedy albums for us. We had this great idea of putting him and an alligator on the cover of one of his albums. Great IDEA? The final picture for the cover had Justin with an alligator just like we wanted. However, the alligator had a visible rope tied around him to keep the alligator from having Justin for lunch. We released it that way.” “When Mickey’s contract with us ended, he cut one final unreleased album at his own studio. The album was not completed, but the basic tracks including vocals were there on 24 tracks for us to finish later. I have taken great joy over the years, especially during the time when I was not associated with music in any way, at the success artists I had come in contact with over the years, were having. Mickey was always, even before that first Paula Hit, a polished, professional entertainer. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ©2009 - DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Media may use with permission when used in conjunction with publicity on Mickey Gilley or Dandy Don Logan. http://www.gilleys.com/ JIMMIE DAVIS I met Jimmie Davis late in his life. Stan Lewis, the owner of Paula Records, knew him personally and was about to sign him to a Paula recording contract. His sessions would be cut in Nashville at the Owen Bradley Studio and Jimmie would pick his own songs to record. I met him at the Shreveport Municipal auditorium during a show he was doing with many other groups. It was a combination country/gospel show. He sang his country hits and did some gospel including “Supper Time” with his wife and her brother, she was a former member of the CHUCK WAGON GANG, a very popular gospel singing group. Jimmie was a little older then, than I am now, so I guess what I was doing there was verifying that Jimmie could still sing on key. We signed him and we put the albums and singles out. I think we had three albums and several singles. Jimmie Davis was always polite and fun to be around and I enjoyed chatting with him from time to time when he would bring a new session back and I always enjoyed his enthusiasm and humor. He was a remarkable man, no matter what your politics were and the good thing about it was that his voice never failed him and he lived to see the 21st century. His story is truly Americana! Politicians have dabbled in music for as long as I can remember. Jimmie Davis was a politician, but he was a songwriter and entertainer first. Many musicians have flirted with politics in the past. W. Lee O’Daniel in Texas, Roy Acuff, unsuccessfully in Tennessee and Jimmie Davis who was a country superstar as well as Governor of the state of Louisiana, serving two separate terms. He was the first of 11 children born to Sam Davis and Sara Works Davis. The family lived in a two-room sharecroppers shack. Jimmie graduated from high school in Beech Springs, Louisiana and enrolled in Louisiana College, where he joined the glee club. He sang lead tenor for a quartet called the Wildcat Four, and earned money for tuition by washing dishes. He received a master's degree from Louisiana State University, and later was a professor of history at Dodd College. Jimmie’s life centered around Shreveport. In 1928 he went to work at the criminal court clerks office in Shreveport. He was also singing in gospel concerts at church meetings and was a performer on radio station KWKH. In 1929 a talent scout from RCA Records signed him to the label. For four years, he recorded songs that imitated the style of the biggest star of the day, Jimmie Rodgers. By 1934, Davis had developed his own vocal style, that of a country crooner. In September 1934 he began recording for the new Decca label just one month after it was founded as an American company. Jimmie also became a composer for Peer Music and remained so throughout his life. In 1935 he earned enough money from his first big hit, "NOBODY’S DARLING BUT MINE," to pay off old debts and purchase a farm. A year later, he had another major hit with a song that became a country standard, "IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE NOW." In 1938, the same year Collier's magazine called Davis and Gene Autry the two biggest stars of country music, Davis ran for office and was elected commissioner of public safety for Shreveport, Louisiana. By the end of the decade, Davis was a well-known recording artist and one of the biggest headliners in country music. As the new decade began, Davis recorded the song that would become his biggest hit all over the world. On February 4, 1940, Davis stepped into a recording studio in Chicago to record his composition "You Are My Sunshine." When it was released in March, it became a million-seller and an international hit. Gene Autry and Bing Crosby were among the first of over 350 artists to record the song, which was eventually translated into more than 30 languages world wide. In 1942, Davis made his debut on film. He played himself in "Riding Through Nevada" and "Strictly in the Groove." That same year, he was named State Public Service Commissioner. Davis was a household name when he ran for Governor of Louisiana on the Democratic ticket in 1944. Encouraged by publisher Ralph S. Peer to use "You Are My Sunshine" as his campaign song, he defeated the political machine of Huey Long to win the election on an anti-corruption slate. While Governor, he had the biggest chart hit of his career with his song "There's a New Moon Over My Shoulder." The single spent a week at No. 1 on Billboard's country chart. After completing his first term of office, Davis starred in "Louisiana," a 1947 film based on his own life. He concentrated on his recording career again, with an emphasis on gospel music. In 1957 he was given the American Youth Singers Award for Best Male Sacred Singer. In 1960, Davis was elected to a second term as Governor of Louisiana. While serving as chief executive again, he returned to Billboard's country chart after an absence of almost 15 years with a top 20 hit, "Where the Old Red River Flows." As a top 40 DJ on the top rated station in town, this presented problems to the programming department. Frank Page was playing the fire out of it on KWKH radio. Though we did not initially play the record, when it entered the country chart we did play it. In 1971, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and a year later, he was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Gospel Music Association's Hall of Fame. In the spring of 1992 Davis appeared on a CBS special celebrating the Country Music Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary, and in 1998 he recorded a new version of "You Are My Sunshine". At a 100th birthday party held in Baton Rouge in 1999, Davis sang four songs with his 100 year old voice. On Sunday, November 5, 2000, at the age of 101, Davis passed away in his sleep at his home in Baton Rouge. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION WHEN USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON JIMMIE DAVIS OR DANDY DON LOGAN. J. FRANK WILSON J. Frank Wilson was from nearby Lufkin, Texas. He, like me was a December baby. When he was growing up, he told me he listened to me on the radio. Whether it was true or not, it made me feel good. J. Frank got lucky with a group called The Cavaliers. He recorded a song that reportedly was based on a true incident. Whether, true or not, the story in song became a smash hit and our station was one of the early stations to start playing it. That was June of 1964 when "Last Kiss" was released right after the February madness and excitement of Beatle-mania and the ensuing British Invasion. By October the song had entered the top ten charts of Billboard and Cashbox. J. Frank told me it was nothing special when they recorded it less than three hours, the whole thing, ready to be mastered. The last week in October, "Last Kiss" went to number three. J. Frank Wilson and The Cavaliers were touring constantly. The Clark Show, the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars tours and on October 23 on their way to Ohio from West Virginia, their late model car went out of control, crossing the center line, crashing head on into a tractor trailer truck. The press had a field day linking the tragedy with the lyrics in "Last Kiss" about a teen-age girl who dies from a car accident in the arms of her boyfriend. The following week in the trade magazines, the record was number two and then number one the week of November 7. J. Frank Wilson earned a gold record for “Last Kiss” with its number one position. The song was also his last hit. Though J. Frank Wilson visited with us at the station when his record first came out, I didn’t really get to know him until much later. He had problems with his health and he was in and out of the V.A. Hospital here in Shreveport. We had lunch together one day after one of his medical check ups and I asked him about the report that Clark had fired him for showing up drunk? He said “No, that was not true.“ I asked him if he wanted to record again and he said, “Yes.“ I guess once you have felt the adrenalin running, you long for it again, the rest of your life. I gave J. Frank a few hundred dollars out of my pocket to sign a contract with Paula and I felt good about it. To me, J. Frank Wilson was an established name that no one could take away from him. I wasn’t for sure he could still sing or not, but I was up for a try. Four days later, I got a call from Bill Smith in Fort Worth. He says, “I understand you think you signed J. Frank Wilson to a contract.” The tone of his voice told me that I had been had. I met Major Bill Smith when I worked in Fort Worth and Dallas. I had helped him on Bobby Crown and several of his early tries at a hit. We also worked together on a release of “Hey Baby” by a Louisiana college group named “Mitch and the Misties.” Bill cut the tune with the writer Bruce Channel and had the big hit. So, I did not try to negotiate with Bill, for he was threatening me with lawsuits and other assorted record executive vernacular. To me, that meant he did have a valid contract or he would not have been that adamant about it. J. Frank never visited me again. I don’t guess J. Frank’s health ever improved to what it once was. He died in 1991, but he left a solid gold number one hit behind for us to enjoy forever. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION WHEN USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON J. FRANK WILSON OR DANDY DON LOGAN. FRANK PAGE (COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME) (LOUISIANA BROADCAST HALL OF FAME) “If Jim Reeves was a gentleman, then Frank Page is a “Prince”. He is best known as an announcer and producer of the “Louisiana Hayride”. He was there longer than any of the others. At Paula Records, we knew him as the manager and record producer of Nat Stuckey, the last major star to come out of the Hayride stable. In radio, he was my prime competition, but I always respected him and what he stood for. I did my job the best that I could and he did his in his own unique way and has been very successful. I have enjoyed working with him in the record business and I was flattered when he asked me to help judge a Miss KWKH beauty contest after I had gotten out of radio and was vice-president of Paula Records.” “It was Frank who introduced Elvis Presley on his first “Hayride” appearance in 1954. Frank’s introduction will live forever in the annuls of radio history. Little did he know that when he uttered those words, the world would be repeating them, time and time again. A little less than 3000 people were there to hear his introduction that night as Frank first introduced this unknown star, this way. “Just a few weeks ago, a young man from Memphis, Tennessee recorded a song on the Sun label, and in just a matter of a few weeks , this recording has skyrocketed right up the charts. It’s really doing good all over the country. He’s only 19 years old. He has a new distinctive style...ELVIS PRESLEY. Let’s give him a nice hand.”” “All the entertainers who stood on the “Hayride” stage remember this quite, unassuming man. Some of the announcers would get a little carried away and a little silly sometimes, but Frank was the glue that held it all together and helped this show that emanated from Shreveport, Louisiana last as long as it did. And Frank was there with some of the biggest stars in country music. Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells, Johnnie and Jack, The Wilburn Brothers, Hank Williams, Jimmie C. Newman, Nat Stuckey, Faron Young, Bob Luman, Webb Pierce, Floyd Cramer, Tony Douglas, Goldie Hill, Tibby Edwards, Maggie Lewis, Red Sovine, Dean and Marc, Slim Whitman, Rusty and Doug, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, Ferlin Husky, Hank Locklin, Jim Ed Brown and the Browns, Margie Singleton, Tommy Sands, George Jones, Van Howard, Werly Fairburn, Jimmy and Johnny, Hoot and Curley, Leon Payne, David Houston, Carl Belew, Merle Kilgore and Johnny Horton.” “One of the funniest things I ever heard on radio was a remote DJ broadcast on KWKH from one of the smaller towns around Shreveport. The music would be played from the studio and they would switch to the guys on the remote for live inserts. There was Frank Page and a couple of salesmen on the broadcast, whom I won’t name. They were not as sharp as Frank. On one of the breaks, one of the salesmen asked a kid who just happened to have stopped by to see the excitement of a live remote broadcast, if he knew any good knock-knock jokes to tell on the air. Frank interceded with “I don’t think we ought to go there”. Well, the two hot shot salesmen went there anyway and well, you know, not all knock-knock jokes are clean and broadcast quality. After the kid did his nasty-dirty punch line, the open mike picked up the sound of one salesman giggling, the other saying, “duh...duh” and then Frank coming in to the rescue with his full professional delivery and mannerism.” “Jim Reeves was once a “Hayride” announcer and he got his chance to sing on the show one night when Hank Williams, I’m told, was so drunk that he could not make it to the stage. Reeves made some records for Fabor Robinson on the Abbott label. These records sold well, went into the charts and the quality of his voice was evident in the grooves. RCA Victor, Nashville and The Grand Ole Opry opened their doors to him and he left Shreveport for Nashville”. “Nat Stuckey was one of Frank’s DJ’s and announcers at KWKH and Page was quick to pick up the “Jim Reeves” quality of Nat’s fine voice. He engineered a deal to get Nat on MGM Records. That was the same label Hank Williams had been so successful with. The MGM producers had Nat way in the background. The record had some great technical and production technique, but lacked that raw edge you needed to make the record stand out and become a hit.” “Nat was encouraged to develop his writing skills and he did. I would have been in on the publishing end of Nat’s talent had I been Frank, but Mr. Page was overly gracious with Stuckey. Frank presented us with a plan for Nat’s career and we, at Paula Records, wanted to be in on it. Frank and Nat would produce the records and we would release them on Paula.” “Sweet Thang” was our first major Paula hit on Nat and he continued to hit with every record we released after that. We were looking for easy street as we, with the help of Frank Page, had successfully built an artist from the ground up. The fact that Nat could also write the songs, was a bonus and helped get his name around, but the general public did not know that he wrote, Pop- a-Top” and “Waiting In Your Welfare Line” and many other hits. So, it was the artists who recorded these songs, who were benefiting from what we were building. Neither were we getting any of the publishing rights, as Nat and Ann started their own publishing company. Frank was not too proud to come down to our office in his spare time, get on the phone and call friends and fellow DJ’s promoting Nat. It’s true, Nat was a great talent, but the promotion he got from us in Shreveport, made him a star.” “Nat was one of the early country acts to play Vegas. Stan Lewis, the owner of Paula Records made that happen. The showroom had shows at 10am, Noon, 10PM and 2AM. They were booked for the 2AM gig and were upset over it, thinking no one would come see their show. Nat later told us, “everybody was gambling at 10am and 10pm. 2AM was when Vegas came to life and that was the show that got the crowds”. Nat also did a Canadian tour while with us at Paula. We didn’t know it, but Nashville was watching our newly-discovered star. Nat Stuckey was the last major star to be discovered by the “Louisiana Hayride”. We didn’t know it at the time, but this show that once paid all of it’s overhead from the profits of their Saturday night show, was about to fade. The public taste was changing, coupled with the fact that Henry Clay, the manager of KWKH had died in a plane crash, the popularity of rock and roll, a deteriorating old Municipal Auditorium that was in a rather unsafe part of town, and many other circumstances figured into the demise of the “Louisiana Hayride”. The show would later be revived in a different location, but we all knew that the end of an era was about to happen.” “We didn’t know that Nat Stuckey would not sign a new contract with us at Paula. As far as I know, Nat never told us. It was Frank Page who broke the news to us. Frank was hurt as much as we were. When we first got Nat, we had trouble getting his first record out, as the label he was signed to , would not let him out of his recording contract. Rather than hold Stuckey to the end of his contract with Paula, it was quickly negotiated that he would cut one more album of standard country songs for us, then sign with RCA. Frank did not want to produce this album, so I got my first shot at producing a Stuckey session. The first morning of the session, I was sick. I made it to the motel and called the engineer and told then to go without me. When I felt well enough to get out of bed, it was off to the studio. I completed the second half of the album and later, Robin Hood Brians over-dubbed strings andother things on the first part. I was proud of it. The cover was a bit redundant, and the stereo separation we were doing then was not as good as later, but the album was well received and I am glad I was involved. When I learned of Nat’s death, I recalled the Frank Page game plan. We got the jukebox hits going for Nat, but we never got to phase two, where we got the hit ballad. RCA, MCA and the other labels Nat recorded for could never get him that big ballad that would showcase his excellent singing voice either. l think Frank Page would agree, that had Nat stayed with us at Paula, we could have gotten the big ballad hit. Nat once told me on the phone, that he was satisfied with the way we treated and handled him at Paula, but he had to give Nashville a shot, because Chet Atkins told him, “You sound more like Jim Reeves, than Jim did”.” Frank is a true, total radio person, the last of his kind. Everyone who was in radio years ago, had to do their fair share of commercials and other assorted things around a radio station. Frank’s commercials were good. They were straight forward, without fancy gimmicks and were the kind that made you want to go out and buy whatever he was selling. He did other programs besides his DJ shows, country music and the announcing on the Saturday night show. One was a show called “No Name Jive” where he pitched record packages for Stan’s Record Service. This was when KWKH had a deal with the Hot Springs, Arkansas station, KTHS, when it moved to Little Rock, to simulcast KWKH programming. That signal got out to Hibbing, Minnesota on the Mesabe Iron Range. I used to live in Hibbing and with all that iron ore in the ground, you could pick up all kinds of stations. One of the listeners who was hearing southern rhythm and blues for the first time was young Bobby Zimmerman. Bob Dylan, in his book, credits Frank Page and Stan’s Record Shop with introducing him to music that influenced his career. Incidentally, Bobby Zimmerman and Bob Dylan are one and the same. Frank has written a book about his memories of the Louisiana Hayride. You can get it from www.amazon.com. Personal recollections by Don Logan © 2009 - Media may use freely when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the above named individuals. |
| ELVIS PRESLEY “My wife, Mary, was a lifetime Elvis fan. My home still has many of the mementos she kept of him displayed. There is a plaque in her honor at the Elvis Presley Trauma Center in Memphis. It was placed there by Elvis Fans and friends of my late wife. This would make her very happy. After my career in radio and the record business had ended, I became a bureaucrat and Mary became the star of the family. This part of my life, was her fifteen minutes in the spotlight and she made it last for many years before her death. She was interviewed on world wide TV as a fan on “The King”. Elvis fans from around the world would write her and call her. She always had the answer to most any question a fan could ask. She was featured or quoted on all local media as an authoritative Elvis fan on many occasions”. “I was a DJ and singing star at KCUL in Forth Worth, Texas when I met Mary. An acquaintance of hers had a record out on Starday and she brought it to me, asking me to play it. I didn’t like it and I told her I did not want to play it. She said, “Well, so it’s not by a big name star. But Elvis IS a big name star and you don’t play him”. At that time a lot of people were kind of angry with the way Elvis’ career had changed directions. I was not playing Elvis records and as I thought about what she said, I realized that a country station could play Elvis and I did start playing Elvis records and it was accepted, warmly, by my listeners. Mary met Elvis once, when she was barely a teen in Texarkana, Texas through her cousin, Jimmie Martin, who was a musician in a group that played on the Louisiana Hayride and was on the show with Elvis that night in Texarkana.” “When I got to Shreveport, Louisiana, Elvis was in the army in Germany. We did a thing on KEEL about not forgetting Elvis and we played his records hourly. There were a few in Shreveport who accused him of ruining the Louisiana Hayride, but most people here were and still are fans. The street where the Municipal Auditorium is located had a name change recently. It is now known as Elvis Presley Avenue. It is true that the Hayride peaked in popularity when Elvis was performing here and it did start declining in popularity when he left, but I think that would have happened anyway. Nashville had finally awakened to the threat the Shreveport show was making on their prestige and they started making changes and improving their show and presentation. Also, country was kind of like pop music at the time. It had become a formula type production and the real innovators at the time, happened to be the ones doing rock and roll or rock-a-billy as some called it. In other words, public trend had a lot to do with what happened to the Hayride.” “When Elvis started touring again, Mary wrote for tickets to his first concert in this area since he did the final Hayride show at Hirsch Coliseum in the fifties. This show was in Monroe, Louisiana. She ordered the tickets the first day the ad ran on TV. My check was returned, the show had sold out in one day. Mary was devastated and called me at my record company office, asking me to call someone at RCA and get tickets, because there was no way she was going to miss this show and since I was a big-shot record company vice-president, I could surely come up with two tickets. I called everybody I knew and came up with an empty hand. I offered scalp prices for two tickets to every music person I knew. I even called George D’Artois at Shreveport City Hall and had him check with the people in jail to see if anybody there had a ticket or tickets that they would not be using because of being incarcerated. I finally told Mary there were no tickets available. Peace and harmony took a vacation in my happy home for the next week and a half. She could see no point in me being a vice-president at Paula Records if I were not important enough to latch onto a couple of tickets to see Elvis. The day of the show, a miracle happened. Ronnie Lewis called me upstairs and said he had two tickets and I could have them for face value. I never knew where the two tickets came from, but my life would not have been worth much and Mary probably would have considered divorce, if I had not been able to get them. Oh yes! Mary enjoyed the show and I was glad to be there with her. In later years, Elvis returned to Shreveport to do several shows and Mary and our four kids were always there to enjoy his shows.” “On December 18, 1954, I celebrated my birthday by playing a gig with my band at the Elk’s Club in Oak Hill, West Virginia. Oak Hill is where Hank Williams, Sr. died on New Years Day 1953. I was unaware that Frank Page in Shreveport, Louisiana had introduced a new, young singer from Memphis on the stage of The Louisiana Hayride and that musical history was about to be made. After our gig, we listened to WLAC on the car radio of Frank Salvatore, our sax player. A record package from Stan’s Record Shop was being advertised and Elvis’ first record was one of the records they were spotlighting.” “At WMON, I had heard some early rock-a-billy type records. There was one by Jerry Reed, another by Dallas Frazier, there was an Indian boy named Charlie Feathers and I had cut several demonstration tapes of this type myself. The first time I heard that raw sound of an Elvis record, I knew it was different. I am sad to say, that I never met Elvis face to face. I enjoyed his talent then and I love to listen to his records even now.” “When I returned to Oklahoma and was active on KWHN in Fort Smith, Arkansas, they preempted their Saturday night show for ball games every so often. I appeared regularly with Bob Jones at the Eagle Ballroom in Fort Smith, but he was not performing that weekend. So, with a weekend off, Bob Plummer, the bass player in the KLCO All-Stars band and I drove down to Shreveport, Louisiana and we went to the Hayride to meet Elvis and talk music and the rock and roll trend. Somehow, we got backstage. I think it was Merle Kilgore who let us in. Elvis was not on the show that night. We talked to a guy who had been on stage and brought the house down with an Elvis number, but he was Edward Thibodeaux and he performed under the name Tibby Edwards. We also talked to some of the other entertainers. I never heard it from Horace Logan, Frank Page or Ed Hamilton, all of whom I have been associated with later in life, but I detected an anti-Elvis feeling backstage that night with the other entertainers. But, after working with entertainers in the record business, I have found that all entertainers have the type ego that won’t let them appreciate other entertainers, especially when the other gets hot. When Horace Logan was hawking his book about the Hayride, I visited with him at Books-A-Million. One of the old timers who was also visiting said, “Elvis ruined the Hayride”. Well that is not true. I have heard that statement many times and there will always be someone who will repeat it.” “My second possible meeting with Elvis happened when I was a DJ in Fort Worth, Texas. Elvis was stationed at a base in Texas. KXOL had put out an Associated Press bulletin that Elvis had been spotted in Fort Worth. We had a teen time show on the air at night with Bill Woods at the time. We did not have a two way radio and of course, cell phones were unheard of back then, but we could call in interviews and news reports from phone booths. So, I set out to find Elvis and call in an interview. I did spot a car with three guys in it and I swear to this day that it was Elvis sitting in the shotgun position. I rolled my window down, shouted out who I was, what station I was from and told him I wanted to do a short interview with him and motioned to a phone booth on down the street about a half a block. I sped up, pulled over, ran to the phone booth, put my money in and dialed the radio station. Their car slowed down and as Bill Woods was putting me on the air live, they pulled away and sped off. If it was Elvis, he probably had a good laugh over it. If it wasn’t Elvis, whoever it was probably thought Fort Worth really had some really weird people.” “My observations on Elvis’ career is that it had nothing to do with black music. Those of us who were active in music at the time were all looking for some kind of break and if you were going to make it you would have to be different. This was the boom time for the independent record label. There were all kinds of records coming out and the successful ones, for the most part, had a beat. His physical movements go back to the church. Before I joined the Methodist Church, I went to just about every church there is. The basic early Elvis movements were the get happy movements of some churches. As he discovered the crowd reaction to movement, he added to it and elaborated on it.” PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS (c)2009 - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION FOR PUBLICITY ON ELVIS OR DANDY DON LOGAN http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000062/bio JOE STAMPLEY (THE UNIQUES) The first hit we ever had on Paula records was NOT TOO LONG AGO by a group from Springhill, Louisiana called the UNIQUES. This record charted in all three of the nations trade magazines at the time, Cashbox, Billboard and Record World The lead singer was a young guy named Joe Stampley. There were a popular group who continued to command a large audience where ever they entertained. Several of our records had been played on the Clark show, but the UNIQUES were our first group to actually appear live on the program. They were seen on many other national TV programs also. Their song ALL THESE THINGS is probably the most danced to slow song ever. We actually put this song out on record twice on Paula. Once, in its original raw form and the second time with lush violins added. On the second go around, we almost made a mistake by leaving out Ray Mills excellent guitar solo break, but we fixed that and both versions are still listened to at my house. The second version in addition to being played pop was played by many Gavin reporting middle of the road radio stations. The group recently reunited for a series of Remember When appearances. In 1971, Joe Stampley signed with ABC- DOT as a country singer and recorded seven albums that produced such hits as, "Soul Song," "Too Far Gone," "If You Touch Me (You've Got To Love Me)," "I'm Still Loving You" and the remake of "All These Things," that I mentioned earlier. For ABC-DOT he did it as a two-step, and it went all the way to number one on all the charts. Joe’s next recording label was EPIC. It was here, he exploded, teaming with MOE BANDY and they were recognized as the Country Music Association's (CMA) 1980, Vocal Duo of the Year, as Moe and Joe. They also received the Academy of Country Music's (ACM) Vocal Duo award for two consecutive years. Joe’s collection of pop hits and country hits can entertain an audience for days. The take off on Boy George, "WHERE’S THE DRESS," won the American Video Association's award for Video of the Year in 1984. In recent years, Joe lost his father and mother and more recently his long time friend Merle Kilgore. He is still a high energy act and just recently got married and works out of Nashville. I saw him perform recently at one of our local casinos and he still has the gift and the enthusiasm it takes to command an audience. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - all rights reserved - Media may use with permission when used in publicity on Joe Stampley or Dandy Don Logan. JOHN FRED (JOHN FRED AND THE PLAYBOYS) JOHN gave us, at Paula, our first number one pop hit. The January 27, 1968 Billboard Record Chart showed the number one record in the country was PAULA 282, JUDY IN DISGUISE by JOHN FRED AND THE PLAYBOY BAND. The record had already been in the charts for 10 long weeks. The number two record was Chain Of Fools by Aretha Franklin. “Judy In Disguise” remained number one for two weeks. This was not the first time the young singer had known a hit. Cajun swamp pop musician John Fred Gourrier cut an R&B flavored hit called SHIRLEY back in 1959 with the Fats Domino Band for a Baton Rouge recording label. Fred came to us in the 60s and they were hot during the BEATLES craze. The high school/college dances that I sponsored with John and his group were still as hot as ever and the band started incorporating some of the Beatles material into their repertoire. I guess that is why, in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes they cut “Judy” which was inspired by the Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”. I first met John when Dale Hawkins brought him by a dance I was doing with Maggie Lewis Warwick at the Fort Humbug Armory. He was in the process of signing with Jewel records. After the success we had with Paula Records and the Uniques, we switched the Playboys to Paula. I had often heard about the HORN BAND FROM LOUISIANA. I always thought they were referring to the BOOGIE KINGS! From my days in the combo/big band era, I have always thought the one thing the big bands had that should be brought over to the pop or rock and roll side, as it was then being called, was the trumpet and sax section. The solo sax made it, with most bands of the 50s having one, but none really used the brass section. A trumpet still, to this day, can bring goose bumps to me, when played just right! Fred’s band had the horn section and that made them different from any other band anywhere. Of course, the soul acts of the sixties knew this also, and the folks at Stax and Motown starred the brass/reed sections on many hits of that era. Cajun swamp pop musician John Fred was born John Fred Gourrier on May 8, 1941, in Baton Rouge. In 1968, with “Judy In Disguise” at number one, I, along with Ronnie Lewis, Gene Kent and the entire Playboy Band, went to New York City where the fellows appeared on the CARSON SHOW. Doc Severinson was impressed with John’s horn section. John was totally at ease on national TV and a series of TV shows, fan magazine interviews and tours was coming their way. BUT, there was trouble in River City. One of the longest nights of my life, was when John, his attorney, Harold Lippsius and our attorneys, Mike Meyer, Marvin Katz and C.P. Brocato negotiated endlessly to renew the contract. Our contracts were four year contracts and the hit came at the end of the contract, so it had to be renewed. Enter, UNI Records, a division of Universal Films with big money in hand. John would sign with UNI in less than 30 days. So, we bid goodbye to our golden goose, John Fred. I’m sure John Fred knew at that time that a band the size of his, was next to impossible to transport to New York City, much less from town to city to hamlet in a given time frame and keep it together on a 30/45 day tour. That is one reason why the big bands of the 30s and 40s started failing. They could not handle the expense and headaches of being responsible for that many people on the road. In later years, John told the media they did a parody on “Lucy In The Sky” with “Judy”. I never knew this because to me the song sounded like a total groove right from the opening bass and drum licks to the retarding end. All the previous records we had put out and promoted, I think, led to “Judy”. Anything they put out at that time could have been a hit as long as it had that certain raw edge. The Beatles were stars and already their material was getting that smooth, polished studio sound and they had abandoned that raw, hard edge that put them there. Fred certainly capitalized on this with his hit “Judy In Disguise”. Their success as a hot regional band made them more than ready for European tours and the many one- nighters they did after “Judy”. But, as early as “The Carson Show” in New York City, I knew that a couple of his guys were in love with Louisiana ladies, and they were not going to like being out on the road with the love of their life waiting back home. After the accolades and stardom that comes with a number one record, the group disbanded and they all became successful in other fields. John Fred, with a new house, became a respected coach. Louisiana Public Broadcasting still includes him in many of their music specials. In the 90s, he was back in the business, teaming with G. G. Shinn, former lead singer of the BOOGIE KINGS, and Joe Stampley, former lead singer for the UNIQUES, who went on to become a country super-star. They recorded an album called THE LOUISIANA BOYS which got a lot of publicity and was received well regionally. In the 21st century, John’s health was at risk, and he died on April 15, 2005.. If I ever write a song that is an award winner, I don’t think I will feel more ecstatic than I did at this time in my life when John Fred went “gold”. Sure, back then, you received the prize for selling a million 45RPM records. Today, you sell three or four million CDs or DVDs and they represent fifteen to twenty-four bucks a pop and the 45s back then were only a dollar. But still, to me, this achievement is the fifteen minutes that we are all supposed to have in the spotlight. Sure, it was John Fred and the Playboys' success, but for me, it was the culmination, of hard dedicated work to make a star out of our acts. We worked just as hard on all the other talented people who recorded for us, but with John Fred Gourrier, we found the golden ring. And it’s ironic that to become number one, we had to knock off “Hello Goodbye” by the Beatles. Our follow-up to “Judy In Disguise” was “Hey Hey Bunny”. It went into the charts of all three music trade paper magazines, the second week out, but by then, news had gotten around to our distributors that we had lost the group and the distributors started returning the product days after they received it. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ©2009 - DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION, when used in conjunction with publicity on JOHN FRED GOURRIER OR DANDY DON LOGAN. BOBBY POWELL BOBBY POWELL - was one of our early recording artists. In 1965 we went to the top of the soul charts with the original version of C C Rider. It went to number one on the charts. We tried desperately to swing it pop, but we were cut off at the pass. Stan Lewis and I would call the Dick Clark office weekly, reporting the chart number for the upcoming week, trying to get Clark to put it on his show. Stan talked directly to Clark, but I talked to an intermediary and was told if it hit number one SOUL, they would put it on. Well, two weeks before it went number one, Clark started playing a song called “Jenny Take A Ride” by Mitch Ryder and we never made it to the Clark Show with Bobby. Larry Ryan and I were to do a couple of dances at the Progressive Men’s Club in partnership in 1965, first with Bobby Powell on November 25th and then on November 27th with John Fred and his band during the Thanksgiving holiday. The Powell show was a disaster. Bob Hogan and Jerry Hawkins of the Shreveport Musicians local 116 shut us down as Bobby’ s band did not have paid up Union Cards. A local band was quickly hired and the few who stayed enjoyed the evening, but it was a financial disaster. Larry, in the meantime, had pulled out of the venture, so I teamed with Gene Kent for the John Fred event and it came off without a hitch and that started a partnership between Gene and I that carried him eventually into the recording company where I was a vice-president. Bobby, blind since birth, started his career in church and we were maybe the second or third label he recorded for. Lionel Whitfield was his manager and started “WHIT” records. We began putting all of Bobby’s material on that label. Powell’s biggest chart record was the 1965 version of "C.C.Rider" which went number 1 on the Cash Box R&B chart. Elvis used a similar version as his opening song. Actually, the song was a 30s blues standard that was a hit in the 50s for an Atlanta, Georgia soul singer. He also hit pay dirt with the funky "Do Something For Yourself" which went to number 21 on the R&B Soul Chart in 1966, but his hottest number came later that year with "I'm Gonna Leave You" which only went to number 34 on the charts, but it was a crowd pleasing HOT number. At the end of his contract with us, we had a most unusual number with him called "The Bells" which went to number 14 in the R&B soul chart at Record World. This again, was a cover song of a Baby Washington number. The phenomenal thing about it is, we had just the music track with Bobby singing “The Bells, The Bells“, on the back side and it got as much play as the vocal. From collectors listings and discography’s I have noted from various sources, Powell recorded for many more labels and continued to have regional success after he left us. He has been a perennial opening act for the big R&B acts that came to town. As I understand it, he went back to the church singing only gospel songs after his successful career as a soul singer. We at Jewel- Paula were one of the first labels to see the importance of the college campus to music as a whole. We had a mailing list of every college campus radio station in the country, so it is no wonder that we found the young Mister Powell at Southern University for the Blind. The songs I sing on my Cal label are not what you would call main stream and youth oriented, but I still call and contact the college stations as some of them do have small blocks of time that they devote to the new unknown artists and hopefully, I might be able to find another young artist the stature of Bobby Powell to record. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - All rights reserved - Media may use with permission in conjunction with publicity on Bobby Powell or Dandy Don Logan. BOBBY CHARLES An Abbeville, Louisiana native, he was named Robert Charles Guidry at birth. He was basically a songwriter who could sing well, giving the world such classics as SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, WALKING TO NEW ORLEANS, and others. Bobby helped Stan Lewis get his recording label off the ground. At first, the Jewel label was to be distributed by Chess Records and Bobby Charles was the first and only artist. That’s the way it began, but it quickly dissolved as Charles, who did not play an instrument, proved to Stan that to have to hire musicians just to do a demo of a song Bobby would write and Stan would publish, was going about it the wrong way. The distribution deal with Chess crumbled also, after an encounter between Leonard or Phil Chess and Bobby Charles. The Chess brothers were good friends with Stan and for years a picture of Leonard hung in Stan’s private office, so it had to be Bobby who caused the deal to fall through. Bobby would come by whenever he was around and I always enjoyed talking to him, but he never seemed to be happy that I could see and always seemed disillusioned. Dale Hawkins entered into the picture, when Bobby pulled out and Stan was putting together his own distributors. When I came on board, as a part time employee, there was only about 15 distributors. Bobby and Dale were both entertainers and each had already known a lot of personal success in the business on their own, so putting out records that they were not directly involved with was not a lot of fun to them. But, in the record business back then, if something sounded like a hit and some unknown person produced or wrote it, you needed to take the gamble and put it out to see if it would hit. When I came on board, both Bobby and Dale had gone. We continued to put out records on Bobby Charles, however. He told me once when he had signed with the Chess label, they thought he was black and the tours they put him on, he was the only white kid on the shows. All the others, Chuck Berry, Howling Wolf, The Moonglows, Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers were black. I think Bobby was jealous of the success we had with the label after he left to begin with. But, from checking around the inter- net, I find that Bobby has been more than successful in many ventures since then and has continued to record and write songs. Two of my favorite Bobby Charles songs that he recorded are THE JEALOUS KIND and BUT I DO. Both of those songs, to me, seem to have a big band flair to them. Bobby’s songs have been recorded by Ray Charles, Etta James, Muddy Waters, Wilson Pickett, Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, Joe Cocker and many other established stars. Bobby Charles left the building in 2010. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ©2010 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION WHEN USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON ROBERT CHARLES GUIDRY, BOBBY CHARLES, STAN LEWIS OR DANDY DON LOGAN |
| DALE HAWKINS (THE HAWK) THE name everyone recognizes around these parts. The song that is never forgotten. Stories about a fast Cadillac running at break neck speeds trying to get to the next show. The only person besides Merle Kilgore, who has more funny road stories than Carter had little liver pills. In 1957, Dale and a group of musicians that included T.J. Mandino, a 15 year old James Burton, Ronnie Lewis and others got together in the studios of KWKH radio which was in downtown Shreveport at the time. Bob Sullivan was the recording engineer and together, working in unison, came up with a riff that included a vocal by Dale, some hi-hat funk drum sounds and guitar licks that young guitarists try to emulate to this day, and it all blended together onto a mono quarter inch tape that later became a CHESS smash and the song was SUSY Q, which remains a standard to this day. I met Dale when he came back home to work for Stan Lewis’ new Jewel-Paula Records. He was quick to show someone new guitar licks he’d picked up and had that outgoing personality the stars of that era needed. I guess Dale has worked with just about everybody in this area including , Maggie Lewis Warwick, Dean and Mark Mathis, Merle Kilgore, Johnny Horton, yes he was on the Hayride and yes he was opposite DICK CLARK having a TV program on WCAU TV called THE BIG BEAT! Having the big success he did at a very early age is hard for some artists to deal with, but Dale has been very successful in many other areas and is still active as late as 2000. After he left Jewel-Paula, he had other success with Jon & Robin, the In Crowd (Not the INN CROWD, I was associated with) Michael Nesmith, Harry Nilsson and The Five Americans. Of course, he also produced some of the early Jewel-Paula discs, including the Uniques, NOT TOO LONG AGO! When CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival) cut SUSIE Q for Fantasy Records, Dale came back to work for us and worked along side me for around a year. I got to know him as a person. It was amazing that he could call a station anywhere in the country and tell the DJ, music director or program director, “I‘m Dale Hawkins” and they would recognize the name and put it with “Susie Q”. I was talking just a few months ago with Joe Stampley, who has became a well known country entertainer, and the name Dale Hawkins just naturally came up. While with us, Dale made a trip to Robin Hood Brians’ studio in Tyler, Texas and did a session for Paula and we released his material. Paula 424 was “The First Cut Is The Deepest” and "Nothing Left To Do But Say Goodbye." Dale continues to receive accolades and he well deserves them. I had hoped that he would stay with the company, this was the second time he was there, but he longed for the big bucks of the industry and he still was harboring ill will toward Stan because of the 3rd writer listed on his big hit. Regardless of how many names were on the song, the name Dale Hawkins has certainly stood out. I received an e- mail from Finland recently, someone asking about him. Dale at one time had his own studio and since “Susie Q”, he has been in some of the finest studios. But, I’m sure he will agree with me, that no matter where you record, when the groove is right, when the riff is right, when the beat is steady and the funk floats right, you cut a hit! And the aura that surrounds that moment can not be bottled and sold to others, it just happens. He can tell the media what it was like, he can tell other musicians what it was like, but we don’t have the same feeling as he and the others had, because we were not there and did not experience it first hand, so we can not fully understand! Dale left the building in 2010. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS BY DON LOGAN ©2010 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON DALE HAWKINS OR DANDY DON LOGAN. RANDY TRAVIS In the late 70’s, Paula Records was struggling. We had the number one pop record in January of 1968 with John Fred, but he split for UNI Records, a division of Universal Pictures. We had established Nat Stuckey as a legitimate country artist but he had split for RCA Victor. Mickey Gilley had been with us and had left and we missed picking up his “Room Full Of Roses” by one day, as PLAYBOY signed him for their new label before I got the call in to Mickey. About the only thing we had going was our BLUES and BLACK GOSPEL recordings of which I was active in. One morning, Stan Lewis, the congenial owner of Paula Records, had me listen to a dub of a session that Joe Stampley had produced on an unknown out of the Carolinas. Stampley had been the lead singer in our pop group, the UNIQUES, and he was now out on his own recording for DOT and had several country hits under his belt at the time. Stan said “I Really Like This Kid‘s Voice“ and he wanted me to listen and give him my opinion. After I listened to the dub, I agreed, it was a good possibility. The voice was resonate and flowed freely with the melody and the phrasing was natural and the good thing about it that I heard was, while the voice had a certain quality to it, it also sounded country. Country at that time was in a kind of changing of the direction, so to speak. Joe Stampley met Randy Travis when Joe played the COUNTRY CITY USA NIGHTCLUB in Charlotte, North Carolina. Randy had entered a talent show there and won the prize, beating the competition hands down. The club owner, Lib Hatcher, made him the regular house band and he would open for the big stars she was booking at the famed night spot. Travis had relocated to Charlotte by that time and he was performing on week-ends and eventually full-time. Lib Hatcher had taken over management of the youthful singer and in the late 70's, we made the deal with Lib and Randy to release two singles on Paula Records. The first was called DREAMING and the second was SHE’S MY WOMAN. Joe Stampley produced both sides. The Paula records charted, but as I said, country was in a state of change. The “Urban Cowboy” movement had begun and there were no further sessions for Paula. As I understand it, Randy came from a musical family, being first billed as the Traywick Brothers, before Randy struck out on his own, having a few scrapes with the law along the way. I left the label in 1979. In 1981 Randy made the move to Nashville, commuting regularly to Charlotte to perform and when Lib Hatcher became the manger at another club, The Nashville Palace, Randy made great inroads in the Nashville scene. Randy is not afraid of work as I’m told he cooked catfish and washed dishes in the kitchen, as well as singing on stage. He developed a loyal following, changing his stage name to Randy Ray and did several live appearances on Nashville Now and Nashville After Hours. His album , "Randy Ray- Live at the Nashville Palace" is a find for record collectors and is even harder to find than our Paula singles, as both are now a collector's item and out of circulation. In the 1980s I was trying to make a comeback in radio, unaware that Randy was doing everything he could to get a break again in the record world. Shortly before I left KRMD, a country station in Shreveport where I worked for a very short time with Smokey Hyde and Jerry Black, I saw the record ON THE OTHER HAND come in to the music directors desk and when I heard the voice, I knew I had heard it somewhere before, but it would be years later that I would be told that yes, that is Randy Traywick. Warner Brothers had changed his name to Randy Travis. A string of country chart-toppers followed that song, with millions of Randy Travis product sold and his name becoming a household word. TV and movies came his way and everything he touched turned to gold and in 1991, Randy married his longtime manager and friend, Lib Hatcher in a quiet ceremony on the island of Maui, in Hawaii. The Methodist church has a monthly publication that featured Randy some years back and my mother cut it out and sent it to me. Randy talked not only about religion, but his career as well. He said in that interview that “every record label in Nashville turned him down” and “Paula Records, a little label in Shreveport, Louisiana picked me up”. Most of our artists, when they left, badmouthed us all the way to the bank and I was happy to know that an artist who had become as successful as Randy, had nothing but good to say about us at Paula Records. In September, 1997, Randy was the first artist to sign with the newly formed Dream Works Record label in Nashville. When "Out of My Bones," the first single from the new label's debut album, "You and You Alone" was released in 1998, he delivered the label its first number one country hit. Dream Works is also home to James Stroud, who worked regularly with me in the studio at Sound City when he was a session musician there. Stroud went with Stuart Madison to Jackson, Mississippi when things started unfolding in Shreveport and worked many sessions for Malaco , before making the trek to Nashville, where success found him quickly in the form of some number one hits on Clint Black. Personal recollections on Randy Travis by Don Logan © 2009 - Media may use with permission when used in conjunction with publicity on Randy Travis or Dandy Don Logan STAN LEWIS Stan Lewis started wanting to be in the music business when he was a youngster. His brother, Ace Lewis was a drummer of exception quality. So, Stan was thinking he would be Ace’s manager and drive him to his gigs. You see, young Ace was too young to drive. I worked for Stan for many years, as an employee of his Paula Record Corporation, where I was a vice-president. One thing he did in his success that I will always respect was give aging entertainers another chance at recording and going for the gusto. Stars like Big Joe Turner, Jimmie Davis and the Ink Spots. There was a very good article, penned by local well-known entertainer, Bill Bush, who is also a writer for City Lights Magazine below. I think Bill covers the story better than I could. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS BY DON LOGAN ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON STAN LEWIS OR DANDY DON LOGAN. ENTERTAINER PROFILES by Bill Bush Stan The Record Man One of the most influential people in the entertainment and recording business in the last half of the 20th Century is “Stan the Record Man” (Stan Lewis). For those of you who did not live in Shreveport during the 50s, Stan’s Record Shop was located at the head of Texas Street near the First Methodist Church. Stan’s Record Shop opened in 1948 and was a Mecca for young people like myself who made weekly pilgrimages on the trolley to purchase the current rock ‘n‘roll hits of the time and meet other people there with the same mission. Lewis was born in Shreveport. His parents were of Italian decent and operated a grocery business in the Allendale (West End) part of Shreveport. This area was a vibrant community with a mixture of white and African-American families. Many of Lewis’ relatives and friends also operated grocery stores catering primarily to the black community. In this environment, Lewis was influenced by the music of this community, primarily blues and gospel. When he was just nine years old, Lewis’ first job was selling newspapers. Later, he purchased five jukeboxes and the records for his jukeboxes from a little record store in downtown Shreveport. Learning that this record store was up for sale, Lewis and his wife, Paula, gathered their savings of $2500 and bought the store in 1948. The rest is history. Stan’s Record Shop began in an 8x12 foot space. Lewis carried mostly rhythm and blues, some gospel and country & western records. You must realize that in the early 50s, R&B was in its infancy. Lewis set up speakers in the store and began to have autograph parties for the entertainer who passed through the area. The “Louisiana Hayride” was very popular at that time, and the performances were carried live on KWKH Radio every Saturday night. During this time Elvis Presley, who appeared regularly on the Hayride, would stop by Stan’s Record Shop for autograph sessions for the fans. Around 1950, Lewis started meeting the heads of up-and-coming independent record labels of R&B music. Some of these record label owners included such pioneers as Leonard and Phil Chess (Chess Records), Joe, Saul and Lester Bihari (Modern Records), Art Rupe (Specialty Records), Lou Chudd (Imperial Records) and Bobby Shad (Mercury Records). These gentlemen came by in their cars with a trunk full of records to sell. During this time period, it was common for record distribution to be conducted in this manner. To promote record sales, Lewis began sponsoring a weekly 15 minutes radio show on KWKH. The show became so popular that it grew to a one-hour production every weekday, and the famous Frank Page hosted it. By the mid-50s, the legendary “Wolf Man Jack” hosted a show for Stan’s Record Shop out of the 250,000 watt XERF Radio station in Del Rio, Texas. This station was heard all over the United States and in many foreign countries. I remember listening to this late-night program in my bedroom in Cedar Grove. This form of advertising had a tremendous impact on Lewis’ mail order record sales. Lewis then began to produce records for Chess, Imperial, Specialty and other labels. He was an A&R and producer for the region that included Louisiana, East Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi. In 1954, he produced two big country hits, Jimmy C. Newman’s “Cry, Cry Darling” (No. 4) and Jimmy and Johnny’s “If You Don’t, Someone Else Will” (No. 3). I think the best record Lewis ever produced was the great hit, “Susie Q,” which was recorded by local vocalist Dale Hawkins. “Susie Q” was a tremendous hit nationwide. Lewis would kick around ideas with Leonard Chess, whose daughter was named Susie. Later, Lewis named his daughter Susie. This is how this record began. Hawkins worked in Stan’s Record Shop at the time. Lewis and Hawkins wrote “Susie Q.” In 1957, there was no recording studio in Shreveport. The song was cut In KWKH’s studio around midnight after the station went off the air until six o’clock the next morning. The members of the band that recorded “Susie Q“ are: Ronnie Lewis on drums (Lewis’ brother), T.J.Mandina on bass (his cousin), James Burton on guitar (who later was guitarist for Elvis, Ricky Nelson, John Denver, etc.) and Dale Hawkins on vocals. Ronnie Lewis and T.J. Mandina are still in the grocery business in Shreveport. Mandina told me recently the session took four or five hours because in 1957, recording technology was such that if anyone made a mistake, you had to record all over again until you got it right. Lewis is still in the wholesale and retail record business in Shreveport and currently has an office on Centenary Boulevard where he distributes southern, R&B and gospel music. He is a very good friend of mine and extremely interesting to talk to about the history of music in Shreveport and the nation as well. His contacts in the music business are endless. We are fortunate to have Stan Lewis in Shreveport. Reprinted by permission - article from City Lights Magazine - March 2003 written by Bill Bush bill_combo@msn.com -contact City Lights for reprint permission on the Bill Bush story. |
| JANE POWELL * MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM * 1963 Jane Powell had appeared in Shreveport previously at the old Broadmoor Theater when it had stopped showing movies and was presenting special concerts. Her appearance at the beautiful old Municipal Auditorium was a sold out show with an enthusiastic audience. The lighting, musical backup and audio was excellent. However, there was a problem with the sound. Jane was one of the first vocalists to use on a local stage, the new contraption known as the wireless microphone. Today, artists like the BOOMERS, a well liked local group, had their whole act based around the wireless microphone system and it is great, giving the artist total freedom to roam and rove, wherever they feel like going, even out into the audience if they are so inclined. It was not always this effective, however. The night Jane Powell appeared at the Municipal Auditorium, her wireless microphone was on the same frequency as the detective unit of the Shreveport Police Department. As you can imagine, there were numerous interruptions during the performance. Unlike many so-called super-stars, who would have become upset, angry and possibly stormed off the stage in a fit of rage, Miss Powell saw it through to the end. The interruptions became less frequent and were gone by the end of the performance. I was told that Public Safety Commissioner George D’Artois, had made a personal call to the Police Station and had the entire detective force change to a secondary frequency, so as not to interrupt the pleasure of the audience. T. G. SHEPHERD T.G. Shepherd never recorded for us, never worked for us. As a matter of fact I knew him by another name. He was in the promotion end of the record business when I was there and our paths crossed many times as he would be promoting his company’s product and I the Jewel/Paula product that was out at the time. At the Bill Gavin convention in Atlanta, Georgia in 1969, where a gob of record people gathered to talk about the business, where it was going and the current trends, I and several others got together with T.G. for a night on the town. Joe Tex had a big smash R&B hit at the time and Tex was playing at an Atlanta Night Club. Joe was produced by Buddy Killen in Nashville and he recorded for Killen’s Dial Recording Label which was one of the labels T.G. worked for. So, T.G. got us passes for the show and we’d have to pay for our own drinks and transportation. How many record guys can you get in one taxi cab. There must have been 10 of us. We never tried telephone booths, just this one taxi and its poor driver. On the way to the show, T.G. serenaded us with a song or two and several of us remarked, me included, that “hey, you should be promoting yourself instead of all these R&B records.” Whether he took that to heart or had already thought about it on his own, he made the switch in 1974. That was the first time the name T.G. Sheppard appeared on a record label as the artist. His first single called “Devil In The Bottle” became a number one hit! Warner Brothers had a field day with ten consecutive T.G. Shepherd number one songs. It was during this fantastic string of number one hits, that I was trying to make a comeback in radio and working for KRMD, a country station in Shreveport. While there, I enjoyed playing a record by someone who had been a friend in the record business while I was there. My personal T.G. Shepherd favorite is his song called “Party Time.” The last time I saw T.G. in the promotion end of the record business was in the WJLB studios in Detroit where we were both promoting product with Ernie Durham, before T.G. made the switch to country singer. While recording for Columbia Records, veteran producer, Rick Hall produced three albums on him. T.G. loves to entertain. I can tell that as I have caught his act several times in local appearances from the audience over the years and he always puts on a great show. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS BY DON LOGAN ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON T.G. SHEPHERD, JANE POWELL OR DANDY DON LOGAN DICK CLARK “The world’s oldest living teenager is a world-famous businessman. This man has been a most influential person to music in general. At Paula Records, when one of our records hit the charts, we would immediately start calling the Clark office to see about the possibility of getting the record on his show. I never talked directly to Clark, but people on his staff knew me on a first name basis. Clark knows Stan Lewis. When he sees him, he’ll point and say “Dale Hawkins”. “Dale Hawkins” was Stan’s first superstar. Both Stan and Hawkins were very young when Stan got Leonard Chess to release “Susie-Q” on Chess Records. That song is a certified rock and roll classic. Most people don’t know it, but Dale was opposite Dick Clark back in the good old days with a program.” “Dick Clark is a story similar to the Johnny Carson fable. Clark’s predecessor was a guy named Bob Horn. As we all know, Carson replaced Jack Parr on the “Tonight Show” and made it his very own. The similarity ends here. Bob Horn of WFIL in Philadelphia did the Esslinger Beer show, Bob Horn’s Bandstand. He was top jock and took it to TV. Then he is arrested for drunk driving and was fired. Clean cut and ambitious Dick Clark, took over. Horn wound up in Texas with some very bad publicity, rape charges, and the IRS got him for failing to report $392,000 in income. Back in Philadelphia, Clark played it straight. Kept it clean, went through grueling interrogations from a congressional investigation during the ugly payola scandal and went on to become the most successful former radio person in the world”. “American Bandstand” went national on August 5, 1957 with Dick Clark at the helm. It became the number one show on the third rated network. As the show gained popularity, it was thought by many to be Dick Clark’s peak. But, it was not. His productions and shows continue to delight the world. In Nashville one year, for the DJ Convention as they called it then, at the old Andrew Jackson wooden hotel, I did meet Dick Clark. This was the year when he was first doing some things surrounding County Music in the late 60's. Loretta Lynn and her sister were putting up fan club handbills on the hotel’s wall and Ralph Emery would be doing a live broadcast later that evening. Shelby Singleton had moved his record company to Nashville as I met Dave and Patsy Alban on one of the elevators.” “We once had a blind, black singer named Bobby Powell who recorded our version of C.C. Rider, not the same one Elvis did. As the song started going up the R&B charts, I started calling my contact in the Clark office, trying to get the record on Clark’s program. Several weeks went by without success. Then I’m told, maybe next week they can get it on. Meanwhile, Clark starts playing “Jenny Take A Ride” by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Part of the lyric to that song is “C.C. Ryder”. Our record by Bobby Powell stopped dead in it’s track because of this similarity.” “Dick Clark got his start in radio as a DJ. When rock and roll began to happen, he got the chance to be a TV DJ. With a whopping budget of $1500 a week, he made the world take notice and rock and roll became a national pastime. His personality made the show a tremendous success and his astute understanding of this medium has produced some of the most memorable pieces of programming imaginable.” “I never did a TV dance type show, but an associate of mine did at the KTBS studios in Shreveport, Louisiana. The show was on for four weeks and was sponsored by the Northwest Louisiana Milk Producers Association. I helped get some video from record companies wanting to promote their records via the local dance party TV show. The show was playing each week to a larger audience and the people who wanted to dance on the show already had to be limited. On the fourth week, they had several film clips, plus the good hot dance 45's. Toward the end of the show, Bill Scott played a slow ballad. I forget who the producer was for this show, but he apparently went to the boys room, because camera number two zoomed in on couple number 16 and they were in belly rub heaven. I mean they were grinding and you could see the steam. The camera zoomed in and just stayed there. This was a Saturday show and the switchboard immediately began to light up. Station management and the advertiser went into emergency session after church on Sunday and on Monday morning, the show was canceled.” “Dick Clark has lived and realized the American Dream. He is one of the most successful business people in the entertainment industry and there seems to be no end to his innovative creations. He has made more money than CEO’s of the largest record companies in the world. But, in the beginning, he like all of us old disc jockeys, had to do the sock hops and record hops. A musician paid his dues by endless one nighters on the road. A disc jockey paid his dues with these endless sock hops and record dances. From this point, he rose to the top by mastering TV and TV production” PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS BY DON LOGAN ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON DICK CLARK OR DANDY DON LOGAN TONY BENNETT “Tony Bennett is probably my favorite artist, still living. I went to a Columbia Records press party for him in Dallas, Texas in the late50s, shortly before I came to KEEL in Shreveport, Louisiana. The KLIF and KBOX DJ’s were there and I got to meet the incomparable one. We had finished presenting a variety show with the Ames Brothers and Blackwell, the magician, a couple of nights before this press party, so Tony and I had a lot of things to talk about. He was very pleasant as I remember.” “Tony is one of America’s most influential singers. His love of music was discovered in high school. He performed in military bands during World War II. Bob Hope is credited with giving him his big break, after Hope discovered him singing in a night club.” “Bennett’s popularity is world wide as he was given the “Citizen of the World” award by the United Nations. He is also the recipient of ten Grammys. Over the years I have seen many recordings of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” by many different artists, but we all know the song belongs to only one, and that is Tony Bennett.” “Tony was one of the first major popular artists to record a country song and bring that type song to the attention of mainstream America. The song was the Hank Williams song “Cold, Cold Heart”. In his later years, he and several other mainstream artists did a duet CD with “Ole Blue Eyes”, much to the delight of both Sinatra and Bennett fans.” “The former Hollywood Casino here in Shreveport, presented this entertainment icon, much to the delight of local audiences, twice over a two year period. Believe me, he is as good as they say.” "I listened to a cut of the song "San Francisco" by one of our own artists when I was a vice-president at Paula Records. Our artist was a great vocalist, but when he asked me what I thought about his version of the song, I had to reply, "it really tells me that Tony Bennett is one hell of a great singer." PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS BY DON LOGAN ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON TONY BENNETT OR DANDY DON LOGAN HANK WILLIAMS SR. “Shreveport, Louisiana introduced the founding father of contemporary country music to the world on the stage of the Louisiana Hayride. Hank Williams Sr., became a superstar at twenty-five years of age and left this world at 29. His short, but highly influential career in country music eclipsed that of Jimmie Rodgers, who previously had been regarded as country music’s most influential artist. They say he never learned to read or write music however, he wrote and recorded over 100 unique and lasting songs. M G M Records released at least a half- dozen HIT records every year from 1949 until 1953. His raw, sincere, and emotional lyrics set the stage for much of the country music that followed, and many of his songs, including "Cold, Cold Heart" and "Your Cheating Heart" have become popular classics.” “On tapes of the Louisiana Hayride, you can hear women screaming in the audience as he had the animal magnetism that destroyed women and made them react and remember, this was pre-Elvis. He had the innate ability to almost hypnotize an audience. Country audiences perceived Hank as one of them. He was on their level. He was not a stuffed shirt, he was genuine and real at a time when country music needed a guru or a hero. Simplicity may have been his key to success. However, the type music he was doing was the prime instrument of his success. He was doing country blues and it moved an audience and sounded good on live radio. Then when he got you up and feeling good, he would do a heart-felt tear jerk ballad and he had you in the palm of your hand. Every girl wanted to be his girlfriend, every woman his mom, every boy his brother and every man his best friend. I have never talked to a rock and roll star of the fifties and sixties who did not tell me they had never listened to Hank Senior. His ability to reach your heart and gut at the same time is what these other entertainers studied. Some of his shows were rough house shows, complete with fist-fights. At a time when country music was afraid of doing “drinking songs”, Hank was inviting everybody to go Honky Tonkin’ with him.” “Born and raised in Alabama, Williams was around eight, according to historians, when he learned to play the guitar and sing. Negroes were not always in the ghetto by themselves. For a time there were many poor white southern people living there also. Hank’s mom ran a boarding house and he became friends with a local street performer known as "Tee Tot." This early exposure to black blues styles shaped his own musical character. From reviewing many of his recordings, his song style on his recorded blues type numbers is not the same form African- Americans have used in their works for years, but uniquely that of Hank Sr.” “When he was 12 years old, he was awarded a fifteen dollar prize in a song writing contest for his composition called “W P A Blues”. At the age of 14, Williams organized his own band and began playing local dances, hoe downs and square dances. In 1941, Williams and his band began performing on a local Montgomery Radio Station. He and the Drifting Cowboys would do the most popular songs of the current artists, including Williams' hero, Roy Acuff on their show. His musical career stayed on a holding pattern in this position for many years.” “Williams went to Nashville in 1946 with his wife and manager, Audrey. Acuff-Rose Publishing Company booked a recording session with the material to be released on Sterling Records, an east-coast label. The first two 78RPM singles were “Never Again” which was released in 1946 and “Honky Tonkin’” released in early 1947. The first pressing of this record had the title misspelled, “Honkey Tonkin”. By the standards of 1946 and 1947, these records were successful and William’s career began to blossom. These records also made it on the Country Music charts.” “An exclusive songwriter’s contract was signed with Acuff-Rose Publishing Company and a long and rewarding partnership ensued. Williams would put the songs down on wire recordings and later tape recordings with Rose copying down the words, spelling them correctly and writing Hank’s musical notes down on staff paper, thus creating a lead sheet of his many original songs.” “In 1947, Hank signed a contract with MGM, Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s record label and he negotiated a contract with Horace Logan of the Louisiana Hayride. His first M G M record, “Move It On Over” was a big hit. Other releases followed and he became a bigger than life country music star while regularly appearing on the Hayride.” “The musical establishment in Nashville, Tennessee was aware of Hank Williams. They also were aware that he was a hard drinking fellow with a reputation of being a womanizer and his reputation kept him off the Grand Ole Opry which was very staid and stoic at the time, even though most of their artists occasionally took a drink or two.” “Hank’s career was about to go on hold again and he did not want that. To him, even though his acceptance and fan base was large on the Louisiana Hayride, the Opry was where he wanted to be. A con-man here in Shreveport, Louisiana gave Hank the tool he needed to get there for a fee of $100. It was a song called “Lovesick Blues”. He was invited by the con man to try it out on the Hayride next Saturday Night. Little did Hank know that the song was already published by an ASCAP Publishing Firm and had been written by a couple of airplane pilots and in addition to that, it was already out on M G M by another artist, who was also from Alabama. But, that artist’s rendition of the song was blasé and did not have that Hank Williams rawness with the nasal twang that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Hank was desperate. He did not know all the facts about the song, but the Hayride audience loved the song when he performed it. Hank paid the con man $100 and started doing the song regularly and it was dynamite. The audience reception of this song made Hank Williams Sr. adamant about recording the song. Fred Rose, the head of Acuff-Rose and the producer of his next recording session, did not want him to record this song, but finally capitulated and it was cut in one take at the end of the session. It is inconceivable that they could do this song in one take, because this song has more than three chords. The Drifting Cowboys earned their pay the day this song was recorded. Rose was not a good loser, going so far as to have the first pressing of the M G M record list the title misspelled as “Lovesich Blues” to publicly embarrass Hank. Of course, it also listed the songwriter’s name as Hank Williams, so the label was revised quickly. If Hank Williams had never recorded this song, he would never have been able to write all the other great standards he composed. However, what was good for him on one hand, was bad on the other. Since it became known that Hank would buy a song, his detractors questioned if he really wrote any of his other songs. There has never been any doubt in my mind that he did compose all his numbers.” “When “Lovesick Blues” became a national hit in 1949, Hank made it to the stage of the Ryman Auditorium on a sultry June night. He was introduced by Louie Buck and was called back to do an unprecedented six encores of this most remarkable song. Red Foley came on stage and tried to stop the unending applause. Nashville could not get enough of that song and it’s creator. Even though he did not actually write it, this song was made for one individual and that individual was Hank Williams Senior. I include the song sometimes in my shows. My performance is blasé. I have heard other recordings of the song by artists I admire and respect. Their performance lacks the feeling Hank Williams put into this song.” “With full fledged membership in the Grand Ole Opry, Hank and the Drifting Cowboys started making over a thousand dollars per appearance, big bucks back in that day. Their shows were sold out. Between 1949 and 1953, he had 28 top ten hits. He and other Opry members did a world tour. During his early days in Nashville, he was able to keep his drinking under control and enjoy his success. Tony Bennett recorded his composition of “Cold, Cold Heart” for Columbia Records. Popular songstress Jo Stafford recorded “Hey Good Looking”. “Your Cheating Heart” and“Jambalaya” were cross-over hits. Hank appeared and sang on the Perry Como television show when no other country artists were being exposed in this medium. He also did the Kate Smith TV show. His performance on that show is the old kinescope that was transferred to video backwards, and Hank appears to be a left handed guitar player and I believe that is the only film of Hank Senior that exists. Television at that time thought Dorothy Shay, the Park Avenue Hillbilly, was a country singer. Hank toured with Jack Benny and Bob Hope and that was most unusual. He also started recording recitations of a religious, thought provoking and soul searching nature under the name of “Luke the Drifter”.” “And then as he stood there at the top, his excessive drinking caused him to tumble, at least from the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. He came back to the place it started for him, Shreveport, in ill-health and once again became a member of the Louisiana Hayride cast. His first night back, he was not on the bill, he was simply introduced as an extra added attraction. Horace Logan announced, “We’ve got an old boy backstage that has come home and he is going to be appearing regularly every Saturday night with us...Here’s Hank Williams.”” “KWKH and the Hayride did a massive promotion campaign. Glitz and glamour that was usually reserved for promotion of the Shreveport Symphony began, climaxed by the on stage marriage of Hank to local beauty, Billie Jean Jones. The folks around here had not seen Hank without his hat in some time and were surprised to see a balding 29 year old man when he removed his hat to kiss his young bride.” “Hank Williams Sr. remained associated with the Louisiana Hayride until he died New Year’s day, 1953. This fact has been distorted by many, but Frank Page in the book "Frank and Helen Page..a lifetime at KWKH" reverifies that he was under contract. In the book, “Elvis, Hank and Me”, Horace Logan tells vividly of Hank Williams’ serious health problems and the excruciating pain he endured during his last days. But, I have never heard anyone, Frank Page, Horace Logan, Tillman Franks and Stan Lewis included, say or suggest, that Hank’s voice ever failed.” Frank Page has just written a new book about the Louisiana Hayride that is available from amazon.com. It has so many interesting facts and you should read it. Frank was inducted into the Louisiana Broadcast Hall Of Fame in 2004. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS BY DON LOGAN ©2009 DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION IN CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON HANK WILLIAMS OR DANDY DON LOGAN TOUSSAINT McCALL In 1967, we were about to reach our peak in the music business at Jewel/Paula Records. We had so much product coming out, we didn‘t have room for it. So, Ronn Records was formed, named after Stan’s youngest brother, Ronnie Lewis. We could not get the trademark office to approve RON Records, so we went with the RONN logo with the double N‘s. I signed a DJ from Arizona, Hadley Murrell and we started putting our releases on Ronn. The Bill Bush Combo, a local act also had a release on Ronn. The third record we released, Ronn 3, became a monster R&B hit for us and a young teacher named Toussaint McCall. It was a plaintiff, encompassing love song called “Nothing Takes The Place Of You”. It featured a B-3 Hammond organ, an automatic drum sound and Toussaint playing the bass on the foot pedals. The story on how this hit came about is unusual, to say the least. This story is not made up, concocted or ghost written by some out-of-work TV soap opera script writer, it actually happened this way. The year is 1967. The Beatles invasion is complete. Beatle-mania prevails and America is searching for new sounds. There would be an “Elvis” comeback special soon and there had already been a song called “Louie, Louie” and the garage sound was already born. You ask, what is the “garage sound?” That’s a recorded sound that does not sound like it was recorded in a $150.00 an hour professional recording studio, but some ones garage. And everybody in the business, including Stan Lewis and myself knew that a garage sound could hit and sell records. We were not involved in the overall “garage sound” movement, however. Toussaint McCall, a teacher in nearby Monroe, Louisiana was playing clubs, hauling his heavy, cumbersome, B-3 Hammond organ around, the same kind local hero Bill Bush plays, in and out of every club he could get into. The thought struck him that he should make a record. Nobody would listen to him or give him a break. He had never been to see us, as I recall, but he took it upon himself to put the record out on his own label. The sound was clear, but there was no echo on his voice and it had a raw, plaintiff sound to it, almost country, but Toussaint was a black man. He did come to see Stan Lewis when he got his record out, wanting us to lease it or handle it for him. Stan invited McCall into his office where he listened with his trained ear to the grooves of Toussaint’s recording. He told Toussaint that it did not have the studio sound that soul music needed. Stax was hot around that time with their Memphis Horn Section and heavy-steady bass lines and Toussaint told Stan, that indeed he did record it in his garage. Stan played it for several others in our office, including his brother. Some said they liked it and others turned thumbs down. I think I told him the record sucked. I don’t really remember for sure. Stan always liked to get other peoples opinion on matters before making his own decision. His final decision was to not lease the thing, but did agree to take some stock on the record and see if he could sell some for him. Toussaint left about five or ten copies for our record shop to sell.. We didn’t know that McCall’s next stop would be the studios of KOKA, our local rhythm and blues station, where Sonrose Rutledge and B.B. Davis were heavy weight jocks with a big following. Toussaint went on the air with B.B. Davis and B.B., who had the flexibility of putting any record he liked on the air, did so, playing it not once, but two times within an hour, while talking and interviewing the teacher from Monroe, Louisiana. Within the next hour and a half at Stan’s Record Shop, five people came in and bought what they called the most beautiful, love song they had ever heard. Susan, Lenny, Pauline or whoever was down front in the record shop that day, called up and told Stan, they were getting calls on that record, the guy from Monroe left, and half of the records had already been sold. I’ve seen Stan get excited over artists, songs and records before, but this time he was EXCITED! The first thing he did was listen to the copy of the record that he had on his desk, again. Knowing that it would sell, put the product in a totally different light. He began to hear what those who had already bought the record had heard. It had that raw edge of reality in it. It was pretty, but not too pretty. The next thing Stan did was go to the KOKA radio studios and ask B.B. Davis if the singer from Monroe, that he had interviewed earlier, was still hanging around. B.B. told him that the guy had already left. Next question, did he leave an address or phone number? Stan got the address, came back by the office, got some blank contracts and took off for Monroe, Louisiana looking for Toussaint McCall. He found him, signed him and we scuttled the next Ronn release in favor of Toussaint’s record and we had “Nothing Takes The Place Of You” out in less than fifteen days, on the market as Ronn number 3. In 1967, radio stations generated the excitement and sales for a new artist and new release, so we ran into a problem with the length of the song with some of the key stations. So, we edited the time on the single down to as close to 2:30 as we could. That was a problem, because the song had a story line and it had to follow the story line from start to finish, in order to make the record, make sense. This would be his biggest hit and it charted quickly and established the Ronn label as a rhythm and blues success label. Ted Taylor and Little Johnnie Taylor would come to the label soon. He had other hits and we released an album on him, Ronn 7527. That number represents the birthday of Stan Lewis, the owner of the label. The cover featured a picture of young Ronnie Lewis, whom the label was named for and his wife, at the time. One of my favorite Toussaint McCall songs from the album was Gershwin’s Summertime. I’ve never heard a version quite like Toussaint’ s. The hit song was involved in a lawsuit and Toussaint did not resign with us after we acknowledged that there was another writer, named Patrick Robinson, involved in writing the song. Toussaint was also displeased with the fact that no two DJs pronounced his name the same way. As I remember it, he pronounced his own name as “TWO - SONT.” Toussaint moved to the coast and continued to record for other labels. In his last session for us, we had intended to re-record “Nothing Takes The Place Of You,“ but for some reason we did not. The recording is still as much a mystery today to me, as it was in 1967. I listen to it every so often and it still seems to get better every time you listen to it. The overall sound grows on you and the simplicity, I think, was its secret to success. If we had re-recorded it with strings, maybe, it probably would have lost the secret ingredient it had. The last time I saw country artist T.G. Shepherd was in Detroit, at the WJLB studios. WJLB was a soul station where Ernie Durham ruled supreme and T.G. was doing promotion for Atlantic, while I was promoting the Ronn product. I loved going to Detroit, because a stop there, meant you got to go over to Canada and CKLW radio. This was a Canadian radio station whose signal blanketed Detroit and they were considered by some as the key station for that area. The CKLW 8 HIT PARADE FOR THE MOTOR CITY for April 4, 1967 had “Nothing Takes The Place Of You” by Toussaint McCall on Ronn 3 as number 21! We made it to number five on the national soul charts before the dance ended. Personal recollections © 2009 - All Rights Reserved - Media may use with permission in publicity on Toussaint McCall or Dandy Don Logan HORACE LOGAN “Horace and I worked together at “The Cowtown Hoedown,” a country show from the Majestic Theater in Ft. Worth, Texas that was broadcast on KCUL radio in Fort Worth, Texas. I was the program director of the station and I also sang on the stage show and Jack Henderson, Uncle Hank Craig and I emceed the Saturday night stage show. Horace had been living in California where he produced some records, did a few small bits in movies and wanted to relocate back to our general area. He was hired to produce the “Hoedown” and be the program director. Station management wanted to turn it into another “Louisiana Hayride”. The local acts on the show at the time were “Groovy” Joe Poovey, “PeeWee” Short, Frankie Miller, Honey Bare, “Oakie” Jones, The McCoy Kids, Lawton Williams, Roy Orbison, Tony Douglas, The Ferrell Brothers, Mac Curtis, Johnny Carroll, The Braga Sisters, Bob Luman, Dee and Patti, Bill Emerson, Lonnie Smithson, Charlie Walker, Darrell Glenn, Orville Couch, Bill Mack, Deb Woods, Benny Barnes, Howard Crockett, Willie Nelson and myself. Johnny Cash had left the “Louisiana Hayride”, so they had a Cash sound-a-like named “Johnny Seay” in Shreveport and in Ft. Worth, we had our own Cash sound-a-like, Howard Hausey Crockett. Howard collaborated on several songs with Tillman Franks and Johnny Horton and is originally from nearby Minden, Louisiana. He had a guitar player who didn’t have all his fingers, but could tear that box up!” “Horace became the program director and the air staff at KCUL included Dandy Don Logan, Horace “Hoss” Logan, “Easy” Ed Hamilton, James “Uncle Mac” MacKrel, Morgan Choat, Rita Reynolds, Dick McLendon and Jose Guerrero. I did a remote broadcast from the new car showrooms of Colonel Luke Bolton Ford daily. Horace Logan started booking big name country acts on the “Hoedown” like George Jones, Johnny Horton, Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Bobby Helms and Donnie Young (Johnny Paycheck), Hank Locklin, Ferlin Husky, Floyd Tillman, Jim Ed Brown with Maxine and Bonnie, the Browns, Leon Payne, Margie Singleton, James O”Gwynne, Benny Barnes, Rudy Grazzel, Tommy Cassel, Ray Price with Roger Miller and many others. Horace and I did a live remote broadcast of the Fort Worth Rodeo which was the only time I ever did a program like that.” “Horace is the announcer credited with coining the phrase, “Elvis has left the building”. That happened in 1956, when Elvis came back to Shreveport, Louisiana to fulfill the terms of his Hayride contract and performed at Hirsch Coliseum to a sold out audience. The audience wanted more of Elvis and to quite them, Horace announced, “Elvis has left the building”. After Elvis became the Super Star, King of Rock and Roll, each Elvis concert ended with the phrase, “Elvis has left the building.” “Horace, Frank Page and the other announcers during the Shreveport Elvis era, were at the right station, on the right stage show, at the right time to experience first hand, one of the phenomenal events of the 20th century. Horace was there when KWKH did the very first “Louisiana Hayride” broadcast in 1948. He loved to tell stories about his “Hayride Days”. His book entitled, “Elvis, Hank and Me” brought him to Books- A- Million in Bossier City for an autograph party. I stopped by to visit and reminisce about old times. It was good to see him again. When I asked why he did not include more in his book about our days in Ft. Worth, he told me that was not a good time in his life. After reading his book, I was astonished to find out that you can work side by side with someone, as I did with Horace, and never know what it really going on in his life.” “My favorite story on Horace deals with the popularity of Elvis in those early years. Elvis was so hot, they could do a show with just about anybody, put Elvis on the bill and have a sell out crowd. The “Hayride” went on the road taking full advantage of the popularity of this young entertainer. They did a series of shows in Texas with a big finale in Austin, Texas and the acts that were to appear argued about who was to get TOP BILLING on the posters that were to be put out. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we used to put out posters to tell of coming events. On this show, there was such an argument, that Horace decided to put an end to all the bickering and had posters printed that read, “ LOUISIANA HAYRIDE LIVE SHOW - STARRING HORACE LOGAN.” Of course all the other acts that were on the show had their name displayed also. In my world-famous radio DJ days, all of my old posters said, “Dandy” Don Logan presents, at the top, but the star’s name was always in BIG BOLD TYPE, not my name. I ribbed Horace about having the big head during that time.” “Many have asked if we are related. I was a pretty popular DJ at KCUL when Horace came to Fort Worth and he always told his audience, I was his grandfather. We both tried to search our family tree and claim Josh Logan, who was from Mansfield, Louisiana, as a relative.” “Horace gave Mary Logan, my wife, the Elvis fan, a copy of a management contract he signed with Elvis, so apparently, for a while anyway, he was Elvis’ manager. On one of Mary’s collectible tapes of some of the “Hayride Shows”, I can hear Frank Page’s first introduction of Elvis and later introductions with Horace. I noticed, from listening, that Elvis never developed a rapport with Horace as he did with Frank Page. That could have been because of the contract. They always told me that in a horse race, you can always tell when the track announcer has money on a horse, there is a certain sound in the voice. It was evident that Horace had an interest in his personal appearances. When Elvis started doing shows with Grand Ole Opry stars, I’m sure Horacefelt just like I felt when our big recording star at Paula Records, John Fred, left us to go to another label, or when Nat Stuckey left us for RCA Victor. Horace was promoting at least 6 personal appearance weekly with Elvis and the Hayride cast. Of course, we also know that Colonel Tom Parker took over Elvis’ career about this time also. Horace left KWKH and the Hayride later. Several musicians and singers went with him to California.” Recollections by Don Logan (c)2009 - Media may use with permission for publicity on Hoss Logan or Dandy Don Logan. |
| RALPH EMERY “At Paula Records, we had released several country records with little success, when Frank Page brought us Nat Stuckey. Nat was the last major star to come from the Louisiana Hayride and I believe, had his greatest success with us at Paula, even though he went on to RCA Victor, MCA Records and others. The first Paula record Ralph Emery ever played for us was by Nat Stuckey.” “When “Smiling” Eddie Hill left WSM, every DJ in the country sent audition tapes to WSM to try for that night time position, even though the show didn’t peak, audience wise, until after Ralph got there. Having lived in Hibbing, Minnesota and Montgomery, West Virginia, I was familiar with the coverage of WSM radio. Eddie Hill had a lot of funny stuff each night and there were about a dozen DJs around the country who would sit up nights listening to Hill, copy down the material and do it the next day on their daytime radio shows in their local area. One of those jocks was my friend, Marvin McCullough in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Marvin also sent an audition tape to WSM. T. Tommy Cutrer wanted the job and was hired later by WSM, but he was injured in a car wreck returning to Shreveport and was unable to report to work. After he recuperated, they did hire him again. As history will note, Ralph Emery got the job and the Eddie Hill slot. He did not try to copy Hill, did it his way and turned the show into an event of unbelievable proportions. Hill, incidently, stayed in the Nashville market, but at WLAC, not WSM. The Nashville community took Emery to their heart and they kept most of the time tied up with major Nashville artists on the interview part of his show. Emery also did local Nashville TV before his really big nationally successful cable network show.” “Needless to say, our Paula Records were not being played on Ralph’s show. There was a lot of product out and every label around was clamoring to be on the show or get records played. In Nashville at the time, you probably had 50 active record labels. My attempt to get Nat’s first record played fell by the wayside. Larry Page called Ralph on the second release and Ralph agreed to play the record a little. When our release of “Sweet Thang” came out, Ralph was one of the early jocks to play it and it was a tremendous hit.” “We would later have other acts on his radio show and TV show. I was always impressed at his casual way of handling things that came up in the studios. Visiting artists would sometimes read commercials for him, and his live radio talk/music show was one of the most entertaining I have ever heard.” “Emery had never worked a market the size of Nashville, and as I recall the first time I heard him, his first week on the air at WSM, I was not that impressed. I believe, he had worked small market radio in the Tennessee area. His marriage to Skeeter Davis enhanced him with the Nashville community of musicians and he matured quickly with the pace that management had put him under. I probably thought I was a better DJ than he at the time he first came to WSM, but I wasn’t, as I realized one night, years later, when one of our artists was being interviewed. There were call ins on the phone from listeners, another phone call at the same time from a top country star who had the number one national record that week wanting to talk on the air, the engineer giving him instructions, a live commercial to do and somebody in the audience spilled their coke. That was a lot to keep up with and Ralph was always the master.” “Ralph Emery has been in the movies, national TV and has written several books. I never saw an arrogant side to him and he is certainly a credit to his trade and his main-stream professionalism helped country music blossom. Somewhere along the way, someone decided that he had talked to enough stars and remembered the little personal things they would tell him, that he was an authority on country music. If you wanted a popular hit, you had to get on the Dick Clark program. If you wanted a country hit, Ralph Emery had to play it.” Recollections by Don Logan (c)2009 - Media may use with permission for publicity on Ralph Emery or Dandy Don Logan. MARVIN McCULLOUGH “When my mom told me that Marvin had passed away in 1998, I knew that if I ever wrote some of my memoirs, I would have to mention “Marvelous” Marvin. He was not the best DJ I ever knew, Glenn O’Neal had a much better voice and personality, but Marvin put together an image, not entirely his own, on KWHN in Fort Smith, Arkansas. My home town, Poteau, Oklahoma, is nearby. I won’t say Marvin and I were best of friends, but I always respected the local image he built, an image that no one could touch, as far as I know. He called his female fans his “sugar boogers” and everything good was called a “gravy-sopping” success.” “When Smiling Eddie Hill left WSM in Nashville, I am told that Marvin applied, sent an audition tape and was turned down or maybe, never even contacted. His Fort Smith following was good, but Fort Smith was a small town. When Nashville did not pan out, he moved lock-stock-and barrel to the airwaves of KRMG radio in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The signal was good on a clear night and he did well there for many years. He told listeners on the air that KRMG stood for “Kissing Ruins Many Girls”. He was a pretty fair singer also, so he started recording on Capitol Records and then several small labels and had several regional hits. He also worked for KFMJ Radio in Tulsa. When I was vice-president of Paula Records, I tried to work out a recording deal, but he opted to go with Bobby Boyd at Boyd Records, an Oklahoma based label.” “After I left the recoding industry and became a bureaucrat, my mother in one of our regular phone conversations, told me that Marvin was working for the radio station in Poteau, Oklahoma. Many of his catch phrases, I used in my radio career, like “It’s 1:15, Josephine..that’s what time it is Liz”. There was one phrase he lifted from Smiling Eddie Hill that went, “Any similarity between this and a radio program is purely “co-inky dinkil”(coincidental). I pulled his phrase, “Bass-ackwards” (backwards) on my show one day and almost lost my job over it. In my early days in Fort Smith, Arkansas radio when I was doing live singing shows on KWHN, Marvin was in Tulsa then, Glenn O’Neal, called me aside and called to my attention some of the similarities between Marvin and I, that I was doing on the air, and I agreed that I would be more “Don Logan” in the future and less “Marvin”.” “When I got my full time gig at KTCS Radio in Fort Smith, Arkansas and did the Beverly’s Drive Inn afternoon rock and roll show, it was all me, “Dandy” Don Logan, no one else. That’s why I think the show was so successful. It was real. There was nothing to copy from because no one had done it before. I was making it up as I went. That was the first time that I felt the power of radio.” “I started this phase of my life, as a singer, at a very late stage. I knew when it was time for me to get out of radio and I left. I heard Marvin on the air one time after he returned to his home area from his years in Tulsa radio and I heard in him, the lack of enthusiasm that the younger guys and girls have nowadays. Marvin and I both had that kind of enthusiasm for radio when we were young. When my songs become tired and I become so outdated that the public no longer wants to hear what I am saying, I hope I know when that time comes, so I can quit.” “Linda Seubold of the Fort Smith Times Record wrote several nice articles about McCullough and I was happy to learn that before his stroke, the honky-tonking, ladies man and former leader of the “Baloney Bandits” had found religion. His stroke was the bad kind, the worst kind for a radio man, it not only debilitated him, but took his voice.” Recollections by Don Logan (c)2009 - Media may use with permission for publicity on Marvin McCullough or Dandy Don Logan - Linda Seubold excerpts used by permission from the Fort Smith Southwest Times Record TOMMY SANDS Shreveport, Louisiana has been the litmus test for so many people who went on to bigger and better things. Larry King of CNN, was the track announcer at nearby Louisiana Downs. People say you could always tell from his voice, when he had money on a horse. T. Tommy Cutrer was a local DJ who went to Nashville and became a well known figure at WSM. Elvis Presley got his start on his way to becoming the King of Rock and right here. Van Cliburn lived in Shreveport when he performed with the Moscow Symphony. George Carlin worked for local radio when he was stationed at nearby Barksdale AFB. Hank Williams Junior was born in Shreveport. Tommy Adrian Sands and I were both born in the same year. He in Chicago and I in California. While living in Houston, Tommy became a youthful 12 year old disc jockey. In 1951 he cut his first record and by the following year he had attracted the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, who signed the youngster to a contract with the giant RCA records. Tommy Sands came to Shreveport and was very successful here. He worked with my friend and former program director, the late Vern Stierman. They would knock out windshields of brand new cars during live TV commercials for a car dealership on early local TV. Sands was also on the Louisiana Hayride show. While I was a rock and roll DJ in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Tommy Sands became a “Singing Idol.” That year he was given the title role in a Kraft television play called “The Singing Idol.” He had his biggest hit ever with a song called “Teen-Age Crush” from that show. It stopped in the charts at number two, but, overnight, he became a very popular act. In April, while still a teenager, he was featured on the television show “This Is Your Life. He continued to record songs for Capitol and enjoyed the life of a singing idol. Colonel Parker also signed another young singer who become prominent nationally in 1956, Elvis Presley. Comparisons between Presley and Sands were inevitable. Both had been managed by Parker. Both burst on the scene in a lavish, grand style, and both went to Hollywood to make movies. The story I have always heard was, Kraft wanted Elvis and the Colonel gave them Sands. Both Elvis and Sands went to Hollywood to make movies. Tommy did “Sing Boy Sing“ and Elvis did “Love Me Tender.” Sands should have become the super actor. He had trained as an actor when he was in school, and did a professional job in his film. His recording of the song from that flick “Sing Boy Sing” became his third and last top forty tune. He concentrated more on films, appearing in “Mardi Gras” with Pat Boone and “Love In A Goldfish Bowl.” In 1960, he starred in Disney's remake of “Babes In Toyland,” along with the lovely Annette Funicello, and he married Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy Jr. Tommy continued with his recording career and other film roles came along, including “The Longest Day,“ “Ensign Pulver,” and “None But The Brave.” The marriage of Tommy Sands and Nancy Sinatra dissipated and they were divorced in 1965 and her father, Frank Sinatra, I’m told, pulled all his backing and prestige from Sands. Sands did one other film, “The Violent Ones.” In later years, Sands tried for a comeback at a San Francisco entertainment land mark. Al Hart, who was program director when I first came to Louisiana, was working in the San Francisco market then and he sent a copy of the ripping review Sands got from the leading newspaper there. Vern Stierman and I were both appalled at the tenacity of the review when we read it. Vern, more so than I, because he knew Sands personally, having worked side by side with him at one of the local stations. Sands went into semi-retirement, moving to Hawaii. He opened a nightclub and found time to appear in several episodes of the popular television program “Hawaii Five-O.” At the turn of the century, Tommy Sands made an appearance at a rock-and-roll festival in England and he was featured in the television special “Hollywood Rocks The Movies.” PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS (c)2009 - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION FOR PUBLICITY ON TOMMY SANDS OR DANDY DON LOGAN JERRY KENNEDY “I can’t say that I really know Jerry Kennedy. He has always been around and I have long admired his work and guitar licks. In the old days, you would constantly find him in the shadow of Shelby Singleton. I met him in Ft Worth, Texas along with Shelby and Margie Singleton. When I first came to KEEL, Shelby was making some fantastic recordings on the artists at Mercury Records and Jerry Kennedy was the music brain behind that combination.” “Shelby advanced up the executive ladder of Mercury Records and when Smash Records was formed, Jerry Kennedy was a driving force and became a vice-president of a record company, like me, except Mercury Records was much bigger. When Johnny Horton died, Johnny’s guitar player Tommy Tomlinson suffered serious injuries and had to have a leg amputated and was in Schumpert Hospital for some time. During the Christmas season of 1960, Buddy Blake and his wife Cille, Shelby and Margie Singleton and I went up to Tommy’s room at Schumpert and cheered him up. In 1960, nun’s were all over that hospital, but we managed to smuggle a bottle of “you know what” in. I don’t remember if Tommy drank or not, but I remember that I did. Nun’s and nurses kept coming down to Tommy’s room, checking on us and telling us that there were sick people around and we should “shusssh”. ”When Tommy got back on his feet, or in his case, his prosthesis, Jerry Kennedy got him into the recording studio and let him do what he loved. They formed the guitar duo of “Tom and Jerry” and released a record that they had actually started recording before the accident. The material was great and I thought the name was a sure-fire win. It’s still great material, but the album never made it to the top of the charts. It was the most wonderful rehabilitation possible for the late Tommy Tomlinson.” “Jerry Kennedy left Shreveport around 1962 and has been tremendously successful in the music industry. In all the Nashville sessions I did when I was a vice-president at Paula Records, I attempted to get Jerry on several occasions, but his schedule kept him from being readily available. Jerry stepped out from behind the shadow of Shelby Singleton a long time ago, while the Stan Lewis shadow continues to hang over me.” Recollections by Don Logan (c)2009 - Media may use with permission for publicity on Jerry Kennedy or Dandy Don Logan JAMES BURTON “James owned and ran the famous river front night club, “James Burton’s Rock and Roll Café” here in Shreveport. His music career began in this city many years ago. If Jerry Kennedy’s guitar solo on Roy Orbison’s, “Oh, Pretty Woman” on Monument Records is a guitar player’s solo masterpiece, then Burton’s hot licks on “Susy Q” by Dale Hawkins on Chess Records is a guitar player’s hot lick masterpiece. Both are fantastic and are recorded forever in the annuals of music history and no one can ever take that away.” “To become the super star, he had to leave Shreveport. He left when Horace Logan’s family moved to California. His association with a very young Ricky Nelson and his performances on the Nelson Family TV series made him a household name and easily recognized.” “Of course the world best knows him as Elvis Presley’s guitar man. James performed with Elvis until Elvis died in 1977. Burton is still an innovative instrumentalist and was one of the featured musicians on “Elvis - The Concert” which featured filmed images of Elvis Presley on a large video screen, with vocal soundtrack and a live orchestra playing in synchronization with the vocals.” “In 2005, the city of Shreveport and a group called “Friends of the Municipal” gave James the ultimate acclaim, by placing a statue of him alongside his former boss, Elvis Presley, at the entrance of the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium.” James Burton is the host of the James Burton Guitar Festival. Recollections by Don Logan (c)2009 - Media may use with permission for publicity on James Burton or Dandy Don Logan TILLMAN FRANKS “Tillman Franks became the producer of the “Louisiana Hayride” show when Horace Logan left KWKH and went to California.” “When I was in country radio, I played the Mercury records of Johnny Horton. Tillman was Johnny’s manager and got him a contract with Columbia Records and Horton’s career skyrocketed. An artist by the name of Jimmie Driftwood, came down to do the Hayride from Arkansas. He did folk songs and had found an old tune called, “The Battle of New Orleans.” The Hayride audience responded to this song, much the same way as they responded to “Lovesick Blues” when Hank Williams sang it and “That’s All Right” when Elvis sang that tune. Tillman and Johnny picked up on this and, as it was a public domain song, they rushed it into session and cut amost fantastic hit called “The Battle of New Orleans.” Driftwood also put it out on RCA Records.” “Back then, I did not know a lot about the record business and how it interfaced with radio. I’m driving home after work one day and I am listening to Gordon Mc Lendon’s radio station in Dallas, Texas, KLIF. Art Nelson played a KLIF exclusive and it was a new Johnny Horton record called “The Battle of New Orleans.” I called the Columbia distributor the next day and asked why I had not been sent a copy of the record. I was told it was not released yet. The phone rang off the wall with people requesting it, KLIF was the only station that had it to play. I knew who Tillman Franks was at the time, but I did not know that he was Horton’s manager. I got the record a week later, it was the fastest selling record ever, up to that time, in the Dallas-Ft. Worth market, but I did not play it.” “Horace Logan became the program director, the record was going number one and he booked Johnny for the “Cowtown Hoedown” and we began to play the record. The stage show for that night was a sell-out. After I ventured into the record business, I understood why Columbia Records gave the exclusive to KLIF. The “Exclusive” did build a bonfire under a new record release and many new artists and song hits were established that way. This song became a fantastic smash hit.” “When Tillman and Johnny came over to Ft. Worth for the “Hoedown”, I was involved in a special promotion after the stage show with a live broadcast from Luke Bolton Ford and at is the first time I was formally introduced to Tillman and Johnny. They explained that the exclusive with KLIF was something that Columbia did, they just wanted a hit record and appreciated our playing the new Horton record and his Mercury and Columbia records in the past.” “After I came to Shreveport, I was one of the invited guests for a short bus ride when David Houston got his new Silver Eagle touring bus. Tillman was David’s manager at the time and that was right after they had the big hit, “Almost Persuaded”. “When I was vice-president of Paula Records, we were active in all fields, including country and we released several recordings by The Tillman Franks Singers that Tillman and David Houston produced.” Tillman died in 2006. Recollections by Don Logan (c)2009 - Media may use with permission for publicity on Tillman Franks or Dandy Don Logan NAT STUCKEY “I consider the late Nat Stuckey as our truly great country find. Nat was a native of Atlanta and a DJ, like me and one of us was one day older than the other, so I always felt we had a lot in common. We also worked for opposing stations in the same time slot. It is true that we had Mickey Gilley, Joe Stampley, Governor Jimmie Davis, Randy Travis and Tony Douglas on our record label, but Nat was our big, consistent seller that WE developed. Joe, Mickey and Randy became super stars after they left our label. Jimmie was a super star before he came to us, back when he was a young man, before he went into politics. He was Governor of Louisiana two different times. He had a movie made about his life and he was still in demand and loved by many when he recorded for us. I also had Charlie Daniels with Paula, but he was mostly producing pop product for us back then. It’s true Nat had already been on MGM records and he had already written some fine tunes, but it was our Paula Releases that established him as a legit artist. ” “ When I worked in Fort Worth, I played the first record ever made by Willie Nelson that was less than two minutes in length. I think this was the first record Willie ever recorded and someone had sent me the record and I found that I could use it as a tool to get up to the news on the hour easily, because it was so short. When Willie showed up in Fort Worth sometime later, I kidded him, while having a cup of coffee in the Fortune Arms restaurant with Willie and Ken “Pee Wee” Short, that if he would cut records less than two minutes in length, I could always find a place to play them. Most of the records back then were two minutes and thirty seconds in length. I remembered this in the record business and that’s the kind of record we cut on Nat, less than two minutes. Frank Page did all the producing on Nat’s records and they were known in the industry as “Juke Box Hits”. Juke Box operators gave us our early sales and then the consumer sales would follow.” “We were not the first label Nat Stuckey recorded for. When we wanted to put out the song “Pop A Top”, we could not. Nat was still under contract to MGM and they wouldn’t budge on letting him out of it. So, Jim Ed Brown recorded it and had the big hit on RCA. Nat wrote that song and was a fine songwriter. “Sweet Thang” was our first hit on Paula by Nat. There was a last minute decision to release this record. I had a release already mastered when Frank, Nat and Joe Stampley, whose band did the back up for this spur of the moment session, out voted me and we made “Sweet Thang”, the next release. Stan Lewis, the label owner thought it was my decision. The idea for this song was born in the studios of KWKH. Nat put the finishing touches to the song late one night and the next day, he rushed to the recording studio and cut the tune in the middle of a Joe Stampley and the Uniques session. The Uniques received no label credit for the hit. I always thought the song was kind of a rip-off of “Lovesick Blues”, the Hank Williams crowd pleaser. “Sweet Thang” was certainly a crowd pleaser for Nat throughout his career. We did not have the publishing on most of Nat’s songs. His wife, Ann, was very adamant about that and together they built a very fine publishing company which they sold to Buddy Killen at Tree Publishing later, but we did help them get covers out on the song, thinking it would only help us develop an artist we believed in. Dean, Marc and Larry, the Newbeats did a version of Sweet Thang on Hickory Records. Loretta Lynn and Ernest Tubb did a version on Decca, Jerry Kennedy did a version with Jerry Lee Lewis and his sister Linda Gail, and there were many more covers that I can’t recall.” “I produced the last album that Nat did for Paula and I enjoyed the event immensely. The only thing that would come close to the satisfaction I felt over this session, would be the session that I did on Tony Douglas, when we cut a song called “His and Hers”. Nat did a knocked out version of “Mental Revenge” and the session included a string section. Nat probably would have stayed with us at Paula, had he not met the RCA people in Nashville and Chet Atkins said to Nat, “You sound like Jim Reeves”. That was what made Nat want to make the switch. Our Paula Records sold well, making the charts and establishing the name Nat Stuckey as a certified country entertainer. I never thought he had the success with RCA and MCA that he had with us. His hits with the major labels continued to be the jukebox type hit. Nat was the last major star produced by the Louisiana Hayride show and it is regretful that he never had a super smash ballad to showcase his excellent singing voice. Nashville was always cool to us at Paula. The success we had with Nat opened doors for us. Ralph Emery would talk to us on the air about Paula Records and Cheryl Poole performed on Emery’s Nashville TV show many times. Buddy Killen, Charlie Daniels, Scotty Moore, Ray Stevens and Cowboy Jack Clement produced some great sessions for us.” “Killen was a particular favorite of ours. He identified with us a little more than the others as he was active in other fields besides country. I appreciated him because he, like me, sometimes had to create a finished master tape by splicing the good parts together. That was what Buddy did on the biggest Joe Tex hits. I had to do the same thing many times, with some of our artists. Buddy Killen was a friend to Nat and Ann Stuckey also, buying their publishing company before Nat died. Nat died on cancer in 1988.” “Coming from radio and being familiar with advertising and advertising agencies, Nat was also active in cutting commercial jingles. I believe he was heard on Pepsi and Bud Light national spots, which is an accomplishment in itself. There were others, I’m sure, that I was never aware of.” PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS (c)2009 - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION IN PUBLICITY OF NAT STUCKEY OR DANDY DON LOGAN SHELBY SINGLETON “I first met Shelby when he was promoting records by his wife, Margie Singleton and other product for Pappy Daily in Houston, Texas. When I made the move from Dallas, Texas to work at KEEL in Shreveport, Louisiana, he was on the verge of becoming an important official with Mercury Records.” “During his tenure, there was a multitude of hits on Diana Washington, Brook Benton and others. He was one of the first record company executives to see the potential in releasing foreign artists, who could sing in English, on an American label. Capital Records and the Beatles were the first to successfully do that trick. As fate would have it, one day Mercury and Shelby parted company and he started SSS International and moved to New York City.” “When “Judy in Disguise” went number one on the charts and we were in New York for the Johnny Carson Show, we stopped by his New York City office to reminisce about old times. Buddy Blake, a former DJ and acquaintance of mine, was working with him at the time. Buddy, I and Wolfman Jack, at one time, provided all the taped DJ programs for the infamous Mexican border radio station, XERF. They had several things going and great plans for the future, but it was evident to all of us, that Shelby was not a happy person in the New York City atmosphere. Shortly thereafter, he moved his complete business to Nashville and did fantastic things. “Harper Valley PTA” was one of the early smash hits his label came up with after the move.” One thing that Shelby did in his success, that I appreciate, was to sign an aging Patti Page to his label. Page was the best-selling female singer during the 1950s, and was a record producers dream and in many ways defined the decade of pop singers trying to stay commercial. Her novelty-ridden adult pop approach to throw-a-way hits like "The Doggie in the Window", “Mocking Bird Hill” and "I Went to Your Wedding", proved very successful She sang a wide range of popular standard material and her own share of novelty fluff and many pop standards that she introduced on her own. As the fall of classic adult pop kept spreading, she remained a chart force into the mid-'60s. Page made her last recordings with Shelby's label. When Sam Phillips sold his SUN Records, it was to Shelby S. Singleton. Recollections by Don Logan (c)2009 - Media may use with permission for publicity on Shelby Singleton or Dandy Don Logan. |
| Artie Shaw, Woody Herman and Glenn Miller - In my ill-fated attempt to return to radio in the 1980s, I worked at several radio stations trying to find a niche for my out of date style of radio. I worked for KRMD, which was the country music station of the year for three years running, when Smoky Hyde and Jerry Black owned it. My ratings were nothing great and I was a little weak in the female 20 to 40 age ratings and I tell everyone they ran me off. I became the station manager for KTAL FM next. They were a 100,000 watt mono station and I did not do them much good as far as ratings went. We changed formats several times, but nothing worked. They went stereo several years later , changed formats and progressed into a viable force. My next stop was as the DJ at Sansone’s Supper Club, the premier eatery in the area at the time. Vito Cefalu ran the place with Mr. Tony.That job led to a part time radio job at KBCL radio which was owned by Randy Alewyne. We followed a big band format there and the station had great possibilities. It was here, that I worked with the orchestras of Artie Shaw and Woody Herman. Randy also booked the Glenn Miller Orchestra. These groups played at the Crystal Ballroom at the place then known as The Sheraton on West 70th street. They had salvaged the chandelier from the old Washington Youree Hotel, which had been demolished, and the beautiful chandelier hung proudly from the ceiling. Glenn Miller never made it back from WWII, so he had been gone a long time before we brought his band to Shreveport. They arrived by bus, just like they traveled in the old days. The old band members, of course, had been replaced by fresh new young musicians. They put on a great show and the place was packed with people who came to dance. The Glenn Miller arrangements are timeless musical treasures. Both Woody Herman and Artie Shaw were in good health and still leading their own bands when I worked with them. We actually had Woody come in twice. He no longer sang a lot, but his clarinet playing was still near perfection. The first time they came in , Woody complained tirelessly about the piano we had provided for his group. A piano is the one instrument that must already be in the show room for a touring band, as it is impossible to transport the instrument with the rest of the band. So, you rent the piano from some music store and they come pick it up the next day. Nobody ever steals a piano. You don’t leave amplifiers, guitars, drums or horns behind, because they will be stolen by somebody, but I have never heard of a piano being snatched. When Jerry Lee Lewis appeared unexpectedly at the Municipal auditorium during one of our KEEL Parade of Stars shows, there was some damage done to the piano and I think the Municipal billed the station for the damage. I remember this, because I was the dum-dum who put Jerry Lee out on stage, right before the star Brenda Lee was to perform. The station wanted me to pay the damage bill. I never paid it and I don’t know if the station ever paid it or not. Anyway, back to the piano that we provided for the Woody Herman band. The tone was perfect. It was an older model, however, one leg was broken and there was visible non- leg wood attached to it to keep it level. Woody was offended by it and made no secret of it. The next time, Woody came, the music store provided the same three good leg, one bad leg piano and Woody was rather ticked off again, remarking that we gave him a piece of crap for his pianist to play on. The piano played perfectly, however, it was not the prettiest piano I had ever seen. I laughed, but Woody was really mad. I believe when Van Cliburn played the Municipal Auditorium, they provided him with a solid white piano and someone was responsible for a hefty damage deposit on it. So, understand, you don’ t put an expensive piano out on stage for just anybody, without some kind of big deposit. Anyway, as they say in show business, the show must go on and it did with the thundering herd of Woody Herman stampeding through the Crystal Ballroom as they had been doing for so many wonderful years.. I enjoyed talking to these two legends. They were as old then as I am now, and it seemed to me they did not want to reflect back to their glory days. I tried to ask Artie about his sabbaticals and semi-retirements down through the years. History records that he left the states for Mexico, and came back, put a string section in his reformed band in the early 40s and had some big Latin type hits. I was also amazed at how the music business had changed. Both Shaw and Herman were not recording as both said there was not a market for their type of recorded material anymore. They, each, had re-recorded their big hits many times for many different recording labels. My stint at KBCL ended when cutbacks were necessary. When I left KEEL to accept a vice-presidency at Paula Records, we were just about to go on the air with KEEL FM. I was putting it together with Marie Gifford Wright. I advised, stereo was the way to go, because I understood from talking to managers in other markets, that stereo would be the thing that would sell FM to the audience. I never realized how FM would totally take over the way it did. KEEL FM became KMBQ and they were successful as a good music station for many years. Bill Berkey and Vern Stierman signed that station on the air. It was KCOZ, known as “cosy” that took over the easy listening audience however, and when my thing was folding with KBCL, Jeanelle Saucier called me and had me come down to talk to Jim Reeder, the majority owner of the company. The station was in trouble. Listener habits were changing. Just like what had happened already to KBCL, the advertising dollars were not there. The KCOZ ratings were down and I was hired to get them back up. So, I became the program manager of KCOZ. Several others, including Curtis Alexander, had already tried to turn the station around and fumbled the ball. I hired my former boss Vern Stierman to bring up the PM drive numbers. I worked the morning show and I also hired the public radio station manager for a weekend show. I did big band specials. I pulled every trick I knew in the book to get the floundering station off its butt and did bring it up to a number four over all rating. That was behind the country station, KVKI, the light rock station and the black urban station. With the current audience taste and the population of Shreveport being what it is, that was the best I could do for the station. I knew it and management knew it. With the over all number four rating, they sold the station and changed the format to URBAN and have maintained that dominate position to this date. My son, David, had also joined me at KCOZ and I chose to leave before the station actually signed off the air and became KMJJ, magic radio. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. JEWEL AKENS Jewel Akens was a one hit artist who had a very popular song in the mid-60's. George Jay did some of the promotion on it or at least that was what Jewel told me back in the 70s. I had played the tune as a DJ back in 1965. Akens was born in 1940 in Houston, Texas and he enjoyed singing and had a good sounding voice for recording. His family supported him and encouraged him to move to Los Angeles, where he might get more exposure and have a better chance in the music business. Jewel took his mother's advice and moved to Los Angeles and mama was right. He quickly got a job singing background for Era Records, owned by Herb Newman. Jewel worked many recording sessions, and one day in 1965, Herb Newman handed him a song on a sheet of paper and said he wanted him to record it with a lead vocal and someone else could do the background singing this time. Akens recorded the song called “The Birds And The Bees” on the Era label and it entered the charts on February 6, 1965. Although the prevailing thrust in the pop music business at the time was British Invasion music, Akens' version of “The Birds And The Bees” became very popular over night. It remained on the charts for twelve weeks and peaked at the number three position. Jewel Akens was in demand as any star was back then when they broke the top ten. He released a similar record, “Georgie Porgie,” which did not sell nearly as well, but kept a blossoming career going. Jewel Akens, who was of mixed blood, appeared on all the hot music entertainment shows on television such as Shindig, Hullaballo, and American Bandstand. He also toured regularly with Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars. Akens has toured regularly since that time and at one time included a stirring tribute to the late Sam Cooke in most of his shows. Though his hits were few, he is a terrific performer. We signed Jewel Akens to our Paula label in the 70s and put out a couple of releases hoping the name recognition would get us another hit. We started at first to put him on the Jewel label. What a promotion party that would have been! Jewel on Jewel!! Many people remembered him from his “Birds and Bees” hit and we had limited success with the releases, but we were not able to muster up enough sales to get them charted. But, by signing him, Stan Lewis gave another recording veteran one more chance to get back into the big time. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. PHIL SPECTOR “I met Spector at record conventions, maybe once or twice. Ronnie Lewis, who ran Stan’s Record Distribution Company and his brother Stan Lewis, knew Phil on a more personal basis. I knew from the grooves of the records he was putting out, that he had a different bag from most of us and the music industry as a whole, regarded him as a good producer.” “In our early days at Paula Records, the Chess record pressing plant mastered and pressed our Paula records. They had a sound that was different. They had that kind of gritty edge to the sound. I always wanted our records to sound more natural, without that sharp edge that seems to be what establishes and creates big stars.” “Berry Gordy at Motown Records, mastered their records at a slower speed so they could get lay more bass into the record grooves, almost on the verge of distortion and guess what, the records sold like hot cakes to a hungry man.” “Phil Spector came up with what the industry called, the wall-to-wall sound. There was sound on the left track, sound on the right track and sound down the middle and it sounded like you were in the middle of a symphony orchestra playing as loud as it could.” “His big era was the 60's, however he is still going strong. In addition to the wall-to-wall sound innovation, he used full orchestral backup on rock and roll songs. It was expensive, but it paid off in big hits for him. He is credited with making, designing and recording “The Ronettes”. His wife, Ronnie, was the lead singer.” “In the 1970's he worked with superstars John Lennon and George Harrison in the studio. There are many Phil Spector stories told by many people in the music industry, however he probably has not done half of all the weird things they say he has done. His former wife, Ronnie Spector, in her book, says he threatened to put a contract out on her if she left their marriage. Of course, after reading Priscilla Presley’s book about Elvis, I have concluded, that ex-wives don’t speak highly of their former husbands. It is not unusual in the music business to say things like “I’ll have my friends in Chicago or New Orleans pay you a visit”. You don’t really mean it, you just use it to get the other persons full attention. However, I did here the one about Phil pulling a gun on John Lennon and firing one shot into the soundproofing of the studio they were recording in. Whether it’s true or not, Spector would be the only one left to know, for sure.” ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. B. J. THOMAS “ I was one of the early jocks to play his material. I heard about his first record from Bob White at KILT Radio in Houston. I played it but not much happened, however a later cover of the old Hank Williams record “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” did remarkably well in my area. His band at the time was a group called “The Triumphs”. Steve Tyrell, who worked our area for Scepter-Wand, leased the master and released it nationally. It hit the charts the first week out on Scepter with a bullet. B. J. and the band never really got along I’m told and they split before the record became a hit. B.J. got a taste of success early in his career with Dick Clark tours and the works.” I was in New York City in early 1968 when “Judy” was number one on the charts to do the Johnny Carson television show from radio city music hall and we experienced no problems or racial tension in our week there. We went so far as to go to a nightclub in Harlem without incident. B.J. did not have our luck, when later in 1968, after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot to death by a sniper, he was attacked by a black desk clerk at the motel where he was staying. He received a knife wound and was hospitalized. He was in New York City to do a television show promoting his release of “Eyes of a New York Woman” and “Hooked on a Feeling”. His two most famous songs that most fans will remember were “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song”. Huey Meaux, who was associated with Mickey Gilley when we first signed him to a contract was also associated with B.J. Thomas in his early recordings. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. LARRY MORTON “Larry is a talented guitar picker who played guitar with “The Nashville Brass”. As I have known him since I was a youngster and he was guitar man on a lot of my recording sessions when I was a vice-president at Paula Records, I would not feel right about not mentioning him.” “I once was the lead guitar player in Fort Smith, Arkansas for the Ann and Jim White band. On Saturday nights, we would all do the KWHN radio broadcast before going to the club. On the broadcast one Saturday night, a new act brought a guitar player named Larry Morton with him. The show ran over and the act did not get on this first show. Ann asked Larry if he wanted to come by the club and sit in. Larry was dying to play, so he came by and blew all of us away. Here was a shoe salesman by day and nobody had heard of him before, but he could play licks that no one had ever heard. Needless to say, I lost my job as lead guitar man”. “Jim White, Ann and Larry Morton moved to Shreveport, Louisiana when I was vice-president of Paula Records and I used Larry on most of my sessions in Nashville, Tyler, Dallas, Shreveport and Muscle Shoals. Jim White changed his name to Jim Mundy and had a string of country hits for ABC Paramount. Ann is a very good songwriter. When Larry moved from Shreveport, he joined the Nashville Brass”. He and his family now work out of the Branson, Missouri area. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. MORRIS LEVY “ Morris Levy was the founder of Roulette Records and was in the industry for more than forty years. His had many hit artists and songs. One of his groups brought to light and to court, the fact that some songwriters give away a part of their song to get it recorded. That is no longer a secret. But, when Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers gave Levy a piece of one of their songs, it was a well guarded secret. Levy and Roulette turned the song into a hit. Lymon failed to follow up with another hit, she he sued to get the song back. The song was “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” Levy testified in court that he wrote part of the song, but he was no Chopin when it came to song writing.” “We called him “Moishe”, and he did wind up in jail. Levy, for years, inspired more fear than any other single record mogul in the industry. Nat Tarnopol of Brunswick Records was subpoenaed to court and was acquitted on thirty-eight counts of fraud and the conspiracy count he was found guilty on, was later overturned. Nate McCalla never made it to court, he just wound up dead. Morris Levy once published a song called “Lullaby of Birdland", when he and some mafia type people owned the Birdland Night Club. I always thought song titles were an excellent way to advertise and promote, so once, when I was recording a session on Lightnin' Hopkins, I did a song called, “728 Texas Street”, which was our record company address in Shreveport, Louisiana and another song called, “Stan, the Hip, Hit Record Man”, which of course, was my boss. Morris Levy at his peak, owned or had a piece of almost 30,000 song copyrights.” ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. AL HART He was the hand picked program director of KEEL when I first arrived in Louisiana and the enthusiastic and entertaining morning man. A talented actor, starring in many local theatre productions and possessing a very fine singing and radio voice. He had one Mercury national release that was a first rate production, complete with strings. He also had several regional record releases on smaller labels. Hart was responsible for teaching me a lot of stuff about radio that I was unaware of. My jobs in the past were strictly "give the boy the microphone and let him sell the spots". Hart, through the late Vern Stierman, gave me a totally new insight into radio. Vern and I became good working comrades and I always respected him for the time he spent with me going over the quality broadcasting techniques Hart demanded. When our station was sold to Lin Broadcasting, Al went with Richard Wilcox to open up a new McLendon radio station on the coast. Luck was not with the old Scotsman on this new venture and the new west-coast radio station fizzled. Wilcox worked his way back to Louisiana, but Hart went on to have a very distinguished career in West Coast radio, working the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets. Al Hart was always a quality broadcaster and he instilled in me the same kind of desire. One time when I was doing some taped programs for Larry Brandon when he and Bob Smith (Wolfman Jack) were first starting out at XERF down in Mexico, I was aboard, but quickly assessed that some of the questionable things they were doing on the air was below the individual standards I perceived myself as having to live up to. I started doing my tapes in the voice and persona of E. Peabody Rasmussen to fulfill my contract with them. Buddy Blake and I were both making the tapes to be used on the air down there and some of the tacky things they did, quickly turned me away from something that could cost me my job and prestige at the very popular station I was with. Extra money was not that important to me at the time. I knew where the butter was coming from on my bread and I have always tried to be a quality broadcaster, and I knew in my heart “this is not for me“. Hart’s idea of quality and truthfulness in broadcasting became my cup of tea and I savored it through my career in radio. With KCBS in the Bay Area, Al Hart was a prestigious broadcaster with 35 years on the air to his credit before retiring. His achievements were many and he received many awards individually and with the likes of John Madden and others. In his later life he became a champion for a motor neuron disease, known as ALS, which was first identified in 1869 with a cure, cause and means of control still unknown to modern medicine. The disease is commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's disease. The late Marie Gifford-Wright, the former general-manager of KEEL radio, who championed Hart's acting ability, had in her possession, the full page newspaper ad announcing the retirement of Al Hart. It was impressive to say the least. We were indeed fortunate, to have worked with this man who went on to become a San Francisco "Icon". Just about any Bay Area resident will readily know and remember, Al Hart, anchor of the San Francisco-based KCBS All News 74 morning radio program. He retired after being with the station since 1966. He was known by his more than 600,000 Bay Area fans as "THE VOICE" of the station. When Hart left the Shreveport area, Vern Stierman became the program director. Vern, with Marie Gifford-Wright's approval, offered me the morning time slot and the assistant program director position. I did not know if I could pull off a successful show or fail, because I was well-aware of the immense talent of Al Hart and what a legion of fans he left behind. After all, my first time slot, that of the newly departed Ron Baxley, did not go so well and Rusty Reynolds came riding in to save the afternoon drive-time show, so to speak. The listeners missed Hart and I struggled at first, but I kept enough of his listeners and added a few new fans on my own and the ratings exceeded even what management had hoped for and I became "the morning man", ruling supreme through mid 1966, when I made Larry Ryan the morning personality, and I left the station for the record business. I paid a visit to San Francisco, before I left KEEL to visit with Al and learn what I could about FM radio stations. There was only one FM station in town at that time and we were about to open up KEEL FM, which became KMBQ, which later became KITT, then “CAT RADIO” and now KISS radio. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS (c)2009 - MEDIA MAY USE WITH PERMISSION FOR PUBLICITY ON AL HART OR DANDY DON LOGAN BIG JOE TURNER (Shake, Rattle, and Roll) When I first started singing rock and roll songs, wanting to be different, and trying to get into the recording business, one of the first songs I did successfully before a crowd was “Shake Rattle and Roll,“ a classic recorded way back in 1953 by Big Joe Turner. The song was a jewel and it went to number one on the R&B charts. It stayed on the charts for over six months. The Joe Turner story started long before that. In 1945,he was recognized with an award for male vocalist by Esquire Magazine and he had played in many bands and was a well-known singer in the black circuit. His childhood was spent in the homes of his mother, grandmother and sister. He took to singing at an early age and his unusual voice blended into Rock, Jazz, R&B and Blues. Joe recorded “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” in New York in December 1953. The producer of that session gave Joe a gem of a song that became one of the most popular songs ever and a rock and roll classic. Just like many hit songs on the R&B charts in the 1950s and into the 1960s, this song was covered by a white performer and promoted to us young whites. It was Bill Haley and The Comets on Decca that I played on radio and most of the world remembers their version of "Shake, Rattle, And Roll." One of the most weird things I ever heard of , happened between Big Joe Tuner and Bill Haley. Some booker put both of them together on the same tour. It was a toss up as to whom would do “Shake.” Big Joe did his other hit songs and let Bill Haley do “Shake, Rattle and Roll.‘ I was filling in as a musician once during this same time with a group called the “Tech Melody-airs” and the main singer sang “Shake, Rattle and Roll” four times one night and the crowd wanted more. He was tired of doing it, so I did it twice more. Such was the popularity of this song. Big Joe Turner was a big man and he continued to have big chart records over the next few years. Songs like, "Well All Right," "Flip, Flop, And Fly," "Hide And Seek," and "Morning, Noon, And Night." Elmore James played guitar on some of those sessions. Because of these hits, Alan Freed included Joe on the tour with his show. He also appeared in the Alan Freed movies "Harlem Rock And Roll" and "Shake, Rattle, And Roll." We recorded Big Joe Turner long after his string of hits had faded and his voice had grown foggy. He had recorded for many label since his super-star days at Atlantic. Stan Lewis gave an aging R&B singer another chance at recording and possibly getting back into the charts. As I recall, we released the product on the Ronn label. Joe was no longer in his prime and the session was somewhat loose, but it was all Big Joe Turner. Recollections of a time gone by ©2009 - All Rights Reserved - Media may use with permission in publicity of Big Joe Turner or Dandy Don Logan. JUSTIN WILSON - Cajun Humorist “Some of our best selling albums on Paula Records were by Cajun Humorist, Justin Wilson. He came to us from Capitol Records. His producer was Bill Holford and for the most part, his product came to us ready to release. All of his recordings were live recordings complete with a live audience.” “I was a DJ at KEEL when I was first introduced to the works of Justin Wilson. He was a request favorite on my show and his material was on a small label. Capitol Records picked it up and released it on one of their labels.” “Wilson, like myself, worked for the State of Louisiana. He appeared on the Ed Sullivan TV Show at the height of the album’s popularity and at the height of the Sullivan dominance on TV. The sophisticated New York audience did not know what a Cajun was and they were not kind to Justin’s choice of material. He fell flat on the show, but his albums continued to sell in parts of the country and we never talked about the Sullivan show after he joined us at Paula Records. While his material was never accepted by the masses, it did very well in many different regions of the world.” “It’s ironic that as funny as he was, most people remember the late Justin Wilson for his cajun cooking show that he did for public television. His cookbook is still a very popular item.” ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. |
| COOKIE AND THE CUPCAKES Back in 1959, a businessman named George Khoury came out with what many regard as the first “Swamp Pop” hit. It was on a group that finally wound up on Paula Records, Cookie and The Cupcakes. Their song “Mathilda” (Pronounced Mah- Till - Duh) was a number one South Louisiana hit that rose to number 47 on the Billboard chart in March, 1959. Part of its popularity was the fact that you could dance the “Stroll” to it. The group was headed by Cookie Hugh Thierry, who was born near Jennings, Louisiana. They, like John Fred’s Playboys and the Boogie Kings, were a horn band. However, their recordings, for the most part, did not feature the horns. They originally recorded for Eddie Shuler’s Goldband Records. But, it was Khoury who had the big hit with “Mathilda.“ The group went through many personnel changes through the years. One of their vocalists was Little Alfred. However, through the years the remaining group has received many accolades. They remain a favorite in the Louisiana and Texas area. Paula obtained the rights to the Khoury masters and we released Cookie and The Cupcakes on Paula with the original Cookie and Shelton Dunaway vocals. We also released a few records on Little Alfred on the Jewel label. Stan also cut a new session on Cookie, Hugh Thierry, in Los Angeles, but when I left the label, we had never released that session. When I heard the session, it was lacking that South Louisiana sound, and that sound is what sold the voice of Hugh Thierry. “Mathilda” was and is a great recording, but my favorite cut of theirs has always been “Got You On My Mind.” The harmony on that cut is quite unique and exhilarating. Personal recollections ©2009 - All Rights Reserved - Media may use with permission in publicity on Cookie and the Cupcakes or Dandy Don Logan. TONY DOUGLAS (MR. NICE GUY) I first met Tony Douglas at the Cowtown Hoedown at the Majestic Theater in Fort Worth, Texas. Tony was the acknowledged star of the show, but was being challenged by Lawton Williams. He had played the Dallas “Big D” show and the Louisiana Hayride and most nights his name was on the marquee, when they did not have a big name Nashville and Shreveport star on the show. The Cowtown Hoedown recording label had been started by Jack Henderson, Kurt Meer and Uncle Hank Craig and Tony and a guy named Elvis had cut sides and released them, but the label folded quickly. Tony started making records for “Big D” Records, out of Houston, Texas, owned by the Daily family. When I was in Fort Worth, Tony made his first appearance on WSM radio on the Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree. George Jones was booked for the Hoedown two weeks after I got to the station in Fort Worth and he did not show. I think this was the second time he had done this. He sent Jack Henderson a telegram and they posted it on the ticket booth at the theater. Jack called me. I was the new jock at KCUL, but had quickly gained a following and on my way to becoming the stations highest rated DJ. He booked me for the show and put my name on the marquee and I made my premier performance. As I remember, I had a terrible cold that first night but, was enthusiastically received and I thought my singing career just might fall in place. I also became the emcee for a portion of the show along with Jack and Uncle Hank Craig. After the show each Saturday night, it was customary for all the entertainers who did not have a gig after the show, to spend some time at the bus station restaurant nearby, talking music and throwing out ideas on songs and gabbing about entertainment in general. Tony’s table always had the most people at it, so let that be a barometer for his popularity. The show itself was comparable to the Louisiana Hayride with an old theater as the backdrop. The “Big D Jamboree“, the one time I was on that show, seemed backward to me. When you walked in the admission door, there was the elevated stage on your left and you were looking into the faces of the crowd who came to be entertained. I guess that was good if you were there with someone you were not supposed to be with and your wife walked in, but I could never understand why a show as successful as that show was, felt 180 degrees out of sync with every other show I had ever seen or been on. When Horace Logan came back from California, Jack Henderson left the Cowtown Hoedown and Hoss started booking all the shows. George Jones did show up the next time he was booked. I was no longer one of the masters of ceremony and Horace became the program director and we went back to a more country format. My afternoon drive show was sold out and I did it from the showrooms of Colonel Luke Bolton Ford. KBCS in Grand Prairie had been sold to a group out of Portland, Oregon know then as KISSIN Radio. They changed the call letters of the Grand Prairie station to KKSN. I was a first time father and in search of a better future for my family which grew to include four children. Buck Buckannon offered me more money and a chance at the golden ring and I jumped at it. I hung up the guitar, kissed country music goodbye and decided to become the best DJ I could become. I played easy listening music, rock and roll and a lot of black music on my Dallas show. I had a good sounding, well listened to program, but the station was unable to make the money it needed to stay afloat and things were falling apart, when Gordon McClendon called, sending me to his national program director Don Keyes, who hired me for the Shreveport market. When my radio career ended in Shreveport, I became a vice-president of Paula Records. I was elated when I found out that Stan Lewis had signed Tony Douglas and The Shrimpers to a contract. I got to produce many of his recordings. Tony has a fine clear recording voice, that I always wanted to take to another notch, but he would have nothing to do with any sound but country and he was right. He stayed right in the middle of a big circuit of regular personal appearances and his fans turned out in droves to let his group entertain. Nashville acts had trouble filling Panther Hall in Fort Worth. Tony filled it with ease. An Opry show in some small Texas town on the same night as a Tony Douglas dance, and the Opry stars would shut down early and come on by and sit in with Tony. Such was his enormous popularity. Like Stan Lewis, Tony would rather be a big fish in a small pond, than a little fish in a big pond. Tony was always true to his country roots and I commend him for that. Most of his sessions, I cut with the personnel in his band, as he had a great bunch of musicians playing with him. Tony was known to make extra money with what was called a “cuss kitty.” While riding in Tony’s Cadillac on the way to gig, one did not cuss or he paid the “cuss kitty‘ a fine. Musicians now would probably laugh at such a thing, but back then, if you played with Tony Douglas, you did not cuss. Of course, Tony was also know to say things in conversation that would make the musician want to cuss, but you always paid the “cuss kitty.“ My favorite country song I ever cut on anyone, was in Nashville with the best musicians I could hire and a warm, enthusiastic vocal by Tony Douglas. We cut a song called “His ‘n Hers“ and Tony delivered it with a powerful punch. It’s a recording I still listen to over and over. Tony will tell you that he threatened to walk out of the session on me and he is telling the truth, as always. I had deliberately left the steel guitar out of my roster of musicians. The other musicians, graciously took a break, without pay, as we sent out for one of Nashville’s finest steel men. When the session resumed, Tony knew he had argued and won out over the issue of a steel guitar being on the session. He was right, I was wrong. But, you know, that feeling of victory, he must have felt, caused him to sing the song twice as good on my session with him as he did on an earlier recording of the song for Vee Jay Records. Tony is still active with his Cochise Recording label at 205 Hillside Drive, Athens, TX 75751 where you can find many of his albums. His phone number is (903) 675-4170 or you may contact him by email: sales@tonydouglas.com Personal recollections ©2009 - All Rights Reserved - Media may use with permission in publicity on Tony Douglas Dandy Don Logan. RONNIE KOLE Of all the artists we recorded, when I was a vice-president at Paula Records, perhaps the most talented of that group, never had a super hit with us. I’m talking about pianist Ronnie Kole and the Ronnie Kole Trio. We did their first session in Chicago and Stan Lewis came away with a fine sounding album. It was quality and we knew from the start that the only way we could make it go was to get the prime middle-of-the-road stations, also known as easy listening stations, to program it. We released a single and the album simultaneously. Kole was an established New Orleans entertainer who came complete with his own club, called Kole’s Korner, where he and the trio performed regularly. We delegated one person in our company, Jo Wyatt, to bring these MOR stations in to play the product. We bubbled under the charts for several weeks and actually invaded the charts, but we were never able to get where we needed to be. At the time, there were a group of stations called the Gavin Stations, and they were the prime factors in making the easy listening chart. We worked the record for a long time and finally brought all the Gavin stations in on the record, but never had all of them, at the same time. If we had been successful with Ronnie Kole, I think Stan, with his love of the big band, may have taken us more in this direction. Ronnie Kole performs mostly music of a higher note now, giving a limited number of concerts yearly. It has been said of the pianist, “he is a true bon vivant. In addition to being a fine pianist and magnificent entertainer, he is one of the most generous individuals I know. Whenever he has worked on my festivals, the response has been fantastic." Recollections by Don Logan ©2009 - All Rights Reserved - Media may use with permission in publicity on Ronnie Kole or Dandy Don Logan. RUSTY REYNOLDS When I first arrived in Shreveport, Louisiana, the mid-day personality was Rusty Reynolds. I always thought he sounded very much like Art Nelson, but with the success Reynolds has had, people probably now say that Art Nelson sounded a lot like Rusty. He had good ratings and was comfortable in that time slot. He already had been offered the afternoon drive and turned it down, but had been working it, filling in, so to speak, waiting for Don Keyes to send in a replacement. The reason nobody wanted the afternoon drive at KEEL was because it had just been vacated by the very popular Ron Baxley. Rusty was viewed as a home town fellow, even though he had been born in East Texas and spent some time at Texas A&M. Like most of us in that era, he began broadcasting at a young age, while he was still in high school. His college education had to wait, as he became a successful radio person before graduating at a much later date in his career. He was the music director at the station and we affectionately called him “wrong side Reynolds.“ And he became rather famous in certain places and with certain people for that. Whether it is true or not, I have heard that record people would send him a new release and deliberately not mark the side, to see which side he would program. Whatever side he picked, the record people would then buy Billboard and Cashbox ads promoting the other side of the record and usually, now this may not be fact, but just rumor, the other side would become a big hit. I wrote a song about this. It's called Wrong Side Rusty and it is on my CD album called Stage of the Stars, Cal 1242. After I did the afternoon drive for a short time, my youthfulness was my downfall. I sounded more like a kid, than the youngsters who were listening to me. The brass at the station decided to shift me into Rusty’s spot and he went to the afternoon drive spot. At that time, Rusty rose to the occasion and took on the afternoon drive successfully. His drive ratings rose and my mid-day numbers continued to grow upward. We both found success because of the change. Rusty worked many radio stations including KDOK, KEEL, WAKY and KXOL. It was at KXOL that Rusty went into sales. Every on- air person knew back then, that sales was where you could find the big money. He also enjoyed activity in sports which were always very important to him. I visited with him once on a promotion trip for the record company at the KXOL studios and he was a very happy fellow with his position there. After sales, the next big money in radio is ownership. Reynolds went there by owning and operating KYKX, KEAN, KYKS, WSLY, KIXS, KAGG (The Aggie) and took them to successful heights before selling them. He still actively owns and operates stations in the state of Texas and is a member of the Texas Broadcaster Hall of Fame. Always a die-hard Texas Aggie supporter, he lives in the college town and is still actively involved in radio station ownership with his son. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. FERRIS WHEELS AND RADIO and BUDDY BLAKE There is a song I wrote called Ferris Wheels, that is in my Mister Stan CD. I wrote the song as my "child support" song for that CD. Having worked for the State of Louisiana child support office for such a long time, I try to include a song about divorce, child support or court room drama in each of my CD releases. There was also, this story behind my reason for thinking of this particular song title. Buddy Blake, whom I worked with at KEEL and we also did some taped programs for XERF when Wolf Man Jack was first starting, left our station and went to competing KJOE. As a special promotion, he was attempting to set the world's record for riding the Ferris Wheel at the festival called Holiday In Dixie that year. The job of putting it together fell on the shoulders of Tommy Moore, an engineer of high repute who has worked for more stations than any other person I know of. There was only one wireless microphone in town at the time. So, Tommy negotiated with KTAL, channel six TV, to borrow it, to do the remote broadcast from the Ferris Wheel, which was not one of the larger ones like they have at the Louisiana State Fair here in Shreveport each year, but much smaller. With a lot of hoopla and hype, the promotion started off with a bang. However, less than two hours later, Buddy had to remove himself from the contraption and quickly run to a nearby tent and barf continuously for nearly an hour. So much for that promotion! Everything was in place except the DJ, who could not ride a Ferris Wheel without becoming ill. DARK HORSES AND RADIO FREQUENCIES - The old KENT frequency, came back on the air as KREB in the early 60s, right after Marie Gifford-Wright took over KEEL radio. There was a rich Oklahoma Oil Man from Tulsa behind it, but it was Larry Brandon, who was running the show at the end. KREB failed after a very short time on the air and the frequency went dark again. KEEL won the battle easily and Marie Gifford-Wright was propelled into a circle of heroes with Lin Broadcasting. However, the local radio market went into a tail spin, because we pulled out all the stops to kill the competition. We probably were not very popular with the other station owners. Shortly after we beat KREB, KJOE attempted a comeback with Buddy Blake as their main super-jock. KJOE, originally, was the first top rated top 40 station in the market with DJs like George Carlin and the owner-DJ, JoeMonroe, had a person in Dallas recording and sending to him every promotion KLIF did. This angered Gordon McLendon to no end and is one reason why he bought KTBS radio and turned it into KEEL! Before Buddy left KEEL, Marvin Kasofski, known in the south as Marvin Burton came down from Newport News, Va. and bought KCIJ. He found a fellow, named Bob Smith at a car wash, and hired him. When KREB folded, Larry Brandon, bought 6pm to 6am nightly on XERF and made a deal with Bob Smith, Buddy and I to do the 12 hours nightly on tape he needed to program the station. He took all the preachers, who had not been paying their bills at the station, off the air and kept maybe one or two, who were paying. When, the three of us met in Brandon's office, I could see the envy in Bob's eyes over being there with Buddy. Buddy had just amassed an unprecedented 100% rating at night with the kids and it was easy to see that Bob wanted to be a top 40 DJ. KCIJ had a lot of taped religious programs and Bob played country/gospel music on the air for 2 to 3 hours a day, so we both knew that Bob was looking for air time. With the deal Brandon gave us, he had from sign off to sign on to cut his tapes. I don't know how Buddy's packages were doing, or how the early Bob Smith packages were doing. I had a successful record package called the "Howling Special" which featured one lp by Hank WIlliams with "Howling At The Moon" on it, another un-named lp and 2 rock-a-billy 45s as I recall. I sold out of the package and when I went to my supplier for additional product on the named material in the package, I could not get it, so I had to pull the package from the air. The last package I put on was a lighted picture of JFK. Since Brandon had bought all the time available on the station, they used a Shreveport mailing address. They did several things on the air with Bob to call attention to the station and its new format. One was a lithographed photo of George Washington. The listener would send a dollar, cash, check or money order and they would send the customer back a brand new dollar bill. This was the lithographed picture of George Washington. At that time I was doing my input to the consortium in my own Don Logan voice. I got a call at KEEL from a listener who had recognized my voice on 1570 and she asked me about the dollar bill gimmick. On checking, I verified they were doing this on the air and it was not against the law, but I started doing my programs from then on, in the voice of E. Peabody Rasmussen, a gravely voiced country kind of guy. At some point in this time, Bob started doing Wolf Man Jack. None of us could believe he could actually do this voice. We thought he was using the tape machines in some manner to create the voice. It was not until the first XERF deal fell through that we determined that Bob could actually do Wolf Man Jack. Arturo Gonzales says in a inter-net web site report that he had the station back when Bob Smith showed up in Del Rio, Texas and Arturo actually hired him to do a live show. It was at this time that the full personality of Bob Smith as Wolf Man Jack came to life and exploded. Bob brought new life to the baby chick 5 minute commercials. He came up with his own male enhancement product and sold it like crazy. The record packages for Stan's Record Review snowballed, like nothing we had ever seen. Wolf Man Jack was not just a voice Bob Smith used. He made Wolf Man Jack a real, believable person. Ironically, there are many in the Shreveport area today, who knew Bob Smith, but never knew he was Wolf Man Jack. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. TOMMY TOMLINSON Tommy was born Gerald Delmar Tomlinson, October 28th, 1930 in Hampton, Arkansas. The Tomlinson farm was located just a few miles away from the Cash’s farm between Kingsland and Tinsman. After the flood that destroyed the entire area, many families had no other choice but to move out. The Cash family moved to Dyess, Arkansas in 1934 and the Tomlinson’s struggled for a few more years before moving to Minden, Louisiana in the 1940’s. Tommy was always intrigued by guitars and had several as a young boy. Once he constructed one from a bug spray can. Some years later a guitar was purchased for Bill, Tommy’s older brother. When the war came, Bill enlisted in the Navy and the guitar was given to Tommy, perhaps to keep him out of trouble. A friend of Tommy’s taught how to play a few chords and by the age of fifteen or sixteen, he had his own band and was playing at many barn dances and social events. One of Tommy’s first bands was a group called the Heflin Boys out of Minden, Louisiana. Tommy and another member of the band, Sonny Trammel, moved to Texarkana to perform at the Star Lite Dance Hall. They were rooming together, both broke, when Columbia recording artist Paul Howard enlisted them into his band the Arkansas Cotton Choppers. The band also included such great names as Hank Garland on guitar and Bobby Moore on bass. During Tommy’s free time, he gave local guys guitar lessons and experimented with his own interpretation of the so called, electric guitar. Tommy had been using a public address microphone and some kind of steel bridge in his acoustic guitar. Seemingly, he already knew about Les Paul‘s experiments with the electric guitar designs. Tommy liked the hollow body sound and most electric guitars were made of solid material and were more expensive than he could afford at the time. Later, Tommy would find the exact guitar he was looking for, a Gretsch G Brand Western Style guitar, 1955 model. He never liked the wah-wah bar on many electric guitars at the time, because each time you used it, the bar knocked the guitar out of tune. By late 1950, he had played with many of country’s great legends such as Hank Williams, Faron Young and Jim Reeves and Tommy felt it was time for a change. He joined the Marine Corps on February 24th, 1951. During his three year enlistment, he was engaged in action against the enemy in Korea. In the winter of 1952, Tom was wounded in both legs. He continued to serve his full enlistment, making the rank of Sergeant and then receiving an Honorable Discharge. After Korea, he lived in New Orleans for a short period of time. While there, he began performing up and down the Mississippi Delta with Werly Fairburn. Tommy was included on several of Werly’s hits in 1956. While performing at the Bossier City Sky Way Club in late 1955, Tommy met his future friend and mentor, Johnny Horton. Horton and Tomlinson were a perfect match with Johnny’s style of singing and Tommy’s style of bringing the strings to words. Together, they created some of the greatest sounds of Rockabilly, recording hits like LOVERS ROCK and SHE KNOWS WHY. They were not the big hits of Johnny’s like, BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS or NORTH TO ALASKA, but they certainly were giant steps forward for Rockabilly. Tommy would spend countless hours perfecting his guitar licks and sharing them with fellow musician Luther Perkins. He had just returned from Nashville on the day of the tragic wreck that ended Johnny Horton’s life and severely injured Tommy. In Nashville, he had completed the first of four instrumental albums with Jerry Kennedy entitled TOM & JERRY. The albums included such great musicians as Harold Bradley, Floyd Cramer, and Boots Randolph. Following the wreck, Tommy would spend over eighteen months recovering. After re-breaking the leg and spending months in a full body cast, and with medical bills mounting, the doctors and Tommy decided it was time to amputate his leg. His friends ultimately came together to hold a benefit concert and premiere of the movie NORTH TO ALASKA, to help cover medical expenses. Although Tommy would never be the same, he still was upbeat and kept a smile on his face. He would go back to touring immediately after receiving his prosthetic leg. Even though it was painful and hard to perform sometimes on the pain medication, he always did his part and fulfilled his obligation. For the next twenty years he would perform with many musicians such as David Houston, Claude King, David Soul and many others. As Tommy‘s touring career slowed down due to the unbearable pain in his leg, he started doing more session work and producing. However, he still performed occasionally with visiting stars in Shreveport, like Ernest Tubb, Mel Tillis and John Denver. Tommy was also a songwriter, having written several songs for DOLLY PARTON, NORMA JEAN, and of course JOHNNY HORTON. Tommy passed away in his home on April 8th, 1982, due to heart failure. ©2009 - T. T. TOMLINSON (NO PORTION MY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY WAY, FORM OR MANNER - THIS IS FROM A PROJECTED BOOK ON THE LIFE OF TOMMY TOMLINSON) |
| FATS DOMINO Fats Domino is a name that is recognized around the world and Fats has always been here in Louisiana. He made his first recordings in 1949. That first session gave birth to a song called THE FAT MAN which went to number two on the R&B charts and established the young Domino as a winner. This would have been after Hank Williams hit the stage of the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium bringing the house down with LOVESICK BLUES. Like LOVESICK BLUES that Hank Williams reworked, THE FAT MAN had Fats reworking an old R&B song that had been recorded before. Like Williams, Domino turned an old song into HIS song. The 50’s saw Domino flower with all of his releases hitting the R&B charts, most going all the way to number one. In the mid 1950’s he exploded. He thrilled them on Alan Freed’s Moondog Jubilee at Ebbets Field. In 1955, a song that Gene Autry and the Great Glenn Miller had recorded with little success, opened the big door for, as we called him on radio, “The little round- mound of sound from the crazy-crescent city”. The song was “Ain’t That A Shame” It’s true most of us remember the Pat Boone version, but later when Domino had fully crossed over to total acceptance by a pop audience, when he did the tune, we knew it was his tune. In 1956, Hollywood found Domino and he was featured, not only with his songs, but a speaking part in the movie SHAKE, RATTLE and ROLL. The film was a typical rock and roll production of the day with a bare script and a lot of music and artists. It was a success. Being seen in the movie brought him a bevy of new teen-age fans and they swamped the record stores for his 1956 monster hit of BLUEBERRY HILL which went number one R&B and number 2 pop. During the height of his career he crossed over to the pop charts 37 times. Then and ever since then, Fats Domino has been a certified star. In 1960, Fats was still putting out great records, but sales were moderate in the pop/top 40 market. That is until Louisiana native Bobby Charles Guidry wrote a song for Fats called WALKING TO NEW ORLEANS. It was a smash. During this time, the radio station I was working for had been doing a series of live shows at the Municipal Auditorium. Most of them were package shows from Dick Clark, A.V. Bamford, or some other big booker and the shows would consist of three or four hot acts with records currently charted and several other artists with records coming up or who had just come off of a big hit. We did the shows on a Sunday. We were offered a show on Fats. However, it would only be Fats Domino, his band and one unknown opening act. We thought long and hard about the possibility of a non-successful program and what it would mean to us, but we decided to go ahead and book the show. The first show sold out quickly and we even added a second show. The opening act, a guy who sang with a turban on was okay. The band played a few numbers and then Mr. Domino, came on stage and sang for over an hour and a half. Song after song that the audience knew, loved and appreciated. Around 1962, the record industry became rather stymied with no particular trend. The Beatles would came to us in 1964 and the industry would crank up again. During that lull, in 1963, Domino stopped recording for Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records. One must give Chudd credit for helping Fats cross over to the pop acceptance that he has enjoyed for all these many years. Chudd did that by having Ricky Nelson record a version of Fat’s song called I’M WALKING. Fats said in an interview one time that he made more money on the Ricky Nelson record than he did his own version. I doubt that, but it was a gracious thing to say. Unlike the Boone cover of “Ain’t That A Shame” which was out at the same time the original Domino version was, Ricky’s was after everyone knew of Domino’s original version and many of the same people who bought the Ricky Nelson version, had already bought the record earlier by Domino. When hurricane Katrina killed New Orleans, local media was besieged with requests as to “Did Fats Domino get out of New Orleans safely”. It was well into the night before word came from the media that he had been treated and was safe. This was truly a light in the darkest of times. When Stan Lewis was still in the record business, several years before Katrina, he played me a record that he had brought under the umbrella of his labels distributorship by Fats Domino and Doug Kershaw called “TOOT TOOT”. It is good to hear the FAT MAN still swinging. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - P O Box 9, Benton, LA 71006 318 965 0781 - All Rights Reserved - Media is granted the right to reproduce in conjunction with publicity on any of the above mentioned individuals. Proper credit must be given to Don Logan and this web-site. SANSONE'S / VITO CEFALU The only DJ to ever be employed by Sansone's , the upscale eatery on Kings Highway, was Dandy Don Logan. An attempt was made to turn the former Continental Room into a disco. The effort never really panned out and Logan settled in to playing oldies and big band music for the older crowd who continued to come to the establishment. There were other DJs who did special broadcasts from the showplace with Logan, from what was then being called Sansone's Supper Club. Those DJs were Jeff Edmond, of Jeff and Melinda radio fame, and Logan's former business partner, Gene Kent, who was doing an oldies show on KEEL. It was during this time, that Billy Wilson took a dark radio frequency, renamed it KVKI, "and went from a zero rating to the top of the ratings in a period of ten months. Tony Sansone was famous in this area for fine food, running Brocato's for his father-in-law for years before branching out on his own. Vito Cefalu was not only a great chef himself, but loved bringing in their quality live entertainment and checking the food quality on numerous occasions. Vito, the son of Tina Brocato Cefalu Sansone was adopted by Tony Sansone and was actually running the eatery during the time I was there. Vito was only three when his father died, so Tony was the only father he knew. In addition to the great food, Sansone's was well respected for it's entertainment. "The Ace Lewis Combo, one of the longest continuous performing quality local combos, started out by entertaining the crowds at the Continental Room of Sansone's in the early 60s. As the crowds continued to grow, Vito began bringing in the expensive Vegas type show groups to reward his loyal patrons around 1965. This continued for years. To keep up, other local venues tightened up their entertainment program and the Shreveport-Bossier area had a great diversified array of fine entertainment for this one shining moment. KWKH was still doing a monthly Hayride show bringing in top-name acts, Don Logan and Gene Kent were doing monthly dances with regional and hot national artists and KEEL was bringing in live shows at the Municipal Auditorium and Hirsch Coliseum with Dick Clark packages and the other hot acts of the day and every club on the Bossier Strip and restaurant with a dance floor had the best bands around. After the peak of the local entertainment scene, when more and more entertainment became available on TV and at the movies, and the advent of the video cassette, where you could see any big name star you wanted to, it was no longer economically feasible to continue to pour money into these expensive Vegas show groups, who by this time had started fading in expertise and showmanship. When the “Disco" concept did not pan out as planned, Vito augmented the DJ work of Don Logan with what was billed as “continuous entertainment," featuring not only the live DJ work of Logan, but live music sets interspersed with such local groups as Toby Cooper on clarinet with his combo or Tim Boatman on his white grand piano with his electronic one man show to keep the electronically lighted dance floor busy. Logan went from Sansone's to the program manager position of KCOZ, the last local good music station which was housed in the beautiful old Logan Mansion on Austin Place. Logan brought the station up to a number four, rating wise, and the station was sold with the new owners changing the call letters to KMJJ and changing the format. Logan worked the rest of his working days for the State of Louisiana before retiring. Vito sold Sansone's after the death of Mr. Tony, and has worked with several friends over the years, consulting, getting restaurants up and running, and continues to live in Shreveport with his wife, Patsy. Vito says the most elaborate occasion and biggest event ever held at Sansone‘s was the wedding of Vito and Patsy Cefalu. Vito says when Van Cliburn threw a 90th birthday bash for his mother, the request that the main course be placed on an oversize plate in double portions between every two people seated at the table, so that no one had to reach, kept him busy right up to the serving hour buying up all the oversize plates in town. Van Cliburn was a local resident when he did his Moscow concert and won world acclaim. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - P O Box 9, Benton, LA 71006 318 965 0781 - All Rights Reserved - Media is granted the right to reproduce in conjunction with publicity on any of the above mentioned individuals. Proper credit must be given to Don Logan and this web-site. ROD BERNARD It was not well-known on the national scene that singer/ songwriter Rod Bernard was a "DJ also. But, here in Louisiana, he is quite well know as a radio man. Born "in Opelousas, Louisiana, he hosted his own live music radio program as a child. Performing with a local Cajun-country troupe called "the Blue Room Gang, Around 1957 he was instrumental in "forming a "group that pioneered the “swamp pop" rhythm and blues sound that would become an idiom. That group was known as the Twisters. With his next group, things started jelling "right. "He "formed the Shondells with other swamp pop stars "Warren Storm and Skip Stewart." Shelby Singleton leased many of his most popular "recordings including "This Should Go On Forever"(1958), and "One More Chance"(1959) for Mercury Records out of Chicago. The first became a national hit and led to Rod's 1959 appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, The Dick Clark Beach-Nut Show, and The Alan Freed Show, among others. He was back strong in 1962 with a tune called "Colinda" which still remains a Cajun favorite. He recorded for Jin, La Louisianne, Arbee, Hall/Hallway, Crazy Cajun, and CSP. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - P O Box 9, Benton, LA 71006 318 965 0781 - All Rights Reserved - Media is granted the right to reproduce in conjunction with publicity on any of the above mentioned individuals. Proper credit must be given to Don Logan and this web-site. JOHN PHILPOT In West Virginia, I went to school with a fellow named Basil Zickafoose. In all my travels since then, I have never met another with the same name. In radio, I met John Philpot, who was the farm director for KEEL after McLendon sold us. I thought he would be the only John Philpot, I would ever meet. Well, he is the only one I ever met, but there are others. John Philpot says, “Richard Wilcox was manager of KEEL when I first started doing programs for the station. I was living in Texarkana at that time doing farm programming for KCMC-TV, KCMC Radio and KEEL. I was hired after Jack Tompkins vacated the position for a job in Oklahoma City. I left Texarkana to go to graduate school at the University of Iowa. Went broke there. By the time I got back to Arkansas, KCMC-TV had become KTAL-TV in Shreveport. They called me and asked me to come be their Farm Director. By then, Marie Gifford-Wright had become GM at KEEL. After about six months, Marie asked me to tape farm programs for KEEL. Then, when KTAL-TV reorganized after one year on the air, Marie hired me full time, and I met Dandy Don Logan. In addition to my farm news shows, I was a fixture on Don's morning show with the “Dancing Girls." That's about the best gimmick we ever created. It would go over well today,” Philpot concludes! John is a true all-around individual with a dynamite personality. He worked in the advertising business and for the State of Arkansas after he left Louisiana and also lived in Japan for quite some time. He has done numerous television commercials. He became a fixture on Arkansas Public Television with a program called Arkansas Outdoors. Phyllis Speer (Cooking With Phyllis) of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, teamed up with “Big John" and they put their mark on Arkansas public television. John has kept in touch with the old group in Shreveport and for many years did motivational speaking engagements all over the south and is truly one of the funniest individuals I have encountered over the years. ©2009 - DON LOGAN PRODUCTIONS - P O BOX 9 - BENTON, LA 71006 - MEDIA IS GRANTED PERMISSION TO PRINT OR "REWRITE OR INCORPORATE IN OTHER ARTICLES ALL INFORMATION INCLUDED HEREIN, "AS LONG AS IT IS IN "CONJUNCTION WITH PUBLICITY ON ANY OF THE SUBJECTS NAMED HEREIN, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO DON LOGAN and/or JOHN PHILPOT. THOUGHTS ON LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS Stan Lewis of Jewel Records knew Lightnin‘, long before I ever heard of him. Sam Hopkins was born in 1912 and died in 1982. Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins was a noted blues singer and guitarist, and was born in Centerville, Texas, on March 15, 1912. He was the son of Abe and Frances (Sims) Hopkins. After his father died in 1915, the family (his mother and five brothers and sisters) moved to Leona, Texas. Even before he was a teenager, his love of music propelled him into concocting his first instrument. It was a cigar-box guitar with chicken-wire for strings. At ten years of age, he was playing music with his cousin, Alger (Texas) Alexander, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, who encouraged him to continue. Lightnin’ also played with his brothers, John Henry and Joel. By the mid-1920s Sam had started jumping trains, shooting dice, and playing the blues anywhere he could. He served time at the Houston County Prison Farm in the mid-1930s, and after his release he returned to the blues-club circuit. In 1946 he had his big break, making his first recordings in Los Angeles for Aladdin Records. On the record was a barrelhouse piano player named Wilson (Thunder) Smith; by chance he combined well with Sam to give him his nickname, Lightnin'. Thunder and Lightnin’ just naturally go together. Aladdin was so impressed with Hopkins that the company did a second session in 1947. He eventually made forty-three recordings for the label. Over his career Hopkins recorded for more than twenty different labels, including Gold Star Records in Houston. On occasion he would record for one label while under contract to another. The Bahari Brothers also saw the talent of Hopkins and recorded many sides on him. In 1950 he settled in Houston, but he continued to tour the country periodically. Though he recorded prolifically between 1946 and 1954, his records for the most part were not big outside the black community. Later, his music began to reach a mainstream white audience. Hopkins became a hit in the folk-blues revival of the 1960s. He played at Carnegie Hall with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and toured with The American Folk Blues Festival. He was the opening act for such rock bands as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. He toured Europe, playing for Queen Elizabeth II at a command performance. Hopkins also performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In 1972 he worked on the soundtrack to the film Sounder. He was also the subject of a documentary, The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins, which won the outstanding documentary prize at the Chicago Film Festival. He had an incredible knack for writing songs impromptu, and frequently spun myths and legends around a nucleus of truth. His songs were often autobiographical. Lightnin' Hopkins died of cancer of the esophagus on January 30, 1982. His musical influence was felt throughout the music world for many years. THE GREAT ELECTRIC SHOW AND DANCE by Don Logan The one thing I remember about Lightnin’ from doing recording sessions on him, was when he was playing, he would slip into, almost a trance, and a flowing stream of non-ending blues would come pouring out, making him nearly oblivious to what was going on around him. Sometimes, when I thought I heard something that was not right in the track, and called for a retake, he would just continue, not hearing anything but the song he was doing. If he was doing someone’s song and he did not feel it, he would stop and tell you, “I don’t like this song, I’m not doing it”. At other times, he would stop singing and start talking the song instead of singing the melody. Lightnin’ always picked his own musicians, with the exception of “Wild Child” Butler, a blues harp man, whom I brought down with me. So, you could say the rhythms would pick up speed or slow down as Lightnin‘ led them to what he was feeling; the musicians would desperately try and readjust the meter, but by that time, Hopkins would have changed it again. Butler’s harp would go up to a high note that needed to come on back to the root chord before he would run out of breath and Lightnin’ would keep him dangling there for another measure of music before going back to the root chord. Butler almost passed out from lack of air once. Most of the time, when I did sessions on Lightnin’, I would always have some Stan Lewis original songs for him. Sometimes, Stan would not even recognize his own song when I brought it back. Hopkins would always tell the musicians, “now don‘t get THERE (the chord) before I do“. I would venture to say most rock and roll artists of the 1960‘s had listened to albums of three entertainers to help them develop their singing styles. These artists had that certain raw edge to their material. One was Hank Williams Sr., the second Bob Wills and the other, I believe, was Lightnin‘ Hopkins. Many of the rock and roll artists, like Dion of the Belmonts, admit to listening in one of his books. There is a lot to be learned from the recordings of each of these entertainers. Lightnin’ played the coffeehouse circuit. College students loved him and he rode the crest of the folk revival. I dug up some of his older recordings, after reading an almost full page spread in the Los Angeles Times about Lightnin’, after Stan Lewis had decided to do some sessions on him. I have always been amazed at how much feeling, soul and depth he could get out of just three blues chords. I was guilty of trying to take Lightnin’ to a different level in my attempt at “The Great Electric Show and Dance” album. Reviewers tore the session and album down because of the slashing electric style that sounded to many like John Lee Hooker or B.B. King performing with a symphony orchestra or a heavy-metal group doing a country session. The album was not as successful as it should have been, because of the reviews that kept many fans away from it. But, I maintain to this day, that it brought him a new legion of fans and he changed chords and re-invented himself with my work. I will not apologize for it. The one thing I did not do, was mess with the guitar and vocal phrasing of Lightnin‘. It would stand on its own. In the last ten years, at least two record collectors, who just happen to have a copy of this very hard to find album, have told me that the album was masterful and exciting. That album is still available, but it now sports only the guitar and vocal of Lightnin’. Hopkins played with the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson. For a short time, he became Jefferson's guide. Hopkins' cousin, the great Texas blues man Texas Alexander, was another influence as Hopkins played with Alexander. When Hopkins made his way to Houston in 1946, a talent scout who had pieced together deals with companies such as Aladdin Records out of Los Angeles, paired up Hopkins with a piano player by the name of Wilson "Thunder" Smith and came up with the name "Lightnin'" as an obvious match. It stuck. Hopkins had but little success with Katie May. After that came a series on the Aladdin label -- Shotgun Blues, Short Haired Woman, and Big Mama Jump. What followed was thirty plus years of albums on everything from small, obscure labels to big ones. The list includes Modern/RPM, Gold Star, Mercury, Jax, Jewel, Decca and Herald. During this period he cut some of the most ferocious blues guitar songs mixed with what one journalist called "air songs,". That meant, and I have witnessed it, he would just pull the lyrics right out of the air on the spot. He once asked me about one of Stan Lewis’s songs, “What’ s it about” and I told him, and the lyrics came out rearranged in his mind. All musicians know, sometimes you have to reinvent yourself and I feel I helped Hopkins' career do that. Not by myself, though. Stan Lewis, the owner of Jewel Records, was a blues fan. So, he promoted Lightnin’ on his radio shows on WLAC, XERF, KWKH and KAAY and others. Hopkins career was fading and this helped bring him back. Also, a folklorist and the media started helping a rediscovered Hopkins by placing him in a growing list of "folk artists." In a book about blues artists, Mac McCormick, called “The Great Electric Show and Dance” a groundbreaking solo album that sent Lightnin’, no matter what the press was calling him at the time, off and running like a dog after the fox. Again, Hopkins' career was burning and more front money and albums came from such labels as Candid, Arhoolie, Prestige, Verve, Cord, Pathe, Tomato, World Pacific, Bluesville, Fire, Marconi and Vee-Jay. For an upfront fee, his material could be recorded on your label and they were often recorded by tiny, obscure one-person labels. Let me set the record straight. I was quoted in several magazines and a few newspaper articles as saying “Lightnin’ was illiterate”. I never said that. I did remark, when a journalist asked if we were the only company Hopkins ever signed a contract with, that Hopkins did sign a contract with me after a session at Bill Holford’s studio in Houston, Texas with an “X”. The journalist may have taken that as a statement that Lightnin’ could not read or write. That may not have been the case, as afterwards, through some legal maneuvering, a lawsuit did have his signature written out, I am told. So, it could be, Lightnin‘ put one over on me, I don‘t know and now, never will. One of many funny stories I heard on Lightnin’ involves one of the band members of a top rock and roll group of the 70s, who heard Hopkins play when he was a youngster in the 60s and remarked to a friend later that evening, that “He does not change chords when he is supposed to!.“ The story goes that Lightnin’ was standing behind the young white boy at the time, and tapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Lightnin’ change when Lightnin’ wants to change”. Whether the story is true or not, it sure fits Lightnin’ to the “T“. Lightnin’ Hopkins, like Sinatra, Elvis and other successful entertainers had the correct phrasing for what he was doing. I think phrasing and on-stage charisma, rather than voice quality, is what appeals to an audience. His kind of music could be done with any band, if the band would wait for Lightnin’ to get there. A kid learning to play guitar, who can’t keep the beat, can play along with any Lightnin’ recording if he or she can play SLOW E CHORD or FAST E CHORD. I think a couple of the songs I cut on him were in A chord. He matched the rhythm and even the chord changes with whatever his feelings at that moment in time were. Sure, this made it difficult for other musicians to follow. His solo recordings later in his life have a certain sense or closeness to them and probably sound better, as opposed to studio bands that became hopelessly entangled in the meter and break-meter of Hopkins style. Of the sessions I did with Hopkins, there is still, I think, some unreleased material of just Lightnin’ and his guitar. And I am told, that the music in “Great Electric Show and Dance” was re-released with just Lightnin’s vocal and his guitar and maybe they left “Wild Child” Butler’s harp in it also. My favorite Hopkins songs are Mister Charlie, Breakfast Time, Back Door Friend, Rock Me Mama, Mojo Hand and Uncle Stan The Hip Hop Record Man. Several compilations of Hopkins work by different labels have been released and blues aficionados from around the world know this individual. I am told that he cut his last recording sessions in 1975. My final chapter on Lightnin’s life would say he probably made more recordings and had more albums and singles released on more labels than any other blues artist. And if you liked his material, all of it, with maybe a few exceptions, fit into the same category of sound and tempo. Out of the business for many years, I was saddened upon my return to the music scene to learn that Lightnin’ was no longer with us. His death did not make the mainstream media. I had hoped one day to do a session on him with strings. You may laugh at that idea and it probably would have been impossible to pull it off, but I was game to try. On some of the unreleased Jewel sides, I had Sound City Studio trying to put them all together in a commercial package for me, when I no longer had the time to spare to do studio work. I think the drummer they used was James Stroud, who has become one of the world’ s hottest Nashville producers. But, even he, the great drummer he was, had trouble keeping up with Lightnin’. Hopkins was the only artist I ever worked with who had played Carnegie Hall, entertained a Queen and had a Los Angeles Times feature that took up about a half page. And one final remembrance of this legendary Texas blues man. I had to let a drummer go during a Hopkins session in Houston and we had to kill about an hour waiting for a new drummer. I paid for an hour studio time out of my pocket and recorded an audio interview with Lightnin’ that has never legally been released. That interview, I understand, has gone around the world. But, back to the story. A new drummer arrived and we finished the session. As we were leaving, I was to come back the next day for the mix down, the drummer I had dismissed, was waiting. He was angry and maybe high, I don‘t know. I did not see the knife, but Lightnin’ stepped between us and may have saved my life. Lightnin’ talked to the young man as a preacher or father might. The drummer’s anger subsided and Lightnin’ promised the drummer he could still play and get paid with them at a show they were doing at Rice University that night. Hopkin’s quick thinking may have averted a tragedy. I consider an injury or loss of life, to me, a tragedy. However, as it turned out, the only tragic thing about this was the fact that because the drummer would be there at the jam-session at Rice that night, I choose not to attend, so I never got to see Lightnin’ perform on stage. I am told that he was equally adept at performing in front of small, polite crowds or boisterous swarms of young people. A RECENT review on Lightnin’ I found on the inter-net: CD TITLE: GREAT ELECTRIC SHOW AND DANCE - ARTIST: LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS ….. This may be the best electric blues material Hopkins ever recorded and is one of the best quality albums Hopkins ever recorded and features one of the best blues collections. The material was recorded in 1969 but has been buried for years by legal litigation. The assembled musicians on these sides follow Hopkins unorthodox music uniquely well. BIBLIOGRAPHY: In addition to the memories of Lightnin’ by Stan Lewis and myself, information was also gathered from: Houston Chronicle: February 7, 1982; Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers by Sheldon Harris (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House,); Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American Musicians by Eileen Southern (Westport, Connecticut). Used by permission ©2009 - Media may use with permission in publicity on Lightnin’ Hopkins or Dandy Don Logan. THE ENGINEERS - “I've known two kinds of engineers in my lifetime. Radio engineers and recording engineers. Johnny Lemons who worked with me at KCUL in Ft. Worth, Texas, kept that 50,000 watt station on the air with bailing wire. In Shreveport, Louisiana, Rudy Johnson kept the 50,000 watt McLendon station on the air everyday. We were never off the air. Tommy Moore is another local engineer, who wound up owning a bunch of stations. He tells some funny stories on Wolf Man Jack, myself, Buddy Blake, El Toro and most of the other radio personalities who crossed this area at one time or another. Most of the radio/record engineers I know worked in their shirt sleeves, however the chief engineers at KTAL, Shreveport, Louisiana and Texarkana, Arkansas and at KKSN, Dallas, Texas wore a suit and tie daily. Before KBCS became KKSN, they had a one good-hand engineer named Jim, who did a weekend DJ gig. I don't remember his last name, but he was a cracker jack DJ, doing it all with one hand. When Marie Gifford-Wright was unable to obtain an echo chamber that cost to much for the budget she had constructed for the year, it was Rudy Johnson who came riding to the rescue with a contraption that was made out of a small metal box about the size of a cigar box, with some kind of spring gizmo in it and there was a knob, very much like a volume knob on a radio, and the thing sounded like an expensive echo chamber and we used it on the air for several years. Rudy built it for under $50.00. Bob Sullivan was another local radio engineer, who happened to work for KWKH and became the engineer and sound man for the Louisiana Hayride. Sullivan came to know many legendary artists, such as Hank Williams Sr. and Elvis Presley, on a first-name basis. He crossed over to the recording engineer side of the business after Sullivan recorded the early rock 'n' roll hit, “Susie Q" by Dale Hawkins in the KWKH studio for Stan Lewis, who would one day own a label called Paula. Sullivan would record a song called “Hey Paula," by Paul and Paula at his studio in Dallas, Texas, later. He stretched out into other genres and is credited with engineering what music historians consider one of the first psychedelic groups ever recorded - not a San Francisco band, but a group known as the 13th Floor Elevator from Texas. Sullivan worked as the engineer at his own Summet-Bernet studio in Dallas and recorded the last album made with the legendary Bob Wills, “For The Last Time"-sessions which included another country music great, Merle Haggard.” “Wills, who had suffered a stroke, had to sit in a wheelchair, but he would point at each musician when he wanted them to solo,” Sullivan recalled. Sullivan grew up here in Louisiana and was exposed to country, a little western swing, zydeco, Cajun, delta blues and Dixieland. Bob tells of meeting Hank Williams - at a small schoolhouse.” “The first time I met him, they played at a school in Louisiana, about eight miles from where I grew up," Sullivan recalled for a recent article. Sullivan knew the janitor at the school, who let him in the back door. “Hank was leaning back in a cane-bottomed chair, playing the fiddle. I told him, ‘I didn‘t know you played the fiddle?‘ He said, ‘I don’t play much, Hoss.” Sullivan saw Williams perform on stage and says, “He was the most electrifying artist I've ever seen in my life. I've yet to see anybody who could walk on-stage with a four-piece band, hunker down over a guitar, and tear the place up like he did." Sullivan moved to Shreveport, La., after his discharge from the U.S. Army and got to know all the musicians in town. He also knew some of the people at the KWKH radio station. “Tillman Franks called me and said there was a job opening as one of the engineers was leaving," Sullivan said he took the job and stepped into music history. As engineer, Sullivan set the microphone and set sound levels for radio shows. That led to him setting up the microphone and sound levels for the Louisiana Hayride every Saturday night at Shreveport Municipal Auditorium. He also saw a lot of artists early in the morning at the radio station. “We had live radio shows from 5 a.m. until 9 in the morning," Sullivan said. “Artists, including Hank Williams, would come in with just a guitar and sing live over the air waves. Sometimes Williams had trouble getting back to Louisiana in time for the shows. If they were going to playing Mississippi or Alabama, he would tell me the day before 'Ace, I need to record it.' We'd put on an acetate disc, made of aluminum with lacquer on it," Sullivan said of the recording process. When we'd finish, I'd throw it over in the corner. "After Williams died in the back of a car while on his way to play a concert on New Year's Day 1953, someone absconded with the acetates - considered a priceless piece of musical history today. Sullivan recalls not only Hank Williams, but Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, D.J. Fontana, Bill Black and he remembers the “Susie Q“ session, this way. “When James Burton hit that lick on 'Susie Q,' I nearly went through the roof,” Sullivan said of the timeless riff. From his studio in Dallas, he worked as an engineer on recordings for Sonny and Cher, James Brown, Asleep at the Wheel, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Marty Stewart, Carol Channing, Tennessee Ernie Ford and Pete Fountain. He also toured Europe and Russia with blues tours. He moved to Oklahoma after he became fed up with the long 18-hour days and nights and the computerized, sampled music being used by a lot of artists. “They're into absolute perfection," Sullivan said. “When music is perfect, it's not music." Sullivan still does the occasional session. He recently was summoned back to Louisiana by Williams' daughter, Jett Williams, and Lefty Frizzell's brother, David Frizzell, who were recreating a tour by their famous family members. I got to know Bob Sullivan at his large studio in Dallas. I was there, the first time, to do some recording on a young man named Bill Bohannon. Bill was one of Frank Page's announcers at KWKH. I was actually doing two sessions. We had another across town on blues man Lowell Fulson, that Stan Lewis had started and then had been summoned back to Shreveport, so I went by there, after I finished the Bill Bohannon session, to pick up the master for the Lowell Fulson session. They were not through with the session there. That's when Lowell Fulson introduced me to one of the musicians, a guitarist named B.B. King. I remarked that he needed to change his name, as there already was a famous guitarist/singer named B.B. King! I was then told, by Lowell, that this WAS THE B. B. King. Sullivan did many of those European blues tours and he has a million stories about the Hayride Stars and amplifies the fact how none of them really knew how important they, and that show was! Not only to America, but the world. THE STUDIOS …. The best studio, studio engineers and musicians I ever had in one place at one time, was Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee. The track record of this legendary studio tell the full story. I don’t remember the names of the 3 engineers at work there during the four times I cut sessions within its confines and I’m sure they don’t remember me, but THEY were good. At the end of the session, you not only had your raw three track master tape, but your mixed-down tape master ready to be put on acetate master. There were other outstanding studios like Cosimo Matassa’s recording studio in New Orleans, where many a HIT record was cut. Jewel-Paula records recorded Big Joe Turner there. We knew Rick Hall over in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, but I never cut a session at either of there well- known places. However, several of our Jewel-Paula-Ronn artists did. The Uniques, Lowell Fulson, Ted Taylor, Toussaint McCall and many others. Robin Hood Brians in tiny Tyler, Texas recorded the bulk of our material in the early years at Jewel-Paula. I first heard of Robin Hood when a fan of his brought his fraternity label recording to me when I was a DJ in Fort Worth, Texas. I played it on audition, liked it and played it on the air for the first time. After it finished, I opened the mike and for some reason, some times I did things like this as an attention getter when I was young…. I announced his name incorrectly, calling him Robin Hood B-R-A-I-N-S. That got me a couple of phone calls at the station. So, I played it again, this time giving the correct artist name, B-R-I-A-N-S. I did that a lot in the old days with artists like Bobby (Half-Bare) Bare, Ferlin (Weakling) Husky, Faron (Old) Young, Johnny (Credit) Cash, Lefty (Rightly) Frizzell, Tony (Dug-more) Douglas, As an engineer, I was aware that he knew his stuff, for his record had sounded very good and I believe Robin Hood progressed and learned with us. I don’t know how good he was at the start, but we started sending acts over to him when he was operating out of his living room. He built a studio that had excellent sound and I think highly of everything we cut with him. Next to his sound, he spent a lot of time with each musician, getting more out of the musician that he or she normally would have given. Not Too Long Ago, All These Things, Sweet Thang, Judy In Disguise were all cut for us at Robin’s studio. I can’t talk to Joe Stampley, without Joe bringing up Robin Hood’s name. He is one of the finest engineers I ever met. His ability of being able to put an extra piano part in because he thought the session needed it, made many a good session become even better. I cut sessions on the legendary Texas blues man, Lightnin’ Hopkins at Bill Holford’s ACA Studio in Houston, Texas. In the big city he had this moderate sized studio where you just naturally felt at home. Bill was well-known as being the producer of the JUSTIN WILSON humor albums we put out on the Paula label. In Shreveport, SOUND CITY was our second home for many years. The late Jim Wilhite and later Stuart Madison ran the place. George Clinton was behind the controls cutting some bread and butter sounds for us. A session musician there, James Stroud, went to Nashville and became a smashing success with hits and a position with Dreamworks records and now has his own independent operation. Madison is an executive with Malaco Recording Corporation of Jackson, Mississippi. Fiddler Joe Spivey plays in John Anderson’s band and is part owner of a Nashville Studio. George Clinton, who recorded such acts as the Blind Boy, Clarence Fountain, Thomas Spann and the Brooklyn All-Stars, Robert Blair and the Violinaires, The Blind Boys of Mississippi, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and Willie Morganfield for us on our Jewel label is now a Nashville engineer. While here, George was the engineer for a studio group called the African Music Machine that released a series of songs that had a most distinctive sound and his mix of a black gospel album by Willie Morganfield that I produced for Jewel, is still an album I take great pride in. Leonard Chess was a friend and an inspiration to my boss, Stan Lewis, so we also recorded in Chicago. The Soul Stirrers, the group that gave the world Sam Cook, recorded for Stan’s Jewel label. The Crume Brothers had the group at that time, long after Sam had died and Dillard Crume produced their product in Chicago and Dillard also worked promotion for us. We used many other studios with talented engineers also. Woodland in Nashville, the Steve Wright Studio and Curtis Kirk Studio in Tyler, TX, Don Dobbs' Studio in Bossier City, LA, Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith studio in Charlotte, NC, Sam Phillips Studio and the Scotty Moore Studio in Memphis, TN, just to name a few. Nowadays with digital recording, the studio and engineer are not that important it seems, so each session looses the input and expertise of those engineers who have been there and done that and have the T-Shirt that says so. Where can you record sessions? In a flat in Stoke Newington on Liam Large 's computer, in your living room, at the musician co-op, or just about anywhere. ©2009 - Don Logan Productions - Media is granted reprint permission when used in conjunction with publicity on any of the named individuals. THE WIDOWS The widow of Jan Garber, legendary big band leader who recorded for Decca Records, lives here in Shreveport, as does Billie Jean Berlin, the widow of both Hank Williams Sr. and Johnny Horton, and Ann Stuckey-Davis, widow of the late Nat Stuckey. Billie Jean Jones was a very young girl when she became the bride of the King of country music, Hank Williams. It was Hank's second marriage, her first. She was introduced to show "business in a blaze of popping flash bulbs from photographers cameras and media type people trying to cover one of the first weddings of a major star to be shared by the general public. There were actually two ceremonies with an auditorium of fans for each. Billie Jean later married struggling Hayride artist, Johnny Horton and raised a family. Horton died in an automobile wreck. Billie Jean Berlin has always maintained a home in Shreveport. Ann Stuckey-Davis knows me from my radio days. I've always told people she was one of my biggest DJ fans until she met Nat. That may or may not be true. Stuckey was making records for us at Paula Records when she met this Texan. The day after they decided to get married, they argued over who asked the question. In a world of broken marriages, theirs was strong and endured the road life a successful musician has to keep up with. Ann was an integral part of Nat's career and success. She actively ran their music publishing company and later had a web-site actively promoting the late singer. Nat died of cancer in 1988. Ann has remarried. The late Marie Gifford-Wright was the widow of legendary local theatre icon Joe Gifford. She was one of the greatest motivational people I have ever encountered. Everything she did was with a flair. She was one of the first, if not the first, female managers of a 50,000 watt totally successful radio station. She masterminded the station and its FM counterpart for the glory years of the stations, before retiring. It was my pleasure to know her and my fortune to gain some of her knowledge from working with her as her program director. Her husband is Harold Wright, who is a local icon. THOMAS ALVA EDISON Most of the people I know, including myself, would have never been able to make the accomplishments we did, had it not been for Thomas Alva Edison. On my grandmother's 300 acre farm in Oklahoma, one of her proudest possessions was an Edison Gramaphone. Neighbors would gather round in her parlor, she would crank up the machine, and they could hear Al Jolson, Vernon Dalhart and the song, Yes, We Have No Bananas , among others. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 and in February,1878, he received his patent for the phonograph. With it, this genius launched an industry that changed the world. In the beginning, it was pretty much controlled by Edison, later RCA, Decca and Columbia. The formation of Capitol Records started a tremendous avalanche of independent labels in the 1940's and the music industry became a giant snowball rolling to prosperity in the 1950's. Edison's first recorded words on the experimental machine that made scratches on tinfoil as a crank was being turned were, Mary Had A Little Lamb. In the 1950's you could hear things like, Wop Bop a Loo Bop a Lam Bam Boom coming from similar grooves ,except by now they were electrically manufactured and pressed by giant record presses and made by the thousands, not just one at a time. The record industry went to wax cylinders, then discs when a substance known as bakelite was developed and wound up with a vinyl 7 inch disc with a big hole in the middle when the 45 RPM record appeared in the 1950's. They say Edison was thrilled when his experimental machine played his verse back and I'm sure he never realized the many doors this opened to people like me. His device made him famous and he became known as The Wizard of Menlo Park, after the New Jersey town where he did his work. Phonographs made sound through a process called analog disc recording. An analog (likeness) of the original sound waves was stored as jagged waves in a spiral groove on the surface of a disc. As the disc turned, a needle riding along the groove vibrated. The vibrations were transformed into electric signals and were converted back into sound by speakers. Vernon Dalhart, from nearby Jefferson, Texas recorded more records for Edison than Al Jolson or any other artist of the time. In the early days, you would make one master of the record. That master would be played back and other records made from it. When that master wore out, sometimes years later, the company would call the artist back and he would re-record the song. Dalhart had perfect memory. He could sing the song a year later, just the way he did before. He not only made folk records, the type that made him the first artist to sell a million records, but he sang popular songs, vaudeville and classical songs. He had over a dozen pseudonyms. If you are a record collector, you know, if you have some of the really old 78RPM records, if you have one made one year and another made two years later by the same band, the recordings are not identical. Either the vocal phrasing, sometimes even the singer is different, the tempo or a particular instrumental solo within it are different. You may have some old 45's, 78 RPM records or twelve inch vinyl albums somewhere in a dusty corner. Originally the master you made for recording was a record just like the one that the industry sold, but they wore out too fast for a growing industry demanding more product each year. It was discovered that you could pour metal over the record grooves and "when it hardens, peel it off and you had what was called a mother. You then poured another layer of metal over the mother, let it harden, then peel it off and you had what was called a stamper. With a stamper, you could press thousands of records in a fast moving press that not only pressed the record but glued on the labels as well. I'm sure some of you have never seen a vinyl record so, you don't know what I'm talking about. That's a shame, for you missed a great part of Americana. And, you probably wonder why I call a 12 inch 33 1/3 record that has around twelve selections on it, an album. It goes back to the 78RPM days. These records had a short playing time. The work of a Symphony Orchestra or Opera could not be etched into the grooves on one 78RPM record because of the length of the works. So, the ten inch 78RPM was increased to a 12 inch size and many records, up to six or eight were packaged in paper sleeves inside a leather-bound book resembling a photo album. Thus the name, album. These were very expensive and were limited to symphonic type music and extremely hot bands, like Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Guy Lombardo, The Three Suns and the likes. Shortly before the 45RPM arrived on the scene, the 33 1/3RPM speed was developed and a ten inch 33 1/3 album with around six songs on it was marketed. It was the grandfather of the 12 inch version, which came later, after publishing, artist and songwriter royalty problems were agreed on. Of all the vinyl type recordings over the years, I would say the 78RPM record went through the most changes. Sure the 45RPM was also available as an EP or extended play version with four songs on it instead of two, but the 78RPM was available first as a thick record about a quarter of an inch thick with one artist on side one and another artist onside two, unless the artist was a proven record seller .Then it decreased in thickness to the normal size, but then, at first, it only had a song on one side of the record. It was blank on the underside. These recordings are very rare. The final version of the 78RPM recording was the 10 inch unbreakable, electronically transcribed pressed record with a song on each side. © 2009 - DANDY DON LOGAN - no part may be reproduced without permission. P O Box 9, Benton, LA 71006 318 965 0781 www.dandydonlogan.com |
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