After enlisting Stephane to sing with them for their
second Tony Marts audition, Joe and the Nomads went looking for a keyboard
player, first to Shriver’s Pavilion on the Ocean City boardwalk, but they
didn’t expect to find one there since it was a scene dominated totally by guitars.
So they scoped it out for a little while, then grabbed a slice of pizza at Mack
& Manco’s counter and ate as they walked to 8th Street to the
Purple Dragon Coffee House.
You could see the big roaring Purple Dragon head
jutting out above the front door that looked like it belonged on a Thanksgiving
parade float, but as legend would have it, was from the bow of a Spanish
treasure ship that ran aground at Anchorage Point during a Noreaster’ a hundred
years before the Dutch and English Quakers arrived and settled in. It was made
of old hard wood and refashioned paper mache, and painted purple, of course.
The large purple dragon’s head jutting out over the
sidewalk would have been an issue for the building inspector, but since the
building was owned by D. Allen Stretch, the city commissioner responsible for
public works and safety, it got a pass.
Inside the Dragon there was half the afternoon lunch
crowd there usually is because all of the folkies and most of the hippies were
camping at the second annual Philadelphia Folk Festival at the Wilson farm
outside Philly. While most of Philly was heading down the pikes or Expressway
to the Shore, the folkies and hippies were going in the other direction,
leaving a lot of empty seats at Shriver’s Pavilion and the Purple Dragon.
Still drinking their Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer
from the boardwalk, they sat at a table in the back, where a folkie was playing
guitar on the small stage. Not just a stage for singers and guitarist, the
Purple Dragon soap box was also open to poets and story tellers, and so it was
after a guitarist John Buloshi would trash was finished, Pittsburgh Paul took
the stage, and after a moment of stage fright, he straightened up and began
reading from a white piece of paper – “The Sheriff of Reality.”
The Sheriff of
Reality
By
Pittsburg Paul
I
am
The
Sheriff of Reality
So
watch out Bad Guys
For
I am
Everywhere.
I'll
step upon
Your
Shadow
And
walk upon
Your
Dreams
Until
you think
Your
carrying
The
world upon
Your
shoulders.
Thus
spoke
The
Sheriff of Reality
Wither
I come
And
wither I go
No
one knows
Not
even I
Thus
spoke
The
Sheriff of Reality
Cold
steel
Pressed
upon
Your
back
Thus
spoke
The
Sheriff of Reality
Give
me
The
Goods
And
I don't
Mean
the money
Thus
spoke
The
Sheriff of Reality
Thundering
I come
And
thundering I go
And
the world
Will
never
be
the same
Thus
Spoke
The
Sheriff of Reality
After a few lines he put the paper down and really
got into it, reciting off the top of his head, and a tinkling of the piano keys
against the wall grabbed everyone’s attention for a split moment – it was Tido
Mambo chiming in, and then the Nomad’s percussionist began tapping his bongos
and dragging Paul’s poem into the realm of music.
When Pittsburgh Paul was done and walked off stage
with an extended applause and a smile on his face, Joe asked Tido to stay where
he was and sat down on a stool on the stage and began playing his acoustic
guitar, a Ventures surfing tune that everyone knew, and the bongos and Tido on
keys rounded out the sound. After an extended jam, Joe knew Tido was in another
league, but asked him to join the Nomads at the Tony Marts audition.
Tido was honest about it, “I already have a band,”
he said, “and I’ve already been fired by Tony three times in one week – not the
record,” he pointed out.
But he did want to go back to Tony Marts and since
it was a Monday and his band was off that night, Tido agreed to join the Nomads
for the audition, and asked them to stop by the Anchorage two hours early so
they could practice a little before going on.
So later that afternoon the Nomads VW bus pulled up
in front of the Anchorage Tavern and the three Nomads and Stephanie went in and
to the back of the bar where Tido was sitting at the Tom Thumb piano, with his
hair pulled up and hidden under a yellow silk Egyptian turban that Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs
had given him after they jammed to "Woolly Bully" into the early morning at the Dunes the
previous week. Stevie and the Nomads got it – since Tido had been
unceremoniously fired and kicked out of Tony Marts by the bouncers three times,
he had to go back in disguise so he wouldn’t be recognized.
Stevie and the Nomads all ordered Cokes from Buck
the bartender even though he would have served them despite none of them,
except Tido, was over 21. They didn’t want to drink before their audition,
introduced Stephanie to Tido and then ran though the two songs Stevie wrote but
mainly stuck to the popular standards that they knew Tony was looking for.
Then they all
packed into the VW bus and Joe drove the few blocks down Bay Avenue and pulled
up to Tony Marts front door to unload the equipment they would need.
Tony wasn’t in the house yet, Joe noticed as he
looked up into the corner seat at the little elevated bar in the corner where
Tony always sat, his seat was empty, that bar wasn’t open yet, but a few of the
others were, and manned by popular bartenders like Doobie Duberson, Harry
Goldberg, Sonny McCullough and Dick Squires.
Joe had arranged to go on first, and they were a
half hour early, so after plugging in his guitar and testing the microphones,
he sat down in the corner on a keg of beer next to a tall, thin black guy
picking at an electric guitar that wasn’t plugged in, staring intently at his
fingers as they plucked the guitar.
When he was done the tall, thin black dude looked up
at Joe sitting there next to him and smiled, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m Joe, with the Nomads,” Walsh said, reaching out
his hand, “we’re auditioning tonight.”
The guy shook Joe’s hand but didn’t say anything,
just smiled.
“Hey, you got a pick I could borrow?” Joe asked,
“I’m fresh out.”
The guy hands Joe the guitar pick he had in his
hands and Joe thanked him and then added, “We got an extra guitar slot if you
want to sit in on any of our set, feel free.”
“You with Joey Dee and the Starliters?” Joe asked,
and the guy just nodded yes.
“Wow, that must be really neat! But I guess you get
tired of playing the Twist and Peperment Twist so much.”
The guy just smiled and picked up another pick from
his guitar case and started stairing at his fingers as he plucked the
unplugged guitar, and Joe went back to the stage with his pick.
They were all in place on the main stage a few
minutes before they were to go on when out of the corner of his eye Joe saw Mr.
Marotta come in the front door, sit down in his spot at the corner of the bar
and light his cigar.
It was Show Time in the Showplace of the World.
The three Nomads kicked in with the power trio set,
while Tido just played softly to fill in the sound and not call attention to
himself, while Stevie stood back against the wall and wasn’t introduced until
the third song, a popular number before they did Stevie’s two originals, that
they knew would make Tony winch.
But they didn’t get the hook or get unplugged
because Stevie was really strong and Tony liked her immediately, and during her
second song, the tall, thin black guy who played with the Skyliters plugged in
and stood in the back but added a dynamic third guitar that blew everybody
away, except Tony. Tony just didn’t get it, and appeared perplexed, as the
crowd, as it filtered in, were suddenly paying attention to a no nothing new
band nobody ever heard of before and at the end of the song everybody was
applauding, cheering and whistling, including the bartenders and bouncers, so
Tony couldn’t give them the hook as the crowd clearly liked it.
Before the Nomad’s set was over the Starliter’s
guitarist unplugged his guitar and unobtrusely left the back of the stage to go
over to the other stage where his band was getting ready to play.
Ending with the Ventures surf songs that kept
people’s attention and got the dance floor going, the Nomads ended their half
hour audition as Joey Dee and the Skyliters began playing “The Peperment Twist”
across the room.
The Starliters front man Little Joey Dee was a
Jersey Guy, that is a North Jersey Guy in the Frank Sinatra-Frankie Valle mold, and married to the mob, and had a
squeaky voice that has been heard over every radio in the country, but on
this night it was the Starliter’s guitarist who was getting all the attention,
much to the dismay of Joey Dee.
“Who is that guy?” everyone wanted to know.
A few years out of the Army, James Jimi Hendrix was
still looking for himself and a good paying job in music, and had already left
Little Richard and jammed with his idol Muddy Waters when he hooked up with
Joey Dee and the Starliters through Leroy Brown, his old drill sergeant from
Fort Dix.
While the whole room was twisting the night away,
and Tido Mambo sneaked out a side door, Joe was still pumping with excitement
and was smiling as he approached Mister Marotta at the bar.
“How’d we do Mister Mart?” Joe asked.
Tony took the cigar out of his mouth and smiled, “You’se
guys did good. You got a job, three sets a night on the back stage through next Thursday,” he said knowing that Mitch
Ryder and the Detroit Wheels were coming in Friday to play the Labor Day
weekend. The Nomads were just going to fill in for a few nights, but it was a
gig, and while it was too late to
include them in the newspaper print ads, they would have their name on the Tony
Marts Marque – along with Joey Dee and the Starliters, the Fall Guys and a few bands like the Nomads who just came down the pike looking for action.
Joe was due to be at Kent State, Ohio on Thursday
for freshman orientation, but he would miss that in order to play a paying gig
at Tony Marts, and wouldn’t make it to Ohio until Tuesday, he day after Labor
Day, and he would be forever disoriented for missing freshman orientation.
And they were going to have to play without Todo Mambo
or Jimi Hendrix and Stevie could only sit in to sing a few sets, but Joe was
confident they could hold their own and after scrounging around Shrivers
Pavilion and the Purple Dragon for more players to fill out the band for the
three night gig, Walsh just sat down with Tony and explained it to him.
“We’re a Power Trio,” Joe said, “and even though
we’re only three guys, we try harder.”
So Tony let them play, and even got to like some of
their original songs because the crowd liked them too, and just let it go, like
water off a duck’s back, he was just resigned to the fact that, as he put it,
“The Hawks were the last of the gentlemen.”
“After the Hawks, the animals took over,” he
lamented, taking a puff of his cigar and a sip of his drink.
On the other side of the room Joey Dee and the Skyliters were rockin' the house, as everybody was up twisting to the "Peppermint Twist," the song that made them famous two years previous. They played the Peppermint Lounge in New York City, and their song made that place famous, so they became the house band there, but were now milking that song for whatever they could get. And then to close the set they did an extended version of the Isley Brothers' "Shout!" that had the college kids going crazy and lying down on the dance floor and bars and shaking on their backs - the ultimate Twist and Shout!
"Shout, shout, let it all hang out.
These are the things I can do without
Come on, I'm talking to you, come on
Shout!
In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul
in black and white
They really ought to know
Those one track minds
That took you for a working boy
Kiss them goodbye
You shouldn't have to jump for joy
They gave you life
and in return you gave them Hell
As cold as ice
I hope we live to tell the tale
I hope we live to tel the tale
I'd really love to break your heart
Come on, I'm talking to you come on
But you really have to hear it with Hendrix on guitar.
After his successful audition Joe Walsh talked to Tony about some gig details and then stuck around to see the Joey Dee and the Skyliters, but was attracted, as was everyone else in the house, to the guy in the back with the guitar, the tall, skinny black dude in the Afro. Joe zoomed in on the guitarists fingers and watched for a few minutes in awe and thought how the quiet guy talked with his guitar.
Joe then searched his pockets and took out the guitar pick the guy with the left handed strat had given him and looked at it as if it had something magical about it, and he kissed it.
Roomfull of Mirrors –A Biography of Jimi Hendrix - by Charles R. Cross –
ReplyDelete(Hyperion, NY, 2005)
p. 122
“When Jimi found he couldn’t make enough with the Squires to survive, he went on the road with Joey Dee and the Starliters, playing fifty-eight shows in sixty days. The job represented a coup for Jimi, as the Starliters were a successful band and their ‘Peppermint Twist’ had been a No. 1 hit….The Starliters were the first racially integrated band Jimi had joined since Seatle, and their sound was more rock’roll than his other early bands. Their tour concentrated on the Northeast, but they did make some appearances in the South, where Jimi found that being in an integrated band was even more difficult than playing in an all-black group. They slept in black-owned hotels, sometimes as far as fifty miles from the venue, and are sitting on flour sacks in the kitchen since the three black band members were not welcome in most restaurants. Though Jimi would later complain that he wasn’t paid enough, his tenure with the Starliters offered firsthand evidence that white musicians existed who were willing to stand up for civil rights…On the tour, the Starliters played to crowds as large as ten thousand, the biggest Jimi had yet seen. Still, because of the racial tension caused by the mixed band, in many venues the musicians were not allowed to leave the backstage area during set breaks. Perhaps because of their shared burden of prejudice, the Starliters were a close band, and Jimi quickly ingratiated himself….As a dance band, the Starliters had little choice but to play their hits note for note. Still, Jimi was given a solo every night during which he played with his guitar behind his head.”
Joey Dee: “Jimi auditioned in my garage in Lodi, New Jersey, and we hired him immediately. He was a great guitar player.”
“There were many times I was offered more money to tour without the black players, but I refused.”
Starliter David Brigati: “Jimi was really shy at first, but he opened up and told wild stories of being on the road with the Isleys and Little Richard.”