Or, like Bobby Lord and his band, in Oklahoma to play a Rodeo. The promoters had a grand entrance arranged. They had the band, Spider Wilson and Hal Rugg being two of them, set up their instruments and amps on a flat bed trailer with a tractor hooked to it, and the plan was to have this long extension cord dragging behind and for the band to start playing as the tractor pulled the movable stage out to the center of the Rodeo Ring. Well, at Intermission when they were to play their show, the announcer gave them a big introduction and the kid on the tractor started the tractor...he evidently had visions of being a race car driver or something cause he took out for the center of the ring at a brisk pace..going over the rough ridges of the ring that the horses and bulls had left...the band had time to hit about two licks on their instruments..and then just grab their stuff and hold on for dear life for the ride. The bouncing got Hal Rugg's steel guitar completely out of tune, one of the amps fell off the trailer, the drums scattered in several directions, and Bobby Lord was doing a tap dance with a mike trying not to fall off. The long extension cord came unplugged, of course...and the whole big entrance was a circus clown fiasco. So, for the first two songs, Bobby was hollering his songs into a dead mike, with only Spider Wilson able to play a dead electric guitar, the bass player was trying to get his amp back up on the trailer, the drummer was trying to put his drums back in some kind of order, Hal Rugg would spend the rest of the night trying to get his steel back in tune...and the crowd loved it all.
Or working on top of the projection booth of a drive-in theater in Illinois, as I was with Loretta Lynn and The Wilburn Brothers, in 1964. It was in October and a cold front had come through to drop the temps to about the upper 40's...and it was raining. The people were sitting in their cars, motors running and heaters going, with the little speakers hung on the inside of the windows..and when I moved up to the mike, pretty well soaked with rain water, I opened my mouth to sing the first words and fire jumped out of the mike, connected with my tongue and lit me up like a Christmas Tree. Just another reason why you should never use electric instruments and sound systems in wet conditions...Instead of the words of my song...I let out a "S==T FIRE!!!!!" And the people in their nice warm cars, turned to each other and asked, "What did he say?"
Or playing the nice club in Tampa, and right in the middle of my show, a group of Professional Wrestlers who had just come in from their big Wrestling Show, started throwing Midgets across the dance floor, in perfect time with my music. Yessir, Midget Tossing was big in Tampa I reckon.
Or playing a show in Poplar Bluff, Mo, and when we got to the club, the local Musicians Union had decided to protest the club and were not gonna let us play...we played the show anyway, and a bunch of toughs were waiting for us when we came out the front door to load up our instruments, and we had to fight our way out of town. Not a good ending for a bad show night. When we finally got to our Dodge Motor Home we found that they had busted in the door and trashed the interior. Just another night of sweatin' over a hot guitar.
Maybe the world has changed so much in the intervening years that music does not have those adventures, I don't know. But, that's how we had to grow up in the music business in the glory years. I loved it. It's like the old drive-ins that used to have the good lookin' carhops...gone, but the memory lingers on.
Stan
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