in Auburn, and this was about 1966, and if he played it once everybody wanted him to play it again. I think he played it about five times, to the point where the other members in the band were saying No! No! … I remember seeing Little Anthony and the Imperials in a packed house. We saw Dionne Warwick.” The embarrassment of rhythm and blues riches in Tuscaloosa had a powerful influence on young musicians in the area, for even if they were not enrolled in the university, there were still plenty of places you could hear outstanding African American performers play once they had earned their money at the fraternities. Future stars of southern rock Paul Hornsby, Chuck Leavell, and Eddie Hinton all started their lifelong infatuation with R&B while growing up in Tuscaloosa.
For lovers of rhythm and blues, the great public universities of Alabama offered wonderful opportunities to hear some good music. You could get an invitation to a fraternity party and spend the evening listening to Arthur Alexander or Wilson Pickett, or if you were really lucky you could find yourself playing behind Otis Redding at an Auburn fraternity party. When one of Redding’s backing band found himself unable to play, aspiring guitarist Bob Cahill got the chance of a lifetime: “This was in the fall of that year [1962], when Otis Redding was unheard-of. The band was sent from Georgia to perform at a fraternity party, and they sent the wrong band and the guitar player got pretty drunk there on the fraternity’s booze, and by the time the party started, he could not play. The guy that I had gone down to see and his brother were there, and he told his brother that I could play, and this singer and I figured out what songs we could play and we played for the rest of the night.” Redding had just cut his first record for Stax in Memphis, and a few months later Duke Rumore played “These Arms of Mine” on the radio. “Five or six months later this friend of mine called and said, ‘You have got to listen to Duke Rumore, he’s playing a song by this guy!’ So I said that that sure did sound like him. I don’t even think that we knew his name, but he had a real good voice. So when he came to Birmingham we went to see him, but when we saw him he did not remember us and I can understand that. It was, however, the same guy, and it was Otis Redding.”
Panama City Blues
Being underage, not having a license or a vehicle, working part-time jobs and homework restricted many teen bands to playing only around town at weekends, often relying on friends or parents to take them to their engagements. But those lucky to be in the nether zone between high school and college or full-time work grabbed at the opportunity to take their music outside Birmingham and onto the road, especially if that road led to the sun, sand, and girls on the Gulf Coast. Driving down to the beach became an important part of the garage bands’ experience as their members matured both as musicians and drivers. Touring was an adventure, part of the newness and excitement that characterized many memories of the 1960s, in which a generation of amateur musicians tasted the life once reserved for fearless bluesmen and hard-drinkin’ country acts. Terry Powers: “I used to play with Hot Light, and that was with Eddie Chandler, Wayne McNight, and myself. We were just a guitar trio and we did pretty well. Jerry Beetlesom and I played in my first band together when we were eighteen called Crystal Magic. We had the life of Riley on the road. It was fantastic.”
Financed by loans from parents and boosted by high expectations, Birmingham’s garage bands took to the road on worn-out tires and vintage automobiles. Many of the stories about touring in the 1960s have at their center vehicles made in the early 1950s or 1940s. The love affair between these young men and their vehicles led to songs and bands named after them: the former about the kind of beat-up cars they drove, the latter about the kind of prestige vehicles they yearned for. Rock songs about cars depict them as things of beauty and power, listing their attributes and making them the heroes of narratives of speed and conquest. For teenage musicians the automobile represented the American Dream at its most immediate and potent, and they crammed into old Dodges and Chevies for long-distance journeys that took them to the Gulf Coast. They pulled U-Haul trailers loaded with gear. They brought their instruments and band outfits but very little money: Larry and the Loafers fell out in Panama City with only $2.65 between the five of them, and the Ramblers pawned some of their PA system for $5 worth of gas to get home. Driving long distances at night on narrow country roads was scary enough to persuade some of them to retire from touring. All shared the same trials and tribulations. Country musician Bill Morrison: “The good, the bad, and the ugly of traveling in passenger cars pulling those darned trailers, with the drummer’s stinky feet resting on your lap while you tried to get a little sleep” during the long rides, guitars between your legs in the cramped interiors, and the inevitable breakdowns. Engines blew up, transmissions failed, tires burst, and trailers became disengaged and took their own way home. None of these hurdles seem to discourage the bands. This was an adventure. It made memories that lasted through adulthood and were fondly recalled in middle age.
The garage bands went on the road with varied goals. Some of them were playing to pick up a few hundred dollars to help get through school. Some played to pay their bar bills. Others had their sights set a little higher and dreamed of a recording session in Muscle Shoals or Nashville. Playing in a band could make an important contribution to a high school student’s budget; a wad of bills for a few hours of fun seemed like a big deal at the time. Bandleaders were in constant negotiation with venue owners for increases in pay or beer. The meeting of band and venue owner usually went as follows, as related by Dale Aston of the Torquays: “A tubby middle-aged man greeted us and gave us the standard band greeting: no drinking on stage — no girls in the room — no smoking on stage — don’t play too loud, etc., etc.” But all the rules were there to be broken and the party that started on the bandstand often ended up in the sensuous confines of a motel room. Playing rock ’n’ roll in Alabama was not without its peculiar dangers, especially where booze and girls were involved. And booze and girls were usually involved. Vodka and underage girls ruined one trip that the Distortions took to Demopolis. The gig at the party went well —“Man, we had a ball!”— and the band’s celebration in the motel after the party went even better until the police arrived. Disaster! The story ended with the band spending the night in jail for underage drinking. The next morning the judge, who had earlier been at the party, fined the band all the money they had made at the gig.4
The thrills of the road went hand in hand with the maturation of the garage bands as musicians. Playing for money, and learning how to entertain a crowd, pushed amateurs to a level of professionalism. There was always that moment of epiphany when you realized that the band was really playing together and you had finally made it. It might come at the end of a set when the crowd cheered or when a promoter asked you what you were doing for the rest of the summer. Some bands enjoyed a special moment of triumph. Dale Aston remembers when the Torquays played Panama City: “Our first night to perform at the Old Dutch was fun. We had a chance to meet our fellow performers, Mark Dinning [known for his songs on Teen Time in Birmingham] and the exotic dancer, White Storm. We began an upbeat instrumental and brought her onstage to raucous applause from around seventy-five well-lit people ready for the show. Remember, she was only a few feet in front of us on the stage as she danced about … All of a sudden White Fury turned her back to the audience, faced the band, and tore her top off, revealing two bounding breasts with tasseled pasties at the end. The drummer lost a stick, and the band lost it for a moment before recovering. I don’t think the audience even noticed the sour chord. After the first night the strip act became routine for us and we hardly noticed when the clothes came off. I guess we had finally become true professional musicians.”
The college fraternity circuit was easily the best place for a garage band to play, but it only operated during the school year, during football season in the fall and coming to a climax with graduation in the spring. The long, dreary months of summer tended to drag on with little musical entertainment and employment opportunities for amateur musicians. Driving down to Panama City, Florida, for the summer vacation became popular in the 1950s as this sleepy seaside town developed into a major tourist destination for folks from Alabama and Georgia. By 1960 it was welcoming a million visitors a year, and the “Miracle Strip” became an icon of southern culture that also supported a lot of live music. It became a summertime tradition to go down Panama City Beach. The route which went along the two-lane highways to
