old tin shed opposite the park at Rushcutters Bay. It was used for all the main boxing events in the 1940s and 1950s and, because of its capacity of about 12,900 people. Lee Gordon turned it into Sydney’s prime entertainment venue. The acoustics of the place made the crowd even louder than the show and, although I had been there many times before, this time was different. This time, instead of being an “audient”, I was a participant!
The atmosphere at the Stadium still contained the stench and sweat of gladiatorial combat. This ambience was even more evident as I entered the fighter’s dressing rooms for the first time in January 1960. All the Australian rockers on the show knew each other quite well. However, when the American contingent arrived we were surprised to find they didn’t seem to know each other at all. Duane Eddy and his band, the Rebels, Johnny Restivo, Santo & Johnny and Floyd Robinson were all asking who the hell Crash Craddock was? Indeed, Crash didn’t seem to be too sure himself! He asked Lee Gordon when he was supposed to be on? To which Lee replied, “You’re on last, boy. You’re the star!” To the amazement of Crash and the other American acts, it was true — he was the star!
This would not have been the case in America where he had only been a football star, hence the name, Crash. This didn’t matter to us of course, as they were all big stars just by the fact that they were all Americans. To us, America was the centre of the rock’n’roll universe where all the stars came from — except for Lucky Starr, of course, who was born in Australia. But that’s another galaxy! Even Lee Gordon was held in absolute awe as his American accent betrayed him as being one of THEM. Lee had been almost entirely responsible for promoting Crash Craddock in Australia with one of the first real film clips ever made. The record and film clip of Crash Craddock singing Boom Boom Baby, wearing his jumper, was played on TV and radio to almost saturation point. It also resulted in a boost in the sale of “Crash Craddock Jumpers” in the middle of summer!
All the Americans were very friendly except for Duane Eddy who seemed genuinely shy and was sulking in the corner because he didn’t have top billing. He also wasn’t too happy about Jonnie Hayton using his Gibson Maestro amplifier. He had good reason to worry for, if given the chance, Jon was one of the loudest guitar players in Australia. Duane Eddy’s band members were all from Phoenix, Arizona and were very interested in the Australian music scene. Their interest waned somewhat when I proudly told them that the local recording rate was seven pounds, seven shillings (£7/7/-). The drummer patted me on the shoulder and shook his head. I think I knew what he meant. The “well paid” musicians of Duane Eddy’s band were Jim Horn (tenor sax and dance steps), Al Casey (electric bass and rebel yells), Jimmy Troxel (drums) and Duane Eddy (lead guitar — with new strings for every show).
The Dee Jays’ pianist Mike Tseng also played with Duane Eddy’s band. Poor Mike should have received a double fee as he played with nearly everyone on the show. Mike Tseng joined the Dee Jays when they needed a piano player for JO’K’s TV show 6 O’Clock Rock, which started back in February 1959. Mike and the Dee Jays started rehearsing Crash who didn’t seem to know too many songs and had to resort to a few standard 12 bar blues rockers like Whole Lotta Shakin’. It wouldn’t have mattered what he sang, the crowd were going to love him anyway. He was pleasantly surprised when Bob “Bluto” Bertles belted out the opening bars of Boom Boom Baby on the saxophone, exactly the same as the record.
After lunch, Dig & the R’Jays finally had a small rehearsal with The Graduates who were going to sing vocal backing for our spot. We came back to the dressing room to find Dig’s father and manager, Gordon, holding Johnny O’Keefe upside down while Johnny Restivo was looking on in horror and disbelief. Apparently JO’K had noticed that Johnny Restivo was a little “thick” (naïve), so he was trying to con him into going on the show before him. JO’K always insisted on being last on amongst the Aussie acts. He thought he would try to take his prestige a little further. After JO’K continually bugged poor little Restivo, Dig’s father finally got sick of it and told JO’K to leave him alone to which JO’K replied, “Shut up you old bastard!” Gordon Richards, who was an ex-policeman from Narooma, immediately grabbed JO’K and turned him upside down till all the money fell out of his pockets. “Don’t ever call me an old bastard again,” he said as he bonked O’Keefe’s head on the floor. Although surprised, JO’K seemed to take all of this with good humour and he certainly never called Gordon an old bastard again! In fact, Johnny O’Keefe and Dig’s father became pretty firm friends from that day on.
The smell of past boxing events at the Stadium seemed to do something to JO’K. On a later show he punched Freddy Cannon in the head for falsely accusing the Dee Jays of playing out of time.
As the start of the show grew closer, the excitement and adrenalin was mounting. I felt like a gladiator about to face the lions in the Colosseum. We had the unenviable task of opening the show. If the crowd hated you, you died. If they loved you, you were gloriously spared. We ran down the aisle toward the boxing ring and the deafening roar from the crowd was both encouraging and frightening. Once we were on the revolving stage the fear subsided and we were “into it”. We were doing what we knew how to do best and they loved it. We were spared! As Jon blew the cobwebs out of Duane Eddy’s amp, the thumbs were up and the crowd was bopping. I must admit to some relief to finally getting off the merry-go-round effect of the revolving stage. We were so carried away I forgot where the steps were. Now, the final running of the gauntlet through a police cordon, staving off menacing outstretched hands. That was the end of our first show and we were still alive! After surviving all of this, the rest of the shows would be easy, and they were.
At the end of the dressing room aisle I was standing with Johnny Restivo watching JO’K whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Restivo was a little Bronx bodybuilding champ of Puerto Rican descent who was built like a miniature brick shithouse. He only had one hit record, appropriately called The Shape I’m In. Over the muscles he wore a very short Lurex coat, which was the latest New York fashion. The poor little bugger was wishing he had taken JO’K’s advice and gone on before him. The reception for JO’K was deafening. How was he going to follow that? I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him as he ran down to the stage amidst choruses of “We want Johnny O’Keefe!”
The crowd didn’t get going again until after Restivo was followed by Santo & Johnny, a couple of tough little Hispanic Brooklyn kids who carried flick-knives and also had only one hit, an instrumental called Sleepwalk. They thought that Jon’s Rex guitar was made by the same people who built the Rex Hotel where they were staying. After Floyd Robinson and Duane Eddy, Crash finished the show off beautifully. He was so successful (and cheap) that Lee Gordon brought him back again the following year and he had a second smash hit with One Last Kiss.
Two weeks at the Stadium was a fabulous experience for me. I had fulfilled my lifetime ambition at seventeen. What could I possibly do now?
By the time we did another Stadium show later that year in September 1960, with Ricky Nelson, we felt like old hands at the game. Ricky suffered the same fate as Johnny Restivo, except this time at the hands of Col Joye & the Joy Boys. It was hard to understand how most of the American acts seemed to have little experience at communicating with big crowds. We all thought that they would be as good as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis but this was not the case. Most of them had very low-key acts and relied solely on record sales and TV appearances. JO’K, Col Joye and Dig had all been through the hard school of trying to win over audiences and, although they weren’t the best singers in the world, they could always be relied upon to stir up a good reaction from the crowd. In earlier times this was even more difficult as Australian audiences usually considered Aussie acts as being second rate. This reaction became known as “The Cultural Cringe”.
Jon and I thought Ricky Nelson and his band were great, especially the guitarist, James Burton, but after Col Joye had “killed ‘em”; the audience was too excited for anyone as conservative as Rick who stood rigidly behind his guitar looking quite terrified. “How could someone so famous be so nervous?” I thought, as he acknowledged me with a slightly forced smile before going
