Rock of Ages: The race for rock
BY JOHN WOOLEY World Scene Writer
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
5/06/13 at 10:06 AM
“There wasn't any discrimination. Not at the Flamingo.” So says bluesman Flash Terry, pictured last week in front of the Greenwood Avenue storefront where, in the 1950s, the doors of the Flamingo Club were open to all.
"I'm tellin' you, I didn't know segregation
back then — in the Flamingo
Club for sure," states multiple
music hall of famer and bluesman
Flash Terry.
Terry worked in that north Tulsa
venue both as a headliner and with
the legendary Jimmy "Cry Cry"
Hawkins throughout the '50s.
"If you were a musician or a
music fan, you could come in there
and sit down," he said. "There wasn't
any discrimination. Not at the
Flamingo. And we used to play on
the south side of town, too, at
places like Benny's Supper Club,
out by the turnpike gate.
Rocky Frisco.
"I remember around '54 or '55,
way back there, some of Bob Wills'
guys used to come in the Flamingo,"
he added. "And then, when it
was kinda goin' out in '58, '59 and
'60, when they were about ready to
tear it down, Leon (Russell) and
(J.J.) Cale and (Jimmy) Markham
and Rocky (Frisco), all those guys,
they used to go over there."
In fact, pianist Frisco — who was
known as Rocky Curtiss at the time
— got his first paying gig with
Terry.
"I'd play for him all week, and then
I'd go in on Tuesday nights when they
had their talent contest, and it was
automatic — if I'd played all week, I'd
get second place in the talent contest,"
Frisco remembers. "Eleven dollars.
That would be my pay for the
week. It was a deal with Flash."
How was it that Frisco showed
up at the Flamingo in the first
place?
"I just went over there one
night," he says, "a stupid crazy
teenage white guy coming into the
club. And Flash was just real nice
to me. He's the most color-blind
man I've ever met."
It's said that music can transcend
all human barriers, and that
was surely the case in Tulsa in the
late 1950s, when the pioneers of
the Tulsa Sound were sinking their
roots into the concrete and clay of
this town. There was a north side
and south side, a black and white
population that didn't mingle easily
— unless you were a musician.
And then, it didn't matter much.
Today he’s Rocky Frisco, but in this 1958 publicity still for Mercury Records, he was Rocky Curtiss.
What was even more noteworthy
than that was in this day of segregated
audiences and segregationist
attitudes, integrated bands
were common — and accepted.
The Shadow Lake Eight knows
Perhaps nowhere else was this
combination of black and white
musical influences better illustrated than in the Shadow Lake Eight, a
group that had begun life doing "bigband
style cheek-to-cheek stuff" as the
house band at the Shadow Lake Pavilion
in Noel, Mo., the summer of '58.
That's according to the band's bassist
and historian, Rick Eilerts, who met a
pre-phenom Elvis on the "Louisiana
Hayride" program and first worked in
Tulsa for the pioneering rock 'n' roll
bandleader Clyde Stacy. Eilerts had
close ties to the Tulsa-based Ernie
Fields Orchestra, having toured as a fillin
with the group.
"I was the only white guy in the band,"
he remembers.
Through that association, he became
friends with Jack Scott, a musician and arranger
for Fields' big band, and the group
began paying Fields to write arrangements
for them.
"I remember it was play a gig and
then pay Jack for some arrangements,"
says Eilerts. "We put a lot of our playing
money back into having him write for
us. And we migrated into the blues —
back to blues, with the black influence.
Not that we weren't enjoying Chuck
Berry and all the rock 'n' roll currents,
but we kind of did a transition from pure
rock 'n' roll, Elvis and all that, over to
more standard blues.
"Then, we got a black singer who
played with Ernie Fields. His name was
Li'l Clifford — Li'l Clifford Watson —
and he was a dynamite showman. Leon
McAuliffe let us come into the Cimarron
Ballroom with the Shadow Lake Eight
featuring Li'l Clifford, and we had three
black girls singing backup. And then we
had (white vocalist) Lewis Tilford in
there to sing a lot of the Sinatra standards
and stuff, so we packed 'em in."
Guitarist Riley Frances tunes up.
Many times, the initial contact
between black and white musicians
came with south-side musicians' visits
to north-side clubs, which, as Leon Russell
points out, "went 24 hours a day, and
they had national bands, national acts
coming through."
"I remember J.J. Cale saying, 'Man,
you've gotta hear this cat named Flash
Terry,'" says vocalist and bandleader
Jimmy Markham. "So he took me over
to Greenwood, to the Flamingo Club,
and that was the first time I ever heard
Flash. I really dug it, too. Loved Flash.
And through that, we just kept meeting
more cats over there. They played a lot
of white clubs over on this side of town.
We didn't play that many black spots
over there, although I did, because I
liked the environment, and I liked the
music."
Learning from each other
Probably, Cale had first become
acquainted with north-side musicians as
a member of Gene Crose's Rockets.
That group had played KOTV's "Party
Lane With Chris" program regularly in
the summer of '56, as had a black group
called Harry Vann's All Stars, a working
north-side band.
"They were very nice guys, and they
had a really nifty blues band, and we
were all over 'em with questions,"
recalls George Metzel, the Rockets'
bassist at the time. "They said, 'Well,
come on out and sit in.' The first time I
went out to the Flamingo, I was a little
nervous — for several reasons. No. 1,
I'd never gotten to play in a group like
that. No. 2, I'd never been in a nightclub
in my life. And No. 3, everybody else
was black, which I'd never encountered.
But they welcomed us and treated us so
well. We just had a heck of a time.
"We learned an awful lot from those
guys, just from listening to the way they
approached something. We were just
kids from the high schools in the area,
and we'd heard a few records, but we'd
never heard any real blues folks."
“There wasn't any discrimination. Not at the Flamingo.” So says bluesman Flash Terry, pictured last week in front of the Greenwood Avenue storefront where, in the 1950s, the doors of the Flamingo Club were open to all.
Guitarist Tom Rush, on the other
hand, made his connection with black
musicians through the elevator operator
in his mother's building. Rush, who had
left the Swingin' Shadows, had an
engagement but didn't have a piano
player. Elevator man Kermit Hall suggested
his son Kenneth.
"I knew nothing about him, and when
he showed up he asked me, 'Can I just
do a tune first?' I said, 'Yeah, go ahead.'
And if you turned your back and listened,
you were listening to Ray
Charles. He was a good salty piano player,"
notes Rush.
"He said, 'I know a drummer and a
bass player,' and I said, 'Well, get 'em,
and we'll start a band.' We were gonna
do a dance at TU, and so we were gonna
rehearse out there, and he showed up
with a whole carload of fellas, all black.
We started rehearsing 'In the Still of the
Night,' and all of a sudden I heard all
these she-doe-be-do-be-does — and
there they were, sitting over on the
couch, singing. They just blew me away.
They were great vocalists.
"So we put together a group called
the Ambassadors, featuring the Edsels
— myself and seven black fellas. The
band was the Ambassadors, and the
singers were the Edsels. I only remember
two names: one of 'em was Macho
Van Dyke, who worked for channel 6
news a number of years, and the other
was Kenneth Hall, who went on to be a
piano player for Bobby 'Blue' Bland."
On stage, off stage
The Shadowlake Eight at attention on a local bandstand.
But even if the musicians were colorblind,
the rest of the society around
them often proved to be less tolerant. As
drummer Jim Turley notes, "Even
though we went out and played with
black guys, and didn't think anything of
it, there was still some serious segregation
going on, even in school. When I
graduated from Central, I think there
was one guy there who was black."
"I played with a ton of African-American
guys — Mike Dean, Little Alex. Joss
Wheeler had a group called the New
Velvets. I played with them sometimes
and they had three black singers — and
no one thought a thing about it," says
pianist Jim Blazer. "If you were good,
and you played, no one cared about the
color of your skin."
No one, that is, except your nonmusician
friends and family members.
"Sadly, my friends who were not musicians
thought it was cool that we had
black people in the band, but they never
wanted me to hang with 'em," Blazer
explains. "Even a lot of the families would
think it was against the rules to go to a
movie with 'em or have dinner with 'em.
And quite honestly, to go to a Bishop's or
Crosstown Grill — that was frowned
upon by the retail establishments."
Two of Tulsa's earliest rock 'n' roll
bandleaders, Markham and Jumpin'
Jack Dunham, encountered a subtler
form of segregation at Tulsa's Municipal
Theater, which is now the Brady
Theater. The two had hit upon the perfect
way to sneak into the traveling
shows that had begun hitting town in
the '50s.
"We'd always dress up and have briefcases,
and those briefcases'd get us
right in," relates Dunham. "As the guys
in the bands were coming off the bus, if
there was a gap, we'd step into it — and
go right on in. We did that for a long
time.
"Then one time we stepped into
Jimmy Reed's band. And this security
guard corralled us right there at the
door. He said, 'You boys step over here
a second.' We did, and he asked us,
'Who you boys with?'
"'Jimmy Reed,' we said.
"He looked at us. 'Well,' he said, 'you
know Jimmy Reed's band's all black.'
And we were just dumbstruck. We had
no comeback at all."
The black and white
of song royalties
Guitarist Tommy Rush stands with the drum kit for his band, the Swingin’ Shadows.
In recent years, a number of stories
have surfaced concerning how black
artists of the '50s were often rooked out
of songwriting royalties. Guitarist and
bandleader Tom Rush, who played guitar
with an otherwise all-black outfit called
the Ambassadors, featuring the Edsels,
relates a tale that indicates it may have
also happened right here at home.
"They wrote a song called 'Shout,'
and we took it to KAKC radio," says
Rush. "This would've been '59, maybe.
We went up to Oklahoma City and
recorded it, and took it to KAKC radio,
and the fellas at the radio station really
liked it. They went out to talk to some of
the fellas' parents, and asked if they'd
sign for 'em on a contract, so they could
do something with the song. KAKC
wanted to be involved.
"Most of the parents said no — 'We
want 'em to go to school.' 'We want 'em
to do this and that.' And the next thing
we know, KAKC tells us that our tape
has been destroyed. Torn in half. And
they were trying to make a duplicate. It
was the only one we had."
In March of 1962, a tune called
'Shout — Part 1' reached No. 6 on the
Billboard magazine pop charts for the
New York-based Joey Dee and the Starliters.
It was, says Rush, "probably 80
percent the same song." – J.W.
A bass player
by any other name
Bill Raffensperger
A legendary Tulsa music story
involves a couple of legendary Tulsa
musicians — white bassist Bill Raffensperger,
who, like so many others,
began his career with vocalist Gene
Crose, and black bandleader Earl "Bang
Bang" Jackson, who was playing regularly
at the Stardust Supper Club in the late
'50s.
By that time, Raffensperger was
working with Johnny (J.J.) Cale at the
Casa Del Club. The same person owned
both places and, recalls Raffensperger,
"He was always trying to get us to go
over there after we finished at the Casa
Del Club, because the Stardust was
open after hours. We were always so
tired we didn't go. But one night, we did.
"So we're there, and we're all gonna
sit in. Elon Watkins, the saxophone player,
gets Cale up there, and (Watkins)
starts telling the crowd about Cale's
background — 'He's played with Ray
Charles. He's played the cruise ships.' A
big resume, right? Except he hadn't done
any of it. He hadn't done jack.
"So Cale goes up and plugs his guitar
in, and Elon whispers to him, 'Who's the
drummer?' Cale whispers back, "Buddy
Jones," and Elon says, 'He's played with
Pearl Bailey, and he's played with Sam
Cooke!" Then the piano player, Duane
Collins, and he goes off on Duane
Collins, giving him all these creds."
Next, it was time to introduce Raffensperger.
But Watkins couldn't quite
understand the name Cale was whispering.
"He says, 'Here's the most wonderful
bass player in the world!' and he whispers
to Cale, 'What's his name?' Cale
whispers, 'Bill Raffensperger.'
" 'And he's played on the cruise
ships, and —' (whispering to Cale)
'What's his name?'
"'Bill Raffensperger.'
" 'And he's played at the White
House, and —' (whispering again to
Cale) 'What's his name?' Finally, he just
gave up on understanding my name
and said, 'Here he is! Basssss
Mannnnn!'"
Raffensperger laughs. "Everybody
just called me bass man for a long time
after that." – J.W.
What is Rock of Ages?
Sunday began a five-part series on the early
history of rock 'n' roll in Tulsa. We'll continue it
in the Scene through Wednesday, skip Thursday
(no paper) and conclude it Friday in Spot.
Sunday: The birth of Tulsa rock 'n' roll
Monday: The venues, from clubs to the hop
Tuesday: A laboratory for racial integration
Wednesday: Teens tuned in to the radio
Friday: The Tulsa Sound comes around
Original Print Headline: Rock of Ages: The race for rock
