a thoroughbred racehorse, or Georgeanne. Try to get them to take a ride up to Blueberry
Hill lover’s lane. Nasty nasty nasty.
Here comes Wendell and Tommy cutting me off as I’m driving out of town, running over the field and through the alley, trying
to catch me. I can’t stop now. I’m on my way.
CHAPTER 2
BUDDYS
W hat if,” I asked my dad one day somewhere in the early 1950s, “they mixed black music with the white music? Country music
and blues?”
“That might be something,” Daddy replied, and went back to pulling transmissions.
On a fall morning in 1954, listening to KVOW’s
Hillbilly Hit Parade,
I heard that something. I was taking my brother to school. It was about 8:20, and the reason I remember is that the program
was only on for fifteen minutes each day, from 8:15 to 8:30 A.M.
Elvis Presley was singing “That’s Alright Mama” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
The sound went straight up your spine. The way he sang, the singer sounded black, but something about the songs was really
country. Maybe it was the flapping of that big doghouse bass, all wood thump, and the slapback echo of the guitars wailin’
and frailin’ away. It just climbed right through you. I had grown up hearing Bill Monroe sing “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” but
this was something entirely different.
I thought, what a wild, strange sound. Up at the station, I looked at the yellow Sun label from Memphis as if it were from
Mars. I started listening for it. They didn’t know what to call Elvis yet on the radio, though they thought of him as a country
artist. “That’s one of our boys there,” they’d say, just to let their listeners know. But nobody was sure of what he was going
to mean.
One thing was for certain. When he came to Lubbock in January of 1955, he was billed as the King of Hillbilly Bop. Dave Stone
of KDAV had first booked him for an ungodly little amount, a hundred and fifty dollars or something. Fifty dollars apiece
for the three of them.
Bill Black, Elvis’s bass player, called Dave to set up some details of the date. He was kind of acting as manager then. Now
Bill Black sounded black; he had that Memphis drawl, and we hadn’t heard many Memphis people. Dave didn’t know what he had
gotten himself into; he was talking around it, through it, and finally came out with it. “Bill, are you black?”
“Hell, no, we’re white,” said Bill. That was how it was then, back when black people could write the songs but nobody wanted
them to sing them. Which is how Pat Boone got to cover Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” if you can believe that. In Lubbock,
audiences might have been legally integrated, but blacks still sat in the balcony while whites sat in the orchestra.
I didn’t get to see Elvis the first time he came through town. I heard about it up in Littlefield, how he performed at the
Fair Park Coliseum with Hank Snow and Martha Carson and stole the show in his red britches, orange sport coat, and white buck
shoes. How he played the Cotton Club out on Slayton Highway southeast of town and got in a little scrap or something there.
The second time Elvis hit Lubbock, they paid him four thousand dollars. He was part of a package tour that also featured Billy
Walker, Jimmy and Johnny (though Johnny had already been kicked out of the group and was replaced by Wayne Walker), and Tillman
Franks, who played bass and managed Jimmy and Johnny. He later worked with the
Louisiana Hayride
and as Johnny Horton’s and David Houston’s manager.
Usually up-and-coming performers would spread out when they hit a region, trying to earn a little extra traveling expenses
and a few additional fans. I booked a show for Billy Walker and Jimmy and Johnny at the Littlefield high school auditorium.
They asked me to put up the posters, and they’d give me a percentage. My then-girlfriend Maxine took the tickets. I’d also
get to sing on the show.
I had heard there was a
Hill lover’s lane. Nasty nasty nasty.
Here comes Wendell and Tommy cutting me off as I’m driving out of town, running over the field and through the alley, trying
to catch me. I can’t stop now. I’m on my way.
CHAPTER 2
BUDDYS
W hat if,” I asked my dad one day somewhere in the early 1950s, “they mixed black music with the white music? Country music
and blues?”
“That might be something,” Daddy replied, and went back to pulling transmissions.
On a fall morning in 1954, listening to KVOW’s
Hillbilly Hit Parade,
I heard that something. I was taking my brother to school. It was about 8:20, and the reason I remember is that the program
was only on for fifteen minutes each day, from 8:15 to 8:30 A.M.
Elvis Presley was singing “That’s Alright Mama” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
The sound went straight up your spine. The way he sang, the singer sounded black, but something about the songs was really
country. Maybe it was the flapping of that big doghouse bass, all wood thump, and the slapback echo of the guitars wailin’
and frailin’ away. It just climbed right through you. I had grown up hearing Bill Monroe sing “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” but
this was something entirely different.
I thought, what a wild, strange sound. Up at the station, I looked at the yellow Sun label from Memphis as if it were from
Mars. I started listening for it. They didn’t know what to call Elvis yet on the radio, though they thought of him as a country
artist. “That’s one of our boys there,” they’d say, just to let their listeners know. But nobody was sure of what he was going
to mean.
One thing was for certain. When he came to Lubbock in January of 1955, he was billed as the King of Hillbilly Bop. Dave Stone
of KDAV had first booked him for an ungodly little amount, a hundred and fifty dollars or something. Fifty dollars apiece
for the three of them.
Bill Black, Elvis’s bass player, called Dave to set up some details of the date. He was kind of acting as manager then. Now
Bill Black sounded black; he had that Memphis drawl, and we hadn’t heard many Memphis people. Dave didn’t know what he had
gotten himself into; he was talking around it, through it, and finally came out with it. “Bill, are you black?”
“Hell, no, we’re white,” said Bill. That was how it was then, back when black people could write the songs but nobody wanted
them to sing them. Which is how Pat Boone got to cover Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” if you can believe that. In Lubbock,
audiences might have been legally integrated, but blacks still sat in the balcony while whites sat in the orchestra.
I didn’t get to see Elvis the first time he came through town. I heard about it up in Littlefield, how he performed at the
Fair Park Coliseum with Hank Snow and Martha Carson and stole the show in his red britches, orange sport coat, and white buck
shoes. How he played the Cotton Club out on Slayton Highway southeast of town and got in a little scrap or something there.
The second time Elvis hit Lubbock, they paid him four thousand dollars. He was part of a package tour that also featured Billy
Walker, Jimmy and Johnny (though Johnny had already been kicked out of the group and was replaced by Wayne Walker), and Tillman
Franks, who played bass and managed Jimmy and Johnny. He later worked with the
Louisiana Hayride
and as Johnny Horton’s and David Houston’s manager.
Usually up-and-coming performers would spread out when they hit a region, trying to earn a little extra traveling expenses
and a few additional fans. I booked a show for Billy Walker and Jimmy and Johnny at the Littlefield high school auditorium.
They asked me to put up the posters, and they’d give me a percentage. My then-girlfriend Maxine took the tickets. I’d also
get to sing on the show.
I had heard there was a
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