After Bebop A Lula: Utica Bands 50's 60's

[kit]

Re: Jim (The Lady’s Man) Gaylord. From what I remember Jim talking about is that he lived in Clinton NY and played a lot of hockey (what else could you do in Clinton at our age back then?). Then he moved to Whitesboro. But Jim had girls all over the place. To look at him, you might not think so, but there was something about Jim that was likeable by both the guys and the girls (and he’s still that way).

One of his girls was named Phoebe (last name withheld) from Whitesboro. Jim used to play with a group called The Rebels before I met him. Now I’m not saying this is true or just some of Jim’s schmooze, but The Rebels (I suspect it was a common name back then) had recorded a tune called, “Wild Weekend” on the Marlee label and the flip side was “Wild Weekend Cha-Cha.” Phoebe had a copy of the record and Jim autographed it and drew an arrow to the band’s name and wrote, “Drummer for Rebels.” Was it the same Rebels? Was Jim the drummer? Does Phoebe even care any more? Your guess is as good as mine.

[dgriffin]

Oct 13, 2008 11:53:27 GMT -5 jon hynes said:

Oct 13, 2008 8:03:17 GMT -5 Clipper said:

Yes, I like the novel forum name but have to look up the spelling every time, so it sure wasn't me that started the thread.

Actually, I looked up Bebop A Lula on several websites before naming the thread. Don't remember where I found this particular spelling, but a check just now on lyrics.com has an additional space between the Be and the bop. Oh, well.

Here's Gene when he was young:





Here he is aging into a classic 50's bad boy, with the hanging grapes forelocks: (Where are you, Dick Laurey?)




This is the way to step through a number in the gym: eat your heart out, Don MacLean, (dancin' in the gym"):



...and I'll bet he was wearing his sister's blouse. Where the hell else would he have gotten a shirt like that?)


Who else would have thought to combine clam fishing and rock and roll?




And, of course, even the best of us begin to put on the years:




That's right! I'd forgotten his group was called the Blue Caps. Seems to me back then I thought it was the Blue Cats.

[kit]

Re: Dale Ryder. Dale left “The Nitecaps” and they asked me to take over as bass player. We were pretty busy putting a repertoire together and practicing so that’s about all I know of Dale’s career. I’d taken Dale’s picture with two groups in the early to mid 60s when Gene Kipper was in his heyday.

One group (it was “The Bay Four” at the time) had Dale Ryder (bass), Gary Flagg (guitar), Johnny DePalma, and one other guy I can’t remember. Fortunately, I have a glossy of the group and as soon as I can scan it and get the image on the website, maybe someone could fill me in on the name of this other guy. (I use a Mac that seems to have the hiccups and can’t upload a photo to the website)

The other group was “Eric and The Chessmen” with Eric Thorngren (guitar), Dale Ryder (bass), Chuck Shoenley (organ) and I can’t remember the drummer’s name. Photo of that shot will follow as well. This photo was taken in the summer of 1965, a couple of years after the accident, just before the band’s gig at The Peppermint Lounge in NYC. Around the time of the accident, Jim Gaylord had to leave our band to join the Air Force so he wouldn’t get drafted. I doubt if he could have been Eric’s drummer. Maybe Tommy Acee for a while? I don’t know. Tommy was with “The Four Synns” (photo to follow)

I have several other photos of bands that I did for Gene Kipper but some of them are 4x5 negatives and I can’t scan them when they’re that big. But the ones I printed glossies of will eventualy get to this thread along with what I know about the members. There were so many bands, actors and models over the years I can’t remember all of them.

[kit]

Here’s Part II of the early years. Not sure if you noticed, but I tend to type as much as I talk. Guess you’ll either have to get used to it, or skip over to the next reply.

“The Nitecaps” were the house band at White’s Inn, later to be expanded and called Massoud’s Oud. When I joined, the band wanted to have business cards and to get the name registered in Oneida County. Guess who they made the ‘leader’ and assigned all this to. You got it - me. So from that time on, it was my band whether I liked it or not. We worked every weekend and started practicing and were getting pretty ‘tight.’ Or so we thought. We invited Gene Kipper to come for an audition one night. We did some stuff for him and after a while Gene got up and walked out without saying a word. I guess that meant “No, I don’t want to book you.” One of the guys knew him and called. Gene said that a band has to entertain and we needed a lot of work on professionalism and needed some simple dance steps along with our music and more personal patter. Many people look more than they listen and we had to give them some entertainment along with the music. So we started working on that. We went to Rudy’s in Herkimer and bought 4 different sets of matching tuxedo jackets - a different tux for every set. And we polished our tunes and patter and with both Jim and I having radio experience we certainly weren’t afraid of the mic. and became pretty decent. This is about the time Omar Massoud came home from the Army and started the expansion and transition of White’s into Massoud’s. So we knew our time playing there was limited and we called Gene Kipper again. He came over to watch us and this time he liked what he saw and said he’d book us. Shortly afterwards Massoud’s stopped having a house band but it didn’t really matter because we were getting booked into several bars, both in and out of the area, colleges and fraternity parties and rounded out our presentation. During this time, Dick Stone the organ player didn’t see eye-to-eye with the group, primarily me, and quit the band just before summertime. We found a couple of substitute organ players named Joe Petty and John something-or-other and did a summer at The Forest House at Sylvan Beach. In the fall we made the decision to remain a trio. We drove to Manny’s in NYC and Ken bought a red Fender Jaguar guitar and piggy-back Showman Amp and I got a matching red Fender Jazz Bass and piggy-back Bassman Amp. Sweet units, both of them.

Since “The Echoes” were now disbanded and I was playing the bass, I sold my trap set to a younger drummer named Ted Entwistle who lived here in New Hartford. Dave Martin liked the name and asked me if he could use the word “Echoes” in a band. I said sure and he apparently teamed up with Tim O’Shea and started the group “Tim O’Shea and The Echoes of Time.”

One other thing that our group did, pretty much for our own amusement and was sort of a natural, was to change the words of popular songs to make them a bit ‘naughty.” We did this to quite a few tunes and also picked up a few naughty songs from “Bernie and The Cavaliers” from Ithaca who we worked with at the Forest House that summer. One hell of a group and so were “Rick Jackson and The Lancers,” also from Ithaca. We played a solid hour, then another group played and hour while we took a break. We often used the same equipment for both bands. Real neat for the patrons - solid music (and drinking) for as long as they wanted to stay and listen, dance or drink. I remember one Sunday we went on break and walked down to DeCastros. Santo and Johnny Farina (who did Sleepwalk among many others) were playing there. We went in and I introduced us to Santo. The drums were set up but there was no drummer. I asked Santo about it and he said the drummer had suddenly come down with the flu and had to return to the hotel and lie down. He was thinking about closing down his show and I asked the 2 other guys if they’d mind sitting in and finishing the show with them. Our group and theirs were thrilled so we climbed aboard and finished the gig with them. We were tight and Santo and Johnny were very professional so we really didn’t need any practice. He’d tell us what key a tune was in, we’d play it and it sounded great. But enough about that.

That winter Gene Kipper booked us for a 2 week location gig in the ‘Down-Under Room’ at the Hotel McConville in, of all places, Ogdensburg NY. It was a 6 night a week gig with a double shift on Sundays. He had booked The Hurley Brothers there. They didn’t go over very well and didn’t stay. Then he booked “The Capri Three” with Frannie Loucks on bass, Bill LaPera on guitar, and Tony Caro on drums. They did a lot of commercial music and lasted for a while. Tony married a local gal named Kathy Lesperance and Frannie had been going with another local gal, but their music just didn’t seem to click all that well and Gene put us in. So we went there with a 2 week contract and a prayer that we could last that long. We decided that they were the ‘right’ crowd and after a while started hitting them with a few of the naughty songs. They ate it up and we were an instant hit. This is the end of this part of the story, but to preview the next part, with the help of a few other musicians the 2 week contract turned into a year and a half for me. We became know as “the dirty band from Utica.”

More later.

[jon hynes]

Oct 13, 2008 21:13:35 GMT -5 kit said:

Then he booked “The Capri Three” with Frannie Loucks on bass, Bill LaPera on guitar, and Tony Caro on drums.

Take a look on page 2 and see if that's Tony Caro in the Picture of the Capri 3.

[jon hynes]

[jon hynes]

One day Larry Moynehan, Jim Porter and I got together to practice. Naturally, the first thing to do was tune up. A B3 was a new thing to most young kids and Larry proceeded to play an E. Jim, knowing the piano keyboard could see that Larry was playing an E. Of course being a perpetual prankster Larry had the Root drawbars pushed in so that what we heard was a G a third higher. Jim kept turning and turning the tuning knob until the string finally popped.

Larry and I pulled some really crazy pranks as youngsters that could fill volumes. He didn't need me to think them up though.

[kit]

Jon,

Yes, that's Tony Caro with The Capri 3. He married Kathy Lesperance from Ogdensburg and they lived in Rome NY. Tony got cancer and had to have 1 (or both) legs removed. He and Kathy were still married the last time I saw them at The Club Monarch several years ago. I have no idea whatever happened with them since. That's pretty much the way The Capri 3 looked back in the early 60s. Frannie was a sketch and his bass is the exact sister to my Gibson 6 string. Frannie was going with an O'Burg gal (name withheld) while he was there. When we took over, I soon started going with the same gal (although I didn't know it at the time). She must have had a thing for singing bass players. I came a hair's breadth away from marrying her. I heard Frannie had switched to the drums. Any idea what's going on with him lately?

Kit

[jon hynes]

[dgriffin]

Now there's a familiar name ... Sal Alberico. Sax?

[Clipper]

Does anyone remember Ronnie Alberico playing music? I never knew him until he was in his fifties, and he had a very bad heart and has passed on since then. I seem to remember his talking about playing in a band and singing as a younger man.

He may have even been Sal Aberico's brother, I would not know. I met Ronnie in about 1987 when he lived on Hinckley Lake with his wife Virgie. He was brought up in East Utica, and around the time that I knew him, he AND his brother worked as security guards at St Elizabeths hospital. ron died in his late 60's a couple of years ago. He lived in N Utica at the time. Possibly in Candlewyk Apartments.

[dgriffin]

Yup, I just did a google and found this:

www.uticajazz.com/sal_alberico_jr_alto_saxoph.html

The UticaJazz.Com site looks interesting. I hadn't seen it before.

[butchd]

To all on the post.
Bob Perry is my cousin. His father, my uncle, Joe Perry was a fiddle player of great talent.
His wife was a country and popular musician. She had a fabulous yoddle. I recall when I was
very young, family musicians gathered in the dining room of my grandparents house on Neilson St. on a Saturday night of all acoustic music with the entire neighorhood.
Bob's younger brother is a famous steel guitar player out of Rhode Island.
He has recorded with all the country greats and now lives off royalties.
I have music in my blood.
butchd

[dgriffin]

Hi, butchd, welcome to the group!

[Clipper]

Bob Perry has always been one of my favorite local musicians. The last time I saw Bob he was playing at the Moose Club in Marcy before it closed up.

I also loved to hear his dad play the fiddle and his mom yodel. They used to join Bob and the band at the Black Dahlia in Poland NY and sit in for a few numbers.

Bob's dad was a wonderful fiddler and used to compete at the old time fiddlers convention.

I remember Bob in the 60's when he was hanging sheet rock and it always amazed me that he and Ron Abrams had an actual callous on the top of their head from holding the sheets of rock up against the ceiling while nailing it in place. Those guys hung rock before the days of screw guns, when rock was hung with nails and a hammer.

Does Bob still play music anywhere? He was doing the one man thing at the moose and had a gal that used to come in as a singer quite a bit. I don't remember if it was his wife, or a girlfriend, or what his marital status was at the time. That would have been around 1998 or 99.