The Steel Guitar Forum

I was sitting around the house during the holidays and started thinking about some of the musicians I'd known in Southern California who are no longer with us. Do any of you remember these folks?

Hank Cochram...Great fiddle, saxaphone, and bass player who died of cancer around '84 or so. Hank played at one time with Tex Williams' Western Caravan.

Tony Amico...Good little drummer who had worked with Wynn Stewart.

Rod Culpepper...Great vocalist, bass player, song writer, and all around good musician. I worked with Rod at the Swizzle Stik in Huntington Beach, Ca. for a while. Cancer also got him at a too young age.

Jerry Walker...Great vocalist, and guitar/bass player. He could do Elvis better than most impersonaters you'll ever hear but he still sounded like himself.

Art Sanchez....Had the pleasure of picking with him at a couple of different clubs. Once for a whole year. Art was on helluva steel player. Worked for Rose Maddox at one time.

Jack Tucker...I worked a brief stint with him at the Pioneer Room in Norwalk, Ca. one time. The place was packed every night. What a guy! He wasn't the world's greatest singer but you can bet that everyone who came in the door he knew them by name. He'd spend his breaks talking to the people who came to see him and making them feel welcome.

Gail Davis....A beautiful blond girl with a great smile, body, voice, and everything it took to make it big. Cancer took her in her 20's. I got the chance to pick behind her once at an afterhours club.

Bobby Boydd....Steelman, Bass player, & vocalist. I knew Bobby for years. He always did his own thing on the steel. He played his own form of a universal which he and a player named Jerry Stevens thought up.. Bobby did a stint with Hank Thompson. Cancer got him too...

John Leighton....John along with his wife Sharon had a successful group in the LA area for years. I got to pick with them on an occasion or two... Lou Gehrig's disease took John out very slowly. He suffered for a long time.

Don Lee....Good leadman/vocalist. He unfortunately didn't have it together in the personality dept. Too bad he could have went a lot further if he hadn't been such an A$$.

Tony Treece...I played steel for Tony on a weekend a couple of weeks before he died. He didn't seem to be feeling very well at all. He finally had a massive cardiac arrest. I think he was only about 43 years old or so.

Ted Kovar...I got to work with Ted in the Johnny McKnight band in Orange County. He was one of the best drummers I'd ever worked with for sure. He later went on to Knott's Berry Farm and worked with a band called Hear and Now. A heart attack took him in his middle 40's.

Ray Mahaffey....I had the chance to work with Ray in the Sammy Master's band. He was a pretty good guitar player and singer and also was a neighbor. My daughter went to school with his.

Mike Fury....Crazy drummer and biker dude. Old Mike left a gig in Anaheim one night on his Harley loaded to the gill. He ran a red light at the intersection of Lincoln and Beach Blvd. and got wiped out by a pickup truck.

I've probably forgotten a bunch more but I couldn't close this out without mentioning my friend Bill "Hoss" Huffman. I first met Hoss in the middle 60's when I was working in Ventura with Fred Maddox. He was at the BanDar with Johnny and Joanie Mosbey's band. There used to be a cafe on the blvd. where you got steak and eggs for 99 cents. When I moved back to LA I got to jam with him a lot at the Imperial Inn afterhours and other places. We both played lead then so we didn't get to work any gigs together but the places like the Imperial Inn, Aces Club, Blue Fox, Time Out, and a couple of others had afterhours jams which all of us could meet and catch up on stuff. Damn, I sure miss those days!!
[This message was edited by Jerry Hayes on 27 December 2001 at 11:43 AM.]<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Jerry Hayes on 27 December 2001 at 12:03 PM.]</p></FONT>

Sorry, I'm drawing a blank!

..good one, Jim!..

Sorry Jim and Pat, I hit the enter key before I'd even typed anything and it made a post. So even when it says edited by me it's the first time I typed anything.;

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Have a good 'un! JH U-12

Let's see, from your list I remember several guys, though my years in the LA honky tonks were only from 1968 to mid-1972, since I turned 21 in 1968 and moved to TX in June of 1972.

Rod Culpepper... I think I worked with Rod briefly in one incarnation of Charlie Call's band... Charlie Call and the Call Boys. This is a band that Boomer Castleman is also an alumnus of, though he'll never admit it!!!

I got a call from Jack Tucker in one afternoon in 1969 to come play at the Pioneer Room that night. I had just got off Linda Ronstadt's band and had hair down to my shoulders. I walked in the club, Jack saw the hair, lead me out to the parking lot, and told me he had already hired someone... I never even got close to the bandstand!

I remember Don Lee real well. He was a good lead man, but yes, I found him sort of hard to be buddies with. He used to work with James O'Rafferty a lot as I recall.

John and Sharon Leighton worked at the Nashville West in El Monte, when I worked at the Holiday II (with Jimmy Lawton), also in El Monte. John was a sweet guy, very sad ending. I have a Sharon Leighton 8x10 promo photo in my memorabilia collection.

I too must say that I have a warm spot in my heart for Hoss Huffman, with whom I also played many a night at the Imperial Inn. He was a class picker, an old pro who was really helpful and protective to a young, smartass steel player who should have gotten his ass kicked in those honky tonks a hell of a lot more than he did. I have his "memorial" album, in fact.

Now, let me add some names to remember from SoCal 69-72, some of whom are deceased.

Ron Still, aka "Big Indian"... great bass player and singer who new every Ray Price song ever written. Became the Union Rep in Brawley CA, because Charlie Call (our boss) played there about 53 weeks a year.

Ted Lessler... the Jewish hillbilly honky-tonk drummer who was perpetually the marshmallow in the honky-tonk raisin box, and always philosophically wondering what he was doing there.

Carmine Psardo... good guitar picker who had the first solid-rosewood Telecaster I ever saw.

Robert Hardy... totally awesome guitarist who could play anything from bluegrass banjo on electric guitar to jazz, western swing, etc. Junior Brown at his craziest is reminiscent of Robert Hardy to me. Seriously. Originally from San Antonio, he was the first guy to tell me I should move to TX. We worked at the Checkers Club on Lankershim with Dave and Lu Spencer, and B. Bailey Brown and Ed Black would hang with us. Those were great nights. Robert overdosed in Corpus Christi in 1973, but at least he made it back to TX,

Ed Black... another wonderful guy and dear friend I miss to this day. He followed me in Ronstadt's band.

Donnie Cagle... non-instrumentalist, gay country vocalist and frequent winner of the Palomino Talent Contest on Thursday nights. His day gig was managing a sweatshop where Mexican women sewed stripper outfits.

Garland Frady... one of the best vocalists, and best friends, I ever experienced in my years in the 'tonks. Garland literally saved my life at the Jack O' Diamonds Club and Boomer was there that night as well. I still am in touch with Garland, who lives in GA just down the road from Johnny Meeks!

Speaking of Johnny Meeks, we played together with Tom and Ted, the LeGarde Twins. They were the Crocodile Dundees of Country Music, with Aussie outback songs, bullwhip tricks, etc. They moved to Nashville in the 70's.

Jimmy Lawton and the Lawmen... which included Dick Trees, me, Eddie Ponder, Wade Wilson, etc. Jimmy moved to Brussels in 1973 and stayed. He called me this summer, and we had a great talk.

Marvin Cave... bass player at the Palomino for awhile.

I could go on and on (and probably will on another thread ), but lastly... Danny Holder. This guy played a Gibson Barney Kessel guitar with a Bigsby vibrato and volume pedal. The way Danny played, if you were in the next room, you could not tell that it wasn't Chalker playing hot C6 onstage. He didn't play steel guitar licks on a standard guitar, he played fantastic steel guitar on the standard guitar.

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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Herb Steiner on 27 December 2001 at 02:34 PM.]</p></FONT>

Jerry after being away since 1964 I need a road map to remember where the Crapper is.However Lou's Blue Fox is forever imbedded in my mind.....Why? Some drunk Hit me over the head with a beer bottle.Lee Ross said he was going to write a song about my hard red head.

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CJC

(Art Sanchez....Had the pleasure of picking with him at a couple of different clubs. Once for a whole year. Art was on helluva steel player. Worked for Rose Maddox at one time.) I knew Art back in the late 50's and early 60's up in Riverside County. Back then he played a Fender 400 first than a Fender 1000. He always said there wasn't a song he couldn't play on the steel and I believed him. Art also had a great influence on Jay Dee also....told him if he was going to play the steel, he would have to use finger picks.

Another great steel player from the 50's and 60's in the LA and Riverside County area was Wayne Gailey. He played for Paul Harper and also Rose Maddox...remember the Cal Worthington Sunday TV shows? Wayne played some great blue-grass/banjo songs on his homemade steel with a custom Standel amp.

Also someone mentioned Lee Ross....What ever happend to him?

Hey Jerry: We ain't all dead yet. Eddie Drake and Carl West know you, and if you are not carefull, we're going to start telling about you. Have a Good un

Guys,... Tony Amico passed away in the 1970s, he was part of Wynn Stewart's West Coast Playboys in the 1950s with Cecil Bays, Pete Ash (died in a car crash in 1960) and Carl West.

Don Lee, is that the guy who worked with the Buckaroos in the mid 1970s?
There was also an album by a fellow named Don Lee, it was on Crown Records circa 1969.

Johnny Meeks is touring with the Blue Caps, Garland Frady is still recording, yes he has a couple of CD out.
Herb I didn't know you worked with Johnny Meeks and the LeGarde Twins at the same time, cool!
The Legardes brought Speedy West to Australia in 1963 for a couple of months of TV, live and TV work. They also appeared in an episode of Star Trek and first recorded in 1951 in Australia!

Still with us, Sammy Masters, Tom Tall, Glen Glenn (aka Glenn Trout or Troutman), Al Bruno, Blackie Taylor, Carl West, Eddy Drake, Clyde Griffin, Earl Ball, Danny Michaels, Billy Tonnesson, Cecil Bays, Don Holiman, Doyle Holly, the Collins Kids and quite a few others.

Jason FYI....Doyle has recently updated his website ( www.doyleholly.com )and has a lot of new pictures of Buck, Don, etc....he also told me that he and Brumley and some others are planning a trip to a steel Convention in Norway next August...... www.genejones.com

I was stationed in Orange County (El Toro MCAS) in '63 and '64. We spent a fair amount of time in a place in Santa Anna called "Boots" or something like that. This was long before I ever even thought about playing a guitar. Anyway, does that place ring a bell with anyone, and did any of you guys play there?

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Bob Shilling, Berkeley, CA--MSA S10, "Classic"

Hey Herb-
Carmine Sardo is still picking that same rosewood Tele and w/a set of .009s on there,it still sounds just as twinky as ever.He came down to Viva Fresh last Friday and picked all night for free Mexican food. -MJ-

Hey I just heard from Cecil Bays and he said he got a Christmas call from Mike Fury, I wondered if he was still around.

It must be a different Mike Fury than the biker dude/drummer. He was killed in that wreck before I left California. Hey Jason, do you have Cecil's Email address? I'd like to contact him.

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Have a good 'un! JH U-12

Does anyone remember a part time steel player in California about this same time? Bobby Brewster played up and down the coast while in the US Navy in San Diego. Bobby played at various times with Tex Williams, Buddy Allen, Maddox Bros and Rose. None of those were full time, but mostly one night gig's. It's a long shot, but if you remember, I'd like to know. Thanks.

Merv, That name,"Bobby Brewster" hit a nerve.I should know him but it fails me. I played up and down the West Coast from San ysidro to Oceanside in the mid and late 50s.
Perry