by Tommy James
In 1956, a greasy-haired kid playing a guitar was the ultimate expression of rebellion. But a greasy-haired kid playing an acoustic guitar was the worst. It was downright criminal behavior. An electric guitar was thought of as a more tasteful, stylized instrument. It was the sound of Les Paul and Chet Atkins, smooth, jazzy, and sophisticated. An acoustic guitar was backwoods and uncouth, the instrument of hicks, hillbillies, and other lost souls. It was the musical equivalent of a Chevy pickup with a bad muffler.
Since I refused to take proper lessons, I figured the easiest way to accompany my singing, which was really all I wanted to do, was to tune the guitar to an open E chord. This was so I could change chords by sliding one finger up and down the fret board, which was fine as long as I was playing major chords. Minors, sevenths, diminished, and other exotic chords that needed more than one finger to make were a challenge. But part of the fun was figuring out how to play the guitar my way instead of the correct way. Unfortunately, open E tuning condemns you to a life as a rhythm guitarist since lead parts become incredibly difficult to figure out and learning from other guitar players virtually impossible. What is ironic is that I still play that way today. I never did learn those damn scales.
By 1957, Mom and Dad were much more relaxed running the hotel. Mom became the perfect hostess, while Dad’s pet project was running the bar. He had frequented a lot of bars in his day and knew what made a good one work. In a fit of inspiration he announced, “What this place needs is a new drink.” Thus was born the Sputnik Fizz, an ungodly concoction of vodka, vermouth, and cherry soda with plastic swizzle sticks that had what looked like little satellites on top. It was a small but typically American attempt to cash in on the ominous Russian space program launched that year. Nobody liked the taste of the Fizz but it sold by the hundreds because of the novelty. Dad actually went Hollywood that year and took to wearing sunglasses while driving through town in his red-and-white, supercharged “Stude.” I was very proud.
A few weeks later, Dad decided that the next step had to be live music. He went out and hired a local combo. They were a model Midwest polka-playing trio with a drummer and an accordionist, but the star of the show, for me anyway, was the electric guitar player who, ironically, happened to be the dreaded town barber where I had to go periodically to get “depomped.” I would sneak into the bar whenever I could to watch him. He played a black-and-white Gibson and had an amazing assortment of licks and chords, which I had heard only on records and had never seen up close before. I was mesmerized. It was hard to believe that this hip guitar player was the same guy who took such sadistic pleasure in chopping off my hair.
I actually ran to get my next haircut just so I could talk to him. I could not believe it when he told me he had a spare guitar and amp that he was willing to sell me for a hundred bucks and, unbelievably, my folks went for it. God bless my folks. They should have sent me to my room, but instead they inexplicably encouraged me in my wild obsession. They put up the money so I could get a rare Slingerland electric guitar. It was an old blond, hollow-bodied, single pickup jazz guitar with a Sears and Roebuck amp. I may have been only ten years old, but I was plugged in.
Now that I had an electric guitar, I could really start copying the licks I had heard from Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers. Because of my age and the fact that no other kid I knew was as nuts as I was about rock and roll, I felt very isolated. But looking back on it now, the musical education I was getting during that solitude was indispensable. I am still doing things today that I learned during that time. God does work in mysterious ways.
American Bandstand also made its debut that year and put rock and roll in everybody’s face five days a week. Rock and roll was everywhere and seeing rock artists became an everyday occurrence, not just on a rare Ed Sullivan appearance. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dion and the Belmonts, and Frankie Avalon made it look so easy. I watched The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet just to see Ricky Nelson sing and play at the end of the show. And what I wanted, more than anything else, was to be one of those rock and roll guys. But all those people and places seemed so far away. There was, however, one ray of hope. A weekly televised amateur contest called Talent Roundup was broadcast live from WREX in Rockford, Illinois, which was only about an hour’s drive from Monroe.
Every weekend auditions were held in different towns within the broadcast area, and Monroe was on the list. Miraculously, in January of 1958 these auditions were going to be held in the dining room of the Eugene Hotel. Only an act of God could have kept me away. There were lots of contestants and the tryouts lasted all weekend. Somewhere between the tap dancing yodeler and the trained parrot, I played and sang “Sugartime” by the McGuire Sisters. Even more amazing, I was chosen as one of the finalists, which meant I would actually get to perform on television. We chosen few would meet a couple of weeks later on Sunday afternoon for the exciting on-air showdown.
When the big day arrived, my folks and I showed up with high hopes at the WREX studios. I had decided to shelve “Sugartime” since I had a well-rehearsed version of “Oh Julie” by the Crescendos that I wanted to perform instead. They would be rocking in Rockford tonight.
We spent the afternoon rehearsing and getting the sound just right for the broadcast and then suddenly I was on. “Ladies and gentlemen… Tommy Jackson!” Things were going great until the second verse when, unbeknownst to me, something happened to the audio transmission at the TV station. I was singing just fine to the studio audience but nobody watching at home could hear a word. My mouth was moving but no sound was coming out. I found out later they even ran a ribbon on the bottom of the screen that read “Sorry… Technical Difficulties… Please Stand By…” with a cartoon repairman hammering on a TV set. I guess the viewing audience that called in their votes must have heard enough, because I won the second-place prize. The girl who came in first had danced a spirited Irish jig complete with working soundtrack. At least it was not another singing guitar player.
By early spring of 1959, we had spent the better part of three years in Monroe and we were all getting weary of hotel life. The demands on my folks had become more than they had bargained for, more than they were getting paid to endure. Monroe was losing its charm and we were all ready for a change. We moved to Niles, Michigan, which was only ten miles away from our old home in South Bend. My mother’s sister, Gert, lived there with her family, and we had spent so much time visiting them when I was a kid that Niles had become familiar territory. It was such a happy, normal place. Mom and Dad got their old jobs back and we found a great little two-bedroom bungalow about a block away from my aunt’s house. We were all relieved to be settled in a real house.
That September I started seventh grade at Niles Junior High School. Suddenly everything felt more serious, with multiple classrooms, lockers, and upperclassmen to deal with. I even joined the choir and the school band, where I played clarinet. A few weeks into the semester I met a kid named Mike Booth, who played drums in the band. He said, “I hear you play guitar and sing. I have a full set of drums at home. What do you say we put together our own band for the variety show?”
“Hell, yes,” I said. “What variety show?”
“The big one they have every year in the auditorium.” Mike knew these things because he was a year ahead of me in school. I did not realize it at the time, but this chance conversation would prove to be a major turning point in my life.
I went to Mike’s house after school and was thrilled to find he had everything we needed: a full set of Ludwig drums, a heated garage, and parents who pretended to be deaf. Over the next few days, we managed to enlist two more kids from our school band who played trumpet and sax, plus one of Mike’s neighbors, who passed for a piano player. Even though the sound was raw and crude, playing with other musicians for the first time was a thrill. It felt powerful; it was like “being a record,” especially when we were all playing in the same key.
We practiced every day after school for a solid week and lea
rned two songs: “Lonesome Town” by Ricky Nelson and “A Thousand Stars” by Kathy Young and the Innocents. We made a try at “Angel Baby” as well but two songs were about all this outfit could handle. We called ourselves the Echoes.
The night of the variety show, we decided to go with “Lonesome Town.” I remember all of us standing behind the curtain waiting to go on, so scared we could hardly talk, let alone sing. The auditorium was packed with our classmates and their parents, daring us to be good. One bad note and we could never show our faces again.
We finally heard “The Echoes” announced, and the curtain opened. There are certain moments that must be experienced firsthand to be fully appreciated, like jumping out of an airplane. This was one of them. There is a unique sound that comes from a large audience in that awkward moment between the time they first lay eyes on you and the time you actually begin to perform. It’s a kind of sigh and nervous murmuring. Getting started took an eternity, or so we thought. Everything seemed to be in slow motion as we started to sing and play. “Th-th-th’ere’s a place… where lovers go…” My stomach was in my throat. But once we felt the audience responding, we became more relaxed, and by the end of the song, we were actually having fun. The whole auditorium erupted into applause and some of the kids even stood up. It was intoxicating. We were a success. I do not know what would have happened if we had bombed that night, but backstage, as we congratulated each other, Mike said something I had not thought about. “We’ve got to keep this band together.”
Mike and I met that weekend and discussed the future. We really did not know what to do next. What did staying together as a band mean? Playing for money? Making records? How do you get from Mike’s garage to American Bandstand? The only things we had going for us were big dreams and blissful ignorance. We both instinctively knew one thing: rock and roll was guitars and drums, not horns and pianos. We needed new blood.
Mike said he knew one other good guitar player who might be interested in joining the band. He was a backyard neighbor named Larry Coverdale. Mike made a phone call and Larry came over with his Gibson Les Paul Jr. and a small Gibson amp that could shake concrete. Larry was skinny, six foot two, and eighteen years old, which was six years older than I was. Despite the difference in our ages, Larry and I had a lot in common musically. We both knew the complete works of Buddy Holly and Elvis. We could perform the entire Everly Brothers songbook from memory. It was one of those partnerships that you spend your entire life preparing for without realizing it. Within an hour, it was as if we had always been friends.
Larry may not have been the most accomplished guitar player, but he was a lot better than I was, and had already played in a couple of local rock bands. In fact, he had recently quit one because he had decided to join the navy. Fortunately for us, there was something not quite regulation about Larry’s feet and he ended up flunking the physical. He was free as a bird and we netted him. From that point on we spent every available minute practicing in Mike’s garage doing songs like “Image of a Girl” by Safaris and the Phantom’s Band, “Hushabye” by the Mystics, and “I’ve Had It” by the Bell Notes.
During our rehearsals we found that since Larry could play solid leads as well as rhythm parts, we could play a lot of instrumentals like “Underwater” by the Frogmen, “Stick Shift” by the Duals, and some hard-twanging stuff by Duane Eddy. But the most amazing thing to me was that Larry could sing harmony. Up until that time, everyone in my world seemed to be tone deaf. We eventually began inventing our own two-part harmonies and began practicing songs by acts like Skip & Flip. We played “It Was I” and “Cherry Pie” and tunes like “Jennie Lee” by Jan & Arnie, who later became Jan & Dean. We did everything a three-piece band could do.
I was still playing in my open E tuning style but Larry taught me that when I stuck my finger one way it was a C chord, when I moved my finger another way it was a G chord, and so on. Larry made me musically literate and allowed me to communicate with other musicians. Of course I learned a lot of other important musical stuff, like saying “Let’s take five.” I learned how to count off songs—“One, two, three, four…”—instead of just starting and hoping for the best. We were all so excited about the band and our prospects that we hardly noticed the 1950s had ended and were gone forever.
The three of us kept on rehearsing through the first couple of months of 1960. It was such a pleasure working with Larry. What were the odds of finding another musical recluse who obviously spent as much time as I did alone in his room with a record player and a guitar learning all this stuff? We even knew the B sides to most of the hits, like “The Midnite Man,” which was the flip side of “Raunchy” by Bill Justis, and “Lonesome for a Letter,” which was the other side of “The Fool” by Sanford Clark. The B sides were always good to learn because most of the audiences had likely never heard them and could not tell if you were playing them right or not. Nothing went to waste.
Since we were a trio with two standard guitars, we had to compensate for our lack of a bass player. Larry would do this by playing the fat strings of his guitar while I sang and played the rhythm parts. If Larry needed to play lead, I took over the bass lines in the same way. We worked hard and eventually had enough material to fill three forty-five-minute sets.
In the life of every band there comes a moment of pragmatic self-analysis when you must honestly answer the question: “Do we stink or not?” We thought we sounded pretty good, but would anybody else think so? Were we ready for a gig? The only way to find out was to book one. Because he had worked in local bands before, Larry Coverdale knew a thing or two about Elks Clubs and Masonic Lodges. In March 1960, Larry and I went to the American Legion Hall in Niles and booked our first gig.
The Legion Hall had a grand ballroom on the main floor that was used for weddings and other large affairs. Downstairs was a bar with a dance floor that jumped pretty well on the weekends. Larry and I talked the manager into giving us a shot on Wednesday, which was a relatively quiet night. If we did well, we would get invited back. Even though it was less than a month before my thirteenth birthday, no one asked me how old I was. I guess they thought, what twelve-year-old would be seeking employment in a bar on a school night? The hard part was convincing my folks to let me do it. They were totally against it. But after a solid week of pleading, they grudgingly gave in.
A few days before the gig, the Legion Hall called Larry and told him they were going to advertise in the local papers. “What do you guys call yourself?” Larry said he would get back to them. That night we had an impromptu band meeting. The Echoes sounded as tired as the horns and piano we had just gotten rid of. We needed a name that sounded like guitars and drums. After an agonizing three hours we decided on the Tornadoes!
On Wednesday I was a nervous wreck all day at school. That night, Larry picked me up in his beat-up, blue-and-white ’53 Chevy, which immediately became the official car of the Tornadoes, since Larry was the only one of us old enough to drive. Somehow we all crammed ourselves and our equipment into the car. We decided that we would dress in white shirts, black sport coats, black slacks, black ties, and black shoes. We looked like we were going to a wake instead of a gig, but they were the only clothes we all owned that could pass for band uniforms. Even so, I thought we looked pretty sharp except for Larry, who had on white socks. There’s always one in every band.
We arrived at the Legion Hall and began setting up our equipment on the postage-stamp—sized stage. In those electric, nervous moments before we went on, I felt very grown up. I wasn’t scared, but it was unreal to me that I was going to be entertaining a room full of adults—for money—playing rock and roll.
At 8:00 sharp we started. We kicked off the first set with “Money” by Barrett Strong. We could tell by the look of the patrons and the bartender that they were not ready to rock and roll and that we should have opened our set with something more sedate. This became my first lesson in stagecraft. We knew right away that we had to slow it down. Our second song was the Everly
Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” which seemed to bring a smile to everyone’s face, and by the third song, “Poor Little Fool,” people began hitting the dance floor, which made us all feel a lot better. Soon, people were coming up to the stage requesting songs, and we knew most of them. “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett and “Angel Baby” by Rosie and the Originals were just a couple. The one we got the most requests for was “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles.
The crowd liked us, but more important, the club manager, who was also the bartender, liked us. We each got twenty dollars for the gig. Up until then it was the most money I had ever made doing anything, and it sure beat mowing lawns. But the best thing was that they wanted us back. I had become a bona fide professional musician.
That is how it started. We played as a trio through the summer of 1960 at the Legion Hall, where we became regulars, and at teen dances around Niles, but we were getting frustrated at having to make up for a nonexistent bass player. We really needed at least one other player to round out our sound and another voice to create three-part harmonies. We found the missing element in Larry Wright, who was one of Coverdale’s friends. Larry Wright played a decent guitar and he could sing. He took over as our phantom bassist using the same fat-string technique that Coverdale and I had perfected until we all finally chipped in and bought a proper bass guitar. This made a noticeable difference in our sound. We figured that if four was good, then five would be even better, and so added a sax player named Mike Finch who could belt out good solos and, just as important, owned a car. We were now two Larrys, two Mikes, two cars, and a Tom, in case you’d lost track.
The question with local bands like the Tornadoes was always the same: Can we earn enough money to make it worth everyone’s while? Guys like Larry Coverdale, Mike Booth, and I were so passionate about the music that we probably would have played for no money at all. But Mike Finch and Larry Wright lived in the real world and had bills to pay. And since I was still in junior high school, we had to limit our playing to the weekends.