Pensacola Groups of the 1960's Note: On January 26, 2008 Florida’s The Laymen reunited after 40 years.  In order to commemorate the event, original vocalist Tommy Ratchford provided detailed bios on not only The Laymen but on other Pensacola area bands of the 1960s.    The Laymen with Edie Adams I was once a member of The Laymen.  My tenure was from summer '66 until April of '67.  Prior to The Laymen I was in a group called The Soul-7.  After the Laymen I was in a band called The 13th Hourglass.  I left the Laymen in April of '67.  The band had taken on a new organ player that preceding January named Jim Roark.  I knew Jim; I had gone to high school with him.  We were in The Laymen together for about 3-1/2 months.  We later went to Ole Miss together and after college, he became a lawyer like I did but we went to different schools.  He became a judge in 1984 and I practice in his court.  In fact, I have tried at least 100 jury trials in front of him.  While we are now in the legal field for our income, neither of us has lost our passion for the music.  I actually played in a small combo for ten years after I started practicing law.  There were many Friday afternoons that I would leave the courthouse and go straight to a gig and not get home until 2:00 in the morning.  I didn't do it for the money; I did it 'cause I loved it and what it did for my ego when the audience showed their appreciation for what I did to entertain them. I didn’t do it in the '60's for the money either.  I did it 'cause it was more fun than anything in the world! Jim Roark bought a new keyboard "just for kicks" about five years ago and, in a way, we've been moving toward this "reunion" gig for a long time.  In the final analysis, it was his idea to do this thing, but reviving the Laymen is something that a lot of people have asked me about over the last 40 years.  Every class reunion from '64 through '70 has asked me to do something like this.  We finally have all the pieces that we need to make it a good experience.  People remember The Laymen as a really great band.  I made it clear (and so did most of the other "originals") that we were not going to be involved if we decided that we sucked.  We do not want to tarnish that reputation.  The original members of the band that are participating in our resurgence are: Guy Pinney (lead and back-up vocals), Tommy Ratchford (lead and back-up vocals); Forrest Higgins (lead guitar); and Jim Roark (organ/keyboards).  The "new" members of the band are: Patsy Roark (lead and back-up vocals); Roger Agerton (bass guitar) and Jason Balbuena (drums).  Those of us that are "originals" are 60 years old or better.  The rest of the players are much younger.  Jason has had to work harder in this group than any of the others have simply because he wasn't born when most of our repertoire was popular.  He's had to learn them from scratch; the rest of us grew up with them.  By Tommy Ratchford The Soul-7 The Soul-7 (1965-1966) The Soul-7 came to be as a result of one of Ken Forbes’ less than intelligent moves.  Ken had joined The Xenos in January of ’65, about three months before The Xenos ceased to exist.  Ken’s father owned a small music store in Pensacola selling primarily Kawai pianos and home-size Wurlitzer organs.  He also did a small business in acoustic and electric guitars, but he didn’t carry the top names.  Ken worked for his father after school as a sales person and had learned enough organ to be able to adequately demonstrate their products, but he was by no means an outstanding player.  Ken was certainly good enough to carry what we were doing, but even he knew that he just wasn’t fast or creative enough to qualify as great.  Ken met and spent time with a lot of musicians while working for his dad and sometimes the store would get calls from people looking for bands for various functions. In early June of 1965, about three weeks after my junior year in high school ended (I was 16), Kenny called me and explained that he had booked three gigs with the Enlisted Men’s Club at the Naval Air Station and he wanted to know if I was interested in putting together a band to do them.  This was just like Ken, to book a job and then get a band together to play it.  Most people did it the other way around.  He said that he had a bass player, a drummer and a guitar player all lined up.  He had an answer to each of my reservations including a practice place as his father had agreed to let us use the store after closing and on Sundays.  Even though we only had two weeks to get ready, I felt that we could get enough songs worked up to get through four hours (and I could certainly use the money) so I agreed. At our first rehearsal, it was clear that the drummer was just not right.  I wasn’t real happy with the guitar player or the bass man either, but they were at least adequate.  The guitar player was not too happy with us either since he quit after three practices.  Forbes came up with another guy that got through four practices before he, too, quit.  Three days before the first gig Forbes came up with another guy named Benny something that was really a good, experienced guitar player.  However, his ego was larger than the Astrodome and I couldn’t stand his arrogance.  He made it clear that he felt he was demeaning his talent by working with such amateurs as us, but he needed the money.  Because he was experienced, we were able to whip up a song list sufficient to carry the first gig in just three days and only had to rehearse once between the other two gigs.  Ray Wright, trumpet player extraordinaire, formerly of The Contours that had recently broken up, showed up at this practice. Forbes and I recognized Ray as an experienced, quality musician and businessman.  He had handled most of The Contours booking arrangements and had cards out all over town saying he was the man to contact to book that band.  Ray felt that our band had some promise, but he recognized immediately that the drummer had to go.  He wasn’t too crazy about the guitar player either, but as I said, the guy could play.  We worked up some songs that Ray could use his trumpet on and he played the last of those three navy base gigs with us.  We all felt that we had the seed of something good so we agreed to meet and rehearse some more the following week.  During that week, Forbes booked two more gigs for us.  At the ensuing practice, Ray brought Bobby Bates, former drummer for The Embers who had worked with the Garcia brothers the preceding year and was a true R&B Soul Music Drummer.  The bass player had called to say he couldn’t make practice due his job.  Newman Gersin (formerly of The Xenos) had heard through the grapevine that we were forming a band and he just happened to be present.  Ray asked him what he played and Newman responded, “guitar”.  Ray said: “We don’t need a guitar player, we need a bass man.”  Newman walked over to the wall where the bass guitars for sale were on display, picked one up, and said “Well then, you got a bass player right here.”  Newman knew instinctively that something really good was being put together and he wanted to be a part of it.  The addition of Newman and Bobby Bates was the last piece in the basic fabric of The Soul-7.  That wasn’t our name yet, and we really weren’t yet a true soul band since we only had one horn.  We still had a lot of “white rock” and surfing music in our repertoire, but remember we were forced by the circumstances to come up with songs fast and that stuff was easy to learn and arrange. (There were no vocals on a lot of it.) Also, the guitar player knew a lot of that stuff and liked playing it because it primarily featured lead guitar. We began rehearsing two times a week at Forbes’ music shop.  We began working up R&B stuff to supplant the “surfing guitar” instrumentals and the guitar player started to complain.  He wasn’t happy that the songs that featured him on lead were being eliminated and he was very vocal in his objections.  He quit three days before our next scheduled gig.  We all hated him too much to crawl and beg him to reconsider and we contemplated canceling or trying to get through the gig without a lead guitar (or without a bass and have Newman play lead).  I wasn’t excited about either option as the gig was at the Bayview Community center for the “TOC Club”, i.e. Teens of Clubbs (junior high school) and they were expecting around 400 people.  I didn’t want us to sound bad at our in-town debut, as that wouldn’t have helped our future a bit.  However, canceling at that late moment wouldn’t help it either. The gig was set for a Saturday night.  Forbes called me that Friday to tell me he had found a guitar player who could handle the gig.  He explained that he had reviewed our song list with him and that the guy knew most of the songs and that he had assured Kenny that he could handle it.  His name was Bill Boyd.  I’d never heard of him and was not very reassured by his assurances.  I didn’t see how anybody could play a four-hour gig with us without at least one rehearsal, but I took a wait-and-see attitude. The afternoon of the gig, I arrived early and began setting up my (primitive) PA system and testing the mikes.  During this process I noticed this kid crossing the stage with a miniature guitar case in one hand and a little bitty Fender amp in the other.  He asked if I was with the band and where did I want the guitar set up.  I indicated the spot next to the bass amp where we wanted the guitar amp to be and he began setting up that little Fender.  He was a little guy, not more that 5’3” and he couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds.  He had thin, straight, white blonde hair that hung off his forehead into his eyes as he bent over and a cherubic, baby-face that had obviously never seen a razor.  I swear I thought he was somebody’s little brother helping bring in the gear from the car.  I waited for someone to join him as he went on with his task, but nobody ever came.  He finished plugging in the amp and then opened the guitar case and removed a 3/4 size white Fender Mustang electric guitar and threw the strap across his shoulder.  It was at this point I realized that, God forbid, this must be the guitar player Forbes had gotten.  I was torn between amazement, anger, and abject terror over what we had gotten into as a result of another of Forbes’s hair-brained moves.  When I had the opportunity, I walked over, introduced myself, and told him I was looking forward to hearing him play.  I put on a happy face even though I was a very unhappy person and I let Forbes know it when he arrived.  He again argued that this guy was good, in spite of his age and Forbes had heard him play (about ten minutes alone the day before on a guitar in the store’s inventory).  I was pissed.  So was everybody else in the band.  Had things turned out differently, Forbes would have probably been drowned in the bayou during the first break. Well, we got tuned up and did about five bars of ‘Somethin’ You Got’ to check the sound balance and then waited for the crowd (and made grievous threats of bodily injury towards Ken Forbes under our breaths).  When the time came for us to begin, there were about 200 kids in the hall.  As we took the stage, I decided that if this was going to work, we might as well find out right at the start whether or not this kid (he was 14 at the time) could cut the mustard so, instead of something easy. I decided we’d start with a song that would clear up any indecision right off the bat.  I called ‘All Day and All of the Night’ by The Kinks.  The only guitar player I had ever heard play the solo in that song with any quality was Forrest Higgins of The Laymen.  I more or less chuckled under my breath as I asked Bill if he knew the song.  “Oh yeah” he replied.  “Can you do the solo?” I asked.  “Oh yeah” he repeated.  “Oh yeah” I said to myself, “let’s just see.”  I counted off the song and everybody came in on time.  Boyd was handling the straight stuff just fine.  He had good timing and a smooth style, but the truth was in the solo and I waited, still reserving judgment.  I finished singing the second verse, then I turned to him and said “OK, man you got it.  Show me what you can do.” Well, I’ve been a lawyer now for almost 30 years and I have occasionally been complimented on the extent of my vocabulary, but try as I might, I still cannot adequately express in words what next happened on that stage.  Bill Boyd grabbed that solo and with his little miniature guitar he absolutely blew me (and everybody else in the whole damned place for that matter) totally away!  He played that solo, without any overdubbing, without any echo chamber, tremolo or any other gadget, as good, if not better, than The Kinks ever played it.  His fingers literally flew up and down that fret board so fast that I thought the thing would catch fire.  As he played, he closed his eyes and matched each note with a facial expression and/or body movement for emphasis.  He was less than halfway through when I realized that we had found our guitar player and I turned around and smiled at Forbes.  He smiled back when he met my eyes, ‘cause he knew it too and I’m sure he was relieved to know that he would live to see another day. About halfway through that gig, a guy came up to us during a break and introduced himself as John “Mac” Berrier.  He told us he was a saxophone player and asked if he could sit in with us on a couple of songs.  We agreed that he could join us to play ‘Wooly Bully’ (‘cause that had a sax solo in it anyway that Ray had been doing on the trumpet) and he could have a solo on ‘Night Train’ that we did as an instrumental.  He did those songs with us and ended up doing five or six more before the night was over as we were really digging what he was doing and the neat, improvised harmonies he and Ray put out with the two horns.  After the gig we talked about him and the sound we had with the sax and invited him to join the band.  The group we put together that night had its first rehearsal in early August of 1965.  There ended up being seven of us.  We were in agreement that we would be a R&B/Soul band in the tradition of The Contours, The Embers and The Scepters.  This was the group that became The Soul-7.  The personnel in the group never changed until the band broke up for good ten months later in June of ’66.  The band members were: Tommy Ratchford, age 16, lead vocal; Ray Wright, age 17, trumpet and band leader; John “Mac” Berrier, age 17, saxophone; Kenny Forbes, age 17, organ; Newman Gersin, age 16, bass; Bill Boyd, age 14, lead guitar; and Bobby Bates, age 17, drummer. Amazing, isn’t it?  We were just a bunch of kids having a good time doing something we loved doing and doing it good enough to have people want to pay money to watch and listen to us doing it.  The truth is that we loved playing and performing that R&B music so much we would have probably done gigs for free (but of course, we didn’t want anyone to know that).  When we first started, we played several times for half of what came in at the door and all the beer we could drink but of course, we weren’t old enough to drink alcohol.  Hell, Boyd wasn’t even old enough to have a beginner’s permit, let alone a driver’s license!  The sad thing is that we were too young to realize what we had or to appreciate the uniqueness of our situation.  It has been hard for me over the years to answer the oft-asked question of which band I sang for that I thought was the best since every band I was in had its own area of excellence.  I don’t really know if The Soul-7 was the best band I was in, but I can guarantee that I had more fun in the Seven than in any other band I played in.  With The Soul-7, our primary goal was to have fun by making good music.  After that, and as I got older, the focus changed to making good money by making good music.  Making the money became more important than having fun.  Playing became more of a business. One of the reasons that our pursuit of our music was not primarily a pursuit of the  money was because all of us were living at home with our parents.  Not all of us had cars, and those who had cars were titled and insured by our parents so we didn’t need money to live on or support ourselves, so most of what we made went into better gear and clothes.  We had several uniforms that we wore on stage.  Our “formal” uniform was a burgundy tuxedo jacket with black trim, black peg-leg pants, a formal shirt with cummerbund and Beatle boots.  Initially, we wore black Dickies under the shirt.  Later we wore a criss-cross formal tie and discarded the Dickie.  We also had two polka-dot shirts; a burgundy one with white polka dots and a gray one with burgundy polka-dots which we wore with either burgundy or black jeans.  The kids in the fraternities and sororities in our high schools (we represented three of the five high schools in Pensacola) wore corduroy jackets with their club name on the back and individual name on the left breast.  We got burgundy jackets like that with the word “Soul” stitched across the top with a huge number 7 (based on the Seagram 7 whiskey logo) directly underneath.  We were damned proud of those jackets.  I still have mine and it is one of my favorite souvenirs.  Every musician in The Soul-7 was talented, but Bill Boyd turned out to be the most talented of all.  There was no song he couldn’t play and no guitar style he couldn’t emulate or even surpass.  He often complained that the only limitation to his ability to sound exactly like the Top 40 records was his equipment.  His entire musical career (which was tragically very short) was a never-ending quest for bigger and better gear.  Bill was a perfectionist; perhaps one of his best traits, perhaps a curse that contributed to his personality that eventually became self-destructive.  I considered Bill as a musical genius in the same vein as Bill Motley.  Like Motley, Bill Boyd died young, but that was several years after The Soul-7 broke up. At first, the equipment that we used was pretty much a hodge-podge of whatever we had on-hand, could borrow (from Forbes’ store) or rent.  For PA, I was using the speakers my father had made overseas for his stereo system (and sneaking them back into the house after the gigs before he discovered I had them).  Boyd was covered with his toy amp and miniature guitar, but he insisted that he would not feel whole until he owned a Fender Jaguar and had a Super-Reverb to play it through.  Newman was hoping to find a Fender Bassman he could afford, even if it was used.  He also wanted a Fender amp and a Fender 15-inch cabinet for sound, but when we first started, he owned no amp and was still using that Sears Silvertone guitar he had converted to take four bass strings.  Forbes was playing a console organ, you know, the kind that looks like a small spinet piano you could buy for $299 to put in your living room and play with two fingers.  We had to put a mike in front of the speaker of the damn thing ‘cause the internal amp didn’t put out more than five watts.  I had a small two-input 40-watt Bogan PA amp and saved up enough money to buy four 12” speakers that I installed into a pair of homemade speaker cabinets.  I used a Shure 55-SW mike, that’s the one James Brown mostly used that cradled in the palm of your hand.  Bobby Bates had his own trap set that was old, but functional.  He couldn’t afford a sizzle-cymbal (the kind with the rivets through it) so he improvised by hanging a length of bicycle chain on a regular cymbal, which seemed to work.  Ray and Mac had their own horns, but Mac’s sax was so old that all the brass had flaked off giving it a brown, muddy color.  This certainly didn’t have any effect on the sound he could coax from it though. During the band’s painful beginnings, Newman used that converted Silvertone guitar for practice and for gigs.  For practice, he would just plug into whatever amp was available (occasionally he even plugged into the PA) but for gigs he played through an old, beat-up Fender bass amp with an even more beat-up cabinet that he rented from a black guy that lived in “the projects”.  Since Newman had no car and I did, I often was his transportation to and from the gigs, which gave me the opportunity to observe the “paperwork” that was involved in these “rentals.”  The way it worked was this:  The guy had five or six different amps, speaker cabinets and powerheads in a room at his house.  Newman would pick out the gear he wanted and the guy would consult a list he had that showed him the market value of what Newman wanted.  He would then fill out a check on a local bank payable to him for that amount and have Newman sign it.  When we returned the gear Newman would pay him the rental fee ($10 to $20 per night) and the guy would make a big deal out of tearing up the check while Newman watched.  It never dawned on us that the bank would dishonor the check since Newman didn’t have an account there (or in any other bank for that matter).  But what the hell did we know?  We were just naive kids. During the latter part of August of ’65 and into September of that year when school started, we played several jobs for people who called Ray trying to book The Contours.  As the word got out that The Contours were no more, and that we had a new band that was even better, we started to get some “after football games” gigs.  We also made a deal with a local teen club (The Beacon) run by the city to play on Friday nights on a semi-permanent basis.  We did a couple of sock-hops at the high schools in the cafeteria before school started in the mornings.  This exposure got us an invitation to play in a battle of the bands at an outdoor community fair called St. Anne’s Roundup that St. Anne’s Catholic Church puts on each year in early October.  This was the first time I heard The Phaetons.  There were two or three other bands that performed at this function, but the contest was clearly between The Phaetons and us.  The audience of about 500 (which decided the best band by their applause) was faced with two distinctly different choices: the clean-cut R&B boys or the longhaired guys that all sang but had no horns.  The distinctly conservative, overwhelmingly white group of fine southern democrats cast most of the votes for The Soul-7, but their votes may have been influenced by the Phaetons’ appearance as they had a kind of back-alley look.  I’ve never considered that vote to be necessarily valid. Our success at the Roundup and the other gigs we played began to pay off and the next thing we knew, we were pretty well booked up through Christmas and New Year’s Eve.  We also started making a little money.  (We started out charging $126 for four hours—$18 per man and later went up to $161 or $23 per man.)  On New Year’s Eve, we made $301, which was $43 per man.  That was the largest payday I ever had with The Soul-7.  But making money allowed us to buy new equipment and add to our uniforms.  Bill Boyd finally got his Fender Jaguar (brand new) and Newman bought a brand new Fender Bassman.  They had collaborated and both bought them in Sunburst.  They were really fun to watch on stage with their matching guitars, matching clothes and matching choreography.  (We had several “dances” we did on stage with the five mobile musicians, i.e. me, Ray, Mac and Bill and Newman, that were loosely based on the moves made by The Temptations and The Four Tops.  Additionally, I had studied James Brown’s performing style and I had copied all his moves, from his one-foot shuffle to his delivery of a song from his knees and had adopted that style as my own.) In October of ’65, James Brown had just released ‘I Feel Good’ and his Live at the Apollo album was still in the record stores.  The Beatles had just released Rubber Soul and ‘Daytripper’ and ‘We Can Work it Out’ as singles.  The Stones’ big hit at that time was ‘Get Off of My Cloud.’  In America, Fender, Ampeg and Altec owned the market for “band equipment.”  Marshall, Standel and Peavy equipment did not exist.  In England, however Vox was the happening thing.  Most of the hot British groups used Vox and Vox was strongly promoting this fact but Vox equipment was not available in the U.S.  Ken Forbes’ father was a pretty sharp businessman and saw an opportunity.  He became one of the first Vox distributors in Florida, maybe in the southeast and eventually, The Soul-7 used exclusively Vox equipment, even for PA (except for my microphone; I wouldn’t consider replacing my 55-SW for anything in the world).  Ken Forbes had the first Vox Continental organ in Pensacola. Business improved for Mr. Forbes as he also sold a lot of Vox gear to other bands so he had to move the store to a bigger building and when he did that, we lost our practice place.  From then on, we mostly practiced in the garage at my parents’ house and we pretty much had at least one gig every weekend.  The Sandpipers joined up with us in January of ’66 and were part of the band until mid-March.  That spring, the band played for four out of the five junior/senior proms held in Pensacola and one in Brewton, Alabama.  We also played a couple of high school dances in Ft. Walton, a small town 45 miles east of Pensacola. Herb Lance was one of the people involved in the local music scene that had a big part in making The Soul-7 what it was.  Herb played a pivotal role in some of my greatest experiences while in the band (and when I was in The Laymen, too). Unlike most “grown-ups” that became involved with our bands, Herb was always a straight-shooting kind of a guy.  He stopped in Pensacola for a couple of days on his way to Miami to open a business, but he liked it so much that he decided to open his business here.  He was originally from Brooklyn and although he lived in the south for the next forty years, he never lost his Yankee accent.  Herb opened the Town and County Record Shop in one of the first mall-type shopping centers that was built in Pensacola.  The record shop was a very small but really happening place.  It became one of the hangouts for the kids and musicians.  Herb was pretty hip (for an old guy—he was well into his thirties when I met him) and carried a good supply of records that couldn’t be found at the usual places like grocery or department stores.  His was the first store devoted primarily to records, posters and “hippy” stuff.  In retrospect, it was the first head shop in this town. Any time there was a dance or a concert, tickets were always available at the record shop.  Herb was married to Newman Gersin’s sister and that created a special connection between him and the bands Newman was in.  Owning the record shop also put Herb in contact with a lot of promoters and agents for recording artists.  Herb was responsible for bringing a lot of big name talent to this town and the band Newman was playing in at the time always got in on the gig.  Herb brought a Rock & Roll Revue to town in the fall of ‘65.  The headliners were The Searchers, The Zombies (the real Zombies with Colin Blunstone, not that rag-tag group that showed up a year or two later that was just using the name) and The Byrds.  Peter Fonda was traveling with them at the time (and I found out later was using the experiences he had to form part of the basis for the script of Easy Rider).  The Soul-7 opened the show for these bands and spent some time backstage with them too.  Of course, this was quite a thrill for all of us. When Herb brought James Brown to town to perform here in the spring of ’66, The Soul-7 set up their equipment on the tarmac at the airport and played ‘Out of Sight’ as J.B. came out of the airplane.  His arrival had been widely publicized on radio and there was a crowd of a thousand or so people (mostly black) lining the fence and screaming their heads off.  As J.B. stood in the door of the plane you could see a huge grin on his face and when we started the music he literally bounced down the ramp, did his patented one-foot James Brown shuffle across the red carpet that had been spread across the runway, danced and boogied his way to where I stood with the microphone, and at just the right moment in the song, he grabbed the mike and wailed, “Oooow! You got your high-heeled sneakers ooooonnn!” and the whole place exploded!  It’s hard for me to recall all the details of what happened next as I was carried away by the adrenalin coursing through my body, and a lot of what happened is somewhat blurry, but J.B and I did that song as a duet, unrehearsed, right there on the runway for that exuberant crowd of wild, screaming folks.  When the song ended, he waved and threw kisses to the crowd as he was taken away in a long white limo.  As we were packing up our gear and trying not to float away on the currents of our emotions, one of J.B.’s bodyguards came over and told us that J.B. wanted to meet us and invited us to come down to the Municipal Auditorium and see him before his performance that night.  We (that is the whole band) spent about two hours in the dressing room with the Godfather of Soul just shooting the breeze about music, playing one-night stands, the hassles of being on the road and a lot of other things.  He seemed really interested in our band and somewhat amazed at the sound he heard from this group of wide-eyed teenaged white boys.  He showered us with autographed pictures and cuff links and other souvenirs and gave us some genuine encouragement about our band.  I recall that as one of the great days of my early life.  A couple of weeks after James Brown performed, Herb brought in The Otis Redding Revue for a one-night show, also at the municipal auditorium.  Herb asked us if we would like to play a 30-minute set to open the show, and of course we jumped at the chance (we didn’t even ask about money, in fact, we would probably have paid Herb to play the gig).  We practiced really hard in preparation and worked up a medley of about eight songs, the end of each segued into the beginning of the next.  All the songs were R&B songs we knew already. What we worked on were unique and creative ways to tie each song to the next one, as they were all different tempos and not all in the same key.  We also had to be careful in our choice of material, as we did not want to do anything that had been recorded by any artist appearing in the show.  This posed a problem, as there were some of the most popular R&B artists of the time on the marquis.  In addition to Otis Redding, the Revue contained Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Barbara Lewis, Irma Thomas and Garnett Mims to name a few.  We saved James Brown’s ‘Try Me’ and ‘Please Please Please’ for our finale and played them as a separate medley. We were set up on the stage of the auditorium right behind the main curtain with about ten feet between it and the scrim.  Behind the scrim was where Otis’ band was set up.  We had bantered with them while we all set our gear up together, but Otis was not to be seen.  He was resting, well ensconced in his dressing room (the same one James Brown had invited us into just a few weeks before) with a giant bodyguard stationed at the door. At this time in my life, my best friend was a redheaded guy named Jerry Maygarden that was in my class at school.  On nights when he didn’t have a date, he would tag along with me to the gigs and help us load, unload and set up the gear; and sometimes, if it felt right, he would add an extra voice as a backup singer now and then.  He also played an important role in our James Brown routine.  He became our first (and only) “roadie.”  (He later became Mayor of Pensacola and then was elected to the Florida Legislature where he eventually became Speaker of the House and served his maximum term.) One of James Brown’s trademark songs was ‘Please Please Please.’  In fact, on his Live at the Apollo album, he is introduced as “the hardest working man in show business, Mr. Please, Please himself………Mr….Jaaaammmes …..Brrrooowwwnnn!”  Part of this trademark was the obvious, visible passion he showed anytime he sang it.  He always delivered the finale from his knees.  He would show utter exhaustion and would be helped from the stage, with his coat, previously discarded, draped about his shoulders by one of his minions, only to throw off his garment and return to the stage to sing just one more verse from his knees.  Through many hours of painful practice, I had learned how to drop to my knees from a standing position (just like J.B.) without causing grievous injury to myself and I did that song the same way he did. As we milled around backstage while the audience filed in I noticed that the eight of us (Jerry was there) were the only white faces behind the curtain, but we sure looked good in our burgundy tuxedos with our matching Vox amplifiers behind us.  The auditorium held around 2,200 people including the balcony and Herb had told us that the tickets were sold out.  I peeked at the audience through the curtain and noticed about 60 white faces out there.  Obviously, we were about to face a very critical audience. The time came for the show to start.  The room lights were dimmed and the stage lights came on.  The rustling sound of the crowd died down.  I stayed off stage in the wings as the band began the intro into ‘Out of Sight’ as the curtain came up.  After three or four bars, I came out on stage on one foot doing the J.B. shuffle, sidled up to the microphone, and as I did, the band reached the end of the intro and stopped, waiting for me to lead them back in after two beats with the first words.  When they stopped, there was absolute dead silence in that auditorium.  The silence was so overwhelming that I paused, longer than just two beats, and as the echo of the music faded, I looked around at the faces in that crowd, looking up at us in wonderment. After a moment sufficient for everyone to appreciate it, I launched into the first words.  There was a murmur in the crowd after the first phrase, it got louder into the second phrase; it became a rumble by the third phrase and when the horns did the little solo duet at the end of the first verse, the crowd was clapping and moving in their seats. We segued into the next song without stopping which was another up-tempo song and some of them stood up, still clapping.  As we moved into the next song, more of them stood up and their murmuring became a roar.  By the time we ended the eight-song medley, they were all on their feet and clapping and whistling and yelling and making all kind of racket.  We stopped at the end of the medley, just to catch our breath.  After all, we had been working really hard for the last few minutes.  As the medley progressed, I had removed first my tie, then my coat, then rolled up my sleeves, and then unbuttoned the top buttons on my shirt.  Bobby Bates, the drummer, had done the same and every other guy in the band had taken off his tie and loosened his collar.  As we took this short respite, I told the audience that a man with the initials J.B made the next songs famous.  They knew what I meant and this announcement was met with a loud response.  With that, Boyd gave me a chord and we launched into ‘Try Me.’ Since we didn’t use backup vocals, the horns played the harmony notes that the backup singers did on the original.  As it is, we didn’t need any backup singers as damn near everyone in the audience sang the backup lines for us.  It was really cool having the audience performing a “duet” with us.  As the horns played the final plaintive notes of ‘Try Me,’ the audience went wild and their screams got louder as Boyd gave me a chord and I immediately launched into ‘Please Please Please.’  Halfway through I dropped to my knees and as I hit the floor the music was nearly overpowered by the roar of the crowd.  As we reached the end, Maygarden came out of the wings with the red cape and placed it on my shoulders, then reached for my arm and helped me rise from the floor.  He held my arm as we slowly walked toward the wings, the band still playing.  All this time there was bedlam in the crowd.  As we reached the wings, I cast off the cape, ran back to the mike, grabbed it up, and sang another verse.  We did this two or three times before the curtain came down.  There was absolute pandemonium in the crowd. I have been terribly nearsighted since childhood and have worn glasses all my life.  I had removed my glasses before removing my coat so I was seeing things through a blur.  I had noticed as Maygarden and I approached the wings the first time that there was a person standing there wearing a burgundy bathrobe watching what we were doing onstage.  I didn’t think twice about it at the time, as I was pretty much involved in what I was doing, but when I came offstage for the last time and put my glasses on, I discovered that Otis Redding had been watching our performance.  I have no idea how long he had been standing there.  I stood there, sweating buckets and breathing hard from my exertions, and he came up to me smiling broadly.  He stuck out his hand and said, “I want to congratulate you on your show, man.  You’ve got more soul than any white boys I’ve ever seen.”  I’ve always considered this as one of the greatest moments of my young life.  Otis died less than a year later.  We never played that eight-song medley again. It was pretty easy to see that we were a very popular band with a strong following so Herb offered to put up the money for us to cut a record.  We set up a recording date for Monday, June 12, 1966 at Cosmo’s Studio in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  We were booked to play three times that previous weekend for Cash Moore at his places in Fort Walton Beach.  We were pleased at this.  Although we had never played for Cash before, he was a well-known entrepreneur in that area of the Gulf Coast and had five or six bars/nightclubs and a part interest in an amusement park.  We knew that there would be other gigs coming from Cash if we did a good job.  We were to play Friday night at the amusement park in the outdoor pavilion, Saturday night at the Castaway, one of his bars on Okaloosa Island and Sunday afternoon at his beach bar, the Faux Pas (foe-paw).  We figured to make some good money from those gigs and have enough cash to have a good time in New Orleans after the session. A couple of days before we were to leave for Ft. Walton, I had an argument with my father and he disciplined me by taking away my car so I had to rely on Maygarden and his ’57 Ford to get my equipment and me to the gig.  The only problem with this arrangement was that Jerry’s car had a lousy exhaust system that emitted toxic fumes into the passenger compartment.  It did get us to Ft. Walton though we were damn near asphyxiated when we arrived at the amusement park. The amusement park was open for business that day so there were a number of people milling about as we set up the gear, including some local girls that we became friendly with.  Cash showed up before we started playing to see if things were satisfactory.  He offered to provide refreshments and food for us during our breaks and rooms for us at a motel down the road after the gig.  We thought this was swell ‘cause that way we wouldn’t have to drive back to Pensacola then return the next day (and there were these girls to consider, too). Sure enough, during every break, one of the park employees showed up with pizza and cold beer for us, which we consumed in a small room behind the stage.  The girls also kept us company during the breaks and shared our bounty.  After the gig, while packing the gear, a park employee stayed with us and then guided us to a motel close by where he provided us with keys to three rooms.  We really felt like we had reached the big time!  We played a good gig for Cash that night and also the following night at his nightclub, The Castaway.  He provided food and beverages to us that night, too. The next day, Sunday, we played at the Faux Pas from 11:00am until 2:00 that afternoon and Cash provided lunch and beer for the band.  During the gig, I had noticed that Jerry was absent and nowhere to be seen.  I figured he was back at the motel with one of the girls and didn’t think about it again but I was relieved to see that he was there by the time we broke down the equipment to load up and get ready to leave for New Orleans.  Our plan was to stop in Pensacola on the way, get some clean clothes, grab a bite to eat and head out for the Crescent City.  We figured to get there between 8:00 pm and 9:00pm and check into a Holiday Inn.  Those plans changed somewhat when we discovered that Cash had deducted the cost of the rooms, beer and pizzas from our pay so we only had half as much money to go on than we had anticipated. When Jerry got me back to my house, I was overjoyed to discover that my father had relented and had gassed up my car and released it to me for the trip (maybe he feared we would both succumb to the fumes if we took Jerry’s smoker).  He had even removed the back seat to make it easier to load up the equipment. We got into New Orleans around 9:00pm but due to lack of funds, we had to check into a fleabag hotel on the edge of downtown.  For the same reason, we would not be able to stay over the following night as we had initially planned so this was to be our only chance to see the nightlife of the French Quarter.  We were all fired up, in spite of what Cash had done to us ‘cause after all, there we were, eight free teenaged white boys, recording artists, if you will, with momma back home and money in our pockets about to enter a world to which we had previously been denied entry.  Our hormones were raging and there was no way we were going to let this opportunity to taste the fruits of “sin city” pass us by.  Our dilemma was that only three of The Soul-7 was of legal drinking age, which at the time in Louisiana was only 18.  Ray, Kenny and Bobby shared their ID cards with the rest of us so we could get into the bars and strip joints, but since there were three Ray Wrights, three Kenny Forbes and two Bobby Bates in our group, we had to split up once we got to Bourbon Street and go our separate ways.  The IDs worked for everyone except Boyd.  He had turned 15 by then, but he still looked like he was 12, and although we saw to it that he had alcohol, he could not get past the doormen of the clubs; limiting his view of the delights therein to what he could see through the doors while he stood on Bourbon Street. This was not my first time in New Orleans.  I had been there once before about three months earlier with Paul and Fred Garcia as the temporary drummer for their band The Six-Pack.  It was my first time on Bourbon Street and I must confess that I tasted the Quarter’s pleasures (and its liquor) to excess and became so drunk that I couldn’t find my car.  When I finally stumbled upon it (after 45 minutes of aimless wandering through the confusing streets of the French Quarter) I discovered that it wouldn’t start.  I pushed while Maygarden hopped in and popped the clutch, which left me face down in the middle of the nasty-ass street.  I blew lunch more than once and when we returned to the hotel I was so wet, stinking and nasty that all the other guys refused to share a bed with me and I ended up sleeping on the floor.  We got back to the hotel around 2:00 in the morning and were due to start the session at Cosmo’s at 9:00am.  I discovered the next day that this is not the best way to prepare for an important recording session. Cosmo’s in the Quarter was the first recording studio I had ever been in and I wasn’t really very impressed by what I saw.  It was small and situated deep inside one of those courtyards that New Orleans is famous for.  From the street it appears as a blank wall and once inside you had to negotiate a broken up brick sidewalk that was probably laid before the Yankee occupation of 1863.  But the studio was well equipped with the latest recording gear and, in spite of our hung-over condition, we got two good sounding cuts.  The first one, ‘Anna,’ was a well-known Arthur Alexander song that The Beatles had covered on one of their albums.  It was a part of our regular repertoire and we didn’t need to invest a lot of time preparing it for the session.  The B-side was an original composition that was unnamed when we entered the studio.  The band had composed the music, but I had not really decided what the words were to be.  We had agreed that if I did not provide good words we would use the song as an instrumental.  As the band recorded the music tracks, I finalized some words, which were acceptable to the guys, and the song became ‘The Bright Side of Things.’  After the session, Herb asked us what we wanted to call “our label.”  We had all agreed that the session had “been a gas” and decided on “Gassounds”—thus, the origin of that name. As we left the studio to come home, it was kind of every man for himself.  We were all pretty broke ‘cause we spent most of our money the night before on pleasures of the flesh.  I told Jerry that we could choose between filling the gas tank before we left and riding hungry or eating before we left and praying that the gas in the tank would get us home.  He smiled and produced a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket.  I was curious where he got it since he had been screwed by Cash as much as we had been.  He explained his absence at the Faux Pas when he told me he had been at the pool hall earning a little money using his sharp eye and steady hand. I had my vocal chord surgery about two weeks later and the records arrived around mid-July.  By the time the record came out, The Soul-7 had ceased to exist.  As it was, we sold several hundred copies.  Every now and then, people tell me that they have it in their dusty record collections.  The surgery required four weeks of total voice rest; that is, I was not even to talk!  Since I was out of action, the guys went their separate ways.  Bobby Bates decided to go away to school.  Newman had been asked to join the “new” Laymen that was being formed and had already started practicing with them.  Bill Boyd and Kenny Forbes joined up with Mark Ramos (formerly of The Scepters and who was a helluva soul singer and trumpet player) in a group called The One-Eyed Jacks.  This was a great band with a super sound.  They had five horns (two trumpets and three saxophones) and a rhythm guitar player in addition to the lead and keyboard.  There were ten of them in all.  When they were on stage, each one of them wore a black eye patch over one eye, which I thought was really cool.  I might have liked the band better if I had not seen it as the cause of the loss of mine.  Unfortunately, this really cool dance and show band did not last a month.  They only played three or four gigs before breaking up.  The shame of it was that they were so good because there were so many of them and in order to make it worth their time, they had to charge twice what any other band would.  They simply could not get any gigs ‘cause no one would pay the price.  They broke up in early August (of ’66). Newman knew that I was looking for a gig and recommended me to The Laymen.  Shortly after that I was asked to become a part of the “new” Laymen and in mid-August after receiving my doctor’s blessing, I attended my first practice with them. And that’s how The Soul-7 died—not with a bang, but with a whimper and as the band went, so went our record.  I went through a lot of changes after that, partly just as a result of growing up and becoming cynical.  My time in The Seven was during my senior year in high school and represented some of the best days of my life.  I had few responsibilities, the enthusiasm of youthful innocence, and the adulation of people I knew (and a lot that I didn’t know).  I was making my own money and only minimally subject to my parents’ control.  Life was a bowl of cherries and I was being permitted to gorge myself.  Perhaps it was ordained for the band to end when it did since the music scene was changing drastically at the time.  The soul sound with horns was being supplanted by the English sound with vocal harmonies.  The Soul-7 was the last R&B garage band to exist in Pensacola other than the brief life of The One-Eyed Jacks and it was the last time I played in a band that used horns.  I made a lot more money with the bands I played in after The Seven, but I never had as much fun.  The Soul-7 was a time of joy and adventure for me and I will carry those memories for the rest of my life.  I thank God for those days and feel blessed that I was given the talent and opportunity to be a part of this really great band. The Sandpipers The Sandpipers No history of Northwest Florida music in the Sixties would be complete without mentioning The Sandpipers.  This group of singers was composed of three young girls, two of which were sisters.  In the winter of 1965, Debbie Kilpatrick was 13-years old, her sister Charlene was 14 and the third voice was Sally Hurst, also 14.  These girls all went to middle school together.  They weren’t even in high school, but they had a vocal blend and harmonies as good as you’ll ever hear.  The group was managed by Debbie and Charlene’s mother, Fran Kilpatrick.  Fran was a successful businesswoman with a very thriving ladies clothing store that catered to the high-end clientele.  Fran was primarily into the money end of the music business and she was ruthless when it came to the girls’ careers.  Since the girls were solely a vocal group (none of them played an instrument), Fran was constantly on the lookout for bands to backup the girls.  Fran insisted that the girls have only the best and she was constantly on the lookout for the best band to provide music for their performances.   When they first started, most of what they did was acappella.  They sang for school functions, for civic groups and other small gatherings.  We (that is The Soul-7) were approached by Fran in December of ’65 and after hearing them sing, we were pleased to have them join our band.  Fran had plenty of money and bought a new PA system (mikes, amp and speakers) and had costumes made for the girls that complemented the burgundy and black tuxedos we wore.  We worked with The Sandpipers until March of ’66.  That was when The Allman Joys came to town, later to be known as The Allman Brothers Band.  These guys were all in their 20s and were dedicated to a life in the business.  They were a very polished nightclub band and shaped their music for that kind of crowd.  They had the long hair and dressed mod in the English style and played a lot of English music.  In fact theirs was primarily an English sound with multiple harmonies.  They performed in Pensacola nightclubs for about three months.  Within a few weeks of their debut (which really stoked all us local guys; they were really a great band with a distinctly new sound for this area.  Their influence was felt, seen and heard long after they left town). Fran had made a deal with Greg and the girls started singing with them.  Unfortunately, the girls were all too young to be employed in a nightclub. (The law was pretty strict about that, even in the ‘60s.)  Since they were more or less a local phenomenon, and as long as their parents were present, this was overlooked on the local level, but The Allman Joys were strictly passing through and there was no way The Sandpipers could do the gigs The Allman joys were doing.  I didn’t really regret them leaving The Soul-7 since I had a hard time dealing with Fran and her obsession with stardom.  However, they took the PA and all the mikes when they split and that posed a problem.  Keep in mind that I was only 17 at the time and was legally incompetent to enter into contracts.  There was no way I could get financing to buy a PA on my own.  I was fortunate to have credit-worthy parents who were willing to co-sign a loan for me, which I paid back every month with what I earned with the band. But The Sandpipers time with The Allman Joys did get them some good exposure and experience.  They managed to make a connection with a record producer in New York and released a single called ‘It’s All Over But the Crying’ that got some national attention but never made the charts.  The group eventually folded (I think Sally’s family moved) but both Debbie and Charlene continued singing with local bands.   The Laymen The Laymen (1966-1967) The summer of ’66 marked a number of thresholds for me.  I graduated from high school at the end of May, recorded my first record in early June and as a result of trying to emulate James Brown I had severely damaged my vocal chords requiring surgery in late June.  How about that for irony—my first record is released and I can’t sing at the time (and wouldn’t be able to sing until mid to late August)?  Because I was out of commission and The Soul-7 needed to play (needed the money), several of them joined up with other groups and The Soul-7 was no more.  More irony—my first record and no band to perform it with.  I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do about a band at that point in my life. In fact, the surgery I had was experimental at the time and the doctors could not assure me that I would have a singing voice when all was said and done.  Like I said, I was just beginning college, Vietnam was in full blossom and many of my friends had been drafted, were gonna get drafted or had already joined something like the reserves or National Guard, and for a young man of 17, I had a lot on my plate. (I tried to join the Navy reserves but was told the doctor wouldn’t give me a physical unless I cut my hair.  At that particular moment, I would have cut off my arms before I’d cut my hair, so I bid adieu to the Navy.) The end of the school year was a threshold for a lot of guys in the bands.  Many were going off to college in addition to the losses attributable to the military situation.  As a result, the end of a school year also precipitated the break-up and reformation of a lot of groups.  I’ve already mentioned the break-up of The Soul-7.  The Laymen had also broken up by the loss of the bass player (Phil Watlington), the drummer (Jimmy Lagergren), and one of the lead singers, Guy Pinney.  The original 13th Hourglass was formed around this time and Guy Pinney started as the lead singer for that band.  The members of this “original” 13th Hourglass were: Robert Lewis (bass), David Dorman (lead guitar and one of Pensacola’s first true hippies), Allen Heinrich (organ) and Rick Harris (drums). The original Laymen was a really good band with a unique, mellow sound.  They were clean-cut and wore button-down collar madras shirts and weejuns.  During my time with The Soul-7, I only heard them one time ‘cause they didn’t compete with us for the gigs and seldom played battle of the bands, which we often participated in (i.e. two bands at the same gig splitting sets).  The reason The Laymen didn’t compete for the local gigs was because they mostly played out of town doing college gigs, especially in Alabama and Louisiana.  This continued after I joined the band.  I estimate that during my nine-month tenure with The Laymen, we played approximately 50 gigs.  Approximately 15 to 20 were local, or within 50 miles of Pensacola. The rest were all out of town. I saw being asked to be part of the new, re-formed Laymen as a real boost to my situation.  Bill Motley ran the band with a very business-like approach and everyone was expected to do his or her part to make the band a success.  The other members of the group as we reformed it in August of ’66 were: Suzy Storm (lead singer), Johnny Lowe (the fastest man with a pair of drumsticks I have ever to this day seen), Forrest Higgins (lead guitar and part of the original Laymen) and Newman Gersin (bass).  Newman was really responsible for my presence as he and I had been together from the start, Xenos to Soul-7 to the present.  Motley was the organ player and had retired the old Wurlitzer.  He was using a Vox Continental organ played through a Vox Super-Beatle amp.  Forrest also had a Super-Beatle and Newman had a Vox Bass head pushing two 15” Vox speakers.  I too was “all Vox” by this time and we were certainly proud of our gear.  The extent of our pride was expressed by the power of the sound we could create.  Needless to say, The Laymen played really, really loud.  We loved that gear so much that we included it in our promo picture.  I attended my first practice with The Laymen in mid-August of 1966.  We discovered that Suzy and I had a good blend with our voices and with Forrest and Newman being passable singers, we had the ability to do some ass-kicking harmonies.  Some of what we did:  ‘I Got You Babe’ (and a lot of other Sonny and Cher stuff), ‘Happy Together,’ ‘Don’t Talk to Strangers,’ ‘Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore,’ everything The Righteous Brothers did, ‘Nowhere Man,’ ‘Paperback Writer,’ ‘Turn Turn Turn,’ and ‘Bus Stop.’  Additionally, we did a soul set of R&B stuff and Suzy, Forrest and Newman would be the “three black chicks” providing the backup on: ‘Try Me,’ ‘Bring it on Home to Me,’ ‘Hitch-Hike,’ ‘My Girl’ and ‘Somethin’ You Got.’  Motley was a musical genius and he would lay out each harmony part separately so everybody would be in sync.  Each singer would work with Motley to get the part right and while the singers did that, the players were working out their respective musical parts.  Once we had all our parts, we’d do the song together and see how it worked, make any changes necessary, explore suggestions (re: syncopation, tempo, emphasis, and an ending) and then play it again. We seldom took more than 45 minutes to work up a song and pretty much had it down after playing it three to four times.  I’ve always figured that to be a good way to measure the ability and experience of the players.  If they ain’t got it after playing it three or four times, they probably ain’t gonna get it at all. The Laymen really liked medleys and we had prepared medleys in categories that were long enough to fill a whole 45-minute set.  We had a rock medley, a Cher medley that featured Suzy, a soul medley that featured me, a Beatles medley, a Byrds medley and two or three others I can’t recall.  As a general rule, once the band started playing, the music was continuous unless we were on break. I’ve more than once referred to Bill Motley as a genius.  He truly was a genius in many ways.  In addition to being a versatile musician, he was an electronics wizard.  As soon as he bought a new piece of equipment, regardless of the cost, he would bring it home and take it apart to see how it worked and how he could improve it for his purposes.  As a musician, he played organ, and every kind of brass instrument there is from trumpet to French horn to tuba, and he was proficient on all.  I recall one gig we played in Mobile, Alabama, for a high school sorority; it was a very formal affair and each girl in the sorority was “presented” by her escort as they walked across the dance floor under a spotlight.  They wanted us to play something during this event that was consistent with the theme of the dance, which was “1001 Arabian Nights.”  Of course, they didn’t tell us this at the time we booked the gig, this was sprung on us as we arrived and were setting up the gear.  I was sweating bullets as I couldn’t even think of a song that came close, let alone know one to sing, but Motley was cool about it and reassured them that we could comply with their wishes.  When the time came for this “promenade,” Motley told all of us except Johnny Lowe the drummer that we could go on break.  Motley always carried his trumpet with him, but I hadn’t seen it out of the case in months.  He got his trumpet out, tapped out a waltz beat to Johnny and then he, that is Motley, by himself, played ‘The Desert Song’ on his organ using his left hand and played the lead part on the damn trumpet with his right hand at the same time!  I was truly amazed but to him it was not a big deal.  Bill never found anything that truly challenged him.  He was temperamental and unpredictable at times, but his ability as a musician cannot be denied. Motley had converted the garage at his parents’ house into a music/practice room by lining the walls and ceiling with egg carton dividers and placing several layers of carpet on the floor.  He had a record player all connected to speakers scattered about for listening to new material and the garage door opened up for easy access and exit for the gear.  We practiced twice a week and played practically every Friday and Saturday night.  The further we had to travel, the more we got paid.  We played for practically every college in the SEC and then some (and some you never heard of).  We played at University of Alabama more than others, partly because Suzy Storm was known to be a “friend” of Joe Namath.  (If you look up the issue of Time Magazine—or it may have been Look or Life—that featured Namath after he won Super Bowl III, you’ll see Suzy’s picture lounging in her bathrobe in Namath’s hotel room in Miami the night before the game.)  Have I mentioned that in addition to having a powerful, husky “Cher” kind of singing voice, she was also gorgeous?  She was a blonde with beautiful features, a great body, super legs and a powerful stage presence, especially when she wore a short hemline.  For the times, the length of some of the dresses she wore on stage was considered just-on-the-verge of scandalous.  To this day, I’m not sure if we got those gigs because we were a great band (and we were) or because Suzy was so damned good-looking.  It didn’t really matter to us at the time, ‘cause we were making a lot of money playing the college circuit. There were two other people involved with The Laymen at this time that made a large contribution to the band and its condition as healthy and profitable.  One was Ben Kenter, our booking agent and Herb Lance, owner of the Town and Country Record Shop and Newman’s brother-in-law. Ben Kenter got us some great gigs, we had great exposure, and we made twice the money than any other band in Pensacola was making.  I can’t fault him for that, but I learned many years later that he was skimming from us by booking a gig for $900 then telling us it was for $700 and then taking his 20% out of the $700.  All through my band career, I seldom worked with a booking agent that I felt was totally honest in his financial dealings with us.  I kind of saw it as a curse on garage bands that we just had to suffer.  An honest agent was inconsistent with the orderly function of the universe.  Ultimately, it was my relationship with Kenter that caused me to leave the band. Herb Lance, on the other hand, was always a straight-shooting kind of a guy.  He always lived up to the promises he made to us, never lied to us and never cheated us out of a dime.  In fact, I’m certain that he lost money on his various projects with local bands, but we could tell that he was having a helluva lot of fun doing it. In the spring of ’67, Motley moved out of his parents’ house and we started practicing in Herb’s garage at his house on Summit Blvd. in Pensacola.  Herb knew how successful the band was and he decided to put up the money for us to cut a record.  He was considering using Cosmos’s in New Orleans again (this was where The Soul-7 recorded the last record he financed) and by chance, The Laymen landed one of the slots in a battle of the bands that was being put on by Universal Studios at the Jung Hotel in New Orleans.  This was a really big deal with national exposure (the whole four-hour thing was to be televised) and held the potential of a role in an upcoming motion picture for the winner.  Herb decided to kill two birds with one stone and book some studio time at Cosmo’s Studio in the French Quarter for the same time we would be in New Orleans for the Universal gig.  We decided on two songs, one for me to sing and one for Suzy to sing.  Both songs were previously released on albums.  I was to sing a Blues Magoos’ song called ‘Sometimes I Think About.’  I can’t remember the song Suzy was to do. In anticipation of this really important trip to New Orleans, we practiced the material more than we needed to and got our clothes together.  (All during my time with the Laymen—and The Soul-7 for that matter—the bands I was in wore “uniforms” on stage.)  Each male member of The Laymen had three matching outfits so we agreed on what we’d wear and we were just waiting for the time to come. I mentioned earlier that Motley could be temperamental and unpredictable at times.  Well, this was one of those times.  About two weeks before the day we were to leave for New Orleans, Motley quit the band.  This was quite a blow as you can imagine the importance of his role to the group.  Fortunately, we were aware that Jim Roark was in-between bands at the time and we solicited him to join us.  We worked our butts off over the next two weeks to acquaint him with our song list and especially the songs we planned to record.  He did a helluva job for The Laymen and rose to the occasion like a champion.  He played the organ for the Universal gig and on our recording session and did a fine job filling in for Bill Motley.  However, after hearing the playback on her song, Suzy just wasn’t happy with the sound or her performance so the only song that came out of that session was ‘Sometimes I Think About.’ Herb called the label Sumit in recognition of the street he lived on and we put the vocal version on one side backed/with an instrumental version.  It is both ironic and unfortunate that Suzy Storm cannot be heard on the only record The Laymen ever cut.  It’s also sad that Bill Motley, whose organ constituted an essential part of the Laymen sound, did not play on that record.  I’ve often wondered how he would have played that organ solo. As an aside, let me mention that part of the scurrying we had to do before this New Orleans trip was getting Jim Roark a proper uniform to match the rest of the band.  Jimmy is very tall and has very long arms.  Buying regular clothes is sometimes a problem and it’s even harder when one is limited to a certain color and style.  Somehow we managed and he had a full set of Laymen uniforms in his dad’s car as we rolled into New Orleans.  While we were sightseeing in the French Quarter, Jim’s dad’s Mercedes was broken into and all Jim’s clothes, including his uniforms, were stolen.  The Universal gig was the first (and only) gig I played with The Laymen not wearing the same clothes.  Little did I know that in about two months I would be in a different band that scorned uniformity and everything considered “ivy-league.” I left the Laymen shortly after we recorded ‘Sometimes I Think About’ and joined The 13th Hourglass.  At the same time, Guy Pinney who had been the lead singer for The Hourglass once again became the lead singer for The Laymen.  Guy didn’t stay with the Laymen very long as he was not in good health, and I don’t know much about what happened with The Laymen after I left.    The 13th Hourglass Other Pensacola Bands In these days, I heard people talk of a band named The Blue Notes that had recently broken up, but I never actually heard this group play.  At this time in history on the Pensacola music scene, all the bands used horns, none used a keyboard, and they did not perform music that had heavy harmonies.  The Embers, Scepters, and Contours were primarily blues bands.  Although the English Invasion was underway and The Beach Boys and surfing music were emerging, there were no bands playing that music around Pensacola in the fall of ’64.  Xenos In November of that year I sang a couple of songs at my school’s talent show and a couple of days later I was asked if I would be interested in joining a band that was being formed.  I was told that I would not have to play an instrument, just handle the singing. I confessed that I didn’t know a lot of rock and roll songs, but that didn’t seem to matter so shortly thereafter I became a part of my first band. The lead guitar player was a “nerd” that was an honor student in Chemistry. (He is now the dean of the department of nuclear physics at Cal Tech.)  It was he who suggested the name “Xenos” after the chemical element Xenon.  The word means “strange and unusual.”  The members of The Xenos were: Danny Villani (lead guitar); Newman Gersin (bass guitar); John Shoemaker (drums) and me, Tommy Ratchford (lead singer). The Xenos struggled to get decent paying gigs since we were competing with bands and we didn’t have any horns.  We often played for a piece of the door and all the beer we could drink.  We did white rock and surfing music (instrumentals like ‘Pipeline,’ ‘Wipeout,’ and ‘Telstar’).  In January or February of ’65 we added an organ player, Ken Forbes.  His father owned a music store and was willing to let us use it for practice and also let us buy equipment on a payment plan so the addition of Forbes made a difference in our sound.  We were actually pretty good but lack of horns and decent backup and/or harmony singers limited us and the band eventually broke up due to lack of demand for our services.  The Laymen (1966) It was around this time (spring of ’65) that the music scene in Pensacola changed for good with the emergence of The Laymen.  This was the band that broke new territory in our musical community.  The Laymen had a keyboard (they used a Wurlitzer electric piano which gave them a very distinctive sound), they had no horns, and did songs with heavy harmonies carried by two singers, one of which was a gorgeous blonde-haired female. The original Laymen was composed of: Guy Pinney and Suzy Storm (lead singers); Forrest Higgins (lead guitar); Phil Watlington (bass guitar); Jimmy Lagergren (drums); and Bill Motley (keyboards).  Motley was a true musical genius and because of him and their superb harmonies, The Laymen did songs that other bands simply could not do such as ‘I Got You Babe,’ ‘The Night Before,’ ‘Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore,’ ‘Tell her No,’ and ‘She’s Not There.’  Suddenly, bands realized the benefits to adding a keyboard to their sound and thereafter, every band in Pensacola that I am aware of had a keyboard player.  Every band I was in after this relied heavily on a keyboard as an essential part of our sound. In May of 1965 when the school year ended, a lot of things happened in the music scene in Pensacola.  The Embers, Scepters and Contours all broke up, The Laymen became established and The Phaetons came on the scene.  The Phaetons had a different impact on the music scene that was significant.  Up to this time, all bands were “clean cut” and many wore uniforms and dressed alike when on stage.  No one had particularly long hair.  The Phaetons changed all that forever.  While some bands still dressed alike, The Phaetons started the local trend of everyone dressing differently, a circumstance that still applies today.  The Phaetons had long hair, wore pegged pants and Beatle boots and had an exclusively English sound.  They did songs by groups like The Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Byrds and The Zombies and had harmony on most of their songs.  The players in this group were Skip Pratt (leadsinger); Ford Carr (lead guitar); Cecil Clark (bass guitar); Richard Gilbert (drums); and Kim Miller (keyboards/organ). While the English sound (and look) was slowly encroaching upon our society, there was still a place for the traditional “blues band” and in the summer of ’65, the remnants of The Xenos along with a former member of The Embers and one of the original Contours formed what eventually became the last band with brass that Pensacola produced.  That group became The Soul-7.  This band was formed in July of 1965 and broke up right after the 4th of July, 1966.  The members of this band were Tommy Ratchford (lead singer); Bill Boyd, (lead guitar); Newman Gersin (bass guitar); Ken Forbes (organ); Bobby Bates (drums); John “Mac” Berrier (saxophone); and Ray Wright (trumpet) who also acted as leader of the band.  Tommy was the only singer so again, the group was limited to songs that did not have vocal harmonies.  This wasn’t really much of a drawback since most of the material The Soul-7 did was R&B oriented.  When there was a need for back-up vocals, they faked it by having the horns play the back-up vocal parts.  This really worked out pretty well because usually the audience would sing the backup along with the horns, which everyone thought, was pretty cool. This band performed with some of the biggest names in the business.  For instance, The Soul-7 opened the show for The Byrds and The Seekers when they performed in Pensacola.  On another occasion, they opened the show for the Otis Redding Revue, which included Otis himself, Garnett Mims, Sam and Dave, and Barbara Lewis (the guys in The Soul-7 were the only white faces backstage and except for about 50 others, they were the only white faces to be seen in the audience that numbered over 5,000).  They set up their equipment on the tarmac of the airport when James Brown came to town and played ‘Out of Sight’ as he came off the airplane.  He even joined with Tommy and sang a verse of the song there on the airport runway while 2,000 adoring fans screamed their heads off. During the spring of ’66, Fred and Paul Garcia formed a new band that they named The Six Pack.  They did a variety of music but again were limited by the lack of good singers to provide back-up harmony.  The members of this group were Fred Garcia (saxophone, vocals and leader); Paul Garcia (lead singer and trumpet); Robert Foster (lead guitar); Chip Mayes (bass guitar); Sergio Fernandez (drums); and Jimbo Turtle (organ).  Among their accomplishments was winning a battle of the bands contest promoted by Universal Studios, which got them a free trip to New Orleans and a shot at potentially being in one of the surfing movies that were popular at the time.  Unfortunately, they lost out to another band in the final round of the contest (but they had a helluva good time in New Orleans on Universal Studio’s expense account).  This band eventually evolved into The Scoundrels, which remained a part of the Pensacola music scene well into the 1980s.  During the later years, Steve Guffey handled the lead guitar duties and Felton Harrison took over as organist. The summer of ’66 saw the break-up of several bands and the re-forming of new groups by the players.  The Soul-7 broke up and several of them joined Mark Ramos in a new group called The One-Eyed Jacks.  This was a really good band with a great sound and a cool gimmick.  They all (and there were ten of them) wore an eye-patch over one eye.  They had five horns, three sax players and two trumpets and they were really good.  Unfortunately, they had to charge almost double what the other bands charged because there was so many of them and eventually, after a few months, this super band dissolved. The original Laymen also disbanded during that summer and was re-formed with the following personnel:  Suzy Storm (femalelead singer); Tommy Ratchford (male lead singer and formerly of The Soul-7); Forrest Higgins (lead guitar and part of the original Laymen); Newman Gersin (bass guitar and former member of The Soul-7); Johnny Lowe (drums) and Bill Motley (organ and also part of the original Laymen).  The 13th Hourglass Guy Pinney, who was the male lead vocalist in the original Laymen joined up with a group of guys who had previously been called The Coventry Sextet and formed a band they named The 13th Hourglass.  The original members of this group were Guy Pinney (lead singer); David Dorman (lead guitar); Robert Lewis (bass guitar); Rick Harris (drums); and Allen Heinrichs (who had quit drumming by then and had become quite an accomplished keyboard man).  In April of 1967, Guy Pinney returned to The Laymen and Tommy Ratchford joined The 13th Hourglass to take his place. The Phaetons also broke up and re-formed with the Blackwell brothers to form a really great group called The Magic Glass.  This group did extensive and complex arrangements of ordinary songs.  It should be noted that at this point in musical history a group named The Vanilla Fudge had broken into the scene.  Everyone was gassed at the really cool arrangements they did to all the songs they performed.  The Magic Glass quickly became the Vanilla Fudge of Pensacola.  The members of this band were Terry Blackwell (drums and backup vocals); Sonny Blackwell (lead singer and bass guitar); Ford Carr (lead guitar and former Phaeton); Cecil Clark (bass guitar and former Phaeton); and Freddie Moore (organ).  These guys were great to listen to and every player in town envied them and the super arrangements they did.  Unfortunately, the songs they played did not lend themselves to dancing and The Magic Glass did not survive for long. Thirty miles away from Pensacola and across the bay is the small town of Milton, Florida.  Milton only produced one band of note during those halcyon days of the ‘60s.  This group was called The Kords.  There were only four in the band but you would never know it just listening to them.  They had a great sound and all of them were singers.  The Kords was the first band in our area to do material off the Sgt. Peppers album.  These guys were really good, so good in fact that they didn’t play very much on the local level.  They traveled a lot around the southeast U.S. from Atlanta to Tallahassee to Baton Rouge to Birmingham.  The members of this group were Ricky Talliaferro (lead singer and bass guitar); Jim Armstrong (lead guitar); John Ripley (organ); Billy Moss (drums).  This group continued to play around the southeast into the early ‘70s but not with the same original personnel. Another group that came into being in late ’66 was The Dickens.  This group was formed around a very versatile musician named Richard Pierce (brother of the former Contours lead guitar player, John Pierce).  Richard was a truly talented musician that played three or four different instruments.  This group did almost exclusively English music but they were also the only band that performed original material.  Richard wrote all of their original stuff.  The members of this band were Richard Pierce (guitar, keyboards and voca;s); Ron Bowman (lead guitar and lead singer); Jimmy Smith (bass guitar and vocals); Louis Boyleston (rhythm guitar and vocals); and Seldon (Skip) Higgins (drums). At one time or another, each of these groups tried to make records.  There were two or three radio disc jockeys that sometimes acted as manager or producer and would arrange recording sessions.  Unfortunately, most of these producers were in the game for themselves, not for the good of the bands, and few (if any) of the records produced ever got enough recognition to be considered hits.  While every musician I’ve ever known wanted to be a recording star, that was not the primary goal of these bands.  If they managed to make a record and/or sell a few, that was all well and good, but their main purpose was to make music for their friends and fans and to be a part of the local music scene.  For the most part, these groups existed to perform to live audiences that came to dance.  Most of these were high school/college dances held at places like Fireman’s Hall, The National Guard Armory or teen clubs such as The Place on Pensacola Beach or The TOC Club (Teen of Clubbs Jr. High).  Most of these musicians were under the age of 20 during those days and were not legal to perform in nightclubs.  While we all (illegally) played in nightclubs occasionally, those places were not our primary market.  There were several teen clubs operated by the City of Pensacola and a lot of the bands played these places.  Some I can remember (in addition to the TOC Club) are: The Beacon, run by the city and located right downtown; Sanders Beach Teen center and across the street from Fireman’s Hall located near the bay on the water, also run by the city; Surfside A-Go-Go, a private teen club owned and operated by George Overby, a local entrepreneur; The Electric Experience, one of the first psychedelic teen clubs. It was owned and operated by Fran Kilpatrick, mother of The Sandpipers. The Sandpipers A lot of the bands shunned the teen clubs run by the city because the rules that applied to the musicians were considered by some of the players to be unwarranted intrusions on their gig.  These rules included things like what clothing was acceptable for the band, what songs were prohibited (i.e., ‘Louie, Louie’), what volume level was acceptable (to the chaperones, not the kids), and rules about going outside once the dance started and prohibitions on smoking cigarettes.  The private clubs didn’t impose those kinds of restrictions.  There were always opportunities for a good band in the Pensacola area, and this was true yearlong.  During the school year, there were school functions at the school or parties after a football game for a school club, fraternity or sorority at the National Guard Armory or Fireman’s Hall.  During the summer there were jobs at the beach or other places that catered to the tourist trade.  In addition, there were seven or eight military bases in this area in those days and they were always looking for bands that appealed to the younger military guys to play at the clubs on the bases.  Those were good gigs, only there were very few females present so there wasn’t much dancing and the clubs had budgets that they had to stay within.  They didn’t pay so well, but unlike other jobs we were guaranteed to get paid and the check never bounced.  In fact, most of us had a policy (and put it in our contracts) that we were to be paid in full, in cash after the end of the first set.  We made exceptions for the military jobs because we weren’t afraid of getting stiffed. When people ask me what it was like being in a band back in those days, I don’t have to think very hard about my answer.  In 1966, I was a star within my own little universe.  Everyone knew me by name.  I was (locally) famous.  I was making $100 a weekend or more when my friends were pumping gas for minimum wage ($1.25/hr).  I had the coolest clothes (‘cause I could afford them), had my own car, money in my pocket and women falling over themselves to date me.  I lived at home with my parents and didn’t have a care in the world.  In retrospect, these were some of the best days of my life.  I was on the committee for the 20-year class reunion we held in 1986.  In preparing for the reunion, we sent out questionnaires to our classmates asking them about their memories of their high school days.  One of the questions was, “What high school event do you remember the most vividly?”  Some of the answers were: “Listening to The Soul-7 at the dances after the football games;” “Going to the dances and listening to Tommy Ratchford sing;” “The first time I heard Ratchford at the talent show;” “Hearing all that great music;” “The sock hops in the cafeteria before school” and the like.  Had I realized then that 20 years later what I was doing would form the basis for the strongest memories these people would have I think I would have taken it more seriously.  As it was, I was just a kid having fun.  What a time! Other Bands The Scepters: Fred Garcia (saxophone, singer and leader of the band); PaulGarica (lead singer and trumpet); Jackie Ganus (replacing George Emmanuel) (bass guitar); David Dorman (lead guitar); Doug Graham (saxophone); and Allen Heinrichs (drums). The Embers: Danny Traynor (lead singer); Chip Mayes (bass guitar); Robert Foster (lead guitar); Mark Ramos (trumpet); Bobby Bates (drums); and Steve Templeman (saxophone). The Countours: Lee Turle (lead singer); John Pierce (lead guitar); John Russell (bass guitar); Ray Wright (trumpet); Gary (Sandy) Spivey (saxophone); and Sergio Fernandez (drums). Special Thanks:   Tommy Ratchford Jason Balbuena (for arranging the correspondence) Jim Roark (for the great photos) Jeff Lemlich (click here to read Jeff's excellent biography on The Sandpipers)