Monarchs on Stage

As I have stated before, I'm still getting used to doing this blog stuff. The picture posted above has me on drums, Herschel on piano, Johnny on bari sax, Donny on guitar and in this instance, Preston Thompson on bass. This was about 1957 and Willo had not yet joined the group.

ERN’S ADVENTURES IN MUSIC BIZ

For years my friends have encouraged me to relate some of the stories from my life in some form or another. I never felt the compulsion to do so ‘til now, as I stare my mortality in the face, edging ever closer to senility. I figured that if I was ever going to pass these meanderings along to anyone I’d better do it while I still had some semblance of a memory of the events. I once heard someone say that “if you remember the 60s you weren’t really there”. Well, there are huge gaps in my memories of not only the 60s but also the 70s and 80s. I’m hopeful that I will remember enough to make this little endeavor worth while.

I must begin by stating that I have no idea what I am doing. This is my first attempt at blogging and I am admitting that this is virgin territory for me . I am starting this literary adventure because I have been told in the past that I have some interesting stories to relate concerning my 20 some odd years as a recording engineer in Nashville Tennessee. I was involved in many sessions spanning a period from 1969 through 1992. I was involved in recording sessions with folks from Wilson Pickett , Joe Tex, Neil Young, Dolly Parton, and yes, Paul McCartney to name a few.
Once I start this blog in earnest, I can't predict where it will lead nor how long it will last. I ask that any potential viewers of this effort be patient with my fumbling attempts at story telling. I welcome any questions or comments you may have but always keep in mind that I am a new babe in the woods and I'm still wary that the big bad wolf is gonna jump out and bite me in the ass. I am going to be as honest as I can...warts and all.

Let me begin with a bit of my background and early history to set up my career in the recording business. My name is Ernie Winfrey
I was born March 27^th 1942 in the old St. Thomas Hospital on Church Street (long since demolished) in Nashville, Tennessee. My parents chose to saddle me with my grandfather’s quaint 19^th century name, Ernest Lee, but for many years I was inexplicably called “Sonny”. As soon as I was old enough to have control of the situation I made sure that my friends and colleagues knew me as Ernie.

I grew up in pretty modest circumstances in an east Nashville neighborhood called Inglewood, not having a lot of material things but appreciating what we did have. I went to Dan Mills grammar school where my love of music began to surface and was nurtured by a couple of really neat teachers. My first love was classical music to which I had been exposed from the time I was an infant by my father. In the 4^th grade I entered a conducting contest at Peabody College and won my division, Davidson County Schools. The prize was to conduct the fledgling Nashville Symphony Orchestra in one song of my choice on local TV station WSM. I selected “The Marine Hymn” and I have always assumed that once I delivered the downbeat I was promptly ignored until I gave the cutoff. I cannot begin to describe the degree of terror I experienced during that ordeal.

I spent my teen years at Isaac Litton Jr. and Senior High during the 1950s. It was in the early fifties that I discovered the radio station WLAC which only aired what was then known as “race records”. They were geared toward black listeners and I was fascinated by these rhythmic, soulful sounds that made the “white” stations in town sound so vanilla. Pop music at that time was very safe and unexciting, characterized by artists such as Patti Page, Frankie Laine and a variety of boring crooners. I guess it was around 1955 that I went to see a movie that literally changed my life called “The Blackboard Jungle”. It was a movie about a teacher’s struggles with teenage hoodlums in the inner city. But the thing that shook up my world was the movie’s theme song called “Rock Around the Clock”. I was my introduction to Rock n’ Roll and became my impetus into a career in music.

When I became a sophomore in High School I joined the famous “Litton Marching 100” and started playing field snare. At some point I met a couple of other guys, Donny Green and Johnny Sturdivant, and put together a little combo to play sock hops and VFW dances. This group later grew to include Herschel Hopper, Willo Collins and, in it’s final stages, a young multi-instrumental musician newly arrived from Miami, Florida named Charlie McCoy.

By the time we graduated from high school, we were pulling in an incredible income for high school kids, playing sorority and frat parties at Vanderbilt, University of Alabama, Auburn University and University of Tennessee. 

After graduating in 1960 my parents insisted I attend college even though I wanted to take some time off from school to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up applying at Middle Tennessee when it was still a state college. I went to Murfreesboro the night before the entrance exams and got a motel room and, by hook or crook, managed to get a pint of gin. I got completely snockered that night but miraculously managed to awake the next morning and get to the first test. Despite my alcoholic haze I somehow passed all my tests, just barely in some cases; but I was later told that I had scored the highest ever recorded grade at MTSC at that time on the English exam. This may have been the one event that convinced me that my talents were enhanced by the use of alcohol. To make a long story short, suffice it to say that it’s unwise to send anyone to college who doesn’t want to be there. I flunked out after one semester, probably because I rented an off-campus apartment, stayed drunk most of the time and didn’t attend classes. My parents weren’t happy!

I moved back to Nashville and got a job at the Tennessee State Safety Department coding accident reports. Not long afterward I was contacted to play drums for a group working in Printer’s Alley. Their drummer, Dewey Martin, had just moved to LA and would subsequently end up playing drums with a new group called Buffalo Springfield in time to record a song called “For What It’s Worth”. My new group was called Jeff Gordon and the Summits. Jeff played trumpet and sang. Claude Montgomery played bass and Bill Gilmore played guitar. We actually were signed and recorded a single at the original Bradley Studio on 16^th Avenue before the Quonset Hut was built onto the back. Owen Bradley himself actually engineered. This was in 1960.

We worked at an underground club across Church Street from Printer’s Alley called The Subway. It was a wonderful place for a budding alcoholic like myself to work. Cheap drinks and lots of groupies! I was to become close friends with some of the “working girls” who hung out there. One of them told me that she always kept a TV on when entertaining clients so that she could entertain herself.

We were fortunate to be working in the night club district of downtown Nashville because we were able to visit the other clubs when we were on break. I have fond memories of seeing some of the guys perform that went on to become great session musicians in Nashville including Hank Garland, Boots Randolph and Larry Londin. I was to be told many years later that, after our group left Nashville for a gig in Birmingham Alabama, an unknown guitar player named Jimi Hendrix played The Subway with bass player Billy Cox. Together they would, some years later, later form Band of Gypsies just before Hendrix died. A few years later Billy would play bass on Charlie Daniel’s first album that I had the good fortune to engineer. 

The club we played in Birmingham was called the Golden Dragon lounge.  It wasn't doing a lot of business so George, the owner was hoping we could could stir up some interest in the community.
Within a couple of months we had stirred up enough interest that the place was jam-packed every night.  We weren't old enough to legally drink but George would slip us a beer in a paper cup every once in a while.  And it so happened that George had graduated with a degree in pharmacology so he was able to supple us with huge jars of dexedrine which would keep us up for days at a time.
I would sometimes stay up 3 or 4 days in a row then sleep for a whole day until it was time to get up and go to the gig
After a few weeks of not sleeping and not eating I was starting to resemble a death camp survivor with large knobby knees and downright skinny.  We finally figured out that it was detrimental to our health and tried to eat more and sleep more.
After a while we got the big head and decided that we could fare better elsewhere and got a gig at a French themed club in Atlanta called Place Pigalle'.  We would play three sets a night and then go hang out at other clubs in town.  It was a lot of fun...lots of drinking and meeting girls and just being carefree.  We got so carefree that we neglected to save any of our earnings and when our gig was over at Pigalle we didn't have enough money to pay our hotel bill.  I also got so carefree that a young lady gave me the gift of my first and only case of "crabs".  She was so cute that I never would have thought that she would be a carrier. (My first lesson that looks can be very deceiving) 
I did the old blue ointment treatment, sitting in the bath tub and smearing that stuff high and low.  Had to have my clothes dry cleaned to take care of any remaining critters.  Take my word... the blue ointment really works!
Well, the management was going to keep all our gear 'til we paid up.  Our guess our leader Jeff must have sweet talked the management.  I don't remember how it happened but we got our stuff back and went on to play a short gig at a club in Savannah Beach.  What a beautiful town.  Lots of Oak trees with spanish moss hanging down.
I remember while we were there John Glenn was sent into orbit...the first American to do so.
Lots of speed and alcohol and not a care in the world.  Then our job was up and we didn't have another one to go to.  We did have enough money to limp our way back to Birmingham.  We nearly
bought it on the way back.  We were in a 1958 or '59 Lincoln pulling a U-Haul trailer.  We were on a rain slick highway coming down a long hill when the car in front of us started fish tailing and just as he crossed the median and went off the embankment on the other side of the road, we started fish tailing with that trailer pushing us.  We were all white knuckling our arm rests but Jeff finally managed to straighten us out, pulling over to the side of the road.
We crossed the highway expecting to see a horrendous pile of wreckage at the bottom of the embankment.  Instead the car had landed flat on the top and all the glass had popped out intact,
apparently cushioning the impact because the driver was crawling out to the car, seeming to be unhurt.  We were just very lucky we hadn't gone over right after him.  I'm sure the results would have been very different with that trailer on the back.

   

Introductions are in order

I must begin by stating that I have no idea what I am doing. This is my first attempt at blogging and I am admitting that this is virgin territory for me . I am starting this literary adventure because I have been told in the past that I have some interesting stories to relate concerning my 20 some odd years as a recording engineer in Nashville Tennessee. I was involved in many sessions spanning a period from 1969 through 1992. I was involved in recording sessions with folks from Wilson Pickett , Joe Tex, Neil Young, Dolly Parton, and yes, Paul McCartney to name a few.
Once I start this blog in earnest, I can't predict where it will lead nor how long it will last. I ask that any potential viewers of this effort be patient with my fumbling attempts at story telling. I welcome any questions or comments you may have but always keep in mind that I am a new babe in the woods and I'm still wary that the big bad wolf is gonna jump out and bite me in the ass.