Chapter 3
HARRIS MILLER

A few months before I got in the band, a split-up had occurred. The band was playing  so many gigs that they decided to turn professional,   So Doug Ardoin decided to attend college full time and Bert Miller left the band to form his own group, "The Swing Kings".  Harris Miller inherited the job of leader of the band. Harris was a very different type of person than Doug was. He was much more aggressive and eccentric than most musicians that I have worked with.  On the first job that I played for Harris, one of the guys gave me two pills. I knew one of them was a Desoxyn (speed) and one was an Ambar, a pill that I didn't know anything about.  After taking these diet pills for a while, I realized where the band got it's energy  level. These pills would wire a person up like a Christmas tree. Several of the guys in the band were using drugs during this period.  I can remember staying up for days at a time.  I also didn't eat very much and shrunk down to about 120 pounds.  Harris Miller was a genius on the guitar. I have yet to hear anyone play the instrument like Harris did. He was very innovative, like a white Jimi Hendrix. He did the tune "Bo Diddley" in his own style, working it up to a fever pitch that really turned the audience on.  He would set the echo on his amplifier to repeat about four times and it sounded like four guitars playing at the same time.  Fender amplifiers were very powerful in those days, and Harris would crank it up to the max.  Actually, it was very exciting to hear him play.  It really got the crowds going.  After losing Doug and Bert, the band began rehearsing quite heavily. These rehearsals were for the purpose of learning some "James Brown" and "Bobby Bland" tunes. In order to really do these tunes correctly, Harris realized the band now needed a more heavy-duty horn section with an accent on the brass.A couple of weeks before I was hired, Harris had secured the services of G.G. Shinn, and a honking sax player named Murphy Buford. In late 1963, the band consisted of  the following players; Jack Hall on bass, Harris Miller on guitar, Clint West on drums, and Bryan Leger on the Hammond B-3 organ. Johnny Giordano and Bryan Leger alternated between B-3 organ and bass.  The horn players were Mike Pollard, Murphy Buford, Ned Theall, G.G. Shinn, and Dan Silas on baritone sax. Clint and G.G. did the vocals.
In early 1964, the band was playing primarily at the Bamboo Club in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Norris Badeaux, the great sax player, who had left the band for a while, came back.  When Badeaux came back into the group, the horn section came alive.  We lovingly called him "Bado".  Bado had this tremendous sound on saxophone, sort of like a Cajun John Coltrane that played the blues like no other man could.  Most of his solos were masterpieces and he never repeated himself.  Even though Bado had
the musical mind of a genius, he had the personality of a kid.  He was very modest and kind, but he was as strong as an ox.  He saved my butt from getting beat up several times.  It was a very sad day when we lost Bado to an automobile accident in 1985.      We purchased our first tuxedo when Harris was leading the band.  I remember the first time I rode with Harris Miller to a job. He had just purchased a new Grand Am Pontiac, and he drove me to the gig in Bossier City at a speed of 140 miles per hour up a two lane highway. He scared me so bad that I never rode with him again. I also did not wear those jockey shorts again!  Harris believed in taking risks.  Seriously.
The thing that I couldn't believe is the fact that no matter where we played, it was sold out or it was standing room only, and everyone was having such a good time that none of us realized that we had one of the greatest bands that ever came together. I made up my mind that I would have to figure out a way to get control of this band, a decision that would take me approximately a year to accomplish.
One night Harris booked us at a very popular club near the Texas border called The Big Oak Club for $200. This was way below our normal price, but we played it anyway. Of course, the room was jammed with people and the band was light years ahead of the Texas bands with the possible exception of Jerry Count Jackson and The Dominos. The Dominos had sort of made a home at the Oaks. They made the terrible mistake of playing across the street from the Boogie Kings. They had hoped the Big Oak's crowd would follow them to their new location........... It didn't happen.
  After our first job, Mr. Hebert paid Harris the deuce and complimented us on the music.  He then asked Harris if we wanted to play next week. So Harris told Mr. Hebert that we surely wanted to play next week. Then Mr. Hebert said, "Well, I'll see ya'll next week." To which Harris replied, "Wait a minute, Mr. Hebert, we didn't talk about the price." Mr. Hebert said, "Don't worry, I don't mind paying $200." Harris laughed out loud and said, "We want $800." This immediately pissed off and insulted Mr. Hebert because he had never paid a band over $200. Mr. Hebert told us to pack up and get out and never come back. Well, guess what? He got so many phone calls about the band that he reluctantly hired us again for the next weekend. Mr. Hebert and his sons, AC. and Harris were eventually to become the best friends we ever had.  We played at the Big Oaks every weekend and the crowds were tremendous.  One had to be 21 years old in Texas to purchase liquor, but in Louisiana, one only had to be 18.  The club was located about a half mile from the Texas border, so the kids would come over in droves to get boozed up.  The Texas girls were among the most beautiful creatures that I had ever  seen and I fell in love with most of them.  They, of course fell in love with the band, and it was not much of a task to get them in a motel room after the gig was over.  The bad thing about that is that some of them were seventeen, and even sixteen, and we had to be very careful who we dated.
 As the months passed, I found myself getting more and more dependent on the speed. Before  I was hired with the Boogie Kings, I had a weekend habit. It all started one day when I found a whole bottle of pills in my own medicine cabinet. To my astonishment, my wife had a legal script for Desoxyn, the most popular of all amphetamines. Desoxn was the store name for methedrine, a very dangerous narcotic. It would be hard to describe the rush that I got when I saw all of that dope just sitting in my own medicine cabinet. Add to that a very liberal druggist in my home town who would put a hundred pills in a bottle that only called for thirty. It was all right when I was only doing it on weekends, but now that I was in the Boogie Kings, I found myself taking pills every night. This would prove to be real destructive later in my career. One thing was obvious to me from the first gig that I played with the band, and that was the availability of the opposite sex. I had never been in a hot Rock n' Roll group, so I wasn't accustomed to girls hitting on me. After a gig at the Bamboo a fine looking girl came in the dressing room in a bikini and sat on my lap and got my temperature rising. That was the night I had my first extramarital affair. My family was becoming less important to me as time went on, something that I am not proud of.
So here I was in the greatest band that I could have ever played in, (and believe me, I did count my blessings) females everywhere, great money, and dope all over the place. I was Living Like a King. The Boogie Kings truly lived up to the term, "Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll."      We sometimes went  to the Pitt Grill on Broad St. in Lake Charles when the Bamboo Club gig would end. One night, I found myself sitting on a bar stool, next to a gorgeous hunk of a woman who was only too eager to engage me in some healthy conversation. Of course, I was only too willing to reciprocate. I asked her if she would like to come to some of the out of town gigs with me. She was quick to say, "I'd love to."
    So we dated for a while, had a great time at the gigs and had some great motel action. This helped me to keep my weight down. Jeannie had an apartment of her own. It was not until I went over there, that I saw a certificate that identified her as "Miss Lake Charles." That really impressed me.  She had never revealed this to me and I thought it was quite humble of her not to flaunt this title.  I bunked with her for a while, but I eventually had to split from Jeannie. I didn't think that there was a woman in the world that would love sex more than I did, but I was wrong.  We made love morning, noon and night.  It was great for a while, but I must admit, she was too much for me.  She was loving me to death...too often, even for me!  We went to sleep every night listening to Clint West singing " The Twelfth Of Never", which was the first song that I arranged and recorded with the band.
The Boogie Kings were doing so well in Louisiana that the band started receiving offers from other states. One of these offers was from the Tropicana Lounge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. When the band got this offer, Harris called a meeting to take a vote on the trip. Well, as usual, it was five for and five against. So the vote  carried.  The only problem we had was that the band had just enough money for food and gas to get to Florida. One of the guys made a remark about  the possibility of the club owner screwing us, but it basically went unheard. Who in the world would stiff the Boogie Kings?  Anyway, we loaded up the car, picked up some chicks, made a quick stop at the nearest liquor store, and we were on the way.  When we arrived at the club, we were shocked to see a legal notice on the door of the  Tropicana Club, It read, "Closed for liquor law violation. "We all looked at each other with a "What the hell do we do now?" look on our faces.  We were standing there when we spotted a band on the beach playing on the back of a flatbed
 truck. We hurried over there to see who was playing. It turned out to be the "Classics IV," real good friends of the Boogie Kings.  We had done some shows with them in Monroe, Louisiana.  They told us that the band that was supposed to follow them had canceled out, and they asked us if we wanted to substitute for them. We jumped at the chance to play since we had driven so  far.  At least, we could make hot dog money.  The Classics finished, and we got up and began  playing. Suddenly, people started coming from everywhere to hear us Boogie down.  Within ten minutes, word had spread up and down the beach about this big jammin' Blues band.  People were leaving the lounges to come and check out the action. Within thirty minutes, we had six or seven lounge managers watching us.    When it was all said and done, we had attracted over seven thousand people, booked a six-week engagement at the "Beachcomber Lounge"  on the beach, and got a two thousand dollar advance. I could not believe the dumb luck that we had!  We drew the most incredible, enthusiastic crowds that I had ever seen.  Not to mention, the incredible parade of fine female flesh that came in and out of those doors.  That was a fabulous six weeks, thanks to the incredible Boogie Kings!  Harris Miller, the leader of the band, was getting more eccentric by the day, and I felt that he would push his luck a little too far one day. That day came quickly.      It was 8:40 p.m. at the Bamboo Club in Lake Charles that Harris made a very bad decision.  He left the club twenty minutes before show time and told Bryan that he was going to Eunice, an hour and a half away, to pick up a shirt. When the club owner, Ray Veillion, heard about this, he came over and told us that if we didn't start at nine, we could pack it up. We had a full house and no guitar player.  You know, a rock band with no guitar player sounds more like an orchestra.  That was Harris' last night with the Boogie Kings. We had earlier agreed that no one could be fired without a unanimous vote from all of the other players.  Well, Harris  lost the vote and Clint West took over the band the next day.
After Clint took over the band, I  realized that if he would leave, I would have a shot at being the leader of this great band.  I had quite a bit of influence in the band as I was arranging all of the music that we played.  I decided that I would watch Clint very closely from that point on.  Clint and I would fight it out down the homestretch.