CHAPTER 5
Ned Theall
 
Who in the hell is Ned Theall?  Why did fate cast this little man in this huge role?  Only God knows.  When the dust settled in January of 1965, I found myself in charge of the Boogie Kings program. My life's dream had come true!  I immediately went to work with a passion that still drives and motivates me to this day. I had the challenge of taking this great bunch of musicians and making entertainers out of them.  I knew that it would not be easy, but I was up for it, and I was chosen by the guys, and I damn sure was not going to let them down in any way.  Even if it cost me the job.  You see, every leader of the Boogie Kings had lost the job, and down the road, I would eventually suffer the same fate.
    First, I needed a wardrobe, a must for every professional musician. Second, I re-vamped the whole show, inserting riffs and chasers, and adding an M.C. to the group.  Murphy Buford, a humorous guy, took a shot at it a while.  Later, my good friend Dan Silas was to take over and weld himself into the legend of the great Boogie Kings.
    The band's only competition was a band called "Jerry and the Dominos." We were wiping them out so badly that Jerry gave up his band and called me for a job with the Boogie Kings. I hated for that to happen because we really admired  Jerry's band.  But then again, I was very happy to have the opportunity to work with Jerry.  We had eleven pieces already, but I hired him anyway because of his enormous talent. Jerry fit in right away, after him and I had a few conflicts about the repertoire, but we got on track after a while.
      Rehearsals followed, and I was able to introduce new and better arrangements to the repertoire.  One of the first things I did when I became leader of the band was to quickly release a single record. In those days, it was possible to release one 45 rpm record at a time.   I didn't dare tell the band what I was up to.  I told them that we needed to do a demo tape to assist me in booking.  It was in the back of my mind to try to get a good enough recording that I may be able to make it into a record.  We knew a friend, Charles Bailly, who had a tape recorder, and he offered his help, so we set up on the stage of the Bamboo Club because of the good acoustics of the room. We could only use two microphones, and because we weren't in a real studio.                   
      After a couple of play backs, we realized the tape sounded good, but the background voices were weak. There were about 25 people watching us make this tape, so we invited all of them to come up on stage and sing.  It worked out beautifully. We recorded two songs that day, "The Crying Man" and "Two Steps From the Blues."  G.G. did a superb job on vocals.   I then took the tape to Houston and had a hundred records made. Then I brought one to every radio station in Louisiana, western Mississippi, and east Texas. When I got to Baton Rouge, I asked a few questions and found out where the good rock bands played. It was a place called the Golden Slipper. It was there that I met Vince Maggio, a gentleman who gave us our start in Baton Rouge. This club was later to be re-named the Blue Bull when Bonnie Fusell took it over.  After I booked the job with Vince, a gentleman approached me and said, "I heard the record that you gave Vince for the jukebox. I think you have a hit record. Is that your band?"  I replied that it was, and he said, "I'm Sam Montel.   I've got the #1 record in the country and I'd like to talk to you." Before I left the Golden Slipper that night, I had signed an album deal. God was surely with me that night.  It was nothing but dumb luck that led me right to a record producer.  Radio stations all over South Louisiana began playing the single, and we arranged with Sam to go to Cosimo's Recording Studio in New Orleans and cut the album. The studio was booked for five consecutive days. Sam apologized for not being able to get more time. I told him not to worry, and that we'd probably finish in 3 days.
    To the producer and engineers amazement, we had all of the music tracks done in less than four hours. We got every song down with no mistakes in one or two takes. After the music tracks were down the vocalists dubbed in their voices. Some of the vocal performances were so great that the band and the others in the control room would burst into applause. We finished the whole album in less than eight hours and came up with a product that is still selling today and Is a collector's item on the Boogie Kings website, boogiekings.com.  Little did we know at the time that this recording would still be a best seller decades after it was recorded.   Some of the classic tunes on this album were "Crying Man," "Harlem Shuffle," and "A Change Is Gonna Come." It is called "Montel Presents the Boogie Kings." Pick up a copy at your local record store or at any Boogie Kings performance. This album was recorded in 1965 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I was ly overwhelmed by all of this and  when it was all over, I drove home and sat in my room crying like a baby.
    I had previously met Jon Smith in 1960 at the Forest Club in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. I walked into this club, jammed to the hilt, and heard this good Rock n' Roll band called the Rhythm Masters." The band was fronted by "Poochie" Benoit on guitar and the sidemen were Glen Guilbeaux on piano, Raymond Cormier on bass, Joe Thibodeaux on drums, and a most incredible horn player named Jon Smith. Jon was fourteen years old at the time and could blow anybody off the stage. I said to myself, "I've got to play with that guy, he's a genius."
    To continue about Jon. He was, and still is the greatest rock ‘n roll sax player that ever walked.  He was also the most controversial person that I had ever met. His luck was so bad that sometimes it was funny. One night after a Bamboo Club job, Jon came out of the club to find that his brand new Chevy, parked under the light, was on blocks and his four brand new tires were ripped off. Jon almost went nuts. I thought he was going to have a seizure!  The very next week, his car, parked under the lights again, was minus the whole back seat!  Jon again erupted in a fury.  A week later, while riding in the country with Robert Prado, his transmission fell out onto the ground.  I'm sure happy that I wasn't there that day. Phew!
    I had booked a job at an all-black venue called the Casson Street Community Center in Alexandria. When we got there to perform, it was jammed to the rafters. A sea of black people.  Please remember that segregation was still alive, and we were a bit apprehensive about playing for an all-black audience.  But, we had done it successfully several times before.
    The first set was great and the crowd was totally enjoying our presentation. We took a break and Jon and I walked out the back door to his car where we planned to burn one. When Jon opened his car door, he saw that all of his clothes had been stolen. Jon went into an immediate rage, opened his trunk, grabbed his shotgun, and was marching back into the community center.  I shouted, "Jon! Catch a grip, man!" Jon walked in and stood in the middle of the dance floor. As the crowd spotted the shotgun, a dead silence came over them. Then Jon shouted at the top of his lungs, "Which one of you black mother-fuckers stole my mother-fucking clothes?!"  I screamed to Jon, "Put that damn gun down!"  It took about ten seconds for that crowd to vacate the premises. lol.  One would have thought that the building was on fire!  That was a very short gig.  The producer gave us our bread immediately, helped us pack up,  and wished us a speedy trip home.  That was the last time that we ever played at the Casson St. Community Center.
      Things were really good for the Boogie Kings in 1965. We had the best of everything. We all had new cars, a nice place to live and all of the "Rock n' Roll, Sex and Drugs" that we could handle.
    The Beatles were getting so popular by this time that all of the bands were changing their style of music to this new beat. We made a vow that we would never change our style of music, no matter what.  But this new music would eventually put us in the unemployment line. Nevertheless, at the moment, we were still at the height of our popularity. So we didn't worry about the Beatles too much.
    One night, from the stage of the Dynasty Lounge in Monroe, I spotted this beautiful girl amongst the dancers. She was so stunningly beautiful that I had a hard time concentrating on the music.  I have never been affected so much by a woman.  I thought to myself that some lucky guy would be going home with her. Then all of a sudden, as she was dancing with her date, our eyes met and she winked at me.  At that moment, I had the biggest rush that I've ever had.  Could it possibly be that this goddess from Venus could be interested in me?  I was a mass of jelly by this time, but I couldn't get close, because her date had picked up on the interaction between her and me.
    After the gig was over, I stood by the door, hoping to get one more look at this beautiful woman.  Much to my surprise, as she and her date passed by, she leaned over and whispered her phone number in my ear. I didn't even need to write it down.  I was having explosions in my head and my heart was pounding, but best of all, so was hers. Her name was Cathie.  I had to be careful because I was still married at the time and I had three kids that I loved dearly.
      I called her and set up a date for the next week when we would be in Monroe again.  I found out that she was just as interested as I was.  Cathie and I dated for a few weeks, and fell very deeply in love. One night, before our regular Wednesday night gig, I went over to her house and we had a couple of hours on her couch. Up until this point, we had not made love.  I left Cathie's house about thirty minutes before showtime and went to the Dynasty.  When I walked in, "Smitty" Smith the owner told me, "You had better stop going after Cathie, that's too much woman for you."    
     After we began playing, I suddenly realized my wallet was missing. Panic set in when I figured out it was on Cathie's couch.  And in that wallet were pictures of my wife and my kids.  I had told Cathie I wasn't married. When I called her at the intermission, I could tell by her silence that I was busted.  I asked, "Can we talk about it?"  She replied, "There's nothing to talk about.  Come and pick up your wallet when you finish." All I could do was kick my ass and accept it.  I had really blown it big time, before I had even made love to her.  My marriage was pretty much on the rocks at that time.
    When I went to her house to pick up my wallet, she was standing in the dimly lit hallway looking like a million bucks.  I got ready for the sermon and the farewell, but to my great surprise, she said, "Let's go for a ride and talk."  A spark of hope danced through my mind as my heart was thumping like an African tom-tom.  We drove to an abandoned archery range, out of town a ways, in the midst of a group of pine trees. After I stopped, she looked at me and said, "Ned, I love you."  I don't care if you are married.  This was followed by some very passionate kissing and touching, and I whispered back to Cathie, "I love you too, my darling."  I gently eased her white nylon panties off. We made love under the pine trees until the sun came up. When dawn broke, I looked at Cathie and she looked at me and we both knew that we could be separated no longer. I told her, "Let's go pick up your stuff, you're coming with me to Lake Charles."
        After a bout with her mom and a painful phone call to my wife, we broke free from the world and entered the wonderful universe called love.
        We drove back to Lake Charles to begin our new life together. Ray Veillion, the owner of the Bamboo Club, gave me the keys to his camp to use for our honeymoon. Somehow or other, another girl from Monroe, who was a friend, ended up coming with us to the camp. Not only that, she ended up in the same bed with us!  It was very difficult to make love to Cathie with this other female in the same bed as us, but we were in our own world and we had no difficulties.  I thought about making love to her too, but I didn't want to blow it with Cathie.                         
      The days were a little more distracting as this other girl would parade around in a transparent slip with nothing under it, revealing her huge jugs and other assets, if you know what I mean.  But I managed to not get caught staring at her.  At least, I think I did!
        Two weeks later, Cathie and I got an apartment, and spent many incredible days and nights of true love and happiness. These were the most joyous days of my life. I have not been totally fulfilled since that time, and if the truth were told, I think Cathie was experiencing the same feelings.
    Because of the nature of my work, I would eventually blow this great relationship, a situation for which I have many regrets.  But Cathie is happy now, and that makes me happy.  We did have a beautiful child together, my darling Kimberli.
     I'll never forget the first Boogie kings tour, It happened back in 1965 as the Boogie kings headed west for the first time. Funny how it happened.  I had made a trip to Bossier City, Louisiana to listen to a drummer from El Dorado, Arkansas by the name of Bubba Marks at little club called The Peppermint Lounge.  It was owned by Gus Theodus, a great old guy.  As I was sitting there, admiring the drummer, I noticed he was talking to a man in a suit and pointing at me.  So this guy comes up and says, "Hi, I'm Bob Dee.  I'm a booking agent from Nevada."  So, I said, "Yea, and I'm Groucho Marx."  He continued, "No, I'm serious, Bubba tells me that you're Ned Theall, owner of the Boogie Kings."  He said, "Ned, I've been all over the Southern United States looking for bands, and everywhere I go, all I hear is, don't miss the Boogie Kings".  I can't believe I ran into you like this. Would you guys like to go to Nevada?  Well, I thought, if I didn't humor this guy, he'll never go away and I won't get to listen to the drummer. So I gave the guy a card and said, "Five grand a week and rooms, call me."  As he left, I thought to myself, "What a jerk!".  I just about crapped all over myself two weeks later when I received union contracts in the mail with gigs at Lake Tahoe and Reno. When I announced to the band that we were going to Nevada, one would have thought that I was Jesus Christ.  They could not believe it.
       So twelve naive coonasses hit the road for Nevada. .The first engagement that the Boogie Kings had booked out west was at Harvey's Casino and Hotel in Lake Tahoe. We had never driven that far for an appearance, but we were eager and anxious to show our stuff somewhere else besides Louisiana and Texas. So we took off in ten cars caravan style, so we could remain together.  We even had walky talky's so we could communicate from car to car. The caravan held together until the diet pills kicked in and then it became a chariot race to Nevada.  By the time we were 300 miles across Texas, we could see no sign of the original caravan.  Most normal people would take two or three days for a trip like this, but we were determined to drive straight through.  The first 24 hours were no problem, but then funny things started to happen.  One by one, we began to get road weary and exhausted.  We did not realize this, because when we got tired, we'd just pop another diet-pill. (Believe me friends, this was not the correct way to travel).  The road stress was beginning to make us hallucinate.  You would not believe all the strange things that I saw; faces formed in the rocks, rainbows that did not exist, why, I even saw the faces of the four presidents carved into the mountain. The only thing was that I was 2,000 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota at the time.
    We finally made it to Lake Tahoe, dinged out to the max.  None of us had a wink of sleep. We  figured we'd play the first night and then catch up on our sleep. That's what we thought we'd do, but our agent had scheduled us for a photo session the next day in San Francisco. So, we played the first night at Tahoe (sounded like shit!) and left right after the show for the photo trip. We got there O.K. and posed for pictures all day long.  Then we headed back for Tahoe to do our show for a second night.  Friends, let me tell you, when we left Frisco, the sun was shining and it looked good for the trip back to Tahoe.  When we got about an hour away from Tahoe, it started snowing.  Before long, we had a full-fledged blizzard on our hands, and it was getting closer to showtime. Ten coonasses and a blizzard don't mix very well.  We got about halfway up the mountain and we couldn't go anymore without tire chains. Of course, all of the tire chain stores had lines a mile long. We got in line and after about two hours, we finally were back on the road. So picture this; ten coonasses driving like a bat out of hell, up the side of a mountain, with no experience ever driving in a snowstorm.  Jesus must have been riding with us that night.  We were scheduled to go on stage at midnight. At five minutes till twelve, we arrived, got down and ran through the casino toting our instruments, so red-eyed we looked like crazy fools. But when the curtain opened at midnight, the Boogie Kings were all there alive and well.  We played our butts off that night!  What a band!
     Gary Walker was only seventeen when we were on this tour. Gary could only  peek out of the dressing room door because he was under age. If there were no security guards around, he'd rush out to the slots and play them as fast as he could. Then the security guards would catch him and haul him back to the dressing room. Gary had the misfortune to hit a jackpot on his first quarter. He was hooked after that.  I began to get quite concerned about Gary. I had seen him take a handful of pills, spilling several. I cautioned him about overdosing, but he explained it away by saying he had a high tolerance.  But Gary was going down a path that would take him from us early and we were too blind to see it.  Gary was a super talented guy with a heart of gold.  He loved to tell jokes in a Cajun dialect and he loved to watch cartoons.
    From Lake Tahoe, we went to Reno to perform at the Golden Casino.  It was a nice room with a large stage, and a capacity of about five hundred people.  We did very well in this room.  It was a thrill to see the Righteous Brothers sitting in our audience one night.   After the show, they came backstage and raved about our band.  Bill Medley asked us to do a tour with them in Nevada and we graciously accepted.  We did very well on this tour.
    After we had been in Reno for a while, I got hooked on the slots and blew the whole damn paycheck one night.   I lied and told the guys that I had been robbed right after I cashed the check. Thank God, hey bought it.  I had saved money for a few months before we went on tour and I was able to cover it.  That cured my gambling problem forever.
    Our last night in Reno was the most memorable nights in my life. Right before our last show, (with a jam packed house) I went to collect our money and was informed by the pit boss that some of the players had a fight, tore up the motel the night before, and that we had a lien against our wages and we weren't going to get paid.  This is a true story.  We went back to do our final show and I walked up to the mike and told the crowd that I had just been informed by the casino that we weren't going to get paid, and that we were going to stay on that stage until hell freezes over unless we got paid!  The crowd went nuts and started wildly cheering for us and it got louder with every song. Word immediately circulated around Reno and every musician in town stopped what they were doing, came over to the casino, jumped on the stage with their instruments and we dared anyone to remove us from that stage. Little did we know that we could have ended up in the desert, pushing up cactus.  And we jammed, and jammed and jammed. We had so many people crammed into that theater that the owners, the managers and the cops all put together could not get us off that stage.
    The pit boss, who was the man in charge, sent a note up to the stage telling us to stop playing so that the bartenders, waitresses and maitre'd could go home. We ignored the note and stayed on the stage jamming a medley of tunes that had no end.  The frustrated pit boss kept sending threatening notes to me and I kept ignoring them.  By this time everyone knew what was happening, and they were all behind us, cheering us on. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me that I had some leverage against the club.  I remembered that we were playing for less than scale, and the musician's union was unaware of this.  So I left the stage and went to confront the pit boss.  This was about four-thirty in the morning, the band was still on stage and the pit boss had just about enough of my shit.  I told him that if he didn't figure out a way to pay us, that I would show the musician's union the bogus contract and the hotel would be shut down.  I was actually running a bluff and hoping that he wouldn't call me on it.  Obviously they had run up against the union before, because when I ran my  bluff, he bought it, hook, line and sinker. He took me in his office and counted out my five grand.  We won that round!   Before we left Reno, I had lost the keyboard player, two sax players, a vocalist and our drummer, Bubba Marks left for Viet-Nam.
     We had a devastating surprise waiting for us when we got home. While we were on tour, Clint West had put together a knocked out ten piece band and was still performing under the name of "Clint West and the Boogie Kings."  So here we were back home and broke, minus some major players, and facing a huge uphill battle. The public at large was getting confused, not knowing who the real Boogie Kings were. So for a few months there were two Boogie Kings bands. This was not to last long.
    Clint was about to release the Purple Peacock Album under the name "Clint West and the Boogie Kings." If that had been allowed to occur, it would have been the beginning of the end.  So I slapped a lawsuit on Clint West and set about the task of reorganizing the band.   We hired three of Jerry's friends, Dale Gothia on sax, Gary Dorsey on Bass and Ken Yetman from Boston on drums. Jack Hall was on guitar. The horn section was Ned Theall, Norris Badeaux, Dale Gothia and Dan Silas, the MC for the band on baritone sax. These players hung together for several years and evolved into the best loved group the band ever put together.
I had registered the name "Boogie Kings" to myself before the confrontation with Clint. We easily won the court case, and Clint carried on as Clint West and the "Kings." His album was changed to read the same way.
    The King Brothers, a duet act that opens our show to this day, was formed by G.G. Shinn and Jerry Lacroix.  As well as being great solo acts, putting them together proved to be a real winner.  Jerry and G.G. were the force that put the band over the top.
    One night in October of 1965, Otis Redding made an appearance at the Bamboo Club in Lake Charles. It had been a joyous year for us.  Of course, we went to the dressing room to talk to the great blues man. We were honored to be his backup band that night.   While we were in the dressing room with Otis, he mentioned how tired he was. So I asked him if he wanted an "upper" (our slang for speed). He replied, "Sure, man, I need something." I asked Otis if he had ever had a hit of speed, and he said, "No, but there's a first time for everything."  I told him to chew it up so it would take effect on him quickly.  It was showtime, so we got on stage and opened with , "I Can't Turn You Loose."  Otis came running on stage to a rip-roaring round of applause, mixed with whistles and screams.  He sang his ass off, saturating his pink suit with perspiration.  After his opener, he came over to me and whispered to me that the pill had kicked in and he was feeling great.   Then he sang "These Arms of Mine" and the crowd went crazy.  He must have sung the vamp to that song for twenty minutes.  If I wouldn't have cut the band off, he would have gone twenty minutes more!
       Otis sang song after song that night, and each selection got more intense than the one before. The horn players started complaining about their lips being shot, but Otis went on and on. After three hours the whole band was shot, but Otis, speeding his ass off, wanted to go some more.  Everybody's ass was dragging by this time and I could see that Otis was nowhere near being finished.  I walked over and told Otis about an all night jam session on the black side of town at a place called "Evelyn's Lounge.  He finally closed the show and we all went to the jam session.  Otis was so hopped up of the speed that he burned out the jam session players too! Truly and unforgettable night.
      At the end of 1965, the Boogie Kings were one of the hottest bands in the world. Our records were now being played, and we were getting write-ups in newspapers and magazines everywhere. The future sure looked good!  I was surely Living Like A King!      
     
GG and Jerry were tearing it up on every gig.  They seemed to get greater with each show.  But GG was so great, we knew that he would move on to better and bigger things.  After all, one cannot expect a great artist to split the money twelve ways.  GG would figure that out soon.

GG Shinn           Jerry "Count Jackson" Lacroix    1965