Strike Up The Bands

When I went to Jonathan Alder High School in the fall of 1964, a lack of seniority forced me to sit with the third trumpets for the football and concert season. But early in my sophomore year, I was apprenticing with the upperclassmen in the lead section, playing selections from Broadway shows like South Pacific, overtures to operas, concert band repertoire, dixieland medleys and in the trio of trumpets on Bugler’s Holiday.
Our first neighborhood band was called the Soul InterNationals (Music So Good, It’s a Sin!) and the songbook was made up of Motown hits (Junior Walker, The Four Tops, Temptations...), Memphis soul (Sam and Dave, Dyke and the Blazers, Booker T & M.G.s...) and of course, the hardest workin’ man in show business, James Brown. We played neighborhood parties and teen radio dances thanks to a uncle of two of our players who was an announcer on WVKO-AM & FM.
The first group included my brother Gerald on guitar, Doug Yoder on bass, Richard Madry on tenor saxophone, Chuck and Debbie Davidson on drums and piano. Uncle Bill Chapman, an announcer on WVKO, used his connections to get us mentions on the radio and appearances at teen dances with the Belmont Youth Club.
During the winter of 1967, Uncle Bill was supervising a recording session on Columbus’ Hilltop and invited me to come and play as part of a teenaged horn section. I recorded with two other players, including saxophonist Mickey Wallace and we began a lifelong friendship. The group, The Vadicans Band, from London, Ohio, featured Richard and Eldon Peterson, drums and guitar, Don “Little Moe” Wilson, guitar and vocals, Robert “Link” Davis, organist and arranger.
In the early summer of 1967, I was appearing on stage at Columbus’ Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium as a screaming teen in Bye, Bye Birdie, with Gene “Bat Masterson” Barry, singer Arlene Fontana, comedian Totie Fields and Ted “Lurch” Cassidy. Fellow teen Andy Robinson and I were the biggest hams of the entire company, singing and playing the Righteous Brothers at every party or rehearsal break. I cherished that entrance into show business; becoming an adopted son to Fields and George Johnson, her husband/music director.
In July, after I finished performing Bye Bye Birdie, The Vadicans ask me to join them onstage at their Saturday show. I hitched a ride with a neighbor from Plain City and rode the bus to the Arena Bowling Alley Lounge, at Columbus’ 1436 East Main Street and Miller Avenue. I hooked up on the bus with a fellow session horn player, Mickey Wallace and when we walked in the doorway of the lounge, The Vadicans were playing the new James Brown hit, Cold Sweat. Although Mickey and I were underaged, we walked straight to the stage blowing our horns like we owned the place.
According to drummer Richard Peterson, The Vadicans Band was born in Robert “Link” Davis’ home in 1962. “That’s where the old piano was and Link was plunking on it and getting himself together. I drummed on a cardboard box and a pie pan cymbal, while Phil Lowery strummed on an old guitar. We needed a bass so I made one for Phil, before he was able to buy one.”
Phil remembers, “Richard bought some wood and cut out the body and put an older neck on it. We went to Springfield and found pickups and and old amplifier. That guitar had the best blues sound.”
According to Richard, “Link took the name of the band from Vatican City, only he changed the “t” to a “d”.” Richard’s younger brother, Eldon, a guitarist, had been lured to Colorado Springs, Colorado by another brother, Robert, who was in the U.S. Air Force there. A call was made to Colorado and they rehearsed songs with Eldon over the phone, before he was talked into coming back to London to join the them. The Vadicans Trio had already been journeying to Washington, Court House, Ohio play at the Rocking Chair.
Donnie “Little Moe” Wilson soon joined The Vadicans, along with another singer, Walt Wilson and he remembers that instrumental in the band’s maturation was a series of teen events that they began playing in London for State Theater manager Dick Feree. “Dick had us play regularly and we packed teens in for those dances. He took us to Dayton for a talent show and we were a hit there too.” Richard also remembers Jack Schultz, from The Rebel Room in Bloomingsburg, Ohio, who helped the band buy the first electric piano that Link played.
Eldon Peterson remembers those days, “The Vadicans were hot! We began playing clubs, lounges, dawn dances and cabarets all over the state of Ohio.” A list of performance sites from 1962-1969 include the American Legion in London, Wanda’s Lounge (where the barroom battles were frequent), Central State College in Xenia, Wittenberg College and The Blues Club in Springfield, The Majaga Club in Yellow Springs, The Ponderosa in Chillicothe, The Liberty Club in Delaware, The U Bar in Zanesville, The Blue Note in Mansfield and legendary “Hairy Buffalo Parties” at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
In Columbus, The Vadicans auditioned for but were “too good” for Jerry Razor’s Dance Party on WLWC-TV, instead they played for grownups at the Preview Lounge, Joe's Hole, The Sportsmen's Club, The Mecca Club, The Bonfire, The Westinghouse Company picnics and The Arena Lounge, where I first joined them in 1967. Phil remembered parties at the NCO Club at Lockbourne Air Force Base and benefits at Training Institute of Central Ohio (TICO).
Link remembered one of the Columbus singing groups that the Vadicans frequently performed with was the Ohio Quotations. “Tommy Crowder and Verlyn Reeves were in that group and their act rivaled the Temptations and Four Tops. They continued to be great friends and guests on stage with us for years.”
When I join them the personnel included Richard, drums and leader, Elden, guitar, Link, organ and music director, Little Mo, guitar, Harold McNeil, saxophone and Gary Lee Thomas, dancer and percussion. Bassist Phil Lowery had been drafted and was serving in Vietnam in 1967.
The scene that I strolled in on at the Arena Lounge was surreal; a dark room with show lights, that was smokey, loud. Growling organ sounds pulsed groove and “funky broadway.” Drums rolled and rimmed hot shots that made slender, lanky, pompadored men in satin shirts with huge collars, leap into the air, land in splits, ala The Godfather of Soul. Hips snaked and rolled to and fro, maracas shook and flirtation went on with the fine ladies watching the action from close by.
Everyone in the band was a superb vocalist and the songs were all rich with the natural harmonies that make Black music so treasured. James Brown's years as a hit maker were at their peak and we performed “Cold Sweat,” “I Feel Good, I Got You.” Both the Stax and Motown companies were churning out hit records, Otis Redding was making lasting musical memories, before his abrupt ending in a Wisconsin plane accident in late 1967.
I vividly remember “Little Mo” making the women howl as he sang For Your Precious Love and Gary Lee playing maracas and leaping from the stage into a full splits and slowly alternating from side to side, while smiling and teasing the women at the bar stools. Hot, hot hot!
Larry Davis, Link’s younger brother, came into the band as a guitarist replacing Elden, who went to California in 1968-69 and Larry has a phenomenal recall to many of the people, places and Vadican events during the last days of the band before 1970. “I inherited the homemade bass guitar from Phil and it was the instrument that developed me into a player.”
One of my favorite memories is of a song that made dancers go crazy. Link sang the hit by Dyke and the Blazers, Funky Broadway and he also remembers the songs Shake a Tail Feather and Express Yourself.
I cannot say that the best of times in my world of travels have been any better than the miles down Ohio highways in a 1962 Corvair Van, the dim lights, smoke and sweat of the Arena Lounge, the adventure of a snow storm on the way to Zanesville and the pretty ladies that kept us warm until dawn. The Vadicans Band was my first experience on the road to that good life and I can’t be more thankful to Richard, Link, Phil, Little Moe, Eldon and their wives for being my mentors and extended family.