Back in the middle 50’s when I was in high school, I belonged to an out of school club named the BACHELORS. The school frowned on these clubs so we could not wear out identifying jackets in school. We had reversible jackets that were black on the outside with royal blue lettering on the back stating BACHELORS….. All the kids knew the ‘royal blue’ jacket was a member of the BACHELORS. Any way, we used to put on dances almost every Friday, unless another club was having a dance on the same night. We had live local bands and sometimes imported dance bands that were developing a reputation for producing good music. During one of our meetings we decided we wanted to put on a great dance, one to out do every dance of that time. One of the guys suggested he may know someone that could get us a big name to play at our dance…. It was decided to look into this and see what we could come up with…. To make a long story a little shorter, at our next meeting we were told we could possibly get Chuck Berry….yes, THEE Chuck Berry !!! During our pursuit of Chuck Berry a local DJ from a Cleveland radio station contacted us when he was made aware that we were going to book Mr. Berry for out dance. We met with him, he said he could help up put on this dance and get us a couple more names to make this a dance of all dances. Soon we had three people signed and committed to perform at our big dance. He is where I loose most people, we had booked Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino…..Honest. He were are, a group of teenagers putting on a dance with these three performers. We rented out a large Roller skating arena in our town to hold this BIG DANCE.

The club had police lined up to maintain order in the arena during the dance. Everything of our dreams was falling into place. The Bachelors were going to produce the dance of all dances, better than any other club had ever done before.

The night of the BIG DANCE. I can’t remember exactly how many tickets we sold but it equaled the legal number of people that could be allowed inside of the Skating arena building by law, at any one time. But when the word got out about who was entertaining at this BIG DANCE many, many more people attempted to get in and many, many more filled the entire parking lot and over flowed out into the busy street, (Lake Road) out front stopping traffic.

It was a BIG DANCE, and a very big crowd, more than anybody every imagined. We were dressed in dark suits with a flower in our lapel, signifying that we were members of the Bachelors and in charge of this dance. It was a blast. The three performers were outstanding, the police had to call in more officers to control the crowd outside and attempt to keep cars and people off of the main road to keep traffic moving and prevent anyone from getting run down by a car. It was awesome to say the least.

All of the members of our club got a chance to talk to each one of the performers and the most interesting seemed to be Fats Domino. Chuck Berry did not talk very much and Little Richard was just Little Richard, not sure if he said anything that actually made sense, he was “ON” all of the time, even when not on stage. It was a most successful endeavor, even if the local police did not agree. A lot of money was made that night for our club, even after everybody was paid….

The next part of the story…… After all of the receipts were counted it was estimated that we had not received the correct amount of money from the gate. It appeared the Cleveland radio DJ had held back a significant amount of money from us. Remember this was at a time just before the scandal about “payola” hit the news. Well, as a club, we decided to go directly to this DJ and demand our money…. Three car loads of us went to Cleveland, about 30 miles away, and walked right into the DJ’s broadcasting booth, while he was on the air, and demanded he pay up what was owed to us… He suggested he would write us a check…..ha….this was not acceptable to us. It was suggested he send one of his people standing outside of the broadcast booth our to get the money in cash or there would be a problem right there while he was on the air. This seemed acceptable as he sent someone out and brought in the cash. We thanked him and we all left peacefully. It was a significant amount of money.

As a side bar, a few months later, the news broke about this “payola” scam, playing record on the radio for money from the record companies to “push” records on the record buying public. This DJ was deeply involved in this scandal and eventually lost his job in Cleveland and moved on somewhere else.

Moving forward all most 30 years later, I was traveling around the country as a Sales Engineer and found myself down in Louisiana somewhere. I had met up with a local Salesman and we traveled together to call on a couple of his accounts in Louisiana. The one night we stopped a short distance outside of New Orleans for dinner and a few drinks to talk about the days business meetings. While finishing dinner I could hear this piano music coming from another room. It just barely audible but it sounded familiar. I ask my travel partner what/who was playing the piano. That is when I found out that we were in Fats Dominos place and he played there in their main room.

Naturally we went in the main room and had a couple drinks and there he was, The “Fat Man” himself… At that time he looked the same as he did 30 year prior. I got a chance to meet with him again and talk with him.

I don’t know if he was just trying to make me feel good or if what he was saying was 100 percent true. During our conversation I mentioned the BIG DANCE in Lorain, Ohio back in the middle 50’s…. He said he remember clearly. He said he had been traveling around the country at that time with Little Richard and he remembered it was the first time he was on the same billing with Chuck Berry….so maybe he did remember.

Just a story I wanted to share with you…..

Rich