Читать книгу Behind the Rock and Beyond - Leon Isackson - Страница 16

Being now the proud possessors of a hit record, we scored a support band slot on the Conway Twitty Show at the Stadium and toured the country. Also on the show were Lloyd Price (Personality), The Kalin Twins (When), Linda Laurie (Ambrose) and Col Joye & the Joy Boys. Lee Gordon called this show “The Battle Of The Big Beat” and it was on July 25, 1959. It was designed to be a battle between the Yanks and us. Technically I think they won! With experience, equipment and worldwide fame they had a head start but a patriotic feeling for our own bands was starting to emerge.

Consequently, two months later, this show was a great boost to the record sales of everyone on the show. The Top Forty for September 1959 shows:

No. 1... Col Joye — (Rock’n’Rollin’) Clementine

No. 2... Conway Twitty — Mona Lisa

No. 3... Lloyd Price — Personality

No. 7... Dig Richards & the R’Jays — I Wanna Love You

Col’s Bye Bye Baby was also No. 15 and going down after having been No. 1 and in the charts for twenty weeks.

Conway Twitty’s band had us completely amazed. We had never seen Americans before, let alone actually spoken to them on equal terms. They were southerners. Blackie, the bass player, could fill the Stadium with his double bass. Boy, could he slap that mother! The lead guitarist was Joe E. Lewis who just knocked my socks off. He played things for me in the dressing room that I couldn’t believe. Hoe down guitar pickin’ like my favourites, Joe Maphis, Merle Travis and ilk. I guess, although they were playing rock’n’roll, they were really country boys at heart. Conway and Joe both had the small solid body Gretsch guitars, like a Gibson Les Paul. Joe’s had a Bigsby whammy bar, which a lot of Gretsches and Gibsons had fitted. It was from looking at Joe’s whammy bar that I got the design to get someone to build one for me. That person was Jim Snelling who had a little guitar factory down at The Rocks. The handle on my first whammy bar was a piece of steel out of my mother’s corsets!

I had asked Robert Reids for time off to do the Conway Twitty tour and they declined, so I declined to work there anymore and that’s the last day job I’ve ever had in my life.