Fatty Lumpkins Part 2

Fatty Joins WeightWatchers

Things changed drastically during the next month after the escape from Windsor. Terry quit, likely because he was broke; the keyboard player was fired, there was no clue what happened to Glen, and we got booted out of the warehouse because we always left it in a mess.  
Butch had a friend with a Hammond organ who could actually play it. His name was Jan Vincent. He agreed to join, and we found a new place to practice.

Night Crawlers

This place was another warehouse. It stored worms. You read that right…. Worms. A hundred thousand of them at least. Three floors of live Earthworms. They lived in these two-by-two-foot trays that were stacked four or five feet high in large refrigerated rooms. When you opened the door of one of the rooms and turned on the light, you could catch the ones on the top shelf wriggling back under the soil. It was spooky.
In those days, if you drove north into cottage country, there were signs along the road in front of gas stations and variety stores advertising fishing bait. This warehouse was the central hub that supplied these places. The worms were picked from golf courses by people who needed a job so badly that they got up before dawn and spent hours collecting the slimy creatures for minimum wage.
Butch knew the owner, and he was fine with us rehearsing on the weekends in one of the rooms that wasn’t being used. The place was damp, windowless, and smelled like a stagnant swamp. We lasted three weeks.

Organ Transplant

Certain that a cough I had was the start of some rare worm disease, I asked my father if we could rehearse for a while in the basement. He was under the impression that this band thing was keeping me out of trouble, so he okayed it. It took removing the handrail from the stairway and four reluctant guys using the kind of vile language that would make Caligula blush to get Jan’s enormous Hammond A-100 organ into the basement. 
The A-100, the C-3, and the B-3 were basically the same Hammond organ but in different style cabinets. They were heavy beasts as it was, but Jan’s A-100 had an amp and speakers built in. 
The sound of a Hammond, particularly when hooked up to a Leslie tone cabinet with its rotating speaker, was just this side of heaven. That organ spent quite a bit of time in my basement that summer, so who could blame me for being smitten?  

Ebony And Ormie

Meanwhile, we set about replacing Glen. A guy who spoke fluent musician lingo answered the ad we placed. He arrived at my house for an audition with three family members. His name was Rico. I never knew his last name. He was a big man, 6’4” easily. He was also African American.
He had a good sense of humour. When we asked him what he’d like to sing, he said, “Know any Hank Snow?”
Always the comedian, my father, who was standing near the top of the stairs, yelled: “You ain’t white enough for snow!”
As if rehearsed, Rico shot back, “I ain’t black enough for coal.”
The place erupted. 
He had a classic and powerful baritone voice, very soulful, almost gospel. He was only able to do one gig with us. I don’t know why he quit, but it was amicable. My father ran into him a few months later, and Rico bummed five dollars from him.

Humongous

We replaced him with two singers. It was like Three Dog Night except one was female. So now out front we had Pete Piette, Bob Scotia, and Sue Lyn. I don’t recall her last name. The band was getting crowded. 
They noticed my waning interest in the guitar. There was a special meeting called. They suggested I was spending too much time with my girlfriend and not enough time practicing.
Joe and I were still the leaders of this band, which had grown into a very professional unit.
Unfortunately, they were all better musicians and singers than we were. We had risen to our level of incompetence. Over the course of fifteen months, we had gradually deleveraged ourselves. The BS caught up with us. We were fired.

Sorta Like The Peter Principle

A book written by Lawrence J. Peter, The Peter Principle, was meant as a management concept. He pointed out that in most hierarchical systems, like companies, if you’re good at what you do, you are promoted to a higher level. When you do well at that level, you’re promoted once again. This keeps going until you’re promoted to a level at which you flounder like a freshly caught tuna. In a way, we (Joe and I) promoted ourselves into obsoletion.
To this day, neither of us regret a single moment of that band, and in an unusual twist of fate, the two of us were the only ones in that group who found lasting success in music.
In August of 1973, Joe (Jonas now) moved to Minneapolis and, within a very short period of time, was involved in its vibrant music scene. He formed a band called Jonah And The Whales that still exists. A highly respected cover band with concert-style production, they have a guaranteed following and are booked regularly. Over the years, I’ve heard four or five versions, and though the players changed, the quality didn’t.

Moral Of The Story

I’m sure we both learned something from Fatty Lumpkins, but it had nothing to do with bullshit. Hell, this whole business is built on hype. No, what we learned was to be smart enough to stay one step ahead of people like us.