Category Archives: Ohio

Categories: Akron, Buccaneer, Cleveland Recording, Faux Pas, Ohio, Rite Record Productions custom pressings, Suburban

Bobby Runnel’s Faux Pas “True Love – Heartaches”

September 3, 2010 Chris Bishop 39 Comments

Given Bobby Runnel’s career as a lounge act during the mid-late ’60s, you’d think it unlikely that one of his songs could become something of a classic of mid-60s rock. His original song “True Love – Heartaches” has been a favorite of mine since hearing it on Teenage Shutdown vol. 11. He certainly must have believed in the song, as he recorded it three times in as many years.

Bobby Runnel was born Robert Wilson, the son of a Southern Baptist preacher, and raised in eastern Arkansas, a rural area now part of Little Rock. Across the river was Memphis, where he picked up some of the early rock ‘n roll styles of the ’50s. He moved to Miami and started the Faux Pas trio, touring the east coast and mid-west.

In Nashville he recorded “True Love – Heartaches – False Love” as the b-side of his first single, released in September 1965 on the Buccaneer label from Jackson, Mississippi. The A-side is what I’ve heard is a soul ballad featuring flute, “If Your So Mart”. The artist is listed as Bob Runnel’s Faux Pas III with John Sherwood and Ivano Comelli (sp? – Ivann Comelli?). He had a second 45 on Buccaneer (509) “For My Baby” / “Where’s Willie Walker” that I haven’t heard.

I recently heard a clip of this first version of “True Love – Heartaches – False Love” and it’s pretty cool, slower with piano as prominent as the guitar and good drumming. If anyone has sound transfers or label scans please email me.

In 1966 the band found long-term work in northern Ohio, based mainly in Akron at Ninos’ restaurant and lounge. The clientele was older and Runnel’s repertoire ranged to all kinds of pop styles from folk to mainstream pop. The Faux Pas trio changed personnel from time to time, but always with Runnel playing lead guitar and singing. The two records I’ve heard also feature piano, so at least in the studio they were more than a trio.

Runnel cut “True Love – Heartaches – False Love” for a second time at Cleveland Recording (not in Little Rock as noted elsewhere) in 1966, released on Suburban Records CRC 2031 (white labels). On this release the band is listed as simply the Faux Pas III. It was the b-side of “Baby What You Gonna Do”, a good New Orleans-type r&b.

Songwriting credits on both sides are listed as Runnel, Comelli and Lott. Also on Suburban is another single featuring the Faux Pas backing a Janet Stewart, “What Can I Do” / “Brand New Love”.

In January 1968 he released the third and best version of “True Love – Heartaches”, recorded at Akron Recording and released on his own Faux Pas label (a Rite pressing: 21131/21132 with black labels). The A-side this time was a cover of “Black Cloud”, a hit for Me and Dem Guys on Palmer from late 1966. It’s a song I’m not very fond of but the Faux Pas do a great job, especially the drummer who lays down a beat like a locomotive. Whatever the limitations of their lounge act, this band could rock when it wanted to.

On this 45 the band is credited as Bobby Rúnnel’s Faux Pas, with an accent over the “u” in Rúnnel. Rúnnel is also listed as sole song writer on “True Love – Heartaches”, as well as producer.

In 1969 they released a pop 45 as the Faux Pas that I haven’t heard, and also during the late ’60s Runnel had two LPs featuring his typical lounge repertoire and probably sold as souvenirs of his club act. Bobby Runnel, A Winning Streak Of One on the Hawk label features a photo of Bobby with an acoustic guitar, and lists some of the songs: “Big Boss Man”, “A Place in the Sun” and “Malaguena” along with original jokes!

In the early ’70s he broke up the Faux Pas and did well as a songwriter in Nashville.

All info cribbed from Buckeye Beat, with some 45 release info from Mop Top Mike.

Categories: Newark, Ohio

The Fabulous Pendletons

June 26, 2010 Chris Bishop 5 Comments

Len More sent in this bio and photos of the Fabulous Pendletons, from Newark, Ohio, just east of Columbus. Len wrote to me “They never recorded. Terry Worth left the group in 1966. I grew up in Newark also but never saw them. I did frequent a dance club called “Alcatraz” in Newark and the “Pirates Cove” in Granville. I also had a friend Jim Proshek that was in a band called The Cytes from Johnstown and Alexandria.”

The bio reads as follows:

The group formed in Newark, Ohio in 1964 and played until the summer of 1967.
The original lineup was John Butts (lead guitar), John Proudley (drums), Terry Worth (rhythm guitar), Dave Pound (vocals) and Dave Morris (vocals). Worth and Morris left the group to seek other fame and fortune. Jerry Miller joined and added the bass guitar to the sound and Jeff Robb from nearby Granville, OH took over on rhythm guitar.
The group played at various scenes around central Ohio including the Newark Armory, Battle of the Bands at Vets Memorial in Columbus, the Holiday Swim Club as well as the college dance circuit. The jocks from WCOL in Columbus were helpful in furthering their career, especially Mike Adams. The group played cover songs of the day but no original compositions.
They played with Ohio acts such as the Rebounds, the Dantes and Sir Timothy and the Royals. They also played at the same venues with national acts such as the Standells, Terry Knight and the Pack, the Left Banke, The Supremes, Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, and the Four Tops.

Fabulous Pendletons circa 1966, photo: John Butts, Dave Pound, Jerry Miller, Jeff Robb and John Proudley — The Fabulous Pendletons circa 1966, clockwise from left: John Butts, Dave Pound, Jerry Miller, Jeff Robb and John Proudley
“Terry Worth left the group in 1966 shortly before this picture was taken.” – Len More

Categories: Alco, Dayton, Ohio, Rite Record Productions custom pressings

Tom and the Tempests

April 24, 2010 Chris Bishop 5 Comments

Tom & the Tempests Alco PS It's Over Now

Tom Fortener, keyboard player for Tom and the Tempests sent me this incredible 45 and sleeve and a short bio on the group:

Tom and the Tempests were formed in 1963 by Tom Fortener. Original members were, Randy Debord, rhythm guitar and vocals, Frank Hall, lead guitar, Bill Muncy, drums, Fred Nagle, bass and Tom Fortener, piano, organ. The band was managed by Toms’ Dad, Ray Fortener.
They wrote and recorded “It’s Over Now” and “Play It Cool” in 1964. They sponsored Sunday afternoon dances at GBU hall in Dayton, Ohio. They hired disc jockeys from WING and WONE. A popular promotion there was the Battle of the Bands. In 1965, they played the New State Pavilion, New York World’s Fair in Flushing, New York. They played throughout Ohio and was considered by many the best band in the area.
Tom Fortener

This is a Rite pressing from 1964. Alco’s first two releases were by Sonny Flaharty and His Young Americans, so the Young American Productions credit on the labels of this indicate Flaharty’s involvement. Alco was owned by Arvey Webster on Springboro Ave in Dayton.

Info on Alco from 45rpmrecords.com.

Categories: Columbus, Ohio

King Clam & the Marine Band

April 18, 2010 Chris Bishop 5 Comments

JP suggested I feature this unreleased group from Columbus, Ohio, with the odd name King Clam and the Marine Band. The band recorded four tracks in 1969 that went unreleased at the time. JP said: “These four garage-psych-punk tunes are too hot to handle to just leave them die and rot in the dust!”

My two favorites are “High Strung Woman” and “Inertia” their six-minute tour de force.

I didn’t know anything else about the group until I heard from guitarist, songwriter and leader of the group, Terry Bell:

I am Terry Leigh Bell, the lead songwriter and singer of King Clam. I’m in white shirt. The photo was late 1968, however, in January of 1969, as lead singer and songwriter, I parted ways with the three fellows in the photo and formed a solid garage/rock band which included:
Terry Leigh Bell – rhythm/lead guitar and lead and harmony vocals
Mike Wright – vocals and percussion
Andy Kowalski – bass
Danny ? – drums
Mark ? – keyboards
The band got together as all Ohio State University students. All of us were “hippie” types by this time indulging in whatever. We played around a lot in 1969, particularly at and around Ohio State University.
The band played around Columbus and went in to Musicol Studios in Columbus in June of 1969 and laid down four original tracks. I remember when we laid down the four tracks at Musicol, the owner really liked the songs and said they were some of the best he ever recorded to that point, particularly in that style. Our four songs were never released except for some acetates. We never shopped them around to record companies and in hindsight, maybe we should have.
The band was together as a performing and recording band from January 1969 till December 1969 when we all graduated from OSU and went our separate ways.
In the 70s, I had a 4 piece folk group like Crosby Stills and Nash and we played around Cleveland quite a lot as Morningstone. In the 80s, I released two singles on my own label, Down The Road Records (published by Down The Road Music-BMI) sort of in an acoustic rock sound, “Heartburn” & “The Way That I Do”. I hired a music promoter out of Nashville to plug the songs to radio stations but they never hit critical mass. They got a lot of airplay down south and particularly Florida. We played out of Nashville for a while then back to Cleveland.
Currently, my partner and I are playing and recording under the name: The Sages, and our free music download site is www.thesages.net.
There are sadly no photos of the band. I have tried to contact some of the members but they seem to have disappeared or gone out of state.

These songs are so good, they deserved a proper release on vinyl – and as of May 2014, three of them have been! Now Sound Records has pressed 300 copies on blue vinyl in a color sleeve with expanded notes on the back cover. Order them through nowsoundrecords.nl

Thanks to Frank and JP for their help.

Categories: Athens, Ohio, Pla Me Records

The Oceans “She’s Gone” on Pla-Me Records

November 25, 2009 Chris Bishop 7 Comments

The Oceans on stage. Note the piano player and string quartet in the background ready to be next to perform!

The Oceans came from Athens, Ohio, releasing “She’s Gone” / “Abilene” on Pla Me Records in December 1966.

“She’s Gone” is a great, moody rock number with horns that actually help the arrangement. The singer snarls and yells out the lyrics, the guitar and rhythm is dense.

“She’s Gone” was written by the group. Publishing was by B-W Music, now Weldee Music in Wooster, OH.

The band must have used all their creative energy for “She’s Gone”, because the flip “Abilene” is a slow version of the 1963 country hit. Gary Rhamy produced both sides.

Richard Brown’s son Eric wrote to me with the photo above and some information on the band:

Mike Cunningham: vocals, also guitar and saxophone
Ed Lonas: guitar
Richard Brown: bass, also trumpet (on “She’s Gone”)
Jim Dean: drums
Oceans first, Cobras of Beverly second
They were from Athens, OH. The played mostly around the Athens & Belpre area in SE Ohio, from ’64 – ’67.
The picture is from a Battle of the Bands in either Charleston or Huntington, West Virginia. They won that competition, as noted in the newspaper clipping. Three of the four were students at Ohio University (in Athens), and Richard & Mike were childhood friends.

Thank you to Eric Brown for his help with this post.

Categories: Ohio, United Audio, Youngstown

Mickey Kalis and the Bakersfield Blues Band

October 27, 2009 Chris Bishop Leave a comment

Mickey Kalis self-produced this unusual 45 from 1969 with two of his original songs. The A-side is a western-type shuffle with trumpet “2:10 to Yuma”, with backup vocals by Linda Kalis.Much more arresting to my mind is the flip, the tough “Got No Time”, featuring a neatly picked intro, crude-sounding rhythm and long guitar solo. Mickey alternately drawls and shouts out the lyrics:

“Aint got no time for rainbows, ain’t got no time even for love,
Ain’t got no one I can really talk to, ain’t got no one I can try to love!”

The Bakersfield Blues Band may not have existed except as a pickup group for this session. I don’t know who any of the members were.

United Audio was a Youngstown, Ohio vanity label formerly known as WAM, with recordings and pressings paid for by the artist. This record is from August, 1969. It was probably engineered by Gary Rhamy, who bought the United Audio operations in 1971 and changed the name to Peppermint Productions.

Mickey had at least one other 45, “Fortune Lady” / “Florida Cowboy Man” released on the Peppermint label (#1277) in 1982, and produced with Jack Saunders and Art DeBaise and engineered by Larry Repasky.

Sources include: Buckeye Beat.

Categories: Dayton, Leisure Time, LTD, Ohio, Prism, Smash, Sure Play

The X-Cellents / Vacant Lot

October 12, 2009 Chris Bishop 32 Comments

Here’s a group that went through several name changes over a few years, but kept the same lineup throughout:

Roger Sayre (guitar and vocals)
Ray Bushbaum (keyboards and vocals)
Jerry “Moon” Ditmer (or Jerry Dittmer) (bass)
Jerry Thomas (drums and vocals – replaced by Bill “Fuzz” Weicht)

Prior to starting this band, Roger Sayre had been in 50’s rockabilly Chuck Sims’ group (Chuck also recorded as Charles Vanell). Ray Bushbaum had played with Sonny Flaharty’s Young Americans.

Based in Dayton, Ohio, they started as the Original Playboys in 1962 and cut a disc “I’ll Always Be On Your Side” / “Hey Little Willie in 1965 on Leisure Time records. “Hey Little Willie” has their sound down – grooving r&b with shouts, jokes and frat calls. “hold it – let’s do ‘Go Little Willie’, ‘DOTW'” (see comments below for explanation!). It was picked up for release on Smash Records with their name changed to the X-Cellents.

Another name change to the E-Cellents for their next 45 on Sure Play, the ballad “And I’m Cryin'” backed with one I haven’t heard yet, “The Slide”.

Reverting to the X-Cellents, they cut a cool double-sider 45 for Sure Play in 1966. “Hang It Up” treads similar ground to “Hey Little Willie” though a little less convincing, maybe ’cause it lacks that great bass drum beat. More insider jokes and calls here – “DFTW”, “77” – that I don’t know the meaning of.

“Little Wooden House” is a repetitive vamp lamenting settling down, just the same two chords over and over. “Little Wooden House” is a Roger Sayre composition, “Hang It Up” was written by Sayre-Bushbaum-Weicht-Dittmer.

Still the band progressed with the times, and contributed one of their best songs, Roger Sayre’s original Walk Slowly Away” to a sampler LP on Prism Records called “The Dayton Scene”. Acts were from the 1966 battle of the bands promoted by Dayton radio station WONE and the band is listed as the Xcellents. To my ears “Walk Slowly Away” bears a resemblance to the Beatles’ “I Need You” from the Help! soundtrack, though that may be a superficial comparison, as the lyrics and chorus are distinct.

They changed their name again for their last 45, as the Vacant Lot, or perhaps R. Sayre and the Vacant Lot, the LTD label gives both as artists. “This Little Feelin'” is one of their best numbers, soulful and rocking, as Ray’s keyboards again drive the sound behind Roger’s vocals. It was backed with their version of Huey ‘Piano’ Smith’s “Don’t You Just Know It”, a song that had probably been in their repertoire for years with the same sound and arrangement. Production by Bill Leasure.

The band seems to have gone separate ways after this last 45. Sayre had another group with John Spitler at some point, but I don’t know if that was before or after the X-Cellents

Sources: List of 45 releases Soulful Kinda Music, and sleeve scan from It’s Great Shakes.

Thanks to Joe Kimball for sending in the photo from the WONE LP.

Categories: Findlay, JWJ, Ohio

The Mixed Emotions

July 8, 2009 Chris Bishop 2 Comments

The Mixed Emotions from Findlay, Ohio, and nearby Arlington.

Band members included Mike Brown, David Reddick and Denny Van Weelden.

They had two 45s on the JWJ label:

JWJ 1008/9: Search My Heart / My Backdoor (October 1968)
JWJ 1012/13: Through the Looking Glass / Live Today (1969)

I wonder if the ad worked for them.

Categories: Ohio, United Audio, Youngstown

The Next of Kinn

June 19, 2009 Chris Bishop 8 Comments

Next of Kinn 1966: L-R Steve Brajak, Paul Softich, Jerry Centifanti, Joe Centifanti — The Next of Kinn, 1966, from left: Steve Brajak, Paul Softich, Jerry Centifanti, Joe Centifanti

Joe Centifanti, guitar
Jerry Centifanti, guitar
Steve Brajak, bass
Paul Softich, drums

The Next of Kinn’s “A Lovely Song” is a favorite of mine. Buckeye Beat has the full story on the band, including the photo above – below is a quick summary of their story:

The Centifanti brothers were from Youngstown, and Steve Brajak and Paul Softich other members were from nearby Struthers and Boardman respectively. These kids were young! No older than 10 when they started, and all of 10-14 when they cut “A Lovely Song” at WAM/United Audio studios in the fall of ’67.

Pete Pompura, bassist for the Pied Pipers (who cut the wild 45 “Stay in My Life” on Hamlin Town) contributed the lyrics for “A Lovely Song” and helped the Next of Kinn write “Nosey Rosie”. Jerry Centifanti sang lead on both songs, with Pied Piper vocalist Dennis Sesonsky on backup.

However the band went back into the studio, and the feedback-laden “Nosey Rosie” was dropped in favor of a good version of “Mr. Soul” for the record’s release in January of ’68, with the band’s name abbreviated to Next of Kin on the labels.

I finally heard a dub of the WAM acetate of “Nosey Rosie” not long after I first wrote this post about the Next of Kinn. Let me say it’s all that I had hoped it could be – three minutes of tough feedback layered over a simple backing with vocals similar to “A Lovely Song”. Wow! I can’t think of any other examples of guitar sounds this wild before the second side of the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat, released several months later in early ’68! Time to rewrite music history again!

The Next of Kinn – Nosey Rosie

Huge thanks to MTM for Nosey Rosie.

Categories: Centerville, Ohio

More updates

December 27, 2008 Chris Bishop Leave a comment

Bittervetch at Town Hall in Centerville, Ohio, 1966

Some of the recent updates and additions:

George Dilworth, drummer and vocalist for The Voxmen sent four photos of the band, including one with the Dave Clark Five.

D. Gordon Strickland gives a detailed history of his bands The Stains and Five Cards Stud.

Duke Freeman, bassist and lead vocalist for The Us Four talks about his time in the Louisville, Kentucky music scene.

Rob Hegel of the Ohio band Bittervetch sent in the previously unpublished photo above, which really captures the excitement of the early teen scene. Rob tells me this shot was “taken April of 1966 when Bittervetch played a concert to a capacity crowd at The Town Hall in Centerville, Ohio. This is the concert where The Chandells became Bittervetch and announced the release of their PIXIE single. My dad was an advertising guy in Dayton and he knew Mr. Freeman and everyone at the studio so we went there to record the record. MegaCity Music was the company that owned PIXIE.”

Bittervetch cut two great singles and a number of demos now collected on a Gear Fab release that I definitely recommend. Their website (www.robhegel.com/bittervetch.html) with an article by Mike Dugo is currently defunct.

Garage Hangover