Scotty Celsur, lead guitarist and vocalist with the Chesea Five gives the story behind this Dallas group that recorded for Zero Records, the legendary label originally based in Austin that released the Spades 45s:

My first band, the Exclusives, was made up of my brother and my two best friends who liked to play for fun and entertainment of others on occasion. Sure was not the money at that point. However, after a couple of years of that I got down to business and started to put together a band that would go somewhere. I was in it for the big go.

My best friend, Mike Farr, was my guitar backup rhythm player starting out but finding a bass player was a challenge so after finding a good guitar player of rhythm Mike said he would change to bass to get this thing going. He wanted this bad like myself.

After a couple of months of searching out talent we started to put a show together and we put ourselves out there. After a few months of playing local gigs we just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Oddly enough we were at McCords Music Co. in downtown Dallas one Friday afternoon picking up a new PA system when a guy [Gary McCaskill of Zero Records] asked me if we were a working band and if so he wanted to talk. So we did and told him of a sock hop we were playing that night at a local school.

He said he would attend and about halfway thru the second set he and his wife showed up. He loved our version of “Play With Fire”, why I don’t know and he liked the “Leave Me Alone” song that I had written two years prior to that date. In two days he had us playing dates for a month on weekends. I liked this and then he wanted to start a recording company and he did, with us being his main band. He was a booking agent at the time for a couple of groups in Austin and did some with Kenny and the Kasuals. His mainstream focus was on us.

First he wanted to change the name to an English sort to go along with the fad of the times and that’s when The Chelsea Five brand came to be.

Jimmy Holbert – lead singer except on “Leave Me Alone”
Scotty Celsur – lead guitar, vocals and lead singer on “Leave Me Alone”
Randy Ridell – rhythm guitar
Mike Farr – bass
Sammy Simmons – drums

Funny thing, when we went to the Sherwood Forest complex over by Love Field airport to have pictures taken, Randy Ridell didn’t get there in time so with the evening darkness coming we opted to use Jimmy’s younger brother Bobby [sic – should be John Holbert] as the fifth person stand-in. By the way that is the only picture I have of our band. I have some slides somewhere or I think I do but I not sure where they have been stored at the present.

We were practicing four nights a week then playing on the weekends, mostly in Austin, he had contacts there and at the time bands from Dallas were a good draw for attendance. Pay was good and we were happy. Never considered us to be anything but a rock & roll band with a little edge.

Back then it seemed that everybody and their brother had a band of some kind so that in itself set up competition. Getting a gig could be a hard thing to do if you were looking in your own backyard. Many gigs would get canceled at the last minute just because someone knew someone that was a friend or whatever. That was the trick bag for us. Each one of us had a different group of friends. Strange in a way, but it worked and after we took on an out of town manager who was really in the loop of clubs around it made the whole world bigger.

Two weeks after we signed with Gary the Beach Boys were coming to town for a concert along with the Buckinghams and he asked if we would like to be the warm up band. Being in our home town I said no way. We had never played a venue of that size so the setup it self would be a guess and I didn’t want to take a chance and kill our sound and business by doing something stupid. As things happened Kenny and the Kasuals took the spot and in my opinion it was not good. Best decision I ever made because they suffered from what I feared for us. Poor sound quality but even the headliner bands didn’t sound good in that building [the Memorial Auditorium]. I went to a lot of concerts there and the building was perfectly round so the sound would bounce everywhere. I saw the Beatles there in ’64 and it was the worst concert ever, could not hear anything.

We were friends with a couple of other bands and in fact the Vaughan brothers dropped by for a couple of afternoon jams. Stevie Ray was very young, around 14 I think, but the kid was amazing and could play as good as his brother Jimmie.

One day in early May of ’67 Gary called me and said he had booked studio time at Sellers Recording in downtown Dallas for Saturday to cut a record. When we got there and after we set up he said he wanted to cut the “Play With Fire” song on the A side and my song, “Leave Me Alone” on the B side. I argued to cut the Otis Redding song “Respect”. We had a killer version of it and had request to play it a number of times a night at our gigs but he was paying and I lost the battle with him. This was two weeks before Aretha Franklin cut her song “Respect”, the rest is history and so are we.

5,000 copies were pressed but during the that time we added an organ player thus changing the name to the end result of Jimmy C and The Chelsea Five. There was no Jimmy C. it was actually Jimmy H. but that sounded bad so we used my last name letter C to fix that. We didn’t care we just wanted to play music, cut records and get paid. My manager gave me 500 and I don’t know what happened to the rest, now I only have around 25 left.

Didn’t work out to my way of thinking. I was the only one, other than Gary, who had a car that would go down the road every time. I was killing my car and not getting much in the money end of things for it. Sure, everyone would buy gas but tires and repairs, did those myself, were an expense for me and the others didn’t see it that way. I told them we need to rent a truck for all this, after all the organ was a Hammond with a Leslie speaker so it was no small item.

Other things started get in the way like girlfriends and some members smoking grass, I said no to that from the start. That was a sure way to ruin all we had worked for. I bid farewell to the band I put together and quit. Didn’t play for almost two years. They disbanded two months after I left and so goes the death of a rock and roll band. Gary asked me to form up an R&B group a few months after I had left and the band had vanished. I considered it just because Gary was such an up right guy and I had trust in him. I really liked to play blues more anyway but it just didn’t work in our area of play. Mike, my best friend and bass player soon surfaced and we set up a small band to play local and not very often at that.

I got married and started my family so I still think I did the right thing at the time. After all I did embark upon a career of auto racing for twenty five years and I traveled all over the USA, Canada, and a couple of trips to Mexico seeing things I would have never seen on my own so I don’t have any regrets.

I started the band when I was 14 and I was 17 when I recorded. I’m 60 now and have written over 200 songs of all kinds but they are in a box in my house along with the guitar and amp I bought new and used on the record, 1964 Fender Jaguar and Fender Bandmaster amp. I still play for my self satisfaction and friends on a rare occasion. I have not been in contact with any of the guys since 1973. Don’t have a clue where they are. I still miss them though.

Scotty Celsur

Zero discography:

10001 – The Spades – “I Need a Girl” / “Do You Want to Dance”
10002 – The Spades – “You’re Gonna Miss Me” / “We Sell Soul”
1003 – Jimmy C. & the Chelsea Five – “Play With Fire” / “Leave Me Alone”
1004 – Sammy Julian – “Lead Guitar Man” / “Is It True” (both by S. Julian and C. Kirk)
1005 – Curtis D. Hall and Cactus Café – “Diggin’ On Country Music”/ “I’ll Be Here Awhile” (1975)

Thanks to Gregor Kessler for sending the scan of the “Leave Me Alone” label, and for suggesting I contact Scotty.