The Zig Gazette

The Zig Gazette
October 8 2009
Jim  Ziegler, Adam York, Bill Raffensperger, Jim Downing
Thezigsband.com  Myspace.com/thezigsband
SATURDAY Oct 10 Blues City Bar & Grill, 3300 Mingo
          A Blast from the past! George Basil ‘Scooter’ Segraves tracked me down somehow.
            Our friendship started with a feud. Dauntless Downing was entertainment editor at The Tribune, and he just hated Rock And Roll. I’m not sure why. Bless him, he liked Les Paul and Duke Ellington. But he wrote once about “That garbage they play on KAKC.”
            Jock Harry Wilson shot back: “We recommend that you wrap your garbage in Jim Downing’s column from the Tribune”
            Scooter tells me that Dad replied “Then send it to KAKC; they’ll put it on the air.” There was a friendly rivalry between print and broadcast media in those days.
            In 1963, we had a sock hop at Bell and the host was Scooter. He was wearing a madras patchwork sports jacket and had a 45 on each ear. I introduced myself. He thought it great irony that the rock-hater’s son was in an actual rock band, and we’ve been friends ever since.
            Scooter was inducted into the Tulsa Press Club’s “Icons Of Radio” Hall Of Fame or somesuch. His acceptance speech can be heard at Tulsa TV Memories.com.
            He spent the last 20 years or so in Louisiana, entertaining people on the radio down there. Now he’s retired to the Bull Shoals area in northern Arkansas. He’s in great shape, and just as funny as ever, if not more so.
            Alas, most of the stories I have about him must remain in the can for national security reasons.
SATURDAY Oct 10 Blues City Bar & Grill, 3300 Mingo
All Flotsam
            Mucho congratulato to our buds:
            John Wooley is being induced into the OK Jazz Hall Of Fame. We’ve heard him play, and are dubious about this. But he can do word jazz on a qwerty keyboard. Fellow inductees include Bob Wills, Waymon Tisadle and Steve Pryor.
            Rocky Frisco was inducted into The Oklahoma Music Hall Of Fame, along with Carrie Underwood. Rocky also made a real good showing in the City Council race, finishing a close second to incumbent Gomez Addams.
            The Blue Moon was an outdoor nightclub up on that hill at 36th street North & Cincinnati. Wasn’t there a drive-in theater up there too? The local 97 Musician’s Union used to have their annual picnic there, catered by Stouffer’s. I used to go as a youth, as mom was in the union. I saw other musicians’ kids there such as the McPeters boys and Frank Adams. It’s where I first heard Sammy Pagna and Roy Ferguson and the Royals. For a country group, they rocked.
            Speaking of old musical connections, I was thinking about our departed Frank. There are only a few people I still see occasionally that I have known longer; Gary, Larry and Cruncher from the old hood, I have known about as long as I knew Frank. Larry is the guy in the wheelchair that hangs out at Blues City.
            But when my family moved back to Tulsa in 1954, we stayed a couple of weeks at Bob and Melba Snider’s house. Bob was the engineer for KTUL (1430 AM) and lived in a big farmhouse at the towers at about 52nd Street North and Atlanta. The transmitter was in the house, in a breezeway off the kitchen; a long cage full of glowing tubes.
            Bob’s son Steve plays reeds with the Starlight band; so he’s the Tulsa guy I have known the longest.
            We heard Susan Boyle on TV singing some beautiful song with an orchestra. It took us a minute to recognize it – it was Wild Horses! There’s proof that Mick and Keith can make beautiful music when they want to.
            I stopped by the Zig house and Marjorie set before me a fabulous wedge of flaky, deep-dish, home made Porter peach pie. “This right here is enough reason for you to have married her.” I told Jim.
            The Colony is back to being the Colony. I remember it had another name years ago when my friend ‘Earl’ ran it. I saw Earl’s obit last year and it listed him as ‘entrepreneur’. I’ll say. I recall Earl showing up at my house one day driving a Cadillac with 20 kilos of spinach in the trunk. I asked where he got the Caddy and he said it belonged to his ‘partners’, but the title said it was a Caprice.
            There are 84,000 people in the US who list their primary occupation as ‘Elvis Impersonator’. Maybe we should call ourselves a Zigs Tribute band. But some days we have trouble just impersonating ourselves.
            Thanks to Teb Blackwell who sent a rare interview with J.J. Cale from Mojo Magazine. It may be available online, and it has some good quotes from David Teegarden in it. Thanks also to Don Baker who commented that we sounded ‘like one instrument’ at The Magic Circle Block Party. One mind with 20 fingers, that’s what we’re going for.
            Besides swamping us with partisan propaganda, malignant psychology is doing it’s job making us compulsive shoppers. Take this commercial where a guy holds up a CF bulb and says “Americans want to be more responsible.” Then 10,000 bulbs come on to illuminate two BMWs. Pretty ‘green’, huh?
            Then there’s Chantix, hawked by a bellicose old coot with yellow teeth named Herb who says “All my parents smoked.” (How many did you have?)  It causes you to be irritable, agitated, depressed and even suicidal. Fortunately, we don’t need pills to feel that way.
            Our second Bass man, Michael Mad Dog Johnson, has his high tech studio up and running; The New Sand Burr Ranch facility. He’s doing some amazing stuff, and getting a large reputation as a having a place where great bass tracks are recorded.
            David Mark Pearce normally plays guitar with son of Rick, Oliver Wakeman’s band.  He was in Wales, overdubbing a bass track at Johnson’s in Glenpool. It’s for Lisa Larue’s next ‘chill’ CD. The guitar player is in Sweden. Talk about your remote control; Mad Dog is bad, he’s a transcontinental kind of guy.
SATURDAY Oct 10 Blues City Bar & Grill, 3300 Mingo
Newt Loops
            It was Segraves who reminded us how funny Newts are. Joe Willie Davis got us off on a newt tangent. We started with the obvious: Olivia Newt, Sir Isaac, Gingrich and Rockne. Then on to the more obscure: Newt Gibson, Newt-Scootin Boogie, Newt 66, and so on. But the most oblique must come from Jay Ward, circa 1961:
            “I’ll take Newts for $1000, Alex.”
            “Rocky & Bullwinkle were once searching for this famous French Cubist painting.”
            “What is ‘Newt Descending A Staircase?”
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