Music and Mayhem on Main Street:
R.D. Hendon and his Western Jamboree Cowboys in Context
Part 9: "Nervous Breakdown"
"I made a few rounds with him," Harold said. "I got along fine with him, as long as we was on the road. I left him because I walked in on him while he was in a restroom one time shooting up with a needle. A couple of days later, I was headed down here (to Houston-Galveston). I didn’t know Hank had a back problem. He never mentioned it."
In Galveston, Sharp worked with singer Bob Jones at a dance hall called the Racetrack. "Just me and him by ourselves. We played there for years. After we got off at midnight at the Racetrack, we went next door to the Rodeo Club, and we played there until four the next morning." According to Harold, the atmosphere at the Racetrack was similar to that of 105 1/2 Main. Such clubs were known as "bloody buckets" by musicians because of the frequency of brutal fistfights that would break out among the clientele. "It was pretty rough, all right. There were some battles in there pretty near every night."
Charlie Harris was still playing lead guitar when R.D. hired Harold. "A couple of days later, he fired Charlie," Harold remembered. "Charlie was a pretty heavy drinker. He had a half-pint in his boot all the time." This anecdote perhaps help explain why Charlie had been fired so many times in the past. Drinking on the bandstand was usually not allowed by managers. Harold became the de facto leader of the band, a position he would hold until 1956. He was, of course, never acknowledged as such publicly, something that would create resentment toward R.D. at the time, and bitterness in later years.
Harold's recollection was that Johnny Cooper was still involved in the band somehow when he joined, but would soon depart, and Don Brewer was still playing drums. Eddie Noack had come on board in 1951, and steel guitarist Joe Brewer returned by October of that year. Tiny Smith remained the bassist, and Cecil "Gig" Sharp played rhythm guitar and sang along with Cooper and Noack.
"Eddie (Noack) was a doggone good musician," Harold said, the only time I recall someone complimenting Noack's musicianship. "He wrote some good stuff. He was the only one in the band that could put up with R.D."
R.D. could be abrasive and overly demanding, but also charming in a "country" kind of way. He called people he didn't like "fumpballs," a word with no known etymology. Joe Brewer: "If you made a suggestion and it irritated him, he’d say, 'Well, there you are thinking again, you little ol’ fumpball.'"
The group needed a pianist and fiddler, not another guitarist, but Hendon hired another string-bender anyway. Hamp Stephens (1922-2001) had been playing in area bands for many years, and he remembered going to 105 1/2 Main to see bands years before Hendon acquired the place.
"During the war, a group of safety wardens got together, rented the place, and started hiring bands," he said in 1994. "Jerry Irby played there, both Elmer and Ben Christian’s band played there, Dickie McBride, Floyd Tillman."
The Cowboys played at 105 1/2 Main every night except Monday, when Hendon would hire other local groups to fill in. One such group was Bill Freeman's Texas Plainsmen. When two of their members were drafted by the army in late 1951, the band broke up. That put their lead guitarist Stephens out of work.
"Just killing time, I went down to 105 1/2 Main, just to see who was playing there," Hamp recalled. "When I walked in the door, R. D. motioned toward me. He took me in his office and said, 'Your band busted up. What are you going to do?'
"I said, 'I don’t have any plans.'
"He said, 'Have you got your instrument with you?'
'Yeah.'
"He said, 'Go get it and get on the bandstand. I want to hear what you sound like with this band.' I did, and he hired me." Like Sharp, Stephens would prove much more reliable than Charlie Harris, remaining in the band until late 1954.
"R.D. was a very unique individual, to say the very least," laughed Hamp. "He never got on the bandstand (and sang) -- that came later. Harold Sharp and I played together there more than any other two. We played lead and Sharp did most of the singing.
"Noack (also) did most of the singing. He was a Bohemian. He used to call himself 'The Chucklin’ Czechoslovakian Kid.'"
Harold's recollection was similar: "Hamp come up there one night and sat in. Me and him were playing twin guitars on some stuff. That struck R.D. just right. So he hired Hamp. So when Hamp and I were there, we played mostly twin guitars on everything."
The group finally acquired a fiddle player in late 1951 when Woody Carter was hired. But he didn't last long.
"Woody had an alcohol problem," Harold remembered. "I think R.D. fired him. He’d get up there and play, and he’d either fall asleep, or miss a couple of notes. You could tell he was drinking."
At this point, memories become quite confused. A guitarist named Johnny Greer also joined the group during this period. The fact that Harold Sharp and Hamp Stephens had no recollection of him suggests this occurred before they joined the band. Joe Brewer had a vivid remembrance of Greer playing with the group while Charlie Harris was still with them. Sharp and Stephens also didn't remember Harris returning to the group after they joined.
Greer definitely plays lead guitar on "Nervous Breakdown" (4-Star X-41, released c. January, 1952), as R.D. calls him out during his solo. Perhaps this was recorded several months before it was released. It cannot be certain that Greer plays on any other Hendon sides.*
Who was the mysterious Johnny Greer?
"He came to where we were playing at 105 one night," Joe Brewer said. "He said he picked a little guitar. He was so country, we didn’t know whether to believe him or not. For one thing, Charlie Harris immediately thought he was a cornball guitar player. We always had somebody coming up there wanting to play (i.e., sit in with the group). But this guy was different. He was from South Carolina. R.D. didn’t allow people to set in, but I talked him into letting him (Greer) get up there. Greer talked so corny, he’d make Andy Griffith look sick. R.D. said, 'I think I’ll let that little old fumpball get up there and play with y’all.' Charlie didn’t care. Charlie said, 'There ain’t no way in the world that that guy can blow me out of a guitar.' Charlie was a fabulous guitar player. But he got up there, and I’m telling you, he mortally played. He just baffled everybody. The crowd, even. Man, that guy smoked that guitar and old Charlie, he had egg on his face, man. Bad.
"R.D. hired him right there, that night. Put him right up there with Charlie. See, Charlie got hired and fired so many times, it was an everyday occurrence. For no reason."
But Greer didn't last long with the group.
Joe: "I called our clothes, 'Barnum and Bailey band shirts,' especially when Tiny (Smith) had it on. Had a red suit with gold shirts. Fire engine red with stain gold and red trim. R.D. had Greer one made. Greer lived in some hotel on Main. He walked to work every night. On the way to work, he’d stop in all those little beer places. So, I said, 'Man, don’t wear that red suit in no bar. You’ll get in trouble. I wouldn’t wear that thing in a bar for nothing.'
"Anyway, Greer come in one night, and he was beat to a pulp. His eye was black, jaw was cut, blood all over that gold shirt. I asked him what happened, and he said he was sitting there in a bar, minding his own business. And there was these guys shooting pool. And one of 'em came over there and made jokified remarks about his uniform. He said, 'Now look, you guys, I like this uniform.' He said, 'One thing led to another, and one of 'em hit me with a cuestick.' (Laughter) They had a big fight. But he never wore that suit into that bar again. Matter of fact, he said he never went into that bar again. So, needless to say, he didn’t stay too long. He told us he roamed all over the country, played in bands in California -- he played a bunch of guitar."
The band rushed out three singles in the wake of the regional success of "I Can't Run Away." The first covered a current (December, 1951) hit by Hank Snow, "Music Making Mama From Memphis" (4-Star 1595); the second paired two originals, "Please Mr. Postman" b/w "There's a Place in My Heart" (4-Star 1599); and the third paired a cover of the current Webb Pierce single "I'm Going to See My Baby" with the aforementioned instrumental, "Nervous Breakdown," featuring Woody Carter, Joe Brewer and Johnny Greer.
The purpose of releasing cover versions of current hits was presumably to steal nickels on jukeboxes that did not have access to the hit versions. Jukeboxes were controlled by distributors who were limited to carrying only certain labels, and not every jukebox owner had access to every label. 4-Star may have also hoped that their covers would become hits in their own right, just on the strength of the song's popularity. "Covers" were a routine part of the record businesses, but these examples didn't bring any recognition to the Western Jamboree Cowboys. Eddie Noack would soon depart to re-form his own band.
The eventful year of 1951 closed with R.D. Hendon marrying Mary Kozik on December 5. It was his final marriage.
* This is despite what I wrote in the discography to the Bear Family release Eddie Noack – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which states that Greer plays lead guitar on three of the records Noack made with Hendon. While possible, I now think it is more likely Harold Sharp or Hamp Stephens is the guitarist.
Sources:
Harold Sharp, interview by Andrew Brown & Barbara Dunn King, April 24, 2004.
Hamp Stephens, interviewed by Kevin Coffey & Andrew Brown, Sept. 25, 1994.
Joe Brewer, interviewed by Andrew Brown, Nov. 14, 1994, and April 2, 1995.