Relisten

View NotesPlayers:
Charles Atkins - keyboards and vocals
The Blues Boys
Larry Laseur - harmonica, background vocals
Harty Wiedemann - guitar, vocals $
Tom Henning - guitar
Bernie Powers - bass, vocals ß
Chuck White - drums


Notes:
This is the earliest tape I have of Charles and the Boys. It's a 1-off copy; don't know who recorded it, probably by committee. The mix is not that good starting out since we were mixing to the room and not the tape. Vocals are either left or right; harp is way low, like it is coming thru a vocal mic; maybe guitar too. And the original recording had some clipping issues which added to distortion on this copy. Kinda substandard recording, but it's the first one, with original band, a few good moments, and Bernie singing. 

This was one of the new jails built in the Florida Panhandle to warehouse federal prisoners and provide jobs to country folk. We were the entertainment.  So the room was a doozie, lots of steel and concrete and glass, 2 stories, sorta diamond-shaped, and soundwaves had a long life. The good side - lots of horny young ladies who loved to party and cooped up too long. I remember they all wanted to talk and a couple tried to pass off phone numbers and "meet me at the gate when I get out next month". Funny and a lot of fun. Much better than when we played outside at the men's minimum security facility to just a handful of white collar crooks, or another gig at the maximum security prison where we got searched going in. It was pretty much like you see in the movies, going by the weight benches and seeing the biggest baddest guys ever.  Oh yeah - Squeaky Fromme (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynette_Fromme) was at the women's FCI but she never came out of her room.

Pre-Charles, the band was known as White Boys Blues Band so they are still covering WBBB material with Bernie singing half the songs and Harty a couple others. Bernie just loved Muddy Waters and sang a bunch of his tunes. Bernie also has a very cool picture of him and Muddy, side by side, taken some time in the late 60s when Muddy got popular with all us white boys. His cover of Mannish Boy stands out in this set.

This is before Charles got the big 88 key Rhodes so he is playing on a small Casio, more organ than piano (later on I would stack up both for him to play). Still he gives that keyboard all he has on Stormy Monday; good vocals on Hold That Train; and the wild man comes out a couple times on the fast ones.  Wonderful slow-paced rendition of Sitting on Top of the World. Something about the board effects, room reverb, and tape distortion seems to come together - don't miss.