As our time in the USAF came to an end, Jerrel, Pat and I decided to see if we could "make it" as full time professional musicians. Our good friend, Gene Northway (see blog "Windjammer early years") had accepted our offer to be our manager. Gene had recently left the Boys Scouts of America for a job with Southwestern Bell in Houston, Texas. We decided to base our families in Houston since all of us liked Texas. We formed a company called
Cormo Productions, had one "open audition", and immediately began accepting bookings. We hired a great drummer, Roy Prince. When we were not on the road, we had regular "gigs" at the Village Inn Pizza Parlor in Westbury Square and the Marriott Hotel Astrodome. Gene was our manager, but we had an agent in Hollywood (Bob Vincent of MUSART) who booked us all over the USA. We played clubs in Washington DC, St. Louis Missouri, Denver Colorado, Bloomington Minnesota, and Sioux City Iowa. Sometimes we would travel with our families, but most of the time we left our wives and children in Houston. We would sell our LP's and T-Shirts while travelling and send our paychecks home to the wives. We traveled in a Ford LTD station wagon and pulled a rented trailer full of our equipment and merchandise.
2 comments:
hello Clark. I just bought the HEW album at a record store. Kind of a beat up copy, but it's working well. What year did this come out?
Really enjoying these songs and yalls' vibe.
Clark - I have been trying to get in touch with you for years. (We were Apt. building neighbors in Tampa and played together in the USAF Band at McDill) You can contact me at eric@ericmarrero.com also reverbnation.com/eric marrero I hope you can contact me.
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