I am out of town this weekend and am turning off comments for this post, but I wanted to share something that I think is pretty special with you.
I made the decision (a hard choice) to pull down Rick’s website at the end of 2019. It was strictly due to the amount it was costing me per year with very little return. So, I created a page (or the beginnings of one) on my own website. I’d love for you visit, as there may be some things you don’t know about the early years of his career. I will be adding more things as time allows.
And I’d also like to share this YouTube video with you. It’s a song that is a true story about a boat that was sunk in the Sabine River during the civil war. I hope you enjoy it!
This has been a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I have brought a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. These stories have been told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ve done my best to correct grammar, but I wanted to keep them in his own voice.
This will be the last “Story From the Road,” from Rick. I want to end this series on a positive note. I also want to thank everyone who had ridden this train of stories with me, commented and shared. It was your interest that kept me digging.
RICK:
“In 1965, the movie Shenandoah sharting Pat Wayne and Rosemary Forsythe came to Abilene, Tx., and they planned a big premiere party. I was hired to provide the entertainment.
You can see me and Red in the background behind Pat and Rosemary. They were two of the nicest folks I’d ever met and I can’t tell you how excited this country boy was to get to meet them up close and personal. The movie was a huge success and stayed sold-out during its entire run in Abilene.
Another pretty cool deal I had going in 1964 and 1965 was a weekly live TV show on KPAR, Channel 12 in Abilene every Saturday afternoon.
We had show sponsors, one of them being the Key City Sportatorium. I played there almost every Friday night for many months and Benny Barnes, the owner and I were good friends.
But, I would get fan mail at the TV station and would take time to answer each letter I received. A lot of times it would be some gal wanting to hook up and I’d write her back and tell her I was married. Not that it really made a damn to me back then, but I kept all that at arm’s length.
I got to do a lot of amazing things in my music career before I got shipped off to Federal Finishing School aka Leavenworth Penitentiary. I was blessed. The sadness is that I was too stupid to know it. If only I had known then what I learned behind bars, I’d have made a lot of different choices in life. I was right there with all of them that went on to make it big. I’m not saying I would have, but if I’d taken different paths, I would have had a shot at it. I tried throughout the rest of my life to help point youngsters starting out in the music business in the right direction. I hope I succeeded to some degree.
One of the most satisfying things I did later in life, after I’d lost my leg, was to teach young children to play guitar. I loved the look they’d get on their faces when they got a chord down. Some of them went on to learn to play pretty good.”
Rick’s first two guitar students
Thank you, everyone, for your overwhelming support for these bits of music history!
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
Rick:
“Back in the sixties, marketing yourself was quite different than today. There was a company out of Missouri I used to order these rainbow posters. It was my trademark. They would look exactly like this, only, of course, would say, “Rick Sikes and the Rhythm Rebels” and advertise where and when we were playing. I’d give anything to find one of these posters.
I’d usually give my bass player, Red, a stack and I’d take a stack and we’d canvas the area where we were going to be playing. We’d tack them up on telephone poles, tape them to windows and anywhere folks would let us put one.
I recorded several little 45 rpm records back then and as soon as I’d have a new one in hand, would start hitting every little radio station across the state. That was a time when you’d walk in, meet the DJ, hand him a couple of records and visit with him. Nowadays, you have to have a record promoter to even get in the door of a radio station, but we did it all in those days.
I recorded a song, “Hundred Miles of River,” that was a true story about a Confederate gunboat that was purposefully sunk in the Sabine River during the civil war. I pushed that song hard. I had these cards printed up and got some newspaper coverage on it.
Then when the DJ’s played my songs, I always thanked them.
I had business cards that I left with every club owner across the five-state area.
I booked my band through Wilson Talent Agency out of Fort Worth, Texas for a while and they wrote up this nice little promo for us.
But, sometimes publicity attempts backfired on me.
I had this crazy idea to do some promo pictures at the train tracks outside Brownwood, Texas and make us all look like outlaws about to rob a train. Little did I know that these two pictures would be used against me in the trials for bank robbery. They were submitted as evidence. So, what seemed like fun at the time, turned into a bad deal.
It was a very hands-on time for marketing and promoting yourself and your art. Without internet, social media or even faxes, it required leg-work and one-on-one connections. And, I was pretty good at it, if I do say so. I kept us booked solid and for the times, drew good pay. So, maybe there is something to be said for old-fashioned communication…”
What do you think would be the best way to market yourself and your books without all the instant internet avenues we have today?
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
RICK:
“I managed to rack up one #1 record in my early career. It was the strangest thing. My records were getting a lot of airplay in Europe around 1965 and the people in Denmark really liked my song, “Den of Sin.” It was a reverse tearjerker. The guy wasn’t upset because his baby was leaving, he was crying because she was coming back. It hit the charts in the number one spot in Denmark and charted in other countries and in the United States but never climbed to number one. I had several others make it up in the Top Ten, but none other charted in the coveted spot.
At one time all of that was important to me. I was chasing a dream. I went to Nashville with a letter in my pocket written by Ernest Tubb, asking Nashville record executives to listen to my songs. I’d never have gotten in the door without his help and I was always grateful. He was a great man.
I’ll never forget the day I walked into Owen Bradley’s office in 1968 on music row. I was more nervous than if I had been in front of 10,000 people. But, I played some songs for him and he sat back and listened. When I got through, he said, “Son, you’re a big ol’ boy and I sure don’t want to make you mad, but I have to be honest. You’re a good singer and you’ve got some pretty good songs, but pretty good ain’t good enough. I can’t sign you with Decca, but come back again and maybe I’ll have a different opinion.”
When you’re a songwriter and someone tells you your songs aren’t good enough, it’s like telling a mother she has an ugly baby. But, I didn’t get upset. I had so much respect for him and for Ernest Tubb for setting up the meeting that I didn’t dare do anything to blow it.
He went on to say, “You can go down the street to Columbia and they may just love you. I’ve missed some of the hottest acts in the business. When they brought Elvis Presley in, I told him I wasn’t impressed with the way he wiggled his ass and didn’t sign him. He went to Columbia and well, you know what happened there. So, don’t let me discourage you. Keep after it. Keep writing and come back.”
Well, I never made it back. I had record deals go bad. I had promoters promise the moon and deliver nothing. I had songs stolen and got cheated out of royalties. All part of the business, I suppose.
I was slated to be picked up and managed by Tillman Franks once he got David Houston‘s career launched. David Houston went on to have several big hits and I got busted and sent to prison. I was always on the edge of doing something big and never quite getting there. I do believe I was my own worst enemy.
I got disillusioned with it all but I was stuck on a merry-go-round and couldn’t find a way off. The United States Government and the State of Texas found a way to help me off, you might say.”
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
Rick:
“I had a tall skinny bass man that we used to play tricks on. His name was Thomas Jenkins but we all called him Red because he had red hair. He wore glasses with thick lenses. He had a lot of trouble with his eyes. I remember one time we were in a motel out in California when he went to sleep on the floor watching TV with his glasses on. My brother, Bobby, had some watercolors and he painted the lens on his glasses with red, yellow and orange paint. When it dried on them, after a minute or so, he put a paper sack in an aluminum pan and set it on fire. Once the room filled with smoke, everybody started hollering, “Fire, fire, fire.” Red woke up. He jumped up off the floor and of course, all he could was red, orange and yellow and he could smell the smoke. He was panicking until he pulled his glasses off. Of course, he failed to see the humor in it but we were all rolling on the floor laughing.
Another thing we used to do to him when he would zonk out like that was spray shaving cream on his glasses. He would wake up and couldn’t see anything but white shaving cream and he’d think he’d gone blind. I suppose that was pretty cruel, but it was all in fun. No harm was ever meant by it.
This same guy, Red Jenkins, greased his hair down with Brilliantine oil, that was popular back then. He was bad about falling asleep; one of those guys that nodded off real good, kind of a Rip Van Winkle sort of guy. So anyway, this time, someone else was driving, Red was in the middle and I was on the passenger side. Three other guys were in the back of the car and we were heading to a gig. I was wearing a white western shirt. Red went to sleep and fell over on my shoulder with that greasy head so I pushed his head back up. He didn’t even wake up. We went a little farther down the road and he fell back over on my shoulder again. I raised his head back up but by this time I was getting a little perturbed. So, the third time he fell over on my shoulder, I popped him upside the head and told him to wake up. He said, “That’s alright, you sonofabitch. You’re gonna want to sleep someday.” It was kinda funny though. The guys all cracked up when I popped him good.
I will say this about Red Jenkins. He always had my back. I met him when he was hitchhiking through Texas on the way to California. I stopped to give him a ride. He wound up staying with me and playing in the band for many years and even went to prison with me. I felt responsible for him. He wasn’t real bright, but he could play good and he was loyal. I often wonder whatever happened to him…”
Rick Sikes and the Rhythm Rebels at London Hall – Red Jenkins far right
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
RICK: One time I had a fancy baby blue Cadillac Convertible, ElDorado Biarritz. Man, that was a helluva car. I’d ride around Brownwood with the top down like I was king of the world.
(You can see the tail of the car in this picture. I searched for ones that I know I had at one time that showed the full car, but cannot find them. Too many moves. 😦 )
It was important back then to look good. You had to appear to be high rolling. If you didn’t, they wouldn’t want to pay you anything.
I had a fabulous guitar player one time that I brought back from California with me. I had met him on one of the trips out there to play. He was a guitar genius. It turned out that he was Roy Clark’s uncle, Gene Clark.
We were traveling around playing here in Texas when we stopped one night at a truck stop. There was a little raggedy country boy sitting on an overturned crate outside by the door and he had a little toy guitar. When he saw us, he jumped up and said, “Oh, y’all are a band. Aren’t you?” Of course, we told him we were.
His eyes lit up and he said, “I’m learning to play guitar and I can play “Honky Tonk.” He named two or three other songs he could play. Then he said, “I ain’t got a very good guitar, though.”
I said, “Oh yeah?”
He went on. “I put the best strangs in the world on it. I use them Black Diamond. Them’s the best in the world. Says so right on the package.”
I agreed with him and we went on inside to order, or whatever we had stopped to do. He followed us in carrying his guitar.
Gene asked the kid if he could see his guitar and the boy handed it to him. Gene sat down with it. It was one of those little cheap ten dollar guitars, not a Gene Autry, but something like that. So, Gene tuned it up and then started playing it. He literally was burning the strings up on it.
That little boy stood there with his mouth open. He couldn’t believe that sound was coming out of his guitar. Ol’ Gene could make a tin can sound good and he was making that little toy guitar smoke.
After a few minutes, he stood up and handed the guitar back to the kid and said, “Well man, I don’t see a thing in the world wrong with your guitar.”
The kid still in shock replied, “I guess it’s a better guitar than I thought it was. Thank you, mister.”
We left him there thumping on his guitar. He had found out that he had a heck of a good guitar. I’ve often wondered if that incident was a defining moment in that kid’s life and whether or not he grew on up to be a guitar player. You just never know.
But, that was the caliber of guitar player Gene was. He hung around Texas playing with me for about a year or so and then headed on back to California. I lost touch with him after that. He was one of the best guitar players I’d ever run across. But, like so many, he had a bad alcohol problem that kept him from being more successful.”
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
RICK:
“As any road musician will tell you, you meet all kinds of strange people in your travels. There was one guy I hired in a pinch when I needed a drummer. I didn’t have any idea when I hired him just what a weirdo he was. But, he told us that he and another guy had gotten busted when they were younger for digging up corpses in the cemetery, opening the caskets, lighting candles, and reading poetry to dead people. He was only hired as a temporary fill-in, but he was damned sure more temporary than he realized when I found this out.
Anyway, me being me, I asked him, “How come you guys to do that?”
He said, “Oh, man, you can really relate to those people.”
I replied, “Oh yeah?”
He got all excited. “You know, there’s something special about that.”
I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but am sure I failed, when I said, “Yeah, I bet there is.”
He went on. “We never would have got busted if we hadn’t started digging them high bones.”
“What do you mean, high bones?” I asked.
“Oh, them rich people. As long as we were digging up poor people’s graves, nobody ever said anything about it, but we started digging up the rich people’s graves and that is when they got cops out there and started watching. That’s how they caught us.”
I said, “Okay, Okay, sure.”
This guy was obviously a little messed up in the head.
One time he was playing drums with another band and he had taken some fighting roosters in with him in a bowling bag. Then when the dance floor filled up, he opened the bag and threw out three roosters. Of course, the roosters were flapping their wings and squawking and people scrambled and hollered. The guy that owned the club came up on the bandstand and politely grabbed him by the nap of the neck out from behind the drums and threw him, not out a door, but through a wooden door out back. He then took his drums, kicked the heads out and threw them out on top of him with a warning. “Don’t ever let me see you again!”
When I fired this same guy, I handled it as delicately as I knew how. I told him I had to let him go because someone else I had promised the job to had shown up. I just wanted to break it off easy.
But, that night, he came out to the club where I was working.
He said, “I brought a pet rabbit for your girlfriend.”
The girl I was with at the time spoke up and said she didn’t want a rabbit and I told him no as well, but he wouldn’t accept that.
He said, “Well, you’ve gotta take it.”
I started to get mad then, so I said, “Man, I don’t want the damn rabbit and she don’t want the damn rabbit so the best thing you can do is take your rabbit and head on down the road.”
“Well, okay. You’re so mad at me you won’t even let me give you a gift?” He asked.
I got a little more firm and he finally left and took the bunny with him.
Another crazy stunt he pulled was in San Angelo. He went into a bar without his ID and he was pretty young back then. So, when he ordered a drink the bartender asked to see his ID. His response was, “Well, let me see your Bartender’s license.”
The bartender ran him out. He went home and came back with an old army trench coat on, an army hat, belt with a canteen and a holster that he had a 45 revolver stuck in. He walked through the door, pulled the 45 out and hollered, “This place is under Marshall Law. Don’t nobody move.”
He walked up to the bar and pointed the 45 at the bartender and said, “Now I want a drink.”
So, the bartender served him. He had a drink or two and when he left, he told everyone, “At ease, men,” saluted them, snapped his feet together and marched out the door.
The bartender turned him in and they locked him up for a few days for bringing a gun into a bar. When he got out, he put on a bikini bathing suit, a wig, lipstick, and makeup and rented a Ford tractor from the farm supply house. He drove around the parking lot at the bar holding a sign that said, “This place is unfair to women. This place is unfair to everyone.”
He pulled some more stuff and I don’t know whatever happened to him, but he had some screws loose. His tenure with me was very shortlived. But this is just an example of some of the characters I ran across over the many years I traveled the roads.”
Top Row L-R Tommy “Red” Jenkins, Rick Sikes, Clyde Graham Bottom Row L-R Mel Way, Bobby Sikes “Doc Dow
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
Since we are entering a New Year, I thought I’d take a step back and show the vast difference in the economy between the 1960s and now. I found these interesting.
I couldn’t find the exact date on this, but do know it was somewhere around 1965 or 1966.
Rick Sikes and the Rhythm Rebels with Mayan Ranch Owners
The following are entries from a 1967 Yearbook in which Rick noted every gig played and what clothes he wore. That was important to him. He never wanted to duplicate the costume at a venue.
New Year’s Eve was the golden night as far as pay went.
So, there you have it. The totals for the entire year.
Now, to put it into perspective:
The average price of gas in 1967 was Thirty cents per gallon.
The average price of a new car in 1967 was $2,750.00
Average rent was $125 per month
Average income was around $7,000
So, you can see from these journal entries, that playing music for a living wasn’t exactly lucrative. But, Rick managed to support a family, a girlfriend and keep the band members paid. He did pay the band members less than he paid himself. After all, he did all of the bookings, advertising, choosing songs, providing costumes, and transportation.
So, I’ll end on this note because I can’t say it any better.
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
THE CHRISTMAS SHIRT
by Rick Sikes
“This is one of those “too-human” stories that took place in Houston in the late sixties. We had played Christmas Eve at Dancetown USA the night before. And, we were playing in Victoria on Christmas night. So, we drug ourselves out of bed and finally found a scroungy looking cafe to grab breakfast. The plan was to eat breakfast around 10 am, get to Victoria and set up at Schroeder Hall. Then we’d get a bit of supper before the gig.
But, back to the story. Being Christmas morning, there were just not any restaurants open except this one little dump. We go in and sit down. Right behind us comes in a hillbilly guy with two backwoods gals. He was puttin’ on the dog for the ol’ gals, and they were giggling and carrying on.
One of the guys in the band said, “Hey, y’all check out the Christmas shirt.”
It was one of those embroidered wagon wheel Yankee cowboy shirts with the folds from being in the package still there. He had on a pair of short-topped Sears & Roebuck boots, a small brimmed Roy Rogers type hat and some kind of cheap blue jeans. He looked at us and asked, “Y’all like my shirt?”
Everyone nodded and someone said, “Yeah man, that’s a cool shirt. Did you get it for Christmas?”
“Yep, shore did, podnuh.” He leaned back in his chair and hooked his thumbs in his belt.
Well, one of the ol’ gals with him was terribly cross-eyed and she started flirting with us…blinking and winking as only a cross-eyed gal can do. It just all came to a head at once. We were all looking at each other, then at them all grinnin’ and carrying on. The ol’ boy told the girls some jokes or riddles or something. The cross-eyed girl got tickled at one of ’em and laughed until tears rolled down both cheeks.
Being the damned fool I am, I looked over there; the ol’ boy doing all sorts of “monkey-shines,” and the gals laughing so hard, and I busted into one of my “rare” moments when I get so tickled that I laughed until my sides hurt and tears streamed down. Often I’d get down on the floor because I laughed so hard. Well, this was one of those times of great mirth. I made an ass out of myself rolling around on the floor laughing. It was just too damned human.
A poor ol’ hillbilly boy dressed to the aces charming two lovely backwoods ladies, plus entertaining a band and the people who worked in the place was just “too human.” He saw his good looks, charm and being well- dressed and dashing for these ladies pay off. And, we got to see a first class show that would have done Tennessee Williams and Erskine Caldwell proud, and supposedly “cool” musicians becoming a fool.”
I hope this brought a chuckle, as that was all Rick intended by telling the story.
This is part of a series of posts I’ve entitled, “Stories From the Road.” Each week I will post a new story from Rick Sikes, a Texas musician who traveled the roads of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and out to California for well over twenty years. With hours to pass in a bus full of sweaty musicians, they found ways to entertain themselves. These stories are told in Rick Sikes’ words. I’ll do my best to correct grammar, but I want to keep them in his own voice.
RICK:
“Back in the sixties, it wasn’t good enough just to be able to play great music. You had to look like a band and you had to have a little something different or extra that the next guy didn’t. So, we came up with different skits that we’d perform along with certain songs. My brother, Bobby was always game for acting a fool.
We created this one skit for “Please Mister Custer.” I helped Bobby make a Yankee Calvary uniform he’d slip into that had a wooden block with three holes in it, in the seat of the britches. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and would be saying, “Please Mister Custer, I just don’t want to go. Those people are savages,” and so on until the end of the song. Then, while he was singing, I’d be slipping arrow shafts into the wood block so it looked like he was shot in the rear. At the end, he’d do a stumbling, falling act (Bobby was double-jointed and very agile.) He would fall off the stage and do a dying ritual out on the dance floor. At the end, he’d lay completely still on the floor with these arrows sticking out of his butt. Then the band would play “Taps” while I pulled the arrows out.
One night we were doing this act and he fell off the stage, wiggling and squirming around like an inchworm with his butt in the air. I go down, like normal, and start to pull the arrows out while the band plays “Taps.” This lady ran up from out of nowhere, knocked the hell out of me and said, “Get away from him, you son-of-a-bitch. You done hurt him enough already.”
That was one of the skits. We had another little gig we did that was a version of “Hello Walls #2,” that Ben Colder recorded (the old drunk). Bobby would act like he was throwing up. He’d take his hat off and pretend he was throwing up in his hat. One night he was doing that act and he deliberately fell off the edge of the stage and stumbled around on the dance floor until he fell down.
Some drunk lady came running up to him with a wet bar towel trying to wipe his face. She said, “Here, honey. Maybe this will help. I know just how you feel. I’ve been there myself.”
Bobby said, “Dammit lady, get away. Get away. You’re ruining my act.”
She didn’t give up. She said, “I’m gonna help you feel better. I know how it is. I’ve been drunk too.”
We never meant any harm doing these skits. We just wanted to entertain and do more than stand up there and plunk on guitars. It helped earn us a reputation and kept people coming back just to see what we were going to do next.
That was before laser shows and all the fancy electronics they have nowadays. We had to invent our own.”
I searched through tons of pictures looking for one of the “Please Mister Custer” act, and couldn’t find one. But, did find one of Bobby doing “Hello Walls #2.”
Bobby Sikes doing “Hello Walls #2”
And I found another one of their popular skits where they dressed like Hippies and played rock ‘n roll.
Writing and Music 
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