“You either have too many gigs or not enough.” – Just About Every Musician I’ve Ever Talked To
Well, here’s the Halloween ’06 website update, and for those of you keeping score, it is indeed not the quarterly update I said I’d try to start doing in my last entry. In fact, it missed being quarterly by about two quarters – the last time I wrote something new here was in February. Yipes.
I suppose I could give that great old W.C. Fields excuse: “Things happened.” In fact, they did, but things happen to everybody. However, one of the things that happened may indeed have a bearing on what you see in this space — after 23-plus years, I have retired from the Tulsa World newspaper to – well, I guess the cliché is “to pursue other interests.” So the other interests I’m pursuing will involve staying up with this website a little better, even as I create more stuff that – I hope – is worthy of being talked about on a website.
With that in mind, I’ve undertaken an update and rewrite of all the spots on this site. Because every part is now up to date, this home page will be less unwieldly and long-winded.
So … if you’re looking for the playlists for my western-swing and cowboy-jazz radio show, “Swing on This” (heard on Tulsa radio station KWGS, 89.5 FM, every Saturday at 7 p.m. and streaming at the same time at www.kwgs.com), just scroll down to the “Radio” site, which is kind of hidden at the very bottom of the menu. Now, I’m not saying it’ll be entirely up to date, but chances are good that it will.
And if you want to know about my new books, Ghost Band and From the Blue Devils to Red Dirt: The Colors of Oklahoma Music, check out the new “Books” site.
Of course, this is how just about every other website works. But it’s taken me a lot of time to figure out that I needed to do this as well. I think this is what Jonathan, my webmaster’s been trying to tell me for years. But since he’s my son, he also knows my Luddite tendencies, so he hasn’t pushed it.
Now, that quarterly-update idea doesn’t sound unattainable at all. So, full of hope and high spirits, I introduce you to the new and improved johnwooley.com website with a few pictures of me and one of my writing heroes, Earl Hamner Jr. Of course, most people know him as the author of the acclaimed novel Spencer’s Mountain and the creator of its wildly successful spinoff TV series, The Waltons. But he was also one of the top writers for Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone series, and his scripts just get better with age. (I refer you emphatically to The Twilight Zone Scripts of Earl Hamner, published by Cumberland House in 2002.)
Earl is also one of the nicest, most genteel men that God ever put on this earth. I’ve had the good fortune to work with him a couple of times, most recently on Sept. 29 at Teresa Miller’s Celebration of Books, the every-two-years blowout that brings some of the country’s biggest literary names to Tulsa. (For more, see poetsandwriters.okstate.edu) That’s where these pictures come from. Thanks to Teresa and her Center for Poets and Writers, which exists under the auspices of Oklahoma State University – Tulsa. And thanks to P. Casey Morgan, Earl’s friend and Tulsa chauffeur, for the snaps.
Finally, one of my all-time favorite photos with one of my all-time rock ‘n’ roll heroes. I first heard the great keyboardist Augie Meyers playing in the ’60s on the Sir Douglas Quintet hit “She’s About A Mover,” and I had never encountered anything like the propulsive, absolutely original organ-playing that bumped the song down its two-and-a- half minute path to Top 40 immortality. Over the years, I continued to follow Augie and buy his albums, whether with the Quintet, on his own, or, later, as a member of the Tex-Mex supergroup the Texas Tornados, with his longtime collaborator and friend Doug Sahm. I even got to see the Quintet play the Cain’s Ballroom (home of Bob Wills) in Tulsa in the early ’80s, touring in support of their Border Wave LP and the swell single from that disc, a grinding take on the Kinks’ “Who’ll Be the Next in Line.” I readily surrendered to my fanboy geek tendencies that night and got Augie, Doug, and guitarist Louie Ortega to autograph my Cain’s membership card. I’ve never had a better time at a concert in my life.
Lots of people feel the same way I do about Augie and the late Doug Sahm. Three of them are the Red Dirt Rangers ( www.reddirtrangers.com ), who brought Augie from Texas to Tulsa to play on their latest album, recorded with Steve Ripley at the fabled Church Studios in early 2006. As it turned out, they needed a classic Vox Jaguar for Augie to play, and since my own 1965 model was at the time reposing in Steve’s studio, it was the logical choice. (The reason I own a Vox Jaguar, aka “a cheesy organ,” at all has a lot to do with my love of Augie’s playing; my own playing is, I can assure you, no particular tribute to him, even though I’ve tried to ape his style for years.)
In the photo, Augie is showing me how to play the opening riff of “Mendicino,” the 1969 Sir Douglas Quintet hit. That lick has buffaloed me for years, but once he demonstrated it, the light went on in my head and somehow got the message to my fingers. (You may be able to see, in the background, my friends Steve Ripley – head of the multiplatinum-selling act the Tractors – Brad Piccolo of the Red Dirt Rangers, and Red Dirt music godfather Bob Childers.)
Of course, Augie turned out to be a wonderful guy, full of great stories about his childhood, the Quintet, hippie days, and the musicians he’s worked with through the years. He signed the Vox for me after he finished, and then we got to go out and have a couple of drinks, joined by Childers, the Rangers, and their drummer, the famed studio and band (J.J. Cale, Gary Lewis and the Playboys) percussionist, Jim Karstein — one of the architects of the classic Tulsa Sound.
It was all just absolutely perfect . I’m not exaggerating when I say that I would’ve rather met and hung out a little with Augie Meyers than to have done the same thing with Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, or any other superstar of my generation. Augie Meyers is my No. 1 musical hero, and I’m proud and happy to be able to post this photo.
— Back atcha soon, you bet…