Cain’s and they had a big picture of Bob Wills in there. Some doctor put about a million dol- lars into it and restored the whole ballroom. It doesn’t look like it did when I played there, which was after Bob Wills played there, of course. Western swing was still big, but rock and roll had taken over. I played with a cou- ple of western bands there on Wednesday and Friday night. And then the Grand Ole Opry guys would come in and we’d back them up. It was the Grand Ole Opry Show and every- one did 15 minutes. It was Little Jimmy Dick- ens, Red Sovine, the Louvin Brothers, and the Cajun guy, Jimmy C. Newman. And, then they took us on the road, and we played schoolhouses in Montana and stuff. We’re talking about only two weeks.
How they got on to us was those guys would come into Cain’s and a lot of those guys didn’t carry a band. They would use the local bands. So, word got out that we were a pretty good western swing band. I was just a guitar player then. We had a steel guitar and piano and bass and drums. Benny Ketchum was the guy that ran the Cain’s band. We were expected to know their tunes. If you played in a western swing band you knew ‘Heartaches By The Number,’ because you did it every night as a cover band. The only question was what key was he going to do it in. That is how the Grand Ole Opry guys discovered Benny Ketchum and his western swing band. It was the last remnants of it, rock and roll was tak- ing over and this was the last hoorah of Cain’s western swing music.
But, we wore hats and kerchiefs, and they made us wear cowboy boots, uniforms and stuff. It was back when bands had uniforms. Everybody dressed alike, and I was only 22, 23 years old. Dickey Overby (steel guitar) was the star instrumentalist. He eventually got a job working with Ronnie Milsap. I knew Ron- nie early on. I used to work in Atlanta, and
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before Ronnie was doing country music he was doing rhythm and blues in Memphis, and I backed up Ronnie for a couple of months. He got huge after that, and I’ve talked to him a couple of times since then. We go way back.
There is some good fiddle playing on the new album. That kid, Shelby Eicher, is really good. David Teegarden, (of Teegarden and Van Winkle band fame from the 1960’s and producer of JJ’s album) found a lot of the old guys, but we didn’t have any fiddle players. So, David came up with Shelby, he’s not that old. I just played in Boulder, Colorado about two weeks ago and…do you know the band Beausoleil? Michael Doucet, the fiddle player for Beau- soleil, sat in with us and he was asking about who played fiddle on that record. I said that I really didn’t know, he is a local Tulsa fiddle player. Shelby also played mandolin, and he was real good.
The song “Stone River” seems to be about the water shortage out west where you are. Yeah, out west the drought out here is bad. People say, ‘Why do you got to live in Nevada or California or Arizona?’ I just played back east and it rained almost everyday, but out here, California has been in a drought for five years. It won’t be long before water is going to cost as much as oil. That’s strictly a western Unites States kind of thing.
The last song on the album, “Another Song,” features you and a banjo. When did you learn how to play the banjo? I have not learned how to play it, and I’m em- barrassed about that cut. I’m a shade tree banjo player. I’ve always noodled on the banjo, but never in public or in front of any- body. It’s something I like to do. I wrote that song here in the kitchen, man. I had my DAT recorder on and my mic set up, and every-
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