practice a lot in the basement, and it would get so loud, you could watch a coffee cup dance across a table from the vibration. They loved it loud." When the Rants began to do original
music, fellow Carolina musician Rudy Wyatt got a chance to hear some of it. "Rudy was instrumental in getting us
The Rants As for how they came up with the
name, Franklin Wilkie explains it all. "My first band with Toy Caldwell was called Magar's Madmen. It was a three piece with Kenny Magar on drums. We were in the 7th grade, and Kenny was in the 9th. We played all instrumentals, no vocals. Right after Kenny, Toy and I met a guy named Jimmy Trout. He had a Falcon station wagon, and played keyboards, which he was always carry- ing around in that wagon. He was older, and kind of helped us get organized. The band that came out of that was The Ramblers. We had these red and white shirts with a block "R" on the pocket and black pants. We were doing "Green Onions," early instrumental stuff."
With the British invasion of 1964, The
Ramblers had decided to make a few quick changes. "We decided to play English stuff," says
Franklin Wilkie. " We fired the horn section, grew our hair long and started doing English rock."
When that band broke up, we still had
those shirts that had an "R" on the pocket, so we had to come up with another band name that started with "R," and that's how we got The Rants." "We were behind them from the very
beginning," says Toy Caldwell, Sr., his warm smile coming to the surface, "They would
10 Toy Factory
our first studio date," recalls Wilkie. "It was at Mark Five in Greenville, and he came in and played maracas on "Hey Little Girl," "Seven Lonely Days," and "Make No Mistake." With three excellent songs recorded, it seemed like things were really opening up for The Rants. "Willie took the tapes to Nashville and
played them for a guy named John Hurley, and another guy named Ronnie Wilkins," says Wilkie. "We got to go to Nashville and record, but ultimately, it didn't work out, so we just came back home." Following the breakup of The Rants,
Toy and brother Tommy started up a group called The Toy Factory, which included Wayne Casasanta, Ron "Redrock" Edwards, Toy and Tommy, and Doug Gray. Jerry Eu- banks would join after returning from Califor- nia.
The Toy Factory played gigs anywhere
they could get booked, and began to grow a quite large following.
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