In the spring of 1962 up at Ronnie’s Roller Rink, the Smiths took the risk of hiring a live band for the hop, a local combo with a smooth-talking singer named Clark Swayton. Clark and the Upbeats were an immediate hit.
They were a septet with a crisp horn section and a steady pulsing rhythm that kept the kids dancing. Clark sang, played both harmonica and trumpet. All of them had decent voices, so their harmonies were pleasing to all ears. They had a regional hit in January 1964, “U R True, I Love U.” Perhaps you, like a lot of us in Warhaven, remember that first verse:
I’m your king and you’re my queen!
You are my majesty, that’s your due.
You’re the best thing I’ve ever seen.
You are true, I love you!
The song would have gone farther up the national charts had it not been for the British Invasion and its vanguard the Beatles who arrives on our shores in February of that year, snowing under, burying many American bands. Despite this the Upbeats could really rave up the dancers.
It was not all gloom and doom for American pop musicians. There was a song that cast a light in the Northwest upon several up and coming bands. The song was “Louie, Louie” and it elbowed its way past the Beatles’ love songs and the Rolling Stones’ anthems of angst. Several bands recorded it and the song became a mainstay in live performances, guaranteed to romp up the audience and get every wallflower out on the dance floor. While never recording it, Clark and the boys did perform it, frequently as an encore when the dancers craved more from the sweating, exhausted musicians.
In the late summer of 1964 a colossal battle of the bands was organized at the Tacoma Armory. Present, in alphabetical order were the following rock and roll combos: Clark and the Upbeats, the Kingsmen, the Markettes, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and two local bands, the Sonics and the Wailers. A lot of publicity was riding on the results of the battle. Nerves were taut, anticipating magazine covers and fair record contracts. There was some sizable betting going on the week before the amps were turned up and the music started.
Imagine the imposing crenelated brick building. It was a very warm evening with a slight breeze coming up from the Puget Sound and Commencement Bay. From the embrasures on the wall hung banners, “Rock and Roll Tonight!”, “Big Battle of the Bands HERE!”, and “Louie, Louie Rock Off.” If you studied the high wall one would have seen several young women, bikini clad, smoking, laughing, pointing out the sights from their elevated vista of the waterways below them.
The interior was vaulted by arching steel rafters, reminiscent of the old Warhaven High School Gymnasium, when it was home to the fighting Woodsmen, before the revolution in women’s sports of Title IX in 1972. It was a vast space, a dance floor for hundreds, and its wood floor had been recently buffed. To speed transitions and to decrease setup and breakdown the six bands set up along the length of the armory. Imagine the six drum kits, the many guitars, keyboards, brass and woodwind instruments, and microphones, shining bright beneath the stage lights as sound and light tests proceeded before the doors opens and the kids thronged. By drawing straws the bands had been assigned location and rotation in performing. Each band would get a half an hour set to entertain and sway listeners to their camp. Then, beginning anew, each band would perform “Louie, Louie” which could last up to five minutes. Then the voting, highly monitored and counted with scrutiny by uniformed volunteers from the Washington Army National Guard. Results would be read within a half an hour, during which all the bands would join in a rollicking jam session to demonstrate the brotherhood of musicians. By the whims of fate Clark and the boys drew lot six, immediately following those Raiders from Boise.
Each band proved to be at its best! The Raiders were the visual tops in their blue tricorn hats and revolutionary war dress uniforms with red trim. And they danced as they played!
While every band pleased the crowd, it fell to Clark and the Upbeats to bring down the house in their ear-popping interpretation of “duh duh duh, duh duh,” the beat with questionable lyrics that had caught the attention of the FBI, which, in fact, was present in the room in the guise of an undercover couple, who danced their brains out.
Steve Smith, the tenor sax player, Lou Galley on trumpet, and Clark on vocals and trumpet emphasized with the Farfisa organ of Danny Faletto the triplet of the rhythm with drummer Jerry Chapman hitting the floor tom and bass drum to complement the throbbing bassline plucked by Tim Sprout. Will Goss on his Fender Strat wailed a wah wah and fuzz solo that ran all over the frets, carrying the dancers to wild abandon. It was in this musical mysticism that Lou and Steve for the first time ever employed on stage their tumbling skills. It had not been planned.
Steve flips a back somersault. Lou throws his head back, laughing. As Steve prepares to jump again, Lou follows suit and the two of them continue, perfectly synchronized, continuing the triplets as Jerry changes gears, playing a dazzling solo on the cymbals and woodblock. And then their seven-part harmonies, scatting about with duh duh duh, duh duh until there was an aural tornado and all those present twirled and jumped and swooned. The dancers couldn’t keep their eyes off the Upbeats and to show their enthusiasm voted them hands-down winners of the battle of the bands.
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The City Council is a work of fiction, written by Jim Tindall, appearing every other week in Columbia Gorge News.
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