Big Star: The Story of Rock’s Forgotten Band

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Meanwhile Jody Stephens was attending Overton High. ‘Nowadays Overton is a performing arts school,’ he explains, ‘but when I went to Overton it was anything but. It was pretty stifling and I didn’t have a great time.’ Jimmy and Jody were getting into music. ‘Stax records was a big influence on me as well as Jody,’ says Jimmy Stephens. ‘“Knock on Wood”, “In The Midnight Hour”, Sam and Dave, Eddie Floyd, Otis Redding, the Isley Brothers, then the Who, early Kinks, Hollies and limited Beach Boys, to mention a few, all stood out. But the Beatles were the major influence – times ten over anything else. The first record I actually bought, that I know I bought without parental participation, was the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand”.’ Jimmy also caught the guitar-playing bug but the problem was that everyone was already playing guitar. He started delivering the morning paper so that he could save up to buy a bass guitar and thus find a way into a local band. ‘I don’t remember how it happened,’ says Jimmy Stephens, ‘but someone either gave or loaned me an acoustic guitar that I took the first two strings off so I would have to play it as a bass instead of a guitar and I learned to play by listening to McCartney’s bass lines over and over.’ Jody started playing drums and the two brothers started practising together at home.

On 19 August 1966 the Beatles played two shows at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, one at 4pm and one at 8.30pm. This was the Beatles third stateside visit and the band was mired in the controversy over John Lennon’s (mis-quoted) ‘bigger than Jesus’ scandal. The tour was under tight security, which was made even tighter when, in Memphis, the band received a death threat. Jimmy and Jody had tickets for the early show but wanted to exchange them for the evening one. They went to the venue in the morning but were told that it was not possible to change the tickets. Then they just decided to hang around outside for a while. Jimmy Stephens takes up the story: ‘We decided to go and hide outside the rear stage doors. We hid beside a dumpster that was inside a fenced area long before they actually closed the gate. We waited and eventually the doors opened and I slipped inside the backstage area unnoticed and found a place to hide in some folded-up bleacher seats and stayed there for a while. I could see police walking around but just after I slipped in, they closed the door, leaving Jody outside. Eventually I turned myself in because I was getting worried about Jody. I think they were really upset about it because these two young kids had breached their security. They took our tickets and we didn’t get to see the Beatles.’

By this time, Jody and Jimmy had begun trying to get a band together. ‘We were really lucky,’ says Jody. ‘Our parents were tolerant of our pursuit of music and they would let us practice in the house, and it was a small house. The den was very “live”. It had panelling on the walls and it had broken tile flooring. I’m sure it was impossible for them to really escape the noise.’

There were lots of kids in the Stephens’ neighbourhood that wanted to be in a band and it didn’t take long to get one together. They found a couple of guys with guitars, one of whom could sing. Jody and Jimmy went through many different names, but two were The Sands and Spot. Their early bands of 1964-5 included Tom Eubanks as the singer and another school friend, Wendell Wheat.

Eubanks was another big Beatles fan. ‘I didn’t ever listen to music until the British invasion, it was horribly boring,’ he admits. ‘When the Beatles came out it was this breath of fresh air and with the rawer kinds of sounds like the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” it was just electrifying. It was something that made me want to do it. I wanted to play guitar but there weren’t the learning aids back then that there are today. I used to muck through it and figure out how to do it.’ Eubanks and Jimmy Stephens were in the same year at high school and started practising at the Stephens house. ‘We never really got anywhere,’ laughs Eubanks. ‘If Jody did something that Jimmy didn’t like, Jimmy’d threaten to beat his ass. I’d say, “Jimmy, you can’t really have a band where you’re threatening to beat up the drummer!”’

‘I think I probably used to ride him,’ admits Jimmy, ‘about his needing to practise more or listen more to what the drummer was actually playing on cover versions – especially with regard to bass and drum lines.’ While Jimmy was brushing up on his bass playing he also sang backing vocals in his friend Mike Fleming’s band, the Chessmen. ‘I had done a couple of parties with them,’ he says. ‘I was doing back-up vocals because they had a bass player who was much more advanced than I was at the time, his name was Andy Hummel.’ The Chessmen consisted of Fleming, Hummel, drummer Scotty Bringhurst and guitarist Dick Wills and provided the link as to how Jody and Andy eventually met.

After several months Eubanks moved on to a new band and Wendell Wheat took his place as the singer in the Stephens brother’s trio. ‘There were different line-ups at various times,’ says Jody. ‘It was the usual core of my brother and Wendell Wheat. We played shows at little dances here and there, parties and stuff. It was all covers.’ At one point the trio actually played at their first recording session. ‘We met a guitar player who was with a black vocalist named Calvin Simms,’ recalls Jimmy Stephens. ‘This was our first recording session at a little studio named Sonic Recording with Roland Janes as engineer.’ That was the closest that the trio came to actually gaining any kind of local recognition because when the principal found out that their band had a black singer he stopped them from playing at their school. ‘Our high school was all white at the time and Calvin was from a different area,’ recalls Jimmy Stephens. ‘As far as I recall, Memphis musicians just played music and didn’t get caught up in the black-white thing. We just wanted to play music and what did skin colour have to do with that, or anything else, for that matter? My parents may have received some stares from the neighbours but we were all doing something positive and fun and they were supportive. Wendell’s mom went to the high school and raised hell with them when she found out they weren’t going to let us play. I think they gave some lame excuse but we knew what was going on.’ The Sonic demo tape would never be used. It had been earmarked for George Klein’s Talent Party but they couldn’t be entered for the show because Simms moved away to Los Angeles, leaving them without a singer.

Andy Hummel had started the 1960s with another house move, this time to Belleair Drive by the side of Overton Park. He was becoming a fan of surf music and bought all the latest singles by the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. Then, like everyone else, he was hit by the Beatles. ‘I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first heard them,’ he says. ‘They totally blew me and everyone else away. It’s sad that so many of the younger folks interested in music these days missed that experience. The Beatles were all anyone talked about. I mean everyone, old and young, the news media; they were just the main thing happening in the world at the time. After that it was the British Invasion and I loved all those bands, bought their records and just listened to rock’n’roll as much as I could. I had a little record player and lots of singles.’

Hummel also changed schools in the seventh grade, aged twelve. His new school was Snowden High, a regular public school where for the first time Hummel was attending classes with members of the opposite sex. ‘Were my eyes ever opened up!’ he laughs. ‘I had spent seven years in a very exclusive, protected environment and all of a sudden I was thrown into the gaping maw of the real world. I mean we had a guy who was seventeen years old still in seventh grade. The place was full of thugs. And girls, girls, girls! I loved it.’

Hummel pushed all the boundaries that he could: rock’n’roll, girls and, in his own words, ‘hanging around in the park all the time smoking cigarettes and stuff’. Overton Park was, and still is, home to the Memphis Zoo. It also has a large wooded area, a nine-hole golf course, some college buildings (including an art school) and is the site of the Overton Park Shell, an amphitheatre where Elvis Presley sang in 1954. Hummel and his friends would sneak up to the art school buildings in the park and try to sneak a peek at the life models that were posing nude for the painting students. They also found an underground system of cemented tunnels that were used for drainage from the park. ‘We lived down there,’ says Hummel. ‘Some of the students from the art academy had once gone down into one of the tunnels and covered the walls with tempera paintings. And it was like our own private art gallery no one else knew about.’

At Snowden, Hummel fell in with a crowd wanting to start a band. The Chessmen, based around Mike Fleming, who was in Hummel’s class, were formed in 1965. ‘I got my parents to buy me a bass that year. I began playing in a basement band with some guys. My musical life just sort of took off from there. My first Precision Bass Sunburst with a rosewood fretboard was about 250 dollars. I took about ten lessons at a local music store and, having played the piano for so long, once I knew which finger to put where to get the notes, the rest was easy. Meanwhile I bought a cheapo Sears Silvertone acoustic six-string. I just played it and played it. I picked out all the songs on all the records I could get. I really began to love Simon and Garfunkel a lot, then Joni Mitchell, and the other folkies because the guitar parts were so much fun to play. Finger picking six-string folk and bluegrass style is still my favourite kind of music.’

Once Jimmy Stephens was occasionally singing with the Chessmen, Hummel soon met Jody. ‘They [Jimmy and Jody] went to the same church,’ explains Hummel. ‘The First Baptist Church was near my house although they lived out in East Memphis. I hung around there because Mike Fleming went to church there and lived close by. Jody was very quiet back in those days so I didn’t really know him all that well. I hung around with Jimmy more. It was later on that I discovered what an extremely nice, considerate guy Jody is, and he has remained so through all we’ve been through, which will always be something of a mystery.’

The Chessmen began with a show at a Catholic or Episcopal church in East Memphis and lasted for about a dozen shows over a period of eighteen months. When that band split, and Jimmy left to play with Jody [who had also occasionally played with the Chessmen] and Wendell Wheat, Hummel and Mike Fleming added Richard Ennis on drums, Jimmy Turnage on guitar and named themselves the Swinging Sensations. A little older and more experienced, they managed to double their profits to around 300 dollars per show. Their line-up changed from time to time with a singer named ‘Yogi’ and a new bass player called ‘Nollie’. Hummel ended up playing keyboards for the last line-up. With Ennis’s dad as manager, the gigs came thick and fast and they moved from youth clubs and church halls to more adult venues, including Air Force bases.

The Swinging Sensations wore matching light blue, short-sleeved Banlon shirts and played an array of R&B and soul covers. Fleming switched to trumpet and a saxophone player was added to give them a mini horn section and enable the Stax sound to be replicated. The summer after the ninth grade the band set off in a van down to Florida, playing shows all the way there and back for their one and only ‘tour’.

The following autumn Hummel changed schools yet again, this time to MUS, which Chris Bell was also attending. Bell had already met fourteen-year-old drummer Dewitt Shy. The two hit it off and immediately began talking about getting a band together. Bell was becoming quite proficient on the guitar and word was put out that they needed a bass player. Bill Cunningham auditioned and was accepted. He brought along two schoolmates from Elizabeth Messick Junior High School – David Hoback to play guitar and Mike Harris to share vocal duties.

‘Chris and I began talking about starting a band,’ says Shy. ‘We hadn’t seen each other play but had heard about each other’s interest in music. We practiced among ourselves until we knew we were compatible in our musical interests, then we went looking for other prospective members.’ In early 1965 the line-up was complete and Dewitt Shy came up with a band name.

‘The band called itself the Jynx,’ he says. ‘I pushed the name, being enamoured with, and basically cannibalising, the Kinks’ name. We practised regularly in the living room of my house at 4272 Chanwil. My mother knew with the band practices occurring at my house she could keep an eye on things. She always loved music, although before we started playing, her tastes were in the realm of Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. She did like the Beatles, though, and welcomed our band’s “new” music at the house. She bought me my first drum set, a Ludwig oyster marine pearl set with Zildjians and after each practice she had to walk around the house rearranging pictures and paintings hanging on the walls, which were askew as a result of the loud music.

‘Girls would show up for the practices which pleased us no end and we played covers of the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Moody Blues, Them, the Zombies, the Animals and the like. Chris was heavily influenced by the Beatles and was an excellent guitarist. We tried to get him to concentrate on playing just the lead guitar, but he liked to play both rhythm and lead and consequently was kept quite busy during our gigs.’

Chris’s love of all things English was enhanced by David Bell’s frequent trips to Europe, from which he’d return with the very latest singles that had yet to reach Memphis. ‘Of all of Chris’s bands, the Jynx are the group that I remember chauffeuring around to band practices and garage parties,’ says David Bell. ‘They were quite popular and rather competent. I think that a lot of their popularity had to do with their courage to be performing at such a young age.’

The summer of 1965 was a good time to be in a band in Memphis. Local act Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs had a worldwide smash with ‘Woolly Bully’ and bands like the Jokers, Ronnie and the Devilles and the Gentrys were pulling in crowds around town. ‘Our name got around the junior-high and high-school party scenes in Memphis,’ says Shy. ‘We played at private parties, at school venues and we competed in and did well in a number of local “battle of the bands” competitions. We played in some local Memphis teen clubs that were hot at the time, like the Tonga Club and the Go Go Club.’

By December 1965 the Jynx were being considered for a spot on Talent Party but they needed a demo tape to audition for a spot, which would let them appear on the show early the next year. ‘We bought some recording time at Sonic Studio,’ says Shy. ‘We recorded at least four songs and I remember that Alex Chilton was supposed to show up for the session to sing with Mike Harris but Alex did not show, so the original band did the session. We were nervous, or at least I was, but we got into it and it went smoothly. We liked to play loud, but we had to back the volume down for the session. Talent Party liked it and we went on that TV show in Memphis as a result. My recollection is a little fuzzy on this but I think Alex became involved because we wanted to experiment with having two lead singers sometimes singing together and sometimes one backing up the other. It proved not to work so well and Mike ultimately left the band.’

The four songs from the session were the Moody Blues’ ‘And My Baby’s Gone’, ‘I’ll Go Crazy’ by James Brown (which the Moody Blues had also covered), ‘Little Girl’ by Them and Paul Revere and the Raiders’ ‘Just Like Me’. ‘Little Girl’ is a confident-sounding take, with a tight rhythm section; ‘Just Like Me’ shows the band rocking out a little with some nice backing vocals and prominent guitar work from Bell. ‘And My Baby’s Gone’ could be an early Doors demo while ‘I’ll Go Crazy’ shows a different, soulful, side to the band.

The December 1965 session was the only one ever recorded by the Jynx and after Harris left the band tried out three different vocalists. Chilton, Ames Yates and Vance Alexander all filled in briefly and Jerry Powers had a short stint as keyboard player but the band disintegrated in 1966 when none of the stand-in vocalists would commit permanently. ‘Alex was very talented but was not always consistent in showing up on time for practices and some gigs,’ recalls Shy. ‘We were playing some original songs but also covers of well-known songs. I can remember telling my mother during the heyday of the band that “music is my life” but she poured cold water on any thoughts I had of not continuing my education. In the long run she was right.’

Chilton would soon go on to national fame with another band and Bill Cunningham would later link up with Chilton once again. On leaving the Jynx, Cunningham immediately hooked up with a band called the Jokers who had a limited edition album released. The line-up included a drummer by the name of Richard Rosebrough.

Rosebrough, born in Memphis on 16 September 1949, initially had different musical influences to his future band mates. ‘When I was three my mother bought us a seventy-eight rpm copy of “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”,’ he recalls. ‘It was on yellow vinyl and very scratchy. I was just fascinated with the melodies, counter melodies, mode changes and the imagery of all the different instruments and sounds. Then Elvis was on The Ed Sullivan Show. We watched it as a family event on a Sunday night. We had no idea that he would become the entertainer of the century. To us he was a local boy made good and we were proud. I somehow knew that things had changed that night but I was still too young to grasp it.

‘As a child I beat on pots and pans and had nervous legs [they bounced up and down a lot]. Both of my sisters got piano lessons because they were girls, but not me. I just banged aimlessly on the piano and worked out ‘Chopsticks’ until I was told to stop. It was considered proper for the young daughters to play the piano and to be cultured. They care little about music now, but it has always been my life.’ Rosebrough got his first drum in the seventh grade but, as his mother couldn’t afford a stand for it, he used two stacks of a classics book collection to set it on. ‘Tore ‘em up, sadly,’ he recalls. ‘It wasn’t that much fun playing just a marching drum, but learning the twenty-six rudiments proved to be the best training for the future.’

Rosebrough had originally started out in the Mariners, a group he put together with some high-school friends. ‘We formed in 1964 after the Beatles had been realized,’ he says. ‘We actually had success with parties, clubs, and “battle of the bands”. We even got paid. Then I got a call from the Jokers and I quit the Mariners.’ When Bill Cunningham also joined the band, the line-up of Rosebrough (drums), Cunningham (vocals and organ), Mark Cowan (vocals), Allan Stewart (guitar) and Dudley Brewer (bass) hit the Memphis live circuit for a couple of years between early 1966 and late 1967, covering everything from the Beatles to the Four Tops and most things in-between. During this time Cunningham brought Chris Bell to a practice and introduced him to Rosebrough for the first time.

It was a meeting that Rosebrough remembers well to this day. ‘Christopher came over to band practice in my mother’s living room one Saturday,’ he says. ‘He was dressed differently, perhaps more loudly, like purple patterned bell-bottom pants that were too short. He had bushy, curly reddish blonde hair that he cut himself or maybe his brother David cut it. He was shy and didn’t say a lot. He had a sheepish, devilish grin on his face, but gave little to go on. I sensed a far-away kid who was really into rock’n’roll, Beatles, Kinks and the Who. He had conflicts with his dad and Vernon Bell wanted to sell the guitar.’ Chris won the day and kept the guitar. Slowly, through this loose series of cover bands, a hard core of anglophilic rock fans was gravitating together. Little did they know it when they all finally met, but they were destined for greater things.