From :
Warren Zanes http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1143797727250490.xml&coll=2
Sent :
Friday, May 26, 2006 7:16 PM
To :
Subject :
Rodney Justo http://www.teddwebb.com/showcase/where_are_they_now/rodney_justo.html
Greetings--I'm looking for a contact for Rodney Justo.
Might you have one you could pass along?
Many thanks,
Warren Zanes {ed: he and his brother were in the DEL FUEGOS http://www.pomegranatearts.com/project-dan_zanes/index.html
Dr. Warren Zanes http://www.miaminewtimes.com/Issues/2006-03-30/music/music2.html
V. P. of Education
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
wzanes@rockhall.org
(216) 515 1214
MUSIC
Rock Hall series will spotlight Orbison http://royorbison.musiccitynetworks.com/
Friday, April 07, 2006
John Soeder
Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic
Roy Orbison has been chosen as the honoree for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's 11th annual American Music Masters series in early November.
The guitar-playing singer- songwriter with the three-octave voice was inducted into the Rock Hall in 1987.
One year later, Orbison died of a heart attack at the age of 52, two days after a concert at the old Front Row Theater in Highland Heights.
"He had a way of putting all the emotions out there," says Warren Zanes, the Rock Hall's vice president of education and public programs.
"There are a lot of rock 'n' roll voices. You can hear the Little Richard in Paul McCartney or the ferocity of Jerry Lee Lewis in John Lennon. But Roy Orbison was a singular species when it came to his voice. It was all his own."
The Rock Hall's weeklong salute to Orbison will include an academic symposium at Case Western Reserve University and an all-star tribute concert. Zanes hopes to involve not only rock 'n' rollers in the show, but country artists and possibly a string section, too.
Orbison, a native of Vernon, Texas, notched more than 20 Top 40 hits, mostly in the 1960s. Among them were "Only the Lonely" "Crying" and the chart- topping "Oh, Pretty Woman."
His career enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s when Orbison teamed up with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and the Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne to form the Traveling Wilburys.
"Among that illustrious group, it was almost like Dylan, Harrison, Petty and Lynne were the fans and Orbison was the star," Zanes says.
Orbison also is the focus of a new exhibition, "Haunting & Yearning: The Life and Music of Roy Orbison," opening Wednesday, April 19, at the Rock Hall. http://oldies.about.com/b/a/256054.htm
The museum is working with his widow, Barbara Orbison, on putting together the exhibit and the American Music Masters festivities.
A PORTION OF BUDDY BUIE'S 3/15/06 INTERVIEW WITH WALLY & DAVE ON WTBC http://wtbc1230.com
Buddy: Now what's your next question you asked me?
Ronnie: How'd you hook up with Roy Orbison?
Buddy: In Dothan, Alabama. This was before any of this had happened.
In Dothan, there was the Houston County Farm Center there and I started promoting shows. I used to have dances at the local recreation center and things of that kind.
Wally: He was the Tiger Jack of Dothan!
Buddy: Yeah, I've heard a lot about Tiger Jack!
LAUGHTER
Ronnie: He used to do that here at Ft. Brandon Armory.
Buddy: We probably played for him!
Ronnie: We've got pictures of y'all on our website.
Buddy: Oh great! Yeah! I remember that armory very well. I had a show... my first big show was Roy Orbison. I loved Roy Orbison. I told you I loved radio and I loved songs. I was just mesmerized with "Only The Lonely" and even a couple of things before that. I thought he was sensational so I called. I found out who he was with. It was Acuff-Rose Agency in Nashville and I called them & they said,"Sure, he'd love to come down there!" and I said,"How much is it gonna be?" and it was $600!
LAUGHTER
Dave:WOO! That was big money!
Wally: That was a world of money!
Buddy: $600. Even then I thought it was a bargain. He came down. In those days, big artists traveled with like a guitar player & a music director and they did. Fred Carter was his guitar player and they told me,"Does your band read?"
Well, of course, they didn't read music!
LAUGHTER
Wally: I read in that article about you that they DID read music!
They said that they DID read!
Buddy: They full of crap!
LAUGHTER
Buddy: They might have learned over years of osmosis...
LAUGHTER "GO AHEAD BUDDY!"
Buddy: They were just country boys, played by ear as most session players at that time were...
The guys in Muscle Shoals, I betcha none of those guys, maybe some of 'em did, the horn players and stuff but most guitar players don't read.
So I said,"Sure! They READ!"
So they said,"We're gonna bring down some arrangements."
Well, immediately we go to the Dothan Recreation Center and start rehearsing and John Rainey Adkins, one of my guitar heroes, & one of the guys that, he passed on, God bless him, we practiced and practiced and John Rainey, he would play a record backwards or slow it down to the slowest spead and learn parts and to make a long story short, by the time Orbison came to town, these guys sounded like his records!
Dave: Wow!
Buddy: They had it down! So he came, got on stage for rehearsal. So he said,"Y'all boys read?"
"SURE!"
So he handed them all this music, you know...
LAUGHTER
Buddy: And so they counted off,"One,two, three, four [Buddy imitating Orbison]
"I was all right for a while!"
RIGHT! So at the end of the song, Orbison said,"God O' Mighty!"
LAUGHTER
Buddy: "God O' Mighty! That sounds great!"
LAUGHTER
Buddy: He's a country boy from Wink, Texas, a small town, like we were small town guys from Dothan, Alabama.
Ronnie: Wink, Texas.
Buddy: Yeah, close to Odessa.
Ronnie: Yeah. I used to live out there.
Buddy: Yeah, did you really? I played a lot of joints out there.
Ronnie: I lived in San Angelo.
Buddy: Did ya?
Ronnie: Yeah.
Buddy: & Orbison, by the end of the night, by the time he left Dothan, we'd become friends and it led from there. He came back, played another show, finally he said,"Man, I'd love to take this band on the road!"
I said,"You're not taking that band on the road unless you take me!!!!"
LAUGHTER
Dave: Oh, that's right!
LAUGHTER
Buddy: I had a '55 Chevrolet and we piled into it. Bobby Goldsboro was the rhythm guitar player!
Ronnie: Oh, man!
Buddy: We all piled into my '55 Chevrolet and went on the road with Roy Orbison!
Ronnie: Wow!
Wally: You were his road manager, right?
Buddy: I was his road manager and he is...
there's no telling how many times I saw him perform.
There was never a time when I saw him perform
that the hair didn't stand up on my arm!
I gotta say; I've said it in other interviews and things; there's no telling how many times I saw him perform.
There was never a time when I saw him perform that the hair didn't stand up on my arm!
WOW! YEAH!
Buddy: & he was one of the sweetest human beings you would ever want to meet. He had a song one time called "If You Can't Say Something Nice, Don't Say Anything At All". That's pretty much the motto he lived by. I never heard him say anything bad about anybody else. He was just one of those guys that did not deserve all... First of all, the lack of attention he got! Everybody thinks of Roy Orbison as being a huge artist during that period. He was huge in England but in America, he had hit records but concert-wise, he was just another Joe & nobody like him deserves what happened. He lost his children in fire. He lost his wife when he was riding down the road on motorcycles. They went out motorcycle riding together & he was in the lead and he looked back and she wasn't there and the reason she wasn't there was because a guy ran a stop sign and killed her instantly.
Ronnie: That's horrible! Didn't know that...
Buddy: So that's his life. You know about his children burning up, didn't you?
NO!
Bobby Peterson, Billy Gilmore, Bob Nix, John Rainey Adkins and Rockin' Rodney Justo at Roy Orbison's house before it tragically burned killing two of Roy's sons.Photo © Rodger Johnson (long time road manager of the Candymen). See more of Rodger's photos in the book
http://heybabydays.com
Buddy: He had a house out by Johnny Cash on Hendersonville Lake in Nashville and they were playing with matches or something and I think their nanny was with them and the house burned to the ground.
Dave: Oh, goodness!
Buddy: With the children in it.
Ronnie: Oh, my God!
Buddy: So he lived a tragic, tragic life.
Wally: Why'd he wear those sunglasses?
Buddy: Well, Roy was... you know there are stories that say he started wearing them in Dothan. Is that what you're referring to?
Wally: I just noticed he always had dark sunglasses on.
Buddy: Yeah, dark sunglasses, I always heard he never wore them until, somebody else told me this, he never wore them before and I don't remember it but somebody told me this that when he was in Dothan, he lost his clip-on sunglasses and he had to buy a pair and he liked himself in sunglasses.
WOW!
YEAH!
He was virtually blind. His glasses were thick like plate glass.
Roy was white. His hair was just white as snow when he was a kid. He dyed that hair. It'd get white. I've seen him.
Oh, I could gush about him for hours!
Ronnie: Well, there was the special, "Black & White". What a great show!
Buddy: Wasn't that great!
Ronnie: Unbelievable!
Buddy: I wrote with him right after that and that's another tragic thing about his death.
All of his life, he'd not really had all the adulation the he deserved. He didn't know that Bruce Springsteen thought he was "GOD"!
YEAH!
Buddy: He didn't know this. All these people...
How they felt about him.
Ronnie: So that was a big moment for him.
Buddy: It was HUGE for him! & finally, his idol was Elvis, and finally he got a little of that Elvis type attention...
UM,HUM
Buddy: & then right after that he came to Atlanta and wrote with Ronnie Hammond and I.
We had a song called "Awesome Love".
Roy called me and said,"Man, I love your song "Awesome Love".
I wanna come down and put my touch to it."
I said, "Come on!"
So he came to Atlanta, stayed there at my house for three or four days and that's the last time I saw him. He died not long after that.
Dave: My Goodness!
Buddy: It was heartbreaking.
Ronnie: Yeah.
