Subject: RE: What was Lee Hays really like...?
From:
Frank Hamiltom
Date: 24 Aug 99 - 03:15 PM
Re: politics and the 50's. Nobody knew what Stalin was doing. Pete was a stalinist in those days. He ain't now! In those days the polarity was so strong that you had to take sides. Waldo Salt told me that the issues weren't so "white and black" and required gray matter. I hear people who were a part of that era and once held left viewpoints swing completely in the opposite direction, today. The "God That Failed" and all that. I think that there is a lot of good that the left provided and that shouldn't all be tossed aside. But there was a lot of goofy statements made.
In 1955, a cheerful, chubby, sandy-haired young fellow sang and played a simple guitar accompaniment. He sang, "I'm Goin' Back To Where I Come From", a bright little ditty which foreshadowed his career. He impressed me as being a friendly salesman type, thoroughly enthusicastic about the prevailing folk scene. I went back to California for a while and when I returned, this pleasant guy had picked up a banjo and had a coterie around him. His speech had picked up the mannerisms of a hip jazz talker and he was creating quite a stir at the parties he sang at. I remember that he sang Abeline with Erik Darling. He found his place at the new folk club, The Gate of Horn and had quite a following there. We always got along pretty well so he asked me to join him there in Chicago. About 1956 I headed to Chicago to meet him at this place on the corner of Dearborn and Chicago Streets on the Near North Side. I stayed with him at his pad on Rush Street where he once had lived with Rose, his wife and their children. But they weren't there then. I guess they had moved to California. We played at the Gate of Horn as a duo. I was more his accompanist, though. When the Bermuda Shorts craze was starting, we both dressed in them with sunglasses and were billed as Gibson and Hamilton. Al Grossman sort of tolerated this begrudgingly. I found myself being exposed to the nightlife of Chicago and the drugs, loose chicks and nighttime citizens were all over his pad. Bob said that I was "oblivious". I think I was more self-protective. Al liked the idea of the duo though and I don't think he cared much for me but the concept was OK so he found Bob Camp in one of the Greenwich Village clubs. Gibson and Hamilton became Gibson and Camp. For a while, Jo Mapes joined us and we were kind of a trio. Then Al asked me to accompany other acts at the Gate in addition to doing my own set. So Bob Gibson was my entree to Chicago. He was doing some teaching one-on-one at his pad. I saw that there was a need to do this kind of thing and I had done a lot of it in Los Angeles. Eventually I started teaching classes in Chicago. One notable one was in the living room of Dawn and Nate Greening. Win Stracke was my student at the time.
I lost touch with Bob after that. He got real busy. Won the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts Show and the "folk scare" was starting to take off. He teamed up with Kick Rosmini and worked with him for a while. They had a bad auto accident which left a plate in Dick's head. Bob and I wrote a song together about the corruption of the Chicago police force at the time. This was before Berkeley came in to reform it.
I'm an old Chicago copper and that's just what I am For these investigations I do not give a damn......
I sang it one time on TV and was persona non grata in Chicago for a while.
Bob played the Blue Angel. He did concerts. We played for the Gate and he was best man for my ill-fated marriage in 1957.
When the Old Town School started, Bob was skeptical about it. He gave it 6 months, I recall. But when he saw it was going to make it, he gave his support.
He was a man of contradictions. He was charming and mean, witty and crude, straight-ahead and sneaky, wholesome looking with a profligate life-style but he was one of the most talented showman I ever played with. He called himself "a saloon singer" which is probably the reason that he never made the "big time" that he sought. He told me that his ambition was to be on the cover of "Confidential Magazine" like Sinatra. But he was more at home at The Gate then he was doing big concerts like the Kingston Trio or the St.Regis Roof in New York like Bud and Travis. He wanted the big brass ring in show biz but it wasn't going to happen. His kingdom was Chicago and his palace was the Gate of Horn. Can't mention the Gate of Horn without mentioning Bob Gibson.
Frank Hamilton
| 
sj
