WHEN SIN STOPS: INTRODUCTION
WHEN
SIN
STOPS
EDDIE REEVES
For Lena;
Marc, Natalie, and Sophie;
Grandmother Reeves;
and Mom and Dad.
For Dr. Adam S. Garden, Dr. Gary L. Clayman
and the good people of MD Anderson Cancer Center.
For the many colorful characters along the way
who made these stories possible.
© 2017 Eddie Reeves
No portion of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means,
including electronic storage and retrieval systems,
except by explicit, prior written permission
of the copyright owner, or his assigns.
CONTENTS
ONE: Passion Trove
DISCOVERY
COMBO KINGS
RAVENS & NIGHTHAWKS
BUDDY & WAYLON
127TH & ST. NICHOLAS
TWO: University Daze
UNCLE JOHN
THE DE LEON PEACH & MELON FESTIVAL
THE DAZE
MOVIN’ ON
THREE: A Bite of the Big Apple
NORMAN PETTY
A FEW BIG BITES
GREENWICH VILLAGE GLUE BLUES
THE ITALIAN STALLION
FOUR: Hollyweird
HANGIN’ OUT
LES “ARTISTES”
CRAFT & CRAFTINESS
THE MUSIC BID-NESS
FIVE: Nashville Cats
JIM ED
THE BOOK OF MARK
T.TOM
CITY FATHERS
THE RIGI
KOBE HAPPY BIRTHDAY
PRANKENSTEIN
SINGERS & SONGWRITERS
THINKIN’ PROBLEM
SIX: Goodbye Ol’ Paint
BUCK
BOB
SEVEN: Before the Music
EIGHT: Meanwhile…I Was Thinkin’
BEYOND THE BLUE
TIME & SPACE
MEANWHILE…
IMAGINE
NINE: Meanwhile…I Was Still Thinkin’
WOMEN & MEN
FAMILY AFFAIR
POTPOURRI
POTPOURRAH
POTPOUROO
WHO KNOWS WHAT DANGER LURKS?
WHAT CONDITION OUR CONDITION’S IN
GUARDIAN ANGEL
PREFACE
The first rock ‘n roll band originating in Amarillo, Texas was formed in 1956 with Bob Venable as lead guitarist and vocalist, Eddie Reeves as rhythm guitarist and vocalist, and Billy Sansing as drummer. We proudly adopted Combo Kings as our moniker, but in the summer of 1957, when Mike Hinton replaced Sansing as drummer and John Thompson later joined as bass player, we were known as the Ravens.
On July 25, 1958, our band recorded “When Sin Stops” (written by Bob Venable) at the Norman Petty Recording Studio in Clovis, New Mexico. During our recording adventure, we learned a recording group named the Ravens already existed, which led us to rebrand as the Nighthawks—the first use of this name by a rock band. On November 17, which was my nineteenth birthday, a 45 rpm single of our recording was issued by the Dot Records’ subsidiary, Hamilton Records. Airplay on local radio station KLYN landed the record at #1 and generated sales of about fifteen hundred records, but no other success followed.
On many Friday and Saturday nights from the fall of 1957 to the fall of 1958, the Nighthawks performed for Amarillo High School dances at the YWCA, the YMCA, the high school gym, and on one occasion at the National Guard Armory. In the fall of 1959, Mike joined Bob and me at the University of Texas in Austin where we often performed (but without participation of John Thompson) for Delta Tau Delta fraternity events. After the spring of 1960, the band performed only three times—at the 20th and 25th Amarillo High School Class of ’58 reunions in 1978 and 1983, and for the final time in November 1989, at my fiftieth birthday celebration in Nashville, Tennessee.
From the fall of 1958 to the spring of 1964, I often visited Norman Petty in Clovis to play songs I’d written—several that he recorded with local talent but without commercial success. On two separate occasions during these visits, I saw Buddy Holly and a few years later met Waylon Jennings—each minor but memorable encounters. While being employed as Petty’s New York representative during most of 1964, I experienced two unique events: co-writing a song with famous songwriter Doc Pomus, and having a few brief but novel encounters with young folksinger Bob Dylan. These occurrences, along with a passion for rock ‘n’ roll, were kindling enough to ignite a forty-year music adventure.
When developing the book cover design, there was no particular reason to use six vertical bars instead of four, or eight. But possibly something deep within begged for six—the number of different labels I recorded for as an artist: Hamilton (Dot Records), Warwick, United Artists, Kapp (MCA), ABC Dunhill, and GRC (General Recording Corporation). Six is also the number of companies that employed me: Norman Petty (producer of Buddy Holly and others), United Artists Music, ABC Dunhill, Chappell Music (later Warner Chappell), Eddie Reeves Music (my own music publishing and artist management company), and Warner Bros. Records. And six is the number of different jobs I engaged in: songwriter, recording artist, music publisher, record producer, artist manager, and record company executive.
It’s unfortunate that collectively these three career perspectives prompt the number 666—not only the sum of the numbers one through thirty-six (thus the sum of all numbers on a roulette wheel), but also a number representing Satan and the Antichrist as described in Revelations, which most likely is a reference to Nero Caesar, the fifth Roman Emperor infamous for torture and persecution of Christians, political murders, debauchery, and incest. Because 1st century Hebrew had no independent number system, various letters of the alphabet represented numbers—similar to Latin Roman numerals where V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100, etc. The number 666 is the sum of the letter numbers of “NRWN QSR,” the Hebrew translation of Nero Caesar.
Even though my daughter Natalie has noted that each of my three birth names—Edward, Benton, and Reeves—contains six letters, I’ll put aside all superstition (at least my own) by noting in Kabalistic Judaism the number 666 represents the creation and perfection of the world—a world created in six days, that has six cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Up, Down), and where physical objects have these same six symmetry descriptions that we recognize as the six sides of a cube and experience as three dimensions. In China the number 666 is viewed as the luckiest number, and it’s a popular choice for personalized license plates.
Pop music stars and stars in the cosmos share commonality—how brightly they shine, how long they burn and the nature of their demise. The greater a star's size, the brighter it burns and the shorter its life. Once fuel is spent, smaller stars quietly fade while the largest end in cataclysm. Had I achieved stardom at a young age it’s likely a perilous fate awaited whatever my prominence. But as it happened, hard work and good fortune nurtured a forty-year music adventure, and through the lens of that experience I have written from a spoken-word inner voice that too often makes for poor written word. My struggle to untangle the many word-knots falling from my brain has on occasion led me to claim “word wrestler” as my occupation.
May 2018
Houston, Texas