Bobby Vee not only filled in, but later did a Hooly tribute album and an
album with the Crickets, both readily available.
>
><<Hey, isn't this the same Bobby Vee that hired a young piano player named
>Bobby Dylan within a couple years after this gig??>>
Definitely true. Also--young Boby Z. was at the Holly show the night
before the crash...
The CD "Bobby Vee & The Shadows: The Early Rockin' Years" (ERA/CEMA/K-Tel)
shows this Vee band to be pretty good for that time. Dylan was never
recorded with them, for the record, but here are some relevant comments by
Bobby V. on the matter, from the CD notes:
"While we were on the road we talked about how cool it would be to have a
piano in the band, like Little Richard or Scotty, what's his name, with
Gene Vincent, not any old piano player, but someone wwho could put it down
like Jerry Lee. But hey, the 50s were about Fender guitars, not pianos! We
couldn't find a rock and roll piano player anywhere.
Then one day Bill came home and said he was talking with a guy at Sam's
Recordland who claimed he played piano and had just come off a tour with
Conway Twitty. Bill made arrangements to audition him at the KTGO studio
and said he was a funny little wiry guy and he rocked pretty good. Wow!!!
This must be the guy! "What's his name?" "Elston Gunn." We decided to try
him out.
His first dance with us was inGwinner, North Dakota. All that I remember
is an old crusty piano that hadn't been tuned since Mae West was a virgin.
In the middle of "Lotta Lovin" I heard the piano from hell go silent; the
next thing I heard was Gene Vincent handclaps--and heavy breathing and I
looked over to find Elston Gunn dancing next to me as he broke into a
background vocal...The next night was more of the same. He was
good spirited about the fcat that none of us had the money to secure a
piano for him and there was no hard feelings ..as he made his exit for the
University of Minnesota. He sure had the spirit, and he rocked out in the
Key of C...Hey, he would have been great on Floyd Cramer tunes. That's
basiclaly he Bob Zimmerman story as it relates to the Shadows. Bob, aka,
Elston, aka Bob Dylan...What I remember most is his sense of energy and
spirit. Confident, direct and playful. A rock and roll contender, even
then."
Barry
PS: Bob can be heard playing rockabilly piano on the pre-Freewheelin
sessions from 1962, including a full-tilt version of "That's Alright
Mama"...and varied rockin takes of his first rock record ('62) "Mixed Up
Confusion"..Of course, nobody would really hear him in a rock and roll
context for some years. But he'd sing to Woody Guthrie in East Orange in
the same days.
