Was Chuck Berry good at craps?
I don’t know—I know Fats Domino used to play, and the Drifters. There was a fourteen-piece back-up band from the big-band era. There was probably twenty acts on the tour. A lot of times Chuck Berry would have his own car, or Fats Domino would, but the majority of us rode in two buses—like Greyhound buses with just seats, not tour buses. How did you ever sleep? Oh—I think most of the time you’d pass out. But it was great fun! We were fans of everybody on the show. The Everly Brothers were on the show—Buddy Knox—those guys had sort of made it. We were booked for the whole thing but these guys would do some of the shows and go off and come back. It was a great time! Was this the tour where they didn’t know you were white until you showed up in person? That’s true! The first three weeks of that tour—we did a week at the Howard in Washington and the Royal in Baltimore. Actually there’d been a black group called the Crickets. A lot of those guys became the Cadillacs. But we were booked in bl
