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Poor Boys, You're Bound To Die
By Goldmine Jim
Before you pick up that first guitar with thoughts of charming the young girls, you might be wise to read this cautionary tale
At St. John's University (Jamaica campus, NY), folk music was the rage. If you wanted to hit it off with the coeds, you needed a guitar or banjo or be able to sing. Now my parents had given me a cheap Lira guitar for my high school graduation the previous June. It probably cost them all of $25. It was perhaps the saddest looking guitar I had ever laid eyes on, and it sat, untouched in its canvas case, throughout the summer.
But that September, there was now reason to learn! Talk about motivation...
I mastered 3 chords and played like a man possessed within three weeks time. Thought my fingertips would fall off from gangrene from those steel strings...
It's now early December, 1963. Three of us - a pasty-faced blond Lithuanian named Joe Valentine, a tall black dude named James Hudson - we called him "Hud" - and me (Ben Gazzara) - had hastily formed a group and called ourselves the New Amsterdam Trio. We had gotten our very first paying gig at St. Leo's RC Church in Corona, Queens, for the upcoming weekend teenage sock hop. We knew a grand total of three songs...
The parish priest greeted us backstage and told us we'd be introduced right after the current set of records came to an end.
So did our lives, nearly. It was Saturday, Dec. 7, 1963. Shades of another Dec. 7 - 1941 - many years before, when a sneak attack took out our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. We took out St. Leo's...
Any performer worth his or her salt instinctively knows that you start off with something lively to get the audience pumped up. We started with the KT's "EL Matador." Ai, Torrero, she's here...A little less than lively. Coming to the end, "Closer, closer...Guitar strum, close cold. Boom.
Dead silence. No applause. Looked out over a sea of 75 or so teenagers who stood galvanized over what they'd just heard. Shell-shocked. Then they recovered.
A voice from one of the Italian-American guys rang out in a heavy NY accent, "Ya know any Dion an' th' Belmonts?" Another chimed in, "How 'bout Vito an' th' Salootations?"
Needing something peppy as a distraction, one of us said, "Our next song is 'If I Had a Hammer'..."and started the opening chord run, but not before one guy yelled, "If i had a hammer, I'd t'row it at youse!"
Something flew up on stage. Then another object - a shoe? As one, they started to move toward the stage, an unhealthy look in their collective eyes.
We stopped in mid-intro, thanked them for being a great audience, and quickly exited stage-right, grabbing our overcoats and guitar and banjo cases. We didn't have time to pack. Just carried them loose.
As we flew by the priest by the side entrance, we yelled back, "You can mail us the check!" and we were out that door and into the 20-degree night like a shot.
Ever trying running on sleet-covered sidewalks? Tons of fun, slippin' and slidin'...Mercifully, the #58 Corona bus was coming to the nearby stop, and not a moment too soon. We turned around to see a stream of crazed guys pouring out of the church hall. We jumped on the bus, paid our 15-cent fare(!), commissioned the driver to "Floor this sucker!" and, out of breath, we slumped in our seats in the near-empty bus. Safe. We made it.
But there's no quit in some NY guys. We suddenly heard a loud banging and thumping from the rear of the bus. These guys had actually jumped on the bumper and were punching the rear windows! As the bus picked up speed, they gradually fell off from lack of grip and too much cold, but their last words echoed in the otherwise quiet night: "...and don' chaz nevah come back...!!!"
We never did.
That was the first New Amsterdam Trio show. It was also the last. The following month, "Hud" transferred to City College in Harlem, saying it was safer there. Joe & I became a duo, "Two Brothers." That didn't last too long. Eventually, I went solo as a singer/songwriter and stayed at that, progressed through being a song publisher (ASCAP) and producer. No hits. Went belly-up and got a real job.
But, oh, the stories I could tell..
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