Joe Lee Richards was known as the "Singing Sheriff". He was Sheriff of Benton County, AR for years, and was a genuine cowboy! Joe passed away about a year ago. Sure miss him.
Maybe we'll do another jam when AJ comes to do his workshop this summer.
At this jam 6 years ago, AJ brought the first Ketron Audya to reach the US. He flew into Shreveport from Italy with it. It was still unfinished at the time, but it blew us away when we heard him demo it!
I was playing the "lowly" Rowland E50 in the video.
Good news, some of us have lost some weight since that video!

Yes Don...Joe Lee was "ACES"..& hank too miss him also........
I'm now down 26 lbs baby yea & going!

I started back on the South Beach last week, lost 5 pounds, in 7 days, so I guess I'm headed in the right direction. Sailing the boat is the best exercise I get these days, because I'm getting too old for the weight bench and three MPH on the tread mill is about as fast as I can move. This gettin old stuff sure ain't what it's cracked up to be.

I can assure you that I will not be in Benton, LA this summer - too damned many jobs on the schedule. For the first time ever I kept the weekends open so I can go sailing. Someone called a few weeks ago and asked if I was interested in playing at the American Legion where I performed for 7 years. I told them "absolutely not!"

I also miss Joe Lee and Hank Bowman. Hank and I talked almost daily on the telephone, we had some good times together when I visited DonM in LA. I saw Hank just a week prior to his passing, I held his hand, we talked about the old days and how much fun they were. I knew that he wouldn't be with us more than another couple days at that point, and I think he did as well. He was a wonderful person.

All the best,

Gary

Gary

WTG Beaky Bird.
Really nice exhibition on your S950.
That puts you in the TOP TWO SZ arranger/guitar players.
Eddie

Hank was my best friend. So hard to see him lose his life because he enjoyed it so very much. We played music, played golf, fished together, and just hung out every day.
We both owned our own nightclubs for a number of years. Hank was a retired Fire Chief as well as having played bass on the road with some of the country music legends.
Every day at 10 a.m. when my phone doesn't ring, I think of Hank.

I finally got down to the library today to watch the video’s posted in this thread to see what all the excitement was about.

What's the matter with you guys? Has the bar on OMB's been lowered that much that you think these players are at the top of their game?

Half of you members in this group are musically more proficient than these phony's.

Now they might be entertaining and in demand, but don't tell me that most of them are musicians who studied their craft like a lot of us here did. And don’t tell me they’re musicians, period! I didn't watch all the video's but from what I saw they were nothing but pianists who wasted their money on a TOTL arranger keyboard when they could have bought a digital piano and a drum machine and saved themselves 3k.

What they did was capitalize on their singing voices or audience interaction to sell themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as people are entertained. But my personal opinion is most audiences nowadays are so used to bad music or hum-drum repetitive music that you can get away with anything. And that includes singing every song and playing everything in the same style and never playing a good “ride” on your keyboard to break up the vocals.

These players could not hold a candle to the worst of the 1940’s big band orchestra players. I was listening to Tommy Dorsey play “So Rare” (popular in the 50’s). That’s one of the best sax solo’s I ever heard. And there's Harry James doing a wonderfully melodic "It's Been A Long, Long Time." I thought I was gong to hear something like that posted in this thread. All I heard was vocals and piano.......vocals and piano.......vocals and piano!

I wasted 90 minutes of my life watching these Youtube’s thinking I’ll pick up something like Gary always talks about. The only thing to “pick up” is what NOT to do. Example: if you’re that good a pianist playing in the Paris Underground, don’t play improvised runs up and down the keyboard. Play songs that people know and can sing to. Maybe then they’ll get some coins tossed into their bonnet.

Being a great OMB is not only about how well you play but also how well you know the art of “working” an audience as Gary has testified already.

I'm sure you can tell by now, it ticks me off to see performers who make no effort to learn how to actually play their instrument.......and optimize every tool at one's musical disposal. Not just the vocals and piano.......vocals and piano.......vocals and piano!

MARK

and sings too !!

and your worried about carrying a 30lb speaker?...