Myron Lee & The Caddies
When We Were Young
2009 | Rock
— track 4: “Rona Baby”
Myron Wachendorf: The place was packed. The plan was for us to begin the evening with one high-energy song to get things started with a bang while people just arriving had time to find their seats. Our song ended and then it was my job each night to get the show underway. “Good evening everyone,” I’d say. “Now — direct from American Bandstand — Dick Clark.”
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I was born at home, June 24, 1941 in Parker, South Dakota. Six months after my birth, my family moved to Sioux Falls. My father had been a part-time laborer and handyman, but he also spent a good share of his time playing in bands. Dad could play both the accordion and the piano, or any instrument if he set his mind to it. He’d never had a music lesson in his life. He’d gotten me started early with his impromptu, after-work lessons of F-sharp chords at home, and on the drums at the Melody Dance Hall in Downtown Sioux Falls. I was fortunate to have inherited some of his musical talents. Later when I was attending grade school, I found a piano in the back corner of the gymnasium. I would play it whenever I got the chance. Students and teachers gathered round to listen and make requests. I’ve always played music by ear. Once my mother invested some of her hard-earned money to pay for accordion lessons for me. It was a waste. I had difficulty reading the notes and found it all very boring.
I remember Christmas Eve in 1949, Dad had a very bad cold and fever, he remained in bed while we kids and Mom opened our presents. I didn’t think much of his illness at the time. He didn’t seem to get any better. I later learned he was suffering with Brights disease. The day he died began like every other day for us kids. I was eight years old at the time. That afternoon my sister Marlene, Mom, and I went to the hospital. [When] we had to leave for supper I edged over and stood by my dad’s hospital bed. He reached out and took my hand. “Go with Mom now. And you always remember to be a good boy and to mind your mother.” Those were the last words he ever said to me. During my life I have tried to live up to what he told me. He was only 33 years old.
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Before rock and roll, music in Sioux Falls was just all, oh like Perry Como, and Frank Sinatra, and of course the big band music. It was mostly touring folks, including Sinatra and Lawrence Welk. Everybody played the Arkota ballroom [now the El Riad Shrine in downtown Sioux Falls]. When I was fourteen [in 1955], with my best friend Chuck, we attended the movie at the Hollywood Theater called Blackboard Jungle. That movie’s theme song, [Bill Haley’s] “Rock Around the Clock,” was arguably one of the most influential single records to come along in the last half of the twentieth century. I know it changed my life. After that movie, Chuck and I, and everyone, were listening to Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and let’s not forget that swivel-hipped man out of Memphis, Tennessee.
By 1957, when I was a high school sophomore, I took my first halting steps toward a career in music. I started a little combo composed of three Washington High School students. I played piano, Greg Hall was the drummer, and we also had a string bass player. We practiced after school and started to sound pretty good. The only television station in town was KELO. It had a locally produced half hour Saturday morning program called Tomorrow’s Stars. It featured mainly singers, dancers, and musicians from Sioux Falls and the area. I wrote to the host, Gwen Gustad, and asked if she might consider us to come on as guests. Much to my surprise she said yes. We showed up, played a couple songs. Apparently we passed the test, because a few weeks later she asked us if we might become the house band to back up singers who didn’t have a band with them. Was she kidding? We were thrilled to do it and spent the rest of our sophomore year on television every Saturday.
I decided that if our combo was ever going to rise to the top of show business we needed to change our musical style. That would mean I’d no longer be the piano player. I needed to learn the intricacies of an electric guitar. I bought a brand new Harmony and amplifier at Sioux Falls Music for $150. A friend, Jerry Haacke, and a kindly lady named Lil who worked at Fashion City helped me with the basic guitar chords. I asked another friend, Barry Andrews, to join my group, he played a great saxophone. I added Augustana College student Dick Robinson as drummer, and Jerry Haacke agreed to play lead guitar. They all made me look good.
Although I didn’t plan it that way, my timing was perfect. There were no other rock and roll bands in the area except a group of Native American boys in the Pierre area that called themselves The Byrnes Boys [or The Byrnes Brothers Band]. So in 1958 we got in on the ground floor of South Dakota rock and roll. The ride would last for over thirty-four years.
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We picked the music we played by listening during the week to local radio station KIHO playing their Top 40 list. We memorized words and music that way, stayed current on the latest hits. "Peter Rabbit," was the always most requested song. I see nothing wrong with cover bands. There is no written or unwritten law that prevents them from doing what others are doing. Show me a group that plays primarily the songs that the band members have written, or obscure album tracks, and I’ll show you a group that is probably in the business temporarily, for fun of hearing their own songs, rather than in it for business. Usually they don’t last very long.
The first ballroom that we ever played was Groveland Park in Tyndall, South Dakota. Big crowd that night, that was in 1958. I was dreaming, and I said on the way home, "Guys, we gotta get a record." I started writing songs and came up with my first two a few weeks after the Tyndall trip. One was called “Aw C’mon Baby.” [The other was] “Homicide,” a wacky song about the unpleasant consequences of a drag race between a guy and his girlfriend and an unidentified flying object, a UFO. I wrote that in a car on the way home from a job in Storm Lake, Iowa one night. Somebody else was driving and I wrote that song. And I don't even know where it came from, but I had the melody and everything in my head by the time I got home at four in the morning. I arranged for The Caddies to have a recording session at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. We had tapes made that we sent to the HEP record label in St. Paul. That was one of those deals where for $400, you could get 500 records. Well, our local radio station started putting that on their rotation, they were playing “Homicide” every two or three hours. Pretty soon, we had more jobs than we could handle. [In 1959] I had written two new songs. One was “Rona Baby,” and the other was “To Be Alone,” and we went up to St. Paul to record those [at] HEP. “Rona Baby” became the most popular side, hitting the charts in Fargo, Minneapolis, and Omaha, as well as on good old faithful KIHO in Sioux Falls, where they played the living heck out of it.
In the music business, it seems that once the first big hit is realized, the others come much easier for the artist. I confess that during my early career, I always had confidence and felt that my big opportunity was in the next song that came along. I believed that sooner or later my time would come, and everyone I worked with in the business also thought it was just a matter of time. But as we say in South Dakota, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
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It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. I got to know Buddy Knox. Remember that name? He's the first guy to ever write his own number one [rock and roll] record, [1957’s] "Party Doll," When he came up to the Midwest, our booking agent, Jimmy Thomas, booked a few days for Buddy Knox up here, and on a couple of those shows he put my band with Buddy. I got to know Buddy real well. In 1961 he hired my band to do a trans-Canadian tour, the first time American rock and roll band ever did that. Buddy was big in Canada. We worked our way all the way across Canada for three months. You couldn't play on Sunday in Canada, but we played six nights a week.
Then I got to know Bobby Vee. Bobby Vee, he was from Fargo, started much like I did, only he had all those hit records [like “Take Good Care of My Baby,” “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,” “Devil or Angel,” and “Rubber Ball.”]. And he seen me with Buddy Knox a couple two, three times, and he liked the musicians I had. So Bobby, when he started getting all his hit records, he hired me and I did the Summer of 1963 all over North America with Bobby Vee. I was riding with him in his station wagon one day, I was sitting in the back seat, and I'll never forget Bobby says, "Myron," he says, "Dick Clark, one of his Caravan of Stars is going to go out in November. There's going to be 12 major recording artists, and Dick wanted to know if I knew anybody that could handle backing up all those people." And Bobby says, "I told him I got somebody with me right now that can do that." And so he asked me, he said, "Myron, would you be interested in going to New York and rehearsing with these people?" And it scared the living you-know-what out of me. I thought, "God, can I do that?" But I only thought for about a minute, because I knew I could never turn down an opportunity like that.
So that's where the first one started. Some of the acts, let’s see The Ronettes, Brian Hyland, Freddy Cannon, Linda Scott, Jimmy Clanton, The Essex, The Jaynettes, The Tymes, The Dovelles, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Little Eva, the Dixie Bells, Dale and Grace, Joe Perkins, Donald Jenkins and the Delighters, Paul and Paula, Jeff Condon, and of course headliner Bobby Vee. I mean, they all had big hits. We rehearsed in New York in November of 1963, and toured all over some major cities in Canada, and all the way across the United States.
Dick Clark really liked what we were able to do. And in 1965 Bobby Vee was going to headline another tour again, and Dick Clark says, "Can you get that same band again?" So there you go, we went to New York again. Herman’s Hermits were on the ‘65 tour, Brenda Hollaway, The Hondells, anyway, it was all people like that.
That's when the British invasion started. And when those English groups came over here, I hate to say it, but I didn't think very much of them then, because they took all the tours. The tours all stopped. There was nothing going anymore. I mean, the Americans were working, but all everybody wanted to see was The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and all those guys. Nobody was working. Bobby was sitting out there in California. And me — you want to have a bummer, imagine having jobs like that, and playing tours like we were doing, and all of a sudden I'm back in Sioux Falls playing the Moose Lodge again, and the VFW. Can you imagine? Well that's what it was, and nothing changed. About starved to death there for the while. And ever so slowly, it started again. In the ‘80s in the Midwest was some of the best years that I had. They started using some of the old songs in movies like American Graffiti. Yeah, that's when it started coming back. I mean, we were booked for conventions. We had all the best jobs.
I was done [performing] in 1994. I was starting to lose my guys, they were getting older and they were getting tired. It took an hour and a half to set up, hour and a half to tear down. Yeah, I was losing them one at a time, and I finally had enough myself. I just, I had been doing it since I was a kid. I laid around the house for about a year or so, and then a buddy of mine talked me into being a DJ. I had all the equipment left from my band, so I had everything I needed.
We had a local ‘50s and ‘60s radio station only a couple blocks from my house. I always loved radio. And so I went up and I talked to the station manager one day, Linda, she knew about my band, and I said, "I'd like to get on the radio." I did that for three years until the owner sold off to another company and they changed the format. I loved it. I think that that's one of the most fun things I ever did. It was called Myron Lee and Ugly Del in the Morning. Five guys from Iowa come in and bought that station out, and they turned it into a news format. Of course, we were out the door then since they weren't playing music anymore. I was sick, losing that job. I've been part time for quite a few years as a security guard. I was at First National Bank, my wife was a guard too for eight years down there. Now I work at a big credit card company, just part time in the morning.
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When We Were Young, I put that thing together myself. To put that CD together, of course, we had to take those songs off of the 45s. I can't remember how many of those I wrote. The first album was called Then...and NOW, that would have been maybe 1967 or ‘68. And then I had another [compilation album from 1997] that was called Myron Lee and the Caddies Rockin' and Rollin' Out of the Midwest. That one sold a lot of copies. They introduced that over in Europe even. That's when I started getting mail and everything from overseas. In fact, did you know that a company in Amsterdam released two 45s on us this year? And one of them was never released, called "Everybody's Talking." The guy's last name that owns that record company is Sleazy. It's called Sleazy Records. [laughs]
You know, I really can't [remember any other South Dakota albums from the time], tell you the truth. At one time it was 50, 60 bands out of Sioux Falls in the mid-60s. And same way with Fargo, same kind of thing. Everybody thinks you know all the other people. Well, when they're working, you're out working. I didn't really know hardly any of them.
The guy that started [The South Dakota Rock and Roll Music Association] was Don Fritz. He was a friend of mine, he's a music lover. And he talked about wanting to have a way to honor the rock and roll musicians from the Midwest, and South Dakota. And he talked, and talked, and talked, and talked, I heard that story for about five years. At that time, I was working mornings in a casino, and guys were coming in there every morning to have coffee and tell jokes, and so finally, we had four or five guys here and I said, "Don, if you want to start the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, here's the guys that can help you do it, right here, right now." And that's how we started up.
Can you believe this? They love [my] stuff in Europe. They think that "Homicide" is the greatest thing in the world. I think it's terrible. I saved a box of those 45s years ago, and did you know that I could get four or five hundred dollars for a 45 of that song? I got a guy named Frickles. He's my guy. He lives in London and he calls me about every six months, we'll talk for a little bit. He's a great guy. And he said. "Myron, before we go, would you just sing the beginning of ‘Aw C’mon Baby,’ just once?” So I'll go "Aw C’mon Baby," and he just laughs and laughs.
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SOURCES
Wachendorf, Myron and Chuck Cecil. Myron Lee and the Caddies Rockin’ ‘n Rollin’ Out of the Midwest. Enterprise Books, 2004.
Wachendorf, Myron. Interview. By Jon Bakken. 10 August 2022.
