When Joy Simmons opened the Comedy Corner, she wouldn’t book me, because she was booking all these LA acts with guys that had been on Carson, or this show or that. But Dallas didn’t know who they were, so they weren’t drawing very big crowds, and she finally booked me. And she said, you’re going to have to be the middle act. So, I middled for Gary Shandling, and I middled for Kevin Nealon, and next thing you know, she hired me to headline. And I put more people in there than some of their LA comics. And started headlining there. Bill Engvall was the in-house MC back then.
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August 3rd, 2019 7pm at Ozona for our next Extravaganza. Jerry Smith and The Legendary Woo Brothers are our headliners!
Sponsored by Buddy Magazine!
The Legendary Woo Brothers, Jackie Don Loe, Billy King on bass,…
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We had no car, and I’ll resist the story that we walked a mile to school in the snow, but yes, we walked to school, no matter the weather. If we needed to go where legs wouldn’t take us, we would ride the bus. Sometimes, we had to take a paper transfer from the driver, in order to reach our destination, but we rarely left Oak Cliff. In fact, I distinctly remember my Mother telling us, “There is no reason to go to the other side of the Trinity River.” We took the Dallas Times Herald newspaper. It was known as the paper for “our side of town.” We had paper boys who rode their bikes and we knew all their names and where they would throw our paper. Our mail was delivered by a mailman (never a woman) who would walk to the door and put the mail in a metal box by the door.
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We did a lot of openings too about that same time. We opened up for The Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher – God, there's so many, I don’t even remember them all. and we also played on WFAA's 'Sumpn'Else' TV show. We also opened for the Turtles at Louanns. I think we played in the big room that night. We also played the smaller room quite a bit. We were buddies with The Chessman who would play there all the time, Jimmy Vaughan was with them then. We would go over to Jimmy's house and there would be Stevie, a little gawky kid (with a laugh) hanging around. We would say 'Hey Stevie' kidding of course (in his best big brother's friend voice) and pick on him a little. but he was a good kid.
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So many headliners at Playboy - Chevy Chase, Jesse Lopez, Mel Torme, Charley Pride, Professor Irwin Corey - we didn't get along so well. He was a grabber and grabbed Cathy's tush. I chased him all across the club and folks thought that it was part of the show. Luckily for him Tony Signori grabbed me and got me to settle down! The dance team that was there had moved on and were working the Playboy Club circuit. That was the 'Dance Machine'. While I was Maitre'd I spoke to our boss Tom Labella about our dance group, "The Boogie Machine" with Cathy and Rick Marshall. We auditioned for Joe Cimino and he hired us. Our time there at Playboy club is what truly validated us. It put us on the map. Before that we were working different places around Dallas, Texarkana and other small gigs. We had to work to book them, but when we got the gig at Playboy, it was really the start of something special. Doors really began to open for us, not to mention the other stuff like having a seamstress to make our costumes which we had always done ourselves.
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"I worked at some rock and roll clubs like Sneaky Petes, Mother Blues, but primarily at Sneaky Petes there in Medallion Center. Then I heard about the Bunny search in the summer of 1977. It was absolutely crazy. They had us go through all the different preliminary, sending in pictures, resumes. That was the first elimination. Then they notified us, then we all came in. You came in through this big gate, filled out your information, attached some pictures, they would look it over and then they would setup callbacks if they liked you. Then after that interview, they would let you know if they wanted you to come back in for the final group. They did a story on me when the Bunny search happened in the Scene magazine for the Dallas Morning News. I was pretty cocky back then and told them 'I may not be the best looking, or have the best body, or be #1, but I can definitely be #99!'"
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I was playing with The Roadrunnners at some school and they had a special guest, Scotty McKay. And we backed him up. After the gig, he came over and asked me if I wanted to play a job with him. I thought he was asking about the whole band. He wasn't. To make a long story short, I had borrowed money from my dad to buy a bass guitar as we didn't have a bass in the band. And I was quite literally new to it, but Scotty liked the way I played and ended up leaving the band and playing with Scotty for a long time. As a matter of fact Scotty is the one who got me into the recording studio to do my own stuff. It turned out to be "Summers Coming" which I wrote in the back seat of his car on the way to the studio. We already recorded the A side of the record with a tune called 'Walk On' and needed a B for the release. Two DJs from KLIF heard it, Chuck Dunaway and Bill Enis and they played it for Diamond Records in NYC and they agreed to distribute it. Made it to the Top 50 nationally that year. The next time I walked into KLIF, they said 'You want to be on American Bandstand in Philadelphia?' I says 'sure, I guess...' So I went on the Dick Clark tours.
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The first time I saw a show advertised in Dallas Morning News, Bo Diddley was gonna play at Louann's. Because by that time, I had heard that song, "Bo Diddley," and I had heard "Can't Judge A Book by Looking at Its Cover," and "Who Do You Love." And, well, I could recite the name of every song on that album. There was something in my mind about the way that album sounded. It went to the fact that it was on a 78 LP record, which is to say that it was thin. And I didn't feel the pulse. I thought, "There's something else going on in this rhythm that makes it so meaningful." And the more I studied it, the more I realized there is a counterpoint that's being played against what Bo Diddley has played. So, I played the record enough to wear the grooves off of it, but I also discovered in that record that there was a low drum part.
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Do you know where the downtown McDonald's is on Commerce Street? That was where the Playboy club was supposed to be. It used to be the Aaron Brothers Fur and the Dorsey Building. It was a 6 story building that everyone tried to buy but nobody could get the deal done. I was friendly with them. The reason I wanted to buy it, is it is an entire city block. You could make an entire circle around the location which was highly unusual in downtown Dallas. So anyway, I knew the guys that owned it and went ahead and bought it with the idea we were going to put the Playboy Club there.
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I was a Display manger at Dillards in Euless. I just got home from my long drive home from work and my roommate told me that she had heard on radio that they were auditioning for Playboy Bunnies at the new club.
She talked me into it, so I grabbed my maroon leotard and high heels and went on up there. There were hundreds of girls there so I really didn't think I would get the job. All we did was walk across the stage, look at judges and smile like there was no tomorrow, I think that's probably why I got it. Then we went into our Bunny training, several girls didn't even make it through that. We had to know our Bunny manual and of course practiced the Bunny dip about a thousand times." Tonda Davis Petty
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