Gary James' Interview With Wally Eaton Of
The Classics IV



From 1967 to 1969 the Classics IV had big hits with their recordings of "Spooky", "Stormy" and "Traces". Each one of those records sold over a million copies. Original member Wally Eaton, (now Dr. Walter Eaton) talked with us about the history of The Classics IV.

Q - Wally, what if any is your involvement in the Classics IV these days? Do you ever share the stage with the band today?

A - Tom Garrett, the one you talked to a couple of years ago, lead singer of the group that backed us and now is a traveling kind of a tribute Classics IV, their band was hired by The Turtles, Flo and Eddie, to do the Happy Together Tour With Flo And Eddie that they do ever summer, about thirty-five to forty shows all over the United States. It was The Turtles, Chuck Negron (of Three Dog Night), The Buckinghams, and The Cowsills. Well, they were coming to town and performing at the Florida Theatre, and I in contact with Tom. It turned out just coincidentally that that was the same couple of weeks that the city council of Jacksonville (Florida) declared it "Classics IV Day" on the same day. After the City Hall presentation, it was presented onstage at the show. But as far as getting together with the Classics, Joe (Wilson) and I are the only ones left. Dennis (Yost) and J.R. (Cobb) have passed on.

Q - Did you leave music altogether then to teach at Florida State College? Are you teaching computers?

A - Yes. Cyber security. A lot of things happened in my life between that and here. I started the group in 1960 in high school. Through the years I hired Dennis (Yost) as a drummer, found out he could sing, and there's a whole story behind that. Anyhow, in 1969, right after we did "Everyday With You Girl", about April '69, we had been up quite awhile with no sleep. We were doing television shows at that time like (Johnny) Carson and Joey Bishop, American Bandstand. Bottom line, I needed some cables, RCA cables to connect our big recorder to my tape deck so I could write the string parts for some of the songs. Like when we played on Carson, I provided the strings and the oboe music for Doc Severinson to give to his group. A tree jumped out in front of us in Atlanta and we wrapped the car around it. I was hurt pretty bad. You may have seen some of the TV appearances of The Classics after that point. I put Bill Gilmore in my place. Bill, at that time, was the bass player for The Candymen, who were not working because (Roy) Orbison was not traveling. So, I broke my femur in two places, crushed my right foot, concussion, broke my jaw. Bottom line, I was in the hospital for about six weeks and put him in my place and went home, back to Jacksonville. It took almost a year to fully recover. At the end of the year I was going to go back on the road. I had just gotten married and I just didn't feel like traveling anymore. Ten years was enough. So, I started building recording studios in Jacksonville. First I commuted to Atlanta to produce for Bill Lowerey. I produced all of his groups that he was contracting. I did that for I guess about a year and a half. Then I started building studios in Jacksonville for two or three years and having more money than brains. It didn't work out. So, I told my wife I was either going to have to go back to school or go back on the road. We decided I'd go back to school. So, I did. Because I was an audio engineer for all those years, working the boards in Atlantic Master Sound in Jacksonville, I took electronic engineering. I thought I knew something about it. They're very different. I didn't. After that I went into commercial consumer electronics, TVs, radios, CDs, CBs. Then I went from that to studying computers. I went to work for Burroughs Sperry UNIVAC. They merged with a company called Unisys. I spent twenty years managing the City Of Jacksonville's computer system. Retired after twenty years. The city hired me straight out, so I didn't even change offices. I became the Computer Security Manager and from there became the Chief Security Officer. In that role is where I learned about hacking. In 2004 I adjuncted at FSCJ here in town. I love it, so I started developing their cyber security system, retired from The City, and I've been there ever since.

Q - Since you're now Dr. Wally Eaton, it must mean you have a PhD, correct?

A - Correct.

Q - Did you get your PhD from Florida State?

A - No. Actually I got my PhD from North Central University Of Arizona, online. All five years of it. (laughs) I wrote my doctoral dissertation of Data Forensics Hacking.

Q - A very timely subject matter that people are interested in.

A - Absolutely.

Q - Do any of your students know of your background? Do you tell them?

A - I don't tell them. They live on the internet. If you Google "Wally Eaton" you're bound to see it. Yeah, they find out every now and then. Of course they love it. I'll come into the classroom and "Spooky" will be playing. (laughs) I'll say, "Alright, okay."

Q - I'm sure they ask you questions about your time in The Classics IV, don't they?

A - Oh, certainly. "Wow! The professor was a long-haired hippie." (laughs) "What was it like?" Of course there's limits to what I can tell them. Most of it was great, unbelievable.

Q - Limits to what? Drugs? Groupies?

A - Kind of keep the drugs to a minimum and the groupies, none. (laughs) They (the students) don't push me. They probably think it's a little above me now. They want to know, "How did you get discovered? Where'd you record?" Of course, once they found out and go on YouTube, then the questions begin about the songs. And, "When did group first start?" It depends on how interested they are. If they're interested enough I'll go back to the beginning, when did I start playing? Why did I start playing? When did the band form? All of those historical stories. They all sit there in amazement. (laughs) Of course once they get that little gleam in their eye it stimulates me to go ahead and tell the stories and meeting with the stars.

Q - What really helped give The Classics IV a unique sound was Dennis' voice, the sax sound, and especially that rhythm guitar. And whoever produced your records, "Spooky" in particular, did a great job.

A - J.R. (Cobb) was doing the rhythm guitar on that. In 1962 we were playing in bars here in town. We had two saxophones, then Dennis, Tommy Branch and myself. I had to hire Dennis out of another group in Jacksonville, The Echoes, and he had kind of a falling out with 'em. I always wanted him to be our drummer. The main reason was, and you have to understand, I never heard him sing 'cause he didn't sing. He sat in back of the band like normal, but he knew when to stop and when to start and how to emphasize the actual drum part of the song to fit exactly the voice on record, whereas the drummer I had at the time, if I wrote the drum part out with all the rests and things like that, he could do it, no problem. But he was a good drummer, Jimmy McCormick. He was really a great drummer, but Dennis just had a better feel. I had tried to join The Echoes when I first started playing guitar and they wouldn't hire me because I wasn't good enough, and they were right! (laughs) So, I did the next best thing, I started my own group.

Q - There you go.

A - In my neighborhood it was Le Roy And And The Monarchs, and I was Le Roy. We went through a lot of different kids from the neighborhood. I kept trying to make it work. After a couple of years, 1960, 1961, one year, we changed the name to The Classics and Bobby Bowen was playing drums, Burton Horton on rhythm guitar and me on lead and Glen Futch on bass. So that was the make-up of The Classics. Then Dennis fell out with The Echoes about two years later and The Echoes had all the bookings in town that we kept trying to get. So, when they broke up, the band was able to do it. Well, Dennis came into the group and he played drums. Sat in the back and played drums. A great drummer. But one night we were coming home from a gig and on the radio there was a song playing and Dennis started imitating that singer. I was stunned. I mean, it was perfection! I said, "My God Dennis!" We needed a vocalist. I was the vocalist. I said, "You could be the vocalist or at least sing with me." So, at the next band practice in Dennis' garage, Dennis and I rehearsed two songs as a duet. It was "Daddy's Home" and "You're A Thousand Miles Away". We sang it as a duet. The problem was we were not rich kids by any stretch. We didn't have a van's worth of equipment. As a matter of fact, we had a Bogan P.A., two bad, ratty speakers and one Shure microphone and that was it. That presented a problem if we took the normal position on stage where all of the guitars stood in a line in front and Dennis played drums in the back. So, Dennis had to sing through the same microphone I sang through. Dennis quickly adapted. At the next rehearsal he was standing up, playing drums. He loosened his hi-hat so he didn't have to have one foot up and down on that and one foot on his bass drum and he could play drums and I could put the microphone in between him and me and we could sing duets in the same microphone. And he'd play standing up and it was unique. None of the other bands in Jacksonville had ever seen anything like that. I hadn't either. Dennis was so quick, man. He got it. He did it. In about six months he was the lead singer. I was writing in a paper about The Classics. I was a better businessman than a singer and I knew it. So, he became our vocalist. We started playing clubs in Jacksonville, in Daytona. We had two saxophones, a guitar, bass and drums and that group broke up. Actually what happened was I left that group 'cause I had a falling out with the manager of the Golden Gate Lounge. I put J.R. in my place, playing guitar. He was in a band in Jacksonville called The Emeralds. After about six months that group broke up. The Classics was the name of the group. I was working on the road crew of the city. One day Joe and J.R. and Dennis came to the house, came to my house and they said, "We want to try it again. We want to form a group again. This time if we have arguments we'll take each other out back and beat the hell out of each other, but we won't break up." I said, "Great!" I quit my job. Dennis had two weeks to play with a band that he was temporarily playing with, so Joe, J.R. and I started practicing the back-up vocals like The Four Seasons. But when we first formed that afternoon we had three guitar players and a drummer. Joe was a guitar player. J.R. was a guitar player and I was a guitar player. So, we drew straws and Joe got the organ and I got the bass and J.R. got the guitar. I went out and bought a bass and Joe bought a Farfisa organ. Well, we weren't very good on those instruments. So we had to concentrate on our voices and we did. We went to Daytona to play in a Go-Go club down there. We had to rely on our singing. We backed (Billy) Crash Craddock down there in this Neptune A-Go-Go. Dennis lied to the manager when he called about the job. The manager said, "We're a building a go-go club here in our hotel in Atlanta. Do you know anything about it?" Dennis said, "Yeah, we just opened one in Vegas," which was a bold-faced lie, but the manager said, "Great! C'mon down." He paid for us to stay there a couple of weeks to supervise building the go-go club. Of course we told him where to put the go-go stands, right next to the stage naturally. Anyway, we were playing there for about three months when Alan Diggs from Lowery came in and said, "Do you want to record?" Obviously. "Yes, sir!" So, him and Paul Cochran, who were working out of New Port Richey, one a cop, the other a park director, they went to Atlanta with us, and Bill Lowery signed us to a contract and booked us around the country in bars. But he also had Joe South to be our producer. So, he wanted us to record Joe South songs. The first one was "Pollyanna". He had done that for Billy Joe Royal. So, we went back out for about three weeks to work a club and while we were there we worked up "Pollyana". We worked it up in our favorite group style, in The Four Seasons style. If you hear it, you won't be able to tell the difference between us and The Four Seasons. It was immediately picked up by Capitol Records. Hey! You gotta be kidding? We're stars! It went to 84 in the nation on Billboard and then stopped. Dead stop. We didn't know why. It was doing so great. It had a bullet. We had to accept that it stopped. We went back into the studio. We recorded "Little Darlin'", the old Diamonds song. Dead on Four Seasons style. It didn't even get played. We really could not figure out what was going on. The flip side of it was a song called "Nothing To Lose" and was a duet that J.R. and Dennis sang. Bottom line, The Four Season's management had told Philadelphia, New York and Chicago radio stations if they play that, our song, they won't get any pre-releases or anything. Bam! It died. All of a sudden we weren't stars anymore. But we went back into the studio and this time J.R. and Buddy Buie had been writing songs in Atlanta. Bill Lowery asked J.R. and Buie; Bill had a solo instrumentalist artist, Mike Shapiro, and he had a small Jazz hit called "Spooky". By the way, it was re-done as a Jazz song about ten years ago (2009). Anyway, Lowery liked Bubblegum. So he asked J.R. and Buddy (Buie) if they could put some lyrics to it. And so, J.R. and Buddy did put lyrics to it. We cut "Spooky", "Stormy" and "24 Hours Of Loneliness". When Lowery took "Spooky" to Capitol their A&R man listened to it and said, "You gotta be kidding." Turned it down flat. And so Lowery had many contacts, fairly big in the business. He peddled it and went to Liberty Records, Imperial and they picked it right up. Of course the rest is history. Boom! Million seller.

Q - After "Spooky" became such a big hit, did you do a lot of road work, and where did you perform?

A - Yes, we did road work and television. We played concerts. Concerts back then were very similar to this Happy Together tour, but it wasn't one person. Even when we had "Pollyanna" we played a concert with Sonny And Cher and Three Dog Night, Lovin' Spoonful. With "Spooky" we played with The Turtles in San Francisco. This is one my wife and I laugh at. We call it the zoo tour because it was The Turtles, The Byrds, The Animals and Three Dog Night. (laughs) Anyhow, those kind of tours. Everything was great and so when it came time to release the next song, well it was fashionable in those days to record a sound-alike, a song that sounded like the first one, although the general listening public was getting wise to that and getting tired of it. Buie and Lowery and our manager did not want to release "Stormy" because they felt it was too much of a Soft Jazz type sound song. A total breakaway from "Spooky". We went back into the studio and cut this ridiculous song called "Soul Train". It bombed immediately. You've got to remember, we're going on about a year on the road and when it bombed, Joe and J.R. said, "No. I don't think we're going to do this anymore." So they quit. J.R. just stayed in Atlanta and wrote, and Joe went to be a photographer at Disney. So, Dennis and I hired two musicians to play, Mac Doss on guitar, and David Phillips on organ. This is why you see so many pictures. That went along pretty good, except no one was playing our latest records, but we were able to tour with Mac and David. When it came time to release the next record, Lowery decided to release "Stormy" regardless of how he felt about it. When he did, that thing sold about a quarter of a million records in four weeks in L.A., which was supposed be phenomenal because it was a tourist town. Well, here we were, we had Dennis and myself and Mac and David. David has passed on, but Mac is still alive and they have families, so I have to be sensitive when I'm talking to people that might put something on the internet that would hurt them. Bottom line, they know this obviously, our manager wanted to put the group back together. So Joe and J.R. at that time were performing in a bar in Atlanta. They were playing with another drummer, Emery Gordy, and a saxophone player. Just working a regular bar gig. So anyhow, Dennis and I went back into town and they already had been told we're putting the group back together because of this massive hit. And they were ready. Well of course I was still the leader of the band and this kind of thing was always hard for me, but it was especially hard at that time because I had to go tell Mac and David that you're not a star. You have to go home and tell your wife and family that you're no longer a star. You're out of the group. I took it hard, but I had to do it. The group that Joe and J.R. were playing with had another week to play, so Dennis and I would go in each night and see them. We'd sit in with them. I'd double with Emery like we'd do in the studio a lot. But they had their own drummer. So Dennis, at the club, stood in front of the band as a front man with a mic and started singing that way and let the drummer play. The drummer's name was Kim Venable. He passed on a couple of years ago. We knew he was gonna be out of a job when Joe and J.R. left the group. They were gonna split up. So, David, me, Joe and J.R. said, "You look good out front Dennis. So we'll take Kim." So, Kim became the drummer of The Classics. He wasn't contracted, but he was the drummer. He was a member no less. So, we started touring again and we had that local sound back that we had lost. Things were going good, but after awhile "Stormy" kind of fell off and there was nothing else in the can. God Bless 'em, Joe and J.R. quit again. I hired David Phillips and another organ player. Dennis and I toured that way for awhile. Finally Lawry said, "C'mon, we're gonna record again." So we went back into the studio again and did "Traces". You know what happened with "Traces". But Joe and J.R. stayed out of the group. I hired Auburn Burrell on guitar and Ox we called him, Dean Daughtry on organ. Now Dean was The Candymen's organ player, but like I said, The Candymen weren't touring at the time. He became the organ player. Great organ player, and was all the way through the rest of the life of The Classics. So we did "Traces" as that group. When we released "Everyday With You Girl", that was when I was in the accident and left the group. Dean stayed on organ, Kim Venable on drums, Auburn on guitar and Bill Gilmore, bassman of The Candymen, and of course Dennis. That group played for a couple of years and broke up and Dennis hired an assortment of back-up groups through the years. There you go. That's my whole two cents worth! (laughs)

Q - I do believe I've got the whole Classics IV story right there. Did you by chance ever cross paths with Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin?

A - In the '60s there were good guys and bad guys. The Beatles were good. The Rolling Stones were the bad guys.

Q - That's what they told us anyway.

A - Yeah, well... (laughs) And The Dave Clark Five were in the middle. The music scene was split up with the real heavy drug use and the dark side. That's your Janis Joplin, Hendrix, all of those. And the other side were people like Sonny And Cher, The Cowsills and all the good guys, and The Beach Boys. We were touring with The Beach Boys and we played a gig in Miami and we did that gig the week after Jim Morrison pulled his stunt on the stage. Now, do you know what I'm talking about?

Q - I do. It was reported that he exposed himself. His band mates told me it never happened.

A - Yeah, I've seen that on the internet too. According to the stagehands when we were there, it happened. So, I just take it for what they said. I think he got a pardon. I would think there's a tendency to give the guy a break and believe it, but having said that, the newspaper columnist at the time we played, which was one week later, believed it. Believe me, and he was a critic. He was very harsh on our performance and I mean the whole show. His article said The Beach Boys basically sucked and needed to be back playing Surf music in California. And I remember exactly what he said about us. He said, "The Classics IV came on stage, stood dead pan behind their instruments while their lead singer wheezed and breathed into the microphone and brevity was their only attribute." It's burned into my memory. I read it in the paper next day and went, "What?" He came there with the attitude, "Okay. Let's top last week." (laughs) What can you do? Like Woodstock, that concert and The Grateful Dead, they were all the other side. Now, we worked with Three Dog Night and The Animals and The Byrds and not so much Joplin and Hendrix and the darker side.

Q - Would you have encountered any of them in say a restaurant or a hotel?

A - No. The reason is we were there for a concert. You didn't have dueling concerts very often that I've ever known of. We traveled with groups like The Allman Brothers when they were The Allman Joys. I'm talking about earlier on and up through their first fairly big hits. Those type groups were as much on the dark side as we went. I shouldn't say The Allman Brothers were the dark side, but you know what I'm saying.

Q - They certainly weren't Bubblegum.

A - No. We cut our teeth with Lowery backing Tommy Roe and "Dizzy" and Billy Joe Royal and artists like that. It was a two-sided music scene really.

Q - I should have asked you earlier, where did the group's name Classics IV come from? Did you name the group that?

A - No. I named the group The Classics from high school.

Q - Who came up with The Classics IV?

A - Bill Lowery. And the reason is when we recorded "Pollyanna" and "Lil Darlin'" they went high enough on the charts to get the attention of a group, The Classics. They were from New York. They recorded a song called "Til Then". Be-Bop stuff, right? But they sent Bill Lowery a Cease And Desist on us using the name. So Lowery said, "Fine." He told us, "Okay boys. You're now The Classics IV." And that's where it came from.

Q - It's so important to get these facts historically correct.

A - Yeah. In about 1982 Dennis came to town and wanted to talk to me about The Classics IV. It turned out that a manager/booking agent named Gabe Garland, our manager for Lowery, once Dennis left Lowery and was just touring with back-up groups on his own, our manager sold the copyright to the name Classics IV to this booking agent, Gabe Garland. I had and have the trademark Classics IV music, but I'm talking about Classics IV, the band. So, we tried to figure out what in the world we could do. I went out at that time and bought every book in the bookstores, How To Succeed In The Music Business and Music Star Careers and history, Rolling Stone as an example. They had our names in it, but they had nothing to do with this group that was touring with Gabe Garland, but he had the trademark. We went to war with the trademark bureau. The lawyer said, "I'm sorry. It was available." And I said, "But I owned Classics IV music." How could you give up that close? We did. No one complained. We didn't know. We fought that battle for about six months and put a lot of money into it. Well, it turned out finally the local radio station got wind of the fact that somebody had taken the name and of course Classics were a home town group. So they put it on their television. When they did, it got national attention. It got the attention of Chris Wallace. You know who I'm talking about, the newscaster?

Q - Sure. He's the son of 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace. Chris Wallace is on Fox News.

A - He was doing a television show, a national television show. His producer got wind of what happened and contacted me. I told him the whole story and so Chris decided he wanted to look into this situation closer. He came to find out that The Coasters, The Four Tops, these groups, they had groups that were traveling, using their name because they trademarked the name. So, Dennis and I went to New York and interviewed with him. They did a sting operation. It was beautiful. He had reporters undercover go to the performances and ask performers, like the guy who was taking Dennis' part of the show that night, "So, how long have you all been together? When did you record?" At the end of it he said, "I happen to be a reporter and we've been talking with members of the real Classics IV." (laughs) It was a great show. Anyhow, that was enough to cause Senator Kennedy to get interested and we were able to make Gabe Garland give us our trademark back.

Official Website: www.TheClassicsIV.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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