Gary James' Interview With The Bassist For The Legend/Dragonfly/The Pawns
Jack Duncan



Jack Duncan's career as a bassist has taken him through some interesting times in the 1960's music scene. Rather than go on and on about it, we'll let Jack Duncan do the honors.

Q - Jack, you're from El Paso?

A - Correct.

Q - What kind of a place was El Paso when you were growing up?

A - I tell people this sometimes and they look at me weird, but I say I kind of grew up as a minority. I grew up in an environment that was 80% Hispanic and I'm part Hispanic myself. Not much. About 2%. There was a tremendous influence on the border of Mexican music and Mariachis. In Texas of course there's always like the Blues influence and the Country/Western influence. So, it was pretty much an intricate part of mixing influences. When I was growing up and started getting involved in music, I played trombone and baritone sax in high school. I got my first guitar the month The Beatles hit the U.S. That'll give you some time frame there. When I got a guitar, obviously I didn't live anywhere else. I didn't have a basis of direct comparison, but my recollection, my feeling looking back is that El Paso had a really disproportionate amount of guys in the Rock 'n' Roll business. Lots and lots of bands. I mean lots of bands for town that had at the time less than 300,000 people I think back then. For whatever reason they were very competitive and there were some very good players. And of course the good players always provide influence to the other players. There was also a heavy influence coming from across the border in Juarez (Mexico) by a guy named Long John Hunter. He had a band that played right across the border for years. All of us used to sneak over there and of course all of us could drink at a teenage age. But Long John had a really interesting, pretty much Blues and Shuffle Boogie band. His drummer, Miguel, was just phenomenal. He influenced a lot of El Paso drummers. But, we had that mixing pot of all those musical influences. So, I think it all kind of lent itself to good Bluegrass players and good Blues players. In my view, El Paso, for that small population has had a really incredible amount of excellent drummers. That to me makes a big difference. But there was a lot of gigs back then. I don't know how that happened. There were just a lot of places that had bands. It just seemed if you had a band and you were halfway decent you could always find a gig.

Q - The good old days.

A - Yeah. When I think back on it, the economy of scale doesn't make much sense, but never the less I lived it so I had to see it for what it was.

Q - You got a guitar in 1964, but you weren't the guitarist in The Legend. You were the bassist, correct?

A - Correct.

Q - Was your fist band The Pawns?

A - No. Before that, the first actual band I had was called The Mystics. It was me and a guy from my high school who was a year older than me and two guys from the college. I don't know how long we were together. Six months or a year. But that was my actual first band. The Pawns were a successful band around town. They had a couple of 45s actually at Bobby Fuller's studio. It was actually called David Hayes And The Pawns. The way I got into The Pawns is kind of typical of my politically incorrect and rude manner and humor sometimes. Anyway, I was very good friends with David Hayes' girlfriend. And I mean we were just friends, kind of like brother and sister friends. So, I went out to one of the gigs one night. The Pawns were playing. I knew the drummer in The Pawns. He was a neighbor from down the street and he used to be the drummer for Bobby Fuller as well, a guy named Jimmy Wagnon. So, I went out to hear David Hayes And The Pawns. While he's up there playing he sees me yapping to his girlfriend. He's really eye-balling the situation. Soon as they took a break he comes over there and she briefly introduced us. And I said to him, "Hey, those chords you were playing to the Beau Brummels song, were they the best chords you could find?" I just insulted the hell out of him. He said, "Why? You know some better ones?" I said, "Yeah. I know the right ones. And furthermore, you got a whole bunch of songs where you're playing the wrong chords." (laughs) David had an ego, big time. He's long since left the planet. He was just a front man, just a singer. He played a little guitar, but that wasn't his thing. He invited me over to the band's rehearsal the next week, which was at his parent's garage. He had me come into the living room where his mother, father and sister were sitting, and he had a guitar and amp. He said, "Okay. Show me the right chords to this song." So I picked up the guitar and said, "Start singing," and he started singing this song and we were through a verse or whatever and his mouth dropped and he said, "No shit! Those are the right chords." (laughs) All of a sudden he changed and got real excited. He said, "What else?" I started going over a few tunes with him. He took me out to the garage and said, "Show the band those chords." And of course like I said, I knew the drummer, but I didn't know anybody else. The bass player in The Pawns at the time was a guy named Jack Watkins. He was actually a pretty good Jazz guitar player and didn't like playing bass in a Rock 'n' Roll band. He was just doing it 'cause they couldn't find anybody. So as soon as he saw my kind of musical aptitude, he pulled me aside and said, "Hey, if you want to take over this spot in the band I'll sell you this bass for fifty bucks and away you go." Of course he didn't ask for anybody else's approval. Given the fact that I was showing 'em all how to sound better, it became a no-brainer. So I joined the band instantly. Then right after that, Jimmy Wagnon, the drummer, decided to leave. So we got a guy named Barry Davis. Barry and I became really good running buddies and became great, close friends. So then the guitar player decided to leave 'cause he knocked up his girlfriend or something and we got another guitar player. And pretty soon The Pawns kind of resembled and morphed into a whole other band of guys. Long story short, David didn't feel like he was in control anymore, so he quit. So at that point we just became The Pawns and we hired this other singer and we played around for a little bit.

Q - Where does The Bobby Fuller Four come into the picture?

A - I knew Bobby Fuller like a lot of people knew Bobby. I wouldn't say we were close friends. We didn't really hang out together. It was just that Bobby was always very accommodating to upcoming, aspiring musicians. I met him by going over to his house. Him and his brother were still living at home. Bobby had turned us on to a gig up in Farmington, New Mexico. There as a guy up there who would let the band take the gate and he'd take the soft drinks, which makes no sense by today's reasoning, but we'd go up there and we'd make a ton of money. We're talking in 1966 and band making $900 or $1000 a night. Gasoline was nineteen cents a gallon. Hamburgers were a quarter. But we went up to Farmington and started playing there several times a year. We got a really, really good reputation. One weekend we were playing a gig and we take a break and this tall, lanky, hippie looking guy comes up to me behind our P.A. stack and says, "Hey, I live up in Durango. I've got connections on the West Coast. If you and your drummer ever want to do something different you should give me a call and we'll put something together." He was just interested in me and Barry. So I said, "Okay. Whatever." It turned out, I don't know how it happened, The Pawns started to fizzle out. I don't remember exactly, but I think within a couple or three months I called up Gerry in Durango and said, "If you still want to do something with me and Barry we're available. I'm not sure how we could move up there." He said, "Don't worry. My parents own one of those motels with a kitchenette in it and you can live in one of those for free." I said, "Oh, okay. Cool." So Barry and I headed up to Durango, Colorado and put a band together. At first we went under the old name Gerry had which was The Lords Of London. (laughs) He had previously been in L.A. and thought that adding a name that implied British would affect people a lot more than being some schmuck from Durango.

Q - Like the Texas band calling themselves Sir Douglas Quintet.

A - Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Doug Sahm. So anyway, we played for awhile under The Lords Of London. We went out to California to see his old managers who were a couple of shysters. We kind of thought The Lords Of London was a hokey name and one time we were driving from Durango to L.A. Six of us in a GTO pulling a U-Haul trailer, driving all through the night. On the way out there the sixth guy in the car, who was not a member of the band but kind of one of our advocates, his name was Gerry Jimmerfield. He had come up with the name The Jimmerfield Legend, okay? We thought that sounded pretty cool because the name Jimmerfield sounds so different. Anyway, it was kind of like, "What was that name?" Gerry was older than the rest of us by five or six years. He'd already been out to L.A. His previous incarnation of The Lords Of London had played out there. He knew those manager guys. And so we showed up out there and got involved with them and they started wanting to do some recording and the first thing they wanted to do was change the name from The Jimmerfield Legend to just The Legend because they thought, "What if Gerry quits?" It's like, "Whatever." (laughs) When we did the first album that became "The Legend" we only played on like two songs. Those guys were really old school. They hired good studio musicians. You come in, they play and you sing over the top. You call it the band. Of course we were not happy with that whole thing. So, that's how The Legend kind of got born. It was just dropping Jimmerfield in front of it. We'd come back to Colorado a lot to play. We had enormous success here. We were kind of what I would call a quasi house band at The Family Dog, which was an offshoot of The Family Dog on the West Coast. During that time The Family Dog, even though it was just a large warehouse/nightclub in the form of a warehouse, still having a lot of name acts play there because the big concert scene wasn't really off the launch pad real good at the time. A lot of good name bands were playing big places like The Dog. There was a whole bunch of really good name bands that came though there and played there. I don't remember half of them. The other house band, probably more of a house band than us; we each played there a lot as the opening act for the main band and when there was no main band, then the two of our bands would kind of switch off set and that band was called The American Standard. That was headed up by an exceptional guitarist name of Tommy Bolin, who went on to play with Deep Purple and do his own stuff. So, The American Standard and us would either be opening for somebody or the two of us would be playing back and forth, alternating sets. We did that for awhile. Out of our two managers, one that was somewhat hip and smoked pot with us, he came to Denver to see us play at The Family Dog and we gave him some Acid. He heard us play and realized that we were in a whole different caliber, if you will, than they were trying to produce in the studio as a formula or package type band. He realized we should be doing our own material and that we could get out there and compete with everybody that was current on the market at the time.

Q - Because The Legend was so popular, were you getting deals where you would get a guarantee against a percentage of the gate, whichever was higher plus a percentage of the bar take?

A - It was not the norm. The norm was you got a flat fee. And it seemed like every time there was a door percentage that the so called "expenses" would be like ridiculous. So normally we'd play for a flat fee. It was just every once in a while we'd get some kind of a door situation. It was just not the norm.

Q - Before I talk more about The Legend I'd like to talk more about Bobby Fuller. You said he was a nice guy.

A - A very nice man.

Q - Do you believe that Bobby Fuller committed suicide?

A - Absolutely not.

Q - Why do you say that?

A - Because of inside info that I heard and I'd rather not talk about publicly. It's the kind of thing that his brother wanted to talk about that, that would be one thing. To me it could easily be written off as hearsay or whatever. But right at the time it happened there were some things that we heard that just didn't make any sense at all in terms of suicide. Later, over the years I became pretty good friends with his brother Randall. When I moved back to L.A. in about '74 or '75 it turned out that Randall was living about two miles from me. We just started hangin' a little bit. I went out to some of their gigs and sat in with 'em. We were friends. I knew Randall way better than I ever knew Bobby. But Bobby was very accommodating. It was always comfortable around him. But he was not the kind of guy who would say, "Hey, why don't you come on over." One of the things about Bobby Fuller that is very important is that he was really, really leading edge, high tech. He built an old school, reverb echo chamber along the back fence of his parent's yard. He had the den and he had this little room off the garage converted to a studio and he had top shelf equipment. He's the first guy that started doing P.A. systems with Altec Lansing, really professional stuff instead of cheesy, little column speakers. All of the rest of the bands followed suit as soon as we could afford to do so. So, he was always kind of pushing the envelop on technology. His band always sounded incredible. He was really a consummate professional all the way.

Q - As I understand it, The Bobby Fuller Four was being groomed to be America's answer to The Beatles.

A - I do remember, and it's hazy, some scuttlebutt back then about how The Bobby Fuller Four needed to loosen up a little bit. They still had the combed back, manicured hair. They had on these suits. They didn't resemble the Rock 'n' Roll that was blossoming in the '60s at the time with all the bands that were coming out. This is really before things got too wild, but still for some people in the business it was kind of like the writing on the wall 'cause you know The Rolling Stones came along, the British Invasion stuff. A lot of those guys were wearing those uniform suits to begin with. A lot of the bands in the U.S. weren't necessarily doing that. I don't remember exactly when Bobby died.

Q - July 18^th, 1966.

A - That's what I was thinking, '66. The huge '60s explosion hadn't really happened yet in '66. But there was enough writing on the wall for it to be discussed that they were a little bit too clean cut and they needed to loosen up a little bit. I don't know who was having those discussions. That's just one of the little, hazy things I remember.

Q - Who would've put the group in suits to begin with ? Probably their management.

A - Well, you've got to remember, at the time Bobby died and had the hit with "I Fought The Law" and was on Hullabaloo and all that stuff, that wasn't his first trip to L.A. He had been out there at least, I think one or two other times where they basically said, "Kids, you got a lot of good potential. Go back to Texas and hone your songwriting skills and make your band better and come back and see us." When The Beatles come out in '64 they were wearing suits. When Gerry And The Pacemakers came along they were wearing suits. The Beach Boys had coordinated, same outfits. Everything hadn't exploded into the free form, leather, beads and long hair like it did in the Summer Of Love, '67. I just think that he (Bobby) was doing that because that was the thing that was done back then. And of course the Motown bands were all in suits. I never recall Bobby as being really into drugs. He was really, really focused on his music and his career. Randall, on the other hand, was pure Rock 'n' Roll. He's kind of a really interesting guy.

Q - What strikes me is how little the other band members in The Bobby Fuller Four really knew about what was going on or not going on with the business side of things.

A - Bobby lived less than ten minutes from my house. As I got to know him a little bit, I was like a male groupie. Me and a friend of mine ended up being kind of like; they didn't have 'em in those days, Bobby Fuller Four roadies. We'd always go to the gigs and help them load up their stuff. But then when I switched over to bass I went over to the Fuller house one day and asked Randall to show me some stuff, and Randall was really my original mentor on the bass. Randall attacked that instrument. Watching Randall play, that's the direction I went in immediately. I've often said it this way; in 1967 I was an exceptional bass player. By 1969 there was a million guys better than me. That's the way the music industry exploded. But my whole approach to playing bass and the way I attacked the instrument, the way I hit the strings hard with my fingers, that all came from watching Randall Fuller and being mentored by him a little bit. It was just the way he played. I had never seen anybody play like that at the time. I give him full credit for that.

Q - I never understood why Bobby Fuller would have been murdered.

A - Well, I don't know if you've ever hear this aspect of the story, but this is really hazy in my memory and I'm not sure if it's a hundred per cent accurate, but it's one of the things we heard back then. The guy who owned his record company, Bob Keane was affiliated with organized crime. The other thing we heard, which was more than coincidental, was Bob Keane also had the contract with Ritchie Valens. Bob Keane had a life insurance policy on Ritchie Valens and on Bobby Fuller. If either one of them died, Bob Keane got the money. So, you can kind of take whatever you want from that. Like I said, I don't know if that's a hundred per cent true or not, but that's one of the things that was kicked around back then.

Q - Okay. Enough about Bobby Fuller. Back to the story of The Legend. You guys were signed to Megaphone Records. These two brothers who owned the company stole money from your group?

A - They weren't brothers. They were just our managers. The two managers were Tony and Marty. Tony's brother was kind of a legit businessman, know-a-guy in L.A. who was agreeable to investing a little bit in the music business. So, he gave Tony and Marty an office space at his company in a high rise in San Fernando Valley or whatever. He gave them a budget to create Megaphone Records. All Megaphone Records was, was you register the name. Then we went to record and this guy ended up paying the studio bill. We didn't get paid. About the time we were doing our second album, which was an album called "Dragonfly", it was The Legend but we didn't want to use the name The Legend. We changed the name to Dragonfly. By the time we were doing that thing we were really, really getting disheartened with that management. We were going to sever our ties with them even though we had this album coming out. We got a little bit of airplay with Dragonfly on L.A. radio. The manager said we were offered a gig to come up and play at The Fillmore in San Francisco. In hind sight we probably should've done that, but what we did at the time was say, "We're not working with you guys anymore. We don't care if we have a gig at The Fillmore. We're not gonna go up there 'cause we're not working with you guys anymore." And that was it.

Q - The record label then did nothing in the way of promotion and distribution then?

A - No.

Q - Did you have any idea of how many albums you sold?

A - Well, it's totally unverifiable, but like I said, we did have a little bit of airplay on L.A. radio. I did actually get an airplay royalty check one time from B.M.I. which was next to nothing. There was a rumor back then that because of the L.A. airplay and because some people in San Francisco had heard it, that we sold 30,000 albums. I highly doubt that. We don't think they had the where-with-all to press that up and go though distribution. So, you could say anything about that. It's either total crap or maybe it's real and they did get some money out of the deal. It just didn't matter 'cause we had parted ways with them.

Q - You were in a recording studio one day and Sally Field was in the hallway. What was she doing there? Was she making a record?

A - I have no idea. That was in '67 when we were doing the first album at American Studio in the Valley. We met briefly. I kind of knew who she was because she'd had a couple of TV shows by that time. One of 'em was a stupid show, The Flying Nun. I don't know why she was there. Maybe she had a boyfriend that was coming by there. I mean we literally met for a minute. I just thought she was real cute.

Q - The Legend didn't join the Musician Union, which meant you couldn't play concerts. Why not join? Wouldn't it have made a difference in your career?

A - There weren't any concerts offered to us. As far as all the other type gigs, we always made more than union scale, so why join the union? The union scale was pathetic for years. I mean well into the '70s when I went back to Texas and formed a really pretty good band back there for a couple of years. One time one of the union guys came in and told us why don't we join the union. I said, "What's scale?" and he told me and I said, "We're making more than that." And he just didn't know what to say. Now, we were on nationally syndicated TV one time and I think we had to join AFTA or something temporarily to be on TV. But that was a one-time thing.

Q - Had you become a member of the Musician's Union would you have been offered concert slots?

A - I don't think so. I can tell you from being in the business for many, many years after that, and professional sound at the highest level, that the concert business is typically based on record sales. Now, when I was back in Texas after The Legend, okay, maybe '69, '70, '71, somewhere in there, I had a band that was pretty good called The U.S. Naval and we played tons of concerts for whoever came through El Paso. We opened for Jefferson Airplane. We opened for Canned Heat. Those were all concerts and we were always there playing and nobody ever asked us for a union card. (laughs)

Q - Are you doing anything musically today?

A - Not really. I'm fixing to turn 72. It doesn't mean I never will, but it's highly unlikely, let's put it that way.

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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