Gary James' Interview With Wayne Matteson Of
The Rumblers



In the early 1960s they entered the charts with an instrumental record called "Boss". That was in February, 1963. Since they called Southern California home, "Boss" went Top Ten in some local markets and all the way to number two on KFWB in Los Angeles. (#83 on the Billboard Hot 100) The group we are talking about is The Rumblers. Bassist Wayne Matteson spoke with us about the group's history.

Q - Wayne, let's start at the present and work our way back to The Rumblers. What, if anything musically, are you doing at the present time?

A - I retired. It was kind of a long story which we don't have time and it's not necessarily related to The Rumblers. It is indirectly. My old partner, who was part of The Rumblers, not an original members, Rex Du Long, he was so proud to be a Rumbler, well he and I, in the '70s The Rumblers were gone and he and I started a duo called The Four Hand Band. We were quite successful at doing that. We traveled all over the country (the U.S.) and we had a lot of fun and did a lot of things. Of all the original Rumblers, including myself, he stuck to music. I stayed with it until 1979. From 1970 'til 1979 Rex and I played together. Between the two of us we had 1,247 pounds of equipment. (laughs) We carried a B-3, an upright piano. Between the two of us we played twelve instruments. It was kind of interesting when they would get on a plane and send us, they would think they were getting a duo like Loggins And Messina, a two guitar duo, and all of a sudden we show up with 1,247 pounds of equipment. (laughs)

Q - You can't play all those instruments at once. Today you could have those instruments on computer and you would play bass and Rex would play whatever he's playing.

A - The only thing we had electronic was a drum machine and we had a good one. We would sometimes pass instruments to each other during different parts of the song. With The Rumblers, my main instrument started with guitar, like most people that end up as bass players. But I was a bass player all through The Rumblers and other bands that I played in. I also played guitar. I had a Les Paul and then I had my bass. I played the banjo. I had a Martin D 28. We had a Guild twelve string. So, that was all our strings, but then Rex had our keyboard, the B-3 and the upright bass. He also played sax. He played sax in The Rumblers as a matter of fact.

Q - You guys were playing cover material, correct?

A - Oh, yeah.

Q - Top 40.

A - We were playing stuff, but not like any other duos because of the fact that we did so many things. The Rumblers were not like any other band at the time. We just weren't and that sort of carried over into whatever we did musically together. When I played in other bands for example I just played whatever the material was that we were doing. We always had an interesting take of how we would play, how we would interpret other people's music.

Q - In the duo you were playing where? Are we talking Holiday Inns? Sheratons? Marriotts?

A - We were playing more upscale because we're talking about the '70s. In the '70s a lot of very nice restaurants had very nice lounges. They didn't necessarily call them bars. We played with a lot of corporations. We were with Far West Services, which had like three hundred restaurants throughout the country at that time. They started out with coffee shops and then they went to Reubens and Plank Houses. They were mostly West Coast oriented, but they did have 'em all over the country and we played a lot of those throughout most of Orange County, California, which is kind of where we were based out of at that time.

Q - They would probably book you for two weeks at a time, wouldn't they?

A - When we were first starting it was always interesting. When we first decided we were going to put this duo together we were playing in these real dives. I mean they were just neighborhood bars, little piano bars. We weren't making very much money. (laughs) They would always say, "You guys are so good! You guys are so good! We're gonna have to let you go." We'd go, "What?" We got this it seemed like everywhere we went. If they just said, "You guys suck! Get out," that would have been easier to take than tell me how great you are, "You're fired!" But we finally clicked on this one thing in San Diego. We went in there for two weeks and ended up there for three months, which got us a gig at another place for nine months. When we went into places we were usually there for a long period of time.

Q - You must have liked it to do it for such a long period of time.

A - Well, I'll tell you one thing that was funny about that. We worked for this one company that had like three places. This was in Anaheim, California and about a mile from Disneyland. It was in 1973. We were playing between three very nice dinner houses. We were playing contemporary music for the day, but the restaurant had that kind of Western motif. It was a steak house. So, I made this deal with the owner and this had got to be a first for any musician: when a musician says, "I'm off work. I'm taking a vacation," it means they're out of work. (laughs) So, I said, "I want to make a deal." There were three owners and he was the primary owner. I said, "If we work for you for a year, would you give us the same consideration you would give one of your waitresses or busboys or bartenders?" He said, "What's that?" I said, "A week's paid vacation." He thought about it and said, "Sure." So, we're the only musicians that got a week's paid vacation.

Q - That is different! Let's talk about The Rumblers now. The Rumblers started in the late 1950s?

A - Mike Kelishes, who was the rhythm guitar player, he and I met in the fourth grade. We were nine years old. We knew each other and lived maybe a half mile or so from each other, but we met in school and became the best of friends. We were at each other's house all the time. That continued on through when we were in The Rumblers, and it continued through when he wasn't in The Rumblers. We're still friends even now. How it got started is Mike and Johnny Kirkland met in junior high and I knew Johnny as well too. But they became really, really close friends. Best buddies. They saw this group when they were freshmen in high school, like 1959, called The Mojo Men. They were one hit guys called Mojo workout. They saw these two guys doing these songs and they decided they wanted to do that. So, they started playing guitars. At this point I had already been playing guitar and was taking guitar lessons, but I was learning stuff like "Glow Little Glow Worm" and I was learning how to read. We were all in high school together and they had this thing in the gymnasium. All of a sudden I see these guys I've known, especially Mike, whom I've known forever, and they're playing Rock 'n' Roll! Wow! I said, "You guys are great! How do you do that?" A couple of days later they approached me and say, "We're gonna start a band. Do you want to be in it? We're gonna have you play bass." I was playing guitar. I said, "What's that?" They said, "You just play the four bottom strings." I went, "Oh, okay." (laughs) So, that's how it started.

Q - Not knowing anything about the bass, you then pretty much picked it up on your own?

A - Yeah. It's funny because the first thing we ever played was at Norwalk High School in California. We played for fifteen minutes and was three of us playing Sears Silvertone guitars out of one Sears Silvertone amp. That was it. We had this friend of mine who was a drummer. I think his drums came from Sears too. That was it. That was the first time we ever played.

Q - When The Rumblers started, you were doing what kind of material?

A - We were primarily an instrumental band. We started getting serious and realized we can't be playing these kind of guitars. We needed to have real instruments. So, I got a new Fender. My bass was a '61 Fender Precision that I got in 1962. Johnny and Mike each got Stratocasters, and we all had Fender amps. At that time we were playing more things and had a different drummer. We were all still in high school. We were Seniors in high school. I don't remember how we found Adrian (Lloyd), but all of a sudden Adrian showed up. He was about three years older than we were and he was experienced. He'd played in bands. He was much more savvy about the music world than we were. We knew nothing about it really except we just liked to play it. We could listen to the records and duplicate the records 'cause they weren't really complicated at that time. But Adrian came in and he had this beautiful set of drums and he could sing. None of us sang. He was really good compared to us. We learned a lot from Adrian. Good and bad. The music we were playing was more of a '50s, early Rock 'n' Roll (style). Then we got Bob Jones in the band. He was a Junior in high school. Bob was an incredible sax player. Really good. Good musician. He was in like all the bands at his high school. The Marching Band. The Jazz band. The stage band. He was a very good musician. So, he joined the band. The music that we really loved was Black music. R&B. That's what we really played. That's what we were drawn to more than anything else.

Q - There were probably more instrumental groups back then.

A - Right. Duane Eddy was my idol. I had a picture of myself with a sweater like he had on one of his albums. I wanted to be Duane Eddy. And he's still around, as you know. There seems to be a resurgence of Surf music all over the world, which kind of inspires me, but regardless, people in Wisconsin are playing Surf music. I don't know where you surf in Wisconsin.

Q - One of the questions I asked Mike Love a few years back was how Surf music gained popularity in the the Mid-West.

A - We did many, many shows with them, (The Beach Boys) and I can tell stories about them, but I won't. (laughs)

Q - What type of venues were The Rumblers playing in?

A - We were playing in a lot of what they called canteens. They would have 'em on Friday nights. Because we were still in school, Adrian was able to go out and scrounge up jobs for us. Because he's from the Long Beach area, a lot of 'em were at Long Beach schools. So, we were playing at a lot of what they called canteens. They would have like Friday night dances. It was like a dollar to get in. We played a lot of those and we got really popular. The more popular we got at these canteens, we were playing at those pretty much every Friday. One of the groups that really influenced us was a group called The Pastels. We knew of them because one of their sax players, they had two, was in like a couple of classes ahead of us in the same school. I think everybody else in The Pastels was out of school. We're like 15, 16 years old and he was like 17, 18 and the rest of the guys were probably in their early 20s in The Pastels. A really good band. It's what we really wanted to attain. Adrian was a friend of one of the guitar players in The Pastels. The Pastels were recording at this studio in Downey, California that was a combination record store that dealt primarily in older records. People came from all over when they wanted something from Bill Haley or 1953. Something like that. They also had a recording studio that used to be a laundromat. They tuned it into a four-track recording studio and The Pastels had recorded there. Adrian went in there and we had recorded this one song and paid ten dollars to record this song. We put it out and it actually got released. It probably sold like three copies. (laughs) Adrian took it into the studio and played it for 'em. They said, "Why don't you guys come in and talk." So, we went in and they talked to us and said, "Well, come in and we'll start recording some stuff. We'll try some ideas." It sort of evolved from that. We just started working on things and working on things. Eventually we hit on "Boss".

Q - That's the record that was put out on the Downey Records label.

A - Yeah. It was Downey Records. We were originally on Downey and Dot picked us up after the record started getting some action. We were the first group that Dot (Records) had that they considered a Rock 'n' Roll group, 'cause everybody they had was like Lawrence Welk and The Lennon Sisters and Pat Boone.

Q - And Downey Records had The Chantays.

A - Oh, yeah. We sort of opened the door because the studio had such a unique sound that people started coming down from L.A. and recording there. Right now, "Boss" is number two in L.A. (57 years ago today, right around Christmas time, 1962). The Chantays came out early to mid-1963.

Q - Who else would have been on Downey Records.

A - Barry White, I'll tell you the Barry White story. When we were recording and putting out a lot of stuff, we had an incident with one of the radio stations. We were playing every week, KFWB and KRLA were the two major radio stations at the time. Pretty much every city had those two major stations. We were usually playing for one of those stations every weekend, every Friday and Saturday for one of their dances. Sometimes we got paid. Most of the time we didn't. When "Boss" came out, we couldn't get it on KRLA. They said, "We won't play it until you get 10,000 sales in this Southern California region." We were able to do that by going out to the inland empire and it reached number one there. Then they started playing it on the L.A. stations. We put our next record out called "Boss Strikes Back", which is what the studio wanted to do and call it. The program director, Red Foster, said, "I'm doing this dance. I'd really like you guys to do this. I want you to do this." Our manager at the time was Nick Kalishes, who was actually Mike Kelishes', our rhythm guitar player's dad. But we had a booking in Fresno, California. "Boss" was number one for five weeks in Fresno of all places. That's mid-California. That's nowhere near the beach. It's an agricultural area. Our record came out. We didn't have to jump through hoops. The record was being played. He (Red Foster) said, "I'd really consider it a favor if you would do this for me." It was more like a bribe. We said, "We can't. We've got this booking." He said, "Okay." The record was never played again. (laughs)

Q - Who wrote "Boss"? Was that you?

A - No. Actually the melody of "Boss" came from Bob Jones, our sax player. It was kind of a combination of all of us, but Bob was the one that really did it. But he didn't get credits for it because he was only sixteen years old at the time. For some reason, they didn't think they could do that. So, what they're showing is Jack Wenzel, who was our producer, as writer of "Boss".

Q - Downey Records being a small label, how much promotion could they have done for The Rumblers?

A - Not much. We didn't know anything and our manager was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft. He was a great guy and everything, but he didn't know anything about the music business. We needed a real manager. As soon as Dot wanted us to sign, and they made a big deal out of that, William Morris immediately came to us and wanted to send us to Europe and go on a tour because the record was hot. It was getting a lot of play and it was pretty successful, especially in England. They wanted to send us, but we're all in high school. We had a parents meeting and they decided our education was more important. So, William Morris said, "Okay," and that was that.

Q - Wayne, that's quite a story. Did a representative of William Morris see the band someplace, or did they hear the record?

A - I really don't know. Nobody ever told us. I just found out a lot of this just recently, within the last few years. At the time, the five of us never knew this happened. They approached Downey (Records) and Downey went to our manager, Nick, and then Nick called the parents. We didn't know about that. That would've changed a lot of things for our life I think.

Q - I guess so. At that time William Morris was, and still is, a major talent agency.

A - Oh, yeah.

Q - They represented the biggest names in show biz.

A - We kind of opened the door for that because we had a publicist they got for us and I remember we were doing some morning radio or morning television show even back then. Irwin Zucker was the name of the guy. He became very big in the business. The song was there, but it kind of had its run. This was early '63. Probably February, March, something like that. He kept talking, "Oh, my God. The Chantays are doing fantastic." We're thinking, "Hey, remember us?" He's telling how great all these things are going.

Q - The Rumblers broke up in late 1965 because your guitarist, Johnny Kirkland was drafted. Couldn't Johnny have been temporarily replaced?

A - We played. In 1965 it pretty much started breaking up. We used to play at Chino Prison about once a year. It was like a minimum security type prison. It wasn't Folsom. They had like Joey Bishop as the emcee. We were all about 20 at this point. So, we were out of high school. We were in college and still playing. We were going to be playing at Chino Prison and went in and did sound check. And here was this guy and he was a prisoner there, but it was Bobby Rydell's manager. He was this really heavy-set guy. It was almost like a cliche in a movie. He had a big cigar in his mouth and he's booking entertainment. He booked us on a Far West tour from jail! (laughs) But that was the best the group ever was and that was 1965. At that point we were six pieces, two saxes. Adrian was no longer in the band. We had Greg Crowner and had another sax player. Rex was playing sax. Then we had Dave Allen also playing sax. A very good sax player. And myself. Then Johnny and Mike. Bob Jones had left.

Q - Why do you say 1965 was such a good year? Are you speaking of musically or booking wise?

A - We were all 19 or 20. We're getting booked into nightclubs. The first place he booked us into was this club in Fresno, California because even though it was years later, we were still popular in Fresno. So, they thought it would be a big deal. But we're all under-age and the owner doesn't know this. He's just booking the band. We all came in and we're bringing in our equipment and he goes, "By the way, I want you guys to be made aware that I've got this topless dancer coming in. I'm not sure about the legality. Don't worry about it. If you get arrested, I'll bail you out." In comes the night and the girl comes and we rehearse with her. She's got clothes on. Of course we're playing "Night Train", a real bump and grind "Night Train". We're scared the first night we're going to go to jail. All of a sudden the whole Vice Squad is standing at the door. I don't know if it was in the county, but there was some legality that they couldn't do anything. They all just stood there and watched like everybody else at the front door. It was pretty funny. So, that's what we did. We worked various different clubs up through the coast. A lot of places. Going back to the earlier days of The Rumblers, they would have these big shows and they would have a series of groups, vocal groups, but didn't have their bands. There were a lot of Black groups going around, The Temptations, The Coasters, The Olympics. They loved us. We backed them because we already knew their songs 'cause we loved their songs and most of them we played them ourselves. We became one of the favorite bands of singers and groups at that time. We backed everybody. You name it. We backed everybody in the '60s.

Q - What was your connection to Barry White? I think we got side-tracked along the way.

A - This was in 1965 and we were all out of school. We're in college. For years our sessions would be on Tuesday nights. We'd usually start about seven or eight o'clock. Get over at ten because we were still going to school. Now we're all in college. We're driving. We come in one time and Jack Wenzel and Bill Wenzel meet us and say, "Okay, you guys always wanted to play Black music, right?" We went, "Yeah." "Okay, look in there." We look in the control booth and there's three Black guys in there. "They're going to teach you how to play Black." We're all excited. There were two kind of small guys and one really big Black guy. Okay? So, we go in and start working and recording. It was great. We were learning so much. They were experimenting because they had access to a studio. Over a period of time the two smaller guys just disappeared. I don't know where they went. The big guy is there and we're recording and we're just going crazy because it's the best we ever sounded as far as we're concerned. Sure, we're more mature, but the fact is he taught us what to play and more important what not to play. Our sessions would get over now at two o'clock in the morning. Well, we don't know how this guy got there, but we had to drive him home. It's 1965 and he lived in Watts. That's where the riots were going on in L.A. The thing is, one of us had to drive him home. What we would do, seriously, is in the echo chamber room they had a broom. There was a bathroom and in the bathroom there was a broom. We would literally go in and draw the short straw. He would have to drive him home. I had to do it two or three times. We all did it. There was never an issue. There was never a problem. We worked on his things and this guy was Barry White. He produced about two or three of our songs. It was released, but never really went anywhere. I got a royalty check a few months ago for $195, which I got a kick out of 'cause it was fifty-seven years ago. (laughs)

Q - Do you remember anything about this show you played with Bobby Fuller?

A - I don't remember much about it at all really. Where was the show? Do you know?

Q - Yes, I do. It was February 12^th, 1966. The Bobby Fuller Four headlined the 7^th Annual KXFM March Of Dimes Show at the Swing Auditorium, with Dick Dale And The Del-Tones, Jewel Akens, Cannibal And The Headhunters, The Bush, The Premiers, The Watt Four, of course The Rumbers, California Sons and April And Nino.

A - Oh, April And Nino. We loved them. Yeah, I do remember that show. Jewel Akens is one of the ones we backed. He didn't know what key his song was in. You know, "The Birds And The Bees". He was so unprofessional. We went on right before Dick Dale. We knew Dick pretty well. We did a lot of stuff with him. But, we had another show we had to do, so we just played and we were one of the earlier acts. The bigger, main acts were going to be towards the end, obviously. We were more of an opening act type of thing. I don't know where we were on the bill, but I remember we had to leave there because we had another booking that night. I didn't see Bobby Fuller. We were gone.

Q - Why did you record under the names The Nylons and Bel Cantos? Were you hoping that people would think of the band as a new band?

A - Well, yes and no. They just wanted to have it as a different thing. Bel Cantos was one of the songs that was produced by Barry White. It was a vocal. Actually it got some pretty good airplay in Europe for some reason or another. The Nylons were Mike and I and our producer, Jack Wenzel. Mike and I ditched school one day and went to the studio. We were seniors in high school. We walked and it was kind of a long walk. We went a good three or four miles to the studio. We wandered in there and they said, "What are you doing here?" Jack and Mike and I started fooling around. He said, "Well, let's try something." He was on drums. We just had two guitars, a little bit out of tune. It was almost like a joke. I don't know why they ever put that out.

© Gary James. All rights reserved.