(50's / 60's / rockabilly / rock'n roll) Wade Curtiss - Bright Lights - 1997, MP3, 192 kbps

..."In one night we knocked off a remake of 'Voodoo Mama,''Bright Lights,''Maxente,' and I think 'Real Cool,' all at Howell. The guy who ran the studio was an older man. I don't think he had any idea what we were doing, which probably helped with the sound, ha ha! Back then, EQ's and multiple balance - none of that was even heard of! They'd just turn on the microphones and turn on the amps and away you went!
"Wade's sound was unique, driving. That sound came about because of his physical limitation. Because he couldn't play traditionally, didn't have the dexterity, he developed his own sound."
Wade had been mossing with home recordings back in Canada with hilarious radio skits starring his mother as Zsa Zsa Gabor, and now with his own combo, he began taping radio snows, band rehearsals, and live shows, providing a fascinating document of Buffalo teen nightlife.
"Man, we had some crazy times," laughs Dixie Dee, recalling life in show-biz with Wade Curtiss: "We were booked at Crystal Beach at the Ontario Hotel one night, and Wade insisted on driving. He picked me up in his convertible, and we were whipping down the highway at about sixty miles an hour and a bee stung him on the back of the neck! He could not reach back to swat it because his arms really couldn't reach back there and he started screaming and jumping around and I didn't see that he had a bee on his neck - I didn't know what was wrong!
"Another time, Wade took a job with a big black radio station and we did one of their dances, and we were trying to tit in and were just about to go into a popular song at that time, 'Pretty Blue Eyes,' and I didn't even think. I just dedicated it to all the girls in the audience. Everybody was laughing and of course there wasn't a blue eye in the place.
"I always wore a black tee shirt, tight pants: I had a lot of muscle, even though I wasn't wrestling professionally anymore. The band would usually start with an instrumental, then I would come out. I loved to finish with 'Ain't Got No Home.' I'd do both voices. One time we played a Lancaster Moose Club hop for a deejay named Freddie Claustine. There were always two bands at a big hop: a band at eight and a band at ten. The band at ten would finish the hop. When they finished, the hop was over. They wouldn't play any more records. Well, that night they brought in an out-of-town band to finish the hop, and when we got there. Freddie comes over to me and says he heard the band run through their stuff at tour, and he was worried because they just weren't any good. He was making a lot of money on these hops - he was getting over three hundred people in the Moose Club! So he says, 'Can you guys just hang around. I'll put these guys on first. I'll tell them I want to got them on the road earlier or something.' They went on. it was okay. Nobody went crazy or anything. Then we played and blew the place away. Well, we found cut later, the guy was Frankie Avalon. Bobby, Fabian - all from Philadelphia, all terrible!
I mean, a lot of the white singers - Jerry Lee, Elvis - they may have copied the black artists, but they had soul. These guys had nothing! When all that 'whitebread' stuff started to happen, the Rhythm Rockers started to slip out of vogue. People viewed us as just, well, not hep."
The end of the Rhythm Rockers came suddenly in 1961. "We were playing at a place in Riverside called the Club Bar, where we had built up a cult following. The place was packed every Friday and Saturday night. It was a blue-collar neighborhood, and our kind of music was really going over there really, really well. So one night, we're playing there and Wade tells me. 'I'm going to Nashville' and I said, 'When!?' and he says 'Monday'! And he tells me I should come too! I told him I couldn't just pick up and leave, that I had a job. He just.. left. He told us on that Saturday night - we had to cancel all our shows. We were booked weekends indefinitely, and suddenly, it was all over".
That particular Monday morning in 1961. Wade loaded up his car with his guitar, a new Silvertone tape recorder that he'd special-ordered from Sears, and a modicum of necessities, and headed for Music City, USA. His doings over the next dozen years, however, are sketchy at best. We know that he was involved in a fake Trashmen band during the mid-sixties, and thankfully, the tape of his frantic answer song to 'Surfin Bird,' titled 'Puddy Cat (Mama Meow-Mow),' has survived. In 1969, he recorded and released the astonishing "Electrics Theme," a crazed instrumental (originally titled "Steel Rocket") on which Wade plays both lead guitar and bass on his steel git setup. It ranks with the most atmospherically demented hunks of wax ever made,reminiscent of a sonic steel cage match between T. Valentine, Jerry McCain, and Joe Meek. He also started up his Record Masters business as a sideline, which he used to license his own and local yokels' material, as well as rare tracks from his personal record collection. He took over the defunct label name Aaron, on which Hank Swatley's legendary "Oakie Boogie" was issued, thus drawing the attention of various record mavens worldwide. His reissue of "Real Cool" on the Aaron label bore the mysterious credit of "Duane De Santo, Guitar Man," no doubt confusing collectors. Oddly enough, Wade also connected with fellow wild man Hasil Adkins and, in fact, can be credited for getting Hasil into a professional recording studio for the first time. Hasil had sent Wade a demo and Wade had jumped at the opportunity to record the "Hunch Man" for Aaron. 'Duane was a nice guy,' recalls Hasil, 'but there was something weird going on. Somebody was after him or what all. I don't know. Duane got me set up in the studio and all, but he disappeared or somethin'. I made that "Blue Star' and 'He's Just Telling You That' and 'I'm In Misery,' when he got me up there, but then it never came out on Aaron like he said it would. I don't know what happened to that guy. One thing I can say about him though; he knew a good record when he heard it.'
Wade met the love of firs life, Susan Neal, at a wrestling match at Nashville Fairgrounds, and the couple married in 1974, settling in Madison, Tennessee. Wade's life took a new turn which drew largely on the experience of his early years in Buffalo: he entered the fabulous world of wrestling, adopting the tyrannical alter egos of the terrible Master Curtiss (who would chase opponents around In his motorized wheelchair and handcuff them to the turnbuckle) and the rich and evil Doctor Master Canada. His valet was the enigmatic Miss Candy, whose face was totally concealed by an impenetrable veil Wade got into the game by running ads locally promoting his shoestring operation, SIU (Sports International Unlimited), and calling for willing, unfettered grapplers to come forward. His stable came to include masked tag teams the Interns, the Pink Panthers, and the Canadian Blues, and assorted bad guys such as the masked Vicious Victor, Hillbilly Herb, Hillbilly William, Rockin' Midnight Special #1 (and #2!), Super Destroyer, and Nigntstalker. There was also the ever-popular Ladies' League with Rockin' Eva, Princess Myra, Saphire (sic), Denise Black, and 'Big' Mary G. All the while, Wade was paying the bills working by day as a draftsman for Metro Water and Sewer in Nashville, but having the time of his life in the wild world of wrestling by night. Susan, his widow, recalls. "Wade was always a bad guy. He'd say 'I just don't give a damn.' One night in Gallatin there was a woman who thought her baby face wrestler son was getting hurt in the ring by Vicious Victor, I think it was She had a small handgun in her purse and was about to shoot Wade, who was pulling his usual nasty tricks ringside. He had a completely split personality. He was one way-mean and evil-in public, and totally another behind closed doors. He al ways felt you had to be one way for the people. He liked Dan Green and Bearcat Wright and Ho Jo (the judo chop guy), Mark Lewin, the Von Enchs, Don Curtis." Wade hobnobbed with the cream of the crop in every field of entertainment. Susan adds, "He had first met Link Wray I think in the late '50s, because when they met up again in 1979, they were talking about playing together twenty years before. They were really good friends. Also Little Richard played a gig with him once. I got to meet him once when he was still pretty straight!
"In December of 1979, Wade went into the hospital with cellulitis in his legs. Since he couldn't bend them up at all, fluid collected in his legs. They wanted to amputate, but he did not want that. He did not want to be treated as a cripple, and if they took off his legs, he wouldn't be able to get in and out of the car and go places. He didn't want to be left in a corner somewhere. He managed to do just about everything. He could type, he could write his signature and autographs, and he made a special hand control for his car so he could drive. He tried to put a patent on that invention, but the attorney told him it would cost a thousand dollars just to start the paperwork He wanted the WWF and WCW to come and check him out and get him into their federations, but they must've been afraid that he'd get hurt or something. He was the only one in the world who had the idea to be a mean manager in a wheelchair. When they were doing the wrestling dolls, they could've made a Wade Curtiss doll with a motorized wheelchair with a remote control. It's too bad."
Susan describes what she calls Wade's "behind dosed doors" persona: "Wade loved baseball - the Dodgers were his team. He kept calling Dodger Stadium and finally got through to Tommy Lasorda, and they met when Tommy came to Nashville, and became friends. Wade was a Republican; he wanted to be President, of the United States. He loved shrimp, deep fried. He drank black coffee, five or six cups a day. He loved Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis. Link Wray, and he loved Nancy Sinatra's 'These Boots Are Made For Walking.' He loved fancy shirts with After Six ruffles down the front. Also, his hair had to be perfect; he sometimes spent up to eight hours on his hair. He did not like hippies Beards irritated him. He didn't like panhandlers. They'd come up to him for a handout and he'd just say 'Just don't even bother me." He had no use for people who wouldn't better themselves. He had an attitude. He had that attitude m real life, at ringside, everywhere he went. People would stop and look and he'd yell 'What are you lookin' at!?' He suffered with terrible pam in his legs and took Percodan for it. He missed a lot of wrestling matches because either the pam was so bad or he couldn't drive with the Percodan."
Master Duane Theodore Canada Russell War a Curtiss De Santo expired on August 7, 1993, from congestive heart failure brought on by cellulitis in his extremities. His bones may rest in scenic sojourn in Nashville's Woodlawn Cemetery where a stone marks the spot, but you can bet your bottom dollar he's elsewhere boomin' the big beat and whackin' pretty boys on the noggin with the crook end ot a jewel-encrusted cane, far beyond the shadow of sorrow and the valley of pain.