The Guilloteens

THE GUILLOTEENS

THE GUILLOTEENS HISTORY

THE LESABRES 1961–63
Playin A Step Ahead Of The Pack

One observer said of the LeSabres, “They were a greaser group of wildmen – punks way before their time. When they got cranked up, they just blew your ass away.” The prevailing opinion of the band was that they were an excellent group of musicians that played a step ahead of the pack.

The band began at Kingsbury High in 1960 as Johnny and the Rawhiders. Led by singer Johnny Jackson and guitarist Laddie Hutcherson, the band also included Ray Davis (drums) and Ronnie Anderson (bass). By mid-1961 the group expanded by adding Barry Johnson (piano), and Joe Arnold (sax), and Gerald Smith had replaced Anderson on bass. They also changed their name to the LeSabres. By then they had built a big following – mostly in the Highland Heights area and specifically at the T. Walker Lewis YMCA.
“I can remember kids coming to see us who later had bands or just formed them,” says Ray Davis. “Larry Raspberry used to sit up behind the band and watch us while we played when he was just learning to play guitar. A lot of guys did that.”

Late in 1961 the LeSabres cut their first single, Risin' Mercury Blues/Summer Nights at Echo Studio on the corner of Manassas and Union. Released on the Co & Wi label, Stan Kessler produced the record, and it is one of the hottest discs from the era. Johnson, Hutcherson, and Arnold all swap great leads on Risin’ Mercury Blues. Arnold’s reputation as one of the elite horn players in the city, as well as a great showman on stage, started with this record.

“We began branching out, playing all over the city and competing mostly with Tommy Burk and the Counts for jobs,” says Laddie Hutcherson. “There was a growing debate as to who was the best group in town. I helped arrange a battle of the bands between us and them – one of the first battles staged in the city. We had it at Davis YMCA and they won. Randy Haspel of the Radiants was there, and in his infinite wisdom said that they won the battle of the bands, but we won the battle of the music.“ Mike Stoker of the Counts says, ”We won because we were the most popular group in the city, but I always thought they were more talented than us. They really put on a great show, all those guys could play.”

In early 1962, businessman Ray Hamilton took an interest in the band and became their manager. Hamilton owned the Millington Star newspaper as well as his own record label, RCT. The LeSabres cut two singles for Hamilton over the next six months: A Million Miles From Nowhere/ Heaven In My Arms and Standby/ Kneebeat. Both records were cut at Sonic, though neither disc equalled the first release nor did much.
“We got excited when Hamilton got interested in us,” says Davies. “We got on Wink Martindale’s Dance Party and had our picture in the Millington paper a couple of times, but nothing ever really happened for us. Jimmy Blackwood played keyboards with us some during that time. His daddy was one of the Blackwood Brothers, the gospel group, and didn’t know Jimmy was playing with us. He'd slip around and play a gig with us or go in the studio, but he never let his father know what was happening. I guess he didn’t think his dad would approve of him playing with a bunch like us.“
By late 1963 the LeSabres had broken up, with the guys moving on to several other groups – most notably Laddie Hutcherson with the Guilloteens.

The LeSabres stand out as one of the first really renegade kick-ass bands in the city.
Listen to Risin’ Mercury Blues and realize those were sixteen and seventeen yearold kids playing those licks! The song boldly exposes the attitude of the band and the time.

The LESABRES:
Laddie Hutcherson – guitar
Gerald Smith – bass
Pat Neal – bass
Barry Johnson – piano
Ray Davis – drums
Joe Arnold – sax
Ted Garretson – trumpet
Johnny Jackson – vocals

Discography:

• Summer Nights / Risin‘ Mercury Blues (Co & Wi 111) 1961
• Heaven In My Arms/A Million Miles From Nowhere (RCT 1302) 1962
• Knee Beat / Standby (RCT 2931) 1962

THE GUILLOTEENS 1964–68
Memphis Garage Legends

Upon leaving the LeSabres, Laddie teamed up with Joe Davis and Louis Paul. Joe had led the Joe Davis All-Stars and Louis was already gaining notoriety as a musical genius by the age of fifteen, playing in black clubs around town. In 1964, together, they were the rhythm section for a dying version of the Mar-Keys of Last Night fame. Steve Cropper and Donald“Duck” Dunn were mainly in the studio and Don Nix and Packy Axton remained the only original Mar-Keys touring.
“One night we were booked over in Arkansas as the Mar-Keys,” says Louis Paul. “Joe, Laddie, and I showed up, but the horns or the singers never did. The owner is pissed as hell. So we talked among ourselves, and I know we couldn’t have had an hour’s worth of material worked up. But we alked the owner into letting us play, and we played four hours and never repeated a song. It was magic, man!” On the way back to Memphis, the three of them spoke about how they had clicked and decided to keep it that way. They broke off on their own as a trio – a move which was unprecedented at the time.
“For months after that, we were a phantom band,” says Paul. “We’d pop up in some place and play a set and take off. The kids were crazy about us. We must have practiced five months in my bedroom – working up every song in the top forty. When we finally started booking, we hit them with every song being played on the radio.”

“We all started growing our hair long and wearing matching English-style clothes,” says Laddie Hutcherson. “We chose the name Guilloteens because it sounded English. We were really beginning to cause a buzz around town. Jerry Williams had managed the Mar-Keys, and he took over managing us. We became the houseband at the Roaring ‘60s and were packing the house every weekend.”

By early 1965 the band was ready for something bigger. They learned that all that was necessary to get on Shindig, a popular rock and roll show on ABC-TV, was an audition. Williams packed the band up and took them to Los Angeles. Upon arriving, they auditioned and got a job at the Red Velvet Lounge. Though their first couple of nights were shaky, they soon were drawing huge crowds. “We had the Righteous Brothers, Glen Campbell, Billy Preston, Dick and Dee Dee – all kinds of people coming to see us,” says Hutcherson. “When we weren’t playing at the Red Velvet, we’d go out to little outlying towns with DJs like Bob Eubanks and back up people like Sonny and Cher at roller rinks and places like that.”
“One night the Righteous Brothers brought Phil Spector to hear us, and he was crazy about the band and Louis’ voice. He invited us up to his mansion the next day to work on I Don’t Believe, a song Louis had written, which was in the early stages.

We drive through those gates and can’t believe what’s happening to us. Jack Nitzsche was there and played piano on the song. We went into Gold Star Studio, and it was unbelievable what Spector didwith that song. He had that ‘wall of sound‘ going and it just blew us away! He had to go to New York for a couple of weeks but said when he got back he’d make I Don’t Believe into a hit. Man, we were on cloud nine!”
Manager Jerry Williams had been in Memphis during this time, getting married. Upon his return he negotiated a deal with Hanna-Barbera, and the band signed up. Stories differ on why they did not wait for Spector to return, and to this day, the band members feel their future went down the drain after missing that opportunity. Hanna-Barbera was then huge in the cartoon business (the Flintstones, Jetsons, Yogi Bear et al), but new to the world of rock & roll – they were not fully prepared to market and promote the Guilloteens.
“We went from the wall of sound to Huckleberry Hound,” laments Paul. “Jerry just didn’t want to wait on Spector. We cut a good record for Hanna-Barbera and got pretty good airplay out there, but you would have had to have heard the Spector version!
It was unbelievable!”

When the record was released in the summer of 1965, the Guilloteens had several national television appearances on shows like The Loyd Thaxton Show, American Bandstand, and Where The Action Is (twice), and then they finally got on Shindig. “We did Shindig and did I Got My Mojo Working with the Searchers,” says Laddie. “They were on this riser, and then they brought us up on another. They had star ted the song off, and we were all rockin’, and they did the first verse. But when it was our turn, Louis stepped to the mike and bellowed out I Got My Mojo Working in that soulful voice of his, and you could see the Searchers step back. Louis could really intimidate like that.“

“We made a lot of friends and contacts while we were out there,” says Laddie.“The Righteous Brothers gave me a twentieth birthday party. They had a cake with these little plastic Beatles figures on it and had left Paul off so here’d be only be three on it. Everything was going pretty good. Then Jerry said we were going back to Memphis. We went from making good money and playing with musicians we’d always admired, to coming home and playing freebies.”

The band came home frustrated, but to the people in Memphis they were stars. They had one to the coast, cut a record and been on national television – everything a band could dream of. The legend was born. “When we signed with Hanna-Barbera, they took us out to the Vox plant and told us to pick out any equipment we wanted,” says Hutcherson. “Of course, we were like kids in a candy store. Not long after we got back to Memphis, George Klein had us on Talent Party. Afterward, we were standing around in the studio, and this younger group that had been on the show was watching us, and you could tell they had been ‘Guilloteened‘.

They were just all starry-eyed over us. There was this one kid in the band whose parents had bought him this expensive gold-top Gibson, and he traded it to Louis Paul for his piece of crap Vox. Jerry Williams pulled Louis to the side and said, ‘Man, you can't take this kid’s guitar, his mama will kill him. You gotta trade back.’ Louis looked at him and said as serious as hell, ‘Man, I can’t do that – we did black-black, no trade back! I can’t go back on that!’ That was Louis. The guy was a musical genius, but he could be out there sometimes.”

“Louis was real tight with Elvis. He picked me up once and said, ‘Come on. We’re going to the Big House’. Elvis always called him ‘champ’. We pulled up to the gates of Graceland in his old Plymouth and he hollers at Vester (Elvis' uncle and main guard at the mansion) to ‘open up! It’s the champ.’ I couldn´t believe it! Elvis loved his voice. Louis affected so many people like that. All those people in L.A. were crazy about him. We spent a lot of time with the Byrds. You listen to the guitar on I Don’t Believe and Turn Turn Turn, and you can hear where Louis influenced McGuinn a lot.” Hanna-Barbera released For My Own/ Don’t Let The Rain Get You Down late in 1965. Early in 1966, Louis Paul left the band. His frustration with management had finally become too much. ”We showed up one day to pick him up,” says Hutcherson, ”and he had dyed his hair pink and said he was quitting the band.” Buddy Delaney was brought in to play bass and Hutcherson moved to guitar. For a brief time, Jim Vinson was brought in as a second guitar, but the band suffered with the loss of Paul. They fullfilled their commitment to Hanna-Barbera with the release of the exceptional I Sit And Cry/ Crying All Over My Time in late 1966. Over the next two years the band did two tours with Paul Revere and the Raiders, played the top clubs in Memphis, and had a steady string of bookings in Florida.
		A ROYAL MEMPHIS welcome was tendered as Memphis‘ own Guilloteens when Mayer Ingram presented keys to the city to the new famed rock n‘ roll trio. Getting the keys are, left to right: Louis Paul, Laddie Hutchinson and Joe Davis, billed as the “world‘s fastest drummer.“ The threesome, managed by Memphis‘ Jerry Williams, will be featured on the coast-tocoast Shindig show at 7:30 tonight on Channel 13.
In 1967 the Guilloteens signed with Columbia. This deal produced two singles. One, Wild Child, was comparable to the Hanna-Barbera material. “We cut Wild Child at Bradley’s Barn in Nashville,” says Hutcherson. “John Simon produced it and played piano. Tommy Cogbill played guitar and Flash was one of the back-up singers. We had a lot of fun with that one. Late in 1967 we went to New York for our final session. We got to hit all the shops, buying clothes and boots. We had a blast! We had some real hot session players with us on that record, like Bobby Gregg, who played on a ton of stuff.”


		Versions of the Guilloteens struggled on through 1968.Hutcherson quit for health reasons and Joe Davis tried to keep it going for a while, but it was just a shadow of the great band it had been. “When I left the Guilloteens, I played down at the Western Lounge, a place wrestler Jackie Fargo had a piece of,” says Louis Paul. “He’d lock the place late at night and whip the hell out of the band. He taught me how to wrestle and even took me out to some small towns as his tag team partner.” Paul went back to L.A. in 1970 at the urging of Three Dog Night’s Danny Hutton, who earlier had had a solo carreer on Hanna-Barbera. Over the next two years, Paul played on several Three Dog Night records as well as with Blues Image and Bobby Hebb, to name a few. He returned to Memphis in 1972 and recorded a critically acclaimed solo album that highlighted his amazing vocal and musical talents. Later he recorded singles on the Memphis, Shelter

and Cotillion labels. Hutcherson returned to his rootsand played in several groups over the years. Today, he is a regular solo performer on Beale Street. Joe Davis lives in Dallas.“I guess I could be bitter over the way things turned out for us,” says Hutcherson.“We had every chance any band could dream of, though it never quite happened. I’m proud, though, when guys like Keith Sykes and Jimmy Davies tell me we inspired them. I’m proud of what we did.“

THE GUILLOTEENS: Laddie Hutcherson – bass, guitar, vocals Louis Paul – guitar, keyboards, vocals Joe Davies – drums Buddy Delaney – bass Jim Vinson – guitar
Discography: • I Don‘t Believe/Hey You (Hanna-Barbera HBR 446) 1965 • For My Own/Don‘t Let The Rain Get You Down (Hanna-Barbera HBR 451) 1965 • I Sit And Cry/Crying All Over My Time (Hanna-Barbera HBR 4861) 1966 • Wild Child/You Think You‘re Happy (Columbia 43852) 1967 • Dear Mrs. Applebee/I Love That Girl (Columbia 44089) 1967

THE MEMPHIS MARKS 1966
A Room Full Of Great Players

Joe Correro, Jr. And Mark Tidwell, two of the players and co-writers of Just Jam, knew nothing of the record, never remembered playing on it, and did not know that it had even been released. Also listed as writers were Laddie Hucherson, who at the time was with the Guilloteens; and John de Witt, who along with Correro and Tidwell, was with Joe Frank & The Knights. The record came out in 1966 on the Block label. Steve Blockman and Jerry Williams, who released records periodically on Block, say the Memphis Marks were never a performing band. “We spent a lot of late hours in studios back then,” says Jerry Williams. “Sometimes, if the guys had a good jam going, we would turn on the recorder and tape them. Weeks later, we might be listening to some tapes and say,‘man, this isn’t bad.‘ We’d come up with a name and put it out. Sometimes we couldn’t remember who actually was there at the studio that night!” Just Jam is just that – a late night jam with some of the best musicians in the city. It got little airplay and sold nothing. Another Block record by the Memphis Group was probably the same story. Just Jam, according to Steve Blockman, was cut at Sun. “We cut some good stuff in those sessions,” says Williams. “On any given night, we’d have a room full of great players like Laddie, Flash, Correro, and all those guys playing until the wee hours. Probably some of the best stuff was never released– just taped over the next session.”

THE MEMPHIS MARKS:
Laddie Hutcherson – guitar
Mark Tidwell – guitar
Joe Correro Jr. – drums
John DeWitt – bass

Discography:
• Markin’ Time/Just Jam (Block Records 451) 1966

ODDS & SODS
Side-Projects, Solo Recordings And Other Things

One of the most amazing discoveries to come to light during the research into the Guilloteens' history is a recording the band put down with Nino Tempo & April Stevens, the hitmaking brother and sister duo famous for the 1963 chart-topper Deep Purple. Little known is the fact that I Love How You Love was recorded with the Guilloteens on backing instrumental duties; Louis played the prominent bagpipes and 12-string guitar on it. How did it come to pass that the Guilloteens recorded a 45 with Nino& April? “We were a very popular group in Hollywood at that time,“ Louis Paul comments. “In 1965 we played the Red Velvet Club on Sunset Boulevard across the street from the Lawrence Welk Theater. Lots of music people came to see us. April and Nino heard us at the club and wanted to record with us.“ Louis further recalls that the band, whose name on the label is misspelled “Guilloteenes“, also recorded a second track with Nino & April that night, but no one remembers its title andwhether it was ever released. Another band obviously impressed by the Guilloteens were the Searchers. Despite being blown off the stage while jamming together on I Got My Mojo Working on TV's Shindig, the UK hitmakers recorded a cover of I Don´t Believe for their March1967 appearance on BBC's Saturday Club. As Louis recounts, “Our mojo was really working that night! We played and sang live on that number. You can tell who was really playing live, because they had cords plugged into their guitars.“
According to rumour, there was an episode of The Flintstones primetime cartoon that featured a prehistoric band that supposedly were the Guilloteens (as the Guillostones). No one could confirm this – we do know that the Beau Brummelstones appeared at one point, however. More certain is that in the late ‘60s, Louis recorded a number of demos written by Dr. John. The session happened at Nashville West Studio in California and the back up vocals were done by theBlossoms, the resident singers from TV‘s Shindig. Two of these six recordings, The Change Will Do You Good and I'll Never Have You were released as a 45 in 1970 on the Intro Label.
At least two Guilloteens records were released overseas. The most common is the Dutch issue of For My Own b/w Don’t Let The Rain Get You Down. More obscure by far is the Australian release on Astor of the band‘s last HBR 45, I Sit And Cry b/w Crying All Over My Time. Also downunder, a version of I Love How You Love Me was released by Marion Gray& the Ricochettes. Featuring bagpipes, this was undoubtedly influenced by the Guilloteens‘ musical efforts on the Nino & April hit.
Although the facts regarding certain events remain unclear, there‘s no question that the Guilloteens leave a more than excellent legacy of potential hits. As Laddie said during a phone call, “It would be good to get all our music together.“ Finally, this has occurred – the Guilloteens are back on the chopping block, giving all of us a permanent account of...
Action! Action! Action!

Discography:
NINO TEMPO - APRIL STEVENS & THE GUILLOTEENES
• I Love How You Love Me/Tears Of Sorrow (Atco 6375) 1965

GUILLOTEENS
• For My Own/Don’t Let The Rain Get You Down (Funckler HB 45.220) 1965 Holland
• I Sit And Cry/Crying All Over My Time (Astor AP - 1288) 1967 Australia

LOUIS PAUL
• The Change Will Do You Good/I‘ll Never Have You (Intro 101) 1970

BUDDY DELANEY & THE CANDY SOUPE
• Girl/I Love That Girl (De-Shane 25529) 1969


Between 1970 and 1977 Louis recorded a number of 45s for various labels. In 1973, a complete album for Enterprise Records (a subsidiary of Stax) was released. The stories on the LeSabres, Guilloteens and Memphis Marks were first printed in Ron Hall's book “Playing For A Piece Of The Door – A History Of Garage & Frat Bands In Memphis 1960-75“. We'd like to thank Ron Hall and editor Sherman Willmott of Shangri-La Projects for their permission to use these parts of the book. If interested in more information on the Memphis garage music scene, you can order this excellent book and other items at:
www.shangrilaprojects.com or write to: Shangri-la Projects PO Box 40106 Memphis, TN 38174 USA

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