The beginning of our journey......

I would like to welcome you to "El Paso's Musicians (Past and Present)" My intent with this site is to bring information about musicians I have known in El Paso from the 60's to present day. Many of the musicians that you will be reading about were either in groups that I played in while living in El Paso, as well as, the ones that I befriended all throughout high school and college. I graduated from UTEP in 1972 and in 1973 my wife and I left El Paso with a vocal show group called The Sounds Royale. The group started out with Sam Stephenson (guitar-vocals), Gayle Hageman (bass-vocals), Tedd McKeever (keyboards-vocals), Debbie Wilson (flute-vocals) and myself, Rick Kern (drums-vocals) The group was based out of Newport Beach, CA. We performed at mainly Orange County venues such as The Disneyland Hotel, Charley Browns in Huntington Beach, The Newporter Inn, Del Webb's Townhouse and the San Francisco Hyatt Regency. For many years all the members of our group were scattered all over the place. Sam, has retired as the Dir. of Safety for Union Pacific Railroad and moved back to his hometown of El Paso, Tx. Gayle, Tedd and Wayne have all passed away. Sam and I are still trying to find Debbie. I am sure she is warming many hearts out there somewhere with her fabulous voice. In 1978 my wife and I moved back to El Paso to be with our respective families and to start our own family. Both of our kids, Ricky and Nicole are musicians both living in Austin. Nicole use to play electric cello with an Austin band called Alex Dupree and the TrapDoor Band. She also played and toured with a popular Austin band called "Balmorhea". Both of our kids went to UT Austin. Ricky graduated in May, 2007 and Nicole graduated in May, 2008. They both love photography and film. The YouTube videos on this site were produced by my son to show our capability to show videos of performers on this site. Unfortunately when the Blogger site enabled encryption it deleted my videos. Hopefully we'll be able to retrieve them again in the future. He also did my colorful splash page that you see when you first log on to the site. There were two other groups that I played with while on the road. When the Sounds Royale disbanded I advertised my profile at the Local Musicians Union that I belonged to in Los Angeles. Two guys were looking for a drummer/vocalist and that was the beginning of "Tapestry". The members were Curt Hespe (keyboard-bass-horn-vocals) Dan Evans (guitar-bass horn-vocals) and myself (drums-horn-vocals) This was the group that travelled the most. We played many show rooms from one corner of the U.S. to the other, including two tours of Canada. Our very first job, after only being rehearsed for two weeks, was the Sahara in Lake Tahoe. During that time we appeared on the same billboard with Elvis, Diana Ross, Isaac Hayes, The Fifth Dimension and the Jackson 5. We were suppose to be there for one week and they held us over for 5. The only bad part of that booking was when we all came down with the flu at the same time. Remember the saying "the show must go on" well, it did with the grace of God and alot of liquids. This group continued travelling all over the country. We even took a three day break to cut an album in Cincinatti, Ohio at Queen City Studios. We sold the album mainly to people that saw our shows. This group lasted about three years. My last group on the road was also called "Tapestry" It consisted of Dan Evans from the first Tapestry, Jerry Johnson (bass-guitar-steel guitar-vocals), Danny Miller (guitar-vocals) and myself on drums and vocals. This group came together as a result of my old friendship with Jerry Johnson. He was a Chaplains Assistant at Ft. Bliss in El Paso in 1969. We played in a group called the Basic Sound at the Knights Club. That club was in the old Rodeway Inn at Bassett Center. Jerry was living in Long Beach, CA. when I asked him if he would like to form a new group. Out of my three groups on the road, this one was the group that was more destined for a recording contract and opportunity to break out of the club scene. We will never forget the night that we were playing at the Reubens in West Covina, CA. when our agent came in and told us that we were going to be on the Captain and Tennile TV Special with Neil Diamond. Dick Clark was the producer of the show. We signed the contract and had our original songs ready to showcase. There was only one small problem - none of the networks picked up the contract. How do you say "that's show biz" It was not too long after that I left the group and came back to my home town of El Paso where I still live. This is the rest of the story....
Showing posts with label Danny Lucas McDaniel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Danny Lucas McDaniel. Show all posts

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Tribute to Danny Lucas McDaniel - Oct. 2, 2008

(Click Image to View)
The Border Legends made a special presentation
to Danny Lucas McDaniel of Danny's Music Box
for all of his support to the El Paso musicians
over many years. We presented him with a
nice plaque and a picture of him and Peggy Sue
(of the Buddy Holley era) - taken at the recent
Tribute to Norman Petty in Ruidoso, New Mexico.
We Love You Danny! We ended his Tribute with
the phrase he always used with the customers -
"Tell Them Where You Got It, Babe"
To see the presentation go to YouTube and type
Border Legends under the music category.
Picture by Mike Louis
Submitted by Rick Kern
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Danny Lucas McDaniel and Peggy Sue - 8/16/08

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Danny McDaniel came up the hill to Ruidoso
to honor the late Norman and Vi Petty at the
tribute this weekend. How many of you knew
that Danny played drums for Buddy Holly in 1958?
Well, the lady seen here with Danny is Peggy Sue
Gerron or as Buddy Holly refered to as "Peggy Sue"
Submitted by Rick Kern
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Monday, November 5, 2007

Danny Lucas McDaniel - 1960

Danny Lucas McDaniel is the musicians's
musician. Every musician in El Paso knows
Danny. He has a great music history as a
player and has helped most of us when it
came to buying our equipment. He has owned
Danny's Music Box for many years and has
the reputation of being the fairest price to
all of us that needed equipment. Thanks Dan!
Submitted by Rick Kern
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Danny Lucas Combo - 1968

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L-R Mike Ciccarelli-guitar, Dave Holt-bass,
Danny Lucas-drums, Bruce Mills-sax, Rudy Gallardo-piano.
They were playing at the White Sands Officers Club.
Submitted by Danny Lucas McDaniel
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Danny Lucas McDaniel

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Left to Right: Frank Goff, Freddy Bunch,
Fred Beatty, Danny Lucas, Roy Wilcox
and Tommy Allsup. This picture was shot in
1958 when Danny was on tour with Buddy
Holly. Notice the cricket on the bass drum.
They were not the Crickets but did play for
the Buddy Holly Show.
Submitted by Danny Lucas
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Cliff McDaniel (Danny Lucas) Paid by Buddy Holly

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How this pay receipt came about is a long story.
Rick Stone asked me to send a guy by the name
of Bill Griggs (lives in Lubbock, Tx. and is a Buddy
Holly collector) a copy of the Rock & Roll Exhibit
newspaper article that was recently published by
the El Paso Times. The result of that was that he
looked at this site that was mentioned in the
article. He saw a picture of Danny Lucas - who
was playing drums with Buddy Holly in 1958.
Bill then contacted me and I put him in touch with
Danny. The rest is history. He sent this copy of
the pay receipt to Danny and copied me to put on
the site. This is just another example of people
that really care about El Paso's great music history.
Check out Bill Grigg's site: http://www.Rockin50s.com
Submitted by Rick Kern and Bill Griggs
Thank you Rick Stone!
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Danny Lucas McDaniel - 1956

(Click Image to View)
Danny Lucas - 4th from the left, has
been playing drums most of his life.
This group was playing Western Swing
in Oklahoma. You name it and Danny has
played it. He's played with many famous
musicians. I started buying drums from
Danny when he was working for the Melody
Shop at Bassett Center in the 60's. He had two
stores up on Montana, one in Alamogordo,
N.M. and two on both sides of the freeway.
There is nobody else I would buy equipment
from - The McDaniel Boys Rock!!
"Danny's Music Box" is an El Paso Legend
with a million stories......
Submitted by Rick Kern
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