I always make terrible time on road trips. Today, on my way from El Paso to Phoenix, I made a long detour in Tucson to visit a couple friends.
I visited with my friend Michael Dixon, who runs a record lathe business there (and the lathecuts.com website), and we talked shop for a couple of hours. He helped me with a few ideas for improving my vacuum problem I’ve been having on my lathe, and showed me an uber-rare record lathe from the 1940s that he asked I not post photos of. Fun stuff for record-cutting geeks like myself.
Then I met up with my old pal Dewayne Quirico, the drummer and last surviving member of the Bobby Fuller Four. He lives in Tucson and we had a great dinner at his favorite local Mexican restaurant.
Dewayne has stories for days! He told me about recording “I Fought the Law” with the Bobby Fuller Four late at night, after a particularly hot show at PJs in Hollywood. He told me about all the fistfights the band would always get into. Wild stories about partying in Juarez, Mexico, and the time they got thrown in jail after Randy Fuller started a fight at a strip joint in Juarez, and Randy’s dad having to come bail them out of jail. He told stories about seeing Long John Hunter at the Lobby club in Juarez (“his drummer, Miguel, didn’t speak a word of English, but he played the best blues shuffle I’ve ever heard to this day”), and he also talked about seeing Little Joe Washington there too (“Little Joe was Nuts! He would hang upside down from the rafters, playing his guitar!”). I’m proud to say that not only was I lucky enough to play with Long John Hunter and Little Joe Washington in more recent years, I’ve been fortunate enough to play with Dewayne many times, as well.
He told stories about running into various celebrities in Hollywood in the mid-1960s, and stories about record label owners Bob Keane and Morris Levy and their Mafia ties, leaving the band and getting replaced by Dalton Powell. And of course Bobby Fuller’s unfortunate death in 1966 that ended the Bobby Fuller Four.
He told me stories about partying in Topanga Canyon in LA, and recording the 1971 Naturally album with Jesse Hill (of “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” fame). Dewayne’s memory of the sessions: “Man, if you handed a joint to Jessie Hill, you weren’t ever getting it back.”
He told stories of recording with Sylvester, the gay disco pioneer: “One time, just to mess with him, we put out some coffee creamer and cut it into lines on a mirror and handed it to him. You should’ve seen his face when he snorted that stuff!” Dewayne told stories of touring with Lee Clayton, who wrote “Ladies Love Outlaws” for Waylon Jennings, and who is given credit for coining the term “outlaw country.“ Dewayne also had stories about shooting a Cup O’Noodles commercial with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and as you can imagine, about a million more. So many stories, and never enough time.
At some point, we were the only customers left in the Mexican restaurant. I told him to go get his drumsticks out of his pickup truck (his personalized license plate simply says “DRUMMER”), and I went and got one of the Bob Wills Epiphone guitars out of my SUV. We jammed on “I Fought the Law” and “Let Her Dance” with Dewayne drumming on the table top, and closed the place down. I love Dewayne. He’s just the best dude. I’m so happy I got to see him and spend some time with him. Then I had to get on the road to Phoenix.
I always make terrible time on road trips.
See more photos and some videos at Deke’s original Facebook post!
