I’m spinning records tonight at my DJ gig at the Blind Lady Ale House in San Diego. I just played this Conway Twitty rockabilly masterpiece, “Long Black Train,” and I remembered the one time I got to work with Twitty’s wonderful guitar player from the early days, Al Bruno. What a character!
At some point I found out that Al lived in Las Vegas, so I called him up out of the blue and told him about this guitar geek show I did at Viva Las Vegas every year. He was up for doing a couple songs, so I instructed him to come over to the Orleans Casino and rehearse with us a day before the festival. He said he would be there.
Right around when I’d told him to show up, there was a knock at the hotel door. I opened the door, and I didn’t see anybody—then I noticed that there was a man who was on his knees, body pressed up against the door, who was at that point sliding forward with the weight of the door, winding up flat on his face.
He straightened himself up, got up off the ground, and stuck out his hand.
“I’m Al Bruno,” he said. “You must be Deke.” Then he had to go back into the hallway, after his practical joke, to fetch his 1959 Gibson ES-355, the one that Hank Garland had given him.
I mean, you can play the records from the 1950s, but I got to meet all these people. And like Al Bruno, almost all of them were 100% out of their minds, in the best possible way. RIP Al, I hope you’re playing a weird practical joke on somebody in heaven tonight.
