In 1969, when I was in eighth grade, Mom and Dad took my brother and me to the Atlanta International Pop Festival because Johnny Rivers was playing there.
Mother promptly lost her contact lens and everyone, including Johnny Rivers, got down on their hands and knees and tried unsuccessfully to find it. Finally, Johnny Rivers invited them back to his dressing room one night. They sat at a front table every night for a week, they told us. Sometimes she would put her ear right against the stereo speaker so she could literally hear every breath he drew.ĭad took Mother to see Johnny Rivers at the famous Whisky A Go Go nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. She spent hours alone in the living room listening to them over and over. Of course, Mother also bought every Johnny Rivers record as soon as it came out. The legendary disc jockey Scott Shannon was there at the time, I recall. We moved to Columbus, Georgia, when I was in sixth grade, and we continued this same routine with Mother’s new favorite radio station, WCLS. The Strand Theatre is much like our Tennessee Theatre - only smaller. We’d also take turns calling the radio station, which was long distance, to request Johnny Rivers songs. They just might not have been as prolific with the correspondence as we were.) (Which, I’m pretty sure there actually were. We used fake names and all those different colors of ink and paper to make it seem as if there were legions of Johnny Rivers fans out there in radio land. Mother would buy stacks of blank postcards and various kinds of stationery and she, my brother and I would spend countless hours at the kitchen table writing and typing notes to radio stations - especially WFLI - requesting they play Johnny Rivers songs. We also had a half-dozen ballpoint pens that wrote in those same four colors. We owned an electric typewriter that typed in four different colors – red, black, blue and green. The reception came in better at night, I remember. We lived in Rome, Georgia, until I was in sixth grade and Mother always listened to a Chattanooga radio station, WFLI - 1070 on the AM radio dial. My mother loved Johnny Rivers, the rock and roll singer famous for such hits as “Secret Agent Man,” “Summer Rain,” “Memphis,” “Baby, I Need Your Loving” and “Poor Side of Town.” Johnny Rivers playing the historic Strand Theatre in Shreveport last month.