“Monte” Ballou SR 9342, Oral History, by Linda Brody

Ralph Hosea “Monte” Ballou SR 9342, Oral History, by Linda Brody

1980 September 16

BALLOU: Monte Ballou LB: Linda Brody Transcribed by: Deborah Frosaker, ca. 1980 Audit/edit by: Sara Stroman, 2018

Tape 1, Side 1 1980 September 16

LB: This is an interview with Monte Ballou conducted at the Oregon Historical Society on September 16th 1980. The interviewer is Linda Brody. [Inaudible]

Are you a native Oregonian?

BALLOU: No, I was born in Waterport, New York and when I was about two years old we moved down to Pennsylvania, Uniontown, which is near Pittsburgh in the coal mining and steel producing district.

My mother and I came out to Oregon to see her folks. She was a native Oregonian. She had taught school in Seattle, had gone to Monmouth, taught school in Seattle, and met my father there. They then moved back East. My mother and I came out here in 1907 on a visit. I vaguely remember. I was only five at the time. One thing I do remember were the coal stoves in the end of the cars on the train.

Then we moved back here; we moved back to Oregon, in 1911. We lived in Portland out on 24th Street, just a block from the Vaughan Street baseball field. I don't even remember what they called the team then, the Portland Baseball Club. Then we lived on a houseboat on the river for a couple of years, right exactly now where John's

The Oregon Historical Society allows use of this Oral History Interview according to the following license: Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Ballou SR 9342

Landing is. Then moved down to Amity - I went to school here at Holman. Then when we moved to Amity, I went to school there.

LB: You mentioned that your mother was from Oregon. Were her ancestors of pioneer stock?

BALLOU: Yes. Her father and mother came over here to Oregon, in 1849 from Missouri. Her name was Serena Cook before she married my grandfather. My grandfather evidently had been married before and one of his daughters was named the Pioneer Mother of Oregon. That was Aunt Margaret Powell. I think she was 93 or 94 when she died. She lived in Hillsboro. There’s probably a record of her somewhere about it. That was [a daughter from] another wife. In my mother's immediate family, she had six brothers and five sisters, and I only knew three or four of them because the rest of them had all passed away.

LB: So, you spent your early years, as a youth, in Amity?

BALLOU: Yes, I finished grade school and high school with a little difficulty, because I was expelled every year. My grades were up but my conduct wasn't very good. I did get a diploma, because they couldn't turn me down – couldn’t turn down my diploma. The professor said at graduation, “Here’s a young man that the whole community said would never graduate, but I’m proud to give him his diploma.”

LB: How did you become interested in music?

BALLOU: My mother taught me to play a few tunes on the mandolin when I was young. And from the mandolin, I got into strumming the banjo. I started playing around Yamhill County in various spots in McMinnville, Sheridan, Whiteson, Willamina, all those, at an early age; while I was still in high school.

LB: Did you play by yourself, or with a band?

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BALLOU: No, I probably made more trips to McMinnville, which was about nine miles, because there only was one neighbor who really was a musician but he didn't play professionally. He just helped me. He just taught me. There was a man and his wife who played and went out on tours. It was all kind of strange to me at that time because he was a little older than I was.

Actually, I became interested in playing with orchestras when I went to McMinnville. And I could always carry a tune, so I sang songs at dances and started to be getting paid for it so I took that up.

LB: Do you remember when you bought your first instrument?

BALLOU: Oh dear. I bought instruments that were repossessed because I couldn't pay for them, but I couldn't tell you the year.

LB: I thought you might remember your first one.

BALLOU: Oh, my mother had a mandolin. My mother had a gourd-shaped mandolin. Evidently, she played. I was trying to figure out what happened to it later. That’s what I first played on. It was a mandolin.

Then I went to a tenor banjo which was tuned - the mandolin’s tuned like a violin and the tenor banjo is tuned like a viola, and the tenor was the same, so I went to the tenor banjo. After when I started playing banjo, there was a long-necked banjo and a five string banjo which is used for Blue Grass. What we call a long-necked banjo is tuned exactly like the five string without the fifth string. But I played the tenor, which I was familiar with. And then when banjos became sort of passé, I took up the guitar, so I've played both guitar and tenor banjo, but now I'm playing what is known as a guitar- banjo, a six string.

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LB: When you first started, what kinds of music did you play?

BALLOU: Popular tunes of the day, all tunes of – the tunes were popular, and occasionally some old ones but not real old; just popular tunes, just the regular tunes that were probably…

LB: Since you lived in a small town, how did you keep up with the popular tunes?

BALLOU: The druggist had a phonograph and some records that he was selling, but he didn't sell many records and he didn't seem to object to people going in there and playing them. So I used to go in there and play those records in the drugstore. This was during Prohibition, and he was selling a nonalcoholic wine called Virginia Dare, but he was loading it with alcohol and selling it for five dollars a pint. So he was a little under the counter on things. He didn't, evidently, object to playing the phonograph. So I heard a lot of tunes. I heard my first jazz records in that drugstore and became interested in it.

LB: Did you have any formal music training?

BALLOU: No. My father threw me out of the house one day and I stayed out for three days. I think I worked in the hay field or did something, farm work, and when I come home, my mother had bought a piano and paid for 25 lessons. I never went near the teacher.

LB: Do you play the piano now?

BALLOU: [Laughs] No.

LB: Did you play by ear, mostly?

BALLOU: I played by ear with a knowledge of music too, but, yes, I play mainly by ear now.

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LB: What was it about your experience that encouraged your interest in music?

BALLOU: Actually, it started - the interest in jazz music, I think, it started in about 1927 when we first heard the records that Louis Armstrong made. I think that turned on most of the musicians. Now, I’d gone from - I came to Portland to study music, or to play music, but I couldn’t. I didn't have the experience.

I got a job bussing dishes and I think I put my banjo in hock for a, oh, probably a bottle of whiskey or something alcohol, or whatever. Gin. I got a call from a friend of mine that I had known in McMinnville who’d come down to play in a band. He was playing in a band at the University of Oregon and I couldn't go because my banjo was in hock.

So I went out to my uncle, who was a railroad engineer, my father's brother, and said, “Uncle George,” I said, ”I've got a chance to go down to Eugene and play in an orchestra,” I said. “But I need $15 to get my banjo out of hock.”

He said, “If you stay here you can live at the house and I'll take care of your board and room and I’ll pay your tuition at Northwestern Law School and you can become a lawyer.”

I said, “Can I have the $15?”

LB: Why didn't you want to go to law school?

BALLOU: No, I didn't want to go to law school. I wanted to be an entertainer and a musician. That’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I didn't have any urge to be a lawyer or anything else but what I was. I think that went back to when I was seven and eight years old in Uniontown, and saw all the vaudeville and all the shows, all

Ballou SR 9342 the music that came to town. This was what I wanted to do. So, I went down to Eugene and played with an orchestra in a club down there on the campus.

LB: Was that a onetime kind of gig?

BALLOU: No, I stayed there all that school year. The next year I went back, and that year I married a girl on campus, and then the next year we were divorced, and the piano player said, “How would you like to go to Klamath Falls?” I said why not? So I went to Klamath Falls and saw another side of the music business.

LB: What side did you see?

BALLOU: Well, that’s the afterhours business; that's where all the pimps and hustlers and the gamblers. That was a whole different – that was a world that I’d never seen, you know. I knew about it, but I'd never been around it. It was very lucrative. They spent money like it was going out of style. So that’s where I spent the greater part of my life, hanging around those places. That’s where the money was.

From Klamath Falls I went to Coos Bay. We played in North Bend for one summer with a band. The saxophone player and I, and a drummer from Klamath Falls, all five of us went over to North Bend and played all summer. We worked Wednesday and Saturday nights. I never made so much money. Then I came to Portland from there.

LB: What year was that? When you came to Portland.

BALLOU: I can’t remember exactly. I think it was, it could have been around 1927.

LB: And that was during the…

BALLOU: Prohibition was still in. I joined the union. I joined a Musician’s Union in Eugene, so I was a union musician.

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LB: What benefits did you have by being a union musician?

BALLOU: About the only benefits was the fact if someone hired us and didn't pay us, you could collect, you know. The union would collect. Now they have contracts that are binding and they have a condition that if they don't pay, they put them on the unfair list and don't permit our members to play there.

But I have stayed away. I have been on the board of the Musician's Union; I was on the board for 12 years, six years at two different times. It's a one year position but I was reelected five times. I haven't been near the union for several years. I got a call to go up and listen to a band, evaluate a band for a party. And I said, “Where is it?” And they told me the name of the place. I went up there and I said, “What time does it start?” They said nine o’clock.

So I got up there about 10 after nine and there was no band there. I went up to the counter and had a cup of coffee, looked at my watch, it was 20 minutes after. I said to the bartender, I says, “What time does the band start?”

He said, “Nine o’clock.”

I said, “Why aren't they here?”

He said, “I don't know.”

I said, “What do you do in a case of that kind? What sort of a resolution - how do you pay them?”

“Pay them?” He said, “We haven't paid a band here for two years!”

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So that's what's happened now in this area and in a lot of other places. There are so many young musicians who go in and work for the door, or work for tips or pass the hat. Well, I worked that way myself so I know what it is.

I worked in one spot after I had become established in Portland in the late 1930s and they guaranteed me, they didn't say they’d pay me, they guaranteed me $25 a week. After I made my $25, they wanted half of what I made in tips. I worked about a week at that and left it. They raised me to $30 and I was doing very well and I left again and they called me back to work there. I had to emcee too. It was the only club in town that had floor shows, so they called me back and said, “Well, you can work and keep all your tips.” And I had to emcee two shows and then go around and sing to the tables in the bar. I stayed there four years.

Some pretty good acts came through there. An act called The Will Maston Trio. You know the Will Maston Trio?

LB: No, what’s that?

BALLOU: That was Sammy Davis' father and his uncle. They played at the spot where the big parking space is over on Third and Fourth on Morrison and Alder. You know the big parking thing that - the Capitol Theatre was there. It was what they called three-a-day vaudeville, which was not as good as two-a-day. Two-a-day was the matinee and an evening performance.

Where Nordstrom's is now, was the Orpheum Theatre. They had two-a-day vaudeville. Further up the street was the original, where the Orpheum used to play, the Heilig Theatre. That’s where the big names played two-a-day. You could sit in the balcony for 10 cents on a Saturday afternoon. But that’s all changed now. That’s all changed.

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In about 1941 or 1942, I was still working at the Clover Club and we had a five- piece band that I sat in and played with. I wasn't paid to work with them. They were making about $45 a week at that time. I'd just sit in with them. We were playing some jazz tunes.

Then all of a sudden in San Francisco, a man by the name of Lu Watters put together a band called Yerba Buena Jazz Band and somehow or other, it caught on. Actually, what it was, was a revival of the music of the 1920s and 1930s, with the same instrumentation. King Oliver was the band that it was modeled after, that was the band that Louis Armstrong left New Orleans and went to Chicago and work with.

LB: What were the traditional instruments you had then?

BALLOU: Piano, banjo, drums and tuba. Two trumpets or two coronets, you put coronets above that; it could be either one. Trombone and clarinet.

LB: You're talking about an...

BALLOU: Eight-piece band. And we played here with five pieces and six pieces and seven pieces. I'm trying to think what year it was. 1948, I think. Was that before the [Vanport] flood or after the flood. Wasn’t that the big flood year, in 1948?

LB: That was 1949.

BALLOU: 1949? You sure?

LB: I’m certain.

BALLOU: Well, anyway, we played at Jantzen Beach every Sunday with five pieces. We used the banjo, trombone, clarinet, string bass, and trumpet, and we played, I think, five Sundays out there. One Sunday we were Hawaiian; one Sunday we were – they

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had convict outfits on and I was a policeman; on another Sunday we were Spaniards; and another Sunday we were hillbillies. I can’t remember, but that was the beginning of the Castle Jazz Band.

Then we came to town and played at a spot that was called the Ratskeller and it had a piano and drums. Piano and drums, that’s right. That was the beginning of the Castle Jazz Band. I worked for several weeks out at The Castle with a trio. The Castle out near Oregon City. Are you familiar with The Castle? No?

LB: I don’t...

BALLOU: Aren’t you a native here? You haven’t lived here long, huh? Well, The Castle was just sold. John Dominico had it and it’s just been sold. It was originally a stone structure that was built with the turrets and everything, and I think primarily it was a furniture salesroom out on the River Road, but it didn't go. So two or three people put a restaurant in there and failed, but Dominico made it go. He just stayed with it. I think he just sold it for about a million bucks.

LB: Was that the [Inaudible]?

BALLOU: What? No, no. That’s The Castle. You don’t own that. What are you doing in town if you’re from Eugene? This is Portland.

LB: [Laughs] So, [Inaudible]. Who were the musicians in the Castle Jazz Band in the beginning?

BALLOU: The original band was George Bruns on trombone, Don Kinch on trumpet, Bob Short on tuba, Larry Du Fresne on piano, Bob Gilbert on clarinet.

LB: And how long have you played with…

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BALLOU: Then, let’s see. The first drummer was Axel Tile, and the next drummer was Bob Goodwin, and the third drummer was Homer Welch. He was the one that recorded with us.

LB: How long did the Castle Jazz Band play together?

BALLOU: Well, we played through 1948, and in 1949 we went down to Los Angeles and played at the Second Dixieland Jubilee at the Shrine Auditorium. I got a letter from the promoter saying we were acclaimed the hit of the show. Then we came back here and I went into a club up on, I don’t know, 12th, 13th or 14th Street called the Hi Mack and leased it. Had a lease on a lease. We were only there seven months.

The trombone player, Bruns, left and then we got George Phillips. Don Kinch left and we got Ned Dotson. We had changed piano players from Larry Du Fresne to Freddie Crews.

Think you’ve got an end coming here.

[End of Tape 1, Side 1]

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Tape 1, Side 2 1980 September 16

BALLOU: So we stayed there seven months and had the same band, but I didn't like the situation there so I got out. This was in 1949. I got out and then tried to open another club.

LB: Of your own?

BALLOU: Yes. It took me about 2 years to get through the Liquor Commission and get it. It was above the Liberty Theatre.

LB: What was the name of it?

BALLOU: The Diamond Horse Shoe.

LB: Oh, did you tour with the band?

BALLOU: No, not toured, no, but we played several jobs at Eugene, Corvallis at various times. I can't remember how many, what the personnel of the band was, where we played these jobs, we played so many of them. But the band was pretty hot for, oh, maybe two or three years. I finally got the club open. The club was located where the Liberty Theatre - where the Bank of California is now.

So I operated that for three years, but the personnel kept changing, you know. About the only two that have stayed were Bob Short the tuba and Freddie Crews, piano. The trombone players changed and clarinet players changed and there was a time when I had a clarinet player by the name of Bob Helm from San Francisco working with me. He’s working with Turk Murphy now.

LB: Why did your musicians change so often?

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BALLOU: Well, various reasons. Bruns went to Los Angeles; he was married to a singer. Her name was Porter, can’t tell you her first name. She sung under the name of Gale. He went down there to promote her. Through having been with the Castle Jazz Band, he had met the leader of the Firehouse Five Plus Two, Ward Kimball, who was the head animator at Disney. So he got George a job at Disney.

Soon after he got down there, Kinch left; Kinch went down there, Don Kinch. He played down there, played tuba with the Firehouse Five. He went to school and learned to repair wooden instruments, guitars and violins and the like. He had divorced and remarried. George became very successful down there. He wrote Davy Crockett and it made him a bundle, I guess. I had no idea. Kinch is back up here. [Inaudible]

I've had several trumpet players since then. I could go through a list of trumpet players that have played with me. I played three years at Rosini's at 10th and Stark, which is now a parking lot. Three years at the Raleigh Hills Corral, which is now The Moon Colony. I don't know how long I worked at the Oswego Lodge. That’s burned down. I've done various and sundry jobs.

LB: Were these jobs done as a soloist or…

BALLOU: No, they were with a band. In 1957, we got a call from Good Time Jazz in Los Angeles to record. Bob Short was playing in New York and he flew out to make the date. I don’t know how Freddy Crews got down there, but Bob Gilbert went and drove down from here. Kinch and George were already there. Homer was down there. Homer’d gone down to work for N.B.C. [National Broadcasting Company]. He'd been in the radio business here. So we made a record in 1957, the original group.

Gilbert was working with me. We were working at Rosini’s. I can’t remember - so many changes in the band. We were only working weekends, but with so many changes in the band that I can't remember right off the top of my head when such-and-such was

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with the band. In 1959, we went back and made another record, the same, [an] L.P. [Long Playing record]. That’s the only two that we made.

Originally we had our own record company, at the start. We used the Castle Label, Castle Records. We did, I don’t know, 28 to 30 sides on 78s. One that seemed to stay, and I get more requests for that, was Floating down the Old Green River, which was a tune written in 1915. It was being sung in a movie with – God, I can’t think. Danny Kaye and [Louis] Armstrong, I think, were in the movie. I can’t remember the title. It was being sung by an old Broadway star. So they asked us if we were going to make another record, that’s be a good one to make. I still have to sing it, after all these years.

LB: Do you consider that your theme song?

BALLOU: Oh, no, no, I just consider that one of the songs that people ask for. I better watch the clock. Oh, there’s lots of time. No, it’s just one of those things. I don't know why people like it, but they ask for it. Where do you go from here?

LB: Well, I’m [Inaudible]. Did you play in theatres besides, as well as clubs?

BALLOU: Yes, yes, yes. I played at the Broadway Theater with five other banjoists when Eddy Peabody was here, when Eddy Peabody came to town. That was what they called the Franchon and Marco Circuit. They had a package show and Eddy Peabody was the star and I was one of five banjo players that played.

Then, what else? I played somewhere else, but I can’t remember what it was. I played at the Bagdad on the stage, but it wasn't with my band; it was another band. Then when I worked at the Clover Club, I worked at a theatre that’s now torn down. It’s right at the off-ramp of the Morrison Bridge on Second Street. It was originally called The American Theatre, but then it was changed to, reopened and called The Gaiety, which was a burlesque house, and I worked there.

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LB: What kind of shows did they have?

BALLOU: Just mediocre.

LB: You’ve mentioned a lot of people. Who are some of the other people involved in music that might have impressed you through the years?

BALLOU: People in Portland? Very few.

LB: Why is that?

BALLOU: They didn’t impress me; I wasn't particularly impressed, but I respected them for their musicianship.

LB: Who might they be?

BALLOU: I can recall an emcee and a violinist that was at the Broadway Theatre for a long, long time, that became a personal friend, the violinist Georgie Stoll. See, all the theatres had pit bands and they were a little removed from the jazz musician. We were in a different world.

LB: Why is that?

BALLOU: Well, we played the - the jazz musician’s life was sort of hit and miss. There wasn't anything steady about it, you know. I mean, you just couldn’t play jazz. A jazz band couldn't make it in those days, because there weren't enough places to play. There were a lot of dance halls, but it was just dance music. Now all the dance halls are gone.

LB: Did you ever have trouble supporting yourself?

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BALLOU: Yes and no. Yeah. It's just like any endeavor. Any artistic endeavor, if you're interested in doing something that is not really commercial and saleable, you have problems. Yeah, I've had problems.

LB: What did you do when you had problems?

BALLOU: What could you do? What do you do when you have problems?

LB: Well, I just mean, did you abandon your music?

BALLOU: No, I just stayed with the same thing. It worked out alright.

LB: You’ve been in music for a long time. Have audiences changed over the years?

BALLOU: Oh, yes. [Dolley Madison?]

LB: How have they changed?

BALLOU: I don't see as many drunks as I used to. I don't think people are drinking as much as they did.

About the only place I've played with a group, I play with a quartet, occasionally, at the Rock Creek Tavern and it's a very loose, gentle joint. I call it a joint. The food is good and the management is good and the people are very receptive. It's about the only place that I want to play with a group. I opened a spot on Third Avenue last fall, probably, called Sweet Revenge. You know where it is? It wasn't much.

Now, one thing that has happened, I don't care whether I play or not, you know. I mean, I don’t care whether I play, so when somebody calls me for job, I quote a price and if they say alright, fine. If they don't, I don't care.

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I'll be playing pretty soon and it seems like I'm doing the same thing and I’m in the same circuits that I was and I don't know how it happened or anything. It seems like I’m back in the same thing, because I played at the Portland Golf Club and the Waverley, the University Club, Multnomah Athletic Club, and in a couple of weeks I'll have a trio at the Arlington Club. I've been through all this before, you see. It's just another go around. I’ve been through all these clubs before. I've played in all these places before at various times, either as a single or with a group. So it's getting back to the thing where I'm just going around again.

LB: Is there any particular place you enjoyed or any particular event you found more memorable than any other?

BALLOU: Oh, they're all the same. I liked the one in Los Angeles, because it was recorded and there were 54 musicians there and they were all from everywhere; all top musicians. The Castle Jazz Band got the single side on the record, got the single tune. The rest of them - there was a side that four bands were playing, 28 men were playing one tune and we were part of it. We were one of four bands. And then there was another one where the whole bunch played. There were 54 musicians. It’s quite a thing when you’re with your peers and you're picked out above them, you know. It’s quite a thing.

But it actually is just a - people say to me, “You did a fine job.”

And I say, “Thank you.” I say, “I'm a brick layer.”

They look at me and say, “What do you mean, you’re a brick layer?”

I say, “Do you ever walk by a brick building?” Yes. “Did you look at it?” Yes. I said, “Do you think it was built by an apprentice?” I think I know my business, that’s all I can say. I think I know my trade, and I know how to handle myself. I know what is

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acceptable and what isn't. That’s the name of this business, you know. You have to know what you’re doing or you can't do it.

LB: How do you think Portland compares with other cities?

BALLOU: It's not the same as San Francisco, and it's not the same as Chicago. It’s not the same as St. Louis, and it’s not the same as Sacramento.

Sacramento has festivals the last weekend in May and they have bands from all over. Are you familiar with it? They have bands from all over the world. I've played down there. If I had a band, I'd probably be playing down there. I played down there the first year that they had it in 1974. The thing is, I work with several bands.

This year I went to Paris and played with a French band called the Watergate Seven Plus One. I asked the leader if he would like to go to Sacramento and he said yes. I had heard a record of him and wrote and told him I enjoyed the record very much. It sounded like he enjoyed San Francisco style jazz. He wrote back told me thank you, and yes he did. He thanked me for my comments and my appreciation and put his phone number on there and says, “If you’re ever in Paris, call this number and we can take care of your accommodations.”

So I went over there in October last year for the prime reason of playing with the band, which I did. I played three jobs with the band at two different clubs and left Paris with more money than I came in with. I said, “Would you like to go to Sacramento next May?”

He says, “That's our desire; we’d love to.”

I says, “You’ll go.”

He says, “How do you know?”

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I says, “I know you will. I’m positive.”

He says, “How positive are you?”

I says, “I'll make you a deal.” I says, “If you’re not in Sacramento next May playing, I'll make a trip over here to Paris. You name any Wednesday that you want and at high noon, if you’re not in Sacramento in May, I'll kiss your ass from the Arc de Triomphe.”

So when I got back, I sent a tape to the chairman, one I know and I said, “This is the band you should get.” So they were there and I went down and played for them. About six weeks to two months ago he sent me a picture of the Arc de Triomphe and says you won your bet. [Laughs] Beautiful guy, beautiful guy. I lived with his family. They gave me a full apartment. I had an apartment all to myself and lived with the family and had a wonderful time.

So, next year they want a band from Buenos Aires and I've been to Buenos Aires twice and played with two different bands so I'm going to have to write and get a Buenos Aires band for them. They had 70 bands there this year in Sacramento.

LB: I know that [Inaudible]. How would you summarize your career?

BALLOU: Summarize it. In what way?

LB: Well, have you done [all that you wanted to do?]?

BALLOU: Yes, I've done what I wanted to do. I've been straight with the men that I worked with. I've had some young ones; I had a trumpet player that started with me when he was 15 and he had ability, and he has his own band now in Atlanta. He calls me about twice a month, late at night. I have another trumpet player who lives over in

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Holland now, playing. He was very young when he started with me. A clarinet player. And I've told them all to get out of town while they were young to see what it's like and then come back to Portland, if they want to. The clarinet player who is working in Atlantic City, I haven’t heard from him, you see, for a month or so. But then they go maybe able to work in Disneyland or Disney World.

I have some I keep contact with. I have a washboard player that I worked with in Pittsburgh in 1969, and another banjo player who’s a good friend of mine and we keep in touch. So these are the - I still have friends in the music business, that’s the thing. They're not all here in Portland. I don't have too many ties here in Portland to musicians anymore, because they lack what I demand. I've been very lucky in having young ones with a lot of talent; very fortunate. I've worked with a blind piano player, in Vancouver, that teaches at the blind school, by the name of Bob Sherman, that I work with all the time and we don't have any problems. I've had very, very competent players. I'm not ashamed of it. I’m still at it.

LB: Well, I want to thank you…

BALLOU: Hurry up and I’ll take you to lunch.

LB: Well, thank you for your time.

BALLOU: Thank you very much.

LB: [Inaudible]

BALLOU: You want something to eat?

[End of Tape 1, Side 2] [End of Interview]

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