Vwi . £ ' NOT , " . • . TCI THIS ROOM Kii-.--' :iif County Library Winnemucca, Nevada JEANNIE JOY and WILL CARSON HUMBOLDT COUNTY LIBRARY WINNEMUCCA, NEVADA Vwi . £ ' NOT , " . • . TCI THIS ROOM Kii-.--' :iif County Library Winnemucca, Nevada JEANNIE JOY and WILL CARSON HUMBOLDT COUNTY LIBRARY WINNEMUCCA, NEVADA S: Had Winnemucca changed from 1959 to 1961? W: I don't know if it was during that period but when we first played in Tonopah in 1959, silver dollars were all the thing. Mining was going real well then and we would have people lined up at the bar who would toss silver dollars at us. It was sort of like that in Winnemucca when we first went there but not quite as much because mining wasn't as big there as in Tonopah. A big change did occur but a little later there is a big gap now to what it was then and what it is now. J: The Humboldt Hotel burned and that made a bit difference too and then they put the mall in there which is in there now. They used to have entertainment there and that was quite a landmark. S: What year was that the Humboldt Hotel burned? W: Sometime in the sixties. S: In the sixties, you were on the road? W: We were full time on the road and we had bought our property up in Unionville, in 1962, we were never here much and we played in Cheyenne and Rollins and Rock Springs and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There is a lot of changes since we were playing up in Jackson. S: What were some of the changes? J: It wasn't all of the houses and it was all wilderness and the town square, was always there. W: It is overcommercialized. J: There are homes in some of the elk pastures. It is too many people and not enough wilderness. Everybody wants to live in Jackson Hole. W: It is such beautiful country. J: Grand Teton Mountains and a lot of people from back east have property there. S: Wasn't there a lot mining going on in the sixties and seventies? W: Oil, coal mining also. J: Mining shut down and the coal shut down that hurt Wyoming pretty bad. They are in a recession now. W: Jackson Hole is doing well and Laramie because of the college is doing well. S: We have gone on this tape from 1961 and now we are 1960 *s, 1970's and how did your music change and were you impacted by 1957 and what happened then? J: Elvis Presley turned it over overnight. What was considered good music was the in thing and Elvis Presley put rock and roll on and young kids went for that. That hurt a lot of the travelling musicians, if they didn't go to rock music it hurt your bookings and it hurt our bookings. We are not that type of entertainer, we don't play that kind of music. The clubs wanted rock and roll music and in the clubs in Wyoming, they changed the drinking age to nineteen, that was another factor that hurt our type of music. They wanted big bands and they wanted it loud and they wanted rock and roll music. Where we had two accounts, at each club we lost a lot of them. S: They changed the drinking law in the late 1970's. J: Yes, they did, take an example, this really happened, Edie we played the Outlaw Inn in Rock Springs and Mike Vass the Manager there saw us bringing in our amplifiers and he said that PAGE9 you better not be loud and we said that if we were ever loud that you tell us and we will cut it down to anything that you would want. When they changed to nineteen year-olds and rock music came in, we would play for Rock Springs about two times a year. He said you are nice people you are not b flatters. This all changed, he said Jeannie and Will you are nice people but you don't play loud enough and you don't play rock. The lounge that we worked in was quite small and he got three and four piece groups in there, playing loud music and it changed just like that which was incredible for us. There it was. We lost a lot of our accounts but as Will said we refused to play that type of music. It hurts my ears I can't stand it and the younger people like it but they are going to go deaf and the future is in hearing aides. S: In the sixties or seventies you backed up Rex Allen? W: I had known Rex from way back and my brother Mel had known him and he came in and he needed some one to back him up on this job so he hired Jeannie and me. It was a high school auditorium full of young kids. They were into rock and they didn't even know who Rex Allen was, so you tell what happened from there on when we got about halfway through the evening. J: Rex was doing his best and he is a fine singer and he yodels good and the kids were bored to death and they didn't like his music so at a certain time, the janitor came up and shut the power off to the p.a. set. He just stood there and there was no power on the mikes and he just walked off the stage and later that night, came into the club where we were working at the Westbank Lounge and he said I want a martini and keep them coming, I have never been so insulted in my whole life. We felt so sorry for him and he is very talented and to have a janitor just pull the plug. I think that I would get drunk too. S: You were up there in Torrington Wyoming, at the Kings Inn, and that was in the sixties and you can tell me about that. J: We had just finished playing at the Winners Inn for Joe and so they wanted us up there and we had to open the next night and that is a thousand miles. I took a lot of chocolate Nodoes, and we get up to Torrington and the town is full of FBI, National Guard and they said AIM that indian movement, has tried to take over the whole town. The historical fort, Larramie out there they are going to destroy that and a lot of businesses downtown and they were praying. There was no room anyway because the National Guard or the FBI had the rooms, we couldn't find any place to stay that night so we got set up and one customer that he had driven in said that he wasn't going to be around for any indian fights so he canceled out at the Kings Inn so we took that room, and we went ahead and thought well, we are here if the war breaks out we can hide behind the amplifiers, or something. Come to find out there were only three indians who threatened to do this, and they didn't do anything and they blew it all out of proportion and the news media got a hold of it and here was all of this trouble so we had two weeks up there. After the first week the lady didn't care for our music and said don't play honky music, and I said that I don't understand by what you mean, honky music and she said play what is popular which we were doing, and she was a hair dresser. She said you will have to change your music and I said no we are playing what is current and popular, why don't you just get another act, we will play PAGE10 this first week, but you can get another act. We heard when we left that she went bankrupt, because she didn't understand the business. W: We played there with the other owners and always went over good, she took over and wanted to make it into a rock and roll thing and she was catering to the young kids. J: It used to be funny, Edie, we used to be up on the stage and they had young girls as bartenders and these girls would squat down and they had drinks stashed down behind the bar, they thought that they were hiding from everyone. We saw them real good and they were drinking away. Then they would come up with a smile on their face and no wonder the lady went bankrupt, they were drinking it all. W: About the same time we played up at the Sheridan Inn, in Sheridan, Wyoming, a place where Buffalo Bill used to hang out in the old days. It was owned by Nelga King who was formerly Nelga Doubleday, the publishing company, she bought that place and it was really nice. It had a nice rustic atmosphere. We stayed upstairs in an apartment, just ultra-modern, we enjoyed our stay up there very much, that was really fun. We would go to all of the antique stores and look for all of the indian stuff. S: You two, were in Gallup, New Mexico. J: That is right Edie, we were playing at the Shalimar, a motel unit and restaurant and lounge and we were in good indian country, the Zuni, the Navajo and Hopi.