March 13, 1971: Dick Moore & The Country Playboys

 

March 13, 1971

His Country Formula

Dick Moore Relies on Lead Man, Singer

The woman with the Joan Crawford hair touches Dick Moore’s arm and asks: “Would you play ‘Indian Giver’ and ‘Games People Play’?”

Dick smiles and says OK and my gosh things sure are good tonight because he must be getting requests from darn near everybody in this full crowd of Saturday night people in Tony’s Union Casino.

Outside, the cold rain streaks straight across from Cheektowaga High School, but inside the light wood paneling’s all bathed in this pastel glow. To a party crasher, feels like a class reunion, around Class of ’54.

Only decorations, though, are a sign for bus tours and those Christmas decorations over the bandstand. A gold-tinseled tassel bobs around Dick’s head as he takes the stage with his band.

* * *

“MY HOUSE of Memories.” The echo creeps into Dick’s rough-hewn voice and that old rockabilly beat starts shuffling as you discover on your table a professionally printed Dick Moore & The Country Playboys Request Card. Which the waitress will take over to the band, if you wish.

Dick grabs a few vocal requests right from the floor, but sometimes they get forgotten. With the cards, he can look right down during a song and see what people want next. Tonight the requests are heavy and the band is doing some stuff they haven’t played in a while.

“The people, if you can make them happy, then you’re all right,” Dick remarks. “You can’t play over their heads. You gotta put yourself on their level.”

* * *

“GAMES People Play” is bouncy and the floor fills with twisters and jitterbuggers. There’s a girl with a white chiffon dress and purple sequined top dancing with a little guy with slicked-down hair and a tie tucked into his white shirt.

The band even has a fan club – some 36 members who get a card from Dick’s good friend and group secretary Mary Koblich whenever they move to a new club. Few cards lately because they’ve been here Fridays and Saturdays for four months. Thursdays it’s the Club Romway.

“He’ll Have to Go” comes to a break and Dick announces: “Bobby McGinnis on the country organ.” Bobby, with the group four weeks, squeezes notes so they sound almost like a steel guitar in those solo sections he shares with lead guitarist Basil DeBlasi.

* * *

“I HEARD Bobby one night down at the Club Romway and after that I kicked the idea of an organ around for six or seven months,” Dick recalls. “Five years ago they would’ve said I was crazy to put an organ with a country band. But with this new Nashville sound it works out fine.”

Economics also figured in the decision. Dick had to be sure of making so much per man. Right now he’s looking for weeknight jobs, but most of them pay only enough for three men – Dick, Basil and either bassist Ron Schessl or drummer Matt Christopher. Sometimes Ron’ll come along for free.

* * *

“THE TWO primary people in a country band,” Dick points out, “are the lead man and the singer. The bass and drums can follow along.”

“Love of the Common People,” picked up from one of the band’s favorites, Waylon Jennings, capsizes somewhere in the third verse. It’s so off-key Dick laughs in mid-lyric and somehow everyone finishes. The crowd laughs and applauds like crazy.

As leader, Dick not only chooses the songs, but learns them first and goes over them with Basil before the rest of the group gets them. They try to leave a personal stamp on things.  

“We were doin’ ‘Make the World Go Away,’” Dick says, “and I had a woman walk up and say that doesn’t sound like Eddy Arnold. I told her here’s a dime, try the jukebox.”

* * *

THEY rehearse one night a week, picking up two or three songs, in the spacious house Ron designed and built for himself just a few doors away from the Union Casino. Weekends, Ron’s teenage boys, Greg and Keith, both all-county horn players, practice there with their rock band, The Monarchs.

“I see George Mooney out there,” Dick reports. “Let’s get him up to play some guitar. C’mon, George. We’ll give you a chance to warm up. How about Tchaikovsky’s Fifth with Mozart? You say anything but that?”

 So it’s “White Lightnin’.” Mooney plays a twangy ‘50s guitar solo ahead of the country organ. The good-natured collaboration collapses into uncertainty, however, in “Nashville Shuffle.”

* * *

SITTING IN was what got Dick into country music. He’d played guitar in high school and dug Elvis and all, but he’d let things go until six or seven years back when he stepped onstage at T & T’s Country Paradise to sing “Your Cheatin’ Heart” with Smokey Weaver.

“It was the only song I knew,” Dick confesses. But he kept sitting in and started picking up country pointers from Smokey and Arnie and Mary Ann Ferry.

The mandatory funny-hat number has Dick wearing a long blonde wig and warbling “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Then they all settle down for “Blackjack County Chain,” rocking, full-sounding, easily the best song in the set.

* * *

“THAT’S weeks old,” Dick notes. “It’s that new Nashville sound we’ve been working on. It’s a driving beat, makes people want to get up and dance, but it took me six months to get it across to these guys. It’s just starting to come together.

“We’re all weekend players. The rest of the guys have jobs and I have to start back at my regular job next week. Driving truck at Bethlehem Steel. I dread it, but I gotta for the time being.

“My wife’ll keep working until September when we have our new house down in Eden. That’ll be like a breath of freedom. I’m gonna get her a horse this summer.

“She’s been right behind me in this. I was gonna quit music many times. It’s hard to run a band, you get tired, you get bored, you want to quit. But that’s when she comes in and says no, don’t worry about it, everything’ll work out right.” 

The box/sidebar:

Started five years ago 

Pertinent and impertinent information about Dick Moore & The Country Playboys:

Dick Moore, 31, vocals and acoustic guitar, South Park High School graduate, Air Force veteran, Bethlehem Steel truck driver, married.

Basil DeBlasi, 31, guitar, South Park High, attended ECTI, a barber, married, five children.

Bob McGinnis, 38, organ, McKinley High, wholesale jewelry shipping clerk, single.

Ron Schessl, 40, bass guitar, Kensington High, ECTI graduate, Army veteran, draftsman and construction contractor, married, six children.

Matt Christopher, 29, drums, Grover Cleveland High, Niagara Frontier Services truck driver, married, two children.

* * *

DICK PLAYED with a band called The Frontiersmen about five years ago, then formed a group of his own. Ron, a former horn player who always wanted to play guitar, joined Dick by answering a newspaper ad four years ago.

Bob played accordion, piano and guitar before starting organ a year ago. He played with The Melody Mountaineers. And Matt, who met Dick at the steel plant, had given up drumming for six years until he joined the band three months ago.

Basil knew Dick in high school and played rock and commercial jazz with a number of groups. Most successful was The Velvatones. When he stopped in to see Dick play one night two years ago in South Buffalo, Dick invited him up and he found he couldn’t play a lick of country.

“I couldn’t stand country music,” he says. “But then I listened to it for a while and just got to like it. I really like today’s style. It’s not that old Roy Rogers-Gene Autry stuff any more.

* * *

Google won’t tell me what became of Dick Moore, but it does reveal that guitarist Basil DiBlasi’s barber shop is alive and well on Seneca Street in South Buffalo. Basil himself is gone, died in 2008. Now his son Robert is there, welcoming clients to the chair.

The only other guy who turns up in my searches is bass guitarist Ron Schessl. According to his obituary in 2019, which doesn’t mention musical activities, he became an Oklahoma City building inspector and a master bird carver.