April 8, 1972: Big Wheelie & the Hubcaps
For April Fool’s Day, let’s kick some
tires with
April 8, 1972
Big Wheelie & Hubcaps
Look Back to Old 1957
“Isn’t she a beauty?”
Big Ace, chain-laden guitarist for Big
Wheelie & The Hubcaps, slouches up to the gleaming black and white 1956
Chevy Bel Air hardtop.
“Some kid brought her in from
“Cars ain’t got any style now,” Big
Wheelie himself sneers. “They all look like space ships.”
Cars were the first thing that seemed
weird when they awoke from 14 years of suspended animation which started when a
bomb blast buried the abandoned supermarket where they were practicing.
“Everybody tries to tell us we’re
Friendship Train in funny clothes,” Big Wheelie snarls. “Well, it ain’t true. We’re
straight from 1957 and let me tell youse, daddy-o, things ain’t cool like they
usta be.”
“You seen the hubcaps on the cars now?”
bass player Carlos Rickey complains. “Some of ‘em ain’t even got hubcaps. Can
you believe that? No hubcaps, just the wheel and the tire and they got locks on
‘em. I don’t like ‘em. They got no class.”
They feel the same way about today’s
music. After a couple of weeks following a
They cruised into the club where
Friendship Train was playing, locked the group in their dressing room and took
the stage to put out what they called “real music.”
* * *
BIG WHEELIE himself, dressed in his silver lame suit, the one he says was made from the bumper of a ’57 Chevy, his black shirt open to show at least a cool three buttonsworth of T-shirt, felt obliged to make some sort of explanation to the surprised audience.
“Hey,” he scowled, draping himself
around the microphone. “We’re Big Wheelie & Da Hubcaps and we were buried
alive in a time capsule in 1957 …”
Then they launched into “Johnny B.
Goode.” Big Ace further confounded the crowd with a genuine imitation Chuck
Berry duckwalk. Forty rollicking minutes later, they split, stopping only to
free the bewildered members of Friendship Train.
As the California Chevy rolls up to the
Avenue Soda Shoppe on Buffalo’s North Side for picture-taking and the minute
the group hits the sidewalk, passing drivers slow up and gawk. That inspires
Deeker the drummer to make faces at them.
The photographer focuses in. Wheelie
gives his hair an extra adjustment, organist Dora Knobbe pushes back her
ever-present 59-cent shades, singer Justine tugs up the collar of her floppy
white shirt and …
“Hey, you kids, get out from behind
there.”
The kids don’t move.
“Look, I’ll buy ya ice cream or
somethin’, c’mon.”
* * *
THEY STILL don’t move. The kid chaser shrugs. He’s the group’s
mountainous manager, Fred Casserta, who (in his secret identity as Col. Hubcap)
has guided the group into an uneasy truce with the natives of 1972.
The second time they locked up
Friendship Train, the colonel (manager of Friendship Train in real life) threw
his body across the fire exit and singlehandedly stopped Big Wheelie and the
gang from leaving.
That night the crowd, though they’d been
taken aback at first by the rough crew onstage, wound up applauding and sending
up slips of paper to request their favorite moldy oldies from the ‘50s. Things
like “Peggy Sue” and “Little Bitty Pretty One’ and old Everly Brothers stuff.
He found the four guys and three girls
separate apartments above candy stores and broadened their repertoire by
turning them onto a few hits from the early ‘60s – “Running Bear,” “The Twist”
and “Duke of Earl.”
The colonel figured he’d have Big
Wheelie do one set a night whenever Friendship Train played, but at first local
clubowners were a little reluctant.
The old rock revival got stronger during
the winter, however, and a few successful out-of-town appearances ultimately
made Big Wheelie a regular part of the Friendship Train show. Lately they’ve
even made solo appearances.
Their second one was last Sunday at the
Night Owl on
Augmenting their full-sounding and relatively faithful adaptations of more than 60 oldies are Big Ace’s flashy guitar playing, a variety of three-, four- and five-part harmonies and a flair for mock dramatization.
In “Angel Baby,” singers Justine and the
pony-tailed, bobby-soxed Rosa Maria Mancuso fight over the affections of the
squirming, preening Wheelie, who enjoys every second of it. The situation is
reversed in “My Boyfriend’s Back.”
It all worked up to Wheelie doing a pair
of powerful Elvis Presley songs, the shimmy and everything. “Elvis is da king,”
Wheelie will tell you, “and Big Wheelie is da prince!”
In the months since their suspended
animation ended, they’ve discovered that the ‘70s provide few of the kicks that
made the ‘50s fun. They talk about it as they settle down for a typical ‘50s
snack – giant sodas and mammoth banana boats in the soda shoppe, which aside
from the fresh paint looks much like it must have 15 years ago.
* * *
“THE MUSIC today is really out of touch, daddy-o,” Carlos Rickey
complains. “There’s no Dick Clark and American Bandstand, no Ed Sullivan, no
Mickey Mouse Club.”
“For a while we had a really hard time
telling the boys from the girls,” the Deeker says jokingly. “They all wear
beards and they all wear sailor pants and they’re saying things like ‘Right
on!’ and ‘Do your thing!’
“And they’re drinkin’ tequila and
talkin’ about marijuana. The strongest thing we smoke is cornsilk. Now that’s
really good stuff, cornsilk. And we drink sodas.”
* * *
“THE STORES don’t have any cool clothes,” Justine puts in.
“Nobody has straight pants. And white socks are really hard to get.”
“Hey,” Carlos Rickey says, “try and get
some hair pomade. You just can’t find it everywhere.”
“And the kids all talk about peace,” Big
Ace says. “You can’t even start a rumble these days. And those hubcaps, they
ain’t worth a dime.”
Out soon will be a single they recorded
recently at Fred Casserta’s Sound & Stage Studios – Bobby Lewis’ “Tossin’
and Turnin’” with “The Ballad of Big Wheelie & The Hubcaps.”
Plus they have a pile of dates,
including solo appearances tomorrow night and April 16 at The Night Owl.
They’ll be with Friendship Train tonight
and next Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at Devil’s Rock in Batavia, next
Tuesday at the Landmark in Sloan, April 17 to 22 at The Night Owl (except April
18) and at The Scene on Niagara Falls Boulevard May 2 to 14 and May 30 to June
11.
“We never play for the fun of it,” Ace
growls, “we play because we LOVE it!”
“When we play,” Wheelie sneers, “the
jitterbugs come out of the woodwork, but that isn’t enough. Our job now is that
we wanna make the whole world coo-ool, just like it was in 1957.”
* * *
The box/sidebar:
Chuggin’ Right Along
The seven members of Friendship Train,
whose careers had chugged along admirably for nearly a year before Big Wheelie
& The Hubcaps came along, were asked to comment on their new stage-mates.
“They’re just greasers,” says guitarist
Dan Cook. “And hoods,” says singer Judy Ware. “Hey, thanks for the
compliments,” Big Wheelie purrs.
“They don’t have to call us Freakship
Train,” singer Linda Socie complains.
“Every night before they go on, I wonder
if it’s going to go over, whether the people are going to accept them at all,”
says singer Chuck Vicario, the former Caesar of Caesar & The Romans. “But
somehow they always do. It’s incredible.”
“Actually, we have a lot of fun with them
sometimes,” says organist Carol Fremy.
Of the group’s two newest members, bass
guitarist Angelo Monaco, 23, of
* * * * *
IN THE PHOTO: Big Wheelie & The Hubcaps hanging out in front
of a local candy store, from left: Rose Marie Mancuso, Big Ace, Carlos Rickey,
Dora Knobbe, Justine, Big Wheelie and Deeker.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: For a while in
the ‘70s, they rivaled Sha Na Na and traveled extensively. I ran into them one afternoon walking along the Sunset Strip in
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