Aug. 21, 1976: Slick Grease & the DA's

 

In which our time capsule back to the 1970s touches down beside still another time capsule from 20 years earlier. 

Aug. 21, 1976

Slick Grease – a ’50s Band Comes Back to Life 

HERE IN THE FLASHING DISCO splendor of the Three Coins on Niagara Falls Boulevard, the professional rock revival watchers are getting a little uneasy about Slick Grease & the DA’s.

          They shake their styled heads and adjust the floral shirts unbuttoned down past their neck medallions and say things like: “They play like a high school band” and “They make everything sound like Elvis.”

          The pros, you must remember, have grown content with the simple, unthreatening pleasures of the first wave of the ‘50s comeback.

          It’s all right to be a neatly-wrapped impersonator like Elvis Wade or a safe, nostalgic parody like Sha Na Na and Big Wheelie & the Hubcaps. But these four, they’re so, uh, real.

          When Al the guitarist tells the owner of the red and white Monte Carlo they’ve got his wheel covers out back, you tend to believe him.

* * *

FOR BEHIND the sunglasses and T-shirt beats the heart and mind of a reformed juvenile delinquent.

          Yes, a greaser, a rock, a street gang kid from Chicago who specialized in auto parts before he picked up a job on guitar by night and a job in a gas station by day.

          And when singer Clark Gibas does his Elvis shimmy and his husky come-on in “One Night With You” from underneath the tall pompadour hairdo, you tend to suspect this is just the way he did it in 1957.

          That’s when Clark was making like Elvis for the rock-crazy kids of Buffalo and building a reputation that got him onto the old Dick Clark road shows.

          And those bushy sideburns are the same ones that brought his manager to Riverside High School to get him re-enrolled for his senior year, persuading the administration to drop the suspension because the forbidden facial hair was essential to his career.

          Slick Grease & the DA’s are a taste of the real thing, white socks and all the rest. Not a modern band reviving the ‘50s, but a ‘50s band that’s been brought back to life.

          They’re quite a cross-section. Clark is the cool one. Al is the hard guy. Bass guitarist Charlie Gallagher is the “squeak.” And drummer Rich Kuhns is the face-making kid who’ll put on suspenders and Mickey Mouse ears.

* * *

THEIR VERSION of the ‘50s has been catching on since they recorded their first single a couple months back.

          An 18-year-old girl tells them her parents haven’t enjoyed a show so much in years. And Big Wheelie’s taking gigs they’ve turned down.

          They sell the record – “Sh-Boom” with Little Richard’s “Lucille” – between sets, just like they did in the ‘50s. And it sounds like records did in the ‘50s.

          Entertainment Promotions Inc. has them appearing tonight at Jafco Marina, tomorrow and Thursday at Darien Lake, next Friday and Saturday at the Ivy House in Lime Lake and Sept. 1 to 4 at the Garrison Motor Inn in Fort Erie, Ont.

          Then Sept. 5 and 6 at Socio’s in LeRoy, Sept. 9 to 11 at the Queensway in St. Catharines, Ont., and Sept. 16 to 18 at the Sundowner in Niagara Falls, Ont.

          “We want to be known as a live group that sounds like live groups did 15, 20 years ago,” Al is saying earlier as the band talks in Charlie’s first-floor flat in Buffalo’s Riverside section.

          Al knows how it was back then. He grew up in the ‘50s, was a session guitarist for Chess Records and did shows with Chuck Berry and Danny & the Juniors.

          Same with Clark. On the Dick Clark road shows he roomed with Jimmy (“Just a Dream”) Clanton. Once he even took Annette Funicello out for a milkshake.

          “All she let him do was unwrap the straws,” Al wisecracks.

* * *

AL’S REAL NAME is Heinrich Allen and he was born in Germany. He left Chicago broke a few years ago and landed in Buffalo. This was the closest place to where he ran out of gas on the Thruway.

          He worked as an auto mechanic for a car dealer and met a musician who introduced him to Clark, who’d been retired for 15 years.

          That happened when he came back from his last Dick Clark road show in 1959. He got married, settled down, began raising four children and working for a tire company.

          Al talked him into reliving the old days, but it wasn’t easy resuscitating them. It’s taken a couple years, most of that time in basements rehearsing and squabbling over personal and musical direction.

          Al quit once rather than be part of a commercial group playing modern tunes and a single set of ‘50s music.

          “Al couldn’t do it,” says Charlie, who at 27 was a ‘60s teen who was into the Kinks and the Byrds. “If he wasn’t such a pighead about it, we wouldn’t be here.”

          “Look,” Al interjects, “I did good in Chicago with Herbie & the Hearts and the other groups. It paid the bills for myself and my old lady.

          “I just couldn’t get into the blasé stuff now. I was ready to hang it up. I had a good job.”

          And then there was what seemed like an endless search for the right drummer. He turned out to be tall, red-haired Rick Kuhns, age 20, born in Japan.

          He was raised on ‘60s soul music and is a veteran of Yesterday, a Beatles-Beach Boys revival band.

* * *

“IT WAS last fall,” Al says, “and we needed a drummer for a job Saturday and we fired our old drummer Tuesday. We were all set to hire this guy covered with tattoos when Rick comes along.”

          “I’d had a month of just missing getting into groups,” says Rick, who’s an apprentice plumber. “They’d always hire the guy ahead of me.

          “At first, I didn’t like ‘50s music, but I made some money and got to know the guys better and I started to dig it. It’s a new way to use the equipment.”

          Needless to say, they don’t use ‘50s amps or equipment – Rick’s drums are state-of-the-craft modern – but the PA speakers remain small like the undersized units groups used 20 years ago.

          “The ‘50s groups are super stereotyped,” Al asserts. “They been seein’ too much of Fonzie.

          “In the ‘50s, bands didn’t wear blue jeans and leather jackets. They’d kick you out of places for wearing that. I know. I used to wear it.

          “Clark used to wear sequins in the ’50s. My group used to come out in thin white ties and black shirts,” he says.

          “Fonzie doesn’t even wear a real ‘50s jacket. Look at the belt on the bottom. That’s a ‘60s Air Force jacket.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: From left, Charlie Gallagher, Rick Kuhns, Clark Gibas and Al Allen.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Clark Gibas was really Karl. His folks had a dairy in the Black Rock-Riverside neighborhood and he delivered milk for them. When he refused to shave his sideburns, he was kicked out of St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute and wound up at Riverside High School, graduating in 1959. He was lead singer in several ‘50s bands – Nickel City, the Delrados and the Stereotones – and was known as “Buffalo’s Own Elvis.” He married the manager of his fan club, the former Sarah “Janey” McAuliffe, drove for UPS, then became an account executive for the company. He died in 2018.

Rick Kuhns broke into plumbing in high school, working as a laborer for a friend’s father who was a master plumber, and went on to found his own company – R.I.C. Plumbing (Residential Industrial Commercial) in Lockport in 1982 – doing a lot of underground repair work on burst pipes. In 1984, he became youngest person up to that time to become a licensed by the City of Buffalo as a master plumber. His sons Scott and Adam joined him in the business and he was profiled in Plumber magazine in 2018.