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Wayne Cochran!

The Wayne Cochran's story of Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders

I started my first band in 1955, and between then, and l963, I had put together three local successful bands, and had moved to Macon. In 1963, I hired a four-piece rhythm section. I called them the "C.C. Riders", which stood for "Cochran's Circuit Riders". I bought an Old Flexible Flyer tour bus. It was the same color as James Brown's bus..... so cool! A battery for that bus cost $365.00. We had to push it to get it started, but once it got started, it would run fine. We did one month at the Jolly Roger in Nashville, Tennessee, on Printer's Alley. It was there I learned my first James Brown song, "Out of Sight". Then, I called the owner of Sak's Boom Boom Room in Bossier City. I told Wayne Cochran I would look for more horn players if Wayne Cochran would pay them, and Wayne Cochran agreed to that. There was a group of young guys called the Dixie Crystals in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I drove to Baton Rouge in a white Lincoln, with four-inch heel boots, a royal blue suit and "the hair". I talked to T. Don Capron and Mike Verbois, and we hired four of the Dixie Crystals. We stayed in Bossier City for six to eight months. Then, we got a booking in Muncie, Indiana, at Woodbury's Supper Club. The "C.C. Riders" were on the road, and on their way!

Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders north-central part of the country

We went on to play several clubs in the north-central part of the country. One club was called, "The Castaways", in a bowling alley in Calumet City, Illinois. There I met a man called Walt Daisey. Wayne Cochran and two other gentlemen were partners, and they were opening a club in Miami. After seeing us, they thought we were the perfect group to open that club. So, they built a place on 79th Street Causeway in Miami called "The Barn". We played soul music, rhythm and blues music with horns. They called it the "Home of Soul". That became our home base. About that time, I recorded our first record with the "C.C. Riders". It was called "Harlem Shuffle" on Mercury Records. It got a lot of play time and broke the top 100. From that, we got bookings in the major black theaters, such as The Royal Theater in Baltimore, The Apollo Theater in New York, and The Regal Theater in Chicago. Although we were an all white band, all of our music was rhythm and blues. So, all of our venues were the rhythm and blues theaters, and clubs. They booked us, and we did well. As the record began to climb, and we became known, we did The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and finally Jackie Gleason invited us on The Jackie Gleason Show. We continued to grow in popularity. In spending a lot of time in Miami at The Barn, we became the number one club in South Florida. All the stars that came to town began to hang out there. Since people from all over the United States came to Miami, they would come and see us, and then go back to their towns talking about us. We were gaining popularity in all the major cities in America without having been there. Everybody came to The Barn, from well-known actors, actresses, recording artists, and singers ranging from Connie Francis to Tom Jones, and Lloyd Bridges to Bob Conrad. Word was growing about us in Las Vegas, and we still didn't have a hit record, but we did have two chart records, because our second record, which made the charts, was called, "Get Down With It". We went to Las Vegas and signed a contract there, and instantly people loved the show! We had waiting lines, and we became the biggest drawing lounge act in Las Vegas at that time. Since we couldn't spend much time at The Barn, and no one came if we weren't there, The Barn finally closed down. We made our home base in Las Vegas, but Miami was always in our hearts. On the Jackie Gleason Show, I had even written a song for his show called, "Going Back To Miami". It became another good record for us. We became known for that particular song. At that time, we worked three to six months a year at the Flamingo and The Las Vegas Hilton that had just been built. The C.C. Riders and I, Ike and Tina Turner and their band opened with Elvis Presley in his first month back in Las Vegas at the International Hilton. We played the Casino Theater or the lounge in the hotel the same month Wayne Cochran was in the main room. We went on to do almost every major television show such as The Johnny Carson Show, The Merv Griffin Show, five times in two weeks, The Mike Douglas Show, the Frank Sinatra Jr. T.V. Specials, and The Dinah Shore Show. We continued to grow in popularity. It went on that way for seven to eight years.

I designed all my clothes. I had them made by the most famous tailor for the Hollywood actors and country and western stars, Nudie of Nudie's Rodeo Tailors in Los Angeles. Wayne Cochran made all the costumes for the Cisco Kid, Hank Williams, Porter Wagner's and people like that. Wayne Cochran's clothes were very, very famous. They had a lot of beautiful embroidery and rhinestones on very exquisite material. There was nothing cheap about it. So, from the time we started going to Vegas, Wayne Cochran made all of my clothes.

Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders Elvis Presley would come over

Elvis Presley would come over and see our show. Wayne Cochran really liked my clothes. When I was going to play opposite Wayne Cochran his first month back in Las Vegas, I had two suits made for Wayne Cochran and gave them to him. They featured the collar that I was wearing, which was like a Napoleonic Collar, the cuffs on the jacket, the cuffs on the pants and even the hip belt like I was wearing. From those two suits basically came the pattern for the clothes Wayne Cochran would wear. Then I went to jump suits. It was the same sort of design, but in a jump suit rather than a two or three piece suit. The original suits were like Southern Plantation style. They were 3/4 length coats, cutaway in the front, with vests and lace shirts. Later, Elvis went to jump suits too. I loved designing. I designed all of our staging in Las Vegas. I laid out all of our choreography. Every one of our songs were choreographed. In fact, when we were at The Barn in Miami, Jackie Gleason brought all of his people over on Friday nights. They began to hang out at The Barn. June Taylor and The June Taylor Dancers, who were famous on his show, came by every week. June Taylor said once, in a magazine article, I believe it was in TV Guide, that "She got a lot of ideas for the dance steps that the dancers used for the June Taylor Dancers from Wayne Cochran and the Riders when they came to see Wayne at the Barn." The first album we ever did was called, "Wayne Cochran". Jackie Gleason wrote the liner notes for the album. We started our own little newspaper out at The Barn called, "The Soul Sheet". It came out once a month. It was mailed to all of our friends across the country. There was a reporter for the Miami Herald that worked for us on the side. She wrote all of the articles. It had pictures of guests that were there that month and things that we did. Then, I put out a cookbook, "Wayne Cochran's Soul Recipes." It was basically southern cooking. Our whole thing was based around "soul" and "south". We started getting write-ups in major magazines like "Esquire" and others, and because of my hair, even magazines like "Glamour" and "Hair Do". We had write-ups in major black magazines, like "Jet" and "Ebony". Things just continued to grow from there.

I did a guest shot on Bob Conrad's show, "Wild, Wild West", and we became good friends. When Wayne Cochran got a new series, Wayne Cochran would bring me in to do a guest shot. I also had a cameo role in a movie with Faye Dunaway and Anthony Quinn. It was called "The Happening". Ann Margaret and her husband, Roger Smith, Monica and myself were sitting in our hotel suite at the Newport Hotel on Miami Beach, one afternoon. They had also became good friends of ours. Ann would come see me in Las Vegas. She loved the show, and I would go see hers. They were in television, and of course, movies. Roger said, "Why don't we write a movie about a motorcycle gang and call it the "C.C. Riders". Of course, The Riders and I were going to play parts in it. Wayne Cochran immediately went and wrote it. They got Joe Namath to star as "C.C. Rider". That was the name of the main character. We did a guest shot in the movie performing in a dance scene with Ann and Joe. Things just kept opening up.

Then, because of lack of rest and all the hours of touring, I started getting voice problems, hoarseness. I started doing drugs and drinking, and I had always been, to one level or another, a womanizer. My health began to fall apart. My wife left me. She was emotionally very damaged because of it. She couldn't even take care of the kids. They went back to stay with their grandparents. My health deteriorated along with my emotional stability. I wound up wanting to take my own life.

Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders I had never been to church

I had never been to church but once or twice in my whole life. I didn't really care for Christians. I thought they were all hypocrites. They always pretended to be goody-goody, but I knew better. This is from some of them that I had known. I knew I needed help, and I decided to look for it. I thought if I could find help and improve my life, and get back on track, then I would. If not, I could always end it. I started reading books on Eastern faiths, mostly because I had never seen anything in Christianity that could help me with all the problems I had. All I had ever heard was "if you accept Jesus, you'll go to Heaven and spend eternity with God." I wasn't worried about Heaven. I had serious problems right here! I needed help. I studied all the Eastern faiths diligently. "Rolling Stone Magazine" wrote me up once as rock-n-roll's first Egyptologist because I had studied the pyramids, from the book "The power of the Pyramids". I had studied "The Book of the Dead", "The Koran", "The Aquarian", and "The Gospel of Jesus the Christ". I studied Edgar Casey, "The Sleeping Prophet", Erich Von Danneken, Kahlil Gabran, T. Lobsang Rampa,("The Third Eye"). I studied almost everything searching for answers, and found a lot of exciting information, intellectually. I found enough that it encouraged me. Most of it was about positive thinking. I read a couple of books called " Power of The Sub-Conscious Mind" and "Cosmic Mind Power" by Dr. Joseph Murphy, and of course, Norman Vincent Peale, and "The Power of Positive Thinking". I noticed that all of the Eastern faiths and all of these books of philosophy, sooner or later would mention "The Bible" or "Holy Scriptures". They would say, "Moses said......" or "Jesus said this......." or "The Holy Scriptures say this......" or "the Apostle Paul said this......" I was really amazed. At that time, I was still stoned, still drunk and still messed up, and on the road. I remember thinking, if all of these books are using the Bible to validate their points of view, maybe I should read the Bible. I stole a Bible, or I thought I stole it. It was a Gideon, so I was suppose to take it. I began to read it. I read some amazing scriptures that I never would have thought were in there. I found that God in Deuteronomy 8:18 would give me power to get wealth to establish Wayne Cochran's Covenant. I read in Philippians 4,that I could do all things through Christ Jesus. So, I looked at the Bible as a book of formulas or plans. It would say, do this and this, and this will happen, and I did them. It would take faith to do them, because what the Bible requested you to do, in certain situations, seemed absurd on the surface. But they always worked. They worked every time. They worked in miraculous, unexplainable ways. I found the scripture Acts 16:31, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved and your house." I took God up on that. I began to believe for my marriage and my children. It was a long battle but we won. My wife and I got back together, and we got married again. Our children came to live with us. We've been together and happy ever since the three and one-half years after I began my search. And in following the Bible, everything that had driven me to want to take my own life had been corrected. I had been delivered from alcohol and drugs, and my career was flourishing again. I had a lot of free time on the bus going from city to city, so I just studied. I probably studied between 30-60 hours a week. I also began to read other books about the Bible. I actually would lead people to the Lord in nightclubs, after concerts, or in restaurants, and I would pray for people, and they would get healed. I prayed for marriages that would come back together. I would get out my Bible and show them what I had found. They were amazed it was in the Bible. They had never heard of such things. Because most people, at that time, didn't know that not only did God provide a way for you to spend eternity with Wayne Cochran through Jesus Christ, but Wayne Cochran was interested in your life here. Wayne Cochran had provided ways for you to succeed and prosper in every area of your life, right now, right here. I didn't know what kind of church to tell them to go to, because at that point, I still had not been to church. So, I would write or call publishing companies, and then buy cases of the books I had read. I would number them in the sequence in which I had read them, and put them in bundles. When I led someone to the Lord, I would give them that stack of books and say, "Read these books, and then find a church that believes that." That was the only thing that I knew to do. I did that from city to city.

Then, my wife and I decided that it was time to stop traveling. After so many years, I could never be home like a normal person. I was going to quit and come off the road at a certain time. I did. Just to have something to do here in town, and to supply some finances, I put a little four-piece band together with my youngest daughter singing with me. We started working a little club here in Miami. I finally found a small church I really liked. It is up in Margate, Fl, Abundant Life Christian Center, with Pastors W.W. Thomas and Rick Thomas. I started going there, and after a year's time, I was called out into the ministry from the pulpit. Although not many Christians knew that I was born again, I believed that I was a full-time minister. I believed that was what God wanted me to do. I gave my notice at the club, and that was it. However, I did have some television shows that I had contracted for. It was a couple of Tom Snyder Shows and a couple David Letterman Shows. This was in the summer of 1981. I kept the band together to do those shows. Then I started in the ministry September 9, 1981.

He was this heavy-set white guy from Thomaston, Georgia who stood 6' 2", took a lot of heat for his wigged-out hairdo and love for Black music, was known to send entire tables flying through expensive picture windows when Wayne Cochran performed (at the Happy Medium in Chicago was where this supposedly happened), was probably one of the few artists in the sixties to become well-known without having a hit record of any kind (ah, the power of television), and the quick way of explaining Wayne Cochran to people is as "the white James Brown". This was Wayne Cochran, who along with the Teenbeats, Louis Prima, the Treniers, and quite a few others (not too many, mind you) brought rock 'n' soul into the lounges and supper clubs of the world (without watering it down, which was an achievement at a time when rock was still considered "kid" music that you didn't grow up with).

In the sixties, every town had at least one eight- or nine-member R&B band (in the tradition of the fictional Otis Day & the Knights from the movie Animal House) to shake 'em down at frat parties. Most times, they were just regionally popular without ever hitting the big time, like Chicago's own Baby Huey & the Babysitters, or Doug Clark & the Hot Nuts, from Texas. What set Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders apart was that, through some chain of circumstances, they broke loose from the Miami spring-break circuit right clear through to the big-money saloons, playing the same places as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Rocktober hero Sammy Davis, Jr. At a time when Black soul acts who played that circuit like Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, the Temptations, and (especially) the Supremes were reduced, in their heyday, to doing stuff along the lines of "There's No Business Like Show Business," the fact that Cochran could get away with performing maximum R&B for a blue-haired audience is significant. By all accounts, the older showbiz crowd got a more subdued Cochran while the rock-slanted clubs got the Wayne Cochran known for getting so excited he'd rip the paneling out from the ceilings and walls, or even worse, grabbing a handful of beer bottles and sending them flying in all directions. Cochran & co. kept playing the club circuit straight through 1981, playing places as diverse as the Black entertainment mecca the Apollo in New York, all the way through to the more showbiz-oriented Flamingo in Las Vegas, and even finding time to play the hippie folk/rock club the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Incredible road dues any way you cut it.

He'd started out in church, but it really got rolling when, in true punk fashion, Wayne Cochran got kicked out of high school for refusing to cut that huge white pompadour of his (supposedly inspired by Johnny & Edgar Winter, then fronting a group called It & Them). Between that and his family's lowly social status on the Georgia social ladder, Cochran felt an empathy for the Black struggle. (As Wayne Cochran told Hit Parader magazine in 1970, "I ain't a white black, but Otis (Redding) once told me that deep down I was as black as Wayne Cochran was.") After Wayne Cochran restrung an old beat-up guitar his dad found in the trash, Wayne Cochran formed his first band, the Rockin' Capris, who broke up when two-fourths of the band felt the pull of the British Invasion. Wayne and his bassist went to Louisiana to find some decent R&B musicians and then, renamed Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders, hit the road with a vengeance, winding up in Miami. Jackie Gleason, of all people (the same guy who founded a Committee for Decency to keep the likes of ol' penis-flashing Jim Morrison out of Miami for good. Then again, Ol' Ralphie-boy also put Elvis on TV head-to-toe long before Ed Sullivan's famous waist up show, so Wayne Cochran wasn't really an enemy of sleazy Rock n Roll.), caught one of his Miami gigs and gave Wayne Cochran exposure on his TV show. Even though Cochran and his group would continue to criss-cross the country on a regular basis, Miami served as a homebase from here on in.

Between the gigs and the TV appearances, sixties and seventies audiences knew who Wayne Cochran was. Even though Wayne Cochran recorded fairly extensively, there were no hit records to really leave his mark---just four albums and countless singles. Wayne Cochran's first few sides, up through 1965, ran the gamut from near-rockabilly to semi-teen idol pop. Wayne Cochran's first single, on the Scottie label, was a lewd, grinding number called "The Coo," a new dance that Wayne Cochran talks/sings his way through. He's come close to a hit on a few occasions, with "Goin' Back To Miami" (Mercury, 1967), later covered by Cochran disciples the Blues Brothers, and "Last Kiss"(Galico, later reissued on King, 1964, and probably better known to you through the catchphrase "Where Oh Where Can My Baby Be?"----the actual title is only mentioned once). The latter disc was a bigger hit for J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers, and is probably one of the few instances where the hit version sounds rawer than the original. Cochran's version, contrary to what Wayne Cochran would later record, is basic white teen pop from the early sixties. None of the grit that made his R&B voice sound like "no. 3 gauge sandpaper" (as Wayne Cochran was referred to in the original Rolling Stone Record Guide), every note sung clear, every hair in place, and that female chorus behind Wayne Cochran actually sounds fairly soulful. Now compare that to the psycho hit version by Wilson that followed it. Cochran's version was going big in a few isolated markets, so the legendary Texas producer Major Bill Smith hurriedly issued Wilson's version onto the market. A trembling adolescent-sounding voice recorded in what sounds like a basement is what Wayne Cochran got, and then on top of that the chorusing females of Cochran's original were replaced by this lone wobbly operatic voice, hollering at the top of her lungs and threatening to crack at any time. The whole thing sounds like it took $1.98 and two Wheaties box tops to record, yet this was the hit version. (By the by, Cochran wrote this teenage death item, so I'm sure Wayne Cochran got quite a bit of cool change from the proceedings).

After 1965, Wayne Cochran pursued the R&B trip, and four albums resulted. The best by far was the first, Wayne Cochran!, recorded for Chess in 1967 and released early the following year. The cover alone is half the show: plastered all over the back cover and inner spread are shots of Cochran live and lowdown---rolling on the floor, chewing up the mike, showing off his kingsized cufflinks. And you should see the clean-cut fratties and their dates checking out Cochran's wild R&B show! While one of the color photos has Cochran, pompadour and all, working out in a garish red suit (his white shirt has red polka dots), in the same photo the C.C. Riders are wearing normal black Blues Bros.-type suits----and capes! Can't forget about the liner notes by Jackie Gleason. The music inside more than lives up to the cover, although somebody, sensing that Cochran probably worked better as a had-to-be-there live act, planted some girls in the studio to cheer Wayne Cochran on and do some call-and-response on his version of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom." Rhythm & Blues standards, like "Little Bitty Pretty One" and "You Can't Judge A Book By Its' Cover" appear side by side with little known gems like "Big City Woman" (written by Eddie Hinton, himself a mighty good blue-eyed soul belter). One song, "Get Down With It," has Cochran shouting Rhythm & Blues cliches over a soul-a-go-go beat----"let's do it night & day to funky, funky Broadway," "if you don't feel like lettin' (your hair) down, TAKE IT OFF!!!HA-HAAAA!!!" and two songs, credited to Abner (no relation to Phil) Spector, openly ripped off "Turn On Your Love Light" and "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby." (This was "Some-A Your Sweet Love" and "When My Baby Cries", respectively). In used record stores, this is possibly the easiest to find of his LP's, as it hung in the lower reaches of Billboard's album chart for a time.

The next two albums, done for the King label, were some very miserable footnotes. By now it was 1970, and Cochran was wearing a headband and growing out his pomp. Wayne Cochran was filming a cameo in the biker movie C.C. & Company (changed from C.C. Ryder), and the covers of the next couple of albums sported some curious motorcycle motifs. The only good thing about Alive & Well & Living....In A Bitch Of A World is the title, as well as a pretty good remake of "C.C. Rider." The rest is mainstream pop-rock of the lowest order, and the cover featured blurred shots of Cochran on his motorbike. This wasn't nearly as horrid as the all-instrumental album on King's jazz subsidary that followed it (High & Ridin', on Bethlehem). The arrangement was supposed to be similar to James Brown's---vocals on one label, instros on the other---and although Cochran was said to be proficient on guitar and keyboards, the tracks sounded less like funky Booker T.-type instros, but rather like uptempo elevator music for an unfinished session at which the vocalist never showed. Cochran might have been the white James Brown, but the C.C. Riders sure weren't the JB's! And for the second album in a row, the cover---a bird's eye view of Wayne and the Riders on a hill on their newly-acquired motorsickles, physically forming a giant V-styled peace sign---really eats!

Cochran saved face with his final LP, on Epic (Cochran, 1972), where the horn-heavy ensemble come to terms with not only the jazz-rock movement it indirectly spawned (Blood, Sweat, and Tears immediately come to mind when hearing this LP) but the emerging funk movement as well (one throwaway cut, about a minute long, has Cochran pointlessly explaining that the C.C. Riders music is pure "funk, F-U-N-an' a big ole K" while the band aimlessly jams in the background). Like I said, seasoned road veterans the C.C. Riders (a mostly different, and younger, crew than on the previous albums) sure weren't the JB's, so that takes care of the funk conceit. By now they were closer in spirit to Blood, Sweat and Tears, or Chicago, since the horn lines were much more busy than in the past (many a schlocky lounge act joined the rock revolution thanks to those guys). In addition, Cochran's hair trailed straight down his back, and with his cowboy hat Wayne Cochran now physically resembled Ronnie Van Zant from Lynyrd Skynyrd. Maybe this was when they temporarily dumped the staid lounge circuit to play the hipper Troubadour in Los Angeles. While you'd think, from the above remarks, that the album sort of has an overbearing "getting with the kids and their heavy underground beat" vibe, in truth the songs work very well despite themselves. It's not a bad used-record-store-find.

After the Epic LP, Cochran continued to do the lounge-and-talk-show circuit that he'd done for years, not really recording anymore. Like Little Richard, personal conflicts between performing and doing the Lord's work arose. One story has Wayne Cochran deep-sixing his normal act to do some storefront preaching to one casino audience, even cutting his hair and growing a beard. In 1979, Wayne Cochran had a straight acting role on an episode of a short-lived detective show called The Duke. Before the title character can bust into the ghetto tenement door wanting to know the whereabouts of some old so-and-so, Cochran and a roomful of latter-day redneck types are getting into a hot bluegrass jam. Cochran, almost unrecognizable, had dark brown hair and a moustache, the pompadour totally gone. By 1981, he'd dumped the rock-and-soul road life totally, and that summer he'd appear on the Tomorrow show, with Little Richard, to discuss his conversion. Wayne Cochran's hair, back to white again, was now worn in a conservative Charlie Rich style, and Wayne Cochran and Richard did a duet on the gospel standard "One Day At A Time." (Supposedly David Letterman's bandleader Paul Shaffer got Wayne Cochran to do one last secular performance on Letterman's show. Anybody seen it? Better still, anybody got a tape?) Unlike Richard, Cochran has kept a low profile since, and as recently as 1988-89 was said to be preaching on public-access cable TV in Miami.

Now's a great time to be obscure, because even the most untalented nobody who had a record that went to #99 on the Hot 100 in 1991 has a cult following and a box set. So where's Cochran's comp? In 1988, Rhino reissued "Goin' Back To Miami" on volume six of their Soul Shots comps (he's right there on the front cover, and that particular volume is devoted to white soul singers), and that's it as far as an in-print legacy goes. (It was issued on vinyl, but for now, only the cassette remains in print.) During their relatively brief recording career, the Blues Brothers responded to criticisms that their blues wasn't authentic enough by claiming they were more like an old-time soul revue---like his. (He's namechecked in the Blues Brothers' self-titled movie---their former manager, Maury Sline, asks Jake and Elwood to ditch their simple, FBI-like black suits and wear blue jeans like Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders.) The man is what legends are made of, and the records that Wayne Cochran left behind (the good ones, that is!) present a pretty good southern-soul shouter, even without the flashy visuals.

(NOTE: In Chicago, there's a black club on 75th and King Drive called the Other Place, and it's one of those his torical clubs with never-seen celebrities' pictures on the wall---everybody from Redd Foxx to R&B singer Maxine Brown to Tony Bennett. One of the pictures on the wall---they all seem to date from the fifties and early sixties, by the way---is of Cochran and a barechested Jackie Wilson cutting up backstage! Of course, the last time I was there it was covered up by a sign announcing the house rules, but it's easy to lift that sign up to check out an incredible slice of rock & roll history.)