The Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor

I'm pretty sure the keyboard player is Chuck Leavell. Joe Rudd (front), Tippy Armstrong (back),www.myspace.com/tippyarmstrong
and Charlie Hayward (bass) on the Quad in Oct 68, taken with a Polaroid camera. Charlie has been the bass player with the Charlie Daniels Band, forever (25 yrs maybe). This picture is also somewhere on the Tippy MySpace site.

CHUCK LEAVELL, MIKE DUKE & JOHNNY TOWNSEND

photo courtesy of Johnny Townsend http://www.johntown.com/home.html
& Jennifer Toffel http://jennifertoffel.com/

left to right: Chuck Leavell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Leavell
Jimmy Nall
Lou Mullinex http://robertoreg.blogspot.com/2007_06_24_archive.html
Alex Taylor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Taylor_(musician)
Charlie Hayward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hayward

REMEMBRANCE...

The Misfitz, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

In my early days of playing guitar and keyboard, growing up and living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I found myself in my first band we called The Misfitz.

The first lineup was Jonathan McAlister on bass and vocals, Rodney Etheridge on guitar, Bill Johnson on drums, and me on guitar, keys and vocals. There was another band in town called The Gents that was a couple of years older than us. They had Jim Coleman on guitar, Court Pickett on bass and lead vocals, Jimmy Romaine on rhythm guitar, and Lou Mullenix on drums.
They were a really good band I admired. I sort of looked up to the Gents and wanted The Misfitz to be as good or better, so there was a friendly competition going on.

The Gents played the YMCA every Saturday night for the high school kids, and the Misfitz played every Friday for a slightly younger crowd, the junior high kids. We also would get other little gigs here and there. As time went on we even played some fraternity parties at the University of Alabama.

Eventually the Misfitz became pretty popular, and when the new television station (WCFT, I believe) opened up shop in Tuscaloosa we were approached to do a Saturday morning show that was modeled after American Bandstand, creatively called Tuscaloosa Bandstand. By then, our rhythm guitar player, Rodney Etheridge, had been replaced by a great musician, Ronnie Brown. Ronnie added a lot of spark to the Misfitz, taking the band to another level. The host of the show was a well-known local DJ named Tiger Jack Garrett. We were riding high, playing the Y every Friday night and doing the Saturday morning TV show.

We were also listening to lots of other bands that either lived in Tuscaloosa or that would float through town and play the local armory, Ft. Brandon. Gary and The Top 10, the Rubber Band, the K-Otics, the 5 Men-Its, and the Allman Joys were just a few of the many bands that played there.

There was also a Battle of the Bands that went on there at one point. We entered and won second place for our age group, I honestly can't remember who won first. It was a long time ago. In any case, there was all this musical activity going on in ole' T-town.

All of us musicians were having a blast playing and doing our thing, listening to other bands, listening to records, learning our instruments, experimenting with arrangements, and such. It was a wonderful place and a wonderful time for all of us, and was a sort of breeding ground for musicians.

Occasionaly, we would go out of town and play in other cities- mostly college towns like Oxford and Jackson, Mississippi; Auburn, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee, and such. We also played in Birmingham quite a lot, and even went to places in New Orleans,
down in Florida. It was sort of Chittlin' Circuit.

Eventually some of us began to intermingle and play with each other. When the Misfitz broke up, I wound up playing with some of these musicians. I played with Paul Hornsby of the 5 Men-Its (and who had gone to California and played with the Hour Glass, a precursor of the Allman Brothers Band) in a band called the South Camp, and later with Lou Mullenix and Court Pickett of the Gents in a band called Sundown after we had moved to Macon, Georgia. There were really some great musicians who came out of Tuscaloosa.

SouthCamp: August '69
courtesy of Bruce Hopper
far left,with only head partially showing, Chuck Leavell
Paul Hornsby on keyboards
Bill "Squirmy" Stewart on drums
Glenn Butts on guitar
Frank Friedman on bass

"Wow the Southcamp photo that was second is very similar to the one I took that afternoon in August of 1969. Same angle. There was a lot of jammin going on that afternoon. was Townsend the source for that picture? He is mistaken about Mullinex playing. My picture has Squirmy on drums (same shirt as in your pic, but you can see Bill's receding hairline in my pic, definitely not Lou. My pic also includes Hornsby and half of Chuck's head. Glen Butts is standing where Charlie is and Frank is playing bass. In your pic, Frank's bassman is on the ground but in by pic it is on the stage. I think that a lot of people played that day on the quad. The neat thing is that there is only a two receptacle plug that came out of the ground next to that big Oak Tree. All the power came from there. You had to be careful about how many amps were plugged in or someone would have to go and replace a fuse in the ROTC building."
BRUCE HOPPER

Some went on to make a career of it- myself, Paul Hornsby, Ronnie Brown, Eddie Hinton, Lou Mullenix, Glen Butts, Charlie Hayward and others. Those were heady days and man, did we have fun!

Chuck Leavell