They were huddled in the living room between the couch and the big easy chair, banging out Mustang Sally on electric guitars. A handful of us watched in the remaining floor space between the amplifiers, the drummer, and the walls.
The guy standing next to my friend Craig wasn’t playing, but it was apparent that he was a musician. His name was DeWayne and had that rock-and-roll look. Maybe Allman Brothers or Stevie Ray Vaughn. He was lean and angular and wore his blonde hair long – at least, for that day and age. But he was SO young.
Looking back on that evening, I’m guessing DeWayne Kennon must have been in junior high – 9th grade, I suppose.
There were garage bands around, but not so many in McAlester that one didn’t know the others. It’s still a small town. This band on that day wasn’t out in the cold, but jammed into the living room of one of their parents, jamming to rattle the windows. It was as close to live music as I had ever experienced.
After a couple of songs the drummer said something to the others and the skinny blonde kid opened a guitar case and pulled out a left-handed Fender.
A minute or so later, his age was no longer even considered. His music was the real deal.
The band was called Crystal Image and they even had posters. Print-shop-quality posters. They had played on television on a dance show in Tulsa or Fort Smith. About as professional as you can get for high school lads from McAlester, Oklahoma.
It has been enough years ago that the personnel changes are a little fuzzy, but at some point, DeWayne became the guitar player for the band. In the picture (which I have borrowed courtesy of Paul Choate’s website. Paul, I hope you don’t mind…), you can see the fellows who were the basis of Crystal Image. From left to right: Paul Choate, bass; DeWayne Kennon, guitar; Kenny Milam, guitar; Larry Hall, drums.
Still later on, I got to play with them and I can only imagine that I talked my way in. They didn’t let me join in for my musical prowess, that’s for certain. We weren’t known as Crystal Image at that point: the band was simply called – Kennon. I may have had ignition keys to the equipment-hauling van but we all knew it was DeWayne and his guitar-licks driving our musical bus.
Like anything else, there were highs and lows – but it was always fun playing music with DeWayne, his cousin Larry Hall on drums, and bass player Ronnie Christian. We played several weeks running at a nightspot called Roadhouse West, a venue I was technically too young to enter. I thought we had developed a star-quality following after a number of weekly appearances, but found out after the fact that the packed house and its dancing, partying, fun-loving crowd was mostly due to a liberal underage admittance policy. (I had thought I recognized some faces in the audience… )
Then there was that one-nighter at a college hangout in Ada, Oklahoma, where the stage was situated along a wall without a single electrical outlet. The house was rockin’ and we were in full swing when suddenly my electric piano went mute, and DeWayne and Ronnie’s guitars fell silent. In fact, the whole house went quiet except for Larry and his drums.
He began to slow his tempo, while looking around, and then finally just quit. In the ensuing silence of the nightclub, Larry pointed a drumstick toward a corner table and called to the people sitting there.
You’ve unplugged our extension cord, he said. Will you plug us back in?
They did, and we went back to work.
Since my piano was oversized, it was normally set up on the stage in a manner that had me facing the band rather than the audience. DeWayne and Larry used to talk about watching some of the dancers. I never said anything, but I enjoyed watching DeWaye, Larry, and Ronnie playing and singing. It was a thrill to me, just to be up there with them.
We practiced new material in a loft we had rented over a ladies’ dress shop. Some of you will remember it as catty-corner from the old Hunt’s Department Store in downtown McAlester. It was a long, narrow flight of stairs to get up there.
And I played a piano.
It was smaller than the normal home instrument, but it was still bulky and heavy. It took all of us to drag it up the stairs. Late one night, about halfway to the upper landing, DeWayne moaned a little under the weight, and then asked me why I hadn’t learned to play the flute instead. Lucky I hadn’t. There was no spot in the band for a flute player.
I’m a poor correspondent. Hadn’t spoken to DeWayne and Larry for years and then, probably 25 years ago and completely out of the blue – we ran into each other at the Tulsa zoo. Ronnie married and joined the service and I had not heard a thing about him until I saw him listed as a pall bearer in the News-Capital obituary.
DeWayne died earlier this week.
It turns out, he was only a year younger than me, but first impressions seem to stick and that kid with the left-handed guitar didn’t look old enough to play all those years ago. And he is too young to have left us.
Thanks for helping me carry that piano all those nights, DeWayne. And thanks for carrying me and the boys with your excellent guitar playing. I just wish there was such a thing as a life-encore so I could have heard you play one more tune before you left the stage.