Seven Days Til Vegas – Jack Ely & The Courtmen

Seven days from now, Jack Ely, the original vocalist of LOUIE LOUIE with the Kingsmen, will be performing a very special show in Las Vegas, Nevada with The Courtmen, the band he formed after he left the Kingsmen, and was prohibited to use the Kingsmen name. I asked Jack for details about this upcoming show, and here’s what he wrote:

The last time The Courtmen got together was 1999 at Seaside. However, over the years there were different members of The Courtmen. The lineup at Seaside had the first drummer, the second keyboard player, the third guitarist and me. At this show there will be two drummers, the first one, Gordon Hirsch, and the one that played on all our recordings after the first one went into the service, Michael “Monk” McGrath. The second keyboardist, Bill Truitt will be there. The first keyboardist died a couple of years ago. There will be two guitarists also. The first one Daryl Partlow and the fourth one Clif Evens, but not the one who was in Seaside with us. He seems to have disappeared.

The show came about this way. Some of the guys have been asking for a reunion for quite some time and I finally acquiesced. Then we had to decide where. Las Vegas seemed like the most centrally located place and worked well because Bill Truitt lives there and is still in the music business and has access to a practice facility and can house a couple of the guys while we’re there. The reason we are going to be there during the week is because the hotel rates are half price during the week. The gig came about because a band that Bill sometimes jams with, plays regularly at the Sand Dollar Blues Club and is playing there that night. At first we were just going to sit in and do Louie Louie, but then Bill said he wanted to do more if he was going to the trouble of hauling his equipment down there. So now we’re doing a set, I hope. That is, we are all practicing like crazy hoping to get up enough chops to do a full set. I think we can do it.

So, there it is. There will actually be six Courtmen that night. That should be fun and crazy.

Jack

So there you go- details of a special show taking place at the Sand Dollar Blues Nightclub and Lounge on October 1st, 2008. If you will be in Vegas that night, you can witness a performance you’ll unlikely see any where else..

If that wasn’t enough Jack Ely news, it turns out Jack recently launched his own MySpace page, where you can hear some of his OTHER music … besides LOUIE LOUIE! If you haven’t joined MySpace yet, this may be another incentive….

http://www.myspace.com/jackelysongs

By the way, for those that want the names of all the people in the photo above, starting from the left side, we’ve got Wally Todd, John Thoennes (promoter of 1999 Seaside show), Gordon Hirsch, Jack Ely & Bill Truitt.