About 5 years back I sent Dick Flohill a scan of a review of a SJE concert he promoted in 1964. I've been performing some email 'housekeeping' and came across his acknowledgment which contains some interesting sidelights on blues promotion in the 60s. I'm sure Dick won't object to my passing on his reminiscences.
"Re-reading John Norris' piece on Sleepy John in Canada brought back a whole lot of memories - I was one of the two people (the other being a marvelously eccentric pathologist Dr. Beverley Lewis) who brought John into Toronto.? It was my first experience as a "concert promoter" - I still continue doing that, but my primary job is as a music industry publicist for record companies, individual artists, and music organizations and events; it was nice that John remarked on the publicity effort that Beverley and I made!? With Estes as our inspiration, Beverley and I went on to bring Muddy Waters and Robert Nighthawk to town - we never made any money, but we learned a lot and we heard some wonderful music.
The Estes presentation was done in an odd way, as John pointed out. We asked our backers to buy tickets in advance for $10.00 each (quite a lot of money back then!), and we promised them that they would get whatever proportion of their money back after the expenses (including paying John, Hammie and Yank) were taken care of.
The backers, in fact, got $9.50 back (plus their ticket, which wound up costing them 50 cents).? Only after everyone had been paid back did I realise that I hadn't paid for the posters, and that bill was $90.00. Thus I proudly lost money at my first concert promotion!
Later on, I made a killing with B.B. King's first appearance in Canada; lost my shirt (and stopped smoking the next day) with Bobby Bland; made money with Miles Davis and Benny Goodman and The Chieftains and Stephane Grappelli and Ry Cooder; lost big time with Maynard Ferguson, and sorta broke even with dozens more.? I later got deeply into the folk music end of the business, and I'm still active there.
But Sleepy John set me off on my music biz life, and I owe him bigtime for what's been a rich and marvelous life! Cheers, Richard"
