Organ, drum, and guitar trios were always “fat” outta Philly. So it seems one hot August Sunday in Cape May, New Jersey, my dear old dad got a “hurry call” to run to the aid of a trucking company client down the road in Delaware. It was ‘75, and I was “big enough” to wait it out for his return in this dim bar with the band suspended above the top shelf liquor. Dad advised me to stick with Shirley Temples (i.e. a ginger ale with a dash of grenadine and a couple of maraschino cherries).
In addition, I had a spare room at the spooky, turreted Carroll Villa (up the block from the dive, drummed in orange, halloweeny-type strings of miniature bulbs). The Carroll was the spitting image of a cross betwixt “The Addams Family” horror hovel and the Bates Motel. So, if my errant pater-familias might have taken a detour to secretly play game nags at Del Park; worry not should I but go flip in my barely furnished Cape May garret.
Well, after at least three hours of absorbing the swirling hammond of three sounds, serpentining around a would-be Freddy King Gibson 175 arabesque, (doodle-doodle, doodle-diddle doodle-oo…), and “Going down-down, down, down, down, down-downnn,” then they shifted gears into a sultry “Misty.” By then I had snuck myself one beer and Dad was nowhere to be found. I stumbled the two blocks to the “Villa.”
At daybreak, I gasped, agog at the forest of warts on both feet. I knew what to do and grabbed my kit, and ran straight down to the ocean’s froth. Stood there half an hour, came out — NO WARTS! There is a god. But I never caught the name of dat organ trio!
