Guest
This is a very underrated song, one of my favorites. Chase Canfil and Gene Paul met up in a honky-tonk on the highway out of Port Arthur, Texas. Gene Paul was really a jazz pianist, recently discharged from the USAF, who wound up in the area when an $8 bus ticket got him to Texas. Chase Canfil and Gene Paul started talking at Stewart’s Club and started hanging out, visiting all the joints in the area, and recruited four black musicians from other bands to start their own own group: Chase & Gene. They cut their first record in an empty store front, resulting in a very raw recording. The main side was a song Chase had written, “I Had a Dream.” They realized they needed another side, so they made up one on the spot. Gene started with a piano riff that he ‘borrowed’ from a Stan Kenton album, and Chase made up words, and this is the side most people like, “Woke Up This Morning.” They then got a manager, Bill Hall, who also managed The Big Bopper, and later Johnny Preston, both friends of Gene and Chase. They cut their Dart records in Memphis, and were supposed to do it at Jerry Lee Lewis’ brand new studio, but they couldn’t get the sound and they went across town late at night and made the record at The Hole In The Wall studio, which was owed by Cowboy Jack Clement, who later produced “Ring of Fire” with Johnny Cash. Chase and Gene sadly had to part with the black members of the band after a year. It was difficult to get gigs with a mixed group. They could not work across the state line in Louisiana, where one of the biggest and best-paying honky-tonks was – it was against state law for mixed races to appear on the same stage at the same time. They went through 5 or 6 bands, eventually cooling down to a quartet playing a private dinner club up until the end in ’64.
