21. Rock Till You Drop at the Duthie Hall...it wasn't only the dancers who suffered sleep deprivation

In the early 1960's a craze sweeping America and the UK filtered through to Rhodesia. An endurance rock ‘n roll dance competition aptly called,  “Rock Till You Drop” in which competitors did just that, rocked till they dropped, literally; either from exhaustion or boredom...whichever came first. The last couple left dancing were crowned the winners. 

       1930's dance marathon

An updated rock n' roll version of the 1930’s ‘Depression’ dance marathons which the movie, “They Shoot Horses Don’t They” was based on.

Promoter, Jackie Cooenz, recognizing a bandwagon when he saw one, jumped aboard.  He hired the Duthie Hall and asked us, the Chequers, along with a string of other groups, to play. 

                        A wrestler who bears a passing similarity to Jackie Cooenz

As Jackie was an ex all-in wrestler when he asked us to do something we tried not to disappoint.

Rhodesia’s very own ‘Rock Till You Drop’ competition was to be held over the ‘Rhodes and Founders’ bank holiday weekend. It would kick off on Friday night at 6:00 p.m. and finish 12:00 midnight on Monday – that’s if any competitors were still dancing – all in all 
a maximum of 78 hours. 

                                                                      1960's dance marathon

We turned up at the Duthie Hall on the Friday night an hour or so before the contest kicked off and set our gear up on one of the two platforms provided for the bands.

Jackie's idea was to have two bands rotating, thirty minutes on, thirty minutes off. Over the course of six hours each band would play a total of three hours...after which time another two bands would take over and the system would continue...that was the idea anyway.

Incidentally, the unfortunate drummers had to keep playing throughout the thirty minute sets non-stop to keep a beat for the dancers to dance to. 

The contest was open to couples and each couple had to splash out £2 on the entrance fee.  An area was cordoned off for the competition and with a first prize of £25 (a sizeable sum in 
those days which according to the 'Historic Inflation Calculator' equates to £477 today) the cordoned off area was packed with couples from all corners of Rhodesia...each with an identification number pinned to their backs.

The audience had to hand over 1/6d for a day ticket from 8: 30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. and 2/- for the night session 8:00 p.m. through to 8:00 a.m.

We flipped a coin with the other band to see who would play first. We won and chose to play second. Little did we know that decision would have dire consequences.

Once the competitors where introduced to the sizable audience – there must have been two hundred plus – Rhodesia’s very own “Rock Till You Drop” dance marathon began.

The band launched into their opening number and the competitors started strutting their stuff.

Some bright spark opened a book to take bets on who would win. Jackie Cooenz heard about it and the would-be bookmaker was shown the door. 

Being 'shown the door' by Jackie Cooenz was not something I’d wish on anyone...we had had first hand experience.

Months earlier Jackie booked us along with another band, The Raiders, to play at club he was running. Each band would be on ten per cent of the gate. A combined total of twenty per cent.  

After the session ended Jackie handed over the bands' cut. The leader of The Raiders, a singularly mouthy dude wasn't happy ...and with some justification. At the very least there had been two hundred kids in the club. Ten per cent of two hundred is twenty. It was two bob to get in.  Twenty two bobs equates to forty bob (shillings) or two pounds old money. Jackie Cooenz had handed over a miserly fifteen shillings... an under payment of one pound five shillings. When challenged, Jackie ran through the figures. He reckoned seventy kids had paid to get it (which was laughable), ten per cent of seventy is seven, seven times two bob equal’s fourteen bob... he was feeling generous so added an extra shilling.

It was at this point that ‘stupid’ was added to ‘mouthy’ when describing the leader of The Raiders. He only went and refuted Jackie’s figures...which was as good as calling this twenty stone mountain of an ex wrestler a liar. Not a good idea.

In one swift movement Jackie swung the guy above his head, carried him out the club into the stairwell – I forgot to mention the club was on the first floor – and chucked the 'stupid', 'mouthy' leader of The Raiders' down the flight of stairs.

Jackie came back into the club, sauntered over and asked us if we had a problem with the money.

“Too right we have, Jackie”, we answered to a man. “There’s no way we’re going to accept fifteen bob (shillings)! No way! We want what’s owed to us...and that, my friend, is two quid at the very least!” That’s what we should have said. That is what we’d liked to have said. But instead we metaphorically touched our forelocks and ingratiatingly thanked him for his generosity in adding an extra bob to our pot. “The Chequers...?” We should have been called “The Grovellers”. But if you had seen Jackie Cooenz you’d understand. He was one mean okie.

And the self-same mean oike was running the 'Rock To You Drop Contest'.

The trouble with marathon dance contests is they aren't exactly entertaining for the spectator...well not until the competition nears its conclusion and the competitors, deprived of sleep and in a state of complete and utter exhaustion, start dropping like flies...then it’s definitely entertaining and well worth the price of a ticket. But on that Friday night it was days away...and the sight of people dancing, less than energetically to save energy, got boring very damn fast.

                                                                 Get the picture

When the other band were about to finish their thirty minute set they went into “Johnny B Good”, Mac, Hodge and I slung on our guitars and switched on our amps, Lea got behind his drums and we joined in...after a couple of bars the other band stopped playing and we 
continued – seamless.

We finished our thirty minutes and went into, “Just Seventeen”, the other band joined in and once again after a couple of bars we left them to it.

And so we rotated until 11.30 pm when the other band finished their last set, packed up and disappeared...and we took over for what we thought was our final thirty minutes. 

Twenty minutes into our set and there was no sign of the two new bands that were supposed to take over from us.

At five to twelve they still hadn't put in an appearance.

Unease started to permeate The Chequers. It turned 12 mid night on that Friday night at The Rock Till You Drop Contest and still we were the only band. If none of the other bands turned up we could still be here come Monday night.

We asked someone to tell Jackie we wanted a word. After a couple of minutes Jackie wandered over and told us he had spoken to the bands but unfortunately both their vans had punctures. The likelihood of two vans on their way to the Duthie Hall getting punctures was pretty remote. Jackie must've picked up on our scepticism because he added he didn't believe the lying bastards and told them not to bother turning up at all. He told us not to worry as he had sorted something out. When we asked if had had organized another band. His eyes went all flinty and he repeated that he had sorted something out. The memory of the mouthy band leader tumbling down the stairs was still fresh in our memory so we didn't take it any further. The thirty minutes turned into an hour, the hour turned into two, three, four hours... 

...It was seven a.m. before we were relieved. We had been playing seven and a half hours without a break. The finger tips on my left hand, my chord hand, were red raw. Lea had kept the beat going none stop for a solid seven and a half hours, his drumsticks must have felt like dumbbells.

We were exhausted, totally knackered. 

When at last we were finally relieved it wasn't by a rock band. No, we were relieved by records, discs.

Jackie had a 'back up plan'. In the likely event that one or two of the bands didn't turn up, Jackie had a back-up plan.  A record player with large hefty speaker cabinets was at the ready in his van parked outside. He was only going to let us play on until about one in the morning before switching to the records...so the paying punters couldn't moan about there not being live music. Before the advent of the Disco, playing records at a session was a big no-no. Live music was what people paid their money to hear, not records you could listen to at home.

Earlier that night Jackie had taken himself off to crash for an hour but ended up sleeping through to 7.00 a.m. He mumbled something about making it up to us...we didn't really know what he meant and were too tired to ask. But whatever it was he never did. Oh, well, such is life.