Prologue
Maybe it all started with Elvis Presley on July 5th, 1954 when he began playing Arthur Crudup’s That’s All Right song in the Sun Records Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. It became a popular record.
It did not take long for Elvis Presley to become popular in the fifties with so many women falling in love with him. And then many other young men wanted to cash in on the hysteria. The thought of girls screaming and desiring them would be a dream come true.
This was true for five young men that grew up together Manchester, New Hampshire. These guys were Jackie Brooks, Burt Clark, Carter Collins, Delmar Lee, and Sigmund “Sig” Ward.
All five guys were best friends since they were babies all born during the summer of 1942.
They wanted to start their own rock bands when they arrived in their teen years.
They finally started their own rock band calling themselves The Rocking Tones. Their parents thought the kids would lose interest and the group would fade away in due time. So they hoped.
But the band did not fade away. On the contrary, the teens in the early sixties started to fall in love with The Rocking Tones. They fell in love with their sound that was a mix between The Beatles and the Dave Clark Five.
So 1964 rolled around, and The Rocking Tones grew the same long hairstyles like The Beatles and Dave Clark Five. They figured this was the change of in the times and went with the new trends.
Then on September 20th, 1964, The Rocking Tones got an opportunity of a lifetime. They were selected to be the opening act for The Beatles at the Paramount Theater charity concert in Brooklyn, New York.
After that performance, The Rocking Tones performed daily concerts around the New England area. It was a busy time for the young men.
Jackie was the lead guitarist and played a white with brown wood-grained pickguard Domino Californian electric guitar.
Burt was the rhythm guitarist and played a sunburst, Gibson Les Paul.
Carter was the bass guitarist and played a two-toned Fender bass.
Delmar was the keyboardist and banged his fingers on the keys of a Fender Rhoades.
Sig was the drummer and loved his red Pearl drums.
The band got another next colossal break when they appeared the on Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday, October 4th, 1964.
During that show, The Rocking Tones 1953 silver with red strip GMC Coach bus was parked out in the rear of the Ed Sullivan Theater.
The old bus was converted inside with a large closet installed in the rear along with a toilet. The closet allowed the guys to hang up their suits after a concert. Behind the driver was installed wall that had a table and semi-circle bench seat. The bench seat could seat eight people around the table.
Then there were six chairs installed on each side of the bus by the windows behind the table. There were spaced far apart to provide ample leg room during the trip.
Inside the bus sat middle-aged Gus McMillan the driver in one of the seats. He had it reclined back and took a little snooze. Gus was not fond of rock and roll music but needed the job, so he tolerated the kids of the band.
An hour passed, and The Rocking Tones were finished with their historic appearance on television. They knew this would soar them to greater stardom.
Roger and the band walked out of the stage exit door with a four officer NYPD escort.
The Rocking Tones all wore their standard golden brown suits, tanned dress shirts with dark brown ties and brown leather ankle boots.
Roger always wore a black suit, white shirt with a white tie and wing-tipped shoes.
The NYPD had barricaded at the ends of the street where sixty fans of The Rocking Tones gathered. They cheered at the sight of their favorite rock and roll band members.
But not all of the sixty people behind the barricades were fans of this rock band. Fifteen of the sixty people did not cheer at the sight of The Rocking Tones. They were members of a Baptist church located in the Deep South. They had strong feelings that Rock and Roll were tearing down the morals of the country.
A tall and lanky Pastor named Elmer Watson from Montgomery, Alabama led this group of religious Baptist fanatics. Elmer always had his beloved old Bible in his hand and had an extreme hatred in his heart for rock and roll bands like The Rocking Tones. His Bible was passed down from his grandfather, who also was a religious Baptist fanatic. His grandfather was a member of the KKK back in his earlier youth.
This religious group protested behind the barricades and held four signs up in the air. These signs read “The Rocking Tones Are Pure Evil,” “Sinners!”, “Rock and Roll is Music of the Devil” and “Rot in Hell!”
Two NYPD police officers kept a watchful eye on the pastor and his followers. They were tipped off recently to keep an eye on Elmer, as they were deemed a threat to the band.
Jackie, Burt, Carter, Delmar, and Sig walked over to the front of their bus. They waved and blew kisses at their adoring fan behind the barricades. They loved this feeling and noticed that the crowd of adoring fans had grown over the past year.
They turned around and got inside the GMC bus. Gus closed the door and started up the bus engine.
Roger walked over and talked with two roadies named Tom Westham and Kenny Whitestone that waited by two Chevrolet G10 white vans. These guys were in their early thirties and had been with The Rocking Tones ever since they started going on the road.
After a brief discussion about the trip to Chicago with Tom and Kenny, Roger walked to his brand new red 1964 Corvette Stingray Coupe parked behind the bus.
Tom and Kenny both went back into the Ed Sullivan Theater to gather up the band’s instruments from the show.
Gus drove the bus, drove away, and headed to the opening of the barricade provided by the NYPD.
Roger’s Corvette drove after the bus.
While the bus made a left turn onto the street, those religious protestors hurled rotten tomatoes at the right side of the bus. Tomatoes splattered all over the bus windows.
“You sinners will burn in hell!” Elmer yelled out with fire in his voice while he held up his Bible at the passing bus.
Roger’s Corvette still followed behind the bus, and some of those rotten tomatoes pelted the windows and the right side of his sports car. He was pissed.
The bus and Roger’s Corvette continued their drive on down the street.
Elmer watched The Rocking Tones bus drive off down the street with piercing eyes. “All sinners will burn in hell,” he said. A few of his followers heard him and nodded in agreement.
An hour had passed.
At a small diner off a two-lane country road in Pennsylvania, the bus and Roger’s Corvette stopped off for a quiet dinner.
The place was called Walter’s Diner. Roger had preplanned this stop and paid the owner extra money to make sure no other customers were inside to bug the members of the band.
An hour had passed, and Roger, Gus and the band members of the band walked out of the diner.
Roger got behind the wheel of his Corvette. The band got inside the bus.
The bus and Corvette drove out of the parking lot of the diner.
It was now 3:15 in the morning and Gus drove the bus down Interstate 80 heading west. The Interstate was quiet, and the only vehicles on the road were the bus and Roger’s Corvette. Roger had kept his car a safe distance behind the bus. Then Roger let off the gas and let his car get even farther behind the bus. He anxiously watched the rear of the bus.
Then the bus suddenly exploded into a massive fireball with intense heat.
Pieces of flaming pieces of metal flew at Roger’s Corvette.
He swerved his car to the left to avoid a flaming piece of the bus. His brand new shiny Corvette flipped over a few times. His car finally rested on his roof in the grassy median.
The highway was still quiet except for the crackle from the flames of the burning bus.
The driver’s door to the Corvette creaked opened.
A few seconds of silence, then Roger crawled out of his smashed up sports car in pain.
He crawled twenty feet in the grass to get away from his car.
He painfully sat up on the road on his butt and watched that GMC Coach bus burn. His eyes rolled back in his head. He leaned over and passed out.
A Ford Galaxy drove east on Interstate 80. The driver screeched on its brakes the second he spotted the burning bus in the westbound lanes. The driver of the Ford sped away to find an emergency phone along the shoulder of the highway.
The next morning arrived, and all of the newspapers across the country had headlines that the members of The Rocking Tones band perished in that bus explosion.
The police investigation initially suggested that a deranged fan placed a bomb under the bus. They theorized that the fan installed the bomb under the bus while it was parked at the rear of the Ed Sullivan Theater. They figured security got a little lazy and the fan managed to slip through the barricade.
Fans all around the country mourned the deaths of their favorite rockers.
Roger only suffered a broken collarbone from his accident with his Corvette. But that scared him, so he quit the music business. He decided to go back to college to complete his marketing degree.
Two months had passed.
After months of investigation, the FBI raided the home of Elmer Watson in Montgomery based on an anonymous phone call. The call stated that they saw a 1952 Chevrolet Bel-Air with Alabama tags leaving Walter’s diner that night. The tag number was traced back to Montgomery to a member of Mister Watson’s church. That member claimed his tag was stolen a week before. The black 1952 Bel-Air was eventually found abandoned in some woods just outside Jackson, Mississippi. It was charred from someone setting it on fire.
While the FBI searched Elmer’s garage, they found a timer similar to the timer on the bomb that exploded on The Rocking Tones bus.
Elmer was arrested, extradited to Pennsylvania, tried and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of the members of The Rocking Tones.
For years afterward, the music of The Rocking Tones never left the hearts of their many adoring fans. One such fan was Diane Dakota.
It was now June 2003, and Diane was a middle-aged old widow that lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Diane had worked as an administrative assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1963. She planned on retiring in a few years.
Diane had been a huge fan of The Rocking Tones ever since their Banging the Beat song came out.
She eventually became the President of The Rocking Tones fan club chapter in Massachusetts.
Because she was the President of the local fan club, she met Jackie Brooks, and he gave her an autographed picture of The Rocking Tones. Jackie autographed it with “To Diane, my number one fan, Jackie Brooks.” She cherished that picture, and it always hung on one of her walls wherever she lived.
Diane would spend countless hours listening to the two albums of The Rocking Tones. She later would play them for her seven-year-old grandson Danny Dakota.
He also became a huge fan of The Rocking Tones and loved living with his grandmother and hearing her countless stories of the 1960s.
Young Danny moved in with Diane after his mom and dad were killed in a car accident, because of a drunk driver. Danny was only six years old that horrible day.