Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the hottest local band was Conny and the Bellhops.
Time has taken its toll, but rock ‘n roll never forgets, and the band has been selected for the Kansas Music Hall of Fame. Induction ceremony will be Saturday at Liberty Hall, Lawrence.
Members were in their teens when the band was organized in 1958 by Conny Conrad, Pittsburg. Original members, in addition to Conrad, were Russell Pryer, rhythm guitar, Carl Sipes on keyboard, Tommy Schockley, lead guitar, and Clarence Sharp, drums.
Conrad, Sipes and Schockley are deceased, and Sharp lives in California. Pryer, who lives in Arma, plans to attend the induction, along with Walt Kennett, also of Arma, who is almost an original member. He joined the band a few months after it was started.
Several members of Conrad’s family will also be present.
“They’ll be making the acceptance speech, which is the way it should be,” Kennett said.
He and Pryer have happy members of the band, which played its own special brand of rockabilly. One of the earliest styles of rock and roll, rockabilly emerged in the early 1950s, and combined elements of rock with country music, which was often called hillbilly music in the 1940s and 1950s.
“We both started playing in high school,” Kennett said. “The first band I was in was started by Jerry Peterson, but I went with Conny because he played rock and roll. Conny was a very talented man, a darn good sax player and also an artist. He had a very creative mind. He was a pioneer, basically.”
The band often practiced in the backyard at the home of Kennett’s family.
“My family had a paint store in Pittsburg, and we lived at 118 W. Mead, off the bypass,” he said. “People would stop and listen to us practice.”
The band’s first dance was the 1958 Walnut High School prom. According to Pryer, the Bellhops didn’t know that many songs, so kept playing the same ones over and over.
The Bellhops also played area clubs, including the Blue Moon at Arma and the Tower Ballroom in Pittsburg. They traveled in an old hearse that had been painted fire engine red.
“When the Bellhops played at the Blue Moon, every teenager in Crawford County would be there,” said Karen Pryer. “I wasn’t married to Russell then, but I waved at him when he was up there playing. I waved at all of them.”
Some of the band’s venues were a little rough.
“I called the Tower a two-for-one show,” Kennett said. “You’d pay a dollar, and get to hear music and see fights.”
But the worst place he can remember was at Bunnville, Mo.
“They had a fence up around the area where the musicians played, to keep people from coming up on stage and for when fights broke out,” Kennett said. “One night I looked over at Clarence, and he had a hatchet on his tom-tom. I guess he was afraid.”
Much more pleasant were the jobs the Bellhops played at Cotty College, Nevada, Mo.
“The girls there — oh, boy,” Pryer said.
A highlight of the group’s career was a train trip to Memphis, Tenn., in 1959 to record at Sun Studios, now known as Phillips International.
“We had to be in a back railroad car, because Clarence was black,” Kennett said. “We were playing music, and Clarence didn’t have his drums, but he had his drumsticks so he was banging on everything. People started coming back to our car to listen to us.”
Those were in the days of segregation, and Kennett added that there were many places that did not allow blacks to enter.
“We didn’t have any trouble,” he said, “and we would not play without Clarence.”
When the Bellhops got to Memphis, they were excited about being in a studio where legends such as Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, and Billy Vaughn had recorded.
Scotty Moore, lead guitar player for Presley, served as engineer for the Bellhops’ recording of “Shotrod” and “Bopsticks.”
“I got to play on Scotty’s amplifier, and Carl Sipes played on the piano that Jerry Lee Lewis had used to record ‘Great Balls of Fire’,” Kennett said.
The group’s other records included “Fafine,” “Walkin with Max” and “Terrible Tom.” All songs recorded were original.
Pryer said that the group also opened for greats such as Porter Waggoner and Frankie Avalon.
He and Kennett left the band in 1962, but it continued with other members for several years. In 1977 it was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Conrad died in 1989.
“Around five years ago they had a reunion at Frontenac with about five bands attending,” Kennett said. “We thought that the Gas Company would be the band everybody would want to hear, but everybody wanted to hear Conny and the Bellhops. So we started booking a few jobs again.”
But there were problems.
“We had a hard time finding a drummer,” Kennett said. “They were too young to know the music.”
Another blow was the stroke Pryer suffered a while back. But he said that it hasn’t affected his ability to make music.
“I can still go,” Pryer said. “We could do it again.”
PITTSBURG —
