Daily Dylan - Bob Dylan's High School Bands - Part 3
The Golden Chords!
With the next couple of e-mails I am going to publish my first Daily Dylan article, which will be about Bob Dylan’s early high school bands. We try to get it all straight and make the reading worthwhile, although we also tried to implement as many facts and findings as possible. We did split it into a few parts to make it more digestible.
If you have missed the previous parts you can check them out below:
Part 1: The Shadow Blasters
Part 2: The Jokers
Today: The Golden Chords - Bobby Zimmerman vocals and piano, LeRoy Hoikkala on drums, Monte Edwardson on guitar
The Shadow Blasters (fall of 1956 – early summer of 1957)
The Jokers (12/24/1956 - unknown)
The Golden Chords (Fall of 1957 - May/June 1958)
LeRoy Hoikkala started out playing the piano and taking piano lessons. His teacher one day said to him: “LeRoy, I’m gonna tell you something: Tell your mother not to send you anymore. Save your money.” Because piano was not his thing as he said in an interview. He then switched to drums, “because drums have feeling”. So he got himself a set of Ludwig’s and started taking drum lessons.
“With playing the drums, you could do what you wanted to do, you had the control.”
His first band was The Golden Chords then.
Above: LeRoy Hoikkala in his younger days.
If you would like to read through a written interview from 1999 with LeRoy Hoikkala, you can do so here.
Monte Edwardson became the guitar player of “the Chords”. There is a nice video by Mark Stout1’s YouTube-channel where Monte Edwardson talks about their time at the Chords:
Here Monte sings a song typical of what they did together back then.
The name “Golden Chords” came from the golden Ludwig drums that LeRoy played. LeRoy Hoikkala said in this interview that he started out jamming with Monte Edwardson when Bob came and talked himself into the band to make it a 3-piece.
Bob said one day, walking from school: “I heard your guys are jamming, you and Monte. 2 pieces is kind of hard, what if I come in and play some songs with ya?”
At the time, Bob could play the piano quite decent. “He could play chords on the piano that were just great.” If the band played anything self-composed, Bob did all the writing and they practiced a lot in Bob’s garage in Hibbing. In fact, LeRoy Hoikkala recalls a scene from back in the days, when they were walking home from school:
The Golden Chords played Country-Songs like Johnny & Jacks “I’ll be home”, then Bob moved them into the direction of Little Richard, soon playing songs like “Rock & Roll is here to stay!”
LeRoy Hoikkala: “He was interested mostly in Little Richard… But he did a little bit of everything, improvising a lot… He’d sit down at the piano and play some of the most fantastic chords I’d ever heard… He’d hear a song and make up his own version of it. Using the piano to channel his idea’s to his collaborators, Bob provided the trio with its idiosyncratic impetus.” (Clinton Heylin; behind the shades revisited)
In an interview with Dylan in 1986 he said: “Golden Chords were just the loudest band around… What we were doing, there wasn’t anyone else around doing. Rock’n’roll was here to stay and the town elders could go hang.”
Going places
Collier's Barbeque and Bar (1928 E. Fourth Ave.): Dylan and The Golden Chords jammed here on Sundays in late 1957 and early 1958. His final Hibbing band, Elston Gunn and the Rock Boppers, performed here during the summer of 1958. It is now the Hong Kong Kitchen.
1st known gig - February 6th 1958 - Jacket Jamboree Talent Festival - Hibbing High
“They began playing regularly at Van Feldt’s snack bar and a small barbecue joint called Collier’s on Sunday afternoons, in preparation for the big day – February 6th 1958 – when they would play the Jacket Jamboree, an annual event, in front of the whole high school. Those who knew the band from Collier’s dug it, the rest of the place – and the capacious auditorium could hold 1,800 – looked like they’d just witnessed Springtime for Hitler.” (Double Life of Bob Dylan, Clinton Heylin)
It should be mentioned that, in an interview with Linda Strobach, LeRoy Hoikkala denied that The Golden Chords ever played at a talent show at the Hibbing High.
“The one where they say they pulled the curtain - We weren’t there.”
But he also has had no memory that he joined Bob at going to see Buddy Holly in Duluth, although there are people who tell him that he was there. So, we can not be 100% sure about the Golden Chords attending that event. I think it’s more likely that they actually did play there, given the details that Clinton Heylin described in “behind the shades revisited”:
“[…] Bobby was anxious to return to Hibbing High with his new band in tow. […] Thursday, February 6, 1958 afforded him such an opportunity. Scheduled for the afternoon was a brand of entertainment assembled by the Pep Club: a magic show, a skit by Hibbing High School cheerleaders, plus a ‘local rock & roll instrumental group and several vocal selections.’
It was the ‘vocal selections’ by the Golden Chords that got to the kids. The entire student body of eighteen hundred assembled in the highly omate school auditorium at two in the afternoon. Bobby had put microphones in the piano, in front of the guitar amps and bass drum, and three at his side for his vocals. The sound was LOUD. And this time it was no novelty number, but some authentic rock & roll hollers.”
2nd known gig - February 13th or 14th 1958 - Winter Frolic - Memorial Building’s Little Theatre Hibbing
Just a week later, the Chords would play at the Hibbing Winter Carnival Talent Contest, with Bob playing “I’ll be home” solo on the piano, followed “Jenny, Jenny” with the Golden Chords.
They played a a mix there from their very own creations and cover songs.
They became second place although, considering the applause they should’ve won, but the jury gave the first prize to “no-talent, no-hope pantomime artist. At least he was quiet.” (behind the shades revisited)
3rd known gig - March 1st 1958 - Intermission Entertainment
Another two weeks later, the Chords played a gig at the National Guard Armory, which the local newspaper saw fit to advertise as “Rock&Roll HOP FOR TEEN-AGERS… Intermission Entertainment by Hibbing’s Own GOLDEN CHORDS […].”
For it, Bob teamed up with a disc jockey and reserved the Hibbing Armory. A fifty-cent gained admission. Allegedly, this was the Chords’ first paid performance.
4th known gig:
In the spring of 1958, they played for the WDSM-TV-Channel 8. Polka Hour TV Show in Duluth. Apparently, this was one of the last things done by The Golden Chords. Monte Edwardson mentions that in the video linked above.
What happened?
We can certainly say that The Golden Chords were Bob Dylan’s first serious band in High School.
BUT: At some point in spring / early summer 1958 and yet another failed talent contest in May, something happened. Monte and LeRoy left The Golden Chords. But why?
We’ll find out in the next one.
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