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Concordia band to be honored

Friday's paper 3/6

By GARY DEMUTH

Salina Journal

The Sensational Showmen were a band of clean-cut, velvet jacket-wearing high school guys from Concordia who toured the Midwest playing rock 'n' roll.

The boys performed between 1964 and 1968, and then went their separate ways after high school graduation. With one or two exceptions, none picked up a musical instrument again.

That's why lead guitarist Phil Pfister was surprised to hear the Showmen were being inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.

"When I first heard about it, I couldn't believe it," said Pfister, 60, who now runs an architectural glass business in South Carolina. "I guess we were pretty good after all."

The Sensational Showmen is one of nine bands being inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame this year. The induction ceremony will be Saturday at Liberty Hall in Lawrence.

Among other bands and performers being honored this year are The Dinks from Beloit, a 1960s group who released a popular regional hit, "Penny a Tear Drop"; acclaimed keyboardist Mike Finnigan's first Kansas band, The Serfs, which he formed in 1965 at a University of Kansas fraternity house; and Larry Lingle, of McPherson, a three-time Hall of Fame selection for his work with the Fabulous Flippers, Jerms and this year's inductee the Young Raiders.

The Concordia teens who made up the Sensational Showmen actually are the first of three bands that performed under that name from the mid-60s through the mid-70s. After the Concordia group broke up in 1968, bands from the Parsons/Pittsburg and Chanute/Fort Scott areas began touring under the same name.

"We had a manager who had fine print in our contract that said if we quit or retired the band, he kept ownership of the name," Pfister said.

The last lineup of the Showmen, from Parsons/Pittsburg, will perform at the induction ceremony.

Bill Lee, president of the Kansas Music Hall of Fame, said it was the Parsons/Pittsburg group that actually was voted in this year, but Hall of Fame board members decided to honor all three incarnations of the group.

"How could we vote in these guys who were later versions of the Showmen and not induct the original group?" Lee said. "After we did that, we heard from the Chanute/Fort Scott guys, who felt they deserved recognition, too."

Bands are nominated by dues-paying members of the Kansas Music Hall of Fame, which consists mostly of Kansas musicians, record collectors and music fans, Lee said. The organization's board of directors makes the final decision on inductees.

"Those inducted have to have significantly contributed to the musical history of Kansas," Lee said. "The emphasis tends to be toward getting in older bands while the guys are around to appreciate it and attend the induction."

There were seven members of the original Sensational Showmen -- four from Concordia, two from Clifton and one from Clyde. The fledgling high school musicians met in 1964 while playing in other bands at area high school dances.

"We decided to start a bigger band, one that included a horn section," Pfister said. "Everyone back then idolized the Fabulous Flippers, who played blues and rock and had a great horn section. We started wearing nice suits and practicing choreography."

Combining guitars, drums, horns and a whirling Hammond Organ, the group played many popular pop and rock songs from the 1960s, from James Brown to the Beatles.

"We learned a new song every week to keep us fresh," Pfister said.

On weekends and during school holidays, the Showmen toured throughout Kansas and Nebraska, performing at fairs, carnivals, National Guard armories and area bars and clubs, including the Lamplighter in Salina.

"We were all 16 and 17 and couldn't buy a beer in a lot of the places we played," Pfister said. "We were clean-cut kids who didn't drink or smoke. Our parents trusted us."

The Showmen's concerts weren't very sophisticated. The group had a substandard sound system and a portable lighting system rigged up in plywood boxes by a band member's father.

"The plywood boxes would be put around the stage, and our drummer would flip the lights on and off with his feet while he was playing," Pfister said.

In the mid-1960s, the band purchased a rickety 1953 Chevrolet school bus to carry equipment and to drive to area gigs.

One night, on the way back to Concordia from a concert in Beloit, the headlights on the bus suddenly went out.

"We had to lean out the windows with flashlights to be able to see to get home," Pfister said.

After another gig in Nebraska, a group of music critics took issue with the Showmen's musicianship and busted out all the windows of the bus. It was the dead of winter, and the shivering musicians had to drive home in sub-zero weather.

In 1968, after four years of performing, the Showmen decided to call it quits.

"We were just teenagers, and it was time to move on," Pfister said.

Pfister attended Kansas State University and joined the U.S. Air Force. In 1980, he moved to South Carolina with his wife, Patty, who he met at a Showmen concert in Concordia. The couple have been married 40 years.

Pfister said he hasn't picked up a guitar in nearly 30 years.

He was content to leave the Sensational Showmen a memory until a few months ago, when he received word that his old band was to be inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.

Pfister contacted his old bandmates, and in December, he and three other ex-Showmen reunited in Concordia: horn player Paul Justyna, rhythm guitarist Bob Burns and drummer Robin Hood (yes, that's his real name).

"It was the first time we'd seen each other in 40 years," Pfister said.

Pfister and three ex-Showmen plan to attend the induction ceremony Saturday: Justyna (who still lives in Concordia), horn player Mike Srite, of Norman, Okla., and Hammond organist Ron Balderson, of Idaho. The band's bass player, Larry Jackson, died in 2002.

Pfister never dreamed the Showmen would someday be considered a classic Kansas band.

"When we were playing, we never thought anything would come of it," he said. "We were just having fun."

nReporter Gary Demuth can be reached at 822-1405 or by e-mail at gdemuth@salina.com.

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