Page 107 - Been There… Done That!

Been There... Done That!
Once in Pleiku I was being heckled and harassed by a black soldier who kept telling me to play soul music and started telling me where I could go. I threatened to hit him over the head with the microphone stand and I didn’t hear anything from him after that. I remember being called a “honky motherfucker” and telling him I wasn’t there just for him but to do a show for everybody. That statement made the rest of the crowd cheer.
Even after I sang “Dock of the Bay” for that guy, he looked right at me and said I had no soul. It was an hour-long show, but I had been putting up with him for thirty minutes, so I let him have it and called it done. People were a bit startled by that, but after the show, where we were escorted out by military police for our protection, another black soldier came onstage with tears in his eyes, apologizing to me for the way the other guy had acted. For the most part, any encounters with the audience, especially hecklers, resulted in more laughter and smiles than disrespect, hurt feelings and lumped on stubborn heads.
During a show at a fancy officer’s club in Saigon, I had a little fun back-and-forth exchange with the audience, especially one colonel, when a fresh lieutenant decided he was going to defend the colonel’s honor and said, “Do you understand that man is a colonel?” My reply was, “That may mean something here, but where I come from a kernel is the inside of a nut.” Everybody fell out laughing, especially the big brass who were there. That answer just popped in my head and I have used it several times since.
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