Page 86 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
pantomime. Ray and I will pay the bills for whatever it takes to get this done.” Voss could tell that I was in a quandary about what to say or do. It wasn’t the topless part that was a concern – after all, the last two weeks I was in Vegas the women’s dressing room had flooded so the showgirls came to our dressing room to change. They teased us and sometimes purposely took it all off just to get a reaction from us. Some might think, wow, what a deal, but in fact, they just talked among themselves and were strictly professional and were there to work. So topless wasn’t going to be the problem – it was how to get it all to work. Voss said, “Here’s the deal, if you can get this done, Ray and I will pay you ten thousand dollars plus all expenses.” I had a new incentive and if there was a way, I was going to find it. We ran an ad looking for girls who could sing and weren’t opposed to being topless on stage. Talk about shock when the announcement came out and no less than twenty-five girls showed up. I auditioned them fully clothed with my guitar. Annie, the head waitress, did the behind-the-door inspection interview. Of twenty-five applicants, we ended up with four. Next, I had to figure out a way to make this into a performance.
I talked to the girls and asked what kind of music they liked and they all agreed on the Supremes. I wrote out a song list that would last for an hour and I talked to Jack Kearney at KSFO radio about a spot recorder, the kind used for playback on commercials. When a button is pushed, the commercial plays to the next spot and stops. I thought we could go to the studio and reload the backup music for the songs. The next step was putting the music on the recorder.Then the girls could announce the next song, push the button and sing. The tape would go to the next track and stop. Once we had that working, the next thing
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