Page 94 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
The first booking was some awful club that paid top money, which I could never understand. It was a crap club but the one good thing that came out of it was I met the man who was the entertainment director for the local air base and he loved the act. One night, as I was coming off stage, he stopped me to ask, “Mr. Graham, is there anything I can do to get you out of this shit hole?” We were then contracted to play the military clubs in Hawaii and there were 42 of them. At that time we were doing two or three shows a day and it was common for me to earn up to $900 a day, plus everything was furnished. We couldn’t make that kind of money in ordinary clubs, except for some places in San Francisco and Las Vegas. We could make in two days in military clubs what we would hope to make in a week working at most civilian clubs. It was pretty standard for us to work one club, finish the show and go to another military club. It was tough, but that’s how it was.
Through playing these clubs we came into contact with a promoter named Van Barker who had a connection to the Air Force providing specialized groups to such high-security places as Johnston Island and Guam. After meeting Barker, we did our first show on Johnston Island, where the astronauts had landed coming back from the moon.
We kept playing the clubs and doing other dates like Guam and had a return engagement at Johnston Island in July. One of the downsides of the business, which happens in other business as well, is stealing. With that thought, I will tell the story about Van Barker, the agent. Van had booked us in different venues without incident, but the last one was a doozie. We were booked in Guam for seventeen shows and on the morning we were supposed to leave,
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