Page 96 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
the bed, with no less than $30,000 scattered around the room. I immediately called my road manager to the room and we counted the money and took it to security in the hotel. The more significant challenge was to get Dorsey sober and in shape to do the show that night. Thank God he was cooperative and we were able to get him going. Some people are not aware that before the hit records, he was a prizefighter. It was touch and go at the show, but we pulled it off. Fortunately, my band got some rehearsal time in with him and anyone who didn’t know better would think they had worked together a lot. Dorsey and I became friends and I later recorded two of his songs. According to Dorsey’s wife Alberta, Dorsey, Roger Miller and Johnny Cash were on over a hundred pills a day. This was hard to even imagine for a guy who didn’t like taking two aspirin a day.
Drugs did not appeal to me. I had seen the results of what they had done to some great friends and people in the music business. I wasn’t above taking a drink, but I just didn’t like how people became so different after taking drugs. Dorsey smoked a little pot, but that was a personal choice and one I could do without. The only effect it ever had on me was to make me hungry and sleepy.
By August we were going hard and heavy with the Far East bookings, which took us to Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea. It seemed like a long time away from home, but we were doing a show in a different country every day. Along the way somehow we found ourselves in the paradise lost of Vietnam doing our best to do what we do best, which is merely to play music and make people enjoy themselves for a little while, but all the while carefully avoiding being engulfed by the war that was raging all around us.
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