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Ronny Elliott |
| It's the Fall
of 1964 and Ronny Elliott has begun his musical career, playing bass
and singing in the Raveons, a Tampa-based garage band. He's pretty
sure he's got' the blues but, let's face it, the boy's a hillbilly!
By the early 7O's Ronny has been through stints with the Outsiders, (not those Outsiders), the Soul Trippers, Noah's Ark, Duckbutter and the Outlaws, (yeah, those Outlaws) among others. He's had flops on Knight, Laurie, Providence, Decca and Paramount with these bands. He's done shows with the Allman Brothers Chuck
Berry, the Coasters, the Chambers Brothers, Mike Bloomfield, Canned
Heat, Dion, Bo Diddley, the Dave Clark Five, Van Morrison, Gene
Vincent and Jerry Jeff Walker along the way. When he opened for Jimi
Hendrix with his band, Your Local Bear, in 1967 the local newspaper
referred to his music as country rock'n'roll. He's still pretty sure that he's a rhythm'n'blues musician but his songs call to mind Hank Penny more than Prince Lala. There have been lots of bands since then but now he's a solo act, usually backed by some twisted version of the Nationals. He's shared recent bills with Jimmy Lafave, NRBQ, Joe Ely, the Bottle Rockets, Jeff Healy and the Fiji Mariners. Someone coined the musical term, Americana, and he gets called that in No Depression and Billboard. He still thinks he plays the blues. By the time he was 10, Ronny's mom was buying him guitars. He took the instrument up seriously at about 15 and ended, up in his view, as little more than a middling bass player. (He plays rhythm guitar these days.) In 1964 a buddy he bagged groceries with asked him to form a band, Ronny was reluctant Then he went to meet the singer. From a '57 T-Bird emerged a guy with hair down to his collar wearing candy-apple red patent leather shoes with a zipper. His name was Warren Novack. Ronny joined the Raveons. Before long, Elliot signed on with The Outsiders and played a lot of gigs. Their manager presented them a song he had co-written called "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron." The band thought it was pretty lame. Before they had the chance to consider it, though, the military draft broke them up. In 1966, The Royal Guardsmen scored a No. 2 hit with the novelty song. The disbanded Outsiders evolved in to the Soul Trippers. In a Tampa studio, they cut a garage-flavored version of Slim Harpo's blues classic "King Bee." It sold nearly 20,000 copies but needed to break through on a major R&B station to become a smash. WLAC in Nashville was set to add the record, but when ho-shot program director John R. discovered the band was white, he backed off. In '66, Elliott hooked up with his pal Buddy Richardson and forrned Noah's Ark. They landed a deal to cut some singles for Decca, the label home for Ricky Nelson, Brenda Lee and the early Who. Noah's Ark messed with feed back, violin bows and noise - stuff that would soon fall into the realm of psychedelic rock. They cut a proto psychedelic garage song called "Paperman" that garnered a bit of exposure. (Elliott recalls receiving a couple of small royalty checks from Sweden and Japan.) Elliott quit Noah's Ark in 1968, tried to form an R&B group, but could rarely get all the members in the same room at the same time. The remnants of that outfit constituted Your Local Bear, which Elliott calls a hillbilly band. They opened for Hendrix at Curtis Hixon Hall. "After we finished, our job was to stand behind his Marshall (amplifier) cabinets arid make sure he didn't knock them off the handstand," Elliott says. Local Bear was a short-lived venture. Next was Duck Butter, a "psychedelic vaudeville hillbilly revue" that featured a front- man Harry Hayward, who was also a magician. By 1970, Elliott had pretty much taken himself out of the scene. He promoted some shows, including the only time Duane AlIman played a full set with Erie Clapton's Derek & the Dominoes. It was at Curtis Hixon Hall. Nearly a decade later, as a member of the Wally Watson Band, Elliott got in on Tampa's nascent post-punk scene at Buffalo Roadhouse and Ms. Lucky's. "We were like Rockpile or Mink DeVille, pretty rootsy," Elliott explains. "But we really didn't have that punk base." He got the bug again in '95 and recruited his old pal Hayward, who took on the drum chair, and several younger (but veteran) musicians: guitarists Steve Connelly and Mark Warren, singer Natty Moss-Bond and bassist Walt Bucklin.
Ronny and the Nationals have gone on to release six more critically acclaimed records. The Nationals have kept the original line-up from the first job with the addition of Jim McNealon on steel. Not bad for a bunch of misfits who don't consider this a band, at all.
Ronny adds: "I have been rejected by all of the major record labels, of course, as To hear Ronny's music, click here Email Ronny Ronny's website
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With a
crude 8-track set-up in his house, Elliott
recorded an album, Ronny Elliott & the Nationials,
an
unreconstructed, relatively lo-fi effort that received strong critical
response and positive reactions from industry people.