The Lorraine LaRocka Story

The first time I saw Lorraine she was yellin' at somebody. I was workin' at Morgan Station on 4th Ave. in Manhattan at the time. Dressed in her Gray postal uniform, she looked like a female Ralph Cramden. I remember asking somebody, "who is that?" It was only a matter of time 'till I found out. It was a long time ago, but I think we met on Parcel Post. Somehow or other, we got to talking about music. Then one day I was goin' somewhere I can't remember, when I ran into Lorraine on the street. I had a gig that night in the West Village, so I invited her to sit in and sing a song or two. I was playing bass and guitar with a piano player from Kansas City and a drummer whose names I can't recall. We were booked at the Bally Bay Pub. It was the only non-gay bar on Christopher street. The owner must have been insane because the only people on Christopher street besides me and the band were all gay. This foolish old man actually turned away paying customers because they were gay. Needless to say, the bar was empty and boring, until Lorraine showed up. We tore through some Chuck Berry tunes and that was the beginning of the end.

We decided we had to get a band together, so we played Elvis and Chuck Berry on the streets, and we used to go to a jam session at a place up on Amsterdam Ave. called McAleer's, or something like that. At first it was just me and Lorraine, but then I decided we needed a bass player so I went to my friend, Larry Ghiorsi, and said, "Larry, you're playing bass with us tonight." Larry didn't know how to play bass, but he could play some chords on the guitar. That might have been the night my friend Bob McChesney drove me up there on his motorcycle. I sat behind him with a guitar in one hand and a bass in the other. Larry played my Gibson bass on "School Days," and then all we needed was a drummer.

Larry's friend, Suds Sudsky, played drums, so we got him. Suds didn't practice much. In fact the only thing he did practice was playing drums and drinking beer at the same time. And the only thing he used his floor tom for was as a table to hold his beer. We used to set up in Washington Square Park and rock and roll. We had battery powered amps; I had a Mouse, Larry had a Moose, and Lorraine had a Mini-Mouse. Suds had his drums.

With Larry and Suds as the rhythm section, we played Dan Lynch, and other local clubs, and ran a jam session at Kelly's Village West.Stormy ran the bar for Kelly. She was an older women, light-skinned, with steel-gray hair. If you didn't know her, you would be scared. She also worked as an armed bodyguard for people like Red Foxx. Rosco was the bartender. He was cool. Nat used to come down and jam with us. So did many other NYC musicans. Lorraine was pretty wild. On Stagger Lee, when you get to the part that says "Stagger Lee, he shot Billy...," Lorraine would whip out a starter pistol and fire it over the heads of the audience. If you weren't expecting it, it could be quite a wake-up call.