July 18, 2024 • 46 mins
The search for The Fake Zombies takes us to Bay City, Michigan, the “little smelly town” where the imposter Zombies assembled. The town is home to a Rock and Roll museum that contains details about the band’s history, and the audacious managers who cooked up the scheme. We also talk with Bobby Balderrama, lead guitarist in garage rock pioneers, ? And the Mysterians, who shared a manager with The Fake Zombies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The True Story of the Fake Zombies is a production
of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and never Mind Media. In
episode one, You Met the Real Zombies. Kings of sixty Psychedelia.
The band had two big hits in nineteen sixty four
(00:23):
and sixty five. The first is She's Not There, the
song You're hearing right Now, a total classic.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Jusam Sorry, Why.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
So?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Is this song which came a year later called tell
Her No, another huge hit that helped define the British
invasion era.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
No No.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
The Zombies rode the same wave that brought the Beatles
and the Stones to the United States. American teenagers from
coast to coast were obsessed with all things English. But
unlike the Beatles and the Stones, the Zombies didn't stay
at the top of the charts. The band's early success
had all but disappeared when out of Nowhere, their now
(01:12):
iconic song Time of the Season started racing up the
charts in the United States as the decade came to
a close this season. While Time of the Season was
spreading like wildfire over the radio airwaves here in America,
back in England, the band had no idea they had
a hit record, yes that could actually happen, pleasure promise ee.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Overseas and father.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The fact that a band could have a hit and
not know it is why we're here. That is why
we have the Fake Zombies. Four young men from Texas
who found themselves in Base City, Michigan in nineteen sixty nine,
hired to impersonate five guys from England. Two of those
Texas boys would go on to form zz Top, icons
(02:10):
of American music, but the time Dusty Hill and Frank
Beard from zz Top spent impersonating British rock Royalty is
left out of the band's already mysterious origin story. Zz
Top are masters of the alter ego and creating myths
and legends. The self described little band from Texas has
(02:32):
always been hard to pin down. Before creating the larger
than life personas they'd inhabit in zz Top, Dusty and
Frank were just looking to hit the road with two
friends named Mark Ramsey and Sibe short for Seaborn Metter.
(02:53):
So they went to a little town called Bay City,
Michigan and became the Zombies. I'm Daniel Ralston. This is
the true story of the Fake Zombies. Yesterday, loden Stone
at least a few thousand people read the same sentence
(03:16):
I did in the Zombies biography. I'm did about a
group of guys impersonating the band in the United States.
I'm sure if you even googled it, I can tell
you from experience that in twenty fifteen, there wasn't much
to find on the Internet when you searched the Fake Zombies.
But somewhere around page sixteen of the search results, after
the tutorials on how to make a homemade zombie costume
(03:38):
for Halloween, I found a blog post written by Mark Ramsey,
rhythm guitarist in the Fake Zombies. That's when this whole
thing really got going. Despite the completely crazy fact that
Mark was actually on tour as a fake Zombie, packed
in the van with Siebe and Frank and Dusty, his
(03:58):
blog posts mostly folks fused on his guitar collection. The
details of the tour were almost an afterthought, but there
were photos faded Kodak images of four young men dressed
in psychedelic clothes jamming away on their instruments. They look great,
but they could have been any band out on tour
(04:19):
in the late sixties, hustling around the country trying to
become the next big thing. None of the photos in
Mark's post hinted that these guys were anything but a
regular garage band from Texas except one. It's the same
four guys from all the candid photos, but this one
(04:42):
is a professionally taken promotional photo. In the black and
white picture, Dusty, Frank, Sibe, and Mark look like a
real band. Lead guitarist Seed Meta is on the far left,
looking like an edgier Rod Stewart, blonde rock and roll
mullet and chiseled cheekbones. Mark Ramsey is on the far right,
(05:06):
giving the camera a slight smile, half of his face
covered in shadow. He looks much younger than nineteen, his
age when the photo was taken. Dusty and Frank are
in the middle. Dusty's hand is draped over Frank's shoulder
as the two of them look straight into the lens.
(05:26):
They're both wearing a variation on a cowboy hat, something
the real zombies would never do, but they're pulling it off.
Everything about the photo looks normal. Four young guys dressed
like rock and roll pirates about to conquer the world,
And if you squint your eyes and imagine yourself as
a rock and roll fan in nineteen sixty nine. Sure
(05:50):
they could be the Zombies, but there were five real Zombies,
not four. That's the first thing wrong with this picture.
The second. The promo photo is autographed. Strangely, Seve Metter
and Mark Ramsey signed it with their real names. Frank
and Dusty are using fake ones de Cruz and Chris Page, respectively.
(06:15):
It seems like the zz top half of the band
knew something the other guys didn't. And once you go
beyond the borders of the photo, this perfect rock and
roll picture starts. The band's name is printed on the
bottom left in black on a white border. It says
(06:37):
the Original Zombies, and in the bottom right corner there's
an address where a radio DJ or adoring fan could
write to the company that represented the original Zombies. The
company is called Delta Promotions. We know these four young
(06:58):
guys in the picture are from Texas, So why does
the address say Bay City, Michigan. There's only one way
to find out the answer. After the break, I'm headed
to Bay City, hoping that it will provide some answers
to that and all of my other questions about how
and why the fake Zombies came together. Like why it
(07:23):
happened in the tiny town one hundred and twenty miles
north of Detroit and twelve hundred miles north of Dallas.
Why Bay City. It turns out being in the middle
of nowhere helps when you're putting together a ban that
already exists. Bay City, Michigan, is a long way from anything.
(07:50):
Even now in twenty twenty four, when the world is
so connected by technology and information, Bay City feels out
of the way. The closest airport is Saginaw, about twenty
miles south. If the name Bay City sounds familiar, you
may know it from the band the Bay City Rollers.
(08:16):
They're not from Bay City or anywhere else in Michigan, though,
they're not even American. They threw a darted a map
of the United States and it landed on Bay City,
and that could have been Base City's musical claim to fame,
but it isn't. This out of the way little town
has one big brush with serious music Royalty Madonna was
(08:38):
born there. In one of Madonna's first big TV interviews
with Diane Sawyer in nineteen eighty four, she kind of
trashed her hometown.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Came from Michigan, where in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Well, I was born in Bay City.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Bay City.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, little town, mm hm, small list, smellytown north in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Madonna's connection to Bay City runs a bit deeper than
one disparaging SoundBite. She spent a lot of time here
as a kid at her grandma's house. Like the song goes,
this used to be her playground. But because she called
Bay City a little smelly town, its residents never forgave her.
(09:22):
There's no billboard announcing that this is the birthplace of Madonna,
no statue of her in downtown Bay City, just a
two foot by two foot plaque put up in twenty
seventeen outside the hospital where she was born. It's all
Bay City would allow. I'm not sure I'll find anything
(09:46):
new by going to Bay City. It doesn't seem like
a town that celebrates its heroes. And I'm here looking
for the people behind Delta Promotions, a music management company
who did something a little unscrupulous here over fifty years.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Ag go.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Bay City is a quiet town, a modest town. But
if I come up empty in my search, here, at
least I can say I visited the birthplace of the
Queen of Pop. So I'm hopping on a plane to
Detroit and then a much smaller plane to the crotch
of the thumb of Michigan to see if anyone involved
with the fake zombies or the Delta promotion scam is
(10:23):
still alive and willing to talk. In a little smelly
town called Bay City.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you to dagonaw in a
local time in twenty five pm for your safetyandam.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Is chalk it up to coastal elite bias or just
plain idiocy, but I'm not really prepared for just how
out of the way I will be in Bay City.
When I land at the airport and said iagena on Michigan,
I noticed my flight is one of three arrivals for
the entire day. It's the middle of summer twenty twenty three,
(11:08):
it's hot, and there are thunderstorms rolling in. I'd arranged
to be driven around Bay City by a local music
historian for most of my trip, so I didn't bother
renting a car. Huge mistake. There is no lyft or
uber here. I end up bribing an airport employee for
a ride. I get the impression I'm not the first
(11:31):
stranded passenger he's bailed out. As we motor through the
Michigan sunset in his pickup truck, passing field after field
and factory after rundown factory. I feel like I'm going
back in time, which is exactly where I want to go.
(11:53):
If this part of Michigan feels cut off from the
world now, you can imagine how it was more than
fifty years ago when two guys Bill Kehoe and Jim
Atherton cooked up the idea for the fake Zombies from
their offices inside their teen nightclub band Canyon on the
outskirts of town on Tuscola Road. Keyho and Atherton ran
(12:16):
Delta Promotions, a concert promotion and artist management company specializing
in acts from in and around Bay City. I promise
we'll get into the details of how two of the
guys from zz Top happened to end up in the
Delta offices more than five decades ago. But first I
need to see a guy named Gary Ready.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
When you are sir, okay, well this you know there
wasn't This was such an interesting time in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Without people like Gary Johnson, the history of rock and
roll would not exist. He's a music obsessive and was
a teenage rock and roll rebel right here in Bay City,
back in nineteen sixty nine when the fake zombies assembled,
and thankfully he's found a place to house the history
of Michigan music he's lived and breathed for the past
(13:13):
fifty years. Gary runs a museum on the second floor
of the Bay City Historical Society. The first floor of
the building has your typical local museum fodder, displays about
early settlers and fur trapping. There are multiple displays devoted
to the logging industry if you really like that sort
(13:34):
of thing. The Bay City Historical Society is the museum
for you. If you're ambivalent about logging, like me, it's
a little dry and would The featured exhibit as I
entered the lobby is a lovely collection of tea sets
(13:55):
owned by early Bay City residents. But the second floor,
Gary's floor is another story.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Take you through this. This is our newest exhibit right here.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Here, Gary, Doctor J. Johnson runs the Michigan Rock and
Roll Legends Museum piece.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
All the Michigan talent that had been growing the last
three years. This is what a line up.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
This is.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Junior walks.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Bay City may not be the kind of town that
celebrates its musical history, but Gary's enthusiasm for his hometown
sound more than makes up for that. From the moment
I met Gary, I knew he was a kindred spirit,
another person who loves music and the stories behind it
the way I do.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
But anyways, that was MC five.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
This collection of posters, gear and ephemera is the rock
and roll Hall of Fame for artists born here in Michigan,
from Motown Legends to the White Stripes and everyone in between.
Gary just can't legally call it the rock and Roll
Hall of Fame because the rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in Cleveland won't let him. Not very rock and
roll in my opinion. But back to the Michigan version,
(15:04):
it's a truly impressive collection, and Gary spares no detail
in celebrating Bay Cities contributions to the musical landscape.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
This is all furniture and carpeting from that State Theater
original seats. This is one of the old theaters in
Bay City that burned down, but I love these.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
There's a wall dedicated to the Bay City Rollers on
the State and the time they were given the key
to the city when they.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Were so hot they put their hands in cement and
autographed each one, so we have.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
That Madonna is well represented. Naturally, A mural sized photo
of her covers an entire wall.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Eighteen eighty seven. And he was right in front of
the stage. He said he had you know, he was
there for the verse four or five songs. He was
getting hit by droplets of sweat, you know, from Madonna,
you know, dancing as she was.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
In fact, Gary's the reason there's any mention of Madonna
in Bay City at all. He's the one who insisted
the town up that two by two plaque in her honor.
There's a tribute to just about every musician Michigan ever produced,
from Stevie Wonder to Michigan's favorite son, Bob Seeger. I
don't want to give the impression that this museum is big.
(16:15):
It's not, but every possible square inch is devoted to
Michigan's place in the history of rock and roll music.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yes, and of course Del Shannon, one of our great
Michigan artists. There was a little bit of question about
his death.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
There are parts of Gary's museum that feel like they're
only for true music obsessives like myself and maybe you all.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Right, this is the big wall of the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Gary cares about the forgotten figures and lost histories that
make up the real story of Michigan music.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
You know, different events in Michigan rock and roll history
from nineteen forty six, when the Fortune Records form and
right up to when the Frankie Lineman and the Teenagers
tombstone gat here.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So anyway, case in point, the Michigan Rock and Roll
Legends Museum is dominated by one particular landmark, and it's huge,
about one thousand pounds and made of solid granite. Through
a series of wild and almost unbelievably strange events, Gary
(17:17):
came into possession of the tombstone of Frankie Lyman, the
singer of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Frankie Lyman is
one of the architects of American music. The story of
Frankie Lymon's tombstone and how it ended up in Gary's
museum is such a good one we'll be offering it
up as a bonus episode. Make sure to check out
Frankie Lymon's Tombstone Blues available in this podcast feed. I
(17:44):
know that if I'm going to get to the heart
of Bay City's connection to the fake zombies. Gary will
lead me there. When I first found that black and
white promo shot of the original zombies, I felt like
I'd stumbled onto something, But I didn't know how that
Bay City address on the bottom fit into it. Why
were the Texas Zombies being managed by a company in Michigan.
(18:08):
Somewhere in his archive of forgotten Michigan musicians, Gary had
that same black and white photo, the one with the
cowboy hats. It was the first real connection I found
between Texas and Bay City. Throughout this whole saga, I've
gotten close to hearing the real story of the fake
zombies from the people who lived in There was an
(18:29):
email from Dusty Hill before he passed away, confirming that
he was in fact a fake zombie. I traded messages
in a few phone calls with Mark Ramsey too. He
told me just enough to write an article about the story,
But I always knew Mark was holding back, and it's
one of my great regrets that I never got to
meet Mark face to face before he passed away in
(18:50):
twenty seventeen. Seed passed away in nineteen eighty. Now there's
only one living member of the Texas zombies Frank Beard
and getting him to talk to me is a dead end.
So far, through all the setbacks and vanishing history, Gary
and I never stopped looking for the fake zombies, and
(19:12):
for the first time in years, we have new leads.
That's why I'm here in Bay City. Inside the Michigan
Rock and Roll Legends Museum. There are also tributes to
bands you've never heard of, artists who released one incredible single,
field nightclubs for a few years, and then disappeared. If
(19:33):
not for Gary, their stories, like that of the Texas Zombies,
would be lost. So I'm hearing Gary's museum going down
every rabbit hole I can. I've been making phone calls
and sending emails waiting to hear back from leads. Gary
and I found people who might have been on this
(19:54):
fake Zombies tour. A road manager, a guitar tech, a
Delta Promote employee. While I wait for responses, Gary suggests
I talked to a local historian named Sam Fitzpatrick. Sam
might not be able to help me find a fake zombie,
(20:17):
but he might help me understand how the fake zombie
scheme could only happen in a little, smelly town like
Bay City. As I leave the second floor of the
museum and wander through the more traditional exhibits downstairs, I
noticed something new, an exhibit dedicated to Bay City's other history.
(20:38):
Back when Michigan was still killing it in the logging
and trapping industries, Bay City was the town where people
came to let loose. The god fearing members of the
population even had a nickname for the lawless stretch of
downtown bay City where the worst transgressions occurred. They called
it Hell's half Mile.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Stories of lumberjacks, fight deaths, brawls, police beating people up, prostitution, murder, scandal.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's Sam, the local historian.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Might lose a body part, you might die.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
He tells me about Bay City's reputation for debauchery in
the late nineteenth century, a subject he clearly loves talking about.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Yes, Yes, yes, and a boom town in the nineteenth
century that had a lot of wealthy people from the
lumbering industry. But if you were the everyday working class,
grinding your teeth person in the sawmills, the shipyards, the
coal mines, the farms, and the lumberjacks of North coming down.
So this district was like this all year round. But
(21:43):
during that spring thaw, it was like the bloody Marty Grass.
It was like a bloody spring break.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Bay City was the kind of town where you might
get your nose chewed off or see a man fight
a pig. And it wasn't just a few bad apples.
There were people coming from all corners of the region
to experience everything Bay City had to offer.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
So, in an already thriving lumbertown with this very salacious district,
about five thousand extra lumbermen would come down during our
spring claw in this one small area. They spent all
their money in about two weeks time. It was just
a free for all. It was like the Okay Corral
on Crack.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Bay City was a wild place, and luckily Sam has
the details.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
I have another story of people getting body parts showed off.
Clearly I need to hear that story. There was a
guy who went to a bar over on Third Street.
This guy lunched at him when he walked into the
bar and clamped his teeth onto his nose and bit
a portion of it off. They saved it by wrapping
it up at a napkin. There was also another guy
who has lip fitting off in this fight that took
(22:44):
a weird.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Turn, and apparently one of these Bay City saloons was
running a fight club.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Supposedly there was a secret sporting room where a drunken
lumberman would face off in front of crowds of other
drunken lumbermen, or not just lumberman, but any buddy with
money and a drink, and they would just place bets
on guys fighting. And there was a guy there who
took things to an extreme. He didn't fight people, he
fought animals. He was called Patty the Pig or Patty
(23:13):
the Dog. He was an Irish guy, and when he
would get drunk and for the right price, he would
get down on all fours dogs, rats, chickens.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Eventually, the wild West like behavior that defined Bay City
would give way to modern life, and civility would win out.
Bars and brothels replaced by department stores and mom and
pop businesses. Hard drinking, hard living frontiersmen were replaced by
factory workers with families looking to start a better life.
(23:43):
So what changed the State of Michigan might have stayed
a collection of backwoods hovels like Bay City in the
(24:04):
early twentieth century, but Ford, Chrysler and General motors had
other plans. Here's Sam again.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
In industrial towns like Bay City, Sagonauflin, and Detroit, you
had a new emerging culture. You had emerging scenes.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
When the auto industry exploded and Bay City's residents went
to work in factories making spark plugs and steering columns,
there was suddenly a lot of money going around.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
A lot of kids were gifted instruments as Christmas gifts
because of these jobs that people got, these great generous
paychecks they got from these industrial middle class jobs.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The stroke of economic good fortune happened to coincide with
the baby boom. By the nineteen sixties, Bay City and
hundreds of other towns in Michigan were full of young
people with well paid parents and nothing to do. Thank god,
rock and Roll came along.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
A lot of kids growing up were watching at Sullivan Show.
They were listening to the Beatles. We're listening to all
the new stuff coming out of motown and got inspired.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And that's where the history of Bay City and the
story of the Fake Zombies meet. Before I leave the
museum and continue my search for answers about Bill Keho,
Jim Atherton, and Delta Promotions, I ask Samope's at all
shocked that something like the fake Zombies could go down
in Bay City, not at.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
All, even in Michigan. If you look at Bay City,
you're not gonna look twice at a map. The history
of this town outsizes the size of this town. So
the small town that is still daring enough to do
big impressive things, or to try to get away with
doing big impressive things.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Bay City a town full of dreamers and schemers looking
to make a name for themselves any way they could.
Now here's where the musical history of Bay City starts.
In nineteen sixty four, five guys would get together in
the living room recording studio of a small house from
the center of town and make a new kind of
history for Bay City. Those screaming teenagers you've seen in
(26:15):
clips of the Beatles and the Stones on Ed Sullivan,
they were everywhere in every town.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I think you're yelling much better this year.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And the zombies were a part of all that. Because
Bay City was home to so many music raised teenagers,
a guy named Bill Kehoe opened his own teen nightclub
band Canyon, and he immediately drew crowds of teenagers to
his alcohol free nightclub for young people. Bill Kehoe was
(26:43):
a pillar of the Bay City community, a local businessman
in his mid thirties by the time he was managing bands.
Looking at the old black and white photos of him
in the local paper on microfiche in the Bay City library,
he doesn't exactly scream rock and roll impresario. He looked
more qualified to manage a bank than a band. It
(27:05):
turns out Keiho, despite his square appearance, had pretty good
taste in rock and roll bands. That's how he and
Delta Promotions ended up managing the first Mexican Americans to
have a number one record in the United States, question
Mark in the Mysterians. Before I left for Bay City,
(27:30):
I learned that in addition to managing the Fake Zombies,
Bill Kehoe briefly managed question Mark in the Mysterians, a
pioneering band in the world of punk and garage rock.
If you need punk bonafides, Iggy Pop used to follow
The Mysterians around as a teenager in Michigan, and Lou
Reid put ninety six tiers on his list of the
one hundred best songs ever written. I tell Gary that
(27:54):
I want to talk to the band's lead singer the
man they call question Mark. As always, Gary's encouraging, but
he lets me know it might be a challenge. He
is absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Oh, he's impossible.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I was really even wondering if he question Mark the
guy is a hard man to pin down. First of all,
finding someone who legally changed their name to a question
mark presents an obvious challenge. Then there's the fact that
question Mark is something of a recluse. He lives in
(28:29):
rural Michigan and keeps to himself. Over the course of
his sixty year music career, he's been called a genius
and he's been called a little out there. I finally
got a hold of question Mark. Is that question Mark here?
And I can tell you that he is both. I
ask him about Bill Kehoe and Delta Promotions, but question
Mark doesn't want to tell me about that. He wants
(28:52):
to tell me about his past lives and the fact
that he'll be reborn again on Mars. When I press
him for any scraps of information on the Bay City scene,
he suggests I forget about this podcast and make a
movie about him. He's got a whole pitch, and it
starts with an image of his mother's womb Hello, I
(29:16):
am trying to get a hold of question Mark. Over
the course of the next few weeks. I have a
lot of telephone conversations with question Mark. I'm making that
story into this podcast, and he would occasionally reveal a
tidbit of information about his time with Delta Promotions and
crossing paths with the fake Zombies. Let me give you
a call tomorrow. We'll continue the conversation, none of which
he agreed to let me use for this podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Will you talk to me up in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I suggest that we meet up when I get to
Bay City, and he half heartily agrees that sounds amazing,
but that meeting never happens.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Talk soon, okay, Bane.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Question Mark is and will remain a mystery. I'd expect
nothing less from a man who claims to be from
outer space and helped invent punk music as we know it.
Gary was right as usual. It's another end so far.
At least, question Mark may not want to go on
the record about Bill Kehoe and Delta Promotions. But incredibly,
(30:10):
all of question marks bandmates, the Mysterians, are still around too,
and as luck would have it, one of them lives
right down the street from Gary's Museum in Bay City.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Oh you know what, I can't live five minutes from Man.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
When I get to Bay City, I have a chance
to sit down with Bobby Balderama, guitarist and founding member
of question Mark and the Mysterians. There's a little bit
of magic in Bobby's story and some incredible, almost cosmic timing,
And to be sitting in a room in the Bay
City Historical Society hearing him tell it feels kind of unbelievable.
(30:48):
Like a lot of Mexican immigrants in Texas, Bobby's family
moved to Michigan in search of a better life. There
were jobs to be found in the manufacturing plants popping
up throughout the state. The Balderama settled down not too
far from Bay City. His dad got a job with
General Motors. Music was the real family business.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
My family were guitar players and accordion players from a
you know, a Hispanic family. And I had our cousins
down in Texas and we used to pick cotton. Guy
had cousins that were really fantastic musicians.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
I was influenced by them and my dad he played
my brother. So it was a family thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Eventually, Bobby decided to try to find people his own
age to play with.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
And then when I was twelve years old, I decided,
you know, I wanted to start playing jamming with somebody.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
So me.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
He didn't have to look too far to find that somebody.
He recruited his nephew, Larry Borgis on bass.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Me and my nephew Larry started jamming, and then my
sister said, you know, you guys just started baying, you know,
and I told Larry, I said, she's right, you know.
So I started looking for a drummer, you know, and
we got a drummer was Robert Martinez.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Bobby, his nephew Larry, and Robert Martinez started playing together.
It was the early sixties and the boys, still not
even in their teens, moved away from the Mexican music
their family played towards the pop music at the time.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
We were learning the Ventures, you know, Duayne Eddie. We
were doing instrumentals and that was my favorite. I love instrumentals.
And so we started playing out and people started saying, well,
who sings in the band, you know, and we go, well,
we we're an instrumental band. Well, you know, it's starting
to go out, you know, and when the beatles and
the rolling singers started coming in, you know. So I
(32:39):
told the guy, I said, we need a singer. We
definitely need a singer. I don't want to be a singer.
I just want to play my guitar. So Robert said, well,
my brother sings.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
This is where that little bit of magic comes in.
Robert Martinez. His brother is question Mark.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I said, what, you bring them over?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
You know.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
She brought them over to the farm, you know, and
we checked them out, and I was impressed. He was
definitely a great dancer, amazing dancer. I mean he could
dance circles around Mick Jaggery.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
In my conversations with question Mark, he told me that
it was his dancing more than his incredible voice that
made him a star. Bobby saw it too.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
Question My dances, you know, he kind of danced like
a girl, you know, I mean his hips and everything
manages all over the place, you know, and he would
do the splits and everything. Yeah, he was crazy, man,
I said, yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Man.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
With their frontman in place, naturally, the four piece needed
a band name.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You are now inside a flying saucer. Our destination the
planet Earth.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
We are the Mesterian.
Speaker 5 (33:47):
We used to practice on Saturday afternoons and we would
watch this Japanese show Godzella, you know in the afternoon,
you know, the horror movies in the afternoon on Saturday afternoon.
And one day we were watching it and there was these
aliens they were attacking Earth, you know, and it was
they were called the Mysterians.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
But the boys, still not old enough to drive, didn't
stop there. They adopted sci fi alter egos to make
the Mysterians even more mysterious. Bobby went by the stage
name X. Robert Martinez on drums was why Larry Borges
the bassist Z and of course their frontman, question Mark.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
We started playing with question Mark, doing a little small
event type gigs, not playing bars but teen dancers.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
The sci fi themes shtick worked and the band was
playing bigger and bigger shows in Michigan, but it wasn't
for everybody.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
And we were playing down in Adrian, Michigan, and really
beautiful Mexican girl comes up to me.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
She goes, she goes, you're really cute, you know. She goes,
what's your name? And I go X.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
She goes what I said X, and she goes, what
do you mean X, you know. I said that's my name,
and she looked at me and she goes, you're weird,
and she walked away.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
But that minor setback didn't stop Bobby or the Mysterians.
Eventually they became the darlings of the Michigan teen nightclub circuit,
with the influx of British invasion bands starting to take
over the years of teenagers. In nineteen sixty four, Bobby
thought the band needed a bigger sound.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
We kept listening to these English bands, you know, and
they all had keyboard players, like Dave Clark, five Man
they had. The guy had a box continental kept telling
a question. But we need a keyboard player to get
that full sound, you know. And so my brother told
me about this kid. He was like thirteen.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
The Mysterians would add the thirteen year old keyboard as
Frank Rodriguez, and with one simple, unforgettable riff played by
a guy who probably hadn't even hit puberty yet, they
would create a rock and roll classic. Bobby and his
bandmates piled into that living room recording studio inside a
house in Bay City and recorded ninety six tiers, a
(36:08):
song that's still played on Oldie's radio and added to
garage rock playlists today and just to help reinforce that
punk rock ethos that the Mysterians would help invent. The
song was originally called sixty nine Tiers, but Bobby was
too young to really get the innuendo of the title
at the time.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
He goes, why don't we give it a number?
Speaker 5 (36:26):
You know?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I said, what do you mean the number?
Speaker 5 (36:31):
He goes, like, sixty nine tiers. You know, I was
only fifteen, you know, I kind of knew what it meant,
but you know, it's one of the kind of things
you don't want to ask nobody because you feel stupid.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Everybody should already know.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
The band pressed five hundred copies of the single and
hustled it at every radio station in eastern Michigan. Then
they employed the nineteen sixty four version of a viral
marketing stunt.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
We talked it.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
The DJ, you know, he told us, you know, I
kind of like your song, you know, tell your friends
and send us postcards, calls, you know, request so we
can keep playing it, you know. And so me and
question Mirke went out and bought a whole bunch of postcards.
Back in the sixties, they had these point cards. They
were like three cent postcards already posted. We filled them out.
(37:23):
You know, Hi, this is this is Mary. I just
broke up with my boyfriend, you know, and I'm crying.
In ninety six Tiers, can you play that song for me?
You know, we would listen to the radio station. We
could stop laughing because he would read them all.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
You know, you're like that that's me. Yeah, you know,
And it kept a song going though.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Suddenly that manufactured interest in ninety six, Tiers turned into
real interest. The song was a hit locally in Bay City,
then it hit Flint. Once the song took over the
airwaves on Detroit c KLW, question Mark and the Mysterians
were set loose on the world. Within a year, they
were on Dick Clark's enormously influential TV show American Bandstand.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Oh Fridays for Kiers that one has to see you Welcome,
Where's Home?
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Bagging on michigam? Is that where you all got together?
Speaker 5 (38:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Was I right in saying this is the first record?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Is that first record?
Speaker 1 (38:22):
And on October twenty ninth, nineteen sixty six, ninety six
Tiers became the top selling single in America for exactly
one week. The first all Mexican American band to have
a number one hit in the United States and who
replaced Bobby and his bandmates on the charts a group
of manufactured, good looking white boys called the Monkeys. As
(38:43):
you'll hear years later, the Monkeys will play a role
in the end of the Fake Zombies and Delta promotions.
I wish I could say that question Mark and the
Mysterians went on to have a dozen more hits and
Bobby Balderrama a household name. But in nineteen sixty eight,
question Mark was busted for sniffing glue in a highway
(39:06):
rest stop with two of his friends. Their manager dropped
the band, and the record label stopped all promotion. Question
Mark and the Mysterians would never see that same kind
of success again. After Bobby takes me through the band's
rise and fall, I get a chance to ask him
about his connection to Bill Keho, the manager of the
(39:27):
Fake Zombies. Quijo is a footnote in the story of
the Mysterians. He only managed them for a short time
in nineteen sixty eight and sixty nine. But Bobby is
the first person I've talked to who actually knew Keho.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah. You know, he was a real nice guy.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
You know, I got along with him, and he treated
everybody with respect.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
That's what I see.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Kiyo may have been a nice guy, but by the
time he became the band's manager in nineteen sixty eight,
Bobby was on his way out the door. He was
ready to move on to non musical persons suits.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
I guess I'm going to go back to school and
become an electrical engineer and play music on the side.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
The only thing left to do was sort out the
band's considerable fortune.
Speaker 5 (40:10):
I quit the band question Mark Mysterians and then question
My Ike got hold of me and he told me
that he wanted to keep the name going. You know,
so the question My mistering, so we had signed a
personal contract between the band members that nobody can fire
nobody without the majority.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Question Mark really wanted the band name, and he came
up with an offer that in nineteen sixty nine was
pretty outrageous. So the four Mysterians and question Mark met
at a lawyer's office to hash it out.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
And we had a check over one hundred thousand dollars.
That was like a last big royality check, and question
Mike said that we could have it and then he
would keep the name and we could keep the money.
I told my lawyer, I said, yeah, I'll take the
money because I need the money to go to school.
And I was thinking I was going to get like,
you know, at least twenty thousand dollars, you know, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like and who happened to show up at that meeting
claiming he was owed a portion of the Mysterians Harder
and royalties.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
What happened was Bill Kehoe showed up. Bill.
Speaker 5 (41:10):
I'm thinking, how did Bill Keho fit into this? You know,
he wasn't even there when we started. He wasn't even
there when we were towards the end. And then but
question Mark, you know, he signed something with him or
I don't know what he signed.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Kejo had only been managing question Mark for about a year,
but there was a contract, and that one hundred thousand
dollars check got a lot smaller.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
He came in and he wanted his part. We had
to give it to him.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
By the time I got mine, and it was four
thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Bill Keyho got his share of the Mysterians money and
moved on to his other musical pursuits. Like sending four
guys from Texas on the road pretending to be the zombies.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
I remember that, you know, And I remember talking to
somebody about that, that that Bill o' keel was putting
something together, the zombies. I said, oh, wow, they're from England, right,
And he goes, no, he's putting the band together. I said,
I can't believe that. I was like blown away. I said,
you know, these guys are not going to get away
(42:14):
with it.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
The zombies. It too popular.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
That was fifty five years ago, and I feel lucky
that Bobby still remembers any of this at all. But
it wasn't just Bill Keho who dreamed up the outrageous
plan to send the fake zombies on the road. He
had a partner, a guy who seems to be the
missing piece between the straight laced Keyho and the young
hungry bands looking for their big break. Before we say goodbye,
(42:41):
I asked Bobby if he remembers anything anything at all
about the other half of Delta Promotions, A guy who,
unlike Keyho, never shows up in the local paper, a
guy who seemed to actively avoid the spotlight. And you
don't remember a Jim Atherton.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Yeah, you do, Yeah. He was a pretty big guy.
He wasn't skinny, and he drove a Limo or was
it a Cadillac, a black Cadillac or and the first
and paulse I got was mobster. You know.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
One day he asked me to do something for him.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
I say, well, I better do it. Yeah, but I'm
not gonna say well, you know, I can't say now
because weed is legal.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, he wants me to get him some weed.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Like keho. Jim Atherton is no longer with us, and
it seemed like I might never know anything about him.
Throughout all my time looking for the minds behind Delta Promotions,
Atherton has been conspicuously absent from the story. But thanks
to a little bit of that basity magic and the
help of my friend Gary at the Rock and Roll Museum,
(43:54):
I learned everything I need to know about the other
half of the Delta Promotions partnership. I get a phone
call from Gary. Unbeknownst to him, an old friend of
his name, Jim Thompson, had a connection to our mystery man,
Jim Atherton.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Jim Thompson's wife, Rhea, revealed that she was Jim Atherton's sweetheart.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
On the next episode, of the Fake Zombies. I find
myself sitting across the dining room table from Jim Atherton's
high school.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Sweetheart, Are You Telling Secrets?
Speaker 1 (44:27):
And I finally meet somebody who actually saw the Fake
Zombies play, and it turns out he had a pretty
good view.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
I think they're all pretty bad for them. On the
road up and down the East Coast for three months.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Through all my travels here from the abandoned halls of
Band Canyon to the various diners, bars and living rooms
of Bay City, Gary Johnson has opened doors for me.
Gary is more than a Bay City local. He's keeping
the history of music alive. And if you're ever in
Bay City, swing by the Michigan Music Legends Museum and
(45:15):
say hello. If you want to get in touch about
the Fake Zombies, We've set up an email address, Fake
zombiespod at gmail dot com. This podcast was written by
(45:35):
Daniel Ralston. Executive produced by Ian Wheeler, Melissa Locker and
Daniel Ralston. Produced by Anna McClain and Nick Dawson. Score,
original music and additional audio engineering by Robin Hatch. Additional
production support from Cooper Malt in Los Angeles. The True
story of the Fake Zombies is a production of iHeart Podcasts,
(45:55):
Talk House and never Mind Media. For more podcasts from
iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
The True Story of the Fake Zombies is a production
of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and never Mind Media. In
episode one, You Met the Real Zombies. Kings of sixty Psychedelia.
The band had two big hits in nineteen sixty four
(00:23):
and sixty five. The first is She's Not There, the
song You're hearing right Now, a total classic.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Jusam Sorry, Why.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
So?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Is this song which came a year later called tell
Her No, another huge hit that helped define the British
invasion era.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
No No.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
The Zombies rode the same wave that brought the Beatles
and the Stones to the United States. American teenagers from
coast to coast were obsessed with all things English. But
unlike the Beatles and the Stones, the Zombies didn't stay
at the top of the charts. The band's early success
had all but disappeared when out of Nowhere, their now
(01:12):
iconic song Time of the Season started racing up the
charts in the United States as the decade came to
a close this season. While Time of the Season was
spreading like wildfire over the radio airwaves here in America,
back in England, the band had no idea they had
a hit record, yes that could actually happen, pleasure promise ee.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Overseas and father.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The fact that a band could have a hit and
not know it is why we're here. That is why
we have the Fake Zombies. Four young men from Texas
who found themselves in Base City, Michigan in nineteen sixty nine,
hired to impersonate five guys from England. Two of those
Texas boys would go on to form zz Top, icons
(02:10):
of American music, but the time Dusty Hill and Frank
Beard from zz Top spent impersonating British rock Royalty is
left out of the band's already mysterious origin story. Zz
Top are masters of the alter ego and creating myths
and legends. The self described little band from Texas has
(02:32):
always been hard to pin down. Before creating the larger
than life personas they'd inhabit in zz Top, Dusty and
Frank were just looking to hit the road with two
friends named Mark Ramsey and Sibe short for Seaborn Metter.
(02:53):
So they went to a little town called Bay City,
Michigan and became the Zombies. I'm Daniel Ralston. This is
the true story of the Fake Zombies. Yesterday, loden Stone
at least a few thousand people read the same sentence
(03:16):
I did in the Zombies biography. I'm did about a
group of guys impersonating the band in the United States.
I'm sure if you even googled it, I can tell
you from experience that in twenty fifteen, there wasn't much
to find on the Internet when you searched the Fake Zombies.
But somewhere around page sixteen of the search results, after
the tutorials on how to make a homemade zombie costume
(03:38):
for Halloween, I found a blog post written by Mark Ramsey,
rhythm guitarist in the Fake Zombies. That's when this whole
thing really got going. Despite the completely crazy fact that
Mark was actually on tour as a fake Zombie, packed
in the van with Siebe and Frank and Dusty, his
(03:58):
blog posts mostly folks fused on his guitar collection. The
details of the tour were almost an afterthought, but there
were photos faded Kodak images of four young men dressed
in psychedelic clothes jamming away on their instruments. They look great,
but they could have been any band out on tour
(04:19):
in the late sixties, hustling around the country trying to
become the next big thing. None of the photos in
Mark's post hinted that these guys were anything but a
regular garage band from Texas except one. It's the same
four guys from all the candid photos, but this one
(04:42):
is a professionally taken promotional photo. In the black and
white picture, Dusty, Frank, Sibe, and Mark look like a
real band. Lead guitarist Seed Meta is on the far left,
looking like an edgier Rod Stewart, blonde rock and roll
mullet and chiseled cheekbones. Mark Ramsey is on the far right,
(05:06):
giving the camera a slight smile, half of his face
covered in shadow. He looks much younger than nineteen, his
age when the photo was taken. Dusty and Frank are
in the middle. Dusty's hand is draped over Frank's shoulder
as the two of them look straight into the lens.
(05:26):
They're both wearing a variation on a cowboy hat, something
the real zombies would never do, but they're pulling it off.
Everything about the photo looks normal. Four young guys dressed
like rock and roll pirates about to conquer the world,
And if you squint your eyes and imagine yourself as
a rock and roll fan in nineteen sixty nine. Sure
(05:50):
they could be the Zombies, but there were five real Zombies,
not four. That's the first thing wrong with this picture.
The second. The promo photo is autographed. Strangely, Seve Metter
and Mark Ramsey signed it with their real names. Frank
and Dusty are using fake ones de Cruz and Chris Page, respectively.
(06:15):
It seems like the zz top half of the band
knew something the other guys didn't. And once you go
beyond the borders of the photo, this perfect rock and
roll picture starts. The band's name is printed on the
bottom left in black on a white border. It says
(06:37):
the Original Zombies, and in the bottom right corner there's
an address where a radio DJ or adoring fan could
write to the company that represented the original Zombies. The
company is called Delta Promotions. We know these four young
(06:58):
guys in the picture are from Texas, So why does
the address say Bay City, Michigan. There's only one way
to find out the answer. After the break, I'm headed
to Bay City, hoping that it will provide some answers
to that and all of my other questions about how
and why the fake Zombies came together. Like why it
(07:23):
happened in the tiny town one hundred and twenty miles
north of Detroit and twelve hundred miles north of Dallas.
Why Bay City. It turns out being in the middle
of nowhere helps when you're putting together a ban that
already exists. Bay City, Michigan, is a long way from anything.
(07:50):
Even now in twenty twenty four, when the world is
so connected by technology and information, Bay City feels out
of the way. The closest airport is Saginaw, about twenty
miles south. If the name Bay City sounds familiar, you
may know it from the band the Bay City Rollers.
(08:16):
They're not from Bay City or anywhere else in Michigan, though,
they're not even American. They threw a darted a map
of the United States and it landed on Bay City,
and that could have been Base City's musical claim to fame,
but it isn't. This out of the way little town
has one big brush with serious music Royalty Madonna was
(08:38):
born there. In one of Madonna's first big TV interviews
with Diane Sawyer in nineteen eighty four, she kind of
trashed her hometown.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Came from Michigan, where in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Well, I was born in Bay City.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Bay City.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, little town, mm hm, small list, smellytown north in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Madonna's connection to Bay City runs a bit deeper than
one disparaging SoundBite. She spent a lot of time here
as a kid at her grandma's house. Like the song goes,
this used to be her playground. But because she called
Bay City a little smelly town, its residents never forgave her.
(09:22):
There's no billboard announcing that this is the birthplace of Madonna,
no statue of her in downtown Bay City, just a
two foot by two foot plaque put up in twenty
seventeen outside the hospital where she was born. It's all
Bay City would allow. I'm not sure I'll find anything
(09:46):
new by going to Bay City. It doesn't seem like
a town that celebrates its heroes. And I'm here looking
for the people behind Delta Promotions, a music management company
who did something a little unscrupulous here over fifty years.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Ag go.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Bay City is a quiet town, a modest town. But
if I come up empty in my search, here, at
least I can say I visited the birthplace of the
Queen of Pop. So I'm hopping on a plane to
Detroit and then a much smaller plane to the crotch
of the thumb of Michigan to see if anyone involved
with the fake zombies or the Delta promotion scam is
(10:23):
still alive and willing to talk. In a little smelly
town called Bay City.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you to dagonaw in a
local time in twenty five pm for your safetyandam.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Is chalk it up to coastal elite bias or just
plain idiocy, but I'm not really prepared for just how
out of the way I will be in Bay City.
When I land at the airport and said iagena on Michigan,
I noticed my flight is one of three arrivals for
the entire day. It's the middle of summer twenty twenty three,
(11:08):
it's hot, and there are thunderstorms rolling in. I'd arranged
to be driven around Bay City by a local music
historian for most of my trip, so I didn't bother
renting a car. Huge mistake. There is no lyft or
uber here. I end up bribing an airport employee for
a ride. I get the impression I'm not the first
(11:31):
stranded passenger he's bailed out. As we motor through the
Michigan sunset in his pickup truck, passing field after field
and factory after rundown factory. I feel like I'm going
back in time, which is exactly where I want to go.
(11:53):
If this part of Michigan feels cut off from the
world now, you can imagine how it was more than
fifty years ago when two guys Bill Kehoe and Jim
Atherton cooked up the idea for the fake Zombies from
their offices inside their teen nightclub band Canyon on the
outskirts of town on Tuscola Road. Keyho and Atherton ran
(12:16):
Delta Promotions, a concert promotion and artist management company specializing
in acts from in and around Bay City. I promise
we'll get into the details of how two of the
guys from zz Top happened to end up in the
Delta offices more than five decades ago. But first I
need to see a guy named Gary Ready.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
When you are sir, okay, well this you know there
wasn't This was such an interesting time in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Without people like Gary Johnson, the history of rock and
roll would not exist. He's a music obsessive and was
a teenage rock and roll rebel right here in Bay City,
back in nineteen sixty nine when the fake zombies assembled,
and thankfully he's found a place to house the history
of Michigan music he's lived and breathed for the past
(13:13):
fifty years. Gary runs a museum on the second floor
of the Bay City Historical Society. The first floor of
the building has your typical local museum fodder, displays about
early settlers and fur trapping. There are multiple displays devoted
to the logging industry if you really like that sort
(13:34):
of thing. The Bay City Historical Society is the museum
for you. If you're ambivalent about logging, like me, it's
a little dry and would The featured exhibit as I
entered the lobby is a lovely collection of tea sets
(13:55):
owned by early Bay City residents. But the second floor,
Gary's floor is another story.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Take you through this. This is our newest exhibit right here.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Here, Gary, Doctor J. Johnson runs the Michigan Rock and
Roll Legends Museum piece.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
All the Michigan talent that had been growing the last
three years. This is what a line up.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
This is.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Junior walks.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Bay City may not be the kind of town that
celebrates its musical history, but Gary's enthusiasm for his hometown
sound more than makes up for that. From the moment
I met Gary, I knew he was a kindred spirit,
another person who loves music and the stories behind it
the way I do.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
But anyways, that was MC five.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
This collection of posters, gear and ephemera is the rock
and roll Hall of Fame for artists born here in Michigan,
from Motown Legends to the White Stripes and everyone in between.
Gary just can't legally call it the rock and Roll
Hall of Fame because the rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in Cleveland won't let him. Not very rock and
roll in my opinion. But back to the Michigan version,
(15:04):
it's a truly impressive collection, and Gary spares no detail
in celebrating Bay Cities contributions to the musical landscape.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
This is all furniture and carpeting from that State Theater
original seats. This is one of the old theaters in
Bay City that burned down, but I love these.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
There's a wall dedicated to the Bay City Rollers on
the State and the time they were given the key
to the city when they.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Were so hot they put their hands in cement and
autographed each one, so we have.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
That Madonna is well represented. Naturally, A mural sized photo
of her covers an entire wall.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Eighteen eighty seven. And he was right in front of
the stage. He said he had you know, he was
there for the verse four or five songs. He was
getting hit by droplets of sweat, you know, from Madonna,
you know, dancing as she was.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
In fact, Gary's the reason there's any mention of Madonna
in Bay City at all. He's the one who insisted
the town up that two by two plaque in her honor.
There's a tribute to just about every musician Michigan ever produced,
from Stevie Wonder to Michigan's favorite son, Bob Seeger. I
don't want to give the impression that this museum is big.
(16:15):
It's not, but every possible square inch is devoted to
Michigan's place in the history of rock and roll music.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yes, and of course Del Shannon, one of our great
Michigan artists. There was a little bit of question about
his death.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
There are parts of Gary's museum that feel like they're
only for true music obsessives like myself and maybe you all.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Right, this is the big wall of the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Gary cares about the forgotten figures and lost histories that
make up the real story of Michigan music.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
You know, different events in Michigan rock and roll history
from nineteen forty six, when the Fortune Records form and
right up to when the Frankie Lineman and the Teenagers
tombstone gat here.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So anyway, case in point, the Michigan Rock and Roll
Legends Museum is dominated by one particular landmark, and it's huge,
about one thousand pounds and made of solid granite. Through
a series of wild and almost unbelievably strange events, Gary
(17:17):
came into possession of the tombstone of Frankie Lyman, the
singer of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Frankie Lyman is
one of the architects of American music. The story of
Frankie Lymon's tombstone and how it ended up in Gary's
museum is such a good one we'll be offering it
up as a bonus episode. Make sure to check out
Frankie Lymon's Tombstone Blues available in this podcast feed. I
(17:44):
know that if I'm going to get to the heart
of Bay City's connection to the fake zombies. Gary will
lead me there. When I first found that black and
white promo shot of the original zombies, I felt like
I'd stumbled onto something, But I didn't know how that
Bay City address on the bottom fit into it. Why
were the Texas Zombies being managed by a company in Michigan.
(18:08):
Somewhere in his archive of forgotten Michigan musicians, Gary had
that same black and white photo, the one with the
cowboy hats. It was the first real connection I found
between Texas and Bay City. Throughout this whole saga, I've
gotten close to hearing the real story of the fake
zombies from the people who lived in There was an
(18:29):
email from Dusty Hill before he passed away, confirming that
he was in fact a fake zombie. I traded messages
in a few phone calls with Mark Ramsey too. He
told me just enough to write an article about the story,
But I always knew Mark was holding back, and it's
one of my great regrets that I never got to
meet Mark face to face before he passed away in
(18:50):
twenty seventeen. Seed passed away in nineteen eighty. Now there's
only one living member of the Texas zombies Frank Beard
and getting him to talk to me is a dead end.
So far, through all the setbacks and vanishing history, Gary
and I never stopped looking for the fake zombies, and
(19:12):
for the first time in years, we have new leads.
That's why I'm here in Bay City. Inside the Michigan
Rock and Roll Legends Museum. There are also tributes to
bands you've never heard of, artists who released one incredible single,
field nightclubs for a few years, and then disappeared. If
(19:33):
not for Gary, their stories, like that of the Texas Zombies,
would be lost. So I'm hearing Gary's museum going down
every rabbit hole I can. I've been making phone calls
and sending emails waiting to hear back from leads. Gary
and I found people who might have been on this
(19:54):
fake Zombies tour. A road manager, a guitar tech, a
Delta Promote employee. While I wait for responses, Gary suggests
I talked to a local historian named Sam Fitzpatrick. Sam
might not be able to help me find a fake zombie,
(20:17):
but he might help me understand how the fake zombie
scheme could only happen in a little, smelly town like
Bay City. As I leave the second floor of the
museum and wander through the more traditional exhibits downstairs, I
noticed something new, an exhibit dedicated to Bay City's other history.
(20:38):
Back when Michigan was still killing it in the logging
and trapping industries, Bay City was the town where people
came to let loose. The god fearing members of the
population even had a nickname for the lawless stretch of
downtown bay City where the worst transgressions occurred. They called
it Hell's half Mile.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Stories of lumberjacks, fight deaths, brawls, police beating people up, prostitution, murder, scandal.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's Sam, the local historian.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Might lose a body part, you might die.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
He tells me about Bay City's reputation for debauchery in
the late nineteenth century, a subject he clearly loves talking about.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Yes, Yes, yes, and a boom town in the nineteenth
century that had a lot of wealthy people from the
lumbering industry. But if you were the everyday working class,
grinding your teeth person in the sawmills, the shipyards, the
coal mines, the farms, and the lumberjacks of North coming down.
So this district was like this all year round. But
(21:43):
during that spring thaw, it was like the bloody Marty Grass.
It was like a bloody spring break.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Bay City was the kind of town where you might
get your nose chewed off or see a man fight
a pig. And it wasn't just a few bad apples.
There were people coming from all corners of the region
to experience everything Bay City had to offer.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
So, in an already thriving lumbertown with this very salacious district,
about five thousand extra lumbermen would come down during our
spring claw in this one small area. They spent all
their money in about two weeks time. It was just
a free for all. It was like the Okay Corral
on Crack.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Bay City was a wild place, and luckily Sam has
the details.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
I have another story of people getting body parts showed off.
Clearly I need to hear that story. There was a
guy who went to a bar over on Third Street.
This guy lunched at him when he walked into the
bar and clamped his teeth onto his nose and bit
a portion of it off. They saved it by wrapping
it up at a napkin. There was also another guy
who has lip fitting off in this fight that took
(22:44):
a weird.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Turn, and apparently one of these Bay City saloons was
running a fight club.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Supposedly there was a secret sporting room where a drunken
lumberman would face off in front of crowds of other
drunken lumbermen, or not just lumberman, but any buddy with
money and a drink, and they would just place bets
on guys fighting. And there was a guy there who
took things to an extreme. He didn't fight people, he
fought animals. He was called Patty the Pig or Patty
(23:13):
the Dog. He was an Irish guy, and when he
would get drunk and for the right price, he would
get down on all fours dogs, rats, chickens.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Eventually, the wild West like behavior that defined Bay City
would give way to modern life, and civility would win out.
Bars and brothels replaced by department stores and mom and
pop businesses. Hard drinking, hard living frontiersmen were replaced by
factory workers with families looking to start a better life.
(23:43):
So what changed the State of Michigan might have stayed
a collection of backwoods hovels like Bay City in the
(24:04):
early twentieth century, but Ford, Chrysler and General motors had
other plans. Here's Sam again.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
In industrial towns like Bay City, Sagonauflin, and Detroit, you
had a new emerging culture. You had emerging scenes.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
When the auto industry exploded and Bay City's residents went
to work in factories making spark plugs and steering columns,
there was suddenly a lot of money going around.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
A lot of kids were gifted instruments as Christmas gifts
because of these jobs that people got, these great generous
paychecks they got from these industrial middle class jobs.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The stroke of economic good fortune happened to coincide with
the baby boom. By the nineteen sixties, Bay City and
hundreds of other towns in Michigan were full of young
people with well paid parents and nothing to do. Thank god,
rock and Roll came along.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
A lot of kids growing up were watching at Sullivan Show.
They were listening to the Beatles. We're listening to all
the new stuff coming out of motown and got inspired.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And that's where the history of Bay City and the
story of the Fake Zombies meet. Before I leave the
museum and continue my search for answers about Bill Keho,
Jim Atherton, and Delta Promotions, I ask Samope's at all
shocked that something like the fake Zombies could go down
in Bay City, not at.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
All, even in Michigan. If you look at Bay City,
you're not gonna look twice at a map. The history
of this town outsizes the size of this town. So
the small town that is still daring enough to do
big impressive things, or to try to get away with
doing big impressive things.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Bay City a town full of dreamers and schemers looking
to make a name for themselves any way they could.
Now here's where the musical history of Bay City starts.
In nineteen sixty four, five guys would get together in
the living room recording studio of a small house from
the center of town and make a new kind of
history for Bay City. Those screaming teenagers you've seen in
(26:15):
clips of the Beatles and the Stones on Ed Sullivan,
they were everywhere in every town.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I think you're yelling much better this year.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And the zombies were a part of all that. Because
Bay City was home to so many music raised teenagers,
a guy named Bill Kehoe opened his own teen nightclub
band Canyon, and he immediately drew crowds of teenagers to
his alcohol free nightclub for young people. Bill Kehoe was
(26:43):
a pillar of the Bay City community, a local businessman
in his mid thirties by the time he was managing bands.
Looking at the old black and white photos of him
in the local paper on microfiche in the Bay City library,
he doesn't exactly scream rock and roll impresario. He looked
more qualified to manage a bank than a band. It
(27:05):
turns out Keiho, despite his square appearance, had pretty good
taste in rock and roll bands. That's how he and
Delta Promotions ended up managing the first Mexican Americans to
have a number one record in the United States, question
Mark in the Mysterians. Before I left for Bay City,
(27:30):
I learned that in addition to managing the Fake Zombies,
Bill Kehoe briefly managed question Mark in the Mysterians, a
pioneering band in the world of punk and garage rock.
If you need punk bonafides, Iggy Pop used to follow
The Mysterians around as a teenager in Michigan, and Lou
Reid put ninety six tiers on his list of the
one hundred best songs ever written. I tell Gary that
(27:54):
I want to talk to the band's lead singer the
man they call question Mark. As always, Gary's encouraging, but
he lets me know it might be a challenge. He
is absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Oh, he's impossible.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I was really even wondering if he question Mark the
guy is a hard man to pin down. First of all,
finding someone who legally changed their name to a question
mark presents an obvious challenge. Then there's the fact that
question Mark is something of a recluse. He lives in
(28:29):
rural Michigan and keeps to himself. Over the course of
his sixty year music career, he's been called a genius
and he's been called a little out there. I finally
got a hold of question Mark. Is that question Mark here?
And I can tell you that he is both. I
ask him about Bill Kehoe and Delta Promotions, but question
Mark doesn't want to tell me about that. He wants
(28:52):
to tell me about his past lives and the fact
that he'll be reborn again on Mars. When I press
him for any scraps of information on the Bay City scene,
he suggests I forget about this podcast and make a
movie about him. He's got a whole pitch, and it
starts with an image of his mother's womb Hello, I
(29:16):
am trying to get a hold of question Mark. Over
the course of the next few weeks. I have a
lot of telephone conversations with question Mark. I'm making that
story into this podcast, and he would occasionally reveal a
tidbit of information about his time with Delta Promotions and
crossing paths with the fake Zombies. Let me give you
a call tomorrow. We'll continue the conversation, none of which
he agreed to let me use for this podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Will you talk to me up in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I suggest that we meet up when I get to
Bay City, and he half heartily agrees that sounds amazing,
but that meeting never happens.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Talk soon, okay, Bane.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Question Mark is and will remain a mystery. I'd expect
nothing less from a man who claims to be from
outer space and helped invent punk music as we know it.
Gary was right as usual. It's another end so far.
At least, question Mark may not want to go on
the record about Bill Kehoe and Delta Promotions. But incredibly,
(30:10):
all of question marks bandmates, the Mysterians, are still around too,
and as luck would have it, one of them lives
right down the street from Gary's Museum in Bay City.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Oh you know what, I can't live five minutes from Man.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
When I get to Bay City, I have a chance
to sit down with Bobby Balderama, guitarist and founding member
of question Mark and the Mysterians. There's a little bit
of magic in Bobby's story and some incredible, almost cosmic timing,
And to be sitting in a room in the Bay
City Historical Society hearing him tell it feels kind of unbelievable.
(30:48):
Like a lot of Mexican immigrants in Texas, Bobby's family
moved to Michigan in search of a better life. There
were jobs to be found in the manufacturing plants popping
up throughout the state. The Balderama settled down not too
far from Bay City. His dad got a job with
General Motors. Music was the real family business.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
My family were guitar players and accordion players from a
you know, a Hispanic family. And I had our cousins
down in Texas and we used to pick cotton. Guy
had cousins that were really fantastic musicians.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
I was influenced by them and my dad he played
my brother. So it was a family thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Eventually, Bobby decided to try to find people his own
age to play with.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
And then when I was twelve years old, I decided,
you know, I wanted to start playing jamming with somebody.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
So me.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
He didn't have to look too far to find that somebody.
He recruited his nephew, Larry Borgis on bass.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Me and my nephew Larry started jamming, and then my
sister said, you know, you guys just started baying, you know,
and I told Larry, I said, she's right, you know.
So I started looking for a drummer, you know, and
we got a drummer was Robert Martinez.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Bobby, his nephew Larry, and Robert Martinez started playing together.
It was the early sixties and the boys, still not
even in their teens, moved away from the Mexican music
their family played towards the pop music at the time.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
We were learning the Ventures, you know, Duayne Eddie. We
were doing instrumentals and that was my favorite. I love instrumentals.
And so we started playing out and people started saying, well,
who sings in the band, you know, and we go, well,
we we're an instrumental band. Well, you know, it's starting
to go out, you know, and when the beatles and
the rolling singers started coming in, you know. So I
(32:39):
told the guy, I said, we need a singer. We
definitely need a singer. I don't want to be a singer.
I just want to play my guitar. So Robert said, well,
my brother sings.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
This is where that little bit of magic comes in.
Robert Martinez. His brother is question Mark.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I said, what, you bring them over?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
You know.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
She brought them over to the farm, you know, and
we checked them out, and I was impressed. He was
definitely a great dancer, amazing dancer. I mean he could
dance circles around Mick Jaggery.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
In my conversations with question Mark, he told me that
it was his dancing more than his incredible voice that
made him a star. Bobby saw it too.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
Question My dances, you know, he kind of danced like
a girl, you know, I mean his hips and everything
manages all over the place, you know, and he would
do the splits and everything. Yeah, he was crazy, man,
I said, yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Man.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
With their frontman in place, naturally, the four piece needed
a band name.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You are now inside a flying saucer. Our destination the
planet Earth.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
We are the Mesterian.
Speaker 5 (33:47):
We used to practice on Saturday afternoons and we would
watch this Japanese show Godzella, you know in the afternoon,
you know, the horror movies in the afternoon on Saturday afternoon.
And one day we were watching it and there was these
aliens they were attacking Earth, you know, and it was
they were called the Mysterians.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
But the boys, still not old enough to drive, didn't
stop there. They adopted sci fi alter egos to make
the Mysterians even more mysterious. Bobby went by the stage
name X. Robert Martinez on drums was why Larry Borges
the bassist Z and of course their frontman, question Mark.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
We started playing with question Mark, doing a little small
event type gigs, not playing bars but teen dancers.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
The sci fi themes shtick worked and the band was
playing bigger and bigger shows in Michigan, but it wasn't
for everybody.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
And we were playing down in Adrian, Michigan, and really
beautiful Mexican girl comes up to me.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
She goes, she goes, you're really cute, you know. She goes,
what's your name? And I go X.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
She goes what I said X, and she goes, what
do you mean X, you know. I said that's my name,
and she looked at me and she goes, you're weird,
and she walked away.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
But that minor setback didn't stop Bobby or the Mysterians.
Eventually they became the darlings of the Michigan teen nightclub circuit,
with the influx of British invasion bands starting to take
over the years of teenagers. In nineteen sixty four, Bobby
thought the band needed a bigger sound.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
We kept listening to these English bands, you know, and
they all had keyboard players, like Dave Clark, five Man
they had. The guy had a box continental kept telling
a question. But we need a keyboard player to get
that full sound, you know. And so my brother told
me about this kid. He was like thirteen.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
The Mysterians would add the thirteen year old keyboard as
Frank Rodriguez, and with one simple, unforgettable riff played by
a guy who probably hadn't even hit puberty yet, they
would create a rock and roll classic. Bobby and his
bandmates piled into that living room recording studio inside a
house in Bay City and recorded ninety six tiers, a
(36:08):
song that's still played on Oldie's radio and added to
garage rock playlists today and just to help reinforce that
punk rock ethos that the Mysterians would help invent. The
song was originally called sixty nine Tiers, but Bobby was
too young to really get the innuendo of the title
at the time.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
He goes, why don't we give it a number?
Speaker 5 (36:26):
You know?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I said, what do you mean the number?
Speaker 5 (36:31):
He goes, like, sixty nine tiers. You know, I was
only fifteen, you know, I kind of knew what it meant,
but you know, it's one of the kind of things
you don't want to ask nobody because you feel stupid.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Everybody should already know.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
The band pressed five hundred copies of the single and
hustled it at every radio station in eastern Michigan. Then
they employed the nineteen sixty four version of a viral
marketing stunt.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
We talked it.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
The DJ, you know, he told us, you know, I
kind of like your song, you know, tell your friends
and send us postcards, calls, you know, request so we
can keep playing it, you know. And so me and
question Mirke went out and bought a whole bunch of postcards.
Back in the sixties, they had these point cards. They
were like three cent postcards already posted. We filled them out.
(37:23):
You know, Hi, this is this is Mary. I just
broke up with my boyfriend, you know, and I'm crying.
In ninety six Tiers, can you play that song for me?
You know, we would listen to the radio station. We
could stop laughing because he would read them all.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
You know, you're like that that's me. Yeah, you know,
And it kept a song going though.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Suddenly that manufactured interest in ninety six, Tiers turned into
real interest. The song was a hit locally in Bay City,
then it hit Flint. Once the song took over the
airwaves on Detroit c KLW, question Mark and the Mysterians
were set loose on the world. Within a year, they
were on Dick Clark's enormously influential TV show American Bandstand.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Oh Fridays for Kiers that one has to see you Welcome,
Where's Home?
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Bagging on michigam? Is that where you all got together?
Speaker 5 (38:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Was I right in saying this is the first record?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Is that first record?
Speaker 1 (38:22):
And on October twenty ninth, nineteen sixty six, ninety six
Tiers became the top selling single in America for exactly
one week. The first all Mexican American band to have
a number one hit in the United States and who
replaced Bobby and his bandmates on the charts a group
of manufactured, good looking white boys called the Monkeys. As
(38:43):
you'll hear years later, the Monkeys will play a role
in the end of the Fake Zombies and Delta promotions.
I wish I could say that question Mark and the
Mysterians went on to have a dozen more hits and
Bobby Balderrama a household name. But in nineteen sixty eight,
question Mark was busted for sniffing glue in a highway
(39:06):
rest stop with two of his friends. Their manager dropped
the band, and the record label stopped all promotion. Question
Mark and the Mysterians would never see that same kind
of success again. After Bobby takes me through the band's
rise and fall, I get a chance to ask him
about his connection to Bill Keho, the manager of the
(39:27):
Fake Zombies. Quijo is a footnote in the story of
the Mysterians. He only managed them for a short time
in nineteen sixty eight and sixty nine. But Bobby is
the first person I've talked to who actually knew Keho.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah. You know, he was a real nice guy.
Speaker 5 (39:42):
You know, I got along with him, and he treated
everybody with respect.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
That's what I see.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Kiyo may have been a nice guy, but by the
time he became the band's manager in nineteen sixty eight,
Bobby was on his way out the door. He was
ready to move on to non musical persons suits.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
I guess I'm going to go back to school and
become an electrical engineer and play music on the side.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
The only thing left to do was sort out the
band's considerable fortune.
Speaker 5 (40:10):
I quit the band question Mark Mysterians and then question
My Ike got hold of me and he told me
that he wanted to keep the name going. You know,
so the question My mistering, so we had signed a
personal contract between the band members that nobody can fire
nobody without the majority.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Question Mark really wanted the band name, and he came
up with an offer that in nineteen sixty nine was
pretty outrageous. So the four Mysterians and question Mark met
at a lawyer's office to hash it out.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
And we had a check over one hundred thousand dollars.
That was like a last big royality check, and question
Mike said that we could have it and then he
would keep the name and we could keep the money.
I told my lawyer, I said, yeah, I'll take the
money because I need the money to go to school.
And I was thinking I was going to get like,
you know, at least twenty thousand dollars, you know, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like and who happened to show up at that meeting
claiming he was owed a portion of the Mysterians Harder
and royalties.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
What happened was Bill Kehoe showed up. Bill.
Speaker 5 (41:10):
I'm thinking, how did Bill Keho fit into this? You know,
he wasn't even there when we started. He wasn't even
there when we were towards the end. And then but
question Mark, you know, he signed something with him or
I don't know what he signed.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Kejo had only been managing question Mark for about a year,
but there was a contract, and that one hundred thousand
dollars check got a lot smaller.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
He came in and he wanted his part. We had
to give it to him.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
By the time I got mine, and it was four
thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Bill Keyho got his share of the Mysterians money and
moved on to his other musical pursuits. Like sending four
guys from Texas on the road pretending to be the zombies.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
I remember that, you know, And I remember talking to
somebody about that, that that Bill o' keel was putting
something together, the zombies. I said, oh, wow, they're from England, right,
And he goes, no, he's putting the band together. I said,
I can't believe that. I was like blown away. I said,
you know, these guys are not going to get away
(42:14):
with it.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
The zombies. It too popular.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
That was fifty five years ago, and I feel lucky
that Bobby still remembers any of this at all. But
it wasn't just Bill Keho who dreamed up the outrageous
plan to send the fake zombies on the road. He
had a partner, a guy who seems to be the
missing piece between the straight laced Keyho and the young
hungry bands looking for their big break. Before we say goodbye,
(42:41):
I asked Bobby if he remembers anything anything at all
about the other half of Delta Promotions, A guy who,
unlike Keyho, never shows up in the local paper, a
guy who seemed to actively avoid the spotlight. And you
don't remember a Jim Atherton.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Yeah, you do, Yeah. He was a pretty big guy.
He wasn't skinny, and he drove a Limo or was
it a Cadillac, a black Cadillac or and the first
and paulse I got was mobster. You know.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
One day he asked me to do something for him.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
I say, well, I better do it. Yeah, but I'm
not gonna say well, you know, I can't say now
because weed is legal.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, he wants me to get him some weed.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Like keho. Jim Atherton is no longer with us, and
it seemed like I might never know anything about him.
Throughout all my time looking for the minds behind Delta Promotions,
Atherton has been conspicuously absent from the story. But thanks
to a little bit of that basity magic and the
help of my friend Gary at the Rock and Roll Museum,
(43:54):
I learned everything I need to know about the other
half of the Delta Promotions partnership. I get a phone
call from Gary. Unbeknownst to him, an old friend of
his name, Jim Thompson, had a connection to our mystery man,
Jim Atherton.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Jim Thompson's wife, Rhea, revealed that she was Jim Atherton's sweetheart.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
On the next episode, of the Fake Zombies. I find
myself sitting across the dining room table from Jim Atherton's
high school.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Sweetheart, Are You Telling Secrets?
Speaker 1 (44:27):
And I finally meet somebody who actually saw the Fake
Zombies play, and it turns out he had a pretty
good view.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
I think they're all pretty bad for them. On the
road up and down the East Coast for three months.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Through all my travels here from the abandoned halls of
Band Canyon to the various diners, bars and living rooms
of Bay City, Gary Johnson has opened doors for me.
Gary is more than a Bay City local. He's keeping
the history of music alive. And if you're ever in
Bay City, swing by the Michigan Music Legends Museum and
(45:15):
say hello. If you want to get in touch about
the Fake Zombies, We've set up an email address, Fake
zombiespod at gmail dot com. This podcast was written by
(45:35):
Daniel Ralston. Executive produced by Ian Wheeler, Melissa Locker and
Daniel Ralston. Produced by Anna McClain and Nick Dawson. Score,
original music and additional audio engineering by Robin Hatch. Additional
production support from Cooper Malt in Los Angeles. The True
story of the Fake Zombies is a production of iHeart Podcasts,
(45:55):
Talk House and never Mind Media. For more podcasts from
iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
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