MUSIC : The Last Roundup : Talent night at the Palomino, once a celebrity-studded mix of urban cowboy chic and “The Gong Show,” finally rides off into the sunset.
Like a sad country song, the tradition of talent night at the famed Palomino Club ended earlier this month after 40 years. It was the last roundup of the weekly prize contest, which legend has it gave early exposure to such luminaries as Linda Ronstadt, Willie Nelson and Emmy Lou Harris.
They did not return to the club in North Hollywood for the last show. And unlike past years, when the talent contest was in its heyday, there were no celebrities or prominent talent agents in the audience and no post-contest show by the likes of the Flying Burrito Brothers.
This last talent show was not for the stars or slick music business types in alligator skin boots. It was for the faithful.
“And now,” announced the master of ceremonies, “here’s Crazy!”
A 78-year-old man with a white beard hanging so low it covered all his lower face and much of his chest, climbed up on stage. The crowd of about 50 went nuts and members of the Palomino Riders house band greeted Crazy--whose real name is Charles August Younga--as an old friend. This former miner and box-car unloader claims to have been a contestant at every Palomino talent night for the last 22 years. He even won on a couple occasions.
Younga took the mike and perhaps for the last time in public sang his mostly unintelligible version of a number called “Yodelin’ Chocolate Ice Cream Cone.” Skip Edwards, who has been playing keyboards in this band on and off for about 10 years and just that morning got off an Asian tour with Dwight Yoakam, smiled broadly as he watched Younga.
“Charles is performance art,” Edwards said.
The fringe element has long been a staple of talent night. “When I first got here in the early 1980s there would be a line down the block of people trying to get in for talent night,” said Harry Orlove, a guitarist in the band. “Johnny Carson came to see the show many times. Joni Mitchell, Shelley Winters, too.
“It was at a time when the urban cowboy thing was happening and so was ‘The Gong Show.’ Talent night at the Palomino was the perfect amalgam of the two.”
As usual, more mainstream performers made up the majority of talent at the contests and the last one was no exception. Some of the almost 50 acts were quite polished.
Gil Simon, a young singer from Toronto who had recently moved to Los Angeles, had the sound and looks that could make him a contender one day. He had already won two national competitions in Canada.
“Of course I had heard of the Palomino back home,” said Simon, who performed the Travis Tritt song “Help Me Hold On.” “I thought it was a place I could come and meet some people, make connections.”
Ruth Danziger did a sweet rendition of a song called “Only Love” and Beth Hart gave a bluesy, Janis Joplin-type treatment to a lively “Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
Songwriter Patti Shannon of Long Beach skillfully performed two well-crafted and heartfelt songs of her own. “This is so sad,” she said before going on, sitting at one of the long tables in the audience. She had appeared at talent night about 40 times. “It was such a great place to try out material. The band is the best. They would help with the arrangements, show you how you might do something a different way.
“I will really miss those guys.”
Floyd Everson, 70, who sang two of his own songs, cried when he said goodby to the band after his set.
The five-piece Palomino Riders seemed universally beloved. This tight ensemble, made up mostly of studio musicians, rocked the club with a solid, full sound, especially on their one solo number of the evening, a Randy Newman song “Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man).”
“Just to hear that band made it worth being there,” said Tom Willett, a regular contestant who appeared under the name Herman Schmerdley. Dressed in a 1950s-style suit and wearing his trademark porkpie hat, Willett, 54, an actor who had a regular part on the “Dear John” TV sitcom, sang “Me And Bobby McGee” the last night.
“When you are performing with a band that good, it can’t help but make you look all the better.”
As good as the band members are, they didn’t play on talent nights just for the money--$50 a week. “It was truly a relationship we had going,” said bassist Arnie Moore, who works primarily as a character actor on TV and commercials. “You would see each other every week, catch up on how the guys are doing, what’s happening with the family.
“Now, maybe we’ll see each other around once in a while and call to stay in touch, but it won’t be the same.”
The band members had two major topics of conversation during their breaks. One was their disappointment that talent night was discontinuing. “If it was run right, with some kind of exclusiveness that would pull in more good acts, it just seems it could be a draw again,” said one of the musicians, who did not want his name on a quote critical of club management. “I might want to play here again,” he explained.
The owner of the club, Bill Thomas, did not show up for the event and for good reason. “I think there were people who wanted to lynch me after I made the decision,” said Thomas in a telephone interview a few days before the last talent night. Thomas inherited the club from his father, Bill Thomas Sr., and his uncle, Tom Thomas.
“But it just was not a draw any more,” he said. “We have theme nights that do very well for us now--the Barn Dance on Tuesdays and the Policeman’s Ball, more of a rock show, on Wednesdays. I needed Monday as a night for booking bands.”
Indeed, the largest the crowd got on the last talent night was about 100, including the performers, and that was more than in recent memory for the contest. Barn Dance night attracts at least three times that many on a good night, Thomas said.
The band members also wanted to talk about all the unique acts they had seen over the years. There was Johnny Skunk, who came on stage in a skunk costume. When he hit the part of his song that went, “I’m going to skunk you, babe,” he would spray the audience with an aerosol device sewn into his outfit.
A woman contestant once did a dance wearing only a bikini made out of McDonald’s cartons, and a man at one contest set up a light to make shadow puppets on the wall with his hands.
“He was actually amazing,” Orlove said. “He could even do people’s faces.”
On the last night, tenor E.J. Bahr did his grand opera version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” It got one of the biggest hands of the night, although some people in the club argued that his “They Call the Wind Maria” was even better.
And Younga, late in the evening, did his 10-minute version of Kenny Rogers’ “Lucille.” Even die-hard fans of the song might not have recognized it for the first few minutes--Younga had made the song truly his own.
The final judging started at 3 a.m., with only 20 performers still hanging in to try for the prizes. By applause from the audience (about half of which was made up of club employees at that hour), Willett took the $25 third place, Younga won the $50 second place and the top prize of $100 went to Hart for the second week in a row.
When it was all over there were a few tears, some hugs and lots of exchanging of numbers. The person who seemed most undaunted by it all was talent night’s most faithful participant, Younga. Several of the waitresses and other contestants embraced him, wished him well and asked him what he would now do on Monday nights.
“The way I see it,” Younga told them, “it gives me another night for pinochle.”
