But anyway, after meeting him in Hoboken for the first time, I didn't see Ronnie again for a year or three. Next time I saw him he had enlisted our pals the Frantic Flattops from Rochester, NY as his backup band. They used to travel around in an old early-60's Cadillac hearse, and they drove about sixteen hours from up there somewhere down to Charlotte to do a show with us. We got to the club a bit early (first and only time that ever happened) and were just hanging out waiting for the Dawson/Flattops crew to arrive. Up pulls that beat-up old hearse with all the gear loaded in the back and Ronnie riding shotgun; before the thing had even creaked and groaned to a complete halt, Ronnie dives out wearing shades, some ratty old shorts and a T-shirt ,all sweaty from the hell-drive (no A/C in that thing, and it was mid-summer), rubs his ass, and yells "God DAMN!" in that Texas drawl, grinning like a mule eating briars the while. It turned out to be a hell of a night. I have a tape of it, which I still listen to when I need a good jolt of the real-deal Rockin-itis.

Ronnie got his start in Dallas when he was about fifteen or so, and had a minor hit on his hands - after a Big D Jamboree appearance - with "Action Packed" in 1958, and again shortly thereafter with "Rockin' Bones." But if you ask him, Ronnie will tell you that the years of his greatest success have been the more recent ones.

He got asked back in the late 80's or early 90's by Brit record producer/promoter Barney Koumis if he'd be interested in providing some old archival material for a rockabilly comp Koumis was producing, and Ronnie's response was priceless, and so typical of him too: "well, Barney, what I'd really like to do is just come over there and play, you know." Barney brought Ronnie over and the fans went ape. Ronnie hadn't lost so much as a single step since his previous heyday in the Fifties, and when he got up on the stage the roof rocked and the foundations rolled. Of course, he later put out a record or two, and wonderful things they are, too.

So we did a bunch of shows with Ronnie over the next few years, and every last one of them was a solid blast. But the time I like to remember best was when Ronnie came to NYC - with a wonderful trad-RAB band called High Noon in tow as backup - to do his first appearance on the Conan O'Brien show.