Jan Lawhon – Nonpareil….#122 (the 60’s)

Jan Lawhon

Gary finding Jan’s personality unambiguously unpretentious, an exemplar of congeniality, her musical repertoire capacious and never having experienced a person with such lyrical recall.   Her quality of voice totally acceptable and her timing impeccable, but for some reason standing before the upright percussion set of drums diminished  her ambiance.  Gary having a basic trap-set at his residence according it for Jan who found it more comfortable and relaxing being seated, especially between vocals.

Jan with her trap-set

The two discovering immediate success entertaining six night a week.  Gary at the piano bar playing keyboard bass and piano, Jan seated with microphone behind the percussion trap set on the raised platform stage.  The Pirates Cove decor was truly unique and the newly established Holiday Inn providing weekday seclusion for the road weary salesmen.  The Cove experiencing ever increasing numbers on Friday and Saturday nights as the word of a Jan and Gary venue spread.  The two settling in, to what almost seemed like a family atmosphere, making the acquaintance of Carl Ware the building contractor, George Moore the innkeeper,  Carl Wilcox the day clerk,  Bob Henderson the night clerk,  all installed by the coverall attired Lloyd Hobbs, the Holiday Inn owner and CEO of  H & H  Motels, Little Rock Arkansas.  Herb Carpenter, the clubs franchise owner, who you addressed as Herb when talking to,  but as Herbie when talking about him, delivered a star-studded cast to compliment the club, Wanda Marino and Mary, long-standing employees from the Hi Lo Club.

The Holiday Inn West

The 55 room Holiday Inn West

Gary having noticed another convenience at the new Holiday Inn location, besides its interstate 40 South Meridian location, a new Gulf Service Station, proclaiming the significance of Gulf Oils new affiliation with the Holiday Inn Corporation.  its credit card being honored by the Inn’s,  enabling lower wage earner who could garner a Gulf credit card,  the same opportunity as American Express courtiers,  thus greatly advancing  the availability.   The Holiday Inn remaining in an expansion mode, having opened with only fifty-five available rooms, the additional accommodations soon to  be recognized, and with  Hilton and Ramada lodging opportunities under construction on Meridian Avenue,  competition  would soon prevail.

A dedicated OU fan

Guitarist & Sax – Jerry Willis

Jan’s educational enrollment at OU limiting their rehearsals to accommodate her academic  schedule.  Gary according an index card approach for recording novel indemnities with unusual chord structures to facilitate unfamiliar new songs.   The musician was sustained with the inaugurated accomplishment of the Pirate Cove,  a limited responsibility and a charismatic vocalist satisfying the customer assemblage with the past and current array of musical intuition.   Gary advocating adding a portioned  accompaniment, approaching Herb,  suggesting a trial weekend augmented with the talents of his good friend guitarist Jerry Willis, who accompanied him on weekends in the past.   The Pirates Cove having finally come to full fruition, the weekend addition of Jerry ensured the continuance of the clubs prodigious capacity and success, drawing an increasing audience from  the bounds of the city.  Gary experiencing the best of two worlds, a piano bar paradise, the Pirates Cove Club, and a pianist dream, the talent of a Jan Lawhon.

Tags:

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.


%d bloggers like this: