Ice Cream with Ben E. King

One night early in '85 I was onstage with a top-40 band in Lancaster CA, out in the middle of the desert in a nautical-themed motel lounge. One of the staples of cover bands then was the "Ice Cream Changes Medley."  "Ice Cream Changes" are what musicians call a sequence of four chords that show up in almost every tin pan alley tune, and comprise a large chunk of the early rock 'n roll repertoire.  In C, for instance you would be looking at: C - Am - Dm (or F) - G, or variations of it. The leader calls "Ice Cream!" and you find a key, get in a dreamy 12/8 feel and:

Darlin yoooooo-wooo-wooooooo.  Send me….

("hey I got one," says the guitar player)

Cherry.  Che-erry pie….Gi-i-mme. Gimme so-ome…

(the saxman steps to the mic and…)

Devil or Ay-hnngel, I can't make. Up my mi-ind…

(and back to the lead singer)

Count every wave, on the stormy sea….

…and so on, for as long as paying customers are dancing and we can come up with tunes. There's usually a bridge section to contend with, but they usually fall into a couple of set patterns which can pretty much be divined with a word or two from across the stage.  So in response to raised eyebrows someone'd yell "rhythm!" or "go to the four!" With an Ice Cream Changes tune, that's usually enough to you started. What I do with guitar players who need a chord is point to a fret on my bass up or down the E-string. 

So anyway, this one night, there's a tap on my arm - I was easy to reach at my position on the very left of the stand - and this guy says "I'm Ben E. King, can I sit in?"  To which I naturally respond "getcher butt up here!" and he's great. Now I'm not sure if back then I'd have known  whether or not he was who he said he was, but he had an undeniably stentorian doowop voice, knew the bag, and could do all the stage moves.  Three nights later, I'm at a restaurant somewhere in Orange county, with a different band but in my usual spot on the left side of the bandstand and this guy taps me on the arm, "Hey I'm Ben E. King…"  Different guy, same response, "getcher butt on up here."  Same thing: great singer, smooth performer.  Thinking back on it, and the fact that this was Southern California after all, I doubt either one actually was the Ben E. King.

And a few years later, back in Richmond, I found out why.  I was at that time in a band with 10 of my best buddies, good good band, and we were hired to do a big corporate bash at a downtown hotel. The clients had gone so far as to hire The Drifters and Bowzer (of Sha-Na-Na and TV fame), and members of our rhythm section were supposed to fill in for whatever chairs the name guys needed covered, then play a dance set with our full band.  The Drifters, such as they were (no chick, no one even claiming to be Ben E. King) had their own drummer and guitarist, and pretty much just chord charts, so it was a pretty easy show.  Of course the lead singer was more of an Otis Redding clone than a Ben E. King, but there was a great old-school bass singer, and then a couple of younger guys filling it out; I sort of figured we were backing the Central Atlantic Drifters Troupe or something. With which I have no problem - these Drifter guys were pros. But I guess there's a bunch of guys who, at one time or another in their professional lives, "were" Ben E. King.

I ended up playing The Drifters, The Bowz, and my band's long set with no break. And of course for a bass player, that also pretty much means playing almost every second of every tune, and by the end I thought my arms were gonna fall off.