Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Came across this while searching for Clarence White on youtube, thought y'all might be interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m37-2eB-wj8

Great stuff Sean. I hadn't seen that before. It only serves to confirm my belief that dancing can only be attempted whilst on heavy medication You've gotta love those crazy '60's dance styles!!

What year and month? Name of show? Anyone know?

The Byrds (regardless of the lineup) always looked so...cool. Reserved, but in a very cool manner.

Stop the dancing!

'Playboy after Dark', or 'Playboy after Hours'. Month & year, ??

Fall 1968. I'm sure the archivists have the exact date....Clarence had just gotten the b bender installed in his sunburst tele...John Yorke and Gene Parsons...theres more to it, McGuinn talking to Hef about hair styles and such.That video had been around quite a bit....

Thanks. Always curious about the approximate date for these things. I'd love to see the rest of it.

Wow! I've seen the Byrds' German TV footage with Clarence, but this is much better in terms of bringing out his guitar in the sound mix. I've always been in awe of his sense of melody, but I was blown away by his playing in this video. At times, it seemed like he was playing counterpoint bass lines to what John York was playing. Then he would switch gears seamlessly and do the pedal steel parts! No wonder Jimi Hendrix was one of his biggest fans. I know there are guys out there who have a mastery of the stringbender, but there will never be another Clarence White. He was definitely an original on par with Hendrix.

And that was only a few months after Clarence got the b bender installed..altho if you listen to "Nashville West", the Cd by Clarence and Gene's pre-Byrds band, he was playing many of the same sort of licks with the same syncopations-off beat-on beat stuff before he got the stringbender..so he incorporated the bender into his style and not vice versa...The guitar hadnt had the all the pickup-wiring mods it had later and may have been wired as an single pickup Esquire at the time of the Playboy after Dark show.

I used the Audio off that video to figure out the pedal steel licks to You Aint Going Nowhere" They are much clearer..and simpler than in subsequent recordings

That's definitely "Playboy After Dark." I recognized the black dancer with the vest. Hefner hired professional dancers who were on there every week, no matter who was playing. I have a clip of Steppenwolf on that show with the same guy dancing. I can imagine what he must have been thinking as he danced to "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere."

"Man, I gotta dance to this honky-*** country music? Sh**."

Same dance Jagger does in Gimme Shelter.

Airdate: September 28, 1968 (according to tv.com).

Yes, I also remember the vest-wearing dancer very well. Always danced liked his head was barely attached to his spine. (But what do I know.)
I was a pretty regular watcher of PAD. I watched it for … the musical acts!

As I mentioned once before (and as I’m sure most of you already know) the B-Bender is still being made (and sold) by Gene Parsons:

http://www.stringbender.com/bender/default.htm

And Fender sells their own version:

http://www.fender.com/products/show.php?partno=0118342

Gene Parsons has built a couple of clones of Clarence's guitar...down to the Fender 400 pedal steel parts. Both the parsons-white stringbender and the parsons-green bender used by fender have a somewhat different mechanism than the original...they also mount in a cavity in a single tele body, whereas the original and the clones are mounted on the back of a stock tele body, and are covered by a hollow cover about 2/3s the width of the stock body. Clarence changed pickups several times, at the time of the Playboy video the guitar might have been wired as a esquire with one pickup.

Thats Barbi Benton in there too....

Yes, Barbi, later long-time girlfriend of Hef.
Nice Jewish daughter (Barbara Klein) of a doctor.

She also had her own singing "career:"



And was a regular on U.S. television show Hee-Haw.

This is way off topic but... as cute as she was, with all of the women Hef could have had (and did have) I never understood why he chose her.