THE LEGENDARY PANAMA RED – AN APPRECIATION – by Rick Norcross
Even though the sun is finally out, overseeing a sparkling Spring day here in Vermont, it’s a sad day indeed. My old friend Danny Finley, aka The Legendary Panama Red, passed away on April 29th in St. Petersburg and is being “interred” at 2 o’clock this afternoon at the Bay Pines VA National Cemetery in St. Petersburg, Florida. My
thoughts and memories have turned to Panama often since his passing and, even though I knew it all along, I have marveled at the many positive influences he has “exerted” on my development as a musician over the 55 years of our friendship. Let me share the story with you about this marvelous, wacky and gifted singer, songwriter, band leader and one-of-a-kind personality who spent his entire adult life chasing the musical muse.
I met Danny Finley in 1966 at Beaux Arts, a “bohemian center for the creative,” in Pinellas Park, Florida, just north of St. Petersburg. It was the only place you could hear folk singers in their natural habitat back in the day. Beaux Arts was a somewhat seedy former hotel which doubled or tripled as an art gallery, live music stage, art film house and meeting place for folk musicians. Owned and operated by mother hen Tom Reese, whose family had operated the hotel back in the glory days of the 1920s. Beaux Arts was a very special opportunity to perform in an unpretentous setting to hone your craft and interact with others of like mind and creativity. Here’s how it worked. You’d show up with guitar in hand, sign in and then everybody gets their turn on stage in that order. Beaux Arts had a bottomless coffee urn and a large backyard garden where you could hang out, jam and get to know the other musicians who had come to perform
Danny had just returned from South Korea where he was a journalist in the Army for Pacific Stars & Stripes. At Beaux Arts, he was a left handed, nylon string guitar wielding singer-songwriter with a shock of bright red hair and a songbag chock-a-block full of wonderful tunes he had written. He was by far my favorite of the Beaux Arts musical lineup and we spent a lot of time together there. A year later, I opened my own coffeehouse in North Tampa just off the campus of the University of South Florida, called the Eighteenth String Coffeehouse & Music Emporium. I brought national level folk singers down from New York City (air fare: $100 round trip), Miami and even London. We featured Carolyn Hester, Rambling Jack Elliott, Judy Roderick, Gamble Rogers, Will McLean, Vince Martin, and from London, Diz Disley, to name just a few. I operated the Eighteenth String for two years and I brought Danny in to perform as often as I could.
“Back in the heady days of my very misspent youth, Rick operated the Eighteenth String Coffeehouse. Located in a strip mall in Tampa, it was a beacon in the cultural shoals of Florida in those days, importing all manner of big-name folksingers to whom suncoasters would otherwise not have gained exposure. And he was always and ever a soft touch for a gig at a time and place where local songwriters like me were starving pariahs,” Panama Red.
I lost track of Panama for awhile and then heard he had formed a fusion rock band, Bethlehem Asylum and released two album on Ampex Records. Next, Panama turned up in Nashville playing guitar and touring with Billy Joe Shaver. AND NEXT, he joined Kinky Freedman & The Texas Jewboys as lead guitar player. That’s where Danny became Panama Red, thanks of course, to his red hair and his penchant for wearing white suits and Panama hats. Perfect fit! You can hear Panama all over Kinky’s best-ever album, ‘Sold American.”
The next time I saw Panama, was in 1975 or 1976 when he pulled up in front of my Ybor City house, “El Rancho Tedioso,” in Tampa driving a 1947 GMC Silversides tour bus with his band “Montezuma’s Revenge.” After an alternator rebuild at Ralph’s Generator just up Nebraska Avenue, they all headed off to a booking at the White Lion club in St. Augustine. I followed and had a life-changing experience hanging out with Panama and the band that weekend. Ever since 1963, I had been performing as a solo folk singer type musician. Watching Panama, I saw up close and personal, the brotherhood of musicians, the teamwork and the glory of delivering songs that sounded live as if they were coming at the audience directly from a recording studio.
So, thanks to Panama Red, I resolved then and there to work toward forming my own band. And back in the late 70s, I named my first band after a song that Panama had written with Billy Joe Shaver, “The Bottom Dollar Band.” So for 50 years, I have only had two band names, the Bottom Dollar Band and Rick & The Ramblers. Bless You, Panama Red.
Oh yes, the other life-changing experience I had that weekend with Panama? After seeing Panama’s 1947 GMC Silversides, I fell in love with vintage tour buses. It took a while to find the right one, but as most of you know, I ran my 1957 Flxible Starliner, “The Mighty Pickle,” all over the Northeast for 22 years. She will now be on display at Marty Stuart’s “Congress of Country Music Museum” in Philidelphia, Mississippi when construction is completed and it opens to the public.
I brought Panama Red to Vermont in 2003 for a wonderful solo performance at my Green Mountain Chew Chew Food & Music Festival. I founded and ran that festival here in Burlington for 24 calorie-laden years. One of the very best parts of running the festival was that I got to spend over $10,000 a year booking my favorite musicians for the several stages over the three day weekend. Panama was terrific and won over the audience in a heartbeat.
“The affable and slyly humorous Norcross retains pretty much the same selfless kindness of speech and manner that typified him back then. I found him tactfully directing the placement of yet another vendor’s apparatus on the Chew Chew site. There were immense hugs and much jocularity all around. And then we visited his pride and joy: his green and white (Vermont’s state colors, I’m sure) 1957 Flxible Starliner bus, used now to classily haul Rick and The Ramblers around to their various gigs in New England. The Starliner, for those bus buffs, all both of you, out there, is the one that looks like a miniature Greyhound Scenicruiser. Rick and I share a kind of prideful insanity having to do with old buses: I once toured in a ‘47 GMC Silversides,” Panama Red.
I will be forever grateful to Panam Red for his heartfelt review of the Ramblers performance later that night.
“The show goes well. I tell my little stories, do my tunes, sign off with Poor Boy, and after, at the table by the side of the stage, I sell a few HomeGrown CDs and a Disco Still Sucks T-shirt. It is time for the Ramblers,”
“I believe that there are few things quite as magnificent as a well-oiled, professional Western Swing band. Maybe a Boeing 747. Or a Silver Eagle cruising a straight stretch of highway in the middle of a moonlit night. But aside from those, and maybe some trains I’ve seen in Europe, Western Swing as played by Rick and The Ramblers is enormous, seamless perfection.”
“The Ramblers launch into their set, replete with tunes from established writers and a few of their own. There is not a player here who could not hold his own in Nashville, all things being equal,” Panama Red.
Flash forward to 2017 and the release of my latest Rick & The All-Star Ramblers CD, “Green Mountain Standard Time.” I wanted to record another Panama Red song and I arrived on his “Lost In Austin,” a song I fell in love with after hearing him perform the tune back at the White Lion, lo those many years ago. Bobby Bare recorded “Lost In Austin” in 1976. “Lost In Austin” is a short short song, sporting only one verse and a repeatng chorus. I took pen in hand and wrote an additional verse, recorded it with the Ramblers and sent it to Panama in Nashville with hat in hand, hoping he’d approve. You’re on shakey ground when you mess with another songwriter’s lyrics and I wasn’t sure what his response would be. If Panama rejected it, I was prepared to immediately remove the verse I had written. This is the message that came back down the line from the ever-supportive Panama, much to my relief.
“Rick – Thank you for including my tune “Lost in Austin” on your latest splendid effort. I am grateful for your addition of the stellar third verse to my tune. I have incorporated it into my own performances. Yer fan, Panama.”
I can’t begin to articulate the many ways that Panama Red has positively influenced me, my music and my appreciation for “making your own way” with regard to your creative endeavors. He is my hero and I honor him and all that he accomplished over his long musical career – the music he left us and the spirit that he exemplified over his entire life to keep creating and performing for his many fans. No, he didn’t get rich but his richness of spirit has touched all of us who were fortunate enough to know him and to love him. I hope he has had one of his favorite sayings engraved on his stone, “Disco Still Sucks.” And I look forward to reading his book, now being prepared for publication.
Rest In Peace, Panama Red, old friend.
More links:
https://wordpress.com/post/beauxartisans.wordpress.com/2624
http://www.panamaredmusic.com
Panama Red @ Facebook
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