Oral History Interview with Randy Atcher

...communications officer–shortly after I got there–his name was John L. Lewis–I always remembered it because it was the same as the old CIO man, you know. I mean United Mine Workers [not CIO]. Anyway, he had been there for a while and had gone into Brisbane and had dates with some of the Australian girls, so he asked me to double-date with him one time, so I said sure, and went in and he had made arrangements for the girl he was going with to bring another girl for me. Well, we got into Brisbane and eventually here came his girlfriend–with a different girl from the one who was supposed to be coming. And her name was Daphne Fuller. Well, actually Daphne Fuller Jeffries [sp??] ‘cause she had married an Australian pilot who was killed just about a few months before I got over there.

Anyway, she was a very attractive girl and the other girl said she tried to get away and not come several times, you know–this was somethin’ new to her–this kind of a blind date. But anyway, we did hit it off real well and started going together. She was the women’s golf champion of her country club she belonged to. So one of the first things I did was go out and buy a set of golf clubs [laughs]–I’d never swung one in my life, you know [laughs]. But we played quite a little bit of golf. Yes, she was the one who was not supposed to come–she was the replacement. And I never did meet the one who was supposed to come. Daphne didn’t want to come and kept tryin’ to get out of it, you know. But anyway, we did hit it off and started dating on a pretty regular basis.

But I was starting to talk about the major who was in the infantry. He finally got his transfer. And the CO called and wanted to know if I would like to take over as adjutant of the group. And I was talkin’ to this Tutwiler in Supply about it. I said, I don’t think I want to do that. I kind of wanted to get in to where action’s happenin’–where somethin’s happenin’, you know. And just like a little kid, he took me by the ear and he said, You’ll NEVER be anything higher than a second lieutenant if you stay at this and enlist. You’re goin’ to take the job. And he took me over to the CO and said, He’ll take the job. So I then went into administration and was the adjutant of the group there at Amberley. Had some real experiences there. One of the most fortunate things was that the master sergeant who was in charge of the office and the head of the enlisted personnel in headquarters–I have always sworn I believe he could recite army regulations backwards. He really knew the army regulations–just everything by heart. So I didn’t have to worry about much because he could always show me how this went or how that went. And if I had orders to have prepared, he’d make up the orders–I never even–most of the time after I’d been there for a month–looked at ‘em to see ‘cause I knew they’d be right–‘course I as adjutant have to take ‘em in to the CO to have him sign things, you know. The adjutant is like the administrative officer; it’s sort of like the general manager under the head man, you know. And the CEO [CO??] is the head man. [Wade Hall says and Randy Atcher agrees: Yes, the adjutant is the one who pretty much makes all the decisions–who runs the whole unit.]

Of course, we did this in Australia durin’ the war because most of the–you had to be, at that time, a flying officer to be commanding officer. And most of them could care less about administration, you know–they weren’t really interested. But that first CO I had was Col. Gillespie. And he was from New York. And he told me, as a matter of fact, the first time I reported to him–he said, I’ll sign anything you bring me but by God, it better be right. So that’s the way it operated from then on. And I did.

My commission was in the--I was in the Air Force but was not a flyer. I went over there as a communications officer; then when I became adjutant I was in administration–but still in the Air Force. We didn’t really have army people on the same base–most everybody had to do with the Air Force–Army Air Corps it was then–it wasn’t the Air Force at that point. And our base at Amberley Field was about half Australian–Australian Air Force people. Anyway, I did take the job as adjutant of the organization and was there with that for, well, a long time. Daphne and I started dating and finally decided to get married. And we married over in Australia in December of 1943.

We lived in the little town of Ipswich; we rented a little house in there. It was really very nice. There were two lime trees in the yard and [laughs], but it was really, really a nice place. ‘Course, we went into Brisbane pretty often. You know, my service there was pretty enjoyable. I didn’t have any kinds of [unpleasant, disagreeable] things that happened to me.

Like I said, when we got over there with three communications officers and no airplanes, no pilots. And what planes did come in were United Airlines and Consolidated Airlines–they were bringing in things and they wouldn’t let the army personnel touch their airplanes–they had their own crew there that would check ‘em out, you know. But I guess I’d been there about two months and they sent us 26 pilots–still no airplanes–we had 26 pilots. I don’t know whether you remember an old song but “I’ve Got No Use for the Women”–we composed the song [new lyrics to the music of that song] to that–I can only remember the last line of it, though. It went: “26 pilots here sitting and not a damn ship on the field.” [he sings it and laughs] Yeah, it was a parody on this “I’ve Got No Use for the Women”–it’s one of those old, old songs.

I got to know people in Ipswich. Over there at that time, there were no combined grocers. There was a meat shop, a vegetable shop and so on. I always remember because if the green beans today that were fresh–the second day they were like half-price because they were old, you know. And the meat–England took all of the pork–and of course, the British, as you probably know, have always been into lamb and that sort of thing. The Americans didn’t like lamb. But they had a lot of beef in Australia. And so at the Officers Club, they would get this shipment of supplies and it would be almost all lamb and you know, sheep, as far as were concerned, and nobody liked it. So they would trade it into Ipswich with somebody there for beef. And then bring that back to the Officers Club. Beefsteaks–8 cents a pound; lamb chops–6 cents a pound; chicken–you could get some chicken but you didn’t see too much of that–was like 5 cents a pound. And prices were like that. And we made friends with the butcher there.

And my wife Daphne had been raised in a family where the girls didn’t do the cooking–they had somebody working for them that did the cooking. So she didn’t really know how to cook. But she always said, and it’s pretty true, that if you can read, you can learn to cook. So she did pretty well. And we got to know the butcher pretty well. And one day I’d been out to the office working and came home, and she said, I don’t know what it was but I found on the porch some meat all wrapped up. Said, I never saw anything like it before. It didn’t look good to me so I threw it out. Well, we went down by the butcher’s shop and he said, How’d you like that pork roast I sent cha? [laughs] She had to tell him she threw it out. And he said, This is one I ran over on the way home [laughs]–‘cause all the pork went to England–it didn’t stay in Australia at all. I’ll never forget that. [laughs]

I like the Australians. The Australians that I met were all very, very nice people. And of course, with the guitar and the singing I knew people in Ipswich and I was always being asked to come and sing at some kind of thing going on. And there was a department store there in Ipswich, and the fellow who headed that department store and wanted me to come and sing for a group of Australian soldiers who had been in the African deserts and had been wounded and been sent back home. So, I’ll never forget it, ‘cause I did take my guitar and go to sing for them. And I sang “Cool Water” which is a song that my brother Bob and Bonnie and I recorded, and we recorded it commercially before the Sons of the Pioneers did–we mentioned that before. Anyway, I had to sing it 13 times–they just really liked it because it sounded like just where they’d come from, you know–the sand and all that. And it also sounded like the American West. And I did several of those kind of things.

I never thought of myself as being exotic to the Australians, coming from Kentucky and being a singer and a guitarist, but I suppose it’s possible they might have thought of me like that.

I remember some funny things about the Australian girls in particular. Most of the ones I saw were really very pretty–you know, they looked like outdoor people–that liked to be out in the sun. And they did. And I can remember being very shocked going to a dance–this was before Daphne and I became serious–but goin’ to a dance when they’d have–almost like a USO--only there it was just a dance and they had single girls and soldiers. And I’d gone up to a girl and asked her if she would like to dance and she’s say, Well, not right now–I’m all knocked up. [laughs] Well, this was their expression for being tired, you know. But you know, the first time you hear that it kind of shocks you–yeah. Yes, I don’t recall any Australian that I disliked.

Daphne had one sister. Her mother had died quite young and before I met Daphne. And she was on her own at this point. So eventually I got to meet her father and her sister. Her father was a war correspondent for the Australian papers. So he was not around much–it was quite a while before I met him. Her sister was younger and lived there and I met her early, and her name was Val--Valma [sp??]–Fuller–got to know her pretty well. And after we came back to the United States, she came back to visit us.

There were some cousins I got to meet–their name was Lenihan [sp??]–they were older and died not too long after the war. Her father–I guess we’re gettin’ a little bit ahead but we can go back to that–her father–after we came to the United States and her father came to visit us–spent about six months with us. At that time, I had bought a little house over in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and he spent about six months with us and then went to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and was there for a while. And we didn’t know that he was ill but when we was up there, it was getting worse and he called and said he was goin’ back to Australia. And, you know, went back in Australia about a month and died. And he was in his 50s, and Daphne’s mother had died in her early 50s. And as it turned out, the same thing happened–Daphne died at the age of 54. Hers--arteriosclerosis was the cause of her death at that time. She got to the point where she couldn’t walk and had a walker, you know. And I tried to get her to go to the hospital to see if they could do anything–she wouldn’t–she’d go and have a doctor come to talk to her but she wouldn’t go to the hospital. She died in 1977.

Of course, my oldest son–well, there are a few things [in between]–let’s talk about some of the things at Amberley Field. At Amberley Field, I’d mentioned the 26 pilots and we had no airplanes. And then they did send us some C47s, and they started flying those in and out with supplies up to Navzb [word??], New Guinea–and all up in those areas which the Army Air Corps had taken by that point. The 55th Air Force–that I mentioned–would come down on R & R, and they were operating in that area. And they sent down P38s, and the pilots came to Amberley Field to take their training on this new kind of airplane–I always loved the airplanes–it had double booms–big tail booms that came back and two engines–twin engines, you know. And this one pilot had been flying around–of course, he was checked out in the airplane–and he was flying around but he decided to make a big loop. And he did that and as he came down over the field, it looked like he was maybe 200 feet above the ground, and it looked like somebody just took her hand and pushed the airplane into the ground–just straight down. And of course, he crashed. And I was down at Operations at the time so I jumped on one of the trucks they were rushin’ out there with and got out there and here he comes walkin’ out of the wreckage–plane was on fire and none of us could believe it–he still had his parachute on his back–just came walkin’ out of the fire–wasn’t hurt at all. And I always remembered that. He was an American pilot but I don’t know who he was–I can’t remember.

Daphne and I, of course, married in December of ‘43 and in January of 1945 my oldest son was born. He’s not a junior but he’s Randall–well, he’s got all kinds of names–Randall Fuller Dennis Mark Atcher–you know, and I’ll explain some of that a little bit later on. The Dennis was my idea because we Catholics have to have a saint’s name, you know, and the Randall was of course for me. Daphne was Church of England–here I guess they’d call it Episcopalian–and didn’t really care for Catholics much at all. And also–we’ll, I’ll talk about that later. Anyway, so we call him Mark now–we called him Ranny then to separate it from Randy. He was called Ranny. He was born January 23, 1945.

And of course, I was overseas for a long time and I was still stationed there at Amberley Field at that time. And they sent me on an inspection tour–he was on the way–and they sent me on an inspection tour of our headquarters in Navzb [pronounced Navzab, sp??], New Guinea, and I was to do some inspection there. And then my brother Bob was at Boganville [sp??] which was in the Solomon Islands. And I was gonna try to catch a plane from Navzab, New Guinea and go see him. By the way, our commanding officer just before this time was a Col. Wood–and he really became kind of ill and they sent him back to the United States. So the CO–they had to pick from the flying officers who were there and the one with the oldest time and gray was the one they picked–he was a Capt. Dorman [sp??], and so I told him, I said, Now I’m goin’ on this trip and we’re ‘bout ready to have a baby–at least, she was a little over 7 months pregnant then–If anything happens, you get in touch with me. Well, I flew into Navzb, got on the ground and there’s a cablegram from him saying “Capt. Atcher return to base immediately.” Well, I thought, Oh, boy. So I caught the first plane headin’ toward Australia. We were not 10 miles from the base than we lost an engine and had to turn around and go back. And there was another plane warming up, so I got off this one and got on that one and headed back and came into Townsville, Australia which is up in the northern part there. And they had to stop there and thought they’d just refuel and things but they had trouble gettin’ it started again so I had to change and get another plane there. I was worried and I thought I was never going to get home but of course I finally got back to Australia and by the way, I had had her stay with these cousins–the Lenihans while I was gone. And I went out there–anything I could get transportation–got out there real quick. And walked in and here she is–just fine, you know.

And I got in touch with Capt. Dorman the next day and I said, How come you had sent for me? He said, Well, I had some orders that had to be done and I didn’t know how to do it. And I was on inspection tour!! I was really upset about that. Sure, I worried about my wife the whole time, you know. I was in transit for what seemed like an eternity but it was really only a matter of several hours. And especially havin’ to stop and get off this one and get on that one, and so on.

To start that inspection tour–I should have mentioned this before–I was gonna go to Navzb. And we had a C47–it was waiting to haul some of these old gasoline engines, you know, that had a belt that ran on a wheel, you know, big ol’ heavy gasoline engines. We’re taking a plane-load of those up to New Guinea. And the only other passenger–it’s a pilot and co-pilot–and radio operator–and the only other passenger was a boy who was AWOL and we were takin’ him back to his base. And they had this load of engines. We took off and just got in the air and they radioed to ‘em and said that the nose wheel on the plane did not–no, the landing gear only retracted half-way and hadn’t gone all the way up into the plane. We were fully loaded–heavily loaded with gasoline–we couldn’t go up to New Guinea with this situation. The pilot and co-pilot were practically hanging by their toes out the windah tryin’ to push ‘em down by hand, which of course, they couldn’t do. They tried manual; they tried everything. And so we were just flyin’ around for hours and hours and hours to use up all the fuel in case we had to crash land. That’s near Amberley. In case we had to belly land, we had to get rid of all the gasoline to it. Well, finally–they were continually workin’ with it–well, finally, the wheels dropped on down. But nobody knew whether they were locked in place or not. They were just down–they weren’t [necessarily locked].

So anyway, the pilot had come back. And each seat on those old planes would have an army blanket in it, you know, ‘cause didn’t have any heat of any kind ‘cept when you were up–you had [it] colder than the devil [laughs]. Well, anyway, he had put me and this AWOL sergeant back in the corner and just covered us with those blankets so that in case they had to crash land, those engines come loose or somethin’, we wouldn’t be crushed immediately. So we’re back there and they finally decided to try the landing. And fortunately, the wheels were locked and we made the landing all right. And what they did was change to another plane that waiting there and they repaired the landing gear on this later on. But then we went on up to Navzb, New Guinea when all this came about. I could have easily lost my life in that thing, you know.

But anyway, I got up there and got back then. And then Mark was born–full-time [full-term??], you know. But I never did go back on the inspection trip–that was over, you know [laughs].

I spent quite a long time at Amberley but not the rest of my time there.

I mentioned the 5th Air Force–we hauled people in and out of there–when they had taken the Philippines, there came a time when they needed people up there. The Air Transport Command Unit was called the 1557 Air Base Unit. And they transferred me from Australia to Leyte [sp??] in the Philippines and Tack [sp??] Logan Airstrip. So I was then the adjutant of that organization. The 1557th Air Base Unit they called it–part of Air Transport Command–at Leyte in the Philippines.

And we’re right on the water there. They didn’t have anything ‘cept tents to be in but they had what we called squat [squad??] tents and they’d have room for about 10 bunks–5 on each side, you know. And the one that I was in went out over the water some–it had pilings under it, you know. And we had Australian cots–and they were a cot that had–they didn’t have springs or anything–the cot had like a chain-link fence–that was what you slept on [laughs]. And no mattresses so you’d put two blankets under yah and one [laughs] to cover you and sleep that way. And of course everybody had to have mosquito nets. When we got there, the first thing the doctor did was start us on aterburn [sp??] which is a pill they gave you to help ward off malaria.

Anyway, so we had mosquito nets and I remember waking up one night with something cold just touching my forehead, and I woke up and it’s a big ol’ rat just walking across my face. And of course, it shook me up and I threw my hands up like that [he demonstrates] and threw him over into the net and didn’t frighten him a bit–he just walked out of there as slowly as you can imagine. But I grabbed one of my army boots and threw it at him but I never did hit him, you know. But you know, I’ll take a snake to a rat anytime. But I’ll never forget that.

Then one night we were asleep and the sirens started goin’ off. There were foxholes outside the tent area there and the commanding general was on the base for a kind of an inspection but more just to see what was goin’ on with the thing. And of course, we all started running for these foxholes, including the general. And when he got to his, which was right next to where I was, he kind of got himself half-way in but was still stickin’ up above the thing. And one of the soldiers there gave him a big whack on the rear end and says, Get down!!! Well, he didn’t know it was the general at the time [laughs]. It was right next to us, so we knew about it, you know [laughs].

Anyway, the Japanese Betty Bomber, they called it Betty, came over and dropped a few bombs but they fortunately were away from us. But we were under attack. That happened twice while I was at Leyte–the bombers came in but were I guess interested in more of the strip–the airstrip–than they were in the tents and things around us. So but I never did get hurt with any of those.

And I was there in Leyte when the...oh, by the way, when I was there, my mother wrote to me and said she’d heard my brother Bob was dead and that he had last been in the Philippines at a place called Baggio [sp??]–anyway, it was the summer capital of the Philippines, and would I see if I could find out about it for sure. So I caught a plane that was goin’ to a place called Linguyan [sp??] Gulf which was on the west coast of the Philippines. And I got there and got off and there was nothing that I could get to Baggio with ‘cept hitchhike and I hitchhiked on Six by Sixes–anything I could get for transportation goin’ up there. And I’ll never forget it because I got out of the truck that I’d gotten my last ride in, and I looked up and here comes a black Cadillac limousine down through the middle of this town of Baggio, and the only thing standing in the town was the cathedral. Everything else was rubble. And I thought, Where did that come from? Well, I found out later that a lot of them had had cars like that–hid ‘em in caves and things around so they didn’t get hurt, you know. The American general or whoever was up there at that time confiscated this and was riding it. Anyway, I found out where Bob’s unit was and I was walking up the main area of the unit and I heard somebody say, We’ll I’ll be damned–that’s my brother!! [laughs] And it got there and he had had pneumonia and been in the hospital for several days, you know. And I guess the word got out that he died or something.

Earlier he was at Boganville in the Solomon Islands. But he had been transferred to Baggio. And so we had about three good days together. You bet it was a welcome sight [to find him there alive]. I had to wait until I got back to base to get the information to my mother but as soon as a I got back to base I did. As a matter of fact, I told him he ought to do it while we were there and I don’t think he did but I certainly got the word to her. I don’t know how exactly the word got to her that he was dead–the only thing I knew was what she said, that she’d heard he was dead. Anyway, I was pleased about that and I went back to Leyte.

And we were stationed at our place at Leyte–was right next door to a navy group. And of course we would get movies sent over–there was always a movie screen and that was about all you could get for entertainment unless a USO show came through. So we were watchin’ the movie and over on the navy side, they were watchin’ a different movie. And I thought I would remember what that movie was we were watchin’–it was a musical–I remember that–very entertaining–but I can’t think now. But anyway, all of a sudden over on the navy side we started hearin’ this yelling and people just shouting and yelling and so on. ‘Course we can’t hear a thing and we’re tryin’ to watch the movie. And some of us jumped up and said, Shut up, will yah, we’re tryin’ to watch a movie!! One of ‘em says, The war’s over–the Japanese have surrendered!! So that was quite a big thing, you know. That was in ‘45, you know. Yeah, August 6th I believe it was–we’ll have to check that date–but I think that’s right.

So they immediately transferred me to Okinawa–Kadena Air Strip in Okinawa. And my job was to sent the Occupation troops into Japan. I was the only administrative officer there–all the rest were flying personnel and so on. So I lost 28 pounds in 30 days. I had a cot in headquarters. We had a plane takin’ off every three minutes loaded with infantry and all their gear. And I had to have orders for each of these planes and crews goin’ out, so I’d lie down on the cot for maybe half-an-hour and somebody’d be shaking me–We need orders for this and orders for that. Daphne was back in Australia; she was still in Ipswich where we had rented a house. So--I think I might have told you about this but I don’ know–one night I was shaken awake like that and they said, We have to have orders to go to Vladivostok–we were gonna meet the Russians there. So I got up and writed out the orders and there was a general and a colonel and two or three captains and the flight crew–and they were going over to meet the Russians and shake hands. So they got to Vladivostok and they were due back--‘bout three days there were there–and when they came back, the co-pilot was able to fly the plane; the radio operator was still OK; but the rest of ‘em were just out of it. And they didn’t even stop where we were–they went on to Manila to the hospital. And what we found out was that they got there to Vladivostok and the Russians took ‘em to the clubs and so on, and they’re goin’, Here’s to the United States. And then there’s hundreds of them and only these few Americans there havin’ to drink with everybody and don’t want to make anybody mad [laughs]. And the co-pilot was of Russian descent. And he knew the effects the effects that Vodka could have on yah, so he didn’t drink much, and the radio operator and he got together and conspired to [laughs] be able to at least get away. But some of the others were in the hospital for two or three weeks after that.

Yeah, and I can remember some things there at Kadena. We had one planeload...I was the adjutant of the–it was 1557th Air Force Base unit and I was the adjutant but the only administrative officer they had there, and I had cut [word??] orders for any movement–for ANYTHING that was. I remember one plane took off–and these were DC6s which had the tricycle landing gear–and loaded with infantry and all their stuff. And got up in the air and the nose wheel stuck sideways when it was supposed to retract–was stuck sideways. Well, they radioed and told him–the pilot–about it, and they had to do the same thing I mentioned earlier we were doin’–flying around and around until they could get rid of most of the gasoline. But they still couldn’t figure out what they’d because when that nose wheel hit the ground–turn funny–it might really turn the whole plane or something. So this pilot had this infantry group on there, and when he starts coming in and gets near the ground, he told them to all walk to the back of the plane. So they walked back. And then brought it in on its tail–it had a tail skid, you know. And the nose of this thing stickin’ up in the air seemed like 40 feet, you know–with that nose wheel still crooked up there. And after they got on the ground and stopped, he had the infantry boys come forward and they just let that plane down [laughs]. You had to improvise in those days and some of ‘em were really good at it.

And that’s the only place where I ever saw anybody killed in an airplane. They had some old P47s there, and they were a heavy, kind of a bulky, little fighter plane. And they were checkin’ out–and he did one of those big loops and just slammed right into the ground–it’s the only person that I can recall ever actually seeing be killed in [a plane].

Okinawa was in really bad condition when we got there. The Kadena Air Strip was about two miles out of the little town called Nada–like Mexican for nothing. But it again was one of those places that was just gone. A building here or there standing–and each one had cannon, you know, holes in it. I didn’t see any Japanese there. They had gone–all gone–by that time. What weren’t killed, I guess, had gone back to Japan. No, we didn’t see any of the civilians–they were all–I guess they might have gone to some other part of Okinawa but it’s a big island, you know. Yes, many were living in caves then but I didn’t see any of that–I heard stories–no, we sure did not fraternize with them. As a matter of fact, I didn’t have time to fraternize with anybody when I was there. I was there for 30 days–I lost 28 pounds. At the end of the 30 days, the flight surgeon said, You got to go back to Australia. So by this time, they had closed Amberley Field, and there was another U.S. base called Eagle Farms which was right near Brisbane. So I was transferred there. And of course, then I could have Daphne and Ranny in–we could live there. But I was yellow with aterburn–from takin’ that aterburn you’re skin turns yellow–of course, to keep malaria away. It was called aterburn–I’m not quite sure how you spell it–but I think it’s like atterberun but it may be atterberine. It was a pill they gave you to keep you from getting malaria.

I guess this was in September of ‘45–I was there for another year after that. Yeah, it was either the end of September or early October when they sent me down there. So I went back in there and I was the adjutant of that post station–and this was Eagle Farms.

And I guess the last place we had--the most southerly place we still had a base in Australia at the time. So I stayed there and the CO, I remember, was a Captain Alexander. And we knew we were gonna close the base; we weren’t quite sure when. So we were there for several months. And then they got in touch with us and said we needed to close base, pack up all the records and bring ‘em back to Hawaii. Well, by this time, a lot of Americans had married Australian girls. And they were sending them back to the United States. So I did something the service would not have appreciated but I arranged to get one of the crews to take me and Daphne and Ranny down to Sydney, Australia to catch a Liberty ship that was coming back to the United States. And this is in September of ‘46, so I’d been there about a year, you know. Yeah, I was getting ancy to get home. I had turned down a couple of opportunities to come back to the United States–when you have certain length of time in service–and of course by this time I was a captain and had been a captain for quite some time. And fortunately, the COs always gave ratings to the officers, you know, and I had superior on all of ‘em except I believe there were two that were excellent. Anyway, I took them down to Sydney and put ‘em on the ship back home–back to the United States–went back to Eagle Farms–we loaded everything in an airplane. And this airplane was overloaded–it’s a wonder we ever got off the ground. But anyway, we took all the records and everything–did get off the ground and flew back to Hawaii. And one of the things I was telling yah about Australian beer was a case was 48 fifths. And I thought, I’m gonna take some of that home with me. And I got two cases of Australian beer. And I had that on the plane with us when we got back to Hawaii and customs there said, What’s this? And I said, Well, that’s Australian beer; I wanted to bring some back with me. And he said, Well, you can have it if you want to pay 700 and some dollars duty on it, you know. And I’m sure they took it–they just confiscated it–you know, I’m sure they enjoyed it [laughs]. I think they may have raised the duty a little bit [laughs] so it would be left behind and they could drink it. And then, so it was time for me to go ahead and get out of the service, so they put me on a general’s DC6 airplane–with real soft cushion seats-- you know I’ve been used to those ol’ bucket seats in those C47s–and sent me back to Fairfield Sassoon [sp??] Air Base in California–not far from San Francisco. Daphne and Ranny were on this Liberty ship comin’ over. I had already gotten back and had been there for almost two weeks when they got back, and so I finagled around and got somebody to take me out on a boat so I could meet the ship and met them out there in the Bay.

Anyway, we were then in California for just a matter of days and then they sent me back to Indianapolis for release from the Air Force. And I guess that’s one of the things that I’ve been most upset about–I had a really good time–good service, you know–but when we got back there, here I had a family–a wife and a child–and was getting out of the service–and the officer who was in charge of getting to me your papers to get you out–said, We can either give you your due promotion for major or your mustering out pay; you’ll have to choose.

SIDE B – May 8 and 15, 2000

Even though, you know, I had both length of time and service–and everything else that would qualify me to be a major–I had qualified in every way–they did that to me and I never [got over it]. I wasn’t mustered out as a major–but as a captain. Yeah, and I’ve always been upset about that, you know. I thought about getting into the reserves. See, when I got back–went back into the entertainment business and that’s when I went to Savannah to open that little station there and then came back to WHAS and formed the Swingin’ Cowboys–to be in the reserves, you had to have two weeks of training plus weekends here and there. And the way the station was set up then, that two weeks had to be your vacation. And I didn’t like that. So I decided to–hopped out of the reserves. And I always regretted it really–I really regretted it–I always wished I had stayed in the reserves but at the time, it seemed like that wasn’t the thing to do. And I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do, too, with the rest of my life.

Daphne and I played golf some here but over there [in Australia] we played quite a bit. Speaking of golf, I’ll never forget–Ipswich had a little nine-hole course and you started at the bottom of a hill and one, two and three were at the bottom of the hill--then you went up about 10 or 15 feet to the next bridge and that was four, five and six–and then you went up another ridge and here’s seven and eight, and nine right at the top of the hill. And I was out there–you know, I couldn’t play golf–I didn’t have any clubs–I was out there by myself tryin’ to learn a little bit about it so I could be–at least give her some competition. And so I wouldn’t embarrass myself, too. And there was an old man walkin’ around the course–had three or four golf clubs in a bag–and he watched me a little and he came over and he said, You haven’t been playin’ golf very long, have yah? I said, Well, no, I’m just tryin’ to learn. So he said, I’ll go with yah. And he kind of showed me some of the things. And we got up to No. 7–which is up on the third tier up here and there’s a–it’s a par three hole–and there was an old cemetery that came out with a stone wall, and to get from the tee to the green you had to come over the corner of that cemetery. And they had a sign there that said: Par Three. And right under it: Only God could make a T apostrophe [I think he’s saying only God could make par on that hole] [laughs]–I remember that. But the old man was really good and he taught me a few things–at least I got so I could fairly consistently hit it [laughs].

Yes, golf was popular in Australia. I don’t know whether it was popular there because of Scottish influence–I never thought about it. I guess Daphne’s family was English and Irish because her grandparents came from County Cork. And her father–I mentioned that he was a war correspondent–I can’t remember whether she ever talked to me about the other side of the family or not. I think Fuller is an Irish name. And her grandfather was sent over there as a convict–from England–is Cork in England?–no, Ireland. Well, what’s the other one there that may be in England. No, it wasn’t Northern Ireland. Another area in England that’s not far from–not Wales–like County Cork and all these counties–those are all Irish–I was tryin’ to think of an English one and maybe I had it wrong. Anyway, because he was sent as a prisoner–and at that time I guess England owned Ireland–yeah–so I guess they came from County Cork.

May 15, 2000

I had gotten out of the service and I had met my family in California. And I had come back to Indianapolis to be mustered out. I think I told you about meeting my parents at West Point, and the son who was 17 months old–I think I told you he had all these names–Randall Fuller Dennis Mark Atcher–and anyway, Mark was because my mother thought Dennis was an obscure saint [laughs]–and have another saint’s name. She came out and he was 17 months old when she took him and said–you know–the baby and all that. He looked up and said, Hello, Grandmother. And she almost dropped him [laughs]. I think we talked about that.

When I first came back to the United States after the war– of course, I had been working with my brother Bob and his wife at WBBM in Chicago–before I had gotten into the war. And thinking in terms of being able to get your job back, you know, after the war, I first decided to go to Chicago and see what was happening. Well, I got up there and...Yes, I had decided to go back into music; I made that decision really as soon as I got back [to this country]. That was what I was thinking of. But I hadn’t really dwelled on it much while I was in the service. As a matter of fact, while I was in the service, most of the time my thoughts were that when I got back, I might even stay in the service. I thought about that a few times but then I decided that was not really what I wanted to do. So this being the thing I’d been doing and I felt like I’d like to continue with the entertainment. No, I didn’t do any professional musical work in the service but I did quite a bit of just general playing–impromptu playing mostly. Yeah, at the Officers Club, we’d go over there and sit around and sing the songs that were popular. But I never had a concert at that time where I performed–nothing announced in advance.

So when I got back and took some of the money–the mustering out pay–and I bought a 19–I believe it was a ‘41 Ford which they made ‘em in ‘41. It was a little Ford two-door, used–cost me $250 [laughs]–expensive [laughs]. That was a large chunk of my mustering out pay. I don’t remember exactly what I got in mustering out pay but it was something in the neighborhood of a couple or three thousand dollars–I was overseas for so long, you know [so it wasn’t just a small sum]. So we decided we’d go to Chicago and see what we could get figured out up there. I got up there and discovered that my brother’s–the wife with whom we had sung–divorced him while he was overseas in the Solomon Islands. And he was doing things on his own and there really wasn’t a position for me. But he knew–and so did I–quite a few people in Chicago, and this one fella knew of us before the war and he said he was goin’ to Savannah, Georgia to open a little radio station and would I come along as the musical director.

So I did that. I decided we’d go there. On Tybee Island, they had a few of these old duplexes –where two doors and they’re all one floor–one goes one way, and one the other. So we rented one of those. Tybee Island. It’s all covered now with condominiums and everything but then there wadn’t anything much there at all. It’s near Savannah, Ga.–at the coast. And went down there and organized a band there. There were four pieces–had trumpet and guitar and accordion and bass, and we did programs–just three or four programs a day for a long time. But it was an opportunity to get back into entertainment some, and I was there about six months. Things were going along pretty well. And I got a call from Joe Eaton who was the general manager of WHAS and he told me he’d like me to come back to Louisville and be on WHAS. So I came back. I got out of the service in October of 1946. I went almost immediately down to Savannah, so it was real early 1947 that I came back to Louisville.

And one thing I might tell you about our trip to Chicago after the war–I had this little Ford and I didn’t know where I was goin’ and I’m out on Lakeshore Drive, which was a big, wide street, you know. And we’re goin’ a long and I was on the inside of about five lanes, and I saw way over to the right–as far as you could see–where I needed to get off. And at that time, they had policemen sort of at every red light–every corner, you know–so this policeman–I kind of motioned to him and he came over and I said, I don’t know what I’m gonna do–I need to be way over there. And he said, Well, just a minute. He held up the entire five lanes of traffic [laughs]. No, I didn’t have my uniform on, but I had a Kentucky license on the car. And as I was goin’ across there, these guys were pokin’ their heads out the windah, sayin’ That hillbilly out there!!! All kinds of remarks like that, you know. I really don’t know why the policeman did that for me. But he did that, and I got off at the right place [laughs]. Normally, people in Chicago would not have been that polite or accommodating. I’ll never forget that. And boy did I get some derisive comments from some of the people who were watching it.

Anyway, that’s getting a little off the subject but I thought I’d tell yah that story. I enjoyed living in Savannah even though it was a short time. The accordion player with the band took the other half of the duplex. And I had my son, and they had a small child, so they played together. It was right at the beach, so we got the sun and do as much swimmin’ and playin’ around in the ocean as we wanted to. And I enjoyed it. It was a good job I had there too. As musical director, you know, I could kind of call the shots for everything to do with entertainment at the station. But it’s one of those thing[s] where you feel like this is sort of administrative and I want to get out of that and into just the entertainment. It was a little 250-watt radio station called WFRP, and having previously worked at WHAS which is 50,000-watts and WBBM which is about the same, I felt like I’m in the lower class–sort of–the minor leagues. So when Joe Eaton called, I was tickled to death to come back up here.

[Wade Hall says anybody who was in music would have given his right arm to get on WHAS because that was one of the big stations in the whole country, and Randy Atcher agrees.] It was a powerful station–you could hear it almost any place east of the Rocky Mountains–in the early morning and especially in the evening. So I jumped at the opportunity to come back. And I came back up here and I previously told you how staunch a Catholic my mother was, and the family was raised that way. Well, my wife, whom I married in Australia, was Church of England, or Episcopalian we call it here, but Church of England, and did not like Catholics much at all. I got the impression from things she told me that her father had been in some kind of a Catholic school or home of some sort and disliked it so much he ran away. I think he was an orphan but she never did say directly but I think that was the situation–‘least he wasn’t with his parents, you know.

So when we came back up here, I didn’t have any place to live, so my old home in West Point–most of the family was out and gone by then–so we decided we’d move in there for a while until I could get things worked out. Well, it turns out that was a kind of a mistake because my wife didn’t get along with my mother at all. And my son, who was, you know, by this time, I guess he was about–almost two–maybe was two–pretty close to it. And there were other grandchildren who were larger and familiar with everything, and they kind of mistreated him. And that got my wife really upset about that, too. So as quickly as we could, we decided we needed to get away from there. My wife had not converted to Catholicism and wouldn’t–would not consider it. As a matter of fact, one of the things that bothered me a great deal was that neither would she become an American citizen–she just said the part where you have to swear allegiance to our flag and sort of abandon your own she was not gonna do that–so she never did become an American citizen.[I think he meant to finish this sentence by saying: ...nor would she join the Catholic Church.]

There were times later on–especially somewhat later on--when I did feel I had made a mistake by marrying her.

Anyway, when Joe Eaton called me to come back up, this was the period of time when what they called Western swing was doing real well. So the Vick Salve people had a contract–they wanted a year of this kind of Western country music. So I formed the band we called the Swingin’ Cowboys–that was Randy Atcher and the Swingin’ Cowboys. In the band was a fellow named Tiny Skaggs, Jack Nord, Walter Toole–we called him Walter O’Toole because his real name was Toole–so we called him O’Toole–Zig Fryer and Wendell Carter. And then at that time, WHAS had some staff musicians. And they had a guitar player named Neil [sp??–first or last name??] and a bass player–I can’t think of his name right now but it’ll probably come to me eventually anyway. So this contract was for a program at noon–from 12 to 12:30 everyday. And because the band was pretty good size and everything, they had us doing a 6:15 in the evening program too. There was a fella at WHAS at that time named Roy Starkey and he was doing a Western kind of program in the morning and followed us at noon. So he was an imitator–he’d imitate voices and so on–some of the country music people of the time.

Anyway, we had this year’s contract for the Vick Salve people. So one of the thing that was funny–Jack Nord who played clarinet. By the way, this Western swing band we wrote arrangements for–we had written arrangements for just about everything. The accordion player was the arranger. And the front line was the fiddle–Walter O’Toole played the fiddle–fiddle, accordion and clarinet were the front line. And then we had three electric guitars, using the guitar player who was on staff at WHAS. So he wrote for them like saxophones in a band, you know. And it was really well done and we did a lot of rehearsal...everybody could read music–at least, to an extent. So, you know, this turned out to be a really good band. And we did our year’s contract with Vicks, and I always remember that Jack Nord kept sayin’ he wanted us to come on the air, sayin’, Atcher!! Atcher!! Atcher!! We’ll vick [can’t understand word perfectly??] you!! [laughs] No, we didn’t say it–they wouldn’t let us do it. [laughs]

And one of the things I guess every musician has tried in being on radio–of course, this was well before television–but in radio, when we’d get a new engineer assigned to run the program [that tight–right words??], we did it every time and you’d think they’d a-gotten on to it. Anyway, he’s in there settin’ things up in the control room and everything, and we start in and it looks like ever’body’s playin’–I’m mouthing the words–not a sound–and ever’body’s playin’–and then he starts, Oh! Everything’s right–runnin’ all over the [can’t understand word] [laughs]. We’d do that to every new engineer we had. That was their break-in.

So we did our year’s contract with the Vick Salve people and at the end of that time, the station had, about a month before that year was up, said to me, What time on the air would I prefer? To be on the morning or noon, and evening? Well, these musicians I had then, and I guess it’s typical of that ilk of musicians anyway, they just didn’t get up early–you know, they were against that. So we decided we’d take the noon and evening. In those days, the best time for country and Western music slots was early morning–6:30 to 7:30 area–when country people were up and moving around. And sometimes even earlier than that because the farm people would be getting up, you know, at 5 o’clock and so on. And we did some programs at that time when I was on the air. But at this time [of my life], we weren’t doing [those early morning shows]. The morning prime time was over probably about 8:30 because I had programs all that time later on–I’ll talk about that later. The best time for noontime shows are right at 12 o’clock–usually about half-an-hour’s all you’d do. Twelve to 12:30 is basic–that’s what we did.

For the evening hours, 6 o’clock was the best time to be on–6 o’clock to 7:30–in that range.

So we decided we’d prefer the noon and evening. Well, at the end of that year’s contract we had, the station by this time had decided to put on some news programs in the evening–6 o’clock–so they were gonna take us off that and then we’d only have the noon program and they didn’t feel like it was worth it. So they kept Roy Starkey and his little group with the early morning, and let us go. I had been there at WHAS only one year at this time–this was a one-year contract for Vick’s. So right after that, I left the station and went to what I’ve always considered was probably the easiest job I’ve ever had. By this time, we had managed to buy a little house over in Jeffersonville–a little concrete block house with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and attached concrete block garage. It cost me $5,000 [laughs]. So I lived in Jeff. It’s still standing. I lived in Jeffersonville. And Thurston Cooke was a Ford dealer here in Louisville at that time–later on, he spent some time in the prison but–for selling cars two or three times--as far as the loans were concerned. Anyway, he hired me to do a program for him–just by myself with a guitar from 6:15 to 6:30 in the evening on WGRC which was here then.

So, I did the commercials were all live, and so on. And so I could leave the house at about 20 minutes to 6, get to the station, go on the air at 6 o’clock for 15 minutes, do the commercials and everything, and I’d be home by 6:30 or 6:35. And they paid me $85 a week for that [laughs]. I thought that was the best job [laughs]–easiest job I ever had [laughs]. No, I wasn’t working elsewhere at the time–other than doing a few little personal appearances–solo–mostly at school functions or things like that–the way I did when I was a boy. So during the day I just stayed home–yeah, and goofed off.

And during that period, I’d signed a year’s contract with Thurston Cooke for that. A relation of the Cooke Chevrolet–V.V. Cooke. And I mentioned that we bought this little ol’ concrete block house. My father at this time was working as, I mentioned earlier, at the cement plant at Kosmodale–Kosmos Cement it was called at that time. And we had a back yard and a boy who’s 2 ½ to 3 and gettin’ to the point where he needs to have some room to run around. So I decided I’d like to put in a fence. So I got the fencing and I put some wooden posts in the ground–to attach the fence to–the first time we came a heavy rain the posts floated out of the ground–it was all sandy soil and they wouldn’t stay in the ground. So I’s talkin’ to my father about that and he said, I think we can take care of that. So I got a little pick-up truck and went up to the cement plant and he had these concrete posts that are about 6 inches by 6 inches at the very bottom, and then they tapered up to 4 inches by 4 inches at the top. And he said, I feel sure these will hold your fence in. So we started loading them on the truck, and a had on a pair of cloth gloves–you used to get ‘em–little brown cloth gloves–and I was lifting the heavy end and he was at the other end, and one of ‘em slipped in his hand and when it did that, it slipped in my hand, too, only I didn’t get my hand out from under it. So it came down on my left hand and just crushed the bones and fingers that were in it. I thought I probably never would be able to play the guitar again. So I hired the fella who played guitar for me with the band at WHAS–Wendell Carter–to come and he played the guitar and I still did the program and sang. Of course, I went to the doctor and they put ‘em in splints. What he told me was that it didn’t break the bones like breaking them off, you know. It made ‘em like breaking a walnut–it kind of split ‘em, you know. So they put me in this cast and I did the program for quite a while without playing guitar at all. But surprisingly, and happily, after about two months, my hand was about like normal. And many times I’ve thought surely, I’d probably get bad arthritis or somethin’ but I haven’t had any of that.

So after I was doin’ that program for six months, Joe Eaton who’d brought me back to WHAS had been let go at WHAS and was the general manager of WKLO Radio here in Louisville at that time. So he called me again and said, Randy, I need you to come over here. Well, I’d signed a year’s contract with the Thurston Cooke Ford people, and we had difficulty getting out of the contract. But the difference in pay and everything–and what I’d be doing–and again, a larger station–coverin’ a larger market–we worked it out that I could get out and I went to WKLO and was there doing a country...this was in 1948 and ‘49. I was doing a four-hour country music disc jockey program, from 8 in the morning until 12 noon, followed by Foster Brooks with a pop-music kind of a program for four hours from 12 to 4. I was playing recordings –just as a disc jockey–no live music.

And I guess some strange things have happened to me, uh–I will say my hand was back so I could play again–and we had a Saturday morning program they called Big Top Circus–had kids in and...that was my first children’s show and it was called Big Top Circus, on WKLO. Well, that started almost immediately when I went over there so it was in the latter part of 1948–I don’t remember the exact date–fall of ‘48. So I was doing that live program and then the disc jockey program, and I started to say things happened to me–I was home, bent over to pick up a sock off the floor and was in that position and couldn’t move. I was just in that position of bent over and could not straighten up or do anything. Well, my brothers–two of ‘em–had been to chiropractors. Well, first thing I say, we called the doctor–our family doctor. And he came over and he put me on the bed on my stomach as best he could and got his knee in my back tryin’ to straighten me out. It just almost killed me, really [laughing about the pain]. Aw, man. Anyway, I was talkin’ to one of my brothers about it and he said, You ought to go see a chiropractor. I said, Well, [can’t understand–I hadn’t thought about chiropractors??]. I’m not sure about this.

But my wife drove me out to the chiropractor in Shively who had--one of my brothers had gone to. And two men carried me in–I couldn’t walk–they carried me in. I was still bent over–in that same position. The two men carried me in and I walked out. And from that time, I have thought chiropractors were good. Yes, I’m a walking advertisement. Though I don’t use ‘em much, I have over the years used chiropractors a great deal. And I think they’ve had something to do with keeping my health in the shape it’s been in. Well, M.D.s are beginning now to let chiropractors back in but at that time, you know, they just wouldn’t tolerate anything to do with them–physicians wouldn’t.

So anyway, I’m at WKLO doing this disc jockey program and the Big Top Circus program on Saturdays. WAVE had already gone on television in 1948. And it’s 1949 and I’m workin’ at WKLO doin’ these programs. And in early part of ‘50, WHAS, I guess, made their plans to start television. And they called me and asked me to come over to audition for a children’s program they wanted. And by the way, at that time Tom Brooks, who later was on the program, was an announcer at WHAS. And he told me later that he was the one who suggested that they call me. Anyway, I went over to audition for it, and they said the fella who stayed there after I left–Roy Starkey–that the general manager of the station wanted him to play the “Happy Birthday” song–the old one–original one–so that kids could march around and around the room. And he couldn’t do it. They said, Can you do “Happy Birthday” in a march tempo? Well, there’s nothin’ to changin’ the tempo. And I said, Sure. And I did it for ‘em. And on the spot, they offered me the job. Now this was 1950–sometime in February. And the pay was to be $125 a week.

And so I went back to the general manager at WKLO and talked to him about it–told him that I did this audition and they wanted me on the program–and foolish people, I guess–Joe Eaton says, Aw, you don’t want to do that–television is a passing fad–it’s not gonna do anything, you know. And I said, Well, I’ll tell you what. See Foster Brooks–I should mention–followed me. He was getting the same salary I was getting plus they were paying his alimony which was much more than that. So I told Joe Eaton–I said, I’ll stay here if you’ll pay me what you’re payin’ Foster–which was about twice what I was making at the time. And he said, Oh, naw, we can’t do that. So it’s the best thing that ever happened to me–just about–business-wise for sure. So I decided to take the job at WHAS and went over and we talked about the program. A fella named Bill Loader was quite involved–and he was one of the producers and got involved in it–and some talk back and forth. They decided because I did mostly Western kind of music–and country music–and Tom Brooks on WHAS prior to this on–the radio–they had a Saturday program called Circle Star Ranch. And he had started a character called Cactus, you know. So they decided we would do this children’s birthday program together. So that would have a Western theme and so eventually decided to name it T-Bar-V Ranch. And that’s because in those days, most time when you’d see TV written, it would have a slash between it. So that’s a bar in Western brands. So T-Bar-V Ranch. And that’s sort of how it got its name–its start.

This was somewhat of a change for my career, though. Yes, I really didn’t know what I was getting into–I just thought that this is somethin’ I would like to do and it is WHAS as compared to...and at that time, I was also, when they hired me, included radio programs. So T-Bar-V--they went on the air with television March 27, 1950–and they wanted to show what T-Bar-V Ranch was gonna be like, so we had some children of some of the staff there and went through what we did on T-Bar-V on the birthday program–talked with ‘em–have ‘em wave to people–Mom and Dad and so on–to let them know what T-Bar-V was gonna look like–was gonna be like. And started the program the following Monday and it was on five days a week for going on 21 years.

And when we first went on the air with it, we went on from 6 o’clock–see at that time, WHAS didn’t even come on the air till 2 o’clock in the afternoon. And we were on from 6 o’clock–uh, 5 o’clock till 6:15, from 5 o’clock till 6:15–not doing any entertainment, doing nothing but talking to kids ‘bout their birthday so there were days when we talked to as many as 100 children on their birthdays. And immediately the program started, they became overwhelmed with the people wanting to be on–children wanting to be on.

And you can understand this because TV was so brand new. [Wade Hall says, It was like going to heaven there!! And for people to see you on television!]

Herbie Koch was the staff organist at WHAS at that time. And they had a little Hammond organ and he played off the set–never did appear on the set when we did the “Birthday Song,” you know, and he’d play along with that.

We’d interview each child. The first we’d ask them to tell their name. And then how old are you? Then, have ‘em say, Well, say hi to Mommy and Daddy and ever’body and they’d start wavin’–and many times they’d have a list a mile long –[laughs] somebody’s brother or somebody has talked to ‘em into Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe and all these things, you know. [laughs] I never did engage in any dialogue with them to any great extent the way Art Linklater did on his TV show–and we had so many children on we didn’t have time–except sometimes though...

But let me go on with this-we were on from 5 to 6:15 for about the first six months. During that period, we didn’t know what to do with ages, you know–‘cause they’d bring some down who were 3 or even under–and they couldn’t stand to be away from their parents, so there was a lot of cryin’ you had to [deal with]. Then, also, because it was so new, we had people who were 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old on the top age. We finally decided that 4 was as young as we’d have them on. And that we would take ‘em up to 12. But after the program settled down, most of ‘em were between 4 and 8. So we’re on from 5 to 6:15, and then they decided–television was beginning to kind of get goin’ after about a year. People were buyin’ sets. In the early days, a lot of people told me that one set in the neighborhood and ever’body would go over there and watch.

So they decided they were gonna start news programs in the evening like that. So from 5 o’clock to 6:15, they moved us back to 4 o’clock to 4:45. So we were at that for, I guess, a year–maybe a little more.

And one of the things about the “Happy Birthday to You” song is that it’s copyrighted and owned by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers–ASCAP they call it–and each time it was used on the television station, the station had to pay for its use. No, I really have no idea how much the cost was. It was composed by two women here in Louisville. It would not have been in the public domain by then. And they’re still having to pay. They have kind of done away with public domain now so that if you have something, you own it for the rest of time, you know–for the rest of your life.

With music, back in those days you copyrighted a song and that was good for 28 years. Then you could re-copyright it and it was good for 28 more. And then it became in the public domain. So, knowing that about the “Birthday Song,” well we talked about it and that’s when I sat down and wrote the “Happy Birthday Song of T-Bar-V” that we used throughout the rest of the program–that thousands of middle-aged people in Louisville can sing right now [laughs]. Yes, and they tell me that they moved to California or they moved to Florida or they moved to New York and they teach their children the song, so [laughs]–and they sing it at every birthday, you know.

In order for it to rival the earlier “Birthday Song,” I guess it would need to be published nationwide where it’s been primarily here and then word-of-mouth from there on. I did the words and the music. “Happy, happy birthday, may all your dreams come true. Happy, happy birthday, from all of us to you. May you have happy birthdays now and your whole life through. Happy, happy birthday to you.” [he sings] I hate to admit it but since we’re in the process of telling the truth, later on, after I had written it out, I got to thinking about it and used a little different tempo. And I’ll do it for you and you’ll....