Written by Gage Fears, Arkansas State University-Beebe student, Special to The Herald

The following is a transcript from an interview with Bobby Crafford, drummer for the Legendary Pacers band, formerly known as Sonny Burgess and The Legendary Pacers, since 1957. The interview was conducted via phone call on February 20th, 2025. Crafford is the last remaining original member of the band. The Legendary Pacers supported Albert “Sonny” Burgess for almost seventy years, and now tour as an individual band since the passing of Sonny in 2017.

Background

Sonny Burgess and The Legendary Pacers were an American rockabilly/rock and roll band formed in 1954. The band was originally known as the Moonlighters, named after the Silver Moon Club in Newport, Arkansas, where they often performed as the house band. The band recorded demos at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee, and would later expand to become Sonny Burgess and the Pacers. The band’s first record was “We Wanna Boogie/Red Headed Woman in 1956.” The band is often regarded as the “wild card” of rockabilly music in the 1950s. They toured the U.S. and Canada but did not see the success that other Sun artists like Elvis Presley or Johnny Cash enjoyed, and disbanded in 1971. 

Still, the Pacers gathered loyal support from fans within the Newport area and would see international success in the 1990s due to an American rockabilly revival across the pond. The band would perform in places such as England, Spain, France, Brazil and Japan. The Legendary Pacers are regarded by many as a crucial part of rock and roll history, and are held dear to many Arkansans’ hearts today. Today, the band consists of Crafford, Fred Douglas, Earl Cole, and Tony Kennedy.

Bobby Crafford was born in Goodwin, Arkansas, on April 21, 1936. Crafford originally played in a band in nearby Brinkley with drums he purchased from the Brinkley High School. One night he entered a club that Sonny’s original band had been performing at. The band lost their drummer and horn player, Jack Nance, as well as their acoustic guitarist, Joe “Big Joe” Lewis, to Conway Twitty. Their original drummer, Russ Smith, joined Jerry Lee Lewis. Crafford would join not long after and has remained in the band ever since.

Interview

Gage Fears: How has your music changed from when you first started performing to today?

Bobby Crafford: It really has not changed. I mean, still, we still play the same music and, you know, it really has stayed about the same. Because when we go to Europe or somewhere, they want nothing else to hear, but what we played in the 50s, that’s what they want to hear.

GF: Oh yeah, they’ve got a big thing for 50s rockabilly over there, don’t they? Well, what got you into playing music?

BC: Well, I started out with a little band in Brinkley and played with them. I came home from college in 1956 for that summer, and a guy walked up to me and said, “Hey, we’re putting a band together, but we need a drummer. We can’t find anybody that’s got any drums. ” I said, “Well, we’ve got a set of drums. The high school has some for sale.” So, I bought them and started trying to play. I lived in Cotton Plant, which is right outside of Brinkley. Then, you know, I bought them drums and started playing with them boys and played probably a year with them. I walked into a club one night, and they said that the Pacers had lost their drummer, that he’d gone to work with Conway Twitty. They were looking for a drummer and I got the phone number from the club owner and called them. I went to Newport and auditioned and got the job. Because they were hard up and that was why I got the job.

GF: For those that don’t know who the Pacers are, or what rockabilly is about, could you describe what the Pacers’ music is like?

BC: Well, we played a little bit of country and played old rock and roll. We were on Sun Records there in Memphis, Tennessee. What got him (Sonny Burgess) on that label was Elvis came to Newport to play, and the band opened for Elvis. Elvis told him they should go to Memphis and audition for Sun Records. They did and started recording there. They played, you know, old rock and roll and a little Rhythm and Blues, and recorded there. We actually had five singles on Sun, and then we had other stuff later.

GF: The band’s first release was “We Wanna Boogie,” right?

BC: Yeah, “We Wanna Boogie” with “Red-Headed Woman.”

GF: Besides being the house band for Silver Moon Club, what were some common places that the band performed in the 1950s?

BC: We played in Trumann for a club, played in Paragould, went to Swifton and played. They had a club in Forrest City and Des Arc that we played. Helena had a club. Back then, it was all clubs. There weren’t any festivals or anything. It was all clubs that you played, unless it was a private party. We’d come back most of the time and play the Silver Moon on Saturday night. Usually, a private party or something. We played a lot back then, played a lot of private parties, high schools and things in the area over in Memphis. Again, there weren’t very many bands. You know, we were one of two bands and so we got a lot of work that way.

GF: Who would be some of your favorite artists that you’ve opened for?

BC: Well, of course, Elvis. We played with Roy Orbison, we toured with Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, to name a few. Carl Perkins, we played shows with him. Through the years, we played with a lot of others and got to meet a lot of big people. You know, I never dreamed in my life at the time that I’d meet all these people and get to play with them all, and it was great.

GF: Did you think at the time that you joined the band, that the Pacers would be as big as they are today?

BC: No, I didn’t. Back then, we were just playing local, we thought that was the big-time. But I joined the band in ‘57, and then we started touring in ‘58 and went up to Canada. Then we toured with Johnny Cash and all of them through the years. Of course, they were just starting to get big. That’s one that kept telling us, “All you guys are going to be that big one of these days.” We played on the weekends some but never dreamed that in the 1990s, we’d be back in it full time. PBS did a special on Sun Records in the 1990s; we were part of it and they called us. We went to Mexico. Sun Studios had invited all of the artists that had been on there that were still alive. They came back and that got us back in it. We got to get calls from Europe around the country and we got to tour.

GF: What is the highest honor that means the most to you?

BC: Well, we’re in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and we’re in every European Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame. The governor gave us the award, and we’re in the museum they’ve got. I guess that’d be some through the years, and I know even after Sonny died, the Arkansas Senate presented us with an award. They felt like we were good representatives, going all over the world and being from Arkansas. Yeah, so they care. I think one of the biggest things was that 50 Years Award that Sun Studios had. I think it was because we were rubbing elbows with everybody in the business. I know there were a lot of the big artists that weren’t from Sun, but they were invited to the party. You’d be sitting there, walking around, and it was just one right after another. You run into people that were big artists, you know?

GF: What would you be doing right now? If it wasn’t for your music career?

BC: I’d probably be retired. At my age. I’ll soon be 89. We have slowed down in music. It was funny when the PBS thing came along, it came along just right because we had kind of semi-retired for our little jobs that we had. I got into sales and Sonny did too. Our piano player (Kern Kennedy) worked for the railroad, and the bass player (Fred Douglas) had a fence company. So about the time this PBS thing came along, we had all given that up but it worked out just right. We were free to travel, it worked out really well.

GF: What is your favorite song to perform?

BC: Probably “We Wanna Boogie,” that’s a classic. Can’t go wrong with that one. I did a song in ‘65 called, “A Short Squashed Texan” about the Razorbacks, and we do that on all our shows. So it’s got to be pretty big. We had a friend who wrote it. We recorded the day of the Texas-Arkansas game in ‘65, and it came out on the radio that afternoon after the ball game.

GF: What are some of your favorite memories from performing with either the original lineup or with Sonny?

BC: Well, the original guys, me and Sonny and John Ray Hubbard and John Kennedy, the four of us, and J.C. Caughron. J.C. came along. He was a guitar player. He lived up close to Walnut Ridge. I guess that was a lot of memories there with those guys because we traveled all over the country together. But, in these later years, with Kern, Sonny and myself. When John Ray had passed away, we brought in Fred Douglas from Walnut Ridge on bass, and we brought in Jim Aldridge on saxophone from Little Rock. We had a hell of a band and we traveled. That’s when we played all over the world and we knocked them out.

GF: Do you have any specific memories of being the house band for the Silver Moon Club?

BC: Well, it was a great place because that’s where everybody went on Saturday night and it always had a good crowd. It was a big place. It was the biggest place in Arkansas at the time, probably because it held around a thousand people. We opened with Jerry Lee Lewis there one night, and it was packed out. We actually had to play with Jerry Lee because his band had quit him.

GF: What are some musicians that you admire?

BC: Well, I enjoyed playing with Roy Oribison, of course. Johnny Cash partied with us a lot after the shows, and it was always great backing up Roy because his band had quit him, and he never forgot it. I talked to him years ago and got ahold of him. He would tell me, “You let all them guys know. I still remember all the days, playing with y’all and traveling.” He even rode in the car with us. We had a Cadillac limousine at the time. We bought it at a funeral home. It had a double seat in the back and we had plenty of room. We always had people riding with us, you know, and to me, that was a lot of fun being with those guys. Then, in later years, when they got real big, of course, I got to meet Bill Haley’s Comets. We walked into London, we just got off the plane, and they took us to our hotel. We walked in the lobby of the hotel and they were interviewing Bill Haley’s Comets, and they stopped interviewing. The guy said, “What’s the matter?” They (Bill Haley’s Comets) pointed at us and said, “Those guys there are pioneers, too. Bring them over and let them be in on the interview. ” We went in and sat in on the interview with them. They were great guys, they have all passed away now. They were actually the founders of rock and roll.

GF: Do you have any upcoming concerts that you are looking forward to?

BC: Right. As a matter of fact, we’re going to Newport on April 5th. Newport’s 150th anniversary.

GF: Oh, I’m gonna have to go to that. Do you play anything outside of the Pacers’ music?

BC: Not really. I mean, we play all our stuff, you know. Though we play Carl Perkins’ stuff. We play a little bit of Johnny Cash’s stuff, and a little rhythm and blues. Like I say, rhythm and blues was in my blood, and I got a daughter that loves the blues now. Other than that, no, that was about it.

GF: Are there any regrets that you’ve had? Like, maybe you missed out on a record deal or missed out on collaborating with a certain artist?

BC: Well, Sonny and I were disappointed one time. He got a call. Johnny Cash said he was in Nashville, he got ready to do a thing, and he needed a guitar player and a drummer. Sonny said, “I don’t know why you and I didn’t go and do that,” but we didn’t. We always thought about that, boy, we could have gone and done that. But other than that, we probably had our chances. Phillips didn’t have the money to, you know, get out and publicize all the artists he had, and so he did mainly with Jerry Lee Lewis, you know, of course he sold Elvis. He did a video and we’re on it. He’s saying that if we had the right stuff… but we felt like we had the right stuff. There were too many times that we recorded what we thought was it. I know, we did “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It” (Clarence Williams, 1933, first recording by Hank Williams in 1949), and we thought that was going to be big. Well, Ricky Nelson covered it too and killed us.

GF: The boys from Led Zeppelin had covered that song too, right?

BC: Yes sir, they did. You know, we look back now, and for the past 25 years, we probably got our satisfaction. We didn’t make a lot of money, we made some, but we got to tour the world. I mean, we went to Brazil, we went all over Europe, went all over Canada, Japan, Germany, you name it. And so that had to be a lot of satisfaction to us. To go and have sold-out crowds. The people, you know, bought our merchandise and they loved it, they loved Sun records. That had to be a lot of satisfaction.

GF: Is there a song that most resonates with you?

BC: I always liked “Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison. A lot of Elvis stuff, you know. We were big fans of Elvis. I was good friends with Elvis’s drummer, with Johnny Cash’s drummer, Jerry Lee’s drummer. We were good friends. We talked on the phone a lot. We played shows together and had dinner together. It was a lot of fun with those guys.

GF: What was your early life like?

BC: My early life was probably in sports, you know, in high school. I played football, baseball, and basketball, but never dreamed of getting into music. My dream was to be a coach in high school when I went to school. That was my idea. I did a year in college, came home, got into music, ended up in Newport and didn’t go back to college.

GF: Do you listen to any of the music that your parents listened to?

BC: Yeah, I was into big band music back then. Matter of fact, we went to a show at the Peabody back when I was young. The parents all went to Memphis to the Peabody Hotel. They had big bands, you know, Benny Goodman, all those bands. They had a rooftop place there, on the top of the building. We did a show there one night. I was telling a guy who worked at the hotel that, as a boy, my parents came here and I never did get to. When I was a kid, I couldn’t afford it. But I always heard about the Peabody. He said, “Would you like to go up there tonight?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, y’all take a 20 minute break at 10 o’clock and I’ll come get you and take you up there.” They took us up there and introduced us. They had a big band playing. We played one night at the Pine Bluff Country Club. We were down in the cellar kind of, and up above was Tommy Dorsey’s band. When they got through playing, they came down and sat in with us. We all jammed and had a big time.

GF: Do you have a favorite country that you’ve toured in?

BC: Well, I guess England would have to be one of my favorite ones. Of course, I like Spain, but England, the fans are just fabulous. A lot of them have been over here. A lot of them have been to Memphis. You know, we probably played in England more than we have anywhere else. France is a good play. I played France last April.

GF: What is something that you want fans to take away from Sonny Burgess and the Pacers’ music?

BC: That’s what we would always try to do, you know. What we played, we played for them. It’s something that we always tried to do. You gotta keep your people happy. Oh yeah, and then, all over Europe… We played all our stuff and played a little Jerry Lee Lewis and played a little Carl Parkins and Johnny Cash, but we played all of our stuff and we still do.

GF: Do you have a favorite story from or of Sonny?

BC: He was a hard worker, he really worked hard, you know? Oh, everywhere we went, he did something to his hair. One time we were on tour with Cash. Before he left home, he had his wife try to dye his hair or something and it turned red. We bugged him about that for a while.

GF: Who was your main audience in the 1950s?

BC: We played a lot for college kids back then, you know, and that was a lot of our audience, even at the Silver Moon. We played a lot in Fayetteville and Ole Miss. We tried to put feelings in our music to where everybody felt it and liked it. There’d be some nights where Sonny would say, “I just didn’t feel it tonight… ” I guess that was right, it was something right in that way, you’d really feel it. I guess that’s what kept us in the business. You have to feel what you play and if you don’t, you need to get out of it. Like, I was never into country, but I played a little bit of country. We had to back up a few country artists but my feeling was rhythm and blues. A little rhythm and blues and rock and roll mixed together back then was my feeling.

GF: One final question: what is one lesson that you would pass down to an aspiring musician today?

BC: You gotta please the people. You gotta get along with the other artists. I know that’ssomething we always did because they can pass word along and help you. It’s a step-by-step thing. They like you and you help each other. That’s what we did, especially in the 1990s. The guys who are left, we did shows together and we helped each other, and recommended each other. That’s what got us to Europe. I know Ronnie Hawkins recommended us over in Europe, and that’s what got us over there. Who would have ever thought that the band would become as big as they did. It never really happened for us. We got fairly big, but big time didn’t happen. You’ve got to be at the right time, the right place, and with the right people. That happened with the band. Ronnie Hawkins had to live in Canada to become big. Conway Twitty had to go up there and stay big. He stayed a long time up there. We never did want to do that. We just came back to Newport. Of course, Sonny had family, and Kern had family at the time. The other three of us were single at the time. That was one of the reasons that we didn’t, I guess. You had to give up a lot to want to get out, to be big. We played at the Kennedy Center. We played the Library of Congress. We played on the Queen Mary. We played in New York City. We went to Iowa and played there. I met Buddy Holly. Getting to play those spots, I never dreamed, you know, who ever dreamed of that?

Bobby Crafford now resides in Maumelle, Arkansas, with his wife, Barbara. Though not as active, the Legendary Pacers still tour to this day. The Pacers will be performing at the Newport Sesquicentennial Celebration in Newport, Arkansas on April 5th, 2025.

Categories: Arts & Entertainment