Sneezz bass player looks back on band, career

Residence: Perry

Occupation: Retired

Q: You worked at Blue Bird Body Co., a car dealership and Robins Air Force Base but you’re best known — quite well know — in Middle Georgia for a long musical career. What got you interested in music?

A: Back in 1964 in high school in Unadilla my nephew taught me to play guitar some. I graduated high school in 1966.

Q: You played with a couple of well-known local bands. Who?

A: With Larry G. Hudson then with Sneezz. One was country, the other a Top 40 band playing popular tunes.

Q: Your nephew taught you?

A: I was 16 and he was eight. His name is Russell Borders and he could play anything — all the TV theme songs and about anything else by ear. Me, I could barely keep rhythm tapping my foot.

Q: You learned guitar but played bass in bands. What brought the switch?

A: Larry G. Hudson and I were in high school together. He put a country band together and heard I had a bass. Again, this is around ’65 and I had a bass my brother-in-law sent from Vietnam. It was a cheap Fender Jazz Bass copy but a pretty good one I played for years. He sent a bunch of guitars back. We called them Saigon Fenders. Anyway, Larry asked me to play bass and I told him I didn’t really know how. He said he’d show me and that was that. He carried the band and went on to do really well. He came “this close” to making it really, really big plus he ran some of Macon’s biggest clubs: Larry G’s, The Hayloft, Uncle Sam’s, Bananas.

Q: Why the jump to Top 40 rock?

A: I played with Larry through high school and a few years after. I also worked at Blue Bird for 13 years. Larry ended up heading to Nashville and left us musicians looking for a work.

Q: Sneezz came along. When was that?

A: It was 1971-1972. Randy Buffington was starting a band and looking for a bass player. He’d just come out of a big horn-oriented band and I was just out of a country band. We clashed — didn’t get along at all—but we kept playing music and got over it.

Q: A whole lot of people around here know Sneezz.

A: We got real well known. Our goal was always to entertain people, give them what they wanted. That was it. We stayed a Top 40 dance band and played in one form or another until the mid-90s.

Q: How did Sneezz get so popular for so long?

A: Just entertaining people going out on weekends or through the week. We got really good as musicians and really, really good at pleasing our audience.

Q: Where did Sneezz start?

A: We played the Holiday Inn in Perry for seven or eight years. We also played about every social occasion, Christmas party, private party or corporate event there ever was. We connected and could figure out what people wanted to hear. And if somebody came in on Wednesday and wanted to hear a new song we learned it and could play it by the weekend. If, say, Joe and Lisa asked for a song, we’d learned it and when they came back in we’d stop and say, “Here’s your song.” That’s why people liked us, we worked the crowd.

Q: What was the famous Sneezz stump the band contest?

A: Between us we knew a little bit of about any song anybody could come up with. If the person lost they gave us a quarter and if we lost they got a drink. We never lost. The bartender told us we better start losing to keep it interesting. It was just something for people to have fun with. People would come back to clubs just to try to beat us.

Q: What was the original Sneezz lineup?

A: Me on bass, Randy Buffington played guitar and sang, Linda Walton, who was Miss Warner Robins, was singer, Myron Miller played keyboards, Kenny Hightower was drummer and Larry Colson played flute, sax and whatever he wanted. He was definitely the most musically talented. That lineup lasted 10 or 11 years. We played all those years in Perry and a good while in Warner Robins, too, and all the events. We built a huge following.

Q: Did you tour?

A: We played clubs on tour for two years mainly in Alabama. Two weeks at a place at the time. Our lineup changed when we started touring. I left Blue Bird to go. We picked up another Unadilla guy, drummer Danny Lastinger who later played with Doc Holliday. He’s good.

Q: Most musicians your age say they saw The Beatles and wanted to play and be a rock star. Did you have stars in your eyes?

A: I didn’t. For me it was just my nephew taught me to play and somebody needed a bass player. I happened to have a bass. I just liked playing, making some money and entertaining people. It was a job — usually a fun job. We made good money around here.

Q: And the day jobs?

A: We toured until about 1984. You’ve heard the saying, “It was real. And it was fun. But it wasn’t real fun?” That was touring for us. We’d had enough and came home and built our audience. Randy had such insight into how to put shows together and Sneezz on and on. I ended up working at the base in electronics, too.

Q: What’s your favorite song from all those years?

A: I can’t say a favorite song but I have a favorite genre. In the late 1970s when disco hit, bands wouldn’t play it but we were always a dance band whether it was rock, urban cowboy, disco or whatever. Playing bass to disco was a huge challenge. Playing Linda Ronstadt songs was easy. Pump it up to about 120 beats a minute and you have to pay attention. I became a better player playing disco so for that reason I say disco. Disco led to us playing six nights a week at Sassy’s in Macon for a long time, too.

Q: Now that you’re retired are you involved in music?

A: I have sound systems and do sound reinforcement for shows. With my electronic skills, I work on amps some.

Q: For you, you’re satisfied having worked in your own backyard for so long entertaining a lot of people?

A: Yep. That’s it. I made a lot of friends.

Q: By the way, how did the name come about?

A: We were sitting around trying to think of a name and our girl singer sneezed. That’s it.

This story was originally published March 4, 2017 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Sneezz bass player looks back on band, career."