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Richard “Bossman” Johnson on rehearsing at The New Penelope

Black and white photograph of a group of young men smiling and hurrying down the middle of a commercial street wearing top hats, one of them holds a guitar case, a man is standing in their way filming them and in the background people on the sidewalk are watching the scene.

Image: The Beat Boys fooling around on St. Catherine St., Montreal, 1966. Richard Johnson (photographer), copyright 1966. Courtesy of Richard Johnson

 

Credit: ARCMTL collection. Interview was conducted in Montreal on May 17, 2021 with Richard “Bossman” Johnson by Louis Rastelli, Director of ARCMTL.
Duration: 1:37 min

Excerpt of an interview with Richard “Bossman” Johnson, ex-member of the bands Beat Boys (1965) and The Cavemen (1966). He recalls band rehearsals at The New Penelope on Stanley where Gary let The Cavemen use it as a practice space outside of opening hours. One day, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was at The New Penelope and invited The Cavemen to take part in a jam session. Richard remembers it as an awe-inspiring moment for a young teenager to have the chance to play with such a great band.

Transcription:

Richard “Bossman” Johnson: Early in ’65, it was with the Beat Boys, and Gary Eisenkraft was the owner [of The New Penelope on Stanley St.] and he wanted to be our manager for a little while, for a couple of months. Yeah. And, but he couldn’t do much, you know, he was too busy doing other things, so that didn’t work out too well. And, but he gave us a place to rehearse though. That was good. [Laughs.] And then, I think ’66, Beat Boys broke up and I joined The Cavemen, and the pictures that I have are with The Cavemen. I think one of them is a picture of our bass player and our organ player accompanying… what’s his name? Richie Havens, is that right?

Yeah, well, the second one, I remember we were, we had set up our equipment and we were rehearsing or something. And then the band that was gonna play the next week or something came in, and it was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. So anyway, I was playing guitar there, and I was sitting on the side of the stage and this guy comes up to me. He says, ‘Hi, I’m Mike.’ That was Mike Bloomfield. He says ‘Do you want to jam?’ [Laughs.] I was a kid, I said ‘Sure, why not?’ You know, it’s quite the story. And I remember I had to take my – I had a big ring from, you know, from graduating high school, and I took it off and put it next to me on the stage. And when we finished jamming, I got up, the ring was gone. Somebody stole it.