The Tip-Tops' Master Sound Sessions

	It Ain't No Big Thing				She Drives Me Out of My Mind
			Mr. Pitiful
	Tell Mama				Whose Little Girl Are You

We recorded these in 1967 and 1968 at Master Sound Studios in Brookhaven. She Drives Me Out of My Mind, Mr. Pitiful and Tell Mama are demo recordings, while It Ain't No Big Thing and Whose Little Girl Are You are more elaborate studio productions. Rudy Lancaster is vocalist for It Ain't No Big Thing, written by Gerald Sims. Larry Brown is featured on Whose Little Girl Are You, which was written by Joe South. Larry also sings Mr. Pitiful and Lewis Linder is the vocalist on Tell Mama. Many thanks to Emory Gordy for his invaluable assistance with these tracks.

The Tip-Tops and Bus	The Tip-Tops 1970	Bill Lowery Billboard Promo 1968	The Tip-Tops 1969	Dance Poster	The Tip-Tops 1967

The Tip-Tops are Larry Brown - Lead Singer & Saxophone, Lewis Linder - Saxophone, Trumpet & Vocals, G.A. Malone - Drums & Vocals, Tim Mixon - Keyboards, Bass Guitar & Vocals (left 1969), Andy Culpepper - Trumpet, Keyboards & Vocals (left 1968), Robert Williams - Guitar & Vocals (died 1969), Rudy Lancaster - Lead Singer & Saxophone, Jake Ivey - Trumpet & Vocals (joined 1968), Tom Baker - Keyboards & Vocals (joined 1969), David Morgan - Guitar & Vocals (joined 1969). All but two of the Tip-Tops were from Hawkinsville, Georgia. David Morgan is from Abbeville and Jake Ivey came from Bainbridge.

The Tip-Tops were actively peforming from 1967 through December 1970. We played throughout the Southeast at a variety of venues including teen circuit dances, movie theaters, music clubs, college dances, fraternity and sorority parties, formals, proms, etc. Traveling and playing with the Tip-Tops was quite a ride to say the least! We evolved from the Man-I-Yacks who I began playing with in the Summer of 1966. After bringing Robert onboard, and then Rudy we changed our name to the Tip-Tops in January 1967.

More to come ...

Facebook Post by Jake Ivey

My longtime friend, and fellow Tip-Top, Rudy Lancaster, recently reflected on his experience with the group in a post (below). He mentioned some things about the early days of The Tip-Tops that even I didn't know.

And he refers to the fun and to some "things we can't talk about", which is certainly right. Most of it was clean fun, though. We were clean-cut guys who enjoyed what we did and the good times that came with it. But we never did drugs of any kind, or were otherwise 'weird', like many groups. We never felt the need. We were just straight-up, regular guys most of the time, going to class like everybody else, but working hard on our music everyday and constantly playing at every opportunity.

Rudy naturally doesn't mention it, but he was a heckuva singer. All of our front row guys (Rudy, Lewis Linder, Larry Brown and me) sang backup and some lead. But by 1968 Rudy had emerged as a primary lead singer, along with our fabulous 'soul man', Larry Brown. He was also, by then, our head choreography man. And a dang good one. I knew he was good then. But only after performing over the next 40+ years now did realize how good. Rudy knew his stuff.

I should also say he is somewhat modest about our achievement, especially the peak year of 1969 ... whatever level band we had been when I first joined (which was already successful, and I thought very good), this was another level entirely, something different for sure. You could feel it. Our chemistry, our polish, everything had just come together.

... Sadly, it wasn't too long after this that Robert Williams, our guitar player and music director, was killed in the automobile accident Rudy mentions. It was unfortunate for the group, because we were at our peak. We had talks going on with Bill Drake in L.A., at the time the most powerful man in radio, about recording some records. He had listened to our Bill Lowery studio recordings and had offered to help us and to open the door for us to do some recordings with Chet Atkins in his Nashville studio. He considered Atkins both the best producer in the country and the guy who had the best studio at the time. Drake was a guy who could make almost anything a hit record - he was THAT powerful in the music business.

But it wasn't to be. We were never quite the same after Robert was killed. David Morgan stepped in and did a remarkable job, and we kept all our commitments, playing just days after Robert's funeral on November 15th. Things had looked as if they were going to break wide open for us, but all of that changed that terrible week.

We stayed strong and popular, at least for the remaining time I was there, another year or so (and the few times I saw the band after that, I thought they were somewhat different, but still strong). But as we recovered from the tragedy of losing Robert, the bigger things were put on hold out of necessity, and eventually faded into the background.

Anyway, I'm hoping to put more down on paper in this next year, as I've been thinking about it for a few years. But for those who were around in those days or otherwise interested, here's Rudy's reflection ...

THE TIP-TOPS by Rudy Lancaster

There have been a couple of times in my life when I wished for something ... dreamed of something happening and it actually came to fruition. One of these fantasies was playing with The Tip-Tops.

They were a little combo band around town in the sixties. They played the teen clubs in towns around Hawkinsville. I specifically remember one night they were playing at the Thompson Theatre in Hawkinsville. I had a date with Ann. As we were watching them on stage I was thinking to myself how much I wished I could play with them. I was in the tenth grade at the time, fifteen years old.

Not long after seeing them perform that night and having that thought, Robert Williams (who later died in a car accident at 18) called me at home and asked me to come over to Lewis Linder's house the next afternoon after school. He said they wanted to talk to me about joining their band. They were called The Man-I-Yacks at that time. That is pronounced The Maniacs but most people thought it was the Man-I-Yacks. It was a crummy name but I was excited about the prospect of being in a band.

Robert said they wanted me to play the trumpet and the saxophone. I had played trumpet in the school band so that was no problem. I had never played the sax. They said it didn't matter, that Lewis would teach me to play the sax. The first night I stepped on stage with them was in Douglas, Georgia. I could honk the sax a little but I faked it by blowing on the mouthpiece and moving my fingers in time with the music. I sang some backup also. At least I knew the words.

The first song I ever learned to play on the tenor sax was "Knock on Wood". It started on F sharp. I can still play most of it even now when I periodically get my sax out. Lewis showed me the notes out back at Thompson Theatre. Isn't it strange that I can remember that so clearly and yet have trouble remembering what I did yesterday?

The first year or so we continued under the name The Man-I-Yaks. When I joined the band we were just starting to do a little choreography with each song. The method that was used was Lewis would think something up there on the stage, putting his right foot out and tapping it or something like that. All the rest of us on the front four would then follow and do the same. It was very unpolished.

We started going to see some popular groups like the Temptations and the Swingin' Medallions and it was my job to watch the moves they did and then come back to practice and teach those steps to the front four.

We played with the Swingin' Medallions a few times. I got so good at mimicking other bands choreography that one night I basically stole two hours of the Medallions four-hour show. It was kind of embarrassing when we were booked to open for them. There we were doing what they had thought up. They were much better than we were though. They had a lot of material we had never seen. So when they played with us, they would simply do a different show.

Wingate would walk out on the stage in his pale blue tuxedo... "Ladies and gentlemen...from Atlanta, Georgia ... The Tip-Tops". G.A. would hit the snare rim shot and the rhythm section would start "Get Ready" ... Larry came out first, orange tuxedo glowing in the lights...three steps up, three steps back ... then Lewis, then Jake, then me like a little train. Larry would be almost through with that song ... Lewis, Jake and I would turn, pick up the horns and as Larry sang the last note of "Get Ready" we'd go directly into the instrumental, "I Was Made to Love Her". We never stopped the music for the next 45 minutes.

We practiced every afternoon after school except during football season. Larry Brown and I played on the Red Devil team and football came first. Other than that we practiced a lot out at Robert's house on the Macon Highway.

The first bus we owned was an old city bus. The kind with doors in the front and back that open simultaneously. The motor was a piece of junk. It glowed red-hot when we drove down the road. We'd prop the back door up on its hinges to let more air get to the motor. Anybody following us at night had a real show. People even passed us honking a couple of times telling us our bus was on fire.

Later we got a bus that had been used on a daily circuit between Atlanta and Charlotte. It was a good bus except we couldn't get the heater to work. A year or so after we bought it we were at a truck stop late one night when a guy who smelled greatly of whisky (i.e. drunk as a skunk) came up and said he used to drive our bus from Atlanta to Charlotte and back every day. He said he recognized the bus immediately upon seeing it. At first we thought he was another of those characters we met so often. After talking with him a while we realized he really did drive our bus. He told us things that helped us maintain the bus that we didn't know. Don Wingate, our manager, told him the bus was running good but it sure was cold in the winter because we couldn't get the heat to work. The old guy got down on the pavement right then and there, slid under the bus on his back, stayed a minute or two, slid out and said OK, you got heat now. He had opened a valve on the hot water line that ran from the motor to the heater on the bus. He said it had been put in the heater line so that the heat could be turned off in the summer. We thanked him profusely and drove off into the winter night in warm comfort for the first time ever.

The bus was outfitted with folding bunks. The bottom bunk was permanent and the top bunk folded down to convert into a sofa. One person would drive and the rest would try to get a little sleep.

We bought our equipment from a guy named Eli Frish at Ideal Music Store in Downtown Atlanta. There was a shoe shop a couple doors down from his store. The name of the shoe shop was the Tip Top Shoe Shop. That is where we got our name.

We bought expensive equipment. It was told to me that when we bought our sound system, manufactured under the name Sunn, that it was the second system of that type and quality ever produced by Sunn. I remember it had J.B. Lansing speakers, which were top of the line. It's interesting to note, according to what I was told, that the first set of that type of Sunn equipment was purchased by none other than The Beach Boys. The Tip-Tops bought the second set. I'm sure they were much more able to afford it though.

We always spent more than we made. The last year we played which was 1970 we made somewhere around $32,000 dollars I believe. That was pretty darn good for those years. However, if I'm not badly mistaken, we spent something like $37,000.00. When we broke up in January of 1971 we sold most of the equipment and the bus just to pay off the debts. I think the guys that had been in the group the longest got something like $500 apiece.

**********

We wrecked the bus in Meridian Mississippi on a Sunday morning about midmorning. We had stayed up all night charging the batteries on the bus because the alternator had quit working. Everybody went to sleep at sunrise and left G.A. to drive us home. We left Jackson Mississippi and got as far a Meridian before G.A. decided to take a little nap too, but he didn't leave the driver's seat. He ran off the interstate, hit a big wooden pole that held up two big interstate signs. He hit the pole right smack dab in the center of the front of the bus. He was able to stop the bus. When I got up to the front all that was left was the drivers seat sitting out there by itself. The whole front end of the bus had been demolished and torn off. The only sign on G.A. was a little trickle of blood on his hand from a small scratch. We were very lucky especially G.A. God obviously had more for him to do with his life. You can't get much closer to death than that and not be injured at all.

We had the bus repaired and drove it for another year or so before we broke up. I don't remember how much it cost to fix it but it was pretty expensive. From then on we always had somebody in a chair up front to talk to the driver and keep him awake. No seatbelts, no airbags, and most of the time we kept the door open to give us a good breeze. As far a safety went we were dumb and happy.

The thing that we later got a kick out of was what G.A. said when I got to the front of the bus after the bus had come to a stop. I asked him what happened. Still dazed and probably a little in shock he said, "I think it was a dog."

We rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest names in music in those days. We were booked by Bill Lowery Talent in Atlanta. Bill Lowery was well known in the music industry in the South. The other groups that were represented by his company were The Tams, Billy Joe Royal, The Swingin' Medallions, Joe South, and The Epics. All were well known recording artists.

We were often booked into gigs where we backed other artists who didn't have their own band but had made several successful recordings. We played what was then called Soul Music but it is now referred to as Beach Music. We knew all the big hits spot-on and if we ever backed up a singer one time, from then on, if he was ever in the area doing a show, he would request us as his backup band. I don't remember all the names but I do remember Arthur Connelly, Spider Turner, the Showmen, and Lee Dorsey. We backed a group one time that had ten members. There wasn't enough room on our stage for all of them and us too, so we had to set up on the floor and let them have the stage. (We carried a collapsible stage on the bus with us).

We played at the Block Booking Conference in Charlotte NC with The Royal Guardsmen, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels, and Booker T. and the M.G.s. We were recording one time in Atlanta and in walked Billy Joe Royal. He volunteered to sing a high harmony part on one of our recordings. He brought his buddy with him that day. Freddy Weller who played with Paul Revere and the Raiders. The Raiders had a syndicated teen television show every weekday at four o'clock.

Too many tall tales to tell. Some you wouldn't believe and some I will never tell. Now that is one thing that I can say we were good at..keeping secrets. The ad that is running on TV now saying "What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas" is exactly the motto we had long ago as a group for all those years and it's still honored today. We made a pact early on... that WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE TIP-TOPS STAYS WITH THE TIP-TOPS. As far as I know, no one has ever broken that pledge. Of course it was the other guys who made that pact necessary. I never did anything out of the ordinary and if you ask the other guys, they would say they didn't either.

Over the years we lost members and added members. During the Tip-Tops lifetime the group consisted of Robert Williams, G.A. Malone, Tim Mixon, Andy Culpepper, Larry Brown, Lewis Linder, Tom Baker, Jake Ivey, David Morgan, and me. There were a couple of other people from out of town that may have played with us for a few nights but these that I have named were the core group. We were around fifteen years old when I started playing with them and around twenty when we broke up. As with anything, there was good and bad. Over the years the memories and stories have gotten much more grandiose, sometimes making us much better than I think we actually were. That is what happens with time and the advent of old age. The good and happy memories take on much more importance and magnitude. Overall, we had a blast.