Well here's the hotel we'll be stayin' and playin' at. It's the Orleans Hotel and Casino. I've been their many times, good seafood restaurant and I'll be eatin' their again. "Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell" will be the acts I'll be playing for. It's a "Blast to the Past"... end of the big bands and the beginnings of Rock 'n Roll. It makes me nostalgic. I tried to find older (1974) pictures of the Flamingo Hilton as that's when I first went to Las Vegas right out of high school. As many of you know, I not only played the showroom their.. I started out bussing tables their. A great memory, just not so great when I was actually bussing tables!
Anyway, the Flamingo was a grand hotel with beautiful park like grounds in the backyard and a giant pool with pink flamingos on the bottom. Then, like everything, change took place and it became a GIANT hotel... so large the sun didn't shine on the pool anymore so they had to relocate it to another area.... It's once again a beautiful hotel... just not the way I remember it... with Bugsy Seagle and the mob drivin' through the casino standin' on running boards shootin' their tommy guns... Ahhh just kiddin'. However, in the old park like grounds, their was a sign that stood outside the gorgeous rose bushes that said somethin' like: The roses here grow so well because of the bodies Bugsy planted here: Lol... what a sense of humor they had back then.
Occasionally I used to hang out after the gigs (2 in the morning) at the bar with the other musicians. Different players from different bands would just hang out at a certain bar. Usually the bar with the cheapest drinks. Well, the Flamingo for a while had 50 cent drinks... I remember my buddy sayin' "Heck, at these prices I can't afford not to drink!" I laughed my head off, spoken like a true drinker. On the up side of alcoholism, "They ain't quitters".
I used to live in an apartment on the strip across the street from the Flamingo. Actually right next to Caesars palace. At the time I was the bassist for the Flamingo Showroom, talk about a convenient commute as I'd put my tux on, grab my bass and walk across the street to work.
Back then they had a 'real' drainage problem on the strip and every 4 years or so it would rain fast and hard for a short period of time. The whole strip would flood. I remember cars at Caesars were flooded in the parking lot up to the windows... The strip turned into a large and long running stream. That evening when I went to work, I rolled up my tux pants, held my bass up and waded across the strip to the hotel. The conductor and I were the only ones that showed up for the show... no one else could get through
! I loved it, what an exciting place.
Okay, enough nostalgia for now.
Excellent,
Don
