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The Melody Makers band -- Beaufort's best contribution to the Carolina beach and party music scene that once rocked every pavilion and National Guard Armory in the South -- has just released its first record in nearly 30 years.
The Melody Makers formed in Beaufort in 1960. They caught the wave of white guys playing black music in un-air-conditioned halls bursting with tipsy, under-aged dancers. A whole region grabbed a double shot of a carefree lifestyle and never let go.
Fred Gauch of Hilton Head Island says the feeling is still drawing crowds and warming hearts. At 64, he's still singing and playing bass. He's the only original member still with the band, which took off in 1966 with a regional 45-rpm hit, "I Who Have Nothing."
Other early members included Ron Nobles, Ted Ledford, Larry Rogers, Donny Murdaugh, Charlie Parker, Gerald Polk and O'Neal Clamp. The band hitched up a homemade trailer and found every fraternity house in the South.
"We had a map of South Carolina, North Carolina and north Georgia and we put a pin in every town we played," Gauch said. "You couldn't see the map for all the pins."
Locally, they were regulars at the Baileys club hanging over the Okatie River. It later moved to a cinderblock building still standing on S.C. 170. People called it Oak Grove.
They played the open-air pavilion at the Varnville Pool, the "Land of a Thousand Dances."
"Good God, that place used to rock," Gauch said.
The dancing got so frantic, and the kids and the band were always so close, Gauch still has a chipped front tooth from getting banged by the microphone.
At Pawleys Pavilion, bands painted or burned their names into a wooden wall: The Catalinas, the Embers, the Swingin' Medallions, the Melody Makers. Now their legacies are recorded in an important book, "The Heeey Baby Days of Beach Music" by Greg Haynes.
For a select few, the beat goes on. Gauch and Melody Makers Steve Wiggins, Mike Suggs and Wyman Chavis call their new CD "We ARE Goodtime Music." This week, he delivered 50 copies -- with its new arrangements of old favorites "Brenda" and "Mustang Sally" -- to Bay Street Music in the town where it all began.
In the 60s, people flocked from 100 miles away to dance the muggy nights away at Oak Grove. Who could possibly have dreamed the Melody Makers would some day rock a crowd at a different joint down the road called Sun City Hilton Head.
I hope they never slow that Mustang down.
