History of Haines City's Own Underground Railway Band - Bill Newman,Mike Robinson,Steve Durham,Edward Strickland and Fred Norton

To look back and reflect on times that have long passed. To enjoy thinking about
good times and the people that made them special. Some friends and I had a rock
band in high school and decided to call the group "The Underground Railway" because
all things "underground" were cool at the time . We also admired a local group that
went by the name "Purple Underground" they were great and we would go see them
play anytime we could. There were a number of local players around our area and we
will mention as many as our memories will allow. Even though our band never hit the
"big time", it along with our friends are worth remembering.
Bill Newman

The power trio era was, at least for us, coming to an end. In early 1969 we started to
realize that we needed to add another instrument to enhance our sound. We added
Steve Durham on rhythm guitar and vocals. I had known Steve since grade school and
we were friends, he was the right choice. Shortly after Steve joined, Fred left the band
and moved to Lakeland with his parents. Edward Strickland, another grade school
friend of mine joined the band as drummer. Edward and Steve both played in the
school band and were good players.

Somewhere in this time period I had bought a used Fender Jazzmaster to replace my
Winston guitar, this helped me a lot because the Winston was real hard to play. Mike
and I were at Carlton's Music one day with the Jazzmaster and someone said they
thought it may have belonged to Jim Stafford at one time. They thought so because it
had a red button installed on it that wasn't stock on that model. I don't remember what
the button did and have no idea if it had ever belonged to Jim Stafford. At the same
time that I bought the guitar I also bought a Fender amp. It was one of those great old
tube amps and sounded good. This gave us a cleaner sound and we no longer had to
plug everything into one amp.

Now that our group had new members and new equipment we were able to expand
our sound and our song list. Mike carried most of the vocals and did a great job.
Steve sang some lead and harmony, but it was mainly Mike's job. He was especially
good on the Creedence material and Steve did a great job on the slower tunes. We
were all in high school at the time so we had a lot of time to practice. We lived and
breathed music and were starting to improve our abilities some now.

We continued into the summer of 69' practicing as much as we could. We had left the
garage behind and set up shop in a small apartment behind Edward's house. At times
we would play in Mike's Florida room, I'm not sure how his Mom put up with us, but
somehow she managed. At least now we were giving my neighbors a break, I can only
imagine the relief they must have felt. I was very lucky to have the guys that I did, they
would keep pounding away and give me a chance to play long lead solos. This was the
way that I learned to play lead, but it felt like it took forever, what I liked in talent I made
up in determination. All the rest of the band were doing real good and we were coming
along.

In the summer of 69' we spent as much time listening to music as we did playing it. We
were big into Hendrix, Cream, Johnny Winter, Led Zeppelin and many other groups.
We listened to so many different artist, I can't remember them all. I know that we were
big into blues, and that has remained a lifelong influence for me. I still love listening to
blues guitar, it penetrates the soul.

In July of that year, I was at Mike's house when Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the
moon. I still remember watching it on television and seeing " Live From The Moon"
written across the screen. As we all know the other big event of that summer was
Woodstock that took place August 16th,17th and 18th. The summer was about over
and it was time to return to school. Mike was a Senior and Edward, Steve and I were
Juniors. We all attended Haines City High School.

During the last part of summer break we had made contact with Sgt. Sutherland at the
National Guard Armory in Haines City. This was the old building down by Lake Eva
park. He had decided to sponsor Saturday night dances that would be held on the
second level in the gym area. We were booked for the original dance along with
"Mom's Apple Pie", a Winter Haven band. We were allowed to practice upstairs in the
annex building behind the main armory. A group led by Tommy Hagler had been using
the area for practice and were originally slated to play the first dance. Our band had
went to listen to them practice one evening and were asked to play a couple of songs,
which we did. Tommy liked what he heard and decided to join our band and play the
dances with us. That's how we came to get that nice big room to use for practice.

The first dance took place on Saturday September 13, 1969 and was billed simply as
"Big Dance". If you click on the first flier in top left hand corner you can see what it
looked like. "Moms Apple Pie" played first and we had to follow them for our first set. It
was pretty scary coming after them, they sounded great. Although Sgt. Sutherland
was very nice to us, he knew which band to put on first, even if they were the
headliner.

The next dance we played was on October 4, 1969, again with "Mom's Apple Pie" and
"The Amber Hue" from Lake Wales. If you click on the second flier, you can see how
Sgt. Sutherland billed the bands and tell that he had excellent diplomatic skills. For
that dance Mike Wadsworth had joined our band playing keyboards, hence the "new
added sound".

Every year Haines City High had a program called "Hornet Daze". It consisted of
several different things including skits and other entertainment oriented presentations.
Different student organizations participated in the program and it was generally an
entertaining event lasting two evenings. In 1969 it was held on November 12th and
13th. "The Underground Railway" played at this event during intermission, it was a
memorable event for us all. Steve Durham has this performance on reel to reel tape, I
haven't heard it in years.

I don't remember if we played anymore armory dances after the October gig or not. I
remember that Sgt. Sutherland put us in contact with a local radio DJ that went by the
on air name Bud Richards. He was a lead singer and Sgt. Sutherland thought he may
be a good addition to our group. Bud's given name was Ray Vincent Surrency, I'm not
sure how I remember that but I do. He worked for the radio station that at the time was
on Dundee Road, I believe it was WGTO, but I'm not sure. We worked with Bud until
he moved out of the area, which was probably two or three months.

The school year of 1970 was Mike Robinson's Senior year. As the year progressed he
was preparing to leave for college and the era of "The Underground Railway" was
drawing to a close. He entered Florida State University in 1971, and the band passed
into history.

We were a group of young musicians in Haines City Florida in the late 60's and early
70's. The group formed as a three piece garage band and consisted of myself, Mike
Robinson and Fred Norton. The group was literally a garage band and practiced in my
garage. My Dad would sometimes get tired of the noise and give us a few bucks and
tell us to go have a good time. My uncle was a police dispatcher and would call and
warn us when a noise complaint had been phoned into the station, which was often.
We would turn the volume down, but before too long it would somehow get turned up
again which meant another call from the police station. We would practice for as long
as we could in the evening and just about get heat stroke in that garage. We even had
one of those rotating red, blue and green lights that you used to see at Christmas time
just to make the atmosphere right.

Since I don't sing Mike and Fred handled all of the vocals, we had one or two original
songs and the rest were covers. We played or tried to play Purple Haze and some
Creedence Clearwater Revival tunes among songs by other artist. We had an old
microphone that we would hang from the rafters with a cord and as Fred played drums
and sang it would sway back and forth. Most of the time you couldn't hear the vocals
anyway because we played loud to cover up our mistakes. We didn't have a P.A.
system so we plugged everything into our big Silvertone amplifier that we called "The
Monster". We had a mosrite fuzztone that we had bought at Carlton Music Center. This
gave me plenty of distortion that hid my poor playing abilities. We were all just starting
out at that time so it was a learning experience.

To the best of my memory we only played two or three gigs, but at the time we had
visions of becoming a power trio like "Cream" or "The Jimi Hendrix Experience". One
evening Jerry Sears, a local guitar player that we looked up to came by, listened for a
few minutes and said "you boys keep practicing, some day you'll be good", we took
this as a great compliment. We never made power trio status but we had a lot of fun
trying.