Rick Robinson is a local author who is writing a book based on life in Northern Kentucky in 1968 and what we can learn now. LINK will publish excerpts from the book regularly in the LINK Reader, as well as on linknky.com. This is chapter 10. Click here to read chapter 9, Rick Robinson’s 1968: September
The Love she gives is warm,
She’ll hold you in her arms,
But when she turns you on,
She’ll kiss you and be gone.
“That Girl” by The New Lime
–Written by Judge Mickey Foellger
Mickey Foellger fondly remembers his youthful Saturday morning ritual, a bus ride from Ft. Thomas to Cincinnati. “There was this great record store on Fountain Square called The Song Shop. I’d spend hours flipping through ‘45s,” he said. “They had a listening room where you could play a record before you bought it and I’d sit and listen to all the new releases,” he remembered. “The first record I ever purchased – Elvis – Side A, “Hound Dog” and Side B, “Don’t be Cruel.”
“Then I’d head over to the second floor of the Hotel Sinton and listen to the broadcast on WSAI-AM,” Foellger laughed. “That was a full day.”
The beat flowing through Foellger’s veins came honestly. His father, Milton Foellger, was the band leader for Milt Foellger and the Music Masters who played on the Island Queen and on the beaches of Bellevue and Dayton. The younger Foellger followed in his father’s musical footsteps and began playing drums at an early age.
When Foellger was 12 years old, he got a call from Danny Morgan who had a garage band called The Vibrations. Morgan and his family lived in Ft. Thomas where his father booked acts for military clubs. The Vibrations needed a drummer. “Even though I was younger, I had my own drum set,” Foellger said about becoming the drummer for The Vibrations. He began playing at parties and in church basements throughout Northern Kentucky. “I was so young, my mom had to drive me to band practice and to gigs,” Foellger recalled. “Eventually, my dad took some of the money I was making and bought an old ‘Cloverleaf Milk’ truck for us to pack our gear in and drive ourselves to gigs.”
This early venture into music left a young Mickey Foellger with only one goal in mind. “I was going to make it in the music business,” he said.
In the early 1960s, local radio disc jockeys would sponsor dance parties and sock hops at any venue they could find. The DJ would set up a venue, book a band, and promote it on air. The DJs would give the band a portion of the gate. Shad O’Shay had a popular show on WCPO radio and took a liking to Foellger and the new group for which he was keeping a beat – but he wanted to change the name. “Shad wanted to jump on the British Invasion and call us ‘The New Limeys,’” Foellger said smiling. “We settled on ‘The New Lime.’”
Under the production guidance of O’Shay, The New Lime started cranking out ‘45s. In 1965, “Whenever I Look in Her Eyes” made it to #12 on local charts.
Then, during one recording session, O’Shay asked the band if they had any ideas for a B-Side of an upcoming single. “So, another band member (Mike Boyd) and I wrote this four-chord keyboard song about a girl who had dumped me,” said Foellger. The song was “That Girl.”
O’Shay made sure “That Girl” got a lot of airplay and was eventually picked up by Columbia Records. In 1967, under the Columbia label, “That Girl” made it #1 on several regional charts across the country, as well as onto the national charts. A friend of Foellger’s heard it on the radio while on vacation in England.
Mickey Foellger’s dream of making it in the music business was realized when he got his first BMI royalty check. “It was a big number by 1968 standards,” he said, slowly drawing out the word “bbbbbiiiiiggggg.” “My dad made me promise I would not do something stupid with the money, like buy a new car. I consented but the next day I went out and bought a Jaguar XKE.”
Even though he would eventually be elected to the Campbell County bench, Mickey Foellger was not very interested in politics at the time. However, does remember The New Lime playing a set before Hubert Humphrey made a political speech in Cincinnati.
Foellger paints a picture of a vibrant Northern Kentucky music scene in 1968. On any given weekend, you could go to hear great live music from groups like The Dingos, The Exiles, The Corvairs, The Satins or The Denims. Many of the players in these groups went onto bigger groups. Panny Sarakatsannis of the Satins played with James Brown. Bill Reeder of the Ventures became the musical director for Wayne Newton in Las Vegas.
Danny Morgan teamed up with Foellger and Cincinnati Bengal/Nashville songwriting legend Mike Reed and opened for John Denver and the Beach Boys. He also toured with the original Pure Prairie League frontman, Craig Fuller and opened for Little Feat.
During 1968, John Domaschko was toting his bass around the region as a member of the Dingos, playing dances and being the house band at a club called Grannies in Oxford. He remembers the year as a schizophrenic one for music. “On one hand, you saw all these breakthrough bands following the influence of the Beatles,” Domaschko said, referencing names like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. “On the other hand, bubble-gum pop groups started to get airplay.”
By John Domaschko’s account, two things happened in late 1967 influencing music in the following year. First, there was the Beatles’ release of the LP Magical Mystery Tour. He described life in a band at the time as “waiting for the next Beatles’ album to come out and then just copying the whole thing.”
“Magical Mystery Tour was different,” Domaschko said of The Beatles new psychedelic sound. “The day it was released, we bought a copy, listened and were absolutely blown away. We immediately worked up an arrangement of the title track and the Dingos played it the next night at a “Battle of the Bands” competition. Even the other bands gave us props.”
The second thing happening to rock music setting the stage for 1968 was more personal to Domaschko and the Dingos. They went to a concert to hear Herman and the Hermits but left with a new sound running through their heads, compliments of the warmup band – The Who. “Crowds wanted to be engaged,” he recalls “So everybody started looking to these new sounds for songs to play.”
The Denems were also quite popular in Northern Kentucky. For their haircuts, matching outfits and British covers, many local radio stations referred to the group as “Cincinnati’s Beatles.”
Adrian Belew of the Denems became – well Adrian Belew – one of the most influential guitarists in rock music. A drummer for the Denems, Belew taught himself guitar during a high school bout with mononucleosis. He left Northern Kentucky and headed to Nashville where he was discovered by Frank Zappa, for whom he ended up playing lead guitar.
Quite simply, the list of Adrian Belew’s musical chops is longer than a Zappa concerto. Known in 1968 as Steve Belew, he played lead guitar for the likes of David Bowie, Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, the Bears (a/k/a The Raisins) and Nine Inch Nails. He was the driving force behind King Crimson. Belew has 20 solo albums under his moniker and an Oscar on his shelf for composing the score to the Pixar short film, Piper.
The New Lime, The Denems and The Dingos (as well as several players from those groups) have all been inducted into the Northern Kentucky Music Legends Hall of Fame.
On the countryside of music, Northern Kentuckian Skeeter Davis continued her legendary career by releasing her 13th and 14th albums. The LPs Why So Lonely and I Love Flatt and Scruggs, climbed to #33 and #39h, respectively. Davis’ single “There’s a Fool Born Every Minute” reached #18 on the country singles charts.
Skeeter Davis is best remembered for songs still getting air play to this day. Her crossover country/pop “End of the World” and her classic anti-war anthem, “One Tin Soldier” can be heard on a regular basis. What is often forgotten about Davis is her influence on a generation of performers. Songs by Skeeter Davis were covered by a group of performers with diverse styles ranging from Bob Dylan to Debrah Harry and Michael Stipe. Lou Reed once credited Skeeter Davis as being an early influence on his music.
Another country star, Kenny Price from Florence, was at the beginning of his career. Standing at 6’6 and weighing close to 300 pounds, Price was known as the “Round Mound of Sound.” In 1968, the future Hee-Haw regular released his second of 23 albums, entitled Southern Bound. The album topped out at #23 on the country charts. And one song from the LP, “My Goal for Today,” topped out at #11 on the country singles chart. A section of U.S. 42 in Boone County – from I-75 to Gunpowder Road – is named after Price.
The enjoyment of an active music scene in Northern Kentucky was tempered by the continuous bad news coming out of Vietnam. Sargent Randall Welch of Covington lost his life in Vietnam. His mother said, “if players could have saved him, he’d have come back to us.” Corporal Clyde David Downard of Falmouth was killed just three days after his nineteenth birthday.
The reserve unit deployed from Carroll County got two weeks leave in October. While the men were enjoying their time back home, they were nervously anticipating being shipped to Vietnam. Captain Gerald Wilhoit had been talking to the soldiers returning from the conflict. “We found out first hand what it’s all about,” he said. Many of the men he had spoken to refused to be sent to Chicago to quell the anti-war demonstrations. “They had been to Vietnam,” said Wilhoit.
When asked where they might be stationed once deployed to Southeast Asia, one soldier replied he did not know. “But to our families the Vietnamese towns all sound alike.”
Also coming home in October was one of the draftees being followed by The Kentucky Post and Times Star, Army Specialist John Gerding of Southgate. Just prior to his return, an enemy soldier breached the security where he was stationed and booby-trapped their recreation area. “I guess I got out just in time,” he said.
The promise of a spirited presidential campaign in the Commonwealth was squashed. The Humphrey camp announced early in the month, they were writing off the chance of winning Kentucky in an effort to be competitive in states with larger electoral vote counts. Knowing the news was a harsh blow to every candidate on the ballot, local Democrats scrambled at the news.
The Democratic candidate for United States Senate, Katherine Peden, tried to distance herself from Hubert Humphrey. “Kentucky is not going to elect the next president with its nine electoral votes,” she declared. “But it will elect a senator by popular vote.”
In the race for the Fourth District Congressional seat, the incumbent Gene Snyder and the challenger Gus Sheehan were both focusing on those voters backing George Wallace. “Wallace – Snyder” and “Wallace-Sheehan” bumper stickers began popping up around Northern Kentucky. Snyder went as far as saying he and Wallace shared many policy views.
The Kentucky Post and Times Star doubled down on their previous endorsement of Richard Nixon for President, publishing two more editorials. In one they said Nixon was “a changeover to fresh, experienced, able leadership already facing in the direction of achieving an honorable peace in Southeast Asia, a sound and responsible fiscal policy, a return to law and order in the cities and deceleration of precipitous sociological programs.” The editorial stated voting for Hubert Humphrey or George Wallace was “unthinkable,” labeling Humphrey as status quo and Wallace as an agitator.
There was an unsuccessful effort to get President Johnson to make a follow up appearance to his Thomas More visit. Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Edwin Muskie made a brief stop at the airport and assured about a thousand supporters his ticket would win Kentucky.
Democratic Party leaders were not buying it. The chair of the state Democratic party reminded local officials of the “loyalty oath” they signed when running under the party label in order to keep them from backing George Wallace. Republican voter registration was up in Boone, Kenton, and Campbell Counties. Some polls showed Humphrey running a poor third in Kentucky, a proposition conceivably striking the party from its automatic position on the state’s next ballot.
In the midst of the electoral turmoil, the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, came to town for a rally across the river, choosing to stay at the President Motor Inn on Dixie Highway in Ft. Wright. Supporters waving handmade signs lined the streets as the Nixon motorcade made its way to the motel. The Kentucky Post and Times Star ran an entire article about their stay, commenting on what they ate, the staff waiting on them and the pages running errands for them.
Possibly the most notable news of the month was about the region’s inside ties to the Nixon and Humphrey campaigns. Dixie High School graduate Ron Ziegler was Nixon’s top press aide and Cynthiana’s Ann Swinford was heading up one of Humphrey’s advance teams.
Following his 1957 graduation from Dixie Heights High School, Ron Ziegler and his wife (Nancy Plessinger of Ft. Wright) moved to California where he worked in advertising. He had met Nixon during the candidate’s unsuccessful run for Governor of California. “In June, Nixon asked me to join the campaign and I jumped at the chance,” he said. Ziegler and his staff of eight ran the entire Nixon press operation. “We handle all requirements of the national press in relation to the candidate,” Ziegler stated. He even had a court stenographer constantly following Nixon taking down his every word. He gave high praise to his boss, saying “Mr. Nixon is highly intelligent. He has the quality to get the most out of people. He draws confidence.” Ziegler was twenty-nine years old at the time.
Following Nixon’s victory, Ron Ziegler would become the White House Press Secretary. He never forgot his roots and returned to Northern Kentucky regularly.
Cynthiana’s Ann Swinford was the twenty-five-year-old daughter of United States District Court Judge Mac Swinford and quite proud of her Democratic Party roots. She was at the party’s convention in Chicago as a staffer and witnessed the violence in the streets. “I don’t believe in revolution,” she said. Instead, she chose to make her mark by working through the system. Following the convention, she was given a job as an advance person, traveling in front of the candidate to make sure everything ran smoothly.
The contrasting articles about Ziegler and Swinford mark the times about the role of men and women in the world of politics and business. The article on Swinford noted that while she would likely be out of a job following the election, there were plenty of opportunities in Washington for secretaries like her who could take dictation at 120 words a minute. Zigler was asked if Nixon won, would he become the new president’s Press Secretary.
The establishment of Northern Kentucky University hit another bump in the road when a dust up occurred on whether the extension campus of the University of Kentucky located in Park Hills should remain a part of U.K. Eastern Kentucky University President Robert Martin, who also served as the chair of the state Council on Higher Public Education believed the extension should be turned over to the newly established college. The president of Thomas More college opposed the move, as did The Kentucky Post and Times Star. Their reasoning sounds much like today’s arguments for workforce training. “Some educators see [community colleges] as primarily technical training schools, capable of turning out employable technicians in two years. Others consider them weeding-out centers for future university students. Still others contend they must be a combination of the two, and it will take time to discover what the state needs most from them.”
While it took more time than was reasonably expected, today Kentucky has a flourishing community college under a Board of Regents independent of the University of Kentucky. Gateway Community and Technical College stands as a testament to the need for community-based education.
Finally in October 1968, two of those ever-reoccurring issues came to the forefront in Northern Kentucky – interstate traffic and city/county government. News reports about when I-275 and I-471 would be started tried to determine truth from fiction. Road planners expected the first section of I-275 (from Erlanger west to the Ohio River) to be completed sometime in the 1971 – 1972 fiscal year, with I-471 possibly taking longer. Of course, politics were allegedly involved in the delays with Kentucky Governor Louie Nunn blaming a freeze in federal road funds and promising a vote for Richard Nixon would bring attention to the need for Northern Kentucky roadwork.
Near the end of the month, The Northern Kentucky Area Council (with representatives from each city in Boone and Campbell Counties) asked the Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission to conduct a study of joining the two counties into one mega-city. Campbell County Judge Executive Lambert Heil (D) compared it to Gulliver being tied down by the little people Lilliput. “We could be so much stronger if we were cooperating – working for each other – instead of against,” said Heil.
Nearly six decades (and a countless number of merger studies, consolidation recommendations and visioning sessions) later, Northern Kentucky remains a cookie cutter map of thirty-seven municipalities, twenty-two fire departments, twenty-six police departments and 13 school districts.
Rick Robinson’s award-winning books can be found at area bookstores and are available on Amazon. In a new book to be released later this year, he will be viewing Northern Kentucky through the lens of 1968. If you wish to contact Robinson with a story or thoughts about 1968, you may do so at neverleavefish@gmail.com. Photo credits compliments of Kenton County Library Faces and Places. Unless otherwise noted, all stories and quotes from 1968 are from articles that appeared in The Kentucky Post and Times-Star.