The Fabulous Paradons - Early Days

1963 - John Richardson, Joe Musiel, John Gardner, Jon Elvin, Larry Riggers

1964 - Joe Musiel, Dave Pruessler, John Richardson, Bob Miller, John Gardner

Pictures courtesy of John Gardner

The Paradons circa 1988 courtesy of Rusty Eck. Tim Heintz, Joe "Pode" Musiel and Rusty.

The Fabulous Paradons 1964

Joe Musiel, Rusty Eck, Dave Pruessler, John Gardner, Sandy Eck

Picture circa 1964 courtesy of Rusty Eck.

The Story of the "Purple" Light

When the ambulance/hearse was purchased from the City of Kamiah it still had the red light on top - and it was FUNCTIONAL. Stories about the red light will come later but this is about how the red light became purple. One afternoon as I was driving on the way to a gig we were pulled over by a state patrolman near Jaques Spur. Being a law-abiding person, I rolled down my window and respectively handed my driver's license to the officer. Of course we had no knowledge of why he had pulled us over. The officer pointed to the red light on top and said he had received complaints from people that had been pulled over by us using the red light and a siren. I assured the nice officer that we had no siren, but he insisted on looking under the hood for himself and proceeded to the front. We knew that the hood was sprung and that if you were not careful opening it the hood would spring out and knock you on your butt. As I reached for the door handle the officer told me to stay in the rig and he would look for himself. I tried to warn him, well not too hard. We watched as he pulled the lever - the hood sprung out, hitting him in the chest and knocking him back a couple of feet. He tried to look composed while we tried not to burst out laughing. Looking under the hood, he pointed to something and said, "What's that?" I replied that it was a vacuum whistle (the whistle could be operated to sound like a siren and I had that pretty well mastered). Of course he wanted to hear it, and leaned over the fender about 8 inches from the whistle. To this day I swear the devil made me do it - I grabbed the ring and pulled sending a ear-splitting shriek into the air. The officer jumped, hitting his head on the hood and knocking off his hat onto the dirt. I knew we were dead meat. Mr. Patrolman grabbed his hat, dusted it off and stomped around to my window. Almost throwing my license back at me he roared to get rid of the red light AND the vacuum whistle or the next time he saw us he would confiscate the rig and haul us to jail. The next day Joe and I painted the lens of the light purple but at night it still looked RED! We never did get rid of the vacuum whistle.

Ambulance/Hearse

This classic Cadillac ambulance/hearse was the band rig for the Paradons. It was purchased from the City of Kamiah by Joe and Bob and was used for several years to carry all of the band equipment. Originally painted gray and black with red crosses on the doors, it was decided that a repaint was in order. After a couple of weekends of sanding it was sprayed a bright yellow - hard to miss, eh? Above the driver's compartment there was a zipper in the headliner concealing a shelf that would hold a couple of cases of "beverages". In the back, a compartment where medical supplies originally were kept would hold another two cases of "beverages". There was talk of a hole underneath the jump seats through which items magically disappeared. There are many memories, maybe we will share some of those at a future time.