That time Deke Dickerson went to NYC to meet Billy Miller of Norton Records

 

Here's teenage guitar prodigy Deke with Billy Miller and Glenn "The Fang" Damato on bongos at Billy & Miriam's pad in 1986.

Here's the scoop from Deke...

"In 1986, I was working at a grocery store in my hometown of Columbia, Missouri. Columbia was unique in the state, it had a citywide can and bottle deposit law that required people to bring their empty cans and bottles back to the grocery store. 

"The summer I graduated from high school, Pepsi started a contest where you could save 1000 bottle caps and get a free round-trip plane ticket anywhere in the United States. Because of my access to the “bottle room” at the grocery store I worked at, I bent the rules (to say the least) and would leave after every shift with 40 or 50 Pepsi bottle caps stuffed into my pockets. Soon, I had 1000 bottle caps and a round-trip plane ticket in my hands. I knew where I wanted to go: I wanted to go to New York City to meet Billy and Miriam from Kicks magazine (later they wound start a record label, Norton Records).

"My mom and dad were understandably worried about letting a 17-year-old kid loose in the Big Apple with two people they had never met. Luckily, Billy and Miriam were excellent hosts, and encouraged my aspiring rock ‘n’ roll foolishness, which directly led to my music career. I stumbled across this photograph tonight, and it sure doesn’t seem like 34 years ago. That is the late, great, dearly missed Billy Miller in the Reese‘s peanut butter cups shirt, 17-year-old me posing with the acoustic guitar, and “The Fang” Glenn Damato on bongos. 

"It was complete sensory overload for a Midwest hick like myself. Records, books, pictures, posters, wild-patterned barkcloth, jukeboxes, hell they even had a little diner counter built into their Brooklyn loft! It opened my eyes, and I liked what I saw. It was like discovering the world was glorious technicolor...I had a hard time going back to tan and brown after that. 

"I remember the High Point of this particular evening was calling legendary rockabilly artist Joe Clay on the phone, who at that time had been recently discovered driving a school bus in Louisiana. It didn’t seem possible—you could just call a big star like Joe Clay on the PHONE? A quarter of a century later, I backed up Joe Clay at Lincoln Center in New York City. If only that innocent 17-year old kid in the photo could have seen into the future. Miss you, Billy Miller."