Squaresville had a troubled existence. I wanted to use the excellent players I had brought together for the second Big Junior CD. But, that project died a slow messy death.
"Squaresville" (in my mind) was to be a continuation of Bunny's and my "Big Junior" project. Our really good players kept getting hijacked by music groups that were far more popular than "Big Junior". And I don't blame those guys... our repetoire was a good deal of stuff that Bunny and I were writing, and the remainder of our set lists were my idea of a carefully 'curated' bunch of tunes by old-school Blues guys and women, some 40's era jazz stuff. Some sentimental pop tunes from bygone eras, "God Bless the Child" (Billie Holiday), "Sentmental Journey" (Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day, Willie Nelson), "Little by Little" (Junior Wells), "(Ain't no Cure for the) Summertime Blues", Eddie Cochran, Bunny did a surprisingly rockin' "Roll Over Beethoven". John Lennon's "Imagine" provided a dose of social comment, which I always push, and, I would test the crowd's patience with the Dylan classic "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", all nine verses. I wonder if I could trust my memory like that again.
The "Big Junior" band worked often with "Wedding Gig" agents. The pay was good, but infrequent. The guys we put all this together with were all 'first call' musicians, and an aquaintaince of mine (but no friend) ran a "show band" that did strictly tunes that were in high-rotation Top-40 radio play. This guy did very popular (I guess) imitations of Mick Jagger and Elvis, and had a house gig at a big bar out on South Sante Fe. And since the guys Bunny and I played with, and recorded with, were all in a somewhat defined circle of players and singers a few of our guys were eventually hired off our "Big Junior" enterprise, to play with the show band out on South Sante Fe.
