ROSS ROSCO HELCO
My personal Bio is posted on this page and it starts where it says
— Rosco’s Story —-
“This all started when my dad bought me a snare drum and my sister, Corinne, a guitar for Christmas in 1961. Sometime in early January, my sister approached me and said there was a talent show for us 9th graders sometime in March or April of 1962, and she asked me if i wanted to audition for it. I answered yes, and said that I thought we could work out something for the show.”
“I then went home and told my dad that I was going to need a bass drum and a cymbal too. He laughed and went along with it. After getting my new equipment and rehearsing with Corinne, we went to the audition. We had two songs worked out, and the teacher in charge liked us and said that we would be the opening act for the talent show.”
“Shortly thereafter, two other guitar players, Ron Aitken and Emery Rentschler, approached me and asked if I could be their drummer for the talent show. I said yes, and our trio was put on as the last act. The two songs we did were Apache by Jorgen Ingmann and Walk Don’t Run by the Ventures. After that performance, my life changed forever.”
“During our first year in 1962, we played a lot of house parties in our neighborhood, and that summer we named ourselves ‘The Regents 3’. In the fall we added John Lollio as our lead singer and changed the name of our band to John Lollio and the Regents 3.”
“Lollio only stayed with with for a few months, and after he left, we changed the name back to The Regents. Not too long after, we added a fellow 10th grade classmate named Jan Wissmuller as our bass player. For the rest of the school year we played more house parties, halftime at high school basketabll games, and some of the 10th grade sock hops.”
“By the end of 1963, we started playing at the Huron Valley Teen Club in Flat Rock, Michigan, where all the bands around the area would play on Friday nights. Teens could go to the club and the bands started playing from 6:00 PM until midnight. You could see five or six different bands play at any given night. I think Huron Valley Teen Club was one of the very first of its kind. The next year, and a few years after, saw the rise of other clubs including The Chatter Box, The Pumpkin, and the Livonia Teen Club where area teenagers hung out every weekend.”
“The Livonia Teen Club was where we first met Bobby Dayton. He sang like a bird – awesome voice and awesome range too! After that show, we talked it over and decided that the next time we meet up with him, we’ll ask him to join our band. That chance came just a few weeks later at The Pink Pussycat Teen Club on Middlebelt and Van Born Road. We asked him that night and he replied that his band was in the process of breaking up and his drummer was going into the military service, and that he was ecstatic that we wanted him to join us.”
“Dayton was a perfect match for our band, and there wasn’t a song we couldn’t do. Soon after, we got noticed by a couple important DJs, Robin Seymour from CKLW and Gary Stevens from WKNR. Stevens became our silent manager and we changed our name to Bobby Dayton and the Daytonas. Stevens had connections that provided him with rec.
