There are certain local records—Roland Stone’s “Just A Moment,” Milson Luce’s “Don’t Break Your Promise To Me,” the Jokers’ “There’s Got To Be A Girl,”—that in a justice-filled world would be on every jukebox in New Orleans. Of course, with a true music geek like yours truly at the helm, this list could go on forever, comprising everyone from Casonova and the Chants to the Zoofs. But in all fairness, to really boil it down, you’ve got to zero in on the real local hits, the songs that people endlessly wax poetic about to this day. “Last Chance” by the curiously-named Collay and the Satellites is just such a song.
If Cosimo Matassa’s goal as a recording engineer was “to freeze moments in time” as he’s so often put it, he surely froze a moment when he cut this gem. It’s one of those records where the atmospherics just stop you dead in your tracks. The drums create a laid-back beat, all the while pushing and pulling the otherwise primitive instrumentation along insistently over a vocal line that seemingly lays every teenage concern bare:
“You had your last, last chance / The last chance it’s true / For the last game we played /Was the last one for you.”
After years of wondering just who the genius behind this aural masterpiece was, I found out that the “Collay” on the record was short for Allen Collay, and in January of 2003 I found myself headed to a club in Metairie called the Maxx to check out my hero in person. Typically, the crowd was small, but then again, the gig—which had been going for several months at that time—was barely advertised. When I arrived shortly after midnight, I was told that I’d just missed Collay devotee Allen Toussaint, who’d been there for the duration of the first set.
When the music started, I immediately heard what had kept Toussaint’s attention—and what had probably inspired him to produce a string of Collay’s records on the Instant label back in the early ’60s. Despite having suffered several small strokes and paralysis in his left hand, Collay was firing on all cylinders, tearing up the grand piano in a smoky, late night Ray Charles style and singing in a voice that lay somewhere between Ronnie Barron, Dr. John and Charles himself. He was backed tastefully by Spike Perkins on upright bass and the inimitable Freddie Staehle on drums.
I later found out that the reason Collay had been so elusive on the scene as of late is that he currently resides in Mexico, Missouri. “I was born in New Orleans but I grew up in St. Bernard, in a little town called Violet,” recalls Collay, also noting that he spent much of his childhood with his uncle and other family members on Delacroix Island. “I did a lot of fishing with my family but no one was involved in music. I remember as a little kid, four or five, something like that, just listening to the radio. What was great is I listened to all sorts of music, I cared for it all. Around six-years-old my mother took me to a talent show with Pete Fountain and Tony Almerico’s band. I don’t know how, but I ended up winning. Tony asked my mother if he could bring me to the Parisian Room on Royal Street, where he and Pete played for a living. So I started singing there every Sunday. I was around seven then.” (A case could be made for the Parisian Room’s unwitting influence on the emerging New Orleans rock ‘n’ roll scene: after winning a similar contest, Staehle and future Jokers pianist Richard Ladner were teamed with Nick LaRocca, Jr. as a child version of the club’s house band!)
“The first paying job I had was in Violet at a little church with a group called the Jerry Caluda Orchestra,” Collay continues. “I went there to a dance and someone asked Jerry if I could sit in. I’m sure it drove him nuts—‘Sit in,’ that’s nightmare city, especially with a kid!—but I sang a couple tunes with him and everybody liked it. I made nine dollars in tips and I thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened. They called me a couple of days later and asked if I’d like to work with them on weekends. I was big stuff then, baby, I was about nine! I just loved it so much.”
So much in fact, that it soon began to encompass his entire life. “I didn’t go to high school, I didn’t go to grammar school, I just had music on my mind. Everybody thought I was on dope because I’d go out and work when I was in grade school and then just fall asleep at my desk the next morning. I just couldn’t handle it. I failed in the fourth, fifth and sixth grade and went through it another year and failed again so I said to hell with it. Back then they didn’t bug you that much if you didn’t go to school.”
Around this time Collay had his first experience with the instrument he’d later master—the piano. It was hardly a positive one. “My mother set up some piano lessons on an old upright, I mean the big ones that weighed fifty thousand pounds. I hated the piano to begin with and especially the piano teacher who was totally bananas. An old, old lady, I don’t even know how she was allowed to teach she was so bad. She was terribly bad. So I took a few lessons and just hated it.
“But I had started playing guitar when I was 12. The guy that got me into playing guitar used to sit out on his porch playing country tunes and he taught me the old country thing ‘Just Because.’” Collay’s introduction to rock ‘n’ roll came via Sparks guitarist J.V. Papania. “I just loved the Sparks, man, I thought they were the greatest band in the world. J.V. was the best guitarist I’d ever heard in my life. I started playing some sock hops with J.V. at a hall way in the back of Arabi. Everything was real primitive; I didn’t even have an electric guitar, just an acoustic and they had to put a mike up against it. J.V. had this little guitar—I think he might have even built it—that I thought was the coolest thing and he was getting a new one so he sold it to me for 30 bucks. Then I got a sunburst Fender Stratocaster and formed a little put-together, three chord band of my own, the Satellites, when I was about 16. I recorded ‘Last Chance’ with them at Cosimo’s.”
“Last Chance” was issued on the local Sho-Biz label in 1959 backed with “Little Girl Next Door,” a raving rocker that has since become a cult classic on the underground rockabilly scene. Collay recalls the events that led up to his recording debut: “I was working for a record distributor, Joe Banashak, putting records in sleeves and I guess I sang it for Joe. He said, ‘Well, I’ll set you up with Buddy Cornell and Jim Stewart.’ Bud was the head of WNOE and Jim Stewart was his crony and they had just started a record label. They liked it so Jim said, ‘Well, let’s go in and record it.’ They put it on WNOE and played the hell out of it, it was Number One for several weeks all through the state. Having the clout that they had, every time you’d turn around you’d hear the song.”
While the record broke out of New Orleans and peaked at number 82 on the national pop charts in 1960, Sho-Biz unleashed another local classic, Bobby Mitchell’s rendition of Guitar Slim’s “Well, I Done Got Over It.” The label’s two biggest stars began making appearances together. “Bobby didn’t have a car and I didn’t even have a driver’s license so a friend of mine used to take us around to Bogalusa, Baton Rouge, Gulfport…usually there was a local group that would back us up. We did a show at the Municipal Auditorium and that was great. Mac Rebennack was leading the band and besides Bobby and myself, Jimmy Clanton, Brenda Lee, Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed were there. Jimmy was always wasted. He would smoke a joint if you had one but he really loved the booze. That night Jimmy was just sprawled out back stage, sitting back with his guitar trying to tune it. He had a bottle on the side of him and he was drinking it, trying to tune this thing. And as far as he was concerned, he’d just gotten it tuned, it was perfect. And I came down the steps toward the stage area and ran right into the neck of his guitar. I didn’t even see it. And he just had a fit! Said, ‘Man, I’ve been tuning this thing for two hours!’ I said, ‘Oh, Jimmy, I’m so sorry baby…’
“I stayed with the Satellites maybe a year or two after that and then I formed the Counts with pianist Al Farrell. I also worked spot jobs with Mac and Earl Stanley.” After cutting some sides for Ace Records—followed by the aforementioned Allen Toussaint-helmed sessions for Instant—Collay took a job in Atlanta with Bobby Lonero’s band. “I was making nothing here,” he remembers. “It was just like now, musicians suffering like you wouldn’t believe. So I left because I knew I was gonna make more money. Bobby came back to New Orleans and I wanted to stay so I put together a group and we played there for about three years ’til the job dwindled out. The owner asked if I could play piano because he had a smaller lounge. He said, ‘I can put you in with a trio in the other place.’ So I went home, took out the guitar, hit a chord and found it on the piano. I learned 15 tunes to get by with and that started the piano thing. If it wasn’t for that job I’d probably still be playing the guitar!
“I was in Atlanta for 30 years,” says Collay, who wound up joining the group Atlanta—put together by the same man who’d masterminded Alabama—while he was there. “I wish I wouldn’t have left because I would have had New Orleans music in my blood all the while. I never did lose it but there was so much more I could have learned. New Orleans music is totally different, it’s got a feel of its own.”
Upon returning to his hometown in the ’90s, Collay began a notorious stint at the original Mo’s Chalet that’s still spoken of with reverent hilarity by those who were fortunate enough to have witnessed it. Singer Marilyn Mestier, who became his partner-in-crime on stage at the Chalet, was one of those fortunate souls. “It was an atmosphere that you could never get back again,” she laughs. “He and I were thrown together and I was really amazed with his talent. And personality-wise we hit it off. Because I’m nuts on the stage and he was the straight man, it was perfect. It was like an act but it was all ad-libbed. Every night we played together, there was something crazy happening. And I drove him absolutely nuts ’cause I was always doing something stupid. One time a guy put a parrot on his mike stand and Allen says, ‘I don’t believe this! If this bird shits on my piano I’m puttin’ him in a pie! Marilyn, you ready?’ I said ‘What?’ He starts playing ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and I start singing and the bird is just lovin’ his music, he’s sittin’ almost on Allen’s lap. It was hysterical, I mean you couldn’t make this stuff up!”
Collay has been wanting to return to New Orleans since last year’s gig at the Maxx, but has been struggling with his health for the past year, having had both of his legs amputated due to his diabetic condition. Mestier is currently putting together a benefit to help him pay his mounting medical bills, which will also be a great opportunity to see him perform with some of New Orleans’ most treasured musicians. Though she’s still waiting on the exact date, it will definitely be on a Sunday in July at the Harahan Lyons Club. Check this column next month for more details or call Marilyn at 466-0980.
