EP 410. From the Vault: Lynyrd Skynyrd Remembered

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all for joining me on a very special episode of Duck Season Somewhere. Been working on this a little bit, guys, I have never fallen off down a rabbit hole about a subject matter non duck hunting related in my entire life. But I have and to kick this episode off, I’ve got my buddy Lee Kjos on the other line. How are you, Lee?

Lee Kjos: I’m good, man. How are you?

Ramsey Russell: I’m doing good, Lee. I’m glad to have you on the phone because of course, we’ve said it in other podcasts before, we connected pretty strongly over duck hunting, but also our love of rock and roll and music and things of that nature. If I asked you who your favorite band in the world was, who would it be?

Lee Kjos: Skynyrd.

Ramsey Russell: Lynyrd Skynyrd. Absolutely. Which is the subject of today’s podcast.

Lee Kjos: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Lee, growing up, I was a young man when they died, when the band ended. And I’m talking about the real band, not this other band. I’m talking about the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1977. Today as everybody’s listening, is October 19^th. And on October 19^th, 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd exited the stage in Greenville, South Carolina, having played what ended up being their final concert. At the time, they were the absolute pinnacle of rock and roll concert success. They were the top. They were the best. And all these years later, 44 years later, man who doesn’t walk. What duck Hunter. What man doesn’t walk just a little bit taller than his crocs when he hears a Lynyrd Skynyrd song. Am I the only one that, I’m cruising through the radio and I hear Skynyrd and I just turn it up. I know the word of my, I turn it full blast to this day, man. What was it about Skynyrd that made him your favorite band, Lee?

Lee Kjos: Oh, boy. The word influencer runs rampant social media platforms and stuff now and but when you look at, like, a real influence, I mean, obviously, I’m a photographer and an art guy in my whole life and you would think photography, other photographers is what influenced me. Well, that’s not quite true. What influences me is original works of art. And in your informative years, like in your early teens, I think when you’re starting to your buddies are everything to you back then, you’re starting to get in girls and your group of kids is like, it’s your whole life at that time. I mean, ducks have always been there with me. But I had time for this. Well, in those years back then, Lynyrd Skynyrd, like, when that album pronounced came out and those grungy looking rock stars were – you remember the album, they’re sitting on that street corner or they’re on that sidewalk and this is back when Burns was the drummer. It wasn’t Artimus Pyle yet, but still, it’s that Skynyrd. And then you think about those 4 songs that came off of that one album, Three Steps, Simple Man, Tuesday’s Gone and then Free Bird to end it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lee Kjos: Okay, now here’s what I’m going to tell about that, because this is how big they were when I was a kid when you’re in high school or junior high or whatever and you’d have a pep fest.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lee Kjos: It was in the gymnasium. The whole school would come out and it’s homecoming and somebody would be speaking the principal or something like that. So can we swear here on this? Can we swear?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, go ahead.

Lee Kjos: So you sit there and some dude would yell fucking Skynyrd. Like they would yell this stuff during the principal talking. My point is, I highly doubt anybody screaming Taylor Swift at a pep fast. You know what I mean? It was just. Well, you and I talk about this all the time. The 70s were so different and I bet most people that grew up in it, music was a major part of life. Now, we didn’t buy, like, a tune here or there on iTunes. We followed the band. You attached yourself to a band. You travel, you do anything to get to go see the band. If you saw it on a magazine, you’d buy the article. You know what I mean?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lee Kjos: You’d devour the albums. Like, I remember when one more from the road came out. The live album was a double album just devouring that the jacket, the album cover. That’s what made Skynyrd so good. They were organic even though. Even though they were in for you’d go, well, southern rock. And the first southern rock, the guy, the band that defined that genre probably would be the Allman Brothers. And sure, they had an influence, but dude, Skynyrd took that southern fried rock shit to a new level. In fact, the dude that influenced Van Zant more than any of them was Paul Rodgers of the group Free. And that’s the British band.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Lee Kjos: But what I’m saying is they were so original and organic. And when you saw them live, oh, my God, dude, it was like they were on fire.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s because they were authentic. And that what I was getting at what strikes me about this conversation, I’ve got some buddies down in McComb that had a guest speaker that Mr. Gene Odom and I listened to it. That’s right. Here’s the deal as southern born and raised in the state of Mississippi, I always took a sense of ownership in Lynyrd Skynyrd, their music spoke to me. It just gave me a sense of southern pride. It was kick butt rock. And back in the day when it meant a whole total, totally different thing, they had that rebel flag back there and it just spoke to me as a southern. And I knew that back in 1977, there had been a plane wreck in the state of Mississippi that Ronnie and several others passed, and The Band, as it was known, died in 1977. It died. And I’ve never driven past McComb, Mississippi, exit that I didn’t think about that. Well, it didn’t happen there. It happened about 30 miles away, off in the middle of nowhere woods, even for the state of Mississippi. And as I started tracking down this story, I just became overwhelmingly enamored with the story. I mean, you’re talking about an authenticity I don’t know how you become a rock star, but I can tell you, for the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, it wasn’t overnight. They went off to a remote cabin, a little red house out in the sticks on a bow and they called it the hell house because there was no air conditioning. And they showed up at 08:00 in the morning and they left at 08:00 or 09:00 or midnight that night. And they practiced and they tuned and they played all day, every day, all day, every day. Practice, practice for 10 years. They dedicated themselves to this art and to that sound. And finally, somebody took a chance. Finally, somebody took a chance on them and recorded an album, Pronounced. And in a very brief amount of time, they blew up. And I heard Mr. Gene was telling me last week that the Rolling Stones sold out 5 consecutive nights at Madison Square Gardens, which is a record only because Lynyrd Skynyrd did not live to fulfill their 7 sold out nights. And had they done it, they’d have been the – But it’s just that they would go and they were just constantly touring and recording and practicing and touring and recording and they never really got to come home and sink their teeth into success. They were the absolute, if you think back to the 70s bands, the absolute drug, sex, rock and roll, throwing tv out of windows, partying, hard rocking and just kicking people’s ass out there 90,000 people. Boom, rocking them. They were them. That was the band.

Lee Kjos: Oh, man. Okay, so you bring up the stones. And you think about Keith Richards and I mean, of course you see him now and he’s in a Louis Vuitton spot and stuff like that. I mean, he is a rock star. But we’ve seen, you’ve had decades with Keith Richards and Nick.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lee Kjos: You got to think about like when Pronounced came out. That was 1973. Okay, well, they craft Free Bird went down in 77. That’s short, man.

Ramsey Russell: Short.

Lee Kjos: That’s short. When older I’m 60, so I think I remember it, but it’s like so young that I’m not sure, but it was when JFK was assassinated and I’m not sure because what would that have been, 3, 4 years old? I mean, we are, you really remember that? But for sure, like, you remember when you heard about 911.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lee Kjos: Oh, I can tell you where I was when I saw it on the tv that Free Bird went down. I was in our hunting and fishing lodge up in big fork, Minnesota, shooting pool at night. And that thing came across the ticker, man, and I couldn’t believe it. It was shocking to, like, the kids, like my group. You know what I mean? We’re talking about this with another rocker the other day. We used to show up at parties with albums. Imagine that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I remember those days, I do remember those days.

Lee Kjos: Like, you had your mind live, you’re fucking Joseph’s here dude, he’s got Skynyrd. This was way different but, oh, it was absolutely the best. And seeing them live, oh, man dude.

Ramsey Russell: What I learned about them, what I learned about Lynyrd Skynyrd, I’ve listened to their music forever. That double album, live, has been in my, quote, playlist, unquote. It’s been in cassette form or CD form and now my phone form since I was in 9^th grade, my whole life, number one favorite album. And I love that live music. I love the energy of that music. But what I learned about these guys is they weren’t rock stars in a conventional sense. They were just guys. They were just barefoot country boys that liked to play music.

Lee Kjos: Don’t you think that’s because it wasn’t contrived.

Ramsey Russell: No, it was just, it was who they were.

Lee Kjos: It’s organic.

Ramsey Russell: It was just purely organic. And Lee, you and I talk about John Prine a lot, who to me was folk music and he drew such profound observations from his life experiences, and he was able to put them into song form that means something to people that listen to that music and Lynyrd Skynyrd was absolutely no different. I heard the story and it’ll be told later in this podcast about how Lynyrd Skynyrd came to be and how that smell came to be and how Curtis Loew they just, I learned different little parts of their lives growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, that became real music. And but they never lost their sense of, at least Ronnie Van Zant didn’t of self it’s like back before, they didn’t have a big, elaborate studios full of costumes that they wore on stage. They just, Ronnie just went to his closet and snapped a pair of blue jeans on and whatever t shirt is crocking –

Lee Kjos: Put on his Neil young t shirt.

Ramsey Russell: Put on his t shirt and he very likely was bass fishing in it just a week before, he drove a jeep. But, Lee, tell us about what it was like. I never saw him in concert. What was it like to see Lynyrd Skynyrd in concert?

Lee Kjos: Well, when I think back of being, well, I’ve been 13 when that first tour came out, back then, like you and I talk about, there are no more bands today. The bands are done. Back then, there were 2 places that would have concerts in the twin city area and it would be was the Met Center in Bloomington and the St. Paul Civic Center. And about every, if I can remember right, every 2 weeks, every month, some major band was there. So when tickets came on sale, we take our coins, we’d get on the bus and we’d go to, like, a record shop and the tickets would be on sale there or think maybe like Dayton’s or something like that. There’d be tickets there for sale. I want to say they were like $5, $6, $7, $8 the ticket. And you’d buy it, of course, months in advance. And you waited, like opening day, a duck hunting season. Skynyrd will be here. Then you’d get there. It would be dark and everybody would have their lighters not iPhones lit up. We had lighters back then. And the place would literally be lit from BIC lighters. And of course, you could smell weed. We called it pot back then, back in the day. And you could smell that. And people were usually passing a flask around and passing weed around, and then they would hit that first note and the lights would come on and it was like your hair was on fire for the next guy. They could play for 3 hours.

Ramsey Russell: And they just rocked.

Lee Kjos: They played their own music. They covered some other stuff. But of course, when the crowds Ronnie would always say what song is that you want to hear well? What would happen then? That’s like any politician playing to his base. I mean, we’d all screams Free Bird. And they’d play those first couple lyrics, man, and it was like. It gave you goosebumps.

Ramsey Russell: Gives me goosebumps here. And you say it right now?

Lee Kjos: It gave you goosebumps, man. It was really cool.

Ramsey Russell: I learned last week –

Lee Kjos: I got to tell my favorite live story.

Ramsey Russell: Go ahead.

Lee Kjos: And I don’t have to do it now. We can do it later. In the podcast, because it’s a critical time. We remember when Ed King. It wasn’t that long ago Ed King died. What was it, just a few months back?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lee Kjos: Okay. He’s the guy that did the lyric in –

Ramsey Russell: In Sweet Home Alabama.

Lee Kjos: In Sweet Home Alabama that broke into that little rift in the beginning. It’s just iconic. Well, if they recorded that first album at Muscle Shoals and Ed King loved the sound and everything about Muscle Shoals. Well, Ronnie wanted to do second helping somewhere else. Ed didn’t like that. No, this is from me reading. If I got to do what you did with who you were with, these are the questions that I would have asked is this what really happened? Okay. So anyway, they went a long time, and Ed King really didn’t like the music because he thought it was off brand from Pronounced.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lee Kjos: Well, when they went to the Oakland Coliseum, outdoors in front all. I’m screaming people. And it’s when Ronnie introduced Steve Gaines. And Gaines played the slide. And if you remember the beginning, for those people that are listening to this, go, you got to check this out, because this is like the happiest, you’ll ever see Ronnie Van Zandt in his life. They’re up there and they’re playing and blah, blah, blah. And Ronnie introduces Steve Gaines, an old Okie. He does that bit. And they start to bust, they start to the beginning of T for Texas and Gaines busts into this outrageous slide riff right out of Duane Allman stuff. And Ronnie just sits back and looks at him and just busts out laughing. Like, we’re back, dudes. Like, we’re back. And it really was a big moment. And even for, like, fans, like, when you heard that in that album, that live album, man, that one is fantastic. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Lynyrd Skynyrd. Lee, I went to Jacksonville, and here’s what listeners can expect for the remainder of this episode. I went to Jacksonville and I met with Mr. Gene Odom, who was a lifelong friend since childhood of Ronnie Van Zant’s and when they hit the big time, he was brought on by Ronnie Van Zant to be his personal bodyguard. Helped clean the band up, help get them ready. You know what I’m saying? I mean, they were heading down that path, and we talked about a lot of growing up in that neighborhood, some stories never before heard. Stories of who those band members were, especially Ronnie Van Zant. What he was like how he grew up and we talked about being on stage, talked about being on tour, talked about some really cool stuff about – to me, speak about who he was as a person, as a real person, as the authentic rock star. And then I found my way down to Amite County, Mississippi, and I got to meet persons from the local community down there that have since built a magnificent monument. I was told and have no reason to doubt that it’s about the 3^rd or 4^th largest granite monument in the state of Mississippi. It’s located about a quarter mile from the actual crash site. And I got to meet landowners and volunteer firemen and people within the community that were there when the plane went down. And they tell their story. They talk about how it affected them. They talk about why 4 decades, some odd later, they put hands in their own pockets and wanted to have this monument to this band. One of the most interesting things I did is I jumped in a jeep and we drove across a pasture and we walked up into the woods, and there’s this large beech tree that for decades, since the day after the crash, people have been finding it and carving initials and leaving mementos, and it’s scarred over carvings on top of scarred over carvings of people that felt compelled to connect to the band. And then we walked across the creek and just kind of stood on site to where exactly that plane was laying in. And it was odd. It was humbling, but to hear these stories, really, I think everybody’s really going to enjoy this podcast. I really do it. Lee, I got to ask you, before we part, what is your favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?

Lee Kjos: Oh, boy, Tuesday’s Gone.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I heard that. And I love that song myself. I really – catch me on a mood, it may be Simple Man. I think I’d have to stick with Simple Man or it might be –

Lee Kjos: It’s hard, it’s a tough one

Ramsey Russell: Free Bird, one or the other. And I learned last week that Free Bird and Stairway to Heaven for the last 40 some odd years have vied for the number one most requested, whatever you want to call it song. They vaccinate between first place, those 2 songs.

Lee Kjos: For sure. I loved, like, when Second Helping came out, like Curtis Loew back in the time. I mean dude, there’s so many. But I just think Tuesday’s Gone is like, iconic. Even more so than Free Bird. I know that sounds like blasphemy, but –

Ramsey Russell: No, well, I asked because everybody’s got their favorite. Everybody’s got a favorite song. Everybody. I guarantee everybody listening has a favorite song or a favorite half dozen songs

Lee Kjos: How about the difference in sound between the garage band sound of Pronounced in 73? And then when they did Street Survivors in the studio right before the crash. Yeah, but listen to how, like, clean – How clean the sound was in Street Survivors. But, I mean, still, it’s fan – I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s like the guitar playing and Alan and Gary and Steve and guitars and Billy Powell, he had his deal going always. He was always cool on the keyboards. And Artimus Pyle was a super cool. After Burns didn’t want to do it anymore because I think Ronnie just burned him out big time. But then Artimus Pyle took over and then, like, you were talking about the outdoor concert, look, when you’d see him and they’d have that confederate flag in back of him and he always wore, like, cutoffs, a pair of tennis shoes and high tube socks and no shirt on, and a red bandana was just blowing his hair and oh, my God, it’s just the cool. The coolest.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, we talked a little bit about that flag. It’s a totally –

Lee Kjos: I was going to ask you about that. Did you guys broach that subject? Because I mean –

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. We talked about it because Lee, let’s face it, man. The time has passed to that flag. It’s a whole different political climate and everything else than it was back then. I grew up under the shadow of that flag and never in a million years did it cross my mind anything that’s been said in the last 5 or 10 years about that flag, not one time. Let me tell you what that flag was to me and we said this in the podcast, and I’ll let you all listen to hear what Ronnie Van Zant’s words were. But to me, that flag was a big, fat middle finger to anybody that judged me by my accent, my bare feet, my hunting, my fishing, my ways in Mississippi. That’s all that flag ever made to me. You know what I’m saying? And it’s all it means to me to this day.

Lee Kjos: If we could keep that narrative, we could keep the flag alive. And I’m not here to start a fight.

Ramsey Russell: No.

Lee Kjos: I’m just saying to us, that is not what that thing represents.

Ramsey Russell: That is not what it represents.

Lee Kjos: It doesn’t have anything to do. I mean, look, wasn’t it on the general Lee and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Ramsey Russell: Sure.

Lee Kjos: I mean, it’s not what that was about. That’s not the way we viewed it. And I’m sorry. And like you say, we grow up and we learn things and we change. But –

Ramsey Russell: Well, it was hijacked and people changed the narrative about it.

Lee Kjos: Correct.

Ramsey Russell: And it lies in its past. But we do talk about that subject because when I think of Lynyrd Skynyrd, I think of a raw 1970s band and their only stage set prop. What a great big confederate flag.

Lee Kjos: Yeah. And all I can remember is Artimus with that giant fan blowing his hair, his long, wavy hair just blowing that and him beating the skins and that flag in the background. And that was Skynyrd. Oh, later on, they’d come out and they’d do working for MCA. You know what I’m talking about that riff in the beginning. And, I mean, dude, the house would just freak out, come apart like Trump did the other night. Come apart. His hair was started on fire and he – Oh, man.

Ramsey Russell: We’re going to jump on into this podcast now. You all hang on. I think you all are going to really, truly enjoy the story behind the music and listen to the very end if anybody’s asking themselves why a duck hunting podcast is doing a special and extra long episode on a rock band named Lynyrd Skynyrd, just listen to it and I think it’ll make sense. Thank you all. I’m in Jacksonville, Florida, and today’s special guest, Mr. Gene Odom. Gene, could you introduce yourself?

Gene Odom: Yeah. My name is Gene Odom in Jacksonville, Florida here, oak southern cracker. I work with the Van Lynyrd Skynyrd. Just security for Ronnie, bodyguard work. And here we are.

Ramsey Russell: How did you meet Ronnie? How did you know Ronnie to end up working for their security detail?

Gene Odom: We lived in the same neighborhood.

Ramsey Russell: You all grew up together.

Gene Odom: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Well, how long? I mean, since you all were children?

Gene Odom: Little kids.

Ramsey Russell: Little kids.

Gene Odom: As long as I can go back, remember. Yeah. When I go walk and we probably 200 yards difference in the high house.

Ramsey Russell: Used to play baseball together and go hunting and fishing and all that kind of stuff kids do right here in Jack. Go to racetrack.

Gene Odom: Yeah. Speedway Park right there, right down from the house where the great Leroy Yarber came from.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: We used to ride in the car with him.

Ramsey Russell: When you all were ever little boys. Did it cross your mind that Ronnie Van Zant would be the front man for the band, world famous band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Gene Odom: Not my mind. I don’t know, hanging lefty kind of guy. But I mean, let me tell you how he started that. First off, as real young Cassius Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay. Ronnie loved him. And so, Ronnie want to be a boxer, I’m going to be a boxer. And they say they got boxing gloves and a boy around the corner named Estes Godwin. Short, stocky, several years older than us. Ronnie put the gloves on with Estes and Estes just beat the tour out of him. And so that ended his boxing career then. That was in his boxing.

Ramsey Russell: I think it’s fun when you get punched.

Gene Odom: Oh, my God no. He didn’t need it. Of course, he was young, then he was only a teenager.

Ramsey Russell: But what was it like growing up in Jacksonville back in those days? We’d have been back in the early 60s, probably. And what was it like growing up? You all grew up hunting and fishing. I know from hearing you in other podcasts and talking. He was a big fisherman. You all did a lot of bass fishing down here.

Gene Odom: A lot of bass fishing. Young boys, we used to drag that aluminum boat up and down the banks of that bridge there, Timuquana. And when we first got to drive before that, it was bicycles. We’d ride bicycles to fish down Cedar Creek and out there off Timuquana. He loved it. He loved the bass fish.

Ramsey Russell: That’s good. And there’s even a story he eventually caught his fish of a lifetime.

Preserving the Prize at Lake Delancey’s Fish Camp

He always wanted a trophy bass, I had several of them and he wanted a trophy bass.

Gene Odom: Yes, he did, and I was with him. He always wanted a trophy bass, I had several of them and he wanted a trophy bass. And he always wanted an old pickup truck. So he got both of them right before he died. And I was with him when he put that. It was 12 pound 8oz, I think. 11 pound 8oz, 12 pound 8oz. Anyway, it was 12 pounds, a big bass. And I got it and flipped it in the boat for him. And it was the best day of his life, jumping around. I mean, he was hugging me and just said, misses Gene, I got it misses. This is it little John boat. And I said, hey, quit. You going to sink the boat and I can’t swim. I said, you go sink the boat, man. He said, let’s go. First thing he said after he calmed down, he said, let’s go weigh it. Let’s go weigh it. Let’s go to the guy that had a little fish camp there on Lake Delancey. We could weigh and he had a fish tank. We could put it in and keep it alive when we – till we got through fish.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. That’s awesome. When did he decide, I want to be a rock star? How did that come about?

Gene Odom: Well, after Estes punched him out, At Lee high school, he decided, I think it was Jim Brown. Running back Ronnie Van Zant said, I’m going to be a football star. And at Lee High School, he went out for the team and he made the team. And the very first practice game, scrimmage, he got tackled and broke his ankle and had to put pins in his ankle. And that made him 4 f, so he couldn’t be drafted. So there went his football career. And I didn’t go with him. It’s the first time the Rolling Stones came to Jacksonville. His good buddy Bill Ferris and Jim Daniel went with him to see the Rolling Stones. And Ronnie saw Mick Jagger on that stage dancing. And Ronnie saw the action that Mick Jagger got. When he came back, he said, I want to be a singer. I want to dance on stage, because he couldn’t dance. But Mick Jagger, watching Mick Jagger sing, and that was it. He went from what he wanted to what he got.

Ramsey Russell: We drove around some of the old neighborhoods yesterday and they all live about a mile apart. Most of them went to the same high school. And so how did he end up putting that band together? Did he just – He knew these boys. He grew up with them hunting and fishing or what?

Gene Odom: Well, he had went to another band earlier and just went into their rehearsal. I can’t remember the name of them. I know the couple of the guys and said, I’m your new singer. Ronnie was mean anyway, tough. I’m your new singer. You’re looking for a singer, I’m your man. And so he didn’t like that style of what they were doing and so he decided he wanted to put his band together. And him and Gary were the first 2. And then Larry Junstrom, which became 38 specials, bass player Ronnie got Larry Junstrom. So it was Ronnie, Gary and Larry Junstrom and then was playing ball, and Ronnie hit a ball and Bob Burns had – Ronnie didn’t know Bob, but I knew Bob from elementary school. Me and Bob grew up together also. And so, Ronnie hit Bob with the baseball behind the back of the head on the shoulder. And Ronnie ran out there to check on Bob and then said, oh, you’re Bob Burns. You played drums. Yeah. I said, okay. So come on, we want you to be in our band. So it was Ronnie, Gary, Larry Johnston, Bob Burns. And they heard about Allen Collins. Ronnie heard it. He was a little guitar picker and he was playing in a little band called The Mods. And Ronnie run into him one day and told Allen he wanted to play now. And Allen was riding his bicycle, he said, I’m talking about teenagers. And Allen scared of Ronnie and he throws his bike down and ran, and Ronnie couldn’t get him. So the next day, I happened to go by where they were playing ball and Allen was pitching. And I ran to Ronnie and I said, hey, I said, Allen Collins, they’re pitching there at Jr’s house on the mound, Allen’s pitching. So we get a – We took off around there and just run up on the mound and kidnapped him. Just because nobody would mess with me and Ronnie. Now we got you coming. Ronnie said, you coming? Come on, you coming on being my band. And then was really leaving and said, we’ll be back in a little while to get his guitar and amplifier. So we kidnapped him. And so Allen became a part of the band. And their first notes rehearsing was in Bob Burn’s garage, as I think they called herself My Backyard. They had My Backyard. Conquer the Worm. Another one, The Pretty Ones, The Noble Five. The Pretty Ones, then 1%. And then Lynyrd Skynyrd was their name.

Ramsey Russell: Lynyrd Skynyrd. I heard that that band was a spin off named after a coach in their high school system. Coach Lynyrd Skynyrd?

Gene Odom: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And you knew him. You all were friends here for a long time. But how did it come to be that they named their band after this notorious coach?

Gene Odom: Well, they were at that time, they were trying to come up with a new name. They were the 1%, and they were tossing around name, but by the time they got to the name, they were smoked up and drunk from marijuana or Budweiser. That’s what they would get back then. And so, Bob Burns was always a jokester, funny. And when the phone would ring at the hell house, Bob would say, it’s Lynyrd Skynyrd. He’s after you, Gary or something like that and freak him out. And so they were all smoked up around there and half drunk, from what I heard. And a song back then was came on radio called Camp Granada. Hello, motor. Hello, father hello emma, Camp Granada. And in that song is a lyric. Lynyrd Skynyrd got atropine poisoning last night after dinner. And they heard that and they went, wow, that’s Lynyrd Skynyrd’s names and so that’s Lynyrd Skynyrd. So they put the name together to use his name and change the spelling to aggravate him and change the name from the 1% to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Ramsey Russell: what I kind of gather is coach Skynyrd was probably a gym short wearing, whistle blowing crew cut of a –

Gene Odom: Flat top.

Ramsey Russell: Flat top kind of –

Gene Odom: Redneck.

Ramsey Russell: Boy scout coach. And these boys were the long haired, free thinking musicians of the 60s that he wanted to get to be, get to conform. And so there was a little bit of an issue between them. That’s about it. Did he make them run extra laps or give him a hard time or –

Gene Odom: Well, about the time he got there, within a few days or a week, Ronnie had got his girlfriend pregnant and he had to leave school and go to work. That’s about the same time coach got there. So Ronnie and Coach Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t really butt heads. It was Gary Rossington, Larry Junstrom. Larry Junstrom was there, but it was mainly was Gary’s long hair. But coach was by the book kind of guy. And he made him confirm to the school rules 2 inches above it, 2 inches above your collar, shirt tails had to be poked in, tucked in. You had to wear socks as back then, there was rules –

Ramsey Russell: I remember those days, yeah.

Gene Odom: They don’t have them rules nowadays. They need them kind of rules. But coach was a by the book kind of guy, and he made Gary wear a hair net, get his hair trimmed or wear a hair net. And so one day, Gary’s dad, I think, died in Korea. Ronnie was more the father figure to Gary than anybody else. But Lacy went down there one day to represent Gary to say, hey, you got – You need to slack up on this guy. But Lynyrd Redneck and he was alumni from FSU. He hated the Gators. He was barred from Gainesville. He could watch the Gators play in Tallahassee, but he couldn’t go to the stadium in Gainesville. Cause he get in the fight with him Gators. Oh, yeah, I think he was – Lynyrd Skynyrd was a redneck fighter.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of people don’t consider Florida the south, but it is. It’s just the further north you go in Florida, the deeper in the south you become. And NCC football is a religion in the deep south.

Gene Odom: Oh. I mean, I tell you, yeah. And it different now because all the Snowbirds and Yankees coming down here but I mean, the south ain’t the south anymore. But like you said, the more farther north you go into Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: Those other states, you find the south. True south.

Ramsey Russell: That’s exactly right. Sounds like Ronnie Van Zant was kind of a tough guy. I mean, he grew up in a tough neighborhood and a lot of times things were settled with his fist on the street back in those good old days.

Gene Odom: Yeah. And he was a scrapper, no doubt about it. But a lot of his scrapping was a result of – I’m going to say result of barley, hops and barley.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, hops and barley.

Gene Odom: Yeah. When they rehearsed and they rehearsed hard, many hours every day. And Ronnie, they would, after, when you get there, you’re sober. Then they get the booze and the marijuana and all the other stuff. And by 2 or 3, 4, 5 hours, they’re not playing right. And Ronnie would actually get. In fact, he knocked a couple of thems teeth out. There’s a time to play and there’s a time to play.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Gene Odom: Don’t mix them up.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, speaking of them practicing a lot. That was one thing they did practice a lot. I mean they practically went eight to 8, 12, 15 hours stretches. There’s that little red hell house, which was just a little wooden, non plumbed, non air conditioned, non nothing. Just house out in the country right here.

Gene Odom: It was like a little what you would call an efficiency.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: As the bedroom and the kitchen and the dining room was all the same thing. And the living room area was their practice location. Little small bathroom. It was probably, gosh, it was probably 20ft, 21ft, 22ft wide, maybe 30ft long. It was like a smaller than a normal one car garage. That’s what it was so hot in there and that’s why they called it a hell house. Cause I mean it was a few times I went by there. I wish it was too hot for me to go in there.

Ramsey Russell: I heard that. Well, we went out there yesterday. Of course, the house is gone, it burned down. There’s a big subdivision going in now, but there’s still that little bio back here in the backyard. And you were showing us how you saying, oh man, they get so hot in that house practicing. They come out here, drink cold beer and just bail off into the deep hole and cool off and swing.

Gene Odom: Just jump off of that dog.

Ramsey Russell: Like a bunch of old country boys.

Gene Odom: Yeah, I’m sure Craig Reed has got some footage of them jumping off of that dog. He’s got a lot of footage that people don’t know about, but I’m sure he has.

Ramsey Russell: I was surprised to learn, for such a tough guy, football, boxing, scrapping. Ronnie Van Zant must also have been a poet of sports, because he wrote a lot of those words. He did not play musical instruments, but he gave life to that music with his words. And somebody told me or I heard somewhere that he never wrote down the lyrics.

Gene Odom: No.

Ramsey Russell: Once they were in his head, he said, if it’s worth I don’t have to write it down. If it’s worth remembering.

Gene Odom: Yeah, he didn’t write nothing down when there were copy in it, of course, something like that. But he didn’t write nothing down. He had a memory that was unbelievable. Even when we sold parts of his brother in law’s auto parts store, Ronnie wouldn’t look into – There were no computers back then. It was just big, thick books you would go through these parts books and you’d find the part, what you needed. He just called, go get that. Get this and I go look it up and just go get the parts, Gene that. He had a photographic memory and he had the – I don’t know what you would call it. I can’t imagine it that he could recall, although I can’t do it today. I can write it down. I can’t remember when I wrote, but he could recall words that he had put together for that song. And if he didn’t want to change one, he could just automatically change it in his head. Unbelievable. He had a photographic memory, I guess.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Something I saw in one of the documentaries. It’s not like they just formed a band, went out to the hell house for a few weeks, practiced and became rock stars. This was a decade of real dedication and practice they put into it. I mean, and there was somebody from New York that met them in Atlanta that liked their music and they could not get a record deal. And he said, I’m going to record you. And he started it started a little – They went to a studio, he started a record label and recorded Pronounced Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pronounced. And then they started blowing up. This didn’t happen overnight. This was like a decade of them committing themselves to being musicians.

Gene Odom: Yeah, that was sounds of the south record.

Ramsey Russell: Sounds of the south records.

Gene Odom: Al Cooper. And then they turned into a subsidiary of MCA and then MCA bought them out early on.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of getting back to the songs. The songs are so relatable. The music of Lynyrd Skynyrd is so relatable to people where I grew up in south, but it’s also relatable to a lot of people around the country, around the world. And it’s just regular folks, regular country folks, just simple people, just, that grew up. And Ronnie Van Zant was able to articulate details from his life narrative just from growing up in the neighborhood, from people he knew, from things he saw. And he was able to put it into words that became famous songs. But what are some of the inspirations for some of the songs he wrote? Do you know where some of the details for some of the songs that we know came from?

Gene Odom: Yeah. The ballad of Curtis Loew. The lyric says, used to wait the morning before the rooster crowed searching for soda bottles to get myself some dough. Personally, he told me, he said, I wrote that lyric about you because you was in these ditches picking them cokes up, picking up coke bottles and stuff up. And he said, that’s about you. And then the other reference in that song, the Curtis Loew, the black blues player, double player Claude that ran the store was a white ball headed guy that played the guitar for us. So you couldn’t put –

Ramsey Russell: Okay. What was the proper name of that Curtis Loew store? What was –

Gene Odom: Back then, it was called Claude’s Midway Meats back in the 50s and early 60s and then Claude moved it up to Plymouth Street and Lakeshore Boulevard in the early 60s. And they changed, somebody opened up later on and called it Woodcrest Grocery, but it was Claude’s Midway Meats.

Ramsey Russell: And that was where you all used to hang out a lot.

Gene Odom: Oh, yeah. Go down and buy cokes and moon pies and stuff and I take the coke bottles in there. I used to sweep the floor and rack the bottles. Rack the bottles means everybody brings all the bottles in, you rack the bottles, Pepsi, Pepsi, Coco. So you put them in the cartons. So the coke man, when he came, he could just put the, he didn’t have to sort of bottles out I’d sort and rack the bottles, make a little joke in money. But his writing it, I’d have to get in his mind, which you can’t do that. His writing was his life. Things that went on around him, around us like the Curtis Loew store and I can’t say for every song he ever wrote that I know what was about.

Ramsey Russell: But songs like, we looked at a big live oak tree on a boulevard yesterday that one of the band members had wrecked into and that became a song.

Gene Odom: Yeah. And like I tell people, that was one of the oak trees Gary hit and when he hit the oak tree that Ronnie sat right down and they wrote the song, a hurricane blew those trees away years and years back and he was riding it, coming from the place we call the sugar bowl, him and Joe Crimp. People don’t know that Joe Crimp was riding with him when he hit that tree and he was traveling pretty good when he hit that and tore the front of his car up. But this particular one is when he ran into that, he didn’t know he hit it. He had passed out at the wheel and just, the car just pulled up and hit that one. And he hit several out there where he lived at and now and they hit several. Several oak trees. But when that happened, Ronnie just got an inspiration to write that smell.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: Does the smell of death around you? Because Ronnie realized that wrecking the car, that wasn’t so bad right then, but it could have been a lot worse.

Ramsey Russell: It would have been catastrophic.

Gene Odom: When that he started putting them words together and – go ahead.

Ramsey Russell: One of the coolest stories you told us yesterday was about the origins of Free Bird. You knew a little bit about how that song came into being, because that is probably, that’s certainly among their top songs, was Free Bird.

Gene Odom: It’s one of the top songs ever written. Yeah, it’s one of the, it and Stairway to Heaven, they rotate from the number 1, number 2, number 2. But that’s one of the most requested songs of all time.

Ramsey Russell: I do. I believe that.

Gene Odom: Yeah. Rock and roll.

Ramsey Russell: What were the origins of that?

Gene Odom: They had them. Allen had the music, except he didn’t have the fiery stuff on the end, but it had that, he had the music. They didn’t have any words at that time. They couldn’t come up with the inspiration for words and just hadn’t put the words to it. And so they came home and Allen was home and his Kathy, his wife, which was his childhood sweetheart, was fixing supper or dinner or whatever you want to call it and Allen’s at that couch. The back of the couch would face the kitchen and he would be sitting away watching tv or whatever. And she was in the kitchen doing something, cooking or doing something. And she wrote on a napkin, if I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? And she leaned over the couch and handed it to Allen across his shoulder and Allen looked at it and read it. And he picks the phone up and he calls, Ronnie, get over here right now, quick. Ronnie thought something was up. Ronnie runs over to Allen’s house now, and Allen says, look at this and Ronnie looked at it. Ronnie sat down beside Allen Collins on the couch and they wrote the words to Free Bird.

Ramsey Russell: All it took was that one sentence.

Gene Odom: That one sentence that Kathy came up with in issue, because they were childhood sweethearts and she wrote that lyric. And Allen and Ronnie sat down and wrote the words of Free Bird.

Ramsey Russell: And you were telling us yesterday at the cemetery how Allen Collins was the, he was the inspiration for the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd. He was the music. Ronnie was the words.

Gene Odom: Allen Collins was the sound. He was the, I don’t know, I’m not going to call it the rhythm, but the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd music without Allen Collins, you can never, ever achieve. And they’d never achieved that since he passed away.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: Since he got paralyzed.

Ramsey Russell: And his wife, Kathy, ended up predeceasing him over some health issue or something. Is that right?

Gene Odom: Yeah. She was 4 months pregnant and she started spotting. And the doctor told her, just to lay flat your back for a week, stay in the bed, don’t you get up. And she did and she called the doctor back on a Friday and said, I’ve stopped spotting. Can I take my daughters to the movie? The doctor said, sure. Would you be in here Monday morning? I want to check you out. And so she went to the movie and I guess she felt something happen inside. And she went to the bathroom with her daughter Allison and what had happened is, the week that she laid flat of her back, the fetus inside of her died and turned into gangrene. And when she realized, I guess, something was going on, she went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and the main artery from her heart to her stomach just exploded and busted, and she just fell over on the floor, dead.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Gene Odom: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Gene Odom: That was the end of him. That was the end of him there. After that, he had no.

Ramsey Russell: He loved his wife.

Gene Odom: Oh, yeah. That was the end of him.

Ramsey Russell: That gives those words meaning, doesn’t it?

Gene Odom: It does. It really does because, I mean, that wasn’t just his wife. I mean, she handled everything. The kids and everything. The house is she was his life and then 2 girls.

Ramsey Russell: You told me a pretty funny story yesterday. Ronnie is a thinker, problem solver. A lot of stuff was disappearing from his front yard, people were walking by, stealing stuff –

Gene Odom: Both our yards.

Ramsey Russell: Both you all’s yard, the whole neighborhood. I grew up in a similar neighborhood. If it wasn’t nailed down or locked up, it walked off.

Gene Odom: Both neighborhood.

Ramsey Russell: How did you all, how did Ronnie fix that problem? How did you all fix that problem? I should say.

Gene Odom: We was down off of Ellis and Park Street. Some of those woods are still there, they built a church there and there was, people would dump stuff down there trash and stuff. We was down there, target practice in one time and heard this racket and it was a barbed wire, some barbed wire fence, old way back and we heard this wreck and we went over there and a bobcat had got into the corner of that fence, and there was other barbed wire tangled up there, and this bobcat had gotten tangled in that barbed wire and was, couldn’t get out. And so what are we going to do? We’re messing that bobcat don’t want to shoot him, we don’t want to shoot the wild animal. And talking and knowing him, we’re talking and everything? And he went, man, he said, we need to get him. And I said, what we going to do with him? He went, we need to get him, Gene. And there was all kind of clothes and people dumped stuff in suitcases. There was all kind of stuff. There was a suitcase there and he said, we need to get him. We need to stop these thieves and this is a way to do it. What are you talking about? He said, listen, let’s find a way to get him. There’s a little carpet and some other stuff there. So we got that carpet out and we forced him into the corner of that barbed wire. And so he couldn’t get out. He was tangled all up, forced him down and we got him out and rolled him inside that suitcase and closed the lid down on the suitcase and we had the bobcat.

Ramsey Russell: A bobcat in the suitcase.

Gene Odom: In suitcase. And so I said, hey, I tell you what, let’s lay it by the road and them thieves will come get it later on. And so we got there and we said it right beside the road and we was hiding in the bushes and it wasn’t long at all, headache. Had a 49 Chevrolet or 40 old Chevrolet, stick shift. And they had no driver license and so they went by at first and then pat me backed up and I don’t know which one was it, jumped out and grabbed the suitcase and put in that. And in the backseat, there was one or 2 guys in the backseat and I guess they pop that suitcase open, soon, and I’m –

Ramsey Russell: How far from the house did they get when they opened up that suitcase?

Gene Odom: Oh, we in the neighborhood. I mean, it was houses all around us, their houses and stuff, too. And that was just about dark, just about thieving time, I called it and they were screaming that bobcat tearing their ass up and they rolled in a ditch and the car on its side a little bit and onto the back, one of the back windows, whatever was down. And that bobcat came out of there. They were screaming, oh, mama, can’t help you. Payback, payback. Leon Wilkerson loved that story, no matter where we’d be at if he came in and he said, hey, Gene tell us the Bobcat story? And I tell. They have to tell that story.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a good story, good. It just shows kind of who they were growing up.

Gene Odom: Payback.

Ramsey Russell: Payback, Lynyrd Skynyrd started touring and they represent what I look back now as the absolute stereotypical, ultra successful rock band of that era, they were the hottest tour in the world –

Gene Odom: Back then.

Ramsey Russell: Back then, they were the hottest tour on the world. They were the hottest act. They had great music. They were all over the radio, tons of fans. Everybody loved them and then like, we all imagine rock stars, girl sex, rock and roll parties, crazy. What was it like touring with Lynyrd Skynyrd?

Gene Odom: You just said it.

Ramsey Russell: That’s it. Just a full on party.

Unconventional Job Responsibilities

And normal people wouldn’t have a job like that, and most of them wouldn’t care about having somebody watch over them because they’re rock stars.

Gene Odom: Now, I didn’t do none of that crazy stuff. I’ve never smoked or drank none of that crazy stuff and first started out, I was married. And then we got divorced the first part of 77. I had a job to do and watch over them people. And normal people wouldn’t have a job like that, and most of them wouldn’t care about having somebody watch over them because they’re rock stars. They got plenty of money and they got plenty of lawyers and stuff like that. But sometimes they’re just too dumb to realize that they’re liable.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s why you were brought on as bodyguard, Lynyrd Skynyrd, because once they hit the road and once that success started to blow up and once those 24/7 parties began, they realized that wouldn’t sustain itself. So Ronnie reached out to you for help.

Gene Odom: He wanted to straighten up and they were battling the booze and bet on the drugs. I didn’t know how bad on the drugs they were, because I wasn’t no part of it. I know how they was at the hell house and stuff like that and rumors, but I went on when he asked me, so I want you to come clean us up, get us off all this stuff and you’re the only person in the world that can do it. Nobody else can do it. And I said, well it’ll have to be done my way. And he says, it will be. He said, I’ll tell the band members of it. They got to follow your orders. And I started weaning them off the booze and even told me, he said, you’re doing a good job. He says, now the drugs will be a little bit harder to do, but you know what you’re doing, so let’s get it done. It’ll be tougher and he’s talking for herself also. And I said all right, so they didn’t tear up hotels. They didn’t tear nothing up. They didn’t fight, none of that stuff, because I wouldn’t put up with it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: Because if they come at me and they were in trouble. Billy Powell, one day, Billy Powell started to hit me, draw back cocked, ready to punch. I sent him flying backwards and that changed his attitude real quick, like. And so I told Ronnie, I said, it’s going to be done my way, I’ll do it. He said, all right, you demand, let’s do it.

Ramsey Russell: I saw a picture of you backstage back in those days wearing a t shirt that said, God forgives, I don’t.

Gene Odom: That’s exactly right.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You were the law back there to keep them cleaned up, that was your job.

Gene Odom: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Was to curtailment. What was it like? I mean, you had to be a tough guy, I’m sure, to keep folks off stage and protect the band. How crazy was that?

Gene Odom: Spur of the moment, somebody jump on stage or whatever. You see, as Ronnie seen something happening, he would hit point and I know, and then I look and see what was going on, keep an eye on it one moved up to the crowd, came up to the front of the stage and the guy trying to get on stage, and when he came up, I was already behind him. I had him and he had a buck knife. He came in, that buck knife started to stab me and I blocked it with my arm and hit me in the elbow with it and I elbowed him and palmed him off the stage. He went backwards, flying off the stage and Billy Powell in the dresser went, man, you was too rough on that guy you know you are running with – I said, hold it. Ronnie said, what’s your bleed? Your arm bleeding on it? Yeah, he had a knife, he stabbed me with a knife. And Billy Powell said, yeah, you were way too old, friend. Ronnie told Billy to sit down. Don’t interfere with Gene Odom’s job. So, Billy, sit down and shut up. He says, he’s taking care of us, but it was hectic. But most people abide by the rules you get this, people that’s drugged out or whatever or whatever. All the girls that want to get up there and meet Lynyrd they wouldn’t be Lynyrd. I get about all Ramsey, Lynyrd’s in Jacksonville, talking about Lynyrd’s, get her name, this Lynyrd, on meet Lynyrd to. But it was fun, but I had a job to do.

Ramsey Russell: Sure. What was it like? Gosh, I can’t imagine. What was it like being house mom to a staff of 15 or 20 full on partiers? I mean, how did you keep up with everybody?

Gene Odom: Well, you can’t and I got to get a 7, 8 hours sleep at night. And Ronnie said, when Gene Odom goes to bed, you all don’t mess with him. And if he tells you all to stay straight, don’t be going over messing up, because you go out to deal with Gene. And so it was they knew the rules, but they, you can’t watch 6 guys going in 6 directions, there’s no way. And Ronnie knew that and he said, Leon’s going to go off, no problem, get the phone. Hey, Gene, come down to the bar and straighten this mess out down at the bar, go down there with a level head and take care of the problem. For instance, I forget where was that, as JoJo and Allen were in the bar, and Allen had this big hat with big feathers on it and JoJo has his hat, and they were at the table and they wanted this old redneck coveralls one of his table and they said we’re rock stars. How about we won’t get that? He said, don’t, you all don’t mess with me, whatever. And so he, Allen or JoJo had that, and they would flick the feather around, and the feather was – I got a phone call. Ronnie was up in his room, our room. We were rooming together at the time and said, Allen’s in trouble in the bar and I run down there, and Ronnie’s behind me and what’s going on? And this big old redneck guy says, they want my table. They get my table, and says, I’ll whip all of you mfers. He said, I’ll whip every one of you. I said, no, you won’t. It ain’t going to come to that. I said, we’ll take this problem. I said, Allen, you and JoJo, don’t be messing with this guy. Leave this guy alone, whatever. And I said, matter of fact, because I knew if I turned my back, Allen’s going to start some trouble. I said, let’s go, all you all get out of the bar, let’s just go. And so Ronnie had got in there, and he said, what’s up, guys? Everything’s under control. We’re going back to the rooms, everybody’s cool, leaving. Told the bartender, I said, we’re all, we’re getting out here. We’re going to call the cops you call. They’d already called the cops. I said, we’re going. Everything’s fine and so we had no saying. And that he messed up and said, I’ll cut you, man, I’ll cut you. Jokingly mess around me, I’ll cut you. So as Ronnie walked by the bar, the bartender said, I’ll cut you. He put his hand on his pocket. We went to the room, just got there here to come, here come the cops and the girl went, there’s the guy, right there just going to cut me and I went, hey, look here, I’m was just curious, you just stop, back up against the wall, buddy. We’ll take care of this. He said, he’s the one that said he’s going to cut me. I said and he said, put your hands against the wall. You got a knife and I was security. All he has is his driver’s license, the cop went, will handle this. I said, I’m their security. He don’t carry a knife. We made a joke, we have an old joke saying, I’ll cut you, just a saying. And the cop went, well, that’s kind of a weird saying. I said, but that’s a west side thing and so Ronnie, he didn’t get out of line or nothing. He knew that, let me handle everything. But Allen Collins says to the cops, oh, you all just coming in my room here and have a drink and that it’s too late for me to stop you. He invited the cops into his room and said, they going to go. They go in there and the first thing the cop sees is balanced phone. There’s a bottle of pills and the cop picked it up. He said, man, this looks like a Christmas tree. Are they all these legal? Allen Collins says, probably not. And the cop went, get up and put your hands behind your back, son. Allen said, Gene, I said, you invite him in the room, son. Go on down there, we’ll get you out.

Ramsey Russell: Did you get stressed out doing all that? That would be, that would just stress me out.

Gene Odom: It would stress me out now, but not then, because I knew them. I knew what to expect and we had a folder of all the lawyers in every town that we needed to call to take care of the problem. And anytime you got that big cash money, something like that is nothing.

Ramsey Russell: But it wasn’t every night after a party, was it? I mean, the energy and the what it must have taken to get up and play a big music set in front of all them people night after night. I mean, surely they didn’t go out and party every single night.

Gene Odom: Well, you only have certain band members that go out there and party every night and party. Some of them don’t, some of them just go to bed, watch television, some of them come back, they got wives, some of them. And they go to get something to eat, you get exhausted after a certain period of time, but you have certain members of the band that just want to party all the time. Party, party they pay for it.

Ramsey Russell: You said Ronnie Van Zant sometimes would just come back and turn on a movie channel.

Gene Odom: Turn on tv. And when you look at New York, he loves to go to New York, because they had movies till dawn, played all old movies and he’d sit there in that bed and just watch them old movies, of course, he’d go out to eat sometimes if it had business or whatever. But when it was Ronnie Van Zant time, most of his time was sitting in that bed watching television or whatever.

Ramsey Russell: Because the cycle was they toured and they practiced and they recorded and they toured and they practiced and they recorded. And it just really wasn’t much, a whole lot of life once they hit it big, was it?

Gene Odom: No. And then you, like I said, you have certain band members, have crew members that like to hang around the band, because I’m with the band and some band members that aren’t the front man, that aren’t the superstar, they got to go out hey, look at me. I’m with the band I’m a rock star and that kind of attitude.

Ramsey Russell: Just an interesting question, because these just good old boys from Jacksonville, Florida. What did they eat? I mean, did they go to 5 star restaurants in New York City?

Gene Odom: Now they went to fancy restaurants, if you had, like, MCA people with you or whatever, tough the promoter or the record label, they’re not going to take you to McDonald’s. If they want to talk business or take the band out, you go to these fancy restaurants and I remember famous ones in San Francisco back then, Goldman’s and it’s still there now and Alioto’s were on at the wharf, fisherman’s wharf, fanciest restaurants in the world. We go there and they were when you got that kind of money and you got that kind of aura, you want to be seen, some of them want to be I’m with the band. Ronnie in blue jeans and the flannel shirt like this, going into a fancy restaurant. He didn’t care about being with the band. The other people the front man is the band and some band members have trouble realizing that they’re not the front man. So they want to look at me, I’m with the band.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard of those kinds of issues, but they, when I look back at pictures of the band in front of the hell house or on the album covers or on stage, they didn’t have big. I just, day in, day out, some of the footage I’ve seen, they didn’t have great big ensembles of clothes. It just, it looks to me Ronnie Van Zant was wearing bell bottoms and a t shirt that he just pulled out of his shirt. It just, went to the closet like I would and grab a t shirt and jeans.

Gene Odom: Ronnie was just as, he’s buried in a flannel shirt just like this with his fish, was favorite fishing pole.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Gene Odom: Yeah. There’s no flash and Gary would wear a coat jacket sometimes, but they wasn’t flash. Allen Collins, he put on some fancy white clothes or something. But those guys wasn’t like your normal band want to be rock stars and wear all these goofy clothes? No. You can look at any picture when you see him wearing no goofy clothes. They might be having a jacket on or I might be wearing a Japanese thing something at the time that Dean would throw him to put on. But no, just regular old country boys.

Ramsey Russell: But they were a huge band. Like, I mean, they were a huge band. They were opening for some of the top shows on tour. But they were the top show on tour. I heard the story one time about them opening for somebody out and I think in California. And, man, when the warm up band ended in Free Bird was played and curtain went down, so to speak, everybody just got up and left. They didn’t care about who else was there.

Gene Odom: They didn’t open for bands that they did on that Peter Frampton. It was a cohead two shows. But when Skynyrd played and opened up for the second show, Peter Frampton was the headliner. When Skynyrd played, 50,000 people all walked out of this Oakland Coliseum. Before Peter Frampton came on, Peter Frampton started crying, going, what’s going on? I’ll come back. I’m Peter Frampton, I’m the headliner.

Ramsey Russell: Everybody said, oh, we don’t sing that. We don’t sing Lynyrd Skynyrd, we’re gone.

Gene Odom: I said, they didn’t sing that. And Skynyrd kicked everybody’s butt. So no big bands that were bigger than them back then would play with them. And the Rolling Stones held the record at Madison Square Garden, 5 consecutive nights to Stone, sold out Madison Square Garden. The fall tour that we were on, the Lynyrd Skynyrd band had sold out Madison Square Garden for 7 consecutive.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Gene Odom: We would have broke that record. They would have broke that record.

Ramsey Russell: Broke that record. That’s just how big they were –

Gene Odom: At that time.

Ramsey Russell: At that time.

Gene Odom: It would have been bigger when the next year, when after the album had kicked butt, they would have been bigger.

Ramsey Russell: It happened so quick. They practiced for, let’s say, the better part of a decade. They got the record, they started touring, they blew up. They absolutely blew up. They stayed on the road. I mean, what were some of the sizes of their audiences? I mean, they played in front of audiences that were 90 to 100,000 people at times.

Gene Odom: Yeah. And when it’s played with the Stones over there, in Europe, before our tour started, on that tour with the Stones, there was a quarter of a million people. Skynyrd kicked their butt. Kicked them, and what Peter Frampton, they had these big tongues on the stage.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: And they told Skynyrd, don’t. That’s for Mick Jagger to walk out on. Don’t you guys walk out there. Skynyrd went out there, walked right out there on that tongue. Yeah, kicking their butt and nobody else would have done that.

Ramsey Russell: Rebel.

Gene Odom: At rebel, Ronnie Van Zen. Mick Jagger don’t want me to walk out of his tongue. And Skynyrd kicked the butt.

Ramsey Russell: Sound like a dare, didn’t it?

Gene Odom: Yes, sir. And I’ll tell you a little secret. The Peter Frampton show, there was actually co headline. There was 2 shows, Anaheim and Oakland. In between was the Willie Nelson picnic in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 90, almost 100,000 people. 97 or 98,000 people. But they didn’t want Skynyrd to do no encore. It was Sweet Home Alabama. Then, boom, they were off the states and limousines were ready. I had to meet them, they were gone. And so within 30 seconds, there was no reminisce of Lynyrd Skynyrd banned on that property. And people started stomping, screaming, Free Bird. Free Bird. And so they banned. Didn’t come out. The band was gone. And this hundred thousand people went crazy. They run the security off. I’m talking about ran the security off, pulled the barricades down, pulled a monitor off the stage, was destroying everything. And people were freaking out and I’m waiting on a limousine to come back and get me. I walk out there on stage in front of that hundred thousand people. And I took the microphone, I said, listen, my name is Gene Odom. I’m Ronnie Van Zants bodyguard and security for the band. I said, the band is gone. Wasn’t contracted to play no encore, there at the hotel. You all need to stop this, I said, Willie Nelson and Will Jennings coming out here. That’s the show. You all need to give them some respect and stop this and let them come out and you all enjoy the rest of the show. Cause the band’s not here. That whole crowd backed up. They let the security come back, put the monitors and everything back up. When Willie Nelson walked down that stage, he went, who in the hell was that? That’s a hell of a band to have to follow. The crowd went crazy.

Ramsey Russell: The thing about Lynyrd Skynyrd, it happened so quick. Boom. I mean, just basically after 10 years and after just really laying into it. They blew up. They were big. They were that. But they never really got to come home and sink their teeth into being rock stars. They were rock stars on the road, but they never really got to taste, true. Let it sink in, did they? I mean, it kind of ended before. Before they realized and could build big houses and buy big cars and live like rock stars. They were just on the road. And then it ended.

Gene Odom: And then right before they got that opportunity. Yeah, it ended. Is that quick, but they come home. They wouldn’t. I mean, a couple of them played the Rockstar syndrome, go out and party. But no, most of them, they had a family. And Ronnie he would come home and go fishing

Ramsey Russell: Go fishing.

Gene Odom: Go fishing. Call me up. Hey, man, let’s go. Come on. But what you normal, what you would call rock stars the way they are, they wasn’t like that.

Ramsey Russell: They weren’t like that. They were just like me and you. He showed us a restaurant last night, it was his favorite place to eat here in Jacksonville.

Gene Odom: Waties.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Fried fish.

Gene Odom: Fried fish. He loved fried catfish, baked potatoes. He was a steak and potato man. He didn’t eat no greens. He called greens rabbit food. He didn’t eat no rabbit food. But he was as country as you can be and be a rock star on top of it, barefoot rock star.

Ramsey Russell: Gene, do you have a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?

Gene Odom: The ballad of Curtis Loew.

Ramsey Russell: Gene, whose idea was it to put the confederate flag behind the stage? Was that the music industry because they were southern rock band or was that band members idea to use the confederate flag back in those days?

Gene Odom: Ronnie Van Zant, he got that flag in it, hangout flag. He’d love the south and at that time, the south was different. Politics was a whole lot different back then than it is now and the Democrat party was different than it is now.

Ramsey Russell: Well, it was different times and growing up in the 70s, myself, the flag didn’t mean to me then what it’s become to mean now. It hadn’t been radicalized, it hadn’t been politicized. It was just a beautiful flag that we saw a lot down here, but growing up, to me, it didn’t represent a political statement, it didn’t represent black and white, it didn’t represent none of that. What it meant to me was it was almost like a middle finger to folks around the country that judged me or people like me for my accent, for bare feet, for hunting, for fishing, for my way of life in the deep south, it was just like, it was, hey, screw you. I’m proud of my heritage and my culture.

Gene Odom: That’s exactly what he felt. That’s exactly how he felt about that flag. Same way heritage in the south.

Ramsey Russell: It was just, it was heritage. It was purely, I am who I am.

Gene Odom: Yeah, no doubt about that.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of guy was Ronnie Van Zant?

Gene Odom: He was special. I got a story for you. It may have been 76 or 77, but in Mobile, Alabama, I’ll never forget, hotel and partners, a park there, downtown park. We’re walking across that park, Ronnie and Gary and me, going to get something to eat. And as we walk across that park, there was a bench there and a couple of homeless guys were sitting on that bench. As we walking up toward them, one of them got up and came up to us and asked, he said, do you have a quarter that me and my buddy there can get some coffee? And so we had just got up her dims, which would have been about $120 each and whatever money we had in the pockets. Ronnie turned to us and says, give me your money, give me all your money. I said, what and I had money. I said, well, he said, give me all your money and Gary and Allen, so that would have been dollar 500 per diem. And so whatever money we had, I would venture to say there’s probably a $1,000 there. So Ronnie took that money and started to hand it to that guy and he pulled it back and he pointed to, over was a restaurant and there was a clothing store side by side there that in that mall. And Ronnie says, you see that store? You’re going to take this money over there and you’re going to buy you some clothes. But first, you’re going to go over there to that restaurant and you’re going to sit down and have something good to eat, and I’m going to stand here and watch you go in there. Oh, we will. They were yeah, we’re going with what you want. So they went into restaurant. Ronnie says, come on, let’s go and get something eat. I said, we got no money. Don’t worry, we got a credit card. We’re good and they said, I’ll give you money back. I’ll get money from the road manager. I’ll give you money back. It won’t come out of your pocket. He said, I’ll take care of this.

Ramsey Russell: On October 19^th, 1977, they played what turned out to be their final concert in Greenville, South Carolina. Was there anything to stand out? Anything unnormal? Anything different about that concert at all?

Gene Odom: No, not to me. It was a full house, sold out. They just come in there and kicked their butt.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Gene Odom: And we got into limousines and went to the hotel. I would say normal.

Ramsey Russell: They were off that night. They had October 20^th off and decided they wanted to hey, we’re going to have a night off. We’d rather be in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a night off. Is that right?

Gene Odom: That’s partially right. What had happened is that when we had that engine malfunction coming to Greenville, South Carolina, leaving Lakeland, the girls and a couple other ones didn’t want to fly on the plane. They were scared of it. They were telling Ronnie that they didn’t want to fly. They wanted to fly commercial and so the band had fired, the band, Ronnie had fired JoJo, and so she was gone. But she knew all the alias names. Everybody had an alias name and she knew the aliases. And so she was calling the rooms, trying to get Ronnie on the phone, trying to get her job back and Ronnie was mad and aggravated and she’s called the rooms. And so they were, he was aggravated about the plane that people talking about want no more fly on the plane and they were drinking and doing other stuff. I was asleep. Ronnie then told him, don’t wake Gene Odom up. And they were having a kind of like a band meeting and the girls and 2 of them said, we didn’t want to fly. We scared of plane, Ronnie was going, and the road manager was actually keeping them on the plane and they were calling and I had, that morning, I had went out to the airport to talk with the pilots to see what going on and they were working on the plane. I told them, I said, fix it here. We got a day off. And they said, no, we won’t fly to Baton Rouge. And so the Baton Rouge scenario is that some of the people that want to fly and the management wanted to go to Baton Rouge, because the bottom line is, do you want to party in Hicksville, South Carolina or do you want to party on a day off in Baton Rouge?

Ramsey Russell: There you go.

Gene Odom: Oh, yeah. We were going to Baton Rouge on. You pump them up and then so, and at the last minute, when the fire broke, Ronnie just said, listen, get on the plane. If you ain’t on the plane, you’re fired. If it’s your time to go, is your time to go? And he had other people putting that in his ear about wanting to party in Baton Rouge and the other. Here, don’t worry about Gene Odom, he don’t know nothing about that plane, he don’t know about nothing. Don’t worry about Gene Odom. We’re going to Baton Rouge. And the last thing them pilots heard was, don’t you wish he was on the tarmac like I asked you to do?

Ramsey Russell: Well, let’s talk about that, on the flight you all flew together, you all had an active card game. I mean, what was it like on a tour plane? I mean, what was going on the flights, a lot of times just regular days, just card games, drinking, smoking, partying, sleeping?

Regular Players: Me, Craig Reed, and Occasionally Ronnie

And we would play poker, some of us and every now and then a different one would come and sit on the table, mostly it was me and Craig Reed, Ron would come and play sometimes, and Ronnie would play every now and then.

Gene Odom: Well, they would be some beer, Coca Cola’s and stuff on the plane and people would smoke sometimes and drink and some, most of them would just try to relax, sit there with, I think, back boom boxes. Back then, they could play whatever and there wasn’t no TVs on the plane and none of that video game, none of that stuff was back then. And we would play poker, some of us and every now and then a different one would come and sit on the table, mostly it was me and Craig Reed, Ron would come and play sometimes, and Ronnie would play every now and then. And when you’re flying, you don’t have all that time unless you’re going from New York to LA. 4 hour flight usually you have an hour flight, 2 hour flight, hour and a half, 45 minutes flight, something like and you don’t have a whole lot of time on the plane when you’re jumping from city to city and it’s just do what you do, sit back and relax and Ronnie had taken the 2 sleeping pills because he’d been up all night and so he said, I need to get some sleep. This is when we got up on the plane and I got to get a couple hours sleep. I was up all night. Yeah, I heard. And there was a couch. Kevin Elson, Allen and Gary were sitting on the couch, but there was 4 people could sit there. And there was a little like a 2 by 6 table in front that you could set your drink on or your cup or your Coca Cola or you could lay back and prop your feet on the table. So I told them to move their feet and Ronnie, I laid Ronnie down there and under their feet so he could lay there and people could walk by and go to the gallery. And he went to sleep on the floor right there under their feet.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about, there were motor issues. You all were going to Baton Rouge, one of the motors went out. One of the motors quit. Is that right?

Gene Odom: It didn’t quit. It ran out of gas.

Ramsey Russell: Ran out of gas.

Gene Odom: So it did quit. Both of them did, what happened was they had a problem with the engine, that they didn’t know what it was. They thought it was a magneto. That’s what they say. And so they were mixing the fuel mixture too rich or richer, which is called auto rich. You can make the engine perform more richer with adding more fuel to it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Kind of like choking.

Gene Odom: Yeah. It’s called auto rich and I found out over the years that by running that engine in auto rich position, it burns 29 gallons an hour extra fuel in auto rich position. And normally, the engine would burn 89 gallons per hour and so we don’t know. Nobody alive knows how long they kept that run, that plane in auto rich position, burning that extra 29 gallons per hour. And over all the years of my investigation and checking with everybody, is that the auto rich mechanism on that right engine, maybe both engines was burning extra fuel, burning more than 29 gallons, maybe 5, 6, 8 gallons an hour or more. By doing that, they thought we found out that the right fuel gauge didn’t work. So they estimated and they went the way they would fuel the plane up is they knew how many gallons the engines should burn from point A to point B and even with the engine in auto rich position, so they would put fuel on the plane at every location, thinking they had x amount of gallons on the plane when they added fuel, that is, they added 400 gallons in Greenville, South Carolina, thinking they had approximately 170 gallons of fuel on the plane, meaning they would have 570 gallons to go to Baton Rouge. What I found out and through my investigation, is that the FAA even thought they should have had 170 gallons when they added the 400 gallons. The 400 gallons should have flew that plane from Greenville to Baton Rouge. So we ran out 10 minutes short. So what that tells me is that when we landed the plane from Lakeland to Greenville, South Carolina, the plane was out of gas. When we taxied up to the area, engines, they didn’t know what engine still running, but that plane was out of gas and they didn’t know it, and so they added 400 gallons, thinking they had 570 gallons and so they ran out. That’s why they were so shocked is that and Billy Powell said, when they saw him dumping the fuel, that’s what bloody Mary’s would do to you. They were trying to figure out why we’re out of fuel, where’s our fuel at? And so the engines started sputtering and then when one engine would suck up some fuel, it would actually spin the plane sideways. And that’s up there, 12,000, 10,000ft, that’s a horror story. And then finally they, the engines, they ran out of fuel, but they had hydraulic power and flap control because the little John engine in the back was an 8hp engine and it was run, they had it running in a situation and they were on the phone talking to Houston and they’d already turned one time. Houston, tell them, they tell them we’re having fuel problems. And then the engines would pick up some fuel and they said, well, we’re not out of fuel, but we need to get back to the nearest airport.

Ramsey Russell: So they had turned from going to Baton Rouge, they had turned over 8 Amite county heading over toward McComb airport. That what you’re talking about, they turned.

Gene Odom: They turned coming down, they turned some because they were trying to find an area to do a belly landing. So they had turned at that point. So when Houston tells them to turn around and go to McComb, they couldn’t turn around at that point because of little Johnnies and then ran out of fuel. So we had no flap control. No electrical power. So instead you couldn’t turn up. If you, without that kind of flap control at that time, with no flap control, if that plane would have tilted to turn left or turn right, it had nosed into the ground. They had to stay on a flat plane With no flap control. They couldn’t manipulate those flaps at any time with that going on because the plane would just nosedive to the ground. So, we was a glider and they saw this field at a distance that they wanted to try to make and we’re up here and losing.

Ramsey Russell: What was the – You all are coasting. Both motors out of gas, you all are coasting. This plane will coast a pretty good way, but not forever, without power.

Gene Odom: No, it won’t coast very far at all.

Ramsey Russell: What was the demeanor of everybody at this point when it’s quiet and you all are now a coaster, what could, was it pandemonium or was it silent on that plane?

Gene Odom: It was silent because they were thinking in their mind that we were going to do a belly landing.

Ramsey Russell: Everybody’s getting their mind wrapped around that.

Gene Odom: I’m running back forth to the cockpit and then the last trip and I see that we lose our airspeed. The stall speed of that plane was 55 to 65 miles an hour. If you can maintain 55 to 65 miles an hour, you can fly. That plane weighed 30,000 pounds, without any kind of propulsion, it’s going to lose its airspeed. And that’s why we come in at 52⁰ angle, because it had done right at airspeed. It was a brock, it was a ball of metal coming out of the sky. And without propulsion, as soon as it loses its airspeed or whatever you call it, it’s coming down like a baseball. You can throw a baseball real fast from here to that truck, but if you throw it up over that truck and it’s going to start, it’s going to find the point where it loses its steam and that’s what happened. Because when it lost its airspeed, we started just coming in at a nosedive, actually and we started hitting the trees at 150ft.

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember that? Do you remember the sound of the leaves scraping the belly of the plane or hitting the limbs hitting the side of plane coming in? Because it’s coming in.

Gene Odom: No, I can’t. I know they said somebody said trees, because they were thinking we were going to do a belly landing. And they said trees and then they started hitting the trees. And then I was trying to get Ronnie to stay in his seat. And I’m sure he unsnapped his seat belt. If he hadn’t snapped the seatbelt, he’d probably still be alive, because he was running, fighting. He’s ready, he was trying to get up to fight because he thought I was messing with him. I mean, he was so groggy from those 2 sleeping pills, he knew he was trying to get up to fight. I’m going to teach you to wake me up. And he died not knowing the plane was going to crash, he doesn’t know when he was out of gas, he died not knowing anything about that.

Ramsey Russell: What’s the last thing you remember? The last cognizant thought you had. You had told me you were running back to your seat, you were running uphill. This thing’s coming in.

Gene Odom: The last thing I remember was turning away from him to try to run up to my seat. That’s the last thing I remember.

Ramsey Russell: It’s already pitched at an angle coming in, so you’re running uphill in the cab.

Gene Odom: It hit the ground at the 52⁰ angle.

Ramsey Russell: And then you don’t remember being thrown out of the plane?

Gene Odom: No, I don’t remember going through the fuselage. But see the reference to the airspeed of the plane, the stall speed. If we’d have been higher up when the stall speed disappeared, we’d have come nosediving straight down, because that thing weighed 15 tons, 30,000 pounds. We come in that angle because when we started coming down, I mean, that plane’s coming down. There’s no force behind it to push it. We’re coming down and while they were having the little John engine running, they had flap control. But once that little John engine ran out of fuel, there was no flap control. And you can’t turn the plane then, it’s just, you just on a dead run to whatever you’re going to hit. And they, I don’t know how many, how far away we were from the field that they didn’t make –

Ramsey Russell: Back 350 yards.

Gene Odom: 350 yards. We came up short around 350 yards.

Shammy Walt: My name is Shammy Walt, I’m from Hillsboro, Mississippi and my story here is about the Lynyrd Skynyrd crash. October 20, 1977, I was the first person at the crash site. That afternoon I had been bow hunting with my brother and we had come in from hunting and a friend of mine on the volunteer fire department, Stuart Hemphill, called me and said a plane had crashed between McCoy and Gillsburg and that we ought to get the fire department out. I said, that’s a good idea. So I told him I was on ride in my truck from Gillsburg to Magnolia down the road, just looking. That afternoon, I saw a small plane putting out ant pulls and I thought it was a small plane with one person on board. When I got to here at the easy road, I could see the helicopter down in the wood and I said to myself, that’s where the airplane crash is, where that helicopter was just sitting there, hovering above the woods. And I stopped at Johnny Moke’s house to let them know I was going to go through their pasture to the woods. And when I got to the house, there was 3 survivors at the house had walked out. Artimus Pyle, the drummer, was one of them, and Mark Frank was one, and I don’t remember the third person. And Johnny knew and them was telling to get off their land and they were trying to tell Johnny and them they was in a plane crash and they needed help and there was more people in the woods. And I said, Johnny, they telling the truth. The plane did crash and if you step off your porch and look behind your house, across that field, you’ll see this helicopter. And I feel sure that’s where the plane is and I was also a volunteer deputy sheriff. And I showed him my bag and I said, I’m going to go across your pastor and help the people. And I had my brother with me, and when we got to the woods, I left my brother in the truck. I had a radio in the truck. I could talk to people and I was telling people where to come. I said, you stay in the truck and talk. Well, I crossed the creek, went to the light in the woods, it was dark by this time. And the first person I saw when I got to the plane crash with the pilot hanging upside down out of his seat, the plane was upside down, the front of it was. I got that on my hands and knees and prayed to God to help me, give me strength to go up there and help. Well, the first thing I want to do is find the wings. That’s where the gas is. I didn’t want to walk up into a pile of gas. And I walked around the plane twice and the wings were ripped off and there wasn’t no gas, so I felt safe. But while I was walking around the plane, I stumbled on top of 2 people that were alive. One of them was Paul Welch. I talked to him and I took 2 hunting coats, and I covered him up with the hunting coats and told him help was coming. Just they on our way, we’re going to take care of you. The second person I found was Steve Laurier and he was the same way. He was kind of hurt his legs and stuff, but he could kind of stand up. I covered him up with a hunting coat and told him help was coming. There was a third person on the ground, but I didn’t find him. That was Gene Odom. And the back of the plane, the plane had twisted. The back was up, and I knew most of the people was going to be up front, but you couldn’t see the doors or the winders. And there was a crack in the plane, but I didn’t go through that crack. I went through that back door and it wasn’t nothing but suitcases and stuff up in there at the time. And I didn’t see nobody else, and nobody answered when I called out loud. And you can’t hardly hear, Cause of the helicopter. Well, for some reason, I climbed up on top of the helicopter and was walking on the belly of the helicopter, upside airplane, I’m sorry, airplane upside down. And it was a crack in it and I got down to pray again. But I stuck my hand in that crack and I poked somebody in the eye. His name was Mark Howell. He was an electrician on the plane. And I talked to him and I told him, I want to somehow get him out of that plane through that small crack, which was about a foot long. But for some reason, I took a hatchet, and started cutting a hole in that plane around that crack. I told him, close his eyes. When I got the hole big enough to pull him out, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and it was Ben lang on the highway patrolman. He said, Jamie helps coming. There’s people here and I looked around and I could notice there was people on the ground below me helping. Other people had come, I hadn’t noticed them to that point. And I don’t remember who helped me pull Mark out of the hole. I said, Mark, I’m finna pull you out of this hole, and it’s going to hurt like hell. I said, all I teach, grit your teeth. And I reached under his arm and pulled him out and when I handed him down to help on the ground, I handed him to Stuart Hemphill, the guy that called me. Well, after that, I’d never met Mark. The 40 years later I met him. And I’m going to tell you that story in a minute. But I climbed up in the future last inn with Dwayne Easley, my brother Gerald, sir, I had a brother, Joey. Dennis Wilson was up in the future lot. And we were trying to, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle, who to get out next, what to do. You could, he’s upside down, you walking on the ceiling. You try not to step on nobody. Some people would hung up in the seat belts. You had to cut them out and we got 7 night, 18 people out at fuselage. And out of the 18 we got out, only 4 were dead. Besides the 2 pilots, May 6, all the rest of them were alive. We got them out alive.

Ramsey Russell: Did you know Lynyrd Skynyrd at the time of that wreck?

Shammy Walt: No, sir, I didn’t. Later on that night, when we had got everybody out of the plane, Nita Labade from Channel 9 news out of Baton Rouge, come up there. And I knew her, had recognized her from TV. And she wanted to know where the crash was, I told her across the creek and she waited across the creek. And I sent her to talk to my brother, Gerald Wall, for interview. He sent her back to me and we had an interview. And at the end, she asked me, did I know who was on the plane. I said, well, they tell me it’s a rock and roll group. And she said it was Lynyrd Skynyrd. And I said, which one was he? I knew the name Lynyrd Skynyrd, but I didn’t realize it was the name of the band. I thought it was a person. She explained to me, who’s Lynyrd Skynyrd?

Ramsey Russell: Do you know there who they are now, all these years?

Shammy Walt: Oh, yes. I’ve seen them in concert and everything.

Ramsey Russell: Since then having talked, some of you all down here, just regular folks, hunters and farmers, just jumping at the need to help other people, whether you knew them or not, whether they were famous or not, you all jumped. Would you look back all these years? How did that touch your life? That’s what I’m trying to say. How did that affect you?

Shammy Walt: I would have done it to anybody. I would cure it. It didn’t matter to me and like I say, I didn’t stop to even think about that. All I stopped for is ask God to give me strength to help them do the right thing. And I reckon I might have done the right thing for Mark Howell. Me and him is good friends now. If I hadn’t climbed up there, looked in that crack, we might have never found him in time. But he was the only one airlifted to Jackson, Mississippi. He had broke hip, broke shoulders, he was in bad shape. So I might have done the right thing by climbing up on that plane for some reason and getting him out so quick.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of folks around here have said that forever, nobody talked about it.

Shammy Walt: For 40 years, I really never talked about it too much. Some people would ask me and I said, yeah, I was there and that was about it. I met a man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, years ago and said he was writing a book. And I did an interview for him. But I really never talked to nobody till about 4 or 5 years ago. And really, the first person I really did a lot of talking to was Mike Roosevelt, Rouseville. And he said he was writing a book about the rescuers. So I talked to him and I talked to a newspaper reporter after that. And since then, since the monument, I’ve talked to a lot of interviews, but I don’t do it everybody. I do it with people who are really interested in Lynyrd Skynyrd trying to promote them or something. They not in it for money.

Ramsey Russell: No. How do you feel about this monument? And what kind of people have you met since? I mean, I know people from all over the world come here.

Shammy Walt: I glad we did it. We always wanted to do something. And when we started out a couple years ago, we all finally got together and talking about it. We were doing a little sign. A little sign got bigger because we got more money and donations come in. We got more money. A sign turned into 3 granite stones. What we got now and I’m proud of it. I think all the fans should be proud of it, come see it. We’re not asking for money or stuff. And I come over here every night and I don’t mind talking to the fans. I don’t want nothing from it. I’m just that I want to educate them. They’re interested. If their fan shows me, they really interested and want to know what happened to their band. I talked to them.

Ramsey Russell: Have you got a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?

Shammy Walt: I like a Girl, What’s your name, little girl? What’s your name? Fine, what’s your name? But I’ve seen them in concert and I got some albums and stuff from them. I even got original album I bought right after the crash. I went and found one of the original band but I bought it after the crash. Fine, but I got the story. I like to always like to tell this story on Mark, how when I got out of the plane which I think I told you, didn’t I?

Ramsey Russell: Let’s hear it.

Shammy Walt: Well, but chopped him out.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Shammy Walt: Yeah, that’s right. Me and Mark’s good friend, he lives in Pasadena, Texas now.

Ramsey Russell: Is that, would you say your contact with Mark Howell, is that one of the most long lasting members you’ve got? Like, when you just think back to that night, what was the one thought you have thinking back to an initial impression or when you got back home and woke up the next morning, the first thing you thought about all that.

Shammy Walt: Well, besides the sight of the plane, walking up to it, I remember getting mark out of that plane. Now, after we got up in the plane, I helped get other people out, but I had no idea who I was getting out. Like, I didn’t know who Mark was for 3 years ago, he came down here to see the crash site and he got out of his truck and he got to telling his story that night. And he was telling about how this guy said, look, I want you to grit your teeth. I’m going to pull you out of this hole. And when he said that I knew who he was, I said, feller, you looking at the guy that pulled you out that night? But when he told me, I told him, grit his teeth. I said, this is going to hurt like hell. I told him what? I need to get him out. I didn’t know what was wrong with him. Said he was hurt. He was between the floor and the belly of the plane, up in them hydraulic lines and electrical lines. The plane was upside down.

Ramsey Russell: How long after that day was it before people started piling in and carving on the tree and things like that?

Shammy Walt: I can’t answer that. That happened on Thursday evening, I went home Friday evening, took a bath and ate for about 4 hours. I come back, I didn’t go home this Sunday evening. My drilling was pumped up. I kind of camped out down there. I could talk to my wife on radio from the crash site to the house and she would bring me stuff to eat and stuff. And I just slept in the cars. We just camped out for a couple nights. And I didn’t come back then for 40 years. I mean, I heard about the tree and people talked about it, but I didn’t know. I just didn’t know about it. I never went down there.

Bobby McDaniel: Bobby McDaniel, I have a nickname. Governor.

Ramsey Russell: Governor.

Bobby McDaniel: And I am, was born and raised just about a mile from here before I moved into the town of Magnolia and later into McComb. But our family still has the farm here that I was raised in.

Ramsey Russell: Where were you around dinnertime? October 20, 1977? What happened?

Bobby McDaniel: I was a young business person, 22 years old, had started my own business and I was working, a lot of my friends and all were still in college that did go to college or, but I had come back and started a business.

Ramsey Russell: You got a, somebody called you, you got a radio call, you’re on a volunteer fire department, is that right?

Bobby McDaniel: No, no, not the volunteer fire department. And the first time, the first report would have been closer to around 615 to 630. The plane crashed around 546. But I was in the K&B drugstore, which has been long gone. But most people remember the K&B purple. And it probably was the first time it broke in on the AM radio inside the store that a plane crashed outside of Magnolia of which is where I spent most of my childhood growing up. And so I ran out to my car and I was a member of the civil air patrol. So I switched my CB radio to channel twelve and reported in and asked for the directions or the location. And they gave me the location and I had them to repeat it a total of 3 times because they was directing me exactly to our family farm.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Bobby McDaniel: The plane crashed 2000ft from the corner of our farm through the woods.

Ramsey Russell: How long did it take you to get there?

Bobby McDaniel: It’s a very funny story. I could see where it looked like somewhat of a command center being set up. And I walked up in it quietly and a friend of mine’s father was the, one of the ambulance drivers, a great big man, Eddie Warren Smith. And he grabs me by the back of the neck and starts dragging me to his ambulance, telling me, telling everybody, this boy know the way around. And explained to me that they were having to go across a field, that the other ambulances had gotten stuck and had to cross a creek and they wanted to find a way around that they didn’t have to go across the creek. And so I rode in the amulets and we did go around Easley branch and turn in on a ridge on the backside. The ambulance did make it, I’m going to say, about 200ft into the woods, which was a logging road, until he determined he was not going to be able to go any further. And I bailed out of the ambulance and continued on to the crash site. And he and Tommy Doddrell, the other person on the amulets, backed the amulets back out.

Ramsey Russell: What was it? Describe what it was like when you got there, you got to the site.

Bobby McDaniel: I have said this from the very beginning, is that the greatest thing on this rescue was the fact that the Louisiana Coast Guard helicopters happened to be in the area returning back from a training mission. And of course, they heard it over the air, turned their locators on and they started making circles looking for the plane crash and located the plane crash before the first rescuer ever showed up. So whenever I bailed out of the ambulance, I went toward the helicopter lights and the first thing I did was I came across the wing of the plane and I thought that was the plane crash. Until I realized that there was more commotion further on up. I had no idea the size of the plane that we were searching for.

Ramsey Russell: How much further ahead did you have to go to find it?

Bobby McDaniel: I would say about 200ft. The plane hit the top of the first pine tree at 497ft until it hit the base of the oak tree that actually split the plane open.

Ramsey Russell: Reckon how long it took to get everybody? I mean, by the time you all got everybody out across the creek and off to town, I mean, it sounds like a pretty arduous situation here.

Bobby McDaniel: We have gone over this in our minds numerous times and I cannot tell you what the timeline was, some of the passengers of the plane was up and walking around. Of course they were in shock. Some of them we were getting out and laying them out and that was kind of my position of helping from Dwayne handed them out of the plane onto the ground and several of us would get them over and somewhat triage them and decide what injuries or what order they were. And, of course, when we did get the deceased out, we kind of lined them up in the same little area, there was no stretcher. And the helicopter, which I want to say something about the 2 helicopters. One helicopter did go and land. The second helicopter was immediately over with a spotlight and the prop wash and the noise, and it was just, it was hectic.

Ramsey Russell: I bet.

Bobby McDaniel: And he, at some time, another had one of the crew members propel out of the plane and it was conversation. He instructed the helicopter to back on off and back up. So he gained altitude and backed out to where the prop wash was not over us. The noise was not as bad, but that spotlight was perfect on the plane. And if it hadn’t happened for that spotlight from the helicopter and of course, the helicopter finding the plane, that rescue could have gone on much longer.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir. It seems from talking to a lot of people down here at the monument that there were a lot of community people involved. It was a lot of rescuers. There was a lot of landowners. There were people on the site. There were people inside the plane. There were people doing triage. There were people transporting and there were people, as I understand, donating their trucks to run to town and take these people. If you had a guess how many people might have been involved in this whole process?

Bobby McDaniel: Well, by living here for another 40 years and running into people, half of the people in southwest Mississippi was here that night and helped that night. I mean, everybody said, I was there. Everybody was doing this and that, the people that was actually at the plane, getting the people out of the plane was between 6 and say, 20. But then we transported them across the creek and put them in the back of the pickup trucks that was able to drive across the muddy bottom. But they were all kind of law enforcement people, it was hard. I could not tell you if it was a 100 people involved or not. I could say probably so. But at one point of time there was at least 100 people that helped in the rescue.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Bobby McDaniel: But it’s been said that there was x amount of rescuers and several 100 spectators. Yeah, because there were spectators and there were some people that was, souvenir hunters.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Bobby McDaniel: And a lot of stuff got picked up that night. That I was ashamed to say.

Ramsey Russell: But.

Bobby McDaniel: I’m proud to say that some of it did get given back to the families of the people on the plane. Within the next week or 2, as they were in town, they did come back and bring certain artifacts or family pictures or even the guitar was brought back.

Ramsey Russell: What did – A lot of people say, it wasn’t really talked about that much around here people were just real quiet about it. They didn’t talk about it. Was that the case or were people talking?

Bobby McDaniel: I walked out of there that night with my dad, actually, one of the neighbors had came and got him and got his tractor and front end loader to bring over, thinking it would be able to help. And he had cut a tire down on the tractor and someone had told me about it. And so I found him and he and I were walking out together. And that’s whenever someone came up to me and told me it was Lynyrd Skynyrd playing.

Ramsey Russell: Had you heard of the band at that point?

Bobby McDaniel: I’d been to 3 concerts.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?

Bobby McDaniel: Ed Lanson went on to say, but don’t worry, Bobby, I think Lynyrd’s going to be okay.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Bobby McDaniel: But to answer your question, it was 25 years before I walked back into those woods. I had done seeing all I wanted to see. And actually, it was people, friends of mine that had moved into the area and stories were told, and people said, well, that’s out near Bobby’s farm. And people actually encouraged me to take them back to the crash site. And that was the first couple times that I did go back.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you probably had a lot of folks coming in over the years, just sneaking in and looking and trying to find it.

Bobby McDaniel: People all the time had come searching for it. And they would stop on the road, they would stop people. You’d be on your train, tractor bush hogging or plowing and they’d come out there flagging you down, wanting to know where the crash site was. And Johnny Mote, which owned the land that the pasture that we came across on the rescue, he got tired of people flagging him down and stopping him from his work. He couldn’t even get his cows milked. So he built a big arbor archway and hung rebel flags off the top of it that you could see from the road here. And he would just point and they would take off across the pasture to that area.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, that’s incredible. How would you describe the events of 43 years ago having affected the Gillsburg community or affecting you?

Impact of Skynyrd Nation on Community Awareness

I do a little bit of work in our community as far as community services and community support, community advertising. And I think that is something that this community has not used as far as an asset.

Bobby McDaniel: I’d say that in Mississippi, even people had never heard of Gillsburg, but now Gillsburg is a pretty common word, especially in the Skynyrd Nation and in rock and roll. But I had always been a fan of the band. Like I said, had been a 2, 3 of their concerts. And one of the concerts was the top, best concert I had ever been to. I mean, it’s still number one to this day. I do a little bit of work in our community as far as community services and community support, community advertising. And I think that is something that this community has not used as far as an asset. And some people don’t agree with us on making it publicized about where they crashed and where they died. But rock and rollers, that’s the greatest band we had. And that’s this is just something that can attract us to the band or make us feel like we are somewhat closer to the band.

Ramsey Russell: I agree. A lot of people are connected to the music and in this way, they can find their own closure and their own connection to the band and to the music. Last question, do you have a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?

Bobby McDaniel: Curtis Loew. The ballad of Curtis Loew.

Ramsey Russell: Where were you on October 20, 1977, around dinner time?

Dwayne Easley: Okay. This is Dwayne Easley, I’ve lived here all my life. And around noon that day, I was baling hay, actually, square bales of hay, just cut through the woods here. And later that afternoon, I and a friend of mine, Wayne Blades, went bow hunting. And it was a really warm day. Little too warm for hunting. So we came back early and stopped over at my mom dad’s house. And that’s when I heard. We heard helicopter go over really low. And we wondered what that was about. And about that time our, the telephone rang. Mama answered it and she hollered, called in there to us and said, there’s a plane going down behind our house. That was my aunt that called. They saw it coming our way. Well, as soon as we heard, well, she told us that we knew what the helicopter was about then, so we jumped up and went around to the hay field. I could see my hay haulers down in the field, but we didn’t have any idea what the plan was, because there’s several 1000 acres of timber back here. So it’s kind of a dilemma. Wonder where the heck will we look? And then we saw the helicopter coming back. So he came back making circles, big circles with a spotlight.

Ramsey Russell: And then he got in dark.

Dwayne Easley: Well, it wasn’t dark, I could still see my hay haulers. But it was dark in the woods.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir.

Dwayne Easley: So they were shining light down in the, under the store, the forest trees, because you couldn’t see down in there. Some was already set, but I could still clearly see my hay hauler. So when he stopped circling, we knew that was it. And we were maybe a quarter of a mile away from the plane. So we took off running. Looking back and thinking about the times and time the plane went over Michael’s house and then the phone call. We had to be at the site within 15, 20 minutes of the crash. I mean, we had to be. And we got there, of course, in the woods is dark, but the spotlight from the helicopter has made it, like, daylight in there.

Ramsey Russell: Were you all the first ones on the same?

Dwayne Easley: I saw some guys coming from the other direction, but we came in from the east side. I could see people coming from the west side out of the woods at the same time. I mean, I saw, that’s what I saw. And so I’m thinking that it seemed like maybe 5 or 6 of us got there at the same, basically, the same time. I don’t really know. Somebody was there before that or not. But, yeah, we got there pretty much the same time, I guess.

Ramsey Russell: What exactly did your aunt say on the phone? I know it was explained to me earlier today that we’re right in the flyway. I mean. The plane’s coming out of McComb airport, flying towards Baton Rouge, you all right under it. But what did she see or what did she say that made her think something different about that plane?

Dwayne Easley: Well, for one thing, people out here in the country, especially Gillsburg, we know where everybody’s house is within a few miles, which direction. And they knew exactly which direction that plan was headed. They knew was headed straight to our house and they also knew it was going down because the engines were not running. So they called us because there’s not any other houses between their house and ours, really, through those woods. I mean, it’s with the first house.

Ramsey Russell: How. I wonder how high old those trees. At that time, they were probably pretty low to those trees.

Dwayne Easley: Well, I can tell you this. The first tree they hit, the pine tree, they were really tall pines. The very first one they hit. And to the, where the nose hit the ground was almost a quarter of a mile.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Dwayne Easley: They were clipping trees as they went more as they went. But I know those woods, that was our, in fact, it crashed on the backside of our family property. And that’s what we call it, the back 40. It was a quarter of a mile square. Well, they started hitting the treetop, the first 3 top, just about on the property line on the south side. And when they hit the ground, they were only a couple 100ft from the other property line on the north side. So they went almost a quarter of a mile, hitting trees before they hit the ground. And it probably didn’t take but a few seconds.

Ramsey Russell: You all showed up within 15 or 20 minutes. And you all are some of the, among the first handful of folks on the site. Describe it. You ever, I mean, I’m just imagining. You never walked up on a crashed airplane before.

Dwayne Easley: Well, first of all, we thought it was a small plane, like a Cessna or something and when we broke through the underbrush and then we see this really big plane, I’m going, dang this is a lot bigger than I thought. So I walked up to the plane, mean, Wayne. And I could hear people inside saying, help, get me out, help, get me out of here and then I could see a hand sticking out. And so I walked around –

Ramsey Russell: Because the plane kind of broke in half.

Dwayne Easley: Well, it didn’t really. That was actually where the wing tore off.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, actually, that.

Dwayne Easley: When I saw that hand. So I walked around toward the front of the plane and I could see people on the other side. Some guy with law enforcement, because he had some kind of uniform on. And so I walked back and told Wayne, I said, well, there’s a guy over here that’s going to, he’ll probably tell it. He’ll tell us what to do. We don’t know what to do. So I walked back around, looked at the guy and he’s just standing there with his hands in his pocket. I said, I went back to Wayne. I said, forget that. Let’s just, because you could hear them people in there begging for help.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: I mean, I couldn’t just stand there.

Ramsey Russell: No.

Dwayne Easley: So I said, help me up here. And he did. I got up and I, where the wing was torn off? It was just ripped open. But I had to pull that fuselage back to shine my light up in there. But I couldn’t do anything, cause I had one hand like this, holding the fuselage up. I couldn’t do anything. Well, finally, some guy came up and got a dead limb, a broken limb, off a tree and propped it up.

Ramsey Russell: It’s perfect.

Dwayne Easley: I mean. Well, then I went out inside and –

Ramsey Russell: What was the angle of plank, I mean, like you coming in from the top or coming – I guess it was laying on the side because you had to come down to it.

Dwayne Easley: Well, it was tilted a little bit.

Gene Odom: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Dwayne Easley: It was tilted slightly. That and so it made it a little higher I couldn’t just get it climb up there without some help. But that split was probably this high over my head. So that’s about 7ft probably. And anyway, I got up in the plane and now I found out later I was in the main passenger section. I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t know who they were, of course. So I started pulling on people and I mean, they wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t budge at all. And finally another guy jumped up there and he looked around and saw a dead person and he jumped down and left. Well, finally Gerald Wall came and got up there with me and I tried to get several people out. I couldn’t budge him. And he got up there and he said, look, we got to get him out. I said, man, I’ve been trying. They won’t budge. She said, they got seatbelts on. Get your pocket knife out. So I did and when we started cutting belts, it started popping out.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Dwayne Easley: We could pull them out. Then of course, it took 2 of us pull one out, because these people is dead weight, they’re not even trying to climb or pull or nothing. They’re just – I don’t know, I guess shock in shock and brain drama from hitting the ground about, what, 200 miles an hour. But it was really strange that they were not helping us help them. And it’s like handling a 200 pound sack of feet, really. But we started pulling them out and we pull one person out and it’d be another one under them. When the plane hit, all the seats just kind of went together like an accordion.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: In that section at least for sure. So there’s people on top of other people. And as a matter of fact, come to find out, one of the last ones we got out, the whole time I was standing on the back of his legs, he was laying on his face with his feet sticking up. I kept seeing feet go like this and somebody hollering. I didn’t know what it was, but it’s good. Every time I pull somebody up, I was pushing on his legs and didn’t know what.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Dwayne Easley: Of course, there’s sharp metal all up in there. I mean, its aluminum, but it, man, it was sharp. So wound up my hands were all cut up. They were cut up, my blood, their blood on everything.

Ramsey Russell: You all were bringing them out and just helping people and kind of getting them rested up somewhere nearby.

Dwayne Easley: Yeah. Well, we meet, Gerald and I were pulling them out, handing them down. The first one or 2, I think we handed down to Wayne Blades by itself. But then some other people got there. So we were handing them down to a couple of guys and they were passing them down a line that’s what they told me later. I didn’t see all that. Dr. Lewis was – had them triaged it on the west side of the plane. Well, I couldn’t see that while I was up there in the plane. But when I did finally come down out of the plane, I walked around and I saw all these, everybody was on the plane, laid out, bandaged most of them. All of them are bandaged. And of course, the pilot copilot were P and D. And we couldn’t get them out.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Dwayne Easley: Just couldn’t get them out. You had to have heavy equipment to get them out. I think one of the local farmers, Mike Wilson, got his farm tractor in there. I believe I was gone when he got them out. But I left the woods about 02:30. I got home about 02:30. But I think they said he pulled either the tree or the plane to get the pilot out because he was pinned against the tree. Copilot was in a little broom behind the pilot. And you needed a crowbar or something to get the door. We couldn’t get the door open, so there was only 2 people left, 2 bodies left in the plane when actually the transport Parish fire department got there. There was no rescue. It was been over with about 30 minutes. The only thing left was a recovery of 2 bodies.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: But they came in with the news cameras, so –

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m thinking that wasn’t a quick job, your own man lifting dead weight, 200 pound feed sacks, as you call it, getting people going, it very slow going. And you said something about the community and the locals and everybody, knowing everybody. I mean, I’m sure by then a lot of folks started showing up.

Dwayne Easley: Yeah, I looked out at one point. Actually, after I came down from the plane, because I couldn’t see on the west side while I was in the plane, but they looked like several 100 people in the woods, but they were standing back. And my thought at that point was, why aren’t these people helping us? We need help. But later on, I found out that the law enforcement people made them stand back. Because they were afraid somebody had a cigarette that would, might start a fire. So they wouldn’t let them come close.

Ramsey Russell: They didn’t know the plane was out of fuel.

Dwayne Easley: No, they didn’t know. Nobody knew that. And I didn’t think about it, but that it wound up, there was really only maybe 6, 8 guys actually doing the actual rescue pulling the people out of the plane, bring them to the back. But that’s why they wouldn’t let them come up. But, so most everybody down there was just watching, looking at, seeing what’s going on. And –

Ramsey Russell: What do you remember when you think back all those years? What do you remember? A smell –

Dwayne Easley: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s –

Ramsey Russell: A sound, the lights, the motion. I mean –

Dwayne Easley: All that, 2 things. I could smell that. All I could smell was hydraulic fluid. I mean, it was strong. And I smelled that for a couple of weeks.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: Yeah, the light from the helicopter was made, like, daylight, of course. And the sound of that helicopter wings popping –

Ramsey Russell: The rotors. Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: I mean, that stayed with me a long time and it was constant all night, that sound. But –

Ramsey Russell: What time did you get back home that evening?

Dwayne Easley: Well, I got home about 02:30 that next morning.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: And I went in the woods at dust dark.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Dwayne Easley: And I had no concept of time while we were doing that rescue. I had no idea at all what time it was. I mean you just don’t –

Ramsey Russell: Just kind of evolved in the moment.

Dwayne Easley: It’s just like, it’s kind of like it took forever. But it didn’t also seem like it didn’t take long at all, it’s just weird.

Ramsey Russell: Were you a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan at the time?

Dwayne Easley: I liked their music, but I was not a group. I never went to a concert. Didn’t know what they look like.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: I just kind of like the music, but I’m kind of person. I don’t need to be entertained.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Dwayne Easley: I’d make my own entertainment by hunting and fishing and farming.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Dwayne Easley: So, yeah, I knew who they were and I liked their music. Still do, of course. It’s good southern rock, but I didn’t know it was Lynyrd Skynyrd playing a band until we got them all out, sent them loaded on the ambulance and they were headed back to the hospital. And this 15 year old boy walked up and asked me, did I know who this is? I said, no, I don’t. He said, that’s Lynyrd Skynyrd band. And I said, what? Started to make sense then that they – They all look like a bunch of hippies and –

Ramsey Russell: Rock stars. Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: Inside the plane was looked like dozens at least, of what we call hippie bags the leather. No bags there was lots of those in. There were all bunches, whole bunch of tennis shoes and tennis shoe boxes all over the place. Look like 100s at least. Maybe more playing cards. And every single thing inside that plane had blood on it. I mean, there was nothing. And another thing that observation I made while we were pulling them out, when we got to Cassie Gaines, she was down in there about 2 or 3 deep. When we pulled her out, she didn’t have a speck of blood on her, none. And while we were pulling her out, I was thinking that I said, wow, this is first one I’ve seen with no blood. None. And we knew she was deceased, though, because obviously her neck was broken. Appeared to us anyway. Dean Kilpatrick was the first person we saw that was deceased. He had aluminum bar stuck up under his rib cage. It was just – But yeah, that’s what I remember the smell of fuel. I mean, hydraulic fluid.

Ramsey Russell: I’d heard that all my life growing up. I’d heard about the wreck in Mississippi especially. We kindly claimed Lynyrd Skynyrd is our home. And I heard it was like it was on private property. It was a secret site. But I’m sure over the years, you all probably had folks from all over the world just crawling around, stalking through the woods, trying to find a site. I mean, did you ever see that or –

Dwayne Easley: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’m sure we didn’t. I didn’t see them all. I saw some of them but around the 20^th anniversary, if you get out around here, you’d see cars driving through real slow and looking exactly what they’re doing. I’ve stopped some people that were headed back in there and told them the best way to go. Showed them the best way to go over the years so. But there’s been a lot that I didn’t see and I just didn’t get out and look for them every time they were here.

Ramsey Russell: And it’s your property on which the Lynyrd Skynyrd monument is located. You donated this piece of property. Why was that? And I know it affected you. I know now, your personal involvement with that event, why was it important to you to donate that land for the monument?

Dwayne Easley: Well, I’ll tell you why, because I was inside that plane and I saw those people in pain and dying and bleeding to death or bleeding and I heard them calling for help. And I just thought that they need to be remembered some way. So –

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Dwayne Easley: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How did the monument idea get started?

Dwayne Easley: The very first mention of that was made by Mark Frank, who was a roadie, road crew guy. He was Artimus Pyle’s drum tech. We had to get together here. A lot of survivors and some of us, bunch of us folks that’s actually on the board, rescuers. We kind of had a little get together before, may have been. I don’t remember this year, last year, I mean, in 19^th or 18^th, but Mark Frank just mentioned the fact that most famous plane crashes had a monument or a marker or something.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Dwayne Easley: To that effect. And that the Lynyrd Skynyrd Van denied. And we just, everybody kind of looked at each other. Yeah, that’s right. We need to do it. So we started talking about it and it just started growing and people started saying, look, we’ll pitch in if you’ll do it. And so, we started making plans and we tried to put it on a state highway, but going through the government is, like, impossible sometimes.

Ramsey Russell: Red tape galore.

Dwayne Easley: Red tape, it takes years. We want to do it on 2019. But they were dragging around. And so Bobby McDaniel asked, approached me one day, so what if we put it on Easley property? And I thought for just a second, I said you know what? Yeah. Because that way we eliminate the state and then we can do whatever we want and we don’t have to go through all the red tape and we can get this done this year. And that’s how it started. And we got people made up – we got together, made a group of folks to get this project done. And I think there’s 14 in the group. The board, we call it the board. So we’re thinking about just the roadside, but Ms. Christina Anderson right over here, she said – What was that? She said, go big or go home.

Ramsey Russell: Go big or go home.

Dwayne Easley: Yes. So we were looking at a big monument or a small monument or signs, but she didn’t want anything small. She wanted it big. And so that’s –

Ramsey Russell: Well, it’s big. It’s beautiful. Well, that’s why I got one last question for you. Do you have a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song?

Dwayne Easley: Oh, it’s got to be Free Bird.

Ramsey Russell: Free Bird. I agree.

Dwayne Easley: I mean, I like this. Everything about it. It’s just the music, the it’s a long lasting, some really good music in it.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Dwayne Easley: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Where were you on October 20^th, 1977?

Dennis Wilson: First of all, I’m Dennis Wilson. I’ve lived in the community of Gillsburg all my life. I was making my living at a Feed and Seed store. In October of 1977 when I was 27 years old. Part of my assignment in October was driving a spreader truck and I’d been on a spreader truck spreading ryegrass and oats for fall planting most of the day. I know one particular field. I don’t know why I remembered it. I think because a bug hit me in the face that afternoon and I was discouraged because I was hurting a little bit and wound up going home about 05:00, 05:30. And shortly after then, I got a call from a good friend of mine, Stuart Hemphill, said a plane was in trouble. He had just called the Fernwood airport, now McComb airport, as we call it in Fernwood, that he had seen a plane a little bit too low and he called them and they confirmed to him that there was indeed a plane in trouble. And 20 or 30 minutes later, he called me back. The reason he called me, I was a local fire chief of the volunteer fire department, Gillsbury Fire Department back then. He said, we may have to get together and go see if we can help find the plane if it crashed. Well, a few minutes later, sure enough, it did indeed crash. I was living on P.P. Wilson Road, probably not knowing at the time, only 2 and a half miles the way a crow flies from the actual crash site. So that was my first knowing was getting that phone call. And then immediately thereafter, I left my house to come to this area because he had gave me the general area of the intersection of P.P. Wilson and Highway 568.

Ramsey Russell: And then what?

Dennis Wilson: I got there, probably, I would guess, 06:40, 06:45, just dust dark. There was a highway patrolman, Mr. Sammy Keene from McComb, Mississippi, who I kind of knew because he was highway patrolman. He was at the intersection of P.P. Wilson and 568 with his blue lights on. And I stopped right behind him in my 1977 GMC short wheel based truck that I just recently purchased. And we were small talking, wonder what’s going on. What kind of plane is it? Of course, nobody knew. About that time we see a helicopter, see and hear helicopter and it’s kind of good. And sure enough, dust dark or better, right out in front of us heading south, parallel with 568. It flew about a mile, mile and a half below us, down toward Gene’s grocery, made a U turn and started going back north, northeast, kind of behind us. And we’re still just sitting there talking, small talking and the helicopter has a giant spotlight shining straight down under it. And we hear in the noise of the blades and watching the helicopter. Shortly thereafter, he crossed P.P. Wilson across P.P. Wilson behind us and advanced about another quarter or 3, 8s of a mile. And all of a sudden he stopped and hovered in midair. And that’s when we stopped talking. Everybody knew he had located the crash and we jumped in our vehicles. I followed the patrolman. We came up, got on, we was right on 568 anyhow, came up a quarter mile, turned on Easley Road, went about 150 yards, turned into open gate, went out in the corner of a open bahia grass field that belonged to Johnny Mote. And we could see the steel helicopter. We got within, I would guess a quarter of a mile and we had to park our vehicles. And then we got out and certainly in a fast run, climbed the fence, ran down through the woods, because we could see and hear the helicopter. And that vision is still in my mind in that swampy area of that helicopter with this giant floodlight shining down on an airplane that to me at the time a country boy from Amite County looked like a boeing 747. Of course, it was nothing near to that. Everybody knows it was a smaller plane, but it just looked like a plane. And it literally broke in half and I said half opened and there it was in the woods and it was almost like a scene from a Twilight movie to me at the time.

Ramsey Russell: How many people were there already?

Dennis Wilson: I didn’t see anybody. There was a group of, I’m guessing 4 to 6 or 8 people kind of moving rapidly to get there. But I don’t think it was – I mean, I don’t remember seeing anybody. I was toward the front of the line, because the opening in the plane was about 12ft, where it literally broken open right 6ft or 8ft behind the pilots. And somebody immediately, when I got to the plane, somebody gave me a push up and I wound, I think it was Gerald Wall. Push me up and I’m sliding up the plane, pulling myself up and somebody pushed me over and I literally went in the plane. And as soon as I did, to my left, the pilot and copilot were pancaked in their seat and there was no way that we – I knew we could get them out. I was already hearing people say help me, help me. And that’s when we started trying to get people out. Certainly, the first, the ones that were able to help themselves. And I’ve been told there was probably somebody already out the plane before we got there. I do not, I can’t verify that. I can’t remember. But there very well could have been somebody that had got out on their own.

Ramsey Russell: Gone for help or something.

Dennis Wilson: Yes, sir. And I went down in the plane and it was my, I guess, assignment, for the lack of a better word, to get people to lose and help slide them up to the next man, which I think was Gerald Wall. And then he would get them to the opening and then he would slide them down to the people waiting. And soon, shortly thereafter, people came from all around. There were, I think I’ve been told, 300 to 500 people wound up here before midnight that night.

Ramsey Russell: With the size of the plane and the positioning of it and where the opening was, I mean, were you having to lift them up?

Dennis Wilson: The plane was the tail end of the plane that I started toward. I want to say it was at a 45⁰ angle with the ground, so it was a slant, but it wasn’t a steep incline. So it was, I was going down, but it was not a tremendous incline.

Ramsey Russell: Was the whole interior of that plane. And I’ve heard some of these documentaries and stuff like that from the cockpit towards the back. Was it all kind of an open floor plan or were there, like, barriers and walls and stuff in there?

Dennis Wilson: There was a few barrier from what I remember. There were still some seats, some regular seats that we were – I was using my feet on each side. I was kind of in the aisle using my feet, using those legs of those feet seats as a ladder maybe, to help me get down and get up. The one thing I remember and I still remember and there was a guy named Ron. He was the most conscious guy that I was around. Some of them were unconscious. Some of them were moaning. Some of them were groaning, I’m sure several of them. But I had a more of a conversation with him. His name was Ron Eckerman and he was the band manager or assistant manager. He was in charge of the money. He paid the bills and carried the money and took up the money. But his name was Ron Eckerman. And he told me he was from Houston, Texas. And if you’ll check your records, LSU was playing ole miss that Saturday night and we were told the plane, somebody had told us along the way the plane was headed to Baton Rouge. And all I had on my mind, if they go into Baton Rouge, it must have something to do with the football game Saturday night. And they said, no, we’re a band. Somebody, maybe Ron, said that, Lynyrd Skynyrd, well, that didn’t mean anything to me. I had heard of Sweet Home Alabama, but I just, well, confess I didn’t know who Lynyrd Skynyrd was. I like classic country music and I wasn’t a, what I call hard rock or whatever they were, but it took me about 3 days to learn Lynyrd Skynyrd. Of course I knew but I had a long, Ron from what I remember was the last person alive that. That I got out of there because I left him alone, because he was kind of conscious. He was worrying the fire out of me, wanting to know where his briefcase was. He said, he had to find that briefcase. And I said, we going to find it. We going to get you fixed up. But we helped and I don’t know, 6 or 8, I guess, maybe more. Maybe it was at least 6 and no more 9 or 10. And we got him out, and then there was 1 or 2 deceased individuals and then we had left them alone and we got them out, slid them to the top. And then when we got everybody except the pilot and copilot that I could see the plane. I came out of the plane and I think I was down in that plane at least 45 minutes. I don’t know that. I don’t know it could have been 30, it could have been an hour. I really don’t know. But when I came out of the plane, the pilot and copilot was still in their seat and they were pancaked that maybe. We knew we couldn’t get them out without. And I was told a neighbor went got a tractor, and they – Because there was some oak trees right there and they had just came down at an angle and clipped. I looked at the opening after I come out, and it was near and I always say 45⁰, but it was a slant angle where it started cutting those limbs in those trees, oak trees and pine trees until it got so low it wound up between two oak trees or something. And then that’s when it literally nosed and dove in and crushed those. That pilot and copilot. And in the impact just snapped it open. I’ve described it like you’d break a pencil half in two and it would the part of it kind of stayed together, but the top portion was open enough for me to get down in there and push, help pushing people out, help.

Ramsey Russell: You all had to go a quarter mile into the woods, across a branch. And how far away from the hospital in McComb? I mean this is now this just getting them out to the field, I guess was a chore.

Dennis Wilson: I really wasn’t involved in that so I can’t give you a whole lot of information about that. I do know when I came out of the plane, more and more people coming. I saw blankets, sheets and a few cots by then. But to answer your question, I think we’re probably 16 to 18 miles from the hospital in McComb and only maybe eight or nine air miles from the airport that they were trying to get back to.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Dennis Wilson: So he came pretty close to getting back to the airport. But they were still wounded on the ground when I came out of the plane, but people were busy with cots and as I say and we got, they did carrying people out the wounded and that took say another hour because their ambulances came from McComb and several other places and we got all the injured up. And by then it’s 10:00 I think all this started about 07:00, 07:15. So by then it’s 09:30, 10:00 and we look over there and there’s 3 bodies still on the ground. And as reverently as we could, we got, made us a little hammock type thing to carry them out and we brought 3 of them and slid them, like I say, as reverently as we could in the back of my truck because it was new truck and I hadn’t junked it up yet. But we put them in there and covered them with a canvas or a blanket or something that somebody brought. And I took them in the back of my truck to McComb because I knew they didn’t need to be on the ground any longer. But when I turned in the – there was police that ever intersection and I had my flashers on so they knew I probably had injured or deceased. But I remember turning in the hospital and said, there’s no hurry on these 3. And they routed me to the little quonset hut maintenance building behind the hospital that had been set up already as a morgue. And then we, there’s plenty help there. I guess the Coroner or some of his people were there and we unloaded those guys and kind of set them on the table in that maintenance building.

Ramsey Russell: What do you remember? Just a thought, a smell, a description, a memory that just most about that night, it’s just a feeling. What is there? Just one thought, did you say? I don’t mean nothing gruesome, I’m not asking for that. I’m asking just it’s funny, when I look back, some of my personal experiences, just something stands out.

Dennis Wilson: I kind of hit on this while ago. The thing that stands out to me was we were in the forest in Amite County and here’s this well lit area, not very big, with a giant airplane in it.

Ramsey Russell: Right, that light.

Dennis Wilson: And all that light and that white, shiny airplane was just like a scene from a horror movie, and that. And then when I got out of the plane, there were several people that they had kind of sit up against a tree, the ones that were able to sit up. And then some of them were talking. And I walked by trying to do what little I could to help anybody. And one guy grabbed me on the leg, Britch’s leg and pulled it, and he said, hey, buddy or hey, somebody, what about my nose? And his nose was cut on one side and laid over. And I said, it’s just a little cut. We’ll get your bandage up. You’ll be fine. Was it Leon Wilkerson or Billy Powell? I see, I can’t –

Ramsey Russell: Billy Powell.

Dennis Wilson: Billy Powell. But that’s whose had a horrific nose cut, but it was literally almost cut. His nose all the way down one side and it was laid over on the other. But I tried to reassure him and say, oh, you are, it’s just a little cut. He’d be all right. But that kind of that and talking. That Ron Eckerman, he mentioned that with the word briefcase a 100 times that night.

Ramsey Russell: It must have been important, whatever was in it.

Dennis Wilson: I think it was some money and some checks in it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I bet it was.

Dennis Wilson: I never did see it, but I heard about it.

Ramsey Russell: Have you since listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd? Do you have a favorite song?

Dennis Wilson: A Sweet Home Alabama, I guess. And I had heard song before then, I think, but that’s that Sweet Home Alabama is one of my favorites. And we rarely mentioned it for as we hit on this earlier for years and years and about 2014, a redneck from Charleston, Mississippi, come down here and started asking me questions and everybody else and whirring the stew out of whoever he could. And it’s wound up to be a good thing what started out as the thought for maybe a little old sign on the highway that we couldn’t get any help for turned into one because of a few individuals, one beautiful monument. And so I am really proud that even if it took 42 years that we stepped up and got to fix this monument for their memorial.

Ramsey Russell: How long were you in the hospital after the wreck? I know they got everybody over to McComb. How long were you in the hospital? Cause you sustained some pretty serious injuries.

Gene Odom: A little over 3 weeks. A week out there in Mississippi and then a couple of weeks, 3 weeks in Jacksonville and then many weeks after that.

Ramsey Russell: And while you were in the hospital, nobody told you if anybody died, what happened. They just kind of just want you to focus on getting well and getting out.

Gene Odom: Yeah, I didn’t. I was not told that anybody passed away.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So you were discharged from the hospital, and you told you wanted to go visit Ronnie. What was that like?

Gene Odom: Yeah, my girlfriend picked me up and first thing I wanted to do is I wanted to go visit Ronnie and see how he was doing. And so we were driving out to Orange Park, going toward his house and she pulled into the cemetery and ask her, what are you doing? Cemetery here. She says, we’re coming to see Ronnie. He didn’t make it. And that’s the first I knew about it.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, how did it hit you? Childhood friend.

Gene Odom: I was shocked. I was just speechless. And she pulled up. He was in a temporary mausoleum area because the Judy ordered his heads thing. And I don’t know the right words. I don’t know if it was surreal. I don’t know what that word really means. But it was a horrible shock. I mean, everybody on that plane that could have been killed. Why in the world was Ronnie Van Zant. And then it took me a long time to find out exactly what happened when I put two and two together and unsnapping his seatbelt. And still, why him? Why Ronnie?

Ramsey Russell: Tragedy.

Gene Odom: Tragedy. I mean, there’s a force up above that makes on decisions and you can’t change them and you don’t know they’re being made.

Ramsey Russell: Ronnie was a young man. All those guys were young back then. Young, young. And when you’re late twenties, you don’t think about mortality. You don’t think about not waking up tomorrow. You just don’t give those things thought. You’re young, you’re bulletproof. You got a long life ahead of you. So, I’m sure you all probably never talked about this, but how do you think Ronnie Van Zant would have wanted to be remembered?

Gene Odom: Well, him being a rock star, that wouldn’t have mattered to him one bit. The way he’d be remembered as a southern country boy, barefoot country boy that liked to fish and he loved life. That’s how he liked to be remembered. Rock star wouldn’t make a bit of difference to him.

Ramsey Russell: Well, if he had a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song, what would it have been?

Gene Odom: Let me see, I would say Curtis Loew would probably be right at the top of his list and that in a Simple Man.

Ramsey Russell: Simple man.

Gene Odom: Yeah, because that’s what he was a simple man. And Gary Rossington actually wrote those lyrics, helped write those lyrics to Simple Man. Gary came up with the Simple Man’s lyric and then him and Ronnie sit down and wrote the words to it. But just as he was a simple. I mean, and a story about it. Everywhere he went, no matter who you were, your money wasn’t no good. His money, he was paying everything. Finally, one day we just got per diem money, which we got $20 a day back then with somewhere, he paid. I said, hey, let me pay for something. He went, Gene, he said, you see these jeans? These jeans cost $17. I ain’t going to let a dollar bill burn a hole in $17 jeans. That’s the kind of guy he was.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know what attracted me to this story. Maybe it’s just that my whole life, I heard Lynyrd Skynyrd suffered a tragic fate in my home state of Mississippi. Decades later, their authentic music and lyrics still resonate. Almost half a century later, their music still speaks to many of us. They were absolute top of the world rock star legends and the whole world remembers. What song is it you want to hear? That’s right, Free Bird. But you know what in meeting with these guests, visiting the sites, hearing their stories, I found myself wondering, how will we be remembered? Inevitably, we’ll all spend attorney staring at the bottom of headstones, figuratively speaking. And I’m reminded that as parents, spouses, business owners, as hunters, even each of us are influencers. Our words and actions affect our families, friends and entire communities. That is our legacy. Likewise, we’re all the some of our past. People, places, events and even music.

[End of Audio]

LetsTranscript transcription Services

www.LetsTranscript.com