Rockin' and rollin' with The Villagers

Readers: Our March 14 column on Music Casters, the 1960s teen spot in Riviera Beach, prompted a note from Bob Gallo, whose family ran Gallo Insurance in Lake Worth for decades.

In 1967, Bob played keyboard for The Villagers, which spent that summer as Music Casters' house band, playing alongside such national acts as Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs and John Fred and his Playboys.

Gallo, who turned 70 this month, sent us a photo of the group, in matching slacks and flowery shirts. There he was, second from the left.

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Intrigued, we checked and found a 1992 Palm Beach Post story by then-colleague Scott Benarde. It's about a book on Florida garage bands written by Jeff Lemlich, who now lives in DeLand. (Disclaimer: this writer worked with Lemlich at a Miami-area all-news radio station all the way back in 1979!)

The 1992 Post article said The Villagers band "is better noted for what its members did later: Brian Rich became a guitarist for Ike & Tina Turner; keyboardist Bill Donahue backed Dobie Gray and Johnny Rodriguez; drummer Jeff Teague played with the Pousette Dart Band, Andy Pratt, Steve Forbert and Harry Chapin, among others."

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Yes, Bob Gallo said, that's the same Villagers. He said he was replaced by Donahue.

During his tenure, Gallo said, The Villagers was "just a cover band; we didn't have anything original."

He said his equipment was heavy but impressive: a Hammond B2 organ and a Leslie amplifier speaker. But, he admitted, "even then I wasn't really a really good keyboardist. All I kind of played was chords. I didn't really do solos. But it was still a lot of fun."

At 19, Gallo recalled, he never considered himself to be "square" for playing at a club with a ban on alcohol and a close watch on raging hormones.

He later played for another garage band whose venues were a little less sedate. They performed for a week each at a bar on Narcissus Street in downtown West Palm Beach, and at the Black Rooster, at Forest Hill Boulevard and Congress Avenue.He said it featured a topless dancer one night, meaning, "we might have had the distinction of playing at the (area's) first topless bar."

Finally, he went off to Florida State University, and his rock 'n' roll career came to an end.

Pressed, Bob did say The Villagers had had a few "groupies." He declined to elaborate.

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