ALLIGATORS IN THE POOL

I wouldn't want you to think I ever had a wild streak in my younger, hillbilly singer days, however, there was that one time...............

In 1968, Columbia Records decided to include Country Artists on the annual Columbia Records Convention and Show at the Eden Roc Hotel, in Miami Beach, Florida. This was a big deal, because they had never give us the time of day before, it was always the big Pop Acts from New York and California that did the Show, while we read about it in the trades. Well, they chose Tammy Wynette, Charlie Walker and myself as the token hillbillies to appear at the Convention that year, and we were pretty proud to be there. All the promotion people, producers, executives and Artists from all over the world gathered in Miami for this one time a year affair.

We really put on the dog, I mean it was kinda like the Beverly Hillbillies coming to town, we just swarmed that place. The Eden Roc was not quite ready for Country, but, that's okay, Country wasn't quite ready for Eden Roc either. However, the show went off without a hitch, Tammy and Charlie just knocked them out, and I didn't do too bad myself. It was something being on the same show as Tony Bennett, Barbara Streisand and the Staple Singers.

When I finished my bit, and walked off stage, a very distinguished gentlemen, resplendently decked out in tux and black tie, cornered me at the side of the stage. He introduced himself to me as the President of Columbia Records, Goddard Lieberson, and I was pretty impressed because everyone in the Music Business knew who this gentleman was......he was the MAN, The Chief, The Lead Dog of the biggest record company in the world....yessir, Mr. Lieberson, glad to meet you. He got right to the point, "Stan, I was impressed with your voice, and I want to bring you to New York and record you with a full orchestra, for I believe you are a Pop Singer." Well, that shook me up, cause I sure did not want to be one of those, but nonetheless, he was the MAN so I sure would not argue with him. He told me he would work out the details with Billy Sherrill when they went to dinner together that night, and we parted company.

Glenn Sutton had taken over as Associate Producer at Epic and he and I were running mates, and if there was ever a funnier guy than Glenn Sutton, I've never met him. Well, this night just about did us in, and I still don't know how we got away with it, but let me set the story up. Billy and Glenn were sharing a room in the Hotel, and Glenn knew that Billy was going out with the big dogs, namely Mr. Lieberson and Len Levy, the President of Epic, and we thought this would be a good opportunity to play a little joke on Billy. That afternoon we had been out exploring the Eden Roc complex, and we found that this Hotel was built in a sort of concave design, facing the Ocean, and in the middle of the concave was a tropical garden, and an alligator pit. We decided this would be our joke on Billy; we would put a live alligator in his bed to surprise him when he came in from his party.

About one o'clock in the morning we went out on the beach and found a good piece of driftwood, about the size of a baseball bat. I took the driftwood, climbed over the chain link fence into the alligator pit while Glenn held a flashlight on one of the alligators that was about four foot long, and just kinda laying there giving me the fish eye. I whopped him between the eyes with the driftwood, and he went out like a light. I lifted him up over the fence to Sutton and then climbed over myself. The darn thing was pretty heavy and starting to come around a little so we wrapped him up, like a mummy, in three beach towels, and carrying him between us sneaked back in the lobby of the Eden Roc and up the Service Elevator to the 21st floor where Billy and Glenn_s room was located. We let ourselves into the room and pulled the covers back on Billy_s bed and lay the Alligator under the sheets, with it's head on the pillow, and covered it up. It was still wrapped up tight in the towels, but it was awake.....and it was pissed off. Just as we got him all settled in we heard Billy Sherrill coming up the hall, singing at the top of his voice (a Tammy Wynette song), heading for his room. We hid in the bathroom, with all the lights out, the bathroom door cracked just enough for us to see into the room. Billy had been to a heck of a party, and was having a little trouble navigating, but he finally got the door unlocked, turned the light on and saw what he thought was Glenn Sutton, sleeping in his bed. Being in a boisterous mood, he hollered, "Sutton, you bastard, get out of my bed." and jumped right in the middle of what he thought was Sutton. It wasn't Sutton he realized when he jerked the covers back, and in so doing pulled one of the towels off the head of the alligator.....the alligator opened his mouth wide open and hissed, bout like a snake, and Billy, who was astraddle that thing, just levitated....I mean he went straight up....I've never seen anything like it, before, or since....he went up, and then , somehow did a flip, and landed in the floor, about five foot from the bed. He was stone, cold sober, instantly, and I don't know who was the madder, him or the alligator. We finally got Billy calmed down, after all it was just a joke, come on Billy where is your sense of humor, and he got in the spirit of things.

I'm pretty sure that Billy came up with the idea that we could win a hundred dollar bet with Mr. Goddard Lieberson....the idea went kinda like this. Mr. Lieberson' s suite was one floor below the room we were in, and directly in line below us. Billy decided we would lower the alligator from our balcony down to Mr. Lieberson's balcony, then when we had the alligator safely on his balcony, he would call Goddard up and bet him $100 that there was an alligator on his balcony....and win the money. Good idea, we all agreed. Billy and I wrassled the alligator over to his balcony, got it hanging over the railing ready to lower it down on the other balcony....when the dang thing flipped his tail real hard, slipped out of our hands and went sailing down 21 stories to crash, like a bomb, through the front marquee of The Eden Roc Hotel. It was the worst case of alligator suicide on record in Florida, to this day. Well, that kinda broke the party up when all the police in Florida converged on the Hotel, you have never seen such a hub bub....I mean they were real serious.

I made it back to my room and kinda collapsed in the bed cause it had been an extremely tiring day, after all, I had been a Country singer, then mistaken for a Pop singer, then changed into an alligator wrestler all in one night, that's enough for this 'billie, I'm going to bed. . . . .my room overlooked the pool area and I had been asleep just a couple of hours when I heard the hollering and yelling coming from the pool.......Alligator in the pool !!!.....Alligator in the pool !!!.....I don_t know what was happening, but it kinda sounded like maybe someone had mistaken the swimming pool for the wild alligator pool....and stocked it during the night.... I put the pillow over my head and went back to sleep.

Stan Hitchcock

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