Lafayettes - Baltimore Sun Article

Rock 'n' Roll stars
with a local flavor

Lafayettes:
Members of the Baltimore band
recall days of celebrity and Buddy Deane.

By Joe Nawrozki
Sun Staff
July 28, 2003

One morning in 1962, Lee Bonner and friend Phil Huth sat in the cool basement of a Towson rowhouse and penned a song.

There was no particular inspiration, no shadows of Jack Kerouac or Bob Dylan. They were just playing and singing about teen-age love in their local band, the Lafayettes, named after the Baltimore avenue.

The group won a battle of the bands contest on the Buddy Deane Show, and their lives suddenly were great fun. The song, "Life's Too Short" became a national hit on the RCA label and turned group members into celebrities.

But then reality slowly settled in. Band members graduated from college, got married, had kids or went into the military, and by 1970, the band slipped into obscurity.

Reflecting somewhat typical Baltimore provincialism, members of the original band are still around and still keep in touch. They have also enjoyed the revival of their halcyon days in the 1988 movie Hairspray, which featured the group's hit song.

"We had a reunion 10 years ago," said Bonner, 59, who is a filmmaker who lives in Annapolis with his family.

"And when we got together it was like we had stepped back in time. We were 30 years older but looked the same. ... It was bizarre."

Like Bonner, other members of the original band grew up and stayed in the Baltimore area. A couple moved away.

Ben Proctor, 62, the drummer, resides in Stoneleigh and is senior vice president of a Baltimore real estate management firm; Jamie Hess, 61, piano, owns a computer company in Columbia; Frank Bonarrigo, lead singer, lives in Churchville; Steve Taylor, guitar, was last heard from in Easton.

Alto sax player Dick Svehla, 62, was a track and cross country star at City College and the University of Maryland at College Park and now owns a micrographics business in Spring Hill, Fla.; Bob Kirschner, 61, tenor sax, of Owings Mills retired as comptroller of the state Motor Vehicle Administration.

Huth enjoys a quiet life and owns a piano repair and sales business in Catonsville. None of the group is mired in the past, but they treasure their time together, an experience most say helped prepare them for the future.

Even one of the two "girls" mentioned in "Life's Too Short" is around -- M.A. Bonner who lives in Stoneleigh. The other, Sally Fobes of Rodgers Forge, died Wednesday.

"Most of us attended Towson High School," said Bonner, a waitress at a Towson restaurant who was married to Lee Bonner. The couple, now divorced, had four children.

"It was fun in those days, going to dances on the weekends and in Ocean City, people knowing I was in the song. ... I still love to jitterbug," M.A. Bonner said.

Like many groups of the early '60s, their hit record and numerous weekend gigs didn't put the Lafayettes in the millionaires' club. "We had a fan club in England," Proctor said. "But we didn't make much money, really. ... Got some royalties, yet nothing to retire on."

Today, Bonner said, the song's writers receive about $60 for airplay, mostly from Europe.

Members of the Lafayettes were pretty conservative, compared to other music groups of their era.

"We were pretty straight -- no drugs, some beer -- but I was 21 when RCA recorded the hit," Proctor said.

At the zenith of their success after the record, people interested in booking the band often hired them over the telephone. They included fraternities, debutante parties and social groups.

One organization in Washington hired the Lafayettes to work a Saturday night gig in the nation's capital.

"We took the job without the group ever seeing us, they just liked our sound," Proctor remembered. "Well, we walked into the hall and everybody's jaws dropped to the floor. ... The organization that hired us was black. We were an all-white band but played a lot of soul.

"We went out and played for them, had a great time, they enjoyed us very much. ... Times were changing then, and it was fun just to live them."