Lord Byron and the Poets

Lord Byron & the Poets did not release any records but did record a session at Ed Boutwell Studios like many other Birmingham area bands. Members were:

Chip Woody – lead singer
Ed Balog – lead guitar
Eddie Robinson – rhythm guitar
Jim Lacefield – bass and vocals
Danny Saxon – drums and vocals
John Wheatley III – drums

Drummer John Wheatley sent me the photos seen here and answered my questions about the band:

We had a great band and were well received wherever we played gigs. Our band was very unique in that we had two drummers. Our singer, Chip Woody, looked a lot like Mick Jagger and was very talented at singing Rolling Stones songs, so we did plenty of them along with the usual list of current favorite rock songs.

Several of the band members were very creative and wrote quite a few songs during my time with them in the 65/66 school year.

I have a few pictures from a “freebie” we did at Canterbury Methodist Church in Mountain Brook, AL for a benefit event. My family were members at the church for many, many years.

The one other picture I have is a promotional picture made at Phipps Piano Company in Birmingham that is connected with our band’s purchase of a large amount of Vox sound equipment to amplify all of the guitars and all of the singers.

We had a really nice Vox PA system with two “sound columns” and amplifier. The lead guitar player (Ed Balog) played a really nice Gretsch Country Gentleman gold plated guitar through a Vox Royal Guardsman amplifier accompanied by a really nice Vox reverb unit, that actually recorded the initial sound on an audio tape and then replayed it in diminishing volume levels as the tape passed through a successive series of tape heads that progressively erased more and more of the original sound as the tape completed it’s circuit while continuously recording and playing each new audio sound on the same tape … absolutely amazing to watch it operate with the cover off of the tape component area.

The bass player also had a brand new deluxe model of a bass amplifier that had its own hand truck type of chrome rack on wheels and sounded amazing for sure. I’m not sure what amplifier Eddie used, but he probably plugged into Ed’s equipment sometimes and I think he had a classic Fender amp that he used some of the time.

We were “recruited” at one point during that tenure by a man representing himself to be a talent scout from RCA in Nashville and he had us to meet him on a weekend at the new Mountain Brook High School where we set up in a sunken carpeted area and he used an reel to reel tape recorder to tape all of the original songs that our group had to offer at that time. He kept in touch with the Balogs for some while, promising this and that. That’s about all that ever came of it, except that one of our songs came out as a hit record titled “Hey Little Girl” with only very minor changes to our original version and it did quite well on the charts and got loads of airplay. The band members that wrote the song felt ripped off but there was little they could do about it.
 
At another point, we did a recording session at Boutwell Studios in Birmingham and recorded several songs, including one entitled “Mister You’re A Better Man Than I” performed by Danny Saxon for our group. During my efforts to re-connect with our original band members recently, I learned that the bass player, Jim Lacefield, still had the original reel to reel tapes from that Boutwell recording session, but had never done anything with them since 1966. One thing led to another and he was kind enough to ship them to me and I am in the process of getting them transferred so that all of our band members can enjoy and share them as they see fit when the project is finished. It will be interesting to hear the music on the tapes and re-experience those magical moments from 50 years ago surrounded by our current families.

We never actually made any records during my tenure with the band and the group essentially dissolved at the end of the school year as all members were heading off to college, etc … similar to the Ramblers and many other groups of that era.

Our lead guitar player, Ed Balog, was only 14 at the time while most of the rest of us were seniors in high school, but Ed was an extremely talented musician who had been playing the guitar daily since age 8 and was a child prodigy for sure. When I tried to re-connect in recent years I was saddened to learn he had passed away after a legendary career as a musician in the greater Birmingham area.

During efforts to re-connect with Chip Woody, I learned that he was doing very well and had continued to be very active in music along with his wife, but never actually located him or spoke with him since 1966.

I finally located the other drummer / singer, Danny Saxon, who lives out west in a beautiful part of the Great Rocky Mountains and is very happy doing wood work along with pursuing his current hobby of singing and playing music on a frequent basis.

Jim Lacefield was our excellent bass player / singer and I reached him in recent times to learn that he had continued his musical endeavors, shifting over to a really interesting and successful string of performances for many years singing and playing acoustic guitar in a variety of venues throughout the southeast. Jim lives near Tuscumbia now.

Eddie Robinson, Johnny Robinson’s younger brother, played rhythm guitar with our group and I understand that he is alive and well in the Birmingham area these days, but I haven’t actually spoken with him since 1966.

Chip Woody (lead singer) and Danny Saxon (drummer / vocals) both went to the University of Montevallo and seem to still be active in music now, although Danny lives out west in the Rocky Mountains and has switched from drums to guitar a long time ago. He told me that he saw Chip Woody and Chip’s wife at a music-related meeting in California a couple of years ago and learned they both were very active in music.
 

Jim Lacefield was very active in music for several years after Lord Byron and the Poets, often working with well known music acts and also doing his own one man shows in small clubs in the southeast. He later got heavy into geology and became a leading professor on the subject and has written several highly acclaimed books on geology in Alabama. He and his wife now own and operate a “preserve” park near Tuscumbia where they conduct tours and he does public speaking on such matters all over the state.
 
I have continued to be pretty active as a drummer in a variety of bands in the greater Montgomery area since moving here in 1972 and really enjoy pursuing those opportunities now during retirement from my “day job”.
 
It would be really great to reunite the band, but would be very difficult due to the geographical locations of the surviving members after nearly 50 years of being apart but I would love to see it happen.

John Wheatley, 2015

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