The Royal Guardsmen are an American rock band, best known for their 1966 hit single “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” and the Christmas follow up “Snoopy’s Christmas”. (More from Wikipedia)
The Royal Guardsmen had a million seller in 1966 with “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”; I guess I have been reminded of it since the local paper has been running some of the “Classic” Peanuts comic strips featuring Snoopy riding his Sopwith Camel into combat, always with the battle cry: “Curse You, Red Baron!”
The Red Baron was a real person – Manfred von Richtofen, who is credited with 80 air victories during the First World War – and his name is referenced in the song (though never in the comic strip as far as I know). The Royal Guardsmen followed that hit with “The Return of the Red Baron” and “Snoopy’s Christmas” and managed to release four albums with Snoopy/aircraft themes in the mid-1960’s, which also featured other novelty songs that had been released earlier by different bands. They had other original songs as well; their first single, “Baby Let’s Wait” eventually made the Top 40 when it was re-released after the “Snoopy” hits.
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So, when the Miss Winston-Salem Pageant decided to come up with the entertainment one year (probably 1968, though I don’t know that for sure), I guess they figured that the Royal Guardsmen would be a safe bet. I knew two or three of the girls who were competing, and this was my chance to see a band that I had actually heard of before. I had been to a few “battles of the bands”, even one that featured a quite good local band that had one of the coolest names ever, Captain Speed and the Fungy Electric Mothers; but I am pretty sure that this was my first real concert, and I was psyched.
First, for those who aren’t familiar with my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina: We are mainly known as a manufacturing town, and mostly of cigarettes; R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is headquartered there. Though the brands “Winston” and “Salem” have waned in popularity some, our nickname “Camel City” highlights what I always thought was the best of their brands – from back in the days when I was a smoker myself, now almost 35 years ago – the original Camel non-filters and also Camel filters. If there is a more iconic cigarette pack than Camel, I don’t know what it would be. I also went to R. J. Reynolds High School; and the site of the Pageant, Reynolds Auditorium is located on that campus. I grew up in two different houses on a short street with a long name, Horace Mann Avenue, that is located just one block from the high school.
The Hanes hosiery mill and the Hanes knitting mill that makes men’s underwear are also located in Winston-Salem; originally they were two different companies (owned by first cousins, if I remember right), but they merged a long time ago. Krispy Kreme doughnuts were founded there back in the 1930’s, and the line of Royal snack cakes that I have seen from coast to coast is also made by a local company.
Winston-Salem also has a reputation as being kind of prudish. Their feud with the rock band Steppenwolf is rather well known in rock circles, as the City fathers attempted to keep the band from singing “goddamn” when they performed their hit song “The Pusher” there. (Lead singer John Kay obliged, though the concert crowds always enthusiastically filled in the offending word).
I was rather surprised years later as I played one of the songs on the two excellent Mermaid Avenue CD’s, consisting of a set of performances of the lyrics to several of literally hundreds of unrecorded songs by Woody Guthrie that were set to music by the American rock band Wilco and the English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg. One of the songs, “Aginst th’ Law” goes on and on about all of these illegalities – “It’s against the law to talk, and it’s against the law to walk”, etc. – and later in the song, there is the lyric: “Everything in Winston-Salem is against the law!”
The Pageant itself was enjoyable enough – my first and last attendance at one of those – and while I didn’t know Miss Winston-Salem herself, Miss Congeniality that year was a friend of mine, Karen Nielsen. But then the Royal Guardsmen took the stage; and somehow, they had morphed into a really nasty punk rock band! They were rocking the house down as far as I was concerned, but you could even see from the audience that the Pageant promoters had no idea who they had hired; and they were scrambling to try to get the concert cut short. After around four songs, the Royal Guardsmen were told to do their hit song and beat it; and even that performance of “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” was unlike anything I had expected: At one point, it sounded like there was cannon going off! As far as I know, this incarnation of the Royal Guardsmen never made any records, but I have sure looked hard for them over the years.
