My Memories With Bobby Vee.........................by Al Breaw

On October 24, 2016, we lost a very special person. He was not only a fantastic singer and a superb entertainer, but he was also a great guy. Bobby Vee was one of my heroes when I was growing up and starting my own musical journey! I had been playing on the road for some time when I heard that we were going to be working a few shows with Bobby Vee. My first thought was, "This will be the Best!"

We’d worked shows with other big names, but hey, this is Bobby Vee. Of all the musical celebrities that I have met and shared a stage, in my opinion, Bobby was the nicest of them all. I found that we had a lot in common, mainly because he was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota. We knew a lot of the same musicians and had also worked a lot of the same venues. Besides being a genuinely nice guy, he shared many great stories, including the following, a story from Bobby I will never forget. 

Elston Gunn

As told by Bobby Vee: When we first started playing, we would cover basically 75 miles in any direction from Fargo. It was myself, older brother Bill and several others and we called our group "The Shadows". Every place we played, we packed the house. I don’t think it was our music though. We dressed really cool. Our uniforms included black shoes, white socks, black pants, white shirts and a little blue dickie. We looked so cool.

One Saturday night after we were done, brother Bill approached me and said, “Bobby, what we need is a keyboard player.” I asked him if he had any ideas and he told me that he’d heard of a guy over in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota that played pretty well and also sang. The next day, we drove over to Detroit Lakes and looked this fellow up. He went by the musical name of Elston Gunn. We told him what we were doing, and he said that he was definitely interested, so we invited him over to Fargo the next Sunday for a session to see how it might work. It went fine, and he joined our group.

I remember the first night we played, and I gave him his uniform, the black shoes, white socks, black pants, white shirt and the little blue dickie. He was just excited. I don’t remember exactly how long he played with us, but I believe it was a little less than a year. One Saturday night after we were finished, he told me that he’d been offered a job with a band in Detroit Lakes and, although he enjoyed working with us, he would have to take their offer as he could save a lot of money by working with a local band. He would, however, give us a month’s notice so that we had plenty of time to find a replacement. I’ll never forget the last night he worked with us. After we were done and getting paid, he turned in his uniform, the black shoes, white socks, black pants, white shirt and, of course, the little blue dickie. The man was crushed.

He went back and played with the group from Detroit Lakes. I’m not sure for how long, but I heard that he had started doing some writing and moved back East, and changed his name again from his birth name of Robert Zimmerman. I haven’t seen him in a while but guess he’s not doing too bad.

We had been listening to this story and thought it was very interesting, but at the end we were a bit surprised when we heard the name Robert Zimmerman, because we know that was the guy now known as Bob Dylan.

My Memories of Bobby Vee by Al Breaw