Features: 60s Garage Bands [ Original Starfires Media Gallery ] While attending Auburndale High School in the late fifties, Chuck (Charlie) Brown, Allen Keefer and Jack Pilkington started keeping musical company with Haines City rocker, Ronnie Mills, who's band "The Blazers" was stirring up the emerging pop music scene in the North Polk County area of Central Florida. They were playing radio shows, truck stops and a growing number of municipal teen centers throughout the central Florida regions. Mills had a good voice and excellent guitar skills and was quickly developing a healthy following of mostly teenage girls-- certainly not something that would go unnoticed by his handsome crew of adolescent side-men. After graduation from high school, the boys started looking for new ways to expand their own newfound rock and roll skills and decided to form their own band. Along with singer Ronald Whitney, they would put together what would become a sort of musical dynasty--one that would completely span the next decade. Tulley Stokes originally hired on as bassist but was soon replaced by Ross "Clayrock" Williams. These five would play together for most of the next two years and thus was born, "The Starfires". There was just somethin' about that Auburndale Teen Center on a Saturday when the Starfires were playing. The late morning and afternoon hours would be spent by high school girls in peddle-pushers and bobby socks, decorating the room in prom-like fashion for the night's festivities, while the moving strains of Hank Ballard's "Finger Poppin' Time" boomed on the juke box in the background -- all, of course, carried out under the close supervision and watchful eye of the city Teen Director, Connie Zacker. When the doors would open at 8 p.m., the local teens would line the walls of the almost new city Municipal Building, some having washed cars or mowed lawns all day in order to earn the twenty-five cent admission price. The Starfires were the mature musicians of the area -- meaning they had graduated high school. They were musically raw and crude, but they had that rockin' rhythm & blues sound and the kids loved it. Under the managment of friend and cohort, Sammy Killebrew, the Starfires played the Central Florida teen center circuit, many of the Tampa area country clubs and teen clubs and could almost be considered regulars on WFLA television's "Hi-Time" show that was broadcast "live" from Tampa each Saturday on channel 8. In the summer of 1962, Ron Whitney's job (he was an agricultural inspector) took him to Georgia and would put a temporary end to the Starfires. Brown, Keefer and Pilkington started playing jobs with Winter Haven singer/guitarist Kent LaVoie's band, "The Rumors". However, by the end of the year, Ron had returned from Georgia and he and Chuck Brown were once again plotting their dream-team rock and roll band. But alas, most of the former Starfires had moved on to more secure areas of life, that most often did not leave time for rehearsals and cavorting around the state playing music. This called for drastic measures -- new, young blood.
Tune in to the next exciting episode - [Return of The Starfires] This site was created and is maintained by Carl Chambers for Dizzy Rambler Productions
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