During late 1984, while Carl, Joe and Nancy were working as the Dizzy Rambler Band at "Skeeter's Big Biscuit Restaurant" in Winter Haven, we had the good fortune to meet an old gentleman by the name of "Pappy" Rogers, a real fan of both home style cooking and of country music. Rogers was an actor and I believe he had played the cook on the old 50's television show, "Wagon Train". "Pappy" had been doing some work in a Wild West Show which was part of the entertainment at the Circus World theme park, located up in the northeast corner of Polk County about 18 miles from our area. He told us the park was under new management and was doing some hiring. "Pappy" really liked our music and suggested that we should check out the possibilities of performing there.

The idea of making a regular weekly paycheck was a concept that was somewhat foreign to us as musicians at that time -- so we were quite courious at the possibilities of setting up in a semi-permanent location, not having to do a complete load-in and load-out every day and working on a daily schedule. We made an appointment with the Circus World Entertainment Director, Tom Edelston and took out a presentation of our audio tapes, scrapbooks and assorted other credentials. Edelston was sufficiently impressed and set us up with an audition. On Saturday, February 23, 1985 we loaded into the park and did our first audition. The audition went well and Tom told us he would be in touch. After a couple of weeks we started calling from time to time to see if any decision had been made and time and time again we were put off. While Tom was always encouraging about the eventuality of work for the band, as the weeks past, we were slowly losing hope.

The "Skeeters" store we had been working at in Winter Haven closed down and we had taken the weekend breakfast shift at another "Skeeters" location, at Lee Road in Orlando. It was a long drive and we were less than appreciated in this new environment so the duration of this gig was relatively short. We were soon out of work and starting to get desperate.

Over three months had passed since our audition at Circus World and we had all but given up hope, when Tom Edelston called and asked if we would do another audition at the park - this time for the park's owner, Jim Monaghan. We were a little skeptical and insisted that if we were to audition again we would need to be paid at least a token amount as a show of good faith. I think we were offered $100.00. It's not like we had a lot of options so on May 12, we once again loaded into the park and played another audition. Again we passed the audition with flying colors and both Edelston and Monaghan seemed excited about the possibilities. Monaghan wanted to do a cash giveaway every day during the summer and Edelston wanted to do a western Bar-B-Q. Both could envision the Dizzy Rambler Band as part of their promotion idea.

Tom Edelston aka Tom Robbin

Although the park was not ready to offer us daily work, for the rest of May and the first of June we played special events each weekend and developed a good working relationship with Tom Edelston. Tom was also a performer at the park working as Tom Robbin of "The Flying Robbins" who were the featured trapeze act of the Circus Spectacular show in the Big Top arena. Tom held the Guinness Book of World Records as the first trapeze flyer to perform a "Triple Triple" move and had also performed that stunt on a segment of television's "Fantasy Island". For obvious reasons Tom could relate to both the performer's and management's sides of the work environment. He was a good man to work under.

Finally it was decided that a Bar-B-Q restaurant would be installed in the former carousel gazebo which was located near the entrance of the Circus Spectacular pavilion and an adjoining smaller gazebo would be built as a stage for the Dizzy Rambler Band. Show times would generally coincide with the "dump" of the Circus Spec shows. The last show of the day would also include a Grand-a-Day Give-Away promotion. On June 18th, the Dizzy Rambler Band started a daily schedule of performances, usually involving 2 or 3, 30-40 minute shows a day. The band's gazebo stage was not completed when we first started and was not finished for a week or so thereafter. In the beginning, the Bar-B-Q was set up in a huge canvas dome building toward the back of the park. The acoustics were so bad in this dome that "Crown Electronics" had setup experiments there to test equipment under adverse circumstances. One could count approximately 14 echoes from a single handclap. We were one of the only acts to play the dome successfully (if that was even possible). Instead of turning up to overcome the acoustics - we turned down. I'm not sure why that worked -- but it did.

When we were contracted to do the summer season at Circus World - our contract included the stipulation that we have cloggers in our show. After several audition sessions we hired four youngsters to be our clogging team. The original group consisted of James Johnson, Greg Sawyer, Jackie Gaskins and Kelly Taylor and they were hot. We also had a couple of regular alternate dancers: Joey (Foley) Willis and Liz Voight - who stepped in when one of the other kids was sick or on vacation. We set up certain guidelines but then allowed the dancers to develop their own show and choreography- as well as design their own costumes. They worked hard and the routines really cooked. The team's ages ranged from 13 - 17 years old and along with their given talents also came the problems of a group of kids given all but free reign of an amusement park for about 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. Needless to say, Nancy had her hands full as the surrogate stage mother (funny how things like that work out).

The Dizzy Rambler Show/Western Bar-B-Q was an instant success and crowds were usually large and friendly-- and ate lots of Bar-B-Q. We were happy and the park was happy.

A Summer in the Circus
For a closer look at the day to day grind of a circus country band
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