It came over the air late one night. I read it in the paper the day after. Ted Weems was dead. I was very sorry because Ted Weems meant a great deal to me. I remember it as if it was yesterday. We lived in a large old brown shingle home on 26th St. My older brother and I shared a second-floor bedroom. On a small bedside table sat a little $12 radio we’d picked up at Sears Roebuck on our last visit to the states. Every night after we went to bed we’d tune in that little radio to catch the music of Ted Weems. I don't know what station it was, but I can recall exactly what the announcer said as he opened the show. "From the beautiful Avalon Ballroom on Catalina Island, just 15 miles off the shores of Southern California, here is the music of Ted Weems.” The band would play its great theme Heartaches and my brother and I would fold our hands back up under our heads and settle down for some real music. For me those were the golden days of music, when songs had melodies and singers enjoyed the dignity of a last name. Funny thing; I saw Catalina Island for the first time in 1961. As I stepped ashore and looked around I somehow expected to hear the music of Ted Weems band drifting up from Avalon. I loved Catalina and I want to go on record as saying it wasn't the travel posters that got me there. It wasn't the glossy brochure in the Chamber of Commerce, it wasn't the page in the Los Angeles Times which extolled the virtues of the island resort. I went to Catalina because that was where TED WEEMS used to play. I am deeply sorry that Ted has gone.
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