The Shadows' circle is finally broken
The Fabulous Shadows played five times longer as a reunion band than it did in the ‘60s.
The Coeur d’Alene group last performed six years ago when the oldest members reached age 70.
They will play no more.
“We’re 76 years old, and we’re through,” Dexter Yates told Huckleberries this week.
The Shadows — the late KVNI broadcaster Bob Hough would add “Fabulous” later — were born by accident. Four members and their dates were at a Demolay Senior Prom when the scheduled band failed to show. Dexter volunteered to play the piano on stage and the others scrambled to get instruments.
They were an instant hit. Newly minted fans begged them to stay together. They did, even when the older ones went off to college. For 4 ½ years, beginning that night in 1963, they were booked solid, entertaining from McCall to Canada, from Seattle to Missoula.
Eventually, the band would consist of Dexter on the keyboard, Doug Wanamaker on drums, Pete Shepperd on bass guitar, Mike Bolan on lead guitar, Jack Fullwiler on sax and Jim Frame singing vocals.
The Shadows cut a 45 record with “Walk the Dog” on one side and “Puff Stuff” on the other.
“It was crazy,” said Dexter, longtime owner of Yates Funeral Home. “We hit a spot where we were just fortunate. We had a following that was very loyal.”
The Vietnam War broke up the band. Four served in the military, including two who went to Vietnam.
The Fabulous Shadows faded, well, into the shadows afterward.
In 1985, the band reunited to raise money for Kootenai Medical Center (now Kootenai Health) and Hospice of North Idaho. Dexter is a founding member of the Hospice board.
They packed the Kootenai County Fairgrounds pavilion, attracting 2,200, who hollered and stomped to “Louie Louie,” “Gloria” and other '60s favorites. The event raised $8,000. The Shadows agreed to do it again in 1986. And then played reunion gigs for the next two decades and beyond.
Dexter thought the Shadows had ended when some members turned 65. But five years later Jerry Jaeger called. Dexter admits he hung up on the Hagadone Hospitality exec. But Jerry persisted, promising in a letter to handle everything. All the Shadows had to do was show.
The band did, arriving on a helicopter that landed on a special pad on Lake Coeur d’Alene, near tour boats tied together for the event.
The Shadows had decided they would break up if anyone left. Or died. All are still alive. But Bolan has moved to Mexico. The six have remained best friends.
Dexter’s fondest memory of his time with the Shadows occurred during the later reunions.
“At the height of it all,” said Dexter, “I would be at the piano and look out at the audience and see my grandkids jumping and dancing. That’s full circle.”
Saved
Ava Goodman has been in foster care since she was 2 weeks old, 2,025 days. Fortunately, Angela and Doug Goodman of Rathdrum have nurtured her since she was 9 months old. Five years ago, the Goodmans asked the Washington foster system if they could care for Ava. In 2016, they had adopted Ava’s half-brother, David. And they knew it was important for siblings to be together in foster care, to maintain family connections. Ava was born a week before David’s adoption. David’s adoption was easy. Ava’s wasn’t. Angela and Doug, a Kootenai County sheriff’s deputy, faced years of canceled court hearings, red tape, rotating case workers and bureaucratic indifference. “It was a roller coaster ride,” Angela told Huckleberries. “You’d think things were going well and then they’d do a 180.” The frustration ended Wednesday when the Goodmans adopted Ava. The kindergartner knows she has two moms and two dads. And she knows her forever family loves her. The Goodmans proved their untiring love by outlasting a broken system that causes some children to fall through the cracks.
Huckleberries
• Poet’s Corner: Come January we’ll remember/how bright the sun shone in September — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Autumn Thought”).
• Bumpersnicker (in the back window of a tattered black truck on McFarland): “I don’t have road rage. There’s just too many idiots on the road.”
• Did You Know: John Stone, the visionary who transformed an old mill site along the Spokane River into Riverstone, once directed computer courses at North Idaho College?
• The Way We Were (Sept. 23, 2016): Five years ago, The Press reported that Mike Pearce, widower of actress Patty Duke, had put their 2,973-square-foot, five-bedroom home in Best Hills Meadows up for sale. Asking price: $398,000. The house might sell for a bit more today.
Parting Shot
Coeur d’Alene hasn’t been a two-newspaper town since Sept. 1, 2017, when I literally turned off the lights in the old Spokesman-Review bureau on Northwest Boulevard. Decades before, SReporters and their Press counterparts had engaged in, what an Idaho Statesman columnist dubbed, the “Great North Idaho Newspaper War.” We tried our best to scoop one another. Some subscribers feared we would tear the town apart. But, in September 2014, Press columnist David Bond, who had worked for both sides, explained why cities with competing papers were well served. “Two newspapers independently owned and edited in a single circulation area kept each other honest. The publishers and editors could spin things, but they had to hew to facts or they’d get called on it, mercilessly.” If you weren’t here in the 1980s-90s, you missed the golden days of local journalism.
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You can contact D.F. “Dave” Oliveria at dfo@cdapress.com.
