The stars were hot when they played the Coconut Lounge

Live at Lakewood

Here’s a sampling of who played the Coconut Lounge:

Del Shannon ("Runaway"), April 6, 1963

Johnny Tillotson ("Poetry in Motion" and, later, the theme to "Gidget"), May 29, 1963; Dec. 26, 1963

Lou Christie ("Two Faces Have I" and, later, "Lightnin' Strikes"), June 15, 1963; Dec. 14, 1963; Dec. 26, 1964

The Four Seasons, July 23, 1963; April 11, 1964; July 13, 1964

Guitarist Lonnie Mack ("Memphis"), Sept. 5, 1963

Dee Dee Sharp ("Mashed Potato Time"), Oct. 5, 1963

The Crystals ("Da Doo Ron Ron"), Oct. 19, 1963; May 2, 1964

The Orlons ("The Wah Watusi"), Dec. 7, 1963

Paul & Paula ("Hey Paula"), Dec. 26, 1963; June 25, 1964

Major Lance ("The Monkey Time"), April 25, 1964

The Kingsmen ("Louie Louie"), June 13, 1964; July 21, 1964

The Dovells ("Bristol Stomp," "You Can't Sit Down"), June 25, 1964

The Beach Boys, July 21, 1964

Jan & Dean ("Surf City," "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena"), Aug. 15, 1964

J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers ("Last Kiss"), Oct. 24, 1964

One guy, according to Dick Hatfield, swears he saw the Righteous Brothers in their prime at a teenybopper club in rural Champaign County.

Funny, right?

What’s funny is that it’s possible.

Another guy posted online that the Supremes were there.

Only today is it impossible to imagine acts of such magnitude being affordable enough — and perhaps humble enough — to come play a venue in the middle of nowhere like the Coconut Lounge.

But seriously now, what makes anybody think that a club up in Champaign County farm country would’ve had enough clout in any era to pull in such mega-stars?

Maybe because that club, located at the now-defunct Lakewood Beach resort, played host to the Beach Boys the very month “I Get Around” topped the national charts in July 1964.

Maybe because Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons already had three No. 1 hits by the time they played the Coconut Lounge for the first of three times on July 23, 1963.

That third and final concert by the Seasons, on July 13, 1964, occurred just as “Rag Doll” was about to overtake — crazy enough — “I Get Around” as the top song in the country.

So were the Righteous Brothers there? The Supremes?

All I know is what’s on the list. They’re not on the list.

The list is the most complete of who played the club in the 21 months before iron-fisted manager Herb McBride shut ’er down because too many kids were boozing it up in the parking lot.

Del Shannon christened the venue on April 6, 1963, and the Velvelettes, a Motown group whose “Needle in a Haystack” stalled at No. 45, no doubt thanks to a glut of insanely great records in ’64, closed it on Jan. 16, 1965.

In between?

“There’s not a slacker in the group,” noted Hatfield, the ever-popular local disc jockey who recently passed along the list as if he was sending me something akin to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

He got his copy from Greg and Marcia Ward, a Champaign County couple who attended nearly every show.

And they got the list direct from Greg’s cousin, the late Diane McBride McLean, who co-managed Lakewood with her dad, Herb. (See last Friday’s Life section for the story of how Diane ended up befriending many of the acts.)

At 74, Hatfield admittedly felt he was too old to hang at a teen club in the early ’60s — he would’ve been pushing 30, and besides, he was into jazz — but looking at the list, it’s easy to have regrets.

“It’s interesting to me now. It wasn’t to me then,” he said. “Now it’s extremely interesting.”

After all, the list reads like a who’s who of rock ’n’ roll in the (unfairly maligned) days before the British Invasion.

You’ve got your teen idols, your girl-groups, your frat-rockers and even the occasional soul singer like Major Lance.

“It wasn’t just a teenage nightclub,” explained Marcia Ward, now the principal of Graham Local Schools’ A.B. Graham Academy. “It gave everyone a sense of hope and belonging that was greater than themselves.”

Of course, it’s also possible the list isn’t complete.

Looking through Diane’s scrapbooks, I found a ticket for a show on Jan. 11, 1964, by The Angels, of “My Boyfriend’s Back” fame.

But they don’t make the list.

So where does that leave the Righteous Brothers?

We have no physical evidence — just the verbal account of a former teenage boy who in all likelihood took a few nips of some stuff out in the parking lot and/or spent the night eyeballing chicks.

So you tell me.

Is that a credible witness?

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.

Book him!

Frankie Valli had lots of memorable hit records.

In Springfield, he has a record he’d rather just forget.

Arrest No. 5279, to be exact.

The charge: Defrauding an innkeeper.

The final time the Four Seasons played the Coconut Lounge, in July 1964, the band apparently didn’t pay its tab at the Springfield Holiday Inn.

So after the Seasons played the state fair on Sept. 6, 1965, they were busted by Columbus’ finest and hauled back here, where at 9 p.m. that day, they posted bail and were given a Sept. 17 court date.

The charge was dismissed then, but Valli’s index card-sized arrest record is still on file at the Springfield Police Division.

Even nuttier, Columbus police have a mug shot taken of Valli just before the long ride west.

Oh, what a night.

The saga of the Stomp

The song went like this:

“There’s a place I know where the cool kittens go, it’s a place that the hippies found, where you stomp and shout and knock yourself out, it’s a place called the Coconut Lounge.”

The song, “Coconut Stomp (Part I),” by Sonny Flaharty and His Young Americans, is as primal and enthusiastic as the day it was cut, 47 years ago.

And that’s the problem.

“It still makes me want to dance,” Flaharty, now 68, confessed, “but I can’t afford the hip replacement.”

While they hailed from Moraine, Flaharty and the Young Americans became the house band at the Coconut, playing their own shows, opening for national acts and even backing acts like The Crystals, which didn’t have a touring band.

“We were always pretty starstruck with the people we were with,” recalled Flaharty, who mostly writes music nowadays for his Unity church in Southern California and has become something of a legend with collectors of ’60s garage-rock records.

While backing The Orlons locally, Flaharty heard a word in their song “South Street” that intrigued him.

Hippie.

“I had never heard that word before,” he said, “but I thought it was cool.”

Cool enough to be included in his own tribute to the kids who hung out at the Coconut.

“They were hip and needed their own dance,” he said.

The song became a regional hit, even making the list of the most-requested songs at the Peppermint Stick, a similar club in Lima.

But pay no attention to the fact that the record says the song was “recorded live at the Coconut Lounge.”

It was actually recorded in a Dayton studio, Flaharty revealed, with the aid of a sound-effects record for crowd noises.