It could have been 1966 at the American Legion Hut on Claiborne Avenue late Friday afternoon, with the rock ‘n’ roll strains of The Gants blasting onto the parking lot and some 250 starstruck fans hanging onto every word of the band’s lead singer, Sid Herring.
A Greenwood native who went to Greenwood High School with many of those gathered, Herring was in town for the unveiling of a historic marker commemorating the musical contributions of his band.
Mayor Carolyn McAdams, one of Herring’s classmates and a frequent bebopper at the Legion Hut as a teenager, said that when the city put news of The Gants marker on Facebook, they got 21,000 hits.
“We’ve never had 21,000 hits in the history of Greenwood!” she said.
“We all laughed, learned and flirted with these guys back then. All I can say is they were pretty darn cute.”
Another classmate of Herring’s, Allan Hammons, designed the marker that depicts The Gants meteoric rise to fame, starting while they were still in high school and placing them among the musical pantheon of the Delta.
Herring said he and his bandmates, now deceased, were proud to be part of the Delta’s rich music history.
“It all started right here in this Legion Hut,” he said. “If you came to the dance and climbed in through the window, you were welcome, too.”
Herring remembered his fellow band members — Johnny Sanders, Don Wood and Vince Montgomery, all of Greenwood —fondly, and with a string of well-received jokes.
“I was an only child,” Herring said, “and these guys were truly my brothers. The music connected us for 50 years.”
Just kids, like the title of the Patti Smith rock memoir, following their dreams. That was The Gants, Herring said, and they followed it to the very end.
After the unveiling of the marker, the crowd headed inside the Legion Hut for a question and answer session with Herring and Delta State University entertainment industry studies instructor Charles Abraham, who is originally from Leland.
“Everybody wanted to be in a band, here and in Leland,” Abraham said. “The band we looked up to most, besides the Beatles, were The Gants.
“All the girls were in love with Sid.”
Herring recounted how he came with the name for the band.
“I was sitting behind my cousin, Freddy Carl, trying to think up a name for the band,” he said. “I saw the tag on his shirt, Gant, and I said, ‘Gants — how’s that sound?’”
Herring made nearly every turn in the band’s career sound as effortless as that fortuitous naming, starting with his own first forays into performing live music.
“My uncle would come over to our house, over on South Boulevard, and I’d be watching Elvis and Little Richard on TV,” he said. “I’d pull out a guitar and act like Elvis, and my uncle would throw 50-cent pieces at me.
“I thought this seemed like a pretty easy gig.”
Herring said he found his voice imitating Eric Burdon of The Animals inside the record store that used to be on Howard Street.
“I heard him singing, and I said, ‘I can do that.’ I just belted it out, singing it in front of whoever was there.”
The band quickly got gigs out of town, beyond the American Legion Hut, in Vicksburg and, fatefully, at the Holiday Inn in Leland where Herring, on a break and looking for the bathroom, ran into a man who introduced himself as the promoter/manager of The Animals. He invited the band to come along on a short tour and The Gants opened for The Animals at four shows.
Before long, they were recording — first, with little guidance or engineering at Sam Phillips’ Sun studio in Memphis, then at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, under the guidance of Jimmy Johnson, guitarist of the house band at the famous studio that recorded Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and so many others.
The Gants played at the Legion Hut in Greenwood, at Holiday Inns, in California and in New York, and although they split up when one of them went to medical school, the music never stopped.
The audience chimed in with stories of their time with Herring and what the music meant to them — admiring his prowess on the trampoline, showing off collectible copies of his records released in Brazil and Thailand, wondering how it was that he got famous and they didn’t.
“We covered a lot of ground, and we helped a lot of people have a good time,” Herring said.
He lives in Nashville now, with a backyard studio where he continues to write and frequently puts down tracks — and his musical journey continues.
“My last solo album was called ‘Full Circle,’” he said. “This is truly full circle for me, coming here.
“It touches me deeper than you know.”
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
