James Garner Hits The Jackpot And Buys Me Breakfast
- Place – De Lane Lea/CTS Recording Studios Wembley
- Time – 1981 n
- Artist – Gigi Garner and James Garner
One evening the session had finished early and everyone else had left, this was due to Gigi having to go for a photo session.
I remained in the control room making a couple of phone calls, when Jimmy arrived wondering where everybody was. I explained where Gigi had gone and that she wouldn’t be back that evening.
Jimmy asked if I wasn’t busy would I like to go for a drink, I jumped at the chance, and we headed for the local watering hole.
On entering the bar Jimmy asked what I would like to drink, I insisted on buying the first round explaining that many years before he had helped pay for a breakfast for me.
Looking very bewildered, knowing that we had never met before these sessions, he went and sat down, and I brought the drinks over.
Jimmy’s first question was, “What was that about a breakfast?”
I explained to him that when I was a kid, I hitchhiked with a couple of friends to a place called Southend-on-Sea. We spent nearly all of our money having a good time, then spent the night sleeping in a bus shelter.
Early the next morning my friends decided to hitch back to London but I wanted to spend a bit more time there, it felt like being on holiday.
I was starving but the few pence I had left was nowhere near enough to get any food.
I sat outside one of the arcades, which had a machine with six movie stars photos on. Each movie star had a winning amount. The two highest payouts were Ava Gardner this was a 10 pence pay-out, and James Garner was the jackpot, 12 pence.
A light would flash very fast behind each photo and stop at random on one of the pictures, if you could guess which star the light would stop on you would win.
I sat staring at the photos on this machine for a long time, wondering what it must be like to be a movie star, when I noticed the machine wasn’t so random after all.
A sequence was occurring. Every five minutes the light would stop twice on Ava, always after the second stop on Ava, the very next stop was the jackpot, James.
I invested a penny in the theory, and within the next hour I made more than enough to have a big breakfast and get a bus back to London.
Having listened to my story Jimmy said jokingly, ‘Well it looks like the rest of the nights on you”.
The rest of the evening was just fantastic talking about movies, music and life. I mentioned one of my favourite films, which he had made, was Skin Game with Louis Gossett, Jr. and Susan Clark.
He told me he’d seen it for the first time in ages a few nights before on TV in his hotel room.
When talking about music I mentioned how much I loved country music and Nashville. Apparently one of his best friends was Waylon Jennings.
Jimmy said, “Let’s go back to the studio and get to a phone, I’ll give him a call”.
“Jimmy, I would have no idea what to say to him but thank you anyway”.
Today I wished I had. The evening sadly came to a close, but it would be something I would remember all my life.
Looking back, the only other thing was I wished I had asked of Jimmy, and I know he would have had no problem doing it for me, was to let me record him for my answering machine message.
How cool would it have been to have James Garner on my answering machine saying, “Hi this is Jim Rockford, Kenny can’t get to the phone right now so please leave a message?”
Unbeknown to me, Jimmy had spoken to Blake Edwards, the Director of the movie Victor Victoria and recommended that I take over the recording of the music.
This was of course a very kind gesture, but that was not the way the engineer at the time, John Richards, saw it.
I adored John he really was the best in his field. It took me sometime to assure him that I was not trying to encroach on his territory.
I have been asked so many times about the people I have been lucky enough to meet and work with during my career. I have always placed James Garner as one of the most genuine and nicest people I ever encountered.
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