Sweet William Makes the Rounds

In Restless Native by Chris Wohlwendleave a COMMENT

When Sweet William joined the East Knoxville cruising scene on Sunday nights, he would be, befitting a rock ‘n’ roll star, the center of attention. It was on one such foray that I first became aware of him. It was a summer night and a couple of friends and I had copped a prize back-row spot at the Pizza Palace, the still-standing drive-in on Magnolia Avenue. We were enjoying a Super Deluxe (minus the anchovies) as we scoped out the action. The year was 1966 or so.

A white Cadillac convertible, top down, pulled off Magnolia. In the middle of the back seat sat Sweet William with a glitzy blonde female under each arm. Sweet William, real name Bill Sauls, fronted the Stereos, one of Knoxville’s best-known bands at the time. He stood about 6 foot 4, weighed about 260 pounds, and sported shoulder-length red hair and a matching beard. When he wasn’t on stage and the weather allowed, he accessorized with a leather vest, which allowed glimpses of the chest rug that matched his beard. Possessed of a raspy, furnace-fire voice, Sauls at full tilt was a perfect bar-room rock ‘n’ roll singer.

For several years, until his fame led him and the Stereos to the road as an opening act for more established groups, Sweet William and the Stereos were rock ’n’ roll in Knoxville.

His regular driver was Sticks, the band’s drummer, and, at about 130 pounds, the physical opposite of Sweet William. Excellent at pacing his frontman, Sticks knew to keep the Caddy at a stately parade speed as they made the Magnolia rounds. The ritual was a tour of the Palace, then down the alley to the back entrance of the Tic Toc, then west on Magnolia toward downtown to the Blue Circle at Central, and return, with one more stop. Sweet William’s trips always included visits to the Krystal—Sauls had a penchant for sniffing glue, and he claimed that glue sniffed from a Krystal bag worked best. They were quite the spectacle.

Later, when I was working at The Knoxville Journal, I met Sweet William. He was an acquaintance of one of my cohorts, Grady Amann. Both hailed from North Knoxville and had been schoolmates at Fulton High. Sauls would sometimes show up at the Journal seeking publicity, to see if Grady could help. Eventually, after the managing editor banned him from the office as a noisy nuisance, his visits were late at night after the brass had gone home.

Sauls made his business contacts with up-and-coming acts playing the Martinique, a notorious club in Daytona Beach, Fla., famous at college campuses throughout the East because of Daytona’s popularity at spring-break time. Another group with a large following at the time also played the Martinique. The Allman Joys would later break nationally as the Allman Brothers Band.

Once, after the brothers had become rock stars, Gregg Allman nearly caused a riot at Central Avenue’s Casual Lounge, sitting in with the Stereos. (Here’s a recording of them playing together.) Another of Sauls’ friends who sometimes visited Knoxville was Texan Domingo Samudio, better known as Sam the Sham, of Pharaohs fame.

By the time I met him, Sweet William and the Stereos had a well-established and well-earned reputation for on-stage antics, the kind that draws the college-age crowd while driving club-owners crazy. Once, at Bradley’s Barn near the University of Tennessee campus, a couple of friends and I were seated at a table near the stage as Sauls was working on one of their more popular tunes, the blues standard “C.C. Rider.”  Hulking over his electric keyboard in full attack mode, he miscalculated on a run of the keys and toppled off the stage, scattering beer bottles and revelers in all directions.

He was helped back onstage, the keyboard was set back up, and the show went on, bar management nervously making sure the star and his instrument were well back from the edge of the stage. “I’m okay,” he told the audience as he sat down. “And, if I need any help, I’ve got a big jar of uppers, downers, leapers, creepers, and crawlers.”

The last time I saw him was late one night when he showed up at the Journal. He had, he told us, been hassled by the police as he left the Krystal on Gay Street. “What for?” we wanted to know.

“They wanted to get me on a weirdo charge,” he said. “But I told them that at this time of night I fit right in with the rest of downtown’s weirdos, and they had to let me go.”

Chris Wohlwend's Restless Native addresses the characters and absurdities of Knoxville, as well as the lessons learned pursuing the newspaper trade during the tumult that was the 1960s. He spent 35 years working for newspapers and magazines in Miami, Charlotte, Louisville, Dallas, Kansas City, and Atlanta. As an editor, he was involved in winning several national awards. He returned to Knoxville in the late 1990s and now teaches journalism part-time at the University of Tennessee. His freelance pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and numerous other publications.

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