After the first RaVons split, manager Vern Ruppert re-started the group as a R&B/soul group with all new musicians “I maintained the name, and it was about the time when soul was breaking pretty big, James Brown and such, and we moved into that musical style, got Sammy (Towers) and the new bunch, and moved along.”
The new RaVons, hailing mainly from the Towson area, owed its success to a heavy R&B booming soul sound, and were better known locally as ‘The Thundering RaVons.’
Members included Mike Hodgeman (vocals ex-Dynamics), Sam Towers (guitar ex-Dynamics), Keith Donhauser (bass), Rody Barthelmes (keyboards), Allan Eberwein (trumpet), John Lockwood (sax), and Warren Raymond (drums).
Kneeling: Barthelmes, Raymond, Eberwein, Lockwood. Courtesy of Sam Towers
The RaVons could be seen at school dances (Towson, Parkville, Overlea) and various teen centers.
Hodgeman went on to front Gary & the GTO’s, Elegants, Majestics, Admirals, Celebration. Towers later joined Gary & the GTO’s, Danny & the Elegants, Flow, Touch… Barthelmes went on to the Princetons. Eberwein was later with the Tempests, Fallacy, New Sentries… Lockwood played for the Jetsons, Collections… Raymond went on to the Jetsons, and the Koffee Beans…
The second incarnation of the new RaVons featured a rhythm section of Geoff Schenkel (guitar), John ‘Johnny Stein’ Hamill (bass), Rich Levine (electric piano), Bill Gordon ‘D. Weems’ (drums), and a brass section of Joe Vitek (sax), Eric Stewart (trumpet), Hank Rupprecht (trumpet), and Chas Kerr (trombone). The ‘new RaVons’ vocalists included Phil McManus, Louis ‘Frizzle’ Davis, Ed ‘Stymie’ Banks, Isaac Burke, Edweena Williams aka ‘Weegie’, Brenda Hail, and Jean Brown. McManus, Davis and Banks were known as Phil & the Soul Brothers. With a white rhythm section and a black vocal group, the RaVons believed themselves to be the only true racially mixed group in the area (ed. Note: while it would have been impossible to know of every performing group of the time, there were others to share this distinction including the Chryslers & Monarchs Band who also thought they were the only black/white group).
Sam Towers remembers Mike Hodgeman and the RaVons…
My friend and classmate Bunky Cook and I had been playing guitars with one another during most of the 1960-61 school year at Dumbarton Junior High, and as summer approached, we began talking about forming a band. When summer finally came and school let out, we relocated our playing to the basement of my house on Banbury Road in Idlewylde, and we started putting a band together.
Every day during that summer, my friend Mike Hodgeman would walk almost a mile down to my house from his house in Stoneleigh. He usually got there in the late morning, and we would always start the day on my front porch with some of our other neighborhood friends, playing the card game “Hearts” as we planned the rest of the day and evening. On the days that Bunky came over to play guitars, Mike would always come down into my basement and listen.
Bunky had heard of a drummer that was looking for a band in which to play. His name was Warren Raymond, and he lived at the bottom of Overbrook Road, right where it hooks into Register Ave. We got his phone number, called him up, and asked him to join with us. He said yes! Warren brought his drums up to my house the next day, and set them up in my basement. Warren said that he had a bass-playing friend named Keith that lived over in Loch Raven Village, and that Keith had asked him if he could play with us too. We said sure!
So, when Keith Donhauser joined our group, we had two guitars, a bass player, and a drummer. We started out practicing guitar instrumentals such as the Ventures “Walk, Don’t Run’, Link Ray’s “Rumble”, Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser”, Bill Doggett’s “Honky Tonk”, and others – there were a bunch of rock n’ roll guitar songs in those days.
As time went on and as we started to sound better, we began talking about adding a singer to the band, so that we could play for some parties and maybe even play at some teen center dances, like the bands the Nomads and the LaFayettes were doing. We talked about adding a singer at every rehearsal – who could we get?
Now, like I said earlier, Mike Hodgeman would come down to my basement and listen to us every time we practiced. Occasionally, Keith would bring a crazy neighborhood friend of his named Bob Weaver to our band practices. I guess Keith had told Bob that we were looking to add a singer to our band, because at the next rehearsal that Bob came to, he immediately came up to me and begged, “Oh please, please, please Uncle Sammy, let me be the singer in your band”!!! Please, please please!!! I looked past Bob at Keith standing behind him, and Keith was shaking his head NO – shaking it emphatically back and forth.
I hesitated for a moment, and then looked down at my friend Mike Hodgeman, who had been listening to us practice and was sitting nearby. I realized in a flash that Mike was a singer! He had sung in our elementary school choir as the lead soloist! I turned to Bob and said, “Gee, I’m sorry Weavo, but I already promised Mike that he could be our singer”. Well, this was news to Mike. He knew absolutely nothing about this, and stared up at me with a surprised look. I stared back at him intently, with my eyes wide, boring holes into his brain, until he got the message. “That’s right”, he said to Bob. “I asked Sam if I could sing with the band last week, and he said yes”. And THAT, my friends, is how the great Mike Hodgeman got his start as a professional singer!
We practiced with Mike every chance we got, and soon had enough songs to play a gig. I clearly remember the first song we learned with Mike – it was “Running Scared”, by Roy Orbison. Mike hit all of Orbison’s high notes perfectly! As time went on, we learned Gene Pitney’s “I’m Gonna Be Strong, Jerry Butler’s “The Walls Are Much Too Thin”, a bunch of Elvis tunes, and even the Righteous Brothers “Unchained Melody”. Mike aced them all! He had that wonderful voice right from the start!
We named our band “The RaVons”, after the Buddy Holly song “Rave On” from his first album. At the end of the summer Bunky left the band, and we added Keith’s cousin Rody Barthelmes on piano to take his place. Not long after that, because we wanted to play James Brown and Ray Charles songs, we added two horn players – Johnny Lockwood on alto sax and Alan Eberwine on trumpet.
Through Keith, we met a Loch Raven booking agent named Vern Ruppert. Vern was in his early twenties, an older musician that had played in several bands in the fifties, and when he heard us play, he offered to be our manager. Vern had played the teen center circuit for years, and had all of the booking contacts, but more importantly, he knew how to make a band sound good and look good too! We became a fairly popular band around the Towson and Parkville areas rather quickly.
Mike and I played together in five more bands after the RaVons. Those bands were:
The Dynamics – 1963 & 1964
Gary & the GTO’s – 1964 & 1965
The DuKays – 1965 & 1966
Mike Jones & the Elegants – 1966 & 1967
Puzzle – the first half of 1969After Puzzle, I lost touch with Mike for a while. In the fall of 1969, I began playing out on the road, traveling back and forth across the country, and in the spring of 1974, made a permanent move with my family to Battle Creek, Michigan. After that, even though I was gigging and living in Michigan, I would always go back to the Baltimore area for my vacations, visit with Mike when I could, and go to hear him play, if he was playing.
After a year or so manager Ruppert got married and he left the group. Having an established name and an improved sound the ‘The RaVons Entire Band and Show’ performed at many Baltimore area teen centers, school dances including the Junior Prom and Ring Dances at Towson High School 1965 and 1966, church dances, and some previously all-white debutante balls and swim clubs.
