November Birthdays 
Found this article on a whim today doing a curious search for images featuring what may be my most favorite first wave band, the Sentinals. I'm assuming the image is a photo of a microfiche archive of the paper (note to self, add topic to the "you might just be old" thread about going to the library and reading archives on the microfiche machine!), and the text is brutal on the eyes, but after I made the effort to read it, being a fave band, I had to take the time to transcribe for readability (below the image).
There are so many cool aspects in this article - nightly earnings, future at Foothill college for a Sentinal (Cuz Mary!), being mistaken for million dollar robbers, and much more.
Forgive any type-o's... did I say reading that microfiche was brutal!?
Tom Valentine wrote, for the San Luis Obispo County (Calif.) Telegram-Tribune Saturday March 16, 1963
S.L.O. Musicians Gain Momentum In Struggle For National Notice
By Tom Valentine
Six dynamic young men give San Luis Obispo a claim to modern musical fame.
A group of San Lois Obispo high school musicians known as the Sentinals have found nationwide favor with their spontaneous showmanship and rhythmic stylings.
The Sentinals are jelled under the guidance of Tommy Nunes, the lead guitarist who originated the group in 1961. The two major attractions outside their drawing power as a top flight rhythm and blues group are Johnny Barbata, one of the up and coming drummers in the nation, and Kenny Hinkle, the vocalist.
Ben Trout holds down the rhythm section on the bass while Harry Sackrider handles the second guitar duties. Bobby Holmquist, who has the most longevity as a musician in the group, is on the saxophone.
The Sentinals are now touring California with a popular vocal group from New York - the Four Seasons. The tour hit San Luis Obispo Thursday with a show at Fremont theater and Thursday night the swung into action in the Santa Maria National guard armory.
The tour already set an attendance record at Fresno where it drew over 4000 listeners.
The Sentinals are fast becoming as big a draw as the Four Seasons, especially in the valley area. Managed by another former San Lois Obispo high schooler, Norman Knowles, the Sentinals are affiliated with Wesco Records and the West Coast Entertainment agency.
"Big Surf," an album of Sentinal recordings, is now selling at a fast clip. In the album the group presents 14 numbers including five of its own composition.
The Sentinals biggest hit to date is their own composition called "Latin'ia" which is on of the featured numbers in the album.
Other original numbers include "Big Surf", "Pismo Beach", "Tor-Chula" and "Sunset Beach."
The boys completed a national tour last summer, playing with such top names as Deedee Sharp, Bobby Vee and Dickie Lee. Starting with a quick tour to Rapid Falls, S. Dakota and Gallup, N.M, this Easter vacation, the group is headed for another swing to the east. Rapid Falls and Gallup are Easter vacation sites for youngsters much like Balboa and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The biggest time of their tour last season happened in Baltimore where the boys were extremely popular and in two days played four dances and the Buddy Deane television show, which is the Dick Clark show of the east.
When the group arrived in Baltimore, it had been on the road 72 hours, driving from Kansas City. The group had hardly settled in its quarters when the Baltimore police investigated the group as suspects in a million dollar robbery which had just occurred in that city. The actual robbers had posed as musicians and the Sentinals arrived in town at the time when the police authorities were in a dither over the affair.
In 1961 Nunes, who learned his guitar playing by starting with a ukelele, and classmates Gary Winburne and Pete Graham, both now in the armed forces, started tinkering with music. The new organization started searching for a name and flipped through the pages of a dictionary.
None of the boys remembers just how it happened, but the boys landed on the word sentinel, squabbled a bit about it, and decided to alter the spelling and came up with the Sentinals.
In the fall of 1961 the original group played its first dance - the Aristocrat affair at the veterans memorial building in San Luis Obispo. Knowles picked up on the group and aided them with his knowledge and flair for the business.
They became affiliated with GAC (?), a company that books their tours, and with Knowles showing the way, quickly stepped into the $150-$200 per night bracket.
Last summer's tour reached as far as Connecticut before starring in Balboa's Rendezvous ballroom.
This year the Sentinals hope to hook up with the Dick and Deedee duo for their summer tour.
The Sentinals stated recording last summer also, and their first tune was a questionable ditty called "Blue Booze."
Asked what they call themselves, the Sentinals say they have been referred to as a combo band, group, and even an orchestra - "because we have strings."
Holmquist, who is featured on the saxophone, is the only member of the Sentinals who has had any formal music training. Bobby is now a Cal Poly student, majoring in business, but is keeping his hand in where music is connected with several courses in theory.
Barbata found he enjoyed beating tattoos of rhythm only two years ago. Although he has never had a lesson he is capable of beating rhythms for any length of time.
Johnny is planning a career as a drummer, and even though the field is a long, hard uphill grind, the natural talent he is endowed with should send him a long way.
Hinkle has a fine voice quality and many critics of the Sentinals suggest the group design more "soft" numbers for him. The boys all agree they should. They are working on several new arrangements featuring Kenny's vocal ability.
With the exception of Barbata, the boys all have college careers planned in conjunction with their music. Nunes and Trout are both heading for art majors in college. Tommy favors San Francisco state or San Jose state while Ben is heading for Foothill college.
Hinkle, who graduated in 1962 from San Luis Obispo high school is aiming toward a business major at Cal Poly, while Sackrider said he while attend Allan Hancock in Santa Maria before taking a business major at Poly.
All six of the men admit they are "hams" and that they "enjoy their work and the crowds."
But wait!!! It gets better. This image, it turns out was from a resuscitation of the original article brought back to life by the San Luis Obispo Tribune in October of 2008.
The additional flashback story from the vault says
Patrick S. Pemberton at SLO The Tribune wrote
At the peak of his career, Johny Barbata played drums on dozens of albums, performed in packed stadiums and rubbed elbows with rock’s most recognizable superstars. Yet his fondest memories are with a little-known Central Coast surf band.
“That’s where my roots were — San Luis Obispo,” Barbata said.
The Sentinals never experienced the success of Barbata’s later groups, but the band did have a single, “Latinia,” that garnered lots of airplay in the West.“Our friends couldn’t believe that we were in high school and had a hit,” Barbata said.
The drummer recently returned to San Luis Obispo to perform with one of his old bandmates, local musician Tommy Nunes, and to pitch his book, “Johny Barbata: The Legendary Life of a Rock Star Drummer.”As the title suggests, Barbata isn’t overly modest about his accomplishments, which includes stints with Jefferson Starship and Crosby Stills Nash & Young.
Barbata’s father, a Snap-On Tool salesman, moved the family to the Central Coast from New York State for better job opportunities. While attending San Luis Obispo High School, Barbata hooked up with the Sentinals. The modest success the band had was enough to convince Barbata to move to Los Angeles and delve into the music scene.
There he sat in with musicians until he was noticed. Eventually, he was invited to join the Turtles. Barbata’s drums can be heard on the group’s biggest hits, including the harmony-laced “Happy Together.”
“I remember one time, spinning the dial, I heard it three times on three different stations at the same time,” Barbata said in a telephone interview. “That was a good sign.”
The first reader comment on the on line story called out yet another story about the band / Tommy Nunes from the Tribune - an interview with Tommy and 'current' collaborator Chet Hogoboom.
Patrick S. Pemberton at The Tribune wrote
Chet Hogoboom and Tommy Nunes have both had their brushes with fame.
Hogoboom once talked to Keith Richards, though he couldn’t understand much of what Richards said. And Nunes once had a hit record that still appears on surf music compilations.Over the past three decades, the two have played with various bands, tuning their guitars before hundreds of gigs.
Now that they’re older, they say, they don’t stress out about becoming rock stars; they just like to jam.
They recently recorded an eponymous CD (“C.T. and Tommy Lee,” available at local record stores), which is a collection of dreamy, melodic rock. On the CD, the two switch off lead vocals and share songwriting credits while friends add percussion, banjo, dobro, mandolin, flute and harmonica.
We caught up with them at Uptown Espresso in San Luis Obispo.
Tom, you were in a surf band (The Sentinels) before. Does that mean you surf, or are you like the Beach Boys — just playing surf music?
TN: No, I’m like the Beach Boys. We were a rhythm-and-blues band, and we got hooked up with a guy around here who was in a band called the Rebels. And he kind of managed us and took us down to L.A. and recorded us, and we recorded a song that somehow became a surf anthem “Latina,” and to this day I get royalties for it. I get checks in the mail from Finland and Germany — places you wouldn’t really associate with surf music.You guys have been doing gigs for a long time. What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened?
TN: I was on tour with the Sentinels and we were just outside of Baltimore… I was in the bathroom, and a guy knocked down the door. He was a federal agent. They thought we had robbed a bank. They barged in the room, and I happened to be on the can. Of course, we were quickly cleared.
Another one was, I was playing a gig down in Balboa (in Orange County). It was the closing of the club, so it was a party for the employees. We were in the middle of a song, and they dropped live chickens down from a trap door above the stage. They fell in front of us in the middle of a song. A couple of them broke their necks on the ground. It was terrible. I was like, “Whoa.”What was the closest you got to the big time?
CH: With different bands, I opened for the Chili Peppers, Junior Walker and the All Stars. When we were recording at Wally Heider’s, I met John Denver. And then the Stones were in there on the same night. I met Joni Mitchell in the same studio. You think you’re close — you’re rubbing elbows and stuff — but things happen and life is what it is.
TL: I had a small taste of big-time rock-and-roll. I went on tour with a guy named Ian Matthews. We went back East and played with Linda Ronstadt, opened for her and America and played with Boston. That was kind of neat: dressing rooms, the spreads and the limos. When I was with the Sentinels, we would play these shows down in Huntington Beach or Bakersfield that were put on by the big radio stations back then. And they would have Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys, Righteous Brothers, the Coasters, and we would back them up. For us — 16, 17, 18 years old back then — that was pretty cool.Okay, now I have some more general music questions: Beatles or Stones?
CH: That’s a tough question. I think overall Beatles because I think they’re better songwriters. But when the Stones came out, I really liked that rough side.I’ll give Tommy this one: CCR or Eagles?
TN: I wish you would’ve given me the first question. I like them both. Geeez. I guess if I had to pick, I’d probably go with the Eagles.Are there any new bands that you guys like?
TN: I think John Mayer’s great.
CH: I like Jack Johnson. He’s not brand-new now, but that style is kind of cool. Kind of laid-back and not real presumptuous.Do you guys have any guilty pleasures?
TN: I tend to like kind of sweet music sometimes, which some people kind of cringe at. To me it’s candy, you know? I love the two-part harmonies and the beauty of the old Everly Brothers’ harmonies. I think I like a lot of country music because of that. Some of it is very melodic. And I think country music has got some of the best guitar players.What’s your favorite guitar song?
CH: I would have to say some of the Duane Allman stuff. First hearing it was like ‘Wow!
What was that?’ The combination of two guitar players going together was kind of new and different.
TN: When I grew up, a guy named Freddy King was one of my idols — an old blues player. At the time, I had an album of his that was all instrumental. One of the songs on there that I still play is called “Hideaway.”All right, Tom, Beatles or Stones?
TN: The Beatles, definitely. I actually got to see them play. For me, they just changed the whole music world.
CH: I saw the Stones in ’65. My dad ran the stadium there in Fresno. As they did in those days, the girls stormed the stage at the end, and they took the Stones away in, like, a Brinks truck. And Charlie Watts left his snare drum. My dad gave it to me, and then I started taking drum lessons on it. Like an idiot, I sold it a few years later and bought a drum set.
There are a few other cool reader comments, including a note from Tommy Nunes brother, Bobby and original Sentinal Harry Sackrider.
Harry Sackrder wrote
Just found this sight. It is nice to see the the old news paper piece on the Sentinals. As you can imagine the early 60′s was a fun part of my life. We all had a lot of good times traveling around the country playing music for most of each summer, then returning to San Luis Obispo, Ca to go to school.
I left the band in 1964 to go back to school, get a job to help pay for it at a Bank and get married. I ended up staying in the banking business for 43 years retiring in the spring of 2007. For the past 6 years I’ve playing in a new band of guys from the last Bank I worked for. We call the band, “Route 66″, and play a lot of the oldies including some songs from the Sentinals such as Latinia and Hide Away from the Big Surf album.
I live in Morro Bay, Ca with my wife Polly and enjoy playing music, golf and travel.
TOO FRIGGIN COOL!!!!
Respectfully,
Your resident Sentinals fanboy
Fady
El Mirage @ ReverbNation
Last edited: Apr 10, 2013 16:58:02
