W. S. had a nickname. It was “fluke.” He became known to many as Fluke Holland. Sometime back I had the good fortune to sit and visit with him. He was most gracious in conversation.
Can you imagine a nickname like that? Story has it that the term fluke came from the game of billiards. In billiards when a player hit a shot that was considered far beyond their ability, but just lucky; the term is “that was a fluke.” A dictionary will tell us that a fluke is when something good happens unexpectedly with more luck and less skill; occurrences solely based on luck.
In the early 1950s’ W. S. was a good friend of Carl Perkins’s brother. Perkins would later become the legendary Sun recording artist. One night Holland was with Perkins and his band after they had played a gig at some small setting near their hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. Perkins told Holland, “Hey next week we have a recording session booked at Sun Records in Memphis with Sam Phillip. Perkins went on to tell Holland, “We don’t have a car big enough to carry all of us down there, but you do so you are driving us; and also, we need a drummer for that session.” Now Holland had a Cadillac big enough, but he was not a musician. He had never played drums in his whole life, let alone own a set. He had a neighbor who had an old set of drums that he gave to Holland, so the next day he began to teach himself to play.
About a week later finds Perkins and his band in the Sun recording studio having arrived there by Holland’s car. Holland was sitting at the drums when the session began. The less than one month drummer would go on to find himself playing drums for the next sixty years. He played on the famous Perkins recording of “Blue Suede Shoes,” and he was Johnny Cash’s drummer for nearly forty years. In the words of Holland, “Much of my whole life has been a fluke.”
In the lives of most all of us I would imagine there have been a number of times things have happened in which we could not fully explain. Where we have had good luck beyond our skills or when something good happens, and it was least expected. Personally I know that has been the case in my life. Many times I experienced luck beyond my skills.
Hum… I have a friend that often references such occurrences as “God things.” You know maybe some things that man thinks happened just by chance… well maybe; just maybe it might be otherwise.
Maybe everything isn’t just a “fluke.” You think?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 15, 2012
Keep on,
Larry Adamson