Former Shondell Mike Vale's Crystal Blue Band to hold final concert Saturday in Latrobe

Mike Vale can vividly recall the details of the night his life changed dramatically in January 1966.

He and his band, The Raconteurs (not to be confused with the modern Jack White-affiliated band), were playing at the Thunderbird Lounge in Greensburg.

“Who, of all people, walks into the Thunderbird Lounge with his manager but Tommy James,” said Vale. “Tommy James listens to us, and he called me aside later on and said ‘I’ve got something going on, and I wonder if you’d be interested?’ ”

What James had going on was an infectious song called “Hanky Panky” that he had recorded with his group the Shondells some two years earlier. The catchy tune was suddenly getting on Pittsburgh radio, and it was on its way to becoming the No. 1 song in the United States.

James had been summoned to Pittsburgh from his hometown of Niles, Mich., to promote and perform the song. He had a problem: It had taken “Hanky Panky” so long to finally break that the original Shondells had broken up and gone their separate ways. James needed to find a band quickly to be the new Shondells.

“We didn’t know who he was,” said Vale, who was the bass player and vocalist for The Raconteurs. “I was flattered but I said, ‘I’ve got to talk it over with the guys.’

“The next morning, I’m on my way to a day job that I had and I turned on the radio, and, sure enough, I put it on KQV, and Chuck Brinkman was the jock at the time. He said, ‘I want to play a song for you that’s going to be No. 1 in the country,’ and he plays ‘Hanky Panky.’

“I made a U-turn in the middle of a four-lane highway and went back home and called all the guys in The Raconteurs and told them, ‘This is a window of opportunity, and we should jump through it.’ ”

Vale, who grew up in the coal mining town of Salemville, was studying to be a mechanical engineer. When he told his parents he was moving to New York to work with a rock ‘n’ roll band, they were not pleased.

“When I first explained to my parents that I was going to quit school and quit working my job and go on the road with a rock ‘n’ roll band, the look on my dad’s face … he was really upset.”

Vale’s bandmates, guitarist Eddie Gray, keyboard player Ron Rosman and drummer Pete Lucia, were concerned because they were still in college, but they decided to take a year off and go to New York with Tommy James. Many hit songs later, one year turned into six.

And now, 56 years and a few incarnations later, the 82-year-old Vale’s Crystal Blue Band is bowing out with one final concert at Saturday’s Banana Split Celebration on the Robindale Main Stage (320 Main Street) in Latrobe. It will be the band’s final live public performance.

Courtesy Mike Vale

The Crystal Blue Band

“We took a long ride, and it was very successful,” said Vale. “It was not only the result of Tommy being a good musician and singer. These guys were all music majors (at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe) and I was no slouch myself. So, we were able to contribute greatly to our success going forward. We did a lot of the writing.”

Vale and Gray co-wrote “Crystal Blue Persuasion” with James, a song that prominently featured Vale’s bass guitar between the bridge and the third verse of the song. The tune went to No. 12 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

It was part of a string of hits that followed “Hanky Panky,” including “Mony Mony,” “Crimson and Clover,” “I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Sweet Cherry Wine,” and “Sugar on Sunday.”

“After a year or two, when we had all the hits and we were on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the first guy in line to get tickets in New York City was my dad. My mom was with him. They were very proud,” Vale said. “The other part of that story is that a year before our first appearance (on the “Sullivan Show”) I was sitting at home watching the Rolling Stones on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and thinking to myself ‘My God, I can’t imagine what that feeling would be like.’ ”

On their first Sullivan appearance, James and the Shondells performed “Mony Mony” and “Crimson and Clover” on a split-level stage with Vale positioned on the highest platform.

“They always give the highest spot to the bass player,” he joked.

As dreamlike as the experience of being a nationally known rock star was, there were aspects of it that must have seemed nightmarish.

As James related in his memoir, “Me, the Mob, and the Music,” Roulette Records, the company the Shondells had signed a contract with, was controlled by organized crime. The company’s co-founder and owner Morris Levy worked for New York’s Genovese crime family.

“It was frightening at times,” said Vale. “Once we spent time with Morris at the offices in New York and saw who was coming in and out and saw weapons being handled, we started to realize the world we were getting into. We had our own connotations of what the word Mafia meant and all of a sudden it became real.

“We would hear guys say to Morris ‘Hey, I took care of that guy, I broke his legs’ and stuff like that. And we’re thinking ‘What are we getting into? We’re a couple of coal miners’ kids from Pennsylvania.’ It was frightening.”

Vale said there were times when Levy would have to have the band go into hiding in the mountains of upstate New York for their own safety.

“There were times when the families of the Mafia would end up in Mafia wars,” said Vale. “If they couldn’t get at the family members they were trying to wipe out, they would go after the cash cow that the family was involved with – and there was no question that we were the cash cow for Morris Levy and the Genovese family. So, on occasion, we spent some time out of town. We would have to be hidden.”

By 1970, James was in such bad mental and physical health that he started missing shows and the band would sometimes have to perform without him, which didn’t go over well with the audience.

“(James) called us together one day and said he was sorry he had to do it but he was going to have to stop touring for a period of time,” said Vale. “If we wanted to continue our music careers, we would have to form a new group.”

The new group, Hog Heaven, recorded an album but wasn’t nearly as successful as the Shondells had been. A year went by and James wasn’t ready to start working again. During the process of recording a second album, which was never released, Vale said he and the others learned that Tommy James had decided to go back out on the road as a solo act with another band backing him up.

“That quite frankly (ticked) us off to the extent that we decided it was over between us and that’s what broke up the group,” said Vale.

With four children at home, Vale decided to come back home to the Pittsburgh area and pick up where he had left off before going to New York. He completed his engineering studies and started his own company called Stellar Precision Components in Jeannette, which services the nuclear and aerospace industries.

He has since retired and two of his children, Mike Vucish Jr. and Lori Albright, have been running the company. He had two other children, Cari and Traci Vucish. Traci died of Lupus, which led Mike Sr. to start a benefit golf tournament to raise money for the Lupus Foundation that for 15 years included a jam session with his many musician friends.

In 2015, Vale and the other former Shondells reunited and formed the Crystal Blue Band after his grandchildren and great-grandchildren asked about the gold records displayed on the basement walls of his house in Deep Creek Lake, Md.

“We didn’t know it would go this long,” said Vale. “We just wanted to do it long enough to create a tie to our legacy in the eyes of our younger family members. It was so much fun and was received so well that we kept on going until now.”

Vale said the pandemic definitely factored into the group’s decision to call it a day.

“We’re at an age now where the last thing we want to do is be running around the country for our own enjoyment and run into something that’s going to take us away from the families that we’re trying to be more involved with.”

Other health issues, including a triple bypass, helped make up Vale’s mind.

“It’s gotten to the point now where it’s not as easy to just, on the spur of the moment, say ‘let’s take this job, let’s take that job because you never know where you’re going to be in a month or six months relative to your ability to do it,” he said.

“We decided we’ve accomplished what we set out to do. So, let’s thank God for the time and go forward and spend the rest of our days with our family and friends.”