The Common Few has rocked its way to the top.
The 1960s and early ’70s soul and rock band, which had its roots in Chanute and Emporia, will be inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame on Saturday evening in Lawrence.
It’s the second trip to the Hall for the band — who played at the 2006 “Up In Flames” benefit concert to get the Hall of Fame on its feet after a fire — but their first appearance as members.
“We feel blessed,” said Gary Leitnaker, who paid his way through college as a singer and bass player for The Common Few. “It’s an unexpected honor. It’s wonderful.”
The ceremony starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 and are available from Liberty Hall, (785) 749-1972, or through any Ticketmaster outlet.
The Common Few got its start as a garage band in Chanute. The core group of Darrel Brown, Bob Crumrine, Robert Orr and lead singer Ben Ennis played together since junior high school. According to the group’s Web site, the others added Eddie Ladd and Jeff Leverenz as members in high school after deciding it wanted to be a “horn band.”
When it came time to go to college, the whole group wound up relocating to Emporia rather than break up the band. Every member ended up at Kansas State Teachers College, now Emporia State University.
“At times, I believe the emphasis was on the band and not the education,” vocalist and keyboard-organ player Orr said in his online biography. In 1968 the group would release its only single, “Love Makes a Man.”
But what graduation couldn’t do, Vietnam did. Ennis found he had a low number in the draft lottery and enlisted in the Navy rather than wait for the Army to draft him. He left at the winter break of 1969-70 and Leitnaker came in, along with another new member, John Addison.
“It took two of us to replace Ben,” Leitnaker said.
Like the rest of the group, Leitnaker had been into music since childhood. But at the time he joined the band as a college freshman, it had been about six or eight months since he’d played with a group. He was itchy to get back in.
Not only was it fun, he said, but it wasn’t a bad job to have, either.
“It wasn’t unusual for us to make $700 to $1,200 a night,” Leitnaker said. “That’s a lot better than a lot of bands do in clubs now.”
The group eventually broke up in 1971, though a few of the members continued to play with a short-lived band called ISAAC. By the mid-1970s, the band members had generally gotten out of the professional music business, although Orr did keep writing music for a while and won five American Song Festival awards.
There things stayed until 2005, when Orr’s brother needed something for a Lions Club fundraiser. The call went out to The Common Few, whose members had scattered across the map from Bandera, Texas, to Chattanooga, Tenn. But the band came together and it still clicked, even with adding a new member, lead guitarist Lex Fox.
“It was quite a challenge for a bunch of old geezers to pick up where they left off over 35 years ago,” Ennis said in his biography on the Web site. “But after a lot of hard work and determination, we are back doing what we love — making music.”
Best of all, Leitnaker said, it’s a chance for their kids and grandkids to see what the old days were like.
“They don’t have to listen to us talk about our days when we were with the band — they can hear it,” he said. “And while we might not be as tight as we were in the old days, we’re still rockin’ enough. One grandson even said he wanted to be a rock star like his grandpa.”
nleitnaker (anonymous) says...
Great article, I'll be sending you some photos of the hall of fame concert and the Common Few playing last Sat. Thanks for the coverage.
nancy Leitnaker
January 14, 2007 at 3:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )