Nice article, thanks for posting that, Ed. I never had the pleasure of seeing Gene Ammons live, but I remember seeing him on tv. He was with the Herman band on the Al Hirt tv show right after his second release from incarceration. So this must have been the summer of '69. Gene was scuffling with his horn a little bit on this show, so he must have just been released.
My other personal memory having to do with Gene was a very small story told to me by my friend, the great trumpeter Johnny Coles. JC told me that when he was working in the Ammons band, they had driven 2 Chrysler New Yorker sedans from NYC to a gig in Oklahoma in like 28 or 29 hours. It seems that Gene liked the big, fast Chryslers. Gives you an idea what the road was like in the early '60s.