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Ronnie Lowe: A<br />
Great Tampa Bay<br />
Music Legacy<br />
By Dan Allison<br />
If you’re under the age of 50, Ronny Lowe and the<br />
Dominoes won’t be familiar to you, but in the 1960s,<br />
they made music history in the Tampa Bay area<br />
playing rockabilly and 12-bar blues in local venues<br />
like the Roseland Ballroom and the Robert James<br />
Hotel. In 1962, the Dominoes were the first<br />
integrated band to perform publicly in Tampa Bay,<br />
breaking the color barrier when they became the<br />
house band at the Peppermint Lounge on Madeira<br />
Beach. The band’s personnel changed frequently over<br />
the years, but Ronny Lowe’s vocals – the epitome of<br />
blue-eyed soul – remained the group’s one constant<br />
feature.<br />
The band was called the Dominoes after local DJ<br />
“Tiger Tom” Hankerson at WTMP Radio said their<br />
music was “like dominoes, white in spots, but mostly<br />
black.” A number of more-or-less famous musicians<br />
moved through the band over the years, including<br />
Jim Stafford (who had a hit with “Spiders and Snakes”<br />
and a TV variety show in the 1970s) and, in the early<br />
years, Dickey Betts. In the mid-1960s, the Dominoes<br />
occasionally opened shows across Florida for a littleknown<br />
pair of brothers who at the time called<br />
themselves “The Allman Joys.”<br />
The band also befriended St. Petersburg resident and<br />
beatnik novelist Jack Kerouac. In the years just prior<br />
to his death in 1969, Kerouac frequently joined the<br />
Dominoes onstage, playing the ukulele and<br />
harmonica. The band’s final lineup included Bob<br />
Hohmann on lead guitar and Ron’s brother Nick on<br />
drums. By the mid-1970s, the Dominoes were getting<br />
fewer gigs and finding it harder to compete in Tampa<br />
Bay’s expanding music scene. Ronny Lowe moved<br />
into marketing and journalism, but as late as 1980<br />
you could still catch the band performing occasional<br />
local gigs.<br />
Ronny Lowe died in 2001. I met him in 1969 just after<br />
his friend Jack Kerouac had died, and just after<br />
another of Ron’s friend’s, guitarist Kenny Shelton,<br />
had died in an auto crash in Los Angeles. Kenny, I’m<br />
told, was an amazing guitarist who was in California<br />
to sign a recording contract for the Dominoes, but<br />
after his death, the record company was no longer<br />
interested. The music scene in Tampa Bay is far more<br />
diverse in the 21st century, but the steady work by<br />
Ronny Lowe and the Dominoes throughout the 1960s<br />
and 1970s helped create the diversity we take for<br />
granted today.<br />
BUZZ MAGAZINE NOV/DEC <strong>2016</strong> / 39
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