The SOC HOP stories

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL Band to be inducted into Kansas Music Hall of Fame
Silver Tones give tunes new shine
Shawnee Mission East students formed the group popular at ’60s sock hops.
By SARA STITES
The Kansas City Star
The Silver Tones began when a movie inspired two of its members to take on guitar lessons and start their own band. They named it after their new Silvertone guitars, splitting the word in two to be safe.
Or was it at the Indian Hills Junior High School talent show, when a couple of kids just learning to play figured they’d just enter the talent show together?
Rich Stoy of Overland Park, who recalled the first account, and Frank Plas of Lenexa, who gave the second, take it in stride that their memories are fuzzy.
After all, that was almost 50 years ago.
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Around 1960, the Silver Tones donned white dinner jackets and took the area teen scene by storm.
The four musicians, Indian Hills then Shawnee Mission East High School students, started performing at small private parties before taking their show to area dance halls.
Plas played lead guitar, Stoy was on bass. The other two members, both now living in California, were Roger Calkins on vocals and Mike Weakley on drums.
They played rock ‘n’ roll — originals and cover songs — and rhythm and blues at now-bygone places like the Chicken Coop in Raytown and the Coke Bar in Grandview.
Their best gig was as the house band at the Soc Hop in Overland Park, located first in a barn and later in the old Silver Spur Country Club at 8940 Quivira Road.
"We would have between 1,000 and 1,500 teenagers at the Soc Hop on a Saturday night," Plas said. "The joint was really jumpin’."
The band recorded several albums, and some of its original songs — including "Midnight Thunder" and "Dimples" — neared the apex of the Top 40 list on local radio stations, hovering around crooners like Elvis and Brenda Lee, Plas said.
At some point their name was upgraded to the Fabulous Silver Tones.
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The Silver Tones’ splash has now landed them a spot in the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.
A few other early bands were playing around the Kansas City area, but the Silver Tones were the first to really make an impact on later groups, hall of fame President Bill Lee said.
"They just captured the imagination of the kids in Kansas City at a time when rock ‘n’ roll was exploding nationally," Lee said. "There were other bands that later became successful who copied everything about the Silver Tones."
The group will be inducted into the 2007 class at a concert next month in Lawrence.
The two remaining local members started shaking off the rust just in time.
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The Silver Tones broke up in the mid-1960s, a few years after its members graduated from high school.
After moving away, Calkins owned music stores and Weakley was a musician, including with a band called the Electric Prunes. Plas and Stoy, both busy with family and business careers, didn’t touch a guitar for decades, they said.
But Stoy dragged his out a couple of years ago, when co-workers talked him into playing at his company’s annual sales meeting.
Plas revived his guitar playing earlier this year, he said, and then revived the Silver Tones.
Stoy, busy as vice president of a large corporation, said he can only commit to moonlighting, so, other than Plas, all of the other New Silver Tones are in fact new.
One of the bands most popular gigs was billed as a Soc Hop reunion and drew a full house at RC’s Back Door Bar and Grill in Kansas City for several shows this fall.
Plas said he "worked up" 52 of the Silver Tones old songs to get ready for the first show. Things are different now, but the tunes still had the right effect.
"Everybody wasn’t as young, but the crowd was really receptive," Plas said. "They were dancing."