Glory days: The Signa 7 finds their groove

More than 50 years after a group of high school friends built some local fame cranking out dance music for rooms full of sweaty, bopping teenagers, the Signa 7 has rediscovered the spirit of what brought them together in the first place and picked back up their instruments.

For the last few months four of the band’s original members, along with a couple of not-so-new additions, have been gathering in a wood-paneled workshop to practice the same songs they have always loved and reminisce about the days when those songs were topping the charts.

Original members Jerry Weeks, Jimmy Fleming, Charles Milburn and Steve Anderson along with new additions Miller Weeks and Phillip Roberson took to the stage this past weekend. It was the fifth year they played Wrens High School reunions and now, officially, they have been playing together longer as adults than they did as kids.

How it all started 

They were friends before they ever decided to plug in a guitar. In 1965, the summer before most of their freshman year of high school, Fleming, Anderson, Jerry Weeks and Collins Wadlen started taking music lessons. Everyone was studying guitar except Anderson who opted for the drums.

Weeks, who was a year younger than his friends, had taken piano lessons for a couple of years, but decided to switch to guitar when his piano teacher quit him after pointing out that everyone who started with him were far beyond what he was playing. So for a few months the group of buddies spent their Saturdays at lessons in downtown Augusta.

“They were trying to teach us the notes and everything and but we kept saying we want to play a song. That’s it. We don’t need all this other stuff, which we really did, but we wanted chords so we could play songs we knew,” Fleming said.

Once they all got to where they could strike up a tune, they started getting together at Anderson’s or Weeks’ house.

“I look back and wonder how our folks and the people in the neighborhood put up with it,” Anderson said.

Miller Weeks, who is younger, said he remembered the band setting up in one room to practice and him having to kneel down inches from the TV in the den to hear over their faltering chords. As they found their rhythm and learned how to play with each other more and more neighbors would walk over and eventually filled the porch and yard during their practice sessions.

For a long time, Anderson said he forgot the original name they came up with for the band and only in the last few years did he come across a message written into an old yearbook that referred to them as The Spans of Time.

“That was our name, but do I specifically remember that,” Steve said and shook his head.

“I don’t,” several other members said.

Sometime in the Spring of their freshman year they decided they were good enough for a real audience and played for the first time in the old Wrens High gymnasium.

It was around this time that Charles Milburn, Phil Marsh, Everett Williford and Larry Faglier joined the band.

Finding their groove 

After dark, especially on cloudy nights, AM radio signals and disc jockey Johnny Cigna from Fort Wayne, IN, brought the guys the hottest new songs on WOWO channel 1190.

“We all listened to it,” Anderson said. “Late at night the signal would skip on the clouds.”

And those were the songs they learned to play: GLORIA, Double Shot, as well as the hits from The Four Tops, The Temptations, The Tams.

“Those were our go-to-groups back then,” Anderson said.

“We all loved the music and we worked hard at it,” Milburn said.

The band practiced a couple of times a week until around 11 p.m.

Their first gigs were a lot less well-planned.

“When we decided we wanted to play we would put up a poster at school on that Friday afternoons saying there would be a dance out at the Legion hall. That’s how we adverised,” Anderson said.

“We wouldn’t know two days ahead of time that we were going to play,” Milburn added.

“We charged a dollar a head,” Weeks said.

The Legion Hall was an old building that wasn’t really that big and they would throw open the doors and windows.

“It wasn’t long before it got to be that we had more people coming than we could handle,” Milburn said.

“We filled that place up,” Anderson said with a grin.

They all remember the building being sweltering in the summer. It would hold about 75 or 80 people but there was often another 100 outside.

That summer they really polished their skills playing either the Legion Hall or the city community building, now known as Rabun Center, pretty much every other weekend.

With the new band members and a growing fan base, sometime that year they changed their name to the Signa 7, named after the DJ who they all loved.

After they had been playing for several months, they sent him a letter asking if they could use his name.

He gave permission, but told them that they he spelled his name with a C, Johnny Cigna. At that point, they were not going to change it.

Finding a following 

Bolsted by their local fans, the Signa 7 started taking their show on the road.

They got bookings and played Teen Towns across central Eastern Georgia with shows in Tignall, Warrenton, Swainsboro, Louisville, Sylvania, Milledgeville and North Augusta.

They started dressing alike, adding in theatrics and amping up their performances and with Week’s older brother, Ronnie, managing them, they even played a few college dances.

Marsh’s sister financed a trip to Greenwood, SC where they recorded three records featuring several original songs, records Johnny Cigna actually played on WOWO.

“I remember sitting in class and someone played our record over the speaker system at the school,” Milburn said. “That was pretty eerie.”

They added more songs to their playlist, which they all remember as being a challenge each time.

“We only had record players. So, if we wanted to hear what he said, we had to pick the needle up and write the words down,” Milburn said.

“Most of the time it didn’t matter because Phil would sing it how he wanted to anyway,” Milburn laughed.

Walden started out as their lead singer, but when Marsh joined the band he took over on most of their songs.

“Phil was a fantastic front man,” Milburn said. “He was a crooner and it didn’t matter how he sang it, the fans loved whatever he did.”

The band remembers adding costume changes half way through the set. They would come out in matching outfits and play for a while, then, on break, all change in to matching white outfits sporting white gloves.

“We’d start playing and then they’d hit the black lights and we’d just glow,” Anderson said laughing. “We thought we were something with those black lights. Nobody else around here did anything like that, and the kids loved it.”

Having the records earned them the chance to play on WJBF Augusta's televised Top 10 Dance Party.

“It was kind of like the local version of American Bandstand,” Anderson said. “It was held on Saturday mornings. They didn’t really have the place set up to really play, but we had a record so we could go lip synch.”

That day the JB Whites models were there and so they had the band stay and dance with the models during the rest of the show.

Around that time the Signa 7 also played in and won the Battle of the Bands in Augusta.

“We had all our people who used to go out to the Legion Hall and hear us come over there to support us,” Fleming said. “We weren’t necessarily better, but we had way more people with us than anybody else and so we kept placing and placing.”

“We had good equipment,” Milburn said. “I remember all the other bands wanted to use ours.”

“I remember the song we did on Battle of the Bands was Stagger Lee and we acted it out,” Weeks said. “Bam, bam, bam and I’d fall over.”

The way most of the band remembers it, winning the Battle of the Bands earned them the honor of opening for Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, known for their hit Wooly Bully, at The Bell Auditorium in Augusta.

Milburn said he remembers being on stage playing when he heard voices calling from back stage.

“That’s when they were hollering for us to get off the stage and we wouldn’t do it,” Milburn said.

“We were contracted to play so many songs and were going to play them,” Weeks laughed. “We were going to play our songs.”

The band played together until graduation and after that, they didn’t for a long time.

Picking back up their instruments 

They played again a couple of times during the Wrens Centennial in 1984, but did not really start practicing regularly until six years ago when a classmate suggested they reunite for their class reunion. And they’ve played every reunion of that era since, including this past weekend for the WHS class of 1973.

“We don’t know how long it will last,” Milburn said.

“But this is longer than we played in high school,” Anderson pointed out.

“We get together and practice and cut up,” Jerry Weeks said. “It’s like our poker night.”

“And then when our wives hear us play, they wonder just how much practicing we’ve done out here,” Fleming said.

In breaks between playing the same old songs, the band members laugh, rib each other and talk about old times. Like when the first time they blew out their speakers plugging in too many mics. Or one band member donning a wig and jumping up on the amp to the roar of the crowd. Or the time they covered their old white van in spray paint and the poor impression it gave the sorority house where they showed up to play a gig. Or the time Weeks had to play the organ with is arm at a weird angle because he had dislocated his shoulder playing football. Or how they would all go to Miss Sugar Pie’s restaurants after a gig and gorge themselves on hamburgers sometimes as late as 2 a.m. Or the time they got a police escort out of Tignal.

“It wasn’t anything the band started, we were playing,” Fleming said. “But something happened and it must have gotten blamed on us because when we pulled out their were about 50 cars at the filling station that pulled out and followed us and we started handing out mic stands.”

“But nothing bad ever really happened,” Anderson said.

“We loved every minute of it,” Milburn said. “Every minute of it. We still do.”

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Glory days: The Signa 7 finds their groove