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[scan]
Ticket for the concert with Levon Helm & The RCO All Stars on May 7, 1978 at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas.

Michael Priest, who made the poster for this show and was a Master of Ceremonies at Armadillo, claims the show never occurred. The band was in Baton Rouge the night before, and a thick fog the morning of May 7 socked in the airport delaying them from flying to Austin. Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn were part of the All Stars, and Cropper called Armadillo and said they were delayed, and he and Duck weren't too big on the idea of flying in bad weather and there wasn't enough time to drive from Baton Rouge to Austin. He said he and Duck had been performing with Otis Redding and did not get on the same plane that went down in the crash killing Otis, and he and Duck were disinclined to test their luck in another possibly risky flight. The folks at Armadillo definitely understood their feelings, and said if the group got back in the area just let them know, and they'd figure out a way to organize a spur of the moment show at that time.

Levon & the RCO All Stars did make it back in to Austin later, and they were also scheduled to do an Austin City Limits TV show. Michael Priest claims that Levon had never seen himself on television, and he didn't want to either, along the lines of ".. it might steal my soul if my image is captured..." sort of like some headhunter in Borneo would think a camera would capture his soul and take it out of his body. During a rehearsal at Austin City Limits, Levon glimpsed a camera monitor and saw himself on it, got scared, fled the TV studio and locked himself in a room on the top floor of the Communications Building. He couldn't be talked in to coming out and doing the TV show, and the Austin City Limits video shoot never happened!

(Of course this is pure bulls**t, Levon had been on national television for the first time on American Banstand with Ronnie Hawkins in '59, and numerous times with The Band... but it's a funny story.)


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