Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [79]
He said, “That is fine. We will be ready.” He was completely confident.
Up to this point the show seemed to be all set, but when I got on the airplane to go to Tennessee, the weather in that part of the country was terrible. We could not get near Johnson City, Tennessee. It was a fierce winter storm. I ended up in Kansas City, Missouri, that Friday night. The show was scheduled for Saturday night. So I called Dr. Rowe, and he said, “Hello, Bob, where are you?”
I said, “I don’t want you to worry because everything is going to be fine, but I am in Kansas City.”
There was a long pause.
“Dr. Rowe?” I said.
In a dazed voice, Dr. Rowe asked, “What are you doing in Kansas City?”
I explained the weather problem and assured him that they had told me I would be able to get in tomorrow. “If you can meet me at the airport, we will go directly to the venue,” I said. “We’ll put this show together and it will work.”
The next day, the weather was again horrendous, but I did manage to arrive in Tennessee. By the time we left the airport, it was close to showtime. I was happy to discover that Dr. Rowe and his crew of fifteen men and two young ladies were all prepared. I had told them every move to make, right down to the last detail, in the script, and they were on top of it. They were like a veteran Hollywood crew, sharp and dedicated, and they wanted to work.
We did the show, despite a veritable blizzard in the area, and we filled Jefferson Hall. We had an audience of eight thousand people and turned away a couple of thousand more. The show was a smash hit. They laughed, screamed, and applauded, and they gave me a standing ovation at the end. After the show, Dr. Rowe came up to me and said in his rich southern accent, “I think you ought to be doing more of these shows.”
And I said, “I think you are right.”
That was how the live road show began, and it became wildly popular. We broke the record at the Omni in Atlanta. We filled the Summit in Cincinnati. Everywhere we went, we sold out and broke attendance records. I was still hosting The Price Is Right in Hollywood, but I would fly out on Thursday or Friday, do a show Friday night and then do another one in a nearby city on Saturday night. I would jump on a plane and fly back on Sunday and go to work on Price on Monday.
Dr. Rowe and Sheldon Ferguson had a company called the Tennessee Partners that promoted country-and-western acts—and as of that night, Bob Barker. We started barnstorming all over the map. We went on a tear that lasted eight years. You name it, we played it: Omaha, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Cleveland, Detroit, Tampa, Miami, and Atlanta. We went all over. They wanted us to play Madison Square Garden in New York, but the advertising costs were outrageous, and I did not want to do a show that would just pay for advertising. They wanted us to play at the old Los Angeles Forum, but I didn’t want to appear at the Forum because we taped The Price Is Right in Los Angeles. I thought if people wanted to come see me in Los Angeles, they could come see me for free doing The Price Is Right.
Dr. Rowe was the one who suggested that we call the show The Bob Barker Fun and Games Show.
I said, “You got it.”
When I first started doing The Bob Barker Fun and Games Show live in front of such large audiences, I thought we might have to have big acts with lots of things happening on the stage. Not so. I learned that folks loved to have me roam through the audience, even up into the balcony.
The lighting man would follow me with a spot as I had fun with people of all ages and colors, even with kids as young as four or five. I’d pick them up, stand them on their chairs and stay with a youngster as long as we were getting laughs. I remember talking with a six-year-old boy in San Antonio for about five minutes. The audience loved him.
If I was