From his Petersburg youth and Jackson High upbringing was born a musical talent that made a short run at stardom in the 1970s and a lasting impression on music in mid-America.
Patrick Rasmussen and the college buddies who came together as the band Clutch and the Shifters will re-converge Saturday to rev up their audience during an encore performance alongside their induction into the Mid-America Music Hall of Fame.
“We started out as this little college band and our popularity just continued to grow,” Rasmussen said. “This is a great honor for us. We’ll be playing for about 40 minutes the night of the induction. We really hope some of our fans will show up to hear us one last time, and for those who never had the chance to see us, it’s a great opportunity to catch our act.”
That act is vintage rock and roll.
“We were a ’50s band in the style of Sha Na Na,” he said. “We had three front men who did the singing and choreography. We were a very visual show. I was the bass vocalist; I performed all the choreography and sang some leads.”
The others included Gary Petersen of Fairmont, Keith Hocking of Ellsworth, Joe Keyes of Pipestone, Lee and Don Kanten of Ortonville and Jerry Lindberg of North St. Paul — guys whose common ground was Southwest Minnesota State University and music.
“We got together to play at the homecoming talent contest,” Rasmussen said. “We won the contest. Then an owner of a bar near campus asked us to come and play at his place. We had only learned three songs for the contest, so we did a lot of practicing and learned enough songs to do a four-hour show.”
The band continued to play throughout the remainder of the year and then was able to secure a contract with Alpha Productions, the top booking agent out of Minneapolis, he said. That connection propelled Clutch and the Shifters outside of southwest Minnesota and into performances throughout the Midwest, Florida, Michigan, Colorado and Arkansas from 1973 through 1976.
“We quickly became Alpha’s top band,” he added. “We shared billing with rock legends like Dion and Chubby Checkers. Frankie Avalon and Joey Dee saw us when we were in Florida. Joey managed the club and Frankie stayed for the entire night. He said that we had the truest ’50s sound that he had heard.”
Other highlights were much closer to home.
“One of my biggest thrills was when we played the Roof Garden,” he said. “I went to the Roof all the time when I was in high school and heard some great bands, like Sonny and Cher, The Turtles and the Fabulous Flippers. We played the Roof a week before Memorial Day weekend and had a full house. It was great.”
Other local influences also turned Rasmussen on to the world of music.
“I grew up in Petersburg, which at the time had things happening. We had two gas stations, and my dad owned one,” he said. “There was also a general store, creamery and school. During the summer there were free movies.
“My dad is Melvin — he was the veterans service officer for Jackson County for many years — and my mom, Marie, worked at Gervais Jewelry in downtown Jackson. Our close friends were Paul and Lucy Poynter and their family. They played music all the time, guitar and fiddle. It is my first memory of live music.”
Also with the group for a period of time were Chris Nolte of Fairmont and Isiah Whitlock of South Bend, Ind.
“Isiah was with us when we were in college and Chris joined us for a summer,” Rasmussen said.
Their reunion — the first in decades for some of the members — will make for a special night at the nearby I-90 Expo Center in Sherburn. Clutch and the Shifters is set to take the stage at 7:30 p.m.
Millie and the Saddle Pals
Millie and the Saddle Pals, another area band, will also share the honorary spotlight at the Mid-America Music Hall of Fame on Saturday, and the induction ceremony is much longer in coming for the country band.
The Ceylon-based post-World War II group of Truman and Millie Kittleson and Truman’s brothers Ted and Norman, as well as Kenny Meyer and later Roy Healy and Cap Kurseth, got its start in 1950 and quickly established itself as a weekly mainstay on six southern Minnesota radio stations through 1959.
“I think the reason we got inducted is because we were on those six radio stations for Supersweet Feeds,” said Millie Kittleson, the Armstrong, Iowa-born singer with a rich family history of music who married into the country-singing Kittleson family.
“We were pioneers in country music at that time,” she said. “I sang pop before that but married into a county music family and have been singing country ever since.”
Millie’s mother came from Sweden with a guitar when she was 18, Millie said.
“She was a very accomplished musician and had a show on KSUM for 36 years,” Millie said. “Of her six kids, she wanted someone to follow in her footsteps and she picked me.”
It was that same Fairmont KSUM Radio that gave Millie and the Saddle Pals its big break.
“I’m very happy, very humble,” Millie said of the induction honor coming on Saturday. “The people who are in this hall of fame are all recording artists with top records. … We hope we’ll get a crowd to celebrate with us.”
Millie Kittleson went on to work with KSTP’s Sunset Valley Barn Dance television show and later toured with the Roy Acuff group from the Grand Ole Opry, and her 60-year entertaining career is still going. The Kittleson brothers — and some of their kids — went on with their music too.
“We’ve all been doing our thing since,” she said.
Rock and country revival show on tap
Along with inductees Clutch and the Shifters and Millie and the Saddle Pals, several Mid-America Music Hall of Fame — formerly the Minnesota Rock Country Hall — alumni are scheduled to perform Sept. 26.
Those entertainers include Tony Andreason of the Trashmen, made famous by the song “Surfin’ Bird” and who has recently toured overseas; Marilyn Sellars, singer and pianist who rose to fame with “One Day at a Time;” Phil Humphrey of the Fendermen, whose “Mule Skinner Blues” was a Billboard No. 3 hit, followed by “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Heartbreakin’ Special;” Doug Spartz, a studio musician with Jesse Jay and the Bandits when “Come On Pretty Girl” was a regional hit and whose recent song “Name on the Wall” charted on Billboard; and Denny Charnecki, known for his release of “I Know.”
Windom artist Sean Benz and the Mid-America Music Hall of Fame All-Star Band will also join the performers.
