Towards the end of 1965, The Chartbusters were ready to release their next single after "New Orleans". The doorman at one of the clubs the band played had written a song he felt would go over great. The doorman's name was Paul Tate and the song he had written was entitled "Kick Wheeler". The Chartbusters decided to record it as their next Crusader single. It was a cool motorcycle song and Paul was pretty cool himself, always dressing in white suits and driving a Corvette. "Kick Wheeler" was in the tradition of "Dead Man's Curve" and "Leader Of The Pack", but failed to dent the charts.
Several years later, there was a hardcore street person always stumbling around Georgetown that everyone called Sky King or Spaceman or perhaps even worse. He had long, matted hair and was constantly muttering to himself while picking imaginary and/or real bugs from his beard and hair. One day as my dad and I were walking down M Street, Spaceman approached us and spoke, kind of startling me. But what he said freaked me out even more. He asked my dad, "Do you remember that song I wrote for you?" It turned out that Spaceman was Paul Tate! I asked my dad how he became that way and my dad replied that while many people thought it was drugs, it was more likely a bad crash in his 'Vette that had resulted in the extensive brain damage to Paul. I found it so sad that even profoundly out of his mind, Paul still had some tenuous links to his previous existence - but no way of ever getting back to it...