Sam and the pilot -- Sam Neely Forum

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Date Posted: 18:37:27 07/24/06 Mon
Author: Tabby Crabb (Recording studio story)
Subject: Sam and the pilot

Sam and became friends from the time I played on his album on Gilley's Records and spent a lot of time together during the course of that record.

While we were doing that recording we needed Sam to fly up from Corpus to Pasadena to do some vocals. Mike Taylor (the producer) was a pilot and talked Sam into letting us (Mike and me) fly a single engined plane down and bring him back. Sam was hesitant but agreed so Mike and I rented a Skyhawk (small 4 place single engine) in LaPorte TX and headed down the coast to pick up Sam.

We had to spend the night in town that night and we left the next morning for the airport and loaded up and took off to fly back to LaPorte which was just down the road from Pasadena.

Mike was in the left front seat (pilot), me in the right front (co-pilot) and Sam was lounging in the back seat. As we approached LaPorte and made the turn we were horrified to see a huge thunderstorm closing in on the airport. We were at about 500' and on the final approach. We could feel the storm catching up to us and tossing the little four place plane around.

As we were coming over the end of the runway the storm caught us and blew us nose down straight down the runway. We thought we were going to die for sure and it took both Mike and me (and some luck from God) to straighten the little plane out. We skidded to a stop in the mud and grass at the end of the runway with the nose of the plane hanging out over the highway. Luckily no one at the airport saw this because they had gone inside the hanger when the storm hit.

I looked over at Mike and saw that Sam had his hands around Mike's throat. I started laughing (nervously since we had almost been killed) and Sammy said,

"Mike there's no way the crash would have killed you because I would have choked you to death before that for talking me into taking this trip."

It was always hard to know with Sam but I have always thought he was serious about that. Sam told me later that he wasn't worried until he saw me turn white as a sheet and start pulling back on the wheel with Mike.

We laughed about that trip a lot over the years. Doing that record with Sam is something that made me very proud since I was already a fan when I met him and being his friend has been one of the highlights of my life.

-=Tabby Crabb

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