Barry Winslow of Houston, who was famous in the 1960s as lead singer for the rock ‘n’ roll band the Royal Guardsmen, is now finding fulfillment in Christian rock
Barry Winslow and his wife, Teena, work about 50 hours a week making airplane parts for Hart Aero, a friend’s ultralight aircraft business in Pomona, a small town southeast of Springfield. A flexible schedule with the family-owned start-up allows the couple to also perform Christian rock music, written by Winslow, at regional churches and concerts.
The fact that Winslow, who lives in Houston, has found a way to pursue two lifelong passions �airplanes and music — brings his life and career full-circle, in a way.
Winslow was nationally famous in the 1960s as lead singer for the rock ‘n’ roll band the Royal Guardsmen, which had a hit about a fictional World War I airplane duel set to music. Winslow was 18 when Laurie Records released “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” in November 1966. The song eventually went gold.
A year later in 1967 — 40 years ago this month �the Royal Guardsmen recorded “Snoopy’s Christmas.” The song, in which Snoopy and the Red Baron share a moment of holiday spirit, was No. 1 on Billboard’s Christmas chart for five weeks.
Winslow grew frustrated with the record industry in 1970 and quit the band, which soon broke up. The six original members reunited in the mid-1970s to play the club circuit. After about two years, Winslow quit again �this time turning his back on music.
It was God’s intervention and a renewed faith, says Winslow, 59, that inspired his return years later. In the late 1980s, he wrote a song which was recorded on “A Child’s Gift of Lullabies,” an album that went platinum. And he wrote seven of eight songs he performs on the aptly titled “Transition,” a contemporary Christian rock album recorded in 1994 when Winslow lived in Nashville. He’s writing more songs for “Remnant,” a new Christian album he and Teena will record.
Turning to Christian music saved him in more ways than one, Winslow says: “It was the first time in my life that I was able to write anything I felt. No one told me how I had to sound, or how to be. I just let it out.”
In 2004, he reunited for a third time with original Royal Guardsmen members, who occasionally perform together. They opened for the Commodores in 2005 and were a featured act on a cruise ship in 2006.
In 2006, before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, they wrote and recorded a new song, “Snoopy Vs. Osama.” Band member John Burdett came up with the idea, Winslow says. “And I said, ‘Are you out of your mind? No one is doing this anymore.’ Very few acts have done new music. But we did it. We did it for the guys and gals overseas. … It was to give them something to hold on to because of what they do to keep us safe and free.”
The song, now on iTunes, is getting air play, Winslow says, especially overseas. It compares to their old Snoopy tunes, most of which were penned by another songwriter, but it has a more contemporary feel.
“The vocals are, unfortunately, older than they used to be. With a little more seasoned edge,” Winslow adds with a chuckle.
Quiet about past fame
Dressed for the autumn chill permeating the old building in Pomona where he works, Winslow cuts one long strip of hollow metal tubing after another. He bends each into a “rib” for the growing number of aircraft on order.
Nearby, Teena, 44, cuts smaller metal parts.
Business owner Doug Hart, on the other side of the building filled with door-length work tables and the skeleton of one ultralight aircraft, discusses a custom order with a new client from Mississippi.
Winslow met Hart last January when both were assigned to fix a twin engine turbo airplane for a local company. A month ago, when Hart needed help with his ultralight business, he called Winslow.
“It takes so many ribs to make an airplane. It’s labor-intensive and has to be done by hand,” Winslow says, more interested in talking airplanes, it seems, than about his historic music career.
Winslow rarely brings up his past, says Hart, who didn’t know about any of it until after they’d become friends. And then he heard about it from someone else — not from Winslow. The singer is just like anyone else you’d meet, Hart says: “He’s a very friendly, very nice guy.”
But if you ask, Hart says, “or start talking about it, he will tell you about it.”
‘I never thought of us as stars’
Winslow lived in Ocklawaha, Fla., when he auditioned for the Royal Guardsmen in the spring of ‘66. By summer of that year, the six-member cover band was being asked to play larger and more prestigious area gigs. They were one of the best bands around, Winslow says.
At one big concert, record producer Phil Gernhard approached the band with a song scribbled out on yellow legal paper. It was the lyrics to “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron,” written by Gernhard and Dick Holler.
“And he says, ‘Here, see what you can do with this.’ … He said to give it a military cadence feel. So we took it home,” Winslow says.
The teens were less than excited about working up a silly song they considered beneath their talent. After all, they covered the likes of the Beatles. They came up with something on the fly, recorded a demo they disliked and gave it to Gernhard.
“And he absolutely loved it.”
So did Laurie Records, who had them record the song in a studio.
“Then we were kind of pumped. It’s a silly record, but our first,” recalls Winslow, who has since grown fond of the song and other “Snoops” they played.
Within two or three weeks, in November 1966, “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” was being played by a major Chicago radio station.
“It was so weird,” Winslow says. “They would play it every hour. Then every half hour. Then every 15 minutes.”
With the record’s success, Laurie Records wanted more Snoopy. And a full album.
“Literally, we were thrown from kids being in a hobby band into the world of big stuff. Big time. It was scary,” Winslow says.
And exciting.
“Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron” climbed the charts, and by January had landed at No. 2 behind the Monkeys’ “I’m a Believer.”
During winter break from school, the Royal Guardsmen took off for their first national bus tour with other popular acts of the day, including Sam the Sham and Tommy James & The Shondells.
Over the next couple years, they met many big acts, including the Beach Boys and Jimi Hendrix.
“When we toured with Sam and the guys, it was like what you see on television, where they pull into the place and there are people screaming and hollering. And jumping up and down,” says Winslow. “You get mobbed. And mobbing is scary. They came at us with pens and pencils, and one of the guys, Tommy, got his shirt ripped. It was nuts. It was frantic. I never really expected it. And I never thought of us as stars.”
The next year they recorded the hit “Snoopy’s Christmas” �probably their most enduring song. All together, they recorded four albums, ending with “Snoopy for President.”
Done with the music business
Winslow quit the band, he says, because he felt the record company reneged on a promise to let the Guardsmen record Holler’s “Abraham, Martin and John,” which instead went to singer Dion. Winslow had hoped the song would move them beyond Snoopy.
“I was disillusioned more than anything,” he says.
Winslow sold Jeeps until the mid-1970s, when a music promoter convinced the guys to reunite and play clubs. They played their own songs and covered others, pleased that audiences seemed to remember them.
But in 1978, Winslow burned out on the long, endless nights. And he knew the drinking was getting out of hand when the first thing he started wanting each morning was a shot of tequila.
“And one morning,” Winslow says, “I looked up and said, ‘What are you doing? Are you out of your mind?’ And it just hit me. I just threw the thing in the garbage and went cold turkey.
“I said, ‘I’m done.’”
Finding fulfillment in Christian music
For the next 15 years or so, Winslow lived in Nashville, sold cars and, after obtaining his aircraft mechanics license, worked on airplanes. He was married, and had a daughter.
In the late 1980s he co-wrote “I L.O.V.E. Y.O.U.,” sung by Christian artist Tonya Goodman Sykes for “A Child’s Gift of Lullabies.”
In the early 1990s, finding Jesus led him to Christian music, Winslow says, and by 1994 he’d recorded “Transition.”
In 1997, he moved to the Willow Springs area to be near his brother. Two years later, he started working on helicopters for an Ozarks company.
And in 2002, a now-divorced Winslow met Teena, who was waitressing at a local restaurant.
“We discovered that we both had a love of music and a lot of things in common,” Teena says. “And we got together and started hanging out.”
They were best friends who fell in love and married last December, she says: “It’s good when you marry your best friend. There are no surprises.”
Though they tried to put a band together, Winslow and his wife say it was easier to put Winslow’s tracks on CD and sing to that in churches and for concerts.
“With the response, we must be doing something right,” Teena says.
Winslow is also happy to be working again with his friends from the Royal Guardsmen. All of them but Tommy Richards, who died in 1979, reunited after performing a short set at a 2004 reunion for their high school band.
He thanks God and his wife’s support, he says, for helping him find new meaning in his life.
“All these years there was this hole. And I didn’t know that filling it was (supposed to be) music. Now I feel whole,” Winslow says.
“I really think this is where we’re supposed to be.
