ABOVE: Tom Tourville speaks to a crowd during a presentation at the Martin County Historical Society on Thursday.

FAIRMONT – In the ’60s and ’70s, Fairmont was a training ground for Rock ‘N Roll, Tom Tourville told all at the Martin County Historical Society on Thursday.

And he was there. Born and raised in Fairmont, he has now written 31 books on it and other topics in Midwest music. All of them are in the Library of Congress, which Tourville said is something he’s proud of.

“That doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “That [means] they like your product, they like your book, they like what you say.”

In writing these books, Tourville said it was important to find as much information as possible to preserve.

“People will not forget about rock ‘n roll,” he said. “The bands that played here, The Antagonists, The Epicureans, The Brotherhood, The Black Viscounts, The Henchmen. They’re not going to be forgotten, because the book isn’t going anywhere.”

In serving some of what he’s learned, Tourville started by talking about the ballrooms. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, he said there were more ballrooms in the five upper Midwest states than in the other 45 combined.

Interlaken Ballroom was a big piece of the story. Tourville said until it was sold in 1970 they had mainly Minneapolis bands from Central or Marsh Productions. He said it was a big deal when they broke that formula and booked The Epicureans from Fairmont.

“If you were a kid from Fairmont, that was a big deal,” Tourville said. “Whether we were old enough or mom and dad said yes, we were going to get in that ballroom. I’m a kid of a teacher. If you guys went to Mr. Tourville’s class, you knew he didn’t have a sense of humor. He was not a rock ‘n roll guy. It took everything I could think of to convince Bill Tourville to let me go see rock ‘n roll shows.”

The Interlaken was also a center for many of Tourville’s Fairmont Rock ‘N Roll memories. While working as a lifeguard at the Yacht Club, he would sneak out after finishing his work and sneak into The Interlaken through the back door.

“Got to hang with the band,” Tourville said. “Shoot the breeze, talk records, posters, get autograph photos. It didn’t matter. Because I was such a pain, Wes Rau left me alone. I got to hear all the sound checks and hang around for a while. It was sweet.”

While only around 1973-76, Mr. C’s Ballroom in Hands Park was what Tourville described as three years of rock ‘n roll bliss after the Interlaken burnt down in 1972. Cheap Trick, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, once played Mr. C’s. While with a different band, an associate of a Minnesota legend honed his skills at the old Fairmont Youth Center.

“In 1973 a band came in from Minneapolis called Whale Bone,” Tourville said. “What was interesting about Whale Bone was there was one black guitarist and a white bass player and drummer, mixed-race band. You did not see a black guitarist often in the youth center. The guitarist’s name is Dez Dickerson. He got picked up for a little job in Minneapolis. For two years, he was the lead guitarist for Prince and the Revolution. He’s on one of the Prince albums as the principal guitarist.”

In addition, Dickerson contributed vocals for Little Red Corvette and 1999.

While not a rock ‘n roll guy, Bill Tourville played a big role in his son’s rock ‘n roll experience. Tom Tourville said his father was the one who taught him how to sell. Tourville paid for four years of college by booking bands, with those skills.

Tourville capped his talk by recounting a memory where he and his father connected over rock ‘n roll.

“One night after supper I was out in the garage dinking with my bike,” he said. “My dad said, ‘You know, there’s a rock ‘n roll band in Fairmont, and they’re all my students.’ My dad and I drove over to this garage on the north side and we parked out front [and listened]. It wasn’t one week later I saw them on a hay wagon in downtown Fairmont. I’m sitting there going, ‘My lord, this is rock ‘n roll.'”

As a Fairmont kid, Tourville said it was a fantastic experience to recount his history and Fairmont’s rock ‘n roll history as a whole.

“Everybody in this room loved rock ‘n roll,” he said. “It’s fun for me to tell my story, to see all the heads going up and down because it was their story too.”

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