Jim Stringer loved to go hear The Silver Tones in the early 1960s; he just wasn’t allowed to see the band.

“I was too young to get into The Soc Hop,” Stringer recalls of the Overland Park club.

“My brother, who was four-and-a-half years older than me, would drive me in the car – he was 16, so he could get in, and I was 12. I had to sit out in the car and listen. It was a great way to become acquainted with the band. I wasn’t distracted by the visual of it. I’d listen to the guitar. I’d see the people coming and going. I probably heard The Silver Tones 20 times.”

Now Stringer and his favorite band are enjoying a musical reunion, and this time they’ll both converge inside the venue.

The Silver Tones and Stringer’s group Tide are among the eight inductees of the Kansas Music Hall of Fame’s junior class.

“It’s a broader spectrum than the first two classes. It’s more diverse,” says hall president Bill Lee.

“The first two were primarily rock, with the exception of (jazz musician) Jerry Hahn last year. Whereas this year we have Marilyn Maye, Martina McBride and Blue Riddim Band. So there’s jazz, country and reggae – all sorts of things.”

Inductees include:

¢ Marilyn Maye (Kansas City): A veteran jazz singer who holds the record of performing 78 times on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.”

¢ The Blue Riddim Band (Kansas City): The first all-white American act to be nominated for a reggae Grammy (for 1984’s “Alive in Jamaica”).

¢ Tide (Lawrence): “Tide was one of the original jam bands,” Lee says. “They had a lot of jazz influence. They could take what had been a three-minute pop hit and turn it into a 10-minute tour de force.”

¢ Martina McBride (Sharon): A Grammy-nominated country artist who has sold more than 13 million records.

¢ The Silver Tones (Kansas City): “Probably the first big rock band in Kansas City. Everybody back then remembers them,” Lee says.

¢ Dawayne Bailey (Manhattan): A guitarist and songwriter who was a member of both Chicago and Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band.

¢ The Common Few? (Chanute): “A ’60s Plains horn bands that there were so many of back then,” Lee describes. “They were basically white guys introducing black music to white audiences.”

¢ The Rising Suns (Topeka/Coffeyville): Lee says, “Two different versions are being inducted of this R&B-based show band. The original group out of Topeka was in an accident. Their bus wrecked and they lost all their instruments. They couldn’t meet all their booking obligations, so the management which owned the name looked around for somebody else to fill the dates. They found a band down in Coffeyville called The Dalton Gang. Both versions contributed to the history and reputation of the band.”

Rising Tide

Oddly enough, Tide guitarist Stringer also performed in The Rising Suns … sort of.

“Midcontinent (booking agency) would double book, and if they had two Rising Suns gigs, they would send somebody else out as the band,” Stringer recalls. “We played under their name at a place once and somebody came up at break time and told Steve (Hall, Tide drummer), ‘Hey, I saw you guys two weeks ago and it was a completely different band.’

“Steve said, ‘Yeah, we had a wreck in a bus. Everybody else was killed except the drummer, and he stunk, so we replaced him.'”

Unlike many of the bygone artists honored by the hall, Stringer has been a working musician since the 1970s. In 1993, he moved from Lawrence to Austin, Texas, where he has spent years fronting Jim Stringer and the AM Band.

Stringer is getting back together today with former Tide members Hall, Paul Miller, Greg Mackender and Bill Lynch to run through some tunes from his past. (“If there’s anything I’ve learned over the course of the years is I feel a lot better when there’s a rehearsal,” he says.)

As for the hall of fame honor, Stringer says it’s a positive movement for the state’s musicians.

“We call Austin the ‘live music capital of the world’ – which is not a humble stance at all. Whereas in Kansas it always had a Groucho Marx thing: ‘I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member.’ There’s kind of a state inferiority complex. And yet, I’ve realized that these guys in Tide were truly world-class players,” he says.

Silver age

World-class player Frank Plas spent decades severed from his electric guitar. But recently the Lenexa resident decided to re-explore The Silver Tones during a few area gigs. Now his band will be performing in Lawrence for the first time since the mid-’60s.

“We formed at Indian Hills Junior High for a talent show,” Plas recalls. “In 1959, it was pretty much pop music: Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. What The Silver Tones did was incorporated some of the blues that had not been heard in this area. We were a little different than most of the pop guys.”

The members named the ensemble after their Silvertone guitars, donned white dinner jackets and began to foster a reputation as the premier live act of the era.

“We’d play out at The Soc Hop (at 95th and Metcalf Ave.), and on any given Friday or Saturday night we’d have 1,500 kids out there. The joint was really jumping,” he says.

Both Stringer and Lee emphasize what an influence Plas had on a whole pre-Beatles generation of guitar players.

“There are an awful lot of Kansas City guitarists who consider Frank their hero and mentor,” Lee relates. “Ron West of The Chessman and later of the group Missouri said that he used to go to Silver Tones shows and write down their set list, then his band would play those songs. If The Silver Tones played it, it must be worth playing.”

Plas says the reunited Silver Tones will be delivering some of their earliest hits at the hall of fame showcase on Saturday.

“In 1960 we had a song called ‘Midnight Thunder’ that I wrote. We released that here on the West Coast Records label, and it got up to No. 4. Then in 1961 we had a song released called ‘Dimples.’ It got up to No. 18. We’ll try our best on those,” he says.

While the Kansas Music Hall of Fame still lacks a physical location that will serve as its permanent venue, the organizers insist the simple act of honoring past and present musicians is reason enough for the ceremonies.

As Stringer says, “It’s just nice to be remembered.”

How does the voting work?

The Kansas Music Hall of Fame membership must observe two requirements when nominating an artist or act to be inducted.

1. The artist must have impacted the musical history of Kansas or the greater Kansas City area.

2. The artist must have performed live at least 25 years ago.

There are more than 100 dues-paying members of the hall of fame, plus all past inductees are allowed to vote. (Membership info is available at www.ksmusichalloffame.org.) They get a ballot in October, then vote for as many as 10 acts, up to five of which can be write-ins.

Each year the top 10 nominations by this group are presented to the board of directors (“to keep it from being a total popularity contest,” says hall president Bill Lee), who ultimately select the inductees provided they earn 60 percent approval.

“As far as I know, we’re the only hall of fame that allows dues-paying members to get a vote,” Lee says.