Cork Proctor remembers a time in Las Vegas when men put on tuxedos for an evening on the town. “That was when show business was really in it heyday—nothing like today. Then it was first class—live music with big bands—18, 25 pieces. Tony Bennett with a hundred strings at the Desert Inn. It was fun to go out, fun to hear things because there was no junk. It wasn’t about volume; it was about the quality of the music,” says Proctor.

The top lounge act of the fifties and sixties was Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and Sam Butera. Proctor says some of the great lounge bands are still around. Freddie Bell and the Bell-boys, the Treniers. “All of these guys came from the tuxedo era, when they dressed on stage. The bands had suits, coats, ties.” Proctor adds that they were excited about playing and it showed.

A legendary lounge comedian himself, Cork Proctor has become the Andy Rooney of Las Vegas, recalling a time when “you could leave your keys in your car, your doors open, and there were no ‘drive-bys.’”

Proctor appeared regularly in main rooms and lounges in Las Vegas during the seventies and eighties, opening for such headliners as Mel Tillis, Lee Greenwood, Eddie Raven, and the Supremes.

For three years he was entertainment manager for Coast Resorts—the Barbary Coast, Gold Coast, and Orleans hotel/casinos—before running away in 1999 to join the U.S. Peace Corps. Proctor and his wife, Carolyn, were subsequently sent for two years to Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana) in South America, where he continued to amuse and confuse the natives in both English and the local language, Sranan Tongo.

One of his ongoing jokes is that he’s been fired from several major hotels, “but never for being unprofessional.” Proctor, who is known for saying what everyone knows but nobody talks about, says it was usually just something he said, often about a hotel owner, another performer, or a fire.

Proctor came to Las Vegas with his parents in 1946, attending Las Vegas High School from 1946 until 1950. His favorite decade of all was the fifties. “We had the Southern California influence. The Compton Tar-Babies, the football team, was the first group to introduce dope to the Las Vegas football team.”

Las Vegas High School played Compton Junior College because “there was a shortage of teams around Nevada. It was hard to fill out the season. There was no university here (and) only one high school.”

Proctor recalls that “Barbara Binion (daughter of Horseshoe founder Benny Binion) was in my high school class. She had her own car and could drive as soon as she wanted to.”

After a stint in the U.S. Navy, he worked as a lifeguard at the Sahara Hotel. “There was always a plethora of stars here. Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers―that was Andy and Don―who later went into management. Kay Starr at the Flamingo, Myron Cohen.”

Proctor began a serious career as a drummer. “Starting out as a musician late in life, in my twenties, I had the opportunity to see all these guys night after night after night and watch them work. That’s how I learned my craft.”

He saw Nat King Cole at the original El Rancho “for a 25-cent Coca-Cola. There was a time when they gave the town away—no cover, no minimum, no nothing. We left a 15-cent tip; we were high-rollers.”

Always throwing one-liners from behind the drums, he decided to make a career change to comedy at age 40, sometime after observing that there seemed to be “no old drummers.” He felt comedy was “ageless.”

His best comedy career advice came from veteran comedian Jackie Gayle: “Get ridda d’drums.” So he sold his drums and never looked back.

Roy Powers, director of marketing at Harold’s Club in Reno, gave Proctor his first break in 1972, booking him into Harold’s Club’s Silver Dollar Bar, “which had real silver dollars embedded in the bar.”

He did four comedy sets a night. On May 5, 1973, he made his debut in Las Vegas at the Frontier Hotel.

Pioneer publicist Abe Schiller was a colorful character whom Proctor remembers well. “He always dressed very lavishly. He was a large man and wore large chrome-plated guns with pearl handles. He was a great for the town because he made it look like it was fun to be here.” Proctor adds that “everybody wore guns.”

One of Proctor’s favorite stories is about his father, Al Proctor, who in the fifties was sales manager for the Thunderbird Hotel. “My father was one of the early members of the Las Vegas and Clark County Sheriff’s Posse, the same guys who went up to find actress Carole Lombard when the plane crashed in the mountains. They all had horses and they used to get together, get drunk, and have a wonderful time.”

They “hung out” at the Hualapai Club upstairs at the Thunderbird. Al Proctor had a horse named “Billy,” a rodeo pick-up horse purchased from an Idaho stock contractor.

“A bunch of those guys were in the hotel one night, along with the Thunderbirds, those jet pilots who do all the stunts. They were hanging around the hotel because that was their local watering hole. My father was extolling the virtues of Billy—how smart he was—and someone said, ‘If he’s so damned good, why don’t you bring him in for a drink?’”

Billy happened to be outside in a trailer, “so that was a big mistake to ask my dad! He said, ‘OK, wait a minute’, went outside, got the horse, saddled him up, and rode him right into the hotel.”

The Hualapai Club was “a bunch of guys who wanted to get together, who didn’t want a bunch of projects, didn’t want to raise money for charity. They just wanted to go into a nice dark, leather, smoky bar with a great bartender, have a drink, and be left alone. If they wanted to play Pangini for a dollar a point, nobody bothered them. And it seems to me that everything was on a city ledger. There was no money, they just signed for everything. I don’t know that my father was a founding member, but I think Jimmy Schuylar and Frank Scott may have been, and Oscar Bryan, and maybe Jim Bilbray, Sr…”

Proctor recalls that “in the sixties, the town didn’t really get crankin’ till midnight. Louis, Keely, and Sam’s first show started at midnight and their last show was over about six in the morning. It was a different kind of clientele because people were coming here to really party and have fun in the later hours. They didn’t have to get up and go to conventions, seminars. They didn’t have to get up and do anything.”

And the stories just go on and on.

In the forties, the population of Las Vegas was about 20,000, and most kids had horses, Proctor says. “There were horse clubs, and the 4-H club was here. Helldorado was a big thing. There was a village (at Helldorado), Quejo’s Cave, it was called. Quejo, he was an Indian they found somewhere down near the river. They put him in an artificially constructed cave and had him on exhibition for years. He was in a little glass case, mummified.”

And where did they keep the body the rest of the year? Proctor quips, “In the meat locker at the Flamingo, along with some of the guys who didn’t pay their markers. I don’t know. Who would know that?”