FEATURE STORY
SOCIAL MEDIA
BY MARTIN STEIN
He threw himself
back in to his
work...
The Power of Social Media
Jackpot, Nevada, is just about anything but. The town rests near the
Idaho state line and consists of fewer than 1,200 souls, a school, a post
office and a public library. And because it’s technically in Nevada, it has
casinos. Five of them, to be exact. Cactus Pete’s is one of the oldest, with
the opening of its doors considered to be the town’s founding, and by
all accounts it’s a decent enough resort, with a swimming pool, a steak
restaurant for those whose luck is hot and a buffet for those whose it isn’t.
And it has the Gala Showroom, which has in the past seen the likes of ZZ
Top and Willie Nelson grace its stage but today more often sees all-female
Led Zeppelin tribute bands.
And, that’s where Murray SawChuck found himself on a cold October
night in 2015.
Formerly a magician with a show on the Strip, Murray now
found himself as far away from Las Vegas as you can
get while still staying in Nevada. Literally. His
contract at Planet Hollywood hadn’t
been renewed, his wife of three
years had left him, and his
father -- to whom
he was
especially close -- had passed away, all within the same year.
“It was a lower point in my personal life,” Murray reflected honestly. In
order to take his mind off his troubles, he did what he had always done:
threw himself into this work, accepting any gig that came his way. He also
looked back to advice he had gotten years earlier from his mentor, the
famous Mr. Electric, Marvyn Roy: to look for what people are into and use it
to your advantage.
Mr. Electric, together with his wife, was a famous magic act from the 1950s
all the way through to even the ’90s. His gimmick was light bulbs, pulling
lit strands from his mouth or magically filling a giant bulb with milk.
Around the time that Murray began to perform professionally, the
music industry was making the massive transition from cassette
tapes and vinyl albums to compact discs so it felt like a
natural move to design his act around CDs the same
way Mr. Electric used light bulbs.
He made them appear from scarves,
multiply in his hands, change
color and size, breaking
and restoring
12 JUNE | 2020
JUNE | 2020 13