NASHVILLE, TN (CelebrityAccess) — Fast food hamburger chain White Castle announced that three music legends – the late troubadour John Prine, concert promoter Danny Zelisko, and Tommy Shaw, frontman of Styx — will be inducted into White Castle’s ‘Cravers Hall of Fame.’
White Castle’s ‘Cravers Hall of Fame’ has been honoring enthusiasts of its hamburgers for almost 20 years and Prine, Zelisko and Shaw will join a group that includes rocker Alice Cooper, the late comics icon Stan Lee, and comedian/actors John Cho and Kal Penn.
Each of this year’s inductees has a White Castle story.
For Shaw and Zelisko, their White Castle moment came during an IEBA conference about a decade ago. According to White Castle, Shaw and Danny were attending a banquet at IEBA where they were to receive a lifetime achievement award.
After dinner, the two were still hungry, so Zelisko called the local White Castle and had them deliver enough burgers to to feed the rest of the crowd at the event.
Zelisko also shared his affinity for White Castle with John Prine, who he started working with in the late 1970s. But Prine, who died earlier this year after contracting COVID-19, had his own White Castle story.
The story, recounted by Prine’s longtime tour manager Mitchell Drosin via White Castle, goes like this:
“One morning, many years ago in Kansas City, Mitchell’s hotel room telephone rang around 8 a.m. A woman on the line asked if her husband could meet John at his show in Houston the following day, her husband’s birthday. Mitchell said, ‘Yep, no problem,’ not overthinking it at such an hour, and closed his eyes again. Yet, the phone rang again and it was the same woman with a more detailed request. She said her husband, a Canadian astronaut, needed some hours in the cockpit and could fly a private jet to them in Kansas City and continue on to Houston. Even more curious, the Canadian astronaut was to be accompanied by an Italian astronaut.
Mitchell called John later in the morning to tell him what happened. John was all for it, but en route to the airport, he said, ‘Let’s stop at White Castle first and pick up a bunch of sliders for the pilots and attendants.” When they boarded the plane, John said with a smile, ‘Hey, I’ve got lunch for everyone!’ The astronauts had never had White Castle before. The group bonded over the sliders and made the entire plane smell of grilled onions!
Prine, Shaw, and Zelisko will be inducted in the ‘Cravers Hall of Fame’ at a socially-distanced ceremony at the White Castle in Nashville on Oct. 13th.
