SAM SMITH and his Alabamans used to play at rallies for Lurleen Wallace, when she was running for governor in 1966 and dying of cancer. Last night, grandly re-christened Sam Smith and his American Independent Party Band, they performed for George on Parkman Bandstand, a concrete-columned pagoda on Boston Common.

Older men, with guitars slung over their suitcoats, they made very fine country and blues. Soothing, mellow music, like "Your Cheatin' Heart," and "Make the World Go Away." The candidate hadn't come yet, and Sam was doing his genial best to set the mood.

But seeing the demonstrators must have wrenched the hundreds of people who were serious about hearing the candidate. The demonstrators had come early and taken the seats immediately surrounding the Bandstand, and that inner ring looked like the floor of the Democratic Convention, a sea of signs. The biggest was a bedsheet ten feet square that had been hoisted aloft right opposite the candidate's podium and read George Wallace Your Friendly Fascist.

Sam Smith stepped back after singing "Make the World Go Away," and a Wallace aide stepped forward. Now we all love America don't we, he said.

"We want peace, you fucking bastard!" screamed a demonstrator. The students started chanting peace, peace, peace.

"Everybody who loves America raise his hands," the aide asked, and the mass of serious listeners filling the outer ring showed their palms and their cheers rose over the peace chants.

The band began playing God Bless America, in a slow and sentimental tempo, led by a sweet trumpet. Now everybody sing, said the aide, and the whole thing swelled up and that funny feeling stirred in people's stomachs.

The demonstrators booed when it was over. Then the booing unexpectedly peaked and suddenly the candidate was beaming behind his big bullet-proof podium, which covered all but his head and shoulders. His sympathetic listeners in the crowd, which crammed a grassy area of several city blocks, let out whoops of greeting which again reached higher than the catcalls.

Oddly, no one introduced him. He stood there until the noise died down, and then he himself introduced five Southern labor leaders who were touring with the campaign party. That was a good move, because the demonstrators had been passing out leaflets headed "George Wallace--Enemy of the Working Man."

Then the candidate put on his glasses to read his speech. First thing, he wanted everybody to know that he had never acted against a man because of what he said or on account of his color. The demonstrators booed, and he said that he hoped they would let him talk; maybe by the end he would have persuaded them to see things his way.

THE demonstrators shrieked their outrage, but George went on; the loud-speakers worked very well. He said he would get the federal government out of local education, and they yelled, but the crowd out back gave him thunderous approval. He said he would make the streets safe to walk down, and the students didn't like that either, but the others did.

So it went. The demonstrators did their best to drown him out, and they began shouting before he could complete each of his well-known lines. But the candidate stayed calm and collected, and his friends in the audience matched all the boos with cheers. After the demonstrators drowned out his passage about running over anarchists, he started to play with them.

"Here's what I'll do for all my fans in the front rows," he said. "When I get through speaking, come on up here and I'll autograph your sandals for you."

"Go Home! Go Home!" chanted the kids. The candidate blew them kisses. The older crowd loved it.

Howls again. "They believe in free speech," murmured Wallace. "These are the free speech folks." He talked softly and whimsically, like a guitar-strummer sometimes speaks in the middle of a folk song.