Dead Folks 2011: Cartoonists

By David Pelfrey, Ed Reynolds, J.R. Taylor

January 26, 2012

Joe Simon and Jerry Robinson

After working as an illustrator and art director for various small newspapers and comic publications during the early years of the Great Depression, Joe Simon moved to Manhattan and began doing freelance work with Jack Kirby, an artist at Fox Feature Syndicate. In 1940, the two artists wound up at Timely Comics, which would eventually become Marvel. That first year, Simon (as editor) and Kirby created a decidedly patriotic super hero who was taking on Hitler several months before America entered WWII. The first issue sold close to one million copies. The superhero was called Captain America. Simon continued a very lucrative and creative career at National Comics (later D.C.), and in 1960 created Sick, a satirical magazine competing with MAD. (98)

Jerry Robinson began work in comics when Batman creator Bob Kane hired him to ink and letter panels for the series. Within two years Robinson was a regular staffer at Detective Comics, working in the same office with the creators of Superman. Robinson thought a sidekick for Batman might provide a welcome addition to the team’s stable of superheroes, and so Robin was created (not short for Robinson, by the way, but inspired by N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations for Robin Hood). Later, Robinson and colleague Bill Finger added a villain to the series, based on Conrad Veidt’s grotesque grimace in the horror classic The Man Who Laughs. Batman’s arch nemesis was called The Joker. (89) —DP

Bil Keane

Most modern cartoonists would have considered it a travesty that Bil Keane was still alive. His long-running single-frame comic “Family Circus” was easily considered the most uncool comic to still be taking up valuable space on the pages of American newspapers. Younger cartoonists didn’t even care that Keane was rivaled only by Hank Ketcham when it came to drawing hair. Instead, there was always a parade of hacks thinking they were the first comic geniuses to parody a “Family Circus” panel by adding an obscene caption. Keane probably never cared. He got plenty of recognition from his actual peers, and even contributed to a “Family Circus” cameo that popped up in Bill Griffith’s “Zippy the Pinhead” daily strip. Among wiser artsy types, Keane stepped in to replace “Nancy” creator Ernie Bushmiller as the most surreal daily comics creator around. “Family Circus” is now helmed by Bil’s son Jeff, and will continue to offend a new generation of irreverent hicks who can’t grasp the Bil Keane comic tradition. (89, congestive heart failure) —JRT

Dead Folks 2011: Inventors, Entrepreneurs, & Trailblazers

Leave a reply

Dead Folks 2011: Inventors, Entrepreneurs, & Trailblazers

By David Pelfrey, Ed Reynolds, J.R. Taylor

January 26, 2012

Milton Levine

Levine started hawking silly mail-order products (fake shrunken heads, potato guns, plastic soldiers) just after WWII, when toys were reported to be in short supply. By the mid 1950s, his successful company was in Hollywood, at which time Levine happened upon an idea for a new item. According to the story—possibly marketing apocrypha—during a July 4 picnic Levine noticed an anthill, recalled collecting ants as a boy, and decided that a mail-order “ant farm” was the educational toy American youth were craving.

Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm, in its first inception, was a 6″x9,” one-inch-thick plastic “antarium” filled with sand (later white volcanic ash) topped by a three-dimensional plastic farm scene. There were no ants in the kit; the customer mailed in a coupon after which a vial of ants arrived in the mail weeks later. They were red harvester ants, gathered by “rustlers” in the Mojave Desert. Almost instantly, once the tiny insects were carefully dropped into the farm, they began building a network of tunnels, storing food, and even burying their dead.

Uncle Milton Industries, as it is now known, was officially established in 1965. The ant farm was expanded in size at that time, and the company began to also create and market other nature-focused educational items for kids. Some twenty million Uncle Milton’s Ant Farms have been sold since 1957. Last June, according to the Los Angeles Times, Transom Capitol Group purchased Uncle Milton Industries, which was valued in the $30 million to $40 million range. (97, natural causes) —DP’

Rev. David Wilkerson

Street preachers became fashionable in the 1960s, but David Wilkerson was one of the first—and he was square enough to be portrayed by Pat Boone in the movies. Wilkerson was pastoring in small towns when he felt called to Times Square after reading a Life magazine article about New York City’s troubled youth. He arrived in the city in 1958, and launched youth ministries that still survive in NYC. He then became a national figure after publishing his story in The Cross and the Switchblade. The best-selling book was turned into a Hollywood production in 1970, with Boone as Wilkerson and Erik Estrada as Nicky Cruz—who was a real-life former gang member who continues to work as a preacher today. Wilkerson would later divide his time between New York and Texas, where he began a worldwide gospel organization. He also began to get regular visits from God that warned of various end-of-the-world scenarios. Wilkerson remained uniquely inclusive in his preaching, though, and dedicated a lot of his teachings to the importance of supporting Israel. Sadly, he didn’t believe too much in wearing a seat belt while driving through East Texas. (79, car crash) —JRT

Harry Coover

While working at Eastman Kodak Laboratories during WWII, creating new plastic optical materials for gunsights, Coover and fellow chemist Fred Joyner determined that their early experiments with cyanoacrylates just weren’t working out. The stuff stuck to everything, including itself—and usually forever. Later, during the early 1950s, similar experiments at Kodak under Coover’s supervision yielded similar results, but by then the chemist recognized that, with a few minor tweaks, C5H5NO2 would make a dandy adhesive for almost any application. Thus was applied patent number 2,768,109, also known as Super Glue.

The glue was marketed as a wonder product, most famously with television ads depicting an automobile attached to a crane hoist with a single drop of Super Glue. A decade later new products made from various types of cyanoacrylates were on the market, Instant Krazy Glue being the forerunner with its own iconic marketing image: the construction worker dangling from a beam onto which his hardhat is attached with a drop of Krazy Glue.

Coover, a Cornell graduate with a Ph.D. in science, didn’t make his fortune from any of these sticky items; his wealth resulted instead from some 460 other patents under his name, most having to do with innovations in research management policies and systems. (94, natural causes) —DP




Jack LaLanne (click for larger version)

Jack LaLanne

Gym owner Jack LaLanne became a TV pioneer when he purchased time on a San Francisco station to host a morning exercise program. The show became popular enough to be picked up by the ABC network in 1959. LaLanne’s simple exercise show—emphasizing work-outs using household items—would stay on the air until 1989, with LaLanne also building a national chain of gyms and promoting electric juicers and exercise equipment. His long stint as a pop-culture figure would make him one of the few celebrities able to spoof himself on both the original “Batman” TV series and an episode of “The Simpsons.”

LaLanne was already in his mid-30s when he began his TV show, and he made good use of his age for marketing purposes. He retired from public stunts after marking his 70th birthday by towing rowboats for a mile at sea. LaLanne still always found some way to stay in the public eye. He kept looking good enough to be the best advertisement for his businesses. He also knew death was the ultimate bad marketing move. Fortunately, his wife Elaine—who was working out with Jack back in the ’50s—is still around and looks ready to live forever. (96, pneumonia) —JRT

Arch West

As the developer of Doritos corn chips, Arch West no doubt would be one of the first inductees into the Junk Food Hall of Fame. Currently Frito-Lay’s second-best seller (behind Lay’s Potato Chips), West’s original notion was to create a Southwestern-inspired alternative to traditional salted potato and corn chips. Doritos were first produced in 1964 using corn tortillas cut into triangles with cheese and chili flavorings added. West’s wife of 69 years died last year. When the couple’s ashes were buried together, mourners were allowed to toss Doritos into the burial site. (97) —ER

Wilson Greatbatch

Wilson Greatbatch’s genius for tinkering (he held patents on more than 325 inventions) led to extended, normal lives for millions through his invention of the heart pacemaker. The invention was an accident of sorts. In 1956, Greatbatch was working on a heart rhythm recording device and grabbed the wrong-size resistor to complete the circuitry. The circuit it produced discharged intermittent electrical pulses. He immediately associated it with the timing and rhythm of a heartbeat and thought about the electrical activity of the heart. At that time, it was not believed that electronics could be packed into a stimulator for continuous functioning, much less in a tiny, reliable apparatus. Doctors demonstrated in 1958 that Greatbatch’s device—which he developed in his barn—could take control of a dog’s heartbeat. The first human implants were made in 1960. (92) —ER

Paul Baran

As an engineer who created a vital component at the heart of a government-sponsored advanced communications network called the Arpanet, Paul Baran tried to interest AT&T in the project. AT&T said no thanks, refusing to believe that the project would amount to anything. The Arpanet eventually evolved into the Internet. (84, lung cancer) —ER

Charles Laufer

In 1955, a high school teacher named Charles Laufer was so dismayed that his students had nothing entertaining to read that he started a publication called Coaster for teen and pre-teen girls. Coaster soon became Teen, which Laufer sold in 1957. He printed a one-time only magazine of Beatles photos in 1965 that sold 750,000 copies in two days, inspiring the creation of a teen fanzine called Tiger Beat. Featuring The Monkees on the cover, Tiger Beat hit the big time as the band became a colossal sensation. In addition to an over-abundance of exclamation marks, Tiger Beat was packed with glossy pictures, fold-out posters, and innocuous facts about the personal lives of everyone from the Beatles to Donny Osmond to Bob Dylan to David Cassidy. The magazine’s slogan was “Guys in their 20s singing La La songs to 13-year-old girls.” (87, heart failure) —ER

Murray Handwerker

In 1916, Murray Handwerker’s father, Nathan, borrowed a few hundred dollars from entertainers Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante to establish a hot dog stand near Coney Island called Nathan’s Famous. Thirty years later, after returning from military service, Murray finally joined the family business. His first idea: expansion, because Murray figured Nathan’s Famous wasn’t nearly famous enough.

Expanding the business meant expanding the menu, so Handwerker added clams, shrimp, and several deli items, all the while dreaming up publicity stunts to attract customers to the Coney Island stand. By the 1960s, Nathan’s Famous had three full-scale restaurants in operation. In 1968, Handwerker took Nathan’s public, ultimately expanding by the following decade to ten franchises, more than three dozen restaurants, and a line of products sold in supermarkets. (89) —DP

Shopping on the Hit and Run

Leave a reply

Shopping on the Hit and Run

This Southside landmark isn’t in any tourist guide, but many people couldn’t live without it.

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

December 08, 2011

There’s no sign outside that identifies the convenience store by any name other than Chevron. It’s been that way for nearly 30 years, yet everybody knows the place is named Tom & Jerry’s. “We had a big Coca-Cola sign right there at the corner with ‘Tom & Jerry’s’ up top,” says store-owner Tommy Numnum, who opened the business in October 1981 with longtime friend Jerry Chambers. “The city made us take it down. They didn’t like it or something. We had it for two or three years and then the city said it was too high and didn’t meet with the historic district [standards] or whatever.”

For 31 years, Tom & Jerry’s Chevron on Highland Avenue (next to the fire station) has been a popular Southside landmark. “It’s a meeting place,” says Numnum with pride. “People say, ‘We’ll meet at Tom & Jerry’s.’ We see people all the time parked out there, and if they’re out there for an hour or so I’ll go ask them if they’re broke down or anything. And they’ll say, ‘Nah, we’re waiting on somebody.’”




Owner Tommy Numnum has established Tom & Jerry’s as the go-to place on Southside. (Photos by Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

Tommy Numnum is a gregarious fellow, saying hello and carrying on snippets of conversation with patrons while he goes about his daily chores. “My son Mark is in [the business] now; He’s taken over. He’s been a big part of the success. He’s here most of the time; I’m not,” 66-year old Numnum admits, laughing while sitting in his office on a November morning. “I’m just occasionally in and out—clean the bathrooms and pick up the parking lot—the things that nobody else does . . . I come in ’cause I don’t want to retire. I enjoy coming in. This has been a fun place. It hasn’t really been a hardcore work atmosphere. A lot of good customers I’ve become friends with. I play golf with them, drink coffee with them.”

There was a time no one was interested in the property. “At that time, this was an empty building and Chevron really tried to find people to go in here and they couldn’t find anybody,” says Tommy. “When I first got this place, nobody wanted it. They were scared of Western [Supermarket], scared of [operating] a convenience store. Nobody believed in convenience stores. Everybody still at that time was doing service station work.”

A former video game salesman and nightclub owner, including The Cabaret on First Avenue North in the 1970s, Numnum ventured into the quick-stop store business—but with a vision that differed from what Chevron had in mind. “Chevron wanted me to put a four-door cooler [at the back wall] and put groceries everywhere. They were new in the business, too. It was brand new for everybody,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Naw, let’s put the cooler down the side of the wall,’ where it’s at now. At that time we had some video games—Donkey Kong and a few other things. So I eliminated most of the groceries and they weren’t happy about that and said it’d never make it. Southside was just building up, UAB was still coming along, and at that time, I didn’t think that was the way to go. It worked out pretty good because I’ve added more cooler doors since then. I put up new canopies and new pumps and new lighting outside about three years ago. I believe in lights. I want this place lit up at night.”

Yellow Cab driver Rod Walker stops there regularly when pulling all-night shifts on weekends and appreciates the well-lit parking lot. “The cab drivers go there all the time. It seems to be one of the most popular stations in town,” says Walker. “You pull up in the parking lot no matter what time it is and it’s like day. So you don’t have to worry about getting mugged or anything like that.” He usually stops for junk food late night while driving. “Every now and then I’ll get something healthy like a banana or an apple,” he admits. “They have a little bit of fresh fruit in there, so that’s always good.” Walker adds that Tom & Jerry’s is unique because the bathrooms are spotless and there are usually two employees working the cash registers.

According to Numnum, Tom & Jerry’s was the first Chevron station in the nation to offer credit card readers where you could pay at the pump. “Chevron test marketed it here. They asked if they could put them in,” he says. “I was a little hesitant at that time because the word was that people were not going to come inside. They were just going to stick their card out there and pump their gas and leave. But it really increased the business. People would pump their gas outside and then come inside and buy something else.”

Tommy Numnum says it’s not unusual to see a vehicle drive off with the nozzle still in the gas tank. “I was at the register one day and this guy with a company truck came in. He had been coming in for a long time, I knew him,” says Tommy. “He was filling up and I saw him get in his truck (without removing the gas nozzle) . . . About that time, he took off and sure enough the whole dispenser came out of the ground. These days, you’ve got breakaways. If somebody drives off, just the hose will break off. He took off down Highland Avenue and that dispenser was behind his truck just a bumping up and down. You could see sparks coming out of that dispenser ’cause the hose still had a little gas in it. He told me when he got back that he was scared to death because all he saw was fire coming from behind his truck and he didn’t know what was going on. He said, ‘Man, I got your pump.’ And I said, ‘I know it, man, I saw it leaving.’”




A typically bustling evening at Tom & Jerry’s—where it’s never dark. (click for larger version)

Tom & Jerry’s has a booming hot dog business. “I’ve had popcorn, I’ve had nachos, several different things but we just stuck with the hot dogs. The hot dogs started back when my mother was working here,” says Tommy. “Everybody called her ‘Miss Jessie.’ She was getting a little too old to work the register and I tried to find her something to do, so we started the hot dogs. She’d go over there and just sit all day long and make the hot dogs and cook ‘em. She’d have burn spots all over her arm, trying to get those hot dogs. She was real short. And then it got to be a monster, we were selling so many. I would’ve probably never done it if it hadn’t been for her.”

His mother passed away in 2004 at age 82. Tommy’s son Mark Numnum, recalls his grandmother: “I remember her being feisty. She was always up there waiting on customers. Everybody in Southside knew who my grandmother was. She just kind of ran the place when I was a kid.” The store also sells lots of boiled peanuts, which include a Cajun spice mixture that Mark Numnum discovered at a country store on the way to the beach last summer year.

As one would expect, a 24-hour convenience store attracts its share of strange customers and surreal experiences, though no employees want to go on record about the weirdness they encounter working a graveyard shift. “I guess the craziest thing that’s happened was somebody ramming their car through the building,” Mark Numnum says, laughing hard. “I was just getting to work and there was a cop car here with somebody sitting in the back and I guess they indulged a little too much that morning and just slammed into the front of the store . . . There’s probably still an indention where the car hit, right behind the newspaper stands. The driver was wasted. (Laughs) I think it was about 6 o’clock in the morning. He was heading home and wanted to get him another beer or two and unfortunately he hit the gas instead of the brakes.”

On the walls of Tom & Jerry’s are large framed portraits of the Rat Pack, Elvis, and the Three Stooges. There’s even a painting of Jerry Garcia. “I didn’t want to be like a grocery store. I wanted to have something different and I think we do,” says Tommy. “I’ve got maybe one row of groceries. The rest of it is convenience items: Candy, beer, wine, cigarettes. The things that you would come in here for and not have to spend time in a grocery store. You know, hit and run.” &

Billy Joe Shaver

Leave a reply

Billy Joe Shaver

Country music’s original outlaw singer talks about dogs, Jesus, and what it’s like to have a heart attack on stage.

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

November 24, 2011

“Oh, it’s you again,” says Billy Joe Shaver, laughing into the phone when I had to call him back to resume our interview after being disconnected. Shaver was right in the middle of an anecdote about riding around for a week with Waylon Jennings and songwriter, poet, and artist Shel Silverstein. Before we got cut off, he had begun the story: “Me and Waylon and Shel Silverstein were out [on the road] for about a week just ridin’ around. We got to tellin’ jokes, and we told so many of ‘em we started numberin’ our jokes!” When I got him back on the phone, I tried unsuccessfully to get him to finish the yarn but he just laughed and said, “Man, I got in trouble last time I told that one.” Regardless, a brief chat with the man hailed as the king of the honky-tonk singers as he drives from Texas to the Flora-Bama Lounge is warm and hilarious.

Billy Joe Shaver’s life has been one of trial, tribulation, and heartache. His father tried to kill his mother while she was still pregnant with Shaver. Later, she left him to be raised by his grandmother. He lost two fingers in a sawmill accident at age 28 and had a reputation as a drinker and brawler. He arrived in Nashville in 1966 to break into the music business. The singer eventually sobered up and changed his wild ways, but troubles continued to haunt his life. In 1999, Shaver buried his mother, then his wife Brenda (He divorced her twice and married her three times.), who died of cancer a month later. On New Year’s Eve 2000, his son (and guitarist/collaborator) Eddy died of a heroin overdose. The next year he had a heart attack on stage at a July 4 show in New Braunfels, Texas. Then in 2007, at Papa Joe’s Saloon in Lorena, Texas, near Shaver’s Waco home, he shot a man who had been harassing him while wielding a knife (Shaver said he thought the man was carrying a pistol as well.) The man was not severely injured, but Shaver was arraigned for aggravated assault. The jury concluded that the singer had acted in self-defense despite prosecutors’ shamelessly ridiculous attempts to portray him as a “honky-tonk bully” for going outside to confront the victim and not simply leaving the bar, according to reports from the court transcripts. His pals Robert Duvall, with whom he co-starred in The Apostle in 1997, and Willie Nelson appeared in court on his behalf. Earlier this year, Shaver penned a song with Nelson about the shooting incident called “Wacko from Waco.”




(click for larger version)

The tunes Shaver writes are brilliant, melodic gems that tell stories about how tough but beautiful life can be. He’s been covered by numerous artists, such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1973, Waylon Jennings recorded an entire album of Shaver’s songs called Honky Tonk Heroes. That album launched the “outlaw” genre, which heavily influenced country music for the next couple of decades. Although Shaver never became as big a star as his musical buddies, he embraces life with a grateful, enthusiastic fervor and never hesitates to share with audiences how happy and blessed he is to still be alive at age 71; especially after the rough and tumble “outlaw singer” existence that so long defined him. One of the best songs ever written is “Live Forever,” which he wrote with his son Eddy. With a smile as warm as Texas sunshine, Shaver often introduces the song by telling audiences, “Live forever, y’all, whether you want to or not.” Billy Joe Shaver and his band will perform at The Nick on Friday, December 9, with local heroes Caddle opening. Call 252-3831 or go to www.thenickrocks.com for details.

Black & White: Have you still got your dogs? I heard a story about you and your buddy Kinky Friedman (singer, songwriter, and novelist who ran for governor of Texas in 2006 with Shaver as his “spiritual advisor”) rescuing a three-legged dog named Momma.
Billy Joe Shaver: Well, one of my dogs died but I’ve still got a pit bull—black one that’s six years old. When I was young we were too poor to have a dog. When I started gettin’ dogs I started out with pit bulls. They’re just as sweet as they can be. It just depends on how you raise em, you know? Her name is Honeybee . . . But yeah, Momma (the dog) had one leg torn off ’cause she had been in a fight. Kinky picked her up and brought her on in to his place (Friedman has a no-kill animal shelter on his Texas ranch) and kind of worked on her a little bit and she got real healthy. So I paid money to put up a pen for her and she didn’t have but three legs. We called it Billy Joe Shaver’s “underdog pen.” (Laughs) Finally, a Vietnam veteran who’d had his leg blow’d off came out there and fell in love with her and now she’s got her a nice home. Kinky’s got a big heart. We’ve been friends a long time, since about ’66.

How did you meet Kinky?
His father introduced me to him. His father was a big fan of mine, Tom Friedman. He was a World War II pilot and also head of psychiatry there at the University of Texas. Tom used to come to my shows. Tom and Kinky’s whole family would come to my shows when I was playin’ in Austin, and Kinky would be playin’ across town. Kinky came over to my show one time kind of mad and said (to his family), “Why don’t y’all come to see me?” And Tom would say, “Well, Kinky we can see you any time. Besides that, you need to get some new jokes. (Laughs) I’ve got Tom’s old jacket—it says “God Bless John Wayne” on it and everything. I’d pretty much do anything for Kinky. Kinky was the first one of us that hung out at (unintelligible) Bar that got to go on the Grand Ole Opry. He sang “Sold American.” Then he went on tour with Bob Dylan. Now he writes books and stuff.

When you played the Opry, how’d you get along with the establishment there in Nashville?
I never had any problems. I’ve been on it many times. I got along with ol’ whats-his-name—that tall, skinny guy— uh, uh, Porter Wagoner. He didn’t get along with very many people but he got along with me pretty good. One night he was tellin’ (the audience), “Billy Joe Shaver has songs recorded by Elvis Presley, Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, and Bob Dylan (Wagoner pronounced it “Die-lan”). And I said, “Naw, it ain’t ‘Die-lan’, his name’s Dylan!” And Porter said, “I said his name was ‘Die-lan!’ And I said, “Naw, it’s not either, it’s Dylan!” And people were laughin’ like hell, and Porter got a kick out of it, too. So we became pretty good friends.

I saw a picture of you at George Jones’ 80th birthday party this past September. How has George stayed alive so many years with all the drinking and hard living that he did all his life?
(Laughs) I don’t know, I think they ran a (George Jones) substitute in on us (from time to time). I love George. I’ve known him about 30 years.

You gave up that lifestyle years ago, didn’t you?
Yeah . . . I got in a shootin’ incident down there (in Texas) and I had to shoot an ‘ol boy—well, he was tryin’ to shoot me. But I was innocent; I was just tryin’ to defend myself. He’s the one who started the fight. I finally got off. I wrote a song about it called “Wacko from Waco.”

I read that when the prosecuting attorney asked why you didn’t just leave the bar after the man you shot had earlier appeared threatening, you replied, “Ma’am, I’m from Texas. If I were chicken shit, I would have left, but I’m not.” Is there anything that you’re scared of?
Naw. (Pauses for a few seconds) Naw, I’m not, but that’s kind of stupid of me. But I’m not ’cause I’ve got Jesus in my heart. I don’t care one way or the other. If it’s my turn to go, I’ll go.

How long ago did you find Jesus?
Oh, way back yonder. When I wrote “An ‘Ol Chunk of Coal” I got born again. I still make mistakes and stuff like that but that’s part of it. You get to start all over again with a clean slate.

You used to be a rodeo cowboy, didn’t you?
Yeah, I used to do that enough to know that I wasn’t cut out for it. (Laughs)

Tell me about having a heart attack on stage in 2001.
Yeah, I had a heart attack in Gruene Hall on stage. That was after my son Eddy had passed away. Jesse Taylor, an old friend of mine, was playin’ guitar for me. When Jesse was a child, they had a car wreck and one of his ears was kind of messed up and he couldn’t hear very good out of it. It would just be my luck: that ear was toward me and every time I’d put my finger up and say, “This is the last one,” he’d think I wanted to do one more. And this elephant is sittin’ on my chest and I’m tryin’ to get him to quit startin’ them durn things [songs]. I finally got off stage and I thought, “Well, God, you’re gonna let me die in the oldest honky tonk in Texas. Thank you very much.” Sure enough, I didn’t die. Then my T-shirt (merchandise) girl, she come and got me and took me down to Waco. They checked me out and I only had one artery workin’ and it was only 10 percent. So I was almost dead.

I didn’t realize until recently that “Live Forever” was originally your son Eddy’s idea.
Yeah, it was Eddy’s melody. I carried it around for durn near a year before I could figure out what to put with it. Then I put with it what I thought was right and I went to Eddy and we finished it together.

Did you ever see Hank Williams, Sr. play?
I saw him that one time when I was a kid. I walked down the railroad tracks about 10 miles to see him. I didn’t know he was goin’ to be on the show, he was a surprise guest. I crawled up a pole to keep people from sittin’ on my feet. They introduced Hank and said (to the crowd), “You ought to listen to this ‘ol boy. He’s gonna be alright.” This was before he was a star. He didn’t play but one song. People was doin’ their bootleggin’ and stuff during that time and wasn’t payin’ no attention to him ’cause they never heard of him. And that’s the way people are. But he saw I was listening and he looked up at me straight in the eye and just sung to me.

I guess you’ve been on Willie Nelson’s bus a few times. I don’t think anybody was surprised when Willie got arrested for pot during a bus search a few years ago but they might have been surprised about the funny mushrooms the cops found.
Yeah. (Laughs) I don’t imagine they [the police] went too deep into the bus before they kinda about half passed out. &

No Sitting in Limbo

Leave a reply

No Sitting in Limbo

North Coast Development Corporation pursues a vision of self-reliability for the people of Haiti.

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

November 24, 2011

Ann Piper Carpenter of Cahaba Heights is a woman of action, pouring her energy into Haiti’s northern coastal area to help impoverished Haitians help themselves. “For about two years now I’ve been going to a town outside of Cap Haitien on the north coast area of Haiti called Terre Rouge. I started going there because the priest at my Episcopal church had worked with some people out of Georgia who established a school and a clinic there, and they are doing excellent work,” Carpenter explains. “Haiti has about 75 percent unemployment. It’s tough. There are so many wonderful organizations that are sending medical and educational care. And I’m not skilled in any of that. The only thing that I thought I could do was to see if we could start some economic development in that area.”

She found a woman in Terre Rouge who was running a school to teach young girls how to sew and has been taking fabric to them for a little over a year. “They’re making tote bags, aprons, napkins, pillowcases. This is some way to give them some money for their work,” she says, noting that she buys the products made or grown from the seamstresses, farmers, and beekeepers, and then brings them to the United States to sell in small quantities. A’Mano (a furniture, gifts, and arts shop) in Mountain Brook Village has been stocking some of the items.




Because her town doesn’t have electricity, a Haitian woman uses a treadle sewing machine at a factory affiliated with the North Coast Development Corporation. (click for larger version)

Carpenter, who spends a week out of each month in Terre Rouge, started North Coast Development Corporation a year ago to do business in Haiti. “I don’t want to be a nonprofit because what I’m trying to do is to develop things that Haitians can eventually take over and run themselves,” she says. “I don’t want them to be dependent on aid. I think they want things that they can develop and own, eventually. We’re just trying to facilitate what those products might be and put some people together that give them some market access. If it’s not these products, then at least maybe to get somebody who’s interested in having us make something.”

Andy English is the executive director of North Coast Development. He met Carpenter in Port Au Prince in 2009 and has a dozen years of experience working in the country. He currently spends two weeks out of each month there. “I was a consultant with the World Bank,” English says. “[Ann] was trying to do a little sewing operation down there, mainly to produce scrubs (medical uniforms). She was trying to supply the clinic that she supports, as well as some other clinics in the region. The only problem is that the volume to sustain a factory like that is pretty high. It would take a lot just to break even. We shelved that idea and she asked me to come up to the north to take a look.”

The company leases about 10 acres of land for its projects in the arid North Coast area. “There’s not a lot up there—there’s not a lot of anything. Mostly it’s all open land, brush scrub, not a lot of things that are growing. It’s a formidable place to start anything,” admits English. “When you start looking a little deeper you find a lot of resources that are not being put to use, which is typical of Haiti. There’s a tree called a ‘Neem’ tree that grows well in Haiti, the Indians brought it over about 40 or 50 years ago. Neem seeds can be ground into a powder that is then sprayed on crops as a natural alternative to synthetic pesticides, which the Haitians need for insect-damage control. “When we went to farm, we looked at different things we could do because some things just wouldn’t work. Tomatoes and things that took a lot of water just wouldn’t work,” he says. “We could grow peppers. Half of our 10 acres is planted with peppers and papaya or mango or coconut or banana—anything that I could grow that would accommodate the peppers. We’re able to do minimal watering, which is done by hand. The soil is clay, so the papaya is able to tap into whatever water is there in the soil. Papaya have been outstanding, I’m amazed how fast they do grow. The mango that we planted is indigenous to that region—it’s called a Baptiste mango. It’s a favorite of Haiti but it only grows where we are. So in about three years when they finally start producing, we should be in pretty good shape.”

A company in St. Augustine, Florida, that makes a pepper sauce has expressed interest in North Coast Development’s peppers, and a woman in New York is interested in importing ingredients from Terre Rouge for herbal teas. There has been interest in purchasing Haitian honey to mix with peanut butter, as well as a potential market for the honey to be blended with peppers to make a honey-pepper marinade. The most frustrating hurdle is transportation, says English. “Cap Haitien is limited in how it can export. To get it to Porte Prince, there is no good road. If you try to drive, it can take anywhere from six to eight hours. If the road was good, it’s only a three-hour trip.” He adds that the 2010 earthquake worked as a catalyst in some ways. “In reality, it jump-started and got some attention on some things that were already enacted.”

“We’re just trying to take advantage of whatever resources are there locally for these folks and see what we can help them do. We’ve put a little money into this. Been trying to find markets. That’s what this sale is about,” says Carpenter of an upcoming “Made-In-Haiti Sale” at Little Savannah restaurant. “I’ve got honey, beeswax candles, peppers, sewing, and I’m also bringing a lot of things from that area that other people have made that I didn’t have a thing to do with. They’re all made-in-Haiti products. That’s what it’s all about, trying to get some economy going down there. I’m just figuring that by putting things out here, it’ll catch somebody’s attention, I hope.”

Northern Coast Development has established the first Internet café in the Terre Rouge area. “I was down there when the Techno Café opened and they brought school kids in from the area,” Carpenter says. “It was their first exposure ever to a computer!” She notes that old-fashioned treadle sewing machines operated with a foot pump are used in the garment shop with which she’s affiliated. “We haven’t invested in the larger generators that it would take to put in electric sewing machines,” she says.

“So many people are doing so many things in Haiti and you wonder why doesn’t it get any better,” she says with a hint of resignation. “All the money that goes down there, all the schools, all the clinics. But they just don’t have jobs. They get educated, and then those that can leave, leave. And it’s so impossible to get goods in and out of there. That’s why I have to go every month. I have to take supplies and then I have to go back and pick up the things they make. There’s no UPS or DHL.”

“It’s so impossible to get goods in and out of there. I have to take supplies and then I have to go back and pick up the things they make. There’s no UPS or DHL.” —Ann Piper Carpenter

The Haitian people have impressed Carpenter with their intense desire to take care of themselves. She says that there has been no shortage of people seeking work at the North Coast Development farm and sewing shop but unfortunately there are not enough goods being sold yet, so most are turned away. “I had my doubts for many reasons but felt sure it would work,” admits Carpenter. “During a visit there, my son, his friend, and I watched the Alabama-Arkansas game at the Techno Café with our Haitian friends. Imagine that, in a town with no running water or electricity.” &

On Sunday, December 4, Little Savannah restaurant (3811 Clairmont Avenue in Forest Park) will host a Made-In-Haiti Sale from 2 to 6 p.m. There will be valet parking. Items for purchase will include aprons, napkins, bags, skirts, throw pillows, pillowcases, honey, Christmas candles, sea salt, wood carvings, jewelry and Haitian art. Call 381-3553 for details.

Fruitcakes in Monroeville

Leave a reply

Fruitcakes in Monroeville

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

November 24, 2011

Truman Capote’s short story “A Christmas Memory,” the timeless tear-jerker that first appeared in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956, will be staged in Monroeville for the fourth consecutive year on Thursday evening, December 1. Capote spent much of his early childhood in Monroeville, raised by relatives after his parents divorced.The drama is the highlight of the town’s annual Fruitcake Festival, staged in the second floor courtroom of the town’s fabled courthouse which is the setting for much of resident Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The courthouse is now the Old Courthouse Museum, which includes Capote memorabilia donated by a cousin of the famed author. Locally-made fruitcakes in decorated tins (many with Capote-related themes) will be for sale during the festival, according to Nathan Carter of the Monroe County Heritage Museum.

Monroeville Fruitcake

Carter’s grandmother was Capote’s mother’s sister, and he remembers one of the last visits the author made to Monroeville in the mid-1960s. “I was maybe five or six. Harper Lee was there. It was during the time he was working on In Cold Blood,” Carter says. He and other young relatives were brought into a room to be introduced: “This is your cousin Truman.” Carter recalls that the children were then “asked to make ourselves scarce and not to bother the world traveler.”

Fruitcake in round or loaf shapes — all prepared from local family recipes”—will be for sale all day at the museum. Delicacies known as “fruitcake rocks” will also be available. When asked to define a “fruitcake rock,” Nathan Carter charmingly explains, “It’s like drop biscuits—they’re irregular in shape. Each is like two or three bites and then you’re done with it.”

Admission to “A Christmas Memory” is $25, with show time at 7 p.m. A reception with more fruitcake follows. Call 251-575-7433 or go to www.tokillamockingbird.com for details.

Hotheads Return to Talladega

Leave a reply

2003-09-11 Diversions

Hotheads Return to Talladega

By Ed Reynolds

write the author




	Driver Kevin Harvick out for a Sunday afternoon hunt with his favorite weapon, his Goodwrench Chevy.

Dale Earnhardt’s death two years ago on the final lap of the Daytona 500 left no shortage of NASCAR drivers contending for Earnhardt’s celebrated role as a racetrack bully. Driver Kevin Harvick, who replaced Earnhardt in the Goodwrench Chevrolet, immediately developed a reputation as a hothead who refused to retreat from confrontation. After one race, he chased an opponent (on foot) who had bumped him on the track, leaping from the roof of a competitor’s racecar to pounce on the offender—all in front of a national television audience. Harvick later violently bumped his nemesis in the following weeks and was suspended by NASCAR.

Tony Stewart, 2002 Winston Cup champion, filled the Earnhardt void with even more abandon. Over the next two years at various racetracks, Stewart ran up a list of impressive bad boy behavior. He crashed into driver Jeff Gordon on the “cool down” lap following a race at Bristol Speedway; intentionally knocked a tape recorder from a reporter’s hand while being interviewed; punched a photographer in Indianapolis; shoved an emergency worker who was attempting to help him from his wrecked racecar at New Hampshire Speedway; and pushed aside a woman asking for an autograph in Bristol. Stewart finally entered anger management counseling after his racing sponsor Home Depot fined him $50,000 and threatened to fire him.

The sporting world’s most exciting soap opera, NASCAR racing, returns to Talladega Superspeedway September 25 through 28 for the EA Sports 500 weekend. Driver Kurt Busch is currently playing this season’s villain with relish—his summer feud with driver Jimmy Spencer erupted into fisticuffs in the garage after the race at Michigan this past August.

Amidst all the intentional wrecks, name-calling, and brutal punches, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will be vying for his fifth straight Winston Cup victory at Talladega. Adding another bit of drama to this year’s EA Sports 500, veteran driver Terry Labonte ended a four-year losing streak when he won the final Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend at Darlington Raceway. The Southern 500 (formerly the Rebel 500) is the oldest race on the NASCAR circuit, but officials have decided to move the race to California Speedway beginning next year as stock car racing continues to expand beyond its Dixie roots. This weekend also marks the final race at Talladega in which the NASCAR series will be known as Winston Cup; next year Nextel will replace R.J. Reynolds as the series’ official sponsor.

Despite the cosmopolitan marketing employed by NASCAR to diminish its longstanding redneck image and reach a wider audience, it’s good to see that redneck tempers still veer out of control at 200 mph. Call 256-362-7223 or visit www.talladegasuperspeedway.com. —Ed Reynolds

Channeling the Elderly

Leave a reply

Channeling the Elderly

Social historian and yarn spinner David Greenberger brings his stories of—and by—the elderly to town.

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

October 13, 2011

David Greenberger, a frequent contributor to NPR through essays and music reviews, began recording conversations with elderly patients in a Boston nursing home where he worked in 1979 after finishing art school. These chats were originally published in his self-published magazine Duplex Planet, which is described as “an ongoing work designed to portray a wide variety of real characters who are old or in decline.” Greenberger eventually began giving spoken word performances using the elderly folks’ words while backed by musical combos. On October 23, Greenberger will appear at Bottletree Café with the Shaking Ray Levis at 8 p.m. For details, go to www.thebottletree.com.

Black & White: Tell us what to expect at your upcoming performance in Birmingham. The Shaking Ray Levis are associated with improv music, which I don’t particularly care for.
David Greenberger: There are no elements of improv in what we do, even with the Shaking Ray Levis. Those guys are improvisers but in the context of what we do, it’s composed music. I actually never like having improvised music with this sort of text, which has a conversational voice. I feel like the conversational voice is to be believed. A true conversation is sort of improvised, in a way. To really believe those conversations, it’s just sort of rolling out like a saxophone solo. So with that being the sort of foreground—or the narrative—in these pieces I need for the music to be anchored, to be sort of specific; to be the sort of architecture that this voice lives within.

So Dennis and Bob (of the Shaking Ray Levis ) are well-known as improvisers but everything that we’ve done has always been completely composed and scored and we know exactly where we’ll be in the piece. Within that, they’ve got some room to play around, just like even non-improvising musicians would. But for the most part, we’re doing a scripted and scored thing.

What prompted you to start sharing your conversations with the elderly in a public format?
Well, I was out of art school, I was a painter. In the 1970s, I met some old guy and I thought that I’d like to meet some more like that. I was sort of intrigued by the idea that I’d met somebody who was significantly older than me. At the time, I was about 25. I never knew them before, they weren’t related to me. And in my experience—and probably most people’s experience—the people I knew who were elderly were relatives, and so there’s a sort of a limited, familial dynamic in play where they always see you as the grandchild or the nephew or whatever it is.




	“I would meet these people who were closer to the ends of their lives. I didn’t have to get too caught up in mourning the loss of who they used to be and I could be with them in the present moment because I never knew them before.” (click for larger version)

What was kind of liberating for me was that in meeting this one particular guy, I realized it was just the same as meeting anybody else. And the fact that he was older than me didn’t really enter into it. We just found common ground to talk about.
I took a job at a nursing home for a couple of years in 1979. I just did it for a little while—it was all elderly men at this nursing home, which was a small converted house. But in stepping into that environment, I really felt that, as an artist, I found my voice, in a way. It was something that I wanted to communicate to an audience who didn’t know these people. But [the point was]not to get to know them but to get to know aspects and various possibilities and various faces of aging and decline. And to do so without them being your uncles or aunts or grandparents or parents, because your own mortality is so tied to that. And I would meet these people who were in decline and closer to the ends of their lives. I didn’t have to get too caught up in mourning the loss of who they used to be and I could be with them in the present moment because I never knew them before.

Say you met somebody who had an accident and lost an arm. And all their friends and family are horrified and feel bad about it. But he moves on and he’s a guy with one arm. Well, you meet this guy and you never knew him when he had the other arm, so you’re not as limited in the same view of him as those other people who, in a way, will always think, “What a shame. He used to love to play Frisbee or baseball” or whatever it was. You can just sort of accept him as is, and that’s also quite empowering to the person who is going through it. Because then they meet people who didn’t know them before and they can just move forward with their life.

How often does dementia or Alzheimer’s come into play with what you do?
When I first started doing this stuff, there were a few people [with some form of dementia] at that one nursing home. But I never really cared to know what the diagnosis was because it didn’t really matter to them. The diagnosis, in a way, can become a distraction. As soon as you say “Alzheimer’s” you’re just seeing that word. But if you would just talk to them, it defines Alzheimer’s in a different way. You’re defining them first as an individual who happens to have Alzheimer’s. You’re seeing them through that window of, “Oh, what a shame.” And I always prefer to not even know what the diagnosis is because that’s really going to be an incumbrance in the dynamic of a relationship to just getting to know them on their own terms.

The Alzheimer’s word is used a lot more than it was before. I don’t think there’s a greater number of people suffering from various aspects of mental decline. So it’s out there as a popular word and idea to support, which isn’t a bad thing. But it sort of tips the balance a bit. That issue’s always been around. In one way or another, there is no cure for the slowdown of your life, which includes the various parts of our bodies. Those things wear out, including our brains.

I would argue that I don’t think most people would want to be very wide-eyed and completely alert but flinchingly having to stare down their own death. In a way, I think the very act of becoming confused and uncertain about what’s real and what isn’t allows for a gentler passage, as it were. Which isn’t to say that I’m opposed to doing things about it. Certainly early onset things and people who are frustrated and know that something’s happened are to be helped.

I did a project in Milwaukee a couple of years ago that was specifically focused on people with memory loss. I had an artist residency and was in Milwaukee for about four months creating a CD that was called Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time. (A documentary was made about the project.) Most of the people that I spoke with all had varying degrees of memory loss. For some of them, there was nothing that you would even notice. For other people it was a profound loss. I would say something and they would say something that was completely different from what I said. And then I would try to follow them there and then they would head somewhere else. It was the full range of faces of memory loss.

Tell me about Duplex Planet.
Well, I started that in 1979. It was a chat book-sized little periodical. It was a format that I was interested in doing at the time. [Readers] would get to know characters little by little over time, just like you would if it was somebody that you run into once in a while at the supermarket—an old guy that you would see there—so that after three or four months readers start to recognize certain characters . . . More people got to know my work and it was channeled into more traditional media like books and stuff. There was a comic book adaptation in the mid-’90s. And then that’s when I started doing these performances and recordings of monologues with music.

Tell me about the oddest or most unusual elderly person you’ve worked with.
Well, I think, in a way, the people I knew earliest on in that nursing home where I worked because of my age. I was 25 and everything was knew to me. I learned a lot. I think I became articulate about what I was trying to do.

Those people show up in my dreams and it tends to mean other stuff to me. There was one guy there, William Ferguson was his name, who I really liked. He clearly did have some form of dementia. But he was a perfectly happy guy. He was clearly making stuff up when he was talking to me. He was about 90. I might have said something to him about the president or something. And then he would say something about Eisenhower. He would talk about driving around with Eisenhower in a jeep after the war and picking up Fräuleins and buying them ice cream.

He was clearly inventing stuff but with such loving vigor. It was real to him in the moment, almost like speaking aloud a dream. I think what I learned from him was that anything that anybody was telling me was real and I should accept it as real. It was real to them. Whether or not it actually happened, it doesn’t really matter. There’s this guy sitting in front of me who’s completely aglow with this stuff that he’s talking about. And for me to say that didn’t happen only ends the conversation. So it’s better to talk about Ike, talk about the jeep. Go with him wherever he’s going. Because the whole thing at the end of the day is just to be present with somebody else . . . The thing that matters is that we have our kind of emotional memory of having been with somebody. &

Mr. Record Man

Leave a reply

Mr. Record Man

The real gospel, according to record geek, gifted vocalist, and true gentleman Jimmy Griffin.

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

October 13, 2011

For 34 years, Charlemagne Records in Five Points South has been a sanctuary for record fanatics, indifferent shoppers looking for birthday presents for friends, lonely souls desperate for conversation, and the occasional celebrity. Jimmy Griffin, a sweet, congenial 61-year-old fellow smitten with music, has worked at Charlemagne for three decades. (He looks 41 and has the spirit of a kid in awe of the world around him.) He’s Clint Eastwood-cool when under fire. He simply cannot be rattled, maintaining a Captain Kangaroo-calm bolstered by a teenage enthusiasm with a subtle charm capable of soothing the most savage customer. “The one thing that I remember is that no matter how hectic the store got, especially at Christmas or whatever, I never ever saw Jimmy lose it,” says local artist Marjorie Clark Boykin, who worked at Charlemagne from 1986 to 1990. “I might see him get a little flustered and inside he might be freaking out, but even if there was somebody who was being difficult, he would always deflect it with some kind of humor.”

Jimmy is indeed one of the funniest fellows in the universe. If forced to express himself to a disgruntled customer, he does so with his customary savvy and hilarious style. During a Christmas shopping season 15 or 20 years ago, a customer came in with a noose necklace and matching noose bracelets on each wrist. The store was packed and the gallows-obsessed guy was having a difficult time getting waited on. The fellow was hunting for a particular piece of classical music. As he grew more impatient, he addressed Griffin by saying: “You know, Jimmy, a scream is a terrible thing to hear.” Jimmy Griffin didn’t miss a beat and coolly responded, “I tell you, man, I bet your family will get you a portable radio for Christmas and you can listen to classical music on WBHM.”

Charlemagne Records opened for business in July 1977 at the Garages, now a popular Southside bar called the Garage Café. Launched by local singer deluxe Marian McKay Rosato, her brother Mike McKay, and Gary Bourgeois, the funky new and used-record store moved to Five Points South four months later, where it set up business sharing the first floor with a used bookstore in the structure where Charlemagne currently operates. (Bourgeois is no longer with Charlemagne. He owns Renaissance Records in Five Points South.) The record store moved upstairs in 1978 when the building’s owner decided to open an apothecary in the ground-floor space. Rosato had been in record sales before starting Charlemagne. “I worked at Sears in Vestavia; I was the record department girl,” she says with a smile. “I sold Gary (Bourgeois) a record there, James Taylor’s Walking Man, and that’s how we met.”




For 30 years, Charlemagne Records employee Jimmy Griffin has been been an iconic source of knowledge for music lovers. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

Charlemagne has definitely seen its share of famous customers. Tom Waits stopped by and bought an armload of albums in 2008 when he was in town playing at the Alabama Theatre. Gary Busey stopped by when he was in town filming his role as Bear Bryant in The Bear a few decades back. Busey selected a Beatles box set and threw down a $100 bill. He picked up the Beatles package with one hand and grabbed Rosato with the other. “Well all of a sudden, Gary Busey hoisted me up over his shoulder,” she recalls. Under protest from then-employee Gary Bourgeois (“I told him he couldn’t have her.”), Busey began to walk out of the store. The actor/madman eventually released Rosato and set her down at the top of the stairs that lead up to the store’s entrance. She also remembers the afternoon Carlos Santana visited the store. “He asked for Baaba Maal, an African musical artist,” she remembers. “I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have any Baaba Maal but we know who you’re talking about.’ So, he was looking around and then the mail came. And so we opened up the mail and there was a promo package in it and it was Baaba Maal. So we said to Carlos Santana, ‘Well, I guess this belongs to you,’ and we gave it to him.”

“What’s really interesting is how Jimmy started working at Charlemagne,” recalls Gary Bourgeois. “He had been working at some big mall store. I think they had closed and he was living right up the hill from Charlemagne. So he just started coming in, and he was helping us do this and do that. People started knowing who Jimmy was. After a while, we might be short-handed and Jimmy happened to be there, because, you know, Jimmy ain’t going to be happy unless he’s working in a record store. Next thing you know, Jimmy’s ringing up customers and we put him on payroll. Soon Jimmy was coming in everyday and helping us. Then you realize, ‘Wow, this guy’s really good, he really knows his stuff.’ You don’t even have to look this stuff up, he already knows what artist, what song title someone was looking for. Before you know it, Jimmy’s like an everyday fixture.”

“It was a gradual thing. I was working at an OZ franchise,” recalls Jimmy. “I was helping Gary at Apple Books and he said, ‘Well, come over and help some at Charlemagne, too.’ So I would spend afternoons going from one to the other, just working my way into the organization. I think at first I was working for record credit. But these were the days of post–hippie, post–peace, and post–whiskey, if you know what I mean,” Griffin says, laughing.

As a child, Griffin had an uncle who would bring over 45 rpm records. “We had a Louis Prima 45. And I would buy classical and Broadway; like I had Camelot. I didn’t get serious—and this is almost embarrassing—but I bought hootenanny (records). So I also bought Peter, Paul, and Mary, and New Christy Minstrels records,” he says. “And when the Beatles came out I bought a Beatles record, like everybody else. But at the same time, I bought the Rolling Stones’ Out of Our Heads the year it came out. And once I got the Rolling Stones record I didn’t buy any more Beatles records. And then I got Dylan records, and me and my buddy across the street, that’s all we did was find Dylan and Stones records and play ‘em. The Stones were coming from the blues base and the R&B base. So from listening to the Stones and Dylan, I dove off into blues and jazz.”




Charlemagne Records has changed little since it moved into its current locale in 1978, maintaining its jam-packed, comfortable environment. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

“I’ve always felt that Jimmy had a big impact on me,” says Brad Quinn, former singer and bassist in the band Carnival Season, who currently lives in Japan when not playing bass with underground pop hero Tommy Keene. “Back in the late ’70s, when I was about 14 years old, I used to hang out and talk music with Jimmy at a record shop in the Riverchase Galleria. I was listening to jazz—or at least I thought I was—but Jimmy quickly expanded my horizons from Bob James and Weather Report by sending me home with Coon Bid’ness by avant-jazz alto saxophonist Julius Hemphill. As I recall, it was a pretty free-blowing album and probably a bit beyond my scope. But I also really liked that Jimmy had treated me like an adult by trying to turn me on to such heavy sounds.”

Quinn also recalls getting a lesson from Griffin about the relevance of singer Freddy Fender. “I remember making some crack about Freddy Fender, who to my mind was just some kitschy cowboy singer who sold records on TV,” he says. “I knew Jimmy as a guy who was deep into jazz and blues, so I was really surprised when he came to Freddy’s defense. It was a small thing, but it made me realize that I maybe didn’t know quite as much about things as I thought I did. It also revealed how open-minded and big-hearted Jimmy was about music. I later went on to spend 13 years or so toiling away in record shops in Birmingham and Atlanta. So I suppose you could say that Jimmy was a bit of a role model. He certainly is a role model for how people should think about and listen to music.”

Tommy Stevenson, a columnist and blogger who has worked at the Tuscaloosa News for 35 years, claims he introduced Griffin to the local community. “I discovered him,” says Stevenson, laughing. “It was at a party that we crashed . . . There was this little skinny guy sitting there strumming on a guitar. I said to myself, ‘This is going to be one of my friends for the rest of my life.’ Allen Ginsberg was in town for a speaking engagement at Birmingham-Southern in 1968 and showed up at the party. Everybody was trying to impress the famous poet, playing ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore’ or whatever. Jimmy picked up the guitar and started doing old Hank Williams songs and Ginsberg shot across the room and sat down beside him and made Jimmy play song after song, and Ginsberg sang along with him.”

Bart Grooms, a local writer, singer, and host of a jazz radio show on Samford University’s campus radio station WVSU-FM 91.1, gushes at the mention of Jimmy. “My initial impression—which I still have—is that he’s just one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met. Friendly to everybody who comes in and seems to know an enormous number of people who come in,” says Grooms. “He’s incredibly musically literate. He seems to have an amazing memory for what is in the store, what he can access, what needs to be special ordered, and also stuff that he likes and can recommend. He’s never pushy about that but has often been able to say, ‘I really enjoy such and such,’ and I think is really helpful to a lot of people coming into the store. Jimmy’s been a real blessing in a lot of people’s lives and that means a lot to me and it’s meant a lot to a lot people. And I count him a friend.”

“I’ve always thought of Jimmy as a gentleman,” says Boutwell Studios co-owner Mark Harrelson. “Not only does he have an encyclopedic knowledge of his inventory, he also remembers what his customer’s individual areas of interest are.” Musician Don Tinsley worked at Charlemagne for a couple of years in the late 1980s. “When it comes to music, Jimmy Griffin seems to remember it all, I’ve never stumped him with any question as to who, what, when, or where,” says Tinsley. “I’ve heard some people refer to him as Saint Jimmy because he NEVER loses his patience or blows up at Charlemagne even when trying to help the most hard to please customers who are asking the most impossible questions. He genuinely tries to help people get the music they want, and he seems to make extremely astute observations and suggestions to aid them in finding what they are searching for and also to help broaden their musical palette.” Tinsley has played in bands with Griffin and has always been impressed with his talents as a singer and player. “He’s sings true and means it, and is a serious roots-style threat on bass drum and maracas. I played a couple of gigs with Jimmy and John McKay on harp as the Drape Vulcan Boys,” he recalls. “I couldn’t make the practice so we ran some songs by telephone and then played what I remember as a very cool and successful gig.”




When actor Gary Busey was in Birmingham filming The Bear nearly 30 years ago, he tried to heist Charlemagne Records co-owner Marian McKay Rosato in addition to the Beatles box set he purchased. (click for larger version)

Besides his day job working at Charlemagne, Jimmy Griffin played for several years with one of the greatest bands to ever come out of Birmingham, the bluesy, roots-based Trains ‘N’ Trouble. He’s modest about his fabulous, distinctive vocal talents but admits that he never lacked confidence singing for an audience. “No, I wasn’t self conscious. Like with Trains ‘N’ Trouble, playing with LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, and John McKay, I was like sort of an amateur with three very professional people,” he says. “Plus the fact that with the improvisational aspect, we would rehearse a song but that wouldn’t necessarily be the way it would go when we played it. I was not on the level of creating new music; I was trying to be true to the nuance of the singers I admired, like Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson. When I was young just playing the guitar, I loved Woody Guthrie.”

Jimmy has memories of famous performers dropping by Charlemagne. “Gene Simmons came in. He was looking for British Invasion CDs, but he had everything we could find,” he recalls. “But he ended up buying Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and Greatest Hits by Bobby Darin. Chris Robinson, formerly of the Black Crowes, came in and a customer asked him if he should buy Robinson’s new record and he said, ‘No, don’t get that, man.’” Griffin doesn’t hesitate when asked who his favorite musician is. “Sun Ra is my favorite because he does so many things. He invented a whole new language of music. I call it ‘the lope,” it’s got a loping sound. It’s like swinging or it could be totally abstract.”

Sun Ra may have invented a new musical language but Jimmy Griffin coined a new phrase for the retail record business. “We call the store business ‘psycho retail,’ because you never know what people are going to ask you in person or on the phone,” he says. “I’ve developed this thing of taking everything literally until I find out otherwise. Because you never know exactly where the customers are coming from. Psycho retail means the insanity of the different ways that people communicate or don’t communicate. And we also have the circular reasoning. There’ll be three thoughts and they’re rotated. They ask you question A. As you answer question A, they don’t respond, they ask question B. As you answer question B, they don’t really respond or make a decision, but ask question C. And as you answer question C, they go back to question A. And you could be on the phone maybe 15 minutes trying to nail down which of these three points is pertinent to the call, and what exactly we can do for them. Some of our customers, we already know who they are as soon as they say hello, and we know it’s going to take a minute.”

Jimmy has devised his own method for remaining calm under fire when business is jumping at Charlemagne. “Well, I do get rattled and I think it comes with age. I used to say that my mind is on ‘erase’ and I would kind of go from one point to the next,” he explains. “Or maybe it’s kind of like a game not to get rattled because maybe you can do a better job. I used to have a motto: ‘People didn’t realize it but I live in fear.’ The other thing is, now that I’ve been in counseling for a while, I realize how much co-dependence I’ve had since I was a young child,” he admits with laughter. “So in a way, I’m in the worst possible job for someone who’s co-dependent with the world. Passivity and co-dependence are like good traits for a retailer, but you might never get well. I have a theory about retail, that it should be democratic. Because one of my jokes is, in the Bill of Rights they have to now include the right to shop. People feel very strongly about their right to shop. That’s why you have yard sales; that’s why you have people with no money actually looking at discarded things on the side of the road, because that’s a form of shopping. So, to me, somebody buying a dollar cassette is just as important as someone buying a $200 box set. Because they might be a regular customer and they may buy 200 one-dollar cassettes over a couple of years but you may never see the box set person again. We’re trying to match people with their musical needs but the customer kind of has to run the show.”




Charlemagne is a museum of concert posters, with some dating back to the store’s inception. (Photo: Owen Stayner.) (click for larger version)

Griffin has a personal philosophy for why people are drawn to certain genres of music while rejecting other styles. “It’s like a music festival. If you don’t like an event, you just change stages. I’ve developed this theory that started years ago at a chain store while I was running the cash register and playing Professor Longhair. And I’m all exuberant and I said, ‘Isn’t this great!’ And my customer said, ‘Not particularly.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, Professor Longhair’s not great.’ The thing about music is that it’s sound waves. When somebody’s receiving their pleasant sound waves, it’s a physiological and environmental and memory, all combined. So, deriving pleasure from music is something everybody can do and you can’t say that one pleasure source is any superior to another. But you can say that certain musicians are more skilled at making new statements.”

Gary Bourgeois told me that if I wanted to drive Jimmy crazy, I should lock him in a room with the first seven Moody Blues albums. Griffin responded: “Well what happened with the Moody Blues is that when I lived in Boston I had a roommate and he lost his girlfriend. He played this Moody Blues song over and over about a quiet day in the park and being sad. It’s just too lush for me. I can see they’re good musicians. It’s taken me years to get over the fact, for example, that Jim Morrison’s approach to a song is more dramatic than Mick Jagger’s. Or David Bowie’s approach is more dramatic. There’s something in Morrison’s voice tone to where I prefer Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. And also, I prefer great non-singers. When people tell me Bob Dylan can’t sing, I say, ‘I guess you’re right but he’s so musical. So it’s not necessarily if you can hit the note, it’s how you approach the note. When I brought Dylan’s Nashville Skyline home, my Dad said, ‘Oh, you mean that fellow finally decided to start singing?’”

The final word on Jimmy Griffin comes from the second greatest musical icon in Birmingham’s storied history. Spike, former singer of punk legend GNP, believes that Jimmy Griffin just might have clairvoyant powers: “I never bought much punk stuff from Charlemagne. There are just too many other cool genres of music to choose from there. It was mostly Grateful Dead-related stuff, or reggae, or ska. It seems like every time I walked up those stairs and Jimmy was there, he would say, ‘Hey, I got this new Dead thing . . .’ or he would have some obscure ska compilation to show me. It was like he knew I was about to walk in the store. I’m pretty sure he’s that way with everyone. He must be psychic. I love that guy.” &

Rock ‘n’ Roll Memories

Leave a reply

By Ed Reynolds

write the author



	Rick Nelson was declared a teen idol at age 16, and continued his singing career as an adult.

Room 106 of the Guntersville Holiday Inn is a hallowed shrine along rock ’n’ roll’s sacred trail. It’s where one-time teen idol Ricky Nelson spent the last two days of his life before his untimely death on January 31, 1985. Nelson and his Stone Canyon Band were killed during the emergency landing of his blazing DC-3 (at one time owned by Jerry Lee Lewis) in a Texas cow pasture.



	The International Rick Nelson Fan Club will celebrate the life and final days of the acclaimed singer October 19 and 20 at the Guntersville Holiday Inn.

Nelson had stopped in Guntersville for impromptu shows at PJ’s Alley, co-owned by his former guitarist Pat Upton. The Stone Canyon Band had just finished a Citrus Bowl appearance in Orlando, and decided to stop in Alabama for a couple of nights before a scheduled New Year’s Eve appearance in Dallas. That final show in Guntersville was eventually immortalized as the “Rave On” show by fanatical Ricky Nelson devotees, as Nelson closed the night with Buddy Holly’s “Rave On.”

America grew up with Ricky Nelson in the 1950s through television’s “Ozzie and Harriet Show.” By age 16, Nelson had scored a Top Ten hit with “A Teenager’s Romance.” A performance of Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’” on the show yielded a million records sold in the week following the broadcast. Life magazine put him on the cover in 1958, coining the phrase “teen idol” for Nelson. By age 21, he had sold 35 million records, with nine gold singles.

Hailed by many as the only teen idol with any lasting influence on rock ’n’ roll, Ricky Nelson eventually dropped the “y” from his name in the 1970s and began recording country songs. He’s credited as a country rock pioneer, launching the careers of Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, and Poco. After a round of booing at a 1972 Madison Square Garden show while trying to perform new songs, Nelson wrote the timeless classic “Garden Party.”

The International Rick Nelson Fan Club will celebrate the life and final days of the acclaimed singer October 19 and 20 at the Guntersville Holiday Inn. Events include a Rick Nelson look-alike contest and plenty of Nelson music. A permanent wall shrine entitled “The Last Two Days” has been erected in the hotel lobby, complete with photos and memories of Nelson’s final show. And most sacred of all, Room 106 has been christened the Rick Nelson Room and will be available for viewing. Call 256-582-2220 for details.