Category Archives: 20th Century Culture

America’s Girl Singer — APT airs the story of vocalist Rosemary Clooney

2004-03-11 Music

America’s Girl Singer

APT airs the story of vocalist Rosemary Clooney.

“She could find the center of a note and just nail it,” Frank Sinatra remarked of legendary singer Rosemary Clooney. Clooney’s wondrous ability to seduce an audience with pop standards from the classic American songbook is documented in the PBS special “Rosemary Clooney: Girl Singer,” narrated by Carol Burnett. Performances on the program are drawn from Clooney’s 1956-57 weekly television series, where her stunning good looks and deep, rich vocals cast a spell as she vamped her way into living rooms across the country.



	The PBS special, “Rosemay Clooney: Girl Singer,” will feature performances from Clooney’s 1956-57 weekly television series. (click for larger version)

Rosemary Clooney’s first number one hit was a song she absolutely detested—”Come On-a My House,” written by Ross Bagdasarian, who later created a cartoon combo called Alvin and the Chipmunks under the moniker David Seville. Clooney initially balked at singing the song because of its novelty nature, but when threatened with cancellation of her recording contract, she readily complied.

Clooney’s devotion to family is lovingly detailed in “Girl Singer,” with numerous testimonies from her five children, brother Nick, and famed nephew, actor George Clooney. “When she was at her best was in a cabaret,” remembers her nephew. “She’d be standing up, leaning against a piano singing some phenomenal song, and everybody would fall in love with her . . . She brought sadness but not despair.” He added that she once told him that her secret was to always sing a sad song with a smile on her face. Clooney purchased the house where Ira and George Gershwin wrote their final song together, a home her children fondly remember for impromptu rehearsals around the living room piano. Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, and Nat King Cole often joined Clooney in song until sunrise.

Irving Berlin’s 1954 classic holiday film White Christmas introduced Rosemary Clooney’s exceptional beauty and remarkable acting prowess to the world. Her duets with costar Bing Crosby on “Counting My Blessings” and, of course, the title track became as essential to Christmas as mistletoe. Unfortunately, her acting roles were few. She won an Emmy in 1997 playing an Alzheimer’s patient opposite nephew George on “ER.”

Clooney got hooked on prescription medication for depression after her first divorce from actor Jose Ferrer in 1960, a marriage that produced five children in five years. She divorced Ferrer a second time in 1967, then witnessed the assassination of Robert Kennedy a year later while standing only a few feet from the 1968 presidential candidate. Clooney spiraled into a nervous breakdown soon thereafter, eventually checking into a psychiatric hospital. A 1976 tour with Bing Crosby to celebrate Crosby’s 50 years in showbiz launched a career singing jazz that blossomed until her death in 2002.

As the “ultimate girl singer,” Clooney left a legacy that will be difficult to match. Among the musical gems showcased in “Rosemary Clooney: Girl Singer” are “My Blue Heaven,” “Moonlight in Vermont,” “Come On-a My House,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and a dozen others. Nick Clooney summed up his sister’s musical flair: “When you hear her voice, we hear not the way we were but the way we wanted to be.” “Rosemary Clooney: Girl Singer” will be broadcast Saturday, March 13, at 5:30 p.m. on Alabama Public Television. &

Bill Cosby, Himself

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Bill Cosby, Himself

Cosby discusses turning the other cheek to hecklers and why he resisted the temptation to use profanity in his act.

By Ed Reynolds

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January 20, 2011

When comedian Bill Cosby answers the phone, his response to a reporter’s greeting of “Mr. Cosby?” for verification, is a playful grumble: “No! This is George Roofles!” before breaking into his slow, wiseass Cosby chuckle: “Heh, heh, heh!” One is never quite sure when Cosby is being playful and when he is genuinely irritated. He speaks in a deliberate cadence he has made his own, slightly stretching out some syllables when not pausing between every other word to get his point across. Cosby is not the easiest person with whom to hold a conversation, but thankfully he answers with engaging, thoughtful responses. When asked if he has ever dealt with hecklers, he simply replies, “Yeah, yeah.” As I waited several seconds for him to elaborate, he suddenly interjects, “There are two of us talking here, so you’re going to have to say something. You asked me about the hecklers, The answer is ‘Yes.’ What do you want to know?” Wow, I was being reprimanded by “the Coz.” Bill Cosby will appear at the BJCC Concert Hall on Saturday, February 5, at 8 p.m. Tickets: $25–$65. Details: www.bjcc.org, 458-8400.

Black & White: Tell me about the early days when you were a struggling comic.
Cosby: I decided to leave Temple University and to go out for a year to test and see what would happen to me. I got favorable reviews from people who had seen me in different venues around the city of Philadelphia. So I went up to this club at 116 MacDougal Street [in Greenwich Village] called the Gaslight, which had a reputation for having classy entertainment and folk music. In those days there was no comedy club. Plus, there was no profanity. Dick Gregory had come along, it was about 1963. This booker for what they called Negro comics was there. So I brought my storytelling and auditioned and the guy said, “Well, you’re a little raw, but we’ll hire you.” I don’t know that I even had a day off, and I got $60 a week. I want you know that I’m the first old person to say, “And that was not a lot of money!” You hear a lot of old people go, “And that was a lot of money in those days.” Noooooo! By the time I cleaned up that room they gave me—which I’m very thankful for—I had spent close to $60 on mops and stuff to clean and make it look good. I showered without a shower. I used the restroom at the club to take a bath. I started at eight o’clock at night and worked ’til four in the morning, working between the folk singers.




	(click for larger version)

How did you deal with hecklers?
After being upset with people, I just decided to go in another direction and not fool with them. Because, you get angry with these people and you start a vocal argument. And many times, for some weird reason, the audience sees you become angry and after a while it has changed the aura in the room. It’s difficult for you to get back to the image that you’re a fun person, even though it wasn’t your fault. But then again, it was your fault because it’s also the entertainer’s job not to lose it. I’ll give you an example. I was at Lake Tahoe in the late ’60s. I already had the mindset that when people wanted to interrupt to say things, the first thing is to understand what they are saying, and then respond as if you were really interested in what a person was saying. When you listen to that, many times if you stay linear with it, you can get rid of ‘em post haste. So I walked out onstage, had on a brown leather suit, and the shoes I had on were high-tops and had sort of like a dark brown mustard color. It was a midnight show, so the people have a chance to medicate themselves with alcohol. The room holds 750—Harrahs, Lake Tahoe, one of the most beautiful rooms in the world. And a woman’s voice shouted out, “I hate those shoes!” And because of the way I think—which is not to challenge, not to beat up the person but to understand what the person has just said and to remain linear—I said, “Madame, you are very, very fortunate, because these shoes will not be performing.” And, man, I never heard from her again.

Were you ever tempted to work as a blue act?
Sure. There was a time when Richard Pryor’s popularity kicked in strong, and there really was a feeling from me—not that I wanted to use profanity—but it just seemed like this was due to Richard’s sales and the publicity. . . . Hey man, it’s a matter of sort of “keeping up with the Pryors.” I was at the Las Vegas Hilton, and it had been on my mind for some time. But I had rejected it because I just always felt I didn’t want it. That particular night I went into a story about my father, and I gave my father the profanity while addressing me. I think I did it for about two or three minutes, which is a long time. The next day, Barron Hilton called the owner of the hotel in Las Vegas. Barron never bothered me, and I was drawing strong, so . . . He said, “Bill, I just want you to read something. And you just do what you want with it.” It was a letter from six nuns who had seen that show. And they very nicely said that they were disappointed that a fellow they felt comfortable with had disappointed them with the use of the profanity. They didn’t ask for their money back, they didn’t say they walked out, but they just felt that they respected this fellow, Mr. Cosby, so much and he really and truly did not need to go in the direction of this, the [foul] language was unnecessary. Then they wished me the best. That was the day . . . that was it. I wasn’t too happy anyway, so the letter just helped close the book on that. And for my not embracing it [working blue], I have been able to turn over volumes of thoughts and write about them and turn them into modernist routines.

When “I Spy” came out, there was a fear that some network affiliate stations wouldn’t carry the show.
It wasn’t only a fear, it was a reality. Television, in those days, people blamed everything on the South. But they were using the South as a reasonable excuse to do what they wanted with their racist thoughts. The beauty of “I Spy” was that even though there were some stations that had people threatening to pull their commercials because of the presence of this actor—this black man—it didn’t have much strength. But I would not be surprised that there were some stations that did put on something else.

How did your life change after the success of “I Spy”?
NBC allowed me to have my own show, “Chet Kincaid,” which lasted two years. Then I had one-hour variety shows with my variety specials, so the change was just tremendous, the acceptance. I think in 1971, I had four LPs on Billboard’s charts. I had four comedy albums in the Top 10 because radio stations were playing them then. So there you can see the strength, the popularity.

Was there any subject matter you wanted to cover on “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” but didn’t feel comfortable approaching?
No, and when you look at the box set of Fat Albert shows, you just look at the titles and see how far ahead that show still is on subject matter.

Which of your television shows had the greatest impact on society?
If you play “Chet Kincaid,” there’s a ton of stuff there, a ton. If you play “I Spy,” you look at it. But people keep saying that I’m the Jackie Robinson of television. And I always say to them, “Well, if I’m the Jackie Robinson, then Robert Culp must have been the Pee Wee Reese and the Eddie Stanky [Robinson's teammates].” We went all around. We went to Mexico, we brought Mexican people into your living room. We brought Japanese, Chinese, and Korean people into your living room because we traveled around the world. We brought Greek people, Italian people into your living room, Spanish people into your living room, English people. So, “I Spy” just wasn’t a black man and a white man, it was all around the world. &

The One-Time King of Local Country Music

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The One-Time King of Local Country Music

Country Boy Eddy reflects on a lifetime of making music, pitching products, and just plain fiddlin’ around.

By Ed Reynolds

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December 23, 2010

For 38 years, many in the Birmingham area started most days with the startling sound of a man braying like a mule on their TV sets. “I used to could really do the mule call before I had my teeth fixed. It messed my whistle up some way,” says Eddy Burns as he demonstrates his mule call in a Jack’s Hamburgers in Warrior on a recent weekday morning. “Hee-haaaaw, hee-haaaaaw! People loved that, and then I’d ring the cowbell.” Better known as Country Boy Eddy, Burns is Birmingham’s most memorable media icon.

“The Country Boy Eddy Show” ran from 5 to 7 each weekday morning on WBRC Channel 6. Probably best described as a hillbilly variety show, its audience was a diverse collection of famers, businessmen, housewives, and kids (I recall watching the show in Selma, as Channel 6 was one of only two stations we received in the early 1960s. As a six-year-old, I remember being intrigued—and often scared—of Eddy’s heavy eyebrows and loud, rhythmic, vocal punctuations when he pitched advertisers’ products.) Eddy played fiddle or guitar and sang with his band, though it was his homespun quips for sponsors for which he is perhaps best remembered.

“Most of the time I usually just had a business card when I’d do a commercial (instead of a script). But I could remember what I was supposed to talk about.” He explains. “I’d play my guitar and sing, then go, ‘Uh oh, I gotta tell you about these folks. Eagles 7 Rat Bait!’ That was a funny commercial. Eagles 7 never gave me any script or any copy. I just read it off the box, what all it did. Then I’d add, ‘If you love your rats, don’t put this out there because it’ll kill the heck out of ‘em.’ And man, we sold lots of Eagles 7 Rat Bait. This guy who owned a chicken farm put out Eagles 7, and he told me he picked up four 50-gallon drums full of rats.”


Country Boy Eddy, Outside ABC affiliate WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama

Country Boy Eddy. (Photo by Mark Gooch.) (click for larger version)

When he wasn’t playing fiddle, Burns had an acoustic guitar in his lap, strumming incessantly as he carried on conversations with guests. He often invented songs on the spot when a guest made a reference to anything that inspired him to sing or that he could turn into something funny. Burns was a natural-born entertainer. One of his more amusing habits was strumming the guitar (not always solemnly, either) as he read funeral announcements.

Burns grew up on the same 200-acre farm near Warrior, Alabama, that he and his wife, Edwina, live on today. He learned to play the fiddle at age 13. “I saw an ad in a magazine that said, ‘Sell a $4 order of Garden Spot Seeds and get this beautiful violin.’ Boy, it was pretty,” he recalls. “[It was from] the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) County Seed Company. I sent off and ordered them seeds, it was 40 packages. I sold them for $4. I bet you I walked a hundred miles trying to sell them seeds to farmers that had cribs full of seeds. I started playing and I think I drove everybody crazy, and my daddy sometime would make me go to the barn.” (Laughs)

One of his first audiences was North Korean soldiers during the Korean War. “I was drafted into the infantry and when I got to Japan, they sent me to psychological warfare school for eight weeks,” Burns says. His unit’s role was similar to that of Tokyo Rose in World War II, the difference being that Burns was helping spread pro-American propaganda. “We broadcast on the front lines. We were set up in a bunker and we had our loudspeakers and our record player. We’d play [Korean] nostalgic music and then the Korean interpreter came in and would do whatever he did. And one night our record player broke down. So I said I’d play a tune on my fiddle. I played them a song I had learned over there, a song called ‘China Nights.’ There was all this mortar fire coming at us and I’d be playing my fiddle in the bunker.” His army buddies had chipped in to purchase Eddy a $20 violin in Seoul.

After the war, Burns played with bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe and honky-tonk vocalist Webb Pierce, often performing at the Grand Ole Opry. “Bill Monroe had heard me on a tape playing with Roland Johnson [a singer on Decca Records, Johnson was also mayor of Garden City, Alabama, for several years] and he wanted to know who the fiddler was. I drove to Nashville to the Andrew Jackson [Hotel] to audition for Bill Monroe. I did ‘Johnson’s Old Gray Mule’ at about six o’clock in the morning in the hotel room and some of them guys [in Monroe's band] were still in bed (laughs). Bill Monroe said, ‘Boy, that’s all right,’ but I knew it wasn’t the best he’d ever heard, but I got the job.”

“You didn’t make much money playing on the road in those days, so I came back to Birmingham and got married,” he says. Burns soon decided he wanted to work in television. “I started on Channel 13 around ’56.” His first sponsor was Big Hearted Eddie’s Used Cars, which he secured before approaching the station, to convince them give him a midnight show on Saturdays after the station’s studio wrestling matches. “Big Hearted Eddie sold 50 cars the next day [after Country Boy Eddy's first appearance]. Bad credit, good credit didn’t matter, Big Hearted Eddie would trade for anything of value—rifles, mules, cows, or whatever it was. Lots of people traded in shotguns on cars. $95 down would get you any car on the lot. Big Hearted Eddie used to say, ‘We don’t condone bad credit, but we don’t hold it against you either!’” Burns says. “I came on at midnight on Saturday nights after the wrestlin’ matches. We were live, I had four or five musicians and we set up next to the wrestlin’ ring at the TV studio. We were on for half an hour after the wrestlin’ went off. We did that for about two years.” Burns recalls a wrestler who took his fiddle away one night. “One night I had this one wrestler who played the fiddle. He said, ‘Gimme that fiddle!’ I was afraid to take it back away from him because I was afraid he’d throw me in a body slam. He was one of them mean-type wrestlers. I finally had to say, ‘Gimme back my fiddle, please.’”

In 1957, Burns got his morning show, on Channel 6, at the 5 a.m. time slot he would maintain for nearly four decades. “I was working on a percentage basis with the station. I was trying to sell and line up the sponsors and everything. I used to run 15,000 commercials a year, 300 a week. I used to make the calls and sell it to the client,” he explains. From 1961 to 1962, Burns also hosted a TV show in Nashville while still doing his Channel 6 program in Birmingham. “Yeah, I was on in Nashville every morning. When I got off at Channel 6 I’d go to Nashville on Monday and Tuesday, and we’d tape five one-hour shows to run every weekday morning. Dolly Parton was on my show up there before she ever became a star. I had Pat Boone and Eddy Arnold on, too. If I had moved there, I could really have done well. They had big billboards all over Nashville of me and Steve Allen. He was on at night, and I was on in the morning. But I stayed in Birmingham because I had a good deal with Channel 6.”

One morning a timid blond hairdresser from Midfield named Wynette Byrd arrived at the Channel 6 studio for an audition. Burns recalls, “When she finished her song, she asked, ‘How did I do?’ And I said, ‘You did terrific!’ (laughs) She sang on my show for a year or so. I finally told her, ‘You need to be in Nashville. Why don’t you go up there and get on a record, there’s nothing around here like that.’” Wynette Byrd moved to Nashville, changed her name to Tammy Wynette, and soon had back-to-back hits with “Apartment Number 9″ and “Stand by Your Man.”

Burns once interviewed baseball pitching great Dizzy Dean on his Birmingham morning show. “Me and Dizzy Dean sang ‘Wabash Cannonball.” Ol’ Dizzy Dean told me, ‘You ought to be making four or five [thousand dollars] a week.’ I said, ‘Well, I can’t take the cut, Dizzy.” (laughs) He later interviewed Steve Allen. “I don’t know who was funnier, me or him,” he says, laughing. “I was advertising Buffalo Rock and he was sponsored by Pepsi-Cola. We was talking and I was drinking a Buffalo Rock and he was drinking Pepsi, and I asked him, ‘Steve, how you like that Pepsi?’ And he said, ‘Boy I love it.’ So I said, ‘Take a drink of this Buffalo Rock, you’ll really like it.’ He took a swig of it and he said, ‘Boy, that’ll rock a buffalo!’ I also had cowboy actor Chill Wills on, then I had [country music performer and comedian] Smiley Burnette. I had Pat Buttram on [Buttram played Mr. Haney on "Green Acres"]. I had Roger Miller on before he had a big hit. He rode a motor scooter from Nashville down here. We also had Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield on—they were passing through town and were on the show, though I forget what they were promoting, probably some movie or something.”

Country Boy Eddy and his band the Country Cousins played grand openings for several of Birmingham’s retail establishments on weekends. They also played a lounge or two. He laughs as he recalls the night they played a club in the middle of nowhere in south Alabama. “The guy working the door at the club had a chainsaw. I said to Zeke the Hayseed—a comedian that worked on my show who could lick his nose with his tongue—I said, ‘Zeke, we’re in trouble tonight,’” he recalls. “They had a big brawl at the club, a big fight broke out,” Burns says, shaking his head. “So we took that chainsaw and cut a hole in the wall and got out real quick!”

In 1995, Country Boy Eddy performed his final live TV show. Regarding his retirement, Burns notes, “Well, after 38 years I kinda got tired. That old mule that I used to ride from Warrior to the TV station in Birmingham was getting worn out. He got to where he couldn’t make it, he was limpin’ on me.” When asked what he’s been doing since his retirement, he says, “I played nursing homes, played at First Baptist Church every year for their wild game suppers—there’d be 3,000 people there, I’d bring my guitar and sing—and also I played different local deals for people I knew. I raised cattle.”

Burns is a member of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, located in Tuscumbia, where the set from his Channel 6 show is on display. He turned 80 on December 13. Eddy admits he has slowed some in his twilight years, noting, “I’m still kickin’ high, just not quite as high as I used to.”

To see Country Boy Eddy’s show as it was 22 years ago, tune in to FOX6 at 2 p.m. on Christmas Day, Saturday, December 25, when the station will air a Country Boy Eddy Christmas special.

• • •Let the Good Times Roll

“Doggone, everybody I knew is dead,” says “Country Boy” Eddy Burns, laughing when pressed for names of those who might share observations about his TV career. This isn’t exactly true; many are still “kickin’ high,” and when questioned about Burns, they all impersonate Country Boy Eddy at some point during the conversation, if only for a few seconds. Eddy Burns affects people that way. He’s the most unique personality in the history of local television, who never met a tale he didn’t like to tell.

Keith Williams was an advertising salesman who worked closely with Burns for 38 years. “Eddy has one tendency—and I’ll tell this right in front of him—he sometimes exaggerates,” says Williams. “He used to say, ‘Well, we had 6,000 people [in attendance at a show].’ He probably had 2,000 people, which was terrific. So anything he tells you, divide it by three and you’ll have it about right.” The 83-year-old Williams continues, “When you got up early in the morning and you wanted to know what was going on in the state of Alabama, there was only one station to tune in to, and that was Channel 6, because the radio stations weren’t on; there was nothing live. Maybe you weren’t really a fan of Country Boy Eddy but you wanted to get the information. And you soon became a fan.”

Allen Tolbert began appearing on “The Country Boy Eddy Show” at age six, playing guitar and mandolin with his father, local bluegrass legend Glenn Tolbert. “Eddy used to call me ‘Little Bill’ after Bill Monroe,” Allen, now 24, says, laughing. “We were always up there having fun, getting a cup of coffee after the show was over. He’s a good entertainer. I look at his business model and the creativity it took to be on in that time slot was a stroke of genius because nobody else wanted it. And he staked it out and made it his own.”

Glenn Tolbert played guitar and sang on the show several days a week from 1981 until 1995. “Eddy usually depended on me to do the bluegrass stuff on the show,” the elder Tolbert recalls. “Everybody else was pretty much into country music. Of course, I like country, but he’d always call on me to do a Bill Monroe song,” explains Tolbert, who says Burns’ perpetual upbeat persona amazed him. “If Eddy felt bad, you’d never really know it. If you met him out in the street somewhere, he acted just as down to earth as he did on TV. There wasn’t anything arrogant about him at all, just a real nice person.”

“Guitar Bill” Smelley performed on Burns’ show from 1983 until 1995. He’s 68 years old and lives in Sylacauga, Alabama. “They call me ‘Guitar Bill,’ but I was more or less a guest singer. I didn’t play much guitar,” says Smelley. “I guess you would say I was an extra. I sang on the program, so he featured me a lot. I was kinda like a sidekick, you know? He’d use me around the station to run errands; go get the newsman, the weatherman, and everything like that—I was a gopher man, I guess,” he says, laughing. “But I enjoyed it. I really hated to see that thing come to an end. I really think a lot of Country Boy, he’s my favorite person. He’s meant a lot to me. I wasn’t all that good. [laughs] All those other folks, they worked so hard to play those instruments and got so good at it. But they kinda envied me, I think, because Eddy liked me.” Guitar Bill understood the importance of staying out of the limelight. “Some guys come on the show and they want to do all the talking,” he says. “But I learned pretty quick to listen to Eddy and he could bring out things about you and your personality and everything that you couldn’t do on your own.”

Guitar Bill penned a Country Boy Eddy favorite: “Jesus Loves You Better Than a Cowboy Loves to Ride.” He currently hosts his own Internet TV program at http://sonshinesatellitenet.webs.com on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 5 p.m. The introduction to each half-hour program includes Eddy Burns welcoming viewers.

Popular local TV personality Tom York, who retired from WBRC in 1989, first featured Country Boy Eddy and his band on York’s Channel 6 “Morning Show” in 1957. “Very shortly, Eddy got so popular that he got his own show. Mine came on at 7 o’clock and they [put him on] at 6 o’clock,” says the 86-year-old York. “And everybody said, ‘Who wants to watch television at 6 o’clock in the morning?’ But he got a big audience, which I inherited at 7, so therefore I had a bigger audience.”

York remembers Burns as one of the hardest-working people in television, selling his own advertising by personally calling on area businesses. “Eddy had a talent for, number one, playing the fiddle. Number two was just talking to people. He would absolutely assure you that he was very genuinely interested in whatever it is you were doing or selling or whoever you are,” says York. “Eddy made a bit of money, and when somebody asks me, I say, ‘Well, I think he owns the south end of Blount County . . . The big [television] bosses from Cincinnati came to town once and Country Boy described them as ‘tall hogs at the trough.’ They loved it!” &

Dead Folks: Business/World Affairs

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Dead Folks: Business/World Affairs

Remembrances of notable individuals who passed away in 2009.

By J.R. Taylor, David Pelfrey, Christina Crowe, and Ed Reynolds

January 21, 2010Roy Disney
At the time of his death, some of the short obituary entries read: Roy Disney, businessman.

They got that right. The last Disney family member to be involved with company clearly possessed the business acumen—and sheer willpower—to twice rescue the mammoth enterprise from spiraling into financial and creative irrelevance. In the movie industry, Roy is known as “the man who saved Disney.”




	Roy Disney (click for larger version)

Roy was prepared for that destiny almost from childhood. His uncle Walt obviously instilled in him an abiding fondness for storytelling through animation. His father, Roy O. Disney, ran the business end of the Walt Disney Company in those early years; fierce and long-lasting disputes between Roy O. and Walt about money revealed to Roy, Jr., that there was much more to the Wonderful World of Disney than just cartoons. He worked for the company during the 1950s and ’60s producing True Life Adventures, an Oscar-winning series of wildlife documentaries that eventually became a staple of Walt Disney’s Sunday night TV program.

After years of producing shorts about injured owls, lonesome cougars, and mischievous raccoons, Roy joined the board of directors when Walt died in 1967. The lackluster production of the 1970s-model Disney company left him with not much to do, so Roy departed, established the Shamrock Holdings investment company, and made several hundred million dollars in real estate deals and corporate raids over the next two decades. Still technically a member of the board, but suddenly no longer dependent on Disney stock holdings for his livelihood, by the early 1980s Roy was a formidable force—aka a billionaire with an opinion. It was his opinion in 1984 that a big change was in order for the Walt Disney Company.

Through some bold corporate maneuvers and a very showy “departure” that rattled shareholders, Roy pushed aside management and installed Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg at the top. This period, known as “the reanimation of Disney,” brought a tide of animated hits, box office bonanzas, retail stores, toys, clothing lines, cable shows, and something called Pixar. Two decades later, when company profits were declining again, Roy noticed that Eisner was cutting corners with new theme park construction, shutting him out of new creative development meetings, and alienating the management at Pixar. Shoving everyone out was more difficult during Roy’s second “Save Disney” campaign, but long story short: Eisner no longer has a Golden Pass, and Pixar/Apple Computer head Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest shareholder. At Roy Disney’s passing, Shamrock Holdings was a $2 billion enterprise. (79, stomach cancer) —David Pelfrey

Oscar G. Mayer, Jr.
The biggest name in wieners died this year, but he wasn’t the first Oscar Mayer to make it big in hot dogs. Oscar F. Mayer started the meatpacking empire that bears the name. He died in 1955 and the company was taken over by Oscar G. Mayer—who passed away in 1965. It was left to Oscar G. Mayer, Jr., to see his name become a memorable commercial jingle. There was a time in the early 1970s when everyone’s baloney had a first name and a last name spelled out by cute kids on national TV. Mayer’s death marked the end of a long retirement, as he left the company after celebrating its first billion-dollar year in 1977. Sadly, no one thought to build an Oscar Mayer Wienerhearse. (95, natural causes) —J.R.T.

Jack Kemp
A self-described “bleeding-heart conservative,” former New York Republican congressman and vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp was a staunch believer in tax cuts and supply-side economic policy who often embraced elements of social liberalism. He was a bit of a pariah in conservative circles for his support of affirmative action and welfare. Kemp’s sensitivity to urban problems prompted the first President Bush to appoint him as chief of Housing and Urban Development.




	Jack Kemp (click for larger version)

A former pro quarterback who led the Buffalo Bills to a pair of AFL championships in the 1960s, his camaraderie with black athletes during his playing days was one reason he strongly encouraged the GOP to actively seek support from minorities. As president of the AFL Players Association, he convinced the league to move its 1965 all-star game to Houston after black players threatened to boycott the game in New Orleans following ugly incidents of discrimination. He later claimed that sports steeled him for the harshness of political life. “Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics: I’d already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy.” Among his favorite memories is going to Red Square in Moscow, where he was amused that the line at a McDonald’s restaurant was longer than the one to see Lenin’s tomb. (73, cancer) —Ed Reynolds

Let Freedom Ride, and Ring

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Let Freedom Ride, and Ring

By Ed Reynolds

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A Freedom Ride passenger, still overcome by shock and smoke, remains near the burning bus near Anniston. (Photograph by Joseph Postiglione, courtesy Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.) (click for larger version)

April 28, 2011

In May of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights organization, sponsored buses carrying interracial passengers on journeys into the South to determine if Southern states were complying with federal interstate transportation laws (earlier Supreme Court decisions ordered the desegregation of interstate travel facilities). Dubbed the Freedom Riders, the trips met with opposition in South Carolina and Georgia, but it was Alabama where the resistance turned particularly violent, with passengers beaten by segregationists in both Birmingham and Anniston. The images of brutality propelled our state into notoriety as a primary battleground where black Americans sought equal rights.

More than 400 black and white Americans suffered violent threats and beatings on their forays into the Deep South during a six-month stretch of southbound journeys. Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Wounded Knee; Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple; The Murder of Emmett Till) has filmed a documentary called Freedom Riders, which includes interviews with the brave riders as well as comments from government officials and reporters from that era. Nelson’s documentary is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. The documentary will premier nationally on PBS as part of the “American Experience” series on Monday, May 16. For more information, visit: www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/about.

Other events occurring in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders include an exhibit of photographs taken by Anniston Star reporter Joseph Postiglione of the beatings that took place in Anniston. That exhibit will run through May 22 at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (520 16th Street North) in the Odessa Woolfolk Gallery. Details: 328-9696; www.bcri.org/index.html. In addition, 40 students from 33 states, China, and Tajikistan will participate in the 2011 Student Freedom Ride—a re-creation of the Freedom Riders’ expeditions. &

Dribbling Around the World

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Dribbling Around the World

The Harlem Globetrotters bring their basketball showmanship to Samford University.

By Ed Reynolds

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March 04, 2010

After almost nine decades, the Harlem Globetrotters continue to mesmerize audiences with their fancy dribbling, surreal shooting skills, and rodeo clown antics—all performed to the melodic strains of a whistled “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Their win/loss record is untouchable. Victorious in 98.4% of their games, the Globetrotters have more than 22,000 wins against 345 losses, the most recent defeat coming in March of 2006, when they lost 87–83 to a team of college all-stars. Their most important victory, however, changed the face of basketball.




	“Flight Time” Lang soars for a dunk.

In 1948, the Globetrotters defeated the world champion Minneapolis Lakers in the Globetrotters’ hometown of Chicago. That’s where the all-black Harlem Globetrotters were organized and coached by a white, London-born Polish Jew named Abe Saperstein, a brilliant promoter who took over the team in 1928, eventually establishing them as the most famous athletes in the world. It was 1968 before the team finally played a game in Harlem. While Saperstein was viewed by some as breaking down racial barriers, others saw him as a P.T. Barnum type staging a minstrel show to entertain white audiences.

Originally “Saperstein’s New York Globetrotters,” the name was changed to “Harlem” because the Manhatttan neighborhood was the mecca of black culture during the first half of the 20th century. Initially, there were only five Globetrotters, forcing Saperstein to wear a uniform under his overcoat when coaching in case the team needed a substitute player. In 1934, most of his players quit after the owner stopped splitting game receipts among the team (often as much as $40 a player) and instead paid salaries that amounted to $7.50 a game. Originally a serious basketball team that performed their entertainment routine only when leading by large margins, the Globetrotters’ style evolved into their now-legendary showboating after Saperstein formed a new team.

The victory over the Minneapolis Lakers proved that a black team could compete with a white team at the highest level of professional basketball. The landmark win, however, ended the Globetrotters’ monopoly on signing the top black athletes available, as black players began to flock to the higher paying NBA. Nate “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first Globetrotter lured to the big leagues when he signed with the New York Knicks in 1950.

An international tour in 1952 captivated the world, transforming players such as Goose Tatum and Marques Haynes into superstars. (A favorite trick had Tatum hiking the ball through his legs, football-style, to Haynes, who then kicked it into the goal from half court.) The world tour featured every venue imaginable. A game in Italy was played in an empty swimming pool where basketball goals were set up in the pool’s deep end. Concrete tennis courts were the norm in Thailand. In Argentina, Eva Perón tossed the ball up for the opening tip-off, and the team sold out eight consecutive games at Wembley Stadium, a huge soccer venue in London. Rain was never a deterrent, as the Globetrotters donned rainhats and carried umbrellas during a thunderstorm in France. Though admired around the world, on their return to the United States the team was banned from the campus of Louisiana State University in 1953 when the school’s president said their presence would threaten “our way of life.”

In 1948, the Globetrotters signed their only one-armed player, Boid Buie, who averaged 18 points a game. Wilt Chamberlain joined the team in 1958 for one year because the NBA refused to sign players who left college early. Among the seven-foot-tall Chamberlain’s biggest fans was Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who was in the audience when the Globetrotters played in Moscow at Lenin Central Stadium. The team signed its first female player in 1985. The first Asian player joined in 2002 and without a doubt must be the oddest named Globetrotter ever: Sharavjamts “Shark” Tserenjanhor, from Mongolia.

“We have all ethnic backgrounds playing for us,” says current Globetrotter Herb “Moo Moo” Evans during a recent phone call. “We currently have two Puerto Rican guys playing for us, we’ve had eight ladies play for us, we’ve had Caucasians, we’ve had Chinese. Predominantly, we’ve had African American guys but we don’t discriminate against anybody . . . as long as you can make the fans happy, and can go out there and play basketball.” &

The Harlem Globetrotters will play the Washington Generals on Thursday, March 11 at the Pete Hanna Center at Samford University. Ticket prices range from $23 to $65. For more information visit www.tinyurl.com/ylbeh67 or call 726-4343.

The Merry Prankster

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The Merry Prankster

Baseball legend Jimmy Piersall, who will throw out the first pitch at the Rickwood Classic on May 28, still calls ‘em as he sees ‘em.

By Ed Reynolds

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May 15, 2008
In his second autobiography, The Truth Hurts, former Major League baseball player Jimmy Piersall opined, “Probably the best thing that ever happened to me was going nuts. Whoever heard of Jimmy Piersall until that happened?” Though he had won two Golden Glove awards for his fielding prowess, Piersall was not well known until he had a nervous breakdown. He was noted for clowning around to entertain fans as well as for his quick temper, but after having a series of violent outbursts, the Boston Red Sox sent him to their Birmingham Barons farm team in 1952. In Birmingham, he once shot an umpire with a water pistol while at bat, then went to the dugout roof behind home plate to heckle the ump for ejecting him. After he was thrown out of several games, the Red Sox organization removed him from the Birmingham team and placed him in a Massachusetts mental hospital.Piersall’s life was chronicled in the movie Fear Strikes Out, based on his book of the same title. Anthony Perkins starred as Piersall and Karl Malden played his father, a man who relentlessly pushed his son to Major League success. Diagnosed as bipolar, Piersall began using lithium to address his mood swings. He’s been taking it successfully for nearly four decades.




	Jimmy Piersall’s 1967 Topps baseball card. (click for larger version)

Piersall will attend the Rickwood Classic on May 28 to throw out the first pitch and sign a few autographs. During a recent telephone conversation, he spoke of changes in baseball, the presidential election, and broadcasting with the legendary Harry Caray. At age 79, Piersall sounds as mischievous as ever. When I thanked him for his time, he replied, “Well, that will be $500 [laughs] . . . I hope I gave you enough bullsh**, because I’m getting so old I don’t always remember things like I used to.”

Black & White: What memories do you have of Birmingham when you were playing here in the early 1950s?

Jimmy Piersall: I was a kid when I was in Birmingham, I was about 20 years old. It was the turning point in my life in baseball. The fans were great. The African-American fans used to sit in right-center field and they’d really cheer me on. We had a great year there.

Were you diagnosed as bipolar before you were sent down to Birmingham?

There were no problems when I was in Birmingham, I was high-strung. I remember I shot a water pistol at the umpire at home plate. . . . Hey, there used to be this clothing store called Blach’s and if you hit a home run, you got a free suit!

You once said that you wound up being more successful than those who said you were crazy.

I always said the best thing that happened to me was going nuts. I got recognition. Every writer said I’d never play again, except for one. I wrote the book Fear Strikes Out, then they did the movie. Karl Malden played my father. When I was playing for the Angels, I got to know him, he looked just like my dad. I got to know Edward G. Robinson. He told me, “Don’t change your ways,” and I guess that’s why I got in so much trouble, because I didn’t [laughs].

You eventually started taking medication for your unpredictable behavior.

I’ve been taking lithium for about 35 years, and it sorta slowed me down. I don’t know if I could have played ball as well if I was taking it at the time, but I do know it’s helped me though my life. I take three a day, and I advise other people to take it if needed. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in taking that stuff.

I’ve read conflicting accounts about your 100th home run. One is that you ran the bases in reverse, starting with third, and the other is that you ran the correct order but facing backward.

[Laughs] I ran facing backward in the correct order. That was the only thing I really planned. Everybody used to write that I was “zany,” but I would say, “Yes, but I’m not an alcoholic like most of you writers.” They were real drunks back then.

Did the umpires allow players to get away with more back then?

In those days, we would go to the mound [when batting, to confront a pitcher who hit them with the ball] and the umpires wouldn‘t throw you out. The game has gotten very dull because the umpires got too much control. The umpires don’t want you to breathe on them. Fans like to see umpires being argued with. When we played, I can remember umpires telling me, “Look, you’ve got two minutes for your act. Now get outta here!”

Any thoughts on the presidential race?

We’re in deep sh** no matter who gets in. They’re liars. They make up all this sh** and they never follow through with it.

Hasn’t it always been that way, though?

Yeah, it’s always been that way. JFK was a favorite of mine, I used to play golf with him when he was a senator. He didn’t have to worry about helping people that were giving him all that money. He had all the money he wanted from his dad.

Did you know Joe DiMaggio? Because if you did, that makes two guys you knew who slept with Marilyn Monroe.

I had an opportunity to work with Joe when we were both in Oakland. I was in sales and doing a little coaching. Joe was in public relations for Finley [legendary maverick Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley]. . . . Joe was a very quiet man. Very, very, very quiet man. You always wondered how he married Marilyn Monroe, he was so quiet. I used to say he must have the biggest dick in the town. [DiMaggio] was a great player. When I was a kid, I’d watch him when he’d hit against Bob Feller and go five-for-five in Yankee Stadium . . . In those days, I never worried about autographs. I used to walk down along the dugouts when they were hitting at batting practice just to be able to see their faces so that when I was listening to it on radio I could know how they looked. Today, they’ve got the television, which is a great help.

You had an interesting broadcasting career working with Harry Caray, didn’t you?

The [Chicago] White Sox general manager offered me an audition with Harry, so I worked three games with him, and boy, they liked it and they gave me a contract and I worked with Harry for seven years. It was really a great experience because Harry taught me an awful lot about radio. He said to me, “You know the game, say it.” Harry and I were working for the last place team for three years, and a great writer for the [Chicago] Tribune, Mike Royko, was putting together a show and he asked Harry and I to go on. All of a sudden, Royko says to me, “Why are these wives trying to get you fired?” The wives were going to the sponsors to try to get me fired because I was telling the truth. I said, “Well, they don’t know anything about that. They’re a bunch of horny broads.” If you ask people in Chicago now, they’ll say we’re the best announcers they ever had together, because we’d be needling each other. One time I said to Harry, “Did you pay your alimony, Harry?” And he said, “Yeah . . . Did you take your pills today?” because I was all excited about something. [laughs] He was a great baseball man. He knew the game. Some of these analysts today are right, but they talk too much. They go on and on. The game is on the field, not in your mouth . . . Baseball makes a life for a lot of people. Even though they are having trouble with the steroids, I can’t understand how the government can [get] involved in that stuff. . . They’ve already made new rules, and they’ve already set up situations where they would catch them. And it hasn’t hurt baseball attendance . . . baseball fans are great fans. It’s an easy game to understand. Soccer is so tough to understand. The only ones who understand it are the ones who play it. It’s great for kids. I think that’s why baseball is losing so much talent because they don’t have as many kids playing Little League and Pony League.

Were there any chemical boosts similar to steroids when you were playing?

We had greenies. They called them “greenies,” they were uppers and downers. You can say one thing: I didn’t need ‘em, I’ll tell you that! [laughs] As soon as I got out of bed in the morning, I was hopped! I didn’t take nothin’. If I had taken lithium, I don’t think I would have been as good a player. Because I had my own way of playing and my own knowledge of the game and knowing how to play the game and knowing how to think the game.

Did you really climb the backstop behind home plate one time, as Anthony Perkins did in Fear Strikes Out?

No, no. That was in the movie, Hollywood did that stuff. If I had thought of it, I would have done it. [Laughs] That was a terrible movie. They rewrote the whole book. The book is very accurate and makes sense.

I’m guessing you were not as nuts as Perkins portrayed you?

Well, Anthony Perkins was a fag. He was a nice guy, a great actor, but he was a fag. I’m the only guy that ever had his part played by a fag. And I have nothing against fags, either [laughs]. &

The Rickwood Classic will be held Wednesday, May 28, 12:35 p.m., at Rickwood Field. Admission is $9. For details call 988-3200, or visit www.barons.com.

Peace on Earth

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Peace on Earth

For nearly five decades, the Independent Presbyterian Church Choir has made its Christmas concert distinctive.

By Ed Reynolds

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The IPC choir at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, Italy, after singing a Mass at St. Peter’s. (click for larger version)

December 13, 2007

As with holiday seasons past, the Independent Presbyterian Church (IPC) choir will present its annual Christmas concert on Sunday, December 16. Few holiday rituals are more fulfilling than a late afternoon spent inside the church’s magnificent sanctuary listening to the choir and accompanying strings and brass instrumentation. This year’s presentation will include Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols.”

I first discovered the IPC Christmas concerts a couple of decades ago when the choir was under the direction of Joseph Schreiber, in particular their presentation of “In the Bleak Mid-Winter.” (Schreiber once described the song to me as both “gorgeous and kind of haunting.” Haunting, indeed. The first few phrases paint a desolate picture that sends chills down the spine: “In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.”) A graduate of Northwestern University, Schreiber introduced Birmingham to world-class choral music upon his arrival at Independent Presbyterian in 1964 as church organist and music director. Jeff McLelland, current organist and music director at IPC, continues the Schreiber legacy. “Joseph Schreiber raised the level of excellence in chorale singing for church choirs [in the area],” says McLelland. “He established a wonderful tradition of music here, both with a professional-like choir plus offering quality concerts that are free to the public. It’s part of the church’s mission to continue the development of music and arts for public consumption.”

Louise Beard sang alto in Schreiber’s choir for 34 years. “Joe Schreiber sort of took church music out of just your—I hate to say ‘run of the mill’—but he put church chorale music on a professional level,” remembers Beard. “He was all about the music and anything that made the music right, which included a professional attitude, being on time, doing your part. He did not put up with lateness or absence without his knowledge. And he had the ability to make people want to do that. The music was an incredible experience.” Beard retired from the IPC choir after Schreiber stepped down in 1998. “After being there every Wednesday and Friday—and that was minimal—there were Tuesday night extra rehearsals, Saturday morning extra rehearsals—all kinds of stuff. But you wanted to do it, because the musical payback was so fabulous.”

Schreiber passed away on September 20, 2007. Independent Presbyterian has commissioned the building of a new organ to be named after the late director, with installation scheduled for 2012.

The IPC Choir Christmas Concert will be presented on December 16 at 4 p.m. The church is located at 3100 Highland Avenue across from Rushton Park. Call 933-1830 or visit www.ipc-usa.org for more information.

Abandoned in the Flood

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Abandoned in the Flood

Volunteers from across the country joined in the heartbreaking task of recovering pets from the hurricane-ravaged coast.

By Ed Reynolds

October 06, 2005Timmy DeRusha is Loretta Lynn’s tour manager. With a week off the road from a current performance trek, DeRusha didn’t lounge around his Tennessee home resting up for the next round of concerts. Instead, he spent the time in flood-ravaged New Orleans rescuing dogs and cats left behind when their owners fled the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina.

Along with his father-in-law and brother-in-law, DeRusha loaded a pickup truck and cargo van with medical supplies and food donated by Nashville-area veterinarians, then headed to New Orleans. “The smell of that city . . . You could smell it from miles away, driving in over the bridge,” DeRusha recalled in a recent telephone conversation. With signs reading “Disaster Response Animal Rescue” posted on their vehicles, DeRusha’s group was escorted by a local fisherman who had previously supplied boats to various animal rescuers as needed. Guards posted outside the city allowed the group in after recognizing the fisherman. “We were armed, because [the guards] said that we might run across someone who wasn’t supposed to be in [New Orleans],” said DeRusha.

At some homes, DeRusha’s crew brought out dogs and cats while National Guard troops removed dead humans from the house next door. “People that left had spray-painted ‘PETS INSIDE’ or ‘DOG NEEDS RESCUED’ on plywood-covered windows in hopes that somebody would be coming along to get them,” said DeRusha. “But some of the animals had gotten stuck on balconies or rooftops and weren’t able to get down.” He said most of the animals were not vicious. “Most were traumatized, because they hadn’t had food or fresh water for two weeks,” DeRusha explained. “After we gave them dog treats and water and they realized that we were there to help them, then it was no problem at all. A lot of them were just really, really scared because all of a sudden the person that had been there taking care of them, in their mind, had deserted them. Then all this stuff happened that they had never seen happen before, with all the water coming in. The animals were survivors. Unfortunately, there were a lot of animals that we were too late for.”




An animal rescue volunteer coaxes a dog to safety. (click for larger version)

DeRusha and his crew used poles with nooses to catch dogs. “If they were too vicious, we just left fresh food and water. I’d say that nearly half the animals that we rescued were pit bulls. We were working in the inner-city area, mostly. That’s obviously what they do there, they raise dogs to fight. Some of the dogs needed rescuing whether there was a hurricane or not. They weren’t being taken care of . . . One was a three-month old pit bull pup. He tried to act like the most vicious of all, but when we gave him some food he began acting like a typical puppy.”

Other scenarios were simply horrifying. A pair of pit bulls were discovered in one abandoned home. The female was emaciated, though it was obvious she had delivered a litter days earlier. DeRusha could not locate the litter and surmised that the male, who appeared well-fed, had cannibalized it.

Rescued animals were crated, with the address of recovery marked on the crate so pets could possibly be reunited with owners. For five days straight, DeRusha hauled approximately 30 dogs and cats each day to Tylertown, Mississippi, where a temporary animal sanctuary had been erected on five acres of farmland.

The Greater Birmingham Humane Society (GBHS) brought more than 300 rescued animals back to Birmingham from Tylertown, Hattiesburg, and Jackson, Mississippi, where animals had been sheltered prior to rescue groups such as GBHS arriving. GBHS director Jacque Meyer was impressed by the number of people who came from across the country to help in the animal rescue effort. “It’s been very, very sad, but I am amazed at the number of people in the United States that have made an effort, using vacation time and their own money, to rescue these animals.” Meyer said that an abandoned warehouse in the Gonzalez area of New Orleans sat on higher ground that had stayed relatively dry. Abandoned animals migrated to the warehouse area, though some people were observed dumping off animals at the site. Food and water were supplied to the homeless animals at the site by the few officials allowed into New Orleans until the animals could be taken away.

Approximately 75 percent of the animals that Jacque Meyer brought to Birmingham were dogs, the rest being cats, along with an occasional goat or pig. They were medically treated at GBHS until the North Shore Animal League, an organization that finds homes for more than 30,000 animals yearly, took them to its New York state headquarters where they will be housed until either the owners find their animals through the web site www.petfinder.com, or until the animals can be adopted.

Meyer said the trauma endured by abandoned animals continued to affect many even weeks after being rescued. “Some wouldn’t sleep lying down because they were so used to standing up so they could survive,” she explained, adding that some rescued dogs kept trying to swim each time they were lifted up into the arms of shelter workers, even though they had been away from flood waters for days. &

All-American Cheating Game

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All-American Cheating Game

By Ed Reynolds

“It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught” has been the unofficial motto of drivers and mechanics on the NASCAR circuit for more than 50 years. A related phrase, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t racing,” hearkens to the origin of a sport sired by drivers who developed their skills hauling moonshine (and eluding law enforcement) through the backroads of the Appalachian Mountains at 100-plus miles per hour. Cheating in a race car is as All-American as major leaguers hitting home runs with corked bats. Year after year fines are imposed, but cheaters simply say that others are infinitely more guilty of flaunting the rules. After paying slap-on-the-wrist fines, drivers whine all the way to the bank while plotting their next devious move.

At one time stock car racing may have been the sport of rednecks, but it was a bunch of innovative, scientific rednecks who skillfully souped up automobile engines allowing them to achieve the break-neck speeds for which NASCAR is revered. “Being creative is my job. If I’m going to get fined and penalized for being creative, then that’s just part of it,” said driver Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus, just after his first major penalty three years ago. The following year, Knaus was busted for rigging a refrigerant near the fuel line (cooled fuel provides greater combustion— and therefore more speed—than heated fuel). In 1986, NASCAR inspectors found a metal box containing copper coils and dry ice in Sterling Marlin’s car; the device was chilling and shaking the car’s gasoline to create a high-octane martini.

This year, NASCAR suspended Knaus for two races when it was discovered after the March 13 race in Las Vegas that the winning car Jimmie Johnson drove was lower than NASCAR’s minimum height requirement. The suspension was later lifted after the car’s owner, Rick Hendrick, complained that the increased height was a result of mechanical issues during the race, yet not an intentional effort to break the law. However, Hendrick’s questionable tactics may extend beyond the racetrack. In 1997, he was found guilty of mail fraud, after which he was pardoned by Bill Clinton during the president’s forgiveness spree in 2000. This after Hendrick’s pal Hugh McColl, CEO of Bank America, donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation before writing a letter to the president on Hendrick’s behalf. Though the two-race suspension of crew chief Knaus was dropped, the $35,000 fine and loss of points for driver Johnson remain.




Fabled for his years running moonshine, Junior Johnson spent a year in prison in 1956 after he was caught hauling wood to his father’s corn liquor still. President Reagan pardoned him in 1985. (click for larger version)

In 1975, when Richard Petty was in desperate need of a caution flag (in order to lure the other drivers into a pit stop, thus allowing Petty to catch back up to the field), racer Buddy Arrington suddenly stopped his car on the high side of the track. The car was out of the way, so NASCAR kept the green flag out. Arrington then drove his car to a busier section of the racetrack and stopped. The caution flag promptly came out. Petty got his lap back and eventually won the race. Earlier that week, Petty had sold a car transporter (a complete portable mechanic shop that hauls the car from race to race) to Arrington, who was an independent driver operating on a shoestring budget. Speculation was that it was one heck of a sweetheart deal, and somebody still owed someone something.

Petty is reported to have once said that teams must learn to “cheat neat,” although there was nothing neat about Petty’s brother Maurice installing an oversized engine in the blue number 43 at Charlotte in 1983. At the time, the $35,000 fine was the highest ever levied. Petty, NASCAR’s poster boy, was embarrassed and fumed that he was only the driver; his brother Maurice was responsible for the engines.

Though some car owners say that taking away wins following rules violations is necessary to end cheating, NASCAR reportedly feels that this would only confuse and infuriate fans to learn that the winner on Sunday is not the declared victor on Monday. According to Vice President Jim Hunter, NASCAR remains committed to “the integrity of the sport.” The last time NASCAR took a victory away for rules violations was when it stripped Fireball Roberts of his Daytona win in 1955. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. spun out deliberately at a 2004 NASCAR race in Bristol to put the race under caution because he was about to lose a lap. He got busted when he bragged over the two-way radio to his crew that he did it on purpose. NASCAR was eavesdropping and fined him $10,000. Earnhardt later admitted that boasting on the radio was rather stupid. “What I did wasn’t necessarily the best plan. My mom even admitted that,” he said after the race.

During practice for the 1982 Daytona 500, the rear bumper on Bobby Allison’s Buick Regal had been inadvertently functioning as a parachute that trapped air, slowing the Buick considerably. Nothing could be done about the bumper because it was a “stock” piece of equipment, just like those on Regals purchased from showroom floors. Early in the race, Allison got tapped from behind and the rear bumper came off cleanly. Allison was then able to increase his speed and won the race. Afterwards, as rivals cried foul, he admitted that the bumper had been attached with a flimsy wire welder rather than with the usual heavy-duty welding machine.

Gary Nelson, currently the chief cop for NASCAR’s policing of cheating, was often praised for his skillful skirting of the rules when he served as Darrell Waltrip’s crew chief. Nelson used to flaunt the minimum weight requirement by rigging Waltrip’s car to unload 80 pounds of shotgun pellets onto the track as the pace laps were being run before the race. “If you don’t cheat, you look like an idiot. If you do it and you don’t get caught, you look like a hero. If you do it and get caught, you look like a dope,” was Waltrip’s philosophy.

The legendary Junior Johnson (immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s 1960s Esquire piece “The Last American Hero”) attached 100-pound bands of lead inside each wheel. On the first pit stop, he’d replace the wheels with conventional ones and suddenly be 400 pounds lighter. NASCAR soon learned to weigh cars after the race as well as before.

The reason NASCAR has such a thick rulebook is due primarily to the greatest racing mechanic ever, the late Smokey Yunick. Yunick, in turn, gave stock car racing a lot of rules to write. The mechanic claimed that he never really cheated, because anything not specifically in the rulebook was legitimate in his eyes. NASCAR rules stipulated that a gas tank hold no more than 22 gallons, but said nothing about the size of the fuel line. So Yunick installed a gas line that was two inches in diameter (everyone else ran a half-inch diameter line) and was also much longer than those of competitors. The line held an extra five gallons of gas. NASCAR limited the size of fuel lines the next year and began watching Yunick like a hawk.




Richard Petty called his 200th (and final) win on July 4, 1984, at Daytona Speedway his most memorable because President Ronald Reagan was in attendance. In 1996, when Petty was running for North Carolina secretary of state, he was charged with off-track shenanigans in a hit-and-run incident after he bumped another driver (whom Petty decided was driving too slow) from behind several times before passing him on a Carolina two-lane highway. All charges were dropped. (click for larger version)

At the 1967 Daytona 500, Yunick’s Chevy was actually a slightly smaller version of opposing Chevelles, making the car narrower and lower to the ground so it could slice through the air faster. The next year NASCAR mandated body templates so that stock cars remained identical in size to the production models. “As far as cheating goes, they’ll never stop it,” said Yunick. “There will always be some guy that’ll think of something that’s a little smarter than the average cat, but the reason there ain’t any more of it on a big scale is that the only way it can be done successfully is if only one person knows about it.”

In the greatest cheating story ever told (which Yunick always denied), NASCAR confiscated the fuel tank from Yunick’s black and gold number 13 Chevelle one year at Daytona. As he sat in the inspection area, inspectors chided him for nine rules violations. With supposedly no gas in the car, Yunick suddenly cranked it up and drove off, hollering over his shoulder, “Make that ten!” &

Aaron’s Dream weekend will be held at Talladega Superspeedway April 30 through May 1, featuring the Aaron’s 499 Nextel Cup Series race on Sunday. For more information, call 877-462-3342 or visit www.talladegasuperspeedway.com.