Category Archives: Birmingham

Visionaries

Alabama’s Sight Savers America is on a mission to spread the gift of sight to the nation’s disadvantaged children.

April 15, 2010

No less an authority than Dr. Lanning B. Kline, chairman of the Eyesight Foundation of Alabama and a UAB Department of Ophthalmology professor, refers to Jeff Haddox as a “visionary.” Haddox, founder and CEO of Sight Savers America, is determined that every child in Alabama have access to affordable vision treatment. Haddox had told Kline of his dream to one day dispatch a mobile vision-testing lab throughout the poverty-plagued Black Belt region of central Alabama to conduct one-day eye examination clinics for underserved children who have little or no access to eyecare. Kline was initially skeptical, assuming that many families would not follow through on addressing a child’s poor eyesight due to financial constraints or a lack of vision specialists in the region. He soon learned that Haddox planned a more comprehensive solution. “Haddox was closing the loop by not only providing the eye exams but also free eyeglasses at the same time. His staff would then follow up every year to make sure the children were getting the care they need,” Kline wrote in the UAB Department of Ophthalmology newsletter Vision.




Sight Savers America founder Jeff Haddox delivers an assistive device to a young girl with vision problems whose family could not otherwise afford such a solution. “I realized that poor vision was adversely affecting tens of thousands of children in our state each year.” (click for larger version)

Originally established as Sight Savers of Alabama, the Pelham-based nonprofit organization served 11 children in 1997, their first year of operation. In 2008, the group branched into Mississippi, prompting the name change to Sight Savers America. In 2010, the organization will serve 30,000 children in Alabama as well as 5,000 in Mississippi, with a staff of 22 case workers. Their staff totals 30, with an additional 350 volunteers.

Before he started Sight Savers, Haddox studied eye diseases. “I had worked for over 20 years doing eye research through grants from the National Eye Institute,” Haddox says. “I realized that poor vision was adversely affecting tens of thousands of children in our state each year. This was largely the result of poor public awareness about the importance of eye care in young children and the inability of children to recognize and articulate their vision needs.”

According to Haddox, many parents are unaware that children should see an eye doctor by age four; some vision problems can be corrected if they are addressed at an early age. Sight Savers offers children from low-income families the opportunity for corrective eyecare. “If they’re low income, then those children are sent to doctors who are in our network, who will give free examinations and a free pair of glasses,” Haddox explains. “If we aren’t able to find a free eye exam or a free pair of glasses, then we pay for it. That happens about 15 percent of the time. We have over 400 optometrists and ophthalmologists in the state of Alabama on our network, and many of them give us a few free eye exams a month. We might have to send a doctor four patients one month, so we would pay for the fourth one.” (The organization is funded by the State of Alabama and private donations.)

Sight Savers began a partnership with the Alabama Department of Education in 2003, implementing the first program in the state dedicated to comprehensive follow-up of individual children with vision problems. Those in kindergarten, second, and fourth grades are vision-screened through the public schools. Each visually impaired student is assigned a Sight Savers case worker who schedules eyecare appointments, makes reminder phone calls, and arranges transportation, if needed. Each case is then added to a database, allowing Sight Savers America and the state to track students’ vision problems and accompanying treatment.

Haddox has also found that many parents of legally blind children are not aware of the current vision technology available. “Children who are legally blind can actually see, but their vision is very, very poor. They might be standing in a room and be looking at two or three people, and they can see that there are people there, but they can’t necessarily distinguish whether they’re male or female, or which person is which. We identify these children (whose families can’t afford expensive vision aids) and we purchase assistive technology for them. That can be anything from a hand-held magnifier to a closed-circuit magnifier called a CCTV. That machine is the gold standard for what we do.”

A CCTV is a device that includes a monitor with either a hand-held camera or camera mounted above a viewing area that allows an object, photo, or page from a book to be magnified up to 75 times. The machines cost as much as $2,500. “The CCTVs really change these children’s lives, from not being able to read any kind of print to being able to put any book or magazine under the camera,” Haddox says. “A girl putting her make-up on can point the camera at her face and she can apply her own make-up for the first time. Or to see a child who takes that device and points it at their mother and sees the details of their mother’s face that they usually can’t. One little girl put her puppy under there, she’d never seen his face.” &

For additional details, visit www.sightsaversofalabama.org. Donations are also accepted via links at the site.

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.

Session Man

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Session Man

How many people do you know who almost joined The Rolling Stones? That experience is just one of many that comprise the unusual musical odyssey of Birmingham guitarist Wayne Perkins.

By Ed Reynolds

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October 29, 2009

In 1973, Island Records released Catch a Fire, the major-label debut of Jamaican band The Wailers, featuring a then-unknown Bob Marley. The album includes the reggae classics “Concrete Jungle” and “Stir It Up.” Few music fans are aware, however, that those songs’ memorable guitar parts (on one of the first albums that helped turn reggae into a worldwide sensation) were played by Birmingham guitar virtuoso Wayne Perkins. Decades later, on a recent afternoon at his Center Point home, Perkins recalls his memory of the session.

The Wailers had recorded the album’s basic tracks in Jamaica a year earlier. Marley took the tapes to London where he supervised overdubs suggested by Island Records president Chris Blackwell to flesh out the Wailers’ barebones sound into something more palatable for American and European audiences. Blackwell brought in Perkins and John “Rabbit” Bundrick, veteran session player and current keyboardist for The Who, to add riffs that went officially uncredited until the album was re-released in a “deluxe edition” in 2001 (the set features both the widely known mix as well as the original Wailers version).

“Chris Blackwell came to Muscle Shoals to record Jim Capaldi’s Oh How We Danced. Paul Kossoff, Free’s guitar player, was there. [Steve] Winwood was there, and all of us became buddies,” says Perkins, who was doing session work at Muscle Shoals Sound at the time. While at the studio, Blackwell heard the band Smith Perkins Smith that Perkins had formed with brothers Tim and Steve Smith, from Homewood. Impressed, Blackwell signed the group and took them to Europe to launch the band’s career. “The first date we ever played was at the Cavern Club in Liverpool,” recalls Perkins. “We were living out our rock ‘n’ roll dream a little bit.” Smith Perkins Smith were soon touring Europe opening for Free, Uriah Heep, Fairport Convention, and Mott the Hoople, among other groups.



A few of the well-known albums Wayne Perkins has performed on. (click for larger version)

In the documentary Bob Marley & the Wailers: Catch a Fire (one in a series covering classic albums), Chris Blackwell says that the Wailers’ record was “enhanced [with overdubs and other elements atypical of reggae] to try and reach a rock market. What I was trying to merge [reggae] into was more of a sort of hypnotic-type feel with a kind of wah-wah [guitar] feel and different sorts of guitar going all the way through, and make it much less a reggae rhythm and more of a sort of drifting feel. . . . It’s particularly distinctive because of Wayne Perkins’ playing . . . this is the sound that started the album. ‘Concrete Jungle’ introduced Bob Marley and the Wailers to the world.”

Perkins continues: “We were in the middle of working on a Smith Perkins Smith album in London, and I ran into Blackwell on the spiral staircase at Island Records. He said that he had some reggae music that he wanted me to try to play on. I really wasn’t familiar with hardcore reggae. He wanted me to ‘do that Southern rock guitar thing, or whatever you do.’ So I met Marley, but just briefly. I didn’t know any of these guys. And the first thing I noticed when I walked downstairs was that the basement was in a fog. Lots of [marijuana] smoke. It was too funny. I tried to get down to business.”

With guitar in hand, waiting to begin recording his part, Perkins requested an explanation of how to approach this music with which he was unfamiliar. “Blackwell explained that the bass drum, sock cymbal, and the snare [drum] are on the one and three [beats]. He told me to ignore the bass guitar because it was more of a lead instrument [as opposed to a bass's typical role as a rhythm instrument]. It’s great music, but it’s kinda weird in that everything feels like it’s being played backwards. ‘Concrete Jungle’ was the very first thing that I was handed. That was the most out-of-character bass part I’d ever heard. But because the keyboards and the guitars stay locked together doing what they’re doing all through the song, that was sorta my saving grace. I thought I could follow the song, but I still didn’t know what I was going to do on guitar. So I started doodling on the front of it, and I told the sound engineer to start over about halfway through it. Then I started picking up a little something here and there. I nailed that guitar solo down on the second or third take, I think. It was a gift from God, because I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And then Marley came into the recording room. He was cartwheeling, man, he couldn’t get over what had just happened to his song, he was so excited. I couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying. And he was cramming this huge joint down my throat and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He got me real, real high.”

Meeting the Muscle Shoals Sound
Though Perkins was only 21 when he played on Catch a Fire, he already had several years of professional studio experience under his belt. He was 15 when he recorded with producer Emory Gordy in Atlanta in the mid-1960s. By age 16, Perkins had dropped out of high school to play music for a living. In 1969, the 18-year-old Perkins moved to Muscle Shoals to work at a studio called Quinvy’s for $100 a week. A year later, he took over lead guitar chores at Muscle Shoals Sound (MSS) when session guitarist, songwriter, and soul singer Eddie Hinton quit to pursue a career as a recording artist. “Eddie told me, ‘I’m leaving here. You want this gig? Duane’s gone and he ain’t coming back. He’s busy,’” Perkins recalls. (Duane Allman played lead guitar on sessions in Muscle Shoals in the late 1960s before forming the Allman Brothers Band.)

Perkins says he will never forget his “job interview” at Muscle Shoals Sound. “I went in to talk to Jimmy Johnson [Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section guitarist and MSS sound engineer]. He handed me a stack of records about two feet tall, and it’s albums of all these different players, all the greatest guitar players,” says Perkins. “Johnson said, ‘I tell you what. You want this job? You want to be one of us? I don’t want to be sitting in the control room with [Atlantic Records executives] Ahmet Ertegun or Jerry Wexler and ask you to give me a little something more like a Cornell Dupree lick or a little more ‘Duane Allman kind of blues’ in style, and you not be able to do so. Any kind of guitar lick I ask you for, I don’t want to see any kind of doubt on your face. You just nod your head and go on with it. Don’t embarrass me in front of Ahmet or Wexler because these guys are our bread and butter.’ So I went home and took about two weeks and consumed that stack of records. And I got the gig.”




Wayne Perkins, left, chatting with Eddie Hinton in Muscle Shoals in the 1970s. Perkins would soon inherit Hinton’s job as lead guitarist for the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios’ house band. (click for larger version)

Perkins recalls an after-hours Joe Cocker session at MSS when the studio’s regular musicians and staff had gone home. “I walked into the recording room with my bass, I’m thumping around. It was me and [drummer] Jim Keltner and Cocker. Everybody’s sitting around high as a kite, didn’t know what to do. They’d been that way all week, hadn’t gotten anything done. And Cocker’s sitting back there rolling these long joints with hash and grass, and apparently something else that I wasn’t aware of. They’re sitting back there in the recording room not doing anything, and then I go back there to check on them and they handed me this joint and I took a couple of hits off of it. I started thumping on my bass and both of my hands started going numb. I went over and laid down on the couch, and I woke up the next morning with the bass still strapped on me. And it’s almost time for a Ronnie Milsap session. Somebody said to me, ‘You better get some coffee.’”

Around the World with Leon Russell
Perkins’ work on the Wailers’ Catch a Fire caught the ears of several prominent names in the music industry, including the Rolling Stones and Leon Russell, with whom Perkins had worked at MSS for the album Leon Russell and the Shelter People. “After Blackwell signed us and got us to England, we started on our second album and got halfway through it, then he stopped it,” Perkins says. Smith Perkins Smith soon broke up. The guitarist returned to the States in 1973 and within a few weeks Leon Russell called to offer him the lead guitar spot in his legendary backing band. “There was a first-class airline ticket to Tulsa waiting for me, and the tour was starting within weeks,” Perkins recalls. “Leon picked me up in this Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud in Tulsa with a couple of chicks, and we go out for steaks bigger than our heads. He told me I had less than a week to learn the Leon Live album, a three-record set. So I said, ‘That ain’t a hell of a lot of time, Leon.’ I didn’t sleep for three or four days. I listened to that album over and over. But thanks to Leon, I got to see the world. With Smith Perkins Smith I had lived in England, toured Europe, and all that. But Russell took me to Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, Hong Kong; it was just unbelievable. Great times. I’d done more before I hit age 25 than most people will ever dream of. For my money, that was the best band I ever played with.”

After a world tour, Russell disbanded the Shelter People. His next backing group was comprised of fellow Oklahomans The Gap Band. “We went out to this place called the Rose Room in Tulsa and there was The Gap Band. And they were kicking ass, the whole place was going crazy,” Perkins says. “So we picked The Gap Band up, but Leon kept the Shelter People drummer—Chuck Blackwell—and me, because Chuck knew where all the changes were, and Leon was always one to throw changes and stuff at you that nobody in the band had ever heard before. We went from first-class airline tickets with the Shelter People to a bus with The Gap Band. Leon wanted to go out and get funky, put his cowboy hat on.”

“Wayne picks up a guitar and does stuff with his fingers that other people can’t do, and they couldn’t do if they worked on it all their lives.” —Boutwell Studios’ Mark Harrelson

It was Russell who coined the nickname bestowed on the Muscle Shoals Sound house band. “Leon came up with the term ‘The Swampers’ for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section when he recorded there. [The Swampers were immortalized in Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama."] Shortly after that, Ronnie Van Zant and them were in Muscle Shoals recording Skynyrd’s first album and I had a copy of Leon’s album [where he mentioned the Muscle Shoals Swampers in the liner notes]. I showed it to Ronnie. Leon had a song on there called “Home Sweet Oklahoma,” which is where Ronnie got the idea for ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’”

Joni Mitchell and a Pink Paisley Guitar
Perkins went to Los Angeles around 1973 to visit Jackson Browne and ended up at A&M studios, where Joni Mitchell was recording her masterpiece Court and Spark. “Yeah, that was a real special thing for me. I stopped in at A&M where Joni was cutting,” recalls Perkins, who also had a romantic fling with Mitchell. Mitchell was recording in a studio across the hall from Browne. “Joni came out of her studio and I said hello and we started talking,” he remembers. “She asked if I wanted to hear what she was working on. Joni and I hit it off. Oh boy, did we ever hit it off!”




Perkins met Joni Mitchell in a Hollywood studio in 1973. He ended up playing guitar on portions of her Court and Spark album. (click for larger version)

“So the next day I went to see her at the place she was sharing with David Geffen over in Beverly Hills—this big, huge mansion. Geffen lived in one half and she lived in the other. I ended up going into the studio with her a couple of nights. I was watching Tom [Scott] overdub instrumental parts on ‘Car on a Hill’ when Joni asked me, ‘Do you hear anything on this?’ I did, but all my gear was with Leon. So we got her band’s equipment but the guitar wouldn’t stay in tune on the bottom three strings, so I told her this wasn’t going to work like I wanted it to. I pointed to this huge anvil guitar case in the studio that had ‘James Burton’ [Elvis Presley's guitar player in the 1970s] written on the side of it. It’s 3 a.m. Joni was hesitant to mess with it. But I flipped the case open and there was that pink paisley Telecaster [Burton's signature guitar]. I told her, ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do some city sounds like you want.’ So I took Burton’s Telecaster and I overdubbed the slide parts on “Car on a Hill” on James Burton’s guitar. When I put the guitar back in the case, I folded the damn strap different than the way I found it, so he’d know somebody had messed with it [laughs].”

“The whole thing sounded real rough, too. It kinda just sucked. It was like the worst garage band I’d ever heard in my life. Then the engineer began recording and it’s like somebody reached out with a magic wand and went, ‘Bing!’ And all of a sudden, it’s the Stones!” —Wayne Perkins, describing his first recording session with the Rolling Stones

Like a Rolling Stone
Guitarist Eric Clapton, with whom Perkins had been hanging out in Jamaica while Clapton was preparing to record There’s One in Every Crowd, contacted the Rolling Stones to arrange an audition for Perkins after Stones guitarist Mick Taylor quit in 1974. “I stayed in Kingston with Clapton for a month or two,” Perkins says. “One morning at the breakfast table Eric said, ‘Did you hear that Mick Taylor quit the Stones?’ And I said, ‘Naww, have they found anybody to take his place?’ Eric said he didn’t think they had, so I said, ‘Well, hell, put in a phone call for me.’ So Clapton called Jagger and told him, ‘Yeah, this boy Perkins can play some guitar.’ So Eric—and Leon Russell—were my references to get to the Stones.” Months earlier, Perkins had played bass on Stones bassist Bill Wyman’s solo debut, Monkey Grip.

Keith Richards, a reggae fanatic, was familiar with Perkins’ work on Catch a Fire. “Far as I know, I was the last one to audition for the Stones job. They had rented a theater in Rotterdam. I basically got off the plane and walked into the audition room,” recalls Perkins. “Keith was sitting on a couch with Bill Wyman. And there was a spotlight in the middle of the room. I set my guitars down and was just standing there, and they’re all looking up at me. I had never met them before. I was standing there in that spotlight. It was kind of understood that that’s where I was supposed to stand because nobody offered a chair. I was talking to Keith when suddenly Jagger and Charlie Watts came up behind me, and they both stood right next to me, really close. Mick and Charlie were looking straight ahead, they wouldn’t even look at me. I looked to each side and both of them are staring straight ahead like they’re posing for an album cover. Then they walked off without saying a word. They put me in the center of this portrait thing that they were doing, like a lineup. They wanted to see if I looked like a Rolling Stone, and I hadn’t even played a note for ‘em yet.”

It is now known that Perkins was competing with Jeff Beck and Peter Frampton, among others, for the job. The Stones eventually chose Ron Wood.

Perkins’ audition impressed the Stones enough that he was invited to play on the sessions that would become the Black and Blue album. “We started out cold on ‘Hand of Fate’ one night. We were just kind of starting from scratch with something that Keith had a musical idea about,” Perkins says. “He had the basic track down, but he didn’t have a bridge, or what they call ‘a middle-eight.’ I was playing a counter-guitar part to Keith, and I started doing this Motown lick that goes along to what he’s playing. And so we’re cooking along there, and Mick’s walking around the room with a tambourine, and he’d go stand in the corner and shake that damn tambourine. And he’s singing to himself, and he’s off in his own world trying to figure out what’s what. The whole thing sounded real rough, too. It kinda just sucked. [Perkins is not the first musician to comment on the Stones' lack of musical finesse.] It was like the worst garage band I’d ever heard in my life. Then the engineer turned on the red light [to begin recording] and it’s like somebody reached out with a magic wand and went, ‘Bing!’ And all of a sudden, it’s the Stones! Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Perkins lived with Richards and his longtime girlfriend Anita Pallenberg for a month or so in a cottage behind the London home of Ron Wood (who was still a member of The Faces at the time). Richards treated Perkins as the new band member. “We started hangin’ out and having a big ol’ time. We got along great,” says Perkins. “But when Mick came into the picture . . . If I was with Mick, it was all right. If I was with Keith, it was all right. But when the two of them got together, I seemed to automatically fall under a microscope without even trying. Keith and Mick were still going at it over me, because I was under the impression from Keith that I was already in the band. Keith was teaching me their songs and gave me two cassettes of about 60 songs that included what the Stones might play on their 1975 tour. While we were in Germany, they had these two rooms and on the walls were [designs] of different stage setups and they were asking me my opinion of which stage I liked. We cut ‘Memory Motel’ from scratch like we did ‘Hand of Fate.’ Keith was on Fender Rhodes, Mick was on grand piano, and I was in some soundbooth with an acoustic guitar and I overdubbed electric guitar later. And then I overdubbed some slide on ‘Fool to Cry.’ We cut like 10 tracks that were just jamming, and then later on they turned this into some stuff, and a couple of those ended up on Tattoo You.” 1981′s Tattoo You, though presented at the time as an album of new songs, was actually cobbled together from unreleased songs recorded from 1973 to 1975. Perkins plays the jaw-dropping guitar solo on “Worried About You.”

Sweet Home Alabama
In 1975, closer to home, Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King had quit the band in the middle of a tour. They continued as a two-guitar act for a year but wanted to return to a three-guitar lineup. “Lynyrd Skynyrd offered me the job, but something didn’t feel right to me,” says Perkins. “I turned them down in December ’76 and the plane crash was in October ’77. I think about that one from time to time. Ronnie [Van Zant] was one of my best friends. I knew all the guys in the band, and I would have made a ton of money. And God knows, fate could have changed and that crash might not have happened.”

One day Perkins went to hear his brother Dale’s band, Alabama Power. “They had a great band and no songs,” he says. “They had the vehicle and I had the gasoline. I had the connections in Hollywood after all these years.” Perkins says that lawyers for the Alabama Power Company were not pleased with the band’s name, so the group changed it to Crimson Tide. “I much preferred the name Alabama Power to Crimson Tide because that’s sacrilege, to me. Crimson Tide is a great name but [the University of Alabama] was already using it.” Crimson Tide released two albums on Capitol Records, the self-titled Crimson Tide in 1978 and Reckless Love in 1979, the latter produced by Donald “Duck” Dunn, bassist for Booker T. and the MGs, with the MGs’ Steve Cropper contributing guitar parts. Crimson Tide became the house band at the Crossroads Club in Roebuck for a couple of years in the late ’70s, where well-known acts such as Yes, Joe Cocker, or Rick Derringer, if they had performed elsewhere in town that day, often showed up to sit in. “That’s one thing about the Crossroads Club. You never knew who would show up,” Perkins says. Crimson Tide split up in 1979. Perkins later released a pair of solo CDs, Mendo Hotel in 1995 and Ramblin’ Heart in 2005, as well as having his songs included on soundtracks for several films and TV shows.

An Impressive Résumé
The wide range of musicians that Perkins has worked with is impressive. In addition to the aforementioned acts, his credits include work with Albert King, the Everly Brothers, Michael Bolton, Millie Jackson, John Prine, Delbert McClinton, Jerry Jeff Walker, Roger McGuinn, Levon Helm, Bobby Womack, and the Oak Ridge Boys, among others.




Perkins and his close pal Stevie Ray Vaughan (left) outside a Memphis studio in 1989. (click for larger version)

Mark Harrelson, co-owner of Birmingham’s Boutwell Studios, first met Perkins in the late 1970s. “Wayne’s been a part of more big time things [musically] than anybody else in Birmingham that I can think of,” Harrelson says. “To be part of that Marley thing, and then to even have a shot at being part the Stones is something that nobody else around here can even come close to. Wayne is first and foremost a player, when you break it right down. He’s a good singer and good songwriter, and he’s had a hand at making some good decisions about production and things like that, too. But the first thing that Wayne does—to me—that is better than anything else that he does is to pick up a guitar and do stuff with his fingers that other people can’t do, and they couldn’t do if they worked on it all their lives. When he went to Muscle Shoals he was a kid, and yet the first time they turned him loose on a session, everybody went, ‘Wow, this kid can really play.’”

“For my money, the best times I’ve had musically interacting with Wayne is when I told him, ‘I need you to play from here to here,’ and he just does something absolutely phenomenal to fill up that space. He’s fabulous at it. Wayne was always fearless at coming up with new ideas and just really nailing stuff.”




	Wayne Perkins today.

Recent Years
In the late 1990s, Perkins began suffering from poor health. Some days, his headaches are almost unbearable, yet he remains determined to forge ahead. Several years ago, he got his I.D. card that officially recognizes his heritage as a native America Indian, and he continues to play bass on occasion with his good friend Lonnie Mack. He’s also working on a new CD. “I’ve been one of the most blessed people you’ll ever run into in your life. And fortunate,” Perkins surmises with an engaging grin.

He’s one of the music industry’s great unheralded guitar players, often receiving no credit on records to which he has made contributions. His confidence has never waned. “I did have to work for it, and when I’m thrown in the damn shark tank [in a studio or on stage] I can swim and I can do battle, or whatever. I can hang,” he admits. “It was a lot of hard work, but the stuff just kept coming. I did everything I wanted to do, including playing with the biggest rock band in the world. If I had joined [The Rolling Stones], by now I’d probably be a dead millionaire.” &

Out of Control

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Out of Control

A recent report raises questions about the conditions at the animal control facility used by Jefferson County and the City of Birmingham.

By Ed Reynolds

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April 30, 2009

Since 1997, Jefferson County and the City of Birmingham have outsourced the task of capturing stray dogs and cats to a for-profit company called BJC Animal Control Services. Although the city pays the majority of the cost, the county has traditionally dictated the terms of the contracts. Over the years, various Birmingham city councilors have complained that the company’s services rendered within the city limits have been less than adequate. A recent unannounced visit to BJC Animal Control by representatives of Jefferson County Commissioner Jim Carns’ office has critics once again complaining about the local animal control provider.

The first high-profile criticism of the facility surfaced in 2001, when the BJC Animal Control facility was inspected by the National Animal Control Association (NACA), an organization that provides guidelines and training for member agencies on how to humanely capture and house stray animals. The report cited several violations of NACA protocol, the most notable being impounded animals that lacked medical attention; dead animals left in cages; “very poor” sanitation of feline living quarters; animals being euthanized with intercardiac (directly into the heart) injections without first being sedated; and cages being cleaned without dogs being removed first—even when bleach and chemicals were being used. NACA also discovered that animals had been euthanized in the presence of other animals (and in view of visitors on at least one occasion). BJC Animal Control had also failed to verify that euthanized animals were actually dead, according to the report. Shortly after the report was published, BJC Animal Control director Steve Smith claimed that he had implemented new procedures to address the problems.




Critics of the current animal control facility feel that Jefferson County and the City of Birmingham should demand better conditions for animals housed there. (click for larger version)

The NACA report received attention from city councilors who had already begun to question both the shared funding arrangement with the county as well as a lack of any independent audit of BJC. City Councilor Valerie Abbott became an early and vocal critic of the BJC contract. “We have no way of knowing how much of the money [BJC] gets is profit, and how much actually goes to providing animal control,” Abbott told Black & White in March of 2004. “We’ve never had a central audit. We’ve asked for one, and what we got was a budget.” Critics fear that by its nature, a for-profit operation would be tempted to put financial gain ahead of animal welfare.

In the past, BJC has been awarded multi-year contracts that stipulated annual payments in the neighborhood of 1 million dollars. Since September of 2007, when the last contract with BJC expired, BJC’s services have been retained on a month-to-month basis while the city and county attempt to reach an agreement on new contract specifications. Such requirements would allow the contract to be bid on by other companies in addition to BJC, as occurred when the contract came up for renewal in 2004. Aside from a few officials such as Councilor Abbott and Commissioner Carns, neither the city nor the county has ever shown much interest in seeking competitive bids or enticing other companies to compete for the contract. To interested observers, the issue has never appeared to be a priority.

In May of 2004, Black & White spoke with Jefferson County Commissioner (now County Commission President) Bettye Fine Collins about NACA’s claim that BJC Animal Control had not been properly audited by an independent agency. According to Collins, “If you give a person a contract, I’m not too sure that it’s our role to audit the operation. He’s an independent contractor, and he contracts to us for a service. I don’t really know if it’s a matter to be audited. I would think that the Office of Public Examiners would require us to do that. All I can do is evaluate their performance. How the monies are spent to provide that service would not be mine to judge, I would think.”

Collins noted at the time that she had not voted to approve BJC Animal Control as the service provider, and that she believes a Humane Society would be better suited to do the job. Many humane societies, however, do not accept animals that aren’t surrendered by their owners—preventing such agencies from picking up stray animals.

Unpleasant Discoveries
In response to complaints from constituents, on January 21, 2009, Sharon Evans and Jeanette Brabston, both employed by Jefferson County Commissioner Jim Carns’ office, made an unannounced visit to the BJC Animal Control facility. Their account of what they observed was included in a February 3, 2009, press release intended to highlight what they considered to be unacceptable conditions at the facility.

Regarding the room where dogs are held as evidence in animal cruelty cases, they reported: Some of the dogs had been held there for up to a year. There were no windows—it was completely enclosed. The stench was bad. There was an exhaust unit there, but it was not turned on. Many of the dogs looked malnourished. Cages were very dirty and scattered with dried excrement. One cage had a dog that had been hit by a car. There were a few pools of blood and dried vomit in the cage.

We never saw [BJC veterinarian] Dr. Shaw tend to this dog. More than half the floor of the cage was smeared in blood. We were told that she was given painkillers and that the vet would be checking on her later. The dog did not move the whole time we were there. We asked Shelley [a BJC Animal Control employee] if the dog was OK and if they were going to treat it. Sharon [Evans] asked, “What decision will the vet make after he checks on the dog?” Shelley said that if the dog’s wounds are major, then the dog would be put down and if there were only minor treatments needed, they would put the dog up for adoption and hope that whoever would adopt the dog would take the dog to the veterinarian for the needed care.

Evans and Brabston’s report on the “Male Dog Room” reads: The dogs are never allowed out of their kennels. [When] asked how [often] the room was cleaned. Janie [a BJC employee] said that it was cleaned 2-3 times a day. With the thick, pungent smell that infused the room, it appeared the place had not been cleaned in a while. The room was extremely stuffy and hot. The smell was unbearable, and made us both extremely nauseous. There were exhaust fans identical to those in the “female” room. However, these were not on. Sharon pointed to them and asked Shelley what they were. Shelley said they were heaters, trying to explain the heat in the room. Sharon asked again “So they are both heaters?” to which Shelley replied “yes.” Sharon asked if there was any ventilation in the room. Shelley pointed to dark recesses in the ceiling and said that was the “ventilation.” There was no light coming from the recesses.

We walked around and saw a lot of malnourished dogs. Sharon saw a standing fan in the corner of the room, but it was not on.

As we were leaving, we saw two signs posted on the wall. One said “Do Not Use Hot Water” and the other said “Do Not Use Exhaust Fans.” Sharon pointed to the “Do Not Use Hot Water” sign and asked Shelley what that meant—why they did not use hot water. She replied: “We don’t want to burn the dogs,” and laughed. Sharon asked “Don’t you remove the dogs from the pen before cleaning? How would they get burned?” Shelley did not have an answer. She said, “We use bleach and cold water because it’s ‘cost-effective.’” (This is a term that we [heard] multiple times on the tour in answer to questions regarding flea treatments, antibiotics, immunizations, and basic care.) Sharon pointed to the “Do Not Use Exhaust Fans” sign and asked why they do not use the exhaust fans. Shelley said, “If we did, the dogs would get cold.” Sharon said, “I thought these were heaters,” to which Shelley said, “We run the exhaust fans in the summer.”

Regarding the “Cat Room,” Evans and Brabston wrote: When they showed us this room, they opened the door and the lights were off. There was not a window in the room. The cages were small, making it impossible for any exercise or very much movement. We asked about flea treatment for dogs and cats. They said that they provided flea treatment for dogs that were infested but if they had just a few fleas, they would bypass the flea treatment altogether. Again, she said this was “cost-effective.” We also asked about flea dipping. She said they did not do that anymore because they did not want to spread possible diseases such as mange. She explained that if one dog was dipped in the same flea bath as the previous dog, the chances for spreading disease were high.

Their report concluded with the following: When we returned to the office, we sent a picture [of the wounded dog] to the Greater Birmingham Humane Society with questions as to the normal procedure for dealing with injured animals. They were appalled and said this was not up to industry standards. The dog should have never been left alone or with other dogs because of the profuse bleeding and possible contamination. The dog should have either been euthanized immediately or isolated and treated for recovery. The picture serves as solid evidence of abuse/neglect taking place at the facility.

A Rebuttal
When contacted for comment, BJC Animal Control president Steve Smith said that he had not seen the February 2009 report from Carns’ office but that he is familiar with it. Regarding the “cruelty room” (where dogs are kept as evidence in animal cruelty cases), Smith explained, “That’s more specifically our ‘animal isolation room.’” As for the bleeding dog they photographed in a cage with vomit and dried blood, Smith said, “Let me tell you the real story. This dog was causing an imminent threat to the public. This particular dog charged the police. They shot him. The dog was brought in and examined by the veterinarian. The animal was given whatever treatment could be given to stabilize it and make it comfortable. The dog was being constantly monitored by the staff and vet. The reason the dog was being held was we were trying to find out if there was an owner involved that wanted to come in and get this animal to save its life. So that’s where we were with this and I think we were doing the prudent thing by trying to give the owner an opportunity before the animal was destroyed. When the owner indicated that they were not willing to do anything to save it, the animal was euthanized.” Smith added that the dog was euthanized later that afternoon after Evans and Brabston visited the facility.

Regarding the “Do Not Use Hot Water” and “Do Not Use Exhaust Fans” signs, Smith explained, “We clean in the mornings, [and] the odors will be unpleasant until we can clean. [Evans and Brabston claim their visit occurred around midday.] When you have this many animals confined in this small a space, you’re going to have unpleasant odors. Any shelter you go into, you’re going to have to deal with those same issues.” As far as complaints about ventilation, Smith said, “If I have done anything as the operator of this facility, I have done what I could to improve the ventilation. As you know, this is not my facility. [The building is owned by the City of Birmingham.] There is an escrow account that has approximately $150,000 to be used by the City of Birmingham and Jefferson County to make whatever improvements and do whatever maintenance to this facility that they deem to be necessary. I have made several requests to the city and to the county to look into things like improving the ventilation and to do things like painting and replacing doors that have rusted, to improve security at the facility.” (Smith stated that the facility has been the target of four armed robberies.) He also noted that the facility was built in the late 1970s and agrees that ventilation problems need to be addressed. “We have gas heat. These roof ventilations have to stay closed because you can’t maintain a comfortable temperature for the animals if you’re blowing all your heat out the roof. So, you’ve got to do a balancing act between finding a comfortable temperature for the animals and decreasing the odors and improving the ventilation. As far as the hot water goes, we have hot water for hygienic purposes and other purposes that necessitate hot water. But the chemicals that we use do not require hot water,” Smith said. “Now, periodically, we’re going to get in there with hot water or extra chemicals and do a more thorough cleaning, but as far as cleaning the kennels, the disinfecting and cleaning agents that we use do not require hot water.”

In response to Evans and Brabston’s observations of cats being confined to small cages and not allowed any exercise, Smith said that the cat cages at the facility are not small. “These are cat cages that are sold by very reputable vendors. They’re very adequate-sized cages, and most of the times the cats are penned individually. They’re fed and watered everyday, their cages cleaned out. Most of these cats are here for just seven days until an owner can come in and claim that animal. To assume that we have a responsibility to take these cats out of the cages and exercise them isn’t reasonable and feasible,” said Smith, citing a danger of employees being injured while handling animals.

“I’ll put this facility and the company’s operation against any other animal control operation in the state, be it ‘for profit,’ ‘not for profit,’ ‘nonprofit.’ Don’t make any difference. To me, what’s important is the job that’s performed. It’s doesn’t matter what type of corporation it is. Everybody has an opportunity to bid on [the animal control contract]. I think it’s important that everybody really understands [the function of animal control]. There are statutory responsibilities that determine what an animal control program should do. It’s up to a community to assess what they want. But it needs to be an informed opinion. These people need to see what other shelters are doing. And I dare anybody to prove that this operation does not meet or exceed its contractual obligations or does not do as good or better a job as any other animal control operation in the state.”

Smith said that most people do not know the difference between a humane society and an animal control organization. “There are problems that are inherent with a humane society trying to perform animal control work, because it goes against their mission,” he explained. “The goal of the humane society is to find these animals a home. When a humane society takes in unwanted animals, they can euthanize these animals immediately. They’re not going to spend their resources on animals they can’t place. We’re required by law to hold these animals for seven days. Sometimes I’m kind of thought of as a heartless individual that doesn’t care about animals and this sort of thing. But I’m a biology major. I have an appreciation for all life.” &

The Entertainer King

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The Entertainer King

Matt Kimbrell takes a final bow, no doubt laughing all the way.

By Ed Reynolds

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November 11, 2010

Matt Kimbrell was the consummate performer, a superb drummer and songwriter, excellent bass player, and decent guitarist. He was revered as supreme frontman in Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits, the Ho Ho Men, the Mambo Combo, or any other band in which he played. He was also funny as hell. He battled a heart problem for a decade or so, but finally lost on October 13 when a heart attack took his life at age 51 in the Bluff Park home he shared with his brother Mark (a world-class jazz guitarist). It’s the same house where the brothers grew up, with one room stocked with musical instruments and stacks of albums—a playground for a family smitten with music.

Matt and Mark’s late father, Henry Kimbrell—a top-notch jazz piano player who is a member of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, as well as a long-ago local TV personality (when not writing commercial jingles such as “Jack’s hamburgers for 15 cents are so good, good, good”)—hired his sons when they were in their mid-teens to form a jazz trio that played regular gigs at local clubs.




(click for larger version)

Matt’s musical prowess on a variety of instruments was impressive, but his stage presence and vocal stylings stood out. “I really feel like on all the Jim Bob stuff, I was kinda trying to vocally imitate Matt,” admits Mats (pronounced Mots) Roden, one of the guitarists and songwriters in Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits, a popular Birmingham band that Kimbrell formed in 1979 with Roden and another high school friend named Leif Bondarenko.

“There’s an expression in opera called ‘heldentenor,’ a rare style of tenor singer, like the Wagner stuff,” says Roden. “Matt could have done that kind of stuff if he wanted to, because he had that kind of voice. He never applied it to classical music, but he definitely had the chops for it. He had a healthy respect for classical music.”

Apart from Sun Ra, the Leisure Suits were arguably the most revolutionary band to ever emerge from Birmingham, introducing the city to punk and New Wave sounds in 1980. Music fans accustomed to classic rock played by cover bands in local bars, where patrons usually sat at tables, sucking down cocktails and politely applauding, could not sit still when the Leisure Suits took the stage. The beats they played were irresistible, and tables and chairs in local venues became relics of the past. Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits transformed the city’s music dynamic as they annihilated the barrier between audience and performer. Soon, anyone with a guitar felt confident enough to write songs, and bands performing original music began popping up all over town, citing the Leisure Suits as inspiration.

Kimbrell was a star whenever he climbed on stage. He was always laughing at his own jokes, which he was never shy to share with an audience, and he imitated a variety of characters, no matter what band he fronted.

“People used to say that one of the great things about playing in the Mambo Combo wasn’t necessarily hearing the songs but hearing what Matt had to say in between songs, because he always had great stories,” recalls Ho Ho Men and Mambo Combo bassist and saxophone player Jeffrey Stahmer, better known as Dr. Ig (short for Dr. Igwanna). “He was a fantastic comedian, and he could always get the crowd going. At Matt’s memorial service people told me they used to come to see us act like fools up there in between songs. Matt was one of the funniest guys I ever knew. He loved to be up there and be the showman. Despite his jokes, his musicianship was always solid.” Dr. Ig laughs when recounting Matt’s fearless knack for entertaining. “We were playing some frat party [once] and [the audience] was acting really dull or stupid or something, and Matt said, ‘Well, then, if you guys don’t like it, for this next one I’m going to take my pants off.’ He actually did, he’s in his underwear, right? So I was playing sax and I decided to do the same thing.”

“At the School of Fine Arts, he was really a troublemaker—but not in a bad way,” recalls Roden, laughing. “All you had to do was climb a drainage pipe and you’d be in some girl’s room. Matt used to do that all the time.” Roden was studying acting at New York University when he and Kimbrell began talking about forming a band. “People were starting their own bands in their own cities. So I called Matt and he said that he was having the same idea, so I moved back to Birmingham to start Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits with him.”

“He knew about jazz because of his upbringing, his dad taught him about all the jazz players,” says former Leisure Suits drummer Bondarenko, who filled in on drums in an assortment of later Kimbrell combos. “Every time we would go over to Matt’s house back in high school, we’d go downstairs into his dad’s workroom and there would be paintings everywhere that his dad was working on. And there’d be a keyboard there, and stacks and stacks of records and a record player, and that’s where we’d hang out.”




	A superb drummer, Matt Kimbrell was just as proficient at garnering laughs. (click for larger version)

Ho Ho Men drummer Ed Glaze recalls Kimbrell’s fearlessness as a performer. “He was incredibly funny and ferocious, absolutely fearless. He was a real force to be around,” says Glaze. “This was around ’94. Matt had a regular gig playing at a restaurant in Mountain Brook. It was a good little gig for him. One night he told me, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that place anymore. The other night there was this really drunk guy who kept yelling at me.’ At one point, this heckler yelled, ‘Hey man, why don’t you play some shit we know?” And Matt leaned into the microphone and replied, ‘Because you don’t know shit.’ He said the manager came up to him and said, ‘We need to talk.’ So Matt took a vacation from that restaurant gig. He’d always laugh at his own jokes, then suddenly quit laughing and have this deadpan look on his face. Between songs, besides just making up stuff in the songs, he was doing comedy routines. The later at night it got, the funnier he got.”

Glaze recalls when the Leisure Suits had a gig booked at St. Andrews Church on Southside. “Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits had suddenly broken up and Matt called to ask if me and Walter Kelly wanted to put a band together in two weeks to play that gig, because he didn’t want to lose that show. That’s how the Ho Ho Men started,” recalls Glaze. “We later started the Mambo Combo when Walter started going to law school. Matt eventually asked me if I wanted to be the drummer, but I don’t think Matt was really that satisfied with my drumming because he told me that I could only use two drums. He’d try to sell me on the idea of not using a full drum kit. He was like, ‘Yeah, man, basically this is like Moe Tucker’s setup for the Velvet Underground. This is like the pure soul of rock. (laughs) And you are the soul of rock, so two drums is all you need.’”

“We used to play benefits,” Glaze continues. “He needed to make a living playing music but he was real good about playing benefits even if we didn’t get paid.” One of those occasions was a benefit for Children’s Hospital. “Dr. Ig had this song called ‘Organ Donor.’

It was off-color and (vulgar). The local daily paper had a write-up of the benefit and wrote, ‘Perhaps the most appropriate song of the day was the Mambo Combo’s “Organ Donor.”‘ That song has lyrics about drinking double shots of Jack Daniels and whips and chains. And then it goes into the chorus: ‘I pulled an instant boner and became her organ donor.’”

Mambo Combo’s final show was in 2001. “We had this gig somewhere in Five Points South and it’s supposed to be a Mambo gig,” Glaze recalls. “Ig and I showed up, and the marquee out front and all the flyers on the windows announced that it would be the Matt Kimbrell Experience playing that night. We were like, ‘So, Matt what do you know about this?’ And Matt went, ‘Oh, yeah, about that. Well, man, I’m putting out my own CD of my own songs. And I thought maybe we’d pull in more people [if Matt's name was on the bill].’ There were maybe 10 people there. That was our last show.”

One of my favorite memories of Matt was in the early 1980s when we appeared together, unscheduled, on WBRC television’s Country Boy Eddy Show. We gathered at my house the night prior for an all-night rehearsal to learn “Route 66″ and the rockabilly classic “Brand New Cadillac.” Our rehearsal turned into a party, which we took to Red Mountain around 3:30 that morning, drinking and gazing out over the city while waiting for Country Boy Eddy to drive up, which he did at 4:45. When he arrived, he eyeballed us suspiciously as we approached him with our guitars. I asked Eddy if we could play on his show at 5 a.m. We were obviously intoxicated (Kimbrell quit drinking many years before he died), but Eddy smiled and said, “Sure you can. But you boys keep your language clean because I’ve got a family TV show.” We behaved, and rocked the Channel 6 studios.

Boutwell Studio co-owner and sound engineer Mark Harrelson recalls a jingle session Kimbrell worked on several weeks before his death, recording a new version of the original Jack’s Hamburgers jingle that his father wrote 40 years earlier. (Henry Kimbrell passed away some two decades ago.)

“What we got was an order for a long version of the jingle that they were going to use for some kind of corporate presentation,” Harrelson says. “All I had was a 12-second piece of audio . . the singing part (‘Jack’s Hamburgers for 15 cents are so good, good, good’) So Matt, Mark, and I got together and tried to figure out how to stretch the original out to three minutes. They put a bunch of solos in it. It was really fun. They laughed and talked about how they made fun of that jingle when it came out originally until one day their father finally said, ‘Y’all need to quit making fun of that jingle, because I wrote it.’ Matt just did what he always does, which is to come in and attack what was [originally] a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing. Matt was very serious about it, and was very good and played his ass off.”

Matt’s older brother Mark recalls the pair playing with their father as teens. “We were probably both in high school when we started playing with our Dad. We did lots of country club work,” he says. “Me and Matt also played together in bands well before Jim Bob and Ho Ho and all that. I think Dad was probably a bigger influence on me than Matt . . . Dad would encourage us, and say stuff like, ‘Love the songs but then do them your own way.’”

When asked if Matt could make their father laugh as easily as he could friends and strangers, Mark replies, “Yeah, he could. Matt had this innate ability to make people laugh, but it all came from Dad, though. Dad was the instigator and the originator of all things weird and funny with the Kimbrell boys, you know? He kind of gave us carte blanche to go ahead and be absurd.”




(click for larger version)

Another Time, Another Place, Another Lost Act
The meaningful sound of Matt Kimbrell and Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits

It was a big deal when Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits made their live debut in Birmingham back in 1979—mainly because these locals were at least as talented as the major-label headliners for whom they opened. The Romantics had a power-pop hit with “What I Like about You,” and the band members of 3-D were former country-rockers from Long Island dressed in skinny ties. Both were sharp acts, but Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits offered a true punk vision that night at Brothers Music Hall.

Their five-song First Time EP came out in 1980. More spazzy than brash, the EP was a solid collection of songs that included two musical manifestos: “Basic Music” celebrated the band’s simple sound, and Matt Kimbrell’s “White Trash Rock” acknowledged their unlikely success.

In those early days, Kimbrell was the default frontman with his billing as Jim Bob. The other Leisure Suits—except drummer Leif Bondarenko—had similarly clever pseudonyms. The band dropped those, however, by the time their 1982 self-titled album was released. Kitsch was no longer commercial, and the band had matured beyond their name. Sadly, the ambitious album left them in that fatal gap between a New Wave band going glossy and a rock band trying to find a home for its quirkiness on college radio stations.

Kimbrell went on to front the Ho Ho Men, whom I first saw live in 1986. He was wearing safety goggles and lurching through a noise-rock rendition of an old Jim Bob tune called “Steamy Paradise.” This was another band with three ace songwriters but a lot less commercial ambition. They managed only to release some cassettes; plenty of great songs ended up lost.

Those include Kimbrell’s “This World Is Killing Me,” which was no joke—especially if you contrasted the onstage Matt of 11 p.m. with the dead-eyed Matt you’d find wandering town in a 4 a.m. stupor. But that was at the end of the 1980s. Kimbrell got his personal life together in the decades to follow. The Ho Ho Men evolved into Mambo Combo, who performed for another 10 years. By the end of the 1990s, Kimbrell was constantly in demand as a live drummer and considered one of Birmingham’s most versatile session musicians.

Kimbrell spent his final days playing to decent-sized crowds as a percussionist with Taylor Hicks. I saw Kimbrell a few years ago and mentioned an old song of his to him. He seemed touched that anyone would remember something from that long ago, which made me feel better about being nostalgic when I learned of his death. I decided to ceremoniously open an ancient, sealed copy of the Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits album. It was too warped to play. Matt would have given that a rimshot. & —J.R. Taylor

Thinking Ahead

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Thinking Ahead

The genius of Leonardo da Vinci springs to life at the McWane Science Center.

By Ed Reynolds

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February 19, 2009

Currently on exhibit at the McWane Science Center is a collection of functional, full-scale machines born from the imagination of Italian Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci. Titled Machines in Motion, the display includes 40 inventions built to detailed specifications from the drawings and notes that filled da Vinci’s 600-year-old manuscripts (the Codices). Patrons are likely to be astonished at the ingenuity and creativity of the 15th-century inventor, painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer who is best remembered for his paintings the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

The exhibit is arranged into five sections. The first is “mechanisms,” which includes devices that showcase the basic operational principles of machines in the exhibit, specifically the transfer of motion to make seemingly impossible tasks appear effortless. The other categories represent the four elements found in nature: earth, water, fire, and air.

All machines in the exhibit are from a museum in Florence, Italy, dedicated to da Vinci’s complex inventions. The machinery is composed primarily of lime, fir, beech, and European oak woods (even the ball bearings and gearwheels are wooden) that have been processed to be as resilient as iron. The detailed craftmanship alone makes the exhibit worthwhile.




Ornithopter with Semi-Fixed Wing (Glider). Da Vinci’s ornithopter anticipated today’s hang gliders—except that here the pilot not only hangs in the middle, balancing the glider, he adjusts the angle of the outer portions of the wings through a system of ropes and pulleys. (click for larger version)

The basic mechanisms section of the exhibit is the most challenging to grasp. Familiarity with lantern pinions, rack-and-pinion devices, worm screws, and other mechanical gadgets is helpful, yet any observer will recognize a chain-drive transmission, car-lifting jack, and rope-and-pulley systems. The machines found in the categories represented by the four elements are more easily understood. The earth section includes da Vinci’s printing press design; an olive oil press; a revolving crane; an early odometer; an intricate machine for lifting large objects such as pillars; and da Vinci’s notion of a 15th-century automated robot in knight’s armor.

An ancient hydraulic saw is brought to life through the force of water onto a paddlewheel. Among the most ingenious devices is one of da Vinci’s simplest inventions—a hygrometer. The apparatus operates much like a set of scales. A chunk of wax is placed on one of two balanced trays and strands of cotton fill the other. Wax will not absorb water. However, as cotton takes on water from the atmosphere, it begins to outweigh the wax, forcing the scales into imbalance. A horizontal calibrated scale carved into the piece of wood joining the two balanced trays indicates the degree of humidity.

Da Vinci’s early parachute design resembles a pyramid, with cloth stretched across wooden beams from which a human is suspended while theoretically floating to the ground. His flying machines include a crude wooden version of a helicopter that is operated by the pilot’s arms, legs, and head. Da Vinci’s early designs for gliders are on display as well.

The weapons designed by da Vinci include an “armored” car whose odd shell is wooden, not metallic. The tank’s movement across terrain is powered by eight soldiers operating four large wheels that extend beneath the vehicle. A main turret with holes in its exterior allows a passenger to spot enemy troops; cannons protruding from the tank’s perimeter may be fired in the direction commanded. Another weapon displayed is da Vinci’s machine gun, which is a wheeled cart with 11 metal gun barrels fanning out like the prongs of a rake, designed to wipe out a larger swath of the enemy.

Unlike many McWane exhibits, Machines in Motion will probably be of greater interest to adults than children. Da Vinci never constructed any of his inventions, leaving the task to later generations. Most of the machines displayed are interactive and operational. The exhibit brings da Vinci’s sketches and words into the three-dimensional, functioning world, leaving viewers with a new appreciation for the world’s original renaissance man.

Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion will be exhibited at the McWane Science Center through April 26. For additional information, call 714-8300 or visit www.mcwane.org.

The Last of the Hardest Working Men in Showbiz

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The Last of the Hardest Working Men in Showbiz

Local musician Rick Carter continues to plug away, doing what he loves best.

By Ed Reynolds




Carter and the late Gatemouth Brown in recent years, hanging out at Gatemouth’s Slidell, Louisiana, BBQ joint during a Rollin’ in the Hay gig. (click for larger version)

August 20, 2009

Birmingham guitarist Rick Carter is one weary fellow. He’s performing solo on a Sunday afternoon at a Five Points South bistro where the patrons are more interested in conversation and eating lunch than listening to some fellow strum a guitar and sing. “And I thought I was an artist,” Carter says with a touch of cynicism as he extends a hand after finishing his set. He is worked every joint imaginable in 40 years of playing music, so he simply rolls with the punches. Though evening audiences ripe on alcohol are no doubt preferable, Carter remains the consummate professional in the face of mid-afternoon apathy, even if he does keep an eye on the clock in anticipation of quitting time.

It’s no wonder he’s tired. A few hours earlier, Carter finished a set in Auburn at 4 a.m. with his popular bluegrass trio Rollin’ in the Hay, returning to Birmingham around 7 a.m. By noon he was setting up gear for the Sunday afternoon job. “I’m gonna go home and take a nap,” he sighed after finishing his set, desperate for some much-needed sleep before his rockabilly-swing band Frankie Velvet and the Mighty Veltones take the stage six hours later at Metro Bistro for their weekly Sunday night gig.

“I started playing music in 1966,” he says on a recent afternoon at his Shelby County home, where an American flag is proudly displayed in the front yard throughout the year. “The first money I ever made as a musician was in 1967, when I was 14. I was playing with my band the Invaders in a teen club at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina.” Carter’s father was a career Air Force officer. (The Hawkins B. Carter American Legion Post 235 in Fultondale is named in his honor.) The family moved to the Philippines in 1968, where Carter formed a band called The Great Wind Controversy.

I walked into my little dressing room and there stands Bob Dylan. He says, “Hey Rick, that’s pretty crafty using that Band song to finish the set.”

“We chose that name because it sounded psychedelic,” he says, laughing. “We played Steppenwolf, did a lot of soul stuff like ‘The Letter,’ ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.’ I played a Farfisa organ and we all wore matching clothes. In the Philippines, you got your clothes made because you didn’t really have access to new clothes unless you ordered out of the Sears, Roebuck catalog, and whatever you ordered took six months to arrive. So it was easier just to get a Sears catalog and tell a tailor, ‘I want that shirt or those pants,’ and the tailor would custom make you a shirt for a dollar.”

The band became fairly popular. “We got to be pretty big on all the military bases in the Philippines and we went on the Filipino TV equivalent of ‘American Bandstand.’ We were the only American band that had ever been on that show. We had to take my family’s maid with us ’cause we didn’t have a work permit to allow us to be paid by Filipinos. So they had to pay the maid and she gave the money to us.”




Rick Carter chats with a few Telluride fans at the Wooden Nickel in the late ’70s. The bar later became The Nick. (click for larger version)

By 1970, Carter was living in Selma, Alabama, where his father was stationed at Craig Air Force Base. There he started the band Truffle and added Allman Brothers songs to the set. “We played all that dual guitar stuff,” he says. “I learned every Dickey Betts lick. In Selma, there was the Ramshack where they had high school dances. But at Craig Air Force Base, you had a teen club, an officer’s club, an NCO club—all those private parties. So there really was a nice little thriving music scene in Selma.” (A rival band with whom Truffle competed for jobs was The Born Losers, which boasted future HealthSouth founder and convicted felon Richard Scrushy as a member.)

“In 1975, I got the dream job of a lifetime—playing the Ramada Inn in Selma in the house band, six nights a week with Larry Hall and The Summer Breeze,” Carter says. “We had to wear powder blue leisure suits and got to live at the Ramada Inn, and each band member had his own room. I got paid $145 a week. We walked down the hall to work. All the food was free because the restaurant was right there. I don’t think we even drank much back then, maybe beer. But we never had to pay for that. We played that gig from June ’75 till March of ’76 before it dried up, which was a heartbreaker. I knew I had to do something, so I moved to Birmingham.”

The High Life
In Birmingham, Carter landed a job selling ice cream from a popsicle truck. He started Telluride in 1977, and the band soon established a following at the Wooden Nickel, now known as The Nick. “By that summer, Telluride was doing so well that I quit my day job and started playing music full time, which I’ve done for 32 years now.” For a bar band, Telluride traveled with an impressive amount of equipment. “We were the only [bar] band that had an 18-wheeler. We wanted to have the biggest show we could,” Carter explains. “We wanted to have the biggest light system, the biggest P.A. system. People thought, ‘Man, they must be the best band around. Have you seen the size of their truck?’ We had a four-man crew that loaded and unloaded the thing. It was a full-blown production. In the ’80s, it was the show, baby! The more lights you had, the better you sounded to audiences. That wasn’t necessarily the way it should be, but that’s the way it was.”

In his home recording studio, a couple of red Miller Beer guitars are mounted on the wall like museum pieces. “When Telluride was sponsored by Miller in ’85 and ’86, you had to have all the Miller signage up [in each venue]. All the beers on the stage had to have the labels pointed out toward the audience,” Carter remembers. “We had to play the Miller guitar and the Miller bass on at least one song a night. So, we’d do ‘Bad to the Bone’ and we’d play the slide guitar parts with Miller beer bottles. It was actually very advantageous to us. We sent [Miller] our calendar, and by the time we got to the gig, they already had us set up for radio interviews, record store appearances, backstage meet-and-greets, all that kind of stuff. They would fly us up to Milwaukee and do symposiums and teach us how to do interviews and all the basic things you need to know about media etiquette or how to say the right thing and how not to sound stupid, basically. And they’d give us a nice, big check.”

“We were the only bar band that had an 18-wheeler. People thought, ‘Man, they must be the best band around. Have you seen the size of their truck?’”

Telluride was playing at Louie Louie’s in Five Points South in 1985 when a familiar-looking piano player walked into the bar. “Nicky Hopkins [former pianist for the Rolling Stones, among other bands] was in town on a promotional tour for a book called Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard,” Carter recalls. (Hopkins had played on a soundtrack album of the same name that Scientology founder Hubbard had produced to promote the novel. The book was later made into a movie starring John Travolta.) Hopkins asked to sit in with the band. After the set, he invited Telluride to play with him at a record convention in the Cayman Islands. Essentially, Telluride would be working for the Church of Scientology. Carter was skeptical that the trip would ever materialize. “Hopkins took all my contact info, and about a week later my mother called me and goes, ‘There’s a package here for you from FedEx,’ and I said, ‘Well, open it up.’ She does and it’s 12 tickets to the Cayman Islands. So I called our booking agent and told him to cancel all our shows because we’re going to the Cayman Islands. Oh, he was all in an uproar, saying, ‘You can’t do that, you can’t cancel Louie Louie’s or whatever it was.”

“The Cayman Island trip was awesome. But we didn’t know too much about the Church of Scientology at the time,” Telluride co-founder and guitarist Moose Harrell recalls in an interview from his Nashville home. “I feel like Telluride really set a standard for the way to be successful in that era, even if we didn’t hit mainstream success,” Harrell says. “We were a good, living example of what hard work and dedication can do for you. A lot of it came from Rick, he has an exceptional amount of drive. He’s always been a real professional. A lot of the stuff that Telluride did, and the way we did it, carry over into my life today, too. But we had more fun than anybody has a right to in 37 lifetimes.”

In 1994, Carter formed Rollin’ in the Hay. “Moose had quit Telluride, so we had replaced him with Barry Waldrep, who was really a bluegrass player,” Carter says. “He and I would sit around in hotel rooms and play bluegrass. So I thought if we could add a bass player, we could go out and pick up some extra money. We hit some kind of strange, odd niche, because within two or three years, that thing got huge. It just swallowed Telluride. We were doing Monday, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. And then we were getting offers for Fridays and Saturdays, and were making three times what Telluride was making per night. It was time to get off the road with Telluride. Rollin’ in the Hay was right before O Brother, Where Art Thou? and all that kind of stuff.”

Rollin’ in the Hay scored a contract with CMH Records to record for the label’s “Pickin’ On” series, which featured bluegrass instrumental versions of songs from popular bands played by studio musicians and bands like Rollin’ in the Hay. “We did right around 20 of those Pickin’




Fourteen-year-old Carter, at far right, and his band the Invaders playing the opening of a TV and radio shop in Sumter, South Carolina, in 1967. (click for larger version)

On CDs,” Carter says. “Pickin’ On the Allman Brothers, Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond, Tim McGraw, R.E.M., Travis Tritt, all kinds of things like that. But the biggest one that we did was Pickin’ On Widespread Panic. When Telluride used to play Athens, Georgia, every time we’d go into the frats, there was always these three guys that didn’t look like frat boys hanging around. And we used to do the best Allman Brothers. That was my inspiration. So, one night I finally asked these three guys, ‘Who are you guys? You’re obviously not in a fraternity.’ And they said, ‘Oh, we got this little acoustic thing going called Widespread Panic.’ And I was like, ‘Well, good luck to you.’ And then years later, I’m doing a Pickin’ On Widespread Panic CD. That one busted us loose with that jam band genre. So now, Rollin’

in the Hay is the breadwinner. We get airplay in the British West Indies, Japan, The Netherlands, Germany.”

Business, as Usual
“I got a check one time for foreign royalties for my song ‘Sail Away’ that I wrote in Selma,” Carter recalls with a grin. “Telluride recorded it. The check was for a bunch of money, so I called BMI and said, ‘Are you sure this is for me?’ It was for foreign royalties, which can come in two or three years later than the actual play period,” he explains. “We had a hit with that song in Europe and never knew it until after the fact, because if we had known that, we’d have gone over there. I bought a National steel guitar with that check, so I can always say I bought that guitar with a song. The license plate on my Corvette says ‘SONGS.’ That’s what bought it, songs and royalty checks. I wrote a song called ‘Redneck Girl’ and my wife at the time said, ‘Don’t ever play that song for anybody. That’s the stupidest song I’ve ever heard.’ So I gave it to J. Hawkins at the Florabama [Lounge]. He always played those kind of nasty songs, silly songs. He was playing at the Florabama one time and Jeff Foxworthy came in. Foxworthy has a record label called Laughing Hyena. They do all those CDs you see at truckstops and convenience stores that say ‘Truckers’ Favorites.’ Well, ‘Redneck Girl’ ended up on one of those. Turns out I get this big giant royalty check for that song, and I showed it to my wife and she goes, ‘You are kidding me! Somebody bought that?’ And I told her, ‘More than one person bought it, baby.’

“To say that I’m addicted to work would be an understatement. I love to play music but I also have always understood the business aspect of it,” Carter admits. “But you do have to ultimately have the songs. If you don’t have the songs, you’re just another band. If you want to eat, it just depends on how good you want to eat. And I always wanted to eat steak. But ultimately I always wanted to just play music. And the more I played music, the happier I was. That’s why if you play with me, you’re gonna work. Rollin’ in the Hay just did seven shows in seven days in seven cities, and I’m 55. So I haven’t slowed down in that department.”

Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown
Rick Carter’s first solo record was Loveland. He assembled a large entourage of local musicians and singers he dubbed the Loveland Orchestra that opened for Bob Dylan. “We did four shows opening for Dylan in ’93 and ’94. For the show in Huntsville, I told the band, ‘Let’s close with “The Weight.” We’ve got all these voices and everybody can sing really well, and by then everybody’s ready for Bob, so that’ll kind of secure our success as the opening act if we play that song and do it well.’ I walked into my little dressing room after we came off stage and there stands Bob Dylan. He walks up to me and says [nasal voice], ‘Hey Rick, that’s pretty crafty using that Band song to finish the set.’”

Carter developed a friendship with late jazz and blues guitar legend Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. “We were playing in Slidell, Louisiana, at a barbecue joint, and Gatemouth had a little piece of the place [as part-owner]. Rollin’ in the Hay used to play there and Gatemouth lived nearby and used to come hear us and sometimes sit in on fiddle,” Carter says. “He used to tell me that his favorite food was grape jelly. One day he called me when he was in Birmingham playing a blues festival downtown, and told me to come eat dinner with him. So I went backstage and they were bringing the catered food in. Sure enough, they bring in a big jar of Welch’s grape jelly. We’re having catfish, green beans, and baked potatoes, and Gatemouth takes about a quarter of that jar of jelly and drops it right in the middle of that catfish. I said, ‘Damn, grape jelly on catfish?’ And he said, ‘Didn’t I tell you I love grape jelly? Grape jelly is on top of everything I eat!’”

Carter once booked bands for the Star Dome when it was a music venue (before becoming the Comedy Club). His chores included an afternoon spent babysitting Bo Diddley. “Bo Diddley and I went into Mike’s Pawn Shop at Christmas time, and there was this guy buying his son a guitar and amp. And the guy goes, ‘Damn, Bo Diddley!’ And Bo said, ‘That’s right.’ And the guy said, ‘I’m buying my son a guitar, which one should I get?’ And Bo said, ‘Well, don’t buy that red one! Get that black one, don’t buy no red guitar.’ And I’ll be damned, because I’ve seen pictures of him for years where he played that red Bo Diddley guitar. Guess he didn’t want anybody else to have a red guitar. Then Bo said, ‘Watch this. I guarantee you he’s gonna ask me to sign it.’ So the guy asked him to sign it and Bo turned to me and goes, ‘I told you.’

“Back at the hotel, he wanted some barbecue, so I went to Golden Rule. And this is a sight I’ll never forget. I knocked on the door with his barbecue, and Bo opened the door and he was in a pair of boxer shorts and cowboy boots, no shirt, and he’s go that damn cowboy hat with ‘Bo’ on it. I gave him the barbecue and he said ‘Thanks,’ and slammed the door, didn’t even ask me in.”

His career in music has afforded Carter a comfortable lifestyle. While walking through his bedroom to look at some photos in his office, I did a double take at what I thought was a casket. It turned out to be a tanning bed. “I’m the weirdest guy in the world,” he laughs. “I have a refrigerator in my bathroom upstairs, I have a tanning bed in my bedroom, and a washer and dryer in the closet in my bedroom. At my age, I don’t want to have to walk downstairs to get a Coke, and I don’t want to have to drive to the tanning bed place, and I don’t want to have to walk downstairs to get my damn clothes. They’re all right here. I’ve got my rock ‘n’ roll crib.” &

The Professional Scoop on Poop

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The Professional Scoop on Poop

It’s a dirty job, but . . .

By Ed Reynolds

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April 30, 2009

Four years ago, Stanley Shafferman told his wife that he was going to start a new business called Poop Be Gone that would offer the removal of pet excrement from lawns and other areas. “I refer to myself as an ‘entremanure’ instead of an entrepreneur,” he says with a laugh. Shafferman, who opened Cosmo’s Pizza in Five Points South in 1986 and later worked at O.T.’s Grill in the Lakeview district, admits that he grew weary of the food business. “I had been in the restaurant industry for 20 to 25 years, and I was getting very tired of employees and bad work ethics,” he says. “And I was looking for something to do that did not require employees.”

Shafferman began submitting résumés as he contemplated what to do with his life. His wife, Peggy, a nurse at UAB, is active in the dog show world. (The couple raises a breed known as Havanese, which is Cuba’s only native breed.) “One afternoon I was reading one of the dog show magazines and I got to the classifieds,” he recalls. “I saw under ‘business opportunities’ two companies selling franchises for removing pet waste. I didn’t buy a franchise, but I immediately went to my computer and typed ‘pooper scoopers’ and found companies across the country.” After speaking with a few professional dog waste removers, he decided to go into business for himself. There is a national organization called aPAWS (Association of Professional Animal Waste Specialists), which he soon joined.

Shafferman advertises the service with magnetic signs attached to his truck, fliers in vets’ offices, and word of mouth. Poop Be Gone has weekly, twice weekly, and twice monthly customers. Shafferman’s tools include a long-handled dust pan, a 13-gallon garbage bag, and a shrub rake that he uses to pop the poop into the dustpan. The bag is attached to the pan, then removed and tied shut once its been filled after a yard is finished. “My hands are not touching the poop,” he notes. (Shafferman disinfects his tools and shoes between yards to avoid spreading any germs from home to home.)

As for vicious dogs in yards, Shafferman has his own approach to winning over any snarling beasts he encounters. “One yard had a small mixed-breed dog and an American bulldog. The small dog liked me—I always carry treats in my pocket—and he took the treat. The bulldog did not like me. He was not interested in treats,” he recalls. Shafferman swears that all he had to do was begin singing and the bulldog immediately retreated to the other side of the yard.

Shafferman readily admits that he often talks to dogs to soothe any canine animosity. “I tell all new clients, if you hear me talking to your dogs, do not pay attention because a lot of the times it’s just gibberish,” he says. “It’s just the sound of my voice that calms the dogs down. They don’t really know what you’re saying anyway. I talk to dogs all day long.”

Where does all the recovered poop end up after it has been bagged up and loaded onto Shafferman’s truck? “When I first started, it ended up in my trash can at home. I soon outgrew that and I now have a dumpster,” he says, although he will not reveal its location. “The poop all finally winds up at the landfill next to the dirty diapers.” &

Poop Be Gone can be reached at www.poopbegone.net or 968-0980. Prices range from $14.50 to $23 per cleaning, depending on the frequency. One-time yard cleanings cost $30.

Number One Fan

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Number One Fan

For seven years, Skybucket Records has successfully promoted Birmingham’s music scene on a national level.

By Ed Reynolds

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March 05, 2009

When Travis Morgan and a friend started Birmingham’s Skybucket Records in 2002, he was not particularly obsessed with creating a record label. “I don’t know if it was ever really a dream [to own a record company]. It was something that we kind of felt we needed to do in order to put out a CD, or to put a name on it,” Morgan explains. “I started Skybucket in 2002 with a guy named Justin Lee (who as since moved on). We were college friends and were both into the local music scene and decided we wanted to put out a compilation CD of local bands. We planned to release it with a literary magazine a couple of Birmingham people were putting together. But they never put out their first issue. We had a compilation sitting there and decided to create a label to put the recording out. And that came out in January of 2003, and we made 800 or so by hand.” Here’s to Last Summer is the name of Skybucket’s first release. It was originally available for $2. The second release was Taylor [Hollingsworth] and the Puffs’ You Know that Summer’s Coming. “We did several hundred of those, handmade, as well,” Morgan recalls. “We kind of upped the ante on that and sold it for $3.”

Though a musician, Morgan was more the avid listener than the player. “I’ve always been interested in music but I was always more of a fan than a performer or a recording musician,” he confesses. “I’ve been listening to so much music over the years, that I guess I have a critical ear.” Morgan’s discerning ear has led to his work with local and regional bands such as The Dexateens, 13ghosts, Through the Sparks, Dan Sartain, and Vulture Whale—as well as Seattle’s Barton Carroll. His instincts have been reinforced by numerous positive reviews that Skybucket releases have received in national music magazines and blogs.

“In the beginning, we would sit there for hours and hand-make packages,” Morgan says of the label’s early days, when their releases were burned onto CD-Rs. “From the fourth release, pretty much everything we’ve released has been a pressed CD or vinyl. When you get into manufacturing a project, it costs a whole lot more. After record number six or seven, I started looking for financing and found the occasional investment dollars that have helped me keep the label alive. But after each and every record, I feel like, ‘is this the last one I’m going to be able to put out?’”




Birmingham’s, 13ghosts, one of Skybucket Records’ early acts. (click for larger version)

Les Nuby, former drummer for one-time Birmingham cult favorites Verbena, formed Vulture Whale with Wes McDonald, who has released three CDs under his own name on Skybucket. Nuby splits time between Birmingham and Los Angeles, where he makes a living doing session work. “I’ve known Travis since he was an infant.” Nuby says, “and if I had known back then that I’d be answering to him on anything to do with music, I think I would have been a lot cooler to him when we were kids.”

Verbena recorded for Capitol Records, and Nuby appreciates the freedom that comes with an independent label like Skybucket, as opposed to a major. “On an independent label you can get somebody on the phone. I’m not going to say it wasn’t fun to be on a major label, because you have more money to work with. But you also have way more money to pay back. Artistically, being on an indie label is so much better because, while you can have 100 percent creative control on a major label, it’s only 100 percent creative control if they agree with your choices. . . . Major labels are like a big promise that’s never kept. I’m sure that some bands that are huge would totally disagree. But you have to fight tooth and nail to do anything with a major label.”

Nuby is not surprised that Morgan now runs his own record company. “It makes sense because he’s kinda been a musicologist ever since I’ve known him as an adult,” he says. “And he’s got a really great ethic, because he has to like the music. His number one rule is that he has to enjoy the music that he puts out. He didn’t release the first Vulture Whale album because he was like, ‘Man, I think it’s a cool album but it’s just not what I need to release right now.’ And it’s a tough pill to swallow because he’s a buddy. . . . But you’ve gotta respect the guy. He works harder than anybody at a major label that I’ve ever met.”

Regarding butting heads with his bands over artistic differences, Travis Morgan is pragmatic: “We don’t necessarily have huge arguments or anything like that. We know each other well enough, pretty much, to where we can say, ‘Hey, I think it would be better done this way.’ So, I actually have a pretty hands-on approach with most of them, and offer my two cents and say, ‘This is how I feel about it.’ Then we end up making compromises . . . Because in the end, I’m the one that has to sell it, basically, to everyone else.”

One of the most frustrating experiences for Skybucket involved 13ghosts and the Bob Marley estate. Four years ago, 13ghosts covered Marley’s “Three Little Birds” on their CD Cicada. “We were trying to kind of be on the up-and-up with the record [by contacting the Marley representatives for permission] . . . and they sent us a ‘cease and desist’ letter,” explains 13ghosts cofounder Brad Armstrong. “We were kind of trying to use the tune in an uplifting way. . . . We thought [our version] was pretty respectful. But our lawyer said we couldn’t release it because the band added lyrics to the song. [Changing someone else's song requires getting the original artist's approval.] His advice was to ask permission.”




	Lazarus Beach” by Birmingham band Through the Sparks. (click for larger version)

Armstrong doubted that any problems would arise. “‘We’re a little, tiny indie band. What’s the worst case scenario?’ I asked our lawyer. And he said, ‘Well, they can take your house.’ And I said, ‘Well, in what crazy parallel universe is that going to actually happen?’ And he said, ‘I can’t tell you it’s not going to happen.’ So he contacted [Marley's] people, and the next thing we heard was their lawyers telling us to pull all the records [from stores]. And, of course, this was after the fact. It was already pressed and distributed nationally and Skybucket had to recall it. It was a real big-to-do. . . . It was killed through our own naïve inexperience or whatever. If I were in the same situation now, I’d just put the song out and not worry about it, you know?”




	Barton Carroll’s second Skybucket release. (click for larger version)

Travis Morgan is not eager to repeat the experience. “Having to pull the album from the stores is expensive and takes a long time. It was definitely an eye-opening experience. It’s one of those things where, for a second, you go, ‘Why didn’t the artist tell me that it wasn’t a straight-up cover?’ But then you realize that they didn’t know that, either,” Morgan says.

Morgan has been pleased with the response to Skybucket’s efforts. “Most indie bands that are doing really well, if you’re selling 10,000 copies then you’re doing good. We’re not there yet. But I think we’re putting out quality music, and for a label to put out 25 records in five years is a pretty good milestone,” he offers. Skybucket’s top seller is The Dexateens’ 2007 album Hardwire Healing. “My underlying goal is to get these bands a lot of exposure. I honestly believe, with all the music that I listen to, that there’s enough good music coming out of this town to consider it a good music city.” &

Have Gasoline, Will Travel

Birmingham heads to SXSW.

Skybucket Records chief Travis Morgan and Jeff Tenner, owner of Soca clothing store in Homewood, are promoting an unofficial showcase of Birmingham bands at the 2009 South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas.

For the uninitiated, music conferences such as SXSW are something of a rite of passage for bands seeking greater exposure for their work. At SXSW, the streets are literally filled with thousands of music publicists, writers, college radio programmers, and, of course, representatives from record labels and publishing companies. A couple of shows at SXSW can allow a band to make valuable connections.

“It’s nice to be around a lot of like-minded people, people that aren’t making any money but doing it because they love it,” Morgan says, noting how much he enjoys what has become one of the largest industry music festivals in the world. This year will mark Tenner’s maiden voyage to SXSW. “The goal at SXSW is to play as much as you can,” explains Tenner, who also manages the Kate Taylor Band, which will perform at the Birmingham showcase in Austin. “Many of the bands also have official showcases at the festival. So this is just another opportunity for them to play in case whomever they need to come see them at the official show can’t attend. And then there are some bands like Vulture Whale, who for some bizarre reason, didn’t get accepted [into the official SXSW lineup] even though SPIN reviewed their record and said it was great.”

Birmingham’s Taylor Hollingsworth has performed with his band at SXSW twice in the past three years. This year, however, he’ll be doing solo acoustic shows. “I want to sound as positive as I can,” Hollingsworth laughs. “This year I wasn’t planning on going but my girlfriend [Kate Taylor] is playing, and I’ll be playing with her. You can definitely accomplish things and get things done [at SXSW] as a band. It’s nice having pretty much the entire music industry in one city, so you can invite people and they can see you if they haven’t been able to before.”

The Austin showcase will take place Saturday, March 21, at the Creekside Lounge, from noon until 6 p.m. To help fund the Austin trip, a fundraising concert titled “Gas Money: Birmingham Goes to SXSW” will be held on March 12 at WorkPlay. The lineup for the Workplay show includes Indian Red (featuring Preston Lovinggood of Wild Sweet Orange and Jody Nelson of Through the Sparks), 13ghosts, the Grenadines, Through the Sparks, and Vulture Whale. For more info, visit www.skybucket.com or www.workplay.com. &

The Night Owl

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2008-06-26 Features

The Night Owl

For 14 years, the gregarious owner of Marty’s bar has welcomed the late-night crowd.

By Ed Reynolds

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Marty Eagle: “We have one rule in this place—and it’s enforced—and that’s ‘Be nice or be gone.’” (Photograph by Mark Gooch.) (click for larger version)

June 26, 2008

Tucked away on a seldom-traveled street near Five Points South, a neighborhood bar and grill named Marty’s has been a late-night destination for 14 years. Aside from Lou’s Pub in Lakeview, few Birmingham bars have such a well-known public face, and none have owner Marty Eagle’s knack for making newcomers instantly feel like regulars. Eagle rarely forgets a face and will usually offer a handshake and warm grin each time you stop by.

Eagle’s friendly, upbeat attitude comes across in the DVD presentation available for purchase through the bar’s web site that provides a step-by-step guide to prospering in the nightclub business. In the introduction, Eagle climbs out of his sports car, unlocks the bar’s front door, looks into the camera, and says, “Hi. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you how to find happiness.”

Eagle is equally forthcoming in person. Rather than guard the lessons learned from his 20 years in the bar business, he has chosen the role of nightclub ambassador. “For me, being in the after-hours business, the more people that are [working in bars and restaurants], the better my business is, because bar and restaurant employees get off work late. That’s the niche I went after—all the bar people and musicians and the late-shift workers from UAB. Two or three in the morning is when their happy hour starts. Those people are not coming in all stupid and drunk. They’re coming from their jobs to have their happy hour drinks.”

The aforementioned DVD offers tips for bookkeeping, choosing music (both recorded and live), hiring top-notch bartenders, avoiding lease problems, and dealing with drunks. “Yeah, that’s the biggest thing you’ve got,” Eagle laments. “You’ve got people drinking, and some people don’t drink well. You’ve got to try to manage them. When you come in here, you have a good time. But if somebody is interfering with the rest of the people having a good time, they’ll be asked to leave. My place is so small, when somebody acts up or acts out, you can feel it all over the room. We have one rule in this place—and it’s enforced—and that’s ‘Be nice or be gone.’ It’s real simple. Has no color, no gender, no nothing.”

Local musician Bob Barker, who has performed at Marty’s often over the years, has always been impressed with Eagle’s finesse in handling difficult customers, which are surprisingly few for an all-night bar. “As soon as somebody’s enjoyment is being hindered by somebody else’s over-enjoyment, Marty takes care of it,” Barker explains. “And if he wasn’t able to do it every time, you’d end up with a problem bar.”

Operating at odd hours sometimes invites the extraordinary. “Being open late at night, you don’t know who’s coming to the door,” Eagle admits. “I had a go-go dancer come in and get up on a table, and she looked like she was pretty lit up—but she wasn’t rude. I was trying to figure out how to get her down without any problem. And I just walked up there and I held out my hand and she put her hand in mind and I helped her down and I said, ‘It’s okay now, you’re off work.’”

• • •Born in Pennsylvania, Eagle spent his adolescence in Brooklyn. Even then, he found nightspots irresistible. “In New York, you only had to be 18 to get into a bar to drink. So, of course, I was sneaking in at 16,” he says. “I just always liked bars.” He learned to bartend at a club located on the Maxwell Air Force Base while serving in the Air Force in Montgomery. “That’s how I got to Alabama. I was in the Air Force and I worked on airborne electronics,” he explains. “But I didn’t want to do that forever, I didn’t want to crawl around a plane. When I got out, I went to this vocational school in Montgomery and got a job there as a computer programmer. I got hired by a company that was a subsidiary of IBM. Then I went to Dallas and I was a contract programmer; I would fly out of Dallas in all directions to wherever the job was.”

He got his first Birmingham bartending job in the early 1970s. “The first guy I worked for here was Ace Kabase. You know where Charlemagne Records is? That used to be a bar called the Trail’s End. There was a one-way mirror at the top of the long, steep stairwell to the second floor. If somebody bounced off the walls too many times walking up, we didn’t let them in.”

Eagle’s first venture as a business owner was Leo’s, a combination cafeteria, hot dog stand, and lounge in the Bank For Savings building downtown (not to be confused with the Leo’s later located near Fourth Avenue and 18th Street South). “I lost my ass there. Different things happened that I never recovered from,” he recalls. “It took me about a year to catch on to the various ways I was being stolen from. So, it was kind of my college education. I got back into computers to make a little more money and then I opened the Eagle’s Nest in 1980 [at the site currently occupied by The Derby bar on Sixth Avenue South near Avondale]. The Eagle’s Nest was an early-hour joint. Around midnight during the week, we’d close and go to somebody else’s joint. I leased the space from a guy in the vending machine business who owned a bunch of little bars like that, all run by different operators. After about five years I was doing well enough that he walked in and wanted to double my lease. And I said, ‘Well, screw you, man.’ I should have planned it a little different, but I was a little hotheaded and I just dumped it, and it took me a while to get back into the business on my own.” After nine years, some of which were spent bartending at the legendary Norm’s on Green Springs Highway, Eagle opened Marty’s in 1994.

• • •On a tiny corner stage, Marty’s offers live music, of all stripes, seven nights a week. Compared to many other bar owners, Eagle takes an unusually strong interest in the bands he books, often auditioning them first at another club or even at a band’s practice space. He pursues his interest in music outside of the club as well. When not overseeing the day-to-day workings of Marty’s, Eagle takes a train to New Orleans and makes the rounds of the city’s landmark jazz clubs such as Snug Harbor. His love of jazz led him to provide a Sunday night residency for the late pianist and fellow nightclub owner Jerry Grundhoefer. “I had Grundy in here on Sundays after Grundy’s went out of business. He ran the jazz night, and nobody else could hold it together like he could. Somebody had to be the disciplinarian. And none of the others wanted to discipline any of the other people. But Jerry wanted a good show, and he did it right.”

When asked about his favorite bands, Eagle laughs and replies, “What I really like is whatever’s coming up here this weekend. I try to get in good shows. I like a variety of music. If I was on the coast and my customers were changing all the time, I could get by with one really good band for a season. Whereas, here I have a lot of regulars, so I’ve got to keep it fresh for them.” He added that an after-hours cover charge on weekends has an added benefit: “That $5 is a good way of weeding out [drunk] jerks late at night.”

Customers winding down after a night of drinking can order from Marty’s grill, which serves hamburgers, patty melts, and corned beef sandwiches from 11 p.m. until dawn. “I’m mainly in the bar business,” Eagle says. “You’ve got to have food to help people get sober, or if they get hungry, to keep them from leaving your place and going to another place just for a bite to eat. Because once they’re gone, they may never come back.”

• • •Diners at one of the handful of white-tablecloth restaurants on Southside may have noticed a solitary, black-clad diner at the bar with his head buried in a book—that’s Eagle starting his workday. “I like to read a lot, and books are only alive when they are being read. Most books are just gathering dust,” he explains. Marty’s maintains a free lending library that consists of several shelves of paperbacks. “People tend to bring me a box of books from time to time. The library has been self-sustaining for 10 years now. People will notice that the library is low, and someone will drop a box of books outside.”

“This is not a big place. My friends probably say I micromanage it or something,” Eagle says with a laugh. “But I enjoy it. It’s hard to explain. Just like you might enjoy loading up the golf clubs and going to the golf course. I get pleasure from it as well as it being work at times. There’s ugly moments, rolling in the street with idiots that you have to throw out or something like that.”

When asked if he’s content running Marty’s for the foreseeable future, he replies, “As long as it plays out all right, I’m good with it. You know, somebody might walk in one day and just have to have it. And I might let ‘em, then take a break and go open another bar.” &

Marty’s (www.martysbar.com; 939-0045), at 1813 10th Court South, is open 365 days a year from 4 p.m. to 6 a.m.