Category Archives: The Southeast

Johnny U

Quarterback Johnny Unitas’ death on September 11 stirred childhood memories: Sunday afternoon pickup games played on empty church lots, NFL championships on television, or the solitary make-believe of an electric football game. Unitas was considered by most to be the greatest quarterback ever, and was credited by the late sportscaster Dick Schaap as the man primarily responsible for elevating football above baseball as the national pastime. There was nothing fancy about Unitas. A blue-collar quarterback with a crew cut and a simple, workmanlike effort, Unitas shredded the NFL’s staunchest defenses to ribbons each autumn Sunday afternoon. The image of Unitas on a black-and-white television set leading another come-from-behind victory was simply spellbinding. He could make the closing minutes of a football game seemingly go on forever. Expertly milking the clock for every precious second, Unitas invented the “two-minute” offense that eventually became an integral part of modern pro football.



	Johnny Unitas prepares to pass while Jim Marshall of the Minnesota Vikings gives chase during a 1967 NFL game.

Growing up Catholic in Pennsylvania, Unitas dreamed of playing college ball at Notre Dame but was rejected because he only weighed 138 pounds. Drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers out of the University of Louisville, he was released at season’s end because the Steelers had too many quarterbacks. He took a construction job in the Pittsburgh area in 1956, playing semi-pro football for the Bloomtown Rams on dirt fields “for three dollars a game and the promise of a cold shower,” according to Unitas. Baltimore’s starting quarterback broke his leg against the Chicago Bears and the back-up had chosen law school over the NFL when Unitas was picked up by the Colts for $7,000 a season. He threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown the first time he passed, and lost a fumble in each of his next two possessions. But the next year he led the Colts to their first winning season, and in 1958 he guided Baltimore to the first of back-to-back world championships over the New York Giants. Packer coaching legend Vince Lombardi said he was the greatest player to ever play the game.

For all his passing skills, Unitas considered his devotion to mental discipline his most vital asset as a quarterback. A master at finding vulnerabilities in opposing defenses, he astounded coaches with his ability to call the perfect plays in unpredictable situations. He was fabled for his toughness (quarterbacks were not protected back then as they are by today’s rules), which earned respect from teammates. Former Colts lineman Bubba Smith remembered the afternoon an opposing defensive lineman shoved Unitas’ head into the ground after a tackle. “He called the same play, let the same guy come through, and broke his nose with the football. I said, ‘That’s my hero.’” Former Colt tight end John Mackey said that playing with Unitas was like “being in a huddle with God.”

Comparing Johnny Unitas to the Almighty was not lost on my Sunday School pals. Conversation at church usually centered more on football than the Lord. We couldn’t wait to get home to watch Unitas rally the Baltimore Colts one more time. With his head tilted downward as if gazing at the ground, his black high-top shoes shuffling rapidly back into the pocket, his style of dropping back to pass was like that of no other quarterback. He appeared invincible in that white helmet with the big blue horseshoe on the side. For years I didn’t realize the logo was a horseshoe. To me it had always represented a big blue “U” for Unitas.

BBC to Beam Country Boy Eddy to the World

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BBC to Beam Country Boy Eddy to the World

Ringing a cowbell, playing a fiddle, and braying his famous “mule call,” Country Boy Eddy (aka Eddy Burns) was more reliable than a barnyard rooster as his daily 5 a.m. television show woke up households across the Southeast. For some WBRC Channel 6 viewers, the day couldn’t begin without coffee and the purest country music ever heard. For others, it was the perfect way to end an all-nighter.

Sunrise was never the same after “The Country Boy Eddy Show” was canceled in 1994. Burns was as proficient doing advertisements and delivering one-liners as he was strumming a guitar while reading funeral announcements. He advertised everything from mobile homes to Eagle Seven Rat Bait (“If you love your rats, neighbors, don’t give ‘em this stuff, ’cause it kills the ol’ rat dead!”). He continually poked fun at his regular cast of sidekicks with a devious grin. While interviewing a chimney sweep who had arrived at the television station to plug his expertise at “reaming out chimneys,” Country Boy turned to one of his ever-revolving cohosts and asked, “Bobby T, you ever been reamed out?”

In the mid-1960s, a blond hairdresser named Wynette Pugh, barely out of her teens, shyly walked into WBRC studios and asked Burns for an audition. “She looked over at me after she finished that song and asked, ‘Do you think I’m good enough to be on your show?’” Burns laughed and said, “Yeah, you can be on anytime you want to.” Pugh became a regular, eventually moving to Nashville and changing her name to Tammy Wynette.

The British Broadcasting Corporation recently paid Burns a visit at Fox 6 studios to interview him for a BBC special on Wynette. The program is scheduled to air in January 2003. “They wanted to see the studio we performed in. They wanted to do a little story about it,” said Burns, who added that he had never been to Britain, nor had he ever seen any BBC programming.

These days, Burns still makes occasional commercials and performs at churches, nursing homes, restaurants, and mobile home centers. “One guy up in Cullman pays me $500 to come sit on the porch with my guitar and greet people when they come in to buy a mobile home. I say, ‘Come on in folks!’ and give ‘em a mule call and a cowbell ring. We sell the heck out of ‘em!”

George Jones

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George Jones

By Ed Reynolds

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Having relinquished his reputation for being too drunk to appear on stage, George Jones had gotten as predictable as April rain over the past 20 years. However, Jones’ performance at Oak Mountain May 25 was anything but predictable. Though still relegating his best hits to medley-status, the 70-year-old singer abandoned his uptight sing-and-get-the-hell-off-the-stage philosophy for a more relaxed approach, as though he were entertaining at a backyard barbecue. Stylishly attired in white boots and a western-stitched powder blue suit, Jones bears a striking resemblance to the late Charlie Rich. His silver hair remains considerably long, meticulously brushed into place, as if manicured rather than sprayed.

In the past, Jones’ voice has been as precise as Pavarotti’s. The classic nasal whine and resonating bottom tones are strong as ever, but on this night, Jones struggled with high notes, often singing flat through entire phrases. Instead of detracting, the loss of vocal control added an intriguing accessible element that complemented the singer’s admittedly simple approach to performing: “We don’t need anybody flyin’ around on a rope. We’re just a plain, ol’ country music show.”

A plain, ol’ country music show, indeed. Before Jones came on stage, a video screen behind the band’s instruments hawked a recent George Jones recording, urging fans to simply raise their hands and the latest CD would be delivered to their seats for 10 bucks. During the show Jones bantered with the crowd, bemoaning the current state of country music, “Ya’ll notice that they don’t write songs about drinkin’ and cheatin’ any more?” he asked at one point. The crowd vocally shared his dismay. Moments later, a young, obviously intoxicated fan leaped onto the stage to hug Jones and tell the singer how much he loved him. Jones replied, “Well. I love you, too, son.” As security personnel dragged the besotted fellow from the stage, Jones asked them to take it easy on the kid. “He’s a good boy. I remember those days,” he laughed.

Proudly admitting that he was drinking “spring water, though I don’t know how much spring it has in it,” Jones acknowledged several birthdays in the audience. With surreal abandon, he sang “Happy Birthday” to a couple of people instead of squeezing all the names into one version. An American flag was brought out toward the show’s conclusion, as Jones introduced a husband and wife duo that had opened the concert. “They’re gonna sing ‘God Bless the USA’ by Lee Greenwood or Ray Stevens or whatever his name is,” Jones said flippantly. “I get ‘em mixed up. All I know is, one’s funny and the other one isn’t.”

Vida Blue Winds Up at Rickwood

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Vida Blue Winds Up at Rickwood

By Ed Reynolds

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Snap on your bow ties and call in sick to work, because former Oakland A’s pitcher Vida Blue will toss out the first pitch for this year’s Rickwood Classic on April 25. The annual game, played at Rickwood Field, features the Birmingham Barons, decked out in vintage 1928 uniforms, battling it out with the Chattanooga Lookouts.

Vida Blue compiled a 10-3 record during a 1969 tour of Double-A baseball duty in Birmingham. Two years later, he was in Oakland, striking out 301 batters as he chalked up an ERA of 1.82 to win the Cy Young award and MVP. (His salary that year was $14,700.)

With an unforgettable moniker and a blistering pitching delivery, Blue was the perfect fit for the Oakland A’s. Sporting white shoes, sunshine-yellow uniforms, and long-haired pitchers with names like Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers, the A’s of the early 1970s were a powerhouse club years ahead of other major leaguers in terms of style. Owner Charlie Finley’s insatiable addiction to garish flamboyance established a collection of personalities never before encountered on a baseball diamond. The A’s were poster boys for irreverence, bringing to baseball what Joe Namath had brought to the American Football League a few years earlier. Blue was one of the aces on the rotating wrecking crew that debilitated hitters’ efforts during the Oakland A’s string of World Series titles from 1972 to 1974. A left-handed flame-thrower, Blue dazzled the baseball world in 1971 with his powerful wind-up as he pitched eight shut-outs en route to a 24-8 record. He threw a no-hitter against the Twins that year; a walk to Harmon Killebrew was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect game. Blue was also the first pitcher to start for each league in the All-Star Game.

Blue had an early run-in with Finley for refusing to comply with the owner’s request that he change his first name to “True.” Some of Finley’s affection for gaudy promotion must have rubbed off on Blue, however. The pitcher staged his wedding in Candlestick Park in 1989 (he spent the end of his career as a San Francisco Giant) before 50,000 spectators to celebrate Fan Appreciation Day. Former baseball great Orlando Cepeda gave away the bride and Giants’ legend Willie McCovey was best man.

For more on Vida Blue see interview, link above

Guns On Parade

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Guns On Parade

By Ed Reynolds

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January 18, 2001

On a peaceful Saturday morning, the stories swapped among the men lounging in the front room of Saint Joseph’s Baptist Church had a common theme: the feeling of helplessness that comes from staring down the barrel of a .357 Magnum. Reverend Abraham Woods, pastor of Saint Joseph’s, recalled a face-to-face confrontation with a shaking, gun-wielding teen robbing a convenience store that Woods had entered to purchase a soda. As the sweating assailant held a gun on Woods, the Reverend started to tell the robber who he was in hopes that the kid would surrender-not a good idea. “He was too nervous for an introduction,” Woods recalled with a chuckle. Frank Matthews, community activist and radio talk show host, nodded his head and laughed as he recalled the night he and his dinner companions were locked in a freezer at Shoneys while the restaurant was being robbed. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” confessed Matthews.

The scene was Saint Joseph’s annual gun buy-back, held each January on the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration. Sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with area churches and businesses, the weapons swap pays people up to $50 cash in exchange for a weapon. At Birmingham’s first gun buy-back in 1994, 411 guns were collected in 90 minutes-a national record according to Matthews. This year, a steady flow of gun-toting citizens waited patiently outside the church door, which was kept locked at all times. Inside, a Birmingham police officer from the Tactical Operational Unit checked to make sure the guns were not loaded. The officer had already emptied bullets from two pistols by mid-morning.

Frank Matthews, a former gang member who was arrested 33 times before he was 19, but who now goes by the moniker “God’s Gangster,” was designated “gun appraiser and negotiator.” Matthews studied each piece quickly, offering $10 to $20 for most of the surrendered weapons. While many people were happy to get what they could for their guns, one elderly gentleman, dissatisfied with Matthew’s $15 offer, said he would hang onto his .12 gauge double-barreled shotgun. Matthews warned him not to leave the gun laying around his home because his grandchildren might get hurt. “I ain’t got no grandkids!” the disgruntled fellow shouted as he left. “We got a couple of Uzis, and that’s a blessing,” sighed a middle-aged woman as she jotted down the serial numbers of surrendered weapons. Behind her was a long table covered with rifles, pistols, and the pair of coveted Uzis. “This is the gun of choice,” said Matthews, holding up an Uzi [also known as a "street sweeper"] as he repeatedly pulled out, then reinserted, the gun’s clip with considerable dexterity. “When a gang gets hold of an Uzi, it does something to the identity of the gang. Gives them more status,” explained Matthews. One of the Uzis fetched $30, while a .357 Magnum brought $35, the highest pay out of the morning.

A woman in a Betty Boop sweatshirt turned in her .38 Special because “the permit had expired, and I don’t want it no more.” A visibly uncomfortable man handed Matthews a .300 Winchester Magnum. “That’s a terrible gun, isn’t it?” noted Reverend Woods. “You could almost hold off an army with that thing.”

Another woman arrived with a gun-wielding tot. “I’m bringin’ in my little boy. He’s already killed 10 people this morning,” she laughed, as the four year-old aimed his plastic pistol and imitated gunfire at everyone in sight. The kid surrendered his weapon to Reverend Woods, who gave him a glimmering locomotive engine in exchange. “Toy guns and play weapons of destruction; we must do something about the terrible romance people develop with guns at an early age,” noted Woods who shook his head at the pile of approximately 60 weapons collected at the church. “It’s a meaningful way to pay tribute to Dr. King. He was the ‘apostle of nonviolence.’ We are our brother’s keeper, but he’d be appalled to find that many of us have become our brother’s killer.”