By Edward Reynolds
July 15, 2015

I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.
—Helen Keller

Prologue

On the evening of July 8, 2015, a dozen literary notables with ties to Alabama received long overdue official recognition when the first class of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame was inducted. Major sponsors of the Hall of Fame include the Alabama Center for the Book, the University of Alabama Library Leadership Board, and the Alabama Writers’ Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. The Gala was held in the Bryant Conference Center at the University of Alabama, with close to 300 in attendance.

Table Setting From Writers Hall of Fame Dinner. Photo by Elizabeth Limbaugh

Julie Friedman is a Hall of Fame Committee member, vice-president of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, a member of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and currently on the Library Leadership Board at the University of Alabama. Friedman said the notion of establishing an Alabama Writers Hall of Fame began in conversations with Alabama Writers’ Forum Executive Director Jeanie Thompson “dreaming about something that we could do to honor writers who either have been born in the state or have done most of their work in Alabama.”

Friedman elaborated, “We have a vehicle in place to honor living writers either through the Harper Lee Award or through the State Arts Council and through the Governor’s Arts Awards. But we didn’t have anything in place that would recognize writers who were deceased in addition to living writers.” Friedman added that a second class will be inducted around the fall of 2016.

Regarding the criteria for choosing the inaugural class, she explained, “A lot of what we looked at were awards—had they won a Pulitzer Prize—or do they have a national reputation. Did their work have an impact on literature? Johnson Jones Hooper was a tremendous influence on Mark Twain, and Twain even borrowed characters from Johnson Jones Hooper. Augusta Jane Evans Wilson was one of the first published authors from the state of Alabama. When she wrote in the 1850s and 1860s, she sold thousands of books at a time when the Internet didn’t exist and there were no public relations campaigns.

Virtually unknown today, Augusta Evans Wilson was one of the most well-known writers of the 19th century and certainly the most successful Alabama writer of her time. Wilson’s great popularity is evidenced by the number of towns and young girls named for her characters.
The Green Room

In the media “green room,” poet, playwright, and Hall of Fame inductee Sonia Sanchez was absolutely charming. Sanchez, a distinguished member of the Black Arts Movement, addresses everyone as “my sister” or “my brother.” Her warm personality, gray dreadlocks, and sparkling black jacket were mesmerizing. Sanchez, a Birmingham native, moved out of state at age six.

“Dad (Wilson L. Driver) took me and my sister up to New York after my grandmother died. He said, ostensibly, you know, for us to have freedom,” explained Sanchez.

“I took care of him the last six years of his life although I was teaching at Temple [University] all that time. He lived in a house in Harlem…. His friends would bring fruit, water, and juice…. And they would bring dirty jokes,” she reflected, laughing. “And I pretended I didn’t hear the dirty jokes sitting in the dining room.

“Dad was initiated into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame because he was a drummer; he was part of that group that Fess Whatley taught at Parker High.

“The joy about my father is that I’m glad he did bring us to New York City because I couldn’t have gotten the free education that I got [being a resident], and we got a bloody good one being in New York City,” she said. “When my father was very ill, one day he asked me, ‘Do you think we’ll ever have a black president?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Dad, it’s going to happen in my time.’ He said, ‘Oh no, no, no… it’ll never happen.’ But I think it’s because my father [lived in] a Southern landscape for so many years…. He was not a young man when he went to New York City. He was in his forties. As a consequence he couldn’t see beyond it. We were raised in New York City and it was a different kind of expanse for me. I taught for years in the university system. I had black, white, green, purple, blue, and brown students. I taught them to be very respectful of each other, to understand that we were part of a new generation, a new change.”

Sanchez continued, “I taught them and I could see what their eyes could see but what my father’s eyes could not see because the majority of his life was spent in the South. And he still walked on what I call a Southern landscape in the North. Whereas we—my sister and I—were on a Northern landscape. So that’s how I could do my early poetry that was really New York poetry; we were rough, we cursed. We didn’t kill anyone. We slaughtered people with our words. We said, ‘Back down!’ And it was simply because at some point we discovered that we’d been enslaved and no one had told us. There was no big sign in Times Square that read, ‘Oh, by the way, you Negroes, you black folks were enslaved.’ And when we got something about slavery in school—and this is New York City—it was never discussed. It was like we saw a picture of a would-be slave eating a watermelon.”

Sanchez’s primary joy in life has been discovering people and being with people. Early in her professional writing journey she came face to face with Northern prejudice in the offices of The New York Times.

“I answered an ad in The New York Times advertising for a writer and they responded with a telegram that informed me that I was hired because of the writing samples I sent the paper,” she said. “So I went down there all dressed up in my blue suit, my blue hat, my heels, my blue purse, and my white gloves. They said to report at 9:00. I got there at 8:30 because I wasn’t on ‘CP time.’ Lo and behold, here comes this [white] woman clicking down the hall in her heels, and she asked what I wanted. So I went into in my purse and showed her the telegram they’d sent to tell me to report for work. She disappeared and two [white] guys walked in and [immediately] disappeared. Finally another [white] guy appeared, and I showed him the telegram telling me to show up for work. He stared at me and said, ‘Well, the job is taken.’ So I used my New York humor and said, ‘Oh, I got you. I came too early. The telegram said to show up at 9:00. I’m going to go outside and wait until 9:00 and then I’ll come back and everything will be OK.’ And he did not laugh. He reiterated, ‘I said the job is taken.’ So I said, ‘I’ve got your discrimination. I’m going to report you to the Urban League.’ He shrugged his shoulders and walked away.”

When asked how she felt about being regarded as the queen of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez noted, “I was the only female with all of those men. That was an amazing thing when you look back on it. You had a whole slew of men and there I was on stage with them. They talk about BAM—Black Arts Movement—being sexist. But what was great about BAM was that they didn’t say, ‘Sonia, you’re the only female. You go first.’ I usually was some place in the program where I went right before Baraka. (Amari Baraka was one of the leading African-American poets and writers who carved his name into literary history beginning in the 1960s.) Isn’t that amazing?” Sanchez surmised with wonder and pride. “We were very much equals on the stage. Being in the civil rights movement, men and women were equal. I was from New York and we thought we were the baddest thing (laughs) on the planet Earth. Or the most radical, at least.”

Andrew Glaze, who was appointed Alabama’s poet laureate by Governor Robert Bentley in 2012, was present to receive his induction medal. Glaze worked for nine years at The Birmingham Post-Herald. Covering a beat inspired one of his most famous poems, “I Am the Jefferson County Courthouse.”

Elizabeth Glaze edited her aging father’s upcoming book Overheard in a Drugstore. She flew in from Philadelphia to help celebrate her father’s induction. Elizabeth spoke for the elder Glaze, who at age ninety-five is largely confined to a wheelchair and has difficulty communicating verbally after suffering a stroke.

She told of her father’s dedication to his craft. “My father would get up early in the morning and work on poems before he went to work,” she said. “He would bicycle home for lunch and work on poems, then bicycle back to work. He would come home in the evening and he’d usually work for a little while on his poems at night. And he’d also set aside time to work on his poems on weekends. He was very driven and very dedicated, extremely prolific. My father was very good at sending his stuff out and communicating and submitting to magazines, which is why he got published in so many magazines.”

Elizabeth Glaze shared the story of how her father became friends with Robert Frost. “One of the things that I did because I was editing the book was to contact the Robert Frost estate and they gave me permission to reproduce a handwritten note that Frost wrote [to my father], which is in the library at Dartmouth in the Robert Frost Collection,” she said. “It’s from 1954. Frost was on a poetry reading tour, and he came through Birmingham in the mid-1950…. My father’s poetry teacher at Harvard was very close to Robert Frost. The Harvard teacher quietly passed the poem on to Frost for his opinion. Frost replied in a note, ‘I have high hopes for Mr. Glaze.’ Glaze had met Frost many times at Harvard and at writers’ conferences in Massachusetts.”

During that Birmingham visit, Frost asked his host “to contact my father and invite him to join them on an outing to Jasper,” Elizabeth Glaze said.

“My father ended up writing a poem about the outing and that’s in the upcoming book. Between 1960 and 2009 or so, he actually kept working on that poem,” she noted, laughing.

Acclaimed Birmingham poet, novelist, and short story writer Kathleen Thompson accepted Helen Norris Bell’s induction medal. Thompson, who had written a thesis on Bell in 2003 while Thompson attended Spalding University, recalled their friendship. “Helen and I were good friends,” said Thompson. “We had an eating, reading, and writing group when I lived in Prattville and she lived in Montgomery. We would meet at each other’s homes, and I had the distinct privilege of hearing a lot of Helen’s stories before they were in print. The thing that Helen had…is the requirement of every good writer; she has a balance of pathos and humor.”

Thompson marveled at Bell’s curiosity that inspired much of her work. “Do you know how she would get her ideas? She would find some little obscure fact such as that the luster of nice pearls is better when worn than when kept in a safe deposit box,” Thompson explained. “And out of that tiny little fact she wrote a short story called “The Pearl Sitter.”
Dinner Is Served

Many of the dining tables represented an inductee, replete with silver inkwells and feather quills, complemented by books and ornamental displays that heralded the spirit of each inductee’s written work. The table settings for inductees led to the stage, set with oversized posters of each inductee. Printed programs at each seat provided a condensed biography and photo of the authors.

The dinner menu included a salad of spinach leaves and spring lettuce with dried cranberries and crumbled gorgonzola drizzled with whole grain mustard vinaigrette, filet of beef with a red wine port reduction, potatoes Anna, and a Mediterranean vegetable medley crowned with asparagus spears. Desert was lemon cake and chocolate cheesecake with raspberries and whipped cream.

At dinner I was fortunate enough to sit at the table of inductee Helen Norris Bell and to chat with the table’s sponsor, retired circuit judge Sally Greenhaw, to my left. Ms. Greenhaw is the widow of Wayne Greenhaw, who wrote extensively about the civil rights movement and the Ku Klux Klan. He received the Harper Lee Award in 2006. To my right I talked about Bragg’s recent biography on Jerry Lee Lewis with University of Alabama Press director Curtis Clark, who agreed with me that Jerry Lee’s country records surpass his rock and roll recordings.

Edmond Williams—retired Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at UA—served as emcee for the Hall of Fame induction. As the house lights dimmed, Williams took the stage to begin the ceremonies. Selected works from each inductee were read by actors and actresses from Theatre Tuscaloosa, adding a spark of drama and humor to the evening’s program. Although most of the inductees are deceased, the creative talent of Theatre Tuscaloosa resurrected their words—and those of the living—with dynamic voices.

With dinner and the dramatic readings concluded, Jeanie Thompson and Louis Pitschmann, Dean of UA Libraries and director of the Alabama Center for the Book, draped the award medals around the necks of the living inductees and presented the boxed medals to the deceased inductees’ representatives.
Postscript

I spoke with the final two inductees, Rick Bragg and Sena Jeter Naslund, the day before the induction ceremony. This gave me the opportunity to ask about three potential impediments that often challenge writers: the importance of a muse, writer’s block, and procrastination.

Bragg has won numerous awards for journalistic excellence and his memoirs about his family, including All Over But the Shoutin’. He has recently published the aforementioned biography on the life of Jerry Lee Lewis. When asked about the importance of a muse in his writing, Bragg expressed skepticism. “I don’t really believe in muse,” he said. “I’ll get kicked out of writers’ clubs for saying this, but I don’t believe that writing is a gift from the gods. I believe that writing is a craft; it’s like being a carpenter able to sight down a board to see whether it’s true or not or a guy who can stand in a field and look at the dirt and see what will grow in it. My brother Sam, if he sees a guy who is reliable and honest, he won’t say, ‘Look at that honest fellow.’ He’ll say, ‘That guy’s gun-barrel straight.’ It’s not folksy; it’s not Hee Haw and stuff. It’s the way these people talk. So you listen to them and then you read. I’ve read the people being inducted into this Hall of Fame. Harper Lee taught me how to put a human face on a morality play. I’m not a great believer that the muse flits in through the window and whispers words [into your ear]. I think the muse is an invention of the rich folks.”

Regarding procrastination, Bragg is equally dismissive. “I think procrastination is really good if you write for a hobby,” he said. “But if you write for a living, then procrastination has another definition; it’s called unemployment. If I have a contract, if I have a deadline, then that’s probably my muse. Sometimes what you’re writing is just eating away at you and you just have to get it out.”

Bragg was a little easier on the problem of writer’s block. “I don’t really believe in writers block, but I think sometimes you don’t feel good,” he noted. “And this has happened to me as I’ve gotten older. Sometimes your mind’s not clear, sometimes you’re just worried. Sometimes you’re just groping for your story. But I have never been unable to find a way out of that. It’s not that it all flows free and easy but I have found, especially as I have gotten older, that the words kind of know where they want to go.”

Speaking about his induction, Bragg is genuinely moved. “It’s a great honor and it probably means a lot more because it’s close to home,” he said. “And also the company that I’m in. I know that there are a lot of [deserving people] in this state, because it’s so rich in writers. There are a lot of people deserving of this—I don’t know if I am or not—but I’m honored, especially to be in that company of people like Harper Lee, Zora Neale Hurston, and all those folks. So I’m thrilled. I’ve reached the point in my life where I never thought I’d be the ‘whipper snapper’ of that group. I’m not the youngest anything any more. I used to be. But I haven’t been the youngest of anything in a long time.”

Sena Jeter Naslund, whose most popular novel, Ahab’s Wife; or, The Star Gazer, was chosen one of the five best novels of 1999 by The New York Times. She could not attend the induction gala because she was traveling in Europe. I spoke to her while she was in Italy. When asked what the induction meant to her, she said, “It is an overwhelming, wonderful honor to be inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. I am surprised and pleased and happy and delighted. I can’t tell you how much it means to me because Alabama gave me my education, gave me my home, and gave me my ambition for becoming a writer.”

When questioned about the notion of a muse in writing, Naslund said, “I think classical music is my muse. It’s inspired me to write in many forms. But also other kinds of beautiful experiences; sometimes just a beautiful day or beautiful flowers, a beautiful garden can inspire me to want to write a story. I have aesthetic sensibility and so when I encounter excellence in beauty in any of the arts, it inspires me to write. I also like to honor the importance of friendship and many of my books show women who are friends with each other, who help each other when one of them is in a difficult time.”

Naslund has her own way of dealing with procrastination. “When I realize that I’m procrastinating what I do is to look at my calendar for the next week and look at the times of day when I don’t have anything scheduled, and I’ll schedule writing sessions then,” she explained. “I like for them now to be about three hours long. When I was younger I could schedule six hours but I don’t have the stamina for that now. So I put a block around those vacant three hours and then I don’t let anything else get in my way. When that time comes I go to my computer—doesn’t matter if I’ve dropped a dirty sock on the floor or if I should take a glass down to the dishwasher. I ignore all those household duties and I sit down. If I’m already in the piece I start by reviewing what I wrote the last time I was sitting there and briefly I’ll lightly revise it. When I get to the end I just keep going without any break in it.

“Now if I’m starting something new, I sit down at the keyboard and type—I write a sentence and then I say, ‘Good for you! You wrote a sentence. Now another.’ I turn off any negativity. I do not say, ‘That sentence stinks; you better tear that up and erase it as soon as you can.’ Instead, I try to be encouraging to myself. So that’s part of my technique. It’s not that I’m going to leave it that way forever but you’ve got to make pages and then once you have something instead of nothing it’s much easier to go back and make it better,” she said, laughing.

Regarding writer’s block, she said she’s never has had to deal with that curse. “I’ve never really experienced writer’s block,” she said with a chuckle. “I have had some students who have had writer’s block. But I’ve never met the person I could not cure of writer’s block.”

Finale

The necklace of pearls draping across Helen Norris Bell’s books glimmered in candlelight on her table in front of the stage. The simple pearls of beauty defined an evening of praise for a dozen Alabama Hall of Fame writers.

Ed Reynolds work has appeared in Oxford American, First Draft, and Black & White, where he served as staff writer for sixteen years.

- Also available at Alabama Writers Forum.

Peavey Guitars: The Authorized American History

- See more at: http://www.writersforum.org/news_and_reviews/review_archives.html/article/2016/04/29/peavey-guitars-the-authorized-american-history#sthash.AdrcDBwL.dpuf

Capone, the Cobbs, and Me

The Gospel According to T.C. Cannon

EXPLORING THE STORIED LIFE OF A BIRMINGHAM INSTITUTION.

T.C. CANNON POSES WITH SOME OF HIS FAVORITE VEHICLES WHILE SPORTING HIS SIGNATURE UAB SHIRTS. PHOTO BY JULIANNA HUNTER

Those who have followed city politics in the past decade or spent evenings as bar flies at any time between the 1960s to the ‘90s in local drinking establishments perhaps know of Terry “T.C.” Cannon. In 1962, Cannon and his older brother Joe opened the Plaza bar (better known as the “Upside Down” Plaza) on 11th Court South behind Western Supermarket on Highland Avenue (currently the long time home of Hot and Hot Fish Club).

Cannon recalls with a grin that his brother Joe had been ‘captured’ (involved with) then gambling kingpin of Birmingham, Little Man Popwell. “So everything (at the Plaza) was in my name,” T.C. says.

The Plaza drew a nightly cast of characters, creating an oddball clientele mix; Lawyers, doctors, students, businessmen, musicians, librarians, and schoolteachers made it the most eclectic bar in town. Bohemians drank with professionals. “It’s a wonder that the magnolia tree outside the Plaza survived because almost every lawyer in Birmingham has pissed on it,” an attorney friend and long ago Plaza patron told me.

The lounge was a Southside landmark. The Upside Down Plaza is currently still in business in the Five Points South area beneath Pickwick Plaza, where it relocated when the lease was not renewed in the mid-‘80s. In 1987, the nightclub began operation under new ownership.

Cannon claims the Plaza was forced out of its original locale because the landlord discovered religion. “A local preacher instructed them that they had to get rid of this horrible beer joint,” says T.C. “We still had three years on the lease and when we went to court, we won and got to stay three more years. And that was a lot of fun.”

How the Plaza’s sign came to be hung upside down is recalled by T.C. on a recent afternoon at his home on Seventh Avenue South, in an old Battery Warehouse a block away from a bar called Tin Roof, which once was home to “TC’s,” the bar that Cannon opened in the Lakeview entertainment district in 1986.

“The reason the Plaza got the name ‘Upside Down’ was because Dick Coffee, the guy that went to 787 Alabama football games in a row without missing one, came into the joint one day. He was selling ads for a publication,” Cannon recalls. “We said, ‘Go away, man, we’re starving to death. We damn sure can’t afford an ad.’ But then we found out how much a one-inch ad in the publication would cost. My brother Joe said, ‘Hell, a little one-inch ad is going to get lost.’ So Joe suggested having the Plaza’s name upside down to make it stand out in the ad.”

Cannon’s next lounge venture, TC’s, soon earned a reputation every bit as charming as the original Upside Down Plaza. “I had the only beer joint in the world financed by the federal government. I applied to the SBA — Small Business Administration,” he says. “I applied to them for financial assistance and, of course, had to concoct an application and try to get it railroaded through claiming that my inventory belonged to ‘so and so.’ I had a little cash and a whole lot of [expletive],” says T.C. during an interview at his warehouse home.

Surrounding his warehouse is a fleet of Volkswagen Beetles and VW vans in various states of disrepair. “In the old days I drove ‘em because I had to. They were economical. Anybody that can chew bubblegum and walk at that same time can work on a VW. A very economical vehicle. We also raced them,” he admits.

“I’ve known T.C. for about 35 years. He might be the craziest human I’ve ever known,” long time friend Billy Jett days with a laugh. “Eccentric is an understatement. Anybody that’s got the money he’s got and lives in a battery warehouse, that’s kind of eccentric right there.

“The damn Volkswagens and the junk that he has accumulated . . . Why does he accumulate that stuff? I don’t think he has a clue. But we loved The Plaza and his other place, T.C.’s . . . There’s 25 or 30 of us that run around together and half of us met our wives at the Upside Down Plaza.”

The Beer Joint Business

Cannon was 10-years old when he began working in the bar business in 1947. “I was born and raised on a dairy farm on Acton Road and old Highway 280. In those days Shelby County was dry. Talladega County was dry. We had the typical ‘county line businesses’ (bars that sold booze legally in Jefferson County). Our dairy farm was adjacent to all those joints,” says Cannon.

“At one time or another there were nine beer joints. Out of those nine, my family either owned or built or had an interest in five of the nine,” he says. Cannon’s father drowned on a fishing trip in the Coosa River with the president of Moore-Handley Hardware when T.C. was five-tears old. His mom raised the family.

“My mother was a ‘Rosie the Riveter,’” he says. “She worked at TCI —Tennessee Coal and Iron, which is now U.S. Steel. My mother built one of our restaurants from scratch. She ran a 140-acre dairy farm with 150 cows and she built a restaurant called Akantu Restaurant, which was local Indian language for ‘Tip Top.’  It was a barbecue and beer joint. At age ten I was working as a bus boy.” Much of the family business included customers stocking up to sell booze in dry counties. His mother eventually became a LPN despite having only a sixth grade education.

When asked if he ever was forced into physical altercations while in the nightclub business, Cannon replies, “Nope. My brother Joe was the world’s greatest bouncer. He was a pretty cool, laid-back dude. He whipped more people without ever laying a hand on ‘em.”

Cannon was once subpoenaed to court when there was a stabbing at the Upside Down Plaza. A guy named Paul and a little guy got into a fight while Cannon was stocking the cooler with beer. Cannon tells the story: “So I jumped over the bar and got around to ‘em. We’re all in a circle and I hear one of them say, ‘You’re drinking my beer.’ And the other says, ‘I wouldn’t drink your beer after you’ve had your filthy mouth on it.’ And I see the shorter guy pop my friend Paul a good one and then run off.

“But then a few days later, I’m subpoenaed to court because Paul had stabbed the little guy before Paul was punched. The little guy had been cut wide open. While I was standing there close to ‘em, Paul — a master with a Case double X single-blade knife — had pulled that knife before he got hit. He pulled it and flicked it with one hand and reached around and cut the guy from his backbone all the way around to his gut twice.

“In court, the victim pulled up his shirt to show the judge [his wounds]. And it was like a perfect little railroad track — two slits with the stitches on it, you know? (T.C. laughs)  I had been packing the box (beer cooler) and Paul reached over the bar and dropped the knife into the cooler after he cut the guy. He didn’t want the cops to catch him with the knife. I didn’t know the knife was in there until I found it about six months later. I probably still have it somewhere.”

Cannon says that most fights never lasted long. “At [The Plaza], we never really had anything other than real quickies. Most barroom brawls last about 30 seconds,” he says. “They wind up rolling around on the floor and that’s about it. In the later days I got smarter. I used to try to break them up physically or whatever. Wrong. I instructed bar employees that when the [expletive] goes down, immediately get the girl that started the trouble and walk her out of the place. Ninety-seven percent of all bar room trouble is over a girl, whether she’s there or not.”

Racecar driving days

I’d known Cannon a little from patronizing the Upside Down Plaza for years. But the first time I spent time with him away from one of his bars was on a Saturday morning when I was writing a story about the history of cheating in NASCAR. Cannon had raced on the beaches of Daytona in the early 1950s, driving on the sprint car circuit throughout the Midwest in the late ‘50s, and raced at Birmingham International Raceway (BIR) in the ’60s and ’70s.

On a Saturday morning while driving to a service station whose owner Cannon had promised would tell NASCAR cheating stories (the owner didn’t), Cannon stopped on Clairmont Avenue every 50 feet to pick up golf balls laying against the curb that had escaped Highland Avenue Golf Course. Soon, a couple dozen golf balls rolled around on the floorboard of his car.

“We built a 1939 Chevy coupe. In those days they had two divisions of what is now known as NASCAR,” Cannon remembers. “In 1953 we went to Daytona to race on the beach before they built Daytona Speedway. Two miles of beach and two miles of highway made it a four-mile oval racetrack. I later started racing cars at BIR at age 15.” He raced late model modified cars against the likes of Bobby and Donnie Allison and Red Farmer. “I was not very successful. Never won a race. I was not a good mechanic or a good racecar driver,” he admits.

After graduating from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1959, Cannon joined a sprint car team that included 1949 Indy 500 winner Bill Holland. The team raced on the sprint car circuit throughout the Midwest with Cannon behind the wheel when Holland was unavailable.

“I came back to Birmingham in 1962 because this insane redneck shot my mother,” Cannon says. “She survived and lived another 50 years in Florida.” He opened the Upside Down Plaza with his brother Joe, also a racecar driver.

The pair began competing regularly at BIR. Cannon raced in blue jeans and a T-shirt. In those days, drivers did not wear fire-retardant suits. “The guys that were really concerned about fire would buy a jumpsuit and soak it in a fire-retarding substance, which certainly did not make it that safe.”

Cannon worked on late NASCAR star Fireball Roberts’ crew for one race at Dixie Speedway in Midfield, a high-banked, quarter-mile dirt track in the early 1960s. Roberts burned to death after a crash in the World 600 at Charlotte Speedway in 1964. Cannon claims that Roberts’ driving suit was not soaked in the fire-retardant substance because he was allergic to the chemical. “Fireball did a ‘CBD’ — he ‘crashed, burned, and died.’”

T.C. CANNON POSES WITH SOME OF HIS FAVORITE VEHICLES WHILE SPORTING HIS SIGNATURE UAB SHIRTS. PHOTO BY JULIANNA HUNTER.

UAB’s top cheerleader

Cannon is never spotted in public without a UAB t-shirt, the most vital accessory to his “total comfort” wardrobe that includes shorts and sandals. One sandal has a piece of cardboard inserted beneath his bare foot because one leg is shorter than the other. The result is an obvious limp that prompts his friend Billy Jett to note, “Terry walks like a duck.”

Cannon refers to UAB and the city of Birmingham as one. “The word ‘university’ itself defines a city and a college as one campus,” he explains while complaining about the University of Alabama board of trustees not giving UAB total autonomy, including lack of support for UAB’s beleaguered football team. He always refers to trustee Paul Bryant, Jr, and the board as “PBJ and the boys.”

“I am totally exasperated (by the system) and that affects my health, my resources, my family, the whole works,” says Cannon. “I’m not a liberal and I don’t want to divide the riches among the masses but there’s got to be a better way.”

He leans into my recording device and loudly emphasizes, “Throughout the recorded history of mankind, the strong must take care of the weak. Cannot be disputed. The only question is how to do it best. And it is my strong contention that what the (University of Alabama) board of trustees — which is the most powerful body in the entire state of Alabama — is doing is immoral and criminal, a simple violation of state law and they do it knowingly and willingly. And my favorite name for them is ‘The Masters of Malfeasance.’ The board of trustees do not intend for Birmingham and UAB to do anything that would in any way, form, or fashion compete with Tuscaloosa. It’s not a money thing, it’s an ego thing.”

T.C. and Politics

For the past decade Cannon has been known for running for mayor and city council on three occasions each. “He was always running (for political office). We used to gamble on how many votes he’d get,” says his old pal Billy Jet. “We had a (money) pot, whether it’d be for city council or mayor. People have won the pot by placing bets on T.C. getting anywhere from one vote to 29 votes!”

When asked if he plans to run for mayor of Birmingham again, Cannon hints that he’s frustrated because he wouldn’t stand a chance because those in Birmingham vote along racial lines. “Birmingham has no leadership and nobody’s telling the truth . . . 40 percent of our city’s population live at or below the poverty level because our leadership — our 1,518 preachers that eat good, a lot of chicken on Sunday and the whole works — why don’t they educate their congregations that our resources are going to Tuscaloosa (to the University of Alabama instead of going to UAB) . . .

“As for whether I’ll run for mayor again or not, I’m not a good speaker. Hitler was a corporal in the army but he was a good speaker . . . George Wallace was a good speaker.” If he runs and is elected, he doesn’t hesitate to share what his first act would be as mayor.

“To have Larry Langford dying in prison for what most of us politicians do daily is wrong,” Cannon says, laughing. “If I should ever become mayor, one of my first official duties will be to get Langford out of prison and bring him back to Birmingham, put a (location detection) bracelet on him, and he’ll work from daylight to dark for the city. And then he can go home at night. Langford’s got a brilliant mind. [My idea] is a no-brainer . . . I like Langford’s style of ‘do something.’ My favorite of his quips is ‘You can fix something but you can’t fix nothing … Let’s do something now,’ is what he is saying. ‘Whatever we do, if it’s wrong, we fix it. But if we don’t do nothing we can’t fix nothing.’”

Regarding presidential politics, Cannon says that the Democrats have got a difficult year ahead of them. “They don’t have a viable candidate and I think Trump, with his bodacious, infamous style, has really been healthy for the system,” T.C. says with reverence. “Several of the Republicans sound good, look good. But if I had to bet, it’d be Jeb Bush—who mumbles worse than I do—he’ll probably wind up with the nomination. But I am a Trumpster,” he admits.

Cannon has often consulted Birmingham Times publisher Dr. Jesse Lewis when running for public office. “I don’t know when I didn’t know him, it’s been so long. I met him because we have a mutual interest in UAB sports,” says Lewis. “He was one of the main reasons that UAB got a football team, because of his efforts. And not only are his efforts loyal to the football program, his efforts have been loyal to UAB (overall) ever since I have known him. If there has been one person who has ever made a difference at UAB, T.C. would be that person.”

Lewis laughs when discussing Cannon’s political aspirations. “He has always wanted to be a politician. And I have always discouraged him. Every time he has run for political office he has been by my office to sit down and talk with me,” says Lewis. “And I explain to him, ‘T.C., you’re too honest to be a politician. You stand up and tell the truth, and these politicians aren’t telling the truth. They tell you what you want to hear.

“Actually, he would make an excellent politician but he is not electable . . . I consider him a personal friend. He is one of the most truthful and dedicated persons you’d ever meet in your life . . . I told him if he runs for political office he has to buy a suit. I don’t think he owns a suit. I told him, ‘Don’t come back by my office and ask me to help you no more unless you buy a suit’  . . . If he runs for office in 2016, I’m going to buy him a suit.”

Golf king Tiger Woods and his father, Earl, recently whisked through Birmingham on April 20 and 21 to raise money for the Tiger Woods Foundation. Featured in the weekend festivities were the younger Woods’ phenomenal ability to charm golf balls and his dad’s uncanny mastery at charming his son’s legion of fans. Dwight Burgess of St. John’s AME Church had seen an article on the Tiger Woods Foundation, prompting him to make a 1999 call that resulted in the visit to Birmingham; one of only four cities on the Woods Foundation itinerary.

Reassuring smiles and words of encouragement from the golf legend greeted the awed stares of youngsters participating in the instructional clinic. Woods offered invaluable tips on adjusting stances, gripping clubs, and following through on swings. “There’s some serious talent out here,” observed Woods. “Kids today hit the ball farther than I did [at their age]. They’re younger, stronger, and more athletic.” Father Earl lounged nearby in a golf cart, posing for photos with lovely ladies and fielding occasional questions from bold reporters. After a few awkward seconds, the sometimes controversial Woods Sr. scoffed at suggestions that Tiger’s exposure to Buddhism (his mother is Buddhist) was responsible for his son’s unparalleled ability to concentrate under immense pressure. Instead, he said, the younger Woods learned self-hypnosis from a sports psychologist he saw for five years beginning at age 16.

Tiger and Earl Woods started the Tiger Woods Foundation four years ago to “make golf look more like America,” according to Tiger. Each year four cities are selected for the popular instructional and exhibition clinics. “We go to communities that haven’t been as enthusiastic about golf,” explained Tiger, emphasizing the importance of lingering in a city for a couple of days for greater impact on the community. “We don’t want to be a circus, where we just come in, do a clinic, and leave.” As for those kids battling nerves trying to hit a ball in his presence, he said, “I tell them no matter who’s watching, it’s just you and the ball. No one else can hit that shot for them.” Asked if he considered going back to finish his college degree at Stanford, Woods noted the difficulty in resuming studies. The former economics major hinted at a change in his field of study. “I’ll have to change majors. Maybe become a journalist,” Woods laughed to the throng of media gathered on the golf course between Highland and Clairmont Avenues. “Then I can just B.S. my way through.”

The afternoon before the clinic, Earl Woods, president of the Tiger Woods Foundation, addressed a two-thirds capacity audience at St. John’s AME Methodist Church in downtown Birmingham. Focusing on raising children and the importance of his son as a role model, Woods confessed, “I never raised him to be a golfer. I raised him to be a good person.” An engaging speaker, Woods sometimes wandered in melodramatic, even surreal, directions. He never failed to place Tiger on a monumental pedestal. “My son’s power dwarfs mine like a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert,” explained the elder Woods.

Back at the golf course, Tiger Woods made an entrance befitting that of a champion, motoring down the fairway from several hundred yards away to the strains of “Eye of the Tiger” as more than 3,000 shouting children and adults squinted for a glimpse of the world’s most famous athlete. Stepping from a golf cart, which had been flanked by two carts driven by bodyguards, Woods flashed his world-famous smile as he wowed starry-eyed patrons with his million-dollar golf swing. Putting on an impressive exhibition, he explained practice habits and the importance of becoming comfortable with gripping the club. Aiming for a 100-yard marker as he began hitting balls, Woods shook his head and questioned the marker’s distance. “That’s a long hundred. What did you do, measure it in meters?” He fielded questions from children, revealing that he wore red shirts during final rounds on Sundays because his mother told him his astrological charts said that red was his “power color.”

Woods ended the exhibition with a flourish. Bouncing the ball on his club just as he does in his now-famous Nike television commercial, Woods grabbed a second club and began performing the feat with two balls. Suddenly he tossed one iron aside and peered into the distance, still bouncing the ball as he apprehensively noted how narrow the fairway appeared. Woods promised to give the shot a try, regardless. And, of course, he whacked the ball in mid-air, it’s 200-yard flight a white blur that brought a collective sigh from the gallery. It was reality imitating television, with fine dramatic flair.

By Ed Reynolds

At Southern clubs in the late ’70s, bands played three sets a night, four nights a week. Most were dishing out versions of The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, and The Eagles, among other dinosaur acts. Meanwhile, a Birmingham actor from Sweden named Mats (pronounced “Mots”) Roden was studying theater at New York University when he attended a show at Irving Plaza — a performance by a campy rock combo from Athens, Georgia, called The B-52s. “It was a really mind-blowing for me because I realized that you didn’t have to be from New York to play the city,” he recalls. “I had been working for the Wooster Group [an experimental theater company] in New York with Willem Dafoe and Spalding Gray, so I was really serious about the theater in those days. But I was always torn between music and acting. So I called Matt  [Kimbrell] a couple of days after The B-52s show, and we talked about me coming back to Birmingham to start a band called Jim Bob and the Leisure Suits.”

    Roden, Matt Kimbrell, and Leif Bondarenko had been friends since high school while attending the Alabama School of Fine Arts (where Roden was legendary for wearing his bathrobe to class). As teens, Kimbrell and Bondarenko were already working as professional drummers at various highbrow cocktail lounges in Birmingham, Alabama. By 1979, Roden had returned to Alabama to form the Leisure Suits, where they rehearsed at his parents’ house, much to the consternation of neighbors (“just keep on playing that white trash rock/you can hear us practicing for blocks,” Kimbrell sings in “White Trash Rock”). They recruited local attorney Craig Izard (rhymes with “lizard”) as second guitarist and third songwriter. Jim Bob & The Leisure Suits soon began playing the same clubs that were booking cover bands four nights a week, though they concentrated on original songs with rearrangements of tasty covers of Franki Valli & The Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man,” a Ramones-style version of The Eagles “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” and a scorching “Burning Love” (featuring front man Kimbrell as a sensual but vulgar Elvis Presley, shaking his hips and caressing his body as he sang).

    The band’s inaugural release was a five-song EP, 1980’s First Time, which reflected the Leisure Suits original vision: fast songs with a punk rock aesthetic, each clocking in at under three minutes. Though there was no college radio station in town to promote First Time, their unpredictable, energetic live shows created enough excitement to to earn them a following in Northern Alabama. The EP’s “White Trash Rock” best defined the Leisure Suits’ frustration seeking recognition outside of the South with the classic line: “They don’t make stars out of bar bands in Birmingham….” Eventually, the club scene in Birmingham evolved when venues such at The Nick and Old Town Music Hall began to focus on presenting a different act nightly. Birmingham groups such as The Mortals, The Invaders, and The Colas as well as The Rakes from nearby Auburn, began getting jobs playing original music. “What I think Jim Bob really did was tap into this underground scene,” says Mats Roden. “There was a wanting of new, original music in the scene. We were not going to do covers; Craig and I were totally opposed to doing covers, which Matt and Leif were not. So that caused a little friction in the band. I wanted it to be totally original.” In 1981, the Leisure Suits released a 45 rpm single, featuring “Panama City Bleach” and “This World Is Killing Me”. The single did not have the rapid- fire punk-rock ammo of First Time; rather the band’s sound had evolved into something slightly more sophisticated, especially the slow, introspective “This World Is Killing Me”.

    “What was cool about Jim Bob was that we had three strong singer/songwriters,” says Roden. The band decided to record a full-length album, 1982′s Jim Bob &the Leisure Suits. “The album turned out okay, but it did not reflect how crazy and good we were live. It was also out first time in a real studio.” One of the stellar tracks on the album is “Gangland Wars.” Roden recalls his naïveté about gang life at the time. “I wrote ‘Gangland Wars’ when I first heard about gangs coming to Birmingham — I’m sure they were always there — but that was my first introduction. This was like the early ’80s, and gangs started appearing all over metropolitan areas. And I kind of romanticized it. I thought it was a cool thing, like the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story.”

    Like the single and First Time that preceded Jim Bob & the Leisure Suits, all three records were released on the Leisure Suits’ own label, Polyester Records.

    One of Alabama’s legendary rock & roll bands when the Leisure Suits began was The Rakes out of Auburn. Rakes’ guitarist Bruce Yandle recollects playing shows on the same bill as the Leisure Suits. “I always thought Jim Bob was pretty good; I thought they were kind of better than we were”, Yandle notes. “They had that B-52s vibe to them a little bit. I remember being totally mesmerized by Leif Bondarenko’s playing. It was the first time I realized that drums are what it’s all about. I thought, ‘This guy is fantastic!’ Leif just drove that band.” Brad Quinn, a member of Birmingham’s celebrated cult favorites Carnival Season, who currently lives in Japan when not playing with pop-icon Tommy Keene, has fond memories of the Leisure Suits. “I was a little too young to get into bars in the early ‘80s, so the first time I ever saw them was at the grand opening of a Jack’s Hamburgers restaurant.” Quinn says, laughing. “They were pretty fantastic. They did Jerry Lee’s ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,’ of course, which as you might remember was Jacks’ theme song for its fried chicken.”

    Izard tells of the two nights the Leisure Suits got to open for The Ramones at Brothers Music Hall. “We got there for soundcheck and they played a couple of songs and Johnny [Ramone] said into the mic, “What state are we in?’ And I’ve never smelled as much pot backstage as I did from the Ramones’ dressing room. You normally wouldn’t think of the Ramones as a bunch of potheads.” Roden’s funniest memory of a Jim Bob gig was the night they opened for Bow Wow Wow at a five-thousand-seat Birmingham auditorium. The Leisure Suits has to leave immediately after their set for a second job that night. “The guys in Bow Wow Wow were really cool, but Annabella [Bow Wow Wow lead singer] was kind of a snob, and I mean, who can blame her? She was sixteen and being managed by that fucking Malcolm McLaren [former Sex Pistols and New York Dolls manager]. Then we had to pack up our gear and go play a Bar Mitzvah at some cheesy Holiday Inn that same night.”

    Craig Izard left Jim Bob & The Leisure Suits soon after the album was released. Guitarist Charles Muse was hired to take his place when the band moved to New York City for a couple of months to peddle Jim Bob & the Leisure Suits. No one showed any interest in releasing the record, and the band never put out another. The last night of a brief tour of the Midwest was the final disappointment; when they arrived at their scheduled Oklahoma City show, they learned from the club marquee that they had been replaced that evening by an unknown band called The Bangles. In 1983, The Leisure Suits called it quits. “By that time it was for all intents and purposes Matt’s band, and we weren’t collaborating anymore,” says Roden.

    RODEN and Bondardenko then formed the Primitons, which, along with local power-pop sensation Carnival Season, became one of the top acts in Birmingham. “Initially, The Primitons were more focused than Jim Bob because we only had one central songwriting point of view and only one lead singer at the time. We did the demos at Mitch Easter’s Drive-In studio in North Carolina,” says Roden. “The studio is like in his mother’s den.” Arena Rock Recording Company, which recently released Misguided Promise: Carnival Season Complete (1984-1989), will soon release a Primitons compilation.

    Kimbrell went on to front a pair of trios, The Ho-Ho Men and The Mambo Combo, both reflecting the tongue-in-cheek approach to performing that the Leisure Suits had pulled off so well. Drummer Leif Bondarenko came to regret having turned down an opportunity to audition for Iggy Pop in 1982. He currently plays drums in American Idol winner Taylor Hicks’ band. Craig Izard is an attorney and musician who fronts The Cosmic Snakehandlers. Despite suffering a stroke a decade ago, forcing him to play keyboard with one hand, Roden contacted the other original members about a Jim Bob & The Leisure Suits reunion that never materialized. When The Oxford American approached the Leisure Suits in October of this year about being featured in magazine’s Music Issue, the band was shocked that anyone was interested after thirty years. “Matt was so excited,” says Roden. “He felt vindicated after having put up with naysayers for three decades.” A week later, Matt Kimbrell died at age fifty-one of a heart attack, following a decade from suffering from a heart condition.

    “Jim Bob set out to make a statement about being anti-status-quo-rock,” Roden notes. “We’ll always be remembered as the first punk/new wave band in Birmingham.” He wasn’t always so proud of that notoriety, however.  “As far as Jim Bob, I thought, I thought of it as a negative thing for a long time. I really was kind of embarrassed by the band as a gimmick. But Blondie, The Ramones, Television, all that music changed my life. So I’m not embarrassed by Jim Bob anymore because I am proud of what we did,” he admits. “We totally changed the scene. If it hadn’t been for us, the new-wave sound would’ve hit a lot slower in Alabama.”

Originally published in the Oxford American Twelfth Annual Music Issue 2010, pgs. 62-64.