CHAPTER 17 Black Blues For White Folks

Let's back track just a bit and uncover something. Along with all the 50's rock that I used to listen to, there was some music that most of us kids in North Texas absolutely cherished. The blues. We never told each other or spoke about it except among our most intimate friends. For white folks, the blues was something nasty in those racially exact days, it was NOT white, NOT nice and NOT allowed. Those of us who listened to the blues listened in private, much as we would view pornography. It was most decidedly nasty. We loved it. Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, and many other gut-yanking masters were the musical backdrop of my life from about 1956 on. KNOK was the station where all this decidedly black nasty stuff was fermented and then later a WHITE guy named "Ol' Jim Lowe" came blasting out of Dallas on WRR at nights with the "Cats Caravan" radio show. Awesome. Of course there was the really weird stuff out of Mexico on XERF; Wolfman Jack, but who cared that it was wierd? And besides what could you DO with an autographed picture of Jesus Christ for just a buck?

The Blues were the lessons of life in song. How much to drink. What kinda woman to mess with - and stay away from. What it is like to be really poor, really sick, really blue. What it's like to miss the rent and be put on the street. The blues could make a human being out of much poorer quality stuff; which is usually the combination of ingredients that makes up mankind. It could help you find your preferences in life, it could help you find your soul. The blues could cry in a world where crying was not allowed. It was the Truth where truth must masquerade as something marketable. I believe even yet, that the blues were the catalyst that caused the social revolutions of the 1960's. It launched Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin Mick Jagger, The Beatles and much more. The music of the sixties were an echo of the blues. Sometimes as sad, often more pretty, and almost always nasty - if only by innuendo.

The blues were my invisible tattoo. I carried them from KVIL Dallas, to KLVI - Beaumont, Texas with my first wife Carol. There we sweltered in 100% humidity in a town that stunk day and night from fermenting wood pulp at the paper mill just a few miles away. Cutting through that odor was the smell of the refineries. Sulphur, asphalt and unidentifiable stinks were my strongest memories of the City of Beaumont in 1964. I racked up big numbers in the ratings on my morning show with daily repetitions of "Noah" by Bill Cosby. I worked with and ate chicken with, Ken Carter (later to gain regional fame in Dallas and Ft. Worth as "Hubcap"), and Joe Halstead. Both were news men at the station. Joe was a classic picture of a Texas Redneck and a fine newsman. He later went on to fame and fortune also, in Dallas/Ft.Worth. Ten miles away from Beaumont in Port Arthur, Janis Joplin was getting her own blues tattoos. I often wondered because of the stink in the air, if my next cigarette might not blow the place up. Then came the call. It was Jim Lowe (remember the white guy at WRR)? They had an opening. Would I like to move back to Dallas? At WRR? Could I finish eating my cigarettes before I answered?

WRR AM/FM were both owned by the City of Dallas, a major distinction for both stations in those days. WRR-FM involved itself exclusively and wisely with classical music. WRR 1310 AM was a grab-bag of block programming ranging from the "Cats Caravan" (later to become the Blues Caravan) to the Library of Laughs - a comedy block in the last quarter-hour of programming each hour. It featured Jonathan Winters, Shelly Berman, George Carlin (remember him?) and a host of other comedians doing their best schtick. It was enormously popular. For myself, I cut a niche with occasional stints on the Blues Caravan and developed my own Jazz show called Jazz Unlimited. It became a vehicle for me to meet some of the greats. I shook hands with and/or interviewed and/or emceed for; Louis Armstrong, Heb Alpert, Cannonball Adderly, Lou Rawls, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Nat Adderly, Roland Kirk and others. I became a correspondent for Downbeat magazine covering the Dallas jazz club scene.

My day job grew into an interview show that allowed me to connect with local lecture and interview circuit personnel ranging from authors both famous and not, to performers like Kreskin. My partner Brice Armstrong who had been my sidekick since helping me find my first job at KFJZ, shared some of the good times with me. We did well with the "Inner-View" show and did a round-the-clock Double Marathon during the State Fair of Texas. We broadcast live, with no sleep from noon Monday to Noon Wednesday. During that time we did most everything a couple of nutty friends could do on the radio, live. Using portable walkie-talkies and Marti transmitters, We rode most of the rides on The Midway at the fair. When things got dull late at night, we locked up the radio station and got into a golf cart with the portable transmitter to the studio being the only thing keeping the radio station on the air. In the pale moonlight, we drove the golf cart up and down the ramps of the Cotton Bowl, broadcasting inane conversational chatter to anyone as bored as we. There were thousands of us.

My interest in psychic phenomena and off-beat subjects began to grow and Brice and I parted ways as I had more and more hypnotists and oddballs on the air. My turnaround came when I met and shook hands with, Sonny Barger of the Oakland/San Fransisco Hells Angels. Here was a man who was a walking challenge. It was a heck of an insightful interview that Sonny did of me on WRR in 1967. That's right, he interviewed me. I turned out to be pretty evil stuff with a wife and at least one girlfriend. And the times, they were-a-changin'.
Vacations for Carol and I were dedicated to San Fransisco. It was the end of the Beat Generation and the arrival of the Flower Children. We were among the vanguard trumpeting their arrival; these sacrificial lambs who behaved like soldiers. My old friend Scott was among them.

On our first visit to San Fransisco, we walked in on Scott and his girlfriend Robin nude, in true Hippie style - and were welcomed with open arms. While Instant Orgy was not exactly our cup of tea, Carol and I managed to simulate some of the native expressions and attach ourselves; by ingesting large amounts of various smoking herbs, to the local hippie society. In that process, we began to grow apart. We ceased to seek each other in trying to find ourselves. My first acid trip with Scott polarized my identity problem. I would be myself. Carol - whoever she was, would have to do the same. The call of California was powerful. I landed a job at KMPX-FM strictly on the basis of a walk-in interview, and then declined it. I really wanted to come to California I knew, but I wanted to come to California alone, with Flowers In My Hair.

WRR and I had just about reached our limits with each other. My work was getting loose and shoddy while my mind pondered The Meaning Of Life; and then one day I found my catharsis. Led Zepplin had issued their first album and were essentially unknown in Dallas (or anywhere else). That is, right up to the moment that I auditioned "Dazed and Confused". That was it. I put almost half their album on the blues show that night, highlighting as many recognizable Willie Dixon songs as possible, which was two. "Dazed and Confused" stuck the knife in the program. It was so mad and wicked, I just couldn't hold back. For the thousands of Dallas and North Texas blues fans who were used to the Classic Blues approach of The Caravan show, Led Zepplin must have scared the willie shit out of them. These were WHITE kids doing blues but there was no DIGINITY in their music at all. Blues in the classic form always allowed some dignity, and required some respect of the listener. Blues can be bruised in that context of listening but it was not supposed to BLEED. Blues was a teacher. Not this. This was music made by insane, suicidal crazy people driven by demons, who were addicted to PAIN and God knows what else. It was Blues yes, but they didn't know when to STOP. It was the horrifying sound of dying people driven mad by love, mistakenly trying to get in to Hell.

I was told to not air the band again, but I conveniently forgot to pull the tape from rotation. When it aired again a month later, I was fired. I regard that to this day as a wise decision on the part of the station management. It was obvious to them that Led Zepplin (and I) didn't have a chance in these days and times. It was obvious to me that the times and I were-a-changin' and they weren't. I went to work as a cab driver.