Albert Lavada Durst, famously known as Dr. Hepcat, born on January 9, 1913, was a barrelhouse pianist and the first black disc jockey in Texas. He learned piano as a young boy and was later influenced by Baby Dotson, Boot Walton, and renowned barrelhouse stylist Robert Shaw. Always keeping busy, Durst recorded two singles for the Uptown label in 1949 and then sides for Don Robey’s Peacock label in the early ’50s. Notably, Durst made his mark as an enigmatic and influential radio jockey, even publishing a small, fourteen-page booklet, The Jives of Dr. Hepcat. Ultimately, Durst’s passions changed and he became extensively involved with the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Austin, eventually becoming an associate minister. He died on October 31, 1995.
In the following interview, Durst discusses his early career and influences. The interview is also significant for providing rare insight and details of a Texas blues scene beyond the more heavily researched Houston area.
—Mark Camarigg
The Jives of Dr. Hepcat: Dr. Hepcat Interview
Mike Rowe
Blues Unlimited #129 (March/April 1978)
“Hey, there chappies, H’lo chicks. You’ve latched on to Rosewood Ramble with your music recorded. It’s a real gone deal that I’m goin’ to wheel so stand by while I pad your skulls.” The introduction rattled out like a burst of machine-gun fire and, followed by Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” was familiar enough to Austin’s black population tuned to KVET through the ’50s for their favorite disc jockey. For the next hour or two until signing off with Ellington’s “Deep Blues,” Dr. Hepcat would entertain with R&B records and commercials delivered in the outlandish hep talk of the ’40s and early ’50s. He might introduce a record with: “Jackson, here’s that man again, cool, calm, and a solid wig. He is laying a frantic scream that will strictly pad your skull. Fall in and dig the happenings.” Or if advertising a show, he might advise: “Gators, take a knock down to those blow-tops who are upping some real crazy riffs and dropping them on a mellow kick and, chappie, the way they pull their lay hips our ship that they are from the land of razz-ma-tazz.”
Today, when ghetto terms have been popularized by the music world and white disc jockeys ape their black counterparts, it’s easy to forget that there were pioneers in the art and that the emergence of the black deejay is a very recent phenomenon. Dr. Hepcat was such a pioneer. Not only was he the first black disc jockey in Texas, but he may well have been the first in the whole of the USA. His first broadcast was in the ’40s, although the actual year is in doubt. Probably it was before 1949 and it ran for fifteen years, something of a unique record in the annals of black broadcasting history. His piano playing was always secondary to his broadcasting career and only an amateur activity according to this modest and genial man. When we learn that both careers were combined with a day job as sports director of an Austin recreation center, that he published a booklet of his “hep talk” in 1953, and that for the last twelve years he has been a minister of the church, “unique” seems a woefully inadequate word to describe this most fascinating man.
Sitting behind his desk in his office at the Doris Miller Auditorium, the chunky figure looks every bit the blues pianist. But instead of the shouts and laughter of the house party guests, the interview is punctuated by the thud of the basketball on the gym floor outside and the shouts of the young players. There’s a natural dignity and a warmth to the man, but, curiously, for one who worked a special kind of magic with the language over the air, in person he seems almost shy. “Rhythm and blues, that’s what I … ya know I can’t play nothing but boogie-woogies.”
Born [Albert] Lavada Durst in Austin, Texas, on January 9, 1913, he learned to play piano when he was young.
Dr. Hepcat, Radio Station KVET.
When I started playing piano blues and boogie-woogies was at an early age—I imagine around twelve years of age—and then I started learning in the church house on the piano I could find. I’d slip in the church house early in the mornings and probably late sometimes through the week and just start pounding out tunes and, strange thing, only thing I could find I found out was eight-beat music. (laughs) I sorta liked that type of music. Nobody taught me anything about piano—just by air—we called it “by ear,” but it’s by air, ya know, the things that we heard. So I sorta was a fan of Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis … Albert Ammons, those the guys I used to hear on the radio, ya know, and then sorta it came to me. I just liked that music, ya know, and … I had a feeling for it. I liked that type of music and seems like it gets on the inside of me, it works up something, gets something going for me.
I never did play professionally at all. Well, what we said in that time of day we had house-rent parties, they call ’em, see, but it wasn’t professionally. But, say, like on Saturday nights, a bunch of us we get together and go to certain houses and they charge ten cents admission and, ah—we play from, say, seven o’clock to one o’clock in the morning for two dollars or dollar and a half (laughs), or we had a lot of fun, in other words, see. But that’s only as far as I went professionally.
All around Austin—the only thing we would do would probably find a certain place, ya know, that we play at every Saturday night, but there weren’t any outstanding ones, ya know? We knew it’s gonna be a—we call it a Saturday night supper, Saturday night fish fry, and that’s where we were. One was on North Western down here, it’s grown up, see, used to be nothing but trees and one or two houses in between that on North Western and a house on East Washington Avenue here. And one on, say, about the 1400 block on East 7th Street and, ah, one down on deep East 7th, what we call “Spanish Town.” That’s about the area. We found it were better in the houses. Each house had its own little, ya know, private bars and things, ya know, and little beer and so forth, so we didn’t play any of the bars. The bars became popular later on.
Lavada didn’t stray too far from Austin, but occasionally he would play out of town.
I stay in the Central Texas area in the small outlying cities like Lockhart, San Marcos, and Taylor—and different places like that, but not too far. I haven’t been out of the state, ya know, playing … barrelhouse music.
Now and then we’d meet up and jam some, and some of the best piano players that, I mean, way outshine me was at those parties and things. We have one right here in Austin now—he hardly didn’t make any records—Robert Shaw. And he and I used to come along together, we play some of the same type of music, you see, but he was a way better piano player than I—than I consider, but, see, we had different touches. And then Robert can play that “Hattie Green,” but I play it different, see, but he can play it, see, he can play it and he got a lot of music, he can play well.
In fact, Lavada picked up “Hattie Green” from Shaw “from observing,” and, not surprisingly, their repertoires were similar.
Well, I played a, like, in addition to “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” and “Miss Hattie Green,” I played the “Rock Island” and I played the “Piggly Wiggly Blues,” and, um, some innovations of my own, boogie-woogie tunes. That’s about all. Some mixtures of them all. See, you can play one or two blues tunes—sing a variety of songs to it, ya know. “In the Wee Midnight Hours”—I played that tune and, ’course, you know with one or two tunes you could play all night, sing different songs to it. Kinda like the country music, got two or three chords, but they can sing a whole lot of tunes to it.
Robert Shaw was probably the best known of the Austin pianists, but Durst remembered some of the others.
Uh, let me see—well, Boot Walton. He’s now, he plays for church—Boot Walton, and Baby Dotson’s passed—he’s gone. And, see, Black Tank also passed, deceased. Black Tank, he was from the Houston area, but he came here around Austin. He was a tremendous piano player. He was one of the tops and we called him Black Tank. (laughs) Like I say, he’s passed now. They were older and I was a kinda kid hanging around the bunch, ya know. But those are about the ones, ya know, that I played around with and the only one surviving in this area is Robert Shaw. And he’s pretty good. You know, Robert Shaw and I are about the last of the barrelhouse piano players … around in Texas. There might be some other people we’ve never heard of. Boot Walton, he’s still around, but he plays at church music, ya understand. But he was pretty good in those days. Like I said, Baby Dotson, Robert Shaw, Black Tank, yeah, they were the cream of the crop. Make a piano sound different … different keys that a polished piano player couldn’t reach! Blues keys, ya know. They just caught the sound of a piano box these professional artists can’t do. Yeah, it’s a different thing altogether, yes, indeed!
Well, a lot of people call it “barrelhouse music,” ya know, and I think that’s the basics of real good music. Because it has a feeling to it. It has a feeling to it and, uh, certain people, well, they tried to get away from it. They tried to get away from the original, I say, black music, but then you’ve lost something. You’ve lost something, you understand? But now they’ve got to come back to it when you get your basic good music. That’s that boogie-woogie and from boogie-woogie, and I’ll say eightbeat music, comes all the other music.
Strange thing about it, though, from music, one thing to another, and then I got the job as a disc jockey and because I was pretty good at announcing baseball games out at Disch Field. And I could talk pretty fast, I could spit out those words pretty fast: “Lamp that kitty with the King Kong physique, I most believe he’ll put the whammy on that horse skin.”
Or after some indifferent play:
“Team B. B.’s manager could stand one more greasing, he’s not slick enough. Had two ducks on the pond nobody down and didn’t a spike reach the promised land.”
The Hepcat’s announcing proved as popular as his team, the Austin Black Senators, and brought him to the attention of KVET’s owners.
The powers that be at that time said, let’s try him as a disc jockey. Strangest thing in that period of time that only thing that a black man could do at a radio station was clean it up! And they took a terrible chance on getting a black man to be a disc jockey. It was a white station, that’s all they had. That’s all we have now here in Austin is white stations, except they have recently a Latin station. And you can imagine what a crime it was for these white men to sponsor a black deejay in the late ’40s, ya know?
Since then a lot of them are famous people now, like I imagine you heard of John Connally, used to be secretary of the treasury and secretary of the navy? Well, he was one of the first owners, and J. J.—Jake Pickle. John Connally, he was the president of the station then, ya see, and I imagine, well, he’s one man who believed that everybody should have the right to pursue their happiness if they had the ability. Of course, I evidenced my fear of going on the air then, ya know, because I told him … probably my academic qualifications weren’t such that I should be over the air, ya know, and he said, “Well, if you want a college professor go out to the university and get one!”
It’s not hard to guess at the reaction of KVET’s white listeners when the Hepcat first assailed them with: “If you want to be hip to the tip and bop to the top, you get some mad threads that just won’t stop.” After the shock had worn off the abusive calls came in.
I got a lot of phone calls, “Are you black?” ’Course they used other words. See, the term “black” just came into being. Used to be “negro” or “nigger” (laughs), ya know what I mean?
But Lavada and his backers weathered the storm.
When I got on the air things just jelled for me. I used a style that caught on pretty quick being one of the first black disc jockeys, I imagine, in Texas, in this area, and the style I used earned me the name Dr. Hepcat, because I talked different terms, like hepcat terms. Now, the Hepcat’s Prayer is:
Now I stash me down to cop a nod
My mellow frame upon the sod
If I should cop a drill before the early bright
I’ll lay a spiel on the Head Knock to make everything all right
With that, fly cat, I’ll chill my chat
And cop a nod like mad.
You know, terms like that when I’m describing different things that’s what caught on, ya know. (laughs) That’s what I’m talking about, sold sponsors and things like that. So consequently people would tune in to hear that jive, ya know, like a girl we’d call a “fine brown frame.” If you want to learn something you “cram your knowledge box.” Or if somebody gonna die you “knocking fowl soup” or “going to the skull orchard”—that’s going to the graveyard. (laughs) And this type of thing, that type of jive.
Dr. Hepcat’s liberties with the language kept his sponsors like Grand Prize Beer, RC Hair Pomade, and Thunderbird Wine happy as indeed it did his audience, which eventually spread well beyond East Austin’s black neighborhoods. The Hepcat was keeping pretty busy, too—during the day as athletic director of the Doris Miller Auditorium and evenings on the air as well as all the natural spin-offs of a disc jockey career: promoting concerts, public appearances, and even lecture tours of the local high schools. He explains:
I was working here while I was a disc jockey. I had two jobs. See, I used—I’d be on, say, ten o’clock at night till twelve—probably ten till eleven-thirty. Then I had a Saturday morning show, too, every Saturday morning. And I found out I could carry the two together pretty well. You’d have a little conflict sometimes, because in recreation your hours are not stable. See, we stayed open as long as the people were here in the ’50s, so there you were. But I’d have to hit that ten o’clock when people expect you to be there. At ten o’clock you must be there! Ya know, ’cause people when they turn that dial they want to hear the Hepcat!
Well, I went from ten till eleven, then from ten till twelve, then back to ten till eleven-thirty and so forth, it varied. Like I said, it was a thrill, and my style, I’d play a record by a certain artist. I’d say, “T’ain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones!” Ha, ha, ha. And “If you jump a cut in the early bright get you a fine brown thing make everything all right. So knock your stash, cats, fall in the alley and jive like mad.” Oh, ya know, you have a whole lot of fun when you get a kick out of doing a job, especially when you doing something you like.
Dr. Hepcat’s first record was recorded by Fred Caldwell, owner of the Uptown label and program director at KVET.1
Well, I decided I wanted to try to make a record, and then I had a program director who made my first records, ya understand, on the assumption that I could probably make something. ’Course it didn’t jell, ya know, because, I imagine, … it might could have done better if, I imagine, if the person had pursued it sincerely. If it had had distribution it would have been nice.
The Peacock record is probably even scarcer than the Uptown considering that the Houston label did have some distribution facilities. But it probably came too early in the history of Duke/Peacock Records.
Well, uh, I wrote a spiritual song for a group of boys, Austin boys, called the Bells of Joy. And I wrote a song “Let’s Talk about Jesus,” and it sold over a million copies, but, listen, me being, ah, sorta sanctimonious in a way, I didn’t put my name as the writer. See, I wrote the lyrics to the song, see, but I was afraid that people knowing that I was a rhythm-and-blues disc jockey wouldn’t buy it, see? But I was wrong. But I didn’t get the money from that, see, but they sold over a million records. The Bells of Joy traveled all over the United States singing that song. I said, well, those are my friends. I said, well, all for one and one for all, but they took it all. (laughs) But I dunno, I feel that sometimes things will come to you eventually, but I missed a whole lot of money then. Sure did. Then I had an inroad to Peacock Recording Company. I knew the owner, the president, Don Robey, and his assistant, so it was easy for me to go down and record this record.2 I didn’t make nothing of that either. I imagine about, I believe, fifty dollars recording session, but that was all.
Lavada could only remember the tenor saxophonist Shake Snyder on the session, for despite the credit, the Hepcat Band, it was just a studio group.3
They were studio musicians. In other words, he’d call them up when he had a recording session. They were probably musicians around the city, but I imagine Shake Snyder’s pretty well known around there if he’s not dead now. ’Cause he had to have one of those pipes, ya know, those asthma pipes, whatever it is, ya know, but he could talk. He could play music. He could write it while you were playing it, notes and everything. Ya know, that’s extraordinary. He was from the Houston area.
Unusual among Texas pianists, Lavada used a powerful boogie bass, and on a number like “Hattie Green” the effect is dramatic. The Uptown version is up-tempo, beautifully sung and played, while the idiosyncratic “Hepcat’s Boogie” is a joy, with Pinetop’s calls translated into hep talk with instructions to: “Knock your statue act / Don’t vip or vop / Now stash yourself and / ‘Do the bebop.’” Truly the cat pulling the elephant teeth was a bonnet flipper!
The Peacock version of “Hattie Green” is slower and even more solid than the Uptown. The lyrics are very similar and mainly traditional Texas verses. The band is very unobtrusive and this, like the reverse, is beautifully recorded. “I Cried Last Night” is an odd blues ballad and very reminiscent of a small group ’40s Decca recording. There is an extended guitar solo, but predictably the most noteworthy feature is the rocksolid piano. Both records are rare examples of the authentic piano blues recorded at a time when the jump blues were the sound of the day. Sadly, they didn’t sell.
Although he had little success with his recording ventures, Durst’s name was sufficiently known for him to promote groups under the Hepcat banner, and he made many such public appearances.
Dr. Hepcat, Uptown Records.
When I became a disc jockey I would get me a little band and go around different places, see, and I wouldn’t have to do much, talk a little bit and make an appearance. Just make an appearance and say a few words and let the band play. Well, I used to play some with Johnny Simmons, who’s passed now. Johnny Simmons was one of the best musicians in this part of the country. He played piano and, oh, he played all types of tunes and anything you could mention, really. He had a nice little ole band and that’s one of the only ones used to go around, used to play for me a lot. They had guitar, drums, and saxophone—let me see—and piano and trombone. As a novelty I’d take over the piano, ya know, and they would kinda back me up, see. We had a boy that sing with us some time. His name was Therau Piper—but lot of those fellows—Johnny’s dead. Therau Piper’s dead, but some of those fellows around here now that played in that band. But they still playing. See, this Hepcat and his band I’d give—they’d take my name for that party, ya know, but they had their own band. They were pretty good. Like I say, it wasn’t too much money at that time, but we enjoyed it. It’s a lot of fun. Well, I imagine I done that for two or three years, then I settled down to just being a disc jockey and probably going up to the schools and making little talks and how I got started and so forth and, uh, how to be a disc jockey and what it takes to be a disc jockey and so forth.
In 1953 Dr. Hepcat added a further string to his bow when he became an author and published a fourteen-page booklet on his jive talk.
And I wrote a book, too, called The Jives of Dr. Hepcat—on all my jive, ya know. And if I’d had distribution on that and pictures and things it would have sold. Because Memphis, Tennessee, and Alabama, Mississippi—a whole lot of blacks, ya understand, that got real soul, feels that soul, but it—I didn’t have any … no money, no nothing to distribute it.4
Dr. Hepcat. (Photo Mike Rowe)
And then finally I came down to I had to move out to another field. When it’s time to change, you know it! Like I say, you got to be able to conform to change. I’ve got a different outlook and different things, but I maintain that every good and perfect gift come from the Maker, you understand? So that was a gift and so this made me do something else. A lot of times people say when you’re called to the ministry that a lot of them say you heard a voice or something, but it’s just an inner urge to do something else, ya know. Why so many people commit suicide, they can’t go any further, you understand, they can’t conform with change. Ya know how every season how the leaves fall off the trees, how during the wintertime the leaves get shed, ya know, because it’s change. Those of us who can’t conform with change, we die. See you’ve got to be able to change.
I don’t know, a lot of times people ask me would I go back into being a disc jockey again. Well, the answer’s no. I couldn’t do that again. I’ve found a real happiness in the ministry. I’m associate minister at the Olivet Baptist Church on the corner of St. Bernard and Cotton, but my home church is Mt. Olive Baptist Church on East 11th Street, but I don’t have a church of my own.
Apart from a wistful “Sometimes I say the disc jockeys came a little too soon,” with his church and his work at the recreation center, Lavada is well content.
I’m still working, enjoying my work, ya know, helping youngsters, producing some good players. Well, we’ve had some mighty good boys come through here in the person of “Night Train” Lane. And just recently Hollywood Henderson that played for the Dallas Cowboys and a number of boys have come through here, and we’ve had some pretty good baseball boys, too. And this is also the home of Willie Wells. He’s, well, he’s pretty old now, but he was one of the foremost black baseball players. They’re trying to put him in the Hall of Fame, see. We’ve had some pretty good athletes around here.
And he still plays piano. He doesn’t have one at home, but there is a piano at the recreation center.
I still play it. Every now and then I practice up on it, ya know. I don’t play as many songs as I used to play, but some of those that I love I play it, because, like I said, every good and perfect gift comes from God and I just keep that gift. Use it. But I don’t play it in public no more. Play it for my own entertainment, see, and it gives me satisfaction. And after I get a good feeling from it, put it down for a while.
The questions have dried up and as he looks up from the desk he laughs.
I think I’ve talked a hole in your clothes!
Perhaps we should take a leaf out of Dr. Hepcat’s book to express our appreciation. Dr. Hepcat, you are most monster, righteous, so copasetic, alreet, alroot, and like, this article, all wrote!
1. The Uptown titles “Hattie Green” and “Hepcat’s Boogie” have been reissued on Midnight Steppers, Fantastic Voyage CD FVTD 167.
2. There must be some confusion here, for the Bells of Joy recorded “Let’s Talk about Jesus” (Peacock 1584) some years after Lavada recorded Peacock 1509. Curiously, an earlier Bells of Joy record, “Doing for Jesus,” has composer credits to “Lavada Durst” on the 45rpm, at least according to Doug Seroff.
3. This must be the saxophonist listed on a Gatemouth Brown session for Peacock as “Wilmer Shakesliner” (see Blues Records 1943–1970, 35).
4. There is a fascinating precedent here, for Dan Burley, a Chicago rent-party pianist and later editor of New York’s Amsterdam News, frequently devoted articles to the subject and also published Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive. Reviewers at the time who doubted if many of the expressions that Burley used were known even to the average Harlemite would have been suitably chastened to find them in common currency throughout America’s black ghettos as reported by Durst ten years later in Texas; e.g., Burley’s version of the “Hepcat’s Prayer” is so very close to the one reported here (see Alan Dundes, ed., Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel [New York: Prentice-Hall, 1973], 215).
Interview with Lavada Durst, Austin, Texas, September 29, 1977.
Durst, Lavada. The Jives of Dr. Hepcat, 1953.
Szilagyi, Pete. “Doctor of the Air Waves,” Free & Easy 9 (Jan./Feb. 1975): 5.