D.K. Little onstage at AWHQ. Photograph by Van Brooks.
When you’re head honcho, the people who call you in the middle of the night are not calling to tell you to have a nice day. As I used to say, “As head honcho, I don’t have the liberty of unplugging the phone. I’m the one they call when the place is burning down.”
On January 10, 1975, I got a call about M. K. Hage III, whom we called “Three.” He had died in his bedroom at his parents’ home. His mother had found him. He had died with his head wedged between the mattress and box spring, in a desperate attempt to silence the noise in his head after ingesting an excessive amount of pharmaceutical cocaine.
Three was there during the summer of 1971, when we tore out the offices in the building to renovate and enlarge the music hall without asking his father’s permission. If his father freaked out, Three would handle it, he had said.
Whenever I floated a new scheme, Three was often more enthusiastic about it than anyone else. His faith in my wild fantasies helped keep me going.
Just two days before he died, he had been at my house, talking about helping me steer the Armadillo into the future. He was going to work hard to win his father’s confidence. When I walked with him to his car, he even said he was going to get straight, stop getting high, and take responsibility for things. “It’s time to grow up,” he said.
The cause of death was apparently an allergic reaction to pharmaceutical cocaine. The news left me discombobulated. I bounced between raw acceptance and denial. It was inevitable . . . No, maybe it wasn’t true . . .
Three’s death spelled bad news for the Armadillo. Without him, there would be no way to talk his father into agreeing to a long-term lease.
* * *
Bobby Hedderman was doing a fine job booking the hall at a time when we were increasingly vulnerable to competition, not only from other live venues but from that new scourge of the day, disco. At the same time, bands and promoters were charging higher fees. Sometimes, though, one of the heavy hitters would offer us easier-than-usual terms. Zappa was one of them. In the spring, Frank Zappa played a two-night stand with Captain Beefheart. Live tracks from that weekend formed the bulk of the Zappa-Beefheart album Bongo Fury. The faithful were thrilled by the show, but the critic for Rolling Stone called it “a disjointed, jarring package of seemingly off-the-wall musings . . . so conceptually jumbled that it seems impossible for it to sustain listener interest for anything but the briefest periods of time.”1 Even with songs like “Man with the Woman Head” and “Muffin Man,” the reviewer posited that Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, also released that year, was probably the only thing standing between Bongo Fury and the title of worst LP of 1975.
Roky Erickson made a tentative return to live performance that summer. Roky had a new band called Bleib Alien and a raft of new songs with monster movie titles: “I Walked with a Zombie,” “Creature with the Atom Brain,” and “Cold Night for Alligators.” The songs had chilling, acid-drenched, nightmare lyrics, but with Roky’s gift for poetry and tight pop arrangements, they were at least the equal of Phil Spector’s best work. Our favorite was the Doug Sahm–produced single “Two-Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer),” a three-chord classic for all time.
The venue formerly known as the Texas Opry House reared its head again under the name Austin Opry House. The man in charge there was one Tim O’Connor, one of Willie Nelson’s people, and Willie himself had a piece of the club. O’Connor had run several smaller clubs already and had produced Willie’s second picnic. Tough as a rhino hide and persistent as the sun in late August, Tim had survived in the business long enough to earn a reputation as Austin’s Bill Graham. He was skilled in making money while dealing with the best talent in the business, huge crowds, and all the Damon Runyon characters running with Willie.
One of the Austin rock bands that proved a reliable draw for the Armadillo was Too Smooth. They were a slick rock band from the cover band scene, though they played original music. Everybody in the band was a top-notch player. Hank Alrich liked them a lot, and although they inked some deals with major labels, everything fizzled out for them and they never broke nationally.
Another house favorite originated as a live-in jam session. Since Jim Finney had the keys to the studio and the front door, he was a de facto jam organizer. One afternoon, Finney was jamming with Hank Alrich, Jack Jacobs, Fletcher Clark, and Tony Laier from Greezy Wheels. As I walked through the Cabaret, they were sawing their way through “Elvira,” the popular tune about a street in East Nashville, and the music put a happy twitch in my butt.
Did they want a job, I asked, as in that night? And did they have a name? The answer to the first question was yes, to the second, no. Fletcher Clark asked if the Five Dollar Name Corporation had anything for sale.
“The only inventory I’ve got right now are Sleaze-O Demeanor and Balcones Fault,” I said. The latter is the name of the fault line that stretches between Del Rio and Dallas and whose tossing and turning over the millennia created the buckled and broken landscape west of Austin known as the Hill Country.
After a quick meeting, they went for Balcones Fault. They played that night and from then on, and even though they never gave me my five bucks, Balcones Fault was our house band.
Clark and Jacobs had more musical energy and produced more frontal lobe stimulation than ten average funky white bands. Fletcher had been a bank vice president in Boston, and Jacob’s brother ran the biggest bank on the Texas-Mexico border, which made their defection to the hippie lifestyle seem only natural. The drummer was Michael McGeary, who formerly played with Jerry Jeff Walker and Michael Murphey.
Their repertoire evolved to include ranchera, cumbia, swing, and R&B. Sometimes they were joined onstage by magicians (among them, the future television star Harry Anderson), a belly dancer, dog acts, and jugglers. Eventually, the band left Austin for San Francisco in an attempt to play in the major leagues, but again, it didn’t work out.
More racially mixed bands were cropping up in town, appearing regularly on the Armadillo stage. Forty-Seven Times Its Own Weight, Starcrost, and Steam Heat were the cream of the crop. Jazz- and R&B-influenced, all three developed substantial followings.
Van Wilks, one of Austin’s many guitar wizards, fronted a band called the Fools. Van played hard Texas boogie in the style of ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, and on a good night, you’d have to toss a coin to say who was better. With Tommy Shannon providing the thundering foundation on his Fender bass, the Fools were one of the hardest rocking, most dependable local draws at the Armadillo.
Another Austin guitar genius, Eric Johnson, played in a jazz fusion ensemble called the Electromagnets. Everybody in the band was exceptional. The music had a fiery and severe intensity, but it wasn’t for everyone. The songs were all instrumental jams, similar to those of Jeff Beck’s fusion rock period.
One night the Electromagnets were playing, and there was an incident with a tear gas canister. People went running from the hall to escape. Some of them jumped over the new fence next to the Marimont Cafeteria. As they landed on the cars in the parking lot, the sound made a thunderous roar. The band never stopped playing.
In my opinion, the best homegrown talent with the most potential was D. K. Little, a surly Lubbock character with a voice that was richer than Waylon’s and a curled-lip pout that made Springsteen look like an altar boy. Mary Martin of Warner Bros. financed a demo but wanted him to do country, and he wouldn’t hear of it. Jerry Wexler didn’t have any better luck with him. We had introduced the two of them at the Dillo, and Wexler sat with D. K. on a flight to Los Angeles, talking to him about a career in the music business. Upon landing, D. K. caught the next flight home. He never even left the airport. He later quit playing, went to air-conditioning school, got married, had kids, and died surly.
Smack dab in the middle of July 1975, Clifford Antone opened a blues club at the corner of Sixth and Brazos downtown. Originally called Pecan Street, Sixth Street had once been a thriving commercial district of great ethnic variety. By the 1970s, however, the legacy of discrimination, white flight, and other symptoms of urban rot had left Sixth Street a ramshackle, seedy area that, nonetheless, had a few good bars. The south side of Sixth was mostly Mexican American clubs, shops, and bars; African American businesses dominated the north side of the street. Few college students were brave enough to go there after dark.
It took an urban pioneer with vision and guts to put his money on a big venue at that location. I wasn’t the only person in town who thought he was crazy, and not just because of the address. The Armadillo had presented blues for five years. There were a few exceptions, such as Mance Lipscomb, Freddie King, and maybe one or two others, but as a rule, blues musicians—like bluegrass and jazz musicians—had a limited audience. But here came this kid from Port Arthur with big plans to showcase blues seven nights a week. I gave him six months, tops. At least the young, white blues bands would have someplace to play more regularly than our joint, and maybe they’d quit bitching to me about it. Plus, I would have another place to go.
As it turned out, Clifford was on to something, even though he was better at being a visionary and patron than a businessman. Inside the old joint, which had the acoustic character of a cafeteria, the old masters and their attentive, loving disciples bonded and burned the midnight oil. The torch was passed to a new generation. As Clifford soon learned, running a blues club was no way to get rich, but there was always a sense that something important was happening at his club.
Flocking to Antone’s school of the blues were stellar students like Bill Campbell, Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Denny Freeman, Angela Strehli, Lou Ann Barton, Derek O’Brien, and many others who, over the years, helped establish Austin’s reputation as a music capital. Clifford Antone would generously pay headliners like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Luther Tucker, Hubert Sumlin, and Clifton Chenier, making arrangements for them to hang around for a while before and after their dates, which allowed the young gun guitar players to sit in and learn through observation and immersion. What Austin blues player wouldn’t want a chance to jam with Hubert Sumlin or eat catfish with Jimmy Reed?
One thing about the blues scene got on my nerves: hearing people say there had been no place for blues in Austin until Antone’s. It kept getting said and printed in the media over and over, even though it was wrong the first time some misinformed person said it.
Denny Freeman remembers it differently. Denny said:
For the first couple of years that I played in Austin with Jimmie Vaughan and Doyle Bramhall in Storm, the only gigs [we] got were the IL Club, the One Knite, the Armadillo, and shows the Armadillo promoted at the University of Texas, Fort Hood, and [in] Victoria. We had the loyalty of the Dillo’s Dallasites, Bobby Hedderman and Mike Tolleson. We played there and got paid for playing a lot of times when hardly anybody showed up.2
* * *
The worst late-night call ever came ten months after the one about M. K. III. It was November 9, the second of two nights of the Pointer Sisters. Both shows had sold out. I’d gone home early because I had a big day ahead.
The phone rang, rousing me from a deep sleep. Dub Rose was on the other end. “Yeah, what do you want?” I answered, using my no-you-didn’t-wake-me voice.
I heard him sob. “Boss,” he said, “Ken Featherston’s dead.”
“What?”
“He got shot in the parking lot, Boss. He died immediately.”
Ken Featherston was twenty-three years old. One of our rising house poster artists, Ken had been gaining a reputation as an equal to Jim Franklin, Danny Garrett, and Micael Priest. He had whipped up a fine-styled, multicolored classic for the Pointer Sisters show. For the Marshall Tucker Band’s June 30, 1974, show, Ken did a beautiful rendition of a cowpoke on a bucking bronco in the middle of a dark sky, a golden sun breaking through. The band liked it so much they used it on the cover of their album Searchin’ for a Rainbow.
Ken was a broad-shouldered, handsome guy. He was part Filipino, with a dark complexion and a thick mane of dark-brown hair flowing down his back. He was athletic, unselfish, cool, and gung ho. His charisma was infectious. One of the most popular people at the Armadillo had been murdered.
Earlier that day, I had called a meeting to remind the staff that the TABC was cracking down; we had to make damn sure no one left the building with a beer in their hand or any other alcoholic beverage (it was legal to bring in your own bottle of liquor, as long as it wasn’t beer). After the show ended, Dub Rose was at the exit, collecting empty pitchers with both hands as the crowd filed out. One guy was toting an open whiskey bottle as he walked out.
Dub hollered at him to get his attention. Obviously high and drunk, the whiskey drinker came up to Dub and shoved him. Dub fell back and the pitchers shattered. Henry Gonzalez walked up to the assailant and bear-hugged him to the ground. Other staff came to assist.
“Buddy, we’re not going to hurt you,” Henry said. “We just can’t let you take that bottle out of here.” Henry released his hold, and as he stood up, the guy jerked himself upright, went a few steps toward the parking lot, then turned around and said, “I’m gonna come back and kill you.”
“Go home, man,” Henry said. “You’ve had too much to drink.”
Most of the staff had already gone home. After a long load-out, Henry Gonzalez and Ken Featherston walked out together, ready to head home. There was a car parked under the big tree. From there, Henry and Ken probably looked alike—two tall guys with long hair and dark complexions.
A pistol shot rang out. Ken fell. The bullet entered just above his left eyebrow. He died in Henry’s arms.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, I talked about that night with Robert Gower, going over the details of an event that none of us will ever forget.
Doyne Bailey and Jerry Spain were the APD detectives who came in and questioned everyone. They were good policemen, and we’d always gotten along well with them. Bailey and Spain questioned the security staff until long after daylight. Henry Gonzalez and Dub Rose were able to describe the whiskey drinker, but nobody knew his name. It seemed probable that this wasn’t the first time he’d had an altercation with a bouncer, which meant there was a good chance that APD had his mug shot. But with nothing else to go on, it might be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
After answering all their questions, Dub said good night and walked back to the security office. He looked up at the wall and saw a picture of himself wearing a new cowboy hat, taken by Burton Wilson. That picture was the key to identifying the whiskey drinker.
Dub recalled that only a minute or two after Burton had snapped the photo, he’d had to lay the hat down to eject a troublemaker. He was certain that this was the same guy, the whiskey drinker.
Burton had just moved to Santa Barbara. When I called to give him the news about Ken, he hadn’t even unpacked his stuff. I told him I needed the date of the hat photo. Burton said it might take several days to find it. He was really sorry about that, he said. But two hours later, he called me with the information.
Dub went down to APD headquarters, where he was shown mug shots from the three-day period that Burton had provided, and he picked out the face of the whiskey drinker. The man’s name was John Randolph Bingham. An Austin native, Bingham lived with his mother on Hippie Row, which was Thirty-Third Street just north of UT. At one time, the houses on that block constituted the entire Austin counterculture community. When the police pulled up, Bingham slipped out the back door and escaped. Henry Gonzalez drew a sketch of Bingham and gave it to the police to aid in their search.
Ken Featherston’s funeral was held in Corpus Christi, and we held a memorial service at the Armadillo. After the services, Jim Franklin went to the Bingham home and talked to Mrs. Bingham, who worked at Dairy Queen on the Drag. At one point, she told Jim that after her husband died, a nice family had offered to raise their son. Now she regretted not saying yes.
After further probing, she said the family now lived in Waco. After leaving Thirty-Third Street, Jim Franklin called directory assistance and learned that the Waco phone directory had three listings under the last name Bingham. Jim called the first and second numbers. No answer. On number three, someone said hello.
“Hello, is John there?” Jim asked. The pause on the other end told him all he needed to know.
Jim called the Waco police, and by the end of the day, John Bingham was in jail. He was sent to the Rusk State Hospital in the small East Texas town of Rusk, the same place Roky Erickson was incarcerated after his 1969 drug bust.
The state released John Bingham sixteen months later. His troubles with the law resumed, and he died in prison.
None of us knew how to cope with the reality that one of our dear friends had been murdered at our hippie music emporium. What did we know about grief counseling in 1975? Nothing.
Henry Gonzalez had been standing next to Ken when the shooting happened. In all likelihood, the bullet had been intended for Henry, not Ken. Henry knew it. The burden of grief was almost too much for him, or anyone, to bear.
Leea Mechling says Henry never really got over it.
Here we were, promoting a song called “The Nights Never Get Lonely” for Lone Star Beer, and we all felt lonely as hell.
* * *
TYNA/TACI took a lot of hits in 1975. Despite throwing some pretty smart counterpunches, the partners were starting to feel punch-drunk. We pitched some great ideas and sold at least one of them. Armadillo Radio Headquarters was our concept for a weekly radio show in the tradition of the King Biscuit Flour Hour: a series of live concerts at the Armadillo broadcast on syndicated FM stations across the country. Radio Shack’s in-house advertising agency arranged for the company to come on board as a sponsor. But then Radio Shack learned that staff members at the agency had been taking kickbacks. Everyone was fired. That put the quietus on Armadillo Radio Headquarters.
Freddie King’s Lone Star Beer music commercial had tested stronger than anything else Dr. Turicchi had ever tested on his lab rats. It had “hit” written all over it, if only RSO Records, Freddie’s new record label, would release it. Instead, the people in charge of artistic direction at the label got the bright idea to release a song that would cash in on the “bump” dance craze in the disco scene, so they dumped a song called “Boogie Bump” on the innocent public in 1975. Sure, Freddie’s stinging lead guitar and great gravelly vocals were present on the track, but it was also awash with wah-wah rhythm guitar, disco bass, and drums. The tune was as sincere as a Malibu sunset printed on a polyester shirt.
We had a plan for a big-budget television commercial that would feature the Pointer Sisters singing the Lost Gonzo Band’s “The Nights Never Get Lonely” to a disco beat. Lone Star Beer goes disco? Why not? It was a fact that they needed to reach a bigger demographic. The two-steppers in their Manny Gammage Hi-Roller hats and Charlie Dunn boots were already sold on Lone Star. We needed people in platform shoes, too.
We wanted to take the Lone Star ad campaign into new markets beyond the cosmic cowboy set. We wanted black music and Mexican music. We wanted to make Lone Star the brand of all the people, not just the young bubbas.
We shot the commercial, as scheduled, on Tuesday, the tenth of November. The fact that Ken Featherston had been killed the day before was never far from our thoughts. For the location, we rented Magic Time Machine, a new theme restaurant on the south shore of Town Lake on Riverside Drive. The place needed very little extra dressing to double as a glamorous disco club. We recruited all the best-looking people we could find for the extras.
The Pointer Sisters were hotter than a handful of raw jalapeño peppers. Beautiful, talented, and savvy, they had worked in various configurations as backup singers since the 1960s. Their sound reeked of a heavy jazz and bebop influence.3 In 1974, after they had notched several Top 40 hits, their single “Fairytale” crossed over to the country charts. The Pointers took home a Grammy the following year for best country vocal performance by a group.
The Pointer Sisters also happened to be the first black female singers invited to sing at the Grand Ole Opry. We thought they were the perfect act to bring Lone Star Beer into the mainstream. Lone Star disagreed.
Sitting across the table from the Lone Star people, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. No, they told us, this commercial isn’t right for us, our distributors would have problems with it. Black faces had raised Lone Star’s redneck card.
The big hats at Lone Star wanted to stick with progressive country exclusively. Their advertising gurus felt the same way. The commercial never ran.
We ended up being so pissed off at Lone Star that we went to Pearl Beer, their rival in San Antonio. “We’re ready to jump ship,” we told them. “We’ve been screwed by Lone Star.” Intrigued and excited, the Pearl boys asked us what we wanted to do next.
I said, “Whatever it takes to get a $10,000 check.”
“Let’s start with a bumper sticker,” they said.
I went home and got high with Woody Roberts. We were drinking Pearl, which was actually a mighty fine brew. At some point I said, “Wow, that’s the best ’neck in Texas.” I’d heard the expression being used by African Americans.
Woody liked the sound of it. Lone Star had tried to register the term “longneck,” but we had beat them to it.
Woody called the guy who printed the “Long Live Longnecks” bumper stickers and ordered a big batch of stickers that called Pearl the “Best Neck in Texas.” I drove down to San Antonio and picked up our check for $10,000.
Lone Star had screwed up a good thing. We could’ve made them cool. Other brands were already tapping into the same market they were so focused on. Instead of hiring us to help expand their appeal, Lone Star gave all their business back to their Dallas agency, Glenn, Bozell & Jacobs—the people who had always bitterly coveted our itty-bitty piece of the action and had always tried to take credit for things that we had done.
Ironically, Lone Star sales enjoyed a boost from the Pearl longneck campaign, since most beer drinkers still associated the tall brown bottle with Lone Star instead of Pearl. Within five years, however, both Lone Star and Pearl would be purchased by bigger beer companies who would move the local brewing operations out of town. If Lone Star had listened to us, it might still be made in San Antonio, enjoying the kind of hip cachet that Shiner Beer has today.
Meanwhile, Randy McCall and Mike Tolleson, two former fraternity brothers at SMU who constituted one half of TYNA/TACI, had become like oil and water. Randy didn’t like company resources being channeled into videotaping experiments that were not immediately reaping revenue.
Randy also wanted out of TYNA/TACI and insisted that we buy him out of the partnership. He wanted $5,500, plus a percentage of future earnings. We felt that was unreasonable. He suggested we bring the matter to Hank Alrich. We all respected Hank and agreed to abide by his decision. Hank heard us out, then said, “I think Randy’s right.” Mike Tolleson, Woody Roberts, and I were stunned. We paid Randy. When you think about it, it was crazy. He didn’t think the Armadillo should have an in-house agency, and he wanted out of it, even though he didn’t need the money—he had another position coming up with Manor Downs, which he expected to be quite lucrative. Yet he wanted a percentage of our future income, even though the hemorrhage of that much cash from a struggling partnership seemed likely to cause its collapse.
Which it did.
Ever since we got a permit to sell it, beer had been keeping the Armadillo ark afloat. We sold lots of beer, but we wouldn’t sell just any old beer, even if selling that brand might help improve our bottom line. The brand I’m referring to is Coors, the Colorado export we called “Colorado Kool-Aid” because it was bland to the point of being tasteless. Coors had gained some kind of reputation for being cool, particularly in our baby boom set. Its cachet was something between a scam and an illusion, however, because the Coors family were huge donors to noxious right-wing causes. One of their favorite people was Phyllis Schlafly, the right-wing activist who had almost single-handedly halted the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and who had also railed against integration, the UN, globalization, so-called activist judges, and abortion rights.
Ann Richards was one of several local politicos who had already sought my assurance that the Dillo would support the boycott against Coors. Even though she held no elective office at the time, Richards was already a political power hitter, having helped at least two liberal women win seats in the state legislature. I wasn’t about to tell her no. But here came Roy Butler, trying to force us to sell Coors. Butler was the former mayor of Austin, a big-time car salesman, country radio station owner, highly competitive hustler, and all-pro asshole. Oh yeah, he was also a beer distributor, and he had acquired the rights to distribute Coors in our area.
Butler’s beer distribution manager kept telephoning my bar manager to make an appointment so he could make a presentation that would inform us of all the reasons that Coors should be added to the brands sold at the Armadillo. I kept stonewalling him. One day I got a call from M. K. Hage. “I don’t know how Roy Butler knows you’re behind on your rent,” he said, “but he’s really pressuring me to get you to make an appointment with him. Couldn’t you please meet with him so he’ll quit bothering me?”
I agreed to see Roy, but I didn’t say I’d go along with him. When he showed up for our meeting, he came rolling into the office like a velvet steamroller. I told him that I was repulsed by the politics of the Coors family. His counterargument was that the Busch family, who owned Budweiser, were a bunch of former Nazis and hadn’t exactly become liberals since the war.
I listened until he finally talked himself out.
“Roy,” I said finally, “Ann Richards is a close friend of mine and you’re not. She says no.”
The Armadillo didn’t sell Coors Beer until after I left. How much revenue was lost in the interim? It’s hard to say. But I do know that in the late 1980s and 1990s, Whole Foods Market (founded in Austin in the fall of 1980, three months before the Armadillo closed for good) supported the boycott against certain species of tuna to help call attention to the mass slaughter of dolphins by boats harvesting tuna for sandwiches and cat food. Whole Foods might have lost some money on that gambit as well, but taking a moral stand made the company look good, and in the long run, they did pretty well.
Looking back, between the terrible traumas of 1975, we had an overabundance of great shows. For our fifth birthday that August, Commander Cody brought in a full house, heat be damned. We did bang-up business with Charlie Daniels, as usual. Unfortunately, Bruce Springsteen’s manager, Mike Appel, decided that the Armadillo was now too small for Springsteen, so they played across the street at the Municipal Auditorium.
Bobby Hedderman had booked a lineup through the end of the year that was as strong as cowboy coffee. Marcia Ball of Freda and the Firedogs went off to front a group under her own name, Marcia Ball and the Misery Brothers. Starting in the fall, we paired them with compatible road shows at every opportunity to help them grow their audience.
Stellar road shows I remember best were the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Pointer Sisters, Billy Cobham with George Duke (Tomas Ramirez’s band Jazzmanian Devil opened the show), Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals, Chuck Mangione, Commander Cody (twice), Marshall Tucker Band (also twice), Amazing Rhythm Aces, Billy Swan (still hot with his refried rockabilly hit “I Can Help”), Detroit rocker Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Mighty Clouds of Joy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and a New Year’s Eve blowout with Asleep at the Wheel.
As for the numbers, we grossed about $1.3 million in 1975, and after costs, we broke even for the second year in a row. Numbers, of course, have no feelings, and we did—thus the divergent accounts of profit and loss.
