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My name is Noy Guthrie from the Woodson Research Center, Fond and Library Rice University. I am interviewing Don Sanders. Today is March 21st, 2017. This is part of the Houston Folk Music Archive, oral History project. Can you tell me about your early life in Houston? Uh

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I lived a very limited life in many ways. My parents only approved of social life at the Baptist Church and Boy Scouts was also part of my, my deal, but I would say it was very limited and limiting what first drew you to music. What, what

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first drew you to music? Uh I suppose the Kingston Trio and the Lime Lighters and the Weavers. Uh I enjoyed those acts and in the early days, what you did was adapt folk songs and create an act that relied on humor. But then I realized that

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you needed to be a songwriter because the companies made more money that way. About what time did you realize you should shift to, to writing your own music? Well, when I went to New York early on, people said you need to be a songwriter too. When

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did you go to New York? Uh, that would have been in 68 or 69 someone somewhere around there. Ok. And what did you do there? Well, I auditioned at a couple of clubs at Gerdes Folk City and, uh, I talked to a couple of agents who

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recommended me to the, it's here in Chicago and it's here was on North Sheridan Avenue up near Evanston. Ok. And so did you, how long did you end up staying in New York? Well, not, not too long, actually, maybe a week. Ok. And so, and that

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was the point at which you decided to go ahead and start doing your own songwriting, right? So before that you had, um, and just so I can try to understand because some, for some of these clubs, I can't understand exactly the days when time when they

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began and when they ended because, you know, there was the jester, right? And did you, you played there? Um About what time was that? Uh 67 or 68 somewhere in there? Ok. What was the gesture like? It was, uh it was very dark, there were no

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windows and Mac Webster owned it. It was, uh it was a good place. Uh Guy Clark used to play there, Carl Carl Phillips, uh Frank and Kay Frank, Frank and KK Osland became KT Osland, the country singer and Frank played a harp guitar sometimes that had

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an extra six strings, bass strings and he played the daddy banjo he was, uh, he was far too original to envy. He had a really rough voice and it was a really, really interesting that he and Kay were teamed up. She had a very pure voice.

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And so, um, you, so around the same time? Well, I guess actually I have some pictures of you that are dated in 1965 and that you're supposed to be playing at Sand Mountain Coffee House, right? OK. So were you playing at both places around the same

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time? But Sand Mountain was really where I got my education in folk music. Uh Jerry Jeff would come in and play for a week at a time and he was already a skilled performer. So I learned how to string songs together. OK. From Jerry Jeff. All

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right. And then um and what else did you uh let's see. So you learned from Jerry Jeff? Were there other people there that were a big influence on you? Yeah, Guy Clark and uh Jim Post who was a one hit wonder with uh think it's so

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groovy now, how people are getting together? OK. Did you play much with or interact very much with Towns fans aunt while he was there? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Town started off just singing his poetic songs and then he learned to communicate with the audience. OK. And so

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you kind of watch that progression. Yeah. OK. And he, he became a skilled communicator. His favorite joke was uh what's white and crawls up your leg. Uncle Ben's perverted rice. I don't know how many times I heard him tell me. Um, and so you, so you

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learned from Jerry Jeff, et cetera, kind of how to put songs together? Um, were you also kind of starting to think about how to tell more stories and what you did or? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, uh, back in those days you tried to use humor

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to, in, in, to introduce a song. Uh So, you know, we learned from the Weavers and from the, from the Kingston Trio. Those were the, and the Lime Lighters. Those were the big acts at the time. So, um when you started writing your own material, um

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do you remember what first song you wrote? Yeah. The first song I wrote was Coffee song, uh which was Jimmy, Jimmy Bonar called it almost a uh pop song. OK. Um What was it? So, Jimmy Bonar was a painter. Oh OK. Uh Who died a few

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years ago. OK. And the, so is the song just about coffee or what was the song about? No, no, it was about falling in love with that? A lesbian? OK. All right. Was that, uh was that something that was taken from your life or just a

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um an idea that you had? Oh, no, it was from my life. Yeah. Yeah. So you were also one of the early um performers at a, at Anderson fair. Right. Um, can you talk about its early, early days? Well, Anderson Fair was a tiny venue at

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first, uh, the entertainment area was to the left of the door and I don't know if you, you've been in there but it's, it was, uh, a room that was very small and then they expanded into the, the performance area that's in there. Now, uh, what

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were the, the people that went there? What were they like your fans? What were they like? Well, people came to meet each other at, uh, Anderson Fair, which he, I suppose you would say they met each other and got laid. I forget. So, I've, I've been

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told that some of the different venues had their own personalities. So, for example, um, Anderson Fair was a bit more political, um, a little lighter with, um, drugs. That old quarter was a little darker in downtown. And so, um, if you're thinking of, so we've kind

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of, so if you're thinking about like Jester Sand Mountain and then the opening, uh, you know, the, the new kind of Anderson fair, what were their personalities like? Well, the old quarter, the old quarter was when it began, the owners thought it was good for people

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to mix with the street people. And then we discovered that some of the street people were very disruptive and so joy who was, the bartender, started sitting out next to the huge double doors and demanding a $2 cover charge which filtered out the worst of the

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drunks. There was a guy that hung out there named Sinbad. Uh si NBA D, he was a merchant seaman and uh sin bad was so skinny that I thought I might damage him when I hugged him. That's unusual to think about him being a merchant seaman

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and then also just being a very thin man. Yeah. Yeah, he, he actually kept a bottle of white pork in his uh in his trench coat. OK. So thinking about these early venues. Do you have any notable memories because you've shared Sinbad any kind of notable

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memories from the different ones? Well, the gesture was more formal. OK. Was more formal in its approach to music. So you really had to have an act together there and Guy Clark performed there a whole lot. He was singing folk songs at first hard times for

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Cotton Mill Girls was one of his big uh big numbers. A lot of my early career was propelled by envy. I envied guys good looks towns, his ability to write songs. And Susan Spa, Susan Spa had a theory of voice that was really mesmerized every male

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in the audience. Did you uh end up hanging out uh with them when they were in Houston, like at their home and stuff? Because I not a, not a whole lot. OK. No, Susan married guy Clark ultimately and had a child by him Travis. But none

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of the women that I envied ever forged AAA career in music. Mhm. Why do you think that happened that way? I think it was just too, it was too spooky. Uh Susan became a teacher and then married Freddie mclean in uh Corpus Christi. And that's all

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I remember about Susan. Susan Crow Johnson was also uh a regular at the Curville folk festival and, and, you know, in the early days at the Curb Fifth festival, the song gatherings were rather informal. Uh So Crow and Bobby Bridger would have uh Bobby had a

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TP where people gathered and Crow had a campfire up on the hill. But over the years those campfires became more formal and camp stupid was established. Uh That's where uh Kim Gaines hangs out regularly and he hosts uh host the camp stupid campfires. Ok. Ken

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makes Ken is a very positive person and he makes things work for him because he, he runs the um songwriters in the round. Yeah. At, at Anderson Fair on Thursday nights. Yeah, I had, I had read someplace that eventually at Sand Mountain. There was a, was

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it in um there was a mural and part of the mural. Yeah, there was a mural on the back wall that uh an artist used an overhead projector to sketch the murals. Uh It was on the far south wall. OK. And guy was on there, Don

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was on there. Uh Maybe Jerry Jeff. How, how did that feel to be part of a mural in one of the places where you got started. Well, it felt, it felt good, you know, to, to be mural. So I'm not exactly sure what year um this

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started, but you also became a DJ at KPFT. Right. Right. Can you talk about your radio show? And when that began? Well, I think it began in the mid, mid to late sixties. And I played, I played acoustic music and interviewed songwriters. Uh I remember especially

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the night that Lucinda came in and I realized that her father was Miller Williams, a poet who I had been reading that that that day. And Miller directed the translation program at, at Fayetteville Arkansas. He had worked his way up from being I think a chemistry

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professor and then got into literature. He also translated uh uh who was part of the family in uh from Argen uh from Chile. Uh Miller was a talented guy. I think he's, he's passed on now. Mhm. And that was a profound moment when I realized that

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Lucinda was his daughter. Lucinda had a really hard time at first because she was doing blues covers and she didn't have a, she didn't have a great voice, but she was stuck to it. And then when she started writing her own songs, she got better and

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better. And so how, how long did you do that radio show at KPFT? I did it into the early eighties and then I was touring so regularly that I had to give it up. So in 1972 you began your own record label mean in low records.

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What motivated you to do this? Uh My friends Don and Pam Don Gardner was one of the founders of KPFT along with Larry Lee and done, encouraged me to make an album of my own. He's, he, they had some money that they were willing to put

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up. And that was the inception of the, of the label. And, um, how many, uh, because you did a, I can't remember now. I actually, I actually bought some of them at Cactus. Um, there were three that you put out. Correct. Right. Right. Can you talk?

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Uh, the first one was, uh, had a long extended story on the second side. The second one had an etching by Bill on the Obverse side. And then the third one was an extended play was just four songs. So, what did you learn by making your

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own records? I learned that it's really hard to make a good record. Uh Clive Clive Gregson did the last one for me and it's really excellent. It's called Limelight and he just was a superb instrumentalist himself because that came out in 2015. Uh Limelight. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. So you recorded, um, some songs for, um, through The Dark Nightly? Yes. Uh-huh. Um, can you talk about that recording experience? Walter Spinks did that recording and he swore that there would never be more than 1000 copies of it. So, he's stuck by that. He

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won't even give me the tapes from that project. Wow. Hold on to those. Yeah. Yeah, that was in there, mid seventies, I think. Yeah. It, it came out in 1976. So, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Um, how did it differ from the earlier studio work that you did

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for your own label? Well, it was different in the sense that I didn't have much backup. Uh Charlie Bickley may have played bass on one of the tunes and Charlie Bickley uh had the space where rock Romano now has his recording studio. Oh, ok. Ok. So

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we went in there and cut, I cut three songs. Mhm It was a compilation album with uh Eric Taylor Lynn Langham, uh Bill Cade, Bill Cade and Steven Gerrard, right? Uh-huh Stephen is married to Francy Files now. And so did you, um did that end up

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getting um pretty good airplay in Houston? Uh It got some airplay but actually the song that made me famous was Open My Third Eye and Stephen Stephen Nagle had a radio show on K 101 that he played that on a regular basis that and uh roaches

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are the oldest form of life that's still around. And are those two tracks ones that you had recorded through your mean and low? Ok. Um Well, that's, I mean, that's good that you got the, that you got the airplay because that was the, that was the

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point. Right. Yeah, that was, that was great. Oh, that really established me in Houston and, you know, I guess Houston is a small scene in a way. Uh, wow, Lyle managed to break out of Houston and they established a national career. But, uh, that's very difficult

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to do. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's still amazing though, the people that came out of the scene over kind of a 20 year period. Right. Yeah. Um I was reading, actually I saw um Tamara Saviano, she wrote the, um the guy Clark um biography that came

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out and she referred to Houston as almost like like Greenwich Village. That there was that amount of talent that was here that was sharing material with each other and building off of each other to create, to, to write and everything. Well, my first girlfriend, Chemo always

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said that guy listened to me very carefully. What did she mean by that? Well, she meant he was kind of picking my brain. Ok. Do you think that that's what he did with most people or guy Red started reading poetry uh about the time that he

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started writing songs and I think he was trying to figure out what would work in a song. And so because you also were kind of drawn to literature, would you to talk about? Mm We didn't uh God, I didn't, didn't talk all that much. He was

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a good guy. He came to stay with me in Berkeley when we were living there. Ok. And that was, he and Susanna were already together. Ok. When, when was that, that would have been in uh the early, late seventies? Ok. Uh I was out there a

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friend at named Cor Donohue suggested the Bay area for me, but he didn't realize that the singer songwriter thing was over there. The big act in San Francisco at the time was uh buzz gags. Um Yeah, and Boz was doing things sort of like Barry White.

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So a different type of music had kind of come to a scene. Yeah. Um To bring it back to Houston. Um around the mid seventies, you protested, um the proposed oil drilling in Memorial Park. Right. Right. Can you talk about the song you wrote? Uh Yeah,

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the song I wrote was called Memorial Park. And it was really interesting to go to City Council and sing that song because the city council people started bobbing their heads in time and when the TV, cameras were on them. Oh, ok. Yeah, we, we have a,

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at one point had two tapes of that city council meeting, but the one tape that we have but only one survives and that is not the tape with you singing it. It's, it's some, a few random people, you know, lodging their complaints. Well, yeah, I did

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it again when the Heights was trying to get certified as a historic district and somebody said this guy might be a crank but he was really pretty good. So, were you singing in support of making a historic district or? Yeah. Ok. Um, you know, when, when

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other people kind of think of folk music, sometimes I think of the political angle and thinking about Houston, you know, how would you describe the level of politics that might have came, come out of folk music here in Houston, kind of high, kind of low, other

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topics were more important. Well, in the early days I sang We Shall Overcome and a lot of the things that were overtly political. But if I had stuck with, with the political aspects, I would have wound up preaching to the choir. OK. You know. Mhm That's

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no, that's, that's interesting. So because the, because the fan base, the people who are going to shows were already more liberal, it gave you room to explore other avenues and I sang. If you miss me at the back of the bus, you won't find me nowhere.

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Uh That was uh that's actually been recorded in by, in Spain and by Victor Jara in Chile. He also recorded. Victor also recorded, recorded uh Malvina Wills Little Boxes on the hillside. So it seems like especially uh considering one of your uh later uh C DS

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that El mosquito in my kitchen that you like to do music both in English and in Spanish. Is that correct? Right. Right. What, um, inspired you to write music in Spanish? Well, I got a graduate degree in Spanish, a master's degree and, you know, you just

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try to actualize yourself. Mhm. So, are there are the themes that you write about in Spanish different from those in English? Yeah. The songs that I sang on that El Mosquito in my kitchen. I collected from uh a book called by Victor Mendoza. Uh That was

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all folk songs from Mexico and I expanded on them a little bit. What did you, what did you do? Just kind of add more lyrics, added more lyrics. Yeah. Did you change the arrangements? No, no, I pretty much followed his arrangements. Um And in the late

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seventies, I think it's the late seventies. You began working in public schools. Yeah, I was uh I got some residency work through Texas Commission on the Arts. Uh I worked at Gatesville School. Uh The Boys Prison initially with Rick, uh with my friend Rick who subsequently

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became the head of the Texas Commission on the Arts. Uh Rick sent me to China ultimately. What was that like? That was uh in the early eighties, I think. Uh you know, and it was like being, it was like being a star act over there. We

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sang at a high school. Uh and it was like a rock concert. Was it kind of just a short visit? Well, it was very odd because we sang at maybe four o'clock in the afternoon, which was, like, being up at four o'clock in the morning

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for us. So, it was, it was rigorous. Mhm. How many shows did you perform? Uh, maybe 15 or 20? Wow. Yeah. Was it just one, like, day after day after day? Wow. That's a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. Have you, have you been back there since

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then? No, I have not been. China is China is just too far away. It's kind of like getting to India. You know, my wife has been to China several times because her brother studied there. But I don't know if I'll ever go back to China. It's

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just, it's a long way. It's halfway around the world, right? Yeah. I, I assume it's probably a 15 to 16 hour. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, well, we flew first to San Francisco and then it was 13 hours from there to Beijing. It's a long trip. Yes.

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Um So when you were working in the public schools, um is this what later inspired you to make the, uh the, the, to do the album El Mosquito in my kitchen? Yeah. I actually thought that that was gonna be my big breakthrough because, yeah, at the

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time in the valley there was a big concentration on doing, on bringing Children into the language, the English language through there's native language and now they're more interested in mainstreaming kids. So, did you ever end up writing specifically just children's music. No, that was, that was

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a limited project. Can you talk a little bit about your, um, about your writing process? My writing process is to come up with an idea for words that sound good together and then to try to create a melody to go with it. Mhm. Uh, I'm not,

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I'm not a great melodies but you know, who really was, was Towns. Van Towns was better, I think was better at, at folk melodies than he was at words. Hm. Interesting. Um What was so special about his melodies? He based them uh in folk folk music.

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And that, that's what I would say was his contribution was he, he used folk melodies just the same way that Woody Guthrie did. Mhm. Woody Guthrie. The song Tom Jode is basically, is basically an old folks are. Mhm But just with new lyrics. Yeah. And

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he, you know, Woody would admit that he'd say, yeah, it does sound kind of like that, doesn't it? Um So when you are, when you write a song, do you um and you said you, you can come up with words that sound good together and then

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try to establish a melody. And do you like to kind of work on songs for a long period of time? Trimming them down? Yeah. Sometimes it will take me a month to write a song. Uh Tourist, tourist is one of my better songs I think. And

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that one is a minor key melody. How long did it take you to write that one? I don't know. Ok. It took me, it took me a while. All right. Do you ever, um, try songs out at, um, on stage and then tweak them afterwards, or?

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you do that with most of the songs that you write? Well? Mm. No, once you get a sum to the shape where it should be performed, then it's pretty much set in stone at that point. Ok. And then, um, when you were

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learning to, we actually didn't, I didn't ask you anything about when you were first learning to play the guitar. When did that start? I started when I was, uh, 12 years old. Oh, wow. Ok. Yeah. Started learning to play guitar and, uh, playing a banjo too.

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Ok. But I never developed as a banjo player because it seemed clear that guitar was a more versatile instrument. Did you take lessons with someone or did you teach yourself? And I taught myself, I would watch other people what they were doing. Uh, I learned a

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slide from watching Dwayne Allman. Dwayne would, uh, come in and play at the old quarter sometimes and they would, they would base themselves in a hotel in Houston and then tour to other towns outside of here. Ok. Um, who else did you learn different techniques from?

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Uh, I watched a guy and Jerry Jeff. Jerry Jeff uh when he wrote Gypsy song, man, that was a really nice song. Did you, have you ever heard that one? II, I might have but I don't, I don't remember. I'm Gypsy song, man. Yes, sir. You'd

00:52:22.070 - 00:52:59.179

like to hear a song? OK. All right. And so, um, so did you, did you kind of like his, what were like kind of specific uh techniques that you liked of, of his when he was playing the guitar? Well, promising boy, I'm made up. Mhm. I

00:52:59.189 - 00:53:32.179

was sitting on the beach in Puerto Rico one day and I thought you were such a promising boy, whatever happened to you. So you've talked about um traveling to New York uh living in um in the Berkeley area. Um But you mainly stayed here. Um You

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know, as you over the years you saw people leave Houston for Austin and Nashville and other places, why did you stay in Houston? Because it was my home. Uh I bought a house in the Montrose in the late seventies and was about to moved to New

00:54:06.870 - 00:54:53.909

York when I met the woman who became my wife. Yeah. Uh So I've lived a more or less normal life. Vietnam surviving in Houston. So it, it has been very pleasant to be able to play in Houston, right? Because I mean, there's still places that are

00:54:53.919 - 00:55:28.310

here with Anderson Fair. And then do you sometimes play in the old quarter down? Yeah. Well, in the Curville festival actually did me a lot of good. Uh, I remember Rod always wanted to make it to divorce it from a hippie love fest. And Rod would

00:55:28.320 - 00:56:05.370

counsel us to make it family friendly. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think I've, um, and one of our collections I've read, uh, have someone was disinvited after a, a rowdy year you couldn't come back for a few years to play. Right. Well, Rod did not want it

00:56:05.379 - 00:56:48.060

to be, uh, a marijuana fest because it was in Texas, which is, which is a conservative town of, of retirees. And, uh, heb started there, uh, Schriner College. Mhm. And so it just, it made sense to keep it a little bit more tame. Yeah. Mhm. Ok.

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But, you know, that put me in a bind actually because a lot of my songs were, had a more urban sensibility and, uh, I guess I shouldn't have been so nervous. But the first time he introduced me on stage I played several songs at just break

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neck speed. But, but even so I was featured on the front page of the newspaper the next day. When was that, um, when did you first perform there? Uh, 74 74? I think that was the first time I played there. Uh, Alan Damron sponsored me and

00:57:59.219 - 00:58:33.689

so did my manager, how did the sponsor, how did that work? Just to kind of help to pay the fees to play or? Well, Cheryl Nelson was my manager at the time and she, uh, she talked me up really good and I even played in front

00:58:33.699 - 00:59:08.100

of 10 years after, in Haines Pavilion and in front of, uh, one time and then I played in front of not the, ok. Which was a disaster. Oh, why is that? Well, they didn't go on. Oh, because the promoter didn't have the money to pay them.

00:59:09.550 - 00:59:33.750

Oh, gosh. So, uh, uh, what venue is this? Uh that would have been in the late seventies that was sponsored by K 101? Ok. Wow. So did they, so they were there and they were ready. They just decided they were, they were faced off with the

00:59:33.760 - 01:00:04.580

promoter backstage. Wow. You know. Mhm All the young dudes, right. So what was, so you went out and performed? Yes. OK. I performed but it was a disaster. So did the fans know at the time? No. Well, that's good. They did not know that ma the

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hoople was not going on. OK. Because I was, they were back there in their platform shoes in their shaggy haircuts faced off against the promoter. Wow. That must have been very uncomfortable. It was my bass player said, let's get out of here. You also did shows

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at Liberty Hall? Yeah. Yeah. I opened for Robert Klein one night and that was, that was actually, that was actually a really good gig. Uh People listened and were on my wavelength because it was a, it was a comedy show. So, uh, I actually did a

01:01:30.969 - 01:02:12.399

show four. We staged a Saturday show at KPF at, uh Anderson Fair and I went out and wore a blue jeans skirt and a bolero jacket and, uh, huge dolly Parton wig. And the people from Liberty Hall saw that and wanted me to repeat it. But

01:02:12.409 - 01:02:40.540

I didn't want, I didn't, even though, uh, take a walk on the wild side was, was uh popular at the time and David David Bowie was uh making his ziggy stardust deal. I didn't want that taking over my career. I wanted to. Yeah, that's interesting though.

01:02:41.159 - 01:03:02.469

So, yeah. So then um I assume it was uh Ryan Trimble or Mike Con or Yeah. Yeah, Ryan Trimble and Mike Con. I don't know if Mike is still alive or not. He, he passed um March or April of last year. Um So, what are you

01:03:02.479 - 01:03:45.389

working on now? I'm working on uh memoir essays right now. And uh I just wrote about my early childhood and, you know, we, I grew up on a street called Covered Street, which was the combination of two people's names and we did not have city services

01:03:45.399 - 01:04:20.879

at the time. We had a water well and a septic tank that spread its arms under the front yard and the grass always grew greener over the uh over the septic tank. What is that? Um What kind of process are you going through to write the

01:04:20.889 - 01:04:53.379

memoir. You kind of starting at the beginning or are you just, um, I'm hitting important events in my life. Yeah. Has it been an easy process? No, not, not. Especially uh when you write a memoir, you are the character. So you have to reveal unattractive things

01:04:53.389 - 01:05:30.000

about yourself, which is ok. I don't mind, I don't mind doing that. It's just not, it's not easy. How long have you been working on it? Uh, maybe a year. So kind of looking back over the scene that happened in Houston. Um, and your own music

01:05:30.010 - 01:06:02.780

and how that's changed over the years. Can you, can you talk about how things have changed in Houston and in your own music? Well, I went through a period of, uh, of really liking Latin American music. So I tried to create some things that fit in

01:06:02.790 - 01:06:48.300

with that. And then I, I wrote a show called Peregrino that debuted at Main Street Theater. Oh, ok. And it included songs and stories. Mhm. About an alcoholic travel writer. OK. When, when was that? That would have been 1980 approximately. And so, so you, you know,

01:06:48.310 - 01:07:18.790

you kind of started out with like traditional folk, you started to write your own music and then you began to have a, a Latin American influence in your writing. Um, I guess where do you see yourself? Now? I see myself at the end of my life.

01:07:20.090 - 01:08:07.780

Mhm. Yeah. My son is, uh, 27. Now, uh, I'm gonna try to hang on for a few more years. But, uh, you know, Kenneth Threadgill was an inspiration to all of us. Hey, hung on for many, many years. Did you ever see him? No,

01:08:07.790 - 01:08:56.379

no, no, no Threadgill Head Threadgill service station on the north side of, uh, Austin. And that's where Janice went. Janice. Janis Joplin came to the Sand Mountain to audition one time and she was really shocking and transgressive. Uh She opened with Jelly Roll Martins. I'm a

01:08:56.390 - 01:09:41.149

whining boy. Don't you deny me? My name with a uh brown J model Gibson strapped around their shoulders. She was wearing a, a bell sleeved mini dress that shimmered under the lights and Mrs Carrick was not impressed. She said, you know, I could put you on

01:09:41.160 - 01:10:06.740

stage but I wouldn't be doing you any favors. So she offered Janice a job as a waitress and Janice passed on that and went on up to, went on up to thread gills and hung out there a bunch and then went out to San Francisco and

01:10:06.750 - 01:10:43.779

became a star. And I didn't realize what a good singer she was until subsequently, she was really good at phrasing. So, did you, at the time when you saw her sing? Did you realize that that, did you think that it was kind of notable or

01:10:43.790 - 01:11:04.310

was it something that later on? Oh, yeah, I remember her when she came in and yeah, it was not, it was notable because she opened with I'm a winning boy. Don't You Deny me? My name, uh A Jelly Roll Morton song. And you know, she was

01:11:04.319 - 01:11:46.479

transgressive in the sense that she sang from a male's point of view. Uh I said that to someone who uh wrote a book about Janice and she was a shocking act. You know, her unruly brown hair, she would start sweating and her hair would stick to

01:11:46.490 - 01:12:22.560

her face. And in those days girls were still singing English ballads. Uh, so she was, she was a real wild card. No, it, it makes sense how she would be different, especially if you had, as you mentioned, like Susan was singing and Yeah. Yeah. No, lot

01:12:22.569 - 01:12:59.979

different. I'm gonna have another sip of water here. So I guess that's kind of a final question. Do you, let's see, how do I phrase this? You watched a lot of people come through Houston over the years and you watch the scene change? Yeah. And, um,

01:13:02.580 - 01:13:17.899

what was that like? You know, kind of, you know, watching guy Clark and Jerry Jeff Walker and Tons Vanzant playing and then moving on to do other things and, uh, seeing Nancy Griffith and I love it and kind of what was that like, kind of watching

01:13:17.910 - 01:13:55.419

them and seeing how the, the scene changed over the years. Well, it was a little bit depressing in the sense that I couldn't figure out a way to break out of Houston, but it was good in the sense that I saw a lot of people. Mhm.

01:14:00.009 - 01:14:38.229

My first wife badgered me into it into performing for the Christy Menstruals. And the guy was gonna offer me a job. But 100 and $50 a week was what he was offering. And, uh, $20 per diem for food. And I couldn't imagine being trapped in a

01:14:38.240 - 01:15:16.399

hotel room with somebody that I didn't know. And then she signed me up for the Johnny Desmond talent contest and I won two tuxedos and two weeks of performance at the Shamrock Hilton Lounge and then at a lounge in Beaumont. But I had to get arrangements

01:15:16.410 - 01:16:02.200

written for the, the combos that were there. So the deal wound up costing me as much as I made. Mhm. So was there anything else that you would like to talk about? No, I don't guess so. Although, you know, I'm 73 years old and I hope

01:16:02.209 - 01:16:57.410

I'll be around for a while. But you know, we're at an age where a lot of people just drop dead. So Chuck Berry just died. James Cotton just died. Last week, James was living in Austin. You hope that you can still be, make a contribution. It

01:16:57.419 - 01:17:20.890

was very kind of Lyle to record bio song. Mhm. Yeah. But thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. I, I will say that I think that people always look at you as being a person who has been here for a long time but mentored others and

01:17:21.490 - 01:17:29.399

you know, did act did make a contribution. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for coming in. Thank you Nori.