THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

lost in Ozona Again

Next time you’re driving down route 290 between Austin and El Paso, be sure and visit Ozona, the richest town in the world. It’s only a couple hours north of the Mexican border and it has the only good all-night truckstop en route, the M&M Cafe. But the biggest reason you should visit — nay, settle — in Ozona is that the wind currents are such that scientists say it is the only place in the country where nuclear fallout won’t land after the atomic bomb goes off. This is important. According to meteorologists and others who have studied the prevailing air flow at Ozona, all nuclear fallout will be swept away and not affect the air in the town; supposedly, it will land elsewhere in Crockett County. Not only will you live longer, come the Bomb, but you can save money meanwhile by not having to build a fallout shelter in your home. '

If health and economy aren’t enough to draw you here, consider the town’s capital. When Ozona was settled before the turn of the century most of the land surrounding the village was owned by 57 ranchers; all men and all anxious to keep things in the family. In each land deed the rancher is required to pass on the entire parcel of property to his eldest son. Not the second eldest, not the daughter. The eldest son. If there are no sons, then a nephew. Parcels of land may not be broken up. Daughters can inherit money but not property. Today there are still 57 wealthy landowners, all descendants of the originals, all millionaires. With a population of 3400 this makes Ozona the wealthiest town per capita in the world!

Tom Miller

The Rubber Dubbers LostJJjda'lSI) Wki

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But Whatre you doing up here? It was Rubber Dubber Evans, impjs lMSgb^x#IJtogy>raing inaieSIp/Vi^iTM^^haJ^^^^ded the of douwi^-^^^jpha|k^^"¥ wfMe new meanin^^Sm^^OTaf m^jneg,” the man who’crml^,Jft(fefat law passed making him illegal and then had gotten bpsted before it went into effect — the Rubber Dubber, in person.

“Coffee,” he moaned. He’d left his house in Santa Barbara at 3 A.M. and driven straight (well, not completely straight) to Marin County. In the back of his cleverly-disguised truck was the last of the Rubber Dubber Records stock, and he meant to unload them in San Francisco, Berkeley and Marin. Since I knew the record stores, I’d Jbe his “native guide.”

The anti-bootlegging law that Congress passed in 1971 had a six-month grace period in it, to give bootleggers a fair chance to clean up their act. But Federal marshals had installed an informer in Bud’s “family,” the group who did everything from recording to pressing to shrinkwrapping to distributing Rubber Dubber Records, and they wanted to move before anybody suspected him. Bud knew the arrests were illegal, and so did the “family,” so nothing at all came of the case except that one of the record presses fell out of the back of a Rubber Dubber truck and smashed a hyrdraulic cylinder, rendering it useless. The feds also confiscated the stock on hand, and didn’t bother to return it until a few months ago.

This stock was the one that Bud had packed into his truck. The six dollar list price albums were to go for $2.50 wholesale, and as he kept reminding all and sundry, they were the last. All that remained was to sell them. So we set off in the truck for Mill Valley, home of Marin’s finest record shop, Village Music. Right off, there was a hassle. The storeowner swore up and down that Bud had promised to ship the records UPS collect, and had said nothing at all about bringing them by today in person. It was to have been a major haul — 125 albums. Bud talked with the guy a while, and finally turned on his heel, gesturing to me with one hand, “C’mon.” He stuffed his dark glasses back on his face. He was muttering about shuck and jive all the way across the Richmond Bridge and on into Berkeley.

At Telegraph Avenue’s famed Moe’s Bookstore, the excuse was the same — it looked like a plot. But Bud is a persuasive talker and finally he agreed to take his $200 in $1.00 bills. “Well,” he said, as we threaded our way through the mass of humanity on the Ave., “I got the rent, anyway. Shit, all I want to do is sell these damn things and be done with the trip. I’m not the Rubber Dubber anymore, I’m Bud Evans, I’ve got a house in Santa Barbara and a fantastic old lady and I’m happy, but I’ll be happier when I get rid of these records.”

The next stop was Berkeley’s leading record shop — at least among connoiseurs — a place on the North Side called Rather Ripped. We waited around the shop for the owner to come back from having stitches put into his head, talking trash with the guy behind the counter. There were a number of whitecovered Beatles bootlegs on display that Bud looked over with disdain — he still has that old pride in craftsmanship, anyway. Finally the owner came back and, standing in front of the rack with the Beatles albums, patiently explained that they didn’t carry bootlegs. “But, but...” I stammered, pointing at the rack. He ignored me.

“Groovy,” I said, as we headed towards the freeway, “Just in time to hit the rush hour traffic.” Bud lit a joint. “Fuck it,” he advised.

The next day he spent an hour on the phone and discovered a couple of stores in the city that would sell a few. The sales litany was the same every time: “These are the same ones, now, that the FBI seized. These are the very last ones; if I were you, I’d stash them in the back room for a couple of months. Tell the customer he’s getting a piece of history, cuz there’ll never be any more of these ever. That’s right, double album, pictures inside and out, some of ’em have liner notes. Now, how many of each do you want?”

By 6 P.M. he had exhausted the city of potential customers. “Well, I’m gonna head back to Santa Barbara and stop in Santa Cruz on the way home and see if I can’t get rid of the rest of these. Thanks for the help, anyway.” “Yeah, Bud. See ya later.” “Cmon down to Santa Barbara some time — Nancy’d love to meet you.” “Don’t worry, I will.” And we shook hands. The end of an era. For Bud’s sake, it’s probably better that way.

Ed Ward

More Fresh Garbage For the Trash Heap

I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite pastimes (other than browsing through the record bargain bins) is to fumble through the magazine racks. All sorts of shit can catch ya by surprise. Like, the most tasteless sweat rags crop up — True Pictorial Romances, Championship Wrestling, The Biofeedback Beadwork Journal, Hot Rod Annual, Fetish and Fantasy, Blind Date Guide... but the crummiest and most offensive of all is this quarter tabloid called The National News Exploiter.

Now the days of Midnight, The Tattler, and The National Enquirer ended about two years ago when the ratpack editors were told to clean up the scene by the government. Too many people were falling for their blood’n’ gutz spiels and the pix were just about making everybody vomit in their soup. So the gore was replaced by scandal, and for a short period there if you wanted to see a six-month old baby getting squashed by a steamroller, you were simply outta luck. Nevertheless, the market was too big to simply allow the sicko’s to depend on sadistic $4.50 fuck magazines so the editors went underground. They were determined not to forget about the filthy perverts. Charles Manson and the Zodiac and Richard Speck had all cast their votes.

The result is this tongue-in-cheek piece of shit that is to the old gore’n’ scandal sheets what Candid Press is to the skin stuff. The only problem is that this tabloid just ain’t funny. I mean, it’s sick-sick-sick and guaranteed to make ya heave up yer intestines.

For instance, under this column heading in one issue:

Tommy Davidson hated his stepfather. He smashed his skull with a bat and later gouged his brain with a screwdriver to make it look like, an accident.

there is an actual picture of the poor old bastard with his brain slithering out of a huge hole in his head and with a screwdriver dug in it. I swear that photo has given me creepy nightmares for weeks.

And then there’s the usual load of articles on stillborn babies, mutants eating their neighbors, child raping, human children born from goats and horses, zombies attacking families, a photo essay on gimps entitled — “If Only They’d Worn Their Seat Belts ...” and a host of assorted circus worms and freaks. All of which will help ya recall that eery time when you went to the state fair and laid out a dime just to gaze at a three-headed, ten-legged babe floating in formaldehyde.

But my all-time special rave article which has appeared in the pages of The National Exploiter (yes, kids, I have a subscription) is the one about a midget getting his left eyeball extracted with tweezers. You see, his landlady got really pissed at him cause he wouldn’t pay his rent, so she pounced on him one night while he was sleeping. “I just stabbed and pried around until I popped it out. He never even flinched. It was as if he were getting some kind of kick out of it. What a weirdo!” The story has a happy ending in that the landlady didn’t ask for anymore rent. She felt the midget had already paid enough dues.

Well, I could go on endlessly listing top nauseating news items (or fictions) from this cheap rag, but ya really gotta see it for yourself to believe it. Jesus, if you thought the old National Enquirer was repulsive, just wait until you get a peep at this joke. Never again will you eat liver or eggs over easy.

Robot A. Hull

Everything s Copa - setic

Going to see Jerry Butler at the Copa is in some ways like watching Valentino hump a corpse. Merely being at the Copa is a show in itself, and the dowdy nightclub on East 60th Street is a necrophiliac’s dream. The first thing that grabs you is the waiters, lined up and ready to pinch your change, continuing the legendary tradition of Angel Lopez, the first Copa captain (“thank you sir, thank you m’am, thank you sir”) reflexively stretching out an open palm for more mordido with each thank you.

Then there’s the gaunt, ghastly blonde with hair literally pasted over the top of her foot tall black hat, moving from table to table offering to read your palms. “I’m certain she’s the same woman who was here 30 years ago,” a woman who was here 30 years ago tells us. For our listening entertainment there were mannequins in black tuxedos posed on the bandstand, swinging with tunes like Kay Kaiser’s “The Love Bug Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out,” which only goes to show that good music rarely fades away, it mostly drops dead.

Chow time at the Copa is a real treat. “The Chinese food is the only stuff edible,” a veteran of post-Copa gastronomic emergencies warns us, but we ignored him. We thought of ordering a ham omelette ($4.95), or steak sandwich ($7.40) or glazed dpnut ($3.95) before deciding on vichysoisse ($1.60), crab meat cocktail ($3.75 and mediocre), filet mignon ($9.75 and thoroughly unremarkable) and asparagus tips, which cost two bucks — for five pieces of asparagus!

Just as they were serving the main course, Jerry Butler came out with his band and four back-up singers. In spite of the best efforts of waiters and patrons alike to disrupt his set, J.B. was non-plussed, the cool professional with so much obvious poise that when Philly super deejay George Woods dubbed him the “Ice Man,” it immediately became Jerry’s other name — the Ice Man.

Indeed^ for a dude on opening night at the Copa, Jerry Butler seemed to be carrying ice cubes in his pocket. He touched all the bases of his career in a set that included “For Your Precious Love” which launched things during his brief stay with the Impressions in the late fifties; “Moon River,” his big pop breakthrough, and into the Gamble and Huff Jerry Butler songbook, which made the Ice Man king in the midsixties: “Western Union Man,” “Onlv the Strong Survive” and “Moody Woman.” Even required Copa MOR material like “Look of Love” came across with the unique combination of passion and dignity that Butler maintains, and he was downright brilliant with the Carpenters’ “Close to You,” a duet with compact soul stirrer Brenda Lee Eager. Brenda came to Jerry Butler from the Operation Breadbasket Choir with a song she had written, Ain t Understanding Mellow,” which she and Jerry recorded. It sold a million copies.

Okay, so Butler does the best of everything, from soft soul to kinetic Chitown energizers to pop masterworks, yet he’s been away from the spotlight for nearly three years now. Most of Jerry’s energy has been directed towards a songwriter’s workshop he started on Chicago’s south side in 1970 to give young hopefuls a chance to develop their talent and maybe even get a crack at the big time.

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It didn’t start as idealistically as that sounds. After years of gold records with Gamble and Huff, there were legal problems between Jerry’s record company and G&H’s lawyer’s. “I was just an innocent third party so to speak,” Jerry says, “but while they were arguing and bickering and carrying on, my whole situation was going down the tubes.”

“That is what led me into going after new writers and getting into the production end. It really wasn’t something I wanted to do, but it’s one of those things necessary for survival sometimes. You take the whole thing in your own hands and say ‘come hell or high water, this is the way I have to go’ . .. and out of chaos comes some very pretty things.”

Some of those pretty things include a pair of albums by the Dells, with material provided by Terry Callier and Larry Wade of the workshop. Callier now has three solo albums. Another workshop writer, Chuck Jackson (brother of Rev. Jesse) fronts a group called the Independents, who’ve also brought home a gold record, “Just As Long As You Need Me.” Recently, the workshop wrote the score for the film Melinda and things are going well in spite of the fact that it will be another year before the workshop starts showing a profit.

But right now we’re still at the Copa. For years now, black artists have come to the Copa, wiped their feet outside the door and given performances that make them acceptable to an influential white audience that would never care enough about them to see them anywhere else. Motown seems to have been suckered by it entirely at one point — are there any moments on record less palatable than the Supremes at their pe6k trying to please that rich white trash? But maybe I’m wrong — let’s let Jerry talk about it.

“I had misapprehensions, and a desire at the same time to play the room. I wanted just to see if it’s possible for me to do what I do in any given situation and have it come off well — at that level it was kind of a trial. The other night the audience was a real trip. We had underground people and we had Earl Wilson, who’s from a whole different journalistic age — and it was a trip to see the two things come together. I think that’s basically what I’m trying to do with my music — I’m trying to stay contemporary without putting down the past.

“You walk into the Copa, there’s lots of ghosts in that room,” he says. “Sam Cooke, Nat Cole, Sammy Davis — it’s kinda nice that you stood in the same spot and did the same thing basically — just trying to entertain folks.”

Wayne Robins