With Music, Come Stories Part II
Rockadelic
Out Digging 13,993 Posts
I realize this is not in the general scope of SS music but I was in a writing mood and thought I'd share
Sometime in the early 80???s a co-worker and fellow record digger called me about some ???weird??? acetates he had found at a Flea Market in a little town Southeast of Dallas called Kleberg. The artist name typed on the label was Jack Starr and he described the music as like something he had never heard before. The song titles were otherworldly like ???Bald Headed Woman, Long Haired Man??? and ???My Love For You Is Petrified???. We got together and listened to the three discs with a total of six songs shortly thereafter. They had been recorded in the early to mid-60???s and could only be described as Psychobilly???and they were GREAT!
My brother and I became obsessed with these recordings and decided to try to find Mr. Starr but our only clue was the word Munsey written in very light pencil on one of the labels. We proceeded to call everyone in the Dallas/Fort Worth phonebook named Munsey and before too long we were speaking to a very sweet woman named Gertrude. She told us Jack was her son and he was indeed a musician. We left our number and asked her to have Jack call us.
Now I???m certain when Jack got this message he thought it was a prank call. He called us and was in disbelief that we were calling about these old recordings. He agreed to meet with us but only at the local Denny???s, a public place, in case we were a couple of friggin??? nutjobs. And I can???t say I blame him. We met on a Sunday afternoon and convinced Jack we were legit, and basically harmless. He was a very soft spoken down to earth dude and after a couple of hours he asked us to come over to his house later in the week where he promised he would blow our mind.
When we arrived at his home in far East Dallas we met his Mom and was invited into the kitchen. There Jack had a tape recorder and a box of photos. What we were about to experience we could have never even dreamed of. Jack proceeded to tell us his life story. He had always played music and had released quite a few self produced 45???s under names like Sebastian Starr and The Gary Desmond Strike Force. He had many tapes of unreleased songs and he played us them all.. Jack was obviously influenced by Rockabilly and Garage Rock, but what he created was uniquely Jack Starr. It wasn???t long before we realized we were sitting with a musical savant.
But music wasn???t Jack???s only love. he had spent a good part of his youth making films and had become an expert make-up artist. Not your average make-up artist, Jack did Monster and Horror make-up and had worked on some local B-Movies in that capacity. He showed us still photos of gruesome figures he had created and told us about some of the films he had made himself. Unfortunately those films had been lost over the years and while Jack had an idea where they may have wound up, we never did get to see them.
As we were sitting there looking at photos and listening to the tapes (including a radio ad Jack had made for one of his films) my brother John and I had the same exact idea. We must contact our friends Billy Miller and Miriam Linna of Norton Records in NYC and tell them about Jack. We called them from Jack???s kitchen table, played some of the tapes over the phone and had them hooked immediately. The result was that Billy & Miriam flew into Dallas to meet Jack and not only inked a record deal with him but booked Jack to play a show in NYC. It all happened so fast that I think Jack???s head was spinning. While Billy and Miriam were in town locals Randy & Donna Reeves put together a house party and invited a bunch of local legends including Ronnie ???The Blonde Bomber??? Dawson and guitar slinger Bobby Rambo. This was a party for the ages and Jack???s coming out party. I???ll post a video below from that party and towards the end you can see Jack, in full monster make-up. It???s a shame that the whole party was not documented on film but I think you???ll get the idea from the Youtube clip. At one point you can even see local psych legend Mike Pemberton on guitar.
I spoke to Jack many times before he flew to New York for his performance and he was very nervous. He asked if I could go up there with him but I couldn???t. Fortunately my brother was in NY at the time and did attend the concert which I think calmed Jack???s nerves a little bit. After all, he had not performed in almost 20 years and never before a large audience in the Big Apple. My brother tells it that Jack was showing signs of stage fright right up until the point when they introduced him on stage. But at that moment he was transformed not unlike one of his monster creations, took the stage and KILLED IT!!!
Our friend Jack passed away some years ago and more recently we lost our gracious house party host Donna Rose Reeves. RIP. If you are so inclined there are some amazing home made music videos of Jack up on Youtube that combine his manic music and his love of everything Horror. Hope you check them out.
Sometime in the early 80???s a co-worker and fellow record digger called me about some ???weird??? acetates he had found at a Flea Market in a little town Southeast of Dallas called Kleberg. The artist name typed on the label was Jack Starr and he described the music as like something he had never heard before. The song titles were otherworldly like ???Bald Headed Woman, Long Haired Man??? and ???My Love For You Is Petrified???. We got together and listened to the three discs with a total of six songs shortly thereafter. They had been recorded in the early to mid-60???s and could only be described as Psychobilly???and they were GREAT!
My brother and I became obsessed with these recordings and decided to try to find Mr. Starr but our only clue was the word Munsey written in very light pencil on one of the labels. We proceeded to call everyone in the Dallas/Fort Worth phonebook named Munsey and before too long we were speaking to a very sweet woman named Gertrude. She told us Jack was her son and he was indeed a musician. We left our number and asked her to have Jack call us.
Now I???m certain when Jack got this message he thought it was a prank call. He called us and was in disbelief that we were calling about these old recordings. He agreed to meet with us but only at the local Denny???s, a public place, in case we were a couple of friggin??? nutjobs. And I can???t say I blame him. We met on a Sunday afternoon and convinced Jack we were legit, and basically harmless. He was a very soft spoken down to earth dude and after a couple of hours he asked us to come over to his house later in the week where he promised he would blow our mind.
When we arrived at his home in far East Dallas we met his Mom and was invited into the kitchen. There Jack had a tape recorder and a box of photos. What we were about to experience we could have never even dreamed of. Jack proceeded to tell us his life story. He had always played music and had released quite a few self produced 45???s under names like Sebastian Starr and The Gary Desmond Strike Force. He had many tapes of unreleased songs and he played us them all.. Jack was obviously influenced by Rockabilly and Garage Rock, but what he created was uniquely Jack Starr. It wasn???t long before we realized we were sitting with a musical savant.
But music wasn???t Jack???s only love. he had spent a good part of his youth making films and had become an expert make-up artist. Not your average make-up artist, Jack did Monster and Horror make-up and had worked on some local B-Movies in that capacity. He showed us still photos of gruesome figures he had created and told us about some of the films he had made himself. Unfortunately those films had been lost over the years and while Jack had an idea where they may have wound up, we never did get to see them.
As we were sitting there looking at photos and listening to the tapes (including a radio ad Jack had made for one of his films) my brother John and I had the same exact idea. We must contact our friends Billy Miller and Miriam Linna of Norton Records in NYC and tell them about Jack. We called them from Jack???s kitchen table, played some of the tapes over the phone and had them hooked immediately. The result was that Billy & Miriam flew into Dallas to meet Jack and not only inked a record deal with him but booked Jack to play a show in NYC. It all happened so fast that I think Jack???s head was spinning. While Billy and Miriam were in town locals Randy & Donna Reeves put together a house party and invited a bunch of local legends including Ronnie ???The Blonde Bomber??? Dawson and guitar slinger Bobby Rambo. This was a party for the ages and Jack???s coming out party. I???ll post a video below from that party and towards the end you can see Jack, in full monster make-up. It???s a shame that the whole party was not documented on film but I think you???ll get the idea from the Youtube clip. At one point you can even see local psych legend Mike Pemberton on guitar.
I spoke to Jack many times before he flew to New York for his performance and he was very nervous. He asked if I could go up there with him but I couldn???t. Fortunately my brother was in NY at the time and did attend the concert which I think calmed Jack???s nerves a little bit. After all, he had not performed in almost 20 years and never before a large audience in the Big Apple. My brother tells it that Jack was showing signs of stage fright right up until the point when they introduced him on stage. But at that moment he was transformed not unlike one of his monster creations, took the stage and KILLED IT!!!
Our friend Jack passed away some years ago and more recently we lost our gracious house party host Donna Rose Reeves. RIP. If you are so inclined there are some amazing home made music videos of Jack up on Youtube that combine his manic music and his love of everything Horror. Hope you check them out.
Comments
Was watching the vid and my wife asks what's with the huge smile. I didn't realize I was smiling!
That's a wonderful moment captured in that video, and an amazing story. Thank you for sharing it!
You might want to fix this.
Great story. Thanks, Rock.
Cool story, bro.
A little while later we met Mr. Jimmy Fields in the parking lot of the Flea. Jimmy greeted us with some sort of Mason-like secret handshake and opened the trunk of his Cadillac making it look like we were about to pull off some illicit drug deal Jimmy had owned various Dallas record labels in the 50???s and 60???s with the most famous being the Felco label. Felco was known for a handful of great rockabilly tunes including ???Crazy Alligator??? by Irvin Russ and my fave ???One Way Ticket??? by Bobby Crown & The Kapers. Mr. Fields had a few copies of all his releases which he sold us including copies of ???One Way Ticket??? by Bobby Lumpkin & The Kapers. I had never seen this 45 before and it was the same exact recording as the Bobby Crown. Jimmy told a wild tale (which I do not believe) about how just after the 45 was released and began to get some airplay under the name Bobby Lumpkin the singer was arrested for armed robbery. He claimed that in an attempt to avoid bad publicity he repressed the record using the Crown alias.
The climax of the day was to attend some professional wresting matches at the legendary Dallas Sportatorium. For those of you not familiar with this venue it was built in 1935 in a seedy part of town and for many years hosted a weekly Country & Western show called The Big D Jamboree. In 1953 it was partially destroyed by a fire and reopened shortly thereafter billed as ???The Million Dollar Sportatorium???. The truth is it was a large metal barn with sawdust covered dirt floors that hit its peak in the mid 50???s when it hosted a very young Elvis Presley. It was also responsible for releasing possibly the greatest rockabilly record of all time, ???Rockin??? Bones??? by Ronnie Dawson on their own Sportatorium label. As the building and neighborhood decayed it was relegated to host nothing more than weekly Wrestling matches starting in 1966. These matches were put together by local boy Fritz Von Erich who eventually became the patriarch of the very tragic first family of wrestling.
A friend and fellow record dealer, Fred Bernard had invited us to be his guests as he was a wrestling ???manager??? and the most hated man in Sportatorium history. Fred went by the name Freddy Fargo and had the unique ability to piss off every redneck wrestling fan this side of the Red River. He had secured us some prime seats in the ???guest section??? and met us at the front door. As he ushered us in we were all met with boos, catcalls and flying debris. Just being associated with the evil Mr. Fargo had immediately made us bad guys in the eyes of these rabid fans. He showed us to our seats and excused himself to go get ready for the show. We received the evil eye from toothless grannies and overall wearing farm boys who probably had never seen tattooed skinheads who ???talked funny??? before. (understand that with the tattoos they stood out a lot more back then than they would today) This was going to be a long night and we were going to make the best of it.
At the time Fred was managing a wrestler named Terry ???The Rooster??? Taylor who was an average looking muscle boy with no real gimmick other than the fans hated his guts. Maybe there was a back story as to why he generated so much hate but we never found out what that might be. As the first match was about to start Freddy entered the ring to a less than friendly greeting from the fans and immediately went into his schtick. ???Look at you freaks??? he???d yell ???What has 7 teeth and an IQ below 50??? he shouted at the audience. Above the catcalls he screamed out ???The entire front row??? pointing at the crowd that by this point wanted to see old Freddy dead. After a few minutes of this banter the match began and was an uneventful meeting of two dudes that were probably full-time truck drivers or garbage men making an extra fifty bucks on the weekend.
As the night went on we exchanged barbs with some of the fans around us and we were having some fun winding up people who not only believed wrestling was real, but probably scheduled their whole week around these matches. A few seats away from us was the nights ???Guest Of Honor??? the winner of a recent Miss Texas beauty contest. One of the tattoo boys had a pair of handcuffs with him. We had been joking around with a little 12 year old Bobby Hill look-a-like most of the night and someone came up with a brilliant idea. I don???t remember if we offered money or just dared him to put one of the cuffs on his wrist and then go cuff the other one to Miss Texas, but he did it. Miss Texas??? initial laughs soon turned to looks of horror as she realized we were not going to be forthcoming with a key. Not as if the fans didn???t hate us enough already, now they wanted to kill US for defiling sweet Miss Texas. Eventually, when it appeared our lives might be in genuine danger, we unhooked them and were allowed to live at least til Intermission.
Intermission was the time to go out to the lobby, piss out five beers and buy five more before the second half started. Fred came to our seats and said ???C???mon, lets go have some fun???. He led us out to a Souvenir Stand and proceeded to try to sell Terry Taylor items to less than enthusiastic fans. Fred was a natural born huckster/showman born in NY and far from bashful. After a couple of failed attempts to sell some of his wrestlers goods he approached a hunchbacked little blue haired Granny who was 80 years old if she was a day. He picked up an 8x10 Glossy of ???The Rooster??? and began to make his pitch ???Mama??? he said ???You need to buy this photo right here because he???s the best wrestler in the house???. Sweet little granny cocked her head, looked up at Freddy and said ???I???m not buying his picture and I???ll give you three reasons why. He???s a cheat, he???s a F****t and he???s a Motherf****r???. Beer shot through my nose. Granny???s blood was boiling and we expected her to start hitting Fred with her cane. We walked off laughing our ass off never to forget the foul mouthed raging granny.
I don???t remember much else about that night most likely because of the self inflicted 32 ounce cheap beer haze. I remember thinking there would be a lynch mob waiting for us outside after the show but that wasn???t the case. The Sportatorium shut down for good in the mid-90???s ending an era in Dallas underbelly history. I've lost touch with Freddy who when I last heard was promoting Wrestling matches in Mexico. I'm sure I've left out a few details but I think this will give you a pretty good idea of what an unforgettable weekend that was and probably even more so for our British guests who got to go home with a memory of Texas I'm sure they will never forget.
So good.