Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air: Legends
of West Texas Music
by Christopher Oglesby
Published by the University
of Texas Press:
"As a whole, the interviews create
a portrait not only of Lubbock's musicians and artists, but also
of the musical community that has sustained them, including venues
such as the legendary Cotton Club and the original Stubb's Barbecue.
This kaleidoscopic portrait of the West Texas music scene gets
to the heart of what it takes to create art in an isolated, often
inhospitable environment. As Oglesby says, "Necessity is
the mother of creation. Lubbock needed beauty, poetry, humor,
and it needed to get up and shake its communal ass a bit or go
mad from loneliness and boredom; so Lubbock created the amazing
likes of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, and
Joe Ely."
"Indeed, Oglesby's introduction of more
than two dozen musicians who called Lubbock home should be required
reading not only for music fans, but for Lubbock residents and
anyone thinking about moving here. On these pages, music becomes
a part of Lubbock's living history."
- William Kerns, Lubbock Avalanche Journal
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The Taste of Stubb’s Barbecue Jam
by Trey Yancy
Have you ever had one of those Moonlight Graham moments? You know – one of those nostalgic moments when you look back at a special time of your life; a moment in time that played a distinct role in making you who you are today. I’ve been fortunate to have quite a few of these, but one of the most poignant involves my time at Stubb’s Bar BQ in Lubbock, Texas.
I was a college student at the time, with dreams of life as a rock star. One of my friends at the time was Dee Purkeypile, who was cementing his reputation as one of the best keyboard players in town. He told me about this barbeque joint on the east side of town, across the street from the fairgrounds. Around a half hour later, there we were. Over the next four years it would become like a second home for me.
The Place
Old, poster-covered walnut paneling, a beat up juke box pumping the tones of Big Mama Thornton, a glitter-flecked ceiling stained so dark brown from the pit and cigarette smoke that it could have been painted in barbecue sauce - this was the Stubb's barbecue I knew.
It was the crunch of gravel under your feet in the car park and the muted throb of a bass guitar and drum set through the walls. It was the sound of the outer aluminum door clumping shut as you entered the warmth of the place on a freezing winter night or the squeak and smack of the door as you stepped into that frosty haven in the midst of the hottest scorcher of an afternoon.
There was the look of the formica on the booth tables and the swept but never polished checkerboard linoleum. And then there was the unforgettable aroma of the place, and the simple pleasure of that combo plate when it was placed on the table before you, complete with jalapeño and hefty chunk of onion.
Most of all it was the people: the names, faces, laughter, and friendship, all within the context of a memory draped in the smells, sights, and soundtrack of old and scratched blues 45's punctuated with dozens of simultaneous conversations.
It is funny how memories can turn a place, people and all, into a series of vignettes in which nothing changes, no one grows any older, and your friends are still there with a ready smile and arm round a shoulder for a 35 year younger version of yourself. As with any visceral memory, it is hard to describe, but whatever it was that wove itself into such an enriching experience, there was indeed a spirit that justly deserves the shrine that would later be erected on the site.
Stubb's was my home away from home for at least one afternoon and one night a week for years. My young wife became so put out with my Sunday evenings (which lasted until 3:00 a.m. on Monday) that one cold evening she tossed me out and I had the privilege of spending the night in one of CB Stubblefield's old motel rooms behind the restaurant. This 24-hour eviction was despite the fact that I was a faithful husband and have always remained tea-total I just happened to have been intoxicated that evening with a couple of ice-cold pitchers of Muddy Waters. We reconciled the next day, but she never understood the Stubb's thing. It was not exactly the kittens, calico and white picket fence kind of life that she envisioned.
Dee Purkeypile
My association with Stubb's was initially through Dee, the keyboardist and unofficial jam leader. This was back in the days before CB began to book regional touring bands and when the place had a more intimate character, although the size of the place determined that it could never be much more than intimate. In those days, my experience at Stubbs was much like a long pleasant summer just before things kicked into gear for the football season and that summer took place every week on Sundays.
I have two main memories of Dee, among many others. The first is of his standard jam set of Sweet Home Chicago, Summertime, Moondance and more. The second is that of toting that three and a half-ton Hammond of his. (My back was much younger then/ Believe me, now that I am in my 50’s, I feel every inch of that Hammond.). My own B3 these days is much lighter. It resides on my laptop right alongside my virtual Minimoog, Odyssey and Mellotron.) For my money, that organ was part of what defined the character of the jams, with those dirty overdriven tone wheels and grimy contacts that could scream the blues with a single note.
Posters & T-Shirts
One of Dee’s contribution was the design of the original photocopied posters that were used promote the jam. They had a slick and slender 1930's looking character in tails and top hat over an orb of a moon placed above a Stubb’s Bar B-Q logo. When the Thunderbirds had their first gig there, I took over the poster work, creating a header based on Dee's high-stepper and incorporating other art to promote the current band. I created the posters for the original appearances of the Fabulous Thunderbirds (the first paid act), Marsha Ball, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others. Stevie liked his poster and asked for a copy, so I gave him one, forgetting that it was my original. Wish I'd kept a copy, as it would have been great for a live album that I recorded of that performance. If anyone has a copy of that poster, please let me know.
And speaking of Stevie’s first performance at Stubb’s, let me create a bit of a buzz by reiterate that a recording does indeed exist of that first performance, but more on this later.
After a year or so I started to expand my participation beyond my efforts as a novice bluesman and took on a number of projects. The first was a modest Stubb's T-Shirt design printed from a hand-cut silkscreen I’d created that featured a Buck Rogers' style squirt-gun shooting out a splatter of sauce behind the word "LIVE". It was about as ugly as it sounds. I printed a few dozen shirts from that using brown, sauce-colored ink. I still have a limpid-green colored T-shirt from an early 70's Yes tour with the Stubb's imprint hastily squeegeed on the back.
My next project was the Stubb's barbecue Jam sign, painted in olive and white on a hunk of masonite. This later joined the ranks of the signs decorating the east wall behind the clearing in the tables referred to as the “stage.” I was told by the manager of the current iteration of Stubb’s Bar B-Q in Austin that this sign, along with the other memorabilia from the walls on East Broadway, still exists. It had been put in storage for purposes of preservation with the intention that it would be mounted properly in the future. If it ever emerges, take a look at the tiny set of initials at the bottom right of the sign.
I remember dropping in for the jam at the first version of Stubb’s in Austin on I-35 and stepping onto the stage amidst the sideways glances of the then current lineup of regulars who, by their rather stern and thoroughly disapproving expressions, assumed I was in the wrong place. I noticed the Bar B-Q Jam sign on the wall behind them and just did my thing.
Later on I created a more classy T-Shirt design based on the Barbecue Jam sign. It featured rainbow glitter ink (it was the 70's after all) with a glossy finish and was applied to a set of shirts in such colors as dark purple, black, brown, teal and so on. Years later, when I finally returned to Lubbock for the funeral of Jesse Taylor, I saw his simple pencil self-portrait of on the cover of the funeral program. I can not say how touched I was to see that this self portrait had him wearing one of those T-shirts. Sorry to say I no longer have one. If Jesse's shirt still exists, it would be great if it could make it to the wall of the current restaurant.
And while I'm at it, it would be nice if the son who inherited Stubb's jukebox from Jesse would consider donating it to a place where it would receive the honor is deserves. There were so many original release classic 45's on that juke box - Heartbreak Hotel, Stormy Monday, tons of stuff. It was a treasure.
The Stage
If you were to visit the Stubb's memorial today you would notice a little bronze marker about halfway down on the left and bearing the inscription, "stage." To call it a stage was a bit much. I built it in the form of a 4' x 8' semicircle of 3/4" plywood supported by a set of 2x6's and with dark aqua blue indoor / outdoor carpeting. The plan at the time was that I would have it finished by the time that the Thunderbirds hit the stage but I found myself so far behind that Jimmy Vaughan grabbed a hammer and joined in the effort of knocking it together.
In any case, I finished stapling on the carpeting at around 8:30 p.m. with the drummer more than a little eager to set up his kit. Of course, once the kit was in place, there was no room for anyone else, but the term "drum riser" just doesn't look a cool on a bronze plaque.
The sight of the T-Birds huddled around that tiny stage came to mind a few years later when I was working security at a Rolling Stones show at the Cotton Bowl. It was produced by Phil Graham, who I met as he toured the entrances in a golf cart. I told him an idiotic joke and it was clear that he agreed it was idiotic. The look he gave me was identical to the look he gave when, as Lucky Luciano, he ordered the hit on Warren Beatty in Bugsy. Anyway, also on the bill were the Beach Boys, Montrose (with a young Sammy Hagar) and, as the first act, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. As this was a Stones stadium show, the stage was absolutely immense. I remember how small and outnumbered those four guys looked as they boldly staked their claim to the center of a stage so massive stage that could have handled a 747. Four little specs. No question, but that they were indeed "Tuff Enough."
Getting back to Stubb’s, as you move around the remains of the place, you will note a number of other bronze markers. Oddly enough, some are not accurate. The jukebox, for example, was west of the kitchen pass-through and next to the hall for the bathroom, and the pit was against the east wall of the kitchen, not the south wall. It stood next to the door that CB later created for access to his new poolroom in what had formerly been an adjoining motel room. I remember countless times that I stood next to that pit, tuning up before I went onstage. (Even now, whenever I tune up I swear I smell wood smoke.)
The Lights
Taking the next step towards turning the joint into a slightly more classy venue, I grabbed some plywood, a spool of cheap brown two-strand electrical wire, a pile of ceramic light receptacles, a half-dozen cheap dimmer switches, a pile of colored flood lights, and a can of flat black spray paint. After a great deal of futzing around I created something resembling stage lighting - actually a big ugly black box hanging from the ceiling and accompanied by an equally ugly knob- and switch-covered box attached to a rope of wire and sitting at CB's usual table at stage left. If anything, it was the precursor to steampunk. The overall effect was that of mood lighting from Frankenstein's boudoir. Be that as it may, CB had fun with it. The more inebriated he became, the more he twiddled. It's a good thing the musicians weren't tied to sheet music. The floodlights in their eyes were just 18 inches above their heads and an arm's length away.
The Jam
The musicians tended to take the stage at around 8:30 p.m. People would bring in their gear and stack it along the east wall. By 9:00 the joint was jumping and with near standing room only crowd (not hard to do in a 110 seat restaurant). There was always a surplus of guitarists and as things progressed, the line-up would revolve. Dee was usually there with his Hammond or a Rhodes. Sometimes a fellow would bring in a set of congas. There was an excellent harmonica player who would attend on occasion. Smokey Joe Miller was often there on his sax. The drummers varied, but they were a vital element of the success of the jam.
By 10:00 or 11:00 CB would get a bit tanked on beer and would take the microphone, give his famous "I am a cook!" speech, followed by a sincere, slurred an tone-deaf rendition of Stormy Monday. It was the same thing every week, but we never grew tired of hearing it. For the musicians, keeping up with the creative timing of his vocals was just part of the fun.
I spent my share of time on that stage, learning how to play on the fly. My 10 years playing as a kid helped, but it was the live action that made it really start to happen for me. A couple of years earlier I had taught myself to play Stormy Monday by listening to Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore East (an absolute classic –if you don’t have a copy, buy one). This came in more than a little handy for a shy, nervous kid like me. One day I took a verse with a brass slide and instantly every eye was glued on me. It scared me to death. After the set a beautiful raven haired college girl pinched my backside as I stepped off the stage. That was my big Eddie Van Halen moment.
This was a joint avowedly dedicated to blues standards. Eventually, after playing the standard set for so many Sundays, I found myself dying for improvisational jams, but it never really happened. Then one day I showed up with a 5-string banjo and a huge amount of jazz and blues licks and with the aim of punching up the blues a bit with some freeform improvisation. I didn't know at the time that I was predating Béla Fleck and the Flecktones by a decade. The next thing I knew they were having me play Foggy Mountain Breakdown. So much for the blues banjo at Stubb's. That was not the kind of venue for hillbilly tunes.
Stevie at Stubb's
After the Thunderbirds, many other acts were to follow, the first being Stevie "Hurricane" Vaughan and the Triple Threat Review. I brought in an ancient mono reel-to-reel deck, hung a mic over the stage and, with Stevie's permission, I recorded a good couple of hours of the gig, producing a reel of tape that bears a strong resemblance to the rough and raspy feel of those old Hamburg Beatle tapes. I hung onto the master until the mid 90’s when it grew legs and walked out of my house. I ran off a copy onto a pair of 90 minute cassettes, which I tried to give to Stevie at a gig a Manor Downs near Austin a few years later, but one of the hired hands took it, promising to give it to Stevie. I seriously doubt it ever reached the intended recipient. I know that one recording reputedly appeared as a bootleg download somewhere, but that is water under the bridge.
A few notes related to that Stevie gig - I was refinishing a '54 neck that I was popping onto my old '63 Strat. I found the neck in a pile of junk in the back room of a struggling speaker reconing business in Lubbock that had once been a guitar academy way back when. Some idiot had sanded the decal off the headstock and I was planning on recreating the decal by hand. The neck was straight as an arrow and I paid the reconing guy ten bucks for it. In any case, Stevie had that old Strat of his (the legendary "number one") and he let me borrow the guitar so that I could make a sketch of the decal.
This was before Stevie installed the left-handed tremolo and it was during the time that he had spelled out his initials using the diamond-shaped stick-on sheet metal characters commonly used for house numbers. That guitar would easily be worth a half million bucks these days if it would ever hit an auction. Hand-cobbled beat-to-hell replicas of that guitar sell on eBay for around $3,000.
Naturally, I couldn’t help noodling around a bit on his guitar. He had it strung with a set of .013's. Those strings were like a pile of steel telephone poles and were balanced by a full set of five tremolo springs. Bending a note was like lifting a knife-edged bar bell. Stevie had powerful hands, like Hendrix, and it was that heavy gauge of strings that gave him a lot of that Hendrix sound.
During that gig Stevie played Tin Pan Alley with lyrics that were largely made up. I remember as if it were yesterday seeing him late that first Saturday morning sitting by the jukebox on one of those vintage tubular metal restaurant chairs as he played that song over and over as he scribbling down the correct lyrics. This is the version that appeared on his first LP.
Guitars and Cases, Two Joes and a Jesse
Stevie and his band stayed over for the Sunday jam and were the centerpiece that night. At one point, Smokey Joe (one hell of a sax player and a long-time regular at the jam) was there with his horn and Louann Barton strode in. She have him a look and, summoning up her best roadhouse imitation of Virginia Mayo, loudly said, "Get off the stage, shorty!" Joe was furious. He spent the next 20 minutes storming around the kitchen (a tempest in a teacup, as it was a small kitchen!), toting his sax like it was a rocket launcher and swearing to kill her, kill her dead, kill her dead-dead-dead! He didn't, but it would have been a heck of a great match, worthy of pay-per-view.
Smokey Joe Miller is a man who has nothing on Wilt Chamberlain. One night he showed up with a baritone sax that he had just bought. He was thoroughly enthused and the horn sounded absolutely fantastic. It was so large on him, however, that the bottom of the horn only cleared the floor by about one inch, but there was no mistaking who was blowing it, though. It was like Al Pachino in Scarface. ("Le' me innorduss you to my little fren' - badda-badda-badda!) It was a genuine wall shaker, and it made everybody smile.
By that time I had built a couple of electric guitars and cases and Joe wanted a case for his instruments - a flute, a soprano sax and a baritone sax all in one case. It was like a small steamer trunk. If Joe's right arm looks like it is longer than the left, this is why.
One of the guitars I had built was a reverse Strat-style in a dull-finished mahogany. Steve Lott (a jam regular and an excellent guitarist) liked it and I traded me for it. I also had a new Telecaster Custom at the time. It was black with maple neck and two humbuckers and I came to hate it. (What I really hate is that the guitar that I traded in for it was a classic 1963 ES 345. These days that guitar would being enough to support a family for a year.)
At the time Jesse Taylor had a Kramer with an aluminum neck and tuning fork style pegged. He swapped it for my black Tele. That Kramer had the rustiest saddles I've ever seen. Jesse had one of the most gentle dispositions of any fellow I had ever met but he played like a house afire and the man sweated formic acid.
It was around this time that Joe Ely got a record deal with MCA and not long afterwards he, Jesse and the band went on his first European tour. Joe was using his trusty, old beat-to-hell Gibson J5 acoustic. Old timers will remember this guitar for its dark finish and the huge rings of chipped varnish on the front. He told me that he'd bought the guitar from a guy on a beach in California. The guitar had four enormous sea shells glued to the front. The fellow had asked for $10 and Joe said that he would bring it the next day, but in the end all he could come up with was $5. The guy agreed but only if he could keep the shells (In case anyone ever wondered what those circles were on the front of that guitar, this was the cause).
Well, Joe needed a road case for the tour and he had seen some of the cases that I had made. He had me build him one, but instead of the vinyl coverings I was using, he decided that he wanted it to be in leather.
There was a small business called Santa Fe Station located in a classically designed adobe-style building on Broadway that was a former gas station. (The building still exists. It is on Broadway a couple of blocks east of University.) The cobbler there was a fellow in his late twenties / early thirties named Joe, who made a wide range of custom leather goods, including some excellent foam-soled sandals. (I ran through two pairs of those sandals and I wish I had bought a lifetime supply). He was a very nice fellow and I hope he is doing well, wherever he is now.
He also did some beautiful leather tooling. Joe Ely knew the guy and he had him create a hand-tooled leather shell for that case. It had a western floral design around the sides, and the front and back of the case had hand tooled front and back portraits of the guitar itself. Well, when I took this leather and added it to the ultra heavy-duty ATA style case I had built, it weighed somewhere around 25 pounds. I was told that the thing was so heavy that his roadie cursed me all across Europe. The tour was more than enough to obliterate its expensive Sampsonite handle, which required a repair when Joe returned.
When I was in the middle of building the case, Joe and Jesse came over to my place on East 14th street, which was located a couple of blocks from University. It was a charming neighborhood at the time full of retirees and fresh-faced college kids, and flowed with green lawns and flowerbeds. Like many of the houses in the neighborhood at the time, it had curtained front doors with floor to ceiling glass - nothing like the unwelcoming dirt-lawned student ghetto that the neighborhood now seems to resemble.
After talking a bit of business that night, we took a walk to a convenience store. I noticed that Joe and Jesse were tripping out over something they were popping in their mouths. Jesse would toss in a mouthful and grin like an idiot. He was such a sweet guy and even a bit goofy at times, so it was more than a little funny. Then he turned and offered me a handful of whatever it was. I was not a substance user, so I told him no thanks, but he shook a teasponful of that purple gravel into my hand. He was right. It was surreal for an earth dweller like myself. It was also my first experience with the newly introduced candy, Pop Rocks. Getting high with local musicians on the streets of Lubbock in the 70's with legal substances - those were simpler times.
On his way out from my upstairs apartment, I told Joe that my neighbor on the other side of the hall was a fan. He whipped out a bid pen and scribbled the words "Joe Ely was here" on the door. Later, when my neighbor saw it he was thrilled. The landlord, however, was not. That autograph is certainly still there under some thirty-five years of paint - awaiting discovery just like all the autographs hidden under the paint on the walls of the recently quasi-resurrected Cotton Club.
Jesse's Funeral
Jesse Taylor was a good man and we will all miss him. When everyone gathered for his send-off, there was a large turnout with many familiar faces from the Texas music scene. Along with the heartfelt gifts from various musicians of guitar picks that went with him, I happened to have an old Fender medium that I'd used in the old days on East Broadway. It was some 30 years old and was worn from who knows how many hours of use. I had stuck it into the pages of a book, where it had stayed for a third of a century. Both Jesse and CB had heard music struck by it and it seemed appropriate that should go in as well. There was one more thing that I donated - a remnant of the checkerboard linoleum tiles from the floor of Stubb's. I guess that some future archaeologist might be curious about that chunk of worn out flooring. Let him guess.
Cuz, Pool, Joe and Tom
One of the other regulars who I miss dearly is CB's cousin, Elias Sanders ("Cuz"). Having only one arm, he had developed certain skills. For one, he taught me how to light a match one-handed from a book of matches with the cover closed. I remember him as being a pretty good shot at the pool table, too, all things considered. He was one very sweet, gentle and unassuming guy and he became a Bahá'í back in the late '70's. I don't know if he ever backed off the beer, though, but he was one of the nicest people I have ever met. As CB told me many years later, Cuz spent his final days in a VA hospital in San Antonio, where he passed away, far from his home on the great plains. Another regular occupant was Little Pete, who I never knew well, but he was as much a Stubb’s institution as Cuz and CB himself.
Speaking of pool, I do remember the famous onion incident, which involved Joe Ely, Tom T. Hall (famous for his once popular song about his love for little yellow ducks), and others. As the game progressed Joe grabbed a broom for a cuestick and an onion for a ball and he chalked his nose green. Tom T. Hall would later recall this event in a song entitled "The Great East Broadway Onion Championship of 1978". Tom, as with other popular country artists of the time, had his picture drawn for the country music hall of fame by a fellow in the Nashville area. When CB took his trip to Nashville a few months later, the same artist drew a picture of him and in the same style as the hall of famers. This is the portrait that now graces the bottles of Stubb's products.
I was there both during the boom time and during the time when the hard times were starting to roll. As mentioned in Mark Gunderson's memoir on virtuallubbock.com, the two of us had been trying to do what we could to get the crowds to return to Stubbs. I remember one Sunday night when only a couple of us showed up to play. The reason for this was Fat Dawg's. This fancy pine paneled saloon on the corner of 4th and University had decided to start a Sunday night jam to compete with Stubb's. Thanks to the proximity to Tech, they grabbed the majority of CB's Sunday regulars and it really hurt his business. I must admit that it was with no small sense of satisfaction that when, after a couple of decades had passed and I finally paid a return visit to Lubbock, I saw that Fat Dawg's had been turned into a hole in the ground and had been replaced with the Marsha Sharp Freeway.
A Note or Two on CB
There's a lot that one could say about CB Stubblefield. I knew him not just as a friend, but also as family. He was like the archetypical favorite uncle. Every year he used to pass out Christmas presents for a few of his friends and I remember wondering once why I wasn't on the receiving list. Mike, Stubb's cook, told me that CB's gifts were expressions of love. Then he told me that when you are a part of CB's close family he doesn't give you a present as an expression of that love, you just accept it as a fact. There is no need for gifts to serve as an expression of something that is so obvious.
CB wasn't an overtly religious man but he did have faith. There was a time when the folks in the neighborhood were pressuring him to show up in church. He approached me and asked if I wanted to go attend the service with him. I agreed. The pastor was happy to see him and although Stubb was barely staying afloat financially, the pastor noted CB's presence in the crowd and loudly encouraged his hearty participation with the collection plate.
Being a white suburbanite from south Fort Worth, I'd never been to a black southern baptist church up to that time. I do not remember everything that took place that morning, but I did manage to gain a huge amount of respect for the ushers. Unlike the grim, somber, and silent ushers of my Presbyterian childhood, these folks put forth a truly heroic effort. As the preacher would continue, his gestures would expand and his voice would grow in volume until he was screaming at the top of his lungs. The congregation would get so worked up that before long they began to drop like ducks in hunting season. Amid this hurricane of faith and praise the users operated like ball boys at a tennis match, rushing out to grab any swooning worshiper before they could hit the floor. They were successful about half the time, as could be felt through the soles of your feet as the near-misses hit the floorboards. The ushers would then drag them out one after another, like victims of a soccer riot. It was a rousing event to say the least, and the participants emerged both refreshed and thoroughly reenergized. Even so, I can understand why such an unpretentious and gentle man as CB Stubblefield would want take a friend along for the event.
A Summer Afternoon
The last time I saw CB was in his restaurant on I-35 in Austin. As with the Lubbock place, it was the restaurant of closed down motel. Dee was there that night and he launched into his Moondance / Stormy Monday set. As in years past, I had been hoping to spice up the jam with some freestyle improvisation, but it was nice to play the old set just the same and it brought back some wonderful memories of my Lubbock days.
A short time earlier, on one hot summer afternoon, I dropped by the place and was able to spend some time with CB over a plate of barbeque. He caught me up on Cuz, Little Pete and the old place in Lubbock. I was saddened to learn that he had torn the place down. I asked him why and he told me that every day he would drive past the place and it broke his heart to see it sitting empty and abandoned. It hurt him so much to see it that he decided to have it bulldozed. I sure wish he hadn't. It should have been protected as a historic site, but then who would ever have guessed - particularly CB himself - that a bronze statue of the man would one day be erected on the spot. (The statue doesn’t look anything like Stubb, but I never met anyone else other than Stevie who would have a bronze statue, so what’s not to like?)
It was during that same conversation in Austin that CB told me that he had not been well. "I've got a tornado in my chest, Trey.” Then he said, “Things are not looking good."
I had not been aware that he was having heart trouble, much less that his time was rapidly drawing to a close. As is often the case with all of us, I was somewhat in denial. CB would always be with us, wouldn’t he? Perhaps not as active as in years past, but he still seemed years away from being a senior citizen. I knew at the time that this was just a pleasant illusion, but there was not much that I could do but love the man.
I remember stepping out through the door and seeing the rich magenta tone in the sky as the sun began to set. I didn’t know that this was the last time I would see the man.
The next thing I knew, the I-35 place was closed as it was about to be torn down for new construction. As with many young men in their thirties, I was distracted by the self-imposed burdens of an extremely hectic life, with mine being more hectic than average – working full time plus putting in another 40 hours publishing a magazine, doing research and giving lectures and seminars here and there.
As if I were a young man with the whole world spread before me, I never thought about paying CB a visit. It seemed like he would always be around, but, as things turned out, I would not be. By 1995, the years that CB passed away, I had remarried and moved to Chicago. I didn't hear about CB’s passing until sometime after the fact, so I did not attend his funeral. I certainly would have flown down if I had known.
I did not have to opportunity to participate in the creation of the memorial and no brick there bears my name. This is a bit of personal grief that I will always live with, but this is eclipsed by the fond memories of the man and what he meant to me.
Stubb's passing was very sad time for many of us. These days CB Stubblefield is considered a legend, but the real Stubb was not a man of legend. He was a human being, plain and simple, and I loved him as much as my own father.
I can still feel that huge, dry hand of his in mine as I said goodbye for that last time. I feel his enormous arm across my shoulder and I smell the brisket and onions. Even after all these many years the sound of clanking pots and pans, a wailing saxophone and Al Green still linger like the dreams of Moonlight Graham.
In 2005, after a span of thirty years spent in Amarillo, Austin and Chicago (as well as a five year span in east Africa) I returned to DFW. When Jesse passed away I finally made that long-delayed drive to Lubbock. I visited the Stubb's monument, paying my respects there and at his resting place at Peaceful Gardens Memorial Park. A couple of years later, due to the combination of economic forces and extreme competition for creative director positions in the DFW area, and to my complete surprise, I moved back to Lubbock, living in an apartment while my wife and teenage daughter remained in Arlington. To say the place had changed over a span of thirty years is an understatement.
A year or so ago I was giving a talk in Austin and I dropped by the current iteration of Stubb's Barbecue. Although I heard that the Sunday jam is now history (which is an absolute tragedy – you can’t have Stubb’s Barbeque without a Sunday night jam), the music there has really exploded. Who would have thought to see a Stubb’s Bar BQ with an outdoor arena?
Besides the jam, one other thing that is sorely missing from the new place is CB's sauce. The sauce they use there (as with the Stubb's sauces you find on the store shelves) is okay, but its bears little resemblance to what he used in the restaurant back on East Broadway. Apparently, sales of these products is going very well, as I've seen them on store shelves all the way from San Antonio to Chicago. It is too bad that CB was so broke throughout his life because he sure could have used a bit of that coin way back when.
The Sauce
And this brings us to a special bonus that I'd like to share. It is a legacy that was passed direct from CB to me and now I would look to pass it on to you: the recipe for the barbeque sauce that Stubb's used for his everyday restaurant sauce.
First off, the sauce he used in his restaurant was not home made, but it is what I've been using religiously ever since and whenever I smoke a brisket or grill a plate of sausage, I toss a hunk of onion on the plate along with a pickle and a jalapeno, and I relive the days of my youth with this sauce.
Here it is, from Christopher B. Stubblefield's lips to my ears and on to yours: What he used was a mixture of Hunt's barbecue sauce (the plain-jane kind), to which he added some brine from a jar of dill pickles and some brine from a can of jalapenos. That's it – the whole shooting match. Just add the crackle and pop a beat-to hell Bobby Blue Bland 45 in the background and you are there at 108 East Broadway.
And there it is, just like grandpa's old two-dollar pocket watch. There may not be much to it, but it is yours now, so guard it well.
A Long Time Ago
Well, those are my memories of CB and of some of the Stubb's family of those days. It seems so long ago now that my memories might as well be from the civil war. Since those days I've been round the world, I've driven hundreds of off-road miles across unmarked African savannas under the blazing equatorial sun, I've spent a decade of hard northern winters, I’ve been interrogated and expelled as a suspected CIA spy, and I’ve faced close brushes with my own mortality on five occasions. In between I have visited all sorts of places around the world from the N’gong Hills to Haifa and from Belfast to Khartoum. Everywhere I've been, I've taken my days at Stubb's along for the ride. Rarely have I had a moment of reflection over the years when my thoughts did not turn to CB.
There is a moment in the film Field of Dreams, where James Earl Jones talks of the passing of the times, of building and rebuilding, of tearing down and building anew, with the one constant being the joy of baseball. I remember CB sharing thoughts that were not all that different and this is how I would describe Stubbs Bar BQ, but rather than a nation of millions, this was a community of only a privileged few.
The Stubb’s monument stands as a commemoration of that community. That statue gazes past those dust-blown bricks and concrete towards the empty fairground, ignored by most and completely non-existent to the young and to those whose vague knowledge of the history of Lubbock goes no further than Buddy Holly and tales of the Comanche. The last time I visited the monument I found a bright red ladybug sitting on Stubb’s shoulder, taking a leisurely break and simply enjoying the view. The cars huffed past but the little fellow didn’t pay them a moment’s notice. I guess that is good enough for me.
For me, Stubb's wasn't just a barbecue joint and it wasn't just a heck of a great place where a kid could pick up a guitar and learn to wail. It was the start of an entirely new life for a much younger version of myself and others like me. It was a haven, a nest and a home. It was a smokey-sweet little chunk of paradise. |
