BOOKS / Ivan Koop Kuper : Vicki Ayo's 'Boys From Houston' Documents a Thriving '60s Music Scene

Vicki Welch Ayo's 'Boys From Houston'
describes a thriving '60s music scene

The book is a real eye-opener for those who would have never believed that the city once known as 'Baghdad on the Bayou,' referring to its oppressive climate and its brackish waterway, was anything but a cultural wasteland.

By Ivan Koop Kuper / The Rag Blog / August 15, 2013

[Boys From Houston: The Spirit and Image of Our Music by Vicki Welch Ayo (2013: Create Space); Paperback; 450 pp; $89.95.]

Author Vicki Welch Ayo and I have never actually met, but we share a similar adolescent experience. The very first rock concert we both attended as teenagers was a performance by a local group called The Sound Investment, a garage band from South Houston fronted by a charismatic vocalist named Ray Salazar.

The year was 1967, and in the high school semester before the "Summer of Love,” Houston, Texas, was experiencing a cultural renaissance. This was a period of creativity and progressive thinking that was reflected in alternative lifestyles, hippie fashion, visual art, and most important, the music.

Vicky Welch Ayo at 17.

Three years had passed since the “Fab Four” first appeared that eventful Sunday night on the Ed Sullivan Show, and from that point on, in the living rooms, basements, and garages of America, boys and sometimes girls were hard at work, on a grassroots level, honing their craft in an attempt to emulate their mop-top heroes.

This was also an era in Houston, Texas, when music was everywhere, and on any given weekend, local bands were performing for their peers in high school gymnasiums, fraternity houses, and neighborhood shopping malls.

These bands were comprised of mostly “waspy” teenagers with a smattering of Italian, Jewish, and Hispanic kids in the mix, who, in the laboratories of their parents' suburban homes, borrowed from the British Invasion, California surf music, and their own Texas blues roots to create what would be referred to as the “Gulf Coast Sound.”

The soundtrack to this special era was provided by Texas bands with the names of A-440, The Coachmen, The Coastliners, The Clique, The Crabs, The Sixpentz, The Fun & Games Commission, The Children, Thursdays Children, Lost and Found, Red Krayola (with Mayo Thompson), The 13th Floor Elevators (with Roky Erickson), Fever Tree, Bubble Puppy, The Moving Sidewalks (with Billy Gibbons), and Zakary Thaks, to name just a few.

Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators at the New Orleans Club, 1966. Photo © Robert Simmons. Image from Boys From Houston.

Although not all of these bands originated in Houston, they all performed in Houston clubs, recorded in Houston studios, and their records were played on Houston radio. Their music was embraced by Houston teenagers, and some of these bands and band members even went on to make a name for themselves in the national music arena.

First-time author Ayo speaks to those baby boomers who, like herself, share a collective memory of coming of age during the 1960s in Houston, in teen clubs like The Living Eye, Love Street Light Circus, La Maison, and The Catacombs, and in “head shops” of the era like The Electric Paisley, Dirty Jim’s Dry Goods, and Houston Blacklight & Poster Company.

Boys From Houston is a real eye-opener for those who would have never believed that the city once known as “Baghdad on the Bayou,” referring to its oppressive climate and its brackish waterway, was anything but a cultural wasteland.

The Moving Sidewalks: From left, Dan Mitchell, Tommy Moore, Don Summers, and Billy Gibbons. Photo courtesy Rick Campbell. Image from Boys From Houston.

Ayo chronicles the time period from 1965 to 1970 with near-encyclopedic accuracy, and explains what key ingredients contributed to this creative and historic time in a town not necessarily known for tolerance or for having an enlightened outlook toward social change.

Houston musician and songwriter, Neal Ford (of The Fanatics), puts this phenomenon into perspective ever so poignantly in the prologue of this publication:

Up and down the streets of the neighborhoods of Houston the sound of bands practicing in their garages and living rooms could be heard day and night. New sounds, fun sounds, and exciting sounds of guitars, basses, drums and keyboards that claimed we are here and we have something to say.

Ayo does have a tendency to overly romanticize this time period and eschews writing about those musicians we lost due to their fascination with the dark side who were added to the roster of Houston’s rock & roll casualties. These were individuals whose promising careers were cut short, and who left us wondering where their talent would ultimately have taken them had they lived.

Bubble Puppy. Photo courtesy of Dave Fore. Image from Boys From Houston.

Tragically, three prominent guitarist/songwriters of this era with ties to Houston -- Steve Perron of The Children, Stacy Sutherland of The 13th Floor Elevators, and Michael Knust of Fever Tree -- all died prematurely, and their all-too-early deaths were unfortunately linked to reckless behavior, an excessive lifestyle, addictive personalities, and substance abuse.

Still equally sad is how some of the key players of this era grew into adulthood and abandoned their musical ambitions only to buy into the trappings of the generation they strived to become an alternative to. Some were lured by Houston’s petrochemical industry, some by the promise of riches in real estate development; and still some have been seen over the years pandering to conservative Texas politicians and other special interest groups.

Ayo reveals how this special point in time could not have occurred without the help of rival AM radio stations, KILT and KNUZ, who made a commitment to the community to provide radio airplay to records produced by local talent, as did Houston’s first progressive free-form FM station, KFMK. This was a time before corporate greed and radio programming consultants redefined the concept of broadcasting into one of “narrowcasting” by creating new radio formats that restricted the quantity and genre of music introduced into the marketplace.

Ayo also gives accolades to local music columnist Scott Holtman, whose weekly column, “Now Sounds,” in The Houston Post, gave invaluable print exposure to the city’s burgeoning music scene and youth culture. Holtzman, with his wife, Vivian, would go on to produce and manage Houston’s psych/pop export, Fever Tree.

Another Houston Post music columnist who is referenced by Ayo is Larry Sepulvado. Sepulvado is recognized as one of the first to write about the Texas music scene in a national publication. In December, 1968, Rolling Stone magazine issue #23 published Sepulvado’s comprehensive expose, “Tribute to the Lone Star State.”

B.J. Thomas and the Triumphs. Photo courtesy Don Drachenberg. Image from Boys From Houston.

This was the issue with the iconic photo on the front cover of the late Doug Sahm and his toddler son, Shawn, who is seen wearing an oversized cowboy hat. It is also the issue, thanks to Sepulvado, that first exposed the nation to Beaumont native and guitar virtuoso, Johnny Winter.

Ayo also acknowledges the contribution made by disc jockey-turned-TV-host, the late Harry Lieberman aka Larry Kane, who hosted a teen dance show Saturday afternoons on KTRK-TV for more than 11 years. The Larry Kane Show broadcast both local Houston and Texas bands lip-synching to their new 45 rpm singles on the air while adoring fans in the studio audience danced to the infectious backbeat of the music.

Vicky Welch Ayo, who now resides in Southern California, spent eight years researching this self-funded labor of love, and after shopping her unfinished manuscript to both UT Press and Texas A&M Press for their “Texas Music Series,” she opted to self-publish, under the company name, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, in favor of editorial control.

Boys from Houston is a fun read and is recommended to all those who ever wondered about Houston’s once-glorious musical past. It was a special time in the most unlikely of cities whose once-thriving music scene vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.

My only burning question is, “What happened?” Perhaps Ayo could address this issue in Boys From Houston, Volume II, which I understand she is in the process of researching.

[Ivan Koop Kuper is a a drummer and a real estate broker, and is still a graduate student at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He can be reached for comment at kuperi@stthom.edu. Find more articles by Ivan Koop Kuper on The Rag Blog.]

• Also see "Houston Was an Unlikely '60s Hotbed," by Thorne Dreyer, originally published in Boys From Houston.

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Houston Rock and Blues Musician Guy Schwartz and Band

Rag Radio's Thorne Dreyer, left, with Billy Bourbon and Guy Schwartz in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, July 5, 2013. Photo by Marlo Blue / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio podcast:
Houston rock and blues artist
Guy Schwartz with band

Houston's Guy Schwartz -- whose bands have included Relayer, Z-Rocks, the New Jack Hippies, and the Austin-based Guy Schwartz & the Affordables -- was called the 'Godfather of the local music scene' by the Houston Press.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / July 14, 2013

See video of the show below.

Houston rock and blues musician Guy Schwartz was Thorne Dreyer's guest -- in interview and performance -- on Rag Radio, Friday, July 5, 2013. Schwartz was joined on the show by Marlo Blue of Houston's KPFT-FM and was backed by musicians Billy Bourbon, Roger Tausz, and Rick Lyon.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download this episode of Rag Radio here:


Guy Schwartz is a musician, songwriter, producer, videographer, music journalist and archivist, and a political activist. In his appearance on Rag Radio, he is backed on rhythm guitar and vocals by singer-songwriter and bandleader Billy Bourbon (The Billy Bourbon Band) who also plays guitar in Guy's Austin-based Affordables, bassist Roger Tausz of the New Jack Hippies, and percussionist Rick Lyon. Also featured on the show is Schwartz collaborator Marlo Blue, an audio-video producer and a news anchor at KPFT-FM in Houston.

Guy Schwartz has played with music legends ranging from Lightnin' Hopkins and B.W. Stevenson to Lionel Hampton and The Monkees. and his groups have included the progressive underground band, Relayer, formed in 1977; the power-pop band Z-Rocks, started in 1980; the New Jack Hippies, which toured the U.S. and Western Europe from 1999-2004 and still perform regionally in Texas; and the Austin-based Guy Schwartz and the Affordables.

Noting his continuing work on behalf of Houston musicians, the Houston Press called Schwartz "the Godfather of the local music scene."

Schwartz also produces a cable-television show on Texas music and musicians, and is producer and creator -- with Marlo Blue -- of the annual Houston indie music and video festival, South By Due East. Schwartz and Billy Bourbon recently recorded the album, Weed at Walmart.

Guy Schwartz and crew on Rag Radio, Friday, July 5, 2013. Video by Guy Schwartz and Marlo Blue.
Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, July 19, 2013: Sociologist, media critic, and author Todd Gitlin.

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Ivan Koop Kuper : Huey P. Meaux Was the Crazy Cajun

Huey P. Meaux was the Crazy Cajun

By Ivan Koop Kuper / The Rag Blog / September 22, 2011

One Friday evening in 1973, a burly looking biker entered the control room of community radio station KPFT FM, the Pacifica station that broadcast from the second floor of the since demolished Atlanta Life building in downtown Houston.

He was there to visit "The Crazy Cajun Radio Show," and to ask host Huey P. Meaux to play a track from an old Eddy Arnold album that he brought with him. The biker told Meaux the record was the only possession of his late father's that he owned, and that it was also the anniversary of his father's death.

In his thick Cajun-French accent, Meaux dedicated a selection from the album to the memory of the biker's father, and as the scratchy vinyl record spun on the turntable, the biker stood in the corner of the room and wept. It was from personal experiences like this one that Meaux developed his keen sense of reading people and knowing how music can trigger an emotional response.


Huey Purvis Meaux made his living as an independent record producer. It was a talent he honed in the 1950s while working as both a barber in Winnie, Texas, and a disc jockey at KPAC-AM in Port Arthur. It was there the naïve Meaux was first introduced to the magic of magnetic recording tape and analog reel-to-reel tape recorders.

Meaux's mission in life was to discover local musical talents, take them into the recording studio, manufacture phonograph records from the master sound recordings, and promote the records to regional radio stations in hopes of receiving the much-coveted radio exposure necessary to make a record into a hit.

Similar to the East Texas "wildcatters" of days-gone-by who drilled oil wells on speculation of striking it rich, Meaux would also speculate on the abundance of homegrown talent, of all musical genres, he found in the night clubs and road houses of East Texas and Louisiana.

Raised "dirt poor" with barely a high school education, Meaux would leave his mark on the music industry and become a significant contributor to popular American culture.

Meaux followed a specific business model that he perfected over 30 years. He learned that after first breaking a single regionally, and with the right amount of radio exposure and sales from independent record distributors, he could then have the leverage necessary to license both the master sound recording and the copyright of the composition to the larger independents and the once prevalent major labels.

Meaux was no novice to this process or to the business of music. Between 1959 and 1985, his name would be associated with 55 gold singles and albums, and eight platinum albums that were produced in recording studios primarily in New Orleans, Houston, and Pasadena, Texas.


"I was so nervous and my hands were shaking as I was fading out that song," Meaux would always recall when discussing "I'm Leaving It Up To You," a track he produced from the Louisiana singing duo known as Dale and Grace, "because in my heart I just knew I had a hit on my hands."

Meaux's intuition was on target because by October 1963, the remake of the composition originally penned and recorded by California's Don "Sugarcane" Harris and Dewey Terry, reached the No. 1 position on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart, and remained on the chart for 12 weeks. The selection that Meaux chose for the Louisiana duo to record resurfaced nine years later when it charted again when it was recorded by America's "squeaky-clean" brother and sister singing duo, Donny and Marie Osmond.

"My records are so bad that the only reason people buy so many is to keep them off the market," Meaux would always boast to those held captive by his bravado and flamboyant personality. With his gift for gab, Meaux could charm both his small town radio audience and the most jaded of big city music industry veterans. If you were to ask Huey Meaux how he was doing or how he was feeling at any given time, his stock comeback would be, "If I felt any betta' bruddah, I'd run for gouvna,' you betta' sho' believe it."

Huey P. Meaux and Doug Sahm at Sugar Hill Studios in Houston, 1974. Photo by Hank Lam.
Meaux would become close friends and business associates with many of the music industry's power brokers of the era, including the late Shelby Singleton of Mercury Records, the late Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, and Aaron Schechter, the low-profile New York-based CPA who Meaux affectionately referred to as "Junior." The unlikely team of Schecter and Meaux, reminiscent of Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison from the Neil Simon stage play, The Odd Couple, maintained a successful professional relationship and a personal bond that endured for more than 25 years.

"I saved his neck many times from the IRS and on many other occasions and there was never any appreciation shown from him," said the 85-year-old Schechter who has made a career of keeping the books for a who's-who of rock royalty.

I quit Huey twice but he chose to ignore me.

I first met Huey way back in 1969 after he got out of jail. He came to New York to visit his lawyer Paul Marshall and he asked Paul to find him a "Jewish New York accountant." Marshall referred him to me and he came by the office and I began doing business for him. Our first order of business was an audit of Scepter Records owned by Florence Greenberg who owed Huey back royalties.

Huey was a real character. He was fascinating, yet he could also be repulsive at times. The last time I saw him was in 1996, right before he went away to prison again.

Born March 10, 1929, in Wright, Louisiana, and raised in Kaplan in the heart of "Acadiana," Meaux always recalled a time growing up when only French was spoken at home and English was his second language." My teachers used to whip your ass if they caught you speaking French in public school," Meaux would say about his grade school days.

Meaux's family settled in East Texas in the town of Winnie, 23 miles south of Beaumont, in 1940, when he was 12. Winnie was in the rich, culturally fertile region of East Texas near the Louisiana border known as "The Golden Triangle." This region incubated the musical talents of Aubrey "Moon" Mullican, George Jones, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, "Barbara Lynn" Ozen, Janis Joplin, Johnny Preston, Barbara Mauritz, and J.P. Richardson aka "The Big Bopper."

Meaux came of age at a time when commercial "terrestrial" radio stations were still independently owned and music programming decisions were made based on local sales figures. It was also a time in history when the frequency of a particular record's radio airplay could be monetarily manipulated by independent record producers and radio promoters.

"Is it true that payola is dead?" a young man asked Meaux in the lobby of the former Marriott Hotel in downtown Austin after he delivered a colorful keynote address at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in 1987. A puzzled-looking Meaux stared at the young man and replied, "Dead? I didn't even know it was sick, little bruddah."


Meaux's special talent in the music business was mastery over the discipline of A & R, or "artist and repertoire" as it was originally known. He had an uncanny knack for selecting the right musical material for the right recording artist to elicit the right vocal interpretation in the recording process.

The objective of this equation was to maximize the greatest profit potential for the master tape owner, the music publisher, the distributing label, the artist manager, and the booking agent. Then as now, it is to one's financial benefit to wear as many of these "hats" as legally possible, a business philosophy that Meaux subscribed to and practiced throughout his professional career.

Not all of the musical groups Meaux had under contract always agreed with or trusted Meaux's choice of material. A young, unknown singer from Rosenberg, Texas named Billy Joe Thomas who fronted a band called the Triumphs can still be heard complaining on the eight-track master recording to the studio engineer one evening: "Let's get this over with and record that damn song just to get Huey off my ass."

The selection he was referring to was "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," a song penned and originally recorded by Hank Williams. The B.J. Thomas version, released on Meaux's Pacemaker label and then licensed to New York's Scepter Records, reached the No. 8 position on Billboard's Hot 100 by March 1966, and stayed on the chart for 10 weeks before its demise.


Although Meaux was the proud father of an adopted son, he was known to brag about all the musicians and singers he nurtured throughout the years -- whom he also referred to as his sons. He especially spoke highly of Douglas Wayne Sahm and August "Augie" Meyers of San Antonio, and would always say, "I raised those boys."

Meaux would often recall the story of the hyperactive, multi-talented teenage Sahm who was always "pestering" Meaux to record his compositions. This relationship ultimately produced Texas' contribution to the "British Invasion" in the early 1960s with the creation of the Sir Douglas Quintet and the release of the single, "She's About a Mover." It was originally titled "She's a Body Mover," but Meaux believed the title sounded too sexually suggestive and made Sahm change it.

The Tribe/London release of this single reached the No. 13 position nationally by April 1965, and remained on Billboard's Hot 100 chart for nine weeks. "I love Doug like my own son," Meaux would always say about the late Doug Sahm, "but he was so mean to Augie. Doug used to make Augie carry all the equipment to the gigs and with his bad leg too," referring to Quintet collaborator and organist Meyers who was afflicted with polio as a child.

Left to right: Huey P.Meaux, Joe Nick Patoski, and The Rag Blog's Ivan Koop Kuper at KUT-FM in Austin, 1975. Photo by Kirby McDaniel.
Life and business were good for Meaux during the 1960s and many of the records he produced became hits. However, in October 1966, the winning streak was interrupted after Meaux and his then business partner, Charlie Booth, attended a disc jockey convention in Nashville accompanied by a 15-year-old girl. Their underage passenger was brought on the trip for the purpose of entertaining the conventioneers with whom they intended to network.

One year later, Meaux and Booth found themselves charged in federal court with conspiracy to transport a minor across state lines for the purpose of prostitution in violation of the Mann Act. Meaux and Booth appealed their case, and although they were represented by high-profile Houston attorney Percy Foreman, their rehearing was denied by the United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

In February 1968, Meaux was sentenced to three years in prison. He would only serve eight months at the low security Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, Texas, near Dallas, before being released for good behavior.

In January 1981, at the end of his term as 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter granted Meaux a full pardon for his transgression. "That's when I went away to college," Meaux would always tell those who asked him about the time he spent in prison during this period.


Not all the hit records that Meaux is associated with were a direct result of his personal production efforts. Sometimes he acted as middleman and brokered the licensing deal to larger labels on behalf of other independent producers, as in the case of a track called "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell and the Drells.

Produced by legendary Houston DJ "Skipper" Lee Frazier, this track was licensed to Atlantic Records with Meaux's help after first being released in Houston on Frazier's Ovid label. Frazier, like most independent producers, would first sell his records on consignment to retailers "out of the trunk" before they were picked up for distribution by a larger label.

However, with the help of Atlantic Records, while Meaux was serving time in prison, this R&B crossover hit simultaneously reached the No. 1 position on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard R&B charts for two weeks by April 1968, and remained on the charts for 13 weeks.

"I first met Huey when I was a disc jockey with KCOH-AM radio in Houston," Frazier recalled.

He had a relationship with most the DJs in Houston and throughout the country for that matter, and Huey was always promoting his records to all the DJs. He was a very personable man and he would bring his records around to the station and ask me to play them.

We had a personal relationship, so when I recorded a record by a band I was managing and it started selling locally, Huey came to me and said, I think can get that record placed with Atlantic Records but I want a piece of the action. I told Huey I wouldn't mind that because I knew Huey had a good relationship with Atlantic because he recorded "You'll Lose a Good Thing" by Barbara Lynn, and I also knew that he knew everybody in that New York office.

So Atlantic took the record and boom, it went to number one on the R&B charts and then, boom, it became a million-seller. I found out years later that Huey knew how many records I was selling locally when he contacted me because he kept up with how many records I was ordering from the local record presser.

After Meaux was released from prison in 1968, the magic of producing another hit record eluded him for several years. Music industry insiders told him that he was "beating a dead horse" when he informed them he was thinking of recording "El Be Bop Kid," Baldemar Huerta from San Benito, Texas -- aka Freddy Fender.

"Before The Next Teardrop Falls," written by the Nashville songwriting team of Vivian Keith and Ben Peters, had been recorded more than a dozen times throughout the years, but had never struck gold. By the mid-1970s, Meaux's intuitive A&R talent was on target once again with his production of the sentimental bilingual ballad with its Tex-Mex flavor. Originally released on Meaux's Crazy Cajun label and then licensed to ABC/Dot, "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" would become a No. 1 crossover single on both the Pop and Country charts by March 1975, and would remain on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for another 15 weeks.

The single not only revived Fender's career, but it also won "Single of the Year" at the 9th Annual Country Music Association Awards in 1975. In addition, the composition also earned nominations for "Best Country Song" and "Best Country Vocal Performance" at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards in 1976.

In 1985, Meaux brokered his last major licensing deal for long-time friend and business associate Floyd Soileau of Ville Platte, Louisiana. Meaux had produced sessions for Soileau with artists Soileau had under contract beginning in the 1950s. In 1984, Soileau brought Meaux the single, "(Don't Mess With) My Toot Toot" that had broken out in New Orleans when recorded by Zydeco/R & B artist Rockin' Sydney Simien on Soileau's label, Maison de Soul.

Meaux arranged a licensing deal for Soileau that year with multinational Epic Records. Although never breaking into Billboard's Hot 100 Pop chart, the single did reach platinum status and peaked in the No. 19 position on Billboard's Country chart. "My Toot Toot" would also win a Grammy Award for Soileau and the late Sydney Simien for "Best Ethnic and Traditional Folk Record," in 1986.

1986 was also the year Meaux surprised friends and industry associates when he appeared on the big screen in the David Byrne feature-length movie True Stories. Meaux made a brief cameo appearance during the "Wild Wild Life" segment of the film, playing the role of a patois-speaking "Crazy Cajun" disc jockey.

Always generous with his time and advice, Meaux was also known to mentor aspiring young music producers because he believed his good deeds would be reciprocated and the relationships he developed would prove to be mutually beneficial. That was not the case however with ZZ Top personal manager and producer, Bill Ham.

Meaux was disappointed that Ham never booked studio time at his Sugar Hill Studios in Houston, choosing to record in Tyler, Texas, and Memphis instead. He would repay the snub in 1986 by suing Ham and ZZ Top for copyright infringement on behalf of Houston songwriter and former rock DJ, Linden Hudson.

Hudson's composition, "Thug," found its way onto the multi-platinum ZZ Top album, Eliminator, without the proper writer credit or music publisher credit which, coincidentally, was Crazy Cajun Music. With the assistance of Houston attorney David W. Showalter, Meaux and Hudson (and Showalter) were awarded a $600,000 out-of-court settlement in compensatory damages from Ham and that "Little Ol' Band from Texas."

Huey Meaux, Winnie, Texas, April 2011. Photo courtesy of Nick de la Torre.
In 1996, Meaux experienced his second major brush with the law. No one expected what a January 29 raid by Houston police on a backroom of Sugar Hill Studios, which Meaux now leased from its new owners, would reveal. There, HPD found incriminating evidence, including a gynecological examination table, illicit drugs, and photos and videotapes of underage girls in compromising positions.

Meaux would plead guilty to five felony charges including possession of cocaine, possession of child pornography, sexual assault, and jumping bail. The Honorable Judge Michael McSpadden of the 209th District Court of Harris County would assess his punishment at 15 years for cocaine possession and sexual assault, and 10 years for possession of child pornography and bail jumping, to be served concurrently.

However, before Meaux's criminal trial would begin, the two daughters of Meaux's former girlfriend filed a civil lawsuit for alleged sexual abuse and emotional distress they were subjected to during the seven years Meaux lived with them and their mother. In mid-February, the now adult McDowell Sisters, represented by attorney Dick Deguerin, brought a suit against Meaux in Harris County's 61st Civil District Court for the sum of 10 million dollars in punitive damages in their request for relief.

By October, the plaintiffs agreed on a final judgment of $900,000, and to dismiss all further claims against defendant Meaux.

In June 1996, Meaux was sent to prison for his criminal offenses and would remain incarcerated for the next six years. Meaux served time at both the privately owned Lockhart Work Facility near Austin, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Ellis Unit in Huntsville.

In September 2002, he was paroled to the Beaumont Center Halfway House, and was then placed on "house arrest" with his mobility restricted and was electronically monitored by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Meaux was looking forward to freedom after four years of enforced detention on the rural property he owned on the outskirts of Winnie -- where he had been living in his double-wide mobile home.

"I go to Beaumont every month now to see my probation officer and go shopping, but I'll be getting my ankle bracelet off March 4th," Meaux said during our last telephone conversation in January 2011. "The first thing I'm gonna do is go to New Orleans and get me some gumbo, and after that, I'm going to Austin to see some friends."


Meaux never made it to New Orleans or to Austin, and on April 23, 2011, at 82, after four months of poor health, Meaux died from multiple organ failure. Meaux was found in his double-wide trailer and scattered about the floor in no particular order were old boxes of magnetic recording tape and photographs that chronicled his 40-plus years in the music business.

Many friends and music industry associates chose to distance themselves from the controversial Meaux, and his funeral service at Broussard's Funeral Home was attended mainly by immediate family members.

However, even after death, the defiant self-proclaimed "producer extraordinaire" still had the ability to surprise and even shock those in attendance at Winnie's Fairview Cemetery. Inscribed on the back side of his "supersized" tombstone was a list of underwriters that Meaux had solicited during the time of his incarceration to help defray the cost of his funeral.

On the front side was inscribed an epitaph of Meaux's personal life philosophy: "Did It My Way - No Regrets - Love Ya - Bye Now - Huey." Once more Meaux was able to get in the last word, prove he was still an innovator and a proponent of crass commercialism who to the very end never showed any sign of remorse.

[Ivan Koop Kuper is a graduate student at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, and maintains a healthy diet of music, media, and popular culture. From 1973-1975, Ivan worked with Huey P. Meaux at KPFT-FM in Houston. He can be reached at kuperi@stthom.edu. Find more articles by Ivan Koop Kuper on The Rag Blog.]

Photos courtesy of Hank Lam.
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Rag Radio : Legendary Houston Folksinger Don Sanders

Don Sanders sings in front of the Sam Houston statue at Hermann Park in 70s Houston.
Legendary Houston folksinger Don Sanders on
Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer. Listen to it here:

Don Sanders was a central figure in the early Houston folk scene, playing all the landmark venues -- from Anderson Fair, Sand Mountain, the Old Quarter, and Liberty Hall to Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters and the Kerrville Folk Festival.

He has shared the stage with Lyle Lovett (who considers him an important influence), Nanci Griffith, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Lightin' Hopkins, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Janis Joplin. He performed at countless peace rallies, benefits, progressive political events, and street concerts in Houston's Montrose.

He was known for his unique vision and for his quirky and highly personal songs; among the best known are "Third Eye" ("Open my third eye, mama / Free me from my chains tonight"), "Coffee Song," "Head Full of Reds," "Southern Coast of France," and "Heavy Word User," where he admits to being a "greasy, sleazy information abuser."

Some of Don's later work was inspired by Spanish folk tales, by the nueva trova movement that originated in Cuba, and by Latin American social justice issues, and he has written and sung in both Spanish and English.

Don Sanders also worked with Pacifica Radio's KPFT-FM (as "Donnie Jo DJ") and in Houston theater, writing, producing, and performing in a one-man show called Peregrino at Houston's Main Street and Chocolate Bayou theaters and at theaters in Austin and San Antonio. In recent years he has devoted much of his time to performing for school children, singing and spinning yarns as the "Sourdough Cowboy."

Don was featured in For the Sake of the Song, the critically acclaimed documentary film about Anderson Fair, Houston's venerable acoustic venue that served as an incubator for such talent as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith, Lucinda Williams, Robert Earl Keen, Steven Fromholz, and Lyle Lovett.

Rolling Stone called Don Sanders Houston's "spritely local folkie," and Lyle Lovett, then a Texas A&M student writing in the school paper, The Batallion, tagged him the "grand old man of Houston folk music." John Wilson wrote on The Rag Blog that, "Over a five year period from 1970 to 1975, Don wrote and performed a suite of songs that pretty much provided the soundtrack for that tumultuous and intensely musical period of Houston’s history."

Many of those historic songs (some of which were mentioned above) have been released on a new CD titled Heavy Word User which came out during the Kerrville Folk Festival. It is available at YourTexasMusic and recently was accepted by Pandora into the Music Genome Project.

Don Sanders dicusses his career and sings several songs on this episode of Rag Radio.

Rag Radio -- hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer -- is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. KOOP is a cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin.

Rag Radio, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

• Also see "Houston Folk Legend Don Sanders is 'Heavy Word User'" by John Wilson / The Rag Blog / Sept. 14, 2011

Houston singer/songwriter and storyteller Don Sanders (right) with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer at the KOOP studios in Austin. Photo by Tracey Schulz / Rag Radio / The Rag Blog.
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MUSIC / John Wilson : Houston Folk Legend Don Sanders is 'Heavy Word User'

Singer-songwriter and storyteller:
Don Sanders is still a 'Heavy Word User'

By John Wilson / The Rag Blog / September 14, 2011

Houston folk legend and children's entertainer Don Sanders will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, Sept. 16, from 2-3 p.m. (CST), on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live here. To listen to earlier shows on Rag Radio, go to the Internet Archive.

I have often wondered how the angel of fame selects the musicians upon whom it bestows its gifts. I have no doubt Justin Bieber is a nice enough young man with a pleasant voice and engaging personality but does he really warrant the rewards flowing his way? And going back in time, what about such stars as Fabian in the 50s and the Archies in the 60s? It seems the fame angel is slightly tone deaf or at least blessed with a delicious sense of irony.

Of the artists with whom I have a personal relationship, Don Sanders is a case in point. He has yet to receive the adulation he so richly deserves. Granted, he is a featured artist with the Texas Commission on the Arts and an honorary board member of the Kerrville Folk Festival, but his music, which compares favorably with any of the recognized folk greats, still exists primarily as the soundtrack to the aging Houston folk crowd.

From the moment I first saw him perform in Houston in the early 70s, I knew he was the real deal. Lots of people agreed with me. He was profiled in depth in numerous articles -- from the Houston Chronicle and Houston Post to Texas Monthly and Rolling Stone. (Rolling Stone referred to Don as Houston's "spritely local folkie.") He was universally loved and respected by musicians of every stripe in Houston.

One of my favorite articles is by a young Lyle Lovett, writing for the Battalion at Texas A&M in 1978. (In a 1998 interview Lovett would refer to Don Sanders as a "big influence.")

Over a five year period from 1970 to 1975, Don wrote and performed a suite of songs that pretty much provided the soundtrack for that tumultuous and intensely musical period of Houston’s history. During this time Don expressed his commitment to social change by performing at countless peace rallies and Montrose street festivals, and was also involved with Pacifica's KPFT-FM in its early days, appearing as "Donnie Jo DJ."

Don's repertoire included such classics as "Third Eye," in which President Nixon and a parrot seek enlightenment; "Coffee Song" ("just waiting for my coffee to boil"), with its bubbling sound-effect chorus; "Roaches" (who are on the pathway down because they live with hippies); and "Heavy Word User," where he describes himself as a “greasy, sleazy information abuser.” There was ample evidence that Don had, as he claimed in the same song, “a jar of talent and the lid's unscrewed.”

Yet universal acceptance stayed away.

It wasn’t for lack of effort on Don’s part. During that period, pretty much on his own nickel, he produced a series of recordings (two LPs and one extended play 45) that highlighted the eclectic nature of his work, the strength of his writing, and the beauty of his voice and guitar work.

He was, however, swimming against the tide. The major labels had a lock on the music industry, and while local radio stations were willing to play local artists, getting exposure outside Houston, much less Texas, was really hard. It is much easier today to produce an album on the cheap, but doing it in the 70s was quite an undertaking.

When I broached the subject recently over lunch with Don he gave me a wane smile and said, “Big record companies really wanted an artist with a burning desire to succeed and make money. I had two problems, first I liked to experiment with different voices and ways of constructing songs.” Then he paused. “And, secondly at the time I just wanted to get laid.”

I didn’t really see the second part as a great impediment to fame, except that it might keep you from focusing on business, but the first could definitely cause problems, especially when it was coupled with the prevailing attitude of the day which focused on the idea of trying to avoid selling out your artistic vision for the chance at a quick buck.

Don Sanders in front of the Sam Houston statue in Houston's Hermann Park. Photo from the Houston Chronicle archives.
“Back around ’78,” said Don, “I was offered the opportunity to go to Nashville and write for Marty Robbins music. It was a pretty standard gig, they would pay a monthly draw and you had to write and pitch two songs a month, but I didn’t really want to write love songs so I turned them down.”

Still, Don kept on plugging through the rest of the decade and into the next, releasing the CD Tourist in 1984, until he decided to do something different. “I just got tired of the format, touring colleges and the bar circuit,” he said, “doing a fast song, slow song, and telling a story.”

It lead, almost naturally, to work in theater -- first at Houston's Main Street Theater and then later with Chocolate Bayou Theater, doing a one-man show of his songs and stories focusing on the troubles in Latin America that grew out of the story “Grunty Mind and the American Love Story” that appeared on the entire side two of one of his LPs.

He had some success touring through Texas. But again, the angel of fame played favorites.

“I just didn’t know how to get it into the larger theaters,” said Don. This once again proves that it’s not what you know but who you know.

In 1992 Don signed a deal with a manager who dealt in children’s music, and it was there that Don found the niche that he occupies to this day, performing for school children. His universally praised shows include:

• Cuentos y Canciones: Latin American folk tales and songs in Spanish and English;
• Gusher Times: based on the oral history project conducted at the University of Texas (Oral History of the Texas Oil Industry Collection, 1952-1958); and
  
• Sourdough Cowboy: based on the oral history of the WPA workers and songs collected by the Lomax family.

“It’s a lot of fun,” he says “performing for children. You have to learn to compete with the distractions and the different developmental levels of the children. You surf the wave and you either stay on top or you get buried.”

So, in the end maybe the angel of fame knew what it was doing. I have to think that bringing the gift of music and song to school children is a pretty cool thing to do and may be of more lasting value than any of the things most of us will accomplish in our lives.

Of course what goes around comes around, and it was after a recent appearance at Houston's Anderson Fair with Sally Spring that Don and I started talking about re-releasing his vinyl work as a CD. (Incidentally, Don appears in For the Sake of the Song, the acclaimed 2010 documentary about Anderson Fair, the venerable Houston acoustic venue.) We embarked on the project and with the help of Rock Romano at Rock Romano’s Red Shack studio the songs were coaxed off their aging tapes and vinyl to be tweaked and mixed into digital format.

The new CD, Heavy Word User, which came out during the Kerrville Folk Festival, is available at Amazon, Itunes, CDBaby, and YourTexasMusic and recently was accepted by Pandora into the Music Genome Project. It is nice to hear songs by Dylan, the Band, Neil Young, Hoyt Axton and Townes Van Zandt, followed by a Don Sanders tune.

So, if the angel is still looking it has one last shot to help Don get this music to the larger audience it so richly deserves. Of course, if it continues to look away then Don still has the children and his digital music is out there and in the mix, standing shoulder to shoulder with the greats. Nice legacy.

[Music producer John Wilson, who is president of YourTexasMusic, was a music critic for the Houston Chronicle and a contributor to Space City!, Houston's late 60s/early 70s underground newspaper. He now lives in Johnson City, Texas.]



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Retro to August 13, 1989

Thanks to Thorne Dreyer who had this hidden somewhere in his closet. It was first published in the Texas Magazine of the Houston Chronicle, August 13, 1989.

Houston's '60s night scene: Joplin sang here for $20 a night
By CLAUDIA FELDMAN, Houston Chronicle staff.

When folks think back on old Houston, they might remember Herman Short's strong-arm police force, Ku Klux Klan ghouls who rode around town tossing bombs and burning crosses, a boring downtown, a snoozing art scene.

"Still a sleepy little town," said singer/song-writer Don Sanders of Houston in the late '60s and early '70s.

Repressive, others said.

Swamp land, Yankee reporters said.

Maybe so, but the swamp was rocking with talent and possibility.

There was a handful of nightclubs and coffee houses that regularly featured the likes of Janis Joplin, Jerry Jeff Walker and John Lee Hooker.

There was an alternative newspaper, Space City!, that loved to tweak the beaks of the traditional reporters and editors. An alternative radio station, KPFT, took shape around then, too. When vandals bombed the station's transmitter during a broadcast of Arlo Guthrie's " Alice's Restaurant," the staff recouped. The first song, when the station went back on the air, was "Alice's Restaurant," sung live by Guthrie.

He picked up, in fact, exactly where the record had trailed off.

Allen's Landing, at night, was crowded. Market Square thrived. Westbury Square flourished.

Twenty years. Those who participated in Houston's hippie-dippie days as adolescents have grown up. Those who already were grown up have grown gray. But a surprising number of those who participated in Houston's artistic explosion back then are hard at work on similar projects today.

Mike Condray, 44, just opened the Washington Avenue Showbar. He calls it "off-Broadway experimental."

By age 25, Condray had already opened and closed a Houston nightclub, Jubilee Hall, a restaurant, the Family Hand, and was enjoying the success of Liberty Hall, an old American Legion meeting place turned music haven.

Condray has featured scores of big-name artists including Rita Coolidge, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen.

Condray doesn't romanticize the old days, though. "We were getting beat up a lot by the police department. The whole nation was at war over Vietnam. Black people were getting killed.

"The music, though, was good. It was hot."

Artist David Adickes laughs fondly when he remembers the Allen's Landing club he started in 1967, the Love Street Light Circus and Feel Good Machine, patterned after San Francisco's wild psychedelic light shows.

"Love Street was popular as hell," Adickes said. "Allen's Landing was packed with bodies - it was shoulder to shoulder, a happening.

Adickes shut Love Street down after two years and went back to painting and sculpting. He's planning more light shows, however, this time using symphonic music.

Sand Mountain is coming back!

"We're looking at locations right now," said John Carrick, who opened the club, a Houston institution, with his mama in 1965. "My mom's real excited."

Carrick was still in high school when he, with help from friends and relatives, rented the Houston Grand Opera's old rehearsal space on Richmond, and turned it into a concert hall.

Tickets were $2 or less.

"Janis Joplin would come play for $20 a night and a place to stay," Carrick said. "There was a little apartment upstairs. Jerry Jeff Walker got $70 a week and a place to stay. But he had to sing five nights and clean five days."

Just a few of the others who played Sand Mountain: B.W. Stevens, Lightnin' Hopkins, Guy Clark, Mance Lipscomb, Doc Watson, K.T. Oslin, John Vandiver and Don Sanders.

Of course, Sanders remembers Sand Mountain. And Maison de Cafe and the Old Quarter and the Jester, where he worked as a busboy and dishwasher all week long to be allowed to play one set.

"But the upside," Sanders said, "was that folks were pretty accepting. You could create a forum for yourself. There was room for creativity."

When the oil business went bust, Sanders started translating plays from Spanish to English and working as an artist-in-residence in school districts around Texas. He also checked out the music scene in Nashville.

Houston, however, is still home.

Sanders, eternally young in the hearts and minds of his old fans, got married four years ago. He and his wife are expecting a baby.

"Here I am in my mid-life," Sanders said, "at 40. Uh, 39."

Dale Soffar took over the Old Quarter, a little folk bar on Congress in 1969.

He was 25, and after putting in a stint in the Army and a Texas City steel yard, the little downtown bar looked good to him.

"Wonderful," Soffar remembered. "It had those brick walls where the plaster was coming off in places, brick floors and tables that were old sewing machines with the heads off. We had people who would come from the opera at Jones Hall - they'd be in suits and tuxedos sitting there next to hippies."

Talents like Don Williams, Rambling Jack Elliot, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt played the Old Quarter.

Finally, Soffar said, the club began to decline. "They all have their life times. Houston was starting to boom, and these big apartment complexes like Napoleon Square were building their own clubs. People quit coming downtown."

Soffar took off for Central America and other adventures. But he's back in Houston and back to tending bar, this time at the Colorado Bar and Grill.

Soffar is about to get married. One of the guests invited to his wedding is Tim Leatherwood.

Leatherwood didn't start Anderson Fair, a Montrose folk bar that's been open since 1969, but certainly he's the club's patron saint.

Many a year Leatherwood has kept the place open - often with his own sweat and bucks from his day job.

He has a company called Audio Systems, and he installs audio-video equipment. Since January, he also runs Anderson Fair's new recording studio.

"We're just trying to get to the break-even point," he said. "We'll stay open as long as there's interest.

Leatherwood joined the Houston music scene in 1967, when he was 17, at a club called Catacombs.

"It was a big ol' warehouse type place," Leatherwood remembered. "We had Canned Heat, Mothers of Invention, Wishbone Ash, Jerry Jeff..."

Twenty years later, Anderson Fair is the only one of the old places still open.

Thorne Dreyer, 43, used to write about Houston and Houstonians for an alternative newspaper, Space City!

Dreyer laughs when asked if he was the editor. "We were militantly non-authoritarian back then, and we didn't have editors," Dreyer said. "Six of us started the paper and we called ourselves an editorial collective."

Space City! tried to be the voice of leftist activists. Like the KPFT staff, Space City! writers got their share of attention from the radical right.

"We were bombed a few times," Dreyer said. "There were bullets through windows and crosses and stickers that read, `The KKK is watching you.'

"It was a heightened time - larger than life," Dreyer said. "On the one hand the community at large was pretty repressive. But Houston always had a core creative community."

Space City! petered out in the early '70s. Over the years Dreyer has worked for KPFT, the City of Houston and public relations businesses. Today he's working as a free-lance writer.

"The other day somebody said to me, `Gosh, you're just an old '60s hippie.' I'd never called myself a hippie," Dreyer said, "but I felt a rush of pride."

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