Texas BBQ, The Book

As both a connoisseur and critic of barbecue in its many manifestations, I am not easily swayed by other critics, much less books on the subject. But I gotta say, nothing comes close to the wonderful book of photographs and essays focusing on the Central Texas barbecue belt that my colleague Wyatt McSpadden has put together for the University of Texas Press. John Morthland's essay sets the table (no silverware required) and Jim Harrison's essay pumps up the whole carnivore thang. But McSpadden's images are the star here, focusing on the cuisine's basic elements - meat, pits, wood, fire, knives and the men who make the ritual happen. He chose the some of best locations to zone in on - Kreuz Market and Smitty's in Lockhart, Louie Mueller's in Taylor, Gonzales Food Market in Gonzales, the New Zion Missionary Babtist Church in Huntsville, Hallettsville, Prause Meat Market in LaGrange, Luling City Market (best in Texas and the world, I think) - and the best people manning the pits, especially his portraits of Roy Perez, all muscle and grit framed by his mutton-chop sideburns.












This isn't a complete guide or a cookbook - Robb Walsh's book is still the best in those respects. What McSpadden achieves is getting to the heart of the culture of Texas barbecue, peeling back the crust to reveal its smoldering soul.













From the butcher paper inner cover images to the school desk seats at Sonny Bryan's in Dallas, the smudged walls at Smitty's and the faded signage ("If the Bears kill, we'll cook it") at Mama & Papa B's in Waco, Wyatt McSpadden captures the essence of Texas barbecue so well, you can smell the smoke every time you turn the page. It doesn't get any better than that.

(in case you can't tell, the following are my own BBQ photographs, not Wyatt's)

Stephen Bruton, Six-String Maestro

Turner Stephen Bruton, the Fort Worth flash and "the best damn rock and roll guitar player in the world," as his friend, mentor, and bandleader Kris Kristofferson would introduce him night after night, rode off into the sunset on Saturday at the doorstep of the Pacific Ocean.





































































Stephen was music, a genuine player's player. He was a mandolinist, banjo picker and guitarist who trafficked in bluegrass at Arlington Heights High School where he was recognized as Most Talented and performed with the Brazos River Ramblers. His mom and dad ran Record Town, a record shop across from TCU that his brother and mother still run today, and one of the greatest dispensers of "hep" Fort Worth ever had, educating critic Dave Hickey, producer T-Bone Burnett, and western swing scholar Kevin Coffey, among others.

He rambled around briefly after graduating from high school, hanging out in Woodstock with Geoff Muldaur and the players in the Band before hooking up with Kris Kristofferson, for whom he ended up playing lead guitar for 17 years. Back home, he dove into the blues at local jooks, most prominently the New Bluebird Nite Club, where he and his high school music buddy T-Bone (formerly J. Henry) Burnett co-produced an exceptional gritty live recording of Robert Ealey & His Five Careless Lovers, a band that included Stephen's brother Sumter. Stephen fronted his own occasional Fort Worth band, Little Whisper & the Rumors with Jim Colegrove, whom he'd met up in Woodstock, when he wasn't hanging in his new hometown of Los Angeles, where he was the kid with the gig to a cadre of hungry Fort Worth expats including Delbert McClinton and Glen Clark.

After leaving Kristofferson, Stephen joined up with Bonnie Raitt just as she was enjoying her second burst of fame for Give It Up for an extended spell, writing songs for her. He briefly worked with Bob Dylan.

In the 1980s, Stephen drifted from LA down to Austin where he reinvented himself as a producer (Alejandro Escovedo, Marcia Ball,Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Hal Ketchum, Chris Smither, Storyville, among others) and a session player, recording with Elvis Costello, T-Bone,Delbert, B.B.King, Lowell George, Bob Neuwirth, and the Wallflowers, while playing solo and band gigs inAustin. His songs were covered by Hal Ketchum, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Patty Loveless, Jimmy Buffet, and Bonnie Raitt.

His movie star good looks were the real deal. He appeared in a number of films beginning with "A Star Is Born" and "Songwriter."

For the past 13 years, he fronted the Resentments, a collective of clean and sober players (Jon Dee Graham, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Bruce Hughes, the late Mambo John Treanor and John Chipman)who held court early Sunday evenings at the Saxon Club, an under the radar joint where they developed a bar band groove so cool, they were "discovered" and toured Japan and Europe, but hardly anywhere else in the United States.

His sobriety helped inspire others, including Stevie Ray Vaughan,to straighten up and save themselves, which he shared with me for the book Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire

Stephen was diagnosed with cancer in December 2006, a few days after I visited him to talk about Willie for the book I was working on. We ended up talking about Fort Worth's rich but hidden music history, touching Sock Underwood, Robert Johnson, and graveyard jams involving white and black musicians in the days of segregation.

After a long fight with his sickness, he left Austin this past winter when T-Bone Burnett chartered a jet for Stephen the night after T-Bone won a Grammy and brought him to Los Angeles where they were working on a movie soundtrack.

Stephen had a full life despite barely making it to 60. He had so much more in him, though, his early exit is a huge loss for those who knew him and loved him and those who simply knew him through his music.

Condolences to his mother and brother, his wife, and all his family and friends.

Godspeed, music maker. You sure sound good.




UPDATE:

Services for Turner Stephen Bruton will be at 10 am Saturday, May 15 at Holy Family Catholic Church, 6150 Pershing, in Fort Worth. Burial at Mount Olivet Cemetery will follow.

There will be a viewing at Thompson's Harveson & Cole Funeral Home, 702 8th Avenue in Fort Worth on Friday evening beginning at 5:30 pm.

Edwin Bud Shrake, Literary Lion

Bud Shrake had twenty years on me, and went to Paschal not Arlington Heights. He was already working at the Fort Worth Press on Jones Street in Hell's Half Acre when I was born. He was mentored by sportswriting legend Blackie Sherrod and had Dan Jenkins and Gary Jap Cartwright as mentors. He dated a stripper from Jack Ruby's club, covered the Dallas Cowboys at their birth, wrote for Sports Illustrated, was part of cafe society at Elaine's in New York where he drank and bullshitted with the leading literary lights of his day. He moved to Austin in 1968 before any cool did and dreamed up his own Texified cafe society with the Mad Dogs, a group that included Cartwright, writer Jan Reid, county commissioner Ann Richards, and music bard Jerry Jeff Walker. He was successful enough to fund the Armadillo World Headquarters with a few well-placed loans. He proceeded to write novels, ghost Willie Nelson's autobiography and partner with golf pro Harvey Penick on his Little Red Book of Golf. When Ann Richards was elected Governor of Texas, he was her First Gentleman and Significant Other. I don't think either of them ever got over the serendipity of it all.

A younger writer who moved to Austin to soak up the culture and write about it couldn't help but fall under Shrake's spell and influence. So it was with some trepidation that the same writer would approach Shrake to look through his papers to see how he wrote Willie's autobiography before contemplating writing his own biography of Willie. Shrake was nothing but encouraging. Still, there was more trepidation when the young writer asked Shrake if he could talk to him about the process and what he learned, and relief when Shrake invited him to coffee. At the end of a five hour coffee, interrupted by several breaks so one of two older men could go pee, the not-so-young-anymore writer heard nothing but encouraging words from the literary lion. That validation emboldened the not-so-young-anymore writer to take the leap and write a book like no other he'd written before. It might not have been Shrake-level literary brilliance, but it exceeded what the writer thought he had in him.

Texas writer had been a description reserved for early 20th century lights such as J. Frank Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb. Shrake embodied that term for late 20th century writers all the way to the here and now, defining the modern Texas and its culture better than anyone had before or has since. What stuck with one writer who came up in Fort Worth two decades after Shrake did was his ability to delineate between "hip" and "hep." Lots of places and lots of people flattered themselves by thinking they were "hip." Fort Worth, Shrake had observed many times, was never "hip." But it sure was "hep" - hepper than just about anywhere on earth. The images that Bud Shrake conjured with words - like when someone was thirsty they needed a "drank" and his description of the "perp walk" the police would make the hoodlums do for the edification of reporters every week - made it so.

So call him what you want. I'll just call him the heppest cat who put words on paper in this corner of the world.

Thanks for the wisdom and the advice.