BFT: I didn't realize you were fifty-seven. I thought you were about fifty.

BBH: No, I'm fifty-seven. W.C. was asking me that the other night over there, you know? He said, "Man, you ain't too much older than I am." I told him, man, W.C., I'm a lot older than you are. He said, "Man, you don't look it." I said, well, as long as you don't look it, you are only as old as you feel. Yeah.

BFT: I thought that you and W.C. were the same age.

BBH: We're not. In fact, I met W.C. back in those late years, and L.P. was the guy that brought W.C. to the bandstand. He brought him up there and said, "Man, this cat want to sit in, he's my cousin, he wants to play a couple of tunes." The first time I met him, that was way back there, probably at that time that was the maybe early sixties, late fifties or somewhere around there. And W.C. was a bass player, and the next time I saw W.C., he was playing with T.D. Bell, and he was smoking then. I said, well, this guy that you taught, he sure is smoking. Yeah, he was playing with T.D. Bell.

BFT: L.P. taught him bass?

BBH: That's what L.P. told me; I never heard W.C. say that. I never heard W.C. say it, you know, but L.P. was telling me that he taught W.C. to play bass, you know? W.C. had the same style of L.P. -- with those three strings on a bass and they'd put that clamp on there, that cheater, they call. They played like that. W.C. started off like that. But it didn't take W.C. no time he got rid of that clamp and bought a real bass and was smokin', man. And L.P. stayed with that. In fact, when we started playing with Charlie, Charlie said, "Man, don't that guy want a real bass?" And I said, I don't know, man, he might. So, we went and bought him a real bass, and that was the end of L.P.'s bass playing. He stopped playing bass.

He stopped playing bass after that and started doing nothing but singing. And L.P. stopped playing bass. He said, "Man, I can't get my clamp on this bass. Hahahaha. He said, "I can't get my clamp on there, Hubbard." He said, "Man, I'm going to have to play in E natural all night long." And he did. He just kept...you know, we had to try to base that whole gig around L.P. and E natural, man, 'cause he couldn't...he had to have them open strings. If he could move the clamp, well good. But he couldn't. The clamp wouldn't fit on the neck of a Fender bass. That was it. And after that, L.P. stopped playing bass. And I don't think he's ever wanted to play bass since then.

BFT: Where else could you go listen to music back then?

BBH: When I was like 16 years old in La Grange, one of my cousins from Columbus, Texas, he had a funeral home in La Grange; he had one in Columbus; and he was an insurance man, also, he and his wife both. He would always come to the house and tell me, 'cause what it is, he ran a nightclub in Columbus. Well, he had two clubs in Columbus and two clubs in La Grange. And the one in Columbus was a big place. And he would book B.B. King, Gatemouth Brown, Lowell Fulson. He booked all the big time stuff because he was in with the guy from Houston, Don Robey. He was in with Don Robey. They knew each other. They was good buddies, you know? So, he could get all these cats without putting up some front money, see. And what he'd do was come to La Grange. He came to La Grange every day with his insurance, you know, selling his insurance and stuff. Like I said, he had a funeral home in La Grange and Columbus. So what he would do was come by our house and tell my mother or dad, "Why don't you let him come down, and you know I ain't going to let nothing happen to him, and let him listen to some of the big time cats." 'Cause he could see that I was going to be a musician, because I was playing piano.

And every time he come by there, I was on the piano beating on it, you know? So, we put a group together in La Grange, and it was called R.L. Pool and the Skyrockets. And we had guitar, drums...you see, back in those days, there wasn't any bass player, see. Only the big time guys could afford somebody with a big upright bass, you know? And even those guys, you couldn't hear the guy on the gig too much, you know, what with the horns. Because at that time, all the bands that came from Houston was cutting for Don Robey. And the band leader was Bill Harvey, and he played tenor sax; and he had a lady that played tenor sax with him; and then he'd have guitar players. He might feature Cal Green on guitar, but B.B. King was the star, you know? But he would have a bass player, but you couldn't really hear it, the bass, too much. You could hear it if you were a musician, and kind of walk up close. But if you were out there in the audience, there was no bottom on most bands when they come to your town, you know? If you were a musician, you were listening to that "ptum ptum ptum." You didn't hear that too much. Everything was up on top -- guitars, horn, you know? And that's what I took advantage of when I came to Austin, because everybody was playing a piano, a guitar and a drummer. That's what T.D. had when I got here, you know? And that's what Jewel Simmons and Duffy was doing, you know?

So, when I went to the Victory Grill, I said I'm going to beat this. What I'm going to do is get a guy playing a bass. And that's what L.P. was doing. You know, it proved to be the right thing to do, 'cause everybody said, "Ya'll sure sound big!" And you know, it was that bass that L.P. was playing. That wasn't a bass, it was a guitar. He dropped the pitch down, you know? And when you passed by there, you got "ptung-ptung-dun-dun-dun." And most of those guys wasn't playing that, but it was just the sound. But I knew it would work because I had played with a bass player in my home town when I was in La Grange, a teacher from Rockdale. Professor Howard, he came down, and he heard us play one time. And he said, "Man, I can put a group together, and we can sound pretty good, and we can get all the junior and senior proms, and we can play a lot of different gigs that I can get!" He was a tenor player and a piano player, so he played tenor. And then, he knew a guy that was another teacher in Hearn, Texas. And he had a bass, a real bass, but not an upright, but the kind that looks like a violin that Gibson made, and you put a peg in the bottom of it and stand it up and play it. But it was electric, see. And that guy played bass. And man, the minute I heard him on that bass, man, that gives you so much! Yeah man, that changed things.

See, like I said, there weren't no bass players around except the upright bass, and they wasn't electric, see. And that's what made me say, man if I can get someone on bass, 'cause man, that changes everything. And that's what I did. Then after that, everybody had to start getting bass players, you know, because that trio thing wasn't working. Yeah. See, T.D. still had his trio; and the next thing I knew, T.D. had eased out of Austin and went to Odessa and Midland and started playing for the same Johnny Holmes you know, 'cause he was out there. Like I said, the whole trend then changed, and everybody started getting a bass player. That was the first thing they started putting in their group was the bass player, because it changed the whole atmosphere of musicians and bands and blues in Austin. 'Was the bass player.

BFT: Did Victory Grill ever come back after that?

BBH: No, it never did. It never did. Right, because George Nichols, he split. But before he cut out, he brought Glory Jean to Austin. At that time, it was Pops Brown, her daddy, he was also a guitar player. And then, she had her brother Leo. And her self, she brought A.J. Maynard to town. And she brought, what's his name? Can't think of the guy's name. He was also a real good singer. In fact, he's with the Mighty Clouds of Joy right now. And he came from Taylor. Oh man, I can't think of this guy's name, but anyway he's been with the Mighty Clouds of Joy for probably thirty years.

BFT: Is he one of the originals?

BBH: He's one of the originals, right. But he used to play...

BFT: The only one I can think of is Fountain.

BBH: Oh, I can't think of this guy's... In fact, he and W.C. used to play together. They were real good friends.

BFT: I'll remember to ask W.C. about it.

BBH: Yeah, he and W.C. were real good friends. In fact, he and W.C. sort of died their hair sort of red one time. Hahahaha! They was the only two black guys running around with -- I think it was -- a kind of yellow or gold colored hair. You know, that's when they were doing those processes then. And he and W.C. died their hair that color.

BFT: W.C. had a red comb?

BBH: Yeah, it was gold or red. Oh, I can't think of that dude's name. But anyway, he's been with Mighty Clouds of Joy for years.

But anyway, he came to Austin with Glory Jean and that's when they had their group at the Victory Grill. But what happened to that is it didn't last too long because I went up there one Saturday, and I heard them, and I said, man, them cats sound good! Then Glory Jean's husband, which was A.J., he came up and started talking to me, and said, "Man, I heard you all got a group down the street at the Showbar." I said, yeah. He said, "Man, I sure would like to get with ya'll," just like that. I said, man, you know the way you sing... And see, he played trumpet too. So I told him, the way you sing and play trumpet, man, I sure would like to hire you. And just like that he started playing with me, you know? That was the very beginning.

What he did was pull the piano player, which was Alvin Henergen -- they called him Cool Breeze -- and he started playing piano with me. So Jean's group kind of got twisted up that a way because these guys came to Austin with her, but they didn't have no intention of staying with her. They were just coming to get on the scene. And that's what they did. They came down there and started playing with me. So, I had her piano player, and her husband, who was the trumpet player, and one of the singers, you know? And they played with me, like, Breeze played with me probably fifteen years straight. In fact, he was one of the backbones of my group, man, because he could play a lot of rhythm on piano. And I knew quite a bit of piano because, like I said, I took piano lessons from a doctor's wife in La Grange that taught me a lot of theory on piano and all kinds of things: chords and different stuff. And I'd show Breeze a lot of these things. And oh man, Breeze was the kind of guy anything you show him, that's it, he's got it. He can handle it and do things with it, you know? And Breeze was one of the instrumentalists in our group that really made our group real tight back then, you know?

Then I hired bass players left and right. Haha! Left and right! W.C., George Underwood, here and there, a guy named Hambone whose name was Leroy Davis. We called him "Hambone." Then I got one bass player, and I was able to keep him for a while. He was from Gonzales. They came here with O.S. Grant. They had a group together, and they finally broke up. Then the bass player came to me for a job, and I hired him. And his name was Bubba Mitchell, and man, could he play! And he could sing. At the time that I had Bubba Mitchell on bass, I was on guitar; Ural was on drums; Breeze was on piano; and I had two horns. And we had the best group in Austin, and that bars nobody. I mean we had a better group than any group, north, west, south, or east of Austin -- anywhere. And every star that would come and play with us would go, "Man, man what are ya'll making, man. I sure would like to take ya'll with me," you know. And we had a lot of guys to do that.

In fact, Johnny Taylor tried to hire, he just wanted to hire just me, you know? But I told him I wasn't interested, you know? But he kept on talking to me, you know? "We can go to Dallas and put a group together around you," you know. But I never did leave with Johnny Taylor.

Then another dude, Elmo Morris, which you've probably never heard of. Elmo Morris, he used to travel with B.B. King. He wanted me to do that also, you know?

Then we had guys that just wanted to take people out of the group. And then we had Pigmeat Markham and his review. Have you heard of him? Well, he came to Charlie's, and we did a show with him, and then he wanted to steal the whole band. Then I sicced him on Major, and Major went with him. They traveled around with Pigmeat Markham.

BFT: Lot of activity. Like, on Friday night, in between sets, like would people get off the bandstand and walk down the street and check out what was happening down the street?

BBH: Now, see a lady named, they called her Big Mary. She opened up the Victory, too. And Jean and them played down there for her, I think, for a little while. But then what happened when she opened up down there, like at the time I was using W.C. on bass, and I had A.J. Maynor, Jean's husband, singing and playing a trumpet. And they talked to Big Mary and A.J. and W.C. split, and they went down there with Big Mary. And I think T.D. was on guitar, W.C. was on bass, A.J.... And there was somebody else that I was familiar with that was playing with her, I forgot who. Well anyway, they put a pretty nice group together, a real nice group, but it didn't last, you know? Because at the time I was pretty much choking everybody to death down at Charlie's you know. Because Charlie had everything together, business-wise, see. And that's the whole thing in a nightclub. If you've got a good band, you've still got to have a business that's doing, you know, somebody has to be business-minded, you know?

BFT: Is this 1960 yet?

BBH: This is the early sixties, right. Around in the early or middle sixties, yeah.