BFT: One of the things I'm trying to clear up, just trying to get people to talk about it, is that usually when you ask people about the 50's, where was it happening, the first thing to come out of their mouth is Victory Grill.

BBH: Well see, it wasn't really happening at the Victory Grill. Like I said, when I first came to Austin, now what happened before I got here, I don't know. I could have been the Victory Grill before '55, yeah. Before 19 and 55 it probably was the Victory Grill for the simple reason that T.D. Bell opened in the Victory Grill, I think see. So during T.D. Bell's early years, the Victory was probably it, you know? Because I don't know what happened before that. All I know is when I got here, the Victory was what's happening, it was. Everybody was going to the Victory Grill, black, you know? And I started playing in the Victory Grill, right there.

But after I pulled out of the group and went down to the Showbar, then the Showbar was what's happening. And then I'm talking about '57, see. Then Charlie bought the Showbar and changed it to Charlie's Playhouse. And from that time on it was the Playhouse, that was it. Every start that came to Austin came to the Playhouse. Before then, Victory wasn't getting no out of town people, you know? And it wasn't Charlie that was booking all the bands, it was a guy named Tony Von [Walls], who was running the Showbar. And see, Tony was a disc jockey; he was a black disc jockey, that had access to all these stars because they wanted him to play their records. And the only connection to getting their records played around central Texas was Tony Von. That was it. So Tony Von had them on a string.

BFT: Was he broadcasting from...

BBH: From Taylor, right, that's where he was broadcasting from. But before he went to Taylor, he was also broadcasting right here in Austin. He and Lavada Durst, they had a thing here, you know? In fact, when I was a kid I used to catch it, whenever the wind wouldn't change direction and it would fade out, you know? That's what I used to do.

When me and Duffy and Jewel Simmons was together, we used to do little shows on Tony's radio station, live you know. He would book us down there and we would go and play a fifteen or twenty-minute set, you know? For Tony Von. And Tony Von was the first person to bring stars to Austin, Tony Von was. Nobody else had the connections that Tony Von had.

BFT: So if you were on the rhythm and blues charts at that time, chances are if you played in Austin, he was probably the connection.

BBH: Exactly, he was the guy that brought you to Austin. And Tony Von, I remember back in the late 50's, when I first switched to guitar, around '57 or '58, Tony put a band together, and he booked a package like at the Doris Miller [Auditorium at Rosewood Park]. And it consisted of Gatemouth Brown, Buddy Ace, Bobby Blue Bland, and Jimmy Nolan, four guys. And we backed them.

Because before then I was playing a Fender Stratocaster, that one right there. And when Jimmy Nolan came up, he was playing a Gibson Switchmaster, which was a big guitar, and he had a Super Reverb amplifier. And he blowed me and Jewel Simmons away, hahaha. Because man he had such a big tone, you know? I was playing that Stratocaster, and man, it was funky, you know? And I had a small amp with one twelve-inch speaker. And Jewel Simmons had the same thing, and Jewel had a Gibson Les Paul, the original Gibson Les Paul. They are a funky guitar, but they didn't have a whole lot of body to it you see, it was a solid body guitar. And Jimmy Nolan had a Switchmaster guitar, and he had a Super Reverb amp, Fender, that had four ten-inch speakers in it. And man, when he got up there, man, he kicked off a tune that he wrote called "Late Freight" and man did he have a big sound, good god. And I looked and Jewel and Jewel looked at me, and we couldn't figure out where does this guy get all this sound from?

BFT: A hollow body?

BBH: Yeah, that's right. The Switchmaster was a big, hollow body guitar that was the same size as a Super 400, which is a big hollow body guitar that all jazz guitarists usually cut their sound with, like Wes Montgomery and George Benson, you know.

The very next day, man, I went straight to the music store. And I was really lucky, man, because what I did, I went in there and the guy had a Switchmaster, used, that a guy in Temple Texas had traded. B.M. Daly was his name, a black guitar player, and he had traded it, and the guy sold it to me, Bledsoe Music Company. He sold that one to me. And he had a Super Reverb amp, and I bought it. And I said the devil with a Fender guitar! I never played a Fender guitar since. Never have, yeah. I don't want these little old things 'cause, you know, I didn't have to string it up to be funky, I was already funky you know. I didn't have to do that. But that stopped the end of that.

But Tony brought that show and that was a real, real nice show, man, and Doris Miller had a big crowd. And it was during the time before all the integration and stuff, so blacks had to stay with blacks. If blacks brought something to town, everybody had to patronize it because you couldn't go on no Westside nowhere. But believe it or not, during that time there was nothing over there to go for. Because they wasn't booking things like that then. The first somebody that I can remember that they had a club off of, sort of out in the University area, I can't think of that guy's name. He would books some bands, but mostly he had, he would book a black group that played there all the time. In fact, he was the music teacher over at Anderson. Can't think of the guy's name.

BFT: Bert Adams?

BBH: No, this other. What's his name? Over at Anderson High School there? Oh, I'm trying to think of the guy's name. He was the music teacher over there. Well, they had a group together, and they played sort of jazz ballads and stuff. And they played some real nice soft shoe stuff you know, and he was booking them. And I started teaching a white guy to play guitar, named Johnny William. And at the same time a club out in South Austin called the Top Hat, he had Johnny Winters out there playing. In fact, I knew Johnny Winters before he ever got big or left from here and went to California or wherever. Johnny Winters used to play here in Austin, you know?

Then back in those days they opened up what they called the Vulcan Gas Company or something like that, on Congress over there. And they used to put together some stuff. Then they started with Armadillo, then they started bringing in some stuff, and that's where things started changing, you know? Because a lot of white musicians wanted to start playing what the blacks was playing on the Eastside. And every one of them came to me.

Right? I've taught so many white guys on the Eastside, boy, it ain't funny. Like Bill Campbell, Johnny Williams, Derek, you know, and guys that I don't even remember their names.

Like on Saturday morning, I'd have class. I'd have four or five University of Texas guys lined up, and I'm giving them guitar lessons. Some of them probably never even touched a guitar after they left school. But I know some of them that did. There was a guy from Taylor that was playing Country and Western with the Jimmy Heap and the Melody Masters. I don't know if you know of Jimmy Heap. He's dead because he got drowned, I think it was, not too long ago. But there was a guy in Taylor they called Ray Fouchet, who was a country and western star who would wear all this fancy stuff, you know? I taught him a few things on blues guitar, you know? He was with this other country and western guy that I see on channel 35 right now, I think Dolly Parton started with him. What's his name. Porter Wagner. Right, that guy. That was way back there before he got real big and everything.

And then...we used to have a TV show, that really wasn't our show. It was two black guys called Tick and Tock, here in Austin, right. In the late '50s. It was called Now Dig This. It came on every Saturday morning, right here in Austin Texas.

BFT: That's the first I've ever heard.

BBH: Right, see I know. It came on every Saturday morning. It was called Now Dig This. And Charlie Elgin and Eddy Washington was the guy. Charlie Elgin was going to Tillotson and he could write music and all this stuff, he narrated the show. And he would put us on there nearly every Saturday. That's how we really got known.

That's how we got known starting off with the whites. They'd see us on there every morning. And they'd say, well, that stuff they playing kind of sounds good, you know? And that's what kind of started motivating white people into wanting black music, with that show called Now Dig This. And when they'd come on Charlie Elgin... No Eddy Washington -- no, Charlie Elgin was the narrator of the show, and then he and Eddy Washington, they had a duet together. And they would sing and stuff, and they would write their own material.

In fact in '58, they had a hit record out, that Don Robey sold real good. They made some money out of that record. And then they started working with us at Charlie's, and then we cut an album with them. But I've never heard anything from that since then.

We went to Houston and spent a whole day on a Sunday, cutting an album in Robey's studio. And at that particular set I met Wayne Bennett, that was playing with Joe Scott down there. He was the leader, he was the engineer at that time. He'd sit there and push all the buttons and tell us when this was too low and this was too loud. It was Joe Scott and Wayne Bennett was there, and I did a solo in a song.

But see, Eddy Washington and Charlie Elgins, they told me exactly what to do in they records, every instrument. But Wayne didn't know that, you know? And I took a solo in there and Wayne came in to me and said, "That solo you are taking in there is not quite fitting for the song." I told him, "Yeah well, talk to those cats. They knows everything that they wants in a record, you know?" And they would tell me, "Now, show the piano player how to do this; tell the drummer to do this." And that's the way they did it. Like I said, they knew music and everything and they wanted everything done exactly the way they wanted it done, you know? And that's what I was telling Wayne. They wanted that solo exactly like that; 'cause what it was, it wasn't a bluesy solo at all, you know? The song that they were singing, it had more blues in it than what they wanted me to solo, you know? The solo that I had was sort of rock and roll, you know, that Chuck Berry kind of stuff you know, and Wayne said, "Man, that don't fit too good. Hey little brother, that don't fit." I said, "Tell me about it, but that's what they want." Yeah, I said that's what they want, that's what they get. But that was in fifty-... I know that was in '58, that we played with these two guys, and that show Now Dig This was around 1958.

BFT: Do you know what station that was on?

BBH: Yeah, KTBC. That was the only station. That was the only one they had; they didn't have any other station at that time. They didn't have another station.

BFT: We should see if they have any archival... Was it a live broadcast?

BBH: Yeah, it was live. Because we used to go in there and I talked to Cactus, Uncle Jay, Packer Jack and all those guys were down there at the time. Dan Love... They were all in that studio then. Like I said, that was the only TV studio in Austin. You didn't have to worry what channel it was on, it was on Channel 7, that was it. Yeah. And I'm sure that they've probably got some clips of that right now. 'Cause it was in the year of '57 or '58, that had to be when it was. And we had a group together then.

BFT: What was happening with this other place that a lot of people talk about in that same period?

BBH: What other place?

BFT: The Chicken Shack, Ernie's Chicken Shack.

BBH: Oh well, we were... See that's what happened. We were playing out there and it was called Sheryl Anne's, and then another guy bought that... Didn't buy it, but he opened it up. And they called him "Armstrong," and he opened that place up also. And then the police sort of closed him down because he was bootlegging liquor out there without a license or anything. And they finally shut him down after keep riding him. And, you know, the liquor control board would always be out there smelling people's cups and things!

And so after they closed him down and padlocked the place, Charlie, who we was playing for already, bought the place. And when Charlie bought the place, we just didn't lose no step, we was already playing out there, see. So Charlie bought it and we were already playing for Charlie at Charlie's Playhouse after he bought the place from Tony Von, which Tony Von didn't own the place but he was running it. But Charlie bought the place and then he bought the Chicken Shack and named it the "Chicken Shack," and we started. We were already playing in there. So we didn't miss a step, you know? And I must have played at that place for 20 years, until he died , you know.

BFT: Mr. Gilden.

BBH: Yeah, Charlie Gilden. That's where the Chicken Shack came in, and that was the only after-hours club, and man, that place would be packed! I mean. I'd do up there and go straight out there, exactly.

But see, what happened was in the beginning I bought double equipment, you know? But everybody at the time wasn't making the kind of money to do that, so Charlie bought the equipment. He bought the drums for Ural out there. He bought bass amps and this and that, we had two PAs, one at the Shack and one at the Playhouse. And everybody had dual equipment. so all you had to do was pack your bass or your guitar, you know? Or Ural would pack his sticks, that was it. We didn't have to move nothing. But in the beginning we were moving that stuff. In fact, I broke an A-frame on my Oldsmobile hauling all that heavy equipment back and forth, me and LP. It was just topping the projects there, going up that hill my A-frame busted 'cause of hauling all that stuff all the time. In a convertible Oldsmobile. And I was sure glad when everybody had equipment out there. We had a piano out there, you know, and everything.

BFT: Did you do sit-ins after-hours, or even as your regular gig?

BBH: No. Like at Charlie's, well, what happened was me and Charlie sit down. Like I said, Charlie was a good business man. He didn't have a whole lot of education, but he knew how to make money. And he knew what sold and what didn't, 'cause he was, like you say, he was out there in the audience and he could hear little mistakes and things that we would do that would hurt us as a group and hurt his business.

So he said, "Here's some things I want you to do." He said, "Stop the sitting-in. When people come up and sit-in, it kills what you all are doing." So you can feel it out here. "Hubbard," he said, "if you all got a groove and are playing, then you stop and let some guy get on Breeze's piano or some guy plays your guitar or whatever," said that guy "don't know ya'lls songs and ya'll don't know what he want to do," so he said things start happening and you can feel it. He said, "If I was you, I wouldn't let nobody sit-in, 'cause you all sound real good when you all sit up there together," you know, and all like that. And he said the same thing at the Shack.

But now, if a guy is a known musician and he's a star, then that's different. 'Cause he's helping your group. If he's not, if he's not helping your group, he's hurting it. He said, if you are out here in the audience, you can tell the difference. That's when I decided, well, I'm going to listen because I think he got something there. And that's what I stopped doing, letting people sit-in, 'lessen the guy was a real good musician. If Freddie King came in the house and came up, yeah sure, you know, he's a star, you know? If Johnny Taylor or someone came in and want to do a couple of tunes after-hours, you know well that's good.

We had, ah... What do they call her? She had on these daytime soaps, they call her "Penny" on The Edge of Night, I think, a little blond girl with a mole right here. She used to come out there every year for about three years. She and a group of guys would come out there. She would come here -- for what I never did know -- but she would come out and sing "Misty." And that didn't hurt your business none; that helped, you know, 'cause here's a girl that's a TV star; everybody see her every day on the soaps, you know? I think it was The Edge of Night or something. I don't know; one of those programs. But anyway, her name is Penny because I used to see her on the program, you know? And she would come out and...

See, with things like that, you know, that's a different thing, you know? But if you let local guys sit in, they always have the tendency to stay in the groove that you're in, you know? 'Cause a lot of guys would come out there and say, "Man, let me play something." I'd say, "Well, as soon as we get down to the last 30 minutes of the gig, you can come up." And that's what I would do all the time, you know? And some of the guys were good musicians, but everybody that would get up there would want to play jazz, you know? And see, people wasn't into that. You've just got to shove that down people's throats, because they wasn't into that. But as long as we were playing was what was popular...

'Cause you see, at that time, we learned a new song every week -- sometime two, you know -- because they were throwing songs at you every week. So you had to learn some of those songs, you know? And everything that was on the charts we would try to learn it, you know? And I had a group at that time where I could learn that, you know? We didn't miss nothing, man. Everything that hit that chart, as soon as it hit the chart, that same week probably, we got it. 'Cause all of us was walking around all day, we wasn't working. All we had to do was practice, you know? Learn new tunes, and that's what we did. And kept going, kept things going.

BFT: Can you think of a memorable gig story from either Ernie's or Charlie's?

BBH: Well, back in those days...