BFT: A so-and-so story?

BBH: Oh yeah, we backed up back in those days, man. Tony Von would book people like Johnny Taylor; we would back him. Little Johnny Taylor; Class Carter; we played twice behind Lou Rawls at Charlie's, right here in Austin -- the same Lou Rawls that you see now. That Lou Rawls, we played two gigs behind him at Charlie's Playhouse. Fathead Newman; Etta James at least ten times; Freddie King probably twenty times; Albert King; Little Willie John; Bobby Bland; Buddy Ace. Let's see, what's this other guy...Joe Hinton. He put out the thing, "Well, Hello There!" We played probably four or five gigs with Joe Hinton. Joe Tex. I just could go on and on, man. Yeah right, whoever was happening, they came to Charlie's. But at the time they were coming to Charlie's, it wasn't Charlie who was booking them, it was Tony Von.

BFT: I just never realized that Charlie's would hold that, you know; maybe the crowds weren't as big as I thought they would be for those folks because their careers...

BBH: Yeah. Well see, what was happening in those years, the crowd for those people were all black, see. So the audience is not as big as it is now. In other words, if you booked Joe Tex, he had a black crowd; but they was all black. And Charlie's Playhouse would seat almost 500 people. It doesn't seem like it, but it does. And see, that was the difference, you know?

And like I said, we would play back behind some powerful people back in those days. In fact, we recorded for B.B. King -- and we did that in the Victory Grill! At the time, B.B. King had a bus, and they backed his bus up to the back door of the Victory. He took out all this recording equipment, and we recorded all day long. And he took those tapes and never did anything with them. Yeah, never did nothing with them. We had a lot of original material. He never did nothing with the material, though. But that was the objection of the whole thing, for him to push new groups, you know? And the new groups that he got, I never heard anything that he did.

Yeah, that was the whole thing. "Man, I'm pushing new groups. I heard ya'll the other night; ya'll didn't know I was listening. And I like ya'lls group, and I want to record you all. The next time I come to town, this is what I want to do..."

You see at the time, B.B. King and Gatemouth and all those guys would come to Austin about once every three months. Bobby Bland and Junior Parker was coming to Austin about twice every three months. Then they had Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Joe Tex, Al "T&T" Braggs that was constantly coming to Austin. Then they had a group out of Houston called the "Masters of Soul." Then they had the TSU [Texas Southern University] Toronados that came to Austin all the time. They were all real good groups in those days! And then they had a guy, I can't think of his name. Anyway, Clarence Holliman, who was at Antone's a couple of weeks ago, he was the band leader. I can't think of the guy's name. He used to put out some real nice songs with Don Robey. He used to come up and play all the time. In fact, he played a gig in Charlie's and we went to Waco to play. We used to travel around a lots, too, and play. We played in Corpus Christi. We used to go out in San Angelo and play on weekends. And Glory Jean and the Rollettes would play in our places. Jean and them used to play regular in our place. Whenever...

BFT: What kind of places were you playing on the road?

BBH: Coliseums and things and private affairs. Private party things, you know? And some of them were regular dances. Like when we'd go to San Angelo, we were playing for teachers. They had a coliseum like in San Angelo, and they would book certain club things, you know? And we would go there all the time and play. And then Charlie opened up a club there in San Angelo. And we would go there on Wednesday nights, I think it was, and play from 10 to 2. And this was way back there in the '60s.

Charlie was... Charlie was making money. He took advantage of Blues Boy Hubbard and the Jets, that's what he did. When he saw somebody drawing, he had enough brains to know, these cats would draw anywhere. And we were: we were drawing! He took advantage of that. When he saw something working, you know... Like I said, that's why I would listen to him talking about when he was talking about certain things you were doing on the bandstand, you know? 'Cause the guy, you know, the guy he would listen to everything. That's what happens to a person if they ain't got a hell of a lot of education, they've got something else going for them. Because Charlie was a real shrewd business man. And he was making money with a fourth grade education. And he had a lot of respect on the Westside. Everybody on the Westside respected Charlie, man. 'Cause Charlie, like I said, was making a whole lot of money back then.

BFT: What do you think when ya'll started drawing so many white folks?

BBH: That program, Now Dig This, that was the beginning of that, by them seeing us on that program. Then what happened was they started calling the Eastside clubs for the band that they see on TV. You know, "How do you get in touch with that band?" And then somebody, whoever it was, told them, "Call Charlie's Playhouse," and they did. And then Charlie would tell me, "A fraternity called ya'll to play." And he said, "What we'll do is, I'll give the guys" -- 'cause see, we were working for Charlie on a salary, see -- and Charlie say, "I'll still pay you all your salary, and then me and you, I'll let you go out and play at this fraternity, let Jean come play in here, and then me and you will doctor up that money in a way and give the guys extra money for that." And that's the way we did that.

But every fraternity we played, they want to know where we were playing when we wasn't playing those fraternity gigs. And we told them, at Charlie's Playhouse. And this was in the early '60s! And what would happen was, they would come out to Charlie's Playhouse, see. When it started off, maybe 10 of them, then it went to like 20 of them. Then what would happen was that in order for them to get a seat, they would call in for reservations. They would book the place: they would book a table for 20, a table for 30; then it got to be a table for 200; then it went to a table for 400; and then pretty soon, when blacks got there, there wasn't any seats, see. And that's where the whole thing started. Every time we would play for a fraternity out there, they would tell another fraternity, "Man, we had that group, Blues Boy Hubbard and the Jets." And they'd say, "Well man, what's going on? We want black music!" So, we started a thing that enriched every black group.

But there weren't a whole lot of black groups on the Eastside that was together, you know? So T.D. started getting some of that action. Then Major Burke came along, and he started getting some of that action. And then, Charlie's Playhouse was so full that there wasn't no room for anybody else. And Ira Littlefield, who had a club next door, started his son to playing drums to the jukebox and charge 99 cents for them to come in there; and they packed his place! Yeah! And then, Sam, that had a club up there called Sam's Showcase, he had Major Burke up there, and then they started going up there. We started telling them, there's another club on 12th Street that has a band, and they started going up there, see?

Then Sam and Charlie got together and established a certain fee, sort of, that they were going to pay musicians. Hahahaha! Yeah, they established a certain fee that they were going to pay musicians to keep the musicians from jumping from one band to the other, you know? So they came up with a certain pay salary, pay scale, for the musicians, you know? And so, what would happen is if a guy would play with me for a while and get tired of playing with me, he would say, "Say Hubbard, I'm going up there to play with Major for a while," because he would want a change of atmosphere, you know? And he'd go up there and play with Major for a while. W.C. used to do it. Bubba Mitchell, my bass player that played with me for a long time, he did it. Hambone, who we called "Leroy," he did it for a while. In fact, when Major went with Pigmeat Markham, he had snatched Hambone from me because Hambone could travel and he didn't mind traveling. The bass player he had, I done forgot whether it was W.C. or not, he came up there with me. And then me and Major would wind up switching musicians all the time.

BFT: What Charlie and Sam did made it where they wouldn't necessarily be making more money if they did?

BBH: Right, exactly. They put a scale there where "I'm going to Sam because Sam is paying more money than Charlie, or vice versa," see. So they got together on that; they used their head right there. It helped us a lot, it helped me as a band leader to keep the guys that I had, see. And it helped Major too in a certain way.

But then, Major... Something happened between he and Sam, and he sort of cut it loose, you know? And then Major came and started singing for me for a while, you know, just singing, 'cause I had my band, you know; but I wasn't going to let the talent that Major had just get away, you know? So Charlie said, "Yeah, go on ahead and hire him." And Sam understood because he and Major had had some problem, I don't know what it was. So Major sung with me way back then for a while.

Then I had another guy sing for me named Eddie Wilson; and he was a showman. All those kids liked him, 'cause he was a showman. He'd get on the floor and do the split. Do everything: flip, turn back over flips and everything. So he played with me for a while.

Then I had Ruthie Mae Jackson singing for me, and she was another Aretha Franklin, man. She could sound just like her. And it was during the time Aretha Franklin was real hot. Filled in the gap right there. Just in the nick of time I've got a girl that sounds like Aretha Franklin! So that kept us hot, you know? Because all I could do is play and play, that was it, because I couldn't sing, you know?

Like Charlie said, "Hubbard, what we got to do is keep us somebody that's a good drawing on to what's going on right now, see?" And if all the bands that was hot fall back to four pieces, we would fall back to four pieces and get rid of the horns, which at the time was either Duck... Now, Shaw played horns with me for four years that he was going to Tillotson. But like Duck and Wimp, you know... One thing about Duck and Wimp: if they were playing with you, they didn't like to practice all the time. When we practiced, Duck would play sick or something. Then if Duck played sick this rehearsal, then Wimp would be wanting to play sick the next rehearsal, see. That kind of thing you know. And another thing about Duck and Wimp, if somebody else across town gave them $50 to go play a gig that night, then Duck would have his mama to call and play sick. Hahaha! Like he was sick, and then he would go and play that gig. Then he'd come back to us Monday, 'cause, see, we had four or five nights up there at Charlie's. But Duck would say, "I can make this $50 tonight. I ain't going to make much more than that if I play the whole week with Hubbard." So he'd do those kind of things. Then he'd come back. But then we got hip to that and went, "naw man, you're cheating on us; you're just going where the money is." But all those kind of things used to happen.

But then Duck and Wimp had a nice group too, called the "Daylighters" or something. Something like that, way back there in the '60s. They had a group together. They had Butch on guitar; Duck and Wimp on the horns; and the rest of the cats, I don't remember who they were. But they had a nice sounding group back then, those early years. And Beartrack also, which is King Curtis. He also had a group back then in those early years. And from time to time George Underwood had a group. But see, back in those early years, I didn't know much about George Underwood. I didn't know him that well. But Wimp and Duck and them, they had a group. And like I say, Butch was the guitar player; I don't remember who they had on bass or drums; I don't remember none of those guys. If one of them would tell me I'd probably remember, but off-hand, I don't remember.

BFT: I guess looking back, was that your heyday?

BBH: Yeah, it had to be. In the '60s, right. But one of the things that I liked was when I started playing with Polk on that jazz session. Because when I started playing with Polk was when I really got into, you know, what jazz and music was all about.

One of the guys that sort of pulled my chain was Tim Pickard. I remember years ago we used to be up on the bandstand playing. And Ray Charles was real popular back in the '60s. And he would put out tunes like "Georgia." And I've always had a good ear for music and can really hear what was going on, but what I didn't realize was that tunes like "Georgia" is a standard song, see? They have standard basic changes. Okay, now Ray Charles is going to follow those standard basic changes, I don't care what he does. Those basic patterns is there under the bottom of all that stuff he puts on top. And I didn't realize that. But Tim Pickard came in Charlie's one night and we were playing "Georgia." Now, we were playing it exactly like Ray Charles was playing it, but we were forgetting the roots of that changes, see?

'Cause when I would learn it, I always learned the record, I've learned everybody's part and then taught it to them at rehearsal, see. Everybody would say "Hubbard learn my part, learn this." 'Cause I could play piano, and the horn parts I would sit on the piano or the guitar and pick out first part, second part, third... I don't care how many horns you've got. I can pretty much hear it, you know? And that's what I would do, you see. But I was hearing always the top of the stuff. I was giving my bass player the right bass line, but I was also giving him passing notes that really wasn't necessary, see, 'cause that wasn't the root of what Ray Charles was doing.

Okay, Tim Pickard was standing at the bar one night, and he heard us play "Georgia," and the guy I had singing it was A.J. singing it. And one day, Tim said, "Hubbard, man, I want to tell you something." I said, yeah yeah, what is it. He said, "You're a hell of a musician, man. You've got good ears and all this. You've heard some things in Ray Charles 'Georgia' that I've never heard." He said, "But I tell you what you're doing: you're forgetting one thing. You're forgetting the basic changes of 'Georgia.' What I'm going to do, we're making out some charts over at Huston-Tillotson." They were doing some stuff. Apparently, some guys from Dallas, they took all the jazz tunes and wrote the changes out and the chord progressions and all that stuff; and they run off a whole bunch of them; and they were selling them for like $25 a book, but Tim got me one of those books. He said, "What you need is a fake book, so you'll know all the changes that all these standard songs like 'Misty,' 'Tenderly,' 'Autumn Leaves,' so you'll know the standard basic changes to those songs without you have to sit there and figure it out." I said, "Now, how am I going to get one of those fake books?" He said, "Well, it ain't easy." He said, "You have to build that book, you know, a little bit here and a little bit there. You may be lucky enough to find that book 'cause the University of Texas got them."

And man, I was just over-average lucky! After the word got around that I was looking for a fake book, a young guy came into Charlie's Playhouse one night. Man, it was packed and we were playing, and Charlie sent the little guy to the bandstand. He said, "Are you Hubbard?" I said "Yeah." And: "I got a book I got out of one of the rooms." He was working at the Driskill Hotel and he said, "I got a book that came out of one of the rooms. They told me that you were interested in that book." Now, that book that that dude had, he didn't know it, that book was worth a thousand dollars. He sold it to me for five bucks, because he didn't know what it was. He knew it had a lot of music in it. But you know, the book was worth a thousand dollars if not more. Man, I tore my pocket off to get... When he showed me the book, I tore my pocket off giving him five bucks for that book! And what it was was a fake book, what they call a "fake book." It was that thick, man, and I've still got it right now.

And then that started me on doing that, you know? And I would always, when I had a ballad to learn by Kenny Burrell or some of those guys, I'd go to the fake book and I'd sit the fake book on the piano and play the chords with one hand and play the melody line with the other hand. And man, I learned a lot from that. I said, man, I'll never do that again. I said, man, this is what's happening, you know? 'Cause if a guy said "Georgia," that's the chord. Now some of those chords in the fake book are squarer than the devil, but you have to use your own ears to put the pretty stuff with that. And that's kind of got me together, way back in the '60s. And I have to thank Tim for that. Tim was the one that pulled my coat on that.

And then from then on I would always listen to guys that would be playing jazz and if I heard them playing the same thing, I would always go up to them and say... In fact, when you and Matthew was over playing at this place, well, Matthews asked me about that. I said, "Yeah, I'll be over Matthews, listening to ya'll." And then I told Matthew, "Man, what you all is doing is you all learns the head of the song, but when ya'll solo you all forget the changes that you were playing with in the beginning," you know. I said, "You can't lose those changes; they have to go all the way through that song." Matthew said, "I told them that, I told them that." Yeah, I told them that, because you all sounded good that night, but you were omitting those changes that you all started with. Like you were doing "Misty," then after you all started soloing, you'd be like doing whatever chord sounded good, you know? And I said, naw, you can't do that. That's the same thing Tim...

BFT: ?

BBH: Yeah. Yeah, right. The same melody that you started with that has to keep going. The only thing now is that you are soloing, you are not doing the melody. And those are the things that you weren't doing. And I told Matthew about it and he said, "man, I done told them that." That's what Matthew told me. James, I think, was with you all. And you all had a piano player that was going to Tillotson University, I think it is.

BFT: Tillotson.

BBH: Anyway, I heard him not too long ago on a tape. Man, he sure was blowing. Man, he is blowing now. He was with some white guys on Channel 33 or something, about last year. And I said, there is that guy right there, 'cause I hadn't seen him in a long time.

BBH: He's up in Jersey. 'Cause now he sure was smoking on that tape, you know? I guess that tape was probably two or three years old.

BFT: He was my housemate for a while.

BBH: I could hear that with him, 'cause when I heard him that night, I could tell he was playing. But then he was letting you get away with that too.

BFT: We ran into problems keeping the progression going; people would start pointing fingers across the stage and that kind of shit.

BBH: Everybody goes through that experience. 'Cause like I said, Tim pulled my coat. At the time, I was 23 or something like that. Early.