BFT: That was one of the things that I found. I am a little younger than you are and played a lot of different kinds of music, and tried to first feel comfortable with 12 bars so that it feels natural. And talking to a lot of players around my age and younger, they don't have any interest in learning. You put some fusion jazz on, they will have a good time with that, but they can't hear I-IV-V changes go by.

BBH: It's just like Tony. I keep forgetting about Tony; he was my bass player. Now Tony is strong on bass, and he has a pretty way of playing. He plays with his finger steady going where you get a sustained sound. But he didn't know how to play a blues, either. 'Cause Tony's probably younger than you are, and he's played with me off and on for quite a while, you know? In fact, he was playing with me not too long ago, and then he was supposed to go with W.C. when Winn quit W.C. So, Winn came to me and started playing with me and W.C. took Tony, but then he only used Tony on two or three gigs, and then he dropped him. For which reason, I don't know. Tony can play, but he cannot play. If you play "Stormy Monday," Tony is going to get lost. And so, what I did, I took an Albert Collins album and give it to Tony, see, and said, "Tony, listen to the bass player on here; he's playing blues the way it is supposed to go." And Tony learned something from it. He did much better on "Stormy Monday." And man, he would start off -- you know the slower a song is the harder it is -- and Tony would start off, man, on the front of it, and after that Tony would say, "Where do I go?" I would say, "Can't you hear the four?" He said, "No, I don't hear nothing! All I know how to do is walk on there where I don't sound real bad." I said, "Come on, Tony, you've got to do better than that!"

BFT: Just be on a relative note.

BBH: Tony said, "Well, I got to hear bass players," and I let him hear Albert Collins, and he got better after that. Because Tony has talent, just bubbling with talent. But like I said, he didn't know blues because he didn't hear much of it.

BFT: One thing that is interesting to me -- and this might be happening all over the U.S. I don't know -- but Austin has developed this reputation as a "blues town."

BBH: Yeah.

BFT: And if you go, if you walk down 6th Street on any given night, there's live music there. You are going to hear 12-bar blues coming out of half of the doors that are playing live music. And you look around the corner... And I'm 34. I just turned 34, and there are these guys that are younger than me, and all of them are white and all of them are playing Chicago-style, big city blues from the late '50s and early '60s. You talk to them, that's where their heart is. This is the music they're in love with.

BBH: If it wasn't for young whites and older whites, the blues scene would be zero. In other words, whites are the only ones who brought the whole blues scene back to this world. Blacks was losing it completely. Guys like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, we had no respect for those guys. Young black guys has no respect for John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Lightning Hopkins. Who are those cats, man? They had no respect, and we were losing it. It was slipping away from black people. And if whites hadn't grabbed onto it and said, "Wait a minute, man, there's something going on around here." By them grabbing on to it, it gave us a chance to renew ourself and say, "Wait a minute, let me get back. There's Antone's over here where I can play!" And hell, I can go back and play my blues again. And that's what's happening. Places like Antone's. But's what really happening to the whole scene is that it's getting mixed in there to the point that a lot of people are thinking that whites started it. And that's not what's happening. But, hell, if you are throwing it away, and I find it you know, finder's keepers, losers weepers. But that's what's happening to the blues, see. Most people are getting to the point of where if you are from Japan, or a place where you didn't hear it way back there, they are beginning to think that Stevie Ray Vaughan was the first blues guitar player in Austin. See what I'm saying. And it's because we lost it. You know, we turned it lose, so who are you going to blame?

BFT: I heard all these stories about the Eastside was jumping. There were clubs that had live music. And there was, like, your band and T.D. and Erbie and W.C. And Polk was necessarily playing blues, but he was playing jazz. And there was a community of players. Everybody knew each other. Bands traded players. I had one person that told me, who doesn't play in public much at all anymore. Pat Murphy, was a saxophone player, bari[tone], I think. He provided me with some good information historically. And at one point in the conversation we stopped and spent 10 or 15 minutes just talking about how life generally for black folks, especially people that had lived on the Eastside for a long time, how times were hard but the community was together. People started thinking that integration was going to make everything better. There was a period when people were getting together, culture sharing and all of that stuff. He's of the opinion in a lot of ways that that's when black people started giving a lot of their culture away and started giving a lot of their power away.

BBH: I have to go along with that to a certain extent, too. Because we did at the time, myself included. But actually, like I said, it was the point where most white dudes came to Charlie's and they heard my playing. And they used to come up there and say "Man, how do you learn them records. You sound just like them records. Man, I sure would like to hear guitar like that."

And here come a guy, he's a rich guy now, Ronnie Moore, he wanted to learn how to play bass. So Bubba Mitchell said, "Man, I'm going to teach you how to play bass." Bubba was the bass player. Or W.C. would say, "Well, Hubbard can teach you how to play bass." Or one guy wanted to learn to play piano. They'd always say Hubbard can teach you how to play piano. So I've taught dudes to play piano; I've taught them to play bass; I've taught them to play guitar. I've taught blind guys to play the piano -- blind guys to play guitar! At the same time, I was charging people for the lessons. Like I would tell the guys, a lot of black guys would tell me, "Man, you are crazy! I wouldn't be teaching them guys how to play like that." I would say, if they don't get it from me, they are going to get it from somebody.

There's one thing about knowledge, you can't hold anybody down from knowledge if they really want it; if you did, we'd still be slaves. You can't hold a man! If he wants knowledge, he's going to get it from me or you or somebody else.

So I'd say, as long as they are paying me for it, what the hell. Like I said, Johnny Williams wanted to learn how to play; I taught him how to play. Mickey Bennett, I taught him how to play. Just scores of guys. But if I hadn't taught them how to play, if they had to go all the way to California to learn, they were going to do it, you know? 'Cause that's one thing about a man and his money, he can always buy what he wants. And that's why I taught them. A lot of guys say, "Man, you are crazy. Like them guys like Stevie Ray Vaughan and them, they used to come out to the Shack and listen to you and stuff." I never did teach Stevie Ray directly, but he used to come out to the Shack. Bill Campbell used to bring him out there. Then he would take things from Bill Campbell that I would teach Bill Campbell, and he would use them. In fact, he got a thing on his record that he does, and he got from me; that is definitely a fact. In fact, I told my wife, "You hear that right there, Stevie Ray got that from me!" And its a lick in E natural that I used to do, because he used to come to the Shack, and set out there and listen. But he was a real little kid then. Then Bill said, "He's going to come up tonight; can he play a couple?" I said sure. He came up and he played a couple of tunes. He asked me, "Man, what do you think?" I said, "Man, you are going to be bad!" And he did. In fact, me and him used to play on 6th Street together. He would go to the Armadillo World and play with the big guys that was coming in; and then he would come over there, because he was playing, we were playing for C-Boy [Parks, cook and music promoter]. C-Boy died not too long ago. Stevie Ray and C-Boy was real tight in those years.

In fact, I've got an amplifier that I used, a Vibrasonic Reverb amp. Stevie Ray Vaughan... I was trying to find the ideal amplifier that I would love, fall in love with. And I had tried all kind of amplifiers that Ray Henning [Heart of Texas Music Store] had out there, and he would let me use it. And if I didn't like it, bring it back, 'cause me and his son had gotten pretty tight. But every one that I used, I didn't like. Stevie Ray told me, "I got a Vibrasonic Reverb, and I bet you'll like it; but you've got to put a JBL speaker in it." He played down there that Friday, and we played that Sunday -- at least me and Major -- we all played together down there. And he left that amp. I played through it and I said, this is it! Then I had a problem finding a Vibrasonic Reverb. But I finally found one. And I've got it now and I've probably had it 10 years. The same amp. Boy, it's ideal! You put a JBL speaker in there, it'll get funky if you want it to get funky, but it won't bog down if you want to play a chord. But yet, it's loose enough if you want to get funky. 'Cause I was using speakers six feet tall, and it just stayed clean and clear all the time, and I got tired of that sound. Yeah, I got tired of that.

BFT: You don't remember it, but actually I was playing bass for you down there at those jam sessions.

BBH: Is that right?

BFT: At the Bottom Line.

BBH: Stevie Ray Vaughan used to come down there pretty much every Sunday. 'Fact, one Sunday me and him got up there and started playing together. 'Cause usually he would play.

BFT: I was playing bass.

BBH: You was on bass! I don't even remember that. We were playing on Tuesdays. In fact, he was giving me three bills for Tuesday nights. I never could understand that. That's the baddest night of the week.

BFT: That's why they're not doing it any more.

BBH: Yeah, right. And then he told us he would let us play when he opened up on East 6th, on up in the cut, but then when he opened up there he never would, you know? In fact, he would freeze all the time. He'd go, "I got Angela Strehli," you know. He had Angela Strehli and this other chick. Pretty soon he closed the whole thing. He introduced me to the guy over there at Steamboat. And that guy gave me four Tuesdays at three bills. That last Tuesday we had a big crowd, and I thought he was basing it on if you could draw there on a Tuesday, we will keep ya'll. He never did give me another set. The first couple of sets he paid me, and he had to go in the hole at least a couple of hundred bucks. But then when we built it to a good crowd, I had a lot of girls that was there. Bunch of them! They dug the band. When we would be sitting around, they would gather all around us. And I figured, this is it! The guy will probably give us another month. And he froze after that.

[End of tape.]