BFT: Do you think there is some kind of strategic, non-accidental, political events that happened that made it to Dad Jones' advantage and Johnny Holmes' advantage to go out of business, or stop doing business, or was it just the hard times?

JP: No, there was no underlying advantage for them to go out of business.

Speaking for Dad Jones, and I see him occasionally, he would still like to do that...to this day. As a matter of fact, I think he owns that whole block up there where Charlie's Playhouse is, where there's nothing there. But it would be a disadvantage for him go to into business now, for the fact that the area's dead. You can't open any kind of public place where there is no fluctuation of the crowd that's going to cater to your place, I don't care what kind of place you have. If you don't have a crowd come in there, then your place is going to die. It's not going to make it.

Consequently that's what happened to most of the black clubs in Austin, Texas. The black clubs were centered around the 11th, 12th Street area. Now and then you would have one out somewhere, for example there was the Hideaway Club out on 19th Street, that I had the house band out there for a long time. And we did good out there. But this was when black people couldn't live all over Austin as they do now.

When I first bought my first house in Austin in 1964, I couldn't buy a house in any section of the town. No. Matter of fact, right here where I'm living today, I couldn't buy a house over here. 1968 or '69, the first black man bought his house over in the Bluffs. His name was Grover Wallace; he worked for IBM. I was working for IBM at the time. He almost had to get a decree from the national government to buy a house over there. You don't know what that man went through to try and buy a house over there in the Bluffs. But he finally bought it.

But they will do what they call "redlining" even today. There are not any black people that live out in Lakeway. There are black people that have Lakeway money, but you can't buy no property in Lakeway. Hey, let's face it. I couldn't go to Lakeway and buy a house because they wouldn't sell it to me. If they did they would charge me so much money for it, it would be ridiculous. But it moved from the Bluffs to other areas. I mean it's still happening today. This is the kind of stuff that drove Johnny Holmes and Dad Jones and people like that out of business. OK, when black people became affluent enough to buy a house in this area, or to achieve a status in a certain job, or to make a certain amount of money, then they upgraded themselves. They don't want to associate, you know. That's why that area's down now, people don't want to go through there and associate.

They had a little club up there, used to be the East Room. I used to have that club. Hylan Adams had that. But it died simply because there wasn't enough people going through there. I mean the little club was nice on the inside, real nice. He really fixed it up. A lot of my effort, 'cause I did that many years ago. I put a whole lot of man-hours in there fixing that place up. But you just didn't have the people coming through to keep the place alive, because people didn't want to associate with the people that were hanging around up on the corner.

Not that those people are going to hurt anybody. I've never know anybody -- only body to be killed up there is a drug deal gone bad -- but those people weren't up there to really hurt anybody. They're just hanging out because they ain't got nothing else to do. Where they hang out and associate with somebody that they feel comfortable with, because they don't feel like they can go down to the Capitol and hang out. You know, so they stand right there and hang out with the people they are comfortable with. It so happens that's where they hang out, not that they go to hurt anybody, but people get that phobia. You see somebody that's standing there with some pants and a shirt on that he's had on for a month and a half and smell like a barrel full of grandaddies, you don't want to be associated with him; you want to go away. So that's kind of what happened.

I think Dad would love to be in business again. I think Johnny Holmes... We've had a couple of fundraisers to try and raise money for Johnny Holmes to reopen the Victory. But they giving him so much flack, man. Johnny told me personally that they won't let him have money! He could go borrow money from the bank if he'd sign his life away. And Johnny told me he's too old to go into that kind of debt now. Johnny Holmes is 70-something years old.

BFT: That's supposed to be an enterprise zone; they got all this city money...

JP: Who got it? Certainly Johnny Holmes doesn't have it. That Southern Dinette, that used to be one of the finest restaurants, soul food kitchen in town. It was probably... No, wasn't the only one, but it was one of the better ones. Great food in that place, man. It's closed down. Everything in that area up there just slammed shut. And the city has money. I've heard several times that it's on the drawing board to put a shopping center up there. When? Ground has never been broken for that. Who's got the money? Where is it? You've got some people in this town that could do something with that. I don't know, what can you do? Who do you go see about it? Who's got it? Who's hoarding it? Who's keeping it? Certainly they won't give it to Johnny. They won't give it to Dad to rebuild that area. I mean, we can put millions and millions of dollars into other things, but something that where some heritage is, where there's, you know... They won't put any money in.

They are talking about... I heard somebody say they are planning on tearing up 6th Street and rebuilding the bricks under the street. Those bricks are still there! They are going to redo those and brick 6th Street from Congress back to I-35. Going to tear up the street! I heard the other day where they are planning on making it two-way traffic again. Then I heard that they are going to close it off to do the bricks to uplift the facing of 6th Street. They've done that once. And as you know, years ago that used to be all-black, from Congress all the way back to I-35. East Avenue is what it used to be called. That used to be all-black. But no more. But, if you can allocate money to uplift the face of 6th Street, why can't you allocate some of that money to uplift the face of 11th Street? It's just not that much. We're talking about what, three blocks? Hey, somebody could do it.

BFT: Somebody should do it.

JP: Yeah, I can't do it. If I could, I would. If I knew who to go see to talk about doing it, I would probably schedule an interview with them and say, "Hey, let's sit down and talk."

BFT: What do you see yourself doing, now that you are back in Austin? Do you think you are here from now on?

JP: Yeah, it kind of looks that way. But I'm definitely on a mission. Well, I feel like now you don't have to be in any one certain locale to do it. You are only a plane flight from anywhere now. Used to be that you either had to go to Los Angeles or New York in the entertainment world in order to do something, but that has changed. You don't have to do that now, you can live anywhere. Willie Nelson can attest to that fact. You can live anywhere and still make it. You are only a plane flight away from those major locations.

But I feel like the mission that I am on, I have several things that I'd like to do musically. Basically, I guess the bottom line is I want to get the community more involved in music, and pass the word on. Don't let the ball drop here, don't let the ball stop here. The type of music that black people have created over the years, don't let it stop, don't let it die. Take it to the youngsters. Expose them to it. Create some kind of programs, some kind of summer programs for them to be involved in music. I'm not talking about summer bands, teaching classical music; I'm talking about summer bands teaching rhythm-and-blues, summer band teaching jazz. You know, learning kids what that's about. Create some big bands, bring the big bands back. Have a community big band, of not just kids but anybody who want to be involved, who've got horns in their closet, used to play instruments and things, and bring them out. Let's play them again! We'll start from scratch, but let's get involved, let's get involved and do something. And let these children see it and create some kind of positive image to let them know there are some other things out there than standing on the street trying to sell some rocks. You know, create some interest in yourself: self-worth. I am somebody. I don't have to do this. So if I can do that through the vehicle of music, let me do it. That's the kind of mission I'm on. It's going to take funding. There are the dollars out there that you can get to do these things, and I'm exploring the possibilities of doing that as we speak.

BFT: One other area that I wanted to hear your comments on... You've been talking about how pop music develops in America. A lot of what we've seen historically is a form might start being performed from black folks to black folks, it catches on and becomes cool. And in order for it to become mainstream and commercial and nationwide, it needs to get diluted or transformed or commercialized to the extent that it can make somebody money. And usually that ends up being big business corporations. And a lot of times it means that form that used to be black music has to be performed by white folks before it can make some money. Part of what some people are saying that they see going on in Austin right now, especially with the blues scene, is that we pay some amount of attention to older players who've been around and actually went into semi-retirement and now are back out playing again, but most of the young players who are playing rhythm-and-blues or blues, especially pretty much straight ahead blues, are white guys. What does it mean for progression of blues?

JP: Well it goes back to the same thing I've been saying all along, is that we have not passed the word on. We have not passed the ball on. We have not exposed enough black kids to our heritage, to what we've done. Partially the reason being for that is integration. There's no way to get around it. That's partially the reason for that. 75% of the reason for that is that. Had we not had integration -- which has its good points and its bad points -- had we not had integration, we would have had more focus in the black area. We would have had more focus on what goes on within this given section of town. Our children would have been more focused on what's happening. The black rhythm-and-blues bands would not have died the death that they died because there would still be more black clubs, there would still be more venues for black musicians to play in.

When integration did happen and we kind of shifted and moved away from... The focus kind of shifted and moved away from the black community to other areas, black people had the chance to go to other nightclubs, to go to other places that they had not previously been able to go in. In the early '60s and when I got to Austin, Texas, there were very few clubs that you could go into.

BFT: Unless you were going to work...

JP: Yeah, unless you were going to work -- on the other side of town! You just couldn't go there. They wouldn't let you in, period. As a matter of fact...

BFT: Did you play any of those places?

JP: I played most of them, yes.

BFT: But you could not be a customer?

JP: You could not patronize, no. I could go in and work as a musician. Yeah, I worked a whole lot of clubs like that in Austin.

Doctor Funk over the Jade Room, they used to have a place over the Jade Room. The guy that owned it was named Dr. Funk. Went out of business. And he and his wife had bought it, used to be a supermarket or something, right on the corner of San Jacinto and 15th Street. And they turned it into a big nightclub. And that was one of the first clubs that black kids and black people could frequent. The Jade Room. That was a block off I-35, two blocks off I-35. But that was one of the first ones that you could frequent and go in, and he had a mixed and integrated crowd. Which... It was a real big place, real nice.

And some of the other clubs caught on. The Continental Club, it caught on. And they had a big club out at the Villa Capri; it finally caught on and started permitting black people to come in. But before that there were very few clubs that you could even go in. And of course, the clubs that were in East Austin could not compete with the clubs on the other side of town as far as the decor. You know what I'm saying? Because black people did not have that kind of money that they could put in to make the clubs plush. I don't think there were any clubs in Austin on the Eastside that had carpet. I don't think there were any. There might have been, but that just wasn't... They didn't have that many. So, this is why the emphasis shifted, the focus changed.

So it was not passed on to the kids who were coming up. They didn't see this, so consequently it wasn't there for them to be exposed to. So they didn't know anything about it. So the only thing they could be exposed to was what they heard on records and stuff. This is kind of why the emphasis changed, and you don't see as many rock bands today. And what happened, the music that the white kids of the young white bands are loving today is the music that T.D. Bell and [Blues Boy] Hubbard and those guys played in 1950. Black people's already been through that. But this is an awakening to them. This is something totally new to them because they've finally learned how to play it.

BFT: But Hubbard can't get a gig...

JP: Hubbard can't get a gig!

What happens now is that, see, black people don't own anything in terms of businesses, in terms of big businesses, in terms of record companies. I don't think.

The only major record company that started out black was Motown, and he doesn't own it anymore; not for some years he hasn't owned it, but he's still the president. They allow him to be president, but he doesn't own it anymore. But Motown was responsible for a lot of black music, and that is probably the only one that reached that level of having some kind of say-so about the people that it pushed. Consequently the people it still has is still predominantly black.

CBS, Atlantic Records, and all of your other major record labels are not black-owned; they are not even in the upper-echelons of the decision-making of those companies. Very few, you know? Consequently, that's what happened. They're going to put that money in that white group that's coming on and try and help them make it, you know. Because... That's been the same old adage. If they can emulate the black singer, the better off they are. You can see that, turn on MTV. No way in the world Mariah Carey sings as good as Whitney Houston. Ain't no way, man. But who got a Grammy? You hear what I'm saying? It's the thing, she's good, she's a new artist, that's fine. But there are some other new artists out there too that's real good.

But that's the whole thing: the focus shifted away from the black community through advance planning. There's been something thought out over a period of 20 or 30 years. I mean it just didn't happen like that. It had to be thought about, careful planning. If I do that, then this will happen, if I do this this will happen; if I do this... This is one thing black people as a whole do not have. They don't have that vision, that long-range, what's going to happen. If I do this today, what would it cause five years from today? Or something that I do now, who is it going to effect? What kind of shock waves is it going to make down the road 10 years from now. No, we are real immediate. So this is something that we have to look at too, man.

BFT: Do you think if folks had been thinking that way back in the '50s or early '60s, they would have started saying, "No, you white kids get out of here! We don't need you learning to play this music!"

JP: Well see, we... What's his name, Louis Farakan, called the black people, "We are the mother's milk, always have been." Basically we are kind-hearted, good people. We are kind-hearted, good people. You ask it from us, and we give it to you if we've got it. We don't think in terms of that. We're not that kind of people to say, "I've got something, and I'm not going to share it with you." No, we're not that kind of people. We won't say, "You get out of here!" I don't think we have to say that. I mean, but we should have taken some legalities that would protect us more so. "OK, I'll show you this, but in turn you've got to do this for me."

BFT: With Blues Boy, for an example...

JP: Oh, you are talking to a whole bunch of folks, man!

BFT: He had what was happening back then. He had all these guys that used to come and hang out and sit in and take lessons. And then when the gigs started happening across I-35, I guess he got some of those gigs.

JP: No he didn't.

BFT: He didn't get offered a record deal. He didn't get offered tours. He didn't, "Here, come and be my house band." I guess he did get a stint as a house band for a while with Antones when he first opened up on 6th Street, but that didn't last.

JP: No, that didn't last.

BFT: Do you get mad?

JP: You feel more hurt than you feel anger. There's a certain amount of anger that you feel, sure, true enough.

Because, like Stevie Ray Vaughan got pushed to the top. I mean, Stevie Ray used to hang around Hubbard and people like that. They're playing black music. That's what they're playing. They're playing something that they heard some black cat play. But they get pushed to the top. Lord have mercy, look what we've got here! Angela Strehli... I gave her her first gig. She sang in my band. First gig, singing the blues.

But yeah, you feel a certain amount of anger. You feel a certain amount of hurt. Something you've given somebody else and they get all the attention for it, just like Hank Crawford. He feels kind of in with anger and hurt about David Sanborn. And David Sanborn, nobody's even saying thank you, man, for what you've done.

BFT: It doesn't go both ways?

JP: No, it doesn't go both ways, man. So that's a problem we deal with, man. That holds true in a lot of other forms: blues, jazz too, the same thing. You create something. You develop it. You hone it. Scott Joplin got recognized 50 years after he was dead. And had it not been for somebody making a movie...