‘the women was wild, man! They was trying to rape me on the floor.'

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Eddie Billups came to me with this idea of coming out of a coffin before his act. So he put this casket behind the club and I had it all advertised, you know, 'Come and view the body of Eddie Billups' (laughs). Eddie put on this white make-up and got into the casket and we got some guys to bring the casket through the audience and lay it down up front while we played this Screamin' Jay Hawkins music. What we didn't know was this lady's momma had just died and she was in the audience. So when we opened the casket. Eddie threw out a cherry bomb 'Bam!' and this girl went crazy, screamin' and cryin.’ The owner drawed a shotgun on us, ran us out of there.

don't worry about nothin', cause nothin's gonna be all right.

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Jack Ruby's Vegas Club and the Silver Spur were dives that employed black jazz musicians in Naughty Dallas of the '50s: "The thing I remember most about Jack Ruby," chuckles Newman, "were the stag parties in his clubs. Whenever the striptease dancers came out, he'd want the musicians to turn our backs. 'Cause these were white ladies. He'd say, 'Now, you guys turn your backs so you can't see this.' But the strippers would insist that the drummer watch them, so he could catch their bumps and grinds. So Jack says, 'Well, the drummer can look, but the rest of you guys, you turn your backs on the bandstand."'

Cornell Gunther of the Coasters was prancing gay, Jerry recalls, but also the toughest of the bunch. He once took out four guys in a parking lot, who made kissing sounds as the Coasters exited a building. "Get in the car honey, lock the doors," he said to Billy Guy, Carl Gardner, and William "Dub" Jones, the great bass voice you hear on "Charlie Brown." Then Gunther turned around, called the gang "faggots," and beat up all four. The moral: Never mess with a tough fag.