Big Mama chasing Little Richard with a butcher knife

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Boy, oh boy, the action started. Every conceivable avenue of pleasure was rampant at this center of activity, a drunken man being dragged home by a good Samaritan, a couple of painted lilies standing in the corner smoking and indulging in that favorite West Dallas pastime—profanity. I paused to hear the deluge of obscene language coming from everywhere. A boy, apparently twelve years of age, walked up and asked for a cigarette. I gave him one on his nerve. He took two out of the package. A nickel Victrola started playing “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home?” Couples dancing, couples drinking, some talking in tones that I could not understand. A woman walked up and asked me to put a nickel in the Victrola. In obedience to her command, I placed a nickel in the slot and she requested that I play “Baby Don’t You Stay All Night.” The earthworm wiggling that started with the music was below my dignity, so I moved on down the avenue of “good times.”

They used to call him 'Groundhog' because he had some dirty ways

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a story involving saxophonist Evelyn Young. The band would often cross into Mexico to visit a favoured bordello when they had some time off in Houston, and on one occasion Evelyn, who liked to dress in men's clothing, insisted on joining the pilgrimage. The bordello was a rather informal affair: lacking actual rooms it had curtained-off areas each equipped with a bed for the patron. Evelyn. undetected as a woman by the girls, had made her selection along with the others and things were proceeding swimmingly for everyone until a scream and a lot of Spanish expletives came from Evelyn's 'room’ and her girl went tearing through the cubicles, breaking down the ropes and curtains and jumping over beds and bodies.

Crazy about titty ‘cause I sucked my mother’s titties so long

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Over the past ten years I’ve been doing home improvements, laying rugs, building furniture. I like to go down to Atlantic City, have a good time and come back. Who cares … I’m a cook at the Blarney Rock restaurant, that’s 267 Madison Avenue. We got corned beef, roast beef, daily specials … I was workin’ at the pop factory – Old Dutch pop factory that was on Homan and 13th somewhere around the ABC club … I had a good job at Ford motor factory – at that time I was bringing home $377 every two weeks. I was on one of the hardest jobs in the plant … Being good in this business doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make it. That’s life …

He wanted the "burlesque sound" from his drummers, a sensuous beat

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the band was also a magnet for the strange, drawing all sorts of people off the streets to rehearsals and performances. One of the most bizarre of those who turned up was Yochannan, one of many eccentric blues singers (like Dr.JoJo Adams and The Sandman) who could be seen on weekends on Maxwell Street and at local blues clubs like the Green Door. Yochannan had many stage names, including the Man from Outer Space, the Man from Mars, and the Muck Muck Man, and declared himself a descendant of the sun. Dressed in turban, sandals, and red, orange, and yellow "Asiatic" robes, he was always quick to hold forth to anyone on his private philosophy. And when he performed he was unpredictable and crude, often working bawdy material into the last song he sang at club appearances. His performance was wild, and Hattie Randolph remembers a gig with Yochannan in Kokomo, Indiana. "It was a big package thing. There was a band for dancing, a comic, a blues singer ... and Yochannan was on the show. When he started his act and began leaping over tables, one woman jumped up and shouted, "He's possessed! He's possessed!" and ran out of the club."

"Do you know what the words are to “Work with Me, Annie”?"

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“So we went to the club, and James started to sing. Now he must have seen an act named Big Jay McNeely. Big Jay had a thing where he would get on his back and he’d crawl all over the floor on his back blowing his horn, his saxophone. James must have seen this because James got on the floor and did the same thing, crawling from table to table singing this song I’d heard on the dub, which was ‘Please, Please, Please.’ It was fantastic.  I got back to Cincinnati and called the group. I told them to come up to Cincinnati at a certain time and I’d put them up in a hotel. They came up and we did the session. I was in St. Louis when Henry Glover and Andy Gibson, an arranger for King, came in on their way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. “They said, ‘You better call the old man right away. He told us when we found you to tell you you were fired.’ And I said, ‘Fired? For what? What did I do this time?’ They just said, ‘You’d better call.’ So I did. Nathan got on the phone and said, ‘What are you on? What kind of shit are you on?’ See, everybody in those days thought I was smoking pot because of the crazy things I did. Henry Glover said to me once, ‘I’m black, but I won’t go in some of the joints you do.’ So, I had to be on some shit, right? Anyway, Nathan says, ‘You gotta be on something, because how could anybody in his right mind record the worst piece of shit I ever heard in my life? Sounds like someone stuttering on a record, all he says is one word.’

women with meat on their bones and long green in their pocketbooks

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The true meaning of Spo-Dee-O-Dee! The relation of breast size to talent! What happens to guys who spend all their money on wine! Why a black man named Doc Sausage will never be elected president of the United States! Mafia a Go-Go! Who got Annie pregnant! How Louis Prima got that way! How to pick up Keely Smith! Why Elvis was a day late and a dollar short! Pills that can change the color of your skin! The price of the first TV Dinner, and of fame! Why Johnny Ace blew his brains out! How Hank Williams stood off Josef Stalin! Why Joe Turner didn't give a fuck about flattening his stomach! How heroin can harm your complexion! How to increase the size of your Cadillac! How to go from stardom to a park bench! And sometimes back! And much, much more! In this, the only book about rock 'n' roll that knows what it's talking about!

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.

shoved nickels in the jukebox and played Wynonie Blues Harris

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Out we jumped in the warm mad night hearing a wild tenorman bawling horn across the way going “EE-YAH! EE-YAH! EE-YAH!” and hands clapping to the beat and folks yelling “Go, go, go!” Far from escorting the girls into the place Neal was already racing across the street with his thumb in the air yelling “Blow, man, blow!” A bunch of colored men in Saturday night suits were whooping it up in front. It was a sawdust saloon, all wood, with a small bandstand near the john on which the fellows huddled with their hats on blowing over people’s heads, a crazy place. The behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from “EE-yah!” to a crazier “EE-de-lee-yah!” and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bullneck who didn’t give a damn about anything but punishing his tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom crash. Uproars of music and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Neal was clutching his head in the crowd and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging that tenorman to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes; and he was raising himself from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the furor. A six foot skinny Negro woman was rolling her bones at the man’s hornbell, and he just jabbed it at her, “Ee! ee! ee!” He had a foghorn tone; his horn was taped; he was a shipyard worker and he didn’t care. Everybody was rocking and roaring. Helen and Julie with beer in their hands were standing on their chairs shaking and jumping. Groups of colored guys stumbled in from the street falling over each other to get there. “Stay with it man!” roared a man with a foghorn voice, and let out a big groan that must have been heard clear out in Sacramento, ah-haa!