I had a little extra material from this week’s “Honkytonk Heroes” — check out these leftover stories:
Billy Bob Barnett on he and Hub Baker‘s short-lived management contract with George “No Show” Jones: “George was out on Eagle Mountain Lake over at David McDavid’s house and they got tired of messing with him and they sent him by boat over to my house and the next thing I knew I was managing George. We tried to help him the best we could. We did 13 shows with him and he showed up to all 13 and that was quite a challenge. Artist management…well, it’s a people business as they say. He was too much of a challenge for me. It was easier to manage bulls than entertainers.”
Billy Bob’s Texas entertainment director Robert Gallagher on honkytonk crooner Gary Stewart:
“Gary Stewart was a mess and a handful but I loved the guy. It was like having a little ol’ kid here. We babied him and took care of him. He couldn’t do anything for himself except sing and write.” For instance, Stewart might think about a Popsicle and then become obsessed with having one. Gallagher would have to send somebody to find a box of Popsicles, and Stewart would get so excited about them he’d eat the whole box.
Gallagher on David Allan Coe’s first pair of tennis shoes: The outlaw musician wanted to buy his son a pair of tennis shoes and asked Gallagher to take him shopping. They went to a shoe store and while they were there Gallagher bought himself a pair. “Coe said, ‘Those look comfy — I’ve never had a pair of tennis shoes.’ He tried some on and said, ‘Man, these are comfortable.’ He bought them but I never saw him wear them again.”
Greg “Greggo” Williams on driving Waylon Jennings to the airport in the 1980s, a time when Jennings was strung out on cocaine: “He stunk so bad I needed to fumigate my car. He smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in a week and he looked like he hadn’t had one in a month. He was larger than life to me — the outlaws, Willie, Waylon, and Jerry Jeff and the whole cosmic cowboy scene — and I was in awe of him. I was wanting to talk and he wasn’t too terribly interested in talking.”
