Friday Night Videos

I miss the Summit in Houston, before it was converted into yet another megachurch. I saw some great concerts there--Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Chicago--and even took in a few hockey games. It was a fun venue. Not the best acoustics, but good enough for an arena. Still, it kind of blows my mind to think of Parliament Funkadelic rockin' the house in H-Town like this. Wow. I was only 6 at the time, and it probably would've terrified me (I grew up listening to both kinds of music in my household: country and western) but if I could go back in time this would be a blast. Here's "Cosmic Slop" from their Mothership album.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Jim Croce.

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Friday Night Videos

If you somehow missed it, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the closure of the Chicken Ranch brothel in La Grange, Texas. To carry that theme over to today, obviously I considered featuring ZZ Tops' "La Grange" as today's song, as the album, Tres Hombres also celebrated its 40th anniversary this week. But I've featured "La Grange" before, and don't like to repeat myself. Likewise, songs from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas come to mind, but 1) that's a little too obvious and 2) I've already featured some of the best from the movie soundtrack. So instead, today we get a flashback to the no. 1 song from this week in 1973, and it's a good one: "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" by the legendary Jim Croce!

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Makem & Clancy.

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Remiss

Forgive me, loyal readers, I have been remiss. In this week of anniversaries, I missed a significant one. Forty years ago yesterday, that Little Ole Band from Texas, otherwise known as ZZ Top, released its third album, Tres Hombres. This was a career-defining album for the group, a wicked blues/rock fusion that became a top 10 hit and launched them to stardom. More germane to our purposes, the lead (and only) single from the album, "La Grange," took a classic John Lee Hooker blues riff and wrapped it with growling lyrics about a certain famed brothel on the outskirts of town. It's a little-known fact that "La Grange" was release--and garnered extensive airplay--well before the album came out. Which means all of America (or at least those tuned to FM rock stations) was listening to "La Grange" in late June and all of July, well before Marvin Zindler launched his TV crusade against the Chicken Ranch. That's why the Chicken Ranch wasn't the worst-kept secret in Texas--to be a secret (even a worst-kept one) people at least have to pretend it's a secret in the first place.

As far as the album is concerned, Radio.com has a nice little writeup about it with comments from Billy Gibbons.

And as tomorrow's major milestone continues rushing at us in breakneck pace, folks here and there are starting to take notice. The Fayette County Record has two stories on the Chicken Ranch in this week's edition, which is worth noting. The stories aren't available for reading online without a subscription, but if you're passing through Fayette County this week, it might be worthwhile to stop in at Hruska's in Ellinger and gab a couple of kolaches to go with a copy of the paper.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 39: Ghosts softcover and more

After some fits and starts, I now have a softcover edition of Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch available for those who want a copy but are a little more cost-conscious. The softcover edition has a slightly redesigned cover, but contains the same photography and text as the original hardcover.

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch (soft) by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke | Make Your Own Book

As always, both versions may be ordered online through the link above. If you are from La Grange, Texas, or plan to travel through there in the near future, I'm pleased to announce that the Fayette Library, Heritage Museum and Archive will carry the book starting in August. You can buy your copy there to help support a good cause--they really maintain a fantastic historical archive, and their assistance to me was invaluable in my research.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 38: Marvin Zindler died today

There are a couple of big Chicken Ranch-related anniversaries on tap this week, the first being the anniversary of Marvin Zindler's death from pancreatic cancer back in 2007.

Zindler, of course, is forever linked with the Chicken Ranch, as his series of exposés on the brothel directly led to its closure. I have it on good authority many hate him for that to this day, and have never forgotten, nor forgiven. Myself, I cannot bring myself to hate the man. Despite being a raging egomaniac, he was a powerful champion of the downtrodden in his lifetime, and did a tremendous amount of good. Where the Chicken Ranch was concerned, he let his lust for fame and the spotlight get the better of him, and this allowed people with a vendetta against the Chicken Ranch to manipulate him from a distance. Zindler was a person who firmly believed in his own righteous infallibility, and once it became clear the vast organized crime conspiracy behind the Chicken Ranch's operation did not exist, well, Zindler doubled down on the conspiracy angle rather than admitting he'd been duped. He went to his grave insisting on criminal conspiracy and corruption, although he was never able to prove any of his claims.

Zindler was a fascinating character, capable of great charity but also possessing feet of clay. His journalistic ethics early on in his career were non-existent, and improved only marginally once he became a television personality. As a radio and newspaper reporter, he was guilty of a multitude of sins that would shock journalists today, going to far as to splatter ketchup on a stabbing victim before taking his picture because the victim didn't look hurt enough. Yes, he symbolized everything wrong with sensationalistic, yellow journalism. But it's almost inevitable he, or someone like him, showed up on the scene in 1950s Houston, which was about as tough a wild west city that existed in the 20th century. Preserved tapes of Zindler's old radio news program on the long-gone KATL radio station serve as a fascinating time capsule:

In a very real way, Zindler is the reason I got involved in this Chicken Ranch project in the first place. I'd grown up seeing his cartoonish antics on television long before I'd ever heard of the Chicken Ranch, but by the time he died in 2007, I'd heard plenty of stories (of dubious accuracy) as well as seen The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas movie (with even less accuracy) and knew he'd been involved somehow with the whole affair. Being the inquisitive sort that I am, I started looking for a more thorough account of what actually happened. How had Zindler actually pulled the closure of the brothel off? The Wife--who'd grown curious about the place as well--gifted me with a book on the place by Jan Hutson for our anniversary in 2008. I read the book and... well, if it were any good, I wouldn't have had to write my own, now would I? I read that waste of paper cover to cover, and came away physically angry that anything so bad could see publication. The Wife didn't even get through the first chapter. But had Zindler not died, had I not known of him previously, the spark that started me on the slow burn toward writing what has now become two books on the subject never would've happened.

Now Playing: The Kinks BBC Sessions 1964-1977
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Friday Night Videos

This week has been a stressful and exhausting one. Despite the month of July being traditionally the slowest, quietest month of the year at work, I've been incredibly busy with a variety of irons in the fire. The biggest of these irons is currently earning significant news coverage across the U.S. and is a likely future National Geographic article and/or television special: The excavation of a remarkably-preserved 19th century shipwreck off the Texas coast in waters nearly a mile deep. What's not in the linked article but announced yesterday is the fact that two additional shipwrecks from the same era were also identified close by, indicating this was either a convoy or a privateer with it's captured prizes that went down in a storm two centuries ago. Wow. So it strikes me as appropriate that today's featured song be the Renaissance festival and folk-singer favorite "The Mermaid," performed here by Makem and Clancy:

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Blue Öyster Cult.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 37: GHOSTS walk among us

I am happy to announce that Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is now available for purchase! A companion volume to my yet-to-be-published epic history of the infamous Chicken Ranch brothel of La Grange, Texas, Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch takes readers on a visual tour of the historic ruins, touches on some history, dispels a few prevalent rumors and generally gives this well-known but often misunderstood and chronically neglected Texas historical site its due.

August 1, 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the Chicken Ranch's closure by Fayette County Sheriff J.T. "Jim" Flournoy, following a call from Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe. A week-long series of exposés by Houston consumer affairs reporter Marvin Zindler of KTRK Channel 13 stoked the flames that led to the closure. In light of the historical significance of those long ago events in the summer of 1973, I felt it important that the occasion be marked somehow, and thus this book was born.

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke | Make Your Own Book

Feel free to pass this along to anyone who has ever expressed an interest in Texas history, watched The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas or happens to like good photography of ruined buildings. Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch makes good wedding, anniversary, birthday, Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and Christmas gifts, but that pretty much goes without saying.

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