Don Swift continues his cautionary tale about Dominionism, the theocratic tendency in right wing Christian thought that is influencing high profile figures like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Rick Perry. Retired history prof Swift recounts Dominionism’s history, the theologians who molded it, the different forms it takes, and its growing political clout.
Ivan Kuper was a colleague of “Crazy Cajun” Huey Meaux (the self-proclaimed “producer extraordinaire”) when Meaux hosted a radio show at Houston’s KPFT in the 1970s. Ivan brings us a remarkable story about the life and legacy of the charismatic Meaux, one of the most influential independent music producers of his (or any) time — and a highly-flawed character who twice went to prison for crimes related to drugs, child prostitution, and child pornography.
Huey P. Meaux was the Crazy Cajun
By Ivan Koop Kuper / The Rag Blog / September 22, 2011
One Friday evening in 1973, a burly looking biker entered the control room of community radio station KPFT FM, the Pacifica station that broadcast from the second floor of the since demolished Atlanta Life building in downtown Houston.
He was there to visit “The Crazy Cajun Radio Show,” and to ask host Huey P. Meaux to play a track from an old Eddy Arnold album that he brought with him. The biker told Meaux the record was the only possession of his late father’s that he owned, and that it was also the anniversary of his father’s death.
In his thick Cajun-French accent, Meaux dedicated a selection from the album to the memory of the biker’s father, and as the scratchy vinyl record spun on the turntable, the biker stood in the corner of the room and wept. It was from personal experiences like this one that Meaux developed his keen sense of reading people and knowing how music can trigger an emotional response.
Huey Purvis Meaux made his living as an independent record producer. It was a talent he honed in the 1950s while working as both a barber in Winnie, Texas, and a disc jockey at KPAC-AM in Port Arthur. It was there the naïve Meaux was first introduced to the magic of magnetic recording tape and analog reel-to-reel tape recorders.
Meaux’s mission in life was to discover local musical talents, take them into the recording studio, manufacture phonograph records from the master sound recordings, and promote the records to regional radio stations in hopes of receiving the much-coveted radio exposure necessary to make a record into a hit.
Similar to the East Texas “wildcatters” of days-gone-by who drilled oil wells on speculation of striking it rich, Meaux would also speculate on the abundance of homegrown talent, of all musical genres, he found in the night clubs and road houses of East Texas and Louisiana.
Raised “dirt poor” with barely a high school education, Meaux would leave his mark on the music industry and become a significant contributor to popular American culture.
Meaux followed a specific business model that he perfected over 30 years. He learned that after first breaking a single regionally, and with the right amount of radio exposure and sales from independent record distributors, he could then have the leverage necessary to license both the master sound recording and the copyright of the composition to the larger independents and the once prevalent major labels.
Meaux was no novice to this process or to the business of music. Between 1959 and 1985, his name would be associated with 55 gold singles and albums, and eight platinum albums that were produced in recording studios primarily in New Orleans, Houston, and Pasadena, Texas.
“I was so nervous and my hands were shaking as I was fading out that song,” Meaux would always recall when discussing “I’m Leaving It Up To You,” a track he produced from the Louisiana singing duo known as Dale and Grace, “because in my heart I just knew I had a hit on my hands.”
Meaux’s intuition was on target because by October 1963, the remake of the composition originally penned and recorded by California’s Don “Sugarcane” Harris and Dewey Terry, reached the No. 1 position on Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 chart, and remained on the chart for 12 weeks. The selection that Meaux chose for the Louisiana duo to record resurfaced nine years later when it charted again when it was recorded by America’s “squeaky-clean” brother and sister singing duo, Donny and Marie Osmond.
“My records are so bad that the only reason people buy so many is to keep them off the market,” Meaux would always boast to those held captive by his bravado and flamboyant personality. With his gift for gab, Meaux could charm both his small town radio audience and the most jaded of big city music industry veterans. If you were to ask Huey Meaux how he was doing or how he was feeling at any given time, his stock comeback would be, “If I felt any betta’ bruddah, I’d run for gouvna,’ you betta’ sho’ believe it.”
“I saved his neck many times from the IRS and on many other occasions and there was never any appreciation shown from him,” said the 85-year-old Schechter who has made a career of keeping the books for a who’s-who of rock royalty.
I quit Huey twice but he chose to ignore me.
I first met Huey way back in 1969 after he got out of jail. He came to New York to visit his lawyer Paul Marshall and he asked Paul to find him a “Jewish New York accountant.” Marshall referred him to me and he came by the office and I began doing business for him. Our first order of business was an audit of Scepter Records owned by Florence Greenberg who owed Huey back royalties.
Huey was a real character. He was fascinating, yet he could also be repulsive at times. The last time I saw him was in 1996, right before he went away to prison again.
Born March 10, 1929, in Wright, Louisiana, and raised in Kaplan in the heart of “Acadiana,” Meaux always recalled a time growing up when only French was spoken at home and English was his second language.” My teachers used to whip your ass if they caught you speaking French in public school,” Meaux would say about his grade school days.
Meaux’s family settled in East Texas in the town of Winnie, 23 miles south of Beaumont, in 1940, when he was 12. Winnie was in the rich, culturally fertile region of East Texas near the Louisiana border known as “The Golden Triangle.” This region incubated the musical talents of Aubrey “Moon” Mullican, George Jones, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, “Barbara Lynn” Ozen, Janis Joplin, Johnny Preston, Barbara Mauritz, and J.P. Richardson aka “The Big Bopper.”
Meaux came of age at a time when commercial “terrestrial” radio stations were still independently owned and music programming decisions were made based on local sales figures. It was also a time in history when the frequency of a particular record’s radio airplay could be monetarily manipulated by independent record producers and radio promoters.
“Is it true that payola is dead?” a young man asked Meaux in the lobby of the former Marriott Hotel in downtown Austin after he delivered a colorful keynote address at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in 1987. A puzzled-looking Meaux stared at the young man and replied, “Dead? I didn’t even know it was sick, little bruddah.”
Meaux’s special talent in the music business was mastery over the discipline of A & R, or “artist and repertoire” as it was originally known. He had an uncanny knack for selecting the right musical material for the right recording artist to elicit the right vocal interpretation in the recording process.
The objective of this equation was to maximize the greatest profit potential for the master tape owner, the music publisher, the distributing label, the artist manager, and the booking agent. Then as now, it is to one’s financial benefit to wear as many of these “hats” as legally possible, a business philosophy that Meaux subscribed to and practiced throughout his professional career.
Not all of the musical groups Meaux had under contract always agreed with or trusted Meaux’s choice of material. A young, unknown singer from Rosenberg, Texas named Billy Joe Thomas who fronted a band called the Triumphs can still be heard complaining on the eight-track master recording to the studio engineer one evening: “Let’s get this over with and record that damn song just to get Huey off my ass.”
The selection he was referring to was “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” a song penned and originally recorded by Hank Williams. The B.J. Thomas version, released on Meaux’s Pacemaker label and then licensed to New York’s Scepter Records, reached the No. 8 position on Billboard’s Hot 100 by March 1966, and stayed on the chart for 10 weeks before its demise.
Although Meaux was the proud father of an adopted son, he was known to brag about all the musicians and singers he nurtured throughout the years — whom he also referred to as his sons. He especially spoke highly of Douglas Wayne Sahm and August “Augie” Meyers of San Antonio, and would always say, “I raised those boys.”
Meaux would often recall the story of the hyperactive, multi-talented teenage Sahm who was always “pestering” Meaux to record his compositions. This relationship ultimately produced Texas’ contribution to the “British Invasion” in the early 1960s with the creation of the Sir Douglas Quintet and the release of the single, “She’s About a Mover.” It was originally titled “She’s a Body Mover,” but Meaux believed the title sounded too sexually suggestive and made Sahm change it.
The Tribe/London release of this single reached the No. 13 position nationally by April 1965, and remained on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for nine weeks. “I love Doug like my own son,” Meaux would always say about the late Doug Sahm, “but he was so mean to Augie. Doug used to make Augie carry all the equipment to the gigs and with his bad leg too,” referring to Quintet collaborator and organist Meyers who was afflicted with polio as a child.
One year later, Meaux and Booth found themselves charged in federal court with conspiracy to transport a minor across state lines for the purpose of prostitution in violation of the Mann Act. Meaux and Booth appealed their case, and although they were represented by high-profile Houston attorney Percy Foreman, their rehearing was denied by the United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
In February 1968, Meaux was sentenced to three years in prison. He would only serve eight months at the low security Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, Texas, near Dallas, before being released for good behavior.
In January 1981, at the end of his term as 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter granted Meaux a full pardon for his transgression. “That’s when I went away to college,” Meaux would always tell those who asked him about the time he spent in prison during this period.
Not all the hit records that Meaux is associated with were a direct result of his personal production efforts. Sometimes he acted as middleman and brokered the licensing deal to larger labels on behalf of other independent producers, as in the case of a track called “Tighten Up” by Archie Bell and the Drells.
Produced by legendary Houston DJ “Skipper” Lee Frazier, this track was licensed to Atlantic Records with Meaux’s help after first being released in Houston on Frazier’s Ovid label. Frazier, like most independent producers, would first sell his records on consignment to retailers “out of the trunk” before they were picked up for distribution by a larger label.
However, with the help of Atlantic Records, while Meaux was serving time in prison, this R&B crossover hit simultaneously reached the No. 1 position on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard R&B charts for two weeks by April 1968, and remained on the charts for 13 weeks.
“I first met Huey when I was a disc jockey with KCOH-AM radio in Houston,” Frazier recalled.
He had a relationship with most the DJs in Houston and throughout the country for that matter, and Huey was always promoting his records to all the DJs. He was a very personable man and he would bring his records around to the station and ask me to play them.
We had a personal relationship, so when I recorded a record by a band I was managing and it started selling locally, Huey came to me and said, I think can get that record placed with Atlantic Records but I want a piece of the action. I told Huey I wouldn’t mind that because I knew Huey had a good relationship with Atlantic because he recorded “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” by Barbara Lynn, and I also knew that he knew everybody in that New York office.
So Atlantic took the record and boom, it went to number one on the R&B charts and then, boom, it became a million-seller. I found out years later that Huey knew how many records I was selling locally when he contacted me because he kept up with how many records I was ordering from the local record presser.
After Meaux was released from prison in 1968, the magic of producing another hit record eluded him for several years. Music industry insiders told him that he was “beating a dead horse” when he informed them he was thinking of recording “El Be Bop Kid,” Baldemar Huerta from San Benito, Texas — aka Freddy Fender.
“Before The Next Teardrop Falls,” written by the Nashville songwriting team of Vivian Keith and Ben Peters, had been recorded more than a dozen times throughout the years, but had never struck gold. By the mid-1970s, Meaux’s intuitive A&R talent was on target once again with his production of the sentimental bilingual ballad with its Tex-Mex flavor. Originally released on Meaux’s Crazy Cajun label and then licensed to ABC/Dot, “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” would become a No. 1 crossover single on both the Pop and Country charts by March 1975, and would remain on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for another 15 weeks.
The single not only revived Fender’s career, but it also won “Single of the Year” at the 9th Annual Country Music Association Awards in 1975. In addition, the composition also earned nominations for “Best Country Song” and “Best Country Vocal Performance” at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards in 1976.
In 1985, Meaux brokered his last major licensing deal for long-time friend and business associate Floyd Soileau of Ville Platte, Louisiana. Meaux had produced sessions for Soileau with artists Soileau had under contract beginning in the 1950s. In 1984, Soileau brought Meaux the single, “(Don’t Mess With) My Toot Toot” that had broken out in New Orleans when recorded by Zydeco/R & B artist Rockin’ Sydney Simien on Soileau’s label, Maison de Soul.
Meaux arranged a licensing deal for Soileau that year with multinational Epic Records. Although never breaking into Billboard’s Hot 100 Pop chart, the single did reach platinum status and peaked in the No. 19 position on Billboard’s Country chart. “My Toot Toot” would also win a Grammy Award for Soileau and the late Sydney Simien for “Best Ethnic and Traditional Folk Record,” in 1986.
1986 was also the year Meaux surprised friends and industry associates when he appeared on the big screen in the David Byrne feature-length movie True Stories. Meaux made a brief cameo appearance during the “Wild Wild Life” segment of the film, playing the role of a patois-speaking “Crazy Cajun” disc jockey.
Always generous with his time and advice, Meaux was also known to mentor aspiring young music producers because he believed his good deeds would be reciprocated and the relationships he developed would prove to be mutually beneficial. That was not the case however with ZZ Top personal manager and producer, Bill Ham.
Meaux was disappointed that Ham never booked studio time at his Sugar Hill Studios in Houston, choosing to record in Tyler, Texas, and Memphis instead. He would repay the snub in 1986 by suing Ham and ZZ Top for copyright infringement on behalf of Houston songwriter and former rock DJ, Linden Hudson.
Hudson’s composition, “Thug,” found its way onto the multi-platinum ZZ Top album, Eliminator, without the proper writer credit or music publisher credit which, coincidentally, was Crazy Cajun Music. With the assistance of Houston attorney David W. Showalter, Meaux and Hudson (and Showalter) were awarded a $600,000 out-of-court settlement in compensatory damages from Ham and that “Little Ol’ Band from Texas.”
Meaux would plead guilty to five felony charges including possession of cocaine, possession of child pornography, sexual assault, and jumping bail. The Honorable Judge Michael McSpadden of the 209th District Court of Harris County would assess his punishment at 15 years for cocaine possession and sexual assault, and 10 years for possession of child pornography and bail jumping, to be served concurrently.
However, before Meaux’s criminal trial would begin, the two daughters of Meaux’s former girlfriend filed a civil lawsuit for alleged sexual abuse and emotional distress they were subjected to during the seven years Meaux lived with them and their mother. In mid-February, the now adult McDowell Sisters, represented by attorney Dick Deguerin, brought a suit against Meaux in Harris County’s 61st Civil District Court for the sum of 10 million dollars in punitive damages in their request for relief.
By October, the plaintiffs agreed on a final judgment of $900,000, and to dismiss all further claims against defendant Meaux.
In June 1996, Meaux was sent to prison for his criminal offenses and would remain incarcerated for the next six years. Meaux served time at both the privately owned Lockhart Work Facility near Austin, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Ellis Unit in Huntsville.
In September 2002, he was paroled to the Beaumont Center Halfway House, and was then placed on “house arrest” with his mobility restricted and was electronically monitored by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Meaux was looking forward to freedom after four years of enforced detention on the rural property he owned on the outskirts of Winnie — where he had been living in his double-wide mobile home.
“I go to Beaumont every month now to see my probation officer and go shopping, but I’ll be getting my ankle bracelet off March 4th,” Meaux said during our last telephone conversation in January 2011. “The first thing I’m gonna do is go to New Orleans and get me some gumbo, and after that, I’m going to Austin to see some friends.”
Meaux never made it to New Orleans or to Austin, and on April 23, 2011, at 82, after four months of poor health, Meaux died from multiple organ failure. Meaux was found in his double-wide trailer and scattered about the floor in no particular order were old boxes of magnetic recording tape and photographs that chronicled his 40-plus years in the music business.
Many friends and music industry associates chose to distance themselves from the controversial Meaux, and his funeral service at Broussard’s Funeral Home was attended mainly by immediate family members.
However, even after death, the defiant self-proclaimed “producer extraordinaire” still had the ability to surprise and even shock those in attendance at Winnie’s Fairview Cemetery. Inscribed on the back side of his “supersized” tombstone was a list of underwriters that Meaux had solicited during the time of his incarceration to help defray the cost of his funeral.
On the front side was inscribed an epitaph of Meaux’s personal life philosophy: “Did It My Way – No Regrets – Love Ya – Bye Now – Huey.” Once more Meaux was able to get in the last word, prove he was still an innovator and a proponent of crass commercialism who to the very end never showed any sign of remorse.
[Ivan Koop Kuper is a graduate student at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, and maintains a healthy diet of music, media, and popular culture. From 1973-1975, Ivan worked with Huey P. Meaux at KPFT-FM in Houston. He can be reached at kuperi@stthom.edu. Find more articles by Ivan Koop Kuper on The Rag Blog.]
The anti-angel forces
By Sarito Carol Neiman / The Rag Blog / September 22, 2011
[Shredding the Envelope (“Ruminations on news, taboos, and space beyond time”) is Sarito Carol Neiman’s (occasionally) regular column for The Rag Blog. This is the third in a series. Read Part I here.]
The computer workstation in my dad’s room, according to the sales pitches of companies who sell them, was designed with the best of intentions to improve both the efficiency and quality of care in hospitals.
It would allow Dad’s caretakers to enter the latest information about his care (vital signs taken, medications given, observations observed) and to retrieve any information about him and his condition they might need — on the spot, without having to go and fetch it from (or take it to) its central location at the nursing station down the hall.
It would allow them (in theory) to spend a little extra time in the rooms with the patients, as they entered or retrieved their information — assuming they could safely mix “quality time” with the patient and the entry/retrieval of complex data at the same time. (An assumption of multitasking ability whose superhuman dimensions the sales pitches overlook.)
In theory, this computer workstation could be part of a vast network of computers, consolidating input gathered from every healthcare professional who had ever seen my dad for any reason. It could offer a more comprehensive picture of Dad’s medical history and current condition than any single human could possibly manage.
Imagine the possibilities… if such a network had been in place from the beginning of this years-long saga, and if all the professionals involved in Dad’s care had been doing more than just their jobs, he very likely would never have ended up in the hospital in the first place.
Those are some pretty hefty “ifs.” And as good a starting point as any to take a look at the “anti-angel forces” at work in the U.S. healthcare system.
Let’s take care of the big stuff first. Let’s assume that our “inalienable rights” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness include the right to healthcare — not as a consequence of having the money to pay the going market rates for it, but as a consequence of being human. Let’s assume, in other words, that there is no need for private insurance companies, hence no fear that a person’s medical history will be used to deny coverage, or to charge an arm and a leg for it.
Let’s further assume that we can agree that being a healthcare provider is a very special calling indeed, and that those who take up the calling should be honored and rewarded for making that choice, rather than being thrust into indentured servitude by a mountain of postgraduate debt, forced to pay for that debt by performing procedures rather than spending time with and understanding their patients, and being stalked by “ambulance-chasing” lawyers whose primary motive is to make a buck on their mistakes and on the suffering of the victims of those mistakes.
(More about the whole “tort reform”/malpractice thing at another time.)
So now we’ve taken care of the big stuff, we get to the sticky, non-systemic, human bits.
Of course, a universal “inalienable right” to healthcare would need us all — hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, aides, and patients, all of us — to behave sensibly, like grown-ups.
We would understand that sometimes things get broken and can’t be fixed, and not every mistake is the result of malice or incompetence. We would know the futility, even harmfulness, of squandering scarce resources on experimental fixes that are likely to fail, or only extend suffering rather than heal. We would understand that death is a natural and inevitable part of the continuum of life.
We would do our very best to keep ourselves healthy and, when those efforts fail, do our best to comprehend the reasons and take responsibility for whatever part we might play in getting better. We would know when to push on against all odds, and when to call it quits. We would celebrate every small victory, and we would know when to allow ourselves to grieve.
We would, in other words, be able to see every health crisis for the opportunity it brings — to take stock of our priorities, to allow ourselves to love and be loved, to heal the old and untended wounds that so often seem to surface at these times.
To help us get from here to there, though (it’s unlikely we’re just going to wake up and find ourselves there), we’d have to start with a clear-eyed look at what we’ve got now.
The computer workstation in my dad’s room, attached conveniently out of the way on the wall, was a neutral presence, at first glance. And, as advertised, it was undoubtedly a time-saving, mistake-reducing tool. It wasn’t until it broke down for a few days that I began to understand how it was also being used by “anti-angel” forces.
As long as this tool was functioning, nurses came and went with their tasks-to-perform and medications-to-give on what was apparently a rigid, inflexible schedule. It didn’t matter whether Dad was eating his breakfast, having a phone conversation with a loved one, or peacefully asleep — the pills had to be given, the BP cuff strapped on, the thermometer inserted. Toward the end of his stay, when he was better able to move around, he discovered that the only way to assert his right to uninterrupted peace and quiet was to go and sit on the toilet.
When the computer workstation tool stopped functioning (and I confess to an irrational fear that I might be blowing the cover of a complex angel-conspiracy) somehow it became fine to let Dad finish his breakfast, or his phone call. To come back a few minutes later to do whatever was on the nursing agenda to be done. Not a problem, said the gracious smiles and body language of the nurses carrying the pills and thermometers. I’ll come back in a little while when you’re done.
And they didn’t forget, either — it wasn’t as though these important tasks magically disappeared from the “do-list” just for lack of computer assistance.
That’s when it occurred to me that behind the hunched shoulders and grim determination of nursing “business as usual” was a Big Brother element that the nurses were fully aware of, but the workstation sales pitches don’t mention. A function more interesting to hospital administrators and lawyers, say, than to doctors or other actual hands-on providers of Dad’s care.
It works like this: the nurse turns on the computer and scans in her badge (nurse presence accounted for) at a certain time (schedule adhered to and trackable by the minute) followed by scans of medication labels, or keystroke entries of vital signs (asses covered). Checked off the list, tidy and impersonal, easily scanned by those whose interest is that no unpredictable breezes of individual human needs or circumstance should interfere with the hum of the well-oiled (and litigation-protected) hospital machine.
The doctors didn’t have to use this workstation, however. They could, if they wanted to look something up… but they didn’t have to, nor did they have to tell it whatever it was they did while they were there.
My sense was that the whole workstation set-up not only reflects but also reinforces the subordinate and purely functional role of nurses in the system as it is. In most hospitals — with a few notable exceptions, I have heard — nurses are told what to do (“doctor’s orders”), expected to pass along requests or problems from the patients, and rarely if ever encouraged (or even allowed) to express an opinion, make a recommendation, or question a decision by the doctor that their best intelligence tells them might not be a good idea. A bit silly, to put a better face on it than it deserves — given that the nurses spend far more time with patients on an hour-by-hour basis than any doctor can possibly afford to spend.
It also, of course, reflects the fact that as the system is set up now, the actions of doctors and the reasons behind those actions are largely protected from public view, and are not required to be shared with other members of the team unless the doctor chooses to share them.
Doctors.
When I first met Dad’s surgeon, I didn’t like him much. Not because I thought he was incompetent — on the contrary, I was satisfied that he was the best available anywhere near Dad’s home. My dislike was more in the realm of “bedside manner.”
I can’t really blame him for the fact that at our first meeting he was uninterested in knowing who I was or why I was there, to the point of being dismissive. He had, after all, already met and spoken with several members of the family along the way, and at that point I must have seemed like yet another potential burden of irrelevant and time-consuming human interaction that he would just as soon avoid.
Plus, he’s a surgeon after all, not a GP — the skill sets required to do an excellent job in those two realms are different. Even if the skills to do more than the job might overlap or even be the same.
Over subsequent meetings our relationship was rocky, with additions of ego-prickliness alongside any deficits in bedside-manner skills. He didn’t like being questioned, especially in front of his entourage. This dislike, it seemed to me, carried the weight of a reflexive assumption that my questions were posed as a challenge, rather than as a sincere effort to understand.
I did my best to accommodate the lesser angels of his nature, to reassure him that I absolutely trusted his medical expertise, while still honoring my own concerns for the rocky spots in Dad’s recovery and whatever support I might be able to lend as a “person on the ground.” In the end, I didn’t want him to change, really — I thought he could use a good “right-hand” person, more a GP type, whom he trusted and who trusted him, to take care of the squishy bits of listening patiently and explaining things to people like me, and maybe translating my concerns into a language he could better understand and relate to.
We worked it out, somehow — the mutual respect and understanding between him and Dad was undisturbed, and when he finally came in with the happy news that Dad could leave the hospital and go on to the next stage of getting strong enough to go home, I was as fully included in the sharing of that news as was appropriate, given who was most directly affected.
I was also delighted to hear that during Dad’s recent follow-up visit, the doctor showed him “before and after” X-rays of his lung, and the transformation that had taken place. The news nicely balanced what happened that day when Dad was having such a hard time, convinced he wasn’t getting any better and grumbling about having to go downstairs for a new X-ray every morning.
When the doctor came by, I suggested maybe Dad could see a before-and-after picture, so he could look for himself how things were going. The response was a little explosion of exasperated breath, an energetic (if not physical) throwing up of the hands, and a “that’s not so easy, it’s all on computer” before turning around and (energetically) stomping out the door.
I liked it when I heard the news that the doctor had managed that “show and tell” … because I know it helped Dad, as it would have helped him on that day I suggested it in the hospital, to get a handle on whether the whole ordeal had really been worth it. Maybe, I thought, just maybe he had heard me after all. Maybe he’ll remember it the next time one of his patients is having a hard time convincing himself it’s all worth it.
We all have a lot of work to do if we are going to meet the challenges of providing thoughtful, competent, whole-person healthcare in this world.
We’ll have to figure out the best ways to weed out those who are thoughtless and incompetent and in jobs they aren’t suited for. And we’ll have to work on minimizing the harm done by our natural human tendencies to want magic pills, and to substitute a messy and mysterious wholeness with discrete and manageable, but lifeless, parts.
We’ll need to figure out how to shift our focus from avoiding the worst to striving for the best.
We’ll have to take a deep look at the role of lawyers in the healthcare system, and the hopeless, despairing greediness they so often foster in our lives. We’ll need to acknowledge that no amount of money can alleviate pain and suffering, and that often, all any of us really wants is a heartfelt apology, shared grief, and support for moving through a loss. And yes, too, sometimes, the satisfaction of knowing that an incompetent, greedy, or careless practitioner will never be able to harm anyone again.
It’s a lot of work, and it needs us all to do more than just our jobs. And at the moment, for me, it’s right up there among the top jobs on the list of those most important and meaningful.
[Sarito Carol Neiman (then just “Carol”) was a founding editor of The Rag in 1966 Austin, and later edited New Left Notes, the national newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). With then-husband Greg Calvert, Neiman co-authored one of the seminal books of the New Left era, A Disrupted History: The New Left and the New Capitalism and later compiled and edited the contemporary Buddhist mystic Osho’s posthumous Authobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic. Neiman, also an actress and stage director, currently lives in Junction, Texas. Read more articles by Sarito Carol Neiman on The Rag Blog]
They want to take over government and create a theocracy. No wonder they see nothing wrong in playing politics from the pulpit.
By Don Swift / The Rag Blog / September 21, 2011
[This is the second in a series on Dominionism by Don Swift. See Part I here.]
Dominionists refuse to accept the separation of church and state. They want to take over government and other areas of society and create a theocracy. No wonder they see nothing wrong in playing politics from the pulpit.
Reverend Ed Kalnins, once Sarah Palin’s pastor at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, has consigned critics of George W. Bush to hell. He even denounced those who criticized Bush’s handling of Katrina. He doubted that people who voted for John Kerry in 2004 would be welcomed to heaven.
He said: “I’m not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I’m sorry.” Kalnins added: “If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time.
There are different forms of Dominionism. Christian Reconstructionism is one important form. These people believe that the Kingdom of God was established on earth at the time of the Resurrection and that it is their job to complete its work by taking control of society. Then Christ can return in the Second Coming. Scholars concerned with technicalities say this view is rooted in pre-suppositionism, meaning the kingdom must be in place before the Second Coming.
Calvinist theologian J.Rousas Rushdoony founded the movement Christian Reconstructionism back in the 1960s. Author of the three volume Institutes of Biblical Law, Rushdoony was a prolific writer, and he was a founder of the Christian home-schooling movement. He also defended American slavery. He appeared often on Pat Robertson’s television program in the 1980s, but Robertson claims he does not understand what Dominionism is.
Rushdoomy hated the Federal Reserve and was revered by gold hoarders. He thought that American law should be replaced with the Old Testament. The irony is that some of his followers today are vociferous in denouncing shariah law. He wrote in 1982, “With the coming collapse of the humanistic state, the Christian must be prepared to take over…”
This rightist prophet led the Chalcedon Foundation, which carries on his work and is known for its virulent homophobia. His followers are bent on reconstructing “our fallen society,” and the recent efforts of the Tea Baggers to bring down the financial system is an indication of how far they will go.
They take seriously the extreme and harsh punishments in the Old Testament and would apply the death penalty to apostasy, homosexuality, and abortion. Many believe the Bible requires physical punishment of children. Some believe that seven years of slavery would be an acceptable punishment for some offenses today, but none believe that slavery now should be based on race.
The Christian Reconstructionists or Theonomists have influenced numerous Protestant leaders without necessarily making them Dominionists. Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy have supported Dominionist books.
They have a “kingdom-now theology.” In the George W. Bush White House, Marvin Olasky, a Christian Reconstructionist, had great influence.
George Grant, former executive director of Coral Ridge Ministry, said that “it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice … It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time … World conquest.” That organization is now called Truth in Action Ministries, and Rep. Michelle Bachmann has close ties to it.
She appeared in one of its documentaries that attacks socialism, and she has espoused the Dominionist position that government has no right to collect more than 10% of a person’s earnings in taxes. She has also promoted Grant’s book on Robert E. Lee, in which the godly Confederacy battled the godless North. It is a pro-slavery book, and Bachmann recommended it on her web site for some time.
Michelle Bachmann has admitted being strongly influenced by a Reconstructionist, John Eidsmore, a Dominionist teaching at Oral Roberts University, a Pentecostal school. Eidsmore spoke to Alabama secessionists last year and defended the right of a state to secede and explicitly endorsed the constitutional views of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis.
Bachmann has also said that she was influenced by the writings of Dominionist Francis Schaeffer. Bachmann said she decided to become a politician after watching one of his films Three years before his death, Schaeffer warned that America would descend into a tyrannical state and that an authoritarian elite would scheme to bring about this terrible result. He believed that only true Christians should rule.
Bachmann has also had good things to say about Dominionist historian David Barton, whose website is WallBuilders. He had followed Rushdoony in defending American slavery. Barton teaches that the Bible provides clear guidance on all public policy matters.
[Don Swift, a retired history professor, also writes under the name Sherman DeBrosse. Read more articles by Don Swift on The Rag Blog.]
Also see:
Part 4: The independent Republic of Texas, 1836-1845
By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / September 21, 2011
[This is Part 4 of Bob Feldman’s Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]
At the time it became an Anglo settler/colonist-dominated independent republic in 1836, Texas’s population included approximately 30,000 Anglo residents, 14,500 Native American residents, 3,470 Spanish-speaking Latino or Hispanic residents, 5,000 enslaved African-American residents and a small number of free African-Americans.
According to Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528-1995, “several free blacks and a few slaves served in the Texas Revolution;” and, ironically, some free African-Americans like “Robert Thompson and the Ashworths provided funds and supplies to the Texas cause.”
Yet the new white supremacist Republic of Texas government treated neither free blacks nor enslaved blacks as equals between 1836 and 1845. As black Texans recalled, for example, “under republic laws, free persons of one-eighth Negro blood could not vote, own property, testify in court against whites, or intermarry with them;” and in 1840 the Houston City Council even “denied free Negroes and slaves the right to hold dances without the permission of the mayor” of Houston.
In addition, between 1836 and 1845, no “free person of color” was allowed to live in the Republic of Texas without the permission of Texas’s legislative body.
Given the increased special oppression faced by African-Americans after the Republic of Texas was established, it’s not surprising that “escaped slaves fought with the Cherokees against the Texas army which drove that tribe from East Texas in 1838” (before most Cherokees were soon forced to move out of the Republic of Texas in July 1839 after the Battle of the Neches), according to Black Texans.
Because there were no longer any restrictions placed on the importation of slaves into Texas from the United States after the independent Republic of Texas was established, between 1836 and 1840 the number of African-American slaves residing in Texas increased from 5,000 to 11,323.
According to Black Texans, “about 40 percent of Texas slaves lived along the coast and in the East Texas river valleys where they labored in groups — of from 20 up to 313 primarily field hands — on plantations to produce cotton, corn and a limited amount of sugar in coastal countries below Houston.” And “by 1840 there were 145 slaves among the 850 or so inhabitants” of Austin, Texas, according to David Humphrey’s 1985 book, Austin: An Illustrated History.
The same book also recalled that the Republic of Texas’s “first permanent capitol” in Austin “was constructed in significant part by slaves who were signed on for the job” and “the hiring system provided income for [white Texas] masters who owned more slaves than they had work for.” But as early as the late 1830s, “some of the African-American slaves in Austin resisted their bondage by running away” and “headed for Mexico and the freedom to be gained by crossing the Rio Grande,” according to Austin: An Illustrated History.
It was also in the late 1830s that the first attempt to organize Texas workers into a labor union happened. As F. Ray Marshall’s 1967 book, Labor in the South recalled, “probably the first union organized in Texas was the Texas Typographical Society formed at Houston in 1838.”
In March 1842, Mexican government troops also marched into Texas again, and on Sept. 11, 1842 the Mexican Army actually reestablished Mexican control of San Antonio for a week — until the Republic of Texas’s predominantly Anglo defenders recaptured San Antonio on Sept. 18, 1842.
Two years later a politician named James Polk was elected U.S. President in 1844, after running on a platform which called for the U.S. government to acquire the Republic of Texas. And after Congress invited the Republic of Texas to join the United States as another state, Polk ordered U.S. General Zachary Taylor to lead U.S. troops into position near Texas’s disputed Rio Grande border in June 1845.
The Texas Admission Act was then signed by Polk on Dec. 24, 1845, Mexico’s former territory of Texas officially became part of the United States, and the independent Republic of Texas now ceased to exist.
[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]
The anti-angel forces.
By Sarito Carol Neiman / The Rag Blog / September 22, 2011
[Shredding the Envelope (“Ruminations on news, taboos, and space beyond time”) is Sarito Carol Neiman’s (occasionally) regular column for The Rag Blog. This is the third in a series. Read Part I here.]
The computer workstation in my dad’s room, according to the sales pitches of companies who sell them, was designed with the best of intentions to improve both the efficiency and quality of care in hospitals.
It would allow Dad’s caretakers to enter the latest information about his care (vital signs taken, medications given, observations observed) and to retrieve any information about him and his condition they might need — on the spot, without having to go and fetch it from (or take it to) its central location at the nursing station down the hall.
It would allow them (in theory) to spend a little extra time in the rooms with the patients, as they entered or retrieved their information — assuming they could safely mix “quality time” with the patient and the entry/retrieval of complex data at the same time. (An assumption of multitasking ability whose superhuman dimensions the sales pitches overlook.)
In theory, this computer workstation could be part of a vast network of computers, consolidating input gathered from every healthcare professional who had ever seen my dad for any reason. It could offer a more comprehensive picture of Dad’s medical history and current condition than any single human could possibly manage.
Imagine the possibilities… if such a network had been in place from the beginning of this years-long saga, and if all the professionals involved in Dad’s care had been doing more than just their jobs, he very likely would never have ended up in the hospital in the first place.
Those are some pretty hefty “ifs.” And as good a starting point as any to take a look at the “anti-angel forces” at work in the U.S. healthcare system.
Let’s take care of the big stuff first. Let’s assume that our “inalienable rights” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness include the right to healthcare — not as a consequence of having the money to pay the going market rates for it, but as a consequence of being human. Let’s assume, in other words, that there is no need for private insurance companies, hence no fear that a person’s medical history will be used to deny coverage, or to charge an arm and a leg for it.
Let’s further assume that we can agree that being a healthcare provider is a very special calling indeed, and that those who take up the calling should be honored and rewarded for making that choice, rather than being thrust into indentured servitude by a mountain of postgraduate debt, forced to pay for that debt by performing procedures rather than spending time with and understanding their patients, and being stalked by “ambulance-chasing” lawyers whose primary motive is to make a buck on their mistakes and on the suffering of the victims of those mistakes.
(More about the whole “tort reform”/malpractice thing at another time.)
So now we’ve taken care of the big stuff, we get to the sticky, non-systemic, human bits.
Of course, a universal “inalienable right” to healthcare would need us all — hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, aides, and patients, all of us — to behave sensibly, like grown-ups.
We would understand that sometimes things get broken and can’t be fixed, and not every mistake is the result of malice or incompetence. We would know the futility, even harmfulness, of squandering scarce resources on experimental fixes that are likely to fail, or only extend suffering rather than heal. We would understand that death is a natural and inevitable part of the continuum of life.
We would do our very best to keep ourselves healthy and, when those efforts fail, do our best to comprehend the reasons and take responsibility for whatever part we might play in getting better. We would know when to push on against all odds, and when to call it quits. We would celebrate every small victory, and we would know when to allow ourselves to grieve.
We would, in other words, be able to see every health crisis for the opportunity it brings — to take stock of our priorities, to allow ourselves to love and be loved, to heal the old and untended wounds that so often seem to surface at these times.
To help us get from here to there, though (it’s unlikely we’re just going to wake up and find ourselves there), we’d have to start with a clear-eyed look at what we’ve got now.
The computer workstation in my dad’s room, attached conveniently out of the way on the wall, was a neutral presence, at first glance. And, as advertised, it was undoubtedly a time-saving, mistake-reducing tool. It wasn’t until it broke down for a few days that I began to understand how it was also being used by “anti-angel” forces.
As long as this tool was functioning, nurses came and went with their tasks-to-perform and medications-to-give on what was apparently a rigid, inflexible schedule. It didn’t matter whether Dad was eating his breakfast, having a phone conversation with a loved one, or peacefully asleep — the pills had to be given, the BP cuff strapped on, the thermometer inserted. Toward the end of his stay, when he was better able to move around, he discovered that the only way to assert his right to uninterrupted peace and quiet was to go and sit on the toilet.
When the computer workstation tool stopped functioning (and I confess to an irrational fear that I might be blowing the cover of a complex angel-conspiracy) somehow it became fine to let Dad finish his breakfast, or his phone call. To come back a few minutes later to do whatever was on the nursing agenda to be done. Not a problem, said the gracious smiles and body language of the nurses carrying the pills and thermometers. I’ll come back in a little while when you’re done.
And they didn’t forget, either — it wasn’t as though these important tasks magically disappeared from the “do-list” just for lack of computer assistance.
That’s when it occurred to me that behind the hunched shoulders and grim determination of nursing “business as usual” was a Big Brother element that the nurses were fully aware of, but the workstation sales pitches don’t mention. A function more interesting to hospital administrators and lawyers, say, than to doctors or other actual hands-on providers of Dad’s care.
It works like this: the nurse turns on the computer and scans in her badge (nurse presence accounted for) at a certain time (schedule adhered to and trackable by the minute) followed by scans of medication labels, or keystroke entries of vital signs (asses covered). Checked off the list, tidy and impersonal, easily scanned by those whose interest is that no unpredictable breezes of individual human needs or circumstance should interfere with the hum of the well-oiled (and litigation-protected) hospital machine.
The doctors didn’t have to use this workstation, however. They could, if they wanted to look something up… but they didn’t have to, nor did they have to tell it whatever it was they did while they were there.
My sense was that the whole workstation set-up not only reflects but also reinforces the subordinate and purely functional role of nurses in the system as it is. In most hospitals — with a few notable exceptions, I have heard — nurses are told what to do (“doctor’s orders”), expected to pass along requests or problems from the patients, and rarely if ever encouraged (or even allowed) to express an opinion, make a recommendation, or question a decision by the doctor that their best intelligence tells them might not be a good idea. A bit silly, to put a better face on it than it deserves — given that the nurses spend far more time with patients on an hour-by-hour basis than any doctor can possibly afford to spend.
It also, of course, reflects the fact that as the system is set up now, the actions of doctors and the reasons behind those actions are largely protected from public view, and are not required to be shared with other members of the team unless the doctor chooses to share them.
Doctors.
When I first met Dad’s surgeon, I didn’t like him much. Not because I thought he was incompetent — on the contrary, I was satisfied that he was the best available anywhere near Dad’s home. My dislike was more in the realm of “bedside manner.”
I can’t really blame him for the fact that at our first meeting he was uninterested in knowing who I was or why I was there, to the point of being dismissive. He had, after all, already met and spoken with several members of the family along the way, and at that point I must have seemed like yet another potential burden of irrelevant and time-consuming human interaction that he would just as soon avoid.
Plus, he’s a surgeon after all, not a GP — the skill sets required to do an excellent job in those two realms are different. Even if the skills to do more than the job might overlap or even be the same.
Over subsequent meetings our relationship was rocky, with additions of ego-prickliness alongside any deficits in bedside-manner skills. He didn’t like being questioned, especially in front of his entourage. This dislike, it seemed to me, carried the weight of a reflexive assumption that my questions were posed as a challenge, rather than as a sincere effort to understand.
I did my best to accommodate the lesser angels of his nature, to reassure him that I absolutely trusted his medical expertise, while still honoring my own concerns for the rocky spots in Dad’s recovery and whatever support I might be able to lend as a “person on the ground.” In the end, I didn’t want him to change, really — I thought he could use a good “right-hand” person, more a GP type, whom he trusted and who trusted him, to take care of the squishy bits of listening patiently and explaining things to people like me, and maybe translating my concerns into a language he could better understand and relate to.
We worked it out, somehow — the mutual respect and understanding between him and Dad was undisturbed, and when he finally came in with the happy news that Dad could leave the hospital and go on to the next stage of getting strong enough to go home, I was as fully included in the sharing of that news as was appropriate, given who was most directly affected.
I was also delighted to hear that during Dad’s recent follow-up visit, the doctor showed him “before and after” X-rays of his lung, and the transformation that had taken place. The news nicely balanced what happened that day when Dad was having such a hard time, convinced he wasn’t getting any better and grumbling about having to go downstairs for a new X-ray every morning.
When the doctor came by, I suggested maybe Dad could see a before-and-after picture, so he could look for himself how things were going. The response was a little explosion of exasperated breath, an energetic (if not physical) throwing up of the hands, and a “that’s not so easy, it’s all on computer” before turning around and (energetically) stomping out the door.
I liked it when I heard the news that the doctor had managed that “show and tell” … because I know it helped Dad, as it would have helped him on that day I suggested it in the hospital, to get a handle on whether the whole ordeal had really been worth it. Maybe, I thought, just maybe he had heard me after all. Maybe he’ll remember it the next time one of his patients is having a hard time convincing himself it’s all worth it.
We all have a lot of work to do if we are going to meet the challenges of providing thoughtful, competent, whole-person healthcare in this world.
We’ll have to figure out the best ways to weed out those who are thoughtless and incompetent and in jobs they aren’t suited for. And we’ll have to work on minimizing the harm done by our natural human tendencies to want magic pills, and to substitute a messy and mysterious wholeness with discrete and manageable, but lifeless, parts.
We’ll need to figure out how to shift our focus from avoiding the worst to striving for the best.
We’ll have to take a deep look at the role of lawyers in the healthcare system, and the hopeless, despairing greediness they so often foster in our lives. We’ll need to acknowledge that no amount of money can alleviate pain and suffering, and that often, all any of us really wants is a heartfelt apology, shared grief, and support for moving through a loss. And yes, too, sometimes, the satisfaction of knowing that an incompetent, greedy, or careless practitioner will never be able to harm anyone again.
It’s a lot of work, and it needs us all to do more than just our jobs. And at the moment, for me, it’s right up there among the top jobs on the list of those most important and meaningful.
[Sarito Carol Neiman (then just “Carol”) was a founding editor of The Rag in 1966 Austin, and later edited New Left Notes, the national newspaper of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). With then-husband Greg Calvert, Neiman co-authored one of the seminal books of the New Left era, A Disrupted History: The New Left and the New Capitalism and later compiled and edited the contemporary Buddhist mystic Osho’s posthumous Authobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic. Neiman, also an actress and stage director, currently lives in Junction, Texas. Read more articles by Sarito Carol Neiman on The Rag Blog]
Huey P. Meaux was the Crazy Cajun
By Ivan Koop Kuper / The Rag Blog / September 22, 2011
One Friday evening in 1973, a burly looking biker entered the control room of community radio station KPFT FM, the Pacifica station that broadcast from the second floor of the since demolished Atlanta Life building in downtown Houston.
He was there to visit “The Crazy Cajun Radio Show,” and to ask host Huey P. Meaux to play a track from an old Eddy Arnold album that he brought with him. The biker told Meaux the record was the only possession of his late father’s that he owned, and that it was also the anniversary of his father’s death.
In his thick Cajun-French accent, Meaux dedicated a selection from the album to the memory of the biker’s father, and as the scratchy vinyl record spun on the turntable, the biker stood in the corner of the room and wept. It was from personal experiences like this one that Meaux developed his keen sense of reading people and knowing how music can trigger an emotional response.
Huey Purvis Meaux made his living as an independent record producer. It was a talent he honed in the 1950s while working as both a barber in Winnie, Texas, and a disc jockey at KPAC-AM in Port Arthur. It was there the naïve Meaux was first introduced to the magic of magnetic recording tape and analog reel-to-reel tape recorders.
Meaux’s mission in life was to discover local musical talents, take them into the recording studio, manufacture phonograph records from the master sound recordings, and promote the records to regional radio stations in hopes of receiving the much-coveted radio exposure necessary to make a record into a hit.
Similar to the east Texas “wildcatters” of days-gone-by who drilled oil wells on speculation of striking it rich, Meaux would also speculate on the abundance of homegrown talent, of all musical genres, he found in the night clubs and road houses of East Texas and Louisiana.
Raised “dirt poor” with barely a high school education, Meaux would leave his mark on the music industry and become a significant contributor to popular American culture.
Meaux followed a specific business model that he perfected over 30 years. He learned that after first breaking a single regionally, and with the right amount of radio exposure and sales from independent record distributors, he could then have the leverage necessary to license both the master sound recording and the copyright of the composition to the larger independents and the once prevalent major labels.
Meaux was no novice to this process or to the business of music. Between 1959 and 1985, his name would be associated with 55 gold singles and albums, and eight platinum albums that were produced in recording studios primarily in New Orleans, Houston, and Pasadena, Texas.
“I was so nervous and my hands were shaking as I was fading out that song,” Meaux would always recall when discussing “I’m Leaving It Up To You,” a track he produced from the Louisiana singing duo known as Dale and Grace, “because in my heart I just knew I had a hit on my hands.”
Meaux’s intuition was on target because by October, 1963, the remake of the composition originally penned and recorded by California’s Don “Sugarcane” Harris and Dewey Terry, reached the No. 1 position on Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 chart, and remained on the chart for 12 weeks. The selection that Meaux chose for the Louisiana duo to record resurfaced nine years later when it charted again when it was recorded by America’s “squeaky-clean” brother and sister singing duo, Donny and Marie Osmond.
“My records are so bad that the only reason people buy so many is to keep them off the market,” Meaux would always boast to those held captive by his bravado and flamboyant personality. With his gift for gab, Meaux could charm both his small town radio audience and the most jaded of big city music industry veterans. If you were to ask Huey Meaux how he was doing or how he was feeling at any given time, his stock comeback would be, “If I felt any betta’ bruddah, I’d run for gouvna,’ you betta’ sho’ believe it.”
Meaux would become close friends and business associates with many of the music industry’s power brokers of the era, including the late Shelby Singleton of Mercury Records, the late Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, and Aaron Schechter, the low-profile New York-based CPA who Meaux affectionately referred to as “Junior.” The unlikely team of Schecter and Meaux, reminiscent of Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison from the Neil Simon stage play, The Odd Couple, maintained a successful professional relationship and a personal bond that endured for more than 25 years.
“I saved his neck many times from the IRS and on many other occasions and there was never any appreciation shown from him,” said the 85-year-old Schecter who has made a career of keeping the books for a who’s-who of rock royalty.
I quit Huey twice but he chose to ignore me.
I first met Huey way back in 1969 after he got out of jail. He came to New York to visit his lawyer Paul Marshall and he asked Paul to find him a “Jewish New York accountant.” Marshall referred him to me and he came by the office and I began doing business for him. Our first order of business was an audit of Scepter Records owned by Florence Greenberg who owed Huey back royalties.
Huey was a real character. He was fascinating, yet he could also be repulsive at times. The last time I saw him was in 1996 right before he went away to prison again.
Born March 10, 1929 in Wright, Louisiana and raised in Kaplan in the heart of “Acadiana,” Meaux always recalled a time growing up when only French was spoken at home and English was his second language.” My teachers used to whip your ass if they caught you speaking French in public school,” Meaux would say about his grade school days.
Meaux’s family settled in East Texas in the town of Winnie, 23 miles south of Beaumont, in 1940 when he was 12. Winnie was in the rich, culturally fertile region of east Texas near the Louisiana border known as “The Golden Triangle.” This region incubated the musical talents of Aubrey “Moon” Mullican, George Jones, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, “Barbara Lynn” Ozen, Janis Joplin, Johnny Preston, Barbara Mauritz, and J.P. Richardson aka “The Big Bopper.”
Meaux came of age at a time when commercial “terrestrial” radio stations were still independently owned and music programming decisions were made based on local sales figures. It was also a time in history when the frequency of a particular record’s radio airplay could be monetarily manipulated by independent record producers and radio promoters.
“Is it true that payola is dead?” a young man asked Meaux in the lobby of the former Marriott Hotel in downtown Austin after he delivered a colorful keynote address at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in 1987. A puzzled-looking Meaux stared at the young man and replied, “Dead? I didn’t even know it was sick, little bruddah.”
Meaux’s special talent in the music business was mastery over the discipline of A & R, or “artist and repertoire” as it was originally known. He had an uncanny knack for selecting the right musical material for the right recording artist to elicit the right vocal interpretation in the recording process.
The objective of this equation was to maximize the greatest profit potential for the master tape owner, the music publisher, the distributing label, the artist manager, and the booking agent. Then as now, it is to one’s financial benefit to wear as many of these “hats” as legally possible, a business philosophy that Meaux subscribed to and practiced throughout his professional career.
Not all of the musical groups Meaux had under contract always agreed with or trusted Meaux’s choice of material. A young, unknown singer from Rosenberg, Texas named Billy Joe Thomas who fronted a band called the Triumphs can still be heard complaining on the eight-track master recording to the studio engineer one evening: “Let’s get this over with and record that damn song just to get Huey off my ass.”
The selection he was referring to was “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” a song penned and originally recorded by Hank Williams. The B.J. Thomas version, released on Meaux’s Pacemaker label and then licensed to New York’s Scepter Records, reached the No. 8 position on Billboard’s Hot 100 by March, 1966, and stayed on the chart for 10 weeks before its demise.
Although Meaux was the proud father of an adopted son, he was known to brag about all the musicians and singers he nurtured throughout the years who he also referred to as his sons. He especially spoke highly of Douglas Wayne Sahm and August “Augie” Meyers of San Antonio and would always say, “I raised those boys.”
Meaux would often recall the story of the hyperactive, multitalented teenage Sahm who was always “pestering” Meaux to record his compositions. This relationship ultimately produced Texas’ contribution to the “British Invasion” in the early 1960s with the creation of the Sir Douglas Quintet and the release of the single, “She’s About a Mover.” Originally titled “She’s a Body Mover,” Meaux believed the title sounded too sexually suggestive and made Sahm change it.
The Tribe/London release of this single reached the No. 13 position nationally by April 1965, and remained on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for nine weeks. “I love Doug like my own son,” Meaux would always say about the late Doug Sahm, “but he was so mean to Augie. Doug used to make Augie carry all the equipment to the gigs and with his bad leg too,” referring to Quintet collaborator and organist Meyers who was afflicted with polio as a child.
One year later, Meaux and Booth found themselves charged in federal court with conspiracy to transport a minor across state lines for the purpose of prostitution in violation of the Mann Act. Meaux and Booth appealed their case, and although they were represented by high-profile Houston attorney Percy Foreman, their rehearing was denied by the United Stated Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
In February, 1968, Meaux was sentenced to three years in prison. He would only serve eight months at the low security Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, Texas, near Dallas, before being released for good behavior.
In January 1981, at the end of his term as 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter granted Meaux a full pardon for his transgression as Carter was leaving office “That’s when I went away to college,” Meaux would always tell those who asked him about the time he spent in prison during this period.
Not all the hit records that Meaux is associated with were a direct result of his personal production efforts. Sometimes he acted as middle man and brokered the licensing deal to larger labels on behalf of other independent producers, as in the case of a track called “Tighten Up” by Archie Bell and the Drells.
Produced by legendary Houston DJ “Skipper” Lee Frazier, this track was licensed to Atlantic Records with Meaux’s help after first being released in Houston on Frazier’s Ovid label. Frazier, like most independent producers, would first sell his records on consignment to retailers “out of the trunk” before they were picked up for distribution by a larger label.
However, with the help of Atlantic Records, while Meaux was serving time in prison, this R&B crossover hit simultaneously reached the No. 1 position on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard R&B charts for two weeks by April, 1968, and remained on the charts for 13 weeks.
“I first met Huey when I was a disc jockey with KCOH-AM radio in Houston,” Frazier recalled.
He had a relationship with most the DJs in Houston and throughout the country for that matter, and Huey was always promoting his records to all the DJs. He was a very personable man and he would bring his records around to the station and ask me to play them.
We had a personal relationship, so when I recorded a record by a band I was managing and it started selling locally, Huey came to me and said I think can get that record placed with Atlantic Records but I want a piece of the action. I told Huey I wouldn’t mind that because I knew Huey had a good relationship with Atlantic because he recorded “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” by Barbara Lynn, and I also knew that he knew everybody in that New York office.
So Atlantic took the record and boom, it went to number one on the R&B charts and then, boom, it became a million seller. I found out years later that Huey knew how many records I was selling locally when he contacted me because he kept up with how many records I was ordering from the local record presser.
After Meaux was released from prison in 1968, the magic of producing another hit record eluded him for several years. Music industry insiders told him that he was “beating a dead horse” when he informed them he was thinking of recording “El Be Bop Kid,” Baldemar Huerta from San Benito, Texas aka Freddy Fender.
“Before The Next Teardrop Falls,” written by the Nashville songwriting team of Vivian Keith and Ben Peters, had been recorded more than a dozen times throughout the years, but had never struck gold. By the mid-1970s, Meaux’s intuitive A&R talent was on target once again with his production of the sentimental bilingual ballad with its Tex-Mex flavor. Originally released on Meaux’s Crazy Cajun label and then licensed to ABC/Dot, “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” would become a No. 1 crossover single on both the Pop and Country charts by March, 1975, and would remain on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for another 15 weeks.
The single not only revived Fender’s career, but it also won “Single of the Year” at the 9th Annual Country Music Association Awards in 1975. In addition, the composition also earned nominations for “Best Country Song” and “Best Country Vocal Performance” at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards in 1976.
In 1985, Meaux brokered his last major licensing deal for long-time friend and business associate Floyd Soileau of Ville Platte, Louisiana. Meaux had produced sessions for Soileau with artists Soileau had under contract beginning in the 1950s. In 1984, Soileau brought Meaux the single, “(Don’t Mess With) My Toot Toot” that had broken out in New Orleans by Zydeco/R & B artist, Rockin’ Sydney Simien on Soileau’s label, Maison de Soul.
Meaux arranged a licensing deal for Soileau that year with multinational Epic Records. Although never breaking into Billboard’s Hot 100 Pop chart, the single did reach platinum status and peaked in the No. 19 position on Billboard’s Country chart. “My Toot Toot” would also win a Grammy Award for Soileau and the late Sydney Simien for “Best Ethnic and Traditional Folk Record,” in 1986.
1986 was also the year Meaux surprised friends and industry associates when he appeared on the big screen in the David Byrne feature-length movie True Stories. Meaux made a brief, cameo appearance during the “Wild Wild Life” segment of the film playing the role of a patois-speaking “Crazy Cajun” disc jockey.
Always generous with his time and advice, Meaux was also known to mentor aspiring young music producers because he believed his good deeds would be reciprocated and the relationships he developed would prove to be mutually beneficial. That was not the case however with ZZ Top personal manager and producer, Bill Ham.
Meaux was disappointed that Ham never booked studio time at his Sugar Hill Studios in Houston, choosing to record in Tyler, Texas and Memphis instead. He would repay the snub in 1986 by suing Ham and ZZ Top for copyright infringement on behalf of Houston songwriter and former rock DJ, Linden Hudson. Hudson’s composition “Thug,” found its way onto the multiplatinum ZZ Top album, Eliminator, without the proper writer credit or music publisher credit which, coincidently, was Crazy Cajun Music. With the assistance of Houston attorney David W. Showalter, Meaux and Hudson (and Showalter) were awarded a $600,000 out-of-court settlement in compensatory damages from Ham and that “Little Ol’ Band from Texas.”
Meaux would plea guilty to five felony charges including possession of cocaine, possession of child pornography, sexual assault and jumping bail. The Honorable Judge Michael McSpadden of the 209th District Court of Harris County would assess his punishment at 15 years for cocaine possession and sexual assault, and 10 years for possession of child pornography and bail jumping, to be served concurrently.
However, before Meaux’s criminal trial would begin, the two daughters of Meaux’s former girlfriend filed a civil lawsuit for alleged sexual abuse and emotional distress they were subjected to during the seven years Meaux lived with them and their mother. In mid-February, the now adult McDowell Sisters, represented by attorney Dick Deguerin, brought a suit against Meaux in Harris County’s 61st Civil District Court for the sum of 10 million dollars in punitive damages in their request for relief. By October, the plaintiffs agreed on a final judgment of $900,000, and to dismiss all further claims against defendant Meaux.
In June 1996, Meaux was sent to prison for his criminal offenses and would remain incarcerated for the next six years. Meaux served time at both the privately owned Lockhart Work Facility near Austin, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Ellis Unit in Huntsville.
In September, 2002, he was paroled to the Beaumont Center Halfway House, and was then placed on “house arrest” with his mobility restricted and was electronically monitored by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). After four years of enforced detention, Meaux was looking forward to freedom on the rural property he owned on the outskirts of Winnie where he was living in his doublewide mobile home.
“I go to Beaumont every month now to see my probation officer and go shopping, but I’ll be getting my ankle bracelet off March 4th,” Meaux said during our last telephone conversation in January 2011. “The first thing I’m gonna do is go to New Orleans and get me some gumbo, and after that, I’m going to Austin to see some friends.”
Meaux never made it to New Orleans or to Austin, and on April 23, 2011, at 82, after four months of poor health, Meaux died from multiple organ failure. Meaux was found in his double wide trailer and scattered about the floor in no particular order were old boxes of magnetic recording tape and photographs that chronicled his 40 plus years in the music business.
Many friends and music industry associates chose to distance themselves from the controversial Meaux, and his funeral service at Broussard’s Funeral Home was attended mainly by immediate family members.
However, even after death, the defiant self-proclaimed “producer extraordinaire” still had the ability to surprise and even shock those in attendance at Winnie’s Fairview Cemetery. Inscribed on the back side of his “supersized” tombstone was a list of underwriters who Meaux had solicited during the time of his incarceration to help defray the cost of his funeral.
On the front side was inscribed an epitaph of Meaux’s personal life philosophy: “Did It My Way – No Regrets – Love Ya – Bye Now – Huey.” Once more Meaux was able to get in the last word, prove he was still an innovator and a proponent of crass commercialism who never showed any sign of remorse.
[Ivan Koop Kuper is a graduate student at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, and maintains a healthy diet of music, media, and popular culture. Ivan worked with Huey P. Meaux at KPFT-FM in Houston. He can be reached at kuperi@stthom.edu. Find more articles by Ivan Koop Kuper on The Rag Blog.]
I look at the Republican ‘debates’ and wonder, where did we — as a supposedly enlightened society — dig up this bunch of morons?
Dr. Stephen R.Keister / The Rag Blog / September 21, 2011
I have come a long way in this world as I anticipate my 90th birthday on October 9. In those many years I have experienced periods of contentment and periods of unhappiness. But never have I seen my country so fraught with danger and despair. Never have I seen such nihilism and cruelty expressed in public view.
The response of the audience to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s pride in multiple executions confirms a nagging feeling I’ve had for many years that a great percentage of the American public would revel in public executions: public hangings, beheadings, or even hanging, drawing, and quartering. Sometimes it seems like we’re descending into the kind of society that would accept a leader along the lines of Vlad The Impaler or Ivan The Terrible.
Yet, paradoxically, it is many of these folks who adhere to “the right to life” concept, idealizing the fetus but not giving a tinker’s damn about the children we bomb in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or the infants in this nation who die due to lack of medical care or from malnutrition.
I entered the practice of medicine in 1950, an idealist, believing in the lesson of the Good Samaritan. I believed that all persons should be provided with medical care as was done at the great middle age hospitals in Europe, founded by orders of Sisters who turned away no one from their doors.
For some 30 years my idealism was validated, as no one in our area went without medical care. Those who could not pay were provided for at free clinics sponsored by the nonprofit hospitals, and each of us on the staff of those hospitals took care of, with help of an intern or resident, some 20-30 indigent inpatients. In our private offices money was never an issue until the patient was ready to leave and make a subsequent appointment, when our secretary would ask, “Do you want to pay now or shall we send you a bill?”
Somewhere in the 1980s medical care, with great planning and premeditation, was usurped by the health insurance cartel in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry. Medicine was changed from a proud profession to a business, and the physician degraded to a “health care provider.”
Now when one enters any medical facility the first question asked by the receptionist involves the patient’s manner of payment: “May I see your insurance card?” Instead of an initial hour-long interview with the physician, one is quizzed by a PA, followed by a cursory visit with the doctor. Multiple tests are frequently ordered when a detailed initial interview would have sufficed, and more often than not the patient leaves the office with many unanswered questions.
To add to the immorality of our system we have some 40 million citizens without medical care because they are unable to buy insurance. Yet, this is countenanced by those who claim allegiance to the Christian Right — a group that appears to be as oblivious to the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes as to the Book of Matthew.
I watch the Tea Baggers docilely follow the propaganda of the billionaire Koch Brothers and propose elimination or substantial modification of Social Security and Medicare, under the illusion that these programs are undermining the national budget — when indeed these social safety nets are not paid out of the national budget (as are our ongoing wars which are never mentioned), but out of the Social Security trust and Medicare funds that we have all contributed to through wage taxes during our working years.
Now the Republicans would take advantage of a naive public and further drive us into the health care status of a third-world nation. We already rate 26th in the world in health care quality and delivery.
Never mind that the scions of the political Right lie to the people of the United States, with their claims that the Europeans and Canadians have “Socialized Medicine,” which is absolutely untrue. The only Western nation with something like socialized medicine is the U.K. and the present Tory Government is trying madly to privatize same in spite of united opposition from physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals. Both the public and health care providers have been generally happy with the health care system conceived and instituted by the conservative Winston Churchill.
I am at the stage of life where I hear the faint splash of old Charon’s oars as his barge moves up the Styx, so I have great interest in the hospice movement. Hospice was introduced to the Erie, Pennsylvania area, where I live, by Dr. David Dunn who had studied in depth the well-established British hospice system. The Great Lakes Hospice and V.N.A. Hospices are outstanding, caring, efficient, volunteer organizations.
Now, as with nearly everything, corporate for profit hospice movements have appeared on the scene to feed off of Medicare payments. Several of these organizations, not driven by humanitarian idealism but by corporate greed, have been cited by the Medicare watchdogs for their part in bleeding the Medicare trust fund.
We should all investigate hospice care well before the need arises, just as we should arrange advance directives, and make certain that we will be dealing with a local organization driven by compassion and caring and not by corporate profit. Ideally, we should consider a version of the Swiss Dignitas; however, this would be a pipe dream considering the influence the “religious” element has in the corporate-driven U.S. society.
The June 2011 issue of Forbes has a first-rate article by Rick Ungar entitled “The Coming Crash of the American Health Care System.” A few dedicated folks within the profession are still continuing the fight for a decent, affordable health care system in our country, groups like Physicians for a National Health Program and National Nurses United, but the average elected politician turns a blind eye to the situation.
If health care is a priority while you are still young, head for Canada where the health care system, founded by the late Tommy Douglas, is still appreciated by the vast majority of Canadians, or learn French and move to France, which has the top-rated health care system in the world.
Sidney Wolfe, M.D. points out in Public Citizen that our mental health treatment system has returned to a level of the 19th century. No longer are there decent mental hospitals available, but the mentally ill are confined to penal institutions as they were in Dickinsonian times. Over the past two decades, as state psychiatric hospitals have shut down, many with schizophrenia and bipolar disease have been left to wander the streets untreated.
The number with mental illness in our penal facilities has increased 20% since 2000. As early as 2006 the U.S. Department of Justice reported that 24% of inmates in county jails and 15% of inmates in state prisons were psychotic. Under these circumstances how do these folks get treatment? When have you last heard about this problem on a TV news program? Where are our values? Where is our moral backbone?
As the drumbeat of ill news and deception continues, why aren’t we told the truth about the cost to Medicare of Medicare Part D, or the fleecing of the trust fund by Medicare Advantage Plans? The American public gets less and less information about what really matters as the Republicans distract us from the everyday issues relevant to our lives and feed us drivel about the “national debt.”
Joseph Goebbels was a piker compared to the propagandists now feeding pure and simple bull to the uninformed, unsophisticated American people. I look at the Republican “debates” and wonder, where did we — as a supposedly enlightened society — dig up this bunch of morons?
I would urge all my readers to follow ProPublica’s ongoing investigation into the collusion between the drug manufacturers and many of the physicians in the current medical community — physicians who, in true American manner, place wealth and income above patient care, ethics, and duty.
A final word of advice. Disregard all pharmaceutical ads on TV — and there are hundreds — and just hope your physician is conscientious enough to prescribe what you need at the least cost rather than shill for the drug manufacturers.
[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform and is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. Read more articles by Dr. Stephen R. Keister on The Rag Blog]
He has shared the stage with Lyle Lovett (who considers him an important influence), Nanci Griffith, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Lightin’ Hopkins, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Janis Joplin. He performed at countless peace rallies, benefits, progressive political events, and street concerts in Houston’s Montrose.
He was known for his unique vision and for his quirky and highly personal songs; among the best known are “Third Eye” (“Open my third eye, mama / Free me from my chains tonight”), “Coffee Song,” “Head Full of Reds,” “Southern Coast of France,” and “Heavy Word User,” where he admits to being a “greasy, sleazy information abuser.”
Some of Don’s later work was inspired by Spanish folk tales, by the nueva trova movement that originated in Cuba, and by Latin American social justice issues, and he has written and sung in both Spanish and English.
Don Sanders also worked with Pacifica Radio’s KPFT-FM (as “Donnie Jo DJ”) and in Houston theater, writing, producing, and performing in a one-man show called Peregrino at Houston’s Main Street and Chocolate Bayou theaters and at theaters in Austin and San Antonio. In recent years he has devoted much of his time to performing for school children, singing and spinning yarns as the “Sourdough Cowboy.”
Don was featured in For the Sake of the Song, the critically acclaimed documentary film about Anderson Fair, Houston’s venerable acoustic venue that served as an incubator for such talent as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith, Lucinda Williams, Robert Earl Keen, Steven Fromholz, and Lyle Lovett.
Rolling Stone called Don Sanders Houston’s “spritely local folkie,” and Lyle Lovett, then a Texas A&M student writing in the school paper, The Batallion, tagged him the “grand old man of Houston folk music.” John Wilson wrote on The Rag Blog that, “Over a five year period from 1970 to 1975, Don wrote and performed a suite of songs that pretty much provided the soundtrack for that tumultuous and intensely musical period of Houston’s history.”
Many of those historic songs (some of which were mentioned above) have been released on a new CD titled Heavy Word User“> which came out during the Kerrville Folk Festival. It is available at YourTexasMusic and recently was accepted by Pandora into the Music Genome Project.
Don Sanders dicusses his career and sings several songs on this episode of Rag Radio.
Rag Radio — hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer — is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. KOOP is a cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin.
Rag Radio, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.
Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.
Don also worked with Pacifica Radio’s KPFT-FM (he was Donnie Jo DJ) and in Houston theater, producing and performing El Peregrino a one-man show at Houston’s Main Street and Chocolate Bayou theaters. In recent years he has devoted much of his time to performing for school children as the “Sourdough Cowboy.” Don was featured in For the Sake of the Song, the documentary film about Houston’s venerable acoustic venue, Anderson Fair, that incubated such major talent as Townes Van Zandt, Nanci Griffith, Lucinda Williams, Guy Clark, and Lyle Lovett.
Don has always been known for his unique vision and his quirky, personal songwriting style. Among his best-known songs were “Third Eye,” the “Coffee Song,” and “Heavy Word User,” in which he describes himself as a “greasy, sleazy information abuser.”
Rolling Stone called Don Sanders Houston’s “spritely local folkie,” and Lyle Lovett, then a Texas A&M student writing in the school paper, The Batallion, tagged him the “grand old man of Houston folk music.” John Wilson wrote on The Rag Blog: “Over a five year period from 1970 to 1975, Don wrote and performed a suite of songs that pretty much provided the soundtrack for that tumultuous and intensely musical period of Houston’s history.”
Many of those historic songs have been released on a new CD titled Heavy Word User which came out during the Kerrville Folk Festival. It is available at YourTexasMusic and recently was accepted by Pandora into the Music Genome Project.
This show includes live performance by Don Sanders.
Rag Radio — hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer — is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. KOOP is a cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin.
Rag Radio, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.
Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.
From the end of World War II through 1979, the gains in productivity in the U.S. were shared between workers and owners, “and both benefited as wages rose along with company profits.” That was before Reagan and “trickle-down” economics. Ted McLaughlin shows us how unregulated capitalism has led to a “hoarding’ of productivity, resulting in a vast inequality in wealth and income, and has put us on the path to a second Great Depression.
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
