Reprinted from the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
Tribute
to an 'everything-goes place'
Bud Kennedy
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
February 14, 2006 Section: Metro
Edition:
Tarrant Page: B1
The
infamous gang from The Cellar nightclub got together again Saturday night,
not so much to relive 1960s memories as to reconstruct them.
After all, The Cellar in the '60s was like Austin in the '70s — if you remember it, you probably weren't there.
From 1959 through 1970, The Cellar in downtown Fort Worth was an all-night jazz coffeehouse and blues club featuring music until 6 a.m. nightly — or maybe daily — fueled by complimentary drinks that were half Everclear grain alcohol served by college-age women in black bikinis or lingerie. Dallas and Houston also had Cellars.
"I wish I could remember more stories," said Frankie Wood, 52, who worked the door as a teen-ager at the Houston location. "But honey, those were some hazy days."
Four decades after the heyday of The Cellar — motto: "Coffee and Confusion" — its spirit lives in occasional tributes and on a new Web site for a proposed California location, www.thecellarlbc.com.
Saturday's Cellar tribute party was thrown by loyal former Cellar dwellers raising money for musicians without medical insurance. For one night, the Sixth Street Grill music club in Fort Worth was restyled with black curtains, sofa cushions across the floor and such wall-borne wisdom as "You Must Be Weird Or You Wouldn't Be Here."
"It was an all-night, everything-goes
place," said Arvel Stricklin, 62 and ready to hit some guitar licks like he used to
in the house band.
"What made The Cellar different was that it was no ordinary bar." That's
for sure. It wasn't a bar at all.
No ordinary nightspot could have landed in the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination. The commission was investigating why seven Secret Service agents were carousing there 'til 3 a.m. on Nov. 22, 1963.
No ordinary nightspot would have made
headlines when 15 women were arrested for serving drinks in lingerie, or when police and
sheriff's deputies had to take to their boats and bust up a July 4 party that was shocking
all of Lake Worth, or when a 16-year-old girl apparently overcome by the coffee aroma
danced topless across the tables.
No ordinary nightspot would have rented a hay wagon so its scantily clad crew could
surprise the Stock Show crowd, riding in the annual parade after registering as the Fort
Worth Bull Shooters Society.
No ordinary nightspot would have given a
platform to a local radio personality working on a new nightclub act. It turned into a
career for George Carlin.
No ordinary nightspot would have launched a little ol' Houston band like ZZ Top.
When the Cellar's late owner, Pat Kirkwood, opened it as a beatnik coffee hangout beneath a music store at 1111 Houston St. in 1959, Texas was still years away from legalizing the sale of mixed drinks. So customers brought their own liquor bottles on occasion. Cellar managers sold imitation liquor drinks and now and then slipped a glowing, green Everclear drink to special guests.
After a fire upstairs, the Cellar moved to another basement, at 1001 Main St., one convenient block from the hotel where Kennedy slept. When that location gave way for the Fort Worth Convention Center, the Cellar moved upstairs and operated its last five years at 509 1/2 Main St., since replaced by a Tex-Mex restaurant.
"It was famous for just being completely
— crazy," said Jas Stephens, 58, of Burleson, a drummer who helped organize the
Cellar tribute. "Anything might happen. It really wasn't the drinking. It was just
the place that made people crazy."
Stricklin remembered one night when Johnny Cash dropped by. More accurately, staggered.
The hint of sin and scandal only helped draw customers to the club.
Kirkwood described the theme as "music,
mood and lots of confusion." The club's lawyer once described it in court as "a
unique showplace with continuous live entertainment."
Sometimes, customers provided the entertainment. Stricklin vividly remembered one night
when he was playing in the band and two women from Dallas arrived wearing long coats. When
they sat down in front of the band and unbuttoned, only the band could see that the women
wore nothing but long coats.
Nothing like that happened Saturday night. At least, not involving the same women.
"No, no, no!" Stephens said, laughing and looking out at the graying Sixth Street Grill crowd. "This crowd doesn't do things like that anymore." A full house of 400 customers drank less potent glowing, green vodka sours and listened to Cellar favorites such as John Nitzinger and Bugs Henderson.
"People always went for the music,"
said Wood, who had worked the door in the Houston Cellar. "But then they came back
just to see what would happen next."
More than 35 years after it closed, they're still coming back to The Cellar.
Bud Kennedy's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. (817) 390-7538 bud @budkennedy.com