“Fire moves away”

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In 2025 I was absolutely obsessed with a TV show called The !!! Beat, which aired for 26 episodes in 1966 from an ABC affiliate studio in Dallas. It was hosted by the amiable Nashville DJ Bill “Hoss” Allen, with a live band led by the legendary Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. The show perfected a loving and curatorial approach to the distinctly Texas blues and soul acts it showcased. The production values are surprisingly low, even for what was expected of a local TV station in that era, and the talent is generally raw — real, but raw. Hoss occasionally mentions that some of the performers have been scouted at Dallas’s John F. Kennedy High School, which must only have been recently renamed.

Hoss himself comes across as a real institution, a symbol of the complexity of cultural identity in the desegregation-era South. Hoss is white and Gatemouth is black, and they and their ancestors have both, obviously, been stewing in the same musical and cultural sauce for centuries. But their show takes place not only against the backdrop of Civil Rights, but also of the psychedelic explosion that has been the focus of such extensive analysis in this space (mostly by JSR). So the backdrops and the outfits feature, by trickle-down or unconscious absorption, much of that effervescent and flowery spirit, even as, in other respects, what we are seeing is not at all revolutionary, and not youth-centered, but traditional, transgenerational, and, in some ways, conservative.

I keep returning to one episode in particular, which features a remarkable performance from Freddie King at the end —such a perfect synthesis of Chicago electric and Texas blues!—, but is mostly given over to several songs performed by Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five (plus an accompanying and astoundingly talentless sidekick, Marsha). You can choose any one member of this ensemble to focus on throughout, and each one will give you a different and equally powerful experience; I am especially fond