Freddie King is not alive to battle those who would seek to profit from his legend. The blues guitarist, a man whose music inspired the likes of Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan and Eric Clapton, has been dead since December 28, 1976, when years of bleeding ulcers and pancreatitis caused…
Radio bloodbath “Souled out” [September 3] was one of the best things I’ve ever read in the Dallas Observer. Anyone who grew up around here in the late ’70s and early ’80s like I did can’t help but stop and reflect for a while after reading something like this. Someone…
Inside a dimly lit banquet room in a tony downtown Dallas hotel, about 250 Americans who consider themselves brave soldiers for civil rights sit around tables adorned with pots of plump pink and red roses. Almost all of them men, they enthusiastically devour their entrees of beef medallions and celebrate…
The beginnings of the little statuette weren’t exactly steeped in idealism. It was 1977, and Dallas commercial artist Paul McKay was sitting around talking with a friend. “You ought to do something on this ‘Roots’ thing,” McKay remembers his buddy saying. The TV miniseries–which depicted the enslavement of a fictional…
The Rev. Al Sharpton wants the citizens of Dallas to know, for the record, that he is not the disruptive sort, and he certainly isn’t coming here with any intention of stirring up trouble. “I think anyone who has that perception wants to have that perception, because the record clearly…
Sacred cows? What sacred cows? Ah, the things Buzz does on your behalf, readers, such as reading a 14,000-word love letter to the Belo Corp. to be published in an upcoming edition of the American Journalism Review–and before lunch, to boot. Buzz received an advance copy of the article, one…
Mark Aguirre redeemed Robert Wilonsky should have qualified the statement of “the crowd” [“waiting to tear Mark Aguirre apart with their boos”] to “most of the crowd” or “the majority of the crowd.” I was there the night my all-time favorite Maverick Mark Aguirre [“Rebound,” August 20] came back to…
Tommy Smith lay dying on his own bed, his body ravaged by the aggressive strain of cancer that first attacked his colon some 18 months earlier. He no longer had the use of his legs. Festering sores on his stomach refused to heal, and his wife, Margie, barely managed to…
One day in June 1995, Mary Ellen Lloyd called in sick to work, citing a variety of ailments. Then she vanished. She would later recount how she packed a few personal effects from her modest home in suburban Fort Worth–such as her collection of gold and porcelain swans–stowed them in…
Surely, the 22 people gathered in the back of the Denny’s restaurant at LBJ Freeway and Midway Road on this Friday afternoon are kooks. They are there for the weekly lunch meeting of the Dallas Area Y2K Community Preparedness Group to discuss what to do when the world as we…
Serendipitous politics Buzz believes that it’s better to be lucky than smart, but being a little of both is best of all. So we envy Karl Rove, the chief political consultant to Gov. George W. Bush. “People are calling me up and asking if I’m a genius,” says Rove, who,…
At first glance, there seems little danger that R.D. Rucker, Democratic candidate for the 292nd Judicial District, might actually win. After all, the days when a Democrat would automatically sweep into office are long gone. Dallas hasn’t elected a Democrat to a trial court bench since 1992, when John Creuzot…
Dallas Morning News executives have threatened to halt publication of the Dallas League of Women Voters’ election guide because of the league’s official opposition to the Trinity River project. The executives who summoned league leadership to a knuckle-rapping session over the river issue were from the paper’s news side, not…
Asbestos I can recall I’m very impressed with the reporting in your Fred Baron article [“Toxic justice,” August 13]. It is a pleasure to read an article that uses no-nonsense words to tell it like it is. The amount of effort put into the article comes through loud and clear…
He will never forget the date: March 25, 1990. That’s the day Mark Aguirre, dressed in Detroit Pistons blue, came home to Reunion Arena to play the Dallas Mavericks, the team that made him the No. 1 draft pick nine years earlier and then swapped him for a washed-up player…
At 2:55 on Monday afternoon, minutes before the school bell rings to dismiss classes at Plano’s Rosemary Haggar Elementary School, Joy Ramsier, suburban mother of two, takes to the streets. Armed with clipboard and pen, she mans her post near the school property line, under the shade of a sprawling…
In public, at least, the charges are somber, the rhetoric bare. The school board race between Richard C. Evans and Se-Gwen Tyler revolves around a high school diploma, which Evans finally admits he doesn’t have. Local educators line up to voice sober thoughts about the benefits of such a diploma,…
Details, details We have long held off taking swipes at the Log Cabin Republicans for two reasons–pity, and the fact that the premise of the gay GOP group is itself so absurd that it defies what passes for commentary to Buzz. Gay Republicans? What’s next, an all-hetero Judy Garland fan…
When Cheryl Kellis learned that plans were afoot to convert the 12,000-square-foot Baptist church across the street from her tidy frame house into a music club and restaurant, she feared the worst–loud music, traffic jams, and weak-bladdered stumblebums turning her front lawn into a latrine. Owners of The Palace and…
Darlie’s defenders The pictures in your article [“Defending Darlie,” August 6] should awaken some people to what has been done to my daughter. There is so much more that we cannot make public because of her appeal. If you think for one moment that the officials in our judicial system…
Animal act Who says U.S. District Judge John McBryde, often described as churlish, doesn’t have a sense of humor? Buzz figures the Fort Worth judge must have some notion of the comic, otherwise he would have hurled his gavel at the lawyers representing two petitioners in his court recently–Barney the…
A federal jury deliberated for only three hours before convicting William Risby, a roofing contractor, last Friday on 64 DISD-related counts that included charges of kickbacks, embezzlement, and conspiracy to defraud the school district of more than $385,000 for roofing repairs that were never performed. But as the proceedings unfolded…
