Stoney Burns, Co-Founder of Underground Paper Dallas Notes and Buddy, Has Died

Angus Wynne just called with the sad news: Stoney Burns — who, in 1967 co-founded The Dallas Notes and then The Iconoclast and would go on to publish Buddy Magazine — died early this morning at Baylor of a heart attack.

For those who didn’t know the Hillcrest grad, there was a time in the late ’60s and early ’70s when the son of a printer was as legendary as Dallas got. He was arrested repeatedly by Dallas cops, including during the infamous “Lee Park Massacre” in April 1970. He even made the pages of Time in 1974, when Burns (whose real name was Brent Stein) was looking at real jail time following a pot bust. His story ran beneath the headline “Getting Stoney Burns.” Dolph Briscoe ultimately kept him out of prison.

Without Burns, hell, there probably never would have been a Dallas Observer. Here’s an essential history of Stoney, then and almost now (up till 2008, anyway). Said attorney Fred Time, who represented Burns during the Lee Park legal battles,”Stoney was a quiet, mild Jewish guy. He had this underground paper and somebody labeled him king of the hippies. He was just a pot-smoking young guy trying to find a niche.” In 1990, filmmaker Kirby Warnock chronicled for D a history of Buddy, which launched in ’72 and which Warnock edited. Said Stoney, “Buddy Holly and LSD had the biggest influences on my life.”

Wynne was plenty busted up when he called this morning: “Stoney and I were always friends, and kinda traveled along the same path at the same time,” he said. “He’d gone through so much, between his public battles and privates ones, and turned into a sweetheart. He’d had a heart attack and cancer and whipped all those. They slowed him down, but he always looked great. He was just a great guy, one of the generalissimos of the so-called revolution back then. There was something real special about Stoney. He was just a sweetheart.”