<Death Anniversary> C.B. Stubblefield (May 27th 1995)
Bill Schenley
Photo: http://www.virtualubbock.com/Images/StubbPhoto.JPG
FROM: The Caprock Sun (April 1997) ~
(No byline)
In 1968, Christopher B. "Stubbs" Stubblefield, Sr. opened the original 75
seat Stubb's Bar-B-Q Restaurant in a small, ramshackle building at 108 East
Broadway. The jukebox was filled with vintage Blues music.
Owing as much to Stubb's warm smile as to his barbecue cooking skills, the
restaurant soon became the center of Lubbock's rich musical community.
Throughout the 70's and 80's, the Sunday Jam Sessions became as legendary as
the barbecue.
Tom T. Hall's song, "The Great East Broadway Onion Championship," was
written about an early-morning pool game between Tom and Joe Ely in which an
onion from Stubb's kitchen was used as a cue ball.
Stubb's died May 27, 1995 and was buried in Lubbock. The church where his
funeral was held was standing-room only. Represented there was about as
diverse a funeral crowd as Lubbock is likely to ever witness, for color
meant nothing to Stubb when it came to making friends.
Stubbs was more than "just a cook." To his many friends, family and those
who have only heard the stories, C.B. Stubblefield was an exceptional being.
He was another of Lubbock's legendary figures whose memory lives on in the
hearts of multitudes of barbecue and music fans everywhere.
Johnny Hughes came to the Caprock Sun with an idea to publish some of the
stories people have about Stubb's. "Stubb's would sing 'Summertime' until it
was wintertime," Hughes said, remembering his friend. These are some
stories, some songs, if you will, that will never die, as they are
remembered by some of his many friends:
Words from Terry Allen:
"At Stubb's funeral in Lubbock, the church was full. Half the congregation
was black and half was white. The speakers were his friends and kin. With
Stubb's, one was the same as the other. Color didn't mean anything that day.
This says a lot about the man who was being buried and a lot about the
community he loved.the way he loved it and was loved back.From the very
beginning, his café.was about good food, good music, and the common dignity
of human beings enjoying being Human in the company of one another. A lot of
black and white people played music with one another on the same stage for
the first time at Stubb's.a whole lot of black and white people ate food and
listened to that music side-by-side for the first time at Stubb's."
Stubb's Famous Quotes (submitted by Terry Allen):
"I was born hungry; I wants to feed the world."
"Bar-B-Q? Makin' do with what you got."
"God born me a black man and I plan to stay that-a-way."
"They build barb wire fences around old locomotives. I'll be damn if they do
that to me."
When asked how he was while in the hospital:
"My Spark plugs ain't firing, and I got this tornado loose in my chest."
"I guarantee you one thing, you ain't gonna cook no better than I can.
Another thing, you not gonna love people no better than I can."
A recent phone call to Austin caught Jesse Taylor freshly home from his 20th
European tour.
These are his words:
"Did you ever hear the hitchhiking story? I lived on East Broadway at the
top of the hill across from Mackenzie Park. One day, I was hitching down
East Broadway. Stubbs picked me up. After driving a couple of blocks, he
pulled in at Stubb's. (Often when walking, I'd catch a glimpse inside
through the open door, and I'd hear the sound of old Blues music from the
jukebox, but I was always reluctant to go in. I was curious.)
"So I said to Stubbs: 'Wow, you go into this place?' And he said to me,
'Sir, I won this place, and I just know there's a barbecue sandwich and a
cold beer inside that's got your name on it.' What started out as a ride
ended up being a friendship that lasted half a lifetime."
Laughing, Taylor says, "But one of my favorite stories about Stubbs happened
one day when I was sitting at the bar. Everyone in the place was black
except me. In walks this Hispanic man. He looks at the crowd and then asks
Stubbs: 'You serve Mexicans here?'
Stubbs eyed the man ominously, then answered: 'No. We serve barbecue here.'"
You know, I'm the guy that started live music at Stubb's Bar-B-Cue. When I
told him I wanted to play music there, he asked me, 'What kind of music?' I
told him, 'Music just like what's on your jukebox. I want to play Blues!'
When Stubbs died, his family gave that jukebox to Jesse Taylor.
In conclusion, Jesse said, "You know that sign.the one from the old building
that said, 'THERE WILL BE NO BAD TALK OR LOUD TALK IN THIS PLACE'? Well, I'd
been hanging around Stubb's for about 5 years when I suddenly noticed that
there were three words in the sign stenciled in red and the rest were
stenciled in black. The three red words were 'bad,' 'loud' and 'place.' From
that day on, I couldn't see that sign it didn't say to me, 'BAD LOUD PLACE.'
That's what that sign said."
She knew him well.
A story from Carol Kelly Edwards:
I worked with Stubb for almost 4 years. During that time we had several
disagreements, but we always remained best of friends.
When I came back to Lubbock in September of 1987, Stubb would call me on a
regular basis. We continued to keep in touch after his moved to Austin. As
time passed, I realized what a special, wonderful person Stubbs really was.
I also realized what a jerk I had been to him over the years.
Jerk is a mild description. I can admit that now. That's been one of many
lessons about my life Stubbs has taught me. "If you make a mistake, admit
it, accept it and then make better."
Anyway, I called him in late 1990 and I said, "Stubbs, I just want to
apologize for the bull-s*** I said and for everything I put you through
when we worked together."
Stubbs told me, "Ma'am, what in the hell are you talking about?" I sensed
something in his voice I never sensed before.
I said, "Well, you know Stubbs, when."
And before I could continue he said, "Now you listen here, Carol Kelly, I
don't even remember any bad times between us, and I sure as hell don't think
about 'em! When I think of you, I remember the good times, and that's what
you need to do, too! The past is the past. We got to go on and be happy!"
Then he hung up the phone. He just hung up! I sat there looking at my phone
and I knew that after everything he and I had been through, he was never
truly angry with me until that moment.
A few stories submitted by Paul Milosevich:
The Nashville Trip
One cold February night in 1980, Stubbs came by my house about midnight. I
had seen him a few days earlier and told him I was delivering some artwork
to Johnny Cash in Nashville. He said he would like to cook up some "cabrito"
for Mr. Cash.
Stubbs showed up in a car I had never seen. He explained that "somebody
named Chuck" loaned it to him for the trip. It had an 8-track tape player
that worked if you wedged in a book of matches underneath the tape. Stubbs
had a shoe box full of blues tapes and an 8mm movie camera he got at Huber's
Pawn Shop for $15. "We're gonna make a movie of this trip," he said. (The
movie camera had film in it with some footage of a Mexican wedding in
Lubbock which was the "lead-in" to the start of our Nashville trip.)
Climbing into the car, I asked Stubbs if he had a map. He said, "No."
"Do you know how to get to Nashville?" I wondered.
"I think you go through Benjamin," he smiled.
We hit a lot of barbecue joints between Lubbock and Nashville and Stubbs was
critical of most of it. He liked some we got in Memphis (Leonard's) and at a
7-11 in Seymour, Texas.
He told me about being in the Korean Conflict, driving a truck down a steep
hill one night during a blackout, "We had to go over this rickety wooden
bridge," he said. "Nobody knew if it would hold our trucks. Paul, it was
dark as this," he said, turning off the lights. Stubbs drove about 80mph,
generally, and he finished the Korean story hurtling through the blackness
somewhere around Texarkana.
(Stubb did cook cabrito for Johnny Cash, slept in Jimmy Carter's bed at Tom
T. Hall's place, was invited backstage at Opryland and the $15 movie camera
worked fine.)
Another Road Trip
One winter Stubbs was driving up to Lubbock from Austin. It was warm when he
left Austin, so he wasn't worried that his heater wasn't hooked up. A "blue
norther" caught him around Sweetwater. The windshield frosted over and his
feet and hands started to get numb. Again, it was about 3 am, his favorite
time to drive. Stubb's stopped at a 7-11, bought a dozen candles, lit them
and spread them out across the dashboard. It must have been an eerie sight
to other motorists that night, seeing this long sedan creeping down the
highway with a black man peering out through a row of candles. "I had to
stop 3 or 4 times to get more candles before I made it Lubbock," Stubb
explained.
Short Shots from the Milosevich collection:
Stubbs referred to me as "Paul Milaka, my art consoler. He draws with
charcoal and I cooks with it."
One of Stubb's young friends offered him a ride to Albuquerque in her small
compact car. "I think it was a Hunda," Stubbs said. "I felt like King Kong
in a cee-gar box.
"Talking about a 'high society' woman he knew, Stubbs described her as
coming "from a very permanent family here in Lubbock."
Stubbs was a charmer, no question about it. An insurance salesman had a
meeting with Stubb in the kitchen of our Santa Fe house. He started
explaining different policies to Stubbs and I excused myself. When I came
back about an hour later, the insurance man had his checkbook out and was
asking, "How much do you need, Stubbs?"
A young Lubbock preacher wanted to know Stubb's thoughts on our society's
current problems. Stubbs said, "It's like that John Wayne movie. We're out
of control, like a cattle stampede. Somebody needs to ride out to the front
of the herd and turn that leadin' steer."
From Lloyd Maines:
Stubbs enjoyed giving of himself. He was totally unselfish. He usually
called me about once a month from Austin to tell me about his latest idea to
promote a concert. Stubbs had great taste in music, but some of the great
old Blues players that he booked didn't quite have the drawing power to get
big crowds, so Stubb would usually lose a lot of money.
Losing the money never seemed to ruin the moment for Stubbs. He would always
sat it was the best show he'd ever seen. Stubbs had no use for greedy
people, and he could smell them a mile away. Stubbs was an important person
in the shaping of the music scene in West Texas and Austin. I miss his smile
and his strong sense of being.
Mike Pritchard had a driving story:
Tiffany and I were out at Stubb's one night not long after we got married.
We were talking way into the night, in fact, it was around 4 a.m. when we
started to leave. The van wouldn't start. We stepped back inside and Stubbs
offered to give us a ride home.
We left Stubb's Bar-B-Que headed west on Broadway. Stubbs must have driven
60mph all the way, and that old Cadillac never slowed down for a red light
or a stop sign. By the time we got to our house on 21st and University, the
color had completely left our faces! Stubbs pulled into our drive, and,
noticing the looks of sheer terror in our eyes, tried to reassure us.
Smiling, he said, "The Lord always takes care of me." And off he went into
the darkness of a very early morning, leaving the two of us kissing the
ground as we found our way to the door.
These are just a few of the stories. There are many more tales around that
remind us of a man known and loved by many. Our friend is gone. The
Bar-B-Que joint at 108 East Broadway has long since been leveled. This is
our tribute to Stubb, our way of saying, "Stubbs, you may have gone before
us, but you really never left our hearts."
He was a cook.
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Photo: http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/stubbsbbq/stubbs2hat.gif
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FROM: Orlandos.com ~
Christopher B. "Stubb" Stubblefield, Sr. was born in Navasota, Texas, March
7, 1934, as one of twelve children, and later in the 1930's his family moved
to Lubbock to pick cotton, the staple agricultural product of the area.
Later Stubb learned to cook by working in local restaurants and hotels.
As a young man Stubb left Lubbock and joined the United States Army to serve
in the Korean war, becoming part of the 96th Field Artillery, the last
all-black Army infantry unit. Stubb served as a gunner and was a respected
leader among the men. It was in the army that Stubb became a cook. He
oversaw the cooking of daily meals for as many as 10,000 soldiers, and
legend has it Stubb fixed a batch of chili on the hot exhaust pipe of an
Army tank.
Foreshadowing his future, Stubb played popular records and broadcast them on
the field radio for his Army buddies to listen to in the trenches.
In 1968, Stubb opened the original 75 seat Stubb's Bar-B-Q Restaurant in a
small, ramshackle building at 108 East Broadway, just across the street from
the South Plains Fairgrounds. The jukebox was filled with vintage Blues
music, the same music that once inspired Buddy Holly. Owing as much to
Stubb's warm expansive smile as to his barbecue cooking skills, Stubb's
restaurant quickly became the center of Lubbock's rich musical community.
Throughout the 1970's and 1980's the Sunday Jam Sessions became as legendary
as the barbecue. Tom T. Hall's song, "The Great East Broadway Onion
Championship," was written about an early-morning pool game between Tom and
Joe Ely in which an onion from Stubb's kitchen was employed as the cue ball.
The list of musicians who found a home, and often a hot meal, at Stubb's
reads like a "Who's Who" of West Texas music. Stubb's patrons were treated
to the best musicians our area had to offer, among them Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale
Gilmore, Butch Hancock, Jesse Taylor, the Maines Brothers, Tommy Hancock,
and Terry Allen.
Other musicians around the nation, and around the world, learned about
Stubb's place, and they began to frequent 108 East Broadway as well, folks
like Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Cash, Hank Snow, Roy Acuff,
Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Robert Cray, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and
George Thorogood, among others.
By the early 1990's Stubb's fame had propelled him to some unlikely places,
such as cooking for David Letterman on his national television talk show,
and cooking for the 1993 U.S. Open Tennis Tournament.
Unfortunately, Stubb's pocketbook was never as big as his heart, and his
exceedingly generous nature ultimately led to the demise of his restaurant
business in 1984. After Stubb left Lubbock to try to re-create 108 East
Broadway in bigger, and ostensibly better, markets, first Austin, then
Dallas, the original building was demolished. All that remains of that warm,
wonderful place is the concrete slab foundation.
In Austin, Stubb first started serving barbecue at Antone's, the legendary
blues house. Later, Stubb opened his own restaurant in Austin, and kept up
the long-standing tradition of an open stage on Sunday nights. Eventually
Stubb decided to close the Austin restaurant, creating much sadness in the
local restaurant and music community.
Stubb later lent his name and expertise to a group of investors who
purchased a piece of property at 801 Red River in Austin. The property was
an eyesore at the time, and Stubb upon looking at the rundown mess said
"This must be Hell's half-acre!" Built in 1850, the building had been
abandoned since its days as the One Knight, a night club which first gave a
stage to Texas rhythm and blues stars such as Paul Ray, Angela Strehli,
Marcia Ball, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan.
Since he had helped many of the same musicians in earlier years, Stubb
thought this was a sign.
Stubb died May 27, 1995, before the new restaurant opened in April of 1996,
and was buried in Lubbock. The church where his funeral was held was
standing-room only, and represented there was about as diverse a funeral
crowd as Lubbock is likely to ever witness, for color meant nothing to Stubb
when it came to making friends. Joe Ely, Terry Allen, and Jesse Taylor all
spoke at the funeral, singing a chorus of Amazing Grace to their fallen
comrade.
Stubb's name lives on at two restaurants in Austin and in Lubbock; in a line
of food products distributed by the East Broadway Q Corporation of Austin,
and a special fund called Stubb's "Feed the World" fund established at the
South Plains Food Bank in memory of Stubb. The Food Bank was one of Stubb's
favorite charities because they shared his vision of feeding hungry people
all across the world. Stubb would have liked to have kept feeding people.
Many people across the world will remember eating a meal in that little
shack on East Broadway, right here in Lubbock, back when the magic was on
stage, and Stubb was master of his house.
He was so much more than just a cook.
---
Photos:
http://www.virtualubbock.com/Images/StubbsLBKSign.jpg
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Colosseum/2485/travel/tex/stubbs.jpg
Stubbs website: http://www.stubbsbbq.com/stubbs/stubbs_about.htm