Chicken Shack
Alen Quiroz
David "Rowdy" Yeats and Andy Silvester had formed Sounds of Blue in 1964 as a Stourbridge-based rhythm and blues band. They invited Stan Webb, who was leaving local band The Shades 5, to join them. The band also included Christine Perfect and Chris Wood (later to join Traffic) amongst others in their line up.[1] With a new line-up Chicken Shack was formed as a trio in 1965,[2] naming themselves after Jimmy Smith's Back at the Chicken Shack album. Chicken shacks (open-air roadside chicken stands) had also been frequently mentioned in blues and R&B songs, as in Amos Milburn's hit, "Chicken Shack Boogie". Over the next few years the band had a residency at the Star-Club,[1] Hamburg with Morley, then Al Sykes, Hughie Flint (who was John Mayall's drummer when Eric Clapton was in the band) and later Dave Bidwell on drums.
Chicken Shack had become a mainstay of the white blues boom in the late 1960s, and they enjoyed some commercial success with their two first albums reaching the Top 20 in UK Albums Chart.[7] Worried that the band's popularity would fade without a successful radio single, they decided to record a song that had been successful for Etta James in the US. The single "I'd Rather Go Blind" (c/w "Night Life") ended up becoming successful with Perfect singing lead vocals.[8] The single was successful enough that it garnered Perfect the 'Top Female Singer' on the Melody Maker's Reader's Poll in 1969.[9]
After being dropped by Blue Horizon, pianist Paul Raymond, bassist Andy Silvester, and drummer Dave Bidwell all left in 1971 to join Savoy Brown.[1] At this point Webb reformed the band as a trio with John Glascock on bass and Paul Hancox on drums, and they recorded Imagination Lady.[1] The line-up did not last; Glascock left to join Carmen, while Webb was recruited for Savoy Brown in 1974 and recorded the album Boogie Brothers with them.[1]
Since 1977, Webb has revived the Chicken Shack name on a number of occasions, with a rotating membership of British blues musicians including, at various times, Paul Butler (ex-Jellybread, Keef Hartley Band) (guitar), Keef Hartley, ex-Ten Years After drummer Ric Lee and Miller Anderson, some of whom came and went several times. The band has remained popular as a live attraction in Europe throughout.
If you want fried chicken, you can pick how many pieces you want and even add a waffle. Get the chicken by itself or do what I did, and order the plate which come with two sides. If you are ordering some variety of hot chicken, my recommendation is to pick sides that will act as a fireguard, keeping the heat at bay when needed.
Atmosphere: Casual. The south location offers elements like colorful walls, garage doors and galvanized steel-lined interior and exterior features. Ample seating for indoor and outdoor seating is available.
Welcome to Rockin Chicken Shack in Wisconsin Dells, WI! Experience the bold heat of Nashville Hot inspired comfort food, from hand-breaded chicken tenders to mouthwatering chicken wings, sandwiches, and delectable mac n cheese. Indulge in our enticing combos and family meal deals for a complete feast!
It was sometime in the spring of 1993 that I had chicken so good it ruined me for the next 20 years. I was 15, shut up in a blind factory in Lexington, NC. About half a dozen other teenagers and I were toiling away on a project for Odyssey of the Mind, a creative problem solving competition for kids.
I was hungry as hell. I was always hungry, but it was 11 o'clock at night and my group had been welding the frame for a homemade go-kart since early afternoon. We'd wisely forgotten to bring snacks, so our grumbling was not without merit. My teammate Andrew, the upper-middle-class kid who was hosting our work in his dad's factory, offered us a way out.
Clyde's? By the time my question had navigated my hunger pangs, we were already in the car and headed down Cotton Grove Road, pulling up next to a shack across the street from South Lexington Elementary and the sliver of the projects which abutted it.
The word "shack" is not an exaggeration. There was no sign proclaiming that, yes, this cinder block building, covered in peeling, cheap white paint, was named Clyde's. No sign in the window letting us know they were open, no people outside, no other cars. Just a wan light from the barred window and the faint sound of voices from inside. It was honestly a little creepy. I would've balked right there, but the stirrings of testosterone-fueled pride brought on by a peer next to me kept me there.
Truthfully, shamefully, it felt as though there was something illicit about the endeavor, not because it was midnight chicken from a dilapidated building, but because it was all of that in the Black part of town. Lexington is a 30% Black town; the racial divide was real. There were places where you just didn't go if you were a White kid, not because of any adult decrees, but because of the osmosis of racism in the South. (And surely, much more powerfully, there places you didn't go if you were Black.) If Clyde's skirted the projects, it was still close enough to seem like I shouldn't have been there.
I kept getting Clyde's chicken, and I slowly picked up on the fact that he was a legend. He stuck around in the back room, cooking chicken all night, while his wife tended the register. The place was only open at night, and not even consistently, because he didn't have a license. You'd go in and see cops getting chicken, though, because it was so good that nobody cared. Clyde's became a nexus of local food folklore, a church of soul food ministering to anyone in Lexington savvy enough to figure out it was there, no matter your race, creed, or class. Chicken as art.
And then one day, he and the shack were gone. Clyde died after I'd grown up and moved away. He took his recipes with him; I can still prod friends on Facebook about the chicken and some will say they've tried to figure out, that they even know Clyde's relatives, and nobody knows what it was. And oh, I hunted for this chicken after I left.
This is what I've been able to figure out in the years since: Dipped chicken is a distinctly Central NC phenomenon; by Central, I mean Central, occupying a strip from the Triad down to just north of Charlotte along I-85, with detours in Statesville and Mocksville. Reliant as it is on the primacy of Western style dip, and vulnerable to the slow march of Eastern style's triumph in the barbecue wars, there's no way the chicken can spill its borders much.
It's fried, but not that Frankenstein crispy shell you might be thinking of. This is a soft fry, made softer after the chicken is dipped. Calling it soggy would be incorrect; pleasantly pliable might be better, as the absorbent coating soaks up the dip and holds it tight, with the butter in the dip creating enough viscosity to seal the deal. The pieces are quarters, or halves, rarely individual pieces, cut somewhat haphazardly.
Clyde's was our place, but there were others. A little further south, in Salisbury's, there was Frankie's Chicken Shack, arguably the most famous of the dipped chicken places; it closed in 2004. The restaurants dotted the area, but Clyde's and Frankie's were the ones Lexingtonians went to. I'm sure the others have their own legends, still whispered about with reverence by people of a certain age in all those old mill towns dotting the Piedmont.
On a trip down to Lexington several months ago, my in-laws urged us to accompany them to Thelma's for dinner. For the chicken, my father-in-law told me, a smile on his lips. We did and I got the same thing I'd gotten at Clyde's 23 years earlier: an upper, dipped, this time with mac and cheese and collards, what with Thelma's being a proper establishment.
I bit in and I was there, in that warehouse, eating Clyde's. I was skateboarding behind the Wal-Mart, a box of chicken on my lap during a break. I was at any number of places at once except in a booth at Thelma's, eating this soul food oddity, blinking back tears. My in-laws had known Thelma from years prior; they knew what was up with her restaurant, that 20 minutes from their house was a time warp to another culinary time. It was perfect; I told Thelma as much when she came to the table, though I'm not sure she could pick me out of a lineup.
If you're on I-85 and near one of these special places, you could do worse than stop in for a bite. It would be appropriate to say that this style of chicken vanishing if it was ever widespread in the first place. As it is, it's better to simply call it "special", because it is, a meal sitting at the physical and cultural crossroads of that thin sliver of North Carolina sandwiched between mountains and the slow descent to the sea.
I have only had one bad experience with fried chicken. My parents were out one evening when I was in high school, and I had some friends over. Everybody got hungry, and I found some frozen chicken tenders. I thawed them in the microwave, because as everyone knows, all great recipes begin and occasionally end in the microwave. I had a metal pot of vegetable oil that I had heated up on the stove, and once the chicken was thawed, wet, and white, I dumped the entire contents of the plate into the oil. The microwave juices (where the flavor is at) boiled over in the oil, spilled over the sides of the pot, ignited on the burner, and shot a funnel of fire to the ceiling. The one bit of pride I have taken from the story is that I reacted quickly (7 or 8 seconds) in the frenzy of panicking teenagers. I grabbed the pot and ran out the front door. I looked around for a moment holding what must have looked like a rocket engine before I threw the contents of the pot into the street. It was a beautiful rainbow of fire in the dead of night.
I learned something important that evening. Deep frying delicious chicken was probably better left to the professionals. And nobody that I have found can do it better in the Tri-Cities than The Chicken Shack.
Food arrived well over one hour late ! Wrong information given by the takeaway The food was cold and chips were soggy The burger was super dry and we asked for wing but was gives a Boney piece of chicken
03c5feb9e7