Beginnings
| In 1959, the first time I stood at the top of the stairway leading down to the Cellar entrance, the music I heard rolling up the stairwell was a loud, driving rendition of "Hey! Bo Diddley", sung in a hard-as-nails voice and accompanied by booming electric guitars and drums. Once I got inside I could see, across the small room, a drum set against the opposite wall and, sitting behind it, a mike stand between his legs, a Danelectro guitar in his hands and shouting the blues like no hillbilly ever would, was Johnny Carroll. With his feet he played the bass drum and hi-hat cymbal, and the guitar in his hands screamed and stuttered, played through some sort of echo unit and in a giant voice he yelled "Hey! Bo Diddley" while the audience yelled it back at him. The whole room rocked and it was hard to believe that this was all coming from one person, but there it was. |  Johnny Carroll - performing at the Fort Worth Cellar in 1959 |
| About the time I thought I
was through being amazed, a huge black man walked up and began beating, with huge sticks
of some kind, on a 55-gallon oil barrel, picking up the rhythm Johnny was playing. After a
couple of minutes, Johnny yelled "King George Cannibal Jones, TAKE IT!" and he
turned a light on the black man who was banging the oil drum energetically in an intricate
rhythm pattern. After watching him for a few seconds, I realized that Johnny Carroll had
disappeared and that "Cannibal Jones" was just getting started. In those early Cellar days on Houston street, the weekend format featured Jazz after hours performed by Ft. Worth's Harvey Anderson and his group, among others. Anderson's performances often drew the tuxedo-and-evening-gown patrons of Casa Manana, the Petroleum Club and other Ft. Worth society night spots to the Cellar's after-hours scene. During the early evening, entertainment was provided by Johnny Carroll, Cannibal Jones(George Coleman), and local folk-singer Jack Estes. On weeknights, Johnny, Jack and George would alternate, along with any musicians who might show up to sit in, usually after-hours following other gigs. On very slow nights, sometimes no one would perform until midnight and the early hours would be filled with recorded jazz from a tape deck. After-hours sit-ins included well-known musicians in town for concerts, notables among them being Fathead Newman and several other musicians from the Ray Charles band, one night in 1962 at 10th and Main. |
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