Mueller Lake Park Outdoor Amphitheater
Cut the Crap Kid
I knew Jerry Wexler. That’s no boast. More like incredulity.
Doug Sahm’s death in 1999 shook Austin to its bones. Enough to rouse the great Jerry Wexler. That day he called me at the Chronicle, all of Atlantic Records roared in my ears: Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin – Jerry’s kids. Led Zeppelin he only signed to the label. The others he left to mankind and beyond.
That I should find myself in one of the five bathrooms at his Long Island home following Sir Doug’s paradise getaway still strikes me as something I saw in a film rather than actually experienced first hand. Whether it was a tiny bathroom with a large photograph of Duane Allman, or the other way around, I swear the spirit of the slide guitar god kept a whisker wired to that water closet. That black and white picture was breathing, and Wexler’s story to go with it stardust.