As the music portion of SXSW returns, meet Jim Franklin, the originator of Texas counter culture
Too often living legends go neglected in their own environs,
If that means the ultimate commercialization of alternate pop culture, they’ve succeeded. But for all their financial gains, you’d think they would toss a few chips toward Jim Franklin, the man who made Austin weird over 50 years ago. Without him, SXSW might not have been possible. With his bald pate and long hair in back, he vaguely resembles another Franklin, polymath Benjamin of Colonial and Revolutionary times. “Somewhere up on my family tree, we’re one step away from Ben Franklin,” Jim explains. More importantly, one of his ancestors fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive event that led to Texas’ independence from Mexico. “He may have guarded General Santa Anna after he was captured,” Franklin adds.
Credit for founding the new center for head music is usually shared by Eddie Wilson, the manager of local group Shiva’s Headband, with start-up money from the group’s signing to Capitol Records; plus Mike Tolleson, a prominent Texas attorney, and Bobby Hedderman, one of the principals at the Vulcan, with added investment from the father of of the founder of Shiva’s Headband and Mad Dog, Inc. and a bunch of local literati including sports journalist and screenwriter Bud Shrake.
Through dumb luck or bad timing, the next milestone on Austin’s path to weirdness was not captured by Franklin. A seemingly washed-up Nashville singer-songwriters’ singer-songwriter, who had left Muzak City for the wide-open spaces of his native Texas, Willie Nelson made his debut at the Armadillo World Headquarters on August 12, 1972. He played on until dawn on the 13th at an afterparty sponsored by writers and poets and — this is Texas — UT football coach Darrell Royal.
The Armadillo’s end came in spectacular fashion, with a New Year’s Eve concert kicking off 1981. The headliners included Asleep At The Wheel, the neo-Texas Swing band led by copper-bearded scraggly-haired giant Ray Benson.In 2022, a silver-bearded Benson, soon to be 71, reminisces about the Armadillo and Franklin’s originality. “I remember Jim’s Pumpkin Stomp on Halloween 1978. Asleep at Wheel was playing while Jim stomped a pumpkin in his cowboy boots. It was so strange and so cool.
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