NewsBank, inc. 
Austin American Statesman-1989
Article with Citation

Sticking with Blaze Foley


February 9, 1989           
by  JOHN KELSO

 It was midafternoon Friday, and the woman on the phone sounded
 one part bemused, one part frantic and one part high.
 
     She said she and some of Blaze Foley's other friends were
 thinking about stealing the late musician out of the funeral home so
 they could cart him up to the Austin Outhouse to attend his own
 benefit that evening.
     A cash flow problem was at the root of the plot, she said.
     The funeral home wanted $1,600 more, she said, adding that
 Blaze's musical associates who were helping foot the bill for his
 burial had invested about all the money they could come up with at
 that particular moment.
     And now, she said, they were talking about making off with Blaze.
 Lord knows what might become of Blaze if they didn't come up with the
 money to bury him, she said.
     So duct-taping Blaze to the Austin Outhouse door for his own
 benefit, so to speak, seemed like a plan.
      It never happened. After John Barrymore died, some of his
 friends took him along and propped him up in a chair while they got
 drunk. But Blaze Foley's friends didn't pull it off.
     One suspects Blaze, the songwriter who was shot to death early
 Feb. 1 after an argument, would have been disappointed if he'd known
 he'd been left behind. He had some outlaw in him. He also was a
 generous soul, said Jubal Clark, one of Blaze's best friends.
     ``He had a big heart, and he loved to sing,'' said Jubal, a
 long-haired picker who knew Blaze pretty well and who spent a lot of
 time ``talking eyeball to eyeball'' with him.
     Blaze, Jubal recalled, liked to hand out little presents to
 people. The occasion didn't have to be Christmas, either.
     "He'd say, `Hey, Jubal, can I borrow the keys to your car?' "
 recalled Jubal, who kicked in on a couple of quarts of beer and a
 pack of cigarettes early one morning shortly before Blaze died, after
 the two of them had pooled all of the nickels and dimes they had.
 "I'd say, `It's raining. Where you got to go?' And he'd say, `I got
 to go over to a variety store.' I'd drive him up there and he'd say,
 `I'll be back in 10 minutes.' He'd be back about 45 minutes later.
 He'd buy all these toys or any kind of little thing, and he loved to
 give 'em away. That was his thing - toys to give to people.''
     Jubal says it was his idea to take Blaze to the Outhouse and tape
 him to the door for that farewell bash.
   ``I said, `Now be real careful you don't leave any kind of musical
 instrument close to him, `cause he might break that duct tape loose,'
 '' Jubal recalled telling his fellow schemers.
    They say Blaze Foley had some quirks. Duct tape and BFI trash
 bins come to mind. When you'd pass one of those BFI trash bins on
 the street, Blaze would ask if you knew what BFI stood for. And when
 you asked him what, he'd joke and say, `Blaze Foley inside.' That's
 why someone taped the initials BFI on Blaze's coffin at the Saturday
 funeral.
     Then there was the duct tape. Blaze liked to tape up his shoes
 and other things with duct tape. ``He'd have a sports jacket or
 something, and he'd have it very artisically covered with duct tape,"
 Jubal remembered. ``Just everything was duct tape."
     Everything wasn't money, however, for Blaze Foley. He was
 another of the Austin musicians who became fairly well-known on the
 one hand and fairly well-busted flat on the other.
     Jubal says Blaze spent much of his life on the couch circuit,
 even though Willie and Merle Haggard had recorded If I Could Only
 Fly, one of his songs. Jubal recalls the time he was talking to two
 young ladies about Blaze. They told Jubal about how Blaze would come
 by and sleep on their porch, or under it, some evenings.
     "I said, `Hey, ladies, I'll tell you one thing about Blaze,' ''
 Jubal remembered. `` `Since Willie and Merle did that song of his,
 with all those royalty checks coming in, I'll bet the next time he
 shows up on your porch, or under it, he'll have his own pillow.
 That's what success'll mean to him.' "
 

 Copyright:   (Copyright 1989)