Louisville Magazine

JAN 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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bit A DEEPER Rockin��� the Roadhouse A sk most central Kentuckians older than 55 where they went to party when they were too young to party, and they���ll tell you: Club 68. Te nightspot in Lebanon, Ky., about an hour southeast of Louisville, still shines with a reputation that retains its resonance even though the club itself is long gone. It was the place where Ike and Tina Turner performed more than a dozen times in the ���60s and ���70s; where Jerry Lee Lewis, the Kingsmen and the Everly Brothers played; where, in later years, bands like Exile, Foghat and Midnite Special kept another generation drunk on the power combo of live music and cold beer. What made it so special? It wasn���t its looks: Te one-story concreteblock building was decorated inside with cheap wood paneling, drop ceilings, an institutional tile foor and basic furniture from a restaurant wholesaler that was still sticky from the weekend before. In short, nothing to look at ��� except when the dance foor was an elevated go-go table lit with black lights. Te Marion County club had one entrance, a single door at the front of the building, through which kids crammed themselves at the beginning of the night and crushed against each other to get out once the show was over. It���s a miracle there was never a fre; there would have been few survivors. But fre codes were on no one���s mind back then. It was all about packing that ugly box full of rowdy teenagers drinking well below the legal age and turning them on with frst-rate music performances that their parents would have been terrifed to know they were watching. What made Club 68 special from its beginning in the 1960s was one simple fact: racial segregation. Club 68 was one of the few places in the South where segregation didn���t exist, where white kids could see black 22 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 1.13 musicians perform ��� a reality actualized by the club���s founder, a Lebanese immigrant named Hyleme George, who, in addition to being a nightclub owner, was also the mayor of Lebanon. Since George was neither black nor white, just all businessman, he saw an opportunity to open a club on the ���white��� side of town and populate it with the musicians who were already performing at his ���black��� nightspot near the railroad tracks in downtown Lebanon, the Club Cherry, which had been hosting frst-rate black entertainers since the early 1950s, including Little Richard, Bobby ���Blue��� Bland, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. It was a simple plan with outsized return on investment. Te frst performer at Club 68 in 1964 was R&B; pioneer Lloyd (���Lawdy Miss Clawdy���) Price, who paved the way for the numerous Ike and Tina shows that live on in so many memories today. By moving his stable of performers to the ���white��� side of town, George increased his potential audience exponentially; by not checking IDs at the door, he increased it again. It was that liberal attitude toward drinking-age laws that caused the Courier-Journal to refer to Lebanon as the ���Fort Lauderdale of central Kentucky.��� To draw kids in from Louisville, George paid DJs from WAKY-AM radio $75 to come to Lebanon to introduce bands at Club 68 as part of the ���Hop Caravan.��� Across the street, the Golden Horseshoe was also on the Caravan, and WAKY DJs would speed into town, introduce the band at the Horseshoe, grab their check on the way out the door, race across the street to Club 68, introduce that band, grab that check, and then race back to Louisville with $150. In fact, that���s how Gary Burbank, the longtime afternoon personality on Cincinnati���s 700-WLW, spent his wedding night. Photo by Jerry Karem By James Higdon All that���s left of Club 68 is the sign in the Lebanon back yard of Elmer George, nephew of Hyleme George. Even though Burbank was in a hurry to get out of Lebanon that night, George left a considerable impression on him, enough for Burbank to create one of his most memorable radio characters based on the club owner. Te character���s name was ���Big fat balding guy with a stubby cigar and his pants half-zipped,��� and his catch phrase was, ���And this time, I���m being honest with you.��� Coyote Calhoun, a WAKY veteran who now spins country music for Louisville���s WAMZ, remembers the frst time he walked into Club 68 and saw George wearing a well-made suit with white socks, sitting at the bar, smoking a cigar and counting money. ���Right away, I knew he was a real character,��� Calhoun says. ���I didn���t even mind going all the way down there,��� referring to the hourlong drive to Lebanon. Tat was the power of Hyleme George and Club 68. It was a magnetic force that pulled in kids from as far away as the WAKY signal reached, including the fraternity houses at Centre College in Danville. Once, a young man nicknamed ���Mad Dog��� by his teammates on the Centre College football team, got into a fght at Club 68 ��� one of those really good brawls where he was beating up all comers ��� until someone had enough and broke a beer bottle across Mad Dog���s face. Kind of took the fght out of him after that, but what did he expect? Club 68 was an away game for Mad Dog, and he had not fully considered the home-feld advantage. Anybody from Lebanon could have told him that if the bottles started fying inside Club 68 get under a damn table. Te quality of Club 68 musical acts declined with the end of racial segregation in America. Once nationally known black performers were allowed into Southern big-city music halls, they no longer needed the shabby roadhouse juke joints ��� collectively known as the Chitlin��� Circuit ��� to promote their music. By the ���80s, the club had gone through several owners: George sold it to Bernard Veatch, who sold it to Gerald Tomas. Under Tomas, there was a changing of the guard. No longer was underage drinking the fuel that kept the party going; rather, it was people disappearing into the bathroom in pairs for bumps of cocaine. Tat���s when the luster of Club 68 started to wear of. Te party ended in 1991, when Tomas went to Louisville to buy cocaine. Te drug deal went wrong, and the club owner chased the guys who stole his money through the streets of Louisville, blowing through red lights and exchanging gunfre, until Tomas blew through one red light too many, T-boned a car and killed two people, both of whom were related to the police chief. Like Mad Dog before him, Tomas failed to consider that he was playing an away game. Soon after his arrest, the club fell into disrepair, and was later demolished. A used-car lot now marks the spot, but 68 Liquors, which stood as a separate building at the front of the club���s parking lot, is still operational if you feel like cruising down to Lebanon for old times��� sake. James Higdon, a native of Lebanon, Ky., is author of Te Cornbread Ma���a.

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