Reporter
The Player
When Champ Hood succumbed to cancer last fall at age 49, we lost a musician's musician—one of the most talented sidemen not just in Texas but anywhere.
(Page 2 of 2)
In the late eighties Champ began playing with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who was hosting a weekly Wednesday night gig at Threadgill's backed by members of his band. The likes of Williams, Butch Hancock, and Tish Hinojosa would get up with Gilmore and his group and perform old country, folk, and traditional songs for a dinnertime crowd. Soon Champ was co-hosting, and when Gilmore got a major-label deal, Champ took over the Threadgill's Troubadours, playing fiddle and guitar and singing lead and backing vocals. The group never rehearsed in its eleven years, but they were so good they never had to.
Champ spent the nineties playing with the Troubadours, backing up people he'd once shared the stage with, like Ball and Hyatt (who died in a plane crash in 1996), and playing with dozens of bands and appearing on scores of albums. "He was comfortable in his sideman's status: Sit down, play his music, walk away, and be done," says his old friend Brad Brobisky. Bandleaders knew that he had a way with a song, that he listened and knew how to play as well as how not to play. "He wasn't a hot-licks, flash type of player," says Ball, "though he could do that. He would become an integral part of the song."
As Warren grew older, Champ turned down touring work so he could spend time with him (he and his wife divorced in 1985). His main gig the past decade was playing with Price, whose Tuesday night "Hippie Hour" early show at the Continental Club was usually standing room only. Price was the main attraction, but the crowds also came to see Champ and her other back-up musicians—including, at various times, guitarists Newcomb, Rich Brotherton, and Casper Rawls—playing against each other as if their lives depended on it. He had long since stopped writing his own songs; he was too busy learning other people's, which Ramsey, for one, regrets. "Everybody loved Champ as a person, a musician, and a singer," he says, "but I think he was a better writer than anything else. He had an amazing dry wit."
LAST SPRING CHAMP BEGAN feeling terrible and took to his bed for several weeks. In early April he started coughing up blood and went to see a doctor, whose diagnosis must have shocked even someone so laid-back: He had cancer in his lungs, bones, and liver and might live another year. True to form, he didn't tell anyone. He went in for surgery but told friends the operation was to remove his gall bladder. They suspected otherwise, especially when he lost weight as a result of chemotherapy, but he would always claim to be fine. "He didn't want to make anyone sad," says Price. This public person and ensemble player was very private and very solo. The whole situation was made even more difficult by the fact that his friend Mambo John Treanor, who often sat in with Price's band, was also dying of cancer.
In August Champ called producer Marvin Dykhuis, an old friend, and said he was finally ready to make a solo album. "I'd been trying to get him to do something for years," says Dykhuis. "Being the underachieving slacker that he was, he didn't want to do it." Champ didn't reveal the reason for the sudden inspiration. He told Warren about his cancer in late September. "He made it funny," says Warren. "He called it his 'tumor rumor.'" The conversation took less than a minute, and afterward they never talked about it again. Champ told Dykhuis in October, on their last day in the studio. Not long after, Dykhuis told Champ's closest friends and gathered them for a sort of intervention. Champ, fading fast, finally let people help him. "He was so private," says Warren. "He didn't want to inconvenience anybody. It was a big deal for him to accept help. He was driving himself to and from chemo." His friends helped move him to an old house in the Hill Country owned by longtime friend and bass player Ivan Brown.
When I heard he was dying, I was like many people—I wanted to do something, if only to let him know how much his music had meant to me. But even some close friends like Ramsey and Lovett weren't able to see him one last time—he would be gone before they got the chance. (When Lovett talked to Champ on the phone in late October and asked him why he was being so secretive, his friend replied dryly, "I told everybody, whatever you do, don't tell Lyle.") Two days after moving to the house, one of Champ's doctors delivered the bad news: His liver had shut down, and he had only three to five days to live. In his last week, Champ would sleep all day and stay up all night—in truth, not that different from his normal routine. He didn't talk about what was coming. "He wanted to be treated like a normal person," says Warren. He got a surge of energy right before the end, staying up for 48 hours straight—hanging out with friends on the FP, as he called the front porch, watching TV, and strumming his guitar in bed while Price sang. Then he went to sleep, slept most of the day and night, and died early the next morning.
IN HIS FINAL MONTHS, CHAMP had two main concerns: make his album and be with his son. Dykhuis suggested they get some of the great guitarists he'd played with in the past to appear on the CD. Champ politely demurred, telling Dykhuis, "This is my turn to do my record." He clearly saw his debut as his epitaph, though it's not the complete Champ Hood album. Most of the songs are his—a few from the Uncle Walt's days ("Chain of Emotion," "Sad As It Seems") and a few he wrote for the album. Unfortunately, he never got to write lyrics for the new ones, so they wound up as instrumentals. The only finished new song, and the only song Champ completed in years, was one he wrote for a Contenders reunion a year ago. "Bon Haven" is a sweet tune in which he sings "I wanna go home" in a tired voice. He was so sick that the slide fell from his finger three times while the song was being recorded.
Champ told Dykhuis he wanted the album to sound like a Ray Charles record, so he played electric as well as acoustic guitar, and he was backed by a few old friends (Price, Marcia Ball, and his son, Warren, among others, added tracks after his death). He played his electric guitar parts while he sang his preliminary, or "scratch," vocals, which are generally sung to help guide the band through the recording. Once high and shining, his voice has a mellow vibrato that often falters. He'd hoped to redo all his scratch vocals when he felt better, but he never got the chance. All over the album you can hear Champ wheezing, his voice cracking, the air running out. Yet there's so much life in the lazy, soulful playing and singing, especially when you consider how weak he was. As rich as the Uncle Walt's albums were, they were sometimes smoothed to death; Bon Haven is rough and vital, with an R&B sway, even on the countryish songs. At the end of "Baby What Do You Want Me to Do," Champ laughs—in his last days he was having fun, doing what he loved to do.
ON THE NIGHT OF HIS father's funeral, Warren and his band of young traditionalists played a packed show at Momo's, a club on West Sixth Street in Austin. Many in the crowd had spent the day mourning Champ, and now they were there to check out his son, the prodigy. Warren began playing classical violin in junior high and was one of two high school students to play with the Austin Symphony Orchestra last year. He debuted with his father at Threadgill's at age twelve and learned early on how to improvise, something that many classical players never do. At Momo's, people shook their heads when Warren played a minute-long classically imbued intro to an old Uncle Walt's song, "Green Tree." It was almost like he was showing off, something his father rarely did. Warren, with high cheekbones and his father's twinkling eyes, has the poise of a pro and the good looks that Charlie Sexton had as a teenager. "He's going to be famous," says Dykhuis. "He has so much talent and a good attitude."
Though Warren currently plays three nights a week, sometimes backing up stars like Bruce and Charlie Robison, he wants to learn his instrument even better and will attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music, in Boston, in the fall on a scholarship. But he wants to come back when he graduates and play in the clubs. "The gigs are always going to be there," he says. "With all the bands I play in now, I'm just a sideman, and all sidemen are replaceable. I want to do my own thing some day. I'd like to front a band." He is determined to be many of the things his father wasn't while maintaining the things his father was. Well, not all of them. Warren refuses to be laid-back. "My dad waited for things to come to him. He didn't want a big solo career and all the responsibilities. I'm more of a go-getter." The two used to kid each other about the father's lack of formal training and the son's abundance of it. Indeed, as a violinist friend of mine insists, Champ had terrible technique. But, says Warren, there are some things you can't quantify. "From him," he says, "I got the soul."
After the funeral, at Momo's, everywhere people gathered to remember Champ, they expressed disappointment at the things he left undone: good-byes unsaid, songs incomplete. He spent so much time living in the moment, but friends wish he'd cared more about the moments to come. That, of course, wasn't Champ's way. He had terrible technique. But from him we got the soul.
Pages: 1 2
My Library
