CUBA, Mo.—-Lou Whitney was proud to tell tourists and visiting musicians that the Carter Family lived in a two story Victorian brick house in 1949-50 when they appeared with Red Foley on the radio version of the Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Mo. That was Lou; talking about Springfield history before he would talk about himself. In July we took Lou to the empty lot off of old Route 66 where Mother Maybellle, Anita, Helen and June Carter once lived. Lou stood tall, like a mountain in a meadow. His eyes squinted into the Ozark evening sun. He had his hands tucked in the front pockets of his blue jeans and he looked around the calm landscape. His feet were firmly planted on the ground. As always. There were no airs about Lou Whitney. I talked my friend and award winning CBS-TV cameraman Tom Vlodek into driving from Chicago to the Ozarks for the July weekend. Lou’s rock n’ roll band the Morells were reuniting to play a high school reunion in Springfield. We wanted to film the concert and interview band members for a possible prose-documentary that uses the acclaimed Morells/Skeletons as a window into the lost history of Springfield music. I’m glad we made that trip. Lou died Oct. 7 at his Springfield home from complications of cancer and a fall he took in his home in late September. He was 71 years old. Lou never stopped playing and recording other voices. He never stopped honoring the power of music. Dave Alvin, Eric Ambel, the Del Lords, Robbie Fulks, Jonathan Richman, Syd Straw, the Bottle Rockets and Wilco are among those who made the pilgrimage to record with Lou and emplloy the Morells/Skeletons at Lou’s studio in downtown Springfield. I hear Lou just about every day. The lineage of his own best known recordings dates back to 1979 when the pop-rock Skeletons were created as a back up band for singer-songwriter Steve Forbert. Lou had been bassist-vocalist for the Symptoms (think Ramones meets rockabilly cat Billy Lee Riley) who had been playing six nights a week in the Pub Mobile bar in Rolla, Mo., halfway between Springfield and St. Louis. Lou would remind you the bar was part of an automobile museum on a plot of land owned by a guy who dated “Elly Mae Clampett” of the Beverly Hillbillies.
The Morells followed around 1981, the Skeletons returned in 1992 when the San Francisco Chronicle named “Waiting” one of the top 10 albums of the year. In May, 2004 the Morells were the band playing behind Bo Diddley at FitzGerald’s in Berwyn. Back and forth, restless hearts. The Skeletons 1991 track “Outta My Way” got major airplay on WXRT-FM in Chicago and porn star Seka used it as a dance number when she appeared at the Admiral Theater in Chicago. Lou had vaudeville gumption. He fought hard in his battle against cancer. He was given six months to live in February, 2013. Lou and his beloved wife Kay drove countless eight-hour round trips between Springfield and St. Louis for experimental therapies. He had a cancerous kidney removed on May 21, 2013. Lou bought extra time to be with his family and friends and to continue to work with regional Springfield music in his studio. In July we spent a Saturday afternoon with Lou. On Sunday we treated him at his favorite cashew chicken joint on the south side of town. Lou was sharing stories and they were good and some were spicy. Lou was an avatar of Springfield music history. Country Music Hall of Famers Porter Wagoner and Brenda Lee got their starts on the Ozark Jubilee radio and television show. Chet Atkins was a studio guitarist for the Ozark Jubilee. Wayne Carson, who wrote the Box Top hits wrote the Box Top hits “The Letter” and “Soul Deep” in Springfield as well as the smash co-write “Always On My Mind,” recorded by Brenda Lee, Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson. His father Shorty Thompson appeared on the Jubilee radio and television shows. Actor Brad Pitt is from Springfield. Lou always had something new to drop on you. In July he told us the Birdman of Alcatraz, a.k.a. Robert Stroud, died in (a federal prison) in Springfield. They all left. Lou stayed. Lou was rugged Americana before Americana got gussied up. Next fall’s Americana awards in Nashville needs to find a way to honor Lou. Like thousands of others who encountered Lou, I never grew tired of hearing his stories. Even the same story several times. Lou was the only guy I know who liked to borrow from Lil’ Abner when he talked about his adopted home town: “Springfield is more like it was the last time you were here than it is now.” Scott Kempner of the Dictators and the Del-Lords wrote on Facebook, “Lou was a constant guide, friend, inspiration, hero and musical companion. Truly one of a kind, high-end, top shelf human being. I don’t think I could have worked with anyone else than Lou and the Skeletons, the best band in America you might not know…Taking a minute to remember them all at this time and a special salute to Lou, the greatest man I have ever known.”
In 2001 Springfield attorney and former music writer Dale Wiley started the Slewfoot Records label with Lou. They even went full tilt Alan Lomax and ventured into the field to record congregations singing hymns at rural churches around the Ozarks. In late September Wiley created “The Best Facebook Thread Ever” for favorite Lou quotes. Here’s some: “I’ve been around the world twice and talked to everyone once”—Trent Wilson “Did I ever tell you how to butcher a hog?”–Cecelia Ellis Havens “Americana radio’s like Spanish fly and a nymphomaniac: everybody says they exist, but you or I sure as hell ain’t seen one”–Dale Wiley “Lou Whitney loudly at the restaurant at the Silver Saddle: ‘I’d like some ice cream. They got no ice cream in prison.”–Eric Ambel. “Cars are the art form of the working class”–Dave Hoekstra “My bad. One more time,” on about my 10th take he always acts like it is him who messed up, not me…even when we all knew it was really me. And theres the time he said of my southern gospel singing mama, ‘Man, she sang the hell out of that song!”–Robin Bilyeu Rees “I once had a felafel–I feltawful”–Rick Wood “Give me a little George of the Jungle on the rack tom”—Trent Wilson. Lou was reticent about playing bass with his band at the July reunion show. He was weak and he didn’t want the attention. “If I felt better I’d play with them again,” he told me. “It’s an emotional thing. I didn’t want to be ‘That Guy,’ you know the guy you see on the television special, and you go, ‘Oh my God, he hasn’t retired yet.’ I was playing when I was 70 (see my January, 2013 birthday post).
Lou did not want a funeral. “And NO band jam memorial,” his long time friend and drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks wrote in an Oct. 2 e-mail. Lou did request that his body be donated to science. Transportation costs for a Springfield funeral home to take Lou’s remains to Washington University in St. Louis were $1,200. A “Send Lou to Camp” GoFundMe campaign raised $2,525 in one day. The extra money goes to Lou’s wife and family. Doing some quick math, Lou figured he had been playing with some core of the Morells-Skeletons (Hicks, keyboardist Joe Terry, guitarist Donnie Thompson) for 46 years. What did he learn about himself after all that time? “A lot of it is confidence,” he answered in satisfied tones. “When you set yourself in the middle of those guys you look good. I don’t care who you are. You know that you’re knocking it out of the park. People dance. If you’re good enough to have that day in and out you can put up with a crappy day easy. A band is like a family. Even if we didn’t see each other for two or three years, we could just pick up and go. “That’s comforting to me.” * * Lou Whitney III was born in 1943 and raised in Phoenix, Az. Singing cowboy Gene Autry was in the Army Air Corps at Luke Field in Phoenix and visited the hospital where Lou was born. “Gene Autry got my attention,” he quipped in July. Lou was the grandson of Louis B. Whitney, the former mayor of Phoenix and unsuccessful candidate for Congress on the Democratic ticket. His son Harold Lou Whitney was a successful Phoenix attorney. In a tender Oct. 2 Facebook tribute, New York singer-songwriter Mary McBride wrote, “Lou was a tried and true Democrat, one of the best, who infused common sense and utter hilarity into every argument and who could actually separate the good Republicans from the bad. A skill many of us sitting out in the political left field have still not developed. I know Lou will always somehow be watching the polls and trying to steer the vote to the right side of the aisle. I know he will always editing gratuitious lines from songs that think too much of themselves. And I hope he feels great satisfaction in knowing he made an enormous impact on so many people. I am just one of them. How lucky we all are.” Singer-songwriter-producer Ben Vaughn made it big scoring music for film and television in projects like “That ’70s Show,” “3rd Rock from the Sun” and “Psycho Beach Party.” On his Facebook page Vaughn said it it wasn’t for Lou, he wouldn’t have a career in the music business. “He was the first guy to deem my songs worthy of public consumption,” Vaughn wrote. “In 1982 the Morells recorded a tune of mine for their album ‘Shake & Push’. Without knowing it, I had touched the hem of the garment. Everything changed for me after that. I had no idea how much respect he commanded in the music world.” The Morells amped up Vaughn’s “The Man Who Has Everything” and the Skeletons later did double keyboard justice to Vaughn’s “I Did Your Wig.”
Lou III left Phoenix by the time he was 16 to live with relatives in the mountains near Bristol, Tn. He was already following the path of the Carter Family. Lou obtained a degree in real estate at Eastern Tennessee University. “It’s a language, actually,” he said in our 2013 conversation. He started playing in tuxedo drenched show bands that were popular in the soul-driven Beach Music scene of the Carolinas, Georgia and Eastern Tennessee. Lou was also a sideman with Arthur Conley of “Sweet Soul Music” fame. “The World War II and Korea party guys came home with G.I. benefits,” Lou explained in July. “They went to school at the University of South Carolina. Partying every night. And going out to see these bands. Shag dancing got real big. If you wanted to play a fraternity party at the University of Alabama, you better know some Bill Deal and The Rhondells. Music trends didn’t happen all over the United States. You could go to Denver and never hear of Chairmen of the Board or the Tams. It didn’t get played. But down south it did.” One of the Skeletons most endearing covers was the Swinging Medallions 1966 Beach Music classic “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love).” In 1970 Lou moved to Springfield to sell mail order real estate to folks in Illinois and Wisconsin who were dreaming of the wide open spaces of the Ozarks. “It was a dying art,” he said in July. “In fact I saw my first fax machine in a real estate office in Springfield. But I really came here to play in bands.” More than once Lou told me that he and his “Wrecking Crew” Morells-Skeletons musicians were defenders of the song. That’s why songwriters loved working with Lou and it is why his bands did such pure justice with the hundreds of cover songs they did over the years. With Lou on my mind I read Ken Sharp’s Sept. 27 Q & A with former Rolling Stones manager and XM-Sirius host Andrew Loog Oldham in the Sept. 27 issue of Goldmine magazine. “The world is so noisy,” Oldham said. “Music has been wounded by Steve Jobs’ technology; greed and ego is fighting for survival. The main role of the artist is to serve the song, as opposed to him or herself. That is difficult to understand in a world where all technology supports the dangerous charade. Give me John Prine any day over what Simon Cowell barfs up. What’s the result? You’ve got Adele, who is great at receiving awards, but could no more put a set together than a politician could tell the truth.” Lou was like a good editor. He was an advocate for his talent. He never got in the way. He maintained a dignified work ethic. Here’s Lou setting the table in 1991 on L.A. hipster’s “Art Fein’s Poker Party.” In July Lou reflected, “We played together in this tight realistic, no nonsense combo. Playing a bass part all the way through a song, the guitar rhythm and the drum pattern and singing the song. Playing the solos as they existed and getting the breaks rights. We drifted into that. We became popular. Roscoe (Eric Ambel) used to say, ‘When you play a Ramones song it sounds so perfect.’ Well, we couldn’t help it. We’re the best band in the world and we opened for this and we opened for that? I don’t know. “We’re the band next door. Four guys you would never believe were in a band. We set up and play and if we’re having a good day you go, ‘Yow!’ Even we’re going ‘Yow!’ That’s a good thing. Being in a band is a job like anything else. We practice our songs, learn them and we get better on the job.” Lou never stopped learning, teaching and sharing. During the rest of my visits to Springfield, I will tell tourists and visiting musicians about the benevolent magic of Lou Whitney. His humble glory roars across America. |
RIP David Leong, founder of “Springfield Style Cashew Chicken”
David Leong, 1920-2020
“The Cashew Chicken Capital of America” is a true made-in-America story delivered from the hills and highways of Springfield, Mo.
Springfield’s population is approximately 168,000 people. And nearly 100 regional restaurants serve cashew chicken.
David Leong, the beloved founder of “Springfield Style Cashew Chicken” died July 20 in Springfield. He had been battling pneumonia. David was 99 years old. He would have turned 100 on August 18.
David’s remarkable journey incorporates so many things I love: cashew chicken, Route 66, soul music, immigrant dreams, supper clubs, and the late Springfield musician and avatar of good, Lou Whitney.
David moved to Springfield from Pensacola, Fla. in 1955. Prominent Springfield neurosurgeon Dr. John Tsang was vacationing in Pensacola and became a fan of David’s cooking. Tsang told David he could make more money in “The Queen City of the Ozarks.” David could not even locate Missouri on a map.
By the early 1960s David was a chef at the now-defunct Grove Supper Club on Old Route 66, which slices through Springfield. The Grove was a cool place, with low ceilings and comfy booths embedded with flamingo prints.
In a 2001 conversation at his now-defunct Studio in downtown Springfield, Whitney told me how he saw the Drifters perform at the Grove. “It had gone through a series of owners and the last burning had been investigated for arson, although nobody was arrested.
“By virtue of David Leong’s Asian heritage, he had a few Asian dishes on the menu. You could get pepper steak, some kind of fried rice.
“And cashew chicken.”
Storyteller Lou Whitney (Dave Hoekstra photo)
David conjured up his own style of cashew chicken. He cut the chicken into small nuggets, dipped them in batter and spun them through a deep fry. That gave the cashew chicken a fried chicken flavor. David then covered the chicken with Chinese oyster sauce, and over that, he sprinkled chives and/or chopped scallions. Salted cashews were applied as the finishing touch.
In 1998 David told the Associated Press, “Everywhere I looked, restaurants were serving fried chicken, fried chicken, fried chicken. So I made American fried chicken with Chinese gravy.”
One evening during the early 1960s a semi truck plowed off Route 66 into the kitchen of the supper club. To demonstrate what happened, Whitney stood up from behind a desk in his studio and threw himself against a wall. Hard. Like ice hockey check hard.
I had to ask Whitney if he was okay.
He was and he continued, “David was pinned against the wall and suffered minor injuries. He ultimately got a settlement.”’
David took insurance money and in 1963 opened his own restaurant – Leong’s Tea Room – on the then-unsettled far south side of Springfield. “That was Springfield’s first Asian restaurant,” said Whitney, who moved to Springfield in 1970. “Of course, he took his cashew chicken recipe out there. And people started flocking to Leong’s.”
Fayetteville, Ark., is about 130 miles from Springfield. At the end of the Vietnam War, Fort Chaffee near Fayetteville was the nation’s largest Vietnamese refugee center (50,797) and the last to close (Dec. 20, 1975).
Area dioceses helped with the resettlement of the mostly Catholic Southeast Asian refugees. Many refugees settled in Springfield.
Guess what business they got into?
“It was BOOM!” Whitney said as he finally returned to his chair. “All of these carry-out Asian places started opening up. Every place had the cashew chicken. The people in Springfield were conditioned to cashew chicken. These Asian families came here, looked around and went, ‘We can buy a nice house in the Southern Hills. Have Trans-Am cars, nice clothes. And all we have to do is work? Not a problem!’ Now, you go to Dallas, Texas or Kansas City, Mo. and see – ‘Cashew Chicken: Springfield Style.’ ”
So it was probably around the time of this memorable 2001 conversation with Lou Whitney I started thinking maybe I should do more than just write about Springfield music. Over the next few years, Whitney and I began talking about things like long-form stories on the history of Springfield music and maybe a documentary.
Reeling in friends like Chicago producer Jamie Ceaser, my former Chicago Sun-Times colleague, and videographer Jon Sall and my cameraman friend Tom Vlodek, we began work on “The Center of Nowhere” documentary in 2013. We had no money but we ate a lot of “Springfield Style Cashew Chicken.” I remained obsessed with all the angles of David Leong’s story. It was so much more than a plate of cashew chicken.
Springfield songwriter Nick Sibley was gracious enough to compose “The Cashew Chicken Song” for our documentary, with sweet lead vocals from Springfield’s Abbey Waterworth. Chicago’s Sharon Rutledge provided excellent cashew chicken animation. More than once I dragged my crew and friends to Leong’s.
They thought I was nuts. Some of them still do.
We interviewed David, his son Wing Yee and Whitney at Leong’s Asian Diner, 1540 W. Republic Rd. on the southwest side of Springfield not long before Lou’s death in October 2014. Wing Yee is the Leong’s executive chef and he ran the business with his father and two brothers, who share the first names of Wing (which means “prosperous” in Cantonese,)
Wing Yee Leong, Executive Chef
Bits of Lou, David, and Wing Yee are in “The Center of Nowhere” documentary, but I had to come to the harsh reality that 20 minutes of the documentary could not be devoted to “Springfield Style Cashew Chicken.”
These are some of the things I learned during that afternoon that are not in the doc (Maybe they will be in the DVD extra!)
David was born in Canton, China (now Guangzhou.) He came to America in 1940 at the age of 20. He became a U.S. citizen because his father had already settled in America.
“It was the wrong time to be twenty and become a U.S. citizen,” David said with translation help from Wing Yee. “I was immediately drafted into the United States Army. I was on the fourth wave of Omaha Beach in Normandy.
“I jumped off the (amphibious) Higgins boat when it was coming on shore. That saved my life. By going off the edge instead of going down the ramp. Because when the ramps opened the Germans would open up (fire) on the boats. The water was over my head. So I had to learn to swim fast.” David also prepared meals in his spare time and his Army comrades often said they were the best-fed troops in Europe.
When David arrived in Springfield in 1955 he first partnered up with his friend Dr. Tsang. Wing Yee said they opened the Lotus Garden restaurant together. “Dr. Tsang wasn’t a very good business person,” Wing Yee added. “He’d invite all his doctor friends and not charge them. From there, my dad went to the Grove Supper Club, which at the time was a very prominent place to work.”
Si Siman, the legendary Springfield music producer, songwriter, and co-founder of the “Ozark Jubilee” television show would bring friends such as Chet Atkins, Johnny Cash, and Red Foley to the Grove. At the time that David worked at the Grove, it was the only restaurant in Springfield where customers could dine and dance. It was a fancy supper club where women wore pearls and cocktail dresses and men wore suits.
Si Siman cut his chops at the Grove Supper Club.
In 1969 a McDonald’s research and development team visited David at the original Leong’s Tea House.
“They wanted to watch the process of how we cut the chicken, bone it, breaded it and fried it, how we used sauces.” Wing Yee said. “After three days they asked for my dad’s recipe. My dad said, ‘Unless you pay for it, I’m not going to give them to you.’ We thought nothing more of it but later (1983) McDonald’s corporation comes up with a Chicken McNugget. I like to think we had something to do with that.”
The Leongs are pioneers in Ozarks cuisine and culture. Wing Yee was born in 1956 in Springfield. “Our family was the first Asian family in Springfield and some people looked at us like, ‘Who are these aliens?’,” he said in 2014. “When we started we heard everything about we’re serving cat, all kinds of things that were never true.
“The plus side was that my dad introduced home cooking, quality service and developed friendships that last to this day. There was always the biased people, the negative people you didn’t want to be around, but the good people, the ones that counted the most, they would help my dad out. He had a lot of good friends.
“And they were friends for life.”
Lou Whitney (center) and the Skeletons–cashew chicken fans and friends.