You Must Be Weird Or You Wouldn't Be Here: The Cellar nightclub in Fort Worth

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What really happened at The Cellar club the night before the JFK assassination? It involved agents and Everclear

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Bud Kennedy

Fort Worth club and Secret Service were in spotlight on fateful November day

Posted Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010

Topics: Fort Worth, Celebrities

By Bud Kennedy

bud@star-telegram.com

Almost 50 years later, the story of the deadly shots fired from a sixth-floor perch in Dallas still begins at the Cellar nightclub in Fort Worth.

Former Cellar workers shed no further light Sunday on their wee-hours work serving Secret Service agents the night before the shooting of President John F. Kennedy.

But in a new documentary about the 1960s downtown counterculture nightclub, guitarist Arvel Stricklin summed up the view from the bandstand: "I know I saw a lot of guys in suits. And the party went on until 6 a.m."

The ensuing investigation provided just one of the Cellar's many headlines during its 13-year run as a late-night haven.

Former musicians and workers gathered Sunday at the Fort Worth Central Library to see the first cut of the forthcoming Cellar documentary, named for a slogan stenciled on the club wall: You Must Be Weird or You Wouldn't Be Here.

Fort Worth filmmaker Giles McCrary interviewed them for the video, due to be released in spring. (A short video clip is at www.gilesvid.com.)

To explain, the Cellar was where Fort Worth's rowdy past met up with the peace-and-love '60s.

Guests danced to Jimmie Vaughan or the future ZZ Top, drank Everclear cocktails from servers wearing only bras and panties -- and then came back the next night to do it all again.

On Nov. 21, 1963, visiting reporters and Secret Service agents were looking for someplace to have fun after the Kennedys bedded down in what is now the Hilton Fort Worth.

The party went to a membership club and then, after midnight, to the Cellar, 1001 Main St.

As former Star-Telegram reporter Bob Schieffer wrote in This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV, "It seemed a good idea at the time and must have been quite an evening. I remember that we stayed long enough for some of the Easterners to see their first Fort Worth sunrise."

Witnesses and guests later told investigators that some of the seven night-owl agents drank at the private club but that no one drank at the Cellar.

(Supposedly, those agents had other assignments away from the Dallas motorcade.)

But as former Cellar manager Jimmy Hill tells the camera in You Must Be Weird: "That wasn't grapefruit juice!"

We haven't heard the last story yet from the Cellar.

Bud Kennedy's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 817-390-7538

Twitter @budkennedyRead more at www.star-telegram.com

 

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You Must Be Weird Or You Wouldn't Be Here.mov

A short film about the infamous Cellar nightclub in Fort Worth, Texas

Anybody Got Remembrances/Memorabilia from The Cellar Clubs?

Wm. Wms. at the Big D 60's Yahoo Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BigD60s/
posted this information. Can anybody out there help?

Participation in The Cellar documentary
Posted by: "Giles Mccrary" taogiles@sbcglobal. net festivetao
Thu Aug 27, 2009 8:49 pm (PDT)

I have spent the past six weeks working on a documentary about The
Cellar. The more research I read, and the more interviews I get on
tape, the more excited I become. This documentary will be able to
reach a much larger audience than first I expected because of its
universal relevance that will be established as the documentary
explores the Cellar Club's juxtaposition to the relevant social issues
of that time, parochial as well as global. It will also examine
poignant existential issues within a specific population as it
remembers the past and reflects on the present.

I need photos, film, and memorabilia related to The Cellar (Fort
Worth, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio) as soon as possible. This is
where the members of the list serve can help me in telling The Cellar
story. I am only interested in photos or film taken in or in front of
the clubs between 1959 and 1974, and/or musicians, patrons, and
employees associated with The Cellar during said time frame. The
photos that are published on the web are exactly what I´m looking for,
except I need better resolution than can I can get by copying from the
internet. If you can help me, I need CD ROMs of your images or the
actual photos so I can scan them. If you do send photos for me to
scan, they will be handled with the upmost care and promptly returned.
I can´t guarantee that every image will be used, but I need to have as
much choice as possible.

Please contact me by email...
taogiles@sbcglobal. net

www.gilesvid. com