BFT: My family, for a long time when I was a kid, Motown was what was happening. It was OK to listen to Aretha, that's fine. but they thought that I was a little bit weird for listening to John Lee Hooker at the time. Don't be listening to that stuff! And part of what they gave me as reasons is the places to go and listen to that music, up in Northeast Texas, were cut and shoot joints. That's where it was happening. Having gone some distance from that in years, now it seems that a handful of black folks are beginning to say, "Well, they have to play it there; and it's an important cultural form; and we have to hang on to it, reaccept that as our own." What's happening with black families right now? That message doesn't seem to be coming through.

JP: No. I don't know what it is, you know. We have... I guess it's that black people have had the crumbs from the table, if any, for so many years, and that process seems to have changed a little bit. And a few of us get ahead and be able to get a little more than just the crumbs from the table, so they don't want to relate to where we came from. "I don't want to go back there," you know. Or "I don't want my children to know that this was happening at that time." That's wrong! That is wrong! That's nothing to say with where you are now. Why forget from whence you cometh?

And pass the word? This is one thing that as a black culture, as a black race, we don't seem to do enough of. And that is pass the word. Keep the word going. This happened, this happened, pass the word. We seem to be very nonchalant about a lot of things and a lot of areas. You know, we've done some wonderful things in the past. But we have not passed the word on. We have not stood up and said, "Well, I did this." Or "We did this." It seems like there's an area of, "I'm ashamed of what we were. I'm ashamed of where we've come from." And we don't pass that word on, and be proud of where we've come from and where we are now, what we represent now, that's the only thing I can see. That's kind of the way I look at it. There's not enough people passing the word on. That's, I think, what we need to work on. And because...

In 1954 is when the federal government passed the bill to integrate public schools. I was in high school in Corpus Christi, Texas. And 1955 all the schools in Corpus Christi, Texas integrated, on a choice basis. So, I had no experience with bussing to achieve racial balance because I had to catch a bus every morning to go to school anyway. That was out there, but Corpus Christi, Texas integrated in 1955. You could go to any school you wanted to.

BFT: that didn't happen where I lived...

JP: No. 'Didn't happen a lot of places. Didn't happen here, in Austin, Texas. But it did happen there. And my father told me, I remember him saying this, "It's the worst thing that could ever happen to the black community." He said that in 1954. I see what my daddy was talking about.

BFT: What?

JP: What does that mean? I can elaborate on that. What that means is that before school integration, there were only black schools. Black schools had... I mean, the larger concentration of black people, the larger the schools were. Naturally. So, what that meant, if you had a city with a large concentration of black people, like Austin, Texas, usually had one... Some had two, some had three high schools. Dallas had three black high schools. Austin had one, which was Anderson. All black kids went to Anderson. If you lived in Austin or in the surrounding area close by, you went to Anderson.

BFT: And you got bussed there, past a lot of other schools to get there.

JP: Yeah, you passed a lot of other schools to get there; you got bussed there.

But what that created was, you had your stars of the football team, you had your track stars... In other words, you had your students at those schools that were household words. Everybody in the community knew who they were. During the time of... Back in the early '50s or '40s, there was Night Train Lane, went to Anderson High School. Everybody knew who he was. Everybody knew who Charlie Bonner was. You know, everybody in the black community. And all the kids, the little kids, had somebody that they could relate to, that they could look up to. Some black somebody. You don't have that now, 'cause that is no longer.

When... One of the first things the establishment did to achieve racial balance was to get rid of the black schools. Get rid of the black schools. Now, I never did understand that! I can't understand that to this day. Why did they get rid of that physical plant over there that was Anderson High School and raise, spend a whole lot of money building another Anderson High School out here on the lake, I mean out here on the river. [After the class of 1971 graduated, L.C. Anderson, the Negro high school, was closed for the desegregation needs of the local school district. Meanwhile, a new L.C. Anderson High School was built in upper middle class Northwest Austin. Eventually in the decade, the ancient, original Austin High School building was closed, and a new school opened close to Town Lake.] Never made any sense to me. Right here in the City of Austin, too.

I forget what year it was, but they said we're going to change the boundaries and schools... They tried that students living within a certain area would go to a certain school. They tried that. Parents started moving their kids, putting them in apartments where they would live in an area where they wouldn't have to go to Anderson. So consequently they closed Anderson down. Why I don't know. And bussed the black kids out of this community over to other schools. Not bussing other kids into Anderson. So that did away with a lot of other positions. I for one got caught up in that. I was a high school band director down in Elgin, Texas, during that heyday. And what happened to my job is that they told me it was duplication of a teaching position. They didn't need two band directors since they were consolidating and making one high school.

BFT: Yours just happened to be the position that got...

JP: Mine just happened to be the position that got cut. Even though the other band director was 63 years old at the time, he was going to retire the next year. He could have retired then, he'd been teaching 40 years then. And told them he would be ready to go.

BFT: And they still...

JP: No. No. They fired me and kept him. The next year they let him go and got another young guy in there. But he were not black. So, this is what I meant about one of the worst things that happened to the black community. The community died. If you think I'm lying, get in your car and take your video camera and ride up-down 11th Street. Ride through the black neighborhoods and see all of the death in terms of the life of the black community. It is no longer: it is gone! It is dead, and I don't know if it will ever be resurrected.

BFT: That part of town was really an entertainment and cultural center, right?

JP: Man, during the early '60s, on any given weekend, anywhere from Thursday to Sunday night, at Charlie's Playhouse, you could find 40% of UT student body! You know what I am saying? Over there at Charlie's Playhouse. I mean, if you talk to any white kids -- well, they are grown people now -- that went to school at that time, they will tell you they frequented Charlie's Playhouse. 'Cause that's where the action was! That's where the happening was, all up and down 11th Street during that time. I mean, they speak of it being some kind of area that's degrading area now, a lot of thugs and stuff, but they weren't afraid to come down there then. It's still the same place.

Now you've got people hanging around up there that's winos and things like that, but they don't have anything else to do. That's because the area, the neighborhood has died. Where you have death, you have buzzards. You have vultures. So, that's what has happened. If the city would allocate money and clean that area up, it would come back to life again. Certainly something more than what's happening now would happen. But you know, when I first came to Austin, man, the east side of town didn't even have paved streets. I'm serious. I got here in '58 or '59.

BFT: That really wasn't that long ago.

JP: No, man. The majority of East Austin didn't even have paved streets. That's a fact! And, we've come a long way in that area, as far as paved streets are concerned. But I mean, there's a difference between East Austin, driving between East Austin and when you cross I-35, there's a difference between night and day, man! Right now! What happens to the money of the city? Is this not part of the city?

One other thing, musically, the National Endowment of the Arts, the federal government sends a lot of money to the cities for programs during the summer months or all year long for musical programs to be put on. Most of the musical programs that are had are had way on the other side I-35. I do some of them. But they don't get passed around, man. Why? That's wrong. How many concerts has, have the Austin Symphony Orchestra played in Rosewood Park?

BFT: None that I can think of.

JP: Why? Is that not the Austin Symphony Orchestra? Is that not part of Austin? Public money. All of the art houses and Laguna Gloria and places like that, they don't have anything on this side of town, not a one! They don't have any concerts or anything on the east side of Austin! That's how I feel about it.

'Course, I'm just one person, I can't do much about it. That's reason I go back to my pet word, you've got to de-ignorize people. You have to wake people up. You have to wake that area within the person up and say, "Hey, this is a blatant injustice here! Something needs to be done about that." Who do we see? Who do we go to? Who do we wake up? Who do we talk to? It's apparent we really can't go to the city; the city ain't going to do anything. I mean, the people in the city, as long as you don't say anything, nobody's going to... They say, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." Well, somebody needs to make some noise. If it takes me making some noise, well, I will make some noise to try and get something happening musically a little bit better.

One way is to enlighten the children, open their eyes, try to get them to see it. You have to tell kids something more than once. You should keep coming at them with this, keep coming at them, until eventually somebody said, "Oh, yeah, OK". And maybe we can change it. I'd like to see it change. I'd like to see more happen in East Austin. I'd like East Austin to be a more integral part of the city than it is. I'd like to see the city put some money over here, and develop some of the areas over here, and not throw a few benches down on J.J. Seabrook Greenbelt and say, "This is a park." You know? Naw, man. Flood plain. Put some benches down there and say it's a park. Naw man!

BFT: It seems like you are saying there is a parallel between what's going on in the Eastside community... We have said this is not a usable past for us in terms of the music. So here, you white folks, you take this stuff and do what you want with it. And maybe people had put all their faith in the constitution and integration and all that didn't come through. What have we got left?

JP: Yeah well, it was hard to put your faith in that from the beginning. I guess a lot of us got caught up in that trap, but I saw the handwriting on the wall early. Because like I said, in the '60s I got slapped in the face with that, so I knew what it would be about. You have to arm yourself with some tools to take care of self first, and then you can help take care of your brother-man some other kind of way. That's one area that we don't do enough of that in, too. You know, helping fellow-man, helping fellow-brother to see the light or to come on. Let's try to help ourselves in one common cause.

You know, we get credited with a lot of the drug situation. I know I'm kind of getting off the beaten path of music, but it fits. We get credited with a lot of the drug situation, but one guy once said -- maybe it was Jesse Jackson -- "I don't know of one black man that has enough money to go down to Columbia and bring back some drugs." Black folks are not bringing drugs into this country. They are not doing it. They are working as the salesmen to pass it on because, when you have something that you want to get rid of, who do you go to first to get rid of it? The downtrodden, the underprivileged. You go to them because this gives them a way to get out, even though they are preying upon their own kind.

I was sort of involved in that in L.A. before I left from out there too. They was talking about creating summer jobs for kids. A job was paying a kid $5.50 an hour. He look at you like you crazy! He's got a gold chain around his neck about this big, cost about $7000. And he tell you, "$5.50 an hour: I make $5000 a day!" And he goes out there and gets in his Mercedes and drive off! Here's a kid that's 14 or 15 years old that this is happening to. This is a way out for him, because of the society in which we live in is geared for the greenback: the more money you have, the more respectable you are, you know. That's a way out for him. So consequently, if he's making $5000 a day, the guy that brought it in there for him to sell is making $500,000 a day! So, we don't bring the drugs into this country. I'm saying we, black people, don't bring the drugs into this country. We move it for somebody else because we are the most likely ones to move it.

We are the mother's milk of the nation. And we get the blame for a lot of stuff. I was involved also in California with taking music to penal institutions. Another area that you can look at doing things here in the State of Texas. And surprisingly enough -- not surprising, not to me -- that the population of the penal institutions all over America, is 95% black. And we comprise a little over 12% of the population of this nation? Something wrong with that? Something wrong with that? Why is that all the penal institutions got to be 95% black? That's a fact! That's recorded. That's a fact. All over this nation is that way. We don't commit all the crimes, but there it is, proof is in the pudding. There's a lot of injustices that we have to rectify.

We have to de-ignorize my people, de-ignorize a lot of people, to wake them up to open their eyes. Hey, wake up, smell the roses, see what's happening! We have to change this. And we can change this. We have to change this. Music is one way you can help change it. You can deliver a whole lot of messages in music. A lot of people do. Political messages, all kind of messages, and you can do it through music. There are many things I'd like to do in the field of music and if I can deliver some kind of messages to, you know, these people in all the areas, these are areas where something can be done. But somebody got's to be the spokesman. Somebody's going to have to say it. You know? That's kind of where I am.