| George
Coleman; aka Bongo Joe; Cannibal Jones |
 |
| As popular
street performer "Bongo Joe", George was well known for twenty years from
Galveston to Port Aransas. In the Cellars Fort Worth (10th & Main) and San Antonio he was called "Cannibal Jones" Tudy once told me "Man, I was standin' by the bridge in San Antonio late one night and I was hearin' this great music comin' from down the hill there, when I heard a voice from under the bridge: "hey boy, what you doin'?" I said "I'm jus' hearin that music, man." He said "You a musician, eh?" I said, "yeah, guitar, man." He said "I'm George, I work down there, listen, I see you just a kid, but that don't matter at the Cellar, you go on down there if you want to, they like musicians. You jus' tell 'em Cannibal Jones sent you." "So I did, and here I still am!" Tudy finished. As for myself, George saved my bacon in a fight one night in the FW Cellar, in the summer of 1963. George left Fort Worth in 1964, when the Cellar moved upstairs. One night he was there and the next day we found that he had torn the piano apart (an old wood upright) and piano parts were strewn out all the way from the bandstand to the alley stairway. We always wondered if he found whatever he was looking for inside that piano! ArvEL Jr. Stricklin ©2006 |