Gildon's Gifts: Charlie's Playhouse and Ernie's Chicken Shack

When the white kids discovered R&B and left the regular clientele out on the sidewalk

Here’s the latest in a series on East Austin history because this is February and you’re supposed to know about this stuff. This is an old piece about two legendary Eastside haunts, rewritten as a chapter of “Austin Music Is a Scene Not a Sound,” coming Spring 2024 on TCU Press:

A story of race in Austin in the late ‘50s comes from an unexpected angle. African Americans were protesting on E. 11th Street, but the picketing was against integration. White college kids had become crazy for rhythm & blues after listening to “Dr. Hepcat” on KVET and watching Now Dig This show on KTCB, and so they’d been flocking to Eastside hotspot Charlie’s Playhouse. Which was fine except that the club’s regular Black clientele was left outside if they didn’t get there early enough.

”We couldn’t go into any club on the west side, but yet we couldn’t go to our own clubs on the east side on Friday and Saturday night,” lamented Villager editor/publisher Tommy Wyatt.

Fraternities would reserve four or five tables each in the 300-capacity joint. Double-dating couples showed up in Caucasian clusters. They had more disposable income than the Black clientele, so they were fine with Charlie Gildon, who owned the entire E. 1200 block, with a barber shop, a liquor store and the Playhouse, which used to be the Show Bar and, before that, the Black Cat.

“Charlie’s Playhouse is where we went to learn all the new dances,” said Lucky Attal, the antique dealer who graduated from Austin High in 1959. Jim Crow segregation didn’t limit where whites could go.

Gildon didn’t allow the races to sit at the same tables, but they danced together to house band Blues Boy Hubbard and the Jets, as well as touring acts like Freddie King, Johnny Taylor, Albert Collins, Hank Ballard, Miss Lavelle and Joe Tex. Guitarist Bill Campbell, a white man from Smithville, often sat in with the Black bands and even toured the South with Pigmeat Markham, leading the way for the Vaughan brothers, Denny Freeman, Paul Ray, Angela Strehli and the like. If you wanted to learn how to cook Creole cuisine you went to New Orleans. If you wanted to play the blues, you went to the Eastside.

Earnest Charles Gildon was a businessman.

Gildon’s initial consolation to picketers outside Charlie’s Playhouse was to have “Soul Night” for Blacks only on Mondays, a school night. “So many of the students didn’t think that was quite right,” Wyatt said.  

“Now, economically, you can understand that this man was in business, that’s the way he was making his money. I mean he was making huge amounts of money on Friday and Saturday nights. But at the same time it was still offensive to the students over here.”

The protest worked. Not wanting to cross the picket lines, and, no doubt, feeling unwanted, the white flock dwindled to the hardcore and eventually Charlie’s became a Playhouse almost exclusively for African Americans again. “Charlie was a little upset,” said Wyatt.

Integration ended up crippling the tight-knit East Austin community, especially when the hub- Black high school L.C. Anderson- was shut down in 1971. In the first case of forced busing in the U.S., and therefore a national story, Anderson students were sent to white high schools, amid much rock-throwing and racial slurs. The federal government had chosen Austin as its test case because the city has a liberal reputation. But what viewers all over the country saw were scenes that smacked of Mississippi.

But let’s remember that it was an Austinite, Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion or nationality.  

With the African-American clientele permitted to shop, eat, dance, whatever, all over Austin, the shops and clubs along East 11^th and East 12^th hit hard times.

Leola Perez and a 19-year-old Stevie Vaughan, wearing a La Cucaracha t-shirt.

Charlie’s closed in early 1973 after a brief run as Twink’s Playhouse, then became Mexican restaurant La Cucaracha. But the blues players wanted to keep the legendary room alive and bugged owner Rey Delgado until be booked Storm, Stevie Vaughan, Southern Feeling and more. It was quite a scene at “La Kook” in ’73 and ’74, then the mostly-white blues scene moved to Alexander’s Place on Brodie Lane, and the Lamplite Saloon on Sixth Street.  

One of Austin’s most influential live music venues was torn down in the late ‘70s and remained an empty lot across the street and up a block from Nickel City (formerly Longbranch Inn) for decades.

But in 1960, Charlie’s was so hoppin’- and nobody was ready to go home at midnight- that Gildon bought the padlocked (for liquor law violations) Cheryl Ann’s nightclub at 1167 Webberville Road and turned it into Ernie’s Chicken Shack. Besides the best fried bird in town, Ernie’s served live music until 5 a.m. on weekends.

Until it closed in 1979, when Gildon died of a heart attack, this was THE after hours club in Austin. Whoever was playing at Charlie’s that night would pack up at midnight and head straight over to the Chicken Shack. Gildon ran a gambling operation in the backroom, where UT football legend Bobby Layne was a regular.

Earnest Charles Gildon passed away at age 57, as did DJ/entrepreneur Tony Von, who sold Gildon the club that became Charlie’s. These kings of the Eastside music scene died four months apart.

Eastside, man. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was its own world with its own code. Some grease going around, for sure, but if it didn’t impact life on the other side of the freeway, it didn’t seem to matter much to the cops. Gildon packed heat at all times and had to shoot a couple customers who’d gotten out of line, but he was always back at the Shack by Friday.

People will argue about which era of Austin was the greatest. Was it the ‘70s during the Armadillo heyday? Was it the ‘80s when the Liberty Lunch/Beach/Continental Club axis put some euphoric jangle in your stride? To some, it was the ‘90s, when South by Southwest made Austin the live capital of cool every March.

Put me in a ripped vinyl booth at Ernie’s Chicken Shack in the ‘60s. It’s 3 a.m. and Freddie King just walked in with his big, red Gibson guitar. Bury me there if you can.