RIP Fat Larry, Fat Larry will not be down for corn flakes, etc

[RidgeHunter]

It's been over 30 years since Fat Larry left us, but in a way it seems like yesterday. RIP, Fat Larry.

POSTED:*December 10, 1987

Larry E. "Fat Larry" James, a musician, songwriter and producer, died Saturday. He was 38 and lived in the West Oak Lane section of the city.

James was a drummer who started his career while still an Olney High School student and was on a steady rise to fame at the time of his death. Songs he wrote and/or produced included "Sparkle," "Spacin' Out," "Straight to the Heart," "Act Like You Know" and "Zoom," which went gold - selling more than a million copies - in England. "Zoom" was on the album "Breakin' Out."

His group, Fat Larry's Band, has been together about 12 years. Before going under contract to Omni records about four years ago, James had played backup for the Delphonics and Blue Magic. His music has been described alternately as rhythm and blues, pop and fast jazz.

James also managed a vocal group, "Slick," led by his wife, the former Doris Watson. Formed in 1979, Slick often toured with Fat Larry's Band.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by four sons, Norvell Briggs, Sean James, Gregg Hall and Larray James; his mother, Ruth Caine; a brother, Norman; and four sisters, Barbara, Carolyn and Geneva James, and Ruby Garrison.

Services will be at noon tomorrow at the Alfonso Cannon Funeral Home, 2317 N. Broad St., where friends may call at 10 a.m. Burial will be in Ivy Hill Cemetery, Easton Road opposite Woolston Road.

http://articles.philly.com/1987-12-10/news/26206361_1_songwriter-and-producer-steady-rise-blue-magic

 

[Shootin 4 Fun]

Man....I think that I saw him play at Joey's back in the day.

Live on Chubby Lawrence.

 

[KOPBET]

Is/was he a bastard?

 

[RidgeHunter]

Is/was he a bastard?

He was a little grumpy some days, but aren't we all?

 

[nofearfactor]

Man....I think that I saw him play at Joey's back in the day.

.

I miss that ol gal. I stayed with a friend in the apartments down at Riverside and 61st on visits when coming and going thru Tulsa one summer while out playing music and we would go down there and get in on some of the Sunday open jamms and free eats. Good times.

 

[Shootin 4 Fun]

I miss that ol gal. I stayed with a friend in the apartments down at Riverside and 61st on visits when coming and going thru Tulsa one summer while out playing music and we would go down there and get in on some of the Sunday open jamms and free eats. Good times.

Joey's was the bomb. What happened to her?

 

[nofearfactor]

Joey's was the bomb. What happened to her?

I thought I remembered she passed, not sure. I also thought I remembered a benefit for her too but also not sure. Steve Pryor is a friend I will text him and see if he knows. Nice lady, redheaded, she took in alot of musicians.

 

[nofearfactor]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/archives/...cle_cd92f360-1f4d-53d2-9b8a-070dec8c9ee5.html



Joey Secora had it all.

She was a corporate success story. She was wife, mother,

Sunday school teacher.

She led the good life, the family life, the structured life.

She chased the American dream. And, she caught it. She embraced

it, held it to her bosom as if it were her own.

Then she threw it aside.

She chucked 25 years of corporate ladder-climbing, 25 years

of benefits, perks, stability, marriage and home.

Without once batting an eye, she threw it all away. Like

yesterday's newspaper.

To become a bartender.

Joey Secora, once president of the National Secretary's

Association and head of a department with International

Business Machines, became a bar owner.

But not just any bar.

She owns Joey's, the IBM of Tulsa bars.

It is the bar standard, the bar by which all others are

measured. Joey's, 2222 E. 61st St., has been voted Tulsa's

best live-music bar, and Tulsa's most popular bar. Standing-room

crowds five and six nights a week are the rule rather than

the exception. Joey's is more than a bar, it is an event.

It is the home of the blues. It is small, crowded, smoky.

It is a dive, yet it is a mecca, a shrine. It has a following

all its own. Its reputation as a sancturary of song stretches

from Los Angeles to New Orleans to New York.

And, the reason is Joey Secora.

When the joint is jumping, so is Joey.

She greets the customers at the door. She pours drinks behind

the bar. She walks the crowded floor. She lingers at the

tables. Always with a smile. Always with style.

She is part Pearl Mesta, part Auntie Mame, part Carol Channing

and Dolly Levy. She is, at once, gregarious, outrageous, charming.

She is flash, brass and splash. She is paint and powder,

yet soft and gentle. She is more lady than woman. She is

show business. She is down-home and modest. She is a female Toots Shor.

She does not sing, does not play a musical instrument, does

not care to take the stage.

Yet she is as much a part of the entertainment scene as

the musicians who come from both coasts to perform in her

club. She brings in the national greats and the local legends.

She is a visual treat herself, a sight to behold. There

is the red hair that flames, the baubles that clang. Her

earrings are more windchimes than jewelry. Her costumes

range from leopard-skin jumpsuits to leathers and silks

in hallucinogenic color combinations. And, then there are

the finishing touches, the fingernails, so bright and so

long that when she waves her hands in conversation it is

like watching a laser light show.

All of this from a woman who never entered a barroom, never

tasted a beer until she was pushing 40. She was pushing

40 and pushing herself, setting corporate goals, building

for the future.

She set up departments and ran departments. She was consulted,

promoted, praised. She traveled, earned big money.

"I gave 150 percent," she says.

"My career always came first."

Then her career took a turn.

She looked around one day in 1982 and didn't like what she saw.

"All my life I had planned for the future. I got to thinking,

maybe you ought to be taking it one day at a time instead

of setting all these goals.

"I was tired of doing all that. I just wanted to live one

day at a time. I found out that nothing is permanent. Everything

is temporary. Life is all beginnings and endings.

"So this attitude came over me: start this new beginning

and end it, start another beginning and end it.

"The corporate thing always kept me in a turmoil about

the future. I was certainly planning my future, but then

you see your future crumble with a divorce, with a child

who grows up and leaves home and gets married.

"I just finally said, don't plan for the future, plan for

the future by keeping your body as healthy as you can, because

as long as you are healthy, you can handle the future, whatever

that brings."

What the future brought was change. She quit her job with

IBM, only the second job she had held in 25 years.

Divorced, she took a bartending job. Not because she had

to. Because she wanted to. By late 1983, she had purchased

a bar in Jenks. Within two years, she had added two bars

in Tulsa. She was becoming a virtual corporation herself.

She sold two of the bars, moved into her present location

three years ago and has been sitting atop her new profession ever since.

It is a profession she loves. Despite the long hours, despite

the risks and uncertainties that accompany the bar business, Joey thrives.

She runs her business like a business. What works stays,

what doesn't work goes. It is a bar business built on a

corporate foundation. Joey is president, CEO, department

head, clerk, janitor.

She works seven-day weeks. She is a competitive person,

an over-achiever. "I've never known what it's like not

to work," she says. "I have got to be the very best I can be."

And, with Joey's, she has become the best.

"I wish I had gone into the business years ago. But I'm

not sorry about the good years I spent in the corporate

structure. It helped round me out as a person."

This well-rounded person reads James Michener and F. Scott

Fitzgerald, fishes, exercises, and teaches her 2-year-old

blue-fronted Amazon parrot to speak.

"After hearing some of the conversations I listen to for

hours, his conversations are wonderful," she says.

"Precious," her parrot, utters such phrases as "the baby's

hungry," "baby wants to go bye-bye," "the baby would like a bath."

Joey, in all her colorful eccentricity, takes her parrot

for a walk in the park, feeds it French fries from the neighborhood

fast-food drive-in, and takes it for a ride on her bicycle.

Because of such behaviorial patterns, Joey often is described

as bizarre, strange, not sane, weird, and eccentric. It

is an image she loves, an image she covets, an image she cultivates.

Yet for all the seeming eccentricities, Joey is of down-to-earth,

plain, God-fearing stock.

She was reared around Fort Smith, Ark., in a poor, strict

family environment. Jake and Elma Sebourn taught their daughter

that, if she remembered nothing else, she always should

be be friendly and nice, and live by the Golden Rule.

The words were not lost on Joey. She lives by that influence.

She runs her business by those standards. Her customers

always feel at home. "If they don't have a good time, or

don't enjoy themselves, I feel I have personally failed."

She does not fail often. Her customers return night after

night, week after week.

And, what an eclectic collage of customers it is. Flash

and trash. Cash and crass. White suits and dark glasses.

Doctors with beepers, hairdressers in sneakers. The cultured

and the unconventional. The professional and the unemployed.

Three-piece suits and tank tops.

And, there is Joey herself. She fits right in with this

crowd. Perfectly. Even if perfection appears to be somewhat off-center.

"I like to think people think of me as a lady in an environment

where it is sometimes hard to be a lady," she says.

And, as a lady, Joey manages to skirt all questions about

her hair color and her age. Indeed, on the latter point,

she offers, "How old would you like for me to be?" But

her standard reply to the question of age is, "Age is merely

numbers, and names are merely letters."

For Joey, the numbers and the letters today add up to SUCCESS.

"I have finally found an inner peace with myself," she says.

"Joey's has garnered a certain amount of respect, and I am proud of that."

Terrell Lester is a World special writer.

 

[saddlebum]

That fat ****er could play........ Rip fat ass

 

[Oklahomabassin]

RIP Fat Larry