The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 31

THE EVENING -gONff CCENT ON ARTS PEOPLE LEISURE Cl ZPAOE CI BALTIMORE. WEDNESDAY. ()( TOHKR 9, 1974 It Seemed Like The Tex-Mex Trip Never Left Austin Off Beat By John Schulian Jiew York The tired face belonged Jo a friend backstage at Carnegie Hall, Doug Sahm started worrying immediately. should take vitamins," he said, and double up on everything else." Tbe friend, a guitar picker for Jerry Jeff Walker, brightened at the mention of everything else. "Nah, man, I'm serious," Sahm said.

"Me and the band bought $70 worth before we left Texas at that place in San Rafael where the Grateful Dead get their i i i 'C On. jiwi wwuiu nave neeaea enougn vitamins to build a wall around Texas, his home state, if you Wanted to keep up with Sahm as he swung through the East with an incongruous mixture of producer Huey P. Meaux. "Us and the Beau Brummels were the first American long-haired groups," says Sahm, "but Huey wanted everybody to think we were English." Stayed Out Of Sight The Sir Douglas Quartet stopped paying off by the end of the sixties, so Sahm stayed out of sight for a couple years and then moved in on Austin's laid-back scene. "It is a scene, man," he said.

"There's ladies and all other kinds of things musicians like, but it's home, too." Sahm lives in the hills west of Austin, not far from the Soap Creek Saloon, where he practices and appears regularly. There is no telephone in his house, and he picks up his mail at an Austin head shop called Oat Willie's. Everything is calm until a group he likes starts -playing somewhere around town. Inevitably he will arrive backstage and, as one observer says, "kind of blink and shake and go through this little routine until he gets asked on stage. You might say he's a well-known walk-on-er." Same Thing At Carnegie The same thing happened with Jerry Jeff Walker, who was the other half of the bill Sahm played at Carnegie Hall.

No one took offense. In fact, it wouldn't have been right without him because the pretend cowboys jamming the place made it seem more like the Soap Creek Saloon on nickel beer night than a pantheon of high-brow music. "New York could be the next country trip," Sahm said when the mad hoo-hawing had ended. could have a million people go into a thing here and all those money cats would there might be kindred souls jamming to satisfy their musical appetites. Off days gave him a chance to watch big league baseball, and the.

thrill of it had him buzzing about the Philadelphia Phillies' Karma and forgetting where he was. You have to say forgetting because no one with a grip on his emotions could confuse the classic Yankee Stadium, even in the midst of remodeling, with homely Shea Stadium. "Like A Bunch Of Hicks" "We act like a bunch of hicks," Sahm said, savoring the word act. The smile that spread across his sharp-featured face suggested that he and the Tex-Mex Trip might have been trying to see just how much nutty New York could handle. "The cats in the French restaurants are the cats that can't figure us out," he said.

"Except there was this one waiter, but he was" from Budapest. Can you imaging that a waiter who can't speak anything but Hungarian in a French restaurant? But he was a soulful cat. He took care of us. I guess he was groovin' just the way we do." Sahm appreciates the kind of style that lets everybody get along and have a good time, which explains why he operates out of Austin, Texas, or, as he calls Paradise." For a long time it was the only town in the state where longhairs didn't risk Shearing by showing up in public places. Musicians like Michael Mur-phey -and Willie Nelson figured that if that was the case, they could blend with rock there and not risk tar and feathers.

Now, because what they have done is so soulful, to use Sahm's favorite adjective, the word about Austin is finally starting to get out Showed Up la 1972 Sahm showed iip in 1972. He was born 32 years ago in San Antonio, only 90 miles southwest, but he took the roundabout way to Austin. The earliest stops were in his hometown, where he was Little Doug, the grade-school kid who sang honky-tonk laments on radio shows with Hank Williams, and later the leader of the Knights, a rhythm-and-blues band seasoned with the funk and soul Sahm had known firsthand. "He was a little-bitty dude about 17 playing with a bunch of spade cats when I first seen, him," says Frank Rodarte, Sahm's saxophonist. "He hung out at places where white cats weren't supposed to go, like the Eastwood Country Club and the Ebony Club.

You have to have guts to go in them. That's how you get soul." Soul didn't bring Sahm a name and money, though. The Sir Douglas Quartet did that with such hits as "She's About A Mover" and "Mendecino." Berkeley in all its psychedelic glory was headquarters for the group and still that wasn't exotic enough for guua uia ooys ana inicanos ne cans the Tex-Mex Trip. 1 It wasn't so much what he did on stage as he worked his way toward his Carnegie Hall debut, if' debut' isn't too high-f alutin' a word for a dealer in Bob Wills' Western Swing and Willie Dixon's blues. Nicknamed Well Anyway, Sahm made his nickname, the; Texas Tornado, look good by acting '-like a ping-pong ball in a wind as he ricocheted from guitar to piano to fiddle to Conga drums, never missing a word of whatever song he i'was singing, 'and you 1 would have he needed a rest after all that.

'There was a' better chance of John Connolly starting a campaign against the oil depletion allowance! Sahm would spend the rest of every night looking for some after-hours boo-greoint or at least a room where DOUG SAHM On stage he moves like a ping pong ball in wind tunnel. still walk down Madison avenue and mentary passes, and now they were not know a thing." backstage with their arms around The dressing room where Sahm was Sahm's shoulders, posing like tourists looking for a seat was crowded with while Frank Rodarte clicked away on his newest fans 12-straight-laced em- his camera. ployes. from the hotel where he was "Tell me this ain't a Tex-Mex trip," staying. He had given them compli- said the laughing Rodarte.

5 ies Prove Speed Demon Skill Troph Hy Gardner On Personalities Of National Champion Crab-Picker 7 SSlk ililftK -ii ifc1 I 1 rvi HvmK-t ROGER MARIS Hitting No. 61 at Yankee Stadium back in the year 1961. By Frank Megargee Woolford, Md. One of the nation's most obscure celebrities lives in this Dorchester county village. She is Betty Lou Middleton, the national crab-picking champion.

1 attractive brunette, Middleton keeps the proof of her fame in a little alcove just off the living room of her home. There, she displays the five tall, handsome trophies she has won in national competition. All were earned in local contests, which also are national in scope, because, so far as is known, no other crab-picking competition is conducted outside this Eastern Shore heartland of the crab industry. For the last three years, she was judged the fastest crab-picker at the national contest held annually at the Bay Country Festival in nearby Cambridge. She reinforced this with first place victories this year and last at the National Hard Crab Derby at Crisfield in Somer-setcounty.

This year's Cambridge contest wound up in a crab-pickin' photo finish. The contestants were given a dozen steamed crabs with victory to go to the one who picked them the cleanest and fastest. Mrs. Middleton picked hers in 3 minutes, 25 seconds to win, but a protest was lodged and the judges declared a three-crab pick-off between Mrs. Middleton and her closest challenger, Mrs.

Betty Lee Parks, of Fishing Creek. In a blur of hands and flying crabmeat, Mrs. Middleton won the pick-off. Later in the summer at the Crisfield Crab Derby, Mrs. Middleton again showed her championship style.

That time each contestant was told to bring a bushel of crabs, and they were given 15 minutes to see who picked the most. Mrs. Middleton. picked 3 pounds, seven ounces of ing from tne world rootoau League. NiiiWht- liott l.lnul IVjruii BETTY LOU MIDDLETON Pride of Woolford, left, displays her skill al FeUs Point festival here.

Has he said anything about the new league fit to print? Dick Gallagher, Pittsburgh. A. Yes. Since many of the players who jumped said they did so for their -families, Robbie slyly concedes: "Apparently, the World Football League has done more than anything else to make family men out of the players." takes crab-picking jobs occasionally. "Pickers get 70 cents a pound now.

In half a day I can earn a day's, wages and still have time for my housework and flower gardening." The future of crab-picking is assured, she feels. Modern technology may be able to send men to the moon, but so far it has been baffled in its efforts to come up with a workable machine that can replace the dexterity of the human hand in probing the crab's quirky interior. "There's an art to picking," said Mrs. "It's a good feeling, seeing others struggling with it, and knowing you know how to do it." crabmeat drops into one pile and empty shells are tossed into another. Like all champions, Mrs.

Middleton has developed muscles in peculiar places. "In this trade," she said, "You get muscles between the knuckles' of your hand from gripping the knife so far and working it fast." She also has an oval shaped callus on her inside forefinger, which guides the knife blade. Her early training was acquired in crab processing houses, where she worked as a professional picker in what still is a handicraft industry. "I was always one of the fastest," she said. She still Question When the usually gentle' Hank Aaron tossed a box of berries in, -the face of a sports writer this sum- mer, I wondered: Did Babe Ruth or any other famous home ran hitter ever' break under similar pressure? Arnie Grother, Birmingham, Ala.

Answer Yes. Roger Maris of the New York Yankees for one. Roger was and nervous as he approached the Babe's record, unable to relax under the pressure. Ruth was able to keep his cool since he was making, not a record. Incidentally, wmaris, setting a new record of 61 home runs, never was given his just due because of a technicality which is still subject of controversy.

The schedule that season called for eight more games than the one in which the Babe set his mark. Q. What famous film actress said, difficult enough being married to an actress more difficult being married to a successful one. And, in Hollywood, people laughed because (my husband) was a Mrs. Mary Freeman, Long Island City, N.Y.

Bergman, speaking frankly, in McCall's about -Dr. Peter Lindstrom, her first of three husbands. Q. It looks like Joe Robbie, owner of the Miami Dolphins, is really hurt- But in Mrs. Middleton's supple hands the ungainly crab is transformed into a tidy, manageable object, and the task of cleaning it is accomplished as readily as paring a potato.

In fact, she said, "You just work fast and handle the crab like a hot potato." She spurns the mallet and uses only a professional crab-pickin' knife, which resembles a short-bladed par-, ing knife. Gripping this close up on the blade, she seizes a crab, pares off the claws and finers, pries open the carapace and flips the meat from its compartments with the skill of a surgeon doing open heart surgery. All this happens almost too quickly for the human eye to detect. The amazed onlooker see only a whirr of hands out of which clean crab meat in her allotted time and transformed her bushel of crabs, except for "eight or nine," into a mound of shells. Anyone who has ever tried to pick and eat a Maryland steamed crab knows what a phenomenal feat this remarkable woman accomplished that day in Crisfield.

Crab fanciers usually bring a wooden mallet and a nutpicker or knife to the task of consuming a crab. The mallet is needed to break the shell, and the picker is used to work out little morsels of crabmeat tucked away in the odd compartments of the crabs' hive-like interior. Tedious Labor For even the most experienced it' is a tedious labor of love and about as speedy as picking lint from a ball ofwool. JOE ROBBIE 5T I iWi Kllliii) 1 Vila III Shore-Style Crab Stew Is One Of Her Favorites Besides being champion crab-picker, Betty Lou Middleton likes to prepare crabs in old-time Eastern Shore ways. One of her favorites is crab stew.

"It's a little sloppy but very good, especially with homemade bread or biscuits," she says. Her recipe, which she learned from her mother, goes this way: remove the claws and fins from two dozen live hard crabs. Pull back the upper shell and remove dead man's fingers and fat. In a large saucepan fry some sliced onions in meat grease, along with fat saved from the corner of the crab back shells. Place the crabs in the pan and add water to half cover them.

Add pinch of seasoning (she prefers a tablespoon of Old Bay seafood seasoning), salt and pepper, and boil 45 minutes. Remove crabs and make gravy with the residue in the pan by adding three-fourths of a cup of water and two tablespoons of cornstarch. Pour gravy over crabs and serve hot; feeds four to six people. i i 'LA ALA i MAGIC FINGERS No mallet for her; she uses pro's knife. INGRID BERGMAN DR.

PETER LINDSTROM.