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Rhode Island Monthly May, 2012 LET THE GOODE TIMES ROLL Part dive bar, part local landmark, Billy Goode's has been a favorite Newport haunt since the end of Prohibition. But having survived two fires, a cantankerous namesake and a sometimes-dodgy clientèle, it now faces the biggest threat to its existence. By Brian C. Jones BOB DELANEY'S life changed the instant he stepped into Billy Goode's Tavern. Enlisting in the Navy at the height of world War II, the eighteen-year-old Delaney had been pressed into shore patrol duty to quell a "riot" at the Newport bar. Although a wisp of a man, Delaney was first through the barroom door. His next memory, three days later, was waking up in the Newport Naval Hospital, recovering from a concussion after getting hit over the head with a barstool. "That was the greatest thing that ever happened to me," Delaney recalls now at age eighty-seven. The reason: A chief petty office rhad come into the fifty-bed ward, not to ask about the sailors' health, but their IQs: "How many of you dumb bastards can read or write?" Delaney was one of a handful to answer in the affirmative. Soon,he was at Dartmouth College, then the College of the Holy Cross,part of the Navy's V-12 program that rushed thousands of servicemen through college programs on their way to becoming officers. That V-12 training led a high school graduate who had grown up poor in Fall River, Massachusetts, to a career in Cold War intelligence, with covert assignments in China, the Hungarian Revolution, Latin America and Vietnam. Along the way, he was promoted to captain, collected master's and doctoral degrees and held teaching posts at Tufts University and the Newport Naval War College. Billy Goode's could do that for a man - or a woman - turn your life around. It didn't have to be a conk on the head. It could be the chance for a young musician to perform live on Billy Goode's tiny stage. Or the soft landing Billy's offered a musician whose career was going the other way. Or the connections that a would-be politician could make with people who knew about elections. Or the spirits that poured from early morning to too late at night, for too many years, that could turn your insides to mush. In the winter of 2012, its seventy-ninth year, Billy Goode's had shaped the histories of thousands of people. In fact, Billy Goode's had a substantial history of its own, as profound as its neighbors in a section of Newport overrun by iconic American landmarks. The White Horse Tavern, which claims to be America's oldest tavern, is catty-corner across Farewell Street; the Great Friends Meeting House, Rhode Island's oldest place of worship, is across Marlborough Street; a block away is the Colony House, the fourth oldest statehouse still standing in the nation. Billy Goode's pedigree traces back to the speakeasy days of Prohibition. It evolved into a sailors' bar, a blue collar watering hole, an old men's hangout and finally an Everyman's Tavern, the last of its kind in Newport, offering premium music, affordable food, a vast library of tall tales and dependable, enduring fellowship. None of which was helping Billy Goode's bottom line. Proprietor Kevan Campbell faced a hearing before the Newport City Council on January 25, at 6:30 p.m., to show cause why said council should not suspend or revoke the bar's food and beverage license, and maybe throw in a fine or two. Campbell, fifty-five, despaired of finding the overdue $2,000 license renewal fee, plus proof he'd met other obligations, like state and city taxes, insurance and worker's compensation. "It's my fault," Campbell said over and over, never blaming the monstrous recession, with its teeth sunk deeply into Rhode Island, or an act of God or anyone except himself. Campbell worried about the effect on his family, on his eighty-four-year-old mother, the people tending bar and sweeping floors, the musicians' community, long-time patrons and the continuing legend of Billy Goode. THERE REALLY was a Billy Goode. William J. Goode appears in historical accounts as a footnote on Prohibition. Operator of a speakeasy dubbed the Mission, Goode was the first Rhode Islander arrested under the Volstead Act in 924, meaning it took authorities four years after Prohibition started to lock him up. Two days later, Goode was back, telling Mission congregants that he'd passed the time pleasantly enough, playing cards and smoking cigars with the guards. As soon as Prohibition ended on December 5, 1933, Goode closed the Mission, walked several yards up the street and opened Billy Goode's at 1West Broadway. Always wearing a coat and tie, Goode ran his legal tavern according to strict principles. One was that every sailor or serviceman deserved his country's enduring thanks and at least two drinks at Billy Goode's. Should a young warrior be overwhelmed by the experience, Goode paid for his safe return by taxi to the Navy base. Goode enforced the liquor license's ban on serving women. He saw himself as a champion of every wife, who knew that when her man was at Billy's, there'd be no temptress on the next stool. If a wife phoned about an overdue husband, Goode provided no cover, but ordered the malingerer to take the call like a man. But it was the Great McLyman Building Fire of 1967 that cemented the legend. The blaze started the afternoon of February 16, in the three-story, ramshackle structure right next to the ramshackle, three-story building that housed Billy Goode's. Driven by fifty-mile-an-hour winds, the inferno spread to other buildings and blanketed the area with brown and black smoke. An exhausting two-hour battle by 105 firefighters from throughout Aquidneck Island prevented a catastrophe, the Newport Daily News reported. But the fire totaled the McLyman Building; left residents of seven apartments homeless; injured five Firefighters;and destroyed several businesses, including Fred's Mahogany Bar. The only mention of Billy Goode's was that it escaped with "slight fire, smoke and water damage." But on the fire's one-year anniversary, a narrative poem surfaced, its author anonymous but fluent in firefighting jargon, and focused not on the McLyman's tragedy but the survival of Billy Goode's. The poet said that firemen wetted down the tavern's building, while inside, the proprietor ignored "a gloomful toad ie's" pleas to close and ordered a braver assistant to "tap another keg." When the electricity was cut off, Goode groped through the murk to find candles, so he could keep dispensing vital fluids until the fire was conquered. By then, the bard reported, "for every man outside Goode's Cafe, a dozen more were in." But ere the Recall rang that night, They all joined in a rousing toast To the grandest man they'd ever known, Their brave and honorable host: "Here's to you, our Billy Goode! For you never gave up the ghost, But kept your barroom open The time we needed it the most. So it's Billy, Billy, Billy Goode! The most hospitable host in town, That lit the candles on the bar When the electric wires were down. We let the Mahogany burn to the ground; There's plenty of other bars around, But there's only one Billy Goode's! KEVAN CAMPBELL knew little of these events when he bought Billy Goode's in 1987. The only thing that he knew about running a bar was that it was something he wanted to do. Born "off-island" in Bristol, he was the son of Esther Luther, who planned to go into missionary work until she met the dashing sailor, James Campbell. The couple divorced when Kevan was three. Esther earned a teaching degree and became school superintendent on Block Island, then in Tiverton. Kevan grew up in Newport, except for his high school years when his mother taught in Andover, Massachusetts. He graduated from Bryant University in 1978 with a degree in business administration, then landed on the loading dock at Frito- Lay in Fall River, where he was given the title of shipping manager, a clip-on tie and a hair net. Campbell's real interest was racing on the weekend motocross circuit, assisted by his roommate and cousin, Nelson Luther. When a knee injury put an end to motorcycles, Campbell went to work in Middletown for a German company that made computer fans and promoted him to national operations manager. In August of 1987, Campbell saw an ad for Billy Goode's, and after a brief negotiation, agreed to buy it for $25,000. His father happened to be visiting, and they tried to drive by the tavern, but fire trucks blocked nearby streets. Campbell learned the next day that a massive fire had ripped through the block of buildings that included Billy Goode's, and this time, firefighters couldn't keep the bar from being gutted. Campbell later understood that the fire was a "lightning bolt," a kindly warning from a higher power. But at the time, he doubled his investment, using the extra money for renovations. Billy Goode, in his final years, assumed the rank of elder statesman. The city proclaimed "William J. Goode Day" on his ninetieth birthday, and Goode granted an audience to the Providence Journal, describing the business of Prohibition. Bootlegged cargo would come ashore nightly in Middletown and Portsmouth, where Portuguese farmers stored it in their barns, then trucked it to retailers like the Mission. "It wasn't as good as today's liquor," Goode confided. He turned the tavern over to his nephew and long-time manager, Edward J. Sharkey. But sadly, Goode lived to see the day he dreaded so much - he once vowed that if women ever won the right to drink at his bar, he'd take the door off the restroom. STILL, WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED that the instigator would be one of their own? Plumber Richard Donelly had been coming to Billy's for years. The company he worked for dropped off paychecks there every Thursday, and, seated at a corner table, Billy Goode cashed workers' checks. Actually, Donelly hadn't planned to go to the tavern that Thursday, August 22, 1974, because he had a date with his then-companion, Penelope Hope. But he remembered his paycheck, and they went to get it. "She's got to get out of here; she can't come in here," Ed Sharkey barked from the bar, meaning Hope, who'd stepped inside the door to get out of the summer heat. Donelly retrieved his check, but when they had gone fifty feet from the bar, he said to Hope: "He doesn't have any right to say you can't." They went back, but Sharkey wouldn't serve her. "I wasn't as horrified as I was puzzled," Hope recalls. She'd grown up in New York City, where there were plenty of men's bars. But none "would have put a woman out on the street while some guy cashed his check." Donelly called the Newport Daily News, which sent a reporter. "A working man should have a place where he can come after the work day and express himself forcefully," one patron said. "We are not in the beauty parlor." Meanwhile, in a case involving a Providence bar, federal District Court Judge Raymond J. Pettine ruled that the exclusion of women was unconstitutional. Donelly has gone on to act at Trinity Repertory Company, the Gamm Theatre and others. Hope taught at the University of Rhode Island. And at Billy Goode's, the bathroom door stayed put. EVEN MORE CHANGES had rocked Billy Goode's by the time Kevan Campbell reopened in 1988, following the previous summer's fire. Ownership had passed from Billy Goode to Ed Sharkey, then to Sharkey's wife, Norma. In 1981, urban renewal forced the tavern to relocate a half-block from its squalid quarters at 1 West Broadway to squalid quarters at 29 Marlborough Street. Campbell learned by trial and error. He overspent on the renovations and naively listened to the recommendations of liquor sales people. But he learned to gauge the ebb and flow of Newport's fickle entertainment industry. He expanded as space became available. He added meals. Sponsored softball teams. On special occasions, he'd roast a pig all night out back. And when the Blue Pelican, an iconic music venue, closed on West Broadway, Campbell offered musicians a tiny stage set up in one corner. Jim McGrath of the Reprobates ran a weekly open mike night, later overseen by Kevin Sullivan of Abbey Rhode. Nationally known musicians like Eddie Kirkland and John Lincoln Wright appeared. Paul Geremia, the masterful guitarist and singer who toured the country to learn and perform the music of America's great bluesmen, was often on the bill. Space was so cramped that Campbell once seated Geremia atop the pool table, propping the troubadour perilously close to a ceiling fan. Campbell soaked up oral history from the regulars, who told him an aging Billy Goode would play pool with anyone who'd buy him a cigar; Billy would return it to a box on the bar, along with other un-smoked stogies, for resale the next day. Campbell plastered the walls with framed news clippings about the big fires; Billy Goode's obituary; and old photos, including one showing tavern volunteers helping to carry the original bar from West Broadway to Marlborough Street. There was a copy of the Great McLyman Building Fire poem, and on either side of the bar, portraits of Billy Goode. One corner of the stage wall was devoted to the late Jody Gibson, a Newport balladeer whose career went back to World War II, when he organized an Air Forcerockabilly band with both black and white musicians, and later went to Greenwich Village, where his friends included Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly. The display included the heartbreaking piece by Newport Daily News reporter Jim Gillis about the 2005 tribute to Gibson at Billy Goode's, with a host of musicians, including his daughters, Joyce and Kate Katzberg. Gibson had colon cancer and told Gillis: "I don't have much time. That's official." Sacred relics were displayed throughout the tavern, reminders of people whose talent and spirit brought life to Billy Goode's. Hanging from the antlers over the bar was a hat worn by the late Barry Cowsill, of the singing Newport family. A tiny shelf near the front door held an empty beer pitcher emblazoned with a giant "S" that had been reserved for Bob Sullivan and his wife, Nancy. A local radio newsman and talk show host, Sullivan always showed up at Billy's with a genuinely funny story, right up to the last months of his encounter with brain cancer. KEVAN CAMPBELL, in other words, did Billy Goode's just right. He preserved the unvarnished, shadowy ambience of the men's bar, but welcomed everyone, of any gender, age and race, local or just visiting. Regulars included Bob Delaney, who lured War College admirals and other officers to Billy's for "lunch," and hung out with Bert Quint, the former CBS correspondent whom he met in his Latin America days and who now lived near him in the city's Point Section. City Councilman Charlie Duncan came in Friday nights with his partner, artist Rita Rogers, whose sumptuous abstract paintings were shown at the Newport Art Museum and in New York and Boston. Duncan was a one-time towboat pilot who had written a book about his years moving long lines of barges along the Mississippi River. Now, Duncan ran a sign business and had crafted the Art Deco neon sign over the tavern's front door. Campbell wanted a place where families like his own - his wife, Cathy, and their kids, Casey, Ryan and Shannon - felt comfortable. His mother, Esther Campbell, put up new curtains every year. His cousin, Nelson Luther, was a tavern DJ and accountant, and Campbell's confidant. Peter F. Martin, who'd grown up in Newport, returned in 2000 after a long career as a computer expert. He wandered into Billy Goode's and sometimes played harmonica, then helped Campbell create a tavern website. When Martin considering running for the state legislature, Campbell encouraged him and put him in touch with Delaney, who knew politics both in Washington and Rhode Island. Delaney was living in Florida then, but counseled Martin by phone. "Become very friendly with the Italians in Providence," Delaney advised. "Meet everyone you've never met." Delaney referred him to Anna Duffy, with whom he and Quint worked when they wrote and edited the weekly paper, Newport This Week. Duffy became Martin's campaign manager, getting brochures printed, keeping things organized. Martin won the House District 75 seat in 2008, again in 2010, and held his election night parties at Billy Goode's. Tom Sheehan, who excelled in track during high school and later was a male model, tended bar. Mike Edwards, a veteran of both the Navy and Army, was a cook and later, wearing a baseball cap marked "Sheriff," brought order to the place in the mornings. Young musicians came in, like Charlie Shea, the sixteen-year-old guitar prodigy from Middletown, who played in the house band on open mike nights. Earl and Timmy Smith, of the former Shows toppers quartet, dropped by. Their 1960s hit, "Ain't Nothin' But a House Party," took off in Philadelphia and soared in Europe and Britain, where the group toured and played at a private party for Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Tom Johnson, an electrical engineer at the Naval Underwater Systems Center, watched the Super Bowl at Billy's and said, "Everybody knows each other. It's a real local place, and a real sanctuary in the summer." Campbell often hosted a benefit at the tavern when someone was in trouble and needed money and, like Billy Goode had done, looked after vulnerable ones, making sure they got home and had a place to sleep. THE LAST THING ANYONE WANTED for Billy Goode's was what had happened to other Newport landmarks. Leo's First and Last Stop on Long Wharf was long gone. It had throbbed with jazz and played host to crews that built the Newport Bridge. People still talked about the time someone rode a horse through the place. The claustrophobic Army and Navy store on Thames Street had also closed, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves loaded with Levis, hunting knives, hats and even genuine military surplus. Farther down Thames Street, Salas's had changed hands. Tourists and Newporters would wait hours to order the dining room's famous "oriental spaghetti," and fishermen whose boats were tied up nearby let Mary Salas help with their books. Kevan Campbell was doing everything to make sure none of this happened to Billy Goode's. After nearly a quarter-century, he understood the business cycles that someone once told him changed every four years, with different crowds, new themes and fluky fads that suddenly made a place "hot," and later not so much. With the January city council license hearing closing in, Campbell talked with many people, including Charlie Duncan, the councilman who knew what it was like to run a small business and wake up at 3 a.m., unsure how to pay yesterday's bills. One morning, the postman left a pile of mail on the bar top, and Campbell joked about the letters he liked best: "I love junk mail- it's not a bill." On a darker day, the landlord dropped by to chat, but not about the freaky warm winter. He was tired of hearing about the gold mine, as in: "This place right here is a gold mine." Speakers would suggest putting big-screen TVs in every corner, but skipped the part about paying for them,and missed the point that Billy Goode's was more than a sports bar. A reprieve came on the January 25 deadline, when the city council postponed hearings for Billy Goode's and several other license-holders. Campbell got a two-week continuance, and as the new deadline approached, there were some good nights, where bands drew in larger-than-expected crowds. Campbell paid the fees at City Hall the morning of the hearing, and that night the council dismissed the show cause notice. In the following weeks, the one functioning big-screen TV at Billy Goode's carried news that the national economy seemed to be improving. GM had record profits. Campbell was particularly looking forward to St. Patrick's Day. Newport's legendary Irish parade brought a bonanza to the city's bars every March, and heralded the coming of summer, when four times as many visitors as residents might crowd into the city, and some remembered to bring their wallets. SAINT PATRICK'S DAY. Billy Goode would have liked hearing about that. His funeral had been on St. Patrick's Day, 1977,a couple of days after he'd died at age ninety-five. Mourners gathered in his bar, and from what they were telling a Providence Journal reporter, you'd have thought the subject was Saint Billy the Goode. One man said that ten years before, Billy had talked him out of committing suicide. Another said Billy paid for his daughter's heart operation. Another that Billy would lend money to anyone down on his luck. And that Billy was "like a father." Yes, sir. Billy Goode really liked St. Patrick's Day. |
Billy Goode's photo gallery
MIKE EDWARDS - The "Sheriff" at Billy Goode, The veteran of both the Navy and ARMY has played many rolls at the tavern, including cook and morning cleanup guy.
These are some of my personal photos that I got as I reported the Billy Goode's story for Rhode Island Monthly, and are NOT to be confused with the excellent work of Jason Evans, who shot the magazine pictures. CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE.
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