The night of January 31, 1989, Chuck Lamb called Casner to come fetch Blaze. He’d been picking fights at the Outhouse. He was hanging around an old speed-freak girlfriend. Blaze made his way from the Outhouse to Jubal Clark’s house and got even more tore down. He wound up at Concho January’s early in the morning, where he worked on some vodka while Concho did his Thunderbird.
It was the first day of Februrary, and Concho’s checks were showing up in the mail in a few hours. He was showing Concho some sketches he’d done when J.J. stopped by. The threats started flying, and J.J. ran to the back of the house. He came back holding a .22 rifle and shot Blaze.
The police said Blaze was still alive when they arrived and begged them, “Don’t let me die.” He died on the operating table at Brackenridge Hospital. Police described the shooting as “a senseless killing.” The bullet hit his liver, which was already damaged by years of serious drinking.
His funeral was held during an ice storm. A benefit had to be held to raise enough money to bury him. There still wasn’t enough to pay for a police motorcycle escort to the cemetery. Half the cars that left the funeral home didn’t make it to the graveyard. Blaze’s coffin was covered in duct tape.
A party that had been scheduled in late February for the cassette release of his first live recording, Live At The Austin Outhouse…And Not There, turned into another fundraiser, and a belated wake. There was talk about digging Blaze up and duct-taping him to the walls of the Outhouse. That way, his friends said, he could attend his own benefit.
In September 1989, after two hours of deliberation, Carey January, Foley’s accused murderer, was acquitted of first-degree premeditated murder by a jury. The prosecution had relied largely on the testimony of Concho January, who contradicted himself when relating what happened. Concho testified that Carey shot Blaze while Blaze was sitting in his chair, but the forensic evidence did not support this. Before the trial, Concho had told one friend, Carlene Jones, that Blaze was standing up and trying to back out of the house when he was shot. Concho apparently thought it would sound less like Blaze was threatening Carey to say he was sitting down. Carey January who had been incarcerated since his arrest, went free.
Blaze Foley became what he always wanted to be: a legend. Townes liked to tell the story of having to dig up Blaze’s grave so he could fetch the pawn ticket for his guitar. Lucinda Williams honored him with the song “Drunken Angel” on Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, her Grammy-winning 1998 album. Townes did him right with “Blaze’s Blues” on his 1994 album No Deeper Blue. Townes’ sidekick Richard Dobson honored him with “Foley” on his Blue Collar Blues album. Four volumes of tribute albums have been released on Deep South Records, and subsequently packaged as a box set by a Spanish label.
Part of Lost John Casner’s Live At The Austin Outhouse tapes were released on CD in 1999 by Lost Art Records, with another disc, Oval Room, issued in 2004. Merle Haggard made “If I Could Only Fly” the title track of his 2000 release, a year after he sang the song at Tammy Wynette’s funeral. “There were scruples he believed in that he died for,” Merle later said of the composer. Lyle Lovett included Foley’s “Election Day” on his 2005 release My Baby Don’t Tolerate.
In July 2005, Leland Waddell got a call from a friend named Mel Pouch who’d been living in Indiana and had been rifling through his pickup when he found an old CD. It was a copy of the lost country album done at Spencer Starnes’ Bee Creek Studios. With the permission of Blaze’s family, Waddell cleaned up the tracks, and in the fall of 2005 he released Wanted More Dead Than Alive on his Waddell Hollow label. The recording includes covers of songs by Calvin Russell (“Life Of A Texas Man”) and Jubal Clark (“Black Granite”), and a vocal assist from Kimmie Rhodes on “If I Could Only Fly”.
It also features stirring rendition of “Clay Pigeons”, which John Prine covered on his 2005 album Fair & Square. Prine heard Haggard sing “If I Could Only Fly” at a concert in Chicago featuring Haggard, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan.
“I had to find out who wrote that song,” Prine told Dave Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times. “When I really love a song, I always want to hear the songwriter’s version of it. When I found out it was Blaze Foley, I really wanted to hear it. I had heard stories about this guy. Lucinda [Williams] wrote ‘Drunken Angel’ about Blaze. Townes [Van Zandt] had a song [‘Blaze’s Blues’] he wrote about him.”
An Austin friend sent Prine “Clay Pigeons”, and Prine flipped. “I thought, ‘Man, that sounds like me.’ I couldn’t get the song out of my head. And when I can’t get a song out of my head, I have to learn it.” Listeners of KGSR, the station that bills itself as Radio Austin, voted Prine’s version of “Clay Pigeons” #8 among the best songs of 2005.
“Blaze has had an interesting afterlife,” said Kevin Triplett, who should know. For the past seven years, he has been working on a film documentary about Foley’s life. He recently completed editing the film and plans to begin entering it in festivals in spring 2007.
“I haven’t a clue why I’m doing this,” Triplett said by way of introduction at the door of his East Austin studio that doubles as a video rental company. He’s never made a film before, and he’s up to his ears in credit card debt. “I’m probably not going to make my money back,” he said candidly.
But he insists it’s worth it. Triplett moved to Austin from Mississippi in 1995 to help a friend design computer game software. His head was turned around by his cousin, Jon Smith, who was working with Ryan Radar on the Blaze Foley tribute records and needed money to press copies of Volume 1 for their Deep South label. Triplett loaned him the cash, although he admitted he wasn’t a big Blaze fan. “But when I heard his life story, I realized he was singing about his life.”
He’s been delving into the saga of Michael David Fuller, Depty Dawg, and Blaze Foley ever since, with time out to pay bills by doing a documentary on the Spacek Family of Granger, Texas, which includes actress Sissy and record promoter Ed, the guy who did indie promo on Willie and Merle’s “If I Could Only Fly” back in the mid-’80s.
