"Ladies & Gentlemen, I’m a Cook"

I'm craving Bar-B-Q right now … and it got me to thinking about a very special man I met when I was just a kid.

Christopher B. "Stubb" Stubblefield liked me ‘cause I was a nice enough kid who loved music, loved food and loved to dream. He also got a little bit of a kick that his birthday (March 7) was just a few days before mine (the 18th) and once told me, “you keep havin’ birthdays, you’re gonna wind up gettin’ as old as me.”

In 1968, Stubb opened the original Stubb’s Bar-B-Q Restaurant in a small, ramshackle building at 108 East Broadway, Lubbock, TX. The jukebox was filled with vintage Blues music. The place soon became the center of Lubbock’s musical community thanks to the man’s smile and his bar-b-q cooking skills. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, the Sunday Jam Sessions became as legendary as the bar-b-q. Tom T. Hall’s song, "The Great East Broadway Onion Championship," was written about an early-morning pool game between Tom and Joe Ely in which an onion from Stubb’s kitchen was used as a cue ball.

Stubb was more than "just a cook." To his many friends, family and those who have only heard the stories, C.B. Stubblefield was an exceptional being. He was another of Lubbock’s legendary figures whose memory lives on in the hearts of multitudes of bar-b-q and music fans everywhere.

Stubb died May 27, 1995 and was buried in Lubbock. I remember the funeral. The church was full … standing-room only … I was standing in the back. Half the congregation was black and half was white … which was fitting, ‘cause with Stubb one was no different than the other. Tells you something about the man who was being buried … a whole lot of black and white people ate food and listened to music side-by-side for the first time at Stubb’s. There was no race at Stubb’s … only difference between us was that some of us liked the brisket best and others liked the sausage.

After the service, I went and had a Budweiser. I remembered fondly how Stubb had told me once that the blues, bar-b-q and beer all went together … you needed a cold beer when you were working over a hot pit. Kept you from sweating too much. And it was good for ya.

Some of my favorite quotes from the man:

o "I was born hungry; I wants to feed the world."
o "Bar-B-Q? Makin’ do with what you got."
o "God born me a black man and I plan to stay that-a-way."
o "They build barb wire fences around old locomotives. I’ll be damn if they do that to me."
o "I guarantee you one thing, you ain’t gonna cook no better than I can. Another thing, you not gonna love people no better than I can."

Miss ya, Stubb.

Gawd, I’m starving now …