Your backstage pass to the DFW music scene and beyond.
Fort Worth native Bobby Krajca, aka Bobby Crown, may not be as well-known as Buddy Holly or Johnny Cash, but he's a rockabilly hero to those in the know.
His vintage 45s bring high prices on the collectors' market, and his European tours with other rockabilly stars were three-day extravaganzas where even young people dressed the period (think Grease with Western shirts) and put on a shake, rattle and roll.
As a boy, Krajca and his father would play outside beer joints on Seventh Street for tips, and as a seasoned musician, singing under the name Bobby Crown, he and his band would perform at bars with owners such as Jack Ruby and Priscilla Davis. He had several marriages along the way.
Eventually, he earned a place in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in Nashville with the likes of Cash, Holly, Chuck Berry, Duane Eddy, and Bill Haley and the Comets.
For some 70-year-old men, it might be enough to sit back during the Christmas holidays and allow their memories to flow through their hearts and minds like the lyrics of their songs. Not so for Krajca.
He's busy working on a book about his experiences in the midcentury music called rockabilly, known for its edgy characters and infectious beat. Helping him is Denise, his latest and fifth bride, whom he married last month on 11-11-11 wearing matching red T-shirts emblazoned with the date.
"I've had a lot of luck come my way," Krajca said recently as he pointed out autographed photos, clippings, awards and other memorabilia in the combination office-music room in his south Fort Worth home. There are just as many framed pictures of Krajca's five children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren covering the walls.
"Oh man, I wouldn't change a thing," he said.
Family tradition
Krajca comes from a south-side musical family.
His father, Leslie Krajca, played upright bass for the Western swing band Ernest Winnett and the Texas Trailblazers. His mother was Erin Lorene Truelove, "part Irish and part Indian" in contrast with his father's Czech heritage, and taught him songs like Iwo Jima Isle and Remember Me.
A brother, Johnny Krajca in Granbury, became a drummer, and a sister, Bonnie Summarell in Fort Worth, got involved in church music.
"When I was 7 or 8, a big night back then for me would be sitting on our front porch singing, and my mother would make toasted bologna and cheese sandwiches for supper," he said.
It didn't take long before Krajca began following his dad around on musical jaunts outside the family.
"Me and my dad would play outside a beer joint on Seventh Street for tips," he recalled. "We used to watch a show called Country Picnic on TV. I told my dad we were as good as the acts on there."
When he was growing up, Krajca's musical heroes were Marty Robbins and, of course, Elvis Presley, whom he first saw at North Side Coliseum in 1955. He still remembers Presley's outfit: blue pants, red jacket, white lace shirt.
"The first time I saw him, Hank Snow was the headliner," he recalled. "It was an afternoon show, and there probably wasn't but about 500 people there. ... The girls were going crazy then," Krajca said. "My cousin and I were in the 11th row and she said, 'I think he's looking right at me.'"
Eventually, on the set of Country Picnic, Krajca met Johnny Fields, the producer who would make him a recording star under the name Bobby Crown. At 17 he recorded One Way Ticket, which he wrote in 1955, as the B side to Your Conscience. It was recorded at the Clifford Herring Studio in downtown Fort Worth, with his group the Kapers.
"When I wrote it I thought it was too simple, but it's gotten me several trips to Europe," Krajca joked.
Today, an original 45-rpm record of One Way Ticket fetches a premium price on the collectors' market.
"His records from 1955 and '56, they're quite rare," said Sumter Bruton, a Fort Worth musician and proprietor of Record Town. "The original on Felco Records goes for as much as $500."
It's rockabilly gold. The heavy guitar chords and honky-tonk piano on One Way Ticket are paired with restless lyrics: "I got a one-way ticket on a lonesome railroad track."
Bruton praised Krajca's versatility with country and rhythm-and-blues as well as rockabilly.
"He did it all; he was just a good singer and rhythm guitar player," Bruton said. "Bobby did what everybody wanted to hear: Bobby Bland, Jimmy Reeves, even Bo Diddley and Ray Charles."
The club scene
Still, life as a musician wasn't always easy, or profitable. To pay the bills, Krajca, a Trimble Tech graduate, Class of '58, worked during the day as an industrial mechanic. But at night he was "pretty wild," he said. It cost him some earlier marriages.
His list of regular dates during 35 years of playing the clubs includes many well-known and sometimes infamous haunts: La Vida Club on Mansfield Highway, the Skyliner Club on Jacksboro Highway and a six-year stint beginning in 1969 at the Dunes Club at Rosedale Street and Lancaster Avenue.
"It had been a gangster haunt in its earlier days," Krajca said. "They still had bullet holes and bloodstains on the ceiling over the bandstand."
He played Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas on Monday nights in the late '50s but never met the man who would later shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby's sister ran the place back then.
During the 1970s, Krajca and his band played a club called the Rhinestone Cowboy on U.S. 80 and Camp Bowie Boulevard. It was owned at the time by Stan Farr and Priscilla Davis. Farr was later killed and Davis injured in the famous shooting spree at the Cullen Davis mansion.
"The club business is worse now than when I was playing," Krajca said. "That's why I kept a day job so I'd have retirement. I know so many guys who don't have anything to show for it."
Occasional gig
Krajca still lives in the house near Sycamore School Road that he bought in the late 1960s. Denise Krajca, who has known Krajca for 37 years, moved in after the wedding.
Bobby Krajca's occasional gig now is at a club on Farm Road 1187 called Ferocious Ambush, maybe a couple of times a month with a group called Festus that plays country and older rock 'n' roll.
"I think more people in Europe know about me than in the United States," said Krajca, who keeps a globe to remember where he's been. The list includes England, Sweden, Spain, France, Denmark and Finland.
"I still enjoy playing every once in a while," Krajca said. "My last guitar player, Buddy Webb, would like for me to get a band together again."
Webb said Krajca still draws a large and loyal crowd whenever he plays.
"I wish I could bring him out of retirement," said Webb, who played guitar in two of Bobby's bands for a total of 18 years. "No. 1, he's a great singer, just tremendously good. He's got great stage presence, he's a good songwriter, and people just love him to death."
Shirley Jinkins, 817-390-7657
