First up is Ruth Carter, a lady who only has decent name recognition in Austin songwriting circles. She and her husband co-wrote a song for the Fabulous Thunderbirds but wrote two larger hits for Stevie Ray Vaughn: “Willie the Wimp” and “Crossfire.” The latter was from his comeback before his death to propel Eric Clapton’s shitty, racist career.
Second is obviously more famous…David Soul. He will forever be tied to the ABC cop show Starsky & Hutch. I’m not sure it was groundbreaking or anything. When I was a kid, any program running at 9 PM on Thursday night on ABC (before 20/20 took over for good) was usually questionable for kids. I think I was wrong because indie station KPLR showed it during late afternoons when it hit syndication. David had two previous roles I recall very well: he was a lead alien in Star Trek‘s “The Apple” and he was one of the motorcycle cops Dirty Harry had to defeat in Magnum Force (the other was Robert Urich!). My friend Paul also brought up his hit pop song in 1976, “Don’t Give Up On Us.” Oh yeah, right there with Elton John & Kiki Dee constantly playin on the AM radio during my first big vacation as a little kid!
After Starsky & Hutch ended, David got a cool break being in the CBS adaptation of King’s book Salem’s Lot and the hilarious gang from Austin’s Master Pancake Theater brought up something everyone wanted to forget…him playing Rick Blaine in NBC’s series version of Casablanca. Yeah. The drama was a prequel to the famous movie. I originally believed it was a thing while I was in college. Nope, 1983, high school. I was continuing to watch TV heavily back then (really HBO or MTV usually); I never had the bad luck to watch yet I was familiar with the movie thanks to Ted Turner. He wasn’t the only actor sucked into this awful idea: Hector Elizondo, Scatman Crothers and an unknown Ray Liotta. Still…better than the possibility of Reagan landing the lead role over Bogart.
Thanks everything Ruth and David! You made great contributions to America’s vast trove of Pop Culture!