by Charly Mann

The Grand Opening of the original Ramshead Rathskeller was on September 27th, 1948. It was closed in 1963 for almost a year because of a fire. This new version of the "Rat" will be its fourth incarnation. 

Beloved Chapel Hill restaurant the Ramshead Rathskeller, which was shuttered more than two years ago and brought great sadness to those who loved the place, is returning from the ashes and will reopen by the end of 2010. For our money this is the greatest rising from the dead in 2000 years.

To many their favorite menu item at the Rat was the Gambler steak , but to me and many others it was their unique pizza. The New Rat will need to duplicate this pizza to stay authentic. 

Meal prices at the Ramshead Rahtskeller in Chapel Hill were always very cheap, but in 1952 beer as well as other drinks were free with your food. For me the best beverage at the Rat was their iced-tea.  

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by Charly Mann

Most people remember the start of Beatlemania as February 9th, 1964 when the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. That may have been true in the rest of the United States, but the Beatles had become a popular in Chapel Hill almost a month earlier. The Record Bar on Henderson Street began a campaign entitled The Beatles Are Coming in early January. As you walked in the door there were stacks of a free newspaper called National Record News with the headline SPECIAL BEATLES ISSUE and a large rack displaying the first album to be released by the Beatles in America called Introducing the Beatles.

This "newspaper" was given away to all customers at the Record Bar in January of 1964. I think this was the one and only issue of this publication which Capital Records actually published as a promotional tool to get people excited about the Beatles.

I had become interested in the Beatles the previous December when Walter Cronkite did a feature about their phenomenal success in England on his evening news program, and eagerly bought several of their singles and their first two albums at the Record Bar in January. Local radio station WKIX had also been playing the Beatle songs I Want To Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Please Please Me, and From Me to You since late December.

These stickers were found on poles in downtown Chapel Hill more than a month before the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. 

The Beatle phenomenon was quite strange that January. Here was a new group that had yet to perform in the United States, that no one had heard of two months earlier, that had top charting singles on three labels, Capital Records, Vee Jay, and Swan Records. I was fourteen and had been an avid popular music fan for about two years. Up until that time "hype", as we now call it, had not been used much to promote musical groups, but across Chapel Hill, many lamp poles had a sticker posted with four long-haired heads that said "The Beatles are Coming." During the next five years the Beatles proved that the hype of their enormous talent was merited and they continued producing incredibly innovative records. I was fortunate to see the Beatles perform three times, at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964 and 1965, and at Dodger Stadium on August 28, 1966, which was their next to last concert performance together.

   
A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles first movie, played to large crowds at The Varsity Theater in Chapel Hill for more than a month. I attended the first showing of it there. Also above is an ad for the Beatles Help album at the Chapel Hill Record Bar in 1965, then located on Henderson Streeet.

On the morning of November 25th, 1968 I was a freshman at the University of North Carolina and my best friend Richard Abbott and I stood in a long line that stretched more than a block waiting to purchase the Beatles latest album at the Record Bar. After we finished classes at about 4 PM we headed over to my house with great anticipation to listen to the record. We spent the next 16 hours laying on separate beds in a darkened room as we played the this two-record album with only a white cover that was titled simply "The Beatles" (but commonly called The White Album) over and over again. It was a bewildering and exhilarating experience, somehow the Beatles had put together the most disjointed album we had ever heard, yet the quality of most of the songs was incredible. We soon agreed that this was not really a Beatle album, but a combination of three separate solo albums by Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison. By four in the morning we also concluded it was the also the first Beatle album with "filler" material, which is what we thought of the songs "Revolution #9", "Wild Honey Pie", and "Don't Pass Me By".

My best friend at UNC was Richard Abbott who I spent almost 14 hours with in late November 1968 listening over and over to the Beatles White Album. Richard was from Asheville, but this is a photograph from Chapel Hill High School in 1968, which I believe is the school that he graduated from. Richard died at the age of 54 in 2004.

Less than a year later, in August of 1969, I was the manager of a local record store and had a friend named Ervin Hester who was the program director of WSRC, a soul and gospel radio station, that had somehow gotten an advance copy of a new Beatles album on cassette. The album was called Abbey Road and I was mesmerized by it almost instantly. I had never heard such a perfect collection of songs, and it remains in my estimation the greatest album of all time. Each of the Beatles had contributed the best songs of their career, and the sonic brilliance and production of the work was light years ahead of anything yet recorded. The wonderful song medley on the second side still sounds as fresh and exciting today as it did when I was sitting on the stone wall across from the Chapel Hill Post Office and playing the album for my friends a full month before the album appeared in stores.

The Beatles also played a critical role in launching the career of Chapel Hillian, James Taylor. In 1967, James was 19 and decided to move to the center of the musical universe at the time, London, to try to launch a career as a singer-songwriter. He had made some demo recordings and through a friend had a connection to Peter Asher who had just taken on the role of signing artists to a new record label the Beatles had started called Apple Records. Asher had recently been half of the folk-rock duo Peter and Gordon which had several top songs written by Peter's sister's Jane's boyfriend Paul McCartney. In fact McCartney had been living in the Asher home for several years and written many of his best songs there, most of which were about Jane. Asher saw potential in Taylor's songs and let Paul have a listen. McCartney was impressed and signed Taylor to the Beatles record label.

This is James Taylor's first album and was on the Beatles' Apple Records label. It was released in England in December 1968, and in the United States the following February. In December, I was able to import the album directly from England to my store, The Record and Tape Center, which made us the first place in North Carolina where "Carolina in My Mind" was ever played.

Taylor recorded his album in the same studio and at the same time as the Beatles were recording the White Album. McCartney even played bass on James's signature song, Carolina in My Mind, and there is evidence that George Harrison also played guitar on the same song. Harrison definitely enjoyed listening to Taylor in the studio, and was so inspired by a song he had written and recorded called  Something in the Way She Moves, that he borrowed that phrase as the opening of the song Something.

James Taylor left Apple with his now friend and manager Peter Asher in 1969. Taylor's career continues to thrive, and Asher has gone on to manage and produce some of the biggest names in the music business including Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, Cher, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, Ringo Starr, and Diana Ross. However in my humble opinion his Asher's best produced album is that of another Chapel Hill resident Kate Taylor's debut album, Sister Kate, in 1971.

James Taylor and his manager Peter Asher who was the brother of Paul McCartney's 1968 fiance Jane Asher 

The Taylor family all loved the music of the Beatles, and in the musical jukebox above I have included James, Kate, and Livingston singing some of their favorite Beatles songs.

This is an 8th grade picture of Livingston Taylor from Chapel Hill's Guy B. Phillips Junior High School in 1965. This is the same year the Beatles recorded "If I Needed Someone" for their Rubber Soul album which Liv sings on the music player at the top of this article. (This song was originally released in the United States on the album Yesterday and Today.)

In 1977 I gathered a group of Chapel Hill musicians to produce an album called Hot as Sun filled with rare and unreleased Beatle songs. The album was recorded in a small studio that was once The Little Red Schoolhouse. The record was released on my label Pied Piper Records later that year.

This is the front and back cover of the 1977 Beatles Tribute album, Hot as Sun, that I produced featuring Chapel Hill musicians singing rare and unreleased songs by the Beatles

Over the last 40 years I have become an archivist of rare Beatle items and videos. Ironically, the day after John Lennon was murdered, the CBS Evenings News (on which I had first seen the Beatles on December 10, 1963) contacted me so that they could use a rare video I had of John Lennon on their broadcast that day.

I am a long time archivist of rare Beatles-related material. Shortly after John Lennon died the Chapel Hill Newspaper did a piece on my collection and my opinion of John Lennon's importance in modern music.

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The sometimes impassable road to Kenny Mann Sr's Ponderosa near Chapel Hill. Pictured is Eddie Funk and his 1953 Chevy Truck.

Down a long, winding, rugged, and sometimes impassable road off Old 86 about half-way between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough sat the homestead of the family of Kenny Mann Sr. who was the cook at the famed Rathskellar for fifty years. Between 1972 and 1978 Mann allowed local artisan Rick Hermanson and Ed Funk to live out there rent free with often with several other friends who would be described as hippies. In return for this privilege they did a few odd jobs at Kenny's house in Chapel Hill, but spent much of their spare time renovating the cabin they lived in that Mann called "The Ponderosa".

Rick Hermanson and his dog Smokey at his cabin in the Andrew Jackson Memorial Forest and Wild Game Preserve near Chapel Hill in the mid 1970s

Most of the time they lived  there the place had no plumbing or electricity, but these guys managed well without either. Eddie Funk said he often imagined what life was like for Kenny’s family when the homestead must have been almost like a frontier wilderness in the 1930’s-40’s. Funk also said he and his friends called the place “The Andrew Jackson Memorial Forest and Wild Game Preserve”, or more affectionately just “AJ”. (Jay Fisher, an early resident of the place along with Ed and Rick, actually came up with this name.)

1977 Thanksgiving gathering at "AJ" between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough

Every Thanksgiving there was a huge celebration at "AJ" that started with an all night roasting of a pig from Cliff's Meat Market with many folks often sleeping over. The above photo is from this event in 1977. In the front row far right Rick Hermanson who is next to Eddie Funk holding the paper cup. Also in the picture is Dale Jamieson, front row second from the left, who is now Director of Environmental Studies at NYU. The handsome hipster centered on the tree at the rear is Captain Steve Fogg, now an Alaskan fisherman and owner of Triton Water Taxi in Homer, Alaska. Among the folks in this photo who are still “around town” are, Dennis Gavin from the Skylight Exchange, Mark Marcoplos, occasional Chapel Hill Newspaper writer and local left-winger, Tate Hamlett who married Terri Basnight, Susan McCall, standing at the end of the second row behind Rick, is now a veterinarian married to Rex McCall, and Randy Brittain a carpenter who works with Rex who does remodels and additions in Chapel Hill. Eddie fondly remembers those were the days for us!!

 
"AJ" was very rustic in thise days with no running water or electricity, but you could sleep in a Tepee

The information for this article was supplied by Eddie Funk, and the Thanksgiving photo is by Tom Cox

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by Charly Mann

There was no better to place to learn the John Dunne lesson that “no man is an island” than Chapel Hill in the 1950s. No one in town felt isolated because there was so much family and community interaction, and everyone growing up at that time had the opportunity to learn and be influenced by a wide array of unique and highly intelligent individuals. In the 1950s, Chapel Hill had a myriad of great role models for young people. The majority of adults were in their mid to late thirties and had endured the hardships of the Great Depression, and most of the men had experienced the hell of World War II. Almost all of the men, whether they were professors or merchants, had come from small southern farming communities and were the first members of their families to have had a college education. I was fortunate to know many of these people, and they were collectively a great influence on me. From them I learned courage and discipline, and that anything was possible if one was determined and worked hard. One common denominator of these people was that each had experienced huge hardships in their lives, but rather than becoming cynical or hopeless, they grew stronger and more optimistic. Each of them also taught me to think creatively to solve my problems.

Charly Mann and family at home on Old Mill Road in Chapel Hill, May 1958

In those days, there was so much more time to talk, observe, and absorb the stimulating ideas of 1950s Chapel Hill. Few people watched more than three hours of television a week. That contrasts to today where the average person spends 35 hours a week watching television. Life then seemed like a constant adventure of listening to people talk about their interests or relating their daily activities.

Almost every night a couple of houses in every Chapel Hill neighborhood had at least four cars parked out in front, signifying they were having people over for dinner. Guests would sit and talk for at least an hour in the living room before being ushered into the dining room for dinner. After dinner the children would usually be sent to bed while the adults returned to the living room to talk.  Typically the women and men would sit in separate groups then. There was rarely any alcohol served at these dinners, and few people smoked.

In 1950s Chapel Hill there was no more exciting and stimulating time of the day than the family dinner. There was never any TV, radio, or music on nearby; just the family and often one or two guests sitting around a table enjoying each other's company over a home cooked meal. Though I remember that my mother's cooking was good, the conversation was usually better. At my house we would all share the events of that day in our own lives, as well as discuss some of the major stories going on in the world. We would also joke and laugh, and we enjoyed hearing ideas and opinions that were different from our own. In this daily forum new ideas were exchanged and learned.

Mothers raised the kids and cooked most meals. It was not unusual to eat on a porch or in the backyard on a warm summer evening.   

Almost every adult and childhood friend I knew was an independent thinker, and everyone had at least one parent who was involved in a civic organization or church group.

My mother was the Den mother of my Cub Scout Troop which met every Wednesday afternoon. My sister was a Brownie and did very well selling Girl Scout cookies at UNC fraternity houses.

The neighborhood you grew up in Chapel Hill was a contributing factor to your development. There was a significant difference between children who lived in each neighborhoods. The Kings Mills Road - Morgan Creek area, for example, was made up of primarily well paid University professors and administrators who had only recently settled in Chapel Hill. Unlike other neighborhoods it was heavily wooded and few people had lawns. Children there played in the woods or down along the creek, and today almost all of them still have friends from that neighborhood. Most of these children went off to private schools not long after completing elementary school and of the almost one dozen I have kept up with, all have had exciting lives and successful careers. On the other hand, growing up in one of the established downtown neighborhoods seemed to be far more challenging for a kid. Of the ten people I still keep up with or knew well who lived in the Downtown Historic District, Gimghoul, or Laurel Hills, there were very few happy childhoods, and many resulting tragedies in adulthood. Most of these people had primarily negative memories of Chapel Hill and have no sentimental attachment for the town. Even as a child you could differentiate unique traits and interests in the children of each neighborhood whether it be Glenn Lenox, Greenwood, Estes Hills, Dogwood Acres, Gimghoul, Laurel Hills, Carrboro, or anyone from the country (which at the time meant three miles or less from Chapel Hill proper). 

In the 1950s new houses were going up all over Chapel Hill. A large home in a neighborhood like Morgan Creek or Greenwood in the 1950s would cost around $25,000 with central air-conditioning.

I had friends all over Chapel Hill and would often bike, walk, or hitchhike to their houses to spend the day. All Chapel Hill kids spent a lot more time outside than kids today. One reason for this was that very few houses were air-conditioned, and there were lots of places outside that were cooler than inside.

Everyone dressed up for Church on Sunday morning. Church services were over by noon and lunch after church was the only time most families would consider going out for a meal. The most popular places for Sunday lunch were The Pines, The Colonial Inn in Hillsborough, Howard Johnson's which was an eight mile drive towards Durham, and Brady's.     

More than anything else, growing up in Chapel Hill gave me a strong sense of individualism and integrity, and now 50 years later I still often measure my actions by the standards of the adults I was surrounded by then.

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by Charly Mann

Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex playing at the Varsity Theater in 1973

The post Vietnam era of the 1970s was probably the least stressful time to live in Chapel Hill. It was the time of sex, drugs, and rock n roll. UNC students had little worry in those days about finding a good job after graduating. Most young people were carefree about sex, and there was no need for men to use condoms since every girl seemed to be on the pill and there was no AIDS .Chapel Hill even had a "massage" parlor on West Franklin street where men could pay to have sex for less than $50. Marijuana was plentiful and cheap, and for those with a little money cocaine was the drug of choice around town.

UNC students personifying the Sex, Drugs, and Rock N' Roll Era of the 1970s 

The polyester Saturday Night Fever look did not take hold in Chapel Hill, but Disco music did in almost every bar and throughout campus. Lots of people danced, and though disco dancing really had little structure, everyone I knew, except for myself, was at least a good disco dancer.

Feet touching feet - 1970's UNC love 

I remember girls wore less make up in the 1970s, but for some reason many wore flavored lip gloss.

David Honigmann's Leather Shop was one of the most popular Franklin Street businesses in the 1970s.  

Though I have loved every decade I have lived in, the 1970s was the time I became an adult, bought a home, started a business, and got married. It was also a time everyone I knew in Chapel Hill seemed to be really enjoying themselves. Looking back at it I am sure we, and most of all our children, wonder how we ever had fun when there were no cell phones, texting, computers, iPods, or even video games. The big advancement in music in those days was that you could actually play your own music in your car with an 8 track or cassette player. Those wanting music on the go could buy a SONY WALKMAN - about the size and weight of a medium sized paperback book - which was simply a small portable cassette player you could strap on your arm or belt.

Michele Hurysz, UNC Class of 1979, known now as Mickey Mann, had a long career in marketing and sales at IBM, and now owns her own accounting firm in Austin, Texas.

On the minus side gas in the late 1970s did briefly reach a dollar a gallon in Chapel Hill, and that made many of us begin to think maybe there was something to worry about.

Troy's Stereo was a high end electronics store located in the center of Franklin Street in the 1970s. They were also the first business in Chapel Hill to sell pre-recorded cassettes.

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by Charly Mann

This article is about my 1970 summer vacation which led to me interviewing Janis Joplin, and seventeen years later to a great concert in Chapel Hill by legendary singer-songwriter Eric Andersen. Included is a wonderful story about former Chapel Hill resident Carey Raditz, the subject of Joni Mitchell's great song Carey.

My interview with Janis Joplin took place three months before she died 

In 1970, I was twenty years old and had spent most of the previous two years working at the Record and Tape Center on West Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. That summer a friend and I decided to take a month off to drive across the United States. We did not have any planned itinerary, but I think we knew we would be heading to California. In Los Angles we attended several concerts at the famed Troubadour club where I got to see concerts by Ian and Sylvia and Eric Andersen. I also convinced Ian and Sylvia to do an interview with me which I intended to submit to Atlanta's underground newspaper The Great Speckled Bird.

This is my press pass for the Festival Express in Calgary in July 1970

The name of Ian & Sylvia's band then was coincidently the Great Speckled Bird, and included Buddy Cage (later of the New Riders of the Purple Sage) on steel guitar. I became friends with Buddy, and he took us to a fine Italian restaurant where we sat next to Jim Backus (Mr. Magoo, Rebel Without a Cause). Buddy told us during the meal that in a couple of weeks they would be playing in series of concerts throughout Canada with a number of other artists including The Band, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and Delaney & Bonnie, and that he could get us press passes to attend.

Eric Andersen performing in Calgary on July 4th, 1970. Other performers that day included The Band, Janis Joplin, Delaney and Bonnie, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy, Tom Rush, Sha Na Na, The New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Good Brothers.

We soon left Los Angles and headed up to the coast to enjoy the San Francisco music scene which included attending several shows at Bill Grahams' Fillmore West, before heading to Calgary on the Fourth of July to meet up with what was billed as the Festival Express Tour. As we entered the hotel in Calgary where the musicians were staying we first encountered Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir sitting in the lobby jamming with a couple of local musicians on acoustic guitars.

Before performing with the Grateful Dead at the Festival Express concert Jerry Garcia played steel guitar with the New Riders of the Purple Sage 

After securing our press credentials I decided to see if I could find some of the musicians on the tour to interview. I noticed that Eric Andersen, who we had recently seen at the Troubadour, and was also one of my favorite singer-songwriters, was one of the several dozen performers on the tour, and I decided to try to interview him. I ran into Buddy Cage at the hotel bar and he suggested I go into the hotel restaurant which he said been taken over by the musicians. I soon spotted Eric Andersen standing at the restaurant bar and asked if I could interview him. He agreed and said we should talk to all the people at the table he was sitting at, and invited us over.

All the musicians I met who took part in the Festival Express concert were friendly and talkative except for the members of The Band. Rick Danko, the Band's bass player, and years later a member of a trio with Eric Andersen, told me I would have to get approval from the band's guitar player Robbie Robertson before any member of that group would talk to me.

As I sat down next to Eric I noticed on my right was Bonnie Bramlet. Across from me was Eric and his new "very good friend" Janis Joplin, who just happened to be the most popular female rock singer in the world at that time. What a journalistic coup I thought; part of my interview could be with Janis Joplin. As it turned out Eric soon graciously bowed out, and I had a ninety minute off the cuff rollicking conversation with Janis Joplin. During the interview she talked at length about her future and how she envisioned the music industry in ten years. She also told us all about her current musical interests, the breakup of Big Brother, and lot about her personal life - which included showing us her latest tattoo on a fairly private part of her body.

This is Ian and Sylvia on the left with Eric Andersen and Bonnie Bramlett singing Will The Circle Be Unbroken in Calgary 7-4-1970. Jerry Garcia is playing the steel guitar.

Sadly exactly three months after this interview, on October 4, 1970, Janis Joplin died, and I believe this was last full length recorded interview with her. In 1975 I sold the master recording and the rights of the interview to "The Estate of Janis Joplin Deceased." I have however included the beginning of the interview here for you to get a sense of what a wonderful time was had by all.

Eric Andersen and me at my house in Chapel Hill in 1987, shortly before he performed at the Cat's Cradle

While I enjoyed talking with Janis Joplin, for the next seventeen years I felt bad about not getting the interview I had intended with Eric Andersen, so in 1987 I invited him to perform at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill. For the last two decades he and I have remained friends and he has several times stayed with me in my homes in Chapel Hill and Austin.

Poster for the Eric Andersen concert I produced in Chapel Hill on April 5, 1987 partly to make up to Eric for interviewing Janis Joplin instead of him in 1970

Included in the audio portion of this article is the first part of my interview with Janis Joplin, the tribute song Eric Andersen wrote about his friend Janis Joplin called Pearl's Goodtimes Blues, a Chapel Hill radio interview with Eric Andersen from 1987 in in which he talks about Carey Raditz, Joni Mitchell's song Carey, and a story about Townes Van Zandt and his signature song Thirsty Boots from the April 5, 1987 Eric Andersen Cat's Cradle concert.

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