Texas Whore House History

[lschultz]

What better tune to start with than the one some folks think is the Republic of Texas National Anthem. ZZ Top released "La Grange" in 1973 on there third album, titled "Tres Hombres". It reached number 41 on the pop charts, and Rolling Stone ranked it 74th on its 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All time.

 

The music borrows heavily from a distinctive guitar lick first recorded by Detroit bluesman John Lee Hooker (1917-2001), but it is guitarist Billy Gibbons' slushy vocal performance that first puts the hook in the listener's ear:

 

Rumor spreadin' 'round that Texas town

'Bout that shack outside La Grange.

You know what I'm talkin''bout.

Just let me know if you wanna go

To that home out on the range.

They gotta lotta nice girls ah.

 

That "HOME OUT ON THE RANGE" was the Chicken Ranch, a brothel with roots in La Grange reaching back to 1844. In the early 1900's, the brothel's then- owner,Jessie Williams, bought a farmhouse located just outside the La Grange city limits, and only two blocks from the main Houston-Austin highway. That became the brothel's permanent home. Miss Jessie refused to allow drunkards in her establishment, but politicians and lawmen were welcome.

 

Much lore, some of it true, attaches to the legendary Chicken Ranch. Apparently, the local sheriff would stop by nightly to glean information about criminal activities among the brothel's clients. A visit to the Chicken Ranch became a rite of passage for young men from distant cities. and business grew as automobile ownership became more common. Miss Jessie took to chicken farming during the Great Depression of the 1930s and charged her cash-poor clients one chicken per sexual act, hence the "Chicken Ranck."

 

Some of this lore has since been debunked, but who likes a spoil sport? Suffice it to say, the Chicken Ranch was tolerated by the good people of La Grange as an economic contributor, if not a venerable institution to some. It inspired a Broadway musical titled "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," and a film of the same title starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds.

 

The stage play and movie came along several years after Houston's KTRK-TV investigative reporter, Marvin Zindler, made enough of a stink about the Chicken Ranch that state officials began to get nervous. Although they had once surveilled the brothel for two consecutive days during which they tallied the comings and goings of 484 people, they found no evidence of organized crime. Even so, the Chicken Ranch closed for good in 1973, as a direct result of Zindler's shrill and accusatory reporting.

 

About 18 months later, La Grange Sheriff "Big Jim" Flournoy, who had personally carried a petition to the Governor to protest the closure, ran across Marvin Zindler. The two got into a physical altercation, and Flournoy broke some of Zindler's ribs. The fight wans't over until Flournoy had ripped the reporter's platinum toupee off his head, waived it around like he had just taken a scalp, threw it in the mud.

 

Sheriff Flournoy wasn't the only one upset over the closing of the Chicken Ranch. In a 1985 interview with Spin magazine, Houstonite and ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill remembered, "I went there when I was 13. A lot of boys in Texas, when it's time to be a guy, went there and had it done. Fathers took there sons there...then this asshole decides he is going to do an expose and close it...we wrote ["La Grange"] and put it out, and it was out maybe three months before they closed it...It was a whorehouse, but anything that lasts a hundred years, there's got to be a reason."

 

This was in the Ride Texas magazine I just received. I remember the whorehouse. Use to be a big fat black woman that would meet you at the door she carried a baseball bat. "What you boys want? Ya got money?" then she would let you in. Dam them were the good ole days. We lived in another town(Bastrop county) about 18 miles from there (Fayette County).

[indian terry]

Them was the good ol days --reminds me of the time some of us Mechanics at the County Corp yard in

So.Lake Tahoe, early 70s, got drunk after work and after a night of carousing Drove down to Carson City

and got snowed in at the Moonlight Ranch couldn't get my truck out of the parking lot till the County

Boys Plowed the Road So we had to spend the rest of the night there. The girls gave us a few free beers

we reciprocated with some Lumbo and they cooked us ham & eggs and coffee for breakfast---Hella snow Storm

didn't get outa there till 10:00 in the morning. I almost fell in Love

[Scalper38]

Cool story, cool movie ('course I had the hots for Dolly!). Even today I can't hear somebody say, "Texas" without wanting to shout "HAS A WHOREHOUSE IN IT!" (from the song Dom Deluise sang as the reporter)

[whadayawant]

all th' cat houses in Texas ain't gone. ya just gotta know where they are

[Blue Diesel]

all th' cat houses in Texas ain't gone. ya just gotta know where they are

 

Paul, something tells me you're the one who knows ...

[lschultz]

I remember back in the late 60's there was another little whore house right off I 10 coming from Houston think it was before Columbus. Never went to that one. Ya ole Big Jim the sheriff was very pissed at Marvin Zingler (little we we wimp) for getting the Chicken Ranch closed. There was bad blood between those two. Big Jim would of killed that little mother.

[hasbin]

all th' cat houses in Texas ain't gone. ya just gotta know where they are

Ahhh, I feel a road trip comin on

[Brock]

I have a menu from the Chicken Ranch....dont ask.

[XV62]

In Fort Worth in the late 50s, it was the New Gym Hotel. It was downtown, cain't come up with the street. Damn that was over 50 years ago.

[indian terry]

Street Vibrations is coming up in a little over a week and many a bike in Reno seems to find its way over the hill to the Ranches

when they head out to Virginia City and they ain't a looking for The Ponderosa

[Scalper38]

I have a menu from the Chicken Ranch....dont ask.

Probably nothing on it but typical chicken fare: breasts, thighs, legs, white meat or dark meat, yada, yada.