Thirteen months after the death of David Swartz, who taught Jimmie Vaughan and little brother Stevie Ray how to play guitar, his longtime bandmate, Billy Joe Shine, has died at 75. Shine was lead singer and songwriter for perhaps the most influential Dallas band of the 1960s.
From the late 1950s until just a few years ago, Shine was frontman for the Nightcaps, who more than half a century ago laid down what have been described as "two of the greatest booze-fueled frat bashers ever to grace the rock 'n' roll world:" "Wine, Wine, Wine" and "Thunderbird."
Shine wrote the former while in study hall at Jesuit, or so the story goes; ZZ Top swiped the latter, claiming credit for a song Shine and his fellows wrote and recorded years before Billy Gibbons picked up his first guitar.
Carol Shine, his wife of 46 years, says he died Monday night at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas, the result of sepsis caused by an infection. Shine died surrounded by family, moments after receiving the last blessing.
"It was as though we walked him to the gates of heaven," Carol Shine says.
Until a few years ago, the Nightcaps still had a semiregular gig at the Knights of Columbus Hall near Flag Pole Hill. The audiences consisted, for the most part, of Jesuit, Thomas Jefferson, Hillcrest and Woodrow grads who remembered the band from way back when. They performed R&B covers and ran through most of the cuts on their sole full-length record, 1961's Wine, Wine, Wine, released on the Vandan label. And they played the two songs that will forever define them.
"And it was like you went back in time," says Carol Shine. "You were back in high school, and everybody was dancing and having fun."
By the end, Shine was the sole remaining original Nightcap. The others - rhythm guitarist Gene Haufler, bassist Mario Daboub, drummer Jack Allday and Swartz - had long ago moved on to straight jobs. Shine had one, too, of course: He was a furniture manufacturer's rep. But he refused to stop singing the songs he'd written when he was a North Dallas teen.
"The reason they loved the band isn't because this is great music - which it is - but it reminds them of that period in their life when they were teenagers, going to college, getting their lives started," Allday says. "It connected them in a way nothing else could to when they were young. And the only thing still remaining was Billy Joe. If he hadn't been there, they wouldn't have been there."
She and Allday say Shine stopped only when he had to. Three years ago, he fainted after a show. Doctors said it was because of low blood pressure and warned him to cut back. Billy Joe never stepped on a stage again. At least by then the city and state had recognized the Nightcaps' contribution to Texas music: In 2009 they were first presented with a mayoral proclamation, then a Texas Senate resolution.
Shine formed the Nightcaps in 1958 - "just a high school thing," he said in the liner notes to 1998's reissue of Wine, Wine, Wine, "goofing around with music." They were white guys playing black music: B.B. King, Little Junior Parker, Ray Charles, Little Milton. At the time, that was almost unheard of, Allday says. Oxford University Press' 10-volume Encyclopedia of Popular Music notes that the Nightcaps were "one of the first widely known white blues bands," and it proved extraordinarily profitable: The band - which took its name from a bowling team, Shine always said - was booked almost every weekend at some high-school dance around town, usually getting around $50 to $200 a gig. Allday says he made enough as a Nightcap to pay his way through Southern Methodist University.
Shine always said he wrote "Wine, Wine, Wine," the band's first single, released in '59 with "Nightcap Rock" as the B-side, while in study hall at Jesuit, after a lesson about how Jesus turned water to wine. According to Texas Monthly, and anyone else who's ever heard "Wine, Wine, Wine," it's one of the 100 best Texas songs.
The song was a hit locally and made a dent nationally - enough to merit the release of a second single, "Thunderbird," a year later. It was an even bigger song; better, too. Maybe that's why ZZ Top stole it 15 years later for Fandango!, which kicks off with a live version of it.
There's no doubt whose song it is: As a federal judge wrote in 1995, after years of litigation, "ZZ Top concedes ... that its version of the song 'Thunderbird' is musically and lyrically identical to the version originally written and performed by the Nightcaps." But the judge tossed the Nightcaps' claim, insisting they were too late to the courthouse, and all these years later, the song remains copyrighted to "William Frederick Gibbons, Frank Lee Beard, & Joe M. Hill, whose pseud. is Dusty Hill." The Nightcaps don't see a dime from sales of Fandango!
In 1961, the band released its one and only full-length record. For whatever reason - the small label, maybe, or just the fact Dallas wasn't yet a rock 'n' roll town - the Nightcaps never made it big outside of the city limits. They became almost-weres, the close-enoughs.
"It'd be easy to underrate Billy Joe," says Allday. "He didn't play the guitar. He just stood up and sang. But he was the face of the band. If you think about the Nightcaps, you think about Billy Joe, and if there wasn't a Billy Joe there wouldn't have been a Nightcaps. It wouldn't have been the same."
The last time the original Nightcaps were together was last year, at Swartz's memorial. And now, its frontman is gone, leaving his family to deal with funeral arrangements while greeting well-wishers bearing condolences knocking on the front door of the family's home north of White Rock Lake.
"He was a legend," says Carol Shine. "And such a wonderful man. A great father, husband, grandfather, musician. Just a dear, dear person. It was amazing - this little band from Texas spread across the United States and across the world. They were a great group and contributed a lot. We all grew up on Nightcaps music, including myself. I was younger than Billy. We would have been married 47 years in June. I'm grateful for every second. Ours was a love story - always was, always will be."
The funeral will take place at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Sparkman-Hillcrest Funeral Home, 7405 W. Northwest Highway, Dallas.
