bobby patterson

Bobby Patterson has got a million of them.

“2Pac wasn’t nothing but one pock on a ham hock when I started.”

“50 Cent wasn’t nothing but two dimes and a nickel when I started.”

He also has jokes about ugly girlfriends: “I had an onion in there, and it started crying, she was so ugly.” That girl was also a nun, he says: “Ain’t getting none. Ain’t had none. Don’t want none.”

But Patterson’s longevity is no joke. The musician, born and raised in Dallas, has been in the music business as a performer, songwriter, promoter, producer and DJ for more than 50 years. His songs have been recorded by a laundry list of R&B, blues, pop and country artists: Albert King, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Bland, Kenny Rogers and Wilco, to name a few. At a recent concert in Marfa, Robert Plant approached Patterson to talk about his career, “You know, the one I almost had,” Patterson deadpans.

Patterson’s career might not be Led Zeppelin-caliber legendary, but that’s only one perspective.

He spent 20 years behind the scenes, promoting artists such as LL Cool J and the Bee Gees before a 15-year stint on air at KKDA, which ended this past spring.

Patterson started playing in bands as a Lincoln High School student in the early ’60s, often competing in talent shows.

“I would always imitate Chuck Berry, and I would always win,” he says. “I would do ‘Lucille,’ with the duck walk and all. I always won.”

In the mid-’60s, he was one of about seven black people who attended the University of Texas at Arlington, he says. He was a student by day, and at night his band played at LuAnn’s, The Beachcomber, the Blackout Club and other Greenville Avenue nightclubs. He was also a favorite at SMU fraternity parties, he says.

Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan used to sit in with Patterson’s band, when they were still students of the blues.

Since KKDA laid off staff in May, including Patterson, he has focused more on performing. Patterson and his band play as many as four shows a week around Dallas, and they’re often invited to play festivals.

“It’s just a thing to do now. It’s not about the money or anything else except having fun and making people happy and putting a smile on people’s faces,” he says. “That’s something the young entertainers don’t do enough.”

When Aaron Gonzalez was a little boy, he used to get onstage and honk his plastic toy saxophone along with his dad’s band.

“And then he would cry because he didn’t get a solo,” says his brother, Stefan Gonzalez.

The Gonzalez brothers are the sons of Oak Cliff-based jazzman Dennis Gonzalez, and the three of them make up the jazz band Yells At Eels.

The band started in 1999 when the brothers were teenagers. Since then, they’ve recorded three albums and traveled on tour several times to Europe.

Dennis Gonzalez, who has taught in Dallas ISD for 37 years, moved to Oak Cliff in 1978 with his wife, Carol. They raised their family in their little house on Clinton, which they bought for a steal.

At the time, there wasn’t much of a music scene in Oak Cliff, Gonzalez says. But he played locally in avant-garde jazz ensembles, and his career as a free jazz musician, writing and composing songs, took him around the world.

The Gonzalezes have different ideas