Brian White: Oklahoma’s Rodeo Extraordinaire
Would you describe yourself as a cowboy?
Absolutely.
It’s not just the hat and the boots. There’s a whole lot more to it. There’s the country lifestyle, and then there are cowboys, those of us who actually do cowboy shit.
Who introduced you to the rodeo world?
My Uncle Danny. He rode bareback horses and clowned, fought bulls later. Always wore cowboy boots. Back then, horses had a lot of balance because they had to ride in the back of a pickup truck.
What’s the difference between the lifestyle and cowboy shit?
For me, cowboying is actually knowing how to rope and how to ride. You’ve competed at some point, or you have worked as a working ranch cowboy. You’ve saddled a horse every day and you’ve checked the fence and you’ve doctored sick cattle. Just wearing boots and a hat and driving a big truck and listening to country music does not in any form or fashion make you a cowboy. It means you romanticize the cowboy lifestyle.
I’ve had people tell me that they rode Bodacious and I’m like, “No, you didn’t.”
What’s Bodacious?
Bodacious was a bull who was during his time considered the rankest bull alive. He jerked down Terry Don West. He jerked down Tuff Hedeman, smashed his face all up. He had to have reconstructive surgery. Most guys that got on him either got their face busted or they turned him out before they ever got on him. I had people saying, “Yeah, I’ve got on Bodacious.” I’m like, “No, you didn’t. You couldn’t ride my sister through a mud puddle. There’s no way you got on Bodacious.”
Who do you look up to? Who are your idols?
Charlie Sampson, the first African American to win a world championship for bull riding, will forever be my hero. Also, a guy named Jamie Davis. He was from the small Arkansas community where my paternal grandmother was from. This guy could ride anything with hair on it, so I wanted to be just like him.
I remember when I was probably about 11 or so, he gave me my first chew of tobacco, which I swallowed. I was sick for four days. I couldn’t get 10 feet from a bathroom. It was bad. I will never forget. Copenhagen Wintergreen just about killed me.
Did you ride in high school and college?
I rode some in high school. But in college, I played football and ran track so I couldn’t ride bulls. My roommate’s dad raised horses though, so we’d sneak off and go up to his place in Culver, Kansas, and I’d ride horses for his dad. I’d start colts for him and get bucked off. I’d try not to get hurt because I didn’t want to go to football practice with a broken arm.
Did football help you with not being afraid of getting bucked off a bull?
There were several times, especially on kickoffs, that I’ve hit people headfirst and trotted off the field groggy and shook it off. I think I had more of an adrenaline rush doing that than I ever did riding or fighting bulls. I never felt the same type of high with the rodeo. I’m not an adrenaline junkie, I don’t want to jump out of an airplane or go whitewater rafting. That stuff scares me. But being in an arena with a bull, I’m on my feet and can get out of the way.
How do you control a 900–1800-pound beast?
The majority of them really don’t want anything to do with you, they’re just trying to get somebody off their back. I found that if I can put my hand on a bull’s head and keep pressure against him, he couldn’t run over me. Everybody has their own theory about it.
What’s some cowboy history people should know about?
I’ve heard stories about a guy named Jesse Stahl. He rode bucking horses extremely well, and some people will say he was probably the best guy riding bucking horses that ever nodded his head. This guy would ride bucking horses holding a suitcase in one hand. He’d ride them backwards. A lot of times, he did that to mock the judges. He may have had the best ride, which everyone knew, but they would not let him have first place. They would say he was second or third or whatever.
There were times that the crowd would pass the hat to reward him for what he was actually cheated out of. He ended up making more money from crowd donations than he would have won had they given him first place like he probably should have gotten. This continued up through the ’60s with Myrtis Dightman, who was the first African American to qualify for the national finals. There are people who say that Myrtis should have probably won the World Championship once or twice, or maybe even three times.
But the judges in that era held some prejudices and wouldn’t mark him as high as he probably should have. Myrtis, bless his heart, took what he got and kept on rolling. He would travel with guys and have to sleep in his car because he wasn’t allowed to sleep in the hotel. A humble man and as far as I’m concerned, beyond a World Champion for all he had to endure.
Do you feel like anything has changed?
I think cowboying changed around the 70’s and 80’s. I’ve known guys from the rodeo community since the ’80s and we’re just friends. What I’ve got, they’ve got. There’s never an issue, and if there is an issue, these guys have my back. They don’t tuck tail and turn and pick a side that I’m not on. It got better. I don’t think a lot of Black cowboys compete on a larger stage because they don’t have the financial backing. I also think there’s still some lingering hesitation because of the treatment of guys like Myrtis Dightman, and they’re more content to just compete at local events. Some of them make more money this way (less travel expenses).
What are you known for?
Protecting bull riders and rodeo clowning; putting on the makeup and doing jokes in the arena. If you said, “Do you know the Brown Clown?” People would say, “Oh, heck yeah. I know that guy.”
What’s the difference between bull fighting and rodeo clowning? Is it common to see people to do both?
It’s not, and I do both. Rodeo clowns haul comedy acts, making the kids laugh up in the stands by squirting water at them or whatever. Bullfighters distract and prevent the cowboys from getting run over once they hit the dirt.
About the time that I got started in this, there started to be a separation where everyone wanted to be a bullfighter, but no one wanted to do the funny stuff for the audience. It’s probably a good thing that there is a separation because I know some guys who fight bulls like demons but couldn’t tell a joke to save their lives. Then there are some guys who are funny, will have you in stitches but they probably shouldn’t fight Billy goats.
I remember loading my truck up with stuff and driving from Salina, Kansas, clear over to Lexington, Kentucky and down to Florida and telling jokes, blowing stuff up, fighting bulls, selling tickets, whatever else it took, and then load it up on a Sunday night and drive all the way back home.
How’d you get into fighting bulls?
I rode bulls for 13 years but fell into bullfighting. I used to live in Brookville, Kansas, which is the bulldogging capital of Kansas. One year, I went to the rodeo, just hanging out, and a bullfighter, Danny Munsell, broke his ankle the first or second bull that bucked. Some of the guys I knew suggested I go out there. I was 29 or 30 years old. I worked the hangup, turned some bulls back and thought, “Well, shit, I can do this.” The next week, I called every stock contractor I knew trying to get a job. The last guy I called was Lial Dodge, from Kingman, Kansas, and he says, “Well, yeah, I got some guys. But come down and show me what you can do.”
That Sunday, I go to Lial’s and get along with the bulls. He says, “I’d like to use you, but I don’t know what I can pay you.” I was like, “Well hell, I don’t even know what to charge you, so just cover my gas down here, I’ll come work your practice deals.” It was 99 miles exactly from my driveway in Salina, Kansas to his driveway in Kingman, Kansas. I’d go over there every other week for $20 and fight. If there were 10 guys or if there were 100 guys, I got $20.
What did that job entail?
Fighting bulls, protecting the cowboys. 45 bulls a night for $40 or $50. But I was just having a ball. It wasn’t a job. I didn’t care what it paid, I just wanted to stay involved.
As a rodeo clown, do you always hit it off with your audience?
There are some nights that everything works and you’re telling jokes and people are going crazy, and there are some nights that everything that comes out of your mouth is absolutely not funny and no one is laughing. You learn your audience real quick in the first 45 seconds to one minute.
How do you come up with your material?
I make it up as I go along.
It’s not about the announcer, it’s not about me; it’s about those cowboys. But in between when something’s going on and there’s a break, that’s where it becomes about us. At those times, I can look in the stands and see someone wearing something or doing something and make a joke out of it. It’s so refreshing when we’re done, people will say, “Man, you were on.” Or they’ll say, “How’d you come up with such and such?” I’m like, “I just looked at that guy out there.”
What’s the hardest part of the job?
You have to know who you work with. In 1997, I was working with Sam Howry at Morehead State University when a guy got hurt out in the arena. I started making a joke, but Sam just looked at me and signaled with his hand, so I stopped. From ’97 to now, I know if I’m working with him and something like that happens, I shut up and go stand in the corner and let him talk to the crowd, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got the medical staff on scene …” He does his deal, reassuring people, “Okay, folks, give him a round of applause.” And then we go back to it, but I know that about Sam. In doing production and watching other clowns work with him, and something like that happens, then the clown goes into talking, I’m like, “Ah, here we go.”
It sounds like you have to be really good at reading people.
Yeah, if we’ve got a steer with a leg out of the chute, or a calf turned around, we need to distract the audience away from the mess. That’s when someone needs to be a clown.
Is the ‘clown’ label considered derogatory?
Well, rodeo clowns, they don’t care. They’re funny man, barrel man, rodeo clown, whatever. We’re just happy somebody’s talking about us. Bullfighters, mostly younger guys, somebody call them a ‘clown’, they want to get all huffy. But the general public, they didn’t really know the difference because traditionally, the bullfighter was the clown. Guys get their panties in a bunch and I’m like, “Dude, it ain’t that serious. They don’t know any better. Shut up. You’re a clown.”
Where were you born and raised?
Oklahoma. My maternal grandfather was from Oklahoma City, and his parents were both born and raised in Texas. My maternal grandmother is from Wynnewood, Oklahoma. My paternal grandmother is from Paris “Gray Rock”, Arkansas, and met my paternal grandfather (who was born in San Antonio, Texas) sometime after WWII.
What were your parents like growing up?
My mom was very straightforward. She had been through a bunch. My dad, he was the cool guy. Everyone liked him. Not a lot of Americans who can say they’ve worked with a Mexican drug cartel.
Who did he work for?
Pablo Acosta Villarreal in Ojinaga, Mexico.
He must’ve really liked your dad.
They don’t ever hire Americans to work directly for them. They like to hire their own people. From what I understand, whenever my dad would get arrested in the 80’s when he was trafficking, he never, ever told who his contact was. They would send a Mexican lawyer to court for the discovery hearing to not find out what happened, but whether or not my dad named names.
How’d your dad start working for the cartel?
He had a Mexican guy that he dealt with. There’s another guy, I can’t think of his name right now, but he would come over and he always brought us tamales. His wife made tamales so he would bring us this big ass bag of tamales every time he came over. I liked that dude because I love tamales. I was 13 or 14 around that time. I’m thinking that’s probably how the contact was made, because it was shortly after that that he started going to Mexico.
They would take four-wheel drive trucks, most likely stolen, to Mexico and trade them for drugs that they would either smuggle them back or someone would smuggle them over for them. But I distinctly remember one weekend, I came home from school and there was a red Ford Bronco and a white Dodge, like a Ram Charger or something in the driveway.
You never got a chance to ask your dad about any of this?
No, because I didn’t find out about any of this until he was gone. He passed away in 2002.
How did you find out?
I have a friend in law enforcement. We’ve fought bulls together. One time over the phone, he started telling me about a new book he’s reading called ‘Drug Lord’. I told him about my dad, he asked for his name, date of birth and permission to look into it. I told him I didn’t mind.
He calls me a week or so later and says, “Do you have any idea who your dad was?”
Apparently, his phone started immediately ringing with DEA agents out of Houston asking him why he was checking out this person. My dad had 22 government issued ID aliases.
How did your dad pass away?
Later in life, he drank a lot. The official cause of death was esophageal hemorrhage. I guess the blood vessels in his throat ruptured. I held his hand when he passed away.
What’s your proudest achievement?
I’ve probably done more than a lot of people are going to do in two lifetimes. I guess my greatest achievement would be not falling into a pitfall of generational bullshit. My parents were 16 when they had me, and both went to prison at one time. Growing up in a drug distribution house, I wasn’t supposed to be an Eagle Scout, a college graduate, an All American athlete or a champion bullfighter. I’m probably supposed to be statistically just finishing my third stint in prison and looking for some way to go back for number four.
My greatest achievement? Breaking a cycle.
