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Big Daddy ED Roth

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Roderick Treece
Posts: 1086
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Big Daddy ED Roth

Post by Roderick Treece »

A friend e-mailed this article to me.

By Nate Jackson, Los Angeles Times
> December 27, 2011
> In the den of Darryl Roth's Corona home, cartoon ogres cover the
> walls, staring back at him with salivating tongues, bloodshot eyes,
> jagged claws and gnashing teeth. To Roth, the images represent
> rebellion, a gloriously grotesque imagination — and his father.
>
> "I look around and I swear, it's like he's still alive. He's still
> here," Roth said. He's the youngest son of iconic hot rod artist Ed
> "Big Daddy" Roth, and this year marked the 10th anniversary of his
> father's passing. "Even now," said the son, "I'm blown away by him."
>
> Between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, Ed Roth was what famed
> journalist Tom Wolfe described as the Salvador Dali of the hot rod
> world. Roth helped pioneer Southern California's Kustom Kulture — a
> flamboyant style of hot rod building that relied on fiberglass rather
> than metal and reveled in flames, pin striping and exposed chrome
> engines — then marketed it through his artwork and accessories.
>
> His character Rat Fink, a sort of grotesque version of Mickey Mouse,
> became shorthand for cool in the post-"Easy Rider"era. Young fans
> around Southern California, and then the world, scrambled to get their
> hands on his T-shirts, model car kits and plastic figurines of
> gruesome monsters stuffed into tiny, super-groovy hot rods. Their
> names? Mother's Worry, Mr. Gasser and Drag Nut.
>
> But after the decline of hot rod culture in the '70s and '80s, Roth's
> conversion to Mormonism and family squabbles over the business, Rat
> Fink and company became less and less ubiquitous until it all seemed
> to fade away entirely.
>
> "My dad was always convinced that once the Beatles came to the States,
> kids kind of lost interest in cars and American culture and started
> picking up guitars instead," said the 51-year-old Roth, who worked for
> two decades as a manager in an auto parts store and is a reserve
> policeman for the City of Bell.
>
> With today's resurgence of interest in hot rod culture and Big Daddy's
> legacy, Darryl Roth has decided the huge collection of his dad's work
> that he spent years tracking down and now has lying around his house
> should probably be in a museum somewhere.
>
> His den, garage and various storage spaces are crammed with original
> model kits of "Big Daddy" cars found everywhere from Japan to Mexico,
> old bikes and cars his father created, rare photo reels of him in his
> famous top hat and red suit coat with tails. Some of his collection
> includes an original sketch of the Flying Eyeball logo created by Von
> Dutch (born Kenny Howard), a Kustom Kulture legend and friend of Big
> Daddy's whose name is now associated with a lucrative clothing line.
> The valuable collection contains thousands of mementos, art pieces and
> artifacts that his dad created.
>
> For well-known custom car designers like Steve Stanford, Big Daddy's
> influence doesn't come with a price tag. "I had all the Rat Fink-
> related items growing up," Stanford said. "It was rebellious, but
> paradoxically, it was just good clean fun."
>
> But to Darryl Roth, the collection is simply part of his childhood.
> Roth remembers souped-up hot rods his dad had worked on out of the
> renowned Movie World, Cars of the Stars and Planes of Fame museum in
> Buena Park.
>
> "I used to sell Rat Fink key chains for lunch money," Roth, the
> youngest of five brothers, recalled. And while hanging out in Roth
> Studios in Maywood, he remembers that his 6-foot-4, 240-pound father's
> hands were enormous and dwarfed any brush he was holding.
>
> Life felt less sweet when Big Daddy began associating with the biker
> gang Hells Angels in the late '60s. That lifestyle eventually
> contributed to the end of his first marriage, to Darryl's mother,
> Sally, in 1970. It also took an emotional toll on Roth and his
> brothers, who moved with their mother to Cudahy after the divorce.
>
> After remarrying several times, Big Daddy converted to Mormonism.
> Though he continued to build cars sporadically, he shunned the
> rebellious remnants of Rat Fink mania, dropping out of the limelight
> and severing ties with family and fans. By the early '80s, he'd taken
> a job as a sign painter at Knott's Berry Farm, using the assumed name
> Bernie Schwartz (based on actor Tony Curtis' real name).
>
> In the early '90s, Darryl saw a renewed interest in hot rod culture
> and decided to start tracking down his father's old signature hot
> rods, which were scattered from the garages of car collectors in Santa
> Paula to the casinos of Nevada. The first of his finds was the
> Wishbone, a car that Big Daddy originally hated so much that he sawed
> it in half after building it in 1967. After finding out that Darryl
> had restored the damaged auto with longtime Big Daddy collaborator
> Doug Kinney (a.k.a. Dirty Doug), he was so angry he refused to speak
> to his son for two years. Eventually, Big Daddy realized Roth's quest
> was one born out of loyalty and a sense his father still had something
> more to give.
>
> Pete Santini, a custom car painter out of Westminster, has helped
> Darryl track down and restore two more of Big Daddy's classic cars,
> the Druid Princess and the Motorcycle Hauler.
>
> "I could tell that as more of the cars were being restored, deep down
> Big Daddy knew that … 'Hey, it's my name, but my kid pulled me out of
> bed, splashed water on my face and said, "Hey, we're going back on
> tour."'"
>
> Roth and his father began rebuilding models together, and Big Daddy
> began appearing with his cars at car shows again and revived some of
> the old T-shirt designs and merchandise that had made him a legend
> decades ago. As a manager of an auto parts store, Roth was able to
> help Big Daddy with parts that he needed to build his new hot rods.
> The walls of his home shrine are littered with old faxes of drawings
> that his father would send him with salivating Rat Fink cartoons
> requesting steering wheels and tail lights. Little air bubbles over
> the cartoon's mouth were full of amusing questions like "what's your
> crazy dad up to now?"
>
> But by the late '90s, Roth's brothers Howard and Dennis — both artists
> and hot rod builders in their own right — clashed with Big Daddy over
> the rights to operate Roth Studios, which their mother had owned since
> the divorce. Big Daddy refused to let them have it, sparking a court
> battle that resulted in him suing his sons and his ex-wife. He won the
> fight shortly before his death in 2001.
>
> Surrounded by his dad's legacy, Roth feels an obligation to ensure
> that this unique slice of Southern California pop history is
> remembered and enjoyed by future generations. Roth said he would like
> to get the bulk of the collection into a museum. Exhibitions about
> Kustom Kulture and its effect have been done, most notably at the
> Laguna Art Museum.
>
> Besides Big Daddy's art, Roth's collection provides a visceral sense
> of his dad's personality jumping out at you like a lick of flame from
> one of his hot rods — a free spirit, a showman, a prankster, a dad.
>
> "He was always a showman," Roth said. "He likened himself to a P.T.
> Barnum in the hot rod world. He wasn't the lady with the beard, the
> man covered in tattoos or some sideshow act. He was the one at the
> center of it all, the guy who ran the circus."
>
> nathan.jackson@latimes.com
> Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
>
Mike Simpson
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2011 10:33 pm
Location: Montrose, CO
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Re: Big Daddy ED Roth

Post by Mike Simpson »

That was a great read. Thanks for posting it Roderick. I grew up in Anaheim during the 50's a 60's. Big Daddy Roth was "the man". My high school notebooks were covered with my imitations of his drawings. Wish I had them now. His influence was very strong. It was a good time to be growing up in Southern California.

Mike
Mike Simpson
picture framemaker and artist
http://www.mikesimpsonart.com
Kent Smith
Posts: 569
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Estes Park, CO
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Re: Big Daddy ED Roth

Post by Kent Smith »

The last paragraph says it all. I am glad to see an interest in preservation too.
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