The Love Shack: McWhorter’s passion for South evident at Big Mama’s Rib Shack and Soul Food

Ken Miller

Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004 | 8:30 a.m.

If you ask Dargin McWhorter what he was meant to do with his life, you migh get dizzy hearing the answer. Quarterback. Outfielder. Boxer. Car salesman. Music producer.

McWhorter has done them all and well.

At age 69, McWhorter's latest enterprise, as owner/operator of Big Mama's Rib Shack and Soul Food in Las Vegas, would appear to be his last.

But not so fast. He has big plans for his top-secret barbecue sauce, and is already marketing it.

"I've got the bottles and everything," he said. "I also sell it on the Internet (www.bigmamasrib-shack.com). I'm old school, but I'm still hip."

That type of humor exemplifies the tireless McWhorter, whose achievements include forwarding the cause of integration in the South and producing Jackie DeShannon's 1969 hit, "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," all the while raising eight children. He and his wife, Anita, celebrated their 40th anniversary this year.

Two of his children operate the other Big Mama's in Pasadena, Calif. Others work when needed at the Las Vegas operation.

The building resembles a fast-food restaurant, complete with drive-through window. The interior is simple, with a walk-up counter and menus prominently displayed. A bell is rung when orders are done, and diners can sit at any of the six booths or nine tables.

Reddish-brown tile contrasts with white-brick walls, and the tables have either red or floral-pattern tablecloths. On packed days, a semicircle counter has six rotating stools available. Opaque glass serves as trim between the dining area and the service counter.

Decor is sparse. An "outside fireplace," used for backyard barbecues, has a flower arrangement inside, and paintings and drawings of New Orleans decorate the walls.

McWhorter's love of Louisiana-style cooking is reflected in the menu, which includes everything from ox tails (the tail of the cow), pig's feet, chitterlins (small intestines), chicken Creole and File's gumbo.

McWhorter has won several local awards, and he's since expanded operations to include catering.

A large picture of McWhorter's late mother, Emma Sue Miller McWhorter, the woman the restaurant is named after, hangs behind the counter.

She died in 1998, but McWhorter continues to live by her example.

"Big Mama was dynamite," he said. "Mama always said if the colonel could have fried chicken like Big Mama, he'd have been a general."

Poor but proud

McWhorter was born into poverty in Atlanta in 1935. When he was 3 years old his family moved to Chattanooga, Tenn., where he lived until he graduated high school.

"I graduated 'O Laudy' instead of 'Cum Laude,' " he said, laughing. "Like, 'O Laudy, I'm glad I'm out of there.' "

McWhorter's childhood was one of constant struggle. His mother and his father, James, separated shortly after arriving in Chattanooga, leaving his mother as his caretaker.

While McWhorter's mother made ends meet by selling door-to-door for a catalog clothing company and working as a maid at the nearby Patten Hotel, her real talent was cooking.

"Everybody liked Mama's cooking," he said, adding that his mother would often make food as gifts for her children.

"When I was a boy, I couldn't wait for Christmas, because she'd cook me a caramel cake with pecans in it. Lord have mercy," he said. "I'd hoard it."

He wasn't the only one. McWhorter's mother also made gifts of her cooking to the neighborhood.

"There were people poorer than us, and we were poor," he said. "Mama used to give them food."

In 1949 she opened a cafe with help from a boyfriend McWhorter remembers as "Big Boy Smith," letting out a chuckle. It was a small operation -- only a few tables -- and McWhorter and his younger brother, Sam, and sister Pat slept in the back with their mother.

McWhorter occasionally helped out at the cafe, but pursued other jobs where he could find them.

"I was going to school during all this, but they had truant officers, and I tried playing hooky as much as I could to make a buck," he said.

A nearby Army base, Fort Cheatham, provided McWhorter with plenty of funds. It was also where he would discover his love of cooking and the barbecue sauce he would spend years trying to perfect.

He started out shining shoes, but soon got a job cleaning up at the camp's diner. One day the cook called in sick, and McWhorter volunteered to take his place.

"I never cooked at my mother's cafe, but I watched," he said. "I could make biscuits as a little boy. I never went to school to learn to cook."

He served as a fry cook at Fort Cheatham for a year, and loved it.

"It didn't pay enough (he made between 50 and 75 cents an hour), but if you did a good job, people would say you were a good cook," he said.

All week McWhorter looked forward to the backyard barbecues of a woman who lived on the base. He remembers her only as "Miss Annabelle."

"That was the best sauce you ever put in your mouth," he said. "I'd save up my money all week to get her barbecue, and I'd help her clean up afterwards and I'd get slaw, sauce and bread for doing that.

"She said, 'Dargin, since you love my sauce so well, I'm going to tell you the ingredients, but not how much of each it takes to make the sauce.' "

That list of ingredients would remain in his head until he opened his first restaurant decades later. To this date, no one -- including his wife, siblings and children -- has been given the recipe.

Sporting life

While in junior high and high school, McWhorter took jobs as a carhop and a bellhop at various restaurants and hotels around town to earn spending money, but his primary interest was sports.

"We had recreation centers at my schools, and I coached kids in baseball, football and basketball," he said. "In high school, I quarterbacked the football team, and I played baseball during the summer."

As much as he loved basketball, McWhorter said he was "too low to the ground" to have a future in the sport.

"My coach said, 'I'm going to put you on the 'C' team -- see you next year for football,' " he said, laughing.

But McWhorter's passion for sports didn't stop there. He wanted to be a boxer, a goal that proved a daunting challenge in a highly segregated community.

"They wouldn't let me fight in the Golden Gloves at my high school," McWhorter said. He went to the Fry Institute, where he met Rye Bell, a man who changed his life.

"Rye said, 'I'll tell them you're the equipment manager. When they go home, we can start teaching you to box,' " McWhorter said. "He was one of the finest human beings I've ever known."

McWhorter trained hard, and was soon a competitive fighter, even while mixing it up in training with men he considered friends.

"All this prejudice talk, but these guys loved me," he said. "One guy called me 'Badger' because he couldn't hardly hit me."

The only place nearby McWhorter could fight was Evansville, Ind., and he needed to raise the funds to go. He went to the local newspaper for help, and ended up getting a story written about him.

"The radio station got ahold of the story, and donations started pouring in," he said.

Before going to Evansville, however, McWhorter had to practice, so he took one of his close friends to the Fry Institute to spar.

"It was the first time two black kids had boxed each other at Fry," McWhorter said. "The city of Chattanooga credited me with (forwarding) integration there."

McWhorter fought two years in the Golden Gloves in Evansville, losing in the finals both times. In 1954, McWhorter staged an all-black boxing event at Engel Stadium in Chattanooga, and it was so popular he staged another the following year.

He also wrote about it for the local newspaper, which hired him to cover black sports during his high school years.

In addition to boxing, McWhorter coached three age groups in baseball and boxing with Projecteers, a nonprofit organization he started while in high school. Funds for the organization came from the tickets he sold for the boxing exhibitions.

"I think training young people at sports was the best thing I ever did in my life," he said.

Boxing days

McWhorter moved to California in 1955, shortly after graduating high school, at the encouragement of some friends in the military who told him he had a better chance of pursuing a boxing career there.

He tooled around California awhile before finding a gym in Pasadena that gave him a chance.

"The pro there couldn't touch me," McWhorter said. "I wore him out."

After competing in the Golden Gloves that year and losing in the finals, McWhorter turned professional, winning six straight fights on his way to a 10-4 record from 1956 to 1959, all the while attending Pasadena City College.

During that time, McWhorter not only attended college, he became a car salesman.

"In 1957, I bought a Bel-Aire hardtop," he said. "I was pretty well known around the area, and the salesman said if I could get customers on the lot in my car and he could make a sale, I'd get $25."

McWhorter brought in a lot of business, finally asking that he be made a salesman in order to make more money.

"I became the first black Chevy salesman in Pasadena," he said.

In his spare time McWhorter coached Pony League baseball, YMCA basketball and Pop Warner football teams.

He also moved his mother, brother Sam and sister Pat to California.

McWhorter's boxing career ended when he broke his left arm in his final fight. "I hooked to the body and he put his elbow up," McWhorter said. "It took a year to heal, and it was never the same. I had calcium buildup that made me hold my arm whenever I jabbed."

He eventually transferred to Azusa College, where he not only played football, but also basketball and baseball -- lettering in all three.

Auto pilot

In 1962, McWhorter transferred to the University of La Verne, but his academic career didn't last much longer.

"I was still selling cars then, and a friend of mine who detailed cars suggested we go into business together," he said. "I checked out of school, we got enough money to buy a buffer he had been using, and we were cleaning cars."

By the end of the year they opened Po Bill's Auto Cleaning in Eagle Rock, near Pasadena. McWhorter opened a second store in Pasadena in 1963, and eventually he took it over completely. He also obtained a license to sell used cars on a Datsun lot while there.

In 1965 he met George Vitale, who owned a radiator shop.

"He had a car license he wasn't using, and he had a steam cleaner," McWhorter said. "He had three viable businesses he could have been running."

The pair began selling used cars in Pasadena, and soon had a radiator and detail shop and used car lot. They would eventually expand to three used-car dealerships in the Pasadena area, businesses they would operate until 1991.

Music lovers

McWhorter's younger brother, Sam, had a deep interest in music, and needed funds to record some of his material. McWhorter and his partner formed a company to back him, Vitale and McWhorter Enterprises (VME).

"We sold an album of my brother's ('Play It By Ear'), who recorded under the name Sam Russell, to Liberty Records, a subsidiary of United Artists, and they loved it," McWhorter said. "They asked us to produce Jackie DeShannon. We produced 'Put a Little Love in Your Heart' in 1969."

Later that year VME purchased a building in Old Town Pasadena to set up a proper recording studio (they had rented space at Sunwest Studios in Hollywood to produce DeShannon). McWhorter and his partner continued to produce music for the next two decades, eventually changing the name of the company to 54 East in the mid-'70s. Artists who recorded there included Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Donovan, Dr. John, Electric Light Orchestra and Joni Mitchell.

Sam continues to produce with 54 East -- his latest project is a religious recording called "The Golden Rulers" -- but McWhorter distanced himself from the music business in the late-'80s.

"The record business is very controlled," he said. "We couldn't get as much work as we wanted."

Sauce of life

In 1969, McWhorter, enjoying the success of his production company, opened his first restaurant, Emma Sue's Fish and Barbecue, in Altadena, Calif.

"I'd been doing barbecue sauce since I was 20 years old, but I still wanted to get Miss Annabelle's recipe right," he said. "When I opened in 1969, I kept after it, keeping records of all the tests. One day I got it just right."

He gave the restaurant to his older brother James in 1974.

"But he couldn't have the sauce," McWhorter said, laughing. James has since converted the restaurant into a furniture business, and continues to operate it today.

McWhorter's next restaurant venture wouldn't come until 1989, when he opened Vincenzo's in Pasadena with five partners.

"We got great write-ups, but it was a catastrophe working with so many other people," he said. "But I learned Louisiana-style cooking from our chef, who was from there."

He left Vincenzo's in 1991, "and it closed shortly after I left." Armed with his secret barbecue sauce and a firm grasp of Southern cuisine, he opened the first Big Mama's in old town Pasadena in 1992, near his production studio.

The business was an instant success, and soon McWhorter wanted to expand.

"I thought Las Vegas was perfect," he said. He leased space on the Strip across the street from the Monte Carlo (where Fatburger now stands). His move to Las Vegas signaled the end of his car-selling days.

Two years later McWhorter lost the lease on the California business. "It was hard times, a bad economy," he said. And in 1998, Bob Metz, the owner of the Strip property, bought out McWhorter, forcing him to relocate his business to its current location.

McWhorter was able to reopen a Big Mama's in Pasadena two years ago, and both restaurants are doing well.

He also maintains an active role in his community, particularly in youth sports. He coached Nevada Youth Football from 1999 to 2002, and treasures the role he plays in young people's lives.

Whether it's a satisfied customer or a young person who goes on to greater things, McWhorter considers himself a people pleaser.

"I like people. I always did," he said. "I like to see them happy."

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