Gris Gris
Remembering Baton Rouge’s edgiest alt-weekly, fifty years later
What was it about Gris Gris, the alternative magazine that took Baton Rouge by storm in the seventies? Edgy, fun and full of witty articles covering political gun battles and burgeoning nightlife, with avant-garde cover stories—it was a zephyr of fresh air in the occasionally uptight Capital City. America had just exited the Vietnam War and baby boomers (even though that name wasn’t being bandied about then) were hungry for things. They were an eager, emerging generation. And in Baton Rouge, Gris Gris was their voice.
Nationally, Rolling Stone was a force, but don’t forget New York’s Village Voice, Philadelphia’s Distant Drummer and the Vieux Carré Courier in New Orleans. Many cities had them. Ours began at LSU’s Student Union, where four students whittled down a list of variations on “Red Stick” and other ridiculous names until there was only one left: “Gris Gris”.
"Edgy, fun and full of witty articles covering political gun battles and burgeoning nightlife, with avant-garde cover stories—it was a zephyr of fresh air in the occasionally uptight Capital City." —Teddy McGehee
While eating a Chinese Inn supper of Moo Goo Gai Pan and egg rolls, the fearless four had decided to launch an alternative newspaper. The group included: John Maginnis, who had been the editor of the LSU Reveille in the spring of ‘69 and just returned from a Navy stint in the Philippines; wordsmith Charlie East, the 1971 Reveille editor who had scored a gig reporting at the Times-Picayune; Jim Gabour, the beefy, bearded hippie with the military chops, newspaper family, and hip experiences from all over the world; and Jodie Cado, a brassy teenager out of Pearl River, the Stevie Nicks of the quartet who couldn’t wait to influence a young audience and see her name on the masthead. It was official. The first bi-weekly issue would publish July 4, 1973.
“You just had daily newspapers,” Maginnis told Melissa Eastin, a senior EBR library archivist who interviewed him shortly before his death ten years ago. “You didn’t have city magazines or anyone who could do long-form journalism. We could delve into stories. Few people wrote like that. They do now. There was an opening for Gris Gris to really tell personal stories, go more in-depth and get different angles.”
The first issue, twelve pages in total, featured Jim Downey’s art direction and East’s in-depth report (“the porno too hot to handle”) on why the Varsity and Regina movie theaters refused to show the much-ballyhooed porn flick Deep Throat. The cover story was a Jim Gabour piece on the blues scene in Baton Rouge headlined “Jukin’ in Baton Rouge.” It included book reviews by Morris Lewis Witten; record reviews by Patrick Berry, Jimmy Beyer, and Michael Moore; and a punchy piece on LSU politics by Maginnis.
"You didn’t have city magazines or anyone who could do long-form journalism. We could delve into stories. Few people wrote like that. They do now. There was an opening for Gris Gris to really tell personal stories, go more in-depth and get different angles.” —John Maginnis
With four years on Maginnis and East, Gabour brought a worldly flavor to Gris Gris. He was a beat poet, artist, and glib-tongued hipster—all of which fueled his Hunter Thompson-like rants. His tough Texas upbringing and three years serving in the Korean War gave him a reputation for fearlessness, always ready for a love-in or a barroom brawl—take your pick. The team worked out of a two-story building in Beauregard Town and, later, another on State Street. Cado—wearing various hats and titles over the years as Business Manager, Associate Editor, and Secretary/Treasurer— was the scotch tape and chewing gum holding the paper together. More than just the “hippie girl,” as Edwin Edwards once called her, she was skilled in selling ads and savvy at brainstorming story ideas. She was the paste-up queen who ramrodded the biweekly madness, the putting to bed of a masterpiece, or at least a magazine with a modicum of mistakes. Moreover, she was tough as nails, raised by a marine sergeant dad who stormed every beach on the Pacific.
Ensuing issues hit Baton Rouge like a tidal wave and the publication doubled in size and readership in just two years. Reach expanded, too—with Frank Hall selling ads in New Orleans and Jim Burk in Lafayette. The clever Gris Gris motto “Covers Baton Rouge like the Dieux” debuted in ‘74, as did the streaking issue: the cover marquis ringing out “The Naked Truth”.
Early articles delved into the machinations of such influencers as Edwin Edwards, Mayor Woody Dumas, East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Al Amiss, Judge Leander Perez of Plaquemine Parish, white supremacist David Duke, Speaker of the House Bubba Henry, and LSU Football coach Charlie McClendon. Riding on the coattails of popular stories describing the Destrehan ferry incident and the Tongsung Park scandal, the magazine also shimmered with Gabor’s acid-fueled column, Bruce MacMurdo’s sports reporting, and Maginnis’s coverage of Louisiana’s deliciously fraught political landscape.
Going behind the scenes with politicians like Edwin Edwards was Maginnis’s forte (he wrote two books about him). He was funny, glib, and never missed a single legislative crawfish boil. His July 27–August 2, 1976 “Best and Worst Legislators” cover story, cowritten with Sandy Branch, was complimented in the archive by Ray Teddlie’s “Ten Best- and Worst-Dressed Men in Baton Rouge” (written under his nom de plume, Addison deWitt, the name of the snotty play reviewer in the movie All About Eve)—for which Teddlie once wrote that legislator Clyde Vidrine’s sports coat “looked like the fabric had been ripped screaming from the back set of a ‘57 Chevy.” The paper ran pieces on the Teamster’s Ed Partin, former governor John McKeithen, Woody Jenkins, and legislators like Shady Wall. Also under the microscope were Advocate Publisher Doug Manship, businessman Shelly Beychok, and Edwards’s cozy relationship with Texaco.
Great features flowed, with photographic coverage of the Atchafalaya Basin with C.C. Lockwood and features on the mysteries surrounding New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello and Baton Rouge businessman Jules LeBlanc.
"Going behind the scenes with politicians like Edwin Edwards was Maginnis’s forte (he wrote two books about him). He was funny, glib, and never missed a single legislative crawfish boil." —Teddy McGehee
Concerts were a big deal of course; Leon Russell, Bob Dylan, and the Allman Brothers shared the Gris Gris spotlight with mime Marcel Marceau and Willie Nelson’s Second Annual 4th of July Picnic. Entertainment writers Del Moon and Eddy Allman (the Revues Brothers, otherwise known as “Delwood” and “Juke”) were all too happy to cover the action. Local entertainers featured in Gris Gris’s pages included Marsha Ball, The Meters, Iscoceles Popsicle, Pot Liquor, Bayou Blues Band, and Irma Thomas. Maginnis described the music scene coverage as equally significant to the magazine’s news stories: “That’s what we did when we were out at night. We went to Cahoot’s, Uncle Earl’s, and the Kingfish. It was the sexual revolution and a great time for music in Baton Rouge with John Fred and the Playboys and a lot of other bands.”
All of it was tied together by splashy covers by talented local artists like Joe Disney, Stan Taylor, and Anna Macedo.
WJBO Loose Radio was buying full page ads, and others followed suit. Didee’s, The General Store, and Leisure Landing Records & Tapes on Chimes Street advertised—also Caterie, J Western Store, and White Horse, as well as movie theaters like Bon Marche Twin, Paramount, Gordon, Hart, and the drive-in on Airline. Some of Baton Rouge’s best remembered businesses advertised, including Capital Bank, New Generation, and Jake Staple’s. Then there were the bars: Cotton Club, Thirsty Tiger, The Kingfish, Brass Rail, and Patio Lounge.
By 1975, the year of the first iconic bagasse cover, Steve and Layne May arrived and gave Gris Gris a boost with fresh energy, starting in as business manager and production manager, respectively. Teddlie’s cover story, “Baton Rouge After Dark,” published under the DeWitt name, outdid itself. Writer Ruth Laney was appearing on the masthead, along with Peggy Garvey, Melissa Toler and Anne Baldridge; and photographers Kent Lowe, Bob Ball, and Tom Tumlin. From the beginning, Maginnis’s column “Ratta Tat Tat” sealed Gris Gris’s enduring reputation as publishing the best, most-connected political writing in Baton Rouge history. Former Louisiana Legislator and Speaker of the House Frank Scimineaux and U.S. Sen. Henson Moore recently commented on Maginnis’s integrity as a writer. “John Maginnis was always fair,” said Scimineaux. His reporting was honest and straightforward.” Walking the dog on University Lakes, Moore described Gris Gris as one-of-a-kind. “When it came to caustic, or political, writing, [Maginnis] was the best.”
[Read more about John Maginnis in this posthumous feature written by contributor Ruth Laney, here.]
In the words of the late Maginnis, they “lived and breathed it.” He said, “There was a kind of printing revolution at the time regarding production—the days of old hot type and linotype machines were numbered. Cold type allowed alternative newspapers to spawn across the country. The production phase became so much easier, something you could do in a living room.”
Through the seventies, Gris Gris kept on growing—the advertisers continuing to pour in: Wilson Jewelers, POETS, C. J. Brown, The Bengal, The Varsity Shop, Art Colley’s Audio Specialties, Jules Madere, RFD, GN Gonzales, Louisiana National Bank, and Sans Souci—a huge all-night joint across the river—just to name a few.
In 1978, Maginnis and Cado broke off to focus on their new weekly, The Baton Rouge Enterprise, published for six years with Rolfe McCollister, Sr. and Jr. before it evolved into the Baton Rouge Business Report. They sold their interest in the paper to journalist Philip Carter of New Orleans, but after they had gone, things were never the same. In December 1979, Gris Gris ran its last edition until a brief revival from 1985–1991, when Gris Gris went away again, this time forever.
After that, Maginnis wrote political columns for various newspapers and magazines around the state while Cado produced artwork for ad agencies. East himself was well-established by that time at the storied Weill-Strother Ad agency, where he worked side-by-side with great political talents like James Carville and Roy Fletcher. Gabour went on to become a professor at Loyola University—where he founded the school’s BFA in Digital Filmmaking, a Grammy-nominated filmmaker in his own right, and a novelist.
When you thumb through the old issues under lockdown at the East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, the brown flakes around the edges of some pages break off into a confetti. “People were waiting for Gris Gris to come out,” remembered Maginnis, “to see what we would print next."
Flip through the Gris Gris archive yourself by making an appointment with the East Baton Rouge Parish Library's Special Collections Department, or find it in digital form at eastbatonrouge.advantage-preservation.com.