Horn Dog

I’m slow-dancing with a 60-year-old man.

I figured it would be like dancing with a grandpa at a wedding, but I get the feeling that this guy is checking me out. Full-length mirrors line the ballroom of the Rick West Theatre in Independence, and I catch him eyeing our reflection in a very ungrandpalike way. A minute later, he confirms it.

“I like your long legs,” Rick West whispers in my ear, looking past me into the mirror. His hands are where they’re supposed to be — one holding mine, the other somewhere midback — but they suddenly feel very heavy. A disco ball is spinning overhead. The dance floor is otherwise empty. Actually, the whole ballroom looks nearly abandoned. Most of the dozen or so spectators are family and friends of the band, occupying this space that could easily hold 200. Tea-light candles flicker from unoccupied banquet tables. There’s a bartender in a dark corner. Someone’s knitting.

This building used to house a Bally’s fitness center. Most of the gym elements have been changed or disguised, except for a swimming pool elsewhere in the building that’s filled with a few feet of stagnant water. Sound bounces off the walls like sneaker squeaks on a basketball court. The band plays country. Besides a lead guitarist, a piano player, a drummer, a bass player and a male backup singer, there’s a slide guitarist whose playing lends an unmistakably weepy, rural sound. It’s exactly what Rick West wants. West is the bandleader and the owner, proprietor and namesake of this theater.

“I love those shoes. What do you wear, a 7?” he asks, looking down at my feet. Reacting to my amazed look, he says, “I know women.” He laughs.

When the song ends, he walks me back to a plastic cocktail table and rejoins the band. He wears black on black — pants, jacket, cummerbund. His black and shiny hair is styled à la Neil Diamond or Wayne Newton, a lacquered helmet. He’s fit, with the same straight posture he had as a teenage guitar-playing heartthrob.

West likes to introduce his songs. “Jerry Lee Lewis was one favorite person of mine,” he says from the bandstand. “People think things about him. They have misconceptions that he was arrogant and stuck up and conceited, but that’s untrue. He was actually 100 percent convinced that he’s great, and this song is dedicated to him.” The band plays “Great Balls of Fire.”

After the song, West tells his audience, “We just don’t have anything but the best. Except for Barry, and we’re working on him.” Barry Boune, the bassist, plays along, aiming a dumb-hick look at the audience.

West pops over to my table between songs, cradling his usual drink, a glass of lemon juice, sour mix and ice. “Just stay most of the night and let me look at you,” he says with a smirk. “I thought you’d look good, but not that good.” Then he retreats to the stage. Now might be a good time to mention that I’m wearing a modest black dress with a white sweater and black heels. I could be at a baptism. I could be at a funeral.

I lean to the table next to me, where three middle-aged women sit and cheer, and ask if they’re related to the band. Turns out they went to school with West at William Chrisman High School in Independence. They graduated in 1969, a few years behind West, and they remember him as an upperclassman who always filled the role of leader of the pack.

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One of the women is 54-year-old Marianne McGrath, who wears her reddish-brown hair in a big pile atop her head and has two dark swipes of eyeliner under her eyes. West played guitar and sang at school dances and made girls swoon, McGrath recalls. He got in fights and was kicked out of school seven times, she adds. “He was sexy then. But I think he looks even better now. Look at that butt. That’s like a 30-year-old butt.”

The next song is “Doing the Best I Can.” West sounds just like Elvis. He swings his hips like Elvis. He punctuates the ends of musical phrases with his fist, making sweeping, grandiose motions as he sings, as if fighting off an invisible assailant. Like he’s still humping a fading, Vegas-lounge-act fantasy.

West is an anachronism, and this theater is his sanctuary. His 82-year-old mother, Alberta West, or “Bertie,” works by her son’s side and has her own office, where she answers the phone. In West’s perfect world, women do as they’re told, employees are loyal and old country hitmakers like Ernest Tubb, George Jones and Charley Pride are household names. Things that don’t exist: rap, paid overtime and the sexual revolution.

Some people love it. Man-to-man, West’s a stand-up, straight-shootin’ guy. Ron Stewart, the mayor of Independence, has performed with West onstage and given him the key to the city. A Branson-style theater in working-class Independence could be a hit.

But West might be too 1956 for 2006. Attendance is dipping, and West has cut back his song-and-dance show from every week to once a month. Lately, he has had more trouble keeping the women in his show. The theater’s former employees were eager to tell me why.
A couple of months ago, I got a call from April LaJune in Osage Beach near the Lake of the Ozarks. She had dug up a stack of court documents from Branson, Missouri, which she said detailed a 1995 criminal case alleging sexual-misconduct against Clyde Rick West.

West signs his name “Elvis Rick West,” “Elvis C.R. West” and sometimes “Rick Elvis West,” but his real name is Clyde Rick West, after his father. West was LaJune’s boss for five months starting in October 2003. She immediately recognized the signature on the bail bonds and court documents as West’s — he prides himself on his flamboyant handwriting.

The documents were important because they confirmed something that LaJune already knew but didn’t know how to prove: Rick West has a history of mistreating female employees.

LaJune is a sharp, feisty redhead who now performs with Lee Mace’s Opry in Osage Beach. She’s 42 and spends her days in a basement office auctioning celebrity memorabilia on eBay, including costumes and props used in Hollywood movies. In the fall of 2003, she was working at a job installing credit-card machines in businesses when she saw a newspaper ad for a new “Branson-style” theater in Kansas City. West answered when she called.

West didn’t have a staff yet, and LaJune suggested that she could run his promotions. West asked if he could defer her salary for three months while he got his theater off the ground. She agreed.

Her job became much more than promotions. LaJune knocked out old plaster and framed interior office walls in the former Bally’s building off Interstate 70 and Noland Road. She estimates that West spent $600,000 on the yearlong renovations of a building appraised at $385,000. He added the offices, the ballroom and a 450-seat theater with stage lights and curtains.

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West needed LaJune’s performance expertise, too, as he began to audition talent. “He wanted me to be in charge of helping hire girls, helping with routines and vocals,” she says. But LaJune was disgusted by West’s method of scouting potential talent. “If you called up for an audition, he’d start out with the questions,” LaJune says. “‘Describe your body. Are you willing to wear a short skirt? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you think you’re pretty? How much do you weigh?’ … He just asked certain things that you might not want to ask today.” When West had a troupe of women, he would line them up, LaJune says, and go down the line, pointing to skirts. “Shorter, shorter, shorter, shorter,” she says, imitating him.

When a pretty, pouty-lipped blonde turned up to audition, LaJune says West was smitten. The blonde played LaJune the messages she got on her cell phone. “I just want to come over and lay in your bed with ya,” West’s message said, according to LaJune. Things got worse quickly. “He trapped [her] in the office and kissed her,” LaJune says. “I felt like I’d already taken all the sex crap, and I’m strong. I can take that. But these girls were inexperienced, and they shouldn’t have to deal with it.”

LaJune says she was fired after complaining to West’s mother, Bertie. She says Bertie told her that she and the girls were lying. LaJune says she was never paid.

But she left her job with something that would help prove what she claims was going on: contact information for everyone who had worked for West at the theater.
“Westies,” as some former theater workers call themselves, have formed a network of sorts. They laugh about their experiences. “It’s either that or cry,” one who wanted to remain anonymous told me. Once word spread that I was collecting Rick West stories, my phone started ringing with Westies from all over town.

Nino Valenti was West’s right-hand man for much of the renovation for the first shows. West required band members — and anyone else he could find — to help with everything from pouring concrete floors to building a concession booth. They say West promised to pay them as soon as the theater got rolling.

Valenti is still waiting for his money. Valenti says he met West at the Miracle Temple on Sterling Avenue in Independence. Valenti is 77, with a lively, high-pitched New York accent. “He stinks! He’s evil!” Valenti yells when he hears West’s name. “He never paid me anything. Ten months, that dirty louse … I worked on his computer, got him a gas man to work on fuel. I did everything for this man. He worked me like a dog, and I never got a nickel. Have you seen that theater? All those chairs, I cleaned them. Cleaned the bathrooms —they had real solid sheet rock. It took at least a month to get it down.”

Valenti and other former employees say West spoke of bonuses that never came and promised television appearances and tour buses full of crowds. “We picked up tile by hand, one at a time. That guy’s nuts,” Valenti says. “He’s the biggest hustler I ever met in my entire life. Write it down. I don’t care. Those guys should have got some money. They loved music and only wanted to get ahead. He didn’t care about any of them. He only cared about Rick West.”

None of the former employees who claim that West owes them money has sought legal action. The sources I spoke with say they are too embarrassed at having trusted West to sue. One couple says their retirement savings were compromised by their unpaid hours working at the theater. Valenti says, “I don’t know if it’s worth it [to file a claim]. He gets away with everything. He’s got a line of bull that won’t quit. I’m trying to worry about getting ahead. I don’t got time to worry about getting him sued.”

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Cat Jacobs auditioned for West during those early days of the theater. Jacobs now lives in Cincinnati, where she moved because of her husband’s job with Procter & Gamble Co. Her voice over the phone is sweet and reedy, like Reba McEntire’s. “Eeeeeeeewwwww,” Jacobs says. “I’ll be happy to give you a quote, and one of the first things you can quote me to say is ‘Ewwwwww,’ the big ‘E’ with a ‘yew’ that trails down into nothin’ with a dot, dot, dot at the end. I think the man has the morals of a chicken.”

When she lived in Kansas City, Jacobs frequented karaoke clubs. Some of her friends urged her to go audition for West. She went in early 2004 and sang “Rose Garden.” West told her to show up the next week in a shorter skirt. “I have some gams — I do know that. I have some good gams,” Jacobs says, giggling. She’s 42.

At the next rehearsal, Jacobs and a group of women were required to learn a synchronized dance routine. “Well, he had, again, another callback. And again, another callback. Try this on, do this song.” They rehearsed every Sunday, often from midday to midnight. For three months, Jacobs says, West strung the troupe along without saying whether they were in the show. Jacobs says West warned the women that he’d cut them if they were caught eating. Then West and the all-male band ordered pizza. “It was degrading,” Jacobs says. “My tolerance for the bullshit is stemming from being from Texas and knowing very well about the good ol’ boy club, and I’ve heard it all. I still felt like I needed to keep my legs crossed all the time. When I walked, I tried to walk like a boy, without the swish.”

Finally, Jacobs and the other women decided to confront West and find out if they were in the show — and whether they would be paid for the time they were spending. West gave her a long speech about how, as a Christian man, he understood the importance of family. Her singing and dancing were fine, he said. There was only one problem: She had a husband. Jacobs says that after their meetings with West, the women stood in a cluster in a hallway comparing notes. They’d all been told that their boyfriends and husbands were the main barriers to getting hired.

Jacobs left and never went back. She says she’s still puzzled by the dances she had to learn, week after week. “He already knew we were quick enough to do a dance,” Jacobs tells me. “I come to think we were getting that old man off or something.”
West’s show first opened for the public in March 2005. After Jacobs and LaJune left, the guys in the band didn’t initially believe the women’s accusations.

Mike Satcher, a man who worked as a string musician in the band, says West’s approach to women was “kind of stuck in the ’60s.” West would often say that he could hire only attractive singers, Satcher says. Audiences, West would tell him, “only want to see girls in short skirts.”

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Satcher says that the band members expected the show to take off and that they’d be able to quit their day jobs. The first few weekly shows went well, with audiences in the hundreds. For a while, each performer earned $50 a show, he says. There were maybe 30 regulars who bought tickets, plus the family members of the band, who had to pay the full-price admission of $15. Audiences thinned after a month or so, and West started paying his troupe a cut of the door money, which amounted to $15 each some nights. More talent quit after that, Satcher says. “Most people did it because they enjoyed doing it,” Satcher says. “He was a good one at talking people into working for free, like Tom Sawyer.”

Satcher says he was fired from the show when he complained about the long rehearsal hours, which were making it tough for him to put in 20 hours at his other job. “His mom called and fired me the next day.”

Steve Reed, who spent some time singing in the show, says he got along with West at first. “Rick has his good qualities,” Reed says. “I left mainly because of the girl stuff. I couldn’t watch that. It was sickening.”

Reed recalls leaving the building late after one rehearsal. When Reed walked by West’s office door, he says he saw a young woman from the show straddling West’s lap, facing him. “I’m like, ‘See ya, Rick!’ and he almost dropped her on the floor,” Reed says.
On May 3, 1995, a woman came to the White River Theater in Branson to audition for Rick West as a singer. On the phone, West had told her to wear a miniskirt. “That’s what show people like to see,” he reportedly said.

According to police reports, when the woman sang for West, he went to the foot of the stage and yanked her skirt higher. She protested, and he started rubbing his body against hers. He then took her into his office and told her to close and lock the door. West asked the woman to sit on the edge of his desk. He told her to cross her legs to see how she would look in publicity photos. He ran one of his fingers up her thigh. She pulled away and slapped him. West told her that if she wanted to be in his show, she’d have to do what he wanted.

The woman claimed, according to the police reports, that when she tried to move to a chair, West grabbed her ass and told her that she needed to lose weight. When she sat in the chair, West stepped in front of her, stuck a finger in her shirt and pulled it away from her skin to look at her breasts. Then he fondled her breasts through her shirt. When he told her to meet him at a Shoney’s restaurant at 10:30 that night, the woman agreed, hoping to speed her exit.

When she didn’t show, West called her every 15 minutes until 4:30 in the morning. The woman called the police.

Six days later, Taney County prosecutors charged West with misdemeanor sexual abuse in the third degree. At his trial, West’s only defense was that he was a Christian man who wouldn’t do such things. West says the trial lasted an hour and a half before he was found guilty.

Taney County Associate Circuit Judge Peter Rea wrote at sentencing that West was “clearly either a liar or in denial” about his conduct toward women. “The Court does not intend to ever forget that being a Christian does not keep us from sinning: it only provides a remedy for the sin that so terribly besets us,” the judge wrote. “The defendant’s theology was offered as a defense: it is only a remedy for persons who have no defense.”

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According to the documents that LaJune located, Rea ordered West to pay a $1,000 fine and gave him a one-year suspended sentence in the Taney County Jail, which he would serve only if he got in trouble again. After West lost his appeal, Taney County prosecutors ordered him, in a letter dated January 30, 1996, to appear in court for sentencing. He failed to show up, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. The last record of West’s case shows that in 1999, West presented himself to be sentenced. He was released on probation the next day, on the condition that he stay out of trouble.

West remains unrepentant. He says the woman who accused him was lying and the judge was incompetent. Someday, West says, the governor will grant him the pardon he deserves. “I don’t know why people are always trying to hurt Rick,” Bertie, his mother, says with a sigh.
“Are you going to melt me?” West asked the first time we spoke, which was over the phone. I had introduced myself as a reporter and asked to see his theater and possibly write a story about him.

“You sound, what, 29?” he asked. “Do you have a short skirt? I like short skirts,” West says.

The conversation proceeded exactly as former female employees told me it would, but I was still surprised. After all, when West had interrogated them about boyfriends, high heels and skirts, they were looking for an audition. I was not. I agreed to watch a show of West’s. There, he danced with me. Later, I went to his theater to hear his life story.

The billboard outside the Rick West Theatre and Convention Center features a picture of West in a Vegas jumpsuit seated in front of a purple background. It’s like a papal portrait; he looks out with a beatific smile, one finger pointed skyward. Inside his office, West sits behind a desk cluttered with papers and half-empty bottles of Chloraseptic. The walls are white and bare, except for a picture of a billboard in Branson with West’s face on it, advertising his show at the White River Theater.

West says his career started when he was about 15, playing county fairs and school dances. He booked his own shows until, he says, legendary country music promoter Harry “Hap” Peebles took him on. Peebles put the teenage West onstage at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas, sharing a bill with a young Connie Smith and Carl “Mr. Country” Smith.

At 18, West had a short-lived marriage that he won’t say much about. With his wife, he had a son and a daughter. Then, like Elvis, West says, he was drafted and served two years in Vietnam. After his stint in the 25th Infantry Division, West went to Nashville. His big dream of a recording contract never developed. West blames payola. He says that a label wouldn’t record a new artist unless he arrived at the studio with investors and millions of dollars already in place. “That’s a true fact. And it’s not because I’m bitter. In Nashville, Tennessee, I’ve probably known 50 people that were better than anybody on record today. But they’re poor. They don’t have major bucks.”

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West says he worked at Hilltop Recording Studio in Nashville. He groomed female singers to sing backup. He recorded at least one semi-hit, a 1964 song called “Cop Car,” with his band, the Red Hots. West made signs on the side and played one-nighter shows. He drops the name Bill Monroe, known as the father of bluegrass music, as a “good friend.” He also realized he could make good money impersonating the King. He oscillates between being proud of his Elvis act and defensive about being called an Elvis impersonator.

As West learned how to be a host, he also learned the laws of show business. “I can find you 400 women in this town who can sing, but I won’t put an overweight woman onstage,” he tells me. “You can be almost homely and be up there OK, if you’re thin. But you cannot be fat.”

He says he worked in Branson for a year in 1995, but there were too many shows and too few patrons. He tried his luck in Vegas — where, he complains, promoters also wanted payola.

“I heard you got shot,” I say, bringing up a rumor that many people repeat about West.

“I got stabbed 11 times in West Memphis, Arkansas,” West corrects me. He’d been working for the World Wrestling Alliance, interviewing fighters on television. He was staying in a hotel, he explains, when a guy tried to steal his wallet in the lobby. “Next thing I knew, a knife was going into me.” He mimes a knife going into his neck, his back, his sides. “I was fighting the knife. I couldn’t kick the guy. I couldn’t hit him because I was fighting the knife to save my life. I knew he wouldn’t kill me, but the knife could,” he says. “What’s really ironic, they rushed me to Elvis Presley Trauma Center.”

He asks, “We could write a movie about Rick West, couldn’t we?”

“Don’t you think?” I say.

“Put in there that I think you’re cute, will you? Naw. But you are.”

We discuss West’s outfit for this weekend’s performances. “Saturday we’re going to make a little more special,” he says. “I have this red jacket. I like to wear Spanish-matador-style clothes, and it’s sparkly like that. Now, are you going to wear something sexy for me on Saturday if I do all that?”

“Sexy how?” I ask.

“I mean the shortest skirt and the highest black heels.”

“They have to be black?”

“No, any heels. As long as they’re tall.” He puts his hands about 8 inches apart.

Something occurs to West. “Now, this stuff that I say, that’s just between us. None of that’s going in the story, right? Or I’ll murder you,” he says, shaking a finger at me. “Just kidding.”

His gaze becomes intense. “Because you know these things I say are between you and me. Because we’re friends. I don’t want to be getting myself in trouble now.”

West says he’s never had complaints from female employees. “I treat my performers in a businesslike way all the time. And if there had been a third person in the room with us, I would have never talked to you like that, because it’s totally out of line. If you’re going to put anything in that paper, I would write that Rick West loves beautiful women and appreciates beautiful women, because that’s the truth. But if you write something so it looks like I’m this guy who hits on all these women all the time, well, that’s just not true…. Can I say something that’s a little arrogant? I’m very selective. I’d only say that kind of stuff to one out of a hundred girls.”

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As he walks me to the door, he hugs me — twice — and says, “And if you don’t tell anybody — wear somethin’ sexy for me!”
At rehearsal, West really is the King.

It’s a Thursday night, and the theater is dark except for the stage lights. And freezing. A propane-powered heater that looks like a jet engine whines ineffectively in the corner. West is training a new band member, a shaggy-haired drummer named Jim Weinberg, who is learning that when West wants his band to stop, it darn well better stop.

The stage is surrounded by shiny, aluminum-paper palm trees and flanked by American flags. West’s ever-present mother and one of his aunts huddle in the front row under blankets, along with Marianne McGrath.

West climbs onstage, wearing gray pants and a gray sweater. “We wanna see your butt!” McGrath howls. West ignores the catcall.

Halfway through the first song, West jerks the neck of his Fender and blasts his drummer. “You gotta do clean breaks,” West says sternly. “You’re throwing me off.” At the end of the song, West grabs the cymbals to silence them.

“I didn’t know you were ending it there,” Weinberg protests.

“Doesn’t matter. You gotta watch my guitar,” West barks. “Stop when I stop. That’s what makes us tight. If I’m strong, be strong. If I’m weak, be weak.”

West switches to piano and plays heavy-chorded, Jerry Lee Lewis-style songs. They try “Since I Met You, Baby.” The drummer isn’t fast enough. “There are so many speeds to my songs. There’s slow and medium and fast and show-fast,” West says. “This is what drives in Branson and Vegas. Not all drummers can hit all my speeds the first time. You’re doing good, though.”

Before calling an end to rehearsal, West asks, “Anything we’ve forgotten?”

“How about ‘All Shook Up’?” McGrath shrieks.

“Let’s see if Jim can play it.”

“Let’s see if you can shake it!” McGrath teases.

“I’m not shaking it,” West says.

He sings the request without any shaking. He stops once, telling the drummer not to play with any flourishes. “Keep straight.”

Watching West, with his smooth moves, Elvis gestures and deft guitar fingers, and his band that shadows his every move, it’s easy to see him as a born performer. Behind me, 450 seats sit empty. But even West’s rehearsals are entertaining. He deserves an audience.

McGrath shouts, “Come on, Rick! Shake it!”

For a split second, a look of amused annoyance crosses West’s face. Maybe it was karma catching up with him in his twilight years. Here, in the only theater likely to carry his name, a woman looks past his music and his talent and sees only his ass.