For those of you who haven't been here ~ a little story about the Man.... He literally was Bigger than Life.... http://federicodecalifornia.wordpress.com/tag/big-daddy-roth/ Cheers ~ Federico
Thank you for posting the images of my Idol, Big Ed. FYI, the first image shows his bubble top mold frame !!!!!
Check out Ed with his custom painted fire mask. In 1965 Roth teamed up with drag racer George “Bushmaster” Schreiber and unleashed the YELLOW FANG DRAGSTER!!! .
Ed with me, Revell Banquet 1963...he's 31 and I'm 19. I figured if he could wear a coat-n-tie, I could too.
Me, R.F. #590 and "Big Daddy Roth at a Rat Fink Party in South San Francisco.....Good times. If you read the paper plate you'll see that the money raised from the "Cool Ass Shit" auction went to the Shriners Childrens Hospital.
Yet another year goes by! Just about to start my 'tribute' build of the Road Agent, plaster & vermiculite sipt wads. VW Beetle based, because those Corvairs look like they could be unsafe at any speed!!!
It may not be the man himself, but I had the opportunity to meet his youngest son Cody at the 40th NSRA Western Nationals 2 years ago. Great man, just like his Dad. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I let you guys down. Sorry. This is the knob that he gave to that kid. he still has it and it has been in several cars over the years. by the way a year or two before Roth passed the kid saw him at a show, he wanted to see the knob and they went out to the kids truck and took a gander at it. Mormon? Probably not after the turn of the century, they smoked a fat cigar and took a pull or two off the mason jar the kid kept under the seat.
What cool cars we had in the sixties. Not just the Mysterion, look at the parking lot in the background. Even the cheap cars like Corvair and Falcon looked good.
The '60s was just a good time for cars, show cars or drivin' around cars it was just a good time to be alive. Something to remember about Mr Roth is that he wasn't just space ships and monsters. he was a real person with a real life just like the rest of us. And he owned and built real cars just like the rest of us too.
I am only 35 but Ed was my childhood hero. I worshiped him and saved my money so I could buy books, models and RF memorabilia. My Dad took my brother and I to the Lewiston ID World of wheels when we were kids so that I could meet him. I wrote him a letter when I was 13-14 years old, and he took time to reply back with a good message about staying on path and listening to my parents. He autographed several pieces for me at the show I saw him at, all of which I still have and cherish today. I was 19 when he died, I still remember exactly what I was doing when I heard. He was one of the good ones. His legacy will live on forever.
I likely should of hated Ed Roth for costing me a hole shows worth of $money on Miami Beach Conv. Center back in 1962. But I still liked his cool carwork anyway an stopped being mad about it by the next show at Dinner Key Miami/Coconut Grove/Miami. I had been doing airbrush T-shirts for 3 years by then at Florida car shows,an a few years before that just around Miami Fla. under my art name of "The Bat" out of hell. Roth had me removed from a car show on Miami Beach,he wanted ,an got exclusive rights to sell T-shirts,so the local kid was out. Not that my one off "T"s would of dented his sales much,but looking back,it was good biz. on his part. Something I should of learned from ,but didn't,I never did do preprinted/screened shirts with added name an just a little color { that was a smarter way,but as a teen my thinking was my art should be one off. I stopped doing shirts,names on cars an striping after I got a wife in 1965 an started racing more. I still like Ed Roth,yet naver talked to him face to face. I was in Car Craft mag. with my fullcustom in jan. 1963. Really fun times!
I forgot to mention that I have this one of one t-shirt transfer that Mr. Roth signed back from in '95. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Ed was legendary for never using a tape measure and for his creations being VERY free-form and lacking symmetry. I document that in reference to the Mysterion in my recently published book about that wonderful car. I recently obtained some pictures of the restored Orbitron show car and one photo lent itself to a symmetry study of that car so I opened my trusty Power Point computer app and looked at it. The photos below represent a pretty much square-on rear view of the car dead down the middle. If the car were perfectly proportioned, a mirror image of this photo should exactly overlay the original photo. I copied the photo then converted it to complementary colors (blue turned to orange, white turned to black, etc.), did a left-right mirror image conversion, and finally made that modified shot semi-transparent. In PowerPoint I then overlaid the modified image on the original and looked for the discrepancies and they turned out to be huge. I first lined up the rear deck and pin stripe line that is drawn across the top of the tail. As you can see the rest of the car doesn't align at all. The fins are way different in position and shape and the front of the car is 1' offset (look at the fender tips!). This tells me that the tail of the car being used as an anchor is way catawampus. I then aligned the photos based on the front fenders and nose. I got good alignment of those parts then looked at the rear of the car. The relative bubble top flange circles line up fairly well and the front of the fins align but the fins themselves are still way different and the rear deck of the car is really misshapen. As I document in my book it is a huge mistake to call Ed a car customizer. He never literally customized a car to any extent. He didn't build Tweedy Pie, he just decorated the already built car. His other steel cars; the Ford pickup was just a novelty paint job, the Model A sedan was a pretty pedestrian street rod, and the '55 Chevy was a cartoon gasser, I have seen hundreds of better version on H.A.M.B.; were very unremarkable. He was an artist creating magnificent sculpture in automobile motif from non-tradition materials. He did that for less than a decade then moved on to other adventures.
WOW!! Yet another year goes by!! Would have been great to have BDR around, I'm sure he would have enjoyed all the new tech and developments in todays world. Who knows what style of car he would be building now!! I thank him (and others: Mark, Jeff Jones etc) for my love of Bubbles and the drive to create my own tribute version of Road Agent. Getting there slowly.
The lack of symmetry is one of the charms of Roth creations. If you did the same trick with a picture of a beautiful woman, or animal, or anything in nature it would be the same, the 2 sides a little off from each other. This is why pictures of people created on a computer don't look right. They look plastic and artificial, unnatural. If you want your custom car to look good don't strain yourself to make both sides identical, it will be better if they are off a little bit. That is one of the secrets of art and nature.
So to most of you guys/maybe gals also, unlike maybe you folks, I wasn't at all enthralled with him and his work. I appreciated his work from a distance but could take him or leave him to his admirers. Then came the Goodboy's show in Puyallup, (don't remember the exact year but it was in the early 90's.) I was pushing my '66 Riviera GS, factory dual quad, (one of 169, many time show winner), staged in the grandstand infield and was directly across from where he sit up. So not being that big a fan, I didn't really pay that much homage to him but did decide after approaching his stand to have him do a tee shirt of my Rivi anyway. As recall I'd have to pay a premium for this as I had watched as he did other rods. Still it would be a reminder of the show and support the GG's. So what follows is the actual conversation. Me: " Hey Big, what's your price to do my Rivi across the way there ?" Big: after glancing across the way at the car with a very nasty snarl: " I don't do no fucking Buicks" Me, (only in thought): Stick it where the sun don't shine, asshole.) That sure justified my opinion of him and still lives as #1 on my hot rod , custom builder shit list. I have no idea who pissed in is Wheaties that morning but he sure was a creep. BTW, the following year on my way though Yreka, Cali. the following year returning from Hot August Nights they were having small show that I stopped at. A very talented young man was doing the Roth thing and did a fantastic job on what Mr. Asshole wouldn't. (Only had it done to spite the idiot jerk incase I should ever run across him again at some show).
The few times that I had talked to him he was cordial to me. At Cars of Stars, he asked me to help him bleed the brakes on his VW trike and, of course, I said sure. He said thanks and shook my hand. Some time later, I called him at Knott's Berry Farm where he was doing signs, and asked him if he could/would build a body for a trike I was building. He said that maybe we could partner up on the build. He came to my shop and when he saw the Harley frame and the motor he just said that he didn't work on Harleys. But he was cordial and business like and stayed for coffee. Happily autographed some stuff for me At Kim Dedic's shop in Fullerton, Kim would have an annual pinstriping party. I saw Ed and said hello again, and once again he was very cordial. Maybe he had a bad day but from my experience, he was great.
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