As Lee Trevino said told reporters when handed the check for winning the 1968 US Open: "When I get rich enough, I'm gonna stop being a Mexican and start being a Spaniard."
What a guy! I never followed golf. I always thought a golf course was a terrible thing to make out of a nice piece of woods. But to let a bunch of "punks" use your image to sell records you don't particularly like is the most adult thing I've heard of this week!
> the picture was altered to look sort of less like Chi Chi
The album cover looks like the mirror-image of the golf-club head-cover picture. Also, it is worth noting that the golf accessory comes from Kent, Ohio, which is about 20 minutes from Akron, home of Devo. I'm sure that made that particular serendipity a bit more likely.
There used to be a lot of regional golf equipment companies. Ram Golf was in Melrose Park, IL and downmarket Northwestern was a mile from my home in Chicago. My parents gave me a set of Northwestern irons and woods for 8th grade graduation. The irons were unhittable but I played them for ten years. Laminated woods were great.
But starting with Taylormade then all the aerospace guys went into golf clubs, they built a better mousetrap and it was all over.
A bunch of SoCal guys who worked on the first titanium aircraft, the SR71 superplane, took their titanium expertise into golf club making after the Cold War: pretty literally beating your swords into plowshares.
I did not know Chi Chi was the DEVO guy. That is really cool.
Chi Chi was obviously loved and always had a huge Latin gallery at The Western Open. He also was always in the top 10 in the caddy draft, because he was such a great tipper. In 84 or so a buddy drafted him, missed cut (not enough distance for Butler) and got hit with $1200. He was actually a bit taciturn.
"Sue them?" Chi Chi asks. "Well, anybody that worries about somebody suing them, that means that they’re so crooked that they sue people and they think people are gonna sue them. I thought it was these young people trying to make a career out of it, and I could help them and that’s it. Because I like to do something good every day of my life, and I wanna leave the earth better than I found it."
If I did not know anything about Chi Chi, that comment right there is enough to tell me he was a decent man. I had watched him over the years on Pro and Senior tours and he was the kind of guy who appreciated his gifts and the galleries. He also had a personal encounter with Mother Theresa that profoundly affected him and was the inspiration to start his Golf Youth Foundation.
I see he was married for 56 years to his wife Iwalani, who died in November 2021. God bless Chi Chi Rodriguez.
Appreciate your Mark Steyn-ish/Paul Harvey-esque anecdote about Devo and the album cover!
While this album didn't produce any hit songs per se, it did feature their cover of Satisfaction, which Mick Jagger personally approved.
Here is the beginning of their performance on Saturday Night Live in October 1978, being introduced by Fred Willard. Coincidentally enough the Rolling Stones were the hosts and musical guests the week before.
Chi Chi was before my time, although I remember him from the Senior Tour and playing Don Quixote with his putter. It turns out his best finish in a major was when he was 45; he finished 6th at the US Open @ Ardmore, 7 strokes behind the winner, David Graham, ironically of Australia. Chi Chi earned $9,920 for his trouble. For those not inclined to read the linked article, I would suggest you do so; in addition to being entertaining on its own, it turns out that Warner Bros. did end up sending Chi Chi $2,500 for the use of his semi-likeness, in addition to 50 copies of the album itself. He also said in the interview that "I think [Devo] were geniuses. And it takes a genius to recognize another."
As Chi Chi was before my time and since golf wasn't huge then, I have seen that Devo album cover multiple times without ever putting together who it was supposed to be. Someone like Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer or Lee Trevino would have been recognizable in 1978, but that's about it. Even now I probably couldn't pick most golfers out of a lineup besides Tiger, Phil, and John Daly.
Akron, Ohio was a huge golf capital when the guys in Devo were growing up. It was home to the Firestone Country Club, the host of the World Series of Golf annual tournament as well as three PGA major championships from 1960-1975. Its symbol was a golf ball shaped water tower, much like the golf ball behind Chi Chi's head on the logo.
As working class art punks, the Devo guys were no doubt sore about golf. But they also recognized that Chi Chi had come from further down the ladder than they had to be a respected figure in golf-crazed Akron.
Mark doesn't seem to be on social media anymore, but Gerald posted a tribute on Twitter yesterday. It also hit me that this rare intersection of golf and music is right in your wheelhouse.
So why wasn't he labeled "black" like Tiger Woods? Is it the Latino Escape Hatch? Aren't Puerto Ricans a mulatto people?
As Lee Trevino said told reporters when handed the check for winning the 1968 US Open: "When I get rich enough, I'm gonna stop being a Mexican and start being a Spaniard."
sad that people will only remember him as "that face"
Les Nessman on WKRP pronounced it Chy Chy Rodrigweez.
He was pretty well known even to casual sports/golf fans.
I remember him as a golfer, never heard of that album.
Didn't he once say "Golf is the most fun thing you can do with your clothes on" or something like that ?
He did. In a similar vein, it has been said that golf and sex have in common that they are both fun even if you are lousy at them
I assumed Devo was British for 40+ years!
So much I've learned from Steve and his commenters--I need to rethink my entire life.
He was through with being cool.
What a guy! I never followed golf. I always thought a golf course was a terrible thing to make out of a nice piece of woods. But to let a bunch of "punks" use your image to sell records you don't particularly like is the most adult thing I've heard of this week!
Devo's Chi Chi mutant is the spiritual sibling of that other retro-kitsch punk PoMo icon, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, founder of the Church of the SubGenius.
It’s a beautiful world we live in
God Bless Chi Chi.
> the picture was altered to look sort of less like Chi Chi
The album cover looks like the mirror-image of the golf-club head-cover picture. Also, it is worth noting that the golf accessory comes from Kent, Ohio, which is about 20 minutes from Akron, home of Devo. I'm sure that made that particular serendipity a bit more likely.
There used to be a lot of regional golf equipment companies. Ram Golf was in Melrose Park, IL and downmarket Northwestern was a mile from my home in Chicago. My parents gave me a set of Northwestern irons and woods for 8th grade graduation. The irons were unhittable but I played them for ten years. Laminated woods were great.
But starting with Taylormade then all the aerospace guys went into golf clubs, they built a better mousetrap and it was all over.
A bunch of SoCal guys who worked on the first titanium aircraft, the SR71 superplane, took their titanium expertise into golf club making after the Cold War: pretty literally beating your swords into plowshares.
I did not know Chi Chi was the DEVO guy. That is really cool.
Chi Chi was obviously loved and always had a huge Latin gallery at The Western Open. He also was always in the top 10 in the caddy draft, because he was such a great tipper. In 84 or so a buddy drafted him, missed cut (not enough distance for Butler) and got hit with $1200. He was actually a bit taciturn.
Pouring one out tonite for one of our own.
"Sue them?" Chi Chi asks. "Well, anybody that worries about somebody suing them, that means that they’re so crooked that they sue people and they think people are gonna sue them. I thought it was these young people trying to make a career out of it, and I could help them and that’s it. Because I like to do something good every day of my life, and I wanna leave the earth better than I found it."
If I did not know anything about Chi Chi, that comment right there is enough to tell me he was a decent man. I had watched him over the years on Pro and Senior tours and he was the kind of guy who appreciated his gifts and the galleries. He also had a personal encounter with Mother Theresa that profoundly affected him and was the inspiration to start his Golf Youth Foundation.
I see he was married for 56 years to his wife Iwalani, who died in November 2021. God bless Chi Chi Rodriguez.
Appreciate your Mark Steyn-ish/Paul Harvey-esque anecdote about Devo and the album cover!
While this album didn't produce any hit songs per se, it did feature their cover of Satisfaction, which Mick Jagger personally approved.
Here is the beginning of their performance on Saturday Night Live in October 1978, being introduced by Fred Willard. Coincidentally enough the Rolling Stones were the hosts and musical guests the week before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvqnC5GRcvw
Chi Chi was before my time, although I remember him from the Senior Tour and playing Don Quixote with his putter. It turns out his best finish in a major was when he was 45; he finished 6th at the US Open @ Ardmore, 7 strokes behind the winner, David Graham, ironically of Australia. Chi Chi earned $9,920 for his trouble. For those not inclined to read the linked article, I would suggest you do so; in addition to being entertaining on its own, it turns out that Warner Bros. did end up sending Chi Chi $2,500 for the use of his semi-likeness, in addition to 50 copies of the album itself. He also said in the interview that "I think [Devo] were geniuses. And it takes a genius to recognize another."
As Chi Chi was before my time and since golf wasn't huge then, I have seen that Devo album cover multiple times without ever putting together who it was supposed to be. Someone like Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer or Lee Trevino would have been recognizable in 1978, but that's about it. Even now I probably couldn't pick most golfers out of a lineup besides Tiger, Phil, and John Daly.
Akron, Ohio was a huge golf capital when the guys in Devo were growing up. It was home to the Firestone Country Club, the host of the World Series of Golf annual tournament as well as three PGA major championships from 1960-1975. Its symbol was a golf ball shaped water tower, much like the golf ball behind Chi Chi's head on the logo.
As working class art punks, the Devo guys were no doubt sore about golf. But they also recognized that Chi Chi had come from further down the ladder than they had to be a respected figure in golf-crazed Akron.
Mark doesn't seem to be on social media anymore, but Gerald posted a tribute on Twitter yesterday. It also hit me that this rare intersection of golf and music is right in your wheelhouse.
https://x.com/Gvc3Casale/status/1822070153820913877