Scott Bowden presents Kentucky Fried Rasslin

After Jerry Lawler returned from a broken leg in 1981,  Memphis promoter Jerry Jarrett no longer needed the services of “Handsome” Jimmy Valiant full time. For close to a year, Valiant had picked up the babyface slack in the King’s absence, drawing several crowds of 6,000-plus at the Mid-South Coliseum.  For months, Valiant wore the King’s crown, figuratively and literally, the latter of which Lawler legitimately did not like. It seems the King took it personally when Jarrett instructed Hart to dump Lawler on TV, culminating with a feud between the manager’s new wrestler, Paul Ellering, and Valiant over the Southern title and a crown to decide Memphis rasslin’s royalty. (Around this time, my mother, Carole, bumped into Handsome at the Memphis airport and shyly approached him for an autograph, explaining that it was “for my son.” According to my mom, Valiant smiled slyly and said, “Sure it is, momma. Sure it is.”)

Lawler’s all-too-real angst is evident in the promo below months before his return in December 1980. (Lawler made good on his promise to Hart, breaking his jaw with an “errant” punch in Evansville, Indiana, weeks after his return. Lawler claims it was an accident; Jarrett believes it was payback for Hart’s comments when unceremoniously dumping the King on live TV: “If you have a prized racehorse, a champion, and he breaks his leg, what do you do to him? You shoot him, right?”)

With Lawler due back as a babyface, Valiant turned heel toward the end of 1980, as Jarrett saw dollar signs in bouts between the two. After drawing several good houses throughout the territory with Lawler, Valiant was shipped to the Carolinas to work for Jim Crockett Promotions in mid-1981. Ole Anderson, who had just started booking for JCP, didn’t really know what to do with Valiant initially, so Handsome debuted as a heel with manager Lord Alfred Hayes, again carrying one of Lawler’s crowns. The solemn, regal “King” James Valiant was a departure from his usual outrageous self, and the gimmick didn’t fit well.

A few months later, in August, Jarrett asked Crockett for a Monday night date on Valiant, who would triumphantly return to Mempho as Lawler’s babyface partner. (Three months is an eternity in Memphis wrestling.) The tag showdown drew an overflow sellout crowd of 11,600 with Lawler and Valiant battling to a no-contest with the Dream Machine and Bugsy McGraw.

The next morning, Jarrett requested another date on Valiant, informing Crockett and Anderson of the sellout. Their curiosity piqued about Valiant’s drawing power as a babyface, Anderson and Crockett called a meeting with King James, who recalled the story years later in an interview with the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.  “When I came back from Memphis on that Tuesday, Crockett said he wanted to do something like that with me here. But they wanted to change my name and everything, because you know I had been wrestling for a few weeks here as a heel.” Valiant returned to Memphis for close to a month while Lawler worked a few weeks in Florida with Terry Funk. Following a convoluted series of loser-leaves-town matches in Memphis, Valiant reemerged in the Mid-Atlantic territory as a bearded babyface: King James was dead…long live the Boogie Woogie Man.

Valiant went on to have his greatest career success with Crockett in the ’80s, returning occasionally to pop the houses in Memphis. In 1984, he returned for full-time duty with Jarrett and Lawler, who bought him a house in Bartlett as part of the deal. Less than three months later, he was gone, leaving the keys behind in Jarrett’s mailbox. The Boogie Woogie Man had to fly.

What's more manly than being macho? MANCHO: "Handsome" Jimmy with WAKY (790 AM) DJ Bob Moody.

On Sept. 19, 1977, “Handsome” Jimmy Valiant came rollin’ into Mempho, TWA. Initially, he was introduced as the new heel superstar to take the place of Jerry Lawler, who had recently “retired” to pursue music and art opportunities. (Lawler’s supposed plans to pursue music should have tipped off fans that this was an angle to switch the King babyface.) Valiant won a tournament to win Lawler’s vacated Southern title and feuded with the King upon his return a few weeks later.

Lawler and Valiant traded the Southern crown several times before large crowds across the territory well into the New Year, in every gimmick match possible, culminating with a bout that could only end with a five-count (shades of King Kong Bundy’s future gimmick). That Lawler victory drew 8,125 fans to the Mid-South Coliseum. Valiant was the perfect opponent to turn Lawler babyface as he was the antithesis of the hometown King…and worst of all, he came New York City.

By that point, the feud had gone as far it could go-for the time being. Promoter Jerry Jarrett had noticed that the fans had often responded with cheers to Valiant’s promos, despite his arrogance and dirty deeds. Valiant was indeed ahead of his time. Although Jesse Ventura gets a lot of recognition for being among the first to spice up his promos with pop-culture references, Valiant was the first one I ever noticed to do so, often referring to his buddies Burt Reynolds and Sally Field (who were red hot coming off “The Smokey and the Bandit” film) and girlfriends Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs. In the same vein as Dusty Rhodes’ obvious babyface potential while working as a heel in Florida, Valiant was primed to be cheered because of his rap with the people.

Shortly after defeating Terry Sawyer with a sunset flip at the WMC-TV Studios on Saturday, April 1, 1978 (the same day that Jimmy Hart made his Memphis TV studio debut as buddy of the King), Lawler conducts a post-match interview with Lance Russell to announce his upcoming promotional appearances around the Mid-South area. Usually, such a spot would be reserved for later in the broadcast; however, the story goes that Lawler wants to say a few words really quickly because he has to leave the studio immediately to make one of those scheduled meet-and-greet gigs in Arkansas before the matches in Jonesboro that night. This, of course, left the dressing-room door open for heel “Handsome” Jimmy to turn babyface after Bill Dundee is attacked later that day by heels Sonny King and Joe LeDuc. (During the beatdown, Russell exclaims, “Lawler’s already gone! We need some help out here!”) As a last resort, heel Valiant struts out acting like he’s going to participate in the beating, pausing to flex and preen for the camera, before slugging King and LeDuc. Back in the kayfabe days (and before Vince Russo had killed such a swerve), most fans weren’t savvy enough to see this coming a mile away.

Valiant remainded a babyface for approximately the next six months (a lifetime in Memphis wrestling), eventually mentoring and teaming with Lawler’s cousin, rookie Wayne Ferris (the future Honky Tonk Man). I’m not sure how much he improved in the ring, but Ferris quickly picked up Valiant’s beauty secrets, with his dark hair becoming platinum blonde seemingly overnight. On the same show his infamous “Son of a Gypsy” video aired on Nov. 11, 1978, Valiant gradually turns heel over the 90 minutes, along with Ferris, setting up the bleached-blonde bastards for a program with Lawler and Dundee. Before things get ugly (with Valiant telling Dundee to play with the short people, referencing Randy Newman’s popular “Short People”), Handsome compares Lawler’s “hillbilly” music to that of the legendary Ernest Tubb.

Good friends…better enemies: I purchased this photo for $1 at the 1978 Mid-South Fair. (Guess Lawler didn't get the memo to look away from the camera.)

The storyline is that “Handsome” Jimmy’s ego is out of control, demanding to be cut in on the main event with the King and Superstar, who politely rebuff him before Lawler finally snaps and offers his opinion on Valiant’s sexual preferences. (That’s certainly the first time 7-year-old Scott Bowden had heard that word on TV.)

Valiant was pretty damn popular, so the heel turn really came out of nowhere and was somewhat inexplicable as the revolutionary music video only got him that much more over with the fans. (I can tell you that all my friends and I were singing “Son of a Gypsy” in the weeks that followed-we all loved that video-and local station FM 100 was bombarded with calls to play it.) Some have speculated that perhaps Valiant was getting a little too popular in the eyes of Lawler and Dundee (who were tight with Jarrett and helped him book the territory), so he was turned heel. (Michael Hayes claims that Lawler put the kibosh on the Freebirds’ babyface turn when he saw the fans go crazy and rise to their feet when they came out to their Skynard anthem.) But in all likelihood, Valiant was turned heel to spark attendance, which had begun to drop to between 3,500 and 4,500 at the Coliseum in the weeks prior. But despite being well-executed by everyone involved, Valiant’s switch back to the dark side didn’t work (attendance at the Coliseum continued to fall), and the program between the two teams was quickly dropped. Perhaps it was because the fans didn’t want to hate “Handsome” Jimmy, that charismatic son of a gypsy.

Longtime TV announcer Dave Brown recalls the other side of the “Boy From New York City,” who sometimes claimed in promos that he was returning to the South in part to see “Grandma Valiant” and her enjoy her fried chicken, biscuits and gravy.

“I have a thousand memories of ‘Handsome’ Jimmy, and they’re all good,” he says. “I was always amazed to watch him in the back because Jimmy was so quiet and mild-mannered. But when he came through that dressing-room door, he just exploded: ‘Wooo, baby, Handsome Jimbo from Mempho!’ He used to call Lance ‘Lancer’ and, at the time, Jackson Browne was hot, so he called me ‘Jack-son.’”

In fact, Jarrett could always rely on Valiant to spark the houses when the King was unable to appear. For example, nearly the entire year of 1980, when Lawler was on the shelf with a broken leg, a heel “Handsome” Jimmy was quickly called into emergency babyface duty.

“Jimmy wasn’t here on a consistent basis,” Brown continues, “so when he came to town, it was an event, much like when they brought in Roughhouse Fargo and Jackie Fargo. Music videos pretty much started on our show-even before they hit MTV. And we did with a video with ‘Handsome’ Jimmy that saw him coming out of a white limo-that was one of the greatest TV moments of the era.”

At the height of his popularity in the early ’80s, my mother approached Valiant at the Memphis airport, asking for an autograph for her son. Never removing his shades, he replied, “Your son, eh? Sure it is, momma. Sure it is.”