Papa Rocco McGinnes will be remembered Aug. 5
Papa Rocco McGinnes will be remembered Aug. 5
Beer served will be ice cold and the pizza will be delicious
By Fran Thompson
Less than a week before he was rushed to Baldwin Medical without a pulse earlier this month, Bill – Papa Rocco – McGinnes said he was going to get enough of his strength back to start joining me at the state-line for LeaAnne Creswell’s weekly early afternoon show in the Flora-Bama main room.
He loved LeaAnne, who sang lead on the Live at Papa Rocco’s album that featured a who’s-who of local musicians from the early 1990’s.
LeaAnne started playing gigs at the Flora-Bama in 1985, the same year Papa opened his “warm beer & lousy pizza’’ bistro just north of Gulf Shores Public Beach. Papa wantad to talk LeaAnne into coming over to play his joint once a week. He mentioned it just about every time we visited for the past few months.
Papa had already handpicked Kenneth Jones, a former district manager at Rouses, to carry on the traditions he had built over decades.
Jones, who took over in May of last year, said he expects the memorial for his friend on Aug. 5 to draw an overflow crowd to Papa’s. A private celebration will be held from 5-6 p.m. and an open celebration from 6-9 p.m.
“We have been getting calls from all over the county and the country,’’ Jones said.
A former project manager for Modco in Michigan, Papa said he had always been fascinated by restauranteurs, and eating out was a big treat for him and his wife Rose, who passed away in 2017.
So, he moved to a place he loved already from vacationing here to persue his dream of owning a restaurant.
He came with ideas in place. He wanted a simple menu. He wanted live music every night, even in the winter. He wanted to serve food ‘til midnight. He knew serving good pizza was a good idea. And he knew there wasn’t another Gulf Shores oyster bar open year round.
He did not want fryers. Customers would decide how crispy they wanted their wings by the number of times the wings passed through the pizza oven.
“The only thing that gets fried around here is the bartender on occasion,’’ said Jay Ryan, who pulled his first shift behind the bar at Papa’s in 1993.
A native of Scotland, Papa’s dad, Malcolm, was a coal minor and pro soccer player who represented Scotland in the sport as a school boy. The McGinnes family (including mom Rebecca and older brother Jim) moved to America for the same reason most immigrants come here – opportunity.
Bill was 12 when the family settled near other family members in Detroit. He would go on to serve six years in the Army before returning home, marrying Rose and starting his career at Modco.
His opening night was a disaster.
“I finally had to pull the plug on the phones and send everybody home so we could get it straightened out and try again the next night,’’ he said. “For the first two years we had delivery and I often did that. I also tended bar, waited on tables and cooked. I did it all. We are successful now, but people probably don’t realize how hard it was when I first opened up. I often had to rob Peter to pay Paul.’’
Those willing to help McGinnes included four of the area’s most popular restaurant owners: CW Spence at Top of the Port, Wayne Perdew at Shirley & Wayne’s Supper Club, Joe Gilchrist at the Flora-Bama and Dale McMath at Perdido Pass Restaurant.
The original Papa Rocco’s menu featured pizza, gumbo, chili, red beans & rice and baked and fresh oysters. That was about it.
There were two other restaurants serving pizza in Gulf Shores in 1985 – Pizza Hut and Pizza & Potato. Both were located behind Souvenir City. But Papa’s was the only one that offered delivery.
“People were afraid to come in because I would try to put them to work,’’ Papa said. “They’d come in for a drink and end up getting a job. I’d recruit whomever I thought could sling a pizza.’’
His original restaurant had an open kitchen. That lasted until Hurricane Elena skirted the Gulf Coast six months after he opened. The fickle storm churned through the Gulf to Tampa only to reverse back towards Gulf Shores for a second time, mandating another evacuation.
“I was thinking if things were going to be like this, I might have to reconsider what I got myself into,’’ McGinnes said.
Instead, he decided to accept the inevitable. “If you live here, you have to accept that you are going to have to deal with hurricanes. Be prepared. Have good insurance and have a willingness to get back open as soon as possible,’’ he said.
Of course, the rebuild from the devastation of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 was its own story.
“We’ve dealt with hurricanes over the years, but I’ve never seen anything in my life as devastating as Ivan,’’ Papa said. “Our goal was to bring it back in three months, and that’s what we did. A year later we had Katrina. That shut me down for three weeks. But we worked hard. We got back in business, and here we are.’’
One of Papa’s early customers, Tim Heyter, helped McGinnes come up with his famous slogan. A Kiwi, Heyter flew it on a banner behind his airplane: “Home of Warm Beer & Lousy Pizza.’’
“It was an interesting first year trying to make payroll every week without dipping into what, believe me, was a very limited reserve,’’ McGinnes said.
While the bulk of the early business at Papa Rocco’s was definitely take-out pizza, McGinnes was also working hard to build his bar clientele and live nightly music would set him apart.
“I knew the chains were coming in and I only had a couple years to make my bones delivering pizza while I built the bar business,’’ he said.
National acts, including Buddy Greco, Pete Fountain, Bob Anderson, AL Hirt, Jack Jones, The 4 Aces, Wayne Newton, Boots Randolph and Pat Boone, graced the stage or ate at Papa’s. The late Foley native Ken Stabler was a regular. Mike Ditka and a long list of SEC football coaches are pictured on Papa’s wall.
But it is the Gulf Coast musicians who have given Papa’s its mojo. The first musician to play there was Mobilian Ken Henderson, who would later team up with former Drifter Johnny Williams to form the most popular duo McGinnes ever booked.
Brent Burns has been around so long that the local tourist commission named him Pleasure Island’s official musical ambassador. He remembers winter nights at Papa’s when it was just him, Papa and maybe a bartender/cook in the place.
Burns played as a solo act and as a duo with the late Shine Powell (of Sam & Shine’s – later to become the first ever Margaritaville).
“He had a smart plan in that you always knew he would be open ‘til midnight and he would shuck oysters right in front of you,’’ Burns said. “Even if nobody came in for two hours, he would still keep that kitchen and those doors open.’’
Burns said it wasn’t unusual or he and Papa to sit outside and wait for a car to come down Hwy. 59.
“We had good nights too. But there was just nobody on the streets in the winter here in the 1980’s and Bill was still trying to find his place in the community.
“He used to run tabs for regulars back then,’’ Burns added. “I’d run up three, four, five hundred dollars by the end of the month. I guess people weren’t paying up. So, he had to stop that.’’
Other early regular acts at Papa Rocco’s included JR Owen, and a trio featuring Jeff Fidler, Jim Hutcheson and Elaine Petty. Another regular, Top Hat, ended up asking Papa to be his best man when he married his wife Jackie.
McGinnes was also grand marshall of the annual Gulf Shores St. Patrick’s Day Walking Parade, an event with a history that dates before 1979’s Hurricane Frederic.
Vince Murphy, who at that time owned The Pink-Pony, started the tradition. Murphy passed the baton to local character John Kelliher, who led his green swarm into Papa Rocco’s just after McGinnes opened. Kelliher deemed McGinnes worthy of the grand marshal’s position four years later.
“Our snowbirds love it. And we get some spring breakers. We even have grandkids of some of the originals coming out with us,’’ McGinnes said.
A sportsman, McGinnes has a championship ring as part owner of a pro football team, the Mobile Admirals. He loved the Glasgow Rangers soccer club, all the Detroit professional sports teams and especially the Michigan Wolverines. He held season tickets at The Big House for 15 years. Many of his vacations back home through the years were planned around a Saturday game in Ann Arbor.
With characters galore stopping daily, Papa Rocco’s has been compared to Cheers. the pub from famed TV series.
“If you walked in there at 3:30 in the afternoon, everybody knew your name. Everybody would say hi and ask you how it was going,’’ said Bob Picard, who was also tasked with starting the St. Paddy’s Day Pub Crawl each year: “Let’s get ready to stumble,’’ he would shout.
“I meet people from all over the United States. I have met celebrities, and have gotten close to so many snowbirds. It hurts when they start dying off and you realize they are not coming back. But I would not trade my life for anything,’’ Papa said before he passed.
“I would hope people will always remember this as a place where you were treated well. A place where you could have a good time and get good food at a fair price,’’ he added.
“When I do die, I hope there will be a celebration of my life where people come and have a good time. The beer will be on me.’’
For the record, the beer served on Aug. 5 will be ice cold. And the pizza will be delicious.
