[WWW] Slam 11.04.03 Book in works by Jimmy Hart

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2003/11/04/246614.html

Book in works by Jimmy Hart

By MEREDITH RENWICK -- For SLAM! Wrestling

Jimmy Hart and the Missing Link in August at WrestleCon. -- Meredith
Renwick
You can add Jimmy 'The Mouth of the South' Hart to the list of
managers writing their autobiographies.

Following the success of Bobby 'The Brain' Heenan's autobiography,
Toronto-based ECW Press signed up Hart to write his life story.

Hart was typically jokey about his project when asked about it a while
back.

"Yeah, I'm just putting a little book together, I don't know what it
might be called. It might be called Jimmy Hart: Never Trust a Midget,
or The Man Behind the Megaphone, or It's Not As Bad As It Seems. But
it's not going to be knocking anybody or saying anything bad about
anybody, so it'll probably be a boring book," said Hart.

"It's going to be about starting off in Memphis in The Gentrys, and
all the travels with that. Then working in Memphis of course, with
Lawler, and Andy Kaufman and doing all the stuff we did for five
years, going to Vince for nine, and WCW and the stuff with Hulk of
course, and what I'm doing now."

According to the folks at ECW Press, the book is still in the editing
phase and a release date hasn't been set yet. "It's a question of
[Jimmy] sitting down with me for two days," said Michael Holmes, the
book's editor.
  

Hart's story really is about more than pro wrestling. "I've had a
great life. Before wrestling I was in music, I had a million-selling
record called Keep On Dancing, I was in a group called The Gentrys.
Both of them are the same, you know wrestling and music are so much
alike," said Hart. "With that we toured with Dick Clark, we were on
Hullabaloo, Shindig, Where The Action Is, American Bandstand twice, we
did tours. Back then they'd put all the bus tours together so I did
all the tours - Sonny and Cher were on some of them, The Beach Boys,
The Shangri-Las, The Grassroots, The Young Rascals. And after that I
got into professional wrestling."

The impossibly energetic Mouth of the South has been entertaining at
ringside for decades now, and has been working with various companies
over the last couple of years. He has a major appearance on November 1
in the corner of The Powers of Pain (Barbarian & Warlord) against the
Road Warriors in Frankenmuth, Michigan. But he also dabbled in
promoting himself, with the short-lived XWF.

Hart's XWF had quite the lineup - Roddy Piper, Sable, Jerry Lawler,
the Road Warriors, Curt Hennig, Hulk Hogan, Superfly Snuka and his
son. But it didn't last. "What happened to us is, we shot 10 shows,
but when we got ready to go door-knock the tape was almost obsolete
because what happened, Vince, the same day we were cutting it, hired
Hulk Hogan, and Mean Gene Okerlund, and Curt Hennig and Jerry Lawler.
So when we went out to door-knock with our tapes, the people said,
'Oh, you've got all this talent.' 'Well, no we don't. We just lost
Hulk, and...' So it really hurt us on doing that."

Besides the autobiography, Hart still has aspirations in promoting.
"What we're thinking about doing (now) is we've found some other
people in wrestling to do something with us, so we're gonna use the
same concept we're not gonna call it the XWF. I can if I want to, but
start fresh again, because we've learned a lot from what happened
before," he explained. "We learned to put something together you'd
better have the guys signed for at least a six-month deal because if
you don't do it anyone can take your talent and run. But saying all
that, I love Vince [McMahon] and them too."