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Chicago-born Art Fein is a rock fan's rock fan. He grew up in the '50s digging Little Richard and Elvis, was disdainful of the Beatles ("not as wild as Little Richard"), managed to endure the psychedelic '60s, and wound up in L.A. managing rootsy punk-era rockers X and the Blasters. A journalist and author (The L.A. Musical History Tour, The Greatest Rock & Roll Stories), Fein has also hosted a cable tv show, Li'l Art's Poker Party, since 1984. "I'm always interested in remarkable characters, and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy is a great one," said Fein. "I'm amazed at the spontaneity of his writing. Songs like 'I Ran Out of Baloney, So I Had To Eat My Pony' are the product of an uninhibited mind -- one that's not challenged by sophistication."

Fein met the Lege while visiting a Las Vegas record store that Odam used to frequent. He would also see him on the annual visits Odam made to L.A. "to watch the people going into the Academy Awards." Fein wrote press releases for the Lege, had him as a guest on Poker Party, and booked a 1985 gig for him at Hollywood's Club Lingerie where Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett were in the audience and Burnett even played drums on "Paralyzed."

The opening act that night was the Soul Senders, a band from San Jose that included drummer Joey Meyers. While Meyers' exposure to the Lege's music was limited to having heard "Paralyzed" on a compilation called Rockabilly Psychosis and the Garage Disease, he was already hooked. "Even on a record full of unfettered, crazy psychobilly, he stood out," Meyers said. "He personified marching to your own drummer. He wasn't derivative of anybody." When Meyers approached Odam and asked if he needed a band to back him in Northern California, the Lege responded enthusiastically. They played their first gig together six months later and have been playing together ever since, recording a single ("Standing in a Trash Can, Thinking of You") and three albums (Retro Rocket Back to Earth, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy Rides Again, and Tokyo).

While Meyers calls playing with the Lege "the funnest gig," he admits that it has its challenges. "Norman always wants to try a different approach," he said, "which makes practice almost moot. You just have to get behind him and kind of hold on." Meyers described one show in a rough neighborhood in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, where a car parked in front of the club had been broken into. "In the middle of the set, [the Lege] went tearing outside, half-naked, firing his six-shooter. It could have gone bad at any minute."

In 2000, Fein arranged for the Lege to play a date at Austin's La Zona Rosa during South by Southwest, on a bill between Frank Zappa's late-'70s drummer Terry Bozzio and ex-Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The original idea was to have Joe Ely's band back the Lege, but they had other commitments, so a pickup band had to be assembled on an hour's notice. In desperation, Fein called Yanaway, who drafted "a bunch of guys who were standing around a beer keg," including ex-Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs guitarist George Tomsco and Texas Tornados bassist Speedy Sparks. When Yanaway walked into the dressing room at La Zona Rosa, he found Odam "impassively looking at the door like the main character from Being There," oblivious to the frenzied activity going on around him.

Today, Odam bristles at the mention of Yanaway's name. "He thought I was an absolute lunatic," said the Lege. "He told me, 'You're not going anywhere.'" Meyers, who plans to write a Lege biography, said that Odam's ill will toward Yanaway arose because the producer took co-publishing credit for some songs on Rock-It to Stardom without consulting the artist, then sold his publishing company to cover a debt. Subsequently, according to Meyers, the recipient of Yanaway's publishing rights "has been cashing Norman's royalty checks and won't return our phone calls. We've got a lawyer in L.A. working pro bono to try and get Norman's royalties." (Meyers said the Lege has received airplay in 26 countries.)

Yanaway denied the charge, saying that Odam was aware of the co-publishing agreement -- which was intended to recoup recording costs -- before signing his contract. "I paid him all of his mechanical royalties up front for all 2,000 copies of the record, including the ones that were sent out as promos," Yanaway said. Since Rock-It to Stardom has never been released on c.d., the label boss added, "it's not making any money now. When you consider the fact that T-Bone Burnett gave his co-publishing rights [for the Mercury records] back to Norman, [the Lege] has actually been paid more than he was due."

Tony Philputt hasn't given up hope that one day his film Cotton Pickin' Smash will be released. In fact, he's still working on it. A former NASA employee reported to Philputt that while working at Houston ground control in 1971, he played the Lege's hit as a "wake-up" song for the Skylab astronauts, leading space center officials to permanently ban the record after the astronauts "performed poorly and were agitated." Now Philputt hopes to include NASA audiotape of the song being played in the film. In fact, he said, "there's a videotape of some NASA engineers singing [the Lege's] 'Who's Knocking On My Door' at somebody's wedding reception."

Even better, David Bowie has expressed willingness to be interviewed for the project -- although he's "incommunicado" for a year and a half until his current tour is completed. "Now I want to end the film with Norman appearing on The Tonight Show," Philputt said. "I think Bowie could make it happen."

As for Norman Odam, these days he works as a night watchman in a Santa Clara bank. His current band -- bassist Klaus Fluoride (formerly of San Francisco punk originators the Dead Kennedys), guitarist Jay Rosen, and Meyers -- works regularly around the Bay Area and recently played a show in France with punk-era figures Alan Vega, Lydia Lunch, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Odam's been featured in Songs in the Key of Z, Irwin Chusid's book on "outsider" music, and Lubbock Lights, a documentary about his homeboys the Flatlanders that screened at this year's South by Southwest. This month, he plans to go back in the studio to record songs for an album to be called Okinawa, which he hopes to shop to a major label.

His advice to those who find him unmusical and his performance bizarre: "Don't take it so seriously. Just have fun. That's what I do." He's not surprised at the continuing interest in his music. "I transcend the ages," he said.

His fans can write to the Legendary Stardust Cowboy at P.O. Box 36305, San Jose, CA 95158. He has no computer: "Poor cowboys can't afford toys for rich Republicans," he said.

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