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TRANSCRIPT
Dromgoole: 'Ladies of the evening' and other
novel topics
Posted: April 7, 2013 - 12:15am
By GLENN DROMGOOLE
For The Avalanche-Journal
Cynthia Jordan of San Angelo warns readers that her historical novel “Pearl” is rated R — which
isn’t surprising since it is about oil, cowboys and “ladies of the evening” in San Angelo’s wilder
and woollier days.
The stories revolve around Victoria Pearl and her girls at Miss Pearl’s Parlor in San Angelo in
1923. You can read the full prologue to the book at her website, theladypearls.com. The
paperback is $20, and an accompanying 14-song CD sells for $15, or buy both as a set for $30
from the website, or get the book at Cactus Books in San Angelo.
Jordan’s biography includes writing the 1983 hit country song “Jose Cuervo (you are a friend of
mine)” as well as a number of piano CDs. Learn more about her music at cynthiamusic.com.
San Angelo's
history, people inspire local
author
Becca Nelson Sankey
1:40 PM, Apr 17, 2015
1:58 PM, Apr 17, 2015
local | entertainment | local news
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SAN ANGELO, Texas - Cynthia Jordan isn’t from Texas, but in the 11 years since she’s lived in San
Angelo, she’s become the city’s singing and writing ambassador.
Jordan on Thursday held a book signing and sampled clips from the audio version of her historical fiction
novel “Pearl” at Stephens Central Library. The event drew more than 50 people, several of whom inspired
or played characters in the book’s audio version.
“Pearl” is set in San Angelo in 1923, when oilmen hit pay dirt with the Santa Rita No. 1 well. Although
the characters in “Pearl” are fictional, Jordan conducted extensive research on San Angelo’s early 20th
century brothels.
Cynthia Rutledge and Misty Barron sat in one of the front rows of the library’s community room as a
small crowd slowly trickled in to listen to Jordan’s presentation.
“We wanted to hear her talk about her book since she has written about San Angelo,” said Rutledge, who
moved to San Angelo a few years ago.
“She is hilarious, and she definitely knows about the underbelly of San Angelo,” added Barron, a San
Angelo native.
Barron listened to the audio version of “Pearl” but has not yet read the novel’s sequel, “Diamond.”
“It’s wonderful,” she said of the first book. “These (scenes) are already acted out for you. It’s like
listening to old-time radio.”
Jordan, a classically trained musician perhaps best known for writing the country music song “Jose
Cuervo” in the early 1980s, said “Pearl” has received critical acclaim since its release in December 2012.
KLST television host Pat Attebery “said, ‘I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it,’ ” Jordan said.
“My friend in Luxembourg said, ‘I love it, I love it, I love it.’ The reaction was always ‘I didn’t put it
down’ or ‘I had to read it twice.’ People really liked it.”Jordan’s upcoming novel “Ruby” also will feature
tales of early San Angelo, she said.
“She’s a great investor of San Angelo,” said Kay Holland, a retired English teacher who edited “Pearl”
and attended Thursday’s presentation. “She believes in it. To be a California girl, she does a pretty good
job of profiling the cowboy life.”
Jordan said she moved from California to San Angelo in 2005 when her husband returned to the oil
business.
“I didn’t know what San Angelo was, but when I got here I said, ‘Whoa. What a cool place this is,’ ” she
told the crowd. “The air is fresh, the people are friendly. I knew I had a purpose here.”
Jordan began promoting her new hometown with the Lady in Blue project, which celebrates Maria de
Agreda, a 17th century Spanish nun who was believed to have brought the gospel to the Jumano Indians
in West Texas through the phenomenon of bilocation.
After initiating that endeavor, Jordan moved to the “Pearl” project, she said.
She fell in love with an old house on Park Street and decided to make it the setting of madam Miss Pearl’s
Parlor. By happenstance, she told the crowd, she was enjoying music one night at The Black Swan Wine
Bar and discussing plans for her book when she met the owners of the Park Street house. The couple
allowed Jordan to tour the home and take photos of it.
“None of us can do anything by ourselves,” she said. “And it’s no fun to do anything by yourself. I have
big plans for ‘Pearl,’ and I don’t want to do it by myself.”
Copyright 2015 Journal Media Group. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
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Sex Literally Sells in Cynthia Jordan's
"Pearl"
By Chelsea Reinhard | Oct. 1, 2013 7:46 pm
“It takes 17 minutes to awaken the goddess,” says Cynthia Jordan, San Angelo resident and local
artist, “…and Pearl teaches that.” Victoria Pearl would know. As the madam of one of San Angelo’s most
prominent brothels, Pearl may be considered something of a local expert on all things sex, even if her
expertise stems from a century long turned. “Here’s the deal,” continues Jordan, “Guys would just roll
over—she was in her night gown; boom-boom-da-boom-biddy boom—and take two or three minutes. No
wonder women didn’t like sex and called it their wifely duty; they didn’t know what it was. And that’s what
Pearl’s all about, she’s an educator,” Jordan says.
The Plot “Pearl” is Jordan’s new book, a historical fiction that centers on a heroine of the same
name and follows her on a journey from Chicago to San Angelo, telling the stories of 10 women in between.
The book, Jordan says, has a little of everything: love, drama, Texas cattlemen and the Santa Rita oil boom,
even Paintrock’s Lady in Blue and the old Christoval bathhouses. And, “Everything in the book is true,”
Jordan says, “except for one little story about Miss Hattie’s. Only the characters were made up to tell the
story.”
Divided into three parts, the book begins in 1900 with Pearl’s arrival at the Everleigh House in
Chicago, which caters to wealthy gentlemen. On its opening night, the owners of the Everleigh are forced
to turn away groups of men who do not meet the standards of their preferred clientele, until a group of
Texas cattlemen appear and are invited inside. The women of the Everleigh were “very classy ladies,” says
Jordan, “very creative and classy, beautiful; they were like ‘My Fair Lady’…that read every day with these
impeccable manners.” The story begins to develop as Victoria Pearl—now one of these classy ladies—
meets and falls in love with a cattleman, who whisks her away some time later to a ranch in Menard. Due
to the work she had done at the Everleigh House, Pearl arrives in Texas wealthy, and buys a large house on
the Concho that she turns into a parlor. Including herself, the maid and a new girl, there are 13 women
working at Pearl’s Parlor, and part two of the book tells the stories of these women. The Underlying
Message “
To me the question was, ‘Why would a woman go into that business?’” Jordan says. “It’s not what
you think. It’s not about a man showing up and going chinka chinka chinka and leaving. That’s not what
it’s about.” But what exactly it is about is a secret she’s not ready to divulge. “You’ve got to read the book,”
Jordan says. “You’ve just got to read it.” One thing she could tell us without reading is that the book has
an underlying message. And for a story that centers around the madam of a brothel in the early 1900s, the
message may not be what most would expect. “[I’m] really trying to stress the importance of education, of
being beautiful, of keeping your self-esteem,” Jordan says. “Women need to know that now. They need to
be educated, they need to develop their own career, they need to demand respect. And men need to get their
act together because women deserve that.” The statement is one that contrasts the conditions of old with
the position of women in modern society.
Referring back to her initial question of why, Jordan continues. “We have a basic instinct to want
to be sexually desirable, because until now it was our survival…women depended on men too strongly,”
Jordan says. “Women weren’t allowed to have educations…women worked 90 hours a week…I could go
on and on.” Through research done for the book, Jordan has learned a great deal about the role of women
throughout history, she says, and a part of the problem she identifies today is that women have cast off the
need for respect in favor of being free and independent, to a point that leads to regrettable sexual
promiscuity. “I found out horrible things, that people have no idea of how far women have come. But what
happened is that because women have gotten more independent, men don’t have to be gentlemen,” Jordan
says. “There’s some woman out there that’s needy enough to lay down for them…and Miss Pearl wouldn’t
like that.”
The Inspiration Although her book centers on women who made their money selling sex, the real
issue Jordan’s book presents today is that women are selling themselves short. “Have you ever had sex for
any other reason besides the fact that you were so in love with this man and you wanted to express that?
When you’re married to keep the peace, when you’re dating to get another date, when you want a part in a
play, or you’re auditioning or you want to keep your job,” Jordan inquires. “At least this business
[prostitution] was honest.” And while prostitution may be the main business of the book, “Pearl” also paints
a vibrant and accurate historical picture of San Angelo in the past.
Part three begins with the Santa Rita oil boom, and tells stories of drama, love and other events
over a four-month period. Jordan says it was David Wood at the Train Depot that initially got her interested
in the Santa Rita story, an interest that was piqued once more when she saw the Santa Rita pump on the UT
campus. But the original idea for the book stems from her own background as a musician and songwriter,
and a quest to rediscover her purpose several states from home. It was 1983 in Hollywood, California and
a song she’d written, “Jose Cuervo is a Friend of Mine,” had reached Song of the Year status. She was
living out in Cali, and ‘had met a cowboy oil man’ that within a few months swept her off her feet and
across the nation. They went to Texas, married, and then to Nashville for a record deal.
Eventually, Jordan landed permanently back in San Angelo, and found herself on the search for
something meaningful. “When I moved to San Angelo from Nashville…I said…‘there’s a reason I’m
here,’” Jordan says. “It took me about five years to figure out. “I started thinking about Miss Hattie’s, and
I started thinking about the town’s genesis, and I started thinking about Jose Cuervo and how fun it was…I
wanted to do fun again,” Jordan says. And around this time she began composing for a musical.
As she began to do research for the content, Jordan started uncovering things in history, and that musical—
which by then had become a three-hour production—turned into the book “Pearl.” “The book just kept
writing itself,” says Jordan.
The more she researched—and she did for every single page—the more she found out that needed
to be told. “It’s all true,” she says. “The locations are all true. I just colored in a little.” Jordan “colored in”
the characters, which she admits are based on facets of herself and on friends and acquaintances (remember
the cowboy that takes Pearl to Texas?). But just how much of herself is in the book she’s left to the reader
to discover. “Pearl” clocks in at 380 pages written in a little over a year, but for Jordan, the book is only the
beginning.
Following on the storyline and history presented in the book, Jordan has also written a history book
of San Angelo, told by the girls of Miss Pearl’s Parlor, which depict pieces of local history such as the Santa
Fe Train Depot with references from “Pearl”. A sequel is also in the works titled “Diamonds,” which Jordan
says will also address women’s issues. “Pearl” may be purchased in the Cactus Book Store at 6 E Concho
Ave., and Jordan is offering free music along with purchase of the book. Jordan has also recorded and
produced an audio version of the book, parts of which may be heard online.
Endorsement
On Jan 14, 2015, at 4:37 PM, Howard Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
Cynthia,
Enjoyed our meeting and your amazing creative vibes. I’ve written a letter and attached a copy.
I’ll be out of town until next Tuesday. I’ve started a list of people that I will send it to which I
will share with you so that you can follow up. I will continue adding to the list after the initial
batch. Linda in our development office will be working with me and you can contact her here at
the museum if you have any questions or comments before I get back next week. I look forward
to talking with you again soon.
Howard
I met Cynthia Jordan in 2005 when she moved to San Angelo. I was impressed with the fact
“Cindy” wrote the huge country hit, Jose Cuervo you are a friend of mine. I also learned that she
is a classically trained pianist and composes lovely piano music. I immediately asked her to share
her talents with us at our Museum which she did with enthusiasm. In the years since her arrival, I
have engaged her multiple times for a variety of programs. She has helped us organize several high
level fund-raisers and developed casual short entertainment programs tied into exhibition openings
and interpretive programs. She loves working with children and is uniquely skilled in that regard.
Among the various ways that she has worked with our children, she incorporated her You Are
Awesome music program into our summer camps.
Cynthia did not hesitate to get involved with the larger San Angelo community and became
interested with the local history. In 2009 she originated the Lady in Blue event to celebrate the
story of a nun from the 1600’s, Sor Maria de Agreda who ministered to the local Jumano Indians.
Cynthia recorded original music to tell her story.
Her most recent endeavor is a new musical she calls, Pearl. It tells the discovery of the Santa Rita
No. 1 in 1923 with original jazz, boogie and even a few vaudeville songs from that era. Her unique
style of telling history with music and song is fun and entertaining.
Cynthia is a consummate musician and communicator and a delightful person to work with. She
is quite flexible, has wonderful ideas to contribute in the process of program development and in
essence is highly cooperative and will work with you to produce a program that engages and
delights audiences. I highly recommend her to you.
Howard Taylor
Director San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
On Jun 18, 2015, at 12:47 PM, Amy Feller <[email protected]> wrote:
Cindy,
Thank you for the fabulous and fun local author event. Everyone had a great
time. We loved the author talk, reading and the historic photos and local
history. I hope you sold some books too.
Thanks again for the wonderful talk.
Amy Feller
Programs & Outreach Librarian
Redondo Beach Public Library
303 N. Pacific Coast Highway
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
310 318-0676 / 1 + 2573