A Fine Line, Part 2: Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth

By Rich Ostrander

Much has been written about Ed Roth and his contributios to the ‘kustom kulture’*, as it’s been labeled by more recent admirers of that era’s custom vehicle artists and builders.  Ed’s motorcycle phase only lasted about five years, but he never stopped constructing trikes. Ed’s involvement with custom cars lasted longer; about ten years.  His artistic talent revealed itself when Ed was at high school; after he graduated he joined the air force, then after being discharged he started pinstriping cars.

Around 1958, he teamed up with the Baron and his grandson Tom Kelley to start a shop called the ‘Crazy Painters’ on Atlantic Blvd in Lynwood, LA.  Ad opened his own shop the following year on Slauson in Maywood, calling it ‘Roth Studios’. Early on, Ed realized that to succeed in this new art form of custom paint and modified cars he needed to develop products that could be mass-marketed.  He was one of the first to understand this – and that there was money to be made doing it.

Kenny Howard made one of the first ‘crazy shirts’ with a weird character on it around 1955.  Ed produced his own shirts once Roth Studios opened; he started one of the first mail-order setups and young kids all over America now had access to his shirts, which were in great demand.  When he closed his shop ten years later, at the end of the Sixties, he’d made a fortune from the thousands of shirts he’d printed.

In the early ’60s he constructed one of the first of many fiberglass bodied hot rod/custom cars; the Outlaw, followed by the Beatnik Bandit.  These captured the imagination of adolescents everywhere [Roth had a particular knack for a flavor of obnoxious that young teens adore – ed.]. Revell model company was quick to see the potential and signed Roth to a very lucrative contract. More money flowed into the coffers. Then around 1965, Ed decided the custom car craze had about run its course, so he hung a 180, turning his back on cars and immersing himself in the custom motorcycle scene. He brought Ed ‘Newt’ Newton on board to do artwork and oversee shirt production; around this time, Roth Studios started silk-screening the shirts to keep up with demand.

Ed also employed Don ‘Monty’ Monteverde, a young Indian bob-job riding local artist and pinstriper who would develop the Rat Fink character (though Ed copyrighted it ‘Roth Studios’).  Next on staff was ex-motorcycle rider Robert Williams – only 22 and showing great artistic promise – whom he brought in as art director to do Ed’s magazine ads.

Ed’s real turn to the ‘dark side’ began with his purchase of five ex-LA police Harley-Davidson Panheads at auction.  He soon chopped one and sold off the other four; a year later he started Choppers Magazine in a small digest format.   He became friendly with several original members of the Berdoo hells Angels.  He also added more employees to the roster at Roth Studios [including the teenage Mike ‘Fass Mikey’ Vils, who helped build the Druid Princess at this time – ed].

Ed then started building his famous ‘Candy Wagon’ outfit: a cool Harley-Davidson 45ci flathead-powered trike featuring a fiberglass body incorporating a creature’s head as a gas tank.  It pulled a custom wagon on which people could sit and throw candy to kids during parades etc. Next up was his equally famous C-cab trike powered by a Crossley four cylinder motor he named the ‘Mailbox’.  I saw both these machines at various car shows back in the late ’60s; to my great surprise they popped up again at the AMCA swapmeet in Rhinebeck, NY, a couple of years ago.  Tedd of V-Twin bought them to display at his Motorcyclepedia museum in Newburgh, NY. Another project he embarked on at this time was constructing fiberglass bodies to cover the V-8 powered trike chassis and drivetrains that Dick Allen and Leon Daily were building at Dick’s shop.

All kinds of people would show up at Roth Studios, like Tom Wolfe, author of ‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby’ [read the original essay here], one of the first books to reveal to a fascinated public what the youth of the day was into: motorcycles, hot rods, custom cars, groovy music, clothes.  Tom McMullen would show up in his famous flamed ’32 Ford highboy roadster.  He dug Ed’s bike scene so much he went and opened his own sho – AEE Choppers – and started his own magazine, Street Chopper.

Mike Vils told me that some Fridays, to get the weekend started, Dougie Poo, Beautiful Buzzard, and a few other Berdoo Hells Angels would ride down to the shop and gather up Mike, Dick Allen, and whoever else was up for a ride.  Once they rode to Las Vegas just to drink a beer and smoke a joint, then rode back. No short trip, that.

Late in 1969, Ed’s motorcycle venture came to a screeching halt.  He’d been advertising his products in mainstream publications like Hot Rod and Car Craft; they didn’t like the outlaw bikers slant [Roth was selling posters of various Hells Angels members – ed.], thinking it was a bad influence on the kids, so they started refusing his ads.  Then Revell cancelled his model contract.  Finally the Hells Angels didn’t think they were being fairly compensated for the sales of their posters through Ed’s mail order business, so it got ‘real heavy’ and Ed shut the Studio’s doors, burned the remaining products out back of the shop, and quit the business. [Rumors about the ‘heavy’ situation include stories of Kenny Howard atop the roof of Roth Studios with a machine gun, prepared to defend the life of Roth and his team when warned of an impending Hells Angels visit/attack to extract cash and product from Roth Studios – ed.]

He went to work as a sign painter at Knott’s Berry Farm, but after a few years was lured away by Jim Brucker to build displays for his Cars of the Stars and Planes of Fame Museum.  Later Ed Roth returned to his Mormon roots, and moved to Utah [it’s a little known fact that quite a few founders of the Kustom Kulture scene were Mormons – usually ‘jack’ Mormons who smoked and drank and did not attend church.  These included Kenny Howard, Ed Roth, and Jeff Decker‘s father Allen, an OG custom guy running in the same LA circles as Roth and Howard – ed.]

Later in life Roth would still build a new trike now and again, make a few shirts and pinstripe a little.  In the mid-1980s he enjoyed renewed fame as one of the architects of Kustom Kulture, attending exhibitions of his, Kenny Howard, and Robert Williams’ work.  Ed passed in 2001 at the age of 69, but the impact of his groundbreaking, highly imaginative work continues to make itself felt today.

*The phrase Kustom Kulture was popularized in recent years first in Burt Ball’s 1985 exhibit ‘Western Exterminator’ at the Zero One gallery in LA.  A bigger exhibit on the same theme was held at the Laguna Art Museum in 1993: ‘Kustom Kulture’, with its associated catalog, which is a decent overview of the genre.  The use of the ‘K’ for Kustom is credited to customizer George Barris’ high school car club, the Kustoms Car Club, ca.1942.