Andrew Worsdale
One of Afrikanerdom’s most favoured boys died last week in a bizarre car accident when he evidently fell asleep at the wheel and was thrown from his car, which rolled and crushed him to death. Country and western singer Bles Bridges, the first local artist to sell out the Sun City Superbowl, was returning from a concert in Jan Kempdorp in the North-West when the accident happened.
There must be many fans in platteland towns and industrial areas who are mortified by the tragic death of South Africa’s middle-of-the-road Elvis Presley, the man with glitzy costumes who would hand out fake red roses to ageing wallflowers at his gigs. And it wasn’t only women who were Bles groupies – burly boere, who would have floored anyone who even thought of touching their women, allowed him to embrace their wives at concerts.
Born Laurence Gabriel Bridges in 1946, he was nicknamed ”Bles” because he was hairless until he was four years old. He worked as a tool- and die-maker for several years in the Vaal Triangle, then sold organs before becoming all home-grown singing su-l perstarl with hisl wifell Leoniell supporting himl as fellow- songwriter, stage manager and the creator of his extravagant ”sexy” outfits. She supported him all along the way, despite a brief extra-marital affair with a woman the Sunday press described as ”a Barbie- doll lookalike”.
This week I journeyed to Pretoria, one of the heartlands of Bles mania, to try to gauge people’s feelings about his death.
First on my route was the Voortrekker Monument, where a gaggle of schoolchildren from Cathfield Christian School were being escorted out of the atrium. Only one of them even knew who Bles was; most named Brenda Fassie, Arthur and TK Zee as their favourite local musicians (and those weren’t only the black kids). A tremendously proud little Cindy Bracks said she loved Bles and had even sat on his lap a couple of years ago, but before she could eulogise any further, her stern schoolteacher marched her away.
Pieter de Villiers in a pharmacy in downtown Pretoria said he loved Bles. ”He was a very warm, soft llperson, who enjoyed lllspreading love lllaround in the lllway he could llllbest.”
llHis friend, llwho refused llto be named llor photographed, lsaid, ”I lldon’t llknow llabout llBles.
lBut I lllknow llthey’ve just named a rose after him, which I think is kind of lekker.”
My best find of the morning, though, had to be Frans Scheepers, his wife Magda and their two beautiful children Caroline and Paul, who had just come back from the pet shop where Frans Scheepers bought his wife a new cockatiel, because her last one had died on Saturday – a coincidence with Bles’s accident that didn’t escape them. They were avid fans of the man’s music and were absolutely bewildered by the events.
”It’s a great tragedy for our country and for South African culture,” Frans Scheepers said to me. ”He was a really good person; he was the country’s top entertainer. We still don’t know what happened with that accident. I think there’s something really fishy going on. But I don’t think we’ll ever find out the truth unless we get hold of Jessica Fletcher.”
Francois van der Westhuizen, the barman at the Fit Caf, said his mum used to drag him to Bles concerts: ”I hated them, but my old man and old lady were into this Telly Savalas kind of music and so they loved Bles. My girlfriend woke me up the other day to tell me she heard on the radio that he died, and then I just went straight back to sleep.”
His most pleasing anecdote was recalling a high school show when he was in standard six where he and his mates did a re-rendition of Bles’s top-selling song Ruiter van die Windjie (Rider of the Breeze) and retitled it Ruik hoe Ruik die Windjie, an adolescent-type joke about flatulence.
The biggest and most mournful fan I spoke to had to be 50-year-old Jean Strauwich who, in indomitable tannie style, refused to speak a word of English to me, the acknowledged and slightly waspishly guilty rooinek.
”Hy was so ‘n dierbare man. Dis verskriklik. My hart is verskriklik seer. Dit is asof ek ‘n seuntjie verloor het. [He was such a lovable man. It’s terrible. I’m terribly heartsore. It is as if I’ve lost a son.]”
She then proceeded to cry openly in grief. A regular visitor to his concerts, she had all his albums, most of which were autographed by the great man himself.