Xerography or electrophotography is a dry printing process. The image is created by using +ve and -ve charges to control where the carbon based powder (toner) lands, which is then fused to the fabric using heat to stabilise it or cook it into the fabric. These were made before drum photocopiers were invented and the process was done as a series of manual steps by Billy, with a copy camera and oven in the lab at Xerox HQ in NYC .

The unique works made by Billy over the Christmas period in 1964 were presented at the Bianchini Gallery, New York in January 1965.

The phrase “barbecue diplomacy” was coined by W. D. Taylor of The New York Herald-Tribune. Johnson liked the symbolism. It conveyed the sense of an everyday man as President, the same image conveyed by Truman. It was so effective the Johnsons occasionally staged barbecues at the White House; also a first.

During the Presidential election campaign of 1964, Johnson flew Jetton[1]around the nation to cook at political rallies. After a Jetton campaign barbecue at Gracie Mansion, New York City’s mayoral residence, Brendan Gill wrote in the New Yorker “Barbecues as a symbol compare favourably with the 1952 hole in Adlai Stevenson’s shoe.”

Johnson and Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey won the election over Barry Goldwater and William E. Miller with the greatest popular vote in history up to that time, and 61% of the votes.

Shortly after the election, Johnson staged an impromptu Victory Barbecue at the Ranch on November 4, 1964. He and Humphrey hosted the White House press corps as guests of honor.

The two dressed in western suits and Stetsons, rode horses, and ate ribs for the cameras. Jetton later wrote in his cookbook that Humphrey “sure gave these ribs a fit… He went at them like Clyde Beaty to cats and must have eaten them for an hour, putting away more of them than I have ever seen anybody do. So far as I could tell, they did him no harm.”