Other than the obvious of listening to the lyrics, what's the story behind the song the Ballad of Curtis Loew?

Remember that first and foremost, Ronnie was a story teller. Though he unquestionably wrote about things he knew, had experienced or had heard about, many times what he wrote was also not necessarily "autobiographical" per se, but a combination of things that worked themselves all together into a song.

Many people have claimed that this song is based on Rickey's Grandpa "Shorty Medlocke".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorty_Medlocke
While Ronnie certainly drew on some of what he knew of Shorty, the song is NOT about him. He also incorporated some of his of own life experiences, such as "Searchin for soda bottles, to get myself some dough". A young Ronnie & the boys notably did just that to raise enough money to go see Eric Clapton (who they revered) when EC played in Jax.

Other than that, it's pretty much just a story Ronnie wrote to tell. The only other thing is that the unusual spelling of Curtis' last name "Loew" as opposed to "Leow" is (according to Ed King's website) Ed said "I was in charge of album credits and I thought it'd be funny if Curtis was a black Jewish guy. So I reversed the W and the E and I don't think anyone in the band got the joke."

That's my take on it anyhow.

Oh, so it's about Gene?