Ain't Bad for a Pink (29 page)

As well as the strict laws on alcohol there are other examples of Puritanism still rife in the Bible Belt. Perhaps the law against sodomy is fairly understandable in such a God-fearing society but oral sex is still forbidden for married couples and
dancing
is still illegal in Newnan!

Continuing this theme: alcohol rationing exists at a place called the Yacht Club. You are not allowed to buy a pitcher of beer on your own. The idea that you might consume four whole pints of beer is not acceptable even in such a bohemian environment.

I did enjoy my first visit to Georgia in spite of the alcoholic anxiety and I wrote a piece of music: “Magnolia and Honeysuckle” in honour of this garden state. What Newnan lacks in wild life, it makes up for in its wildlife: buzzards by the dozen, heron, grebe, red cardinals, birds with blue tail feathers bright in the sun, male and female woodpeckers, wasps that could eat you, butterflies as big as sparrows, beaver and glimpses of deer disappearing into the trees in the flash of a white tail. I enjoyed sitting on the swing verandah seat listening to birdsong and the sound of insects’ wings in the Georgia sunset – a trickle of orange and gold light gradually diminishing, the trees darkly silhouetted against the evening sky.

And I thought about Burl Ives.

One of the highlights of my first visit to Georgia – “off in brilliant sunshine: tight jeans and a big belt” – is the trip to New Orleans. The journal entries record my eager response to this road movie with its fast-moving scenery:

Flattening out – pines replaced by deciduous just coming into spring bud – temperature climbing – light intensifying – field full of donkeys followed by field full of llamas! Trees wear grey beards here – possums instead of hedgehogs dead – soil is getting sandier – dead armadillo on shoulder. Three Rivers Bridge 3 miles approximately – right Mississippi, left Florida…temperature rising.

And so was the emotional temperature rising. Tom and I stopped overnight at Gulfport where the rich brown colour of the Mississippi mud in the Gulf of Mexico reminded me of the Shroppie Union, and we found the bizarrely named and never to be forgotten Seafood and Shoe Repair Shop, and dozens of twenty-four hour pawn shops ominously close to the casinos.

In New Orleans I was soon walking through the French Quarter and the energy of the walking is captured in my words: “Had first crawfish with margarita, walked around, bought voodoo dolls, Cajun spices, T shirt, post cards, couple of beers”.

But perhaps all pilgrimages are marred by the anticlimax of arriving. I was struck by the absence of music on this short trip. At one point Tom and I visited a blues bar offering: “5 nights Karaoke, 1 night house Rock ‘n’ Roll band, 1 night Ladies Night, 1 night once a month for out of town Blues band”. Perhaps we were just unlucky and short of time but once a month blues in a
blues
bar?

I’ve spoken to other musicians about this musical paucity and they agree. Des read an article written by BB King which substantiates the view that you’d be lucky to find the music Bourbon Street and Beale Street are famous for.

I collected my Mississippi dirt and I recorded the sun: a ball of fire dropping over my left shoulder as we left this legendary place, “till next time!”

A commitment I meant at that moment.

Musically speaking, the high points of my trips to America were the interviews at WRFG (“Radio Free Georgia”), the recordings at Whippoorwill Studios, the gig at Fat Matt’s and the Labor Day Blues Festival.

Tom, a locally known musician and recording artist, had told the radio station about me and that’s how we came to be on our way to the studio, listening to the programme
Good Morning Blues
advertising us several times as “The British Blues Invasion – Shaky(!) Jake with Tom Hubbard and live playing”. Well – I
was
used to people getting my name wrong: I’ve been referred to as “this brilliant blues player called Smoky Jake Johnson from Crewe” before now.
(2)

My first interview at WRFG was with the Blues Professor. He was a good DJ though not such a good communicator and I was a bit nervous. I was able to advertise my gigs and recording and mentioned a deal I had with Pyramid Records to distribute my CD in the US and in Manchester UK. I answered the usual questions about my musical background, stressing that I hadn’t wanted to just come to Georgia as a tourist, that the country blues was my “main thing” and that I had met Son House, whose “Death Letter” was to be my first live number on the show. I followed this with another dramatic song: Woody Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man”. The interviewer remarked, “When you sing, you definitely don’t sound so English,” – praise indeed.

We agreed it was ironic that I had been able to meet great American musicians in the Sixties as the result of their own countrymen not giving them the musical, let alone political and social status they deserved.

Tom and I did a duet of Bobby Bland’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” giving this soul number a country edge, followed by a recorded version of “Dust My Broom” by Snakey Jakes’ Dead Skunk Band. The session ended with a rendition of Mississippi John Hurt’s “I’m Satisfied” and a recording of John Hurt at the Newport Festival which I thought was a nice link with the past.

In retrospect this first interview with WRFG was less satisfying than the later ones partly because the content was less extensive and because the interviewer seemed less enthusiastic about the music than the other interviewers. Perhaps I was more relaxed the second time and I could also talk about the newly recorded CD:
4 HOURS IN GEORGIA.
The title refers to the location and the amount of time it took to record at Whippoorwill Studios, Smyrna, Georgia
.
My journal entry for Thursday, 12
^th
March 1998 is surprisingly brief about it:

Off to Whippoorwill – arrived 10.50 and started sound checks. 11.15 – first half done and dusted before lunch using my 12 string and Will’s Maple Guild 6… lunch at The Old Hickory House – main course brilliant – pork and barbecue sauce on garlic bread with fries and salad $4.95 and Brunswick Stew – not so good – $2.25. Back to finish last 4 and master. Finished by 4 with 6 Honey Browns
.

But I do have a reputation for just getting things done. It looks as if I was more interested in the food and drink than the recording studio but on the next page of the journal it is obvious what an emotional impact the recording had had on me: “I realised it was the anniversary of Mum’s birthday – coincidence or what? Well I made it. BLUES IN GEORGIA; a mountain climbed…JUST STEEL & WOOD”.

There must be a song in that last line.

The interviewer for my second appearance on WRFG was Black Jack, a civilized and gracious conversationalist. He was enthusiastic about the music and there was a good sense of informal communicative equality in our dialogue, with him contributing some of his own musical anecdotes and passions but always with deference to the professional musicians. He remembered sitting around in a place called Mandy’s Carwash listening to Junior Wells and seeing Muddy Waters in Chicago in the Sixties. He regarded Muddy Waters’s
Folk Singer
album with some awe.

I was at the end of my second visit to Georgia and was in the WRFG studio to talk about the CD I cut during my first visit. The interviewer was agreeably surprised that the cover showed me standing in front of the windows of the WRGF Studios, immediately after my first interview there. It was by now a legend that I took four hours to record the album, with one-take tracks, “as it happened” including lunch. Black Jack played contrasting tracks: the drama of “Black Ace” and the intimacy of “I’m Satisfied”; the exciting vocals and heavy slide of “Death Letter” and “Friend of the Devil” sung in an understated, folkie way.

The interviewer responded positively, especially to the slide guitar work and invited me to do a live number, on slide. “Dust My Broom” was the choice. “It’s always better live,” was the verdict so I followed this with
“
Pay Day” and received applause, especially from AJ, the interviewer’s wife. More was to come. I gave the jazz classic, “Stormy Weather” a plaintive country edge using slide. This prompted a celebrity response. Curley Weaver’s daughter, Cora Mae Bryant had been singing along to this and called the radio station to say it was “the best goddamn blues” she had heard.

Curley Weaver, Blind Willie McTell, George Carter, Tampa Red and Kokomo Arnold are all representatives of the early slide tradition in Georgia. Weaver and McTell were musical partners and friends: busking in Nashville and recording in New York (1933). Curley and Cora Mae’s mother lived with McTell and his wife. I felt a connection, through Cora Mae, with these great musicians. A blues festival in honour of Blind Willie McTell is held every year in his birth place, Thomson, Georgia.

Cora Mae has had her own musical career, playing at one time with Tommy McClennan. From the early days The Skunk Band admired McClennan’s version of “Bottle Up and Go”: it’s a good vehicle for his characteristic growly voice. We did a rock version. As a soloist I also had a refined version with finger picking. Considering what Cora Mae said about white men and the blues:

white boys now, they don’t hardly make no blues. Mostly they copy after us. I don’t know of any blues they made. They just can’t do it. They can play it pretty good, but they can’t sing it at all. They just ain’t got the voice for that
(
3)

she paid me a huge compliment. I realised how great a compliment when I read about Michael Gray’s encounter with her.
(4)
He describes how she expressed “disbelief and contemptuous unimpressedness” when he tried to interview her about her father’s life with Blind Willie McTell.

Cora Mae Bryant died in 2008.

Two more live songs: Sleepy John Estes’s “I’d Been Well Warned” and “Vigilante Man” followed, and the interview ended with very sincere wishes for a welcome return. Very sincere. It was good to have such an appreciative interviewer as well as an accolade from a celebrated blues woman.

The commercial break included an advertisement for an anti-KKK rally.

Playing the blues in Atlanta gave me a sense of musical context. It’s not possible to say any one place was the home of the blues but being a large conurbation, Atlanta was a focus for blues musicians – somewhere to play to the biggest audience.

Fat Matt’s is one of those places I dreamt of playing. It’s long-established and reputedly the haunt of Blind Willie McTell, who played there and at other places in the area such as the corner of Peach Tree and Vine, further on. Tom’s video shows it buoyant and increasingly busy, the clients concerned with the serious business of eating but there is an appreciative response, especially to the slide numbers. As I record in the journal: “An old couple really enjoyed themselves, complimenting me several times. Sat right at the front – 2 feet from my feet – direct in the line of fire”.

An easy hospitable venue with free beer for the entertainer – the waitress bringing me good quality traditional Southern food on the strength of my English accent – in retrospect this was the only venue on my Georgia circuit with any atmosphere. The
clientele
were from all walks of life and there were blacks as well as whites. The black people at all the other venues were serving.

The gig at The Voodoo Rooms was less well attended and less lively but in spite of the small audience I received good hospitality: free beer, refried beans, sour cream, black olives and tortillas, and people were genuinely interested in me.

My visit to Blind Willie’s: the 1997 winner of the WC Handy Award: “Blues Club of the Year” was not as a performer but to see John Mooney (Bluesiana
),
considered one of the top two bluesmen in the State. A Son House disciple. My reaction was mixed:

good tight drummer – double bass – he played a lot like Son House but lacked a little firmness, using a thumb pick and heavy rhythms and relying on the old foot, his vocals not being anything like his recordings.

During my second visit to Georgia, in October 1998, I did several gigs and experienced many contrasts. The first one took place at Marietta Crystals, roughly a hundred miles from Newnan: local by American standards! It was an upmarket venue and I received $85, $45 in tips, free drinks and sold five CDs at $12 each. It was hard work – they expected three hours from me. After the Gig from Heaven came the Gig from Desolation Row at Java Blues, a club on the edge of extinction in the same square as Marietta Crystals. The manager was pissed; the assistant manager a space casualty from the Sixties and a man-eating blonde offered to let us take her every which way but loose. It was a veritable zoo and a close escape.

In spite of the flamboyant publicity, the gig a few days later at J.Pauls was not a very nourishing experience either, although the money was better than at Java Blues:

Well big neon sign: International English Recording Star but no punters except a few rednecks listening to country. I had requests hollered from Lynyrd Skynyrd to James Taylor.

Fortunately, things were better at Roosters in Douglasville the next night:

…a really nice blues bar with food and drink which Jerry the owner said was all on the house and the barman Chris made sure of it. Great first set – Jerry asked me for a CD for his jukebox. I cheekily swapped it for a $15 Roosters T-shirt.

Things were less good at Harry’s a couple of nights later, where there were eight customers and Tom had to hassle for his money that was then thrown across the bar. I had received some praise from one of the other musicians: “That’s smokin’ Pete,” he said as he shook my hand but I was appalled at Tom’s treatment – docked $25 for not playing until 1.30 in an empty club. Familiar territory.