Can't Be Satisfied (55 page)
Read Can't Be Satisfied Online
Authors: Robert Gordon
“Their apartment on Thirteenth had two bedrooms, a dining room, and a kitchen,” R. L. told me. “I hadn’t started to playing out in the public then. I was playing around
home and juke joints, house parties. I’d go over to Muddy’s house about every other night and watch him play.”
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“We used to just do it for kicks”: Voce, “Jimmy Rogers”; O’Neal and Greensmith, “Jimmy
Rogers”; Brisbin, “Havin’ Fun,” p. 22.
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“Aristocrat [Records] was doing all white stuff”: Aldin, Liner notes to
Aristocrat.
For more on Aristocrat
Records, see hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/aristocrat.html.
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“every porter, Pullman conductor”: Brack and Paige, “Chess.”
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“[Leonard] had Goldstein [
sic
], a black guy”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
Sammy Goldberg had previously been a talent scout for Herman Lubinsky’s Savoy label and the West Coast’s Philo / Aladdin labels, among others. “Yeah, I remember Sammy
Goldberg,” Phil Chess told Mary Katherine Aldin. (Aldin, Liner notes to
Aristocrat
.) “He was a New York talent scout, and then he went to the West Coast and then he came to
Chicago. He knew beau-coup of black talent.” As for Lonnie Johnson not wanting to let Muddy use his guitar, he ate crow a couple decades later when the two shared the bill on a European
tour. “Big Lonnie Johnson, he forgot his guitar in New York,” Muddy recalled. “So after they finished that night I said, ‘Lonnie, maybe you remember when I wanted to use
your guitar in the union hall before I started recording and you really didn’t want me to do it.’ Lonnie just looked at the floor. He thought he had the world in a jug and the jug
in his hand. And I mean he was strong! But you don’t supposed to be like that, I don’t think. ’Cause today your day, tomorrow somebody else’s day comin’
around.” (O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”)
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“Hell man, go get him”: Ibid.
91
Westerngrade: The name was confirmed in a period Chicago phone directory by Robert Pruter. The warehouse was at 2201 S. Ford
Avenue.
92
“Let me do one”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
93
“What the hell is he singing?”: Collis,
Chess,
p. 10.
93
“he didn’t know”: Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.
93
“He didn’t like”: Welding, “An Interview.”
93
“Evelyn Aron, she dug me”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
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“couldn’t get one in Chicago nowhere”: Ibid.
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“But I’m the man”: Obrecht, “Life and Times.”
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“Then Chess began to come close”: Welding, “An Interview.”
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“Come down and let’s have coffee”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
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“He did a lot for me”: Golkin, “Blacks, Whites, and Blues” part 1.
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“I could hear that record”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters”; Rowe,
Chicago Blues,
p.
70.
95
“Muddy couldn’t pay his car note”: Brisbin, “Havin’ Fun,” p. 23.
96
“I’d come across many, many women”: Alfred Duckett and Muddy Waters, “We Got a Right to Sing the Blues,”
Chicago Defender,
March 26, 1955.
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“One morning there, Little Walter and myself”: O’Neal and Greensmith, “Jimmy Rogers.”
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“We did a couple of little gigs in Helena”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
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“Muddy came up to the house where the party was”: Lasker interview with Myles Long.
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“I couldn’t leave”: McKee and Chisenhall interview with Muddy Waters.
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promotion at the 708 Club:
Juke Blues,
summer 1997, p. 29.
100
Not pleased at having his star artist help a rival: Leonard also prevented Muddy from playing a session behind Lazy Bill for Chance
Records, exerting the exclusivity clause of their handshake contract.
7: A
LL
-S
TARS
1951–1952
Maxwell Street, Little Walter:
“The union don’t want you to play down on Maxwell Street ’cause it’s scabbing,” said Jimmy Rogers. “They
can’t get any money out of it. But on Saturdays, maybe on Sunday evenings, Walter could make more money on the street than he could at a gig ’cause you’d have thousands of people
walking up and down Maxwell Street. Harry Graves, that was the musicians’ union president, he would have field guys out there watchin’ that stuff. They’d put a fine on you or
blackball you. Walter, we’d quick run down and tell him, ‘The hawk is out!’ ” (Brisbin, “Havin’ Fun.”)
Walter reveled in the openness of playing outside, the closeness of the crowd, the beer on their breath, and the sweat on their clothes. There was always an audience on Maxwell Street, and it
was as much fun when the crowds were small as when the street was teeming with activity. Walter’s friend would drop an extension cord out the window, and Walter plugged in the possibilities.
“I had a heck of a time gettin’ Walter off the corner,” said Muddy. “That boy, I had to chase him out of Jewtown regular. He’d see me coming, and grab his mike and
gone!” (O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”)
“Juke” and Its Aftermath:
In legend, “Juke” was recorded as an afterthought, once the other tracks were done. But the master numbers indicate it would
have been recorded first. Jimmie Lee Robinson, who would later play guitar on some Little Walter sessions, said the song came from an old jazz record. “The recording was
slower,” Robinson told me. “Walter would play it all the time on the windup Victrola. Then he speeded it up and changed the rhythm a little bit.” Jimmy Rogers
attributed the song’s roots to two prior songs, one by Snooky Pryor and Moody Jones titled “Snooky and Moody’s Boogie” and one that Sunnyland Slim used to play as his theme,
“Get up the Stairs, Mademoiselle.” Sales reported at a thousand copies a day were most likely exaggerated; pressings usually began with five hundred, which was probably how many it took
to break even. “Juke” was released on Chess’s new subsidiary, Checker, because radio stations did not like a playlist dominated by one label; companies were establishing multiple
entities under one umbrella.
Dave Myers’s version of the Walter–Junior Wells switch played his band as innocents: “What happened with Junior was unbelievable to me. We was playing seven nights a week, we
had it going. But one night Junior never showed up. People was lining up outside as usual, so we got up and played. At the bar, there stands Little Walter, he was supposed to be with Muddy and they
was supposed to be gone three weeks. [After Walter told him he’d left Muddy,] I said, ‘Look, man, that’s y’all’s business, I need a harp player, can you play with
us?’ And boy, we loaded him up and he loaded us up too.”
Another version of Walter’s departure has him playing at the Zanzibar gig when a woman wanted to hear “Juke.” As was the custom, she enticed them with tips. She laid a quarter
on Muddy’s knee, a quarter on Jimmy’s knee, and then for Walter, all she had was a thin dime. His big head popped, and he pulled out. As Junior Wells pointed out, “She
didn’t even have no money to give Elga.” (O’Neal, “Junior Wells,” p. 16.)
The musical difference between Walter and Muddy was laid bare in some early tracks Walter cut with the Aces. “Boogie,” (which remained in the vault for decades) propelled by the
unmistakable (and inimitable) energy of youth, replaces the jazz horns with guitar parts. “That was like us starting everything new in Chicago,” Dave Myers told me. “Once we got
that swing music where we could utilize it, we was tough boy.” Louis Myers, Walter’s guitarist, told
Living Blues,
“Listen, boy, them chicks fainted, boy. I ain’t
never seen people faint over music. Just stood up and hollered, ‘Whooo!’ And then, boom! When the music is good to them, man, they had what you call a fit. At that time [early and
mid-1950s] we had a sound that the other cats didn’t have. Everywhere we went, boy, they called us hell and destruction.” (Lindemann, “Little Walter and Louis Myers.”)
A Little Walter performance from the early 1950s was remembered by Max Kincaid in Mike Leadbitter’s
Nothing but the Blues
(p. 12):
I only saw Little Walter once and that was back in the early fifties at Dallas, Texas. The crowd that night was sluggish; you know, drunk and talkative and not digging the
music. When Walter came on after the intermission he rode in on a big stud’s shoulders and brought the house down with that amplified harp. Man, the show he put on! It was a night to
remember! In those days they strung a rope down the centre of the dance floor to keep white and coloured [
sic
] apart, but before Walter was through that rope was down and things were
right. Even the law was too hung up on the scene to keep control!
Though just a kid, Junior Wells stepped right into Walter’s place. “Standing Around Crying” is a great cut (even
Billboard
recognized it with four stars, its highest
rating). Wells’s personality comes through clear in his
Living Blues
interview; here he is on the army:
They had us out once, policin’ up the area and they told us, “I want you to fall down on ’em and get those cigarette butts up.” And they started
gettin’ down on their knees on them rocks at Camp Robertson. I stood up and I said, “No, you’re not talkin’ to me, if you’re tellin’ me that I gotta get on
my knees and pick up some cigarette butts. I’m not gon’ do that.” So, they put me on restrictions. . . . I just right flatfooted told ’em that I’m not a soldier.
I’m a musician. That’s it. (O’Neal, “Junior Wells”)
There’s loads of good stuff in the article.
Big Walter “Shaky” Horton replaced Junior. His technique was more traditional than Little Walter’s and Junior’s, less reliant on the amplifier than on his own
manipulations. Big Walter liked his nip, and he’d often boast that he was a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus’s manservant. He is probably the harp player on Muddy’s
January 1953 session. Wherever and whenever “She’s All Right” is heard, the record transforms the walls to cinder block, thickens the air with cigarette smoke and spilled whiskey,
dims the lighting to the glow of beer signs and weak Christmas lights, and places you absolutely on the South Side.
Otis Spann:
In Belzoni, Mississippi, Otis Spann learned well from a local, Friday Ford, and won a talent contest at the Alamo Theater at the age of eight. “Mr. Alamo, he
used to send for me to play for the vaudevilles,” Spann told Peter Guralnick. “Man, I had a little tuxedo and hat, it was really something.” Spann claimed to have held regular
club gigs by the time he was fourteen. He also claimed, however, to have served in the army for five years beginning in 1946, ranking as a second lieutenant upon discharge. Blues researcher Alan
Balfour, after a correspondence with the U.S. Army National Archives, found no Spann enlisted at that time; several musicians, in fact, remember the bluesman at the piano in various Chicago clubs
during those years.
By the late 1940s, he’d earned a regular gig at the Tick Tock Lounge, Thirty-seventh and State Street, leading a large band that included horns. “I saw Spann in the Tick Tock,”
Billy Boy Arnold said. “He was standing up playing like Little Richard, and I said that’s the greatest piano player I ever heard in my life. A few months later he was with Muddy and I
wasn’t surprised because he was great.”
Jimmy Rogers heard about Otis from West Side pianist Johnny Jones, who knew that Spann’s band had broken up. “We needed a piano player,” Rogers told John Brisbin. “Spann
was playin’ with [guitarist Morris Pejoe] over on the West Side of Chicago. Morris Pejoe had a day job and Spann would just be fussing around.” (Brisbin interview with Jimmy Rogers.)
Spann said, “Muddy kept putting me off, putting me off — ‘Yeah, we’ll see about it’ — and finally he told me to come down one night. I played, they signed me up.
(Standish, “Muddy Waters in London” part 2.) Once in, Spann became something of the Chess’s house pianist, playing sessions with Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’
Wolf (note “Forty-Four”), Chuck Berry, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Rogers, and Little Walter. “When I was growing up,” Muddy’s granddaughter Cookie said with a laugh, “I
thought that Otis Spann was Muddy’s brother.”
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Muddy left his day job: Guralnick,
Home,
p. 69.
105
summer of 1950: Walter began recording in June of 1950, Jimmy in August. Though the date of Walter’s session is unspecified,
the time has been determined by the known dates of the master numbers that surround it.
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Jimmy recorded all his material at the end of Muddy’s sessions: The day Muddy cut “Louisiana Blues” and
“Evan’s Shuffle,” he and the band also backed Jimmy on two cuts (“Going Away Baby” and “Today, Today Blues”); the workday was not concluded. Muddy stepped
aside, and the band slipped back into their musical overalls to play behind Johnny Shines.
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“Muddy was never a binding man”: Aldin, Liner notes to
Jimmy Rogers.
106
“I know when you make ’em a star”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
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“Bo was a nice boy”: Author interview with Pinetop Perkins.
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“Seven nights a week”: Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.
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“My first memory of Muddy”: Charles “Bang Bang” Williams shared these stories about his childhood: “One
day my girlfriend at school wouldn’t give me no notebook paper. I put a Hopalong Cassidy ring on my finger and I jumped on her. The teacher called my mother, and they whupped me. And one day
I told a young boy to get his ass back in the house at Forty-third and Lake Park. I didn’t know Muddy was sitting in the car, but he didn’t whip me, he made me stay in the house.”
Muddy found advantages, too, in the young sons. “When I was about ten, eleven years of age,” Charles remembered, “I had girlfriends and they’d come over and he’d give
them a dollar if they’d kiss him. And around that same time, I remember him putting me on his knee and teaching me how to drive.”