Authors: Buddy Guy
When I Left Home (9 page)
“That’s Otis Rush,” said the wife of the man who’d brought me here.
“Hey, Otis Rush!” screamed her husband between songs. “Got me a nigger here who can kick your ass sideways.”
“Do he have a guitar?” Rush shouted from the stage.
“He do indeed!”
“Well, let him come here and we’ll see about him kicking my ass.”
Without those drinks in me, I would never have gone up. With those drinks, though, I flew to the stage.
In those days even the greatest guitarists like Otis Rush sat down when they played. He had bandstands for his musicians with “OR” written on the stands. So when I got up there, I was scared I’d have to read some music. But when I looked at the music stands, they was empty. They was just for show. I let out a big sigh of relief.
“What you wanna play, boy?” asked Rush.
“Guitar Slim,” I said.
“‘Things I Used to Do’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You start,” said Otis. “I’ll come in behind you.”
I started, but because some magic happened, Rush never did play with me on that song. He just let me go. I believe he had to let me go. I believe no force on earth could have kept me from letting go. See, the spirit of Guitar Slim entered my soul—not just the spirit, but the showmanship. I wouldn’t sit down, I couldn’t sit down, and after I played the opening notes I watched myself move to the edge of the stage and jump into the crowd, just as I’d seen Slim do.
People went crazy.
“Who’s that wild nigger?” I heard one guy say. “Where he from?”
“Don’t know,” said someone else, “but he got Otis worried.”
Truth of the matter was that Otis was egging me on, encouraging me to play over my head and behind my back, just the way I’d seen Slim play. I did it, and the more I did it, the louder the crowd.
Looking back at this moment in my life, I know I was possessed. Maybe I was open to being possessed because I was scared and desperate. Maybe I knew my life depended on tearing up this club until folks wouldn’t forget me.
Just as I know that the Guitar Slim spirit entered me, I was also taking in other spirits. They used to call booze and wine “spirits,” and those spirits sure as hell took hold of me. It was also my first time playing in front of a Chicago blues crowd—women who’d been laboring during the day and men who’d been working the mills. These people had their own spirit. They wanted to forget the pain of trucking steel and killing cows. They wanted to get happy in a hurry. They wanted music that would blast ’em into outer space, sounds that would carry them out of this mean ol’ world into another world of good feeling. I felt them saying to me,
Take it up! Take it out! Go wild! Get me higher!
I heard their calls and I wanted to answer them—I wanted to give them what they wanted.
Take it up! Take it out! Go wild! Get me higher!
I heard their calls and I wanted to answer them—I wanted to give them what they wanted.
The spirits were going crazy—but crazy in a good way.
The owner of the club, a white man named Ben Gold, also felt those spirits. He saw how everyone was reacting, got on the phone, and called a man to hurry down to hear me.
That man got there in time to hear the last couple songs I played. By the time he arrived I was still floating on a cloud. I was playing over my head. I was covered with sweat and was drained and hungry, but I felt happier than I’d been since I got off the train at the Dorchester Station. I felt like I finally had my say.
Ben Gold came up to me and said, “Someone’s here to see you.”
“Who?”
“The Mud wants you.”
At first I didn’t understand Gold. In my frazzled mind I thought he said something like “Someone wants to
mug
you.” Back home I’d heard about muggings in Chicago, where a thief hits you over the head and murders you for your money. I didn’t have no money, but I didn’t wanna get murdered.
mug
you.” Back home I’d heard about muggings in Chicago, where a thief hits you over the head and murders you for your money. I didn’t have no money, but I didn’t wanna get murdered.
“Don’t wanna get mugged by no one,” I told Gold.
“Not mugged—
the Mud
,” he explained. “I’m talking about Muddy Waters. He wants to see you.”
the Mud
,” he explained. “I’m talking about Muddy Waters. He wants to see you.”
“Muddy Waters? The Hoochie-Coochie-Man Muddy Waters?” I asked.
“That’s him.”
“Where is he?”
“Just went out to his car. It’s that red Chevy wagon.”
“You sure no one’s gonna mug me?” I had to ask again.
“Positive. Just go out there.”
The station wagon was new and cherry red. I saw a man sitting in the backseat. I’d seen enough pictures to know that the man was Muddy Waters. My heart started hammering. I opened the door and got in. He moved over to give me room. I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.
First thing I noticed about the Mud was his puffy cheeks set high on his face. His dark skin had a glow. His big eyes sparkled and showed me his mood. On this night his mood was happy. His hair, worked up in a doo, was shiny and piled high on his head. He was something to see.
First thing he said was “You like salami?”
“I like anything,” I said.
“I see you’re hungry.”
“Hungry as a horse.”
“Well, I got me a loaf of bread and some good salami. I’ll fix you a sandwich.”
“I’d be much obliged.”
“Where you from?”
“Louisiana.”
“They told me your name, but I done forgot it.”
“Buddy Guy.”
“You a farm boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
He smiled. “I thought so. I know you had to be pickin’ cotton before you ever picked a guitar.”
“Yes, sir. Way before.”
“Like me,” said the Mud. “You pick cotton long enough and you never complain ’bout having to pick the guitar.”
“I never would complain about pickin’ the guitar.”
“You won’t complain none about this salami. Comes from a Jewish delicatessen where they cut it special for me. Have a taste.”
He handed me a sandwich he had made himself. I wolfed it down. Never tasted anything so good.
“Don’t Lightnin’ Slim play down there in Louisiana? Ain’t that his territory?”
“Yes, sir. He was the first I heard.”
“And Eddie Jones,” said the Mud. “He plays ’round Louisiana. I know you heard him.”
“Don’t think so.”
“I heard you was playing one of his songs tonight.”
“Which one is that?”
“‘Things I Used to Do.’”
“That’s Guitar Slim.”
“Eddie Jones is his birth name.”
“Never knew that.”
“He got that long cord. And he likes to jump around. I see you like jumping around too.”
“Just something that happened tonight. I was just about to quit Chicago.”
“You don’t wanna do that.”
“I don’t wanna be hungry.”
“Well, I’m giving you this salami, ain’t I?”
“Yes, sir, you are. And I wanna thank you.”
As Muddy kept talking, I found myself tapping my foot to his words. He was talking alright, but it was more like he was singing. Never had met anyone who turned talking into a song.
“I got enough salami for the two of us. I bought this salami playing the blues. All I do is play the blues. Used to drive a truck, but no more. Just blues work. I know you looking for blues work. I see it in your eyes. Ain’t easy out here. Ain’t all that easy finding work.”
“I was at Chess Records,” I said, “hoping I might find something there. But then I saw how this guitarist called Wayne Bennett could read the music they set in front of him. I can’t do that.”
“Me neither. You don’t gotta worry none about reading music. Long as you can hear it in your head, you okay. You find any kind of work at all?”
“Been looking for months and ain’t found nothing.”
“Well, you sure as hell found something tonight.”
“I did?”
“Ben Gold ain’t no fool. He gonna give you work, not outta no charity, but because he’s seen how you heat up a crowd. When a crowd gets all hot and bothered, they get to drinking.”
“Funny,” I said, “cause tonight was the night I almost called my daddy for a ticket home.”
“Tonight you found a new home.”
I walked back to Shorty’s place on cloud nine.
I was feeling like I’d found more than a new home. I was feeling like I’d found a new father, and his name was Muddy Waters.
Wild Little Nigger from Louisiana
In those early days I was a lost ball in high weeds. After that night at the 708, though, I started to find myself. I saw that the tough Chicago crowds might accept me. But I also saw that I had to put on a show. I just couldn’t go up and do some straight pickin’. I needed an act.
No way I could compete with the guitarists of the day. I’m talkin’ ’bout Earl Hooker, the greatest slide man in the history of slides. No guitarist in his right mind wanted to tangle with Earl. I’m also talkin’ ’bout Otis Rush and Magic Sam and Freddie King. They was masters, they was monsters, they was killers. There never was—and never will be—another time when so many gunslinger guitarists terrorized the streets of any city. Most of them couldn’t read no music, but the ones who could—Matt Murphy and Wayne Bennett—also gigged in Red Saunders’s band at the Regal Theater when the big acts like Billy Eckstine or Della Reese came to town.
I was intimidated, but I was also scheming about how to get the attention I needed. For example, they had these guitar battles on Sunday afternoons in some of the different clubs. The prize was a pint of whiskey. If I just got up there and played toe to toe against Earl Hooker, Hooker would hand me my ass on a platter—I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. But on a night when there was three feet of snow, I hooked up my 150-foot Guitar Slim–styled cord and started playing from inside a car parked outside the bar. The crowd was screaming long before they ever saw me. And when I finally did step through the door, the yelling was so loud that the owner handed me the pint.
“You done won,” he said. “No one gonna get ’em screaming like you.”
Week after week, against the greatest guitarists, I won that pint, though I never got to drink it ’cause Shorty was usually with me. Shorty would have the liquor all gulped down while I was still into singing my first song.
Unlike the other guitarists, I never sat down. I never started playing inside the club. No matter how cold or hot the evening, I’d come marching in, my guitar screaming. I might march into the men’s room and play from there. Hell, I might march in the ladies’ room and play from there. I’d jump off the bandstand and sit at some pretty woman’s table if she was alone. I’d leap up on the bar and play flat on my back. I’d pick the thing with my teeth. I’d put it between my legs and stroke it all sexy. I’d wave it around the room like it was a flag. I’d do any goddamn thing to get them to like me.
Ben Gold helped by booking me back at the 708. Winning those contests also helped. In a few weeks time word was out. Folk started talkin’ ’bout this wild little nigger from Louisiana. Money was still funny—I’d only got a few bucks a night and whatever tips was thrown at me—but I could eat. I could stop thinking about going back home with my tail between my legs. I could see that, for better or worse, I could deal with Chicago.
Never was easy because Chicago was a violent city. The violence wasn’t drive-by like today. It was mainly violence with two cats who knew each other. They may be fighting over money, but usually they be fighting over a woman. I also saw that many of the men were like me: they came from the farms in the South to factories in the city. That’s a rough change. You don’t got your mama, you don’t got your daddy, and you got some boss screaming at you to hit the steel harder or kill the cow quicker. You working crazy hours and, though the pay ain’t bad, you working in a way you ain’t ever worked before. You miss the open sky and fields of golden corn and white cotton. You miss the fresh vegetables from the garden. You ain’t used to no crazy snowstorms and ice-covered streets where you fall on your ass every two or three steps. And the music, though it’s great, is different.
Guitars didn’t begin with no electricity. They was wood and strings. Same goes for the harmonica. Wasn’t no way to amp it up. When we was young, we heard those guitars that are now known as acoustic. They were played soft because they were played in a room or on a porch where three or four or five people were gathered. Didn’t need to be loud. The blues came through them in a beautiful tone—straight from the heart of the guitarist to the hearts of the folk listening. The softness of those notes did something to the soul. I’d say it soothed the soul.
Now come on up to Chicago and—Lord, have mercy—those guitars are plugged into the walls and screaming loud as sirens. The sound is coming out an amplifier. It needs to be loud because the barrooms in Chicago are loud. The folk are happy and excited to be off work, and they wanna talk and tell stories at the top of their lungs. They got energy to release. So if you a musician and wanna be heard, you gotta pump up and project. Baby, you got to shout. That shouting is a thrilling thing to behold. If you went into a Chicago barroom, say, in 1958, you’d be thrilled out of your mind. The electrical music would throw you back on your heels. I loved it so much because, though it was new music, it was also old music. It wasn’t nothing more than country blues jacked up with big-city electricity.
Other books
The Durango Affair by Brenda Jackson
Deltora Quest #4: The Shifting Sands by Emily Rodda
Rowan In The Oak Tree by Page, Ayla
Final Resort by Dana Mentink
Men in the Making by Bruce Machart
The Lottery by Alexandra O'Hurley
Blazing Obsession by Dai Henley
In Place of Never by Julie Anne Lindsey
Flight From Honour by Gavin Lyall