Can't Be Satisfied (56 page)
Read Can't Be Satisfied Online
Authors: Robert Gordon
107
Drummer Elga Edmonds: “Elga” is confirmed by phone books and also by the research of D. Thomas Moon, who befriended
members of Elga’s family and met a nephew named for his uncle: Elga Edmonds. (Moon, “Elga Edmonds.”)
108
“scufflin’, sleepin’ in cars”: Brisbin, “Havin’ Fun,” p. 26.
109
“All that stuff came to me”: Welding, “An Interview.”
110
“Evans Shuffle”: Sam Evans hosted a show on WGES. The few other prominent blues deejays in Chicago were Al Benson, also
on WGES, Jack L. Cooper on WSBC, Herb Kent on WVON, and, later, McKie Fitzhugh on WOPA.
110
“I tried to give Tampa a few dollars”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
111
“My drummer couldn’t get that beat”: Golkin, “Blacks, Whites, and Blues” part 1, p. 27.
111
“You sure worked for your money”: Cushing, “Behind the Beat.”
111
“Blues is nothing but the truth”: Guralnick,
Home,
p. 227.
112
“Leonard calling people a motherfucker”: Trynka interview with Jimmy Rogers.
An example of Leonard’s intermediation in the studio is preserved in the false starts that precede “Blues Before Sunrise,” from Muddy’s October 1958 session. Before Muddy
can deliver his second line, Leonard breaks in. “Hold it, Muddy,” he says three times. “Say, Guitar Tucker, when he said, ‘The blues before sunrise,’ you ought to come
in with a figure after that.” Leonard sings an
example of what he means, not great, but enough to inform Tucker, who, once the track is under way, livens that spot in
each verse.
“Chess would sit there with his eyes closed in the booth,” said Odie Payne. “If it hit him, he’d say, ‘That’s it, man,’ but I heard him say many times,
‘Man, you got to make me feel it.’ The man would say, ‘I doing the best I can,’ and [Leonard] would say, ‘Yeah, but I don’t feel nothing.’ He’d work
you to death.” (Golkin, “Blacks, Whites, and Blues” part 2, p. 27.)
In June of 1959, Leonard didn’t hear what he wanted as Muddy began “Take the Bitter with the Sweet”; studio tapes captured their exchange:
“Preach the son of a bitch,” Leonard told Muddy.
“I can’t preach on the first beginning, baby. Can’t talk shit on the first beginning.”
“Talk shit like I’m your baby.”
“I got to get into it, baby, first,” said Muddy.
Leonard admonished him. “Got to get into it from the first word. It’s not a broad that you can sit there for two hours and bullshit with her.”
“I make her hot and then get her. Make her hot and get her, baby.” Then Muddy turned to the band. “Slap it good. Slap it behind.”
The master take came next.
113
“The Muddy Waters blues”: Francis Clay, who would replace Elga Edmonds by decade’s end, was playing jazz at the
Heat Wave, a large club. “Muddy’s band played there on our off night. The owner told me to come in when they played, and they had more people on an off night than we had the rest of the
week!”
114
“This is where the soul of man never dies”:
Palmer, Deep Blues,
p. 233.
115
“At one time there was a wide gulf”: Gart,
First Pressings Vol.
2.
115
major labels began jockeying for position: Paramount first revived Okeh Records, dormant a decade, in the spring of 1951 to compete
in the R&B world. Soon after, Paramount wrested Okeh’s distribution from several of its company-owned branches and delivered it to area independents.
115
“We were sitting down”: Trynka interview with Jimmy Rogers.
115
“We would build it and then”: Walters, Garman, and Matthews, “Jimmy Rogers.”
115
“At the time we called it the jam”: Trynka interview with Jimmy Rogers.
116
“If you couldn’t play that song”: O’Neal and Greensmith, “Jimmy Rogers.”
116
“All my best records”: Lindemann, “Little Walter and Louis Myers.”
116
“He said, ‘What’s that?’ ”: Brisbin interview with Jimmy Rogers.
117
“Little Walter flashes”: Gart,
First Pressings Vol.
2.
117
“When we got back to the hotel”: Brisbin interview with Jimmy Rogers.
118
Shaw Artists: The agency was founded in early 1949 by Billy Shaw, who was working as a booking agent for Charlie Parker and other
bebop artists; he’d been VP of Moe Gale Agency and resigned to start Shaw Artists. (Howlin’ Wolf was with the Gale Agency in the 1950s.)
118
“You wasn’t at no blues joint”: O’Neal, “Junior Wells,” p. 12.
118
“from one end of the line”: Ibid., p. 119.
119
“I raised Junior Wells”: Gelms interview with Muddy Waters.
119
“Every time we’d look around”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
119
“We was running in and out of town”: Walters, Garman, and Matthews, “Jimmy Rogers.”
120
“If somebody can shine”: Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.
8: H
OOCHIE
C
OOCHIE
M
AN
1953–1955
Muddy and Wolf:
Not only did Muddy host Wolf, but he also helped him get a band together. Drummer Earl Phillips remembered Muddy coming to his gig: “Muddy came by there
one evening and says to me, ‘How about getting with my man and help him, and you can go somewhere?’ Just like that, Muddy did. I goes over on Greenwood Street to see Howlin’ Wolf.
This was in 1954. And he got to talking and he decided he wanted me to work with him. So we started rehearsing, sometimes in Muddy Waters’s basement because Spann used to be with us
sometimes.” (Cushing, “Behind the Beat.”) In the early 1960s, Little Smokey Smothers played with Wolf and also sat in with Muddy on guitar. “Somebody would always tell Wolf
and he’d say, ‘I heard you been hanging with them Muddy Waters boys. Them ain’t nothing but drunks. I don’t want my guys hanging with them guys.’ ” Calvin Jones,
who also played with Wolf for several years before joining Muddy, doesn’t recall Wolf ever making such demands. The documentation of the union conflict between Muddy and Wolf was found by
Scott Dirks in the papers of Local 208, archived in the Music Research Department of the Harold Washington Library in Chicago. I know of two Wolf biographies and two documentaries in the works.
Arc Publishing:
When short on money, many artists — not understanding the long-term value of their work or unwilling to gamble that its value would rise — sold their
rights to the publisher. Marshall told me: “Publishers often helped out their clients by buying songs from them. Goodman bought some songs from Memphis Slim. There are letters in the file
from Memphis Slim thanking him. Arc had bought the Jimmy Reed catalog, and years and years later they did a lawsuit against Arc. So we hired a detective to find Jimmy Reed’s lawyer from that
time, we knew his name. He’s retired in Florida, gives us a sworn affidavit that not only the Reeds needed the money, the IRS was going to take everything, they were thrilled, they were
kissing feet for being able to get the money.”
Arc Music’s original domain was only international rights and versions of Chess artists’ songs remade by people outside the company. Domestic publishing stayed within Chess; that is,
instead of Chess paying Arc and Arc paying the Chess artists, the record company paid itself. The artists received nothing, or nothing like what they were supposed to receive, until they began
filing lawsuits against Arc in the 1970s.
Band Personnel:
Little George Smith was soon to be George “Harmonica” Smith. In the early 1950s, while working as a film projectionist in Itta Benna, Mississippi,
Smith discovered that he could remove the machine’s amplifier and speaker and play his harmonica through them; on his own, he’d developed a style similar to Little Walter’s. He
was leading a little band, but he leapt at the chance to join Muddy Waters, quitting his day job as a janitor at the Twentieth-Century Theater. Days,
Spann went through the
drill with George Smith, and they were so busy at night that he was quickly on top of the songs.
Joining Muddy’s band was the fulfillment of James Cotton’s dreams. “I was married to this woman, Ceola,” he told me, “and she bought me a record player and every
record that Little Walter and Muddy had ever made. She used to get up in the morning time, write me a note, leave me ten dollars on the record player. ‘Learn this song.’ She knew
Muddy’s songs better than I did. And when I’d play, she’d say, ‘Well, you missed that part there.’ ” Ceola’s regimen served Cotton well; when he joined
Muddy, he was instructed to play the harp parts as they’d been recorded. “The blues didn’t get too low-down for us,” Cotton continued. “We didn’t stand back from
any musicians.” In June of 1955, Muddy battled Ray Charles, the blind keyboardist who took his blues roots in a more jazzy, orchestral direction, at the Trianon Ballroom, a lavish South Side
dance palace that had only recently begun allowing black patrons to enter. The house was packed, the gate was a record, and the battle was a tie. The Trianon scheduled a rematch. The verse James
Cotton contributed to “Rocket 88” begins: “V-8 motor and this smart design . . .”
Music was changing in 1955 and Muddy’s lineup was affected. Through the rock and roll of Bill Haley and Little Richard, the saxophone was enjoying a revival, honking and shouting its
modernity. (Haley’s 1956 hit, “See You Later Alligator,” was written and originally performed by Chess’s Bobby Charles and brought Arc a substantial payment.) Straight
blues, deep blues, no longer satisfied a full house. “We was playing them black dances and it’s kind of hard just to play a dance with a harmonica and guitars,” said Muddy.
“I added on a horn or so, and we could play at a club and dance, too.” (O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”) Muddy went through several players — Bob Hadley,
Eddie Shaw, a Memphis player named Adolph “Billy” Duncan, J. T. Brown, Earl Brown, Bobby Fields, and Marcus Johnson, who also doubled on bass; Johnson played neither instrument
expertly, but he kept Muddy’s cars washed. Bob Hadley was not a good traveler; his legs tended to swell. He soon became a plainclothes detective and slept nights in his own bed.
122
“The piano is made for both hands”: Hentoff, Liner notes to
Otis Spann.
122
“I put a little swing into [the blues]”: Cushing, “Behind the Beat.”
123
“There was quite a few people around singing the blues”: WKCR newsletter.
123
“I was in the men’s house”: Robert Frank Gelms,
Illinois Entertainer,
June 1983.
124
“Oh man, the people went crazy”: Ibid.
124
“He done it two or three times that night”: Brisbin interview with Jimmy Rogers.
124
“Hoochie Coochie Man”: Benjamin Filene, in
Romancing the Folk
(pp. 105–106), offers this interpretation of
“Hoochie Coochie Man” ’s success:
To these migrants, Dixon’s songs offered some of the same consolation that Waters’s statements of yearning in “I Feel Like Going Home” had
provided for earlier settlers. Joining familiar down-home holdovers with new urban styles, the tunes achieved formally the sort of juxtaposition that the migrants themselves were grappling
with in their own lives. To hear evocations of their southern customs in the context of the
vibrantly urban sound appealed to their longing for all they had left
behind and their eagerness to merge the old and new. . . . Dixon’s songs could appeal to newcomers from the South, but his language and imagery suggest that he was primarily speaking
for and to migrants who had been settled in the North longer.
124
“We’re so happy with Muddy”: Gart,
First Pressings Vol. 4,
p. 20.
125
four thousand copies: Ibid., p. 21.
128
Muddy’s move brought Leola: Cookie remarked on the relationship between Muddy, Geneva, and Leola: “Geneva really accepted
my grandmother. I was raised that that was our network. Geneva was my grandmother’s best friend. She would have Bo or anyone go pick her up. They would spend the weekends together, do the
shopping. When Muddy really started out there cheating and stuff, that’s who she would confide in. They were really good friends. If Muddy was going out of town, Leola would stay with Geneva.
I never saw them have bad words toward each other. Muddy would go by Leola’s and she would cook for him. They had a competition of cooking.” Muddy’s move to the South Side brought
Geneva’s mother, known as M’dear, to Forty-first and Greenwood. Geneva and Cookie visited her regularly. “Muddy always made sure that M’dear had whatever she needed,”
said Cookie. “Not that he would deliver it, but he would have someone to do it.”
128
“I had Chicago sewed up”: Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.
128
“I know the peoples thought we hated”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
129
“I’d say this is a song for Muddy”: Dixon with Snowden,
I Am the Blues,
p. 149.
130
It was yellow and green: Some people recall the first car Leonard gave Muddy as red.
130
“Chess would get him a car”: Trynka interview with Jimmy Rogers.
131
“So I got him home”: Brisbin, “Havin’ Fun,” p. 25.