Traveling Soul (5 page)

Marion's struggle shaped my father. As he watched her battle to do something as simple as survive, depression became part of his mind. But he had another role model in Annie Bell. She lived in relative opulence because of her work as a reverend. From her, he learned that one way to have what his mother didn't—success, money, power—was to possess something special, something mystical even, something that set him apart the way Spiritualism set Annie Bell apart.

His family hoped he'd become a preacher, but he knew from a young age that was something he'd never be. Other ways of being special existed though, and he didn't have to look far to find them. They juked all night in the clubs down the street and shook the walls at the church meetings he attended. Their voices came tinny from the radio speakers like magic every night and crept through the phonograph needle into his wondering ears each day. Muddy Waters was special. Louis Armstrong was special. John Lee Hooker was special. Sam Cooke was special. They held a magical power that seemed as strong as religion itself—music. Like many great preachers, musicians attracted all the things that seemed impossible to attain for a ghetto child insecure of his looks and his poverty—money, fame, power, even sex.

As America eased toward the innocuous 1950s, flush with returning soldiers and financially solvent again, the country celebrated and convalesced. The celebration for Negroes, however, was muted. They still chafed under an oppressive homeland for which they had just fought and died by the thousands. They also fought, as always, for their rights.

In 1944, a woman named Irene Morgan refused to give up her seat on an interstate bus in Virginia, violating Jim Crow laws. She was arrested, and by '46 her case rose to the US Supreme Court with the help of Thurgood Marshall, legal counsel of the NAACP. Right around Kirby's birth, the Court struck down the Virginia law as unconstitutional. The ruling prompted a new civil rights organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to launch a series of nonviolent protests challenging segregation laws on interstate public transport, setting the stage for the great bus boycott that would begin the civil rights movement a decade later. Of course, my father didn't know about CORE or Thurgood Marshall yet, and he felt no personal gain from the ruling. After all, no one complied with it, and the federal government either would not or could not enforce it. Even so, the violent changes that would shape his life stirred once again, with two more key players stepping into the spotlight.

Demonstrations didn't matter to him yet—Dad had fallen in love with the radio. Later in life, he'd say, “Aside from the gospel music in the church all I'd hear was the R&B stations … I got nothing but Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and all these guys.” He couldn't avoid it. In the 1940s and '50s, Chicago had DJs like Holmes “Daddy-O” Daylie, whose
Jazz from Dad's Pad
aired on WAIT, and Al Benson, “a whiskey-drinking Democratic precinct captain” who slogged out ten hours on the air every day. Several stations interspersed Negro DJs playing R&B with Greek, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, and other ethnic shows, filling my father's head with strange, exotic combinations of sound. No one wielded more influence, however, than Herb Kent “the Cool Gent.” Kent began as a country and western jockey, but his doo-wop and R&B playlists would come to form the backbone of many a Chicago musician's sense of rhythm, taste, and style, my father's included.

The radio stations were extensions of Chicago's jumpin' and jivin' club scene, and though Dad was too young for these clubs, they imprinted the fabric of his world. By the end of the 1940s, Chicago had become arguably the best city in America for live jazz, with at least seventy-five clubs on the South Side alone. At places like the Club DeLisa, one could see Fletcher Henderson's band, featuring a young Sun Ra (when he was still known as Sonny Blount), as well as blues singers like Big Joe Turner, Gatemouth Moore, and Dr. Jo Jo Adams, a flamboyantly dressed man who performed X-rated blues numbers in top hat and tails and did a knock-kneed dance Chuck Berry would make famous a decade later.

During my father's youth, Chicago also flowered with a cultural and artistic explosion much like the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The Chicago Black Renaissance, which began in the '30s, reshaped American literature with authors like Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Walker. The accompanying musical explosion inspired a young generation including Curtis, Ramsey Lewis, Herbie Hancock, and Maurice White.

In addition to so much enticing secular music, Dad saw firsthand the power of gospel music. At Union Hall near Forty-Eighth and State, he watched bands like the Pilgrim Travelers, the Bells of Joy, and the Staple Singers, as well as Sam Cooke, who would profoundly influence his direction in life. He'd also never forget watching Archie Brownlee, singer of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, dart up and down the aisles like a man possessed, pouring sweat and howling until it seemed the sky would split and Christ Himself would appear.

These singers inspired my father to try his own voice at gospel music, and he'd soon have the chance. Around this time, Annie Bell had saved enough money to rent a small basement at 2310 West Maypole Avenue, where she set up her first church. And there again was the lesson—because of her mystical power, Annie Bell could afford not only food, clothing, and a house, but also her own place of business. If young Curtis had any question about what he wanted to do with his life and how it could help him achieve the control he desired, he wouldn't have to wait long for the answer.

“I know I believe in the spirit,
Traveling Soul was alone, a part of me,
Out in this world, it don't take your eyes too long to see.”

—“S
WEET
E
XORCIST
”

C
hicago, 1950
—Down in a dank basement on Maypole Avenue, forty or fifty people crammed into neatly lined rows of chairs facing a small pulpit. They met every Sunday to chase spiritual ecstasy, arriving impeccably dressed, the men in double-breasted suits, the women in felt hats with grosgrain ribbons. Service commenced with an early morning Bible study followed by Reverend A. B. Mayfield's sermon from nine until noon, during which she'd recount the stories of Jacob, whose brothers sold him into slavery, and Abraham, who nearly slaughtered his own son, and Job, whom Almighty God persecuted the way a cat toys with a bug. She wove these parables into the flow of her congregants' lives—few audiences could identify with Job more than a room full of Negroes—and as she spoke, she cast a spell over the room. The old folks swayed and murmured; the children, of course, dropped like little flies, bored straight to sleep.

Annie Bell didn't celebrate Christian mass, so at some point she called on her spirit guide with rhythmic incantations that snaked around the
basement like frankincense. As she channeled the unutterable essence of the divine, her congregation erupted with testifying shouts and moans. They stomped and sang, the spirit alighting where it would—now here, now there.

On street level, pedestrians swaddled in their Sunday best strolled by the sky-blue building. The only clues to what went on below their feet were the words painted in big white letters on the front window: Traveling Souls Spiritualist Church.

It wasn't big, but it was hers. In the twenty-odd years since she had fled Jim Crow's clutches, Annie Bell had clawed her way to self-sufficiency, a miraculous feat for a Negro woman at the time. She was slight of frame and just over five feet tall, but Jesus said it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains. If anyone could move a mountain, Annie Bell could. She even earned enough money to buy a little house in a racially mixed neighborhood at 2214 W. Division, where she continued her work as a seer. Most of Traveling Souls' congregation visited her during the week, and her house was usually lousy with people. Apart from Mercedes, Charles, and their children, at any given moment one might see clients, relatives, latchkey kids, and the occasional moocher hoping to snag a free meal.

Despite so many people surrounding her, my great-grandmother had few friends. She cultivated an aloofness, preferring her own company to that of others. She did most things in her bedroom, and to deal with her usually required doing it in her room, on her terms. Sometimes she'd come out and mingle with the constant stream of visitors, but as soon as she grew tired of socializing, she'd disappear without ceremony into the sanctuary of her room. She passed these traits unchanged to my father.

Her detachment gave her a kind of power. It kept her accessible yet distant, in the mold of all great religious healers. She projected that air, self-stylized as it was, and the multitude packed in every day to breathe it in, bodies weaving around each other, hemmed in by piles of junk. Annie Bell was a hoarder, and she crammed the house full of trinkets from Riverview. Pink and yellow policy slips sat in messy stacks on her dinner table, and Aunt Carolyn earned many a rebuke for playing with
the pretty slips. “Don't touch that! Put that down,” Annie Bell would hiss, with good reason. Policy formed an important part of her income.

In those days, policy was a little like the modern lottery and a lot like a gambling racket. Number runners prowled the neighborhood, marking down wagers in little books kept in their pockets. At the end of the day, whoever picked the right number won a piece of the pie. Annie Bell had a knack for picking the right number. She claimed they came to her in dreams, which was easier to believe after she won again, and again, and again. She'd stash the cash in wads under her mattress, using it to fund Traveling Souls, make house payments, and splurge on a new car just about every year. Annie Bell loved Buicks.

For Aunt Judy, the constant commotion and clutter created a chaotic living space, made worse by the volatile personalities housed within. Annie Bell passed on her raging temper to her children, as Marion had learned with Mannish. Mercedes exceeded them both in cruelty. She and Annie Bell often shook the house with screaming spats, each on opposite sides of a room shouting in no uncertain terms what would happen if the other put so much as a toe over
this line
.

Meanwhile, every new weekend brought a trip from Marion with my father, Carolyn, Kirby, and Kenny in tow, adding more bodies to the stew. Annie Bell usually hid Judy when my grandmother arrived, so Marion rarely got a chance to see her daughter. Worse, Marion still struggled mightily to keep food on the table, while Judy always had new clothes and plenty of food. Perhaps inevitably, Curtis, Carolyn, and Kenny looked at her as the
have
, while they were the
have-nots
. The constant shuffling between the
have-nots
of Marion's hovel and the
haves
of Annie Bell's house further ingrained the message in Dad's mind—possessing a special talent earned control, and control brought security.

Curtis and the rest of the kids sometimes stayed the weekend at Annie Bell's. It was the only time they got a decent meal. Sundays, they'd slink out of bed rubbing sleepy eyes and pad toward the kitchen where Mercedes's husband, Charles, prepared breakfast. He worked over the food poetically, pots and pans clanging, smoke curling through the house carrying the savory smells of scrambled eggs, steamed rice, hot
biscuits, crispy bacon, fried sausage, and steak smothered in tangy gravy. He sang spirituals while he cooked as if they added seasoning, and when he set the food out for a feast just like you'd see on television, it seemed God Himself had been listening to his songs.

After breakfast, a sinister Sunday ritual followed. As Aunt Carolyn remembers, “It wasn't a pleasant home, because every Sunday morning, you had the big alley fight, cuss-out fight before we went to church. Cuss all the way to the church, and then after church, you'd come home and cuss all the rest of the day.” Only in church would the cussing cease, as no one wanted to cuss in front of the Bible. My father watched these fights, and even though he possessed a much cooler temperament, at times he'd repeat them in his romantic relationships later in life. If Annie Bell's congregants knew about their reverend's unholy temper, however, they didn't seem to mind. They showed up dutifully to Sunday services, and Traveling Souls thrived.