When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

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.

I cottoned to the electricity because it was something I could turn up. Volume did a lot for me. If I couldn’t play better than the guitarists around me, at least I could play louder. I could also play wilder. When I heard the buzzin’ and the fuzz tones distorting the amps, that didn’t bother me none. I figured fuzz tones and distortion added to the excitement of the sound. Didn’t mind jammin’ notes together in a way that wasn’t proper. Notes crashing into each other was another way to get attention. I learned how to ride high on electricity.

The blues electricity got into the people. Sometimes it got them crazy. Mel’s Hideaway, at Roosevelt and Loomis over on the West Side, was a down and dirty club that catered to the rowdy crowd. I played there along with almost every blues picker in Chicago. Freddie King made it famous with the “Hideaway” hit that he borrowed from Hound Dog Taylor, the bottleneck guitarist who used it as his theme song. When it came out in the early sixties, “Hideway” pushed Freddie ahead of the rest of us. Made Freddie a star.

Back in the fifties only the blues-loving crowd knew about the Hideway. Going in, you understood that almost every man was carrying a knife, gun, or razor. The women were also known to carry weapons. The women would cut you quick as the men. The men and the women would be out there grinding up on each other during a slow dance or hollering about being two-timed. You never knew. Being the cautious type, at the first pop of a gunshot I hit the floor. Fortunately, I missed the worst moment at the Hideaway. A waiter who worked there told me the story.

Waiter said, “Man walked and sat at the bar. Bartender said, ‘What it’ll be?’

“‘Two beers and two Scotch chasers.’

“‘You drinking hard,’ said the bartender.

“‘Need to. Feeling down.’

“‘Big trouble?’ asked the bartender.

“‘Wife troubles,’ said the man.

“‘Those the kinda troubles that can get you down.’

“‘Not anymore.’

“The man threw back the beers, threw back the Scotches, and ordered two more. Bartender gave him new drinks and asked, ‘How did you solve your troubles?’

“Man said, ‘I got the answer right here in this paper bag.’

“Man put a paper bag on the bar.

“‘How could a paper bag solve your wife problem?’ asked the bartender.

“‘Go on and look inside,’ said the man.

“Bartender put his hand in the paper bag and felt something hairy.

“‘Pull it out,’ said the man.

“Bartender pulls it out and right there, in his hand, is the bloody, cut-off head of a woman.

“‘Motherfucker!’ the bartender screamed.

“‘Told you I done solved the problem,’ said the man.

By then, though, the bartender had run out of Mel’s Hideway, never to be seen again.

At the Squeeze Club, also called the Bucket of Blood—every big city had a rough bar nicknamed Bucket of Blood—I was playing my guitar when one cat drove an ice pick deep into another cat’s neck. That way you bleed on the inside and there ain’t no mess. When the cat fell to the ground, they dragged him outside and dumped him on the corner. Seeing all this, I got sick to my stomach.

When the cops saw the dead man, they couldn’t have cared less. Didn’t even investigate. To them it meant only one more dead nigger. In those days cops came around for their bribes and nothing else. If the cops ever pulled you over while you was driving, you just handed ’em five bucks. They didn’t even wanna see no driver’s license. Too much trouble.

Then there were enforcers, big guys who worked for the club owners. They’d throw you out if you was raising too much hell. A guy was thrown out of the Sealy Club on Madison. That burned him up so bad, though, that he came back with a gallon of gasoline, poured it all over the front door, and lit the joint on fire. Several people burned to death. In those days there weren’t no laws about safety exits.

There was one exit I didn’t think I’d ever make. This happened back at the Squeeze. Didn’t know a soul at the time. I’d played a couple of songs, and a customer bought me a Schlitz beer. Man come up to me and said, “Nigger, the way you looking at my woman, I should cut your dick off.”

Naturally those are not friendly words. Right away I knew I was in trouble. In truth, I didn’t even know who his woman was.

“You got me mixed up with someone else,” I said. “I ain’t looked at your woman.”

“Don’t lie to me, nigger. You up playing your fancy guitar and you eyeing my woman. You ’bout to get cut.”

I thought fast and said, “Just to show you how I’m feeling, I’m telling you that not only am I not wanting your woman, I’m gonna give you mine. That way you’ll have two women.”

“Say what?”

“I’ll say it again. Keep your woman and take mine.”

Man looked confused, thought it over, and then started to laugh.

“Never have been offered another man’s woman,” he said. “You all right. I’m buying you a beer.”

He bought me a beer and left me alone. I was relieved that he didn’t ask for my woman, ’cause I didn’t have none.

For my first years in Chicago I didn’t mess with no women because even if they would give me a tumble, I had nowhere to do the tumbling. I couldn’t count on Shorty’s place because there was no telling when he’d be coming and going. Didn’t have no money for a boarding room or a bed in a motel. Women were a luxury I couldn’t begin to afford.

The 708 was my first home base. That was where Muddy would come look after me. He kept feeding me that salami and telling me I could play the guitar. He’d just sit there and smile while I played. That smile was better than the few dollars Ben Gold was giving me.

One night in late ’58 B. B. King showed up at the 708. I was so nervous playing in front of him that my hands were trembling. I would have jumped off a building to see B. B., but here he was, coming to see me. Muddy was twenty-three years older than me, and like I said, I looked on him like a father. B. B. is eleven years older, and he was more like a big brother. B. B. is not a rough character like many of the bluesmen. He has a gentle soul and sweet heart. He don’t do no bragging like the other guitar gunslingers. That night when I met him he couldn’t have been nicer.

“People been saying you sound like me, so I had to come in here and listen for myself,” he said.

“B. B.,” I said, “I ain’t good enough to sound like you.”

“Well, you sounding good. All I can tell you is this—use straight picks when you play. You gonna have less trouble with straight picks.”

Lightnin’ Hopkins used finger picks—the kind that actually attach to your fingers—while straight picks (also called flat picks) are those you hold between your thumb and index finger. Well, I took B. B.’s advice, and I use straight picks to this day.

“B. B.,” I said, “I noticed that you never use a slide.”

“Never learned how. Now my cousin, Bukka White, I met up with him when I got to Memphis. Bukka had that bottleneck. He’d slide it over his fat fingers and, man, he’d make the prettiest sound you ever did hear. If he wanted to get even slicker, he’d use a pipe. Well, I’m telling you, Buddy, when he wasn’t looking, I’d try it myself. I wanted that pretty sound, but I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t work the slide no how. All I could was bend the strings. That got me a crying sound, but you got that sound too.”

“Copied from you,” I admitted.

“Hell, I was trying to copy T-Bone Walker and Lonnie Johnson and all the others who got there before me. I wasn’t good enough to sound like them, so I stumbled on something that sounds like me.”

From there we got to talking about the farm. Turned out he was raised as a sharecropper in Mississippi. When B. B. was a kid, he was picking cotton and riding the mule, like I had.

“You’re a good one,” he said. “If I can help you, just let me know.”

Some of the guitar gunslingers wouldn’t help you if you was bleeding to death. They’d see that as one less competitor to worry’bout. But others, like B. B. and Muddy, couldn’t do enough for you. God blessed them with a generous spirit. Those are the guys I was trying to be like.

You can read books that say there was a South Side style to the Chicago blues and then a West Side style, but I say that’s bullshit. We was playing all over. I started out at the 708 on the South Side, but I went to the Squeeze Club on the West Side.

Muddy told me before he ever played regularly in clubs that he and Walter and them would set up on Maxwell Street in Jewtown—this is on the Near West Side—where pushcarts were selling everything from lima beans to lime-green trousers.

“It happened on the weekends,” said the Mud. “You’d get over there around noon to find you a spot on the street. You just started playing. If it rained, you stuck an umbrella over your head and played again. Could be snowing, could be sticky hot—didn’t make no difference ’cause the people, they’d come no matter what. They shopping for junk and jewelry and God knows what. Everyone looking for a bargain. You ain’t ever seen so many people out there as there was on Maxwell Street. You’d make good money on Maxwell Street. I liked it a lot better than being up in these clubs with the guys pulling out their knives and shooting off their pistols. Ain’t no more music on Maxwell Street these days, but if you wanna good suit at a cheap price, go down to Jewtown, Buddy, and tell ’em Muddy sent you.”

When I asked the Mud whether it was better playing on the South Side or the West Side, he laughed and said, “You’d best be playing on every side. Don’t make no difference. Long as they pay.”

When I arrived five minutes late at one West Side Club, the owner said he wouldn’t pay.

“You said you’d be here at 9 p.m.,” the owner told me.

“Took the wrong train,” I explained. “It’s barely past the hour anyway.”

“I ain’t paying.”

I wasn’t about to go back to Shorty’s, so I walked past him into the club, plugged my guitar into my amp, jacked up the volume, jumped on top of the pool table, and started into pickin’. Crowd went nuts. Man said, “No matter, I still ain’t paying you.” Didn’t argue ’cause the tips were good enough to keep me going.

The other thing that kept me going was getting to see the bluesmen I’d always dreamed of seeing.

One night I was dead asleep at Shorty’s. He was shacked up with some woman, so I had the place to myself for a night or two. Good chance to catch up on my sleep. Must have been three in the morning when a knock on the door woke me up. It was Joyce, the lady who’d shown me how the buses and trains worked.

“Buddy,” she said, “hate to wake you, but I remember you saying how you’d give anything to see Jimmy Reed. Well, a friend of mine just got back from Pepper’s where Jimmy’s playing with his whole band.”

That’s all I needed to hear. I jumped out the bed, threw on some clothes, and ran over to Pepper’s on 43rd Street. Must have been a helluva night, because people was laid out on the street, drunk on the music or just plain worn out from dancing. Had to step over one guy just to get in the front door.

“Jimmy Reed here tonight?” I asked the bartender.

“Was here. But they through playing.”

“I’d just like to meet him. I’d just like to see him.”

“You just did.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“When you was walking into the club, that was the man you stepped over.”

I went back out to get me a good look. Bartender was right. Jimmy Reed was passed out cold in front of Pepper’s, his face in the gutter, his red felt fedora all crushed up against his head.