Jailhouse Blues - After I Left Home - When I left home: my story (2015)

When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

Jailhouse Blues

I been in jail a bunch of times—but never for nothing I did. Went to get Junior out.

It got so bad that one time the cop—a man I knew well—came into where I was playing and put the handcuffs on me.

“What I do?” I asked.

“It ain’t for what you did. It’s for who you know.”

“You can’t arrest me for who I know.”

“I ain’t arresting you—just making sure you don’t get away.”

We went outside, where he put me in the squad car.

“Who’s this about?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Your brother.”

“I was playing with my brother Phil up in the club when you came to get me.”

“Not your blood brother,” said the cop, “your soul brother.”

“If you talkin’ ’bout that crazy motherfucker Junior Wells, I ain’t responsible for what he did.”

“He says you responsible for everything he did. Besides, ain’t no one gonna bail him out except you. And we don’t want him. We tired of him.”

“What do I gotta do to get him out?”

“Give me two hundred and fifty dollars and I give you the pink release papers.”

Oh Lord, I thought to myself, here we go again.

I forked over the cash. By the time we arrived at the station, I had the papers that would let me take Junior home. I went down to the cell where they was holding him. Man, it smelled like a whiskey sill. Junior was inside, cuddled up in a corner, snoring like he didn’t have a problem in the world.

Man guarding him was a brother who must have weighed 350 pounds. He was playing with a chain that held a key.

“Brother,” I said. “I came to get Junior.”

“You got papers?”

“I do.”

“They pink?”

“Pink as pussy.”

“Now I need to see something green,” he said.

“I already gave the man two hundred fifty dollars.”

“So it won’t mean nothing for you to give me fifteen.”

I reached in my pocket and found only five.

“My last five,” I said. “Five’s got to be good enough.”

“I’ll take your five, but you go in that cell and get me another ten. I know your man’s gotta be holding ten.”

“What if he ain’t holding shit?”

“Then you sleep next to him in the cell.”

“You gonna lock me in there?”

“One way or the other, I’m gonna get me my fifteen dollars.”

“Hold on, good brother,” I said. “You best come in here with me. I don’t want you out there and me inside. I ain’t gonna be locked up with this man.”

Guard chuckled, but I still wouldn’t step foot in that cell until he was by my side.

We went in together—I was still nervous about the cell door locking behind me—and I right away started poking and shouting at Junior.

“Junior!” I screamed. “Wake up, man, you gotta give me ten dollars so I can pay this man.”

Coming out of some dream or nightmare, Junior mumbled, “I ain’t giving you nothing.”

“I paid two hundred fifty dollars to get you out of here,” I said.

“Well, go get your money so we can buy us some drinks.”

Even the big bad guard had to laugh at that. At the same time, that didn’t stop him from making me search Junior, who, it turned out, had about two dollars in change. The guard took it all and I took Junior home.

The thing that made the bumpy ride with Junior Wells worthwhile was the music. Even though we never made big money as a team and even though no one could never convince Junior that he wasn’t gonna replace James Brown, our chemistry was nothing they could make in a science lab. I believe it was magical.

We argued like a married couple. He wasn’t a guitarist and I was no harmonica player, but we could both sing. I loved his singing more than I did my own, and I let him sing all he wanted. After all, he’d been in Muddy’s band and I hadn’t. He had seniority. But in my mind that didn’t mean I should shoulder more of the costs.

For example, I bought our first band van. When I’d run it into the ground, I figured it was time for him to buy the next one. He refused. So I refused to play. So he changed his mind and bought the van, but then he started drinking more. When he passed out cold from too much whiskey or wine, I’d snap his picture and put it up in the club where he could see it. He didn’t care. When the doctor told him he couldn’t smoke due to his punctured lung, I hid his cigarettes. “Don’t matter,” he said. “Next break I’ll run out and buy another pack.” And that’s just what he did.

After Hoodoo Man Blues, I’d say the next best record I did with Junior was Buddy and the Juniors. That came through Michael Cuscuna, a music producer.

We were talking one day in Philadelphia when I happened to say, “You know, Michael, when I go on stage with those rock cats and their Marshall amps piled up high as a mountain, they got a volume you can hear from here to Alabama.”

“Do you like that, Buddy?” he asked.

“I like it. I’ve always liked loud, but sometimes it gets to where you can’t feel nothing but the loud. You ain’t feeling your soul.”

“Would you be willing to make a record that went the other way?”

“What you mean?”

“I mean,” said Michael, “an acoustic record. No bass player, no drummer—say, just you and Junior and maybe a piano player.”

“Who you got in mind?”

“How about a jazz piano player like Junior Mance? That way we could call it Buddy and the Juniors.”

I had to laugh. And I had to say that I thought it was a good idea.

“If you can pull it off,” I told Michael, “I’m there.”

Michael pulled it off. Me and the Juniors met in New York City.

We started off playing some of the more famous blues like “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Five Long Years.” Junior Wells was in fine form, and Junior Mance was right on time. With no electricity anywhere, it felt great to hear all those empty spaces around me. I could breathe real good and easy.

Things got so good and easy that when Junior Mance was sitting up in the control booth, me and Junior Wells began making up shit on the spot. Those songs—“Talkin’ ’bout Women Obviously,” “A Motif Is Just a Riff,” and “Buddy’s Blues”—were caught on tape and became part of the final album put out by Blue Thumb Records.

By 1971, at age thirty-five, in addition to my girls with Phyllis, I was the father of three other girls—Charlotte, Carlise, Colleen—and three boys—George, Gregory, and Geoffrey—all with Joan. We was living in the two-flat on the South Side. Because I was on the road so much, the marriage was hurting bad. I provided but not nearly in the style that Joan wanted. She wanted more—and I could understand it. The kids wanted more time with me—and I could understand that too. When I got off the road, I was tired. When I played in the city, I didn’t get home till the wee hours of the morning. Joan and the kids was living in one world and I was in another.

One incident still burns into my brain. Happened after I had bought a cherry-red El Dorado with a white canvas top. I looked at the Caddie like a beautiful woman—curvy and sexy as hell. Couldn’t wait to get in it and drive. Everyone who knew me saw me riding in my El Dorado, proud as I could be.

Well, one night, a month or so after I’d bought the car, I was up in the bed asleep when something told me to open my eyes. I woke up just in time to keep my wife from stabbing me with a letter opener. I got it away from her, so no harm was done, but of course I had to know why she was crazy mad.

“I don’t need to tell you,” she said. “You can tell me.”

“I would if I could,” I said. “But I can’t. I honestly don’t know.”

“Bullshit. You got guilt written all over your face.”

She stormed out, and I still didn’t know. For a week she gave me the cold shoulder. Wouldn’t say a word. Finally, we got into it.

“Last Tuesday,” she said, “two different girlfriends of mine saw you in Hyde Park riding ’round with some white woman.”

“Not me they didn’t.”

“You got a cherry-red El Dorado with a white canvas top?”

“You know I do.”

“Well, a black man in a car that exact model and color was all over this white woman in Hyde Park.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“How can you prove it wasn’t you?” she asked.

“How can you prove it was?”

“You playing with me.”

About then our daughter Charlotte, who was eleven, spoke up. “Last Tuesday Daddy came home early and went to sleep. I remember’cause I was doing my homework.”

“When I drove by the house I didn’t see his car,” said Joan.

“That’s ’cause he parked it out back in the garage,” said Charlotte. “He said he didn’t want no one knowing he was home so he wouldn’t be disturbed.”

Joan wanted to double-check, so she went looking for that car. She discovered that Caddie—the one just like mine—in Hyde Park. She realized I was telling the truth. I waited for the apology.

I’m still waiting.

I don’t want to sound like I’m saying I was perfect in our marriage—not nearly. On the road I fell to female temptation. But whatever I did, I tried to be discreet—I would never embarrass or humiliate the mother of my children.

When it became clear, though, that our relationship was in the dumpster, I found my pleasures elsewhere. I went through a period when I enjoyed many women. I played around. Turned out, though, running around wasn’t my style. Might be fun for a while, but I wanted to settle back down. After Joan and I divorced I was on the lookout for a wife. I guess I always remembered the happiness of Mama and Daddy. That’s the kind of trust and love I wanted with a woman.

I also wanted something else—a blues club of my own.