When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

Checkerboard

Not long ago a friend said to me, “Buddy, I know why you had to have your own blues club.”

“Why’s that?” I asked. I knew, but I wanted to see if he knew.

“Because that’s your church, man. That’s where you first got religion when you came to Chicago. You got baptized in these funky blues clubs, you got born again, and you can’t forget it. When you got worried to see all these churches disappearing, you had to get one for yourself.”

That wasn’t the answer I expected, but damn if it didn’t make sense. I guess I did see the Chicago blues club as something sacred to my heart. Sure, there was drinking and shooting, but it gave me a beautiful feeling like nothing else. It brought a spirit that got all over my soul—and that’s something I never wanted to lose.

In 1972 I was thinking that if I had my own club, I might get off the road more. I’d be able to be closer to my kids and, if I played my cards right, might make some money.

I bought the Checkerboard, at 423 East 43rd Street, at a time when prices were low. That’s because the hood was going down. Far as I was concerned, though, the hood was always going down. I figured good blues would draw drinkers. Besides that, Pepper’s, one of the most famous clubs, had closed down. I hated that the South Side wouldn’t have no blues. On the bright side I figured that, what with my work at the F&J in Gary and the club I managed in Joliet, I had good experience. But man, did I have a lot to learn!

Before I opened up a cat said to me, “Buddy, I got only one piece of advice: get a rollaway bed, a gun, and sleep by the register.”

I got the gun, but—at least at first—I didn’t get the rollaway bed.

First year I got robbed so much that I put up security gates. But the motherfuckers just screwed ’em off and got in anyway. Cost me a hundred to put the gates back up. Then the thieves came back and removed ’em like they was nothing. It was costing me more to put up the gates than what the robbers took.

That’s what got me to put up a sign that said, “Don’t break the front gate. Go around back. The door’s open there. Take what you want.”

Of course, I was in the back, waiting for them with a gun. But wouldn’t you know that’s when they stopped breaking in.

I was selling beer for 35 cents and serving open whiskey only. That meant I’d buy the booze by the half-gallon and pour shots. Thieves couldn’t resell open bottles. They were looking to steal whiskey by the case. I learned to keep the stockroom empty.

Folks thought my famous friends would play the Checkerboard and make me a mint. Didn’t work that way. For example, the most famous thing that happened at the club, with our capacity of sixty-five, was when the Stones came to film and play with Muddy. They blocked the whole street, keeping out the regular customers, while the Stones’s huge entourage of cameramen, engineers, security guards, and friends filled up the place. It was beautiful to see Muddy and the Stones jamming together—turned out to be one of the last things Muddy did—but I didn’t hear my cash register ring once.

The Checkerboard was a spiritual blessing but a financial burden. I never broke even and had to use the money I made on the road to keep the doors open. No matter what, I kept the doors open because, as the seventies got disco crazy, the life of the blues was on the line.