When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

Mud in the Burbs

Had to be around 1973 when I went to visit Muddy in Westmont, way out there in the white suburbs, some twenty miles outside the city. He had bought himself a house—nothing fancy, but clean and neat with a little swimming pool in back.

Muddy had been through a lot of changes, the worst being the recent death of his wife Geneva to the cancer. Her passing shook him and, in a strange way, freed him. The Mud had a lot of children from different women, and with Geneva’s passing, he got to move them all into his house. He got to be the daddy and granddaddy that he always wanted to be. Wasn’t that he didn’t love Geneva—he loved the woman with all his heart—but his love life had kept him running this way and that.

When I first came to his house, it was winter. Because it wasn’t baseball season, the TV wasn’t on. On doctor’s orders, the Mud had switched from hard liquor to champagne, and on that day we shared a bottle.

He was happy to see me and asked how things were going at the Checkerboard.

“Going slow, Muddy,” I said. “But I ain’t quitting.”

“Hey, man,” he said, “I thought of quitting after Electric Mud, but I didn’t.”

Muddy was talking about the album he’d done with Marshall Chess that brought him a good piece of the hippie market.

“I thought Electric Mud sold a ton of records,” I said.

“It did. But that psychedelic shit drove me up a wall. Worst part was when I got to the show, they wanted me to play it live—and I couldn’t. What’s the point of making a record when you can’t even play it with your own band?”

“But you liked that thing you did with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield, didn’t you?” I asked, talking about Fathers and Sons, a record I loved.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That was a more natural thing. Those really are my sons. I raised them boys. After that, though, the shit storm hit hard. Leonard sold Chess.”

“They say he got ten million dollars.”

“Whatever he got, I didn’t get a nickel.”

“And then Leonard up and died,” I said.

“Heart attack—went just like that.”

“How old was Leonard, Muddy?”

“Young man, early fifties.”

“Is Phil treating you any better?” I asked. Phil was Leonard’s brother. “I get little checks now and then. Enough to pay the bills and move me out here.”

Couldn’t have been much more than a week after that Leonard died that Muddy and his band were in a terrible car accident in Illinois. Three people were killed, including Muddy’s driver. Muddy escaped with his life, but his ribs and pelvis got broken, and his hips and back got smashed up. He had surgery that took hours, and he couldn’t leave the hospital for months. When he did, he came out walking with a cane. Muddy being Muddy, he picked up his guitar and went back to work. After the London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions started to sell—that’s the record Wolf cut with Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts—Chess had Muddy fly to London to do the same kind of thing. I remember Muddy saying, “Those English rock-and-roll cats can play, but they look at me like I done created the world in seven days. They sitting around waiting to see what I wanna play. ‘You tell me what you motherfuckers wanna play,’ I said. ‘Let’s just play and get paid.’”

That was a couple of years ago. Now Muddy, grieving for the loss of Geneva, was still looking to get paid. We all were.

“Think you’ll like it out here?” I asked. “Think you’re ever gonna miss the old neighborhood?”

“I can ride down there whenever I want. Besides, you’re taking care of it, ain’t you?”

“Who’s taking care of your old house on South Lake Park?”

“I rented it to Big Eyes.”

Big Eyes was Willie Smith, one of Muddy’s drummers.

“So you holding on to it, Muddy,” I said.

“I figure I best. If I can’t pay the note on this motherfucker out here, I can always move back.”

Not too long after seeing Muddy I got to catch up with the Wolf. That happened because of the Rolling Stones. They was coming to Chicago for one of their big concerts and sent a limo for me and the Wolf. The plan was to come to their hotel room and then to the show. I was always glad to see Keith and them, but I was especially happy to see the Wolf. Been some time since I’d run into him. At this point he was in his mid-sixties and feeling his age. He’d taken a couple of bad heart attacks. Like Muddy, he’d been in a bad car wreck. His kidneys were fucked up until he was on dialysis. He was walking with a cane, but don’t you know he was talking shit just like he always did. And just like I always did, I listened to him like a little child listening to his daddy.

“Did I tell you what happened to me coming outta St. Louis the other month?” Wolf asked me.

“Don’t think so.”

“Detroit Junior, he was driving my car, and he was pissed at me about something. So he pulls over and is all set to pull me out and whup my ass ’cause he knows I’m old and tired. But what he don’t know is that I know I’m old and tired. That’s why I don’t ever let go of my gun. When he opens the door, he sees my gun before he sees my eyes. ‘Whose ass you gonna whip now?’ I say. ‘Oh, I was just playing, Wolf.’ ‘Well, I’m playing too,’ I say. It’s colder than a motherfucker—gotta be below zero—and I think he needs to cool off. ‘Best way for you to cool off, Detroit Junior,’ I say, ‘is to take off your shoes and socks and stand in that cold grass for about forty-five minutes.’ ‘I can’t do that,’ he says. ‘Well, I can blow off your fuckin’ head,’ I say. I keep my gun on him for forty-five minutes, and for forty-five minutes I’m feeling mighty good about old age.”

The Wolf had me laughing.

“If you think that’s funny,” he said, “lemme tell you about that bass player of yours.”

“Jack Myers?”

“That’s right. I used him for some college gig up in New York. He wasn’t used to playing with me, and I swear he was outta tune.”

“Not Jack,” I said. “Jack’s never outta tune.”

“Maybe not outta tune for Buddy Guy, but sure as hell outta tune for Howlin’ Wolf. Anyway, the gig’s over and we driving back, and I say stop so I can buy me some whiskey. I get my pint and I tell Jack and Hubert Sumlin—’cause Hubert wasn’t playing right that night either—I say, ‘If you motherfuckers want a drink, don’t look at me. The way you was playing was so downright awful that you don’t deserve nothing. I even start rhymin’ on their asses, saying, ‘I just played a college where the students have some knowledge, but I’m having me a fit ’cause my band ain’t playing shit.’ They start laughing, and I don’t like that. I don’t like to be laughed at. I say, ‘If you ever play outta tune like you did tonight and I don’t kick your ass, then Jesus is possum.’”

Wolf is through telling his story just as we arrive at the fancy hotel where the Stones are staying. We get the best whiskey and all the food we want. We shoot the shit for a while and then go to the show, where we’re ushered into special seats.

From the stage the Stones say something nice about the Wolf, and that warms my heart because he deserves all the praise in the world. When they introduce him to the crowd, though, I can see the pain in his eyes from how much it hurts to stand. The Wolf was once a powerful man. There was a time when no one in this right mind would fuck with the Wolf. Now the Wolf is old and feeble. Not many of the thousands of people who have come to yell for the Stones bother to look up at the Wolf. They don’t really care. But the Stones care. The Stones was the ones who told some American TV shows that they wouldn’t go on if Muddy Waters wasn’t on there with them. The Stones was good to Muddy and the Wolf, and that’s the memory I keep in my heart.

At the end of 1975 me and Junior Wells went on a goodwill State Department trip to the Central African Republic. On Thanksgiving Day it was a hundred degrees with humidity off the chart. We decided to wash our underwear and hang ’em out to dry. After they dried we got dressed and headed out. During the gig that night Junior started complaining about a terrible pain in his butt. We went to a doctor who right away knew what happened.

“You did one of two things,” he told Junior. “You either sat on a wet toilet seat or you hung out your underwear to dry.”

“Yes, sir,” Junior said, “I hung out my underwear.”

“That’s when the moisture got a fly to lay an egg. And the egg hatched a worm. And the worm got in your backside.”

“Ouch!” I said.

“How you gonna get it out?” asked Junior.

Doctor picked up a tool that looked like a can opener.

“Oh Lord,” said Junior.

“It’s quick,” said the doctor, “and it’ll do the trick.”

After the doctor got the worm out of Junior I said, “One thing’s for sure—from now on, wherever I am in Africa, I’m gonna shit like a cow standing in the meadow. I ain’t sitting on no toilet seat. And I ain’t washing out no underwear.”

While we were there I asked the doctor to check my blood pressure. I’d been taking medicine because it was too high.

Blood pressure was okay, but the doctor asked, “Let me see your blood pressure pills.”

He looked ’em over and said, “Hope you haven’t been looking for any women over here.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because with this blood pressure medicine, you ain’t got no nature.”

“My doctor didn’t tell me that.”

“When you get home, ask him.”

“I will.”

And I did. And sure enough, he had forgotten to mention that. I had him adjust the dosage so my nature come back.

It was the first week of January in 1976 when we arrived back at O’Hare. The heat in Africa was unbearable, but the snow in Chicago was piled up high. Minutes after we landed we heard the news.

“The Wolf is dead,” someone said. “The cancer killed him.”

Junior knew him for a longer time than I did. “There ain’t ever gonna be another Wolf,” he said.

That was the truth. I remembered something else that was true, something that Hubert Sumlin said about the Wolf. He meant it with love and respect when he said, “Wolf ain’t no natural man. He’s a beast.”

“You think of those cats like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson,” Junior said as we drove from the airport into the city. “We didn’t get to play with them. But we was blessed to play with the Wolf.”

All I could say was “Amen.”