When I left home: my story (2015)
After I Left Home
A Copyright? What’s a Copyright?
Before I went over to Toscano’s record store I went around to Theresa and gave her a dollar.
“What the hell is that?” she asked.
“Guitar cost $159. You gave me $160.”
She laughed out loud and said, “Boy, you crazy. I don’t need no dollar.”
“It’s yours, ma’am, not mine.”
“Let me see you new guitar.”
I showed her my sunburst Fender Stratocaster, fresh out the music store.
“Mighty pretty,” she said. “By the twinkle in your eye, I do believe you love that guitar more than you love any female.”
“Gonna pay you back if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Go on, Buddy, and make that record. I expect to be hearing it on the radio.”
When I got to Toscano’s, Willie took me back to the garage where they had hooked up a little studio. Eli Toscano did the engineering. Looking back, the equipment was real raw and simple, but to me it was beautiful. There was two microphones, one for my singing and my guitar, and the other for everyone else—Willie Dixon on bass, Otis Rush on back-up guitar, Odie Payne on drums, Harold Burrage on piano, and McKinley Eaton on baritone sax.
“What am I going to sing?” I asked.
“Well, Buddy, how you feelin’?” asked Willie, who was chewing on a meaty rib dripping with barbecue sauce.
“I’m so nervous,” I said, “I could sit and cry.”
“Good start,” said Willie. “We’ll call it ‘Sit and Cry.’ You just start and play some blues.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Don’t worry none. Just start playing some blues. We’ll fill in behind you.”
I sang some stuff that just came to my mind, and when I was stuck for words Willie gave me some of his own. There was no musical notes on paper, nothing written down. We did a couple of takes. The technology didn’t let us do no overdubs or nothing fancy. All them horns behind me felt great. Never had no horns behind me before. When we got through, Willie said, “Sounds good, Buddy. That’s gonna be a good copyright.”
“Copyright,” I said. “What’s a copyright?”
“You don’t gotta worry about that none,” Willie answered. “That’s just paperwork. I take care of all the paperwork for you.”
“Thanks, man,” I said, figuring Willie was doing me a favor.
We needed something for the flip side of the record, and Eli Toscano came up with the idea.
“You know how big Otis’s ‘I Can’t Quit You, Baby’ is?” he asked.
“Real big,” I said.
“Let’s cut an ‘answer record.’ Answer records can be big.”
“What’s an ‘answer record’?” I asked.
“It’s like when they did ‘Annie Had a Baby’ after ‘Work with Me, Annie,’” said Willie. “One records plays off the other.”
“Let’s call your answer to Otis ‘Try to Quit You, Baby,’” said Eli. “That’ll have everyone thinking of Otis.”
“Long as Otis don’t mind,” I said.
“Long as I get paid for this session,” said Otis. “I don’t give a shit.”
Willie used two sax players—Harold Ashby and Bob Neely—to get a fatter sounds. Me, Eli, and Willie made up the words. Playing in front of all those instruments made me feel like B. B. King playing in front of his band. When we listened back, I was all smiles.
“Another good copyright,” said Willie.
“Will they play it on the radio?” I asked. “Will they play it on WXOK so my mama can hear it down in Baton Rouge?”
“Most probably,” said Willie, busy filling out copyright forms.
A couple weeks passed before I got the call to go back to the studio. Toscano wanted to cut two more songs.
When I arrived, walking through the record store to the room behind the curtains, Eli Toscano was playing poker with three guys. I had seen one of the men that day at Chess when Wayne Bennett borrowed my guitar. I recognized him as Leonard Chess, and naturally I wanted to ask him if he ever heard my tape, but I was too shy. Besides, I didn’t need that tape. I was making records of my own.
“Fuck,” Eli was saying, throwing down his cards. “That puts me ten Gs in the hole.”
Willie Dixon had just walked in, so I could ask him, “What does ten Gs mean?”
“That’s ten thousand dollars, son.”
“You mean Eli Toscano lost ten thousand dollars playing cards?”
“That ain’t nothing. He’s lost a lot more than that.”
“Good God,” was all I could say.
“We got us another producer coming in today,” said Willie.
“What’s a producer?” I asked.
“The guy who puts together the session. Last time I was your producer. This time we bringing in Ike Turner.”
“The guy who did Jackie Brenston’s ‘Rocket 88’?”
“So you heard of him.”
“Muddy was talking about him the other day.”
“You’ll like him,” said Willie. “He’s from Mississippi like me. He’s bringing Jackie Brenston with him.”
“Wow,” I said. “Hope I can please him.”
“All you gotta do is listen to what he says.”
A half-hour later Ike Turner, with a mile-high ’do atop his head, was saying, “Willie, listen to what I’m saying. Your bass is out of tune.”
Willie wasn’t having none of that.
“Hold up, Ike,” he said. “I know how to tune a bass.”
“Your bass ain’t going right with the horns. Your bass is off.”
I was hearing what Ike was hearing. I couldn’t put it into words—I hadn’t even learned the word “tuning”—but I knew Willie wasn’t matching the sound of his bass with what me and Ike were playing.
Ike, by the way, had him a Strat. That made me feel like I had really chosen the right instrument.
“I took up guitar,” he said to me, “’cause of Earl Hooker. You know Earl Hooker?”
“I do,” I said.
“He got his shit from Robert Nighthawk. You heard him?”
“Not yet. I wanna.”
“How about Gatemouth? You heard Gatemouth? You gotta love it when Gatemouth does …”
And with that Ike broke into “Okie Dokie Stomp,” Gatemouth’s big instrumental hit. He played the thing note for note.
You had to like Ike Turner. He knew his music and didn’t mind showing you a thing or two. He wasn’t stingy about his compliments. He told me I could play good and had me do one of his songs, “This Is the End.” Though he couldn’t read music, he knew how to arrange all the instruments by singing the notes. He also played piano and just about any other instrument you threw at him.
“I believe you got you a smash hit,” he said when we was through.
The second song we cut, “You Sure Can’t Do,” felt a lot like Guitar Slim’s “The Things You Used to Do.”
“You said you love Slim,” said Ike, “so here’s your chance to tell him how much. I think it’s another hit.”
I laughed and sang the song. My main attitude was just to keep everybody happy and get these records out on the street. If Ike said these were hits, I wasn’t about to argue.
They didn’t play at the session, but Lafayette Leake and Little Brother Montgomery were around, two of the best blues piano players in Chicago. Later Little Brother would write me a hot song, but for now they was happy just to hang out and watch the great Ike Turner. It was a beautiful day.
Got even more beautiful when Eli Toscano said, “I like what you did so well that I’m starting a new label for you.”
“Great,” I said, not exactly sure what that meant but knowing it had to be something good.
“Magic, Otis, Harold, and Betty,” he explained, “they all on Cobra. But I want the radio jocks and the public to take special note of you, Buddy. You’re a real artist, so I’m starting up the Artistic label just for you.”
“Thank you kindly,” I said.
“I think we’re going to make real money together.”
If you ask me today how much I made from Toscano, I’d have to tell you not even my carfare home-not a nickel.
Far as those songs being hits, well, they got played on the radio in Chicago every once in a while—and naturally that was a thrill—but my folks didn’t hear them down in Baton Rouge, and that was a disappointment. In my twenty-two-year-old mind, I saw Eli Toscano turning me into a big recording star, but that dream ended a year later when Eli was found at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Some said it was a boat accident. Some said it was bad debt from his crap shooting and poker playing. Some said he’d been hooked up with the mob ever since he went into the record business. Others said that the body wasn’t Eli at all and that he was hiding out somewhere in Indiana until the heat blew over. Whatever it was, Toscano never showed up again. He was gone, Cobra was gone, Artistic was gone, and I got my first taste of what it meant to be a bluesman in the record business.
Wouldn’t be my last.