When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

“She’s Nineteen”

I told you about Muddy’s song where he sings about the nineteen-year-old honey. When I heard Muddy playing that, he was forty-seven. When I married Joan, I was twenty-three and she was nineteen. I’d actually met her a couple of years earlier when I first started living with Shorty. She was living in the same building with her mom, dad, and sisters. She was a pretty girl with a sweet personality who gave me the love I was looking for.

I remember coming home from an out-of-town gig with Jimmy Rogers, the great guitarist with Little Walter in Muddy’s original band that played Jewtown before the band made records. We pulled up to Jimmy’s house where his wife was waiting. When he got out the car, my drummer, Fred Below, said to his wife, “Don’t worry, he didn’t do nothing bad. He was a good boy.”

“I ain’t worried,” said Mrs. Rogers. “Don’t nobody want him but me.”

I liked the way that sounded. I wanted to be a man married to a woman who wouldn’t worry when I was gone and could say, “Don’t nobody want him but me.” That felt comfortable to me.

I thought I had that woman in Joan. We was happy, but her daddy wasn’t. He didn’t like me. He didn’t see me being very successful.

“You working?” he asked when I told him I wanted to marry his daughter.

“Work all the time, sir.”

“Where?”

I told him.

“Those are barrooms. You tending bar?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I think you know I’m a musician.”

“I been in those barrooms, son, and I see that the bartenders get better tips than the musicians.”

“That might be true.”

“So why ain’t you tending bar?”

“’Cause I like playing my guitar.”

“You might like it, but from what I hear, the people don’t like you near as well as Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters got him his own house. You got a house of your own?”

“No, sir, but one day I hope to.”

“When’s that day coming, son?”

“Can’t say for sure.”

“Can’t say for sure. Well, what can you say? Can you say when you gonna be making real money?”

“I’m doing okay. Playing in Gary.”

“You playing everywhere, boy, but I don’t see no new car and I don’t see no down payment for a house. If you going to Gary, get a job at the steel mill. Steel mill pays. At the steel mill you don’t gotta worry ’bout no tips. Steady salary is something you can count on. That there guitar of yours is like a child’s toy. You gotta get you a man’s job.”

I wasn’t about to argue with my future father-in-law. Out of respect to Joan I wanted to show respect. But I didn’t like the man any more than he liked me. He complained about all the barrooms where I worked, but he was a big drinker himself. I could try to defend myself. I could tell him that Muddy Waters himself said I was good. So did Magic Sam and Otis Rush. The Wolf wanted to take me on the road—and the Wolf didn’t ask just anybody. I could tell him that I was respected. Club owners liked me because I showed up on time and entertained the people real good. They called me dependable. When Chess was making a record, whether for Sonny Boy, Wolf, Walter, or the Mud, I was getting calls ’cause I could cut it. Problem, of course, was that none of this paid big money. And far as my future father-in-law was concerned, nothing mattered except money.

“Look,” I told the man. “I hear you. I understand a man’s gotta take care of his woman. And that’s what I intend to do.”

“I’m holding you to it,” he said, before walking out of the room and heading to the corner bar.

Money was on my mind—it had to be. Marrying Joan at the end of 1959, I had to feed two. When our first child, Charlotte Renee, was born in 1961, I had to feed three.

“In this business,” the Mud liked to say, “someone is always gonna come along and make more than you. When I started up in here, I was the big money-maker. Didn’t see all that much for myself, but I got enough of a taste to where I was living good. Then here comes Chuck Berry up from St. Louis. When Leonard first heard Chuck, he threw him out. He didn’t even understand. Chuck had to sell some blood to keep eating. But Chuck came back and Leonard changed his mind. Next thing you know, that ‘Rock and Roll Music’ was sweeping the country. Same thing with Bo Diddley. He had him this thing that got the kids to dancing. Leonard made big money off Bo. Now he got this big girl named Etta James. He got her going good with a song they’re playing on the radio. Something about crying. Leonard’s promoting the hell out of this girl. Now I’m not saying Leonard don’t like the blues—he does—but Leonard likes money more. If he could make money selling polkas, we’d be recording polkas.”

“But we doing the same thing, Mud,” I said. “When I work a club, I got to look at the jukebox and make sure I can play those songs. I got to learn ‘What I Say’ and sing it like Ray Charles.”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” said Muddy.

“Sure ain’t, but I gotta try. Talkin’ ’bout money, they’ve been playing a song called ‘Money, That’s What I Want.’”

“That song sounds like ‘What’d I Say,’” said Muddy. “All them songs sound the same.”

“That’s what they say about the blues.”

“The blues sound the same, but the singers are different one from the other.”

“I like that ‘Money.’ I learned it. Been doing it almost every night. Gets everyone to dancing. I don’t see nothing wrong with that.”

“Look, son, you can’t get me talking against no hit records. Everyone wants a hit. When I put out ‘Mannish Boy’ and ‘Still a Fool’ and ‘Just Make Love to Me,’ I wasn’t complaining. Ain’t complaining now. Just saying that these blues that you and I took from the plantation … man, I just don’t want them blues to die.”

“Me neither, Muddy.”

“It’s just something we gotta remember. The world might wanna forget about ’em, but we can’t. We owe ’em our lives. Wasn’t for them, we still be smelling mule shit.”