Where Is He? Where the Hell Is He? - Before I Left Home - When I left home: my story (2015)

When I left home: my story (2015)

Before I Left Home

Where Is He? Where the Hell Is He?

On the little radio that Annie Mae kept in the kitchen, I was listening to Dizzy Dean on Mutual Radio broadcasting a Saturday game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Braves. The night before, I was up late listening to the St. Louis Cardinals-New York Giants game. I closed my eyes and imagined what it was like to see Stan Musial or Willie Mays smash a baseball clean out of the park.

After the game was over, me, Annie Mae, and a friend with a car drove over to the School of Agriculture at LSU, where they had a department that taught you to be a butcher. The teacher showed the students how to cut up the choice parts of a pig. When class was over, they’d throw the pig’s head, chitlins, and feet into a barrel. They considered that stuff garbage. Well, we went through the garbage, gathered up the parts they discarded, loaded ’em into a big box, and sold it off cheap to the folks in the neighborhood who knew how to cook it.

The only other little extra money I got came from music. That didn’t begin all too good. Remember, when I left the farm for Baton Rouge, you couldn’t find anyone more country than me. On top of that, I have a naturally shy nature. Never been good at going out and introducing myself to people I don’t know. As a kid and a teenager, I stayed quiet most all of the time. Didn’t feel like I had nothing to say.

When there was downtime at the service station, I picked up that Harmony guitar and played. Might be Lightnin’ Hopkins’s “Fast Life Woman” or Muddy’s “Hoochie Coochie Man” or Elmore James’s “Dust My Broom.” These were the kind of songs I was always trying to learn. The station owner would hear me and say, “You oughta get paid for doing that.”

“Who’s gonna pay me?”

“Well, keep playing and someday someone’s gonna hear you and wanna pay you. I guaran-goddamn-tee you.”

Wasn’t no more than a week later when this big mountain of a man drove up to the station just when I was trying to play some Jimmy Reed.

“Ain’t bad,” he said. “My name’s Big Poppa. Who you?”

“Buddy. Buddy Guy.”

“Well, look here, Buddy. I got me a band and been looking for another guitarist. You free tonight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We playing up at a barroom called Sitman’s. You know ‘Work with Me, Annie’?”

“Hank Ballard and the Midnighters,” I said. “They used to be called the Royals. Yes, sir, I know it real good. Know all the notes.”

“But can you sing it?”

“I know all the words.”

“Be at Sitman’s at nine o’clock tonight.”

I thought I was ready. But when I agreed to play with Big Poppa, I didn’t know what playing music in front of strangers would be like. When I walked into Sitman’s, the joint was jammed—wall-to-wall people waiting to hear something good.

“Found me a youngblood,” said Sitman to the crowd, “who can sing one of your favorites.”

The band broke into “Work with Me, Annie.” There wasn’t no rehearsal, but that didn’t bother me. I knew the tune. And I knew just when to jump in and start singing. What bothered me, though, was facing the audience. I just couldn’t. Shyness got the best of me. So I turned my back on the crowd and sang to the wall.

“You crazy, boy!” screamed Big Poppa. “You out your goddamn mind! You can’t play to no fuckin’ wall!”

More he yelled at me, shyer I got until it would have taken a shotgun to my head to make me turn around.

When we got through with the song, Big Poppa said, “You fired!”

“But I just got started!” I protested.

“You got started on the wrong foot—and turned in the wrong direction. Get the fuck out!”

I got out, felt terrible about the whole thing, and went home to bed. Next morning I told a friend, Raymond Brown, about how I’d messed up.

“Well, Buddy, you ain’t gonna mess up a second time. This time I’m going with you to Sitman’s. I got just the right medicine to loosen you up until you ain’t afraid to look the people dead in the eye.”

“Would rather look at the wall.”

“You keep looking at the wall and you’ll wind up hitting your head against it. You too good to look at the wall. You got to look at the folks paying to hear you play.”

If it wasn’t for Raymond Brown, I would never have gone back to Sitman’s. He had enough confidence for the both of us. He also had a bottle of Dr. Tichenor’s Antiseptic medicine, usually used to treat cuts and wounds or to rinse out your mouth. He poured the stuff into a glass.

“Drink this down,” he said, “and you’ll be shouting out the good news in no time.”

I drank one glass—and then a second. After the second I felt like I could spread wings and fly to the moon. I could get on that bandstand and, despite the dirty looks from Big Poppa, tell him I was ready to sing “Annie” face first.

“This is your last chance, boy,” he said.

“Just hit it,” I said.

I hit it hard. Sang that song for all it was worth. Found me a pretty girl and focused all my attention on her. Her smiling lips were a lot more inviting than the back wall. Yes, sir, with help from my friend Raymond Brown, I faced the people—and I’ve been facing them ever since.

Big Poppa played harp. He was no Little Walter. This was the time when Little Walter’s “Juke” had taken over the radio stations and the jukeboxes. All you heard was “Juke.” It was just music—no singing—but Walter was singing through that harmonica like no one had ever sung before. He made the thing laugh and cry. Before Little Walter, harmonicas cost a dime. Folks looked at them as toys. After Little Walter, harmonicas cost $5. Folks looked at them as instruments.

Seeing I was good for his band, Big Poppa took me to all the roadhouses in and around Baton Rouge, joints like the Lakeland Lodge, Rockin’ Lucky, and Joe Bradley’s Dew Drop Inn. If we went outside the city for a little gig, Poppa took his Oldsmobile 98. He was so big that he took up the whole front seat. Poppa’s wife was so jealous that she wouldn’t let no other woman go with us, not even my sister Annie Mae, who liked to hear me play. But we’d sneak Annie Mae in the backseat and take her anyway. Sometimes Big Poppa would give me $2 a night, sometimes $3. But I didn’t care—I was playing.

I was also listening to other Baton Rouge players. Lightnin’ Slim, who I’d heard in Lettsworth, was around. Schoolboy Cleve and Rafel Neal were his first harmonica players before Lazy Lester. Lazy liked to say, “I ain’t lazy, I’m just tired.”

In Baton Rouge they was always talkin’ ’bout New Orleans. I knew that Smiley Lewis, Lloyd Price, Fats Domino, and Shirley and Lee were making records down there. Before long Little Richard would be recording in that same city. Richard was the one who sped up the music until they started calling it rock and roll. New Orleans had all kinds of music happening, and you’d think because it was only eighty miles from where I was staying, I’d be down there a lot. But I wasn’t. Had no reason to. Nothing was calling me down to New Orleans. Wasn’t part of my world. Never even went there. But it was a New Orleans artist who rearranged my thinking.

It wasn’t B. B. King, who was a Memphis artist. Don’t get me wrong—I was in love with B. B.’s style from the time I heard “Three O’Clock Blues.” His guitar had a ring and a sting that snapped back my head. His sound gave me chills.

This other guitar man, though, gave me something I didn’t get from B. B. This artist showed me how to present myself to the public. He showed me how to put on a show. More than any guitarist I can name, he taught me how to attract and excite a crowd. His name was Guitar Slim.

Slim had a record out, “The Things I Used to Do,” that, after “Boogie Chillen,” became the biggest record of my life. I say that because I played the thing night and day for many years. Hell, I’m still playing it. Loved that song like I loved my mama. Ray Charles, who back then was living in New Orleans, arranged and produced it for Slim. Ray also played piano on the track. Ray’s production was perfect. Within months of the song’s release there wasn’t a guitarist in the South that couldn’t play “The Things I Used to Do.”

Minute I heard that Guitar Slim was performing at the Masonic Temple in Baton Rouge I ran over. I was the first guy in line to buy a ticket. Cost fifty cent. The hall had a big ballroom. I knew the place would be packed with dancers, and I wanted to be right up on the bandstand. I wanted to see the man’s hands when he played the guitar. Didn’t take long before the crowd arrived. Soon it was full. Folks pushing and shoving, but I wasn’t moving. Kept my spot so I could see and hear everything. Eight o’clock came and went. Then nine o’clock. Then nine-thirty. At about a quarter to ten the band came on stage and started playing the opening notes of “The Things I Used to Do.” Man, my heart skipped a beat. It was like someone had poured a quart of whiskey down my throat. I was warm all over. I heard the music alright, but I didn’t see Guitar Slim. The guitar kept playing, but there was no guitarist. I thought to myself, Where is he? Where the hell is he?

As the song kept blasting, the question kept running through my mind. I didn’t know what was going on. I’d paid my fifty cent and wanted to see the man behind the music.

Finally, I heard a buzz in the crowd. Everyone turned around. From the back of the ballroom, coming through the door, was this giant fat man carrying a guitarist on his shoulders. The guitarist was Slim, playing like his life was on the line. Mounted atop the huge guy, Slim looked like a baby. But he was no baby. He was slick as grease and dressed to kill—flaming red suit, flaming red shoes, flaming red-dyed hair. He made his way through the room until everyone was in a stoned fury. When he jumped down from the shoulders of his man, I saw that his guitar was a beat-up Strat that looked like it’d been through two world wars. He wore the guitar low on his hip like a gunslinger. His guitar strap was made of fish wire and the cord to his amp had to be three hundred feet long. Before this, my idea of a guitarist was Lightnin’ Slim, who sat when he played. Lightnin’ was the one who told me that the guitar was designed to be played sitting down. It fit on your lap. That’s where I figured a guitar belonged.

Guitar Slim never sat down. He played his guitar between his legs, played it behind his back, played it on his back, played it jumping off the stage, played it hanging from the rafters. Wasn’t nothing Slim wouldn’t do and nowhere he wouldn’t go with that beautiful old Strat of his.

The Strat was strong. Its one-piece Maple neck was made with steel and could take a beating. The tough construction allowed Slim to sling it around his hip like a bag of potatoes. I liked how he treated it rough, because that treatment got into the feeling of the music. The music was blistering. It was like the Strat was saying, “Go ahead, throw me around, beat me up, I can take all you got and still sound like a screaming angel from heaven.”

Guitar Slim’s show thrilled me. He wasn’t bending the strings but straight lickin’ ’em. I had heard a little of T-Bone Walker, B. B.’s idol and one of the first to plug the guitar into the wall. I liked how T-Bone could chord the instrument. Slim didn’t know no chords. He was single pickin’ with only two fingers, but those two fingers were causing a riot.

After the show I hung around just to get a better look at the man. As he was walking off stage a guy stopped him and said, “Hey, Slim, how many different colors of shoes you got?”

“Got me all the colors of the rainbow,” said Slim. “Got me a dye for every color so I can match my hair to my shoes.”

“You crazy, man,” said the man.

“Oh yeah?” said Slim. “Well, one day every goddamn motherfucker you see gonna be dressed crazy like me. That’s the way the world be changing. Me, I’m just ahead of all you other cats.”

I thought about those words a dozen years later when I turned up in San Francisco and saw the flower-power hippie children dressed up all crazy in every color of the rainbow.

“Hey, Slim,” said another fan. “You so good, man, I’m giving you a taste of my whiskey. Matter of fact, I’m giving you a whole pint.”

“Thank you, good brother.” And with that, Slim sucked down the entire pint.

“Better watch it there, Mr. Guitar Slim,” said a pretty-legged lady in a tight skirt. “Hear tell you drink too much. Keep drinking like that and you ain’t gonna be livin’ long.”

“Maybe so, darlin’, but for every regular day you live, I be livin’ three.”

I followed Slim outside and watched him get into his big Cadillac and roar off into the night. Never did say a word to him because, frankly speaking, I wouldn’t know what to say except “thank you.”

Guitar Slim showed me to how to play the guitar in front of people. Whatever he did, I wanted to do. The excitement he caused, I wanted to cause. The pleasure he gave, I wanted to give. I wanted a Strat that I could beat up. I wanted a big crowd that I could drive wild.

I wanted to be Guitar Slim.