When I left home: my story (2015)

After I Left Home

708

In Chicago, winter is a bitch. Wind comes howling off the lake and freezes every blood cell in your body. You ain’t experienced bone-chilling cold till you experience Chicago cold. And if you walking around for months on end, looking for a job you can’t find, having one person after another tell you how you ain’t qualified, it’s easy to get down, easy to think back to warm Louisiana nights and Mama’s home cooking. After a while your mind starts to wondering, Do I really belong here? And how long is my little money gonna last?

Money had been leaking outta me since I arrived. Can’t say nothing bad about Shorty because without him, I would have never made the trip. The man took me in, and I’m forever grateful. But Shorty had his own life and couldn’t be bothered taking me here and there to find work. In the beginning he said he would, but I understood why he didn’t.

I’ve always been proud, even as a young man. The idea of begging or borrowing ain’t never been attractive. Always wanted to do for myself. But pride don’t put no food in your body, and come late winter 1958, some five or six months after I’d arrived, pride had me straight-up starving. It’d been more than two days since I’d had a square meal. I was flat broke, walking the streets of the South Side with my guitar, thinking of borrowing a dime to call my daddy in Baton Rouge for a ticket home. I was ready to swallow my pride.

Must have been about seven o’clock at night when a man stopped me on the street to say, “That your guitar?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you play the thing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Buy you a drink if you play me some blues.”

“How ’bout a hamburger?” I asked. “Ain’t eaten in a while.”

“No hamburger,” said the guy. “Hamburger won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“You know anything about dogs?”

“A little.”

“You give a dog a big piece of meat, and he won’t hunt. But a hungry dog, well, that’s another story—he’ll hunt all night.”

Couldn’t argue with his logic, but I was still hungry as hell.

“You willing to play for a glass of wine?” he asked.

“Guess so,” I said.

We went to a bar, where he bought me a glass of cheap wine. Right then and there, I picked up the guitar and sang some Jimmy Reed. Everyone around us started clapping.

“Not bad,” said the man. “Come on home so my wife can hear you.”

Went home with him and met the wife.

“Honey, this young man plays the hell outta Jimmy Reed. Wait till you hear him.”

As I started into playing, the wife starting into smiling. She broke out a bottle of gin and gave me a taste.

“I do believe we should take him to the 708 Club,” said the man. “Ain’t that an idea, honey?”

“Good idea,” said the wife. “Let me grab my coat.”

We walked out into the night and headed over to what was known as the 708, one of the hottest blues clubs on the South Side. The place was packed. Blues clubs in those days were almost always packed. Because the steel mills and stockyards never stopped, workers were always coming off the job, wanting a stiff drink and a hard hit of the electric blues. They wanted to relax, and booze and blues helped them do just that.

That evening the booze and blues sure as hell helped me relax,’cause after I had a drink at the 708, I was half out of my mind with hunger and high as a kite on the liquor. I looked up to see that the band, playing some mean, straight-in-your-face blues, was on a long ledge behind the bar. The main musician was playing guitar. His guitar was on fire. Man, he was something else. When I got closer, I saw that he was playing left-handed even though his guitar was made for a right-handed man. But this guy had turned the instrument upside down and was playing it backward—and playing it great! I recognized the song, “I Can’t Quit You, Baby,” from the radio.

“That’s Otis Rush,” said the wife of the man who’d brought me here.

“Hey, Otis Rush!” screamed her husband between songs. “Got me a nigger here who can kick your ass sideways.”

“Do he have a guitar?” Rush shouted from the stage.

“He do indeed!”

“Well, let him come here and we’ll see about him kicking my ass.”

Without those drinks in me, I would never have gone up. With those drinks, though, I flew to the stage.

In those days even the greatest guitarists like Otis Rush sat down when they played. He had bandstands for his musicians with “OR” written on the stands. So when I got up there, I was scared I’d have to read some music. But when I looked at the music stands, they was empty. They was just for show. I let out a big sigh of relief.

“What you wanna play, boy?” asked Rush.

“Guitar Slim,” I said.

“‘Things I Used to Do’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You start,” said Otis. “I’ll come in behind you.”

I started, but because some magic happened, Rush never did play with me on that song. He just let me go. I believe he had to let me go. I believe no force on earth could have kept me from letting go. See, the spirit of Guitar Slim entered my soul—not just the spirit, but the showmanship. I wouldn’t sit down, I couldn’t sit down, and after I played the opening notes I watched myself move to the edge of the stage and jump into the crowd, just as I’d seen Slim do.

People went crazy.

“Who’s that wild nigger?” I heard one guy say. “Where he from?”

“Don’t know,” said someone else, “but he got Otis worried.”

Truth of the matter was that Otis was egging me on, encouraging me to play over my head and behind my back, just the way I’d seen Slim play. I did it, and the more I did it, the louder the crowd.

Looking back at this moment in my life, I know I was possessed. Maybe I was open to being possessed because I was scared and desperate. Maybe I knew my life depended on tearing up this club until folks wouldn’t forget me.

Just as I know that the Guitar Slim spirit entered me, I was also taking in other spirits. They used to call booze and wine “spirits,” and those spirits sure as hell took hold of me. It was also my first time playing in front of a Chicago blues crowd—women who’d been laboring during the day and men who’d been working the mills. These people had their own spirit. They wanted to forget the pain of trucking steel and killing cows. They wanted to get happy in a hurry. They wanted music that would blast ’em into outer space, sounds that would carry them out of this mean ol’ world into another world of good feeling. I felt them saying to me, Take it up! Take it out! Go wild! Get me higher! I heard their calls and I wanted to answer them—I wanted to give them what they wanted.

The spirits were going crazy—but crazy in a good way.

The owner of the club, a white man named Ben Gold, also felt those spirits. He saw how everyone was reacting, got on the phone, and called a man to hurry down to hear me.

That man got there in time to hear the last couple songs I played. By the time he arrived I was still floating on a cloud. I was playing over my head. I was covered with sweat and was drained and hungry, but I felt happier than I’d been since I got off the train at the Dorchester Station. I felt like I finally had my say.

Ben Gold came up to me and said, “Someone’s here to see you.”

“Who?”

“The Mud wants you.”

At first I didn’t understand Gold. In my frazzled mind I thought he said something like “Someone wants to mug you.” Back home I’d heard about muggings in Chicago, where a thief hits you over the head and murders you for your money. I didn’t have no money, but I didn’t wanna get murdered.

“Don’t wanna get mugged by no one,” I told Gold.

“Not mugged—the Mud,” he explained. “I’m talking about Muddy Waters. He wants to see you.”

“Muddy Waters? The Hoochie-Coochie-Man Muddy Waters?” I asked.

“That’s him.”

“Where is he?”

“Just went out to his car. It’s that red Chevy wagon.”

“You sure no one’s gonna mug me?” I had to ask again.

“Positive. Just go out there.”

The station wagon was new and cherry red. I saw a man sitting in the backseat. I’d seen enough pictures to know that the man was Muddy Waters. My heart started hammering. I opened the door and got in. He moved over to give me room. I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.

First thing I noticed about the Mud was his puffy cheeks set high on his face. His dark skin had a glow. His big eyes sparkled and showed me his mood. On this night his mood was happy. His hair, worked up in a doo, was shiny and piled high on his head. He was something to see.

First thing he said was “You like salami?”

“I like anything,” I said.

“I see you’re hungry.”

“Hungry as a horse.”

“Well, I got me a loaf of bread and some good salami. I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

“I’d be much obliged.”

“Where you from?”

“Louisiana.”

“They told me your name, but I done forgot it.”

“Buddy Guy.”

“You a farm boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

He smiled. “I thought so. I know you had to be pickin’ cotton before you ever picked a guitar.”

“Yes, sir. Way before.”

“Like me,” said the Mud. “You pick cotton long enough and you never complain ’bout having to pick the guitar.”

“I never would complain about pickin’ the guitar.”

“You won’t complain none about this salami. Comes from a Jewish delicatessen where they cut it special for me. Have a taste.”

He handed me a sandwich he had made himself. I wolfed it down. Never tasted anything so good.

“Don’t Lightnin’ Slim play down there in Louisiana? Ain’t that his territory?”

“Yes, sir. He was the first I heard.”

“And Eddie Jones,” said the Mud. “He plays ’round Louisiana. I know you heard him.”

“Don’t think so.”

“I heard you was playing one of his songs tonight.”

“Which one is that?”

“‘Things I Used to Do.’”

“That’s Guitar Slim.”

“Eddie Jones is his birth name.”

“Never knew that.”

“He got that long cord. And he likes to jump around. I see you like jumping around too.”

“Just something that happened tonight. I was just about to quit Chicago.”

“You don’t wanna do that.”

“I don’t wanna be hungry.”

“Well, I’m giving you this salami, ain’t I?”

“Yes, sir, you are. And I wanna thank you.”

As Muddy kept talking, I found myself tapping my foot to his words. He was talking alright, but it was more like he was singing. Never had met anyone who turned talking into a song.

“I got enough salami for the two of us. I bought this salami playing the blues. All I do is play the blues. Used to drive a truck, but no more. Just blues work. I know you looking for blues work. I see it in your eyes. Ain’t easy out here. Ain’t all that easy finding work.”

“I was at Chess Records,” I said, “hoping I might find something there. But then I saw how this guitarist called Wayne Bennett could read the music they set in front of him. I can’t do that.”

“Me neither. You don’t gotta worry none about reading music. Long as you can hear it in your head, you okay. You find any kind of work at all?”

“Been looking for months and ain’t found nothing.”

“Well, you sure as hell found something tonight.”

“I did?”

“Ben Gold ain’t no fool. He gonna give you work, not outta no charity, but because he’s seen how you heat up a crowd. When a crowd gets all hot and bothered, they get to drinking.”

“Funny,” I said, “cause tonight was the night I almost called my daddy for a ticket home.”

“Tonight you found a new home.”

I walked back to Shorty’s place on cloud nine.

I was feeling like I’d found more than a new home. I was feeling like I’d found a new father, and his name was Muddy Waters.