Can't Be Satisfied (57 page)
Read Can't Be Satisfied Online
Authors: Robert Gordon
132
“you couldn’t get a job without a harmonica player”: Rowe,
Chicago Blues,
p. 88.
132
“Are you ready?”: Tooze,
Muddy Waters,
p. 125.
133
“Willie Dixon got credit”: Trynka interview with Jimmy Rogers.
133
“Pop Music Rides R&B Tidal Wave”: Gart,
First Pressings Vol. 4.
134
“I had done got Junior”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
136
Band members earned: For a sense of what a club would have paid in 1959, contracts show Wolf was paid a $250 guarantee for him plus a
band of four, with further payments of half the gate over $500.
138
The South was where racism held: Louis Myers was traveling with Walter in the 1950s. “I went in this place in Atlanta and I was
just looking for a guitar and he said, ‘Don’t put your black hands on all the guitars up and down this line.’ And I said, ‘I’m just looking for a guitar.’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘We got white peoples coming in to buy guitars.’ ” (Lindemann, “Little Walter and Louis Myers.”)
138
The South was also home: Robert Morganfield said, “He got back in touch, started to visiting with us, and we started visiting
him. Always when he would come, he would make our sister Luella’s home his stay place. He loved her biscuits
and the way she made steaks. He’d visit around a
couple days, then be gone.”
139
“Somebody with a gun”: Baysting, “Bluesman.”
139
Lake Park Liqueors: Spelling as per Chicago telephone directory.
140
Nate Notkin: “One of the songs that made Muddy famous, I’m gonna put my tiger in your tank, he put his tiger in a lot of
tanks. There was one case that stands out. This was a beautiful woman, she was married, she claimed that Muddy was the father, and that there wasn’t any chance it was anybody else. So we got
on two telephones in my office. Muddy said, ‘Hey babe, how about if I come over now?’ She said, ‘Oh, my husband is home.’ When it came to trial, I had an associate
representing Muddy so I could be a witness. She had, as further proof that Muddy was the father, a notarized statement by Muddy acknowledging paternity. Well, Muddy couldn’t read or write,
except for his name, which was a hell of a job for him. The notarial public seal was there, but no ‘subscribed and sworn’ or the date, just the seal. She tried to introduce that in
evidence, and the assistant state’s attorney — it’s a quasi-criminal charge — said this notary is a cousin of mine. So the case was continued until the cousin was brought
in. He was a used-car salesman. She came to buy a car, she was in his office alone while he went out to attend to some other customer, and while he was gone for five minutes, she evidently used his
notarial seal. The judge threw the case out.”
Notkin also quashed a rumor that persisted, and took various forms, throughout my research. I heard several times that Muddy (sometimes it was Jimmy) ran over a child, possibly while driving
drunk. Notkin said he never heard of it. “If Muddy had been involved, I’m sure I would have heard. He trusted me with his life.”
141
“Muddy was kind of jealous”: Louis Myers, Little Walter’s guitarist, told Dick Shurman that one night he stopped in
at the 708 Club on his way home. Muddy was playing. Louis saw a childhood sweetheart and didn’t know she was Muddy’s girlfriend. They embraced and chatted excitedly, unaware that Muddy
was watching from the bandstand, stewing. Later, Myers was watching the sun come up from his front porch when a car came screaming around the corner. He watched, amazed, as it halted in front of
his house. Muddy jumped out, holding a gun, saying, “I’ll kill you, you motherfucker.” Louis hastened, “Wait. Wait. Wait,” and explained the old friendship.
141
“Only a few artists”: Gart,
First Pressings Vol. 5.
141
“Mannish Boy”: The spelling on the original release was “Manish Boy.” Unlike the suggested transformation of
the man in the evolved spelling of Muddy’s name, this seems to be simply a mistake.
142
“Muddy wanted to take ‘I’m a Man’ ”: Trynka interview with Billy Boy Arnold.
142
“Bo Diddley, he was tracking me”: Bill Dahl, “Muddy Waters Reigns As King,”
Illinois Entertainer,
May 1981.
Diddley’s “I’m a Man” features Otis Spann on piano. Change did not come quickly at Chess. Leonard — and Muddy — did not mind stasis. “Evil,” which
soon followed “Mannish Boy,” reworked the formula of “Hoochie
Coochie Man.” Earlier, after the success of “I Feel Like Going Home,” Muddy
had cut both “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and “Walkin’ Blues,” which were built on the same melody.
142
“some things come out all different”: Obrecht, “Bluesman.”
9: T
HE
B
LUES
H
AD A
B
ABY
1955–1958
Jimmy Rogers Retires:
Even while blues greats were leaving the field, new ones were entering, and this second generation was profoundly shaped by Muddy. His heavy, declamatory
vocals were the model for singers such as Big Boy Spires and Floyd Jones. Otis Rush, whose harrowing singing and playing on 1956’s “I Can’t Quit You Baby” announced a major
talent, named Muddy as his inspiration. The reason he wasn’t on Chess, the musicians knew, was because Leonard found him too close to Muddy in style.
Hubert Sumlin:
Hubert Sumlin played with Muddy from May or June until sometime in December 1956. He began meeting with Spann in Muddy’s basement. “Spann and I would
work for two hours down there every day. He learned me a lot, man. Muddy wouldn’t even pick up a guitar while I was with him.” (Trynka interview with Hubert Sumlin.) He recalled his
trek to Chicago: “[Wolf] calls up, tells me the train leaves at so and so time and you are going to be met by Otis Spann. I packed my little suitcase, gets on the train, and finally arrives
at the big ol’ Illinois Station on Twelfth Street. Otis Spann met me, man, I got to see all these big lights, and I got scared, so we went straight back to Leonard Chess’s daddy’s
apartment building. Wolf had his own apartment there, he got me an apartment there and had done got my union card and everything. So the second day, me and Wolf we done had lunch, and he starts to
telling me how this worked, how that worked.” (Trynka, “Howlin’ Wolf,” p. 44.)
Later, when Hubert joined Muddy, “We were coming back from Florida, Spann had stopped and bought him a pistol — Saturday Night Special. So we all bought them. I got me a little old
gun, it just fit in my coat. We had made it almost back to Chicago, Muddy had went on — he always did drive separate with his chauffeur. The police pulled our car over. He got Spann out of
the car and come up with his gun, so then he hauled us all out. They pulled a gun from every man in that car. They called for another car, kept their guns on us the whole time. They thought they
had captured the black mafia or something, and we all got thrown away in jail. We’d be there today without Muddy. He came down as soon as he found out and made them let us go. But they kept
the guns.” (Trynka interview with Hubert Sumlin.) Hubert went back to Wolf, and they enjoyed an eight-year run of hits, carrying a black audience into the 1960s well after Muddy’s had
faded and his appeal was mostly to whites.
“Elgin” Edmonds Gets Fired:
“I had to find me a drummer that would
drive,
” said Muddy. “My drummer was straight right down —
bop
bop bop bop.
I had to part from him ’cause he just couldn’t hit the backbeat.” (Palmer,
Deep Blues,
p. 168.) Freddie Below, the obvious replacement, was making it in
the Chess studio and, any time he needed the road work, his commitment was with Walter. Cotton remembered the group running through five or six drummers before finding Clay.
“It was funny to me,” Cotton said, “because all the other drummers brought their whole set of drums, Clay come to audition with just a snare drum.” But Clay
said, “No, I didn’t audition.” Marcus Johnson, whom some band members called “Marcus Garvey” because of his politics, got in a fight and out of the band. According to
Cotton, “Marcus thought that Clay owed him something because he got him into the band. We played Gary, Indiana, one night, we loaded the instruments into the back of the station wagon, and
Marcus knocked Clay down. And I gave Marcus a good whupping for it.” Said Clay, “He’d get hot-headed sometimes.” Clay also did not care for Triplett: “Pat Hare was
always a pleasant person, but he loved to play with guns. He would have his gun on his bed, taking it apart, putting it together. He got in trouble one time in Texas, he shot at Triplett, who was
an asshole anyway. He irritated everyone. He thought he was out of this world. The cops came, but they didn’t arrest anyone, they were used to things like that.”
Scott Dirks, researching union documents in the Music Research Department of Chicago’s Harold Washington Library, found these American Federation of Musicians minutes of January 16,
1958:
Members Elga Edmonds and McKinley Morganfield appeared before the Board as notified re: the claim of Edmonds against Morganfield for eighty-three dollars, representing
seventy-five dollars for three days’ wages plus eight dollars transportation. Morganfield stated that he gave Edmonds a notice in Florida on November 24 and he played with the band until
a day or two before he left Chicago for Cleveland. He explained to the Board that he definitely told Edmonds that he would not go to Cleveland. Edmonds stated that he had been given notices
many times before but that they were always taken back by Morganfield. He figured that this would happen with the last notice. He also admitted that Morganfield did not want him to go to
Cleveland. He explained that after talking to President Gray, he did drive to Cleveland under the impression that perhaps Morganfield had not been able to obtain the services of a drummer. When
he arrived on the job, Morganfield was surprised, and, having a drummer, he would not let him play. Instead of him returning to Chicago the next morning, he stayed for three days and
Morganfield gave him some money but not enough to buy gas and oil for the round-trip from Chicago. President Gray explained his position in the matter and stated that he simply tried to act as
mediator in the case. After Edmonds telephoned him from Cleveland, he talked to Muddy Waters and asked him to pay Edmonds’s fare back to Chicago, which Morganfield agreed to do and gave
him fifteen dollars. Edmonds stated that it cost him twelve dollars and seventeen cents each way, which included the price of gasoline and oil and turnpike fees. Muddy Waters agreed to pay an
additional ten dollars to Edmonds as the balance due for transportation cost. On motion, the claim of member Elga Edmonds against member McKinley Morganfield was disallowed.
Francis Clay modernized Muddy’s sound, making it rhythmically more complex without losing its essential backbeat. “Clay, by him playing the beat, he was a help to me and
Spann,” said Cotton.
Blues and Rhythm
wrote of Clay: “He was able to achieve more rhythmic flavor by doing such things as playing on the tom-toms and cymbals in unison with the
melody, and also adding counter rhythms, all the
while maintaining a basic backbeat on the bass and snare drums. Favors a small timbale-like tom-tom, used it for twenty
years.” (Leadbitter,
Nothing but the Blues,
p. 109.)
Luther Tucker:
The rotating guitar spot soon fell to Luther Tucker, whom Muddy stole from the increasingly erratic Little Walter. Tucker was in his early twenties and ready to
kick ass. His fiery style was reflected by his personality: he’d been kicked out of Memphis, his hometown, as an adolescent, and had come to Chicago, where he promptly stole a police car and
landed in a juvenile detention center. His mother, in tears, put him in the care of Sunnyland Slim, and another career was born. Tucker’s playing was fluid, and his solos slithered like wet
snakes. He and Hare gave Muddy a sound rooted in blues but with a contemporary appeal, and that served him well on his next two sessions, including “She’s Nineteen Years Old.” The
rooming house St. Louis Jimmy lived in was at 3300 S. Calumet. Big Smokey Smothers also claimed authorship of “She’s Nineteen Years Old.”
145
“He was my favorite singer”: Berry,
The Autobiography,
p. 98.
145
“Yeah, see Leonard Chess”: O’Neal and van Singel, “Muddy Waters.”
146
Sharecroppers, which had numbered: Daniel,
Revolutions,
p. 7, as per
Historical Statistics of the United States,
Colonial Times to 1970.
146
“Fuck the hits”: Lasker interview with Malcolm Chisolm.
146
“It was a trend”: Guralnick,
Home,
p. 234; originally Lydon,
Rock Folk.
146
number one on all three of their R&B charts: September 10, 1955. (Gart,
First Pressings Vol. 5.
)
147
he was not long from his first heart attack: Leonard had his first heart attack at the end of January 1957. By March of 1957,
Billboard
noted, “Len Chess, starting to show up at the Chess-Checker offices every day, says, ‘It sure is good to be back.’ ” (Gart,
First Pressings Vol.
7
, p. 39.)
147
“The stuff that really started him”: O’Neal and Greensmith, “Jimmy Rogers.”
147
“Rock and roll kind of took over”: May 1956, in
Billboard
: “
SIGN OF THE TIMES
:
Jukeboxes at the MOA Convention in Chi last week blasting forth with R&R all day, no matter what booth it was.” Same month:
