Can't Be Satisfied (63 page)

204
“They’d argue about the women”: One night, Muddy’s two ladies ran into each other. “Muddy was playing
at Pepper’s,” said Lucille. “I was mad at him and left. Muddy told me, ‘You stay off Lake Park.’ I said I’m going where I want to go. And I came walking down
there and it was in the summertime, me and my girlfriend. Geneva was on the corner and Dennis was with her, and Dennis say, ‘Momma, there’s that bitch that goes with daddy.’ And
she popped me upside my head and we got to fighting and afterwards I went back to the club and told Muddy, ‘You had better go see about your wife, I just whipped her ass.’ ”

204
“blinking blinking jiving jiving shit”: According to Stanley Booth.

206
“A lot of people go in for [the effects]”: “Muddy: The Man Who Urbanised the Blues.”

206
“shooting for the hippies”: Jones,
Melody Maker,
p. 29.

206
Jimi Hendrix’s valet: His name was James Finney.

206
“The first guitarist I was aware of”: Murray,
Traffic,
p. 132.

207
“They got this funny thing going”: Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.

207
“that one was dogshit”: Wheeler, “Waters–Winter.”

207
“We did a lot of the things over”: DeMichael, “Father and Son.”

208
“Muddy’s got everybody crazy”: DeMichael, “Muddy Waters Week,” p. 13.

208
Leonard was ready to move on: “No one got rich on the sale of Chess Records,” Marshall told me. “We got a
tremendous amount of stock worth seven dollars a share that we couldn’t sell for five years. When I sold mine it was for one dollar and seventy-eight cents a share. And my mom and Phil, they
never sold theirs. They waited until it was bankrupt.”

208
“I made my money on the Negro”: Dean Gysel,
Chicago Daily News,
June 1967.

209
“I’ll be with Chess”: Guralnick,
Home,
p. 233. Cookie remembered the Chess brothers: “The oldest
used to always bring me candy. I think he thought if he bribed me it would be easy with Muddy and it worked. And I used to love bananas so he would come in with a bushel. And I would go there with
Muddy and Muddy would come back to the car cussing up a storm about something they didn’t do. ‘Those goddamn Chess brothers!’ They had almost like a family
relationship.”

209
IOU notes: One report stated $150,000 worth of IOUs were found in Leonard’s office.

209
“What [the musicians] were paid”: Cohodas,
Spinning,
p. 228. On page 229, Cohodas quotes Leonard saying
he’d never give Sonny Boy a large advance. “He’d be broke tomorrow. . . . I’ll make sure that he lives and his rent is paid.” Cohodas also writes on page 229:
“Some days the first-floor hallway at 2120 looked like the line at a bank teller’s window.”

209
“You know we sold the company”: Guralnick,
Home,
p. 217.

209
“[GRT] could have been in the tomato business”: Golkin, “Blacks, Whites, and Blues” part 2.

210
“they wanted to get rid of my uncle”: Collis,
Chess,
p. 187.

212
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING KLAN COUNTRY
: Paul Oscher told me, “I didn’t say anything, but fifteen years
later I’m sitting in a bar thinking about that shit and I wrote down on a napkin: ‘Mississippi / land of darkness / the devil lives there in and around the low lands by the cotton
fields / by the white crosses on the side of the highway / Satan lingers / Mississippi, your fertile soil have give rise to the dusty mouths of black folks who through wide gold-toothed grins shout
out the blues, oh the blues, those lonesome blues.’ ”

213
“He immediately agreed to come”: Lomax,
Land,
p. 420.

213
“ ‘Hi, Lo,’ he said”: In his book, among the band members that Lomax names in Muddy’s car is Little
Walter, then dead half a year.

215
“If you lose just an ordinary sideman”: Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.

215
“Pinetop, he come from the part of the country”: Ibid.

215
$3,500 for a one-hour set: As per a contract with the Southwest 1970 Peace Festival in Lubbock, Texas.

216
“I used to be a good liquor drinker”: DeMichael, “Father and Son,” p. 32.

216
“Champagne for breakfast”: Nicholls, “Strangers.”

216
“up through Maine”: Guralnick interview with Muddy Waters.

217
“I ain’t dying”: “Car Crash,”
Rolling Stone.

13: E
YES ON THE
P
RIZE
1970–1975

Living Blues
Founded:
As the sixties became the seventies, white audiences in South Side clubs became more common, though they were still outsiders. “In the
seventies, policemen thought we were criminals,” said Dick Shurman, who’d moved to Chicago in the late 1960s. “One time Jim O’Neal and I were leaving and a couple
plainclothesmen grabbed us on the way out. They figured we had been picking up protection money. They had me pop the trunk on my foreign car and I had a little compact jack. They said,
‘What’s this, a machine gun?’ ”

It was in this environment that the magazine
Living Blues
was founded, taking the South Side — and other blues scenes — to mailboxes around the world. With seed money from
Bob Koester, several of his employees at the Jazz Record Mart and Delmark Records began the magazine to document “the Black American Blues Tradition.” Founders included
then-husband-and-wife Jim O’Neal and Amy van Singel, Paul Garon, and Bruce Iglauer (who was working as a shipping clerk for Delmark when Koester declined the opportunity to release a Hound
Dog Taylor album, giving Iglauer the impetus to found Alligator Records). The first subscriber was Victoria Spivey.

Living Blues
became something of a blues family newsletter. Howlin’ Wolf was interviewed in the first issue; Buddy Guy in the second. “I’d go around the country doing
interviews with other people,” said Jim O’Neal. “I don’t know how many would ask, ‘Is Muddy Waters still alive?’ This was at a time when he had disappeared from
black radio and that circuit.” The magazine sought to document, not analyze, and so musicians could sound off in a way that the mainstream press would not allow. “I read in
Down
Beat
or
Time
magazine while I was in Africa, ‘The Rebirth of the Blues,’ ” said Buddy Guy. He continued:

Blues label owners who got their start learning the ropes from Koester as Jazz Record Mart employees included Iglauer; O’Neal and van Singel, who founded Rooster Records; the late Pete
Welding of the Testament label; Don Kent of Mamlish; the late Bruce Kaplan of Flying Fish; Pete Crawford of Red Beans; and Michael Frank, whose Earwig label perhaps most closely follows
Koester’s tradition of recording older, less commercially viable artists. Koester’s role as a mentor and pioneer in the independent record business was formally recognized in 1996 when
he was elected into the Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame. (Barretta, “The Monarch,” p. 28.)

Messinger’s Memory of His Parting with Muddy:
“I heard from the American promoter Lew Futterman that Muddy was drinking a lot of
Piper-Heidsieck and it was costing a lot of money,” Messinger told me. “I went to my home on Cape Cod, where I’m from originally. Muddy came back while I was gone, we had made
some sort of arrangement about the cars. And I got a panicked message of some sort. ‘Where’s the money?’ I had been sending money to all the designated places. They went back to
Chicago. Next thing I know, I got a letter vilifying me and discharging me.”

As support, Messinger proffered a letter typed on blank paper — no letterhead — and dated by hand as December 23, 1970. It was to Muddy Waters, from Lyon–Futterman Associates,
Ltd., the tour’s booking agent. It stated, in part, “This is to confirm the intention of our organization to honor its outstanding financial obligation to you.” The letter is
signed by Lewis Futterman “for Lyon–Futterman Associates and as a personal guarantee.” Messinger continued, “First Futterman was going to be helpful, then he became
incommunicado. I never talked to Muddy again. If I had had a road manager like I wanted, none of this would have happened.”

Scott Cameron’s Developing Relationship with Muddy:
Cameron’s relationship with Muddy took hold and, with things looking up, Muddy invited his new main man to his
South Side home for dinner. Cameron met the family: Charles and Dennis, Dennis’s girlfriend Jean, Cookie and her daughter Chandra. Cameron remembered, “I think Big Walter was over there
that night, too. Not everyone could fit at the table. There were a lot of scamperings in and out.” Muddy served collard greens and smothered steak. Geneva fixed chitlins. “As soon as
the sun started going down, Muddy said, ‘You gotta go now because they might start shooting.’ He’d always send me home before the lights started coming on.”

In anticipation of Muddy’s higher profile East Coast tour, the
Washington Post
sent a reporter to Chicago. Mr. Hollie I. West found Muddy’s “well-kept two-story
brownstone stands out among houses that are deserted or crumbling in disrepair.” He noted that Geneva maintained a garden and was impressed with the couple’s relationship after
thirty-three years of marriage; Muddy greeted her with, “How ya doin’, baby?” They sat down to eat bacon and eggs. “If I’d known you was a brother, I would’ve
had some pork chops waiting for you. Don’t think I can’t cook because I can take care of business in the kitchen. Soul food is my specialty — chicken, pork chops, soup. My wife
will lay back in a minute and let me burn. Pound cake is my specialty. I use a pound of butter and six eggs. You got to cream that butter until it’s almost like ice cream. I cook when the
notion hits me. But I’m a pepper man. My family, man, has to watch my hand with the spice.” (Hollie I. West,
Washington Post,
September 24, 1971, Sec. B.)

After Scott went from agent to manager, Muddy was booked by William Morris, then Premiere, then Paragon (which handled southern rock bands), and finally Rosebud.

Mr. Kelly’s:
“We were riding back to Muddy’s house from the Kelly’s gig in his Cadillac,” said Paul Oscher, “and Muddy whispers to me,
‘Motherfucker, you’re blowing that motherfucker now.’ And I knew I was, too. I was playing my ass off. But I really felt good when he said that.” Oscher, who was playing
through a Guild Thunderbird amp, achieves a deep tone throughout the live recording. His expertise
is most exciting in the staccato comp licks he plays during his solo on the
Jimmy Reed song “You Don’t Have to Go.” He shows a profound understanding of when to lay back; where some harp players are compelled to play all the time, he jumps in and out
— as in the instrumental “Mudcat,” where he lets the band set the shuffling groove, then steps forward for his solo, then is out again. His absence fattens the band dynamic; less
is more.

“I got pretty close to Muddy during Mr. Kelly’s,” said Oscher, “but it’s hard to get close to Muddy. Most every night we came back, Muddy would cook fried bologna
or something, and we’d sit there and have a few more drinks and talk some shit. So he asked me would I give him twenty percent if he made me a star. We were talking shit at his kitchen table
so I said, ‘Well, what about ten percent, man?’ Then I ran into this girl who was doing public relations for Chess and she told me that Chess had a big interest after the Mr.
Kelly’s gig to do a record with me. Muddy wasn’t going to tell me that Chess wanted to do it because that would be cutting his part out. It was a country thing. Cotton was probably
making more money than Muddy at the time. I was in his corner. If he’d told me, I would have said, ‘Yeah, of course, I’ll give you whatever you want.’ But that’s how
he communicated: indirect ways.”