Leavin' Trunk Blues (9 page)

“Sure, I’ve got every phone number for that, man. You want to talk to him in the toilet?”

“Office would be fine.”

Doyle picked up his phone and punched a number with his thick fingers. He stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray and stared at the ceiling. The kid from the cash register knocked and opened the door and Doyle waved him away.

“Moses? You got a second, man?” Doyle smiled at Nick and nodded. “Can you do me a favor? No.” Doyle laughed. “No. No. You going down to the studio today? Great. Listen, I’m sending a good friend of mine over to talk to you. His name is Nick Travers, blues historian. You’ll like him. All right. All right. What time? Thanks.”

Doyle hung up. “I just got the touch,” he said. “What can I say? How long you in town for?”

“Till Christmas, then Tulane cuts me off.”

“Jordan will be at the old Diamond studio in an hour.”

Nick looked at his watch; it was almost 3:30.

“What’d Ruby say?” Doyle asked.

“Said she didn’t do it.”

“You believe her?”

“I’d like to,” Nick said. “But faith is a funny thing.”

“No, faith is blind.” Doyle chuckled and put the needle back on the Memphis Slim record. The dead piano player sang on.

Nick headed south again on Michigan Avenue to the old Diamond Record studio where Jordan kept an office. Diamond was a recording powerhouse in the fifties and early sixties after a pair of Greek brothers started the company in June 1952. Somehow, two guys that spoke English as their second language had a knack for recognizing talent. Almost every great bluesman and gospel singer of that period cut a single for the brothers. Unable to read music, the pair would sometimes hum out a rhythm for the hardened musicians. Nick remembered a recent documentary when Elmore King made fun of them: “How the hell am I supposed to know what blues sound like to two old white guys?”

Nick laughed at the thought as he passed boarded-up storefronts and warehouses in an area once known as Record Row. All the bruised buildings with shattered windows reminded him a bit of Julia Street on a weekend—a stillness. The recording companies were long gone and industry had found cheap labor somewhere else. This was the borderline, the industrial belt that once separated downtown from the South Side.

Nick imagined Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, and Muddy walking down these same streets, a new song in their heads. But before those guys hit the scene, Chicago was already home to some established artists. A white record producer named Lester Melrose was recording Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, Washboard Sam and Big Bill Broonzy for Columbia and RCA Victor in the thirties and forties.

Some might think that Muddy’s blues were too hip, too electric cool for the old set. But really it was a reversal. Melrose’s Bluebird beat relied on a light touch, a jazzy optimism. A mix of vaudeville and twenties novelty blues.

The bleak, desperate sounds of the 1930s Delta artists had evaporated.

When Muddy arrived in ‘43, his own sister told him: “They don’t listen to that kind of old blues you’re doin’ now, don’t nobody listen to that, not in Chicago.”

After a failed effort with Melrose, Muddy would get a second chance with a style he’d learned from Son House and Robert Johnson. New independent labels were flourishing thanks to new, cheaper technology. Producers, like the Diamond brothers, also knew how to sell directly to their market—barbershops, salons, and stores in black neighborhoods.

In the late forties and early fifties, independent record labels exploded like umbrella salesmen in a New Orleans rainstorm.

All you needed was one big hit and you were off. Hell, Muddy was still driving a truck for a living when he recorded “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “Feel Like Going Home Again” back in ‘48, giving blues a kick in the ass. At first, producers weren’t sure if Muddy’s bottleneck style and almost field hand moan would sell in the city. But the record sold out twenty-four hours later. Down on Maxwell Street, even Muddy had to pay almost double for his own song.

“
Late in the evenin’

I feel like a goin’ home.

When I woke up this mornin’

all I had was gone.”

A little slice of the Delta seemed to hit the spot for black immigrants, just like Ruby’s “Lonesome Blues Highway” reminded folks of the long journey. That kind of success, that kind of gamble, is why outfits like Diamond and King Snake started. The boom ended about the time Ruby went to prison. Rock ‘n’ roll and R&B were on the rise. Young blacks had turned their ear to new sounds and a white blues audience didn’t exist.

Nick parked on a dead street where snowplows had stacked sludge like the banks of a dirty river. The iced wind blasted through his ears as he kept his hand on the car hood to keep from slipping.

The front door to Diamond, a two-story building with a wide aluminum canopy, was unlocked, and Nick followed a hallway lined with pictures of old recording stars. A who’s who of Chicago greats. At the end in a large room, a group of children in matching blue T-shirts painted walls while listening to rap music on a battered boom box.

“Mr. Jordan?” Nick asked.

A kid with a lazy eye and plugs of hair missing pointed upstairs.

Nick followed some rickety wooden steps to the old recording room. He heard someone whistling at the top of a rambling wooden staircase. Nick followed the slow tune into the old studio where he saw Moses Jordan in an undertaker black suit painting a door. Six black teens watched him demonstrate a painting motion. Jordan moved the paintbrush like he used to handle the drumsticks. Like it was born in his hand.

He gave the brush back to a kid with a pick in his hair and said, “That’s how it’s done.”

Jordan looked like an old-time weight lifter with a bulging stomach and short legs. His brown face was wide and flat with eyes burning with a permanent irony. A little perspiration shined on his forehead with silver hair ringing his bald head in an almost metallic glow. Somewhere in his mid-seventies, Nick guessed.

“Travers?” Jordan asked.

Nick shook his hand. Great to meet the guy. Jordan was in a class with Willie Dixon, Wolf, Muddy, and all the golden-era guys. He’d seen him talk in about a half dozen documentaries and read endless interviews, but they’d never spoken. Still, he felt like he’d known Jordan his whole life.

“Gonna look like it did in the day,” Jordan said. “Got the old equipment and asked the families of those who’ve passed on to donate instruments. . . . Sometimes I feel like they’re still here.”

“If they’re remembered, they are.”

Jordan held onto Nick’s hand and looked him hard in the eye. “Doyle said I’d like you, Travers. And I’m beginnin’ to believe him.”

Most people thought of bluesmen as old guys wearing overalls and spitting off front porches. Incoherent. Illiterate. Jordan, like most, was the antithesis of the stereotype. Probably never worked a day in his life without shining his shoes, pressing his suit, and carrying a union card.

“So you want to talk about them dirty, lowdown blues?” Jordan said, laughing at his words and letting go of Nick’s hand. “You know we’re coming up on the anniversary. Place might not look like much yet, but you bring back the history and you get the tourists. You get the tourists, you get the redevelopment.”

Nick pulled off his gloves and stuck them in the warm pockets of his wool coat. The layers of clothes were starting to make him feel like the Michelin Man.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Jordan said, pointing to the loose groups of children working on the walls. “I’ve been trying hard to bring back some hope around here . . . they took away our jobs, gave us drugs, and turned us against ourselves. But I’m starting to see flashes of pride like when I first stepped off the Illinois Central from Greenwood.”

“Spent some time in Greenwood last year,” Nick said, watching a young girl painting fine touches on the mural. Windows on a crooked high-rise.

Jordan wiped his hands on a tattered rag. He checked his pants for paint. “Oh, yeah? I ain’t been back in fifty years. And don’t plan to.”

“Understand,” Nick said.

“But you know, we didn’t come all this way to wear more shackles,” Jordan continued, his face full of heat and determination. “What’s this around us but chains? At least sharecroppers had a damn thing to do instead of living off welfare. Buying crack. Do you know kids think it’s always been like this? When I tell them about old Bronzeville they think I’m full of shit.”

A young girl dipping her brush rolled her eyes. Guess she was waiting on another lecture.

“Man, I know you didn’t come down to hear me preach,” Jordan said with a grin. He grasped Nick’s shoulder. “But you still gonna hear a bit anyway mixed with a few stories about Diamond.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about King Snake and Ruby Walker,” Nick said, his voice reverberating off the hall’s perfect acoustics. A holy temple of the blues. He peered through a Plexiglas window at a collection of old recording equipment coated in a layer of rust.

“King Snake?” Jordan asked, removing his hand. The old man sat down on an unopened paint bucket and sighed. There were fine flecks of paint in his silver hair. He laced his pudgy fingers in front of him and looked into Nick’s eyes.

Jordan was cuing him up, wanting to gauge his intelligence, use his long-honed perceptions to see about this white man. A man who wanted to ask him questions about a failure.

“I’d love to hear more about Billy Lyons,” Nick said, plowing though the mental prodding. He took out a notebook. “Sounds like a character.”

“Billy?” Jordan asked.

“Yeah, Billy Lyons, Ruby Walker, King Snake. All of it.”

“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Travers?” Jordan asked, licking his finger and wiping away a speck of paint from his shoe. “Why you like the blues so much?”

“The blues are about truth.”

Jordan nodded. “What do you want to know?”

Annie froze her ass off under East Wacker Drive waiting for Peetie Wheatstraw an hour later. The little shit said it was urgent and maybe worth a little money for his 411. Annie had joked with him and told him sitting on a new sack of hemorrhoids wasn’t news. But he kept pushing the shit so here they were, in between shopping, waiting for the old man to rat somebody out. About the only thing he was good for.

Wacker was a split-level road with a lower track snaking a little above the surface of the Chicago River. A long tunnel shining with yellow lights. A little world of its own with hidden doors and tunnels under the city. The smell of exhaust gave Annie a little buzz as she and Fannie walked out toward the Michigan Avenue bridge.

She took a seat on the cold concrete wall and watched the brown river swirling by in frozen chunks. The river cut into a Y west of where they waited, separating the wealthy Uptown from the old Loop and the ugly West Side. It kept everyone from smelling each other’s shit.

Across the river, she’ could see the Wrigley Building shining like a bright wedding cake.

Annie took a breath and rubbed her hands together as the cars zoomed behind them. Fannie readjusted some fluffy red earmuffs on her head and took a long drag off her cigarette. She wore a tan sweater with lace overlay and a mink collar, brown crushed velvet pants, and a mustard-colored jacket that felt like an old sofa. One of her favorites.

“Bitch,” Annie said. “Let’s go. My buzz is wearing off and my ass is about to turn to ice.”

“Give him another minute, just to say we saw him.”

“Why didn’t he just tell you on the fuckin’ telephone?” Annie asked. “I’m tired of all this I Spy shit. In fact, I’m tired of this whole damned thing. I say we take the cash we have, get on a bus, and head to New York. Shit, we’d become the queens of the city. You’d have all of Manhattan crushed under your platform shoes. All those dweeby guys would follow you around just like Veronica Lodge. They’d have little popping hearts exploding around their brains.”

“Girlfriend. I’m sorry, but the world ain’t a comic book.”

“It can be. It can be, Fannie. I’ve seen pictures of places just like Riverdale. C’mon, let’s head out.”

“I don’t want to wake up dead for Christmas.”

“Stagger Lee can replace us with a phone call. He doesn’t need us.”

“He doesn’t see it that way, Annie,” Fannie said with a look like she was someone’s mama. “Don’t you see that? He sees he gave us something and now we owe him for it. You remember when we were turnin’ tricks at Robert Taylor for five dollars. How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“And what did he do?”

“Sold us out. Had us mule.”

“It was better, wasn’t it? Gave us clothes. Some crack. Place to sleep.”

“Yeah, Stagger Lee’s kind of like Santa Claus. Only he never laughs, he likes to cut people into little pieces, and he ain’t fat and white.”

Fannie leaned over the concrete rail down where the riverboats dock when it got warm. “We’ll always owe him.”

“All right. C’mon, let’s go. Fuck Peetie.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Head over to Rush,” Annie said. “There’s an Irish pub down there. Lot of money. Lot of tourists. Let’s try to get a big one tonight. That Italian shit wasn’t really worth it. Except for the cocaine we gave Stagger Lee. Let’s break five hundred at least.”