Blues Before Sunrise: The Radio Interviews
272
Blues Before Sunrise: The Radio Interviews
272eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
This collection assembles the best interviews from Steve Cushing's long-running radio program Blues Before Sunrise, the nationally syndicated, award-winning program focusing on vintage blues and R&B. As both an observer and performer, Cushing has been involved with the blues scene in Chicago for decades. His candid, colorful interviews with prominent blues players, producers, and deejays reveal the behind-the-scenes world of the formative years of recorded blues. Many of these oral histories detail the careers of lesser-known but greatly influential blues performers and promoters.
The book focuses in particular on pre–World War II blues singers, performers active in 1950s Chicago, and nonperformers who contributed to the early blues world. Interviewees include Alberta Hunter, one of the earliest African American singers to transition from Chicago's Bronzeville nightlife to the international spotlight, and Ralph Bass, one of the greatest R&B producers of his era. Blues expert, writer, record producer, and cofounder of Living Blues Magazine Jim O'Neal provides the book's foreword.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252090936 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Steve Cushing has been the host of Blues Before Sunrise for thirty years. He has served as anchor of WBEZ's nationwide broadcast of the Chicago Blues Festival, performs frequently as a drummer, and has produced several recordings by Magic Slim, Lurrie Bell, and Smokey Smothers.
Read an Excerpt
Blues Before Sunrise
THE RADIO INTERVIEWSBy Steve Cushing
University of Illinois Press
Copyright © 2010 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-07718-0
Chapter One
Yank Rachell
The mandolin is a rare instrument in the world of blues. Throughout the entire history of this music there have been only a handful of blues mandolinists of note. Yank Rachell and Charlie McCoy were the preeminent mandolinists during the prewar years, and Johnny Young was the lone postwar blues mandolinist. The mandolin remains popular in bluegrass and old-timey music, but has reached a virtual dead end in blues.
Pete Crawford made this interview with blues mandolinist Yank Rachell possible. Pete had formed one of those symbiotic relationships that many aspiring young white players had with veteran black bluesmen in the early 1960s, a tradition that continues to this day. Yank taught Pete how to play guitar in accompaniment to his mandolin and hired him to play gigs and recording sessions as his accompanist. Pete, in turn, hustled club and festival gigs and provided reliable transportation. the two worked together for many years. I don't recall if I approached Pete or if Pete approached me, but he arranged the interview and then drove me down to Yank's house in Indianapolis, a four-hour drive from Chicago.
As I recall, there were a couple of problems in doing this particular interview. First, when we set up the recording equipment in Yank's living room, his young grandson sat in. He was about six years old and didn't seem to understand that he couldn't sing or speak while we were recording. It didn't take Yank long to shag him out of the room, since he wouldn't be quiet, but try as we might we couldn't get rid of him. There were more doors in that room than on an advent calendar, and this kid popped through each one of them. Every time the kid reappeared, we would stop recording while Yank scolded him out of the room. This went on for most of the first hour.
Another difficulty for me was that Yank spoke with a unique dialect. I usually had no problem understanding what was said when black musicians spoke, having spent a decade on Chicago's South and west sides. Yank, however, had a very high-pitched, very nasal, rapid-fire manner of speaking. During this session I had a hard time following the conversation. I can be grateful that Yank was a natural storyteller—and that Pete, having heard his stories for many years, requested Yank's best anecdotes.
This interview took place on September 27, 1984. Yank Rachell died on April 9, 1997.
* * *
Well, I was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, way out in the country, you know. My daddy was a farmer. He got this farm, raised cotton and corn. So I didn't know nothing else but that. When I got larger, I heard about the city. "Daddy, let's move to the city." He said, "I ain't eating them wasps nests." He called light bread "wasps nests." Say, "I ain't eating them wasps nests, no light bread." Daddy said, "I'm gonna stay here and raise me some corn. Then I'd have some meal and eat some cornbread. And raise me some sow bosom." Talking about a hog. All right. Well, we stayed there. Planted cotton and corn and sorghum. All that junk, you know.
So we used to have an old radio with a horn on it. You'd hear them talk. When we didn't have one, we'd go to people's house and listen to it. So we decided we wanted to play some music. I did—me and my brothers—the three of us. So my brothers and I met some girls, schoolgirls. We wasn't trying to court them. We were too young trying to court them. But they had a guitar. They would lend it to us. And we'd go home and try to play. We couldn't play nothing, but we had an uncle, he could play. And I had a cousin, he could play. So my uncle, he lived in the city, and he'd come out in the country on a weekend. And he'd teach us how to play something on the guitar. Well, we three learned how to play the guitar.
Well, my older brother, he passed away. That left me and the baby boy. So I was going down the road one day. Wasn't no street then in them times. I was about eight years old. Man sitting on a porch playing a mandolin. One of them old gold mandolin with stripes on it, you know. I went by his house. I knew him. My mother and father knew him well. His name was Ollie Row, I never will forget. I said, "Mr. Ollie, what is that you got there?" He said, "A mandolin, son." I say, "Yeah?" I said, "I'd like that." And he said, "Let me sell it to you." "Let me see it." Say, "I believe I could play." I hit a lick or two. "Let me sell it to you, son." I said, "I ain't got no money. How much you want for it, Mr. Ollie?" "Five dollars." Five dollars was a lot of money then—I'm eight years old. Five dollars—I ain't never saw five dollars, I don't reckon. I said, "I ain't got five dollars. I'll trade you a pig for it." He said, "All right. Go get the pig." Well, he knew the value of a pig, but I didn't. So I didn't care. My mother and father had a lot of pigs and things. I went home, went to the barn. Got me a tow sack—"croaker sack," they call it. I put the pig in there and went 'round the thicket to the man's house. They didn't live far from us. And I gave him the pig and he gave me the mandolin. Well, that's all I wanted. I wasn't thinking about nothing else. So I came home with it.
There's one thing in the world to try to learn how to play a mandolin. If you can't play it, it'll run you crazy. Dinging, dinging, dinging. I couldn't play nothing. He didn't show me anything. So I carried it out. Every evening I'd come from school, I'd grab it. My daddy, he didn't like it. "Boy, get out of here with that fuss. Go to bed." "All right, I'll go to bed." When he'd leave, I'd get it. I'd be so glad when that old man leave home I didn't know what to do, because I want to play on that mandolin. So he didn't let us do much playing on it. He'd go off, we'd play. I'd hand it to my brother and he'd hand it back to me. Hand it to him. Then one day, my mother, she didn't say nothing much that morning. She's sitting there sewing, piecing a quilt or something. She said, "James." I said, "Ma'am." She said, "Where's the pig?" I said, "I don't know." She said, "I ain't seen that pig in a day or two." I said, "I ain't either, Momma." I know where the pig was; the man had the pig. She said, "Go out there and see if you can find him." I said, "Yes ma'am."
She hadn't never said nothing to me about playing the mandolin. She was good about it. I went out there to the barn and stayed about five minutes, or ten minutes, because I was in a hurry to get back to play on the mandolin. The old man was gone, you know. I come back. "You see him, James?" I said, "No, I ain't seen that pig nowhere." I picked the mandolin back up. I wasn't interested in any pig. So she said, "What is that thing you got there anyway? What is that?" I said, "It's a mandolin." "Mandolin?" I said, "Yes, ma'am." "Where you get that thing?" I said, "I got it from the man down the street, down there at the road." She said, "How'd you get it?" Now, in them days you better not steal anything—you do and you'll be dead, because they'll kill you. They didn't allow you to steal where I come from. "Did you steal that thing, boy?" I said, "No, Momma. I didn't steal it." She said, "How'd you get it?" I said, "He let me have it." "Who was it?" "The man down the street." She said, "How come he let you have it?" I said, "He let me have it." So she said, "Uh-huh—you stole it."
We had a tree out there in the yard. We lived right in the bottom, the edge of a bottom. She went and got every switch off that tree—looked like that tree withered. She come right back grabbing them switches. She said, "You're gonna tell me something about that mandolin, about that thing you're playing." She said, "Pull your clothes off." I commence to sniffing and crying, you know. She say, "I ain't gonna whup them clothes." She said, "I bought 'em and I ain't gonna whup 'em now—I'm gonna whup you." I commenced to crying, you know. I said, "Momma," I said, "I traded the pig for it." She said, "I ought to kill you." She said, "No, never mind, I ain't gonna do nothing to you." She said, "You know what? This fall when we kill meat, and we're gonna sit down and eat the meat, and you eat that thing what you got, that mandolin." (laughs) So I didn't care. I didn't care no way. So she wouldn't whup me.
So finally a guy come along named Willy Newborn. He was a mandolin player and a guitar player, too. Well, I played around with him, so he could play a mandolin. Well, he couldn't play too good, but he could play some. He would tune it. And so I learned to play it, you know. I just listened to him. So I learned to play it. A lot of times something comes to me, I didn't make it up, but I would learn how to play it then. We walked ten miles just to play them old country dances, you know. So I went with him one night. I played with him. A man gave me two dollars. I come on back. "That man's crazy paying me to play!"
I was the fool; I had never made no money, you know. I said to myself, "That man's crazy." I come on out. Said, "Momma, here's what I made." "Uh-huh," she say, "well, you better keep it, because you ain't gonna get no meat this fall." (chuckles) Well, I kept on playing; then my brother, he learned to play it. I'd play a piece and he'd play a piece—I'd play a piece and he'd play a piece. Well, my uncle had to teach me how to play a little on the guitar. So we'd team up. He played the mandolin and guitar. He'd play the mandolin, I'd play the guitar. Then he'd play the guitar and I'd play the mandolin. So we grew up like that.
We played that way until my brother Davey Boy passed. Oldest boy died first, but he had learned how to play, too. The three of us could play. So I'd play and play, them old country suppers. In the fall of the year, that's when you'd make some money—from gathering that cotton down there, you know. They'd gather cotton. They'd carry the cotton to the gin and gin their cotton. A lot of people don't know how that was, but they'd make money like that. So one night a man asked me, he say, "Yank?" I said, "Yes." His name is Charlie Barnes. He said, "How about playing something?" I said, "I ain't got no guitar, Mr. Charlie." He said, "I'll buy you a guitar." I said, "All right."
Sure enough, he bought me an old guitar. And I went to his house. Started on a Thursday night. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I played for him. Different people would come from different places. So I didn't know Sleepy John then. I was living on the north side and he was living on the south side of town. But actually he heard about me—they gonna bring him in there to play guitar against me, you know. Of course, John never did do nothing but flail a guitar. But I used to pick one. So we'd come down to the house, full, you know. Old John coming out—looked like an old sleepy man. Sat down, you know. I looked at him. I said, "This old guy, I'm gonna run him out from here playing tonight." He played some and I played some. And so we played around there and played around. So he liked how I played and I liked how he played. So that's why we teamed up together, right then and there, at that man's house. So we both were playing guitars.
Well, I could play a mandolin. So I quit playing guitar and played mandolin and left him on the guitar. So Sleepy John and I went playing together. And we'd play every fall. People come asking for you. And they'd have a fish fry on a Saturday night. Friday and Saturday night. The women would be in the kitchen. They'd pull the table across the middle door. And you'd go out and they would serve you, you know, in the kitchen there. Fish and K-wives—they call 'em hog chitlins. They'd have that moonshine whiskey out there. And we'd be playing out there in the country night, drinking that moonshine, guys fighting. Shooting out the lamp and breaking windows and things. One night, guys got to fighting and I run into the stable with a mule. Well, that guy was shooting pistols. So me and John played and played.
Well, we went to Memphis then, me and him. We sat down on the street playing one day. A fellow come by named Jab Jones. He was a piano player, Jab Jones. He say, "You sure can play. You play good enough to make records." He said, "There's a man from New York here now making records. Why don't you come on and see if we can make some records with him." I said, "Where's he at?" "He's on Shore and Beale." We said, "Well, we'll meet you up there tomorrow then." We was lying, but after all, we did go up there. The guy was there. Man name of R. S. Peer—big, fat, fine-looking white guy from New York. RCA Victor, that's who recorded us. This boy, Jab, carried us up there. He said, "Are these the musicians?" He said, "Let me hear you." We played, me and Sleepy John. He say, "Yeah, I can use you."
In them times they didn't have no tape; they had wax. And that wax was expensive—you couldn't mess that wax up and erase it like you do this tape anyway. So we practiced up a little and we got together and we made the record. "Goin' to Brownsville, Take the Right-Hand Road." That was our home, in Brownsville, you know. "I ain't gonna stop walking till I get in sweet mama's door." John and I made that up. Next thing was the "Divin' Duck Blues." I made that. We three made the first recording together in 1929. Well, the man paid us. That man give us nine hundred dollars. Lord have mercy! I never had seen that kinda money in my life, because I had just come off the farm, you know, youngster. I said, "That man's crazy giving us all this money!" I'm the fool. (chuckles) Three of us got three hundred dollars a piece, now. Well, my God, in 1929—three hundred dollars! Good God almighty.
We went down on Beacon Street, me and John did. We bought some of them old suits. They had a lot of them old secondhand suits and shoes down there. We bought three whole suits. Hired us a taxi to go to Arkansas. Kept the man over there a week, riding us around. The money come easy. Riding us around. Come back to Memphis. Well, I supposed to come to Brownsville. I bought a wristwatch and I had to pawn my wristwatch to have enough money to come to Brownsville on the bus. Now, that was the fool I was. (chuckles) So I goes to Brownsville.
After a while the record come out—ooh, it sounds so good! So many people'd be in front of the main record store the police had to stand there, you know, and make them let people get by. They had the street blocked. "That's John Adam and Yank Rachell. John Adam and Yank. Boy, they got some records out." And you couldn't get by the street. The police had to make 'em get out of the way. A man named Arthur John. He had a little old music store there. And he said, "That record brought you a half a million dollars." A half a million dollars. And we got about three hundred dollars royalty.
So I got married. Commenced to raising a family. I got four kids—two boys and two girls. So John want me to go. I couldn't go then. I said, "John, I can't go. I got to stay here with my family." John loved to go. He'd pick up anybody could play a harp or something. So then he went around. Hammie [Nixon] used to follow. Then he took Hammie. So him and Hammie teamed up together playing. Him and Hammie played a long time together. Well, when my family kinda grew up, I met up with Sonny Boy [John Lee Williamson aka Sonny Boy Williamson I]. Sonny Boy and I teamed up. It was twenty-five miles from Brownsville to Jackson, Tennessee. Sonny Boy's home was in Jackson. Well, I would go to Jackson. I met a friend over there; he could play. So I'd go out and play with him. Because I didn't know where John was, you know. I'd catch the bus and go to Jackson. So there's this little old Sonny Boy on a bike. He'd follow me around on his bike. "Let me play with you. Let me play with you." I looked at him; I said, "All right. Next time."
So I went over there one evening. People giving a dance out there in the country. From Jackson. I carried Sonny Boy out there with me. He got down and got to playing that harp and singing. Man want to whup him about his wife. He sure could play harp and sing. So we come on back. I had a call to New York. I put out that "Squeaky Workbench Blues." A guy up in New York called us. Called me and Dan Smith and B. Johnson. I wouldn't carry Sonny Boy. He just had started. He wasn't good enough back then. We played up there in New York. Come back. Well, Dan Smith, who went with me up there, he come on back to Jackson; I come on back to Brownsville. Jackson a bigger place than Brownsville, Tennessee. Jackson is a city. Pretty nice city. So he was up there woofing about how he had been recording, but people didn't know how much money he made. He even had some rubber [fake] money. And he's up there in a club, talking about how much money he made in New York. He had never been nowhere before. So they saw some money, sure enough. But it was rubber money, but they thought it was real money—they killed him. Robbed him. Killed Dan Smith.
Well, then I went to playing with Sonny Boy. Me and Sonny Boy started playing together. Sonny Boy got so good, we went recording. We went to St. Louis and we met Walter Davis. And Walter Davis, he met us playing with Lester Melrose. We played some and Lester Melrose wanted us to record for him. Well, we're living down South. So he sent Walter Davis down there every spring to pick up me and Sonny Boy, and we'd go to Chicago and record. We were staying with Tampa Red. Tampa Red had a big house. All the musicians come out to the city, why, he had a place for them to stay. The company was paying him, you know. We'd go up there to Tampa Red's and stay. He had an old dog—I never will forget it—drank more beer than a man. You didn't give him some beer, he'd bite you—he would! Tampa played at a tap right across the street from his house. He had an old parakeet. Tampa's wife, she'd give the bird a note. He'd put it in his mouth and go to the tap. That damn bird would fly over there to Tampa! Right over Lake Michigan—that's one place, one studio we was in where I made "Lake Michigan Blues." We was in a studio right, I don't know, about the ninth or tenth floor. Everything set up when you get there. Piano and everything. Two, three fifths of whiskey. Lester Melrose had that, because Sonny Boy ain't gonna play unless he got him some whiskey—not play good. So every studio we went to, they set up. Well, that's why we recorded. Sonny Boy and I in Illinois. I think we went to Joliet, Illinois, once. Walter Davis. So we'd go up there every year. Every spring come out with a new record, you know. We said, "Well, Big Bill [Broonzy] and them gonna record." We'd say, "Well, let us go record, too." And so, "We gonna put out something that they ain't got." Something like that, you know. We enjoyed that. Every summer, me and Sonny Boy would.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Blues Before Sunrise by Steve Cushing Copyright © 2010 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.