When The Blues Was Dues-With Mississippi Goddam In Mind
By Fritz Taylor
Sid Jenkins was not quite sure when he first be-bopped the
blues, knowingly be-bopped the blues although it must have been in early
childhood on some vagrant radio station that would come meandering into the
family house on a wiry windy Saturday or Sunday night for out in the wilds of
America, out in some be-bop heaven at least that what it sounded like, places
called Chicago and Detroit, with programs like Be-Bop Benny Blues Hour and Sal Mann’s The Blues Is Dues Show but those were basically backdrop, renegade
musical shows against the Frank Sinatra croon, the Bing Crosby pitter-patter,
the Patti Page whatever, the Peggy Lee flame and the Rosemary Clooney “come on
to my house” stuff. The stuff that had gotten his parents through the war,
World War II worrying music for those slogging through the mud fields of Europe
or like his father the island wars in the Pacific. That was the main music
blaring over the radio before rock and roll landed its bombshell. (Landed its
bomb shell but a dud when it came to family room air time since Mother Jenkins,
and behind her Father Jenkins acting as surly rearguard against the degenerate
devil’s music banished all such WMEX madness from her presence until God-sent
transistor radios solved the problem and he could listen away from preying ears
and only have to deal with a snotty-nosed roommate brother.)
Maybe somewhere in that rock and roll mix he had heard a
stray saxophone that went blazing in the night to round out the deep croon of
Bill Haley’s romping around the clock. In fact he knew if only by intuition
that some linkage placed the saxophone of some forlorn Benny Goodman musician
played stepfather to that far-out brother when he reached for the big high
white note. But so much for history. All he knew when he watched the doings on American Bandstand was that some
curlicue guy in a rented tux was blowing that rif, that rif that came from deep
inside the pit of his stomach looking to be fed to a closed in world, looking
for that high white note that would blow right out to the Japan seas like that
night in Frisco town back when he first started. Blasted the joint wide open
(blasted that joint too courtesy of some heady chick in a tight cashmere
sweater who was all promise and then disappeared in the night maybe had been
blown out with that high white note in the Japan seas) throw caution to the
wind that night even though his bandleader a guy working six, two and even said
cool the wild boy stuff, this was strictly the suburbanite set out for a night
of drink kicks. Liquor kicks and being able to say they were there the night
Kenny somebody they didn’t remember the last name blew the high white note out
into the Japan seas like they would even know the thing happened they were probably
talking stock futures and the latest recipes when that blow they would read
about it in the next day’s newspaper reported by some second-string guy who
replaced Ralph somebody from the Hearst chain who had been too drunk to write
up a real review and that second brother heard that high white, heard it right.
Blew blues too, blew for Chilly Doone when he was coming up in as the next big
thing from out of Decatur, Chilly the guy whose signature was “later Decatur”
and had half a generation getting into the rhyming simon thing that Sid would
get caught up with when that fad blasted down to the junior high set, blew the
blues right into the sunlight flaming sky if you asked anybody who knew what
was what in the big horn world.
Maybe it was some good old boy fugitive from some farm
outside of Memphis who once the share crop was a dusted reality to the
mega-corporation agri-farm decided that Gloversville, Riverdale, Carver,
Adamsville was too square for his talents and headed to town to take his
chances, and they were chances. Went down to Sam Phillips’ place, his record
shop cum recording studio and blasted the joint to the ground. Those good old
boys feasting on fisted-two dollars to Sam to keep them from those dusty
moth-eaten shoes they left behind and try to hit it big like good old boy (or
rather good young boy since he passed away at twenty-nine of, well, of hard
living and hard loving not a bad way to go when you think about the
alternative). Grabbed an old Les Paul-inspired guitar or some Sears rendition
of the same, went and got a little juice for the machine (and another kind of
juice for the head) and let it rip, let themselves put the rock in rockabilly
hoping that some record company would grab Sam’s lapels and insist that they
manage that good-looking, women-pleasing, suggestively hip-moving, hair all
slicked back bad boy to fame and fortune. Guys like Warren Smith who claimed
that rock and roll Ruby could only dance to satisfy her soul, Sonny Burgess
getting worked up over red-headed women (and who wouldn’t when you saw her
shake that thing, shake it good and hard too, Ray Perkins jack-knifing across
the stage to his classic Fireball, Billy James going all out Rock My Baby Down.
Strangely there was a little rif, a little something not learned from listening
to the Grand Ole Opry when they were kids, something with a “Negro” beat, maybe
picked up in passing the 12th Street Baptist Church and sneaking a
hear, hearing something primal, sometime from our homeland Mother Africa and
that guitar just jumped along twisting Hank and the boys for a while. And so it
went as a whole generation of good old boys gave it hell while it lasted, hell,
none of them were complaining since it got them off that freaking farm.
Maybe it was some exotic, exotic to a white bread Riverdale
working poor (po’, okay if we are going down to the ground) from the Acre and
never having seen a black person in the flesh until he went in Boston and got a
who mix of people he never had seen out in the sticks, rhythm and blues beat
dig up from the muds by guys like Big Joe, Sammy Sacks, Lenny Boy, Sonny Boy,
Hi Hat McCoy and he kept wondering why he was snapping his fingers to the sway
of say Big Joe telling his lady friend to shake that thing (of course by then
Sid was aware, totally aware, of what that was command was suggesting) and
digging the mood created. Dug that simple pitter-patter which reflected his own
hard scrabble take on the world, on the hard to swallow fact that those down on
the floor stayed on the floor and nobody gave a damn whether nobody ever got up
on his or her hind legs and said the hell with it. Put plenty of time trying to
put out the fire in his head that would not let him rest (and a million years
later would wind up going through some crazed mantra trying to slow down, to
rest, to be at peace to stop that self-same fire in his head that he could
never extinguish for hell nor high water).
Maybe, just maybe though, thinking back to that Mother
Africa idea, that raw back beat that seemed to be in his head from baby-hood
had joined him with dusty old sweated plantation workers hacking away their
lives for Mister’s cotton, soy beans, peanuts, who come Saturday let Mister and
his products go to hell and raised hell themselves down in Uncle Billy’s tavern
(illegal of course since the place would pass no inspection even under Mister’s
lax laws where Uncle Jim, Sleepy John somebody, Mississippi Fred, John, Joe or
somebody, Tom from over in Clarksdale now but who grew up under Mister’s shadow
would take out some old National steel guitar or, better, some Sears catalogue-ordered
grand stand guitar and wail the night away for the folk, the folk swilling up
Uncle Billy’s illegal, cutting up Harlem sunsets, and generally making a mess
of things as that beat drove the night’s proceedings. Or more probably some late
arriving traveler from Mister’s country heading up the river following some
modern Northern star finding him or herself in some Maxwell Street gin mill his
old plug-in guitar (showing a new complex of sound never heard down at Uncle
Billy’s) handy after a day of sweated factory labor wailing hell out of the
damn thing and the night away for the folk, the folk swilling up Uncle Billy’s
illegal, cutting up Harlem sunsets, and generally making a mess of things as
that beat drove the night’s proceedings. Hard to imagine such roots but how
else explain that strange mix that drove Sid all his livelong life, that simple
three chords and out.
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