*Roosevelt Sykes Is In The House- The "Honey Dripper" Plays His Boogie-Woogie Piano

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Clip Of Roosevelt Sykes doing "Gulfport Boogie"

DVD REVIEW

Roosevelt Sykes and Big Bill Broonzy, Roosevelt Sykes and Big Bill Broonzy, Yazoo Productions, 200

The last time that the name Roosevelt Sykes was mentioned in this space was to highlight his boogie-woogie piano performances in a country blues compilation entitled “Rural Blues’, Volume 3. There I mentioned the following- “However, the ‘king of the hill’ on this one is Roosevelt Sykes’s piano work and vocals on “Hush Oh Hush” and “I’m Tired”. Roosevelt Sykes is one of those guys you keep hearing about if you listen to enough blues. Now I know why. Needless to say you will be seeing a separate individual review of his work in this space later.” And here it is.

In this documentary film you get to see Roosevelt in person with old soft hat on his head (I think that’s what they call that kind of hat. Being a child of the hatless Kennedy era I am not up on the sartorial distinctions on this question.), cigar in his mouth, keeping time with his foot and stretching his fingers all across the keyboard just like the way that you would think that the old time boogie-woogie guys would do it if you had to describe what they were up to in words. The smoked-filled 1950’s jazz club atmosphere of the film gives just the right feel to Sykes’ work. Outstanding here is his version of “The Nighttime Is The Right Time”.

I should note that the reason I got this film was to get a look at Roosevelt. As an added treat there is footage of Big Bill Broonzy doing a separate nightclub act in the same kind of atmosphere as that of the Sykes segment. And maybe just a little bit more provocative with a white hipster ‘dame’ in the picture. Dangerous stuff. Moreover, there are added segments of Big Bill wailing his acoustic guitar in practice that, I believe, came from one of Stefan Grossman’s “Legends of The Country Blues” volumes. Nice.

“Night Time Is The Right Time”

You know the night time, darling
(night and day)
Is the right time
(night and day)
To be
(night and day)
With the one you love, now
(night and day)
Say now oh baby
(night and day)
When I come home baby, now
(night and day)
I wanna be with the one I love, now
(night and day)
You know what I'm thinking of
(night and day)
I know the night time
(night and day, oh)
Whoa, is the right time
(night and day, oh)
To be with the one you love, now
(night and day)
I said to be with the one you love
(night and day)
You know my mother, now
(night and day)
Had to die, now
(night and day)
Umm, and my father
(night and day)
Well he broke down and cry
(night and day)
Whoah! whoa baby
(night and day)
When I come home baby now
(night and day)
I want you to hold my hand
(night and day)
Yeah, tight as you can
(night and day)
I know the night time
(night and day, oh)
Whoah is the right time
(night and day, oh)
To be with the one you love
(night and day)
You know what I'm thinking of
(night and day)
Whoah! sing your song, Margie
Baby
(night and day)
Baby
(night and day)
Baby
(night and day)
Oh, Baby
(night and day)
Do I love you?
(night and day)
No one above you
(night and day)
Hold me tight
(night and day)
And make everything all right
(night and day)
Because the night time
(night and day)
Oh, is the right time
(night and day)
To be with the one you love now
(night and day)
Oh yeah
(night and day)
Tease me
(night and day)
Squeeze me
(night and day)
Leave me
(night and day)
Ah, don't leave me
(night and day)
Lawdy baby
(night and day)
Take my hand, now
(night and day)
I don't need
(night and day)
No other man
(night and day)
Because the night time
(night and day)
Ow, is the right time
(night and day)
To be with the one you love
(night and day)
Oh yeah
(night and day)
I said baby
(night and day)
Baby
(night and day)
Baby
(night and day)
Baby
(night and day)
Whoah! baby now
(night and day)
Oh come on baby
(night and day)
You know I want you by my side
(night and day)
I want you to keep
(night and day)
Oh keep me satisfied
(night and day)
I know the night time
(night and day)
Everyday is the right time
(night and day)
Yeah to be with the one you love now
(night and day)
Well you know it's all right

Roosevelt Sykes
Ice Cream Freezer lyrics

My baby owns a ice cream freezer
She let's me put my milk in her can
Mercy!
My baby owns a ice cream freezer
She let's me put my milk in her can
Her freezer ain't to be churned
By no other man

Some people crave vanilla or strawberry
But-a black walnut is all I love
Mercy!
Some people crave vanilla or strawberry
But-a black walnut is all I love
When I put my spoon in her freezer
Man, it fits just like a rubber glove
Mercy!

Now, she turns her freezer
So slow an easy
She said, 'Daddy can you hold back
And stick around? ' (I'll try, ha-ha)
As she turn her freezer
So slow an easy
She say, 'Now, daddy can you jus hold back
And stick around? '
I'll say, I b'lieve you spoke jus a little too late
Pretty mama
I gotta let that flavor come runnin' down

'Mercy, mercy, man, yeah'
Ho, yeah!

'Let it roll on a while in the night'

'Ho, til the break of day'

'Ho, til the break of day'
'My, my, my, my'

'Ho while'

She said, 'Now, you done used my freezer
You said, 'Daddy, you look like
You gettin' ready to leave' (quite natural)
My, my
She said, 'Now, you done uses my freezer
'Look like you gettin' ready to leave'
She said, 'But you're still welcome to my can
When you have more cream to freeze'

More cream to freeze.

Roosevelt Sykes
She's Got It lyrics

Worked the gulf port from Memphis, Tennessee
Help me find Mrs. Mercy Dee
I just found a girl, she's got
Just found a girl and she's got
She's got the kind of lovin' I've been lookin' for

Well, she looks so fine
All dressed up in plaid
She start in to makin' love
She goes ravin' mad

I just found a girl an she's got
Just found a girl, she's got
Just found a girl got
The lovin' I've been lookin' for
My, my, my

Whoa (alittle right here)

Let it ride a while (roll another one right here)

Oh yeah
My, my (another one left)

She's no virgin but she's outta sight
She say I can suit her appetite
I just found a girl, she's got a
I just found a girl, and she's got
She's got the kind of lovin' I've been lookin' for
My, my (add a little)

'Let it rock now' (another, another all the way)

'Oh yeah' (another there)

Hurry up, baby
I'm gon' be in here quiet as a mouse
Come on baby, in this house
Cause I just found a girl and
She's got a, I just found that girl
And she's got, she's got
The kind of lovin' I've been lookin' for
My, my, my, my

'Ride now' (right here)
'Roll' (roll it)
'Let it ride a while'
My, my (right here)
'Gonna shake a little while now' (right here a little)
'Ho, yeah' (alright boys, right there)
'Oh, yeah'
My, my (outta here)

Well, I just found a girl and she's got
Just found a girl and she's got
Just found a girl and she's got
Just found a girl and she's got it
Just found a girl and she's got it
Just found a girl
She's got the love I've been lookin' for
Oh, my.

***Remember "Studs" Terkel- Pro- Working Class Partisan Journalist

Click On Title To Link To Studs Terkel’s Web Page.

Commentary

Strangely, as I found out about the death of long time pro-working class journalist and general truth-teller "Studs" Terkel I was just beginning to read his "The Good War", about the lives and experiences of, mainly, ordinary people during World War II in Americaand elsewhere, for review in this space. A little comment is in order here for now. The obvious one is that many of the icons of my youth are now passing the scene. Saul Bellows, Arthur Miller, Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer, Utah Phillips to name a few. Terkel was certainly one of them not for his rather bland old New Deal political perspective, as much as a working class partisan as he might have been, but for his reportage about ordinary working people. These are our people. He heard the particular musical cadence of their lives and wrote with some verve on the subject. Here I post an obituary from The Boston Globe for November 1, 2008. I will have much more to say later when I review his books.

***********

Studs Terkel - the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian and radio host who heard America talking and presented an aural landscape of its democratic vistas as lively, expansive, and often as dark as Walt Whitman's - died in Chicago yesterday. He was 96.

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His son, Dan, issued a statement saying Mr. Terkel died at home, the Associated Press reported.

Mr. Terkel, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote, "is more than a writer; he is a national resource." The psychologist Robert Coles hailed him as "our leading student of American variousness as it gets embodied in human particularity."

Mr. Terkel's interviews with a wide range of Americans on such topics as the Great Depression ("Hard Times," 1970), jobs ("Working," 1974), and World War II ("The Good War," 1984, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction) helped establish oral history as a popular and enduring genre.

Yet the designation "oral historian" never sat well with Mr. Terkel. "It's too much kind of a grandiose term," he explained, "I'm uncomfortable wearing it. My books aren't histories; they're memory books."

Mr. Terkel preferred a more companionable title for himself: raconteur. A raconteur, he once said, "is a teller of stories for public entertainment. I like that; it's a good description of what I am, I guess."

Those stories were told on the air, as well as in print. For more than a half-century, Mr. Terkel was a fixture in Chicago broadcasting. His interview program - originally known as "Studs Terkel Almanac" and then "The Studs Terkel Show" - ran from 1952 to 1997.

When Mr. Terkel retired from broadcasting, he became distinguished scholar in residence at the Chicago Historical Society. The society is a repository for some 5,000 hours of tapes from Mr. Terkel's radio shows and another 2,000 hours of taped interviews done for his books. Several hundred hours are available at www.studsterkel.org.

Mr. Terkel liked to joke about how important the tape recorder had been to his career. "Do I become most alive and imaginative when I press down the ON lever of my mute companion? I have a theory. I am a neo-Cartesian: I tape; therefore I am."

Despite this identification with his tape recorder (or perhaps because of it), Mr. Terkel often referred to the device as "the goddamn thing." Such dismissiveness was understandable. Among the interview subjects Mr. Terkel inadvertently erased or failed to record were actor Michael Redgrave, theater director Peter Hall, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, and actor and comedian Jacques Tati.

"I don't know how a tape recorder works," Mr. Terkel once confessed.

Although audio technician never appeared on Mr. Terkel's resume, he did not lack for job titles. In addition to author and radio host, Mr. Terkel's jobs included actor, playwright, disc jockey, and journalist. The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, whose first performances for predominantly white audiences were arranged by Mr. Terkel, told him he should have been a preacher.

"The way I look at it," he said of his interviewing, "it's like being a gold prospector. You find this precious metal in people when you least expect it."

Mr. Terkel, whose first book was "Giants of Jazz" (1956), an introduction to the music for young readers, likened his interviewing to a jazz soloist's improvising: "There aren't any rules. You do it your own way. You experiment. You try this, you try that. . . . Stay loose, stay flexible."

Along with looseness and flexibility, Mr. Terkel had another piece of advice: "The first thing I'd say to any interviewer is . . . Listen. It's the second thing I say, too, and the third, and the fourth. Listen . . . listen . . . listen. And if you do, people will talk. They'll always talk."

Mr. Terkel was being somewhat disingenuous. Much of that willingness to talk was special to him. He was the least intimidating of interviewers, with a famously warm and empathetic manner. As Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko said, "I could never imagine someone replying 'no comment' to Studs."

Such friendliness toward his subjects led to the criticism most frequently leveled against Mr. Terkel's books, their tendency to sentimentalize people and simplify complex issues.

Admirers as well as critics saw in that tendency the influence of Mr. Terkel's politics, which were very much of the left. (Blacklisted during the 1950s, Mr. Terkel was proud of having a 503-page FBI file.) Certainly, his populist methodology reflected his radical egalitarianism. "My turf has been the arena of unofficial truth," he liked to say.

Mr. Terkel's books include the words of the unknown as well as famous, poor as well as rich, inarticulate as well as eloquent: a class-blind democracy of the tongue.

"I'm looking for the uniqueness in each person," he said. "What was it like to be a certain person then? What's it like to be a certain person now? That's what I'm trying to capture."

Mr. Terkel's own uniqueness was never in doubt. A friendly biographer once spoke of his "orotund personality."

He cut a colorful figure: garrulous, exuberant, a character every bit as distinctive as the honeyed gargle that was his voice. Working into his 90s, Mr. Terkel seemed inexhaustible and inexhaustibly interested.

"Curiosity never killed this cat - that's what I'd like as my epitaph," he once said. "It's what gave me life; the older I got the more curious I became."

Part of Mr. Terkel's legend grew from his association with Chicago. Equally uncomfortable with the elitist East and the laid-back West, he personified the open, muscular ethos of the urban heartland. Appropriately enough, his best friend was another quintessential Chicago writer, the novelist Nelson Algren. Indeed, Mr. Terkel was as much a part of Chicago as Wrigley Field or the Loop.

"In a city with a population of 3 million, Studs must know 2,999,999," the writer Calvin Trillin once observed, "and the only reason he doesn't know the other one is they never happened to ride the same bus together."

Even Mr. Terkel's nickname sprang from his hometown: So great was his identification with Studs Lonigan, the hero of James T. Farrell's 1930s trilogy, a classic of Chicago literature, friends took to calling him Studs. By the time he married Ida (Goldberg) Terkel, in 1939, only she was calling him by his given name, Louis, a habit she never abandoned during the six decades of their marriage. She died in 1999.

Louis Terkel was born in New York on May 16, 1912. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia: Samuel Terkel, a tailor, and Anna (Finkel) Terkel, a seamstress. In 1922, the family moved to Chicago and ran a boarding house. Mr. Terkel would often cite the experience of listening to the establishment's highly varied clientele as to how he came to have such an appreciation for others' talk.

After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1932, Mr. Terkel attended its law school. "I'd read about the great Clarence Darrow, the defender of the guilty and the oppressed," he said. "I saw myself as some kind of heroic figure like that."

He quickly learned the law had more to do with torts than crusades. Still, Mr. Terkel earned his degree; but after failing the bar exam he abandoned the profession. He applied to become a fingerprint classifier for the FBI, only to be rejected. Years later, he discovered that one of his professors had warned the bureau, "His appearance was somewhat sloppy, and I considered him to be not the best type of boy."

He went to work for the federal government doing statistical research in Omaha and then Washington, D.C. In Washington, he took up acting, something he continued when he returned to Chicago to join the Federal Writers Project.

Mr. Terkel flourished as an actor on radio, tending to get cast as a gangster, he explained, "because of the low, husky menacing sort of voice I had." During World War II, he briefly served in the Army Air Force.

Back in Chicago, Mr. Terkel became host of a music program called "The Wax Museum." Music was always a great love of Mr. Terkel's, and his tastes were eclectic. A given show might include recordings by Duke Ellington, Lotte Lehmann, Benny Goodman, Mahalia Jackson, and Enrico Caruso.

With the blacklist preventing him from acting, Mr. Terkel took up on-air interviewing. A publisher, Andre Schiffrin, noticed his talent for drawing people out and urged him to do a book.

The idea appealed to Mr. Terkel. "A radio interview, you do it and it's gone," he once put it. "The ephemeralness, that's part of the attraction. But a book is forever."

Mr. Terkel's other books include "Division Street: America" (1967), "Talking to Myself" (1977), "American Dreams: Lost and Found" (1980), "Chicago" (1986), "The Great Divide" (1988), "Race" (1992), "Coming of Age" (1995), "My American Century" (1997), "Spectator" (1999), "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" (2001), "Hope Dies Last" (2003), and "Touch and Go" (2007).

"P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening" is scheduled for release this month.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.