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The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books

Chicago

I’d really dug those days of busking but if the truth was told I’d had enough. I’d reached a plateau with my music. I was good but there was no way that I could compete with the best and although I got by and had my times I could see that it was a road that was going to end in misery.

I figured it was time to get in out of the weather; to get a room that I could call mine and settle down. Besides, times were changing fast. The South was becoming a different place. The old ways were dying out.

When slavery had been abolished we’d thought we were all free but it hadn’t worked out that way. We might have been free in name but in practice we worked the fields just the same and worked for the boss-man. We lived in the same huts and scratched the same living. We shopped the same stores and drank from our own water fountains, rode in our own parts of the buses and had our own eating places. We were out in those fields early, never educated, never voted and knew our place. If anyone made too much fuss or got above themselves they were quickly put in their place. The Klu Klux Klan saw to that.

There might not have been as many lynchings but that didn’t mean there weren’t any murders. It was easy to lose a body or two in those muddy bayous, especially when nobody asked too many questions. If a pastor got too big then it was always good for a church getting torched. With the Klan’s hooves pounding past your door, the yells and glow of those fiery torches lighting up your room, and the burning cross stuck in front of your door as a warning, it took a brave man to speak his mind. When the men who carried out the terror and tied the weights round the bodies were the same who did the investigating it took an exceptional person to defy the odds.

That is why you don’t find too much Blues with a political message. There was no protest in the words; the protest was heavy in the notes. Even to record a mild rebuke put you at risk.

There was that change coming but it was still a way off.

But for me it wasn’t the racism and politics that drove me out so much as the other changes. The old days were being swept aside by the new world. Machines were replacing men. The days of a big man, like ‘The Wolf’, Chester Burnett, running a team of oxen to plough those fields were going. There were tractors that could do a better job in a tenth of the time. The labour gangs were being replaced by machines that dug, sowed and harvested as good as any gang. The need for a workforce was melting in the heat of the future.

A man could do two things: he could kick his heels and grumble, get mean and ornery and starve; or he could uproot and take himself off to those northern cities where they had a need for labour. The huge car plants of Detroit and Chicago were calling out for fuel for their machines; they wanted hands to keep the wheels turning. Right now, in the South, there were idle hands in need of bucks while in the North there were plenty of greenbacks to be harvested.

There was a black tide flowing in one direction – out of the fields and into the factories, out of the heat and into the ice of winter, out of fields and into the concrete canyons of the city.

I was part of that mass migration. I was about to swap my hominy grits and greasy greens for hamburgers, hotdogs and French fries.

Besides, the days of the acoustic Blues were over. These were the days of electricity. The kids wanted something new that they could dance to, something with a beat. After the war it was as if the old world was washed away on a huge wave of energy. The radio rocked. The clubs rolled and those northern cities shook to the new world.

I hitched into Memphis and straight through with hardly a pause. I worked the street corners and clubs to get my fare together and proudly bought my ticket. I wanted to hit Chicago standing on my own feet.

I had no trouble finding a job and soon found myself on the night shift. The assembly line was tough. Those mothers came down the line at a steady rate and you had your job to do. I was on radiators and mufflers. I was shown my job and left to get on with it. I bolted them in place and clipped on hoses, one after the other. The foreman inspected my work and there was murder if I’d not got it right.

That first evening was hell all night. What with the pounding of machinery echoing round the huge factory and the foreman bellowing at me from two inches away, my ears throbbed. I was all fingers and thumbs and nothing would go on right. At break I was confronted in the toilets by a group of guys from my line. I was holding up production. We got paid by the number we churned out. It was what they called piece-work. My work wasn’t good enough. My speed was below par. I was costing everyone on my line money. They explained it reasonably enough. I picked myself up off the ground with a new resolve to get to grips with the work. I soon learned, the pace picked up and the quality came up to standard.

I forget how many parts I learned to put together on those black Fords. I think I could have assembled one from scratch in my sleep. But once we’d gotten over my little initiation I was accepted into the team and there was good bonhomie. The shifts were long but the hands, used to doing a share of labour in those distant fields, soon hardened up.

I had my own room and soon got into the pace of the city. The money was good and there were clothes, beer and girls to take your mind off the work. I soon learnt the ropes.

At the end of my Friday night shift a big stack of notes was placed in my hand. I looked at those greenbacks with the eagle staring back at me and grinned. It was more money than I could have dreamed of back in those Tutwiler days. I thought I’d arrived. Too bad that most of it had gone by Monday. I sure learnt how to spend money. My days of rags and a ceiling of stars were behind me.

Man, was I a sharp dresser! My suits hung in my wardrobe with my shirts and ties. I bought the shiniest tie-clip, the snazziest fedora and a pair of red braces that Al Capone would have been proud of. With my boots shined and teeth gleaming I cut quite a ladies man.

On Saturday night it was time to strut my stuff.

The Chicago clubs were different to the jukes of the south. Packed with bodies, the air was heavy with smoke and the scent of whiskey, beer and sweat swamped your nose. The heat was overpowering and the music had to fight its way through the din. With the amps turned to ten, the pounding beat of drums, guitars and bass pumped through your body like they were solid. You vibrated to that beat. You pulsed and swayed as it hit you with its rhythm. The whole floor was alive as the crowd jerked, jumped and bobbed in time. The women and men pressed together and lost themselves in that sound. It moved you. This was unlike the lighter bounce of the south; there was something heavy and compelling about this beat. It was somehow locking straight into a primitive core inside you, pumping into your gut, causing your heart to rush. That beat crashed through you, sent you mad with red blood pounding in your head. It captured the steel of the city, harsh and solid, the darkness in those streets, the violence, the noise, the energy.

On Saturday night the money and whiskey flowed. There was reefer and women and the assembly line was a million miles away. Saturday night was the time to go wild, forget, and stomp away all that pent-up frustration. Saturday night was when you let it all go, go, go.

I’d gone electric. I’d got my own amp and guitar and the old acoustic was now propping up the wardrobe.

This was a new world. It was all concrete and metal, glass and steel, hard, grey and shiny. It was a world of traffic, steam and crowds. The sidewalks were streaming with faceless people all bustling, vacant eyed and busy, hailing cabs, streaming down subways, all intent and purpose. There was no time to stop. You were caught up in the pace. There was no dust, no crops, no lazy evenings on verandas. It was go, go, go.

The music was the same. The beat drove it forward. It was harder and more insistent. It was filled with that lust for life. There was no holding back.

There was almost a war between the clubs in the south-side and west-side and a number of heavies moved in to keep order. I took my pick and rarely checked to see who was on. It was always good. I frequented Turner’s, the Checkerboard and Sylvio’s. They were hot and throbbing.

Soon after I got to Chicago I got to see Lightnin’ Hopkins who appeared on a rare visit. He was straight out of Texas but had that big hard bodied Gibson of his wound up to the top of the dial. Those riffs and single note runs of his walked up and down the fret but screeched right out to cut through the room. He stamped his feet with bottle tops screwed to the soles and augmented that with a drum and bass. Those runs of his might have been straight Texas Alexander but the way he delivered them with all that incandescent distortion made them pure Lightnin’. The Blues had run from the country to the city and been reborn. Lightnin’ personified it.

After that I couldn’t get enough. That same wave of amplification had either blown away the old guard or galvanised them. Sonny Boy Williamson had even electrified his harp. He may have been old but he’d moved. When I saw him in that small club on the south-side, man he was a showman. All those years on the King Biscuit show and doing the medicine shows had sharpened him up. He knew how to make an entrance. He came on stage with his top-hat, goatee beard, frock-coat, striped pants, spats and two-tone shoes complete with snaggle-tooth grin and took the place by storm. That band of his were cranked up and I caught a glimpse of Elmore back there on slide. Willie Rice Miller might have stolen the name from the original Sonny Boy but the act was all his own. What he couldn’t do with a harp wasn’t worth telling. He didn’t need somebody to help him; he could do it on his own. He played that harp without hands, lengthways in his mouth and made it talk, made it churn like a train, squeal like a pig and wail.

Then Jimmy Reed, with his infectious grin, shrill harp on some wire contraption round his neck, a pounding bass and driving rhythm shook the place. John Lee Hooker produced that idiosyncratic beat of his boogie shuffle, his deep voice telling you he was mad wid you, you had dimples in your jaw and he was going to shoot you down – boom, boom, boom. He rocked the joint with his rich growly voice and sultry looks.

I finally caught up with Elmore at the Checkerboard. He’d broken away from Sonny Boy and had his own band now. His searing slide guitar was right out there centre-stage and those anguished vocals tore the place down. I watched in awe as I saw the way he’d taken those Robert Johnson runs and poured them through his amplifier to create that sweet, strident sound that was so clear, clean and sharp like slashes of a lazer. I marvelled at what he’d done back in the Canton workshop. We talked into the wee hours reminiscing about those days back in the old electric shop. They already seemed an age ago.

Elmore was my favourite. Nothing came near the sound he created, that excitement and clarity.

But for sheer excitement and energy there were two acts that never disappointed. Chicago was bossed by the two big acts that came straight out of the Chess Studios into those steamy clubs. They were dynamite. But when they went head to head, as they often did at Silvio’s, they were like that atomic bomb on Bikini Island. They blew the place down. Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters both had their origins in the plantations of Mississippi but they’d embraced electricity with a vengeance.

Perhaps it was that shared background that created the fierce rivalry or more probably it was something in their personalities.

They disliked each other intensely and both vied to be top-dog. When they went up against each other it was like two continents crashing together. They pushed up mountains. Neither would give an inch. They pulled out every stop in the book.

The Wolf would prowl the stage, his huge frame menacing, his huge head shaking, wide-eyed, tongue out long, livid, pink, licking the mike lasciviously, crawling on the floor, waving his hand behind like a tail, howling at the moon, clawing up the curtains and moaning, roaring, rampaging, threatening, storming. Behind him Hubert Sumlin played that guitar like his life depended on it and it probably did; the Wolf was known to strike out and dislodge a few teeth if it wasn’t up to the mark. Willie Dixon orchestrated it from behind with huge double bass pounding out the beat and the drums of Earl Phillips providing the meaty platform. The power was so intense that it probably set off hurricanes in the Caribbean. There was something terrifying about the Wolf in full flow looming over the audience like some hulking grizzly bear set to rip you limb from limb. He was primeval, menacing and powerful. His sexuality swamped the women. You thought nothing could match that.

But then you hadn’t counted on Muddy Waters. He’d come a long way from those plantation days and that tractor. He had no desire to go back to that wooden shack in Rolling Fork. Muddy liked having money in his pocket, a Cadillac and young women to fawn over him. He was now a sharp city dude with his trilby, double-breasted suit, waistcoat and neck-tie. The overalls and muddy boots were long gone. Muddy had harnessed the power of those guitar riffs and brought them up to date. His band, also feeding off Willie Dixon’s incredible song-writing skills, motored like no other and Muddy fronted it with aplomb. He brought the Mojo bags, Johnny the Conqueroo and hambone magic of the south to bear in the smoky dens of Chicago where it mesmerised the crowds and sent them into ecstasy. Muddy worked that room like the master-craftsman he was. He might not have had Wolf’s huge frame or power but he had a magic of his own. Whether it was plucking out slide runs on his guitar, singing his boastful songs or dancing his feet, he strutted that stage and drove them wild. He’d whip them into a frenzy and as a climax to his act he’d shake up a bottle of coke, slip it in his pants so that the neck protruded. At the end he flipped the lid off and sprayed the crowd.

Man I went home buzzing and was never sure which of the guitars had stolen it. Why even the opening act of Magic Sam was blown into insignificance and he was a genius.

On Sunday my ears were still ringing, my mind whirling and my head throbbed. It took me most of the day to settle my stomach, stop the throbbing and find my feet. But the memory of those nights drove me forward. The music sent me reeling. I wanted nothing more. Music had hold of me. It was a beast, a monster, and it had me by the throat. I knew it would never let me go.