Excerpt from The Blues Muse.

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Can you turn the whole history of Rock Music into a novel? I reckon you can. That’s what I did with ‘The Blues Muse’

This is a tiny section. My protagonist, an itinerant black blues singer, meets the young Elvis Presley:

Tupelo

Tupelo was a small town and like most of them places had two sides to it. One was black and one was white and never the twain shall meet. Ceptin’ that wasn’t strictly true. The truth was that some of those white sharecroppers were worse off than the blacks and certainly lived no better. They lived a hundred to a room in wooden shacks the same as the negroes. They worked the land and hoed weeds just the same, walked the mules, ploughed, sowed and owed the man the same as everybody else. There was no difference. And many of them weren’t too proud to share some music, a bottle or some dice.

Of a night, when the heat was cooling off, we’d sit on the veranda and rock on our chairs with a guitar on our laps and a bottle at our feet. Sometimes someone would strike up a diddy-bow on the side of one of them huts and some of the youngsters would try out some of their moves. Even the old folks would join in. It was kind of spontaneous and neighbourly.

If you wanted the real action you headed for town. The white folks would Honky Tonk but if you wanted something a bit earthier you hit the black side of town where the beat sizzled and the boots hardly hit the floor. The big mamas would jive their asses and shake like jelly. Their bodies shimmied while the guys, dressed to the nines in their dapper suits, ties and loud shirts, shoes shined, hair slicked and a hat tilted at a crazy angle, would strut their stuff and make their moves. Why – I would watch that floor and sometimes it looked like those cats had bones of rubber.

Elvis Presley was one of those real young white cats who liked to hit town and soak up the sounds. He was a rare one, that young kid. He did not fit in with most of his white group. With his long hair slicked back into a ducks-ass DA and combed into a tall pompadour of a crest like Esquerita, side-burns that he could tie under his chin and bright clothes of contrasting colours, he put the coolest black dudes to shame. He was a young skinny kid and had a mind of his own. His black eyes would look right through you and shine with some inner light when he saw something he liked. I guess it was that Cherokee blood set him apart. He was untamed and wild at times and, I declare, if he hadn’t have been so quiet and shy by nature, I’d swear he was pushing the numbers for some gang or other.

Many’s the time we’d sneak into the back of one of those clubs where the lights were so low you couldn’t tell the colour of a man’s skin and we’d watch. Tupelo was small but we’d get all the Blues Guys come through. Elvis’ eyes would pop outa his head when he saw Jimmy Reed, Big Maybelle and Arthur Crudup.

I saw him talking to Arthur after his show. Arthur had come down from Chicago when he was supposed to have lived in a packing case under the station in Chicago Central. If he ever did, he was not doing that now. You could see the man was eating good.

Elvis soaked up Howlin’ Wolf, Roy Brown and Big Mama Thornton. I could see it. His eyes were glowing and he never missed a beat. That sound was driving into his head and swirling round in there with all that Bill Monroes and Hank Williams. I knew it was all going to come bursting out one day.

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

‘The Blues Muse’ – A novel – the history of Rock Music – Chicago Blues and Chuck Berry

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

Back to Chicago

It didn’t take too long for the deprivation of the South to send me back to Chicago. The money to be made on those production lines was like a magnet. I’d grown to like my own bed and there was nothing quite like those steamy clubs. Chicago jumped like no other place on Earth. The white guys in the north might have their Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. The white guys in the south might have their Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Louvin Brothers but nothing shook the planet like the sound that pounded out of those underground cellars they called clubs. Nothing smelt, felt or rocked like them. Chicago rocked and I wanted to Rock with it.

The tempo was picking up, and there was change in the air. Muddy, Elmore and the Wolf were at their peak but a new phenomenon was starting up and the kids were getting hip to it.

Blues had spawned a new child with an even louder voice, even more insistent beat, and something faster. It was the stirrings of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Like all new things it was full of vibrant energy.

It came ready formed straight out of Chess, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

I was there when it happened. I was right there at the front of the stage. If the Blues thundered along with all the power of a steam locomotive then Rock took off with the roar of a space rocket. Charles Edward Berry, better known as Chuck had stood in the wings for twenty seven years, hiding away, biding his time, honing his skills and sizing things up. When the time was right he exploded on the scene with the nascent force of a hydrogen bomb. There was no pause for breathe, no brief period to learn his trade. He simply headed into Chess Records straight from St Louis and never looked back. This was no kid. He already had that analytical mind. He’d kept his eye on the market.

Chuck had a multitude of skills and among them was a keen business mind. He was twenty seven but he had a mind that was years older when it came to analysing the scene. Chuck had been quick to realise the cross-over potential. He weighed it up and saw that the white kids were boiling like magma under a dormant volcano. The pressure was building. Chuck wanted to be the crater through which that lava erupted, the lava of adolescent fury, the pent-up sexuality of all that angst driven, hormone fuelled repression. All it needed was ignition.

From where Chuck stood it was clear to see. This was post-war USA. The economy was in overdrive and the kids were a new market. There were new fashions, new interests, sex, cars, speed and wild days. There was Marlon Brando, James Dean and rebellion. The establishment was sitting on a powder keg and Chuck was wanting to set the fuse.

Chuck took the beat, speeded it up, and gave it a back-beat. Taking Johnny Johnson’s piano he translated the notes into a string of guitar riffs that stung like a swarm of hornets. Fast cars, poetry, dancing, young love, daring the establishment, there was no monkey business for Chuck.

He was rehearsing for fame in those Chicago clubs and I was there to witness it all, the inauguration of the hurricane that was Chuck Berry, the tsunami that was Rock ‘n’ Roll. I was carried right up there to the roof and rode the crest of that wave. Chuck blew the lid off the Blues and roared off with it in his speedster without a backward glance. We followed in his wake but never did catch him.

I thought I’d seen everything with Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton and then Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Elmore James. I thought that Robert Johnson had played like no other could but I was unprepared for the excitement of Chuck Berry in those early days. Chuck was getting his moves together and man did they work. I couldn’t believe that one man could hold it all together. Johnny Johnson was a brilliant pianist and the band were tight but they were invisible when Chuck hit the stage. He duck-walked out, head jerking back and forth, knees bent and guitar pointing forward, streaming out a distinctive burst of notes in what was to become the most recognisable music in Rock ‘n’ Roll. He’d come to a halt in the centre of the stage , legs splayed into the splits, guitar pointing out showering the audience with notes that went off like cherry bombs. His vocals were fast, diction perfect so’s you’d catch every word, and words sounding off like poetry striking bells. Chuck said it was all merely a case of rhyming words and maths but it was more than that; this was genius. When the verses were over it was back to the jerky walks, machine gun stance – peppering the audience with steel-tipped notes and visual magic.

Chuck had it all – the looks, the moves, the words and the bravado. He captured the excitement that the kids didn’t even know they were looking for.

Extract – ‘The Blues Muse’ A novel on Rock Music. James Brown.

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

Screamin’ and Flamin’ in the South

 The chitlin circuit was well established. If you were a competent musician, and I was, you just dropped in and out of bands. It was no big deal.

I jumped from the battle of egos straight into the coffin.

Leastways that’s how it appeared to me. If Little Richard was loud, raucous and straight outa the Baptist church (with an outrageous bisexual camp twist), Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was straight outa the swamps.

He put together an act and a sound that was so primitive and weird that it got him instantly banned. ‘I put a spell on you’ might have sold a million but it never graced more than a few of the most daring radio stations and never featured in any of the charts I saw. As far as I was aware only Wolfman Jack – beaming out from some mad radio station in the outback of the Mexican border, and Alan Freed, who was on a mission to promote and integrate black and white Rock music and had coined the phrase, dared feature him. Alan featured him as ‘The Wildman of Rock ‘n’ Roll’. I wasn’t sure that what he was doing was in the same category as Elvis and Little Richard but it sure grooved. The primitive drunken grunting was indicative to the establishment of everything that was wrong with negroes. It confirmed all their worst fears.

Not that this in any way deterred Screamin’ Jay. If anything it drove him to even more extreme acts. He was accused on all sides of pandering to racial stereotypes with his costumes and primeval grunts, but he went on just the same. He had a vision and he went for it.

When I joined the band he had taken it as far as it would go. He’d start the act by jumping out of a coffin in reed skirt, face paint and a bone through his nose. In his hands he’d have a spear, ju-jus, and a skull and proceeded to prance around the stage terrifying the youngsters with his snarling mouth and big eyes.

I loved him and didn’t find him half as crazy as people made out. He had an eye on the profit margin but he always ensured that the music was good and his huge baritone voice could carry a song.

Although we were a black band, which certainly alleviated a lot of the aggravation for me as I wasn’t constantly confronted with the fact that I was considered second class, we were still playing to segregated audiences and I was getting fed-up with the demeaning costume I had to wear. It was time to move on.

James Brown was entirely different. He was a perfectionist who wanted everything so tight you couldn’t breathe. He took me on because I’d played with Little Richard and he idolised the man but he expected perfection from day one. If you were a minute late you were fined, if you had a button undone you were fined. I don’t think I ever got a cent. I not only had to learn all the guitar parts in no time but I was expected to know all the steps and routines as well. James drove us worse than mules. There were days I found myself wishing I was back working those fields.

At least with James we played to mainly black audiences. We didn’t get the segregation shoved in our faces every day. I got to go on stage at the Apollo in Harlem. That was some experience, but we still had to stay in the dives, put up with the jibes, drink from the ‘coloured’ spigot and pee in the ‘coloured’ toilets.

Standing there behind James Brown was electrifying. I couldn’t take my eyes off the man. I’ve never seen anyone drive themselves so hard. He wanted it bad. He put together the act based around his dance moves, and man the cat could move. He strutted, spun and did the splits. I’d never seen anything like it. Just watching him made me exhausted. But he made me forget what I was doing. At the end of the show he recited a catalogue of every bum note, false move and grimace like he’d been studying me instead of performing. It certainly tightened up my playing but I got to thinking what I was doing with this life. That band was so tight it felt like a machine.

On top of that the pay was poor and I was docked for every mistake. Some of the time I was so short on cash I hardly got to eat.

‘The Blues Muse’ a novel on Rock Music – Georgia and the South

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

Georgia and the South

Once again I had fallen on my feet. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Little Richard must have heard something in my playing that he liked or at least nothing that he took exception to. As I was there in that band I just fell into place and was slotted in. I had a feel for that beat and a desire to be part of the storm.

Touring was crazy, particularly on the package tours. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Craze was sweeping the nation and the promoters were quick to jump on the wagon. They figured it was likely to last a week or two and be gone; they had to make their bucks while it lasted. They put together package tours with all the guys from Sun Records and lumped in Fats Domino and Little Richard.

The rivalry between Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis was immense. They both wanted to blow each other off stage, both used the piano as a weapon, a stage prop and a visual aid as much as an instrument.

On the bus we all got along fine, black and white. We were musicians. We played cards, swapped riffs, talked music and goofed. Those journeys were long and the heat was intense. There was no air-conditioning back then. You sweated and you fried, even with the windows open it was only hot air that blew through. It burned you up and made you grouchy but we coped.

But it was when we stopped that the trouble began. On the bus we all mingled as one. Off the bus we were divided. The whites went off to their eaters and we went to ours, we drank from different water fountains and even used different toilets. When we stopped for the night they got hotel rooms and we got flop-houses that stank, had roaches and bugs. Sometimes we couldn’t find nowhere to put us up and we slept on the bus while they enjoyed a nice bed.

In the concerts it was more of the same. Little Richard was causing a dilemma. The white kids were going nuts for the music. Little Richard was black and was used to playing to black audiences. At these shows there were just as many white kids as there were black. The promoters split the auditoriums in two with white kids on one side and blacks on the other. They thought they’d got it sussed but they hadn’t reckoned with the power of Rock ‘n’ Roll!

Jerry Lee and Little Richard sent those kids into a frenzy. They didn’t care if they was black or white or green; they just wanted to get out of those seats and let the music take them. Within minutes they were screaming, rushing the stage and dancing in the aisles. There was no stopping them. Black and white, side by side, digging that sound, in ecstasy, shrieking and rockin’ their hearts out.

Behind the scenes there was turmoil. The promoters were threatening the acts. They didn’t want the shows pulled. The police were threatening the promoters; they didn’t like to lose control. The establishment was in uproar. They didn’t want their sons and daughters driven into a frenzy by this decadent primitive beat. They saw it as a moral degrading outrage and the mixing of the races was indicative of all that was wrong with the world, the decay of civilisation. The performers didn’t give a hoot. They were having a great time. They loved every minute. Neither Jerry Lee nor Little Richard would back down. They wanted escalation. They both thought they were the greatest. Elvis might say he was the King but they knew different. Their egos saw all that reaction and stoked it up. They both thought they should close out the show, be the headlining act. They both looked for ways to upstage and outdo each other.

From where we stood in the backing group we saw that it couldn’t get any wilder. Jerry Lee would kick his stool across the stage, spring up on to the piano and pound the keys with his feet, he used his elbows and backside, and went crazy, long wavy hair hanging over his face. The fans threw themselves against the thin line of police and did their utmost to get a piece of him. They went berserk.

Little Richard was not about to be outdone. He played with his leg straight up on the keyboard, jumped on the piano and ran on and off stage. He drove the crowd into such a frenzy that they stormed the stage with girls throwing underwear at him.

At one show Jerry Lee was so incensed at having to take his turn at going on first that he took a can of gasoline on stage and finished with ‘Great Balls of Fire’; he soaked the piano and set fire to it.

Walking past a disconcerted Little Richard, as the flames roared behind him, he dusted his hands and said ‘Follow that Richard’.

We stood there and wondered just how he was going to.

Somehow the racial thing niggled at me. I found myself resenting it. It wasn’t the white guys fault. I could see they were embarrassed by it.

Another section of ‘The Blues Muse’ – early Elvis in Memphis

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A novel that dogs the history of Rock Music. Join Elvis in Memphis.

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

Memphis

Somehow I’d bypassed Memphis. Although I’d passed through and busked a bit I hadn’t stayed long enough to get my feet under the table. Most folks caught it on the way up, stayed a while and made their mark. It was like a staging post on the way to Chicago. The Wolf rolled in and out on his way to Chess.

I had rekindled a shred of ambition. I’d heard about this talent scout called Sam Phillips who checked out the local R&B and Country acts. He was acting for the Chess and Vee-Jay labels in Chicago. If he liked you he sent you on. But he’d also been recording his own talent and had set up his own studio with the Sun Record Label and Memphis Recording Service.

I wasn’t sure about the chances of a recording career but I had hopes of getting into the house band and ambition enough to want to move into recording. I thought there might be an opening there for me. Sam sounded like the kind of guy who knew what he wanted. He’d recorded the Wolf and Rufus Thomas. I thought I might just get lucky.

Sam Phillips seemed happy enough to hear me out. He listened to my guitar and said he liked it but I soon figured that he did not want to record me. He was busy looking for something different. I didn’t fit the bill. If I wanted to record I’d have to pay for the pleasure and that wasn’t what I wanted. I also found that there were no openings for soundmen or scouts. I had no way forward and my contacts were simply not opening any doors.

But Beale Street was a revelation. It was jumping. The place was packed with marks and every bar, club, bordello and street corner was pumping out a different sound. It reminded me of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. This was my kind of place.

The only trouble was that every other Joe Soap had the same idea. The place was packed out with musicians all trying to claw a living. It was jumping but it was sure hard to find a place to jump in.

I drifted back to Sun Studio more in hope than expectation. I guess there was one of my old buddies who had the same idea. As I ambled near to the place with no clear plan in mind a truck drew up outside and out jumped a young lithe figure I knew well. He hadn’t changed much since those days in Tupelo; the same crazy style, long greased hair, sharp clothes and sideburns. The only difference was that now he was clutching a beat-up old acoustic guitar.

Elvis saw me staring and recognised me straight away. He came right on over and gave me a hug, asked how I was doing and flashed that same lopsided grin that I remembered so well. I explained that I was plum full of luck, just that none of it was of the good kind. I was looking for work.

Elvis stood back from me looking concerned and thoughtful. He asked if I’d driven trucks.

‘Sure,’ I lied, after all driving was driving, trucks were no different to cars.

It looked as if there was a possibility of a job. My spirits rose.

I asked what he was up to. He grinned with that lip raised and quivering and lifted his guitar.

‘I’m here to record a song for my Ma,’ he explained. ‘Gonna be a birthday surprise.’

The Memphis Recording Service was one of Sam Phillip’s spin offs. For a few dollars you could go in and record a couple of sides and walk out with a record of your own. It was highly popular. Elvis thought that it would send his Ma crazy to hear him on record.

I accompanied him in.

Sam Phillips was not there but Marion Keisker, his secretary, ran the business when he was not around. She organised the recording booth. Before we could start Marion had to get a few details down.

‘What sort of style do you sing?’ Marion asked.

‘I sing all kind of songs,’ Elvis answered with a bemused frown.

‘Well who do you sound like?’

‘I don’t sound like nobody,’ he replied shuffling around awkwardly.

I concurred with that. Elvis didn’t look, move or sound like any white cat I’d ever met.

I sat at his feet in that booth as Elvis cleared his throat, fidgeted around and got his guitar just how he wanted it. Inside that booth the bubbly Elvis was absent. He was subdued, serious and nervous, a little overawed. He’d wanted Sam Phillips to hear him sing and had hopes of being recorded properly. That was not to be. But he wanted this to be good for his mother. He joked around a bit to settle his nerves and then the red light came on.

Elvis strummed his guitar and sang. The first number was ‘My Happiness’ and then he went straight in to ‘That’s When Your Heartaches Begin’.

When he’d finished we came out. Elvis was excited and buoyed up. He hadn’t made any bad fluffs. It had gone well. He was sure his mother was gonna love it.

Marion had also been impressed. I watched as she wrote ‘Good ballad singer. Hold’ next to his name. I knew that meant she was certain to play it to Sam.

We went back the next day to pick up the demo and Elvis clutched that acetate in its plain paper cover to him, delighted at what he’d done. His mother was more than delighted.

I was not so sure. I’d heard that voice. It was good, but I reckoned that he needed to get the material right. Back in Tupelo we’d been seeing all those great Blues guys who could really jive it up. I would have preferred him to be doing some of that hard-ass stuff.

Elvis was as good as his word and got me working making deliveries. I made good money.

‘Hey Elvis,’ I asked as we were working together, ‘why don’t you record some of that great stuff we were listening to? You know……. The Jimmy Reed and Arthur Crudup.’

Elvis paused and looked thoughtful.

I knew he could do it and I knew Sam Phillips was on the look out for a white guy who could sing like a black guy. He made no secret of it. He always said that The Wolf was the greatest talent he’d ever recorded and if he’d have been white he’d have made Sam a billion bucks. I thought Elvis had the potential.

Over the ensuing months I worked as a truck driving delivery man and often teamed up with Elvis. We tore up the town and had a good time. Elvis liked to drive wild, live wild and catch the best acts in town and Memphis had all the best acts going. He had wide tastes. One time it’d be the glorious smooth voice of Clyde McPhatter and another it was the wild Little Richard or a country act like Bill Monroe. Elvis didn’t seem to mind what colour they were or what type of music they were playing. As long as it was good and it moved him he was happy. When he heard that music he couldn’t sit still. His whole body jerked into rhythm. It shook him to the core. There was nothing he could do about it.

I think Elvis had all but given up on Sam coming through. He’d been in and recorded another demo – ‘Just to hear the sound of my voice’ – he told me. But I could sense the disappointment. Music was in him and it had to come out.

We were together when Elvis got the call. Marion had finally persuaded Sam to give him a chance. Sam was not convinced. He liked the voice he heard but to him it was nothing that special.

I sat in the corner of the studio looking up at the weird switch-back ceiling with the insulation tiles hanging off. Sam assured me that it was like that to create the sound. It stopped it echoing. I was dubious but then you couldn’t argue with the quality of the recordings he was getting out of it. They were different.

Sam had a bit of an idea of what he wanted. He placed Elvis in the centre with his guitar and brought in a guitarist called Scotty Moore and a bass player called Bill Black. I don’t know. I didn’t get it. Those two guys looked square to me. They didn’t look like they could cut it. Elvis looked so cool he stood out between those two. He was young, sharp and keen. They looked jaded, boring and out of touch. I couldn’t see them cutting it with the kids or jiving up a storm. I didn’t know why Sam had brought in a couple of black musicians. With someone like Ike Turner behind him Elvis could let it all go and shine.

I was being proved right. It wasn’t happening. The guys weren’t gelling. Elvis was nervous and subdued and what they were producing was sending the mossies to sleep. It was late into the night and Sam was just on the point of giving up.

‘Take a break’, he said in exasperation and disappeared off.

When the guys in the studio were alone Elvis started fooling around and singing ‘That’s Alright Mama’ in his most uncontrolled and exuberant fashion, jumping, shakin’ and thrashing that guitar any old how. Scotty and Bill responded and they all let rip.

In the control room Sam nearly blew his top. That was the sound he had been dreaming of.  He shouted for Marion to press record.

In the studio the unleashed Elvis was having a ball. All the nervous tension was gone. He let it loose. In a couple of takes they had it and a new sound was born. Elvis had married that Blues of Arthur’s with a jumped up rhythm and created a monster. A few days later Dewey Phillips played it non-stop on his Memphis radio station and that was all she wrote.

Elvis was no longer a truck driver but was driving all over the State. He was in demand and it looked like the girls wanted to tear him apart and eat him up raw.

As for me, my truck driving days were over too. I think Elvis pulled a few strings and got me a couple of gigs with the Ike Turner band and a few with Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who were really just the Ike Turner band with Jackie singing. They’d had a big hit with ‘Rocket 88’, that many were saying was the first record to create the sound that Elvis did so well, but I was not so sure. What Elvis did was something special and original. He’d created Rockabilly single handed. I felt it had come out of a general movement. The kids were ready for a new sound. Many of the cats were moving in that direction. There were Louis Jordan, Bill Haley, Hank Williams, Roy Brown, Clyde McPhatter, Rufus Thomas, Big Mama Thornton and a host of others. Elvis just pulled it together and rode the crest of that wave.

It was an experience I wouldn’t have missed for the world. I caught a number of those shows where Elvis exploded and Scotty and Bill were wild men. Elvis was magnetic. He was bursting with electricity; it ran through him, jerked him and poured out of him in a torrent. There was a seminal force, a howling beast inside him, a primeval energy that he’d tapped into. I don’t even think he was aware. He just let it loose and it controlled him and he allowed it to take him over. He gave himself to it and became one with it. It was primitive, innate and total. The screaming was unreal and they were right – there wasn’t a dry seat in the whole building! Those were the days when Elvis was real and totally unreal, before he started getting too massive and TV and fame turned him, made him conscious of what he was doing, and made him into a parody of himself.

I saw him when he was raw, savage and untamed. It consumed him. He left me in his wake and I was washed up on Beale Street again busking for dimes.

More from ‘The Blues Muse’ – Howlin’ Wolf, his Mum and the Devil.

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

White Station Mississippi

It was one of those vibrant mornings where the air is full of electricity and all the colours of the world are brighter. The sun was up but it was cool. The day was gathering itself before blossoming into its full sultry heat. I didn’t get to see too many mornings like that and on days like this the little town of White Station was serene and beautiful with its white painted wood and red brick.

I was taking the time to ramble with a pair of my old buddies from back in the early Mississippi days and had set out to play a few jukes and do a little busking to get by. I needed a break from the production line. A man could only take so much; besides, I had a whole new urban style to show off, snazzy suits, hats and a new confidence.

There were still some of the old haunts around though most of them had gone over to the amplified music and juke-boxes of the north. I figured there was enough left for us to get by.

Slim was staring across the road at a huge mountain of a man. He must have stood six foot seven and weigh three hundred pounds and was head and shoulders above the group of men he was with.

‘There’s Chester,’ Skip James remarked, nodding towards the huge man.

I saw that it was indeed the mighty Howlin’ Wolf. Out of the context of those smoky Chicago Clubs he looked out of place. I hadn’t realised it was him.

Before I could go across and say hello I could see that his attention was fixed on a diminutive old lady who was coming along the sidewalk, all primped up in her Sunday best, with hat and glasses.

Chester broke away from the group of men he was with and approached the old woman. He seemed to shrink in size and almost cringe before her.

We stood and watched the spectacle unfold.

The little lady stopped and peered at him in disbelief, frowning up at the huge man blocking her path.

‘I do believe that’s his mother,’ Slim said, not taking his eyes off of them.

 The other men had shrunk back out of the way, melting into the shadows.

I thought that it was possible. I knew Chester came from round these parts and I’d heard he’d started out working the farms. The story was that his mother had thrown him out as a child because of his laziness and lack of religion and he’d gone to live with his uncle,  but he’d run away from his uncle’s place because he’d been beaten badly and gone to live with his father. He’d always been huge. As a child they’d called him Bull Cow. He was so huge that I couldn’t imagine this little woman having given birth to such a giant or him allowing his uncle to beat him. The stories of his working the mules and manhandling bales of straw were legendary and probably based on truth. In his speaking voice he deployed a low whisper but in full flight his voice roared and howled with the power of a tempest. It would have been a formidable thing to confront an enraged Chester Burnett; not something I’d be at all keen of witnessing, let alone be on the receiving end of.

The two were in conversation. I could see Chester imploring and begging while his mother was having none of it. She stood rigid and stern as he beseeched.

‘She do believe he’s doing the Devil’s work,’ Skip observed.

Chester took a wallet out of his jacket pocket and held a note out to her.

She knocked it out of his hand and stalked off angrily leaving Chester standing bereft on the sidewalk. I figured it probably wasn’t the time to reacquaint myself with the Wolf and we quietly slunk away before he could see us

An extract from ‘The Blues Muse’

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I have written a novel that follows the exploits of an unnamed man who was there at every major event in the history of Rock Music. It brings it to life in a new way. Why not buy it and give it a read. Please leaves likes and reviews on Amazon. Thank you!

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.

Extract from ‘The Blues Muse’ a novel about the history of Rock Music – New York and Velvet Underground

Posted on by Opher

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

New York

I love New York. There is danger in those concrete canyons, muggings, gang shoot-outs, racial tensions, and even the police can be brutal. A girl friend of mine was raped three times in the three years she lived in the Big Apple. On one occasion the rapist took several minutes battering her door down to get to her. Various doors opened and quickly closed but not one of her neighbours came to her rescue. If you got stabbed on the street people would step over you.

 So it must be strange for me to say I love it, but I do. For all its violence and indifference there is an energy to it and it draws the creative and different into a weird alliance.

When Andy Warhol wanted some help setting up the sound in his night-club I listened to what he wanted and jumped at the chance to get involved. It was a concept that was just too interesting to miss out on.

A club, an event, an experience. It was all of these and more.

Andy Warhol wasn’t just the leading light in Pop Art. He was creating something completely different. His studios were anarchic areas where anything could happen. I walked around with Andy as he enthused about it all. I walked downtown through the markets as he browsed the second-hand stalls and selected items out of the junk, items that others saw as tawdry rubbish but he’d picked out as pieces to be introduced into his installations. In his studios there were films being made, interviews, things being cut up, silk-prints, photographs, drama and paint. Anything was possible. All life was art. He made no distinction.

I wouldn’t say he was weird. Some saw him as pretentious. Some saw him as a genius. For me he was someone who seemed to live in another world. He looked at things from a different perspective. He was a ball of energy that was wanting to fuse art into everything.

The Exploding Plastic Inevitable started as a one off event but developed a life of its own. Warhol wanted to create an environment with music, light and film. The set, the sound, the lights all had to meld into an experience that was total and immersive.

To that end the Velvet Underground were ideal. The band took their name from a sado-masochistic novel about the underground sex scene. Lou Reed was a Garage Punk, Moe Tucker was a female drummer, John Cale – a classically trained avant-garde violinist, and Sterling Morrison a guitarist and bass player. Andy Warhol added Nico, a iconic German model with no history of singing, to the line-up. Their material represented the hard drugs, masochism, transvestism and violence of street culture in New York.

The first time I stood in that club and saw it all happening I was knocked out. They had created something totally new.

This was a million miles away from the Peace and Love going down on the opposite coast. This was harsh, violent and then incredibly delicate and melodic. It pulled you one way and then another.

The light-shows were nothing like those of the Jefferson Airplane. These were hard with stroboscopic effects, sometimes so harsh that the band had taken to wearing shades to protect their eyes. It all added to the image.

I stood in the front and soaked up the music.

Lou, Sterling and Moe produced the core of the sound. Moe was a brilliant drummer and could lay down a Bo Diddley beat as good as any I’d heard. Lou’s voice was great and his guitar had all the riffs and drive that came out of that ‘garage’ scene. His songs were the basis of their sound but it was Nico and John who drove the music into a different dimension.

They had two styles; the power-driver Punk songs that were ruthless and stark, building up to great crescendos of noise, epitomised by ‘Heroin’ or ‘Run, Run, Run,’. Then on the softer songs Nico would come into her own, her voice with its strong German accent like some kind of chanteuse, on the ethereal ‘Sunday Morning’ or sad ‘I’ll be your mirror’.

It shouldn’t have worked. The material was too extreme, too graphic, too perverse, too varied. There was nothing subtle about it.

Yet it did work.

Something magical came out of that setting, something powerful and new. The lexicon of music had a new expression. There was nothing I liked better than a new creation. I revelled in it.

Another sliver of ‘The Blues Muse’ – The Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival 1967

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this as a novel. Follow my man with no name as he weaves through the entire history of Rock Music. Here he is in 1967 at one of the greatest Rock Festivals of all time! What a line-up!!

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

Windsor

The Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival was three days of Rock and Blues and was fairly typical of the festivals going round. I went to as many as I could. The Windsor one stuck in my mind because it cost me £2 for the three days. Seeing as I was going to get to see a whole bunch of people I’d seen or worked with that seemed good value.

It was much slicker than the Free Festivals in Hyde Park but had the same vibe. Just like in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco it was the gathering of the tribes. All the Freaks came together to groove, smoke and share. The camp-site was a mass of guitars and friendly groups. At the festival there were groups sharing, laughing and getting to know each other. This was the new generation with the new ideas, the generation that was going to change the world, blow away the old outmoded establishment warmongers and set up a world based on different principles. This was the new generation of young kids with big ideas and the ideals to match. If the music hadn’t been so fabulous we would have all been happy enough to just hang out together.

Friday night set the tone with the Small Faces, Move, Marmalade and Tomorrow.

I don’t know about Marmalade. They were a big too commercial for my liking but the others were great. It was good to see Steve Marriott and the boys Itchycooing it up. Tomorrow were well suited to a big festival with dancers in long robes and dresses, smoke, light shows and strobes. They blew minds. The Move were the loudest sound I had ever heard. They weren’t so much heard as felt. The bass was vibrating my belly in time.

I went back to my tent and spent the entire night rapping and laughing. That’s what music does to you. It pumps you up with adrenalin and endorphins and makes you high on life.

The Saturday continued with a string of top quality acts. Pink Floyd had to pull out but were replaced with the Nice. Arthur Brown did his Fire, Aynsley Dunbar attacked the Blues, Paul Jones was in need of some real Blues to get his teeth into, Zoot Money, who was one of the originals, showed us what it was like and was amazing ion the keyboards, Amen Corner and Timebox were solid and Ten Years After demonstrated that Alvin Lee could play the guitar at twice the speed of everyone else and that everyone having a long solo was at least two solos too long. The stand-out for me was the Nice. Emmerson theatrically stabbing his keyboards with great long knives and making it squeal, burning the American flag at the climax of the wonderful interpretation of America that they had transformed into an anti-war anthem and the incredible driving arrangement of their adaptation of the epic Rondo.

It sent us back to our tents breathless.

Not that our speechlessness lasted long. Once again we were most of the night rapping and laughing.

For Day Three I and a couple of the guys decided that we’d like to see the bands, particularly Cream, up a little closer. We cut up fag packets and wrote PRESS on them in biro. Arriving as the day was about to begin we were waved through into the Press enclosure. We were ecstatic.

This was the big day for me. I got to see Donovan, PP Arnold was magisterial backed by the Nice, Denny Laine, Alan Bown and Blossom Toes were good but I couldn’t wait for what was to come. I watched Pentangle with interest. It was great to see how Bert Jansch and John Renbourn had teamed up with Jacqui McShee and Danny Thompson to create a new sound. Jacqui’s voice was sublime, Danny’s bass was jazzy and brilliant and those two guitars playing off each other were stupendous. I wouldn’t call it FolkRock, JazzRock or Folk. It was something else.

But then it was down to the non-stop genius. Jeff Beck started it. His guitar seemed capable of anything. John Mayall with Mick Taylor followed and demonstrated a different technique. Then Fleetwood Mac with Pete Green blew us all away. Finally it was Cream with Eric Clapton.

I stood in the Press enclosure right in front of Eric as he played. I watched his fingers move. I looked behind him and Ginger was pounding out his intricate patterns with all limbs following different rhythms, his mouth pouting, brown in a frown and eyes shut as he concentrated on achieving perfection. Looking to the side Jack Bruce provided the most amazing bass and his voice was amazing. That night they hit the heights. They were tight and together.

I went back to my tent, not having slept for three days, and was so exhilarated. I knew that never in my lifetime would I have got to see three of the most amazing guitarists of their day performing one after the other – I was so privileged. All I needed was for Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher, Elmore James and Jimmy Page to have materialised out of nowhere and I would have happily passed away.

No other festival got close to that. Though seeing Jimi at Woburn was one of life’s great experiences and getting to see Ginger Baker and Phil Seaman do a drum off was another. For anything else on a par I had to wait for Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, the Band and Crosby Still Nash and Young to do their thing.

A Slice of my rock music novel ‘The Blues Muse’ – Stax, Soul and Black Power.

Posted on by Opher

Another instalment of my novel: The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books

Memphis and Monterey

Stax was a great place to work. To start with it was good to be in Memphis again. I felt as if I was home. This was the time of Black Power; the Black Panther movement were tearing up New York. The old subservience was long gone. I could stroll down Beale Street with my head high and my Afros declaring to the world that I was a free man. More importantly it was a musician’s paradise. McLemore and College was the site of an experiment that proved race was not important; white and black could be equal. Booker T and the MGs were the tightest unit on the planet, apart from maybe the Meters in New Orleans. They were the driving force behind the whole Soul phenomenon. The incredible thing, for that time in the south, was that ‘Duck’ Dunn and Steve Cropper were white, white Booker and Al Jackson were black. They were a living example of just how good racial harmony could be. Together that band had created a sound that had propelled the likes of Aretha Franklin, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, Eddie Floyd, Sam and Dave and Arthur Conley to the heights of their creativity. I was in heaven. They’d taken me on as a studio technician on the basis of my work in London. I got to stand on the spot where Otis Redding stood. Better than that I actually got to watch Otis record!

Music doesn’t get much better than that.

My legs were like jelly as Otis came in for his session. The MGs were all micked up and Otis was sound tested but I still faffed around. Somehow I knew this had to be perfect. Man, that was an intense session. Otis knew what he wanted. It had to be just right. ‘Try a little Tenderness’, ‘Shake’, and ‘I’ve been loving you too long’ send shivers through me but ‘Respect’ filled me with pride and resolve.

Watching Otis performing in the clubs was like seeing a ball of energy bounce across the stage. Nobody was ever short-changed. The sweat poured off him as the emotion poured out. That voice, the anguish, yearning, tenderness and power; it was all there.

Steve Cropper was brilliant with me. He was working with Otis writing songs, sorting arrangements and getting the sound right, but he always had time for me. He always included me, sought my opinion and made me feel valued.

In my book that Soul sound was unparalleled. Nobody has got close. Those guys engineered it and it came out of harmony, collaboration and integration. That sums up life for me.

The Monterey Pop Festival brought it all together for me into the perfect package. If ever a festival has been misnamed that was it. It was derogatory and demeaning to describe those acts as Pop. Nobody in their right mind would put Otis, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Big Brother, Buffalo Springfield and the Holding Company and Hendrix under a Pop label. That might be true of the Mamas and Papas but not class Rock and R&B acts like those.

Otis and Steve Cropper had insisted I went along. It was brilliant. I got to see a lot of my favourite acts, reuniting with Jimi and the Who, the Airplane and Springfield. It was as if a w3hole load of different elements were being drawn together.

Monterey was a great time to be alive. To see Otis Redding up there on stage wowing a white audience, the British contingent and Us Acid Rockers all together on stage was like the apotheosis. Hugh Masekala just put the seasoning on the dressing.

I came away thinking that this couldn’t get any better and we were heading for a climax that would transform the world; this was building to a crescendo that would blow the whole conservative edifice to shards. Music was the liberator, the emancipator and uniter of people.

It just goes to show how wrong you can be.

It started going wrong with that plane crash.

I was in the Stax studio with Steve when the news came through; Otis was gone. We turned on the TV and watched as news came through of the crash. They pulled Ben Cauley out of the lake but not Otis.

It seemed to me that Otis was just the start.

Four months later we were reeling from another body blow.

Martin Luther King was staying in the Lorraine Motel across Town from us. He was there to support a walkout of sanitation workers. He went out from his room on to the balcony. A sniper shot him through the neck.

That was the year of the black riots. Memphis, along with many other cities burned as the frustration and fury boiled over.

Steve Cropper stood outside Stax studios and looked over to the smoke. ‘They’re burning their own town’ he said in disbelief.

It was blind fury and the atmosphere at Stax changed forever.