Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  Tom, a locally known musician and recording artist, had told the radio station about me and that’s how we came to be on our way to the studio, listening to the programme Good Morning Blues advertising us several times as “The British Blues Invasion – Shaky(!) Jake with Tom Hubbard and live playing”. Well – I was used to people getting my name wrong: I’ve been referred to as “this brilliant blues player called Smoky Jake Johnson from Crewe” before now. (2)

  My first interview at WRFG was with the Blues Professor. He was a good DJ though not such a good communicator and I was a bit nervous. I was able to advertise my gigs and recording and mentioned a deal I had with Pyramid Records to distribute my CD in the US and in Manchester UK. I answered the usual questions about my musical background, stressing that I hadn’t wanted to just come to Georgia as a tourist, that the country blues was my “main thing” and that I had met Son House, whose “Death Letter” was to be my first live number on the show. I followed this with another dramatic song: Woody Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man”. The interviewer remarked, “When you sing, you definitely don’t sound so English,” – praise indeed.

  We agreed it was ironic that I had been able to meet great American musicians in the Sixties as the result of their own countrymen not giving them the musical, let alone political and social status they deserved.

  Tom and I did a duet of Bobby Bland’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” giving this soul number a country edge, followed by a recorded version of “Dust My Broom” by Snakey Jakes’ Dead Skunk Band. The session ended with a rendition of Mississippi John Hurt’s “I’m Satisfied” and a recording of John Hurt at the Newport Festival which I thought was a nice link with the past.

  Done And Dusted

  In retrospect this first interview with WRFG was less satisfying than the later ones partly because the content was less extensive and because the interviewer seemed less enthusiastic about the music than the other interviewers. Perhaps I was more relaxed the second time and I could also talk about the newly recorded CD: 4 HOURS IN GEORGIA. The title refers to the location and the amount of time it took to record at Whippoorwill Studios, Smyrna, Georgia . My journal entry for Thursday, 12th March 1998 is surprisingly brief about it:

  Off to Whippoorwill – arrived 10.50 and started sound checks. 11.15 – first half done and dusted before lunch using my 12 string and Will’s Maple Guild 6… lunch at The Old Hickory House – main course brilliant – pork and barbecue sauce on garlic bread with fries and salad $4.95 and Brunswick Stew – not so good – $2.25. Back to finish last 4 and master. Finished by 4 with 6 Honey Browns.

  But I do have a reputation for just getting things done. It looks as if I was more interested in the food and drink than the recording studio but on the next page of the journal it is obvious what an emotional impact the recording had had on me: “I realised it was the anniversary of Mum’s birthday – coincidence or what? Well I made it. BLUES IN GEORGIA; a mountain climbed…JUST STEEL & WOOD”.

  There must be a song in that last line.

  “It’s Always Better Live.”

  The interviewer for my second appearance on WRFG was Black Jack, a civilized and gracious conversationalist. He was enthusiastic about the music and there was a good sense of informal communicative equality in our dialogue, with him contributing some of his own musical anecdotes and passions but always with deference to the professional musicians. He remembered sitting around in a place called Mandy’s Carwash listening to Junior Wells and seeing Muddy Waters in Chicago in the Sixties. He regarded Muddy Waters’s Folk Singer album with some awe.

  I was at the end of my second visit to Georgia and was in the WRFG studio to talk about the CD I cut during my first visit. The interviewer was agreeably surprised that the cover showed me standing in front of the windows of the WRGF Studios, immediately after my first interview there. It was by now a legend that I took four hours to record the album, with one-take tracks, “as it happened” including lunch. Black Jack played contrasting tracks: the drama of “Black Ace” and the intimacy of “I’m Satisfied”; the exciting vocals and heavy slide of “Death Letter” and “Friend of the Devil” sung in an understated, folkie way.

  The interviewer responded positively, especially to the slide guitar work and invited me to do a live number, on slide. “Dust My Broom” was the choice. “It’s always better live,” was the verdict so I followed this with “ Pay Day” and received applause, especially from AJ, the interviewer’s wife. More was to come. I gave the jazz classic, “Stormy Weather” a plaintive country edge using slide. This prompted a celebrity response. Curley Weaver’s daughter, Cora Mae Bryant had been singing along to this and called the radio station to say it was “the best goddamn blues” she had heard.

  Curley Weaver, Blind Willie McTell, George Carter, Tampa Red and Kokomo Arnold are all representatives of the early slide tradition in Georgia. Weaver and McTell were musical partners and friends: busking in Nashville and recording in New York (1933). Curley and Cora Mae’s mother lived with McTell and his wife. I felt a connection, through Cora Mae, with these great musicians. A blues festival in honour of Blind Willie McTell is held every year in his birth place, Thomson, Georgia.

  Cora Mae has had her own musical career, playing at one time with Tommy McClennan. From the early days The Skunk Band admired McClennan’s version of “Bottle Up and Go”: it’s a good vehicle for his characteristic growly voice. We did a rock version. As a soloist I also had a refined version with finger picking. Considering what Cora Mae said about white men and the blues:

  white boys now, they don’t hardly make no blues. Mostly they copy after us. I don’t know of any blues they made. They just can’t do it. They can play it pretty good, but they can’t sing it at all. They just ain’t got the voice for that(3)

  she paid me a huge compliment. I realised how great a compliment when I read about Michael Gray’s encounter with her. (4) He describes how she expressed “disbelief and contemptuous unimpressedness” when he tried to interview her about her father’s life with Blind Willie McTell.

  Cora Mae Bryant died in 2008.

  Two more live songs: Sleepy John Estes’s “I’d Been Well Warned” and “Vigilante Man” followed, and the interview ended with very sincere wishes for a welcome return. Very sincere. It was good to have such an appreciative interviewer as well as an accolade from a celebrated blues woman.

  The commercial break included an advertisement for an anti-KKK rally.

  Fat Matt’s, Blind Willie’s And The Voodoo Rooms

  Playing the blues in Atlanta gave me a sense of musical context. It’s not possible to say any one place was the home of the blues but being a large conurbation, Atlanta was a focus for blues musicians – somewhere to play to the biggest audience.

  Fat Matt’s is one of those places I dreamt of playing. It’s long-established and reputedly the haunt of Blind Willie McTell, who played there and at other places in the area such as the corner of Peach Tree and Vine, further on. Tom’s video shows it buoyant and increasingly busy, the clients concerned with the serious business of eating but there is an appreciative response, especially to the slide numbers. As I record in the journal: “An old couple really enjoyed themselves, complimenting me several times. Sat right at the front – 2 feet from my feet – direct in the line of fire”.

  An easy hospitable venue with free beer for the entertainer – the waitress bringing me good quality traditional Southern food on the strength of my English accent – in retrospect this was the only venue on my Georgia circuit with any atmosphere. The clientele were from all walks of life and there were blacks as well as whites. The black people at all the other venues were serving.

  The gig at The Voodoo Rooms was less well attended and less lively but in spite of the small audience I received good hospitality: free beer, refried beans, sour cream, black olives and tortillas, and people were genuinely interested in me.

  My visit to Blind Willie’s: the 1997 winner of the WC Handy Award: “Blues Cl
ub of the Year” was not as a performer but to see John Mooney (Bluesiana ), considered one of the top two bluesmen in the State. A Son House disciple. My reaction was mixed:

  good tight drummer – double bass – he played a lot like Son House but lacked a little firmness, using a thumb pick and heavy rhythms and relying on the old foot, his vocals not being anything like his recordings.

  Marietta Crystals, Java Blues, J.Paul’s, Roosters, Harry’s

  During my second visit to Georgia, in October 1998, I did several gigs and experienced many contrasts. The first one took place at Marietta Crystals, roughly a hundred miles from Newnan: local by American standards! It was an upmarket venue and I received $85, $45 in tips, free drinks and sold five CDs at $12 each. It was hard work – they expected three hours from me. After the Gig from Heaven came the Gig from Desolation Row at Java Blues, a club on the edge of extinction in the same square as Marietta Crystals. The manager was pissed; the assistant manager a space casualty from the Sixties and a man-eating blonde offered to let us take her every which way but loose. It was a veritable zoo and a close escape.

  In spite of the flamboyant publicity, the gig a few days later at J.Pauls was not a very nourishing experience either, although the money was better than at Java Blues:

  Well big neon sign: International English Recording Star but no punters except a few rednecks listening to country. I had requests hollered from Lynyrd Skynyrd to James Taylor.

  Fortunately, things were better at Roosters in Douglasville the next night:

  …a really nice blues bar with food and drink which Jerry the owner said was all on the house and the barman Chris made sure of it. Great first set – Jerry asked me for a CD for his jukebox. I cheekily swapped it for a $15 Roosters T-shirt.

  Things were less good at Harry’s a couple of nights later, where there were eight customers and Tom had to hassle for his money that was then thrown across the bar. I had received some praise from one of the other musicians: “That’s smokin’ Pete,” he said as he shook my hand but I was appalled at Tom’s treatment – docked $25 for not playing until 1.30 in an empty club. Familiar territory.

  It got worse. The next gig at Rupert’s was cancelled, the management being the same as the doomed Java Blues . This was the second club I had seen off and at this point I began to feel frustrated and disappointed. Although there were positive experiences, the second visit was characterised by a sense of diminishment: gigs cancelled; interviews postponed; uncertainty about payment; places closed down; money becoming scarce as the sun’s heat dwindled. My welcome had worn thin. When I was preparing to leave there was tense cleaning taking place around me: “Oh my bed’s gone and the washer is on cleaning my sheets ‘fore they’re cold”.

  Another song lyric?

  Performing in unfamiliar places, the welcome and the hospitality become very important – it’s how you judge whether an experience, is good or not. I’ve often spoken about the loneliness of solo playing: how insecure everything is and how exhausting it is to play unsupported. You are dependent on the kindness of strangers and if it happens it is as significant as the fee. I suppose this echoes how it must have been for those early blues players, busking for bread, more or less. How difficult it must have been for them to experience the lack of respect they encountered. It seems to me that people performing on this particular circuit of venues still have low status, no matter what their musical ability is and managers are reluctant to pay them if the audience has been thin. Yet there was good feedback: Tom’s drummer said, “Who’s this Snakey Jake character they keep talking about on the radio?” Another friend of Tom’s – Glyn – rang and said, “Snakey Jake was the talk of the blues programme this morning,” and this lifted my spirits.

  The anomaly was that my talent and status were appreciated but not at the bleak edge of management where an empty venue was the issue. At best, things were all a bit cheerfully amateurish; I had over-estimated Tom’s influence and this began to depress me.

  Labor Day Blues And The Golden Ghetto

  I returned to America in late summer 2000 for the Labor Day Blues Festival in Georgia: a high spot in my career. I was jubilant about recording 4 Hours in Georgia as a dream realised and I’m proud of it because I sang the songs as the old guys did – it’s honest and the same recorded as live – but a CD is something you do for others; the live performance was more real and the experience of the festival hasn’t faded. I was performing with my best mate and we were well placed on the bill. I still have the T-shirt with the list of performers: bizarrely the top of the bill is actually at the bottom of the list, like a countdown. We had an appreciative audience and we even found a bar we both liked!

  During this third trip to Georgia with Des as my companion, some of the contrasts and anomalies I had already experienced came into heightened relief and our time was characterised by ideological conflict and boredom, as well as some exciting encounters with musicians and intellectuals. Although I hoped to make some money performing because each time I leave my business I lose money, the previous two visits had not reassured me. But this trip I had the good fortune to be sponsored on both sides of the Atlantic.

  Keith Bellamy – Bert Bellamy’s middle son – likes the music his father liked and comes to see me perform. Perhaps on the strength of this, Keith sponsored my third flight to Georgia. A generous impulse: “Don’t get one of those flights where you have to change at Newark – get one that goes straight through,” he said as he gave me his credit card details. He also arranged for me to use the Crown, Nantwich, as a free venue for a gig that earned £500 to help with my American expenses.

  Unlike the previous times I was not dependent on Tom Hubbard for hospitality. I had been invited by Black Jack – who did the second interview at WRFG – to play at the Blues Festival: an event organized by WRFG. The deal was that I could bring Des and we would receive free accommodation. I had made an independent link as a result of the interview and the fact that 4 Hours in Georgia had reached number one in the blues chart. My circle of contacts in Georgia had widened.

  For the first few days we stayed at Heartfield Manor, Inman Park: a mansion referred to as the “B&B” in my journal and owned by our hosts Harlan and Sandra. Harlan, a left-wing intellectual who has co-written a book about local history (5) had set up WRFG, “a peoples’ radio station”, had run it, and was still associated with it. His home was a beautiful building with balconies, wooden floors, good quality traditional furniture, a stunning staircase, books, paintings, displays of archaeological artefacts and comfortable sitting areas. Des and I had five-star adjoining rooms and a shared balcony complete with praying mantis. Heartfield Manor was a cultured environment, with an atmosphere of calm spaciousness where creative people were welcome and where the conversation would cover many topics: literary, social, economic, political, artistic, musical… Des and I enjoyed the communal intellectual stimulation of the nightlong discussions and we found their liberalism refreshing. We were also intrigued by the proximity of musicians such as Pete Seeger and parties that carried on until breakfast, unattended by us as yet. Des and I were conserving our energy for the next day: Festival Day.

  After breakfast we walked a mile with our instruments to the festival site. The Labor Day Blues Festival was held in a very large walled complex: an old factory, partly dismantled with the roof and windows gone so that it most resembled a walled garden. I recorded the intensely humid weather, “hotter than Africa” and how grateful we were for the hospitality suite with its cool water, beer and food – all free. Then the inevitable waiting. I stayed on water till two o’clock then had three beers; Des stayed with water.

  There were a hundred performers all with their own agendas and it was difficult actually getting on the stage. Because of the egocentric behaviour of one of the bands half way down the list, whose long-winded attention to their own equipment threw out the timings, we were squeezed into a half hour slot. We felt that this band had been disrespectful and annoying. Fortunately the a
udience was attentive and relaxed – a family audience. The event was well attended and festive yet there was a sense of intimacy and close contact between audience and performer.

  Francine Reed was headlining; Beverly “Guitar” Watkins was the penultimate act with Des and I before that. The Producers played Eric and Blind Blake well if a little contrived. We had to cross “Down ‘n’ Out Blues” off our set list. These things happen. Ours was a difficult set with pints of sweat and fried feet! Not only that: our first two numbers were played without either of us being able to hear ourselves, although all came right for our rendition of “Shine” with kazoo solo courtesy of Des and black guys shouting “Shine!” and laughing every time the word came up. Then the twelve string did its usual job.

  Musicians are used to things going wrong but I have no tolerance for heat. Des had a more equable approach, pointing out that the musicians from the bands were mutually supportive and kind to one another. Anyway the hospitality was stunning and we relaxed into it to watch Francine Reed moving and singing effortlessly, at one with her music. I was impressed by the sound balance: you could hear all the instruments and, importantly, the singer’s voice with its story. There was clarity and a space for each instrument; a laid-back sense of musical professionalism. The other musicians stood back and let her do what she’s good at. American twelve bar blues is so much less frantic and busy than the UK version. There is an ebb and flow in the music. Hear that piano; hear those vocals; there is none of that loudness that prevents the audience communicating, either. In the UK you would have a melée of sound and then vocals on top of that.

  Francine Reed received her well-deserved award for lifelong blues activity and sang like a goddess.