Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

  Toward the end of the set, Junior was singing one of my favorites, “That’s Alright”: “I know you’re loving another man, but that’s alright.” He came across the stage right in front of our table, looked straight down at Virgie sitting beside me, and held out his hand, flashing his giant diamond ring. He started singing, “Take my hand, take my hand.”

  “Go ahead,” I whispered to Virgie, nudging her.

  “No, I don’t even know him. I’m not gonna hold his hand,” she said in her gangster-chick tone.

  “It’s nothing,” I whispered. “It’s just a gesture.”

  “No, screw him,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t want to take his hand.”

  Now Junior had come closer to the edge of the stage, still singing, “Darling please, take my hand,” his head bowed down low, his arm stretching out in supplication.

  People in the crowd began yelling out racial remarks and fuming at her tactlessness. Levon shot me a look, which I took to mean, She’s going to get us killed.

  “Take Little Junior Parker’s fucking hand,” I whispered in her ear, “or you’re going to get our fucking throats slashed. Do it!”

  She pulled back, startled. She had never heard me use that tone before, but we’d never been in a predicament like this before either. After a moment she stood, stepped elegantly to the front of the stage, and took his hand. And without missing a beat, Junior sang, “Well, that’s alright.”

  There was a mild smattering of applause.

  “I’m going to get the car,” Levon muttered to me under his breath, “and I’ll meet you right out front. Let’s not all walk out together.”

  We slipped out quietly, jumped in the car, and peeled out of there with our lives intact. Virgie lit a smoke, cracked her window a bit. “I hate it when men act like you owe them something,” she said. “But I sure do love that music.”

  Breaking out on our own as Levon and the Hawks was a struggle, and we were feeling it. Survival was hand-to-mouth and week to week. Over the next month, as things got tighter, Levon and I were constantly trying to figure out ways to get by. Some of our friends in Fayetteville knew we were feeling the crunch, and one day a friend—I’ll call him Jay—approached Levon with a proposition.

  Every Thursday night, he told us, big-money guys gathered at a high-stakes poker game just outside of town. They got drunk, bet wildly, and didn’t care that much about winning or losing so long as they had a grand old time. Jay proposed that Levon and I get some guns, wear sock masks over our heads, and go in and rob the game. We could score about thirty grand. They’d be scared to death and glad to hand over the money with no trouble; he’d wait outside in a getaway car.

  Levon and I had spent enough time around gangsters and thieves that the idea didn’t seem preposterous. And since we were in a tough bind for money, it was worth considering. The game itself wasn’t legal, so they couldn’t go running to the cops. Jay kept insisting that there wasn’t much danger and that we’d be in and out of there in minutes.

  Levon took to the idea wholeheartedly. “Duke, we need the scratch. Let’s get it over and done with. Jay’s got it all worked out.”

  Levon was my closest friend, my partner, and the leader of the Hawks. I didn’t want to let him down. But I had a serious, very specific concern: who was going to do the talking during the stickup? Some of the card players knew us, Levon had an extremely recognizable voice, and I sounded like I was from Canada. It wouldn’t take much chatter to figure out who was behind the masks.

  Every day, though, Levon kept pressing me to go through with it, and every day Jay would show up to urge us on. Levon tried out different growly voices on me: “Put the money in the bag and no one will get hurt. No…Put all the money in this sack or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

  “That’s it, that’s it,” Jay yelled. “They won’t do nothing but hand over the dough. We just don’t want Robbie saying ‘about’ or ‘out’ or ‘house’ in Canadiana.”

  I told Levon that this was truly insane. “There’s so much that can go wrong, and I really don’t like the idea of robbing anyone to begin with. What are we thinking?”

  Levon smiled. “Well, you’re the one that’s got the big gangster background with your uncle and everybody. I need you to stick by me on this one.”

  The next day, the Wednesday before Thursday’s card game, Jay came by our motel with sock masks, plumbers’ clothes, two guns, and a bag for the money. We were in the middle of checking everything out when Richard came in. He looked at the masks, the clothes, and the guns and said, “Uh, what’s going on here?”

  Levon looked up with a sense of authority. “We gotta go get you some money, son. Tired of this scrounging by.”

  I still felt uneasy about the whole thing. But I wasn’t going to chicken out on Lee.

  The next day, Jay drove over in the car we’d use for the heist. The plan was that he would head over to the spot first to check it out. Then he’d meet us down the road from the building to give us the okay.

  Levon and I changed into the clothes we were going to wear, tried on our sock masks, and loaded the guns. I looked at Levon with his mask on. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel a little shaky,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  We got in the car and drove to the location of the game. Not much was said. No radio, no music, just the sound of our deep breathing. I opened the side-vent window and bent it toward me, hoping to blow off some of the raw feeling in my gut. Levon reached over and slapped me on the knee.

  “It will be over before we know it, son. Don’t worry, we got it, baby.”

  When we got close to the spot where we’d meet Jay, Levon pulled over to the side of the road. He put his mask on, took one of the guns out of the glove box, and stuck it in his pocket. I did the same. I felt the adrenaline kick in. As we rolled forward, we could see the building up ahead where the game was being held. But no Jay.

  “Damn, where the hell is he?” Levon murmured through his sock mask as we crawled along slowly. Suddenly, Jay came busting out of the darkness, waving his hands, and ran up to the side of the car.

  “I just came from around back. I looked in the windows and nobody was there. They must have called off the goddamn game this week or something. Shit, we’ll have to do it next week.”

  Levon and I sat there staring at Jay, sweating and puffing through our masks. We looked like idiots with our stupid disguises and plumber’s clothes. Jay got in the car and we drove back to the motel. Rick, Richard, and Garth were outside, waiting for us anxiously.

  I got out of the car and gave them the news. “They called off the game. We couldn’t do it.”

  As I sprinted to my room to change, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I fell down on the bed, and the gun popped out of my pocket. Staring at the ceiling, I thought to myself, Yeah, sometimes the Lord works in strange ways. There would be no going back next week for me now that we’d gotten out of it by the skin of our teeth. Loyalty can be a scary proposition at times. This episode rarely came up in conversation ever again.

  —

  Levon was always courteous and warm to his folks when we played near his hometown—he was proud to be there, and I found it an interesting contrast to watch him with his friends and family with their traditional southern ways. But you could tell it didn’t play quite the same anymore: he was torn about shedding some of his past in favor of the new, modern-day outlook he was in the process of discovering.

  After we played our gigs in Arkansas we had a day off, and I asked Levon if he thought Sonny Boy Williamson still lived in the town of Helena. “Probably so,” he said, “and there’s one way to find out. Let’s drive down to the holler and ask around.”

  “What’s ‘the holler’?” Rick asked.

  “It’s the strictly black part of town, where you’ll hear the best music and find the best whorehouses.”

  Richard jumped in. “Well, let’s go!” Then he paused. “Wait, is it okay to be hanging there, or will
we get our asses kicked?”

  “Nah, mostly nice people just trying to make a buck,” Levon answered.

  Garth piped in, in his very slow monotone voice, “Well now, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just better to stay out of the way.” We laughed at his subtle wisdom and headed for one of the station wagons.

  Levon jumped behind the wheel and we cruised. He was very familiar with the landscape, calling out sights along the way. Pretty soon we were the only white faces on the street. We stood out like clowns in a VW bug.

  Levon spotted a fellow who looked like he knew his way around and pulled over to the curb. “Excuse me, sir, would you know where I might find the legendary bluesman, Sonny Boy Williamson?”

  Levon had such charm in his voice. Without hesitation the man answered, “I just saw him two blocks down the street here”—pointing his finger—“and you might be able to catch him right over yonder.”

  We motored straight in that direction, wondering if it could be this easy. We came around a corner and there he was, Sonny Boy himself, like a vision, walking with his back to us. As we approached, I studied his lanky form shuffling down the street. He wore a black bowler hat and a two-tone suit: the jacket was black on the left side and gray on the right, and the trousers were the opposite. He carried a black briefcase. As we pulled up beside him, I could see his gray hair and Fu Manchu goatee.

  Once again Levon spoke for us. “Mr. Williamson, my name is Levon Helm, and I’m from up Marvell ways and have been listening to you on KFFA most of my life. We’re a music group who love what you do and just wanted to come down here and pay our respects.”

  Sonny Boy seemed comfortable getting attention from us young white musicians.

  Levon continued, “We just wanted to spend a little time, or play some music, anything you want, sir.”

  Sonny Boy looked us over one by one. Then, to our surprise, he said, “Okay, come on, I’m going right up here.” We parked and followed him inside a building to an upstairs apartment. A woman welcomed him; her young son was sitting over to the side, and a couple of hustlers in their midtwenties were hanging out too. Sonny Boy sat in a chair in the middle of the room, and we all found seats surrounding him. He looked over at the woman and she brought out some little cups, pouring a clear liquid into two or three of them. Sonny Boy took a sip and let out a cough of appreciation. I tried a sip and it nearly set my mouth on fire. I’d just had my first taste of pure “white lightning” corn liquor—or “corn,” as they called it.

  I didn’t know much about Sonny Boy’s backstory, but I had heard his real name was Rice Miller and that he’d changed it to Sonny Boy Williamson even though there already was a blues singer with that name—How can you do that? I thought. Some people referred to him as Sonny Boy Williamson II. It was all a bit baffling, but I sure wasn’t going to ask why.

  He took another sip from his cup, reached down into his briefcase, and pulled out a harmonica, checking to see what key it was in. Then he played a couple of amazing warm-up licks and started stomping his foot. He tipped his bowler hat back and kicked into singing about “fattening frogs for snakes.” Without blinking an eye, the young boy picked up a pair of homemade drumsticks and started beating out a perfect rhythm on a cardboard box. Sonny Boy played that harmonica like it was a part of his body, and he sang his heart out. We were breathless and cheered him on. He played another one called “In My Younger Days” and spit into a can sitting at his feet. I thought he was chewing tobacco or dipping snuff, but when I looked down at the can, I realized he was spitting blood. It made me shudder.

  We suggested he come with us back to the Rainbow Inn, where we had our equipment set up, so we could show him we were no slouches either. “Let’s go on out there, then,” he said, and spat a little more blood into the can.

  As we drove, Sonny Boy explained that he had picked up the bowler hat and the two-tone suit during his recent trip to England. He also laid a couple of tall tales on us. Little Walter and Little Junior Parker were his illegitimate children, he said proudly, and they weren’t the only ones. “I got many, from Chicago to Houston and back. When Walter and Junior were young, I would put one on my left knee and one on my right knee, and teach them how to play mouth harp. They wouldn’t have even known how to play the blues if it wasn’t for me, but that’s what you do with your children, you teach ’em, right?”

  “Isn’t that something,” I said. “Walter and Junior on your knee. You should tell the world about that.”

  “Nah, I’d rather keep it to myself. Their mamas get all upset and wanting me to be sending them money.”

  When we entered our practice room, Sonny Boy drawled, “Well, look-a-here, you boys got it good.” We plugged his vocal and harp mic into a guitar amp, and I started a little groove on guitar; the boys joined in. Sonny Boy looked at my fingers to see what key we were in, reached for his harmonica in the attaché case he carried, and started playing along. Pretty soon, sparks flew. He looked around the room at each of us, showing off his wide, crooked smile with a couple of missing teeth. Garth and I traded solos, and Sonny Boy wailed back at us like a coyote in heat.

  We ran through some more tunes with different people singing and Sonny Boy weaving in and out with his harp. He fit into the groove so naturally. I looked around at Levon and the other guys and could see in their eyes that they were as jazzed as I was. Sonny Boy threw his hand in the air for a break and we stopped on a dime. He stood up and rocked back and forth, taking the whole harmonica into his mouth, never missing a lick. I ripped off some high harmonics of a blues riff and Sonny Boy fell back down in his chair, grinning and slapping his knee.

  We were really feeling buzzed, and between songs we talked about how to keep this connection going. Sonny Boy said that while he was in England he’d jammed and recorded with different musicians. “Boys, I’ll tell you what, those young English cats over there really wanna play the blues bad, but unfortunately that’s just how they play it…bad.” He broke up laughing. Then he said, “You fellas as good as anybody I ever played with.” That was a huge compliment coming from a master.

  Levon got up from his drums. “You guys hungry? Damn, I’m starving. Sonny Boy, can we take you for some of the best soul food in these parts?” He nodded and headed to the bathroom. We could hear him in there coughing violently. I exchanged a worried glance with Levon. When Sonny Boy came out I put my hand on his shoulder and asked if he was okay. “Oh yeah, I’m fine, just a bit of a cough.”

  We drove straight downtown to a restaurant Levon had raved about. Sonny Boy knew it too and gave it the high sign. On the way, we committed to telling our respective booking agents that we wanted to do some gigs together. Sonny Boy said, “Man, I’d like to get into the studio and cut some things with you guys. I’ll tell Leonard Chess we onto something here.”

  “Chess Records in Chicago?” I said. “That would be so fine.”

  Richard said, “I would just like to see the inside of that studio. Love the sound of those records.”

  We walked into the restaurant and sat at the counter so we could watch them cook the food close up—collard greens with smoked ham, corn bread, black-eyed peas, fried chicken, biscuits with gravy. Hog heaven is what you call it, and we were smack dab in the middle.

  Just then, two police cars pulled up in front of the restaurant, their high beams burning our eyes. Two cops got out of one of the cars, swung through the door, and marched up to us. “What in the hell is going on here?” one of them asked. They looked behind the counter at the black cooks and server, who shook their heads like they didn’t know nothing. The cops looked at us with blood in their eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Levon stood up and introduced himself. He explained that he was from up in Phillips County, where his uncle was the sheriff. “We were just having a bite with the legendary bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson. We’re all musicians, sir.”

  The other cop, who was holding a club, said, “So do you think your uncle, the sheriff up in
Phillips County, would be proud of y’all’s behavior?”

  Sonny Boy just sat there, his back to the cops. He knew better than to get involved. “Yeah, your uncle’d be real proud of you, eatin’ with niggers,” said the other cop. “What in the goddamn hell are you thinkin’?”

  Levon wouldn’t be cowed. “Well, sir, I’ll tell you what I’m thinkin’. I’m thinkin’ we can eat wherever we want, with whoever we want. Especially with somebody of the caliber of this gentleman right here. It’s our honor.”

  The cops looked at each other. One stepped in closer to us. “That car out front with the Yankee plates, that yours?”

  Levon answered, “Those are Canadian plates, sir.”

  The cop stuck out his jaw. “I don’t give a fuck where they’re from. What I want you boys to do is get in that car and drive as fast as you can outta here, back to wherever those fuckin’ plates are from. I’m tellin’ you right now, you’re looking for big trouble around here, and we don’t stand for that. We’re all gonna follow you outta town. You understand me?”

  I could see Levon getting hotter, and as much as I appreciated his trying to take a stand in his old stomping grounds, the last thing we needed was to get thrown in jail and beat up. Before he could say anything I intervened. “We just have to stop at the motel and pick up our things, and we’ll be on our way.” Levon looked tight as a knot, but he calmly shook hands with Sonny Boy and said we’d be in touch. “We got work to do.”

  Sonny Boy smiled. He gave everybody a wave as we went on our way.