When The Blues Was Dues-With Mississippi Goddam In Mind   

 

By Fritz Taylor

 

Sid Jenkins was not quite sure when he first be-bopped the blues, knowingly be-bopped the blues although it must have been in early childhood on some vagrant radio station that would come meandering into the family house on a wiry windy Saturday or Sunday night for out in the wilds of America, out in some be-bop heaven at least that what it sounded like, places called Chicago and Detroit, with programs like Be-Bop Benny Blues Hour and Sal Mann’s The Blues Is Dues Show but those were basically backdrop, renegade musical shows against the Frank Sinatra croon, the Bing Crosby pitter-patter, the Patti Page whatever, the Peggy Lee flame and the Rosemary Clooney “come on to my house” stuff. The stuff that had gotten his parents through the war, World War II worrying music for those slogging through the mud fields of Europe or like his father the island wars in the Pacific. That was the main music blaring over the radio before rock and roll landed its bombshell. (Landed its bomb shell but a dud when it came to family room air time since Mother Jenkins, and behind her Father Jenkins acting as surly rearguard against the degenerate devil’s music banished all such WMEX madness from her presence until God-sent transistor radios solved the problem and he could listen away from preying ears and only have to deal with a snotty-nosed roommate brother.)    

Maybe somewhere in that rock and roll mix he had heard a stray saxophone that went blazing in the night to round out the deep croon of Bill Haley’s romping around the clock. In fact he knew if only by intuition that some linkage placed the saxophone of some forlorn Benny Goodman musician played stepfather to that far-out brother when he reached for the big high white note. But so much for history. All he knew when he watched the doings on American Bandstand was that some curlicue guy in a rented tux was blowing that rif, that rif that came from deep inside the pit of his stomach looking to be fed to a closed in world, looking for that high white note that would blow right out to the Japan seas like that night in Frisco town back when he first started. Blasted the joint wide open (blasted that joint too courtesy of some heady chick in a tight cashmere sweater who was all promise and then disappeared in the night maybe had been blown out with that high white note in the Japan seas) throw caution to the wind that night even though his bandleader a guy working six, two and even said cool the wild boy stuff, this was strictly the suburbanite set out for a night of drink kicks. Liquor kicks and being able to say they were there the night Kenny somebody they didn’t remember the last name blew the high white note out into the Japan seas like they would even know the thing happened they were probably talking stock futures and the latest recipes when that blow they would read about it in the next day’s newspaper reported by some second-string guy who replaced Ralph somebody from the Hearst chain who had been too drunk to write up a real review and that second brother heard that high white, heard it right. Blew blues too, blew for Chilly Doone when he was coming up in as the next big thing from out of Decatur, Chilly the guy whose signature was “later Decatur” and had half a generation getting into the rhyming simon thing that Sid would get caught up with when that fad blasted down to the junior high set, blew the blues right into the sunlight flaming sky if you asked anybody who knew what was what in the big horn world.

 

Maybe it was some good old boy fugitive from some farm outside of Memphis who once the share crop was a dusted reality to the mega-corporation agri-farm decided that Gloversville, Riverdale, Carver, Adamsville was too square for his talents and headed to town to take his chances, and they were chances. Went down to Sam Phillips’ place, his record shop cum recording studio and blasted the joint to the ground. Those good old boys feasting on fisted-two dollars to Sam to keep them from those dusty moth-eaten shoes they left behind and try to hit it big like good old boy (or rather good young boy since he passed away at twenty-nine of, well, of hard living and hard loving not a bad way to go when you think about the alternative). Grabbed an old Les Paul-inspired guitar or some Sears rendition of the same, went and got a little juice for the machine (and another kind of juice for the head) and let it rip, let themselves put the rock in rockabilly hoping that some record company would grab Sam’s lapels and insist that they manage that good-looking, women-pleasing, suggestively hip-moving, hair all slicked back bad boy to fame and fortune. Guys like Warren Smith who claimed that rock and roll Ruby could only dance to satisfy her soul, Sonny Burgess getting worked up over red-headed women (and who wouldn’t when you saw her shake that thing, shake it good and hard too, Ray Perkins jack-knifing across the stage to his classic Fireball, Billy James going all out Rock My Baby Down. Strangely there was a little rif, a little something not learned from listening to the Grand Ole Opry when they were kids, something with a “Negro” beat, maybe picked up in passing the 12^th Street Baptist Church and sneaking a hear, hearing something primal, sometime from our homeland Mother Africa and that guitar just jumped along twisting Hank and the boys for a while. And so it went as a whole generation of good old boys gave it hell while it lasted, hell, none of them were complaining since it got them off that freaking farm.                 

Maybe it was some exotic, exotic to a white bread Riverdale working poor (po’, okay if we are going down to the ground) from the Acre and never having seen a black person in the flesh until he went in Boston and got a who mix of people he never had seen out in the sticks, rhythm and blues beat dig up from the muds by guys like Big Joe, Sammy Sacks, Lenny Boy, Sonny Boy, Hi Hat McCoy and he kept wondering why he was snapping his fingers to the sway of say Big Joe telling his lady friend to shake that thing (of course by then Sid was aware, totally aware, of what that was command was suggesting) and digging the mood created. Dug that simple pitter-patter which reflected his own hard scrabble take on the world, on the hard to swallow fact that those down on the floor stayed on the floor and nobody gave a damn whether nobody ever got up on his or her hind legs and said the hell with it. Put plenty of time trying to put out the fire in his head that would not let him rest (and a million years later would wind up going through some crazed mantra trying to slow down, to rest, to be at peace to stop that self-same fire in his head that he could never extinguish for hell nor high water).              

Maybe, just maybe though, thinking back to that Mother Africa idea, that raw back beat that seemed to be in his head from baby-hood had joined him with dusty old sweated plantation workers hacking away their lives for Mister’s cotton, soy beans, peanuts, who come Saturday let Mister and his products go to hell and raised hell themselves down in Uncle Billy’s tavern (illegal of course since the place would pass no inspection even under Mister’s lax laws where Uncle Jim, Sleepy John somebody, Mississippi Fred, John, Joe or somebody, Tom from over in Clarksdale now but who grew up under Mister’s shadow would take out some old National steel guitar or, better, some Sears catalogue-ordered grand stand guitar and wail the night away for the folk, the folk swilling up Uncle Billy’s illegal, cutting up Harlem sunsets, and generally making a mess of things as that beat drove the night’s proceedings. Or more probably some late arriving traveler from Mister’s country heading up the river following some modern Northern star finding him or herself in some Maxwell Street gin mill his old plug-in guitar (showing a new complex of sound never heard down at Uncle Billy’s) handy after a day of sweated factory labor wailing hell out of the damn thing and the night away for the folk, the folk swilling up Uncle Billy’s illegal, cutting up Harlem sunsets, and generally making a mess of things as that beat drove the night’s proceedings. Hard to imagine such roots but how else explain that strange mix that drove Sid all his livelong life, that simple three chords and out.