Photography was one of the skills my father instilled in me during my five-year training period. “Caeles, photography is the study of light. How you manipulate that light to your advantage is what you must learn. Over time, you will learn how to be a better photographer and the many ways you can control light. For now, understand you can control it with the shutter speed, the aperture, the speed of the film and the speed of the lens. Your assignments will never be to take the perfect image, but to identify your subject on the emulsion of that small strip of plastic. After all, the Elders are the ones who dance in the shadows and the see whites and the blacks of your inner core. They are the ones responsible for decisions about whom we steal from since our victims cannot see the beauty in their world. They are the ones who decide who keeps a soul and who does not.”
Photography was new to our kind. Over the generations, the methods of thievery have changed using different human senses. Originally, they used the sense of touch, and for a short time, the sense of smell. As technology developed so too did the Elders who adapted by changing the methods. For many years, it took two to steal, since they used a system of having the subject cross a path between two mirrors. When my father was assigned to teach me photography, in some ways, we learned the creative process as one. It was one way our relationship grew stronger.
Once, while photographing in New York City’s Central Park, I found my way into a debate with an art student. He wanted to question if photography was an art form or a hobby. I played along until I got bored with his immature way of thinking and left him with, “It’s a science that can artfully steal your soul.”
The poor boy had no idea what I meant, but he did upset me. I do admit to losing my patience quickly with anyone who cannot see that photography is an art form as well as a science.
After having lived on earth for over fifty five years, it was time to be set free to do what I was trained to do. I was in top physical and mental health and appeared to humans as a man in his early twenties. Photo training was done using the first camera ever given to me, a Kodak Brownie #2. It had coarse leather like covering and used 120roll film. It was nothing like the current digital cameras, which have made my job in recent years much easier. Kodak once claimed, “You push the button and we do the rest.”
Keeping it all in perspective, Kodak had no idea how little the camera did compared to what I was assigned to do.
My first mission using my new skill set was on a young rock and roll singer and piano player. His career began to take flight in the 1950’s. My assignment was to take his photo while he was performing if possible, but from the start, my goal would not be that simple. I was still learning the limitations of working in low light. In the 1950’s, getting an image on film with any solid values was not an easy proposition in a concert hall with bad lighting.
The light was poor and the Brownie camera and film could not compare with the speed with which you can capture an image these days. The limitation of the lens forced me close to the action on stage to make sure my subject was in the photograph. It was also the only way to get enough light to enrich my negative. Fighting a hoard of young screaming fans as well as security all the while keeping a steady hand was not going to be so simple. A blurry photo would only extend the task. Bodyguards surrounded my victim off stage. Getting him in a photo alone even in day light was not an easy proposition. I needed him in a photograph all to himself. No one else could be captured in the same image for fear they might lose their souls as well.
Since the Elders were still working out all the limitations of using a camera, I was given some leeway as far as the time given to complete my task. Even they were not convinced only the main subject would lose their soul if others could be identified with certainty in the frame. I told myself that was the reason why I would not take the photo quickly and assume mission accomplished. I recognized on my first assignment, it was not as simple as pushing down on the shutter release.
Johnny Joe Jackson was dynamite with a set of eighty-eight black and white keys at his fingertips. He played his piano as if it was on fire. Funny thing, I think it was the second time I watched Johnny Joe perform, he did in fact light his piano on fire. Along with his instrument, he almost set the entire convention hall a blaze while at the same time hammering away on his white baby grand as if no one else was in harm’s way.
The last remaining sounds struggled to find their way from his instrument while he practiced his madness. “They call this the devil’s music, well let’s burn this house down since you are all in hell for coming here to see me tonight,” he yelled during the encore.
Hardly a crime worthy of taking one’s soul, but Johnny did have his demons. He was belligerent on and off the stage not only to his pianos, but to anyone who dared cross his disturbed path. I was told he didn’t start out that way. By the time I met Johnny, he was destined to be a star in the music business. Later he enjoyed a string of number one hits to prove it. However, as good a musician as he had developed into, he had grown into even more of a despicable person.
Johnny Joe was born in Mississippi in 1934, the last of five children. His parents were lower middle-income people like many in his region, but proud hardworking decent folk. He was raised in a religious home. At a tender age Johnny Joe made it clear he was never going to be a weekly attendee at church, even though his parents begged him to go.
Since his family was not financially able to offer him more than one hot meal a day and a handful of hand me down clothes, he rebelled from the start. Early in life, Johnny’s sins never equaled even a low-level criminal.
He never cheated, lied or hurt others intentionally, but every day he grew more distant from the world. His family did their best to get Johnny to appreciate his surroundings, but they failed on most counts. He never felt the warmth of a large family desperately wanting to offer him love. Even as a youngster, he saw himself as a loner wanting to spend time staring into space with no direction and little hope.
By his mid-teens, it was a chore to keep Johnny interested in school. He learned to lie about his daily whereabouts when expected to be sitting at his desk.
“I really was there Dad. Those lying teachers are trying to make me look bad,” he would say. Johnny was a poor liar, though he did not care.
Shortly after turning fifteen, he would occasionally skip school the entire day and take long bike rides across town. It was there he heard a distant sound coming from a tired building in desperate need of some paint and new window.
Johnny peddled his bike closer to peek inside the half-broken window to hear what the unidentified sound was coming from the building. A fresh sound overtook his senses. He spied upon ten old men sitting on wooden chairs swaying back and forth to soulful beats and joyful rhythms. Johnny had heard music before in school, but this was different. At the other edge of the room were four dark skinned men with sweat pouring from their faces and smiles a mile long, obviously enjoying themselves.
Times were not easy for some in the Deep South of the United States since segregation was very much alive at that time. Johnny’s skin was pale white. Like his mother, they each had a string of freckles down their arms and across the bridges of their nose. He had grown to be a boy of over six feet tall, like his father and his father before him.
At fifteen, Johnny's jet-black wavy hair matched his fathers. However, Johnny's foul mouth was something his father never tolerated. In this era, most children were raised with better manners and respect for their elders, not Johnny Joe Jackson. His parents did what they could, but Johnny was not one to take orders easily. No matter how hard as his parents tried to raise Johnny properly, never acquiesced.
As the music played on, joy pumped through Johnny’s heart, a rare occurrence. He began to swivel on his bike seat to the beat of the music, until a hand wrenched his left arm.
“Hey boy, you got no business looking inside this window," a male sounding voice said. "And for sure you got no business on this street.”
As Johnny turned to unh
inge whomever it was who dared to grab him, he noticed a large colored man twice his own size in height and width. Johnny decided punching the larger man maybe wasn't his best option. The music stopped, as Johnny was dragged by the arm into the wooden building, with only a cracked wooden floor and a few thin walls between freedom and a group of strangers.
“Look here what I found listening outside dat window," Johnny's captured said. "Seems here this boy made a wrong turn and thought he could just wander up in here and listen to ya’ll play.”
There were now several men staring back in Johnny’s direction, some smiling and others giving him a not so friendly stare. Silence struck for several moments, until the piano player broke the silence, “Well next time you want to listen to some good music boy, don’t stand outside no window, pick yourself a chair. Only we reserve the ones in the front for us colored folk. You sit that bony ass of yours in the back row if you wanna listen.”
“I weren’t looking for trouble Mister," Johnny said, "but I just never heard music like this. I wanted to see who was playing it. I didn’t mean no disrespect, and I wasn’t spying. I liked what I was hearing. That’s all." Johnny stood partially terrified and partially defiant not knowing what else to do. His comments removed the tension from the room.
The piano player stood up and moved towards the center of the room within breathing distance of Johnny. They observed each other, neither side wanting to budge. Inside Johnny shook with a fear he had yet to experience in life.
Calmly, the man who appeared to be in his late thirties, walked completely around Johnny and the man still attached to Johnny's arm, two, maybe three times. The room was silent as he looked deep into Johnny’s now ready to tear up eyes, and fired back, “Like I said boy, then you need to pull up a chair and listen to some good ole’ fashion blues.”
The stranger, who had Johnny’s arm, shoved him towards the back door when Clive barked, “Let the boy git some learning in what the blues does to a man. Don’t send him home to his mamma howling just yet.”
Clive “Fingers” Johnson was the piano player in the band. He stood over six feet tall with a lean body and hands that seem to stretch half way across the set of black and white keys. His infectious personality instantly seemed larger than life to Johnny. Clive’s smile filled the room as he returned to sit on his wooden stool in front of his instrument. The two guitar players wrapped the shoulders straps back around them as the drummer yelled out, “One, two, three.” The room again filled with a sound Johnny Joe Jackson would never forget.
Johnny twitched nervously in his chair. His right foot no longer take commands from his brain. His foot furiously tapped the wooden floor following the heavy beat of the music. He noticed instantly how much passion Clive and the others had for making music. Clive’s left hand zigged while the right hand zagged across the keys.
The taller guitar player, now completely covered in sweat closed his eyes when it was his turn to take the lead. He bent the strings on his Gibson flat top to make a sound that would make most wail with delight. The other guitarist soon followed the lead with his Epiphone Emperor, while the drums pounded out a rhythm surely never played in Johnny’s neighborhood. If they did play these sounds, why had everyone kept this from him? Was this what he had been seeking every time he sat looking off into space during classroom lessons?
The smaller guitar player sang with a ragged voice chirping words about loss and despair that somehow Johnny thought he relate. However, these men lived the blues and played the blues. Johnny knew he had stumbled onto something unique in his small world.
The band was practicing for only the third time as a group. Clive was the oldest member of the band. He had searched some of the local bars and hangouts to form a band. He found Jackson “Pappa” Collins to play one guitar, Leon “Sly” Graham on the other, and Buddy Jones to pound the skins. One of the locals owned the partially burned out building and was letting the band use it to practice. The owner of the building asked the band to let any locals sit and listen in exchange for using the building. The band didn’t mind, since they enjoyed an audience. They hoped to play in front of a larger group, but for now they were hidden away in a small rural neighborhood.
After listening to the band practice for more than an hour, dusk approached rapidly. Johnny knew it was time to head home. As he made his way a few feet to the exit, the band stopped again and Clive yelled out, “Hey boney ass white boy, we practice again on Saturday, maybe you should come back.” Johnny smiled and waved as if to let them know he would return.
Upon returning home, his parents were upset he skipped out on school for the entire day. After all the yelling stopped ringing in his ear from his father, Johnny tried to explain where he had been and what he had seen.
“Dad, twas music like nobody plays round here. I wanna learn to play like them colored folk do.”
Johnny’s father didn't know if he should ground him for skipping school, or be happy that possibly he found something in his life that made him smile. Johnny kept yapping on and on until his father agreed Johnny wouldn't be grounded, but it was only if he promised not to skip school. If he went to school, he could go back to hear the band again on Saturday.
For one of the few times, Johnny kept his word with his father and went to school the remainder of the week. He couldn't wait until Saturday. He paid attention all week in class not wanting to upset any teachers and lose his chance to hear the band. Johnny’s mother didn't want him to go back, since she didn't know the men or the area. She tried to get Johnny's father to tell him Johnny he couldn't return. However, Johnny's father knew he could use it to keep Johnny in school. Neither side wanted to go back on their word.
Soul Intentions Page 3
