Nighthawk Blues

by Peter Guralnick

  I told him in the first place. First time I ever laid eyes on him, I told him, You just keep heading in the other direction, don’t you go getting no fancy ideas or nothing, I’m doing fine on my own, thank you. Just keep right on passing through. Course he wouldn’t listen, it was all mister this and mister that, can’t remember why I even listened, seems like it was something about the world needing me. Shoot, the world don’t need nobody, keep right on turning all by itself, and everybody know, only a fool need the world—ain’t nothing in the world for nobody but a fool. Which is what we all is, I guess, at least if you listen to the preachers, who are the biggest fools of all, seem like to me.

  I remember when they found Papa Eggshell, made a big deal of it at the time, wrote it up in all the papers. Shoot, anyone could have told ’em where he was right along, out behind Miz Payton’s in his little shack or most likely out in some alley drunk, pissing on himself. He wasn’t no good for nothing when they did find him, mind half gone, couldn’t stay away from the juice, needed it so bad his hand shook when he didn’t have it, couldn’t even remember his own name sometimes, let alone his songs. What they want with him for? But they found him, bought him a guitar (which he prompdy go out and hock, then lose the ticket, so they gotta go out and get him another), then they play him all his old records over and over so he couldn’t help but remember, and they take him up north to that Newport Festival, where he excapes and lands in the hospital without even getting up to play. Shoot, now you tell me what’s the sense in that? That damned old fool just confused and befuddled all the time, steal your last dime just for a drink of whiskey, that one time we went overseas, he didn’t know nothing about what was going on, and still and all them overseas cats falling all over themselves to interview him. And him making up stories, because he don’t remember shit and he don’t care anyway. Which is why Lonnie always say, Are you another one of them damn cats wants to put crutches under my ass? She-it, they don’t know. In the old days that man was strong. He knew his mind. Come a time when he feel like he tired of your company, he just gone, wasn’t no wasting time or waiting around. When you old they ain’t but one place where you fit for, and that’s home. Because home they all know you for whatever you is, and they don’t pay no mind. …

  JERRY AWOKE painfully with the sun, to the sound of Hawk crashing through the bushes with all the delicacy of a water buffalo. In the pale light of day the spot held even less attraction than it had the night before. The abandoned tracks, the rusted railroad car, the tall weeds, the forgotten refuse of humanity—it seemed hard to believe that men had once populated this jungle, cooked meals, hopped trains, that this was all a living part of Hawk’s memory. Jerry had seen pictures, of course, of haggard, hungry men, he had heard all the songs, he had sensed the fellowship and camaraderie—he wondered where they had all gone to.

  Hawk was putting dirt on the fire by the time that Jerry emerged from the woods, having relieved himself and splashed water on his face. He felt as if he were aching in every bone of his body, and there was a foul taste in his mouth. He watched the old man meticulously put everything back in order—for what? For the next transient who came along just to cultivate his memories? Why couldn’t Hawk stay in a Holiday Inn like everyone else who had made it in this great free-enterprise system that Hawk was always talking about—“God bless the United States of America,” he often would say at the conclusion of his concerts, whether sincerely or sarcastically Jerry never knew for sure. “They got the only free-enterprise system in the world.” Audiences were always nonplussed; Hawk never so much as cracked a smile. But what the fuck was he doing staying in a defunct hobo jungle with more than $1,500 in his pocket? What a pain in the ass the “last of the great blues singers” was!

  At first his car wouldn’t start, and Jerry had a moment of panic as he pictured himself abandoned in this dump, having to walk out to the highway, convince a strange mechanic that he hadn’t been doing anything illegal in this godforsaken hole—he watched the dust rise up in the wake of Hawk’s departure, at last the motor caught, Jerry gunned it, the car lurched forward, and he cast a single backward glance, still looking for a clue, before he abandoned the scene forever to memory.

  They were just a few miles from St. Louis, and Jerry occupied himself with thinking of all the times he had read about St. Louis or written about it, in liner notes oudining the Screamin’ Nighthawk’s legendary travels and development as a blues singer. In St. Louis Hawk had met Little Walter, no more than twelve or thirteen, still imitating Sonny Boy Williamson, the first Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee, playing in the marketplace. Walter had stuck with him for a couple of months, learned what he could, taken off for Chicago. Hawk’s second wife—or was it his third or his fourth?—came from St. Louis, the famous vaudeville singer from the ’20s, Lottie “Little Kid” Moore.

  “Could she sing, boy,” Hawk used to reminisce in his more tender moments. “For the last four years I was with that gal, I just about give up my music, she just naturally had me under her spell. Of course she hadn’t joined the church at the beginning but she was always nice, you know what I mean, we used to laugh about all them other gals, they thought it wasn’t nice, you know, to be singing them nasty type of songs and shaking their yas-yas-yas in front of all them peoples. But Litde Kid, she didn’t care nothing about that. Man, the menfolks would just eat it up, and the wimmins could learn something from it, too. Boy, you wouldn’t’ve known me in them days. She had me working regular, only time in my life except when I was a little kid and didn’t know any better—and enjoying it, too! I was working up at Ernie’s Garage, corner of Fourth and Market, greasemonkeying, you know, fooling with them cars. And she had me going to school nights, too, ooh wee, she musta thought she was gonna make a preacher out of me. I was reading them books about Dick and Jane and they dog Spot, I was doing pretty good at it, too. Of course I forgot all that now, but I don’t know what it was come over me then, I guess that domesticated feeling just sneak up on me before I even knowed it. Well, you know how it is, everyone like their ham and eggs, and I guess everyone if they had their choice likes it regular, but I’ll tell you something true, it’s them gals that act like ladies on the outside, you get one of those little old gals behind closed doors, just like the song say, they liable to tear the roof off, bedslats and all. I’ll tell you, boy, sometimes I prayed that morning would come just so she’d turn me loose. And I’ll tell you something else, wasn’t no prowling going on back in them days, not for this Nighthawk, wasn’t no way, I was too tuckered out. Couldn’t do no howling neither. Just churchgoing, Wednesday evening and twice on Sunday. Then she joined the Ladies’ Sodality, man, on Tuesday nights, and I was going to my classes on Monday and Thursday, seemed like after a while we hardly had time for each other at all. Well, I didn’t think nothing of it until one day I got this little head cold, and of course back in the old days, out in the piney woods and levee camps and what have you, I wouldn’t have paid that no mind, but I was getting so highfalutin and refined, I just naturally thought, Well, my dear little wife, she be worried about me working myself into a lather and me being so sick and all, so I takes off from work early, get the boss man’s permission, and I comes home—and I find the preacher in my bed.” Hawk would slap his knee. “And, man, don’t let nobody tell you a preacher don’t have a Johnson just like everybody else, cause this preacher’s must have been a foot long and growing!” Then Hawk might launch into his song—“Some folks say a preacher won’t steal/ But I caught one in my cornfield/ Preacher talk about religion, talk about the church/ All the time he’s doing his dirty work.”

  It was in St. Louis, too, that Hawk had surfaced for the last time before his rediscovery. He was living in a boardinghouse with Wheatstraw (who claimed to be Peetie Wheatstraw, the devil’s son-in-law’s son, but who was, as Hawk frequently reminded everyone, only an off cousin by marriage twice removed) and the legendary Blind Teddy Darby. They had gone into a local studio and cut an acetate and sent it around to all
the record companies whose battered cards still resided in Hawk’s wallet, all of whom had turned it down as old-fashioned stuff. And the acetate grew scratchier and scratchier until it was barely audible on the prized dubs which circulated among collectors at twenty-five dollars and up. The studio was still doing custom recording in 1962 when Jerry, just starting out in television in Springfield, Illinois, first got interested in the mystery of the Screamin’ Nighthawk, and it was through their fragmentary records that he had gotten the address of the boardinghouse. There he had found someone who remembered three drunken disreputable old men who played guitars and mouth harp and claimed to be recording artists, it must have been five or six years before. And there the trail went dead. Jerry hunted in bars, he checked with Welfare, he searched through old telephone books. Not a trace.

  Hawk never got into St. Louis proper. He stopped in East St. Louis, bleak, desolate, a desert of urban renewal, pulled over about six feet from the curb, shut off the ignition, and sat there staring at the excavation site behind a broken link fence while the car gave up with a shudder. Then he eased out of the passenger side, carefully removed his guitar in its battered old carrying case, locked up the car, and started off down the street. Jerry pulled up behind, crunching over what seemed like an ocean of broken glass, eyed the neighborhood kids, themselves giving Hawk the once-over, with wariness, then locked up himself and at a discreet distance, feeling like Dashiell Hammett perceived, started after Hawk.

  Hawk’s progress was not rapid. For one thing he was weighted down with the encumbrance of the guitar. For another, even with the walking stick he had fashioned for himself, he was still uncertain in his gait, listing heavily to one side. He pulled the broad brim of his hat down over his brow. Some of the kids yelled at him and ran at him mockingly, heading straight for him and then veering off at the last minute, but Hawk never paid them any mind, just waved at them indifferently with his stick, dismissed them with a look. As they got to half-blocks of run-down little bars and corner groceries, he would stop and stare at the barred windows of every pawnshop they passed, scrutinizing it carefully as if he were attempting to memorize the contents. Then at last at a sign that said “Uncle Ned’s” with the familiar three balls he stopped, studied the window with the same intense concentration, and went in.

  Jerry watched him through the clouded window, approaching the counter, drumming his fingers on its surface while he waited for the proprietor to materialize, at last slamming his hand down on a tarnished nickel-plated bell, the veins in his neck clearly standing out. When the man shuffled slowly out of some back room, Hawk reached inside his vest and without so much as a glace retrieved a pawn ticket that looked as if it must have resided there for at least fifteen years. The pawnbroker, a red-eyed old man with fringes of white hair and spectacles that kept slipping down on his nose, regarded the pawn ticket without surprise, said something, waited for Hawk’s response, and then went shuffling back to the farthest corner of the store, where he unfolded a rickety little stepladder, climbed up on it, and took something down from the topmost shelf. He handed it to Hawk. Hawk nodded solemnly and peeled off a few bills from his wad. Then Hawk blotted the man from his field of vision, focused solely on the object itself, and at last slipped it on his wrist. When he came out of the pawnshop, he was admiring the watch, turning his hand this way and that to appreciate the effect from one angle or another.

  He made a number of stops after that. Everywhere he went he had something to say, and people seemed to know him. At the arcade he stopped and had his picture taken in the booth where you get three shots for half a dollar. He didn’t bother to draw the curtains, and Jerry watched as he arranged himself on the stool, unpacking his guitar from its case, holding it up with the neck above his shoulder, staring grimly into the camera as if he could stare down eternity. It was like the hundred other “publicity shots” Jerry had seen over the years. Though Hawk got older, he never seemed to change in the pictures, his grim visage always challenged the viewer uncompromisingly. It wasn’t necessary, Jerry tried to explain to him, even if they needed more publicity stills there were always plenty of photographs available form the concerts, and Jerry could always arrange to shoot more. Hawk never seemed to listen, he pressed his won snapshots on well-wishers and press, as if they validated somehow that he was who he said he was despite Jerry’s aesthetic remonstrations.

  Hawk bought Spam and powdered milk at a small market while Jerry gazed longingly at the food from outside. He stopped to look at clothing in the window of Greenbaum’s, where a somber black suit got prominent display. The sings on the privately owned store windows read Schwarts, Lipinsky, Garfinkel; the medical building was made up of Levys and Goldbergs. They were, of course, Jerry recognized uncomfortably, in Jewtown, the Jewtown that existed in every big city and gave rise to every predictable stereotype that Hawk parroted and every schwartze joke that Jerry had ever heard. No, no, it wasn’t like that, Jerry tried fruitlessly to explain, but Hawk insisted he knew how it was, he didn’t hold it against anyone, if anything he would have acted the same way himself. As he sang in his song, “Gonna tell you, baby, like the Dago told the Jew/ If you don’t want me it’s a cinch I don’t want you.”

  The market was almost all boarded up or torn down, a sorry remant of former glories. The colorful marketplace, which had witnessed so many closely negotiated transactions of barter or trade, where music was once played all day long and amplifier cords once hung down from second-story windows (a brisk trade was done in renting electric outlets), was almost all gone now. All that was left were the pawnshops, a few radio and TV repair shops, a lone poultry man, the arcade, and stores Going Out of Business, with Slashed Price Sales, Everything Must Go!—the usual adornments of any city’s streets. It didn’t bear much resemblance to the stories Hawk had told him of when Memphis and Chicago and East St. Louis were all bustling, hustling centers, alive with activity and music and the exchange of ideas, when genius walked the streets. Hawk kept his head down, though, he didn’t even seem to notice the current scene, he was looking for something else. At last he found it. Slumped up against the brick wall of a dilapidated professional building sat a small black man with a bandanna around his head, his back stiff against the bricks, his legs extended out in front of him in loose-fitting brown trousers cut off and billowing like pantaloons at the knee, which was where each leg abrupdy ended. There was a tin cup at his side, which he rattled from time to time, and a harmonica in his mouth. Hawk, who had worked his way up to a ponderous trot, slowed down. A broad smile creased his face. The stump-legged harp player never noticed his approach but just kept playing his song, a thin reedy version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The few pedestrians passed by without even glancing at him, and the coins in his cup made a pitifully lonely sound.

  “Say, man, I thought you was dead,” Hawk boomed out as he made his lumbering approach. “How come you move this time?”

  The little man looked up and broke off abruptly, grinning a sly gap-toothed little grin. “Hey, man. Hey, Hawk. How you making it?” His voice was as thin as his harmonica playing, but he struggled up on his crutches, balancing himself precariously as he gripped Hawk’s hand. “Man, people telled me the Screamin’ Nighthawk was dead, but I didn’t believe ’em. I knowed that was just a line of jive. Say, how you been? How’s my gal?” Hawk shook his head. “She dead ten years now. When you move, boy? I thought you paid rent on that corner.”

  “Oh, you know, man, you seed what’s been happening. They just about teared it all down by now. You know how it is, man. They find themselves a new politician. And the politician puts in new polices. And the polices say, You ain’t got no permit, boy. Well, I told ’em about the arrangement I always had. And they said, Hey, nigger, tell that to Mr. Mayor. And they say, No—No Legs Kenny gotta go. … Do you know, I even showed ’em the reward I got from the city, great Godamighty it must be thirty-six years ago—it say, No Legs Kenny, you a fine man, and we give you permission to sing on the streetcor
ner for the rest of your natural days. You know what them motherfuckers did? They teared it up. They give me eight hundred dollars then, man, for that train that runned over my legs, would have been a thousand, but the lawyer had to get his share. It didn’t mean nothing to ’em. They took that letter, looked at it backwards and forwards, and they didn’t think nothing of it. Well, of course, that was a long time ago. You was making records then. Little Kid joined the church. I guess that’s just the way of it. World moves on, they still jumping, it’s just that they pep it up a little. But hey, man, it don’t make no difference. Long as I got my Sweet Lucy. How you been making it? You don’t look so good, look kind of peak-ed, where you was always black as the sun. That’s how I knowed it couldn’t last—even when that woman had you going to church regular as any Christian. You just too black bad, you black as any devil. But right now you looks like you be thinking about saving your soul.”

  “Oh, I be all right, man, soon as I get my health back. Damned old doctors trying to rob me of my health, make me feel like a old man. Hey, you still living around the corner in that old rooming house where we used to stay?”

  “Naw, I done moved. They tore that down, Hawk. You remember the Palace? They tore that down, too. And Estelle, which passed, they tore down her old joint. Man, they gonna tear down this whole city, I think, just to get rid of them rats. But they don’t know nothing about it—rats just go underground, they be here long after you and I is passed.”

  Hawk nodded sagely and leaned up against the wall. “Well, what do you say, you feel like playing something?” He began undoing the snaps of his guitar case, in clear violation of two of his most often repeated and cardinal rules: no play without pay and don’t ever, on penalty of losing your professional standing, unless it was the only thing between you and starvation, beat on your box on the street. Kenny slid down on the wall, his useless stumps protruding out in front of him. He looked puzzled as he glanced over for confirmation from Hawk. “Aw, it don’t make no matter,” Hawk said in a different tone. “We old men now, ain’t got but a little time, no sense fooling ourselves.” He strummed his guitar with a resonant sweep and without further preamble launched into “Shake ’Em On Down.” The battered old guitar probably hadn’t been tuned in a week, and Hawk’s fingers were still clumsy and uncertain on the frets. Kenny’s thin, astringent harp was not in the right key in any case, but somehow they sounded commanding enough to cause passersby to turn and look and the Muslim who was hawking Muhammad Speaks to the little traffic that was passing by to pause for a moment in his droning patter.