Nighthawk Blues

by Peter Guralnick

  And yet the records didn’t sell, the $450 which he received for the recording session was soon gone (“My mama was having a terrible time at home, and the little girls was pestering at me all the time, so that money just burned right out”), and the Vocalion representative for whatever reason (for all we know he was never able to locate the peripatetic Hawk again) never fulfilled his promise to be in touch. Perhaps it was simply that this kind of primitive musical style was an anachronism by now, a thing of the past. Like Bukka White’s celebrated 1940 sessions (also for Vocalion), Hawk’s recordings may well have represented one last fling in the grand manner. Certainly Hawk’s heavy voice and ringing bottleneck guitar were reminiscent of an earlier era, at a time when people generally were looking for a lighter, more “swinging” sound (this is perhaps the principal distinction between Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound” on which Johnson sang in a pinched, clear, slightly nasal tone, while Hawk boomed out the same message in his characteristically chesty bass—there was no existential hesitation or compromise in that voice). In addition, Hawk may well have been difficult to record. Contrary to his own claims, according to the Vocalion logbook of the time, every song in fact required at least five or six takes, sometimes more. Having been present at many subsequent Screamin’ Nighthawk sessions (I am, of course, speaking of the Screamin’ Nighthawk of the ’60s and ’70s), I can safely say that Hawk is indeed a perfectionist when it comes to recording, but on the other hand I have never seen him require more than one or two takes on any one song. Indeed he sometimes will flatly refuse to repeat himself, unless he receives extra payment for his effort. Perhaps this original session is the genesis for that attitude. It would appear that this is one of those vexed questions, the answer to which we shall never know.

  (Skip Lester Melrose Chicago sessions for time being.’)

  The next time he would record was for the Library of Congress in 1942. The war was on, and Hawk, nearly forty now, was working as a tractor driver at the time. (“Practically living in bondage, man, we wasn’t no better than the beasts of the field. They wouldn’t let us off the farm for nothing. Mr. HolJoway, he was fit to be tied when he found out I’d gone and enlisted. Tried to get it reversed, but he couldn’t, cause I’d already filled out my questionnary. Y’see, it was just a racket to them, keep colored down on the farm. They didn’t pay us nothing, said it was necessary for the war effort. Necessary, shit. It wasn’t necessary for old man Holloway to cut his patriotic profits. And we was raising peanuts then, man. Peanuts!”) When John Fairchild, a tall, bespectacled and distinguished-looking man with a bowler hat and a British accent, came into the Delta seeking to preserve yet another endangered species in the unsullied Afro-American tradition (Plant? Animal? African violet?), the purebred Mississippi blues. Fairchild, who retains the slightly aristocratic air of the Shropshire countryside where he grew up, remembered the occasion well when he included a long pseudonymous account in his landmark of field research, Roots and Branches: On the Trail of the Vanishing Folk Song.

  “We had been in the area for some time, recording harmonica players, colorful folk preachers who chanted out their ’sermons’ to the equally vivid response of an aroused congregation, string bands, work gangs, and the like, when word came to us that there was in the vicinity a commercial blues singer whose name and legend were on the tip of every ethnomusicologist’s tongue. It was difficult to believe for, so far as we knew, the Rootin’ Groundhog, as I shall call him here (the name, like all others in this volume, has been changed to protect certain confidentialities), had vanished, been “done in” or poisoned by a jealous woman after his last Chicago recording sessions. It had even been speculated by many otherwise well-informed sources that the Rootin’ Groundhog was merely another name variant for the even more mysterious Robert Johnson, who, it was theorized, wishing to disappear and escape his doomed legacy, had roughened his voice, taken on another name, even duplicated his own recordings—though in an altogether different style—all to no avail. For we knew, of course, that Johnson was dead, a fact which had hideously assaulted us over and over again in the pursuit of our current field research. So it was with great trepidation that we approached a burly-looking man in overalls and straw hat, momentarily ’taking a breather behind old Bessie at the plow, an altogether imposing and slightly menacing figure who was obviously displeased to be ’caught napping.’ He eyed us as we approached him across the furrowed rows. ’I understand that you gentlemens are looking for a blues singer,’ he said with simplicity.”

  THAT MAN couldn’t tell the truth plain if it jumped out and squatted on his face (Hawk grumbled). I was driving a tractor, not no doggone mule. Little colored fellow name of Perdue in spats and a derby hat come walking out across that field, getting his feet all covered with shit. Mr. Fairchild, he sit in the car. 1941 Olds, it was. Bright yellow. I never will forget that car. Perdue I never did like, he was a sneaky little devil, going around all the time with his mouth poked out, looking like some kind of a golliwog. And, see, he was connected up with Mr. Fairchild. Got him some kind of a bounty for every nigger he brung in. See, he’d been to a year or two of college at that time, and he was already putting on airs, I believe he a professor at one of them Northern schools today. Well, he’d talked to me several times already about making some records for Mr. Fairchild, but I told him I didn’t want to have nothing to do with it. I knowed you didn’t get nothing for it. Nothing but a bottle of corn whiskey and a chance to be remembered, that little weasel Perdue say to me. Remembered, shit; let em forget, I just wants my money, I told Perdue. Anyways he stand there jabbering away, and I didn’t hear nothing about it, cause I can’t hear a word that fool be saying, with the tractor running and all. And finally he reach over and cut the engine. And I say, What you do that for? Because, you see, that tractor wasn’t no easy thing to start up again, it as stubborn as a mule. And he say, I been telling you, nigger, Mr. Fairchild want to speak to you, cause he could get down just like the rest of them when he loosen his JittJe tie. Say, Listen here, you pig-ass motherfucker, Mr. Calloway gonna give you the afternoon off if you cooperates, and I ain’t gonna tell you what he gonna do if you don’t. Well, somehow that Mr. Fairchild must’ve got on the good side of old Calloway, though I don’t know as he had a good side, truthfully speaking, and I should’ve knowed that. But anyways I goes over to the car, and Mr. Fair-child just sitting there just as pretty as you please—he was what we called a pretty boy back in them days, all dolled up and neat as a pin, talked funny, too, with one of them funny accents—naw, I don’t just mean he from across the water, tell you the truth, I always wondered what him and Perdue was up to, cause that Perdue, he do anything to get ahead. So he sitting there, and he say, I understand you are a blues singer. Well, that seem like a pretty dumb thing to say. We all knows I’m a blues singer, otherwise what the fuck is he doing here in the first place? And he say, I have recorded Mayfield Brown and I have recorded Litde Eddie Simson. And Sugar Bear Wylie. And I making a complete record of the Mississippi Delta blues. And if you don’t record for me, we just gonna wipe your name off the history book.

  Well, that didn’t make much of a stir with me. And I believe he knowed that. And Perdue, he knowed that. Professor-he always used to refer to hisself as Professor. Even when he was a little kid, it was Professor do this and Professor do that, like he was some kind of visitor from outer space or something. Only ones that liked him was white folks, and I think that was because he talk so much all the time, they don’t know how rat-ass sneaky that little squealer could be. Anyways, he whisper something to this Fairchild and Fairchild, he nod, and Perdue say, Not only have Mr. Fairchild gotten Mr. Calloway to agree to let you have the rest of the day off, but he has generously agreed to pay you for it, too. Like I was supposed to fall down and drop dead or something, for the two dollars wartime wages we was getting paid.

  Mushmouth smile. I don’t say nothing. Furthermore, Mr. Fairchild have agreed to pay you eight dollars besides, he go on, which is more th
an he have paid to any other nigger, he say under his breath. Still I don’t say nothing. And Mushmouth whisper in Fairchild’s ear, and then he nod again and say like he coming up with their final offer, And Mr. Calloway have agreed besides to give you an extra day off, with pay, to recover from the hard work of recording. He say it real sarcastic-like, and then he add like as if I still don’t understand, The recording don’t take but a few hours if you cooperates. That mean you got another forty-eight to carouse or have yourself a ball or even go into Jackson when the stores and places of business are open.

  You see, he knowed I wanted to enlist, that had been in my mind ever since I go back on the farm with that old redneck Calloway. And, see, I could never get to the recruiting station when they was open, cause we was working six days a week, no time off except Sundays. And Calloway, that scalawag, practically keeps us in bondage. So that done it, I say, Yes, suh, Mr. Fairchild, I plays you whatsoever you want to hear. …

  The titles which he recorded that day were somewhat uncharacteristic of the generally known repertoire of the Screamin’ Nighthawk. For the most part they were not the conventional blues fare but topical blues, and patriotic numbers, both original and familiar (“Yankee Doodle Dandy” is just one of the unlikely titles that come to mind). There were in addition a multitude of recollections, most, I’m sorry to say, undoubtedly apocryphal, reprises of old unrecorded pre-blues numbers, and even one solo excursion on mouth harp. Although one suspects that this material had to be coaxed from Hawk (.dragged out of him, might he the better description), it is nonetheless of invaluable documentary importance (and John Fairchild deserves our undying gratitude and praise for his singular pioneering efforts) both for the light it sheds on Hawk’s fertile creative process and for the wealth of allusive material it clearly shows to have been at the blues singer’s beck and call. …

  THIS WAS WHERE JERRY broke off. That was the end of the ill-fated attempt at biography. Three chapters begun, all sunk in a bottomless morass of indifferent memory and provocative tale-telling. He was no longer able (if he ever had been) to separate the wheat from the chaff; he despaired of ever making a coherent progression out of what was obviously a trackless waste. It was the music, after all, that was going to preserve Hawk’s reputation, Jerry decided; his life would just have to be given up as a bad business.

  VI

  MOON GOIN’ DOWN

  THEY WERE JUST finishing up supper when Hawk came in, leaning heavily on his stick and still seemingly lurching to one side. “Aww, no, Hawk,” said Mattie, half rising, but Hawk dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Feel pretty good,” he said, sinking into the heavy padded chair that he reserved for himself. “Need a change of scene.” With that he lapsed into a glowering silence, as the TV blared, the baby dozed in front of it, and Lori continued to regale them with tales of hoodoo and New Orleans. Jerry watched her carefully for signs, he distrusted what she was getting herself into, but she seemed neither high nor desperate, her nose wasn’t running and her eyes were burning no more or less brightly than ever, so he began to dismiss some of the stories he had heard or imagined—for the time being.

  “I used to know a feller played boogie-woogie piano in all the best sporting houses in town,” said Hawk. “This fella so smart they call him Dr. Rhythm, cause what he was playing wasn’t even in most people’s minds. He could rock the joint, and he could speak three languages, too—English, French, and I think a little guinea Spanish, and in the summer when it get too hot for him he go up to Canada or maybe New England to take his vacation. Man, he was something to listen to, there ain’t nobody like that no more. Sometimes late at night he get to playing classical, you know Chopin or Lieberstram, all that kind of junk. The girls that wasn’t occupied, they just come out and listen, and everything get real quiet-like and nobody say a word. Then he stomp right into a boogie-woogie, cause nobody likes it when the girls gets all quiet and ain’t full of fun, it ain’t good for business. But that boy could play-Never did hear what happen to him. He travel up and down that Gulf Coast, and people knowed him near and far, even down to Cuba, they probably dig him because they was half-breeds, too—you know what I mean, too dark to go in the front door but too proud to go around the back.”

  “Hush, Roosevelt,” said Mattie. “You sure you don’t want nothing to eat?”

  Hawk shook his head. “Just water.” He held the glass steady in his right hand, Jerry noticed, but his fingers closed around it only with some difficulty. Jerry glanced over at the children. Only Little Bo was still awake, and he was watching his father, not the television. “Well, you know it’s good to be just sitting around talking again,” he said to Lori. “It’s been too long, baby.”

  “Well, it sure is in my mind, it’s just this bug here keeps me working all the time, and when I’m not working I’m recording, and when I’m not recording I just feel like I’ve got to get away from everything and everyone, from him mostly,” she said laughingly, indicating Jerry. “Man, you know when I went into this business, that’s just what I didn’t want it to become—a business. I thought I’d play when I wanted to and where I wanted to and only when I felt like I wanted to. But I found out that to do that you’ve really got to pay your dues, and by the time you finish paying, it may be that you don’t want what you set out to buy in the first place.”

  “Ain’t it the truth, baby?”

  “But that isn’t the way it is with you, Hawk—”

  Hawk didn’t say anything, just nodded his head.

  “Hey, it hasn’t been so bad, has it?” said Jerry, feeling a little guilty. He always agonized over Lori’s bookings, sometimes he felt as if he treated her too circumspectly, but then, he reflected, he wasn’t the one who had to go out there and deliver.

  “Hush up, let the child eat,” said Mattie.

  “You know, sometimes I feel like a whore. No, I really do. To go out there in front of all those people and have them expect something of me that I’m supposed to give every night, even when I don’t feel like giving. And then, you know, you have to fake it. Or you get stoned just to pretend it isn’t there. Do you know what I mean?” She turned imploringly to Hawk.

  “Sure, honey, sure I know what you mean. But that’s why you got to always sing what’s in your heart. That way, you don’t have no problem choosing. You feel evil, you sings evil. You feel good, why that’s the way it come across. You can’t go making no distinctions between you and your music. You sing what’s in you, and it can’t be wrong, cause it’s in you for a purpose.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “Leave that child alone, can’t you?”

  “I better. It’s what’s carried me through my whole life.”

  IT STARTING ALREADY. They treating me like I’m sick, like I’m a old man. Well, they ain’t far wrong. Just an old man, don’t bother no one, speak when spoken to, thinking his thoughts, that’s about it. Half them thoughts about things that happen fifty years ago when we was kids and old folks clucking and shaking their heads at us, preacher shouting from the pulpit, saying, Won’t they ever learn, Lord? Naw, they won’t never learn. How can you learn a little kid to act like a old man? Just like you can’t teach nothing to an old man neither. His body tell him he done for. His mind tell him, Slow down. But his spirit say, Shut up, fool, I gonna get it one more time. Young people can’t understand, they take one look at you and they know you past it. Just like I knowed 01’ Man Mose had his day and his day was past and gone. But he didn’t know that, how was his spirit just gonna lay down and die? Young fella ask me, I believe it was this very one, say, Don’t you have no regrets? Well, I think about that one. Regrets? I regret that I didn’t do better. And I regrets that my mama couldn’t see me when I sang for the queen. But ain’t you glad that you been discovered by all these nice young white peoples? Well, to tell you the truth, if they was going to discover me, I just wish they could’ve done it when I was younger and could put out more. I didn’t never get tired then, the ideas just come
so fast they just all jumble up together. Not like now, when they come stumbling along, seem like they gonna trip up before they even gets to me. Shit, I ain’t grateful, if that’s what you mean, but it don’t matter anyhow. Act nice, don’t say nothing to nobody—shit, don’t none of it matter, a man’s just got to be treated with respect. They don’t know, they look like they about to bust out crying, but I surprise ’em all yet. I ain’t nothing if I ain’t Hawk. …

  AFTER the dishes were done they joined him on the screened-in porch, watching as he puffed on a barely lit cigar, the glow winking and dying out again in the deep country darkness. The house next door, a modified trailer up on blocks, showed no light, inside there was only the dull glow of the television set. There were no streetlights, and no car passed. Hawk drew reflectively on the foul-smelling cigar. “You got any more bookings for me?” he said at last.

  Jerry shook his head. “Well, you know that was the last. Kurt’s talking about another European tour, and I’m sure we can pick up some other gigs as soon as you’re feeling better.”

  “Feeling better? I’m feeling better already,” Hawk boomed almost convincingly.

  There was a light knock at the screen door. A skinny-looking old man in a puffed-up cap poked his head in. “Hey there,” said Hawk with a gracious little wave, as the man hesitated in the doorway. “Get the door shut before the whole woods is in here with us. Thought you was dead a long time ago.”