by Jeff Horton
recording studio. It wouldn’t take them a long time to get it together to rehearse and record. Most of the times, what Willie would do, he
would play it along with them. Then, if they wanted to do it a
different way, as long as they used the song, they’d run in and do that.
Before the day is gone, they’d record it. When all this would be happening, the guys, instead of recording just enough to do an LP, they would be in the studio recording different takes on different songs to see how many they could record. A session to them was something like fifty to a hundred songs. That would be a twelve-, fourteen-, sixteen-hour stretch of work, sometimes more than that. We’d go in around
two in the afternoon, and we’d record all night. From the time we’d go in, getting the arrangements and recording it, getting a good balance on the tape, we’d record enough songs that would last us until maybe six or seven o’clock in the morning. If the guys wanted coffee, somebody would leave out at midnight and go pick up some coffee and
bring it back to the studio. They’d take a break just long enough to eat a snack and have some coffee. A lot of them, the reasons their records sound so wavy, they would always be having a drink during the session. They may say, “We’re going to do this with such and such a
musician,” and then sometimes they’d just do so many with whoever’s
in the studio to record with them. There were better recordings then, because you didn’t have a session like an open door thing. A lot of
times nowadays, anybody can come in off the street, enter in your
session, and interrupt you. “If I was you, I’d play it like this, or I would do this, I would do that.” Back then the only way you would
be able to get into the studio is if you were affiliated with the session.
People just couldn’t come and go as they pleased. That’s what messes up a lot of records nowadays. You know, they think you’re having a
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party, and everybody gets to have their input. But somehow they
get it done.
When Elmore James was recording, he would just run one song
down with the band, and on the second one, that would be the first
take of it. After about three takes, it’s a done deal. He would just pick something at random, come up with a beat, and everybody would
just blend in. Most of his stuff he did that way was slide; it sounds somewhat the same anyway. He would use different notes, but his
early material was basically the same unless he recorded something
with a horn section. I have a lot of friends in this modern technol-
ogy deal, but I like to take my hat off to the guys from the old school who’re gone and some who’re still around. To me, that’s just common
courtesy. They were the pioneers that showed the way; it had never
been done before them. You should always give respect to your peers.
In 1964, there was a gentleman named Willie Roy Sanders who
recorded an early version of a song called “Crosscut Saw.” He was
a construction worker; he and Albert King had worked together
doing road construction on some jobs in the upper western part of
Arkansas, and from there back down to West Memphis, building high-
ways and clearing land for other stuff to be built. When Willie Roy’s record came out, “Crosscut Saw” was the number one blues song at
radio station WDIA in Memphis. The people who Willie Roy had a
contract with, somehow they decided to go with Albert King instead,
and later on he recorded that same song. He stepped it up a little bit, and that’s the way he made it his own. Now everybody knows it as
Albert King’s song, and he didn’t even write it. Willie Roy didn’t get no money from doing his own version, either.
There’s one thing I can say, even back from day one, and that’s
people always want to point the finger at the white musician for
stealing the black man’s music. But the thing with Albert King and
Willie Roy Sanders, that was black on black, against black. That’s not
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the only thing that has happened. Black musicians have been doing
that stuff since day one, taking and ripping one another off. They all look at it like, “The white man did this, the white man did that.” It has always been a rip-off thing with either race of musicians. It’s sad, but it’s true.
It used to be that you could just change some words in the song,
and then you say it was your own. If you want to have a hit record out there with somebody else’s song, the right thing to do is to contact the sole owner who has the copyright to that song and get their permission. But now, with the public domain thing, a person can record anything that you’ve recorded. It could be your song, but after thirty years they would not have to give you a dime or even get your permission to do it. The law says you can do that, but to me it’s a wrong thing. The music business has had its ups and downs and its rights and its wrongs ever since day one. It’s just something that you have to deal with. But if there was a way that you could get money for it, it would be a good thing. Like with “Sleeping in the Ground,” there’s a whole lot of people today who know that I wrote it, but they’ll tell me, “Man, you don’t own nothing.” But if it’s my own words, my lyrics and my own com-position, then why don’t I own it? The law says after thirty years it’s public domain, but that didn’t do me no good before the thirty years was up.
There are many others who haven’t gotten what’s rightfully due to
them on their music. Other people would have to record their mate-
rial before it would be recognized that they were the ones who did it.
I’m one that falls right into that category. Personally speaking, I don’t want just anything. I want specifically one thing, and that’s what’s rightfully mine.
I said all that just to say one thing: as long as there is music, there’s gonna be a way that somebody is going to try to connive and down-grade you in what you’re doing. If I had thought about doing back
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then what I have in mind to do now, “Sleeping in the Ground” would
never have appeared on records done by a whole lot of people that are doing great for themselves, but I’m not getting a dime.
There are a lot of musicians who have released that song, and the
only thing I ever got from it was a name as the writer of that song. It’s all right to have a name, but where could you spend that at? I asked Johnny Vincent about it once, and he said that different people had
recorded it, and as soon as he got some royalties on it, I would, too.
The next thing I know he had sold his company, then the next thing
after that, he died.
Robert Cray and Eric Clapton and several other people whose
names I do not know have recorded “Sleeping in the Ground.” That
particular song is on at least ten other records. It was on Eric Clapton’s deal twice; he had a box set with it that went platinum. But not a dime for me, though. So what can you say about that? People ask me to do
the song, and I say, “I don’t mean to be rude in no way, but as soon as I get some money for doing this song, I’ll be too glad to sing it for you.” Some people understand, but some people look at it like me
being smart.
If anybody wants to know the meaning behind “Sleeping in the
Ground,” the song explains itself, simply because anybody who does
any writing of any song usually does nothing but tell a story that faces the facts of life. A song has a pattern, just like anything else. A song could be a story, or a story can be divided up into a song. It’s
about everyday things, as facts about life itself. “I’d rather see you / Sleeping in the ground / Than to be around here / Knowing you’re going to
put me down.” That explains itself. The purpose of the whole thing is, you’re telling the story of a loved one who was there only for what
was in it for them. You gave them all the money you had and every-
thing that you owned. Being conscious of it, meaning that one day,
even though you know it would be the wrong thing to happen, you’d
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like to see that person sleeping in the ground. You might wonder
yourself, why would you even want to be around, when you know
she’s about to put you down? You know it’s happening because as soon as you get broke during this relationship, it’s better to be away from that person.
A lot of songs that I’ve written myself and recorded for other
people, I’ve gotten royalties from, but not “Sleeping in the Ground.”
I recorded it again on Black Top for Hammond and the late Nauman
Scott. I thought I was treated fairly by them because my contract was up when I recorded it on one of the Anson Funderburgh and the
Rockets records. I think they treated me fairly about that, for me not to be a recording artist for them. It was just being on somebody else’s record, but it was my song.
We’re going to go way back a number of years to what happened
with the late John Lee Hooker, who was originally from Clarksdale,
Mississippi. He left home at an early time, back in the forties, went to Chicago and hung around awhile and then went to Detroit. He
played the original clubs there like Henry’s Swing Club and vari-
ous bars around the area and all over the south and west sides of
Detroit. Henry’s Swing Club was on Hastings Street before they cut
the expressway across it. That used to be the street in Detroit for the blues. John Lee Hooker used to play there and he wrote this song,
“Boogie Chillen.” During that time, he recorded other songs that he
wrote, like “Sally Mae,” “Devil’s Stomp,” “Nightmare Blues,” and a Big Joe Williams tune, “Baby Please Don’t Go.” He did these recordings
under an assumed name, “Texas Slim.” He may have been under some
kind of commitment or contract that he wasn’t able to draw any roy-
alties under his name, so he recorded under that name in order to get paid. But people, they knew it was John Lee Hooker when they heard
his record. A lot of times the name protects the innocent, but if you’re innocent, what kind of name would you have to use other than your
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own, to protect yourself ? He died a few years ago, just when he had begun to draw royalties from back-written songs that he did. John Lee and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown are two people from that industry
who, along with myself, have come up against this sort of thing. They were the ones I know personally who didn’t get a lot of the money
due them.
Don Robey kept Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown off the rolls for
right at almost twenty years. He was working for Don and recording
a lot of material that was his own. This was at Duke Records out of
Houston, Texas. A lot of the people that recorded for that label wound up just making records and a big name for themselves, but no money.
A lot of guys back then thought on the same level, to cheat you out of what little you had. They would say, “Hey, man, you got a big record here, you need to hit the road, they’re waitin’ for you.” They had an old saying that was a bad thing, and I never did like for nobody to call me that. “You got a big record out there. Go get ’em, tiger!” Go get what? You’re not getting any money, what is out there for you to go
get? The money’s there, but are you getting it?
For a lot of the Elmore James sessions I was on, I didn’t get more
than the session pay, and that was all I was supposed to have gotten.
Course I never did write any of Elmore James’s songs, and I don’t
expect nothing from that. I was just a member of his band. But stuff that’s rightfully mine, I figure if it’s a song that I wrote, then I deserve to get my money for that.
Like all those Jimmy Reed records, over there at Vee-Jay Records.
Jimmy was forty-eight when he died; his wife, Mary, was living on
welfare, and she didn’t get a dime for his music. I feel like people should have that equalization of what they got going, what is rightfully theirs. But you got shysters everywhere, man. Take Freddie King.
Look at what a Dallas wimp did to him. After Freddie King died, some kind of way he got his hands on the plates and the rights of Freddie
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King’s material. By Freddie King being a Texas guy, this guy went to his wife and got all of Freddie’s songs that hadn’t been released and dumped it off on Black Top Records. They made a little money off it, too. But at a time when it could have been done better and made some better money, Black Top went out of business. It was just a downhill situation.
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STORIES FROM THE ROAD
Any musician who has traveled the world and played with the wide range of artists that Sam Myers has is bound to have a treasure trove of humor-ous anecdotes. Anson Funderburgh, Sam’s bandleader, collaborator, and friend for some twenty years, also contributes a trio of road stories. The stories that follow are not quite as colorful as some that the author has heard, but they have the virtue of being printable.
When I was with King Mose and the Royal Rockers back in 1957, we had a real good group; we were real friendly with each other. Unlike a
lot of musicians, we were playing just as many or even more of the
white business establishments than the other bands. We played at
different fraternities at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, and at Mississippi State in Starkville. I never will forget one fraternity party that we played. It was for the gentlemen of Pi Kappa Alpha and their sorority.
This man walked up with a half-gallon of corn whiskey, but he did
not want me to have a drink. He told King Mose, “All you guys can have some except for Sam, because he rolled his eyes at me.” So Mose told the guy, “No, that’s just the way the guy’s eyes is. He’s partially blind.”
The guy said, “Oh, I’m sorry about that.” Now Mose had a fifth of
Early Times which me and him were drinking on. He said to the guy,
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“Me and Sam will have a drink out of my bottle, just for you saying
that.” I said, “I have to have some water or something like a soft drink to chase it with.” The only thing they had to drink was RC Cola. Mose said, “I drinks mine straight,” and I said, “That’s why you can wind up being drunker than me.” He laughed, but I wound up at the end of
the night drunker than he was. Anytime when you drink liquor with a
soda, it’s the sweetness along with the fumes of the liquor that makes you drunk, so it’s better to drink it with water. We laughed about
it after that.
There was a song that I had listened to Bobby “Blue” Bland do,
one of his all-time hits called “Turn on Your Love Light.” The same
particular night, Mose had just gotten out of the hospital for a hem-orrhoid operation, and he was getting ready for us to take a break so he could go use the washroom. I was really bent sideways with him,
because they all were drinking amongst themselves, and I had to drink with this guy after him saying that I rolled my eyes at him. So right at the end of the part where I was
supposed to sing, “I get so lonely in the middle of the night / I need you darling, everything will be all right /
Turn on your love light and let it shine on me,” instead I sang, “Turn it up, turn it up!” and I just kept on singing. Mose was trying to give me the signal to end the song because he had to go to the washroom.
I kind of hated that I did that afterwards, but I really did put him through something.
Then by it being during the winter months, we had to ride in a ’46
Roadmaster Buick with our instruments and all of us piled up in
the car. He did use the washroom, but it was on himself and we had
to ride all the way from Starkville to our next gig in Greenville, Mississippi, to play at the Elks Lodge, with him not going to the washroom like he should’ve went. He said, “Man, the next time somebody tell
you to stop a song, you will.” I said, “Hey, man, we had a groove going; I couldn’t just stop.” He said, “Well, you’ll know the next time.” He
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wasn’t a man who would take whatever you do against your pay; he
would always figure out something else. But I would always be staying one step ahead of him.
I had some spyglasses made by a good friend of mine that worked
in a welding shop. He took the glass part out of each one of the eyes of this pair of binoculars, and they would hold about a pint of liquor apiece. I had him to melt some lead to pour into it and seal the eye part up. We played at Forest City, Arkansas, between Little Rock and Memphis, in the summer, at the Forest City Country Club. That was
about one of the saddest gigs that I ever remember playing, because
we asked for water and nobody had any water or sodas for us, just for the audience. I said, “Man, we should got us some bottled water or
something, ’cause this is going to be a hard gig to play.” We played a whole four-hour gig without a drop of anything to drink but me. I
didn’t have a soda or nothing to chase the liquor that I had with me in those spyglasses, so I was higher and feeling better than any of them there. They said, “Man, you got something going on, you on some
kind of drugs?” I said, “No, only Jack Daniel’s.” They was really bent sideways with me about doing that!
