Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues

by Peter Guralnick

  Robert didn’t lose any time, even though she told him she was married. Robert would not let her out of his sight the rest of the night. And when we left there a couple of days later she was with us, and she stayed for quite a while. Her name was Louise, and she was everything that Robert wanted: She could sing, dance, drink, and fight like hell. Oh, yes, she could play a little guitar too. She and Robert used to get on until she hit him on the head with a hot stove eye. I don’t think that was part of Robert’s plan at all, because they never got along well after that.

  I only know two women who might have been near as close, and they were Shakey Horton’s sister and Robert Lockwood Jr.’s mother. I have heard Bob talk more about Shakey’s sister than anyone else. Robert’s mother must have meant quite a bit to him too, because he called her his wife. I am sure that you’ve noticed I call these ladies “girls,” but that is just a figure of speech, because there was only one girl in the bunch, and that was Horton’s sister. She was in her early teens, but the rest were thirty and older. Robert spent a lot of time getting the attention of girls without knowing it himself, and he spent the rest of the time trying to get away from them.

  Robert’s route was: Memphis, Tennessee; Mississippi; Helena, Arkansas; Missouri; and sometimes Texas. He was a guy that could find a way to make a song sound good with a slide, regardless of its contents or nature. His guitar seemed to talk—repeat and say words with him like no one else in the world could. I said he had a talking guitar, and many a person agreed with me.

  This sound affected most women in a way that I could never understand. One time in St. Louis, we were playing one of the songs that Robert would like to play with someone once in a great while, “Come On in My Kitchen.” He was playing very slow and passionately, and when we had quit, I noticed no one was saying anything. Then I realized they were crying—both women and men.

  Things like this often happened, and I think Robert would cry just as hard as anyone. It was things like this, it seems to me, that made Robert want to be by himself, and he would soon be by himself. The thing that was different, I think, was that Robert would do his crying on the inside. Yes, his crying was on the inside.

  As I have already said, Robert was far from being a sissy, and he proved it without trying. He could do the darnedest things. Women, to Robert, were like motel or hotel rooms: Even if he used them repeatedly, he left them where he found them. Robert was like a sailor—with one exception: A sailor has a girl in every port, but Robert had a woman in every town. Heaven help him, he was not discriminating—probably a bit like Christ. He loved them all—the old, young, fat, thin, and the short. They were all alike to Robert.

  We were in West Memphis, Arkansas, staying at the Hunt Hotel, and playing for a fellow called “City.” There was a girl not more than a midget in height and size who also lived in this Hunt Hotel that we all took for granted because she was always running errands for the three of us as well as everyone else in the neighborhood. When she would make a run for us, the change that was left, we would give it to her because we thought she was just a very nice girl.

  One day we missed Robert and thought he was on Eighth Street with a girl that he gave quite a bit of attention to. We were satisfied with this explanation until the girl we thought he was with came over with food for Robert, and the rest of us too, but when she didn’t find Robert we had to make a quick guess as to where he was, regardless of what we really thought. So we said he was in Memphis, but she wanted no part of this and was getting quite angry. So somebody had to find him. Well, I knew this little girl always was up and around early and she might just know where Robert was—and she did. One guess, and I bet you are right! He was there in her bed. She only had one room, and since it would have looked kind of foolish to ask her to go out of her own room so I could talk to Robert, I told her what had happened, and she was very broad-minded about the whole thing. She in turn told Robert as though he weren’t listening and showed him a way to get out of the hotel without being seen, and it worked. After that, Robert used this exit quite often, but he was not always coming from the little girl’s room!

  One time we were in Wickliffe, Kentucky, and met some girls that I liked very much. They were a dance team that had never been no place and wanted to be seen and heard. I should have said a song-and-dance team of four people. They could really go to town, and I wanted to take them with us when we left and had it all arranged, but Bob, he would slip from one girl to the other until he had them all fighting among themselves. Now he was ready to give them the slip, and we did.

  Did Robert really love? Yes, like a hobo loves a train—off one and on the other.

  Robert had all kinds of moods—singing, playing, drinking, fighting, rambling, sometimes talking (which was the shortest mood of all, except playing with other men in a playful manner). It seems to me that where there were no women around, that’s where Robert would find the woman he liked best, and had to have her or go to hell trying to get her. And he got her.

  Robert left me in Chicago. He went to St. Louis, to the state line—that is where Arkansas and Missouri join—and from there to Blythesville, Arkansas, then Memphis, Tennessee, and then back to Hughes, Arkansas. I caught up with him in Helena, Arkansas.

  If you want to guess, you can score yourself a hundred: Yes, he was back with Robert Lockwood’s mother again. He spent lots of time going between her house and another house that I won’t name at this time. Yes, Robert was quite a ladies’ man, but he was always running from one, to learn a new face, or to get where another woman was that he already knew. Then Robert went over into Mississippi. I didn’t like the thought of Mississippi, so I didn’t go with him, and I never saw Robert again.

  This was the Robert Johnson that I knew and the good things that I knew about him.

  THE DEVIL’S SON-IN-LAW

  By Ralph Ellison

  [From Invisible Man, 1952]

  It was a clear, bright day when I went out, and the sun burned warm upon my eyes. Only a few flecks of snowy cloud hung high in the morning-blue sky, and already a woman was hanging wash on a roof. I felt better walking along. A feeling of confidence grew. Far down the island the skyscrapers rose tall and mysterious in the thin, pastel haze. A milk truck went past. I thought of the school. What were they doing now on the campus? Had the moon sunk low and the sun climbed clear? Had the breakfast bugle blown? Did the bellow of the big seed bull awaken the girls in the dorms this morning as on most spring mornings when I was there—sounding clear and full above bells and bugles and early workaday sounds? I hurried along, encouraged by the memories, and suddenly I was seized with a certainty that today was the day. Something would happen. I patted my brief case, thinking of the letter inside. The last had been first—a good sign.

  Close to the curb ahead I saw a man pushing a cart piled high with rolls of blue paper and heard him singing in a clear ringing voice. It was a blues, and I walked along behind him remembering the times that I had heard such singing at home. It seemed that here some memories slipped around my life at the campus and went far back to things I had long ago shut out of my mind. There was no escaping such reminders.

  She’s got feet like a monkey

  Legs like a frog—Lawd,

  Lawd! But when she starts to loving me

  I holler Whoooo, God-dog!

  Cause I loves my baabay,

  Better than I do myself …

  And as I drew alongside I was startled to hear him call to me:

  “Looka-year, buddy …”

  “Yes,” I said, pausing to look into his reddish eyes. “Tell me just one thing this very fine morning—Hey! Wait a minute, daddy-o, I’m going your way.” “What is it?” I said.

  “What I want to know is,” he said, “is you got the dog?”

  “Dog? What dog?”

  “Sho,” he said, stopping his cart and resting it on its support. “That’s it. Who—” he halted to crouch with one foot on the curb like a country preacher about to pound his Bible—”got
… the … dog,” his head snapping with each word like an angry rooster’s.

  I laughed nervously and stepped back. He watched me out of shrewd eyes. “Oh, goddog, daddy-o,” he said with a sudden bluster, “who got the damn dog? Now I know you from down home, how come you trying to act like you never heard that before! Hell, ain’t nobody out here this morning but us colored—Why you trying to deny me?”

  Suddenly I was embarrassed and angry. “Deny you? What do you mean?”

  “Just answer the question. Is you got him, or ain’t you?”

  “A dog?”

  “Yeah, the dog.”

  I was exasperated. “No, not this morning,” I said and saw a grin spread over his face.

  “Wait a minute, daddy. Now don’t go get mad. Damn, man! I thought sho you had him,” he said, pretending to disbelieve me. I started away and he pushed the cart beside me. And suddenly I felt uncomfortable. Somehow he was like one of the vets from the Golden Day …

  “Well, maybe it’s the other way round,” he said. “Maybe he got holt to you.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “If he is, you lucky it’s just a dog—’cause, man, I tell you I believe it’s a bear that’s got holt to me …”

  “A bear?”

  “Hell, yes! The bear. Caint you see these patches where he’s been clawing at my behind?”

  Pulling the seat of his Charlie Chaplin pants to the side, he broke into deep laughter.

  “Man, this Harlem ain’t nothing but a bear’s den. But I tell you one thing,” he said with swiftly sobering face, “it’s the best place in the world for you and me, and if times don’t get better soon I’m going to grab that bear and turn him every way but loose!”

  “Don’t let him get you down,” I said.

  “No, daddy-o, I’m going to start with one my own size!”

  I tried to think of some saying about bears to reply, but remembered only Jack the Rabbit, Jack the Bear … who were both long forgotten and now brought a wave of homesickness. I wanted to leave him, and yet I found a certain comfort in walking along beside him, as though we’d walked this way before through other mornings, in other places …

  “What is all that you have there?” I said, pointing to the rolls of blue paper stacked in the cart.

  “Blueprints, man. Here I got ‘bout a hundred pounds of blueprints and I couldn’t build nothing!”

  “What are they blueprints for?” I said.

  “Damn if I know—everything. Cities, towns, country clubs. Some just buildings and houses. I got damn near enough to build me a house if I could live in a paper house like they do in Japan. I guess somebody done changed their plans,” he added with a laugh. “I asked the man why they getting rid of all this stuff and he said they get in the way so every once in a while they have to throw ‘em out to make place for the new plans. Plenty of these ain’t never been used, you know.”

  The only known picture of Peetie Wheatstraw, taken in 1935

  “You have quite a lot,” I said.

  “Yeah, this ain’t all neither. I got a coupla loads. There’s a day’s work right here in this stuff. Folks is always making plans and changing ‘em.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said, thinking of my letters, “but that’s a mistake. You have to stick to the plan.”

  He looked at me, suddenly grave. “You kinda young, daddy-o,” he said.

  I did not answer. We came to a corner at the top of a hill.

  “Well, daddy-o, it’s been good talking with a youngster from the old country but I got to leave you now. This here’s one of them good ole downhill streets. I can coast a while and won’t be worn out at the end of the day. Damn if I’m-a let ‘em run me into my grave. I be seeing you again sometime—And you know something?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I thought you was trying to deny me at first, but now I be pretty glad to see you …”

  “I hope so,” I said. “And you take it easy.”

  “Oh, I’ll do that. All it takes to get along in this here man’s town is a little shit, grit, and mother-wit. And man, I was bawn with all three. In fact, I’maseventhson-ofaseventhsonbawnwithacauloverbotheyesandraisedonblackcatboneshighjohntheconquerorandgreasygreens—” he spieled with twinkling eyes, his lips working rapidly. “You dig me, daddy?”

  “You’re going too fast,” I said, beginning to laugh.

  “Okay, I’m slowing down. I’ll verse you but I won’t curse you—My name is Peter Wheatstraw, I’m the Devil’s only son-in-law, so roll ‘em! You a southern boy, ain’t you?” he said, his head to one side like a bear’s.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, git with it! My name’s Blue and I’m coming at you with a pitchfork. Fe Fi Fo Fum. Who wants to shoot the Devil one, Lord God Stingeroy!”

  He had me grinning despite myself. I liked his words though I didn’t know the answer. I’d known the stuff from childhood, but had forgotten it; had learned it back of school …

  “You can hear … richness and complexity in Robert Johnson’s music… He’s an incredible figure, and he always sparks my imagination … There’s an incredible complexity I’m drawn to in his guitar playing. He’s really playing the drum. It’s amazing to listen to him with that in mind. I imagine that movement from the drum to no drum, having to play all of the parts without the drum, including the polyrhythms that are beginning to happen in his music. He’s singing on top of all that, which adds still another layer. His music is what I mean when I say ‘thick.’“—Cassandra Wilson

  “You digging me, daddy?” he laughed. “Haw, but look me up sometimes, I’m a piano player and a rounder, a whiskey drinker and a pavement pounder. I’ll teach you some good bad habits. You’ll need ‘em. Good luck,” he said.

  “So long,” I said and watched him going. I watched him push around the corner to the top of the hill, leaning sharp against the cart handle, and heard his voice arise, muffled now, as he started down.

  She’s got feet like a monkeeee

  Legs

  Legs, Legs like a maaad

  Bulldog …

  What does it mean, I thought. I’d heard it all my life but suddenly the strangeness of it came through to me. Was it about a woman or about some strange sphinxlike animal? Certainly his woman, no woman, fitted that description. And why describe anyone in such contradictory words? Was it a sphinx? Did old Chaplin-pants, old dusty-butt, love her or hate her; or was he merely singing? What kind of woman could love a dirty fellow like that, anyway? And how could even he love her if she were as repulsive as the song described? I moved ahead. Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn’t know. I couldn’t give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me. I strode along, hearing the cartman’s song become a lonesome, broad-toned whistle now that flowered at the end of each phrase into a tremulous, blue-toned chord. And in its flutter and swoop I heard the sound of a railroad train highballing it, lonely across the lonely night. He was the Devil’s son-in-law, all right, and he was a man who could whistle a three-toned chord … God damn, I thought, they’re a hell of a people! And I didn’t know whether it was pride or disgust that suddenly flashed over me.

  HOBOING WITH BIG JOE

  By David “Honeyboy” Edwards [as told to Janis Martinson and Michael Robert Frank]

  [From The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing, 1997]

  I stayed by my daddy’s for a while when one day Big Joe Williams come through there hoboing. There was a woman staying on our plantation at Fort Loring called Black Rosie and she run a juke house. Black Rosie gave a dance one Saturday night. It was a little before Christmas in 1932. And Big Joe Williams was playing at Black Rosie’s dance. Joe wasn’t nothing but a hobo then, running down the streets. I went over to Rosie’s and there he was playing. He was in his thirties, had a red handkerchief around his neck, and was playing a little pearl-necked Stella guitar; he was playing the blues. He played “Highway 49” and I just stood and looked at
him. I hadn’t heard a man play the blues like that! I was standing up in the corner looking at him and he said, “Why you lookin’ at me so hard? Can you play?” I said, “A little bit!” He got a drink of whiskey and said, “Play me a little.” I was ashamed and shy but I strummed a little. I played a little number or two for him. He said, “I can learn you.” Just like that! So I hung with him then, I wanted to play so bad. I stayed with him all night that night. All night till daylight.

  I come home Sunday morning and Joe come up with me, with his guitar on his shoulder. My dad was a musician and he would take [sic] with musicians. I brought Joe to him and said, “This is my father.” I said, “He used to play, too.” So Joe sat down and played the blues for my father, and my sister cooked a big chicken dinner for him. After Joe got through eating, he wanted to go out to Greenwood [Mississippi] where he could stop at the whiskey house, make a little money around the bootlegger’s house. He asked my daddy, “Well, Mr.

  Henry, can I carry Honey with me? It looks like he’s taken a likin’ to me. I can learn him how to play.” My daddy said, “He can go if he want to. It’s cold and dead out here in the wintertime. There ain’t nothin’ to do on the farm. Just come back when the weather breaks.” My sister’s man, the one we called Son, had that little old guitar with the neck broke on it. We fixed that guitar and that’s the guitar I played with Joe. Son said, “Honey, take it on with you.” Joe tuned it up for me. I was playing in the key of E, low, and he was playing high.

  So I went to Greenwood with him and we played at a good-timing house on Avenue F. Man, we played. Women was flocking, giving us nickels and dimes and quarters, and we kept the house lively.

  Fridays, Saturdays, we’d be on Carrolton Street, at a white man’s grocery store called Mr. Russell’s. That’s where all the people come out of the country in their wagons to buy their groceries. That’s where they do all their trading, at that store; that was a meeting point for the people. Me and Joe would sit in the back on cottonseed sacks and play our guitars. All them country people coming into town to buy their groceries gave us money.