by Tim Bryant
"We're the only station between Houston and Shreveport with a cutting lathe," the manager said. "It craps out half the time, but we only got it in the first place because it's a pre-World War Two model, and our sister station in Lubbock got two new ones."
He showed me how it worked, cutting from the inside of the disc moving out. Then, I sat inside the control room, making sure the levels were staying within the proper parameters while the manager ran around the studio positioning instruments. The studio had one RCA mic in the dead center of the room, and it got a great sound. By the time the show started, I was relegated to the position of observer, watching as the lathe did its work and the band did theirs.
When I suggested that Art swing by the station for some live music, I had every intention of being there to record the proceedings. I was even prepared to purchase the disc. I knew acetate discs could be played on a regular record player, but I had no plans for any of that. I was going to take the recording to Houston. I would find the offices for Peacock Records, and Art would be a label mate with Big Mama Thornton and Gatemouth Brown. I believed enough in Art to believe enough in myself.
I got to the little studio on Tower Road about half an hour early. I knew the morning manager usually arrived in time to make coffee and get everything warmed up. Clean up any mess left behind by the Saturday night crew. Prepare for Aunt You and whoever she might be bringing with her that week.
I was concerned to see that the manager on duty was not the usual morning guy but a late night guy who was obviously still working on Saturday night time. He looked like a drunk who had wobbled by the station on his winding way home and decided to stop in and spin a few tunes while he was in the neighborhood.
I used it to my advantage.
"I'm assuming you were told about the recording session this morning."
The way he responded, I wondered if he really had been drinking.
"Yeah, sure, my man," he said. "We're ready for it."
The manager poured each of us a cup of coffee, pouring an extra one so hers would be cooled off how she liked it when Aunt You arrived. He took a bottle out of his pocket and splashed a little extra into his cup.
"Hair of the dog," he said. "Want some?"
I shook my head no.
He tipped the bottle at the slightest angle and let four small drops escape into the third cup.
"Just the way your aunt likes it," he said. "She says it relaxes her tongue."
I looked at the clock on the wall. There's nothing as quiet as a radio station that's off the air. So quiet, it seemed like I could hear the manager's heart beating, but maybe it was mine. Aunt You was running late, and that wasn't like Aunt You.
Aunt You entered the studio like a field marshal late for battle. Calling for her coffee. Her music books. A chair. Where was the organ. She had already asked me to fetch two or three things before she recognized who she was talking to.
"I didn't know you was gonna be here this morning," she said. "But praise God that you are."
I knew there was no time but the present to tell her that she would be sharing this morning's gospel hour with a man who claimed to be a one hundred and nine year old ex-slave.
"Aunt You, I met a really good musician here, and I invited him to come in and join you for a few songs."
She looked at me over her glasses, which were perched halfway down her nose.
"Is he sanctified?"
I'm foolish enough to get myself into all kinds of crazy situations, but I'm decent enough to know that there are rules to getting myself out of them.
"No, ma'am, I don't think so, but he's transfigurated."
She didn't look fazed. No Trans-who?
"Transfigurated, huh?"
"Yes ma'am."
She looked around the room.
"Well, what does he play on and where is he? Is he invisible?"
The manager looked slightly more awake for the cup of coffee and sense of impending action and was busy getting the big microphone placed just right. It was a two sided mic, so he had Aunt You set up on one side of it and was preparing a place directly across from her for the guest. Made it look like a boxing match was about to take place.
Aunt You had two women with her, but neither was Aunt Earlina. They seemed to be working as her personal assistants, getting her Bible set out on the stand that was attached to her organ, getting her coffee where she could reach it but where it wouldn’t fall and spill, fixing her hair up just right. As if anyone but the handful of people in the studio was going to see her. Meanwhile, Aunt You was praying to Jesus and doing vocal warm-ups.
"Something Pastor John Elmer taught me when I was just a girl," she said. "Don't none of y'all remember John Elmer, but he was around here for a long time. Everybody called him Stump."
The manager was setting volume levels from the booth and wanted to keep her talking. He didn't care what she was saying. Wasn't paying any attention to anything but the little meters on the console in front of him.
"Why did they call him Stump?" he said. "Was he missing an arm or something?"
His voice was coming out of a speaker right over her head, and Aunt You looked up at it whenever she would answer him, like she was answering God himself.
"No, sir, he wasn't missing no legs or anything. They just called him Stump."
She sat there quiet for a minute, looking over her Bible.
"I guess they just liked the way it sounded."
Art showed up five minutes before we went on-air, looking like a cross between a backwoods bluesman and a medicine man. He took Aunt You's hand and kissed it right on the knuckles, which seemed to suit her. He then pulled his music stick out of its case, which I took enough notice of to determine that it was not made of pine, and stood right smack dab on the "x" that had just been marked for him.
"Mister Patton," the manager said, "would you like to take off your overcoat?"
What he was doing was asking, in the best way he knew how, for Art to take it off. Art shook his head.
"It usually stays on."
The coat had colorful knick-knacks and things, coins and button-like medallions sewn into it, and they tended to jangle as he moved his arms and stomped around. Stopping that jangle before it was transmitted across the airwaves seemed to be of utmost concern. The manager looked at me with a can-you-talk-to-him expression. I shrugged.
"It's part of his sound," I said. "Don't hide it, mic it."
None of this seemed to make any difference at all to Aunt You. She was in her own little world, sitting at the organ and studying sheet music like she was reading a map before setting out on a trip. Which is probably pretty much the way she thought.
"Mister Art," she said, "do you know 'Let's Go Out To The Programs?'"
The Dixie Hummingbirds. On Peacock Records. My dad had a copy of it at home. She had probably given it to him last Christmas.
"No ma'am," he said, "I don't know that one."
She ran down a short list of titles, from "There's Going To Be A Fire" to "Just A Little While To Stay Here" to "Marvelous Name." They finally decided she would play whatever the spirit led her to play, followed by a few words of inspiration, then he would play three of his songs, and we would all play out with "This Little Light Of Mine." One of Aunt You's helpers pulled two tambourines from her purse and handed one to me.
"You know what to do with one of these?"
I assured her I was up to the task.
Aunt You started the show with "Marvelous Name," which was my favorite of her usual repertoire. It was a signpost that the show was going in the roof-raiser category, and I was happy for it. Sometimes she would show up with her spirit out of joint, as she called it, and spend most of her time speechifying. She had even been known to take things out on the poor morning manager. I was there one time when she spent half an hour questioning him on where he had been the night before and whether he would go to Canaan Land if God sent a lightning bolt and burned the station down around them.
"I have
no idea," he said. "Where exactly is Canaan?"
I still believe he was thinking of some bigger and better radio market close to Dallas or something. She spent the next half hour singing "To Canaan Land, I'm On My Way," even pulling the poor manager out into the studio and making him sing along. I didn't expect him to show up the following Sunday, but he did. He hadn't missed a day of work until this one.
"Marvelous Name" is an upbeat song, lots of rhythm, and Art clearly dug it. Sitting well off mic in his corner, he cradled his banjo, instinctively finding the groove as well as the key. Aunt You noticed him strumming along and came to a screeching halt. The manager and I both recoiled in horror.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm looking at a young man here in the studio," she said, "and he looks like he knows what I'm talking about this morning."
Art was watching his fingers make shapes on the frets. He might have thought Aunt You was talking about me, if he heard her at all.
"Mister Art Patton, I hear you've traveled all over God's wonderful earth. Is this true?"
Art looked up and nodded. The manager waved at him to move in closer to the mic.
"Yes ma'am."
"You've played your music on stages and even in dancehalls."
I cringed.
"That's right."
Aunt You was playing something real soft underneath the talking. It was beginning to sound like a funeral. I was hoping it wasn't going to be mine.
"Have you ever been called wonderful?"
"Yes ma'am, I expect I have."
"Have you ever been called marvelous?"
"Maybe so."
She stood up and looked around the room. She didn't need an audience. Far as she was concerned, the angelic host was her congregation, and she had their full attention.
"The bible says that the Lord on high, the seed of the woman, servant of the Father, He humbled Himself unto death, my servant, the branch. Can I get an amen?"
One of Aunt You's helpers supplied an amen and two or three claps on the tambourine, which was enough to start up a beat. Art plucked a couple of notes out of the air, and the manager let out a whoop which could be heard over the mic.
"The bible says He was the high priest, the living water. The mediator. The carpenter. Shilo. The Lion of Judah. The true vine. He was wonderful. He was marvelous."
The music was swelling, her voice riding over the top of it like she was riding a wave.
"Art Patton, are you all— of— these— things?"
She signaled her two companions, and one fell into line with the tambourine, the other clapping her hands and stomping her foot.
"Art Patton, I want to know. Are you these things? Are you the true vine. The true bread. The hidden manna. The Rose of Sharon. The dayspring. The bridegroom. The Son of Man. The Man of Sorrows."
He was standing. Stomping. Playing. Throwing his head back and digging it. I had never seen anything like it.
"Mister Art Patton, can— you— save— my— soul?"
The meters were pegging into the red, but it was a beautiful, rapturous noise. Art stepped up to the mic and let loose with a solo seemed to bounce off the walls and fill the studio up with static electricity. The hair was standing up on my arm, and I was starting to wonder if that lightning bolt was coming at long last. Half the room seemed to be saying no to Aunt You, the other half an emphatic hell yes.
"All I know, Miss Eulalie, is I used to be a pretty good carpenter."
With those words, Art launched into his portion of the broadcast.
"I was born a slave on a plantation in Pattonia. Property of J.T. and Lucille Conray. The president of the United States went to war to set me free. I put a broken boat into the river of the Angel, and she delivereth me."
"I didn't think about what I was doing. if I had, I never would have done it. I reached down, pushed the intercom button which piped my voice into the studio and leaned into the control room mic.
"Tell everybody how hard they tried to stop you, Art."
"When he turned toward me, I felt for the first time that, instead of being inside the glass, the control room was on the outside. Art and Aunt You weren't outside the glass. They were on the inside. It was the only time I ever wanted to be in the studio itself. I turned around and grabbed the extra tambourine.
"I was friends with a man in Pattonia named George Demetrius Delafield. Now, George was a white man, but he was a good man and a good friend. Maybe the best friend I ever had. His family owned a plantation way back when Pattonia was a riverboat stop. But George came down on the side of the colored man. He didn't fight in the Civil War because he was just a boy like me when that come around, but he saw what was going down with his own two eyes, and he thought about things, and he knew.
"George died back in the 1920s. 1924, maybe it was. At that time, me and George Delafield was about the last two people living at Pattonia. And because we was friends, he give everything he had to me. I can still remember coming into Nacogdoches to speak with a lawyer here. Man by the name of Mister Lester Massey. So Mister Massey looks over his books and he says, Art, this is your lucky day. George Delafield has left you all of the possessions on his property. You get the house and everything in it. You get the carriage house and everything in it. You get the barn and everything in it. You get the outhouse and everything...
"Well, you get the point.
"Now, I don't think any of these lawyer men knew anything about the old riverboat that was on his property, but that was the one thing there that caught my eye. I'm telling you, it was looking a little rough. Like it might have taken on a little water if we'd try to set sail in it. But I was a carpenter, and I knew what to do to fix that boat up good as new. The Lady Camargo.
"Well, the banker people were getting everything that I didn't want, and they naturally were taking a pretty strong interest in whatever I was picking up. And that put it in my mind that I needed to take this boat and fill it up with as much of George's possessions as I could.
"That put a plan into my mind.
"I had me a friend. A young man by the name of Harmon Littlejohn. Lived down in Oak Ridge, just about halfway between Patton Landing and Marion's Ferry. I don't believe Oak Ridge is there at all anymore. But Harmon Littlejohn was a musician, played what we used to call the saw mill circuit. Back then, unless you was a carpenter or maybe a barber or something, that's just about the only good job a colored man could get. A saw mill job.
"Now I was already getting up there in age by 1920. You gotta keep in mind, I was born in the time of Lincoln. So I hatched up this plan to take all of George Delafield's possessions, run 'em down river to Sabine Pass and sell 'em. I knew I could get a pretty strong return on them. I'm talking good, white folk stuff. Furniture, silverware, enough books to stock up a library. You understand? So I had it in my mind that I was going to sell all of these things off and give the money to my friend Harmon Littlejohn, so he could go off and maybe see the world. At least see life beyond the saw mill circuit in east Texas.
"I never told Harmon that's what I was gonna do. I just decided to do it.
"First, though, we had to load up my new boat and get out of Pattonia. And that would prove to be more difficult than you might imagine. See, what me and Harmon Littlejohn didn't know was, George Delafield's father, a man named William Delafield, had been the undertaker man in Pattonia for many a day. While his slaves were all busy working his cotton and corn and peanuts, he was taking care of all the dead people. And somehow, for some reason, he had left one tiny little coffin in his home there in Pattonia. Yes ma'am, Miss Eulalie, one little bitty coffin with one little bitty baby boy was still up in that house.
"And guess who found it. I did.
"Well, I've found a whole lots of things in my life. Some of them was pretty okay. Some wasn't. But it ain't never a good thing when a colored man comes up with a dead body that he don't have no good explanation for. I can tell you that much right now. Before I knew it, the sheriff was there with his deputies. The bankerme
n were there. The lawyer men. Some guy walking around taking pictures of everything. And me and Harmon Littlejohn right smack dab in the middle of it all with no way to see our way out."
"It was getting to be like a circus up in George Delafield's house. I doubt it had ever seen so many people. It was a pretty big house, but seemed like everybody was all crowded up in that one room. And finally, in come Lester Massey.
"Sheriff McBride offered to arrest both of us for trespassing or for public disturbance or anything else they could come up with. The bankers were pretty much all for it, and the probate man was too. Fortunately, one of the lawyers, who later became the district attorney in Nacogdoches, told them to hold their horses until he could see how things checked out with Massey, who he seemed to know and respect.
"A guy came by and took everybody's picture. Harmon and I both thought he was with the law, but they said they didn't know him. The sheriff thought he was from the paper, but the bankers knew the camera man from the paper, and it wasn't him either. Everybody was trying to figure out what to do about this renegade photographer when Lester Massey came wheeling into the front yard in his Roadster.
"He stopped in the yard to talk with one of the deputies, again on the porch to talk to the sheriff, and then right at the screen door to talk to his lawyer friend. By the time he made his way through the front room, Harmon and me were the last two people he hadn't spoken with.
"He said, there hasn't been this much excitement in Patton's Landing since the Laura hit a sandbar, and all the womenfolk had to be rescued in john boats.
"I told him I was sorry me and Harmon didn't meet up to those standards, but we could sure stand some rescuing. That was for sure. Well, it didn't take Lester long to drag out a certified copy of the last will and testament of George Demetrius Delafield, and he made sure to wave it under the nose of everyone he could. He looked around for one of George's boxes, and we told him which one to steer clear of. He grabbed the very one that Harmon had set aside for his guitar case and stepped up onto it. He was still not the tallest person in the room, but when he started to talk, he proved to be the loudest.
