Gardner Remembers: the lost tapes

by KUBOA

BG: Well, you know he played clarinet with a supper-club band called Dick Delisi and the Syncopaters. They were fine, really fine. And Mr. Delisi came over to the house sometimes to dinner. A nice man, even a talented man. Could blow a barrelful of sax. But, they never talked music, never. I would question them about the band, what it was like performing, what particular songs they played. They would keep switching the conversation, keep it moving away from music and onto neutral topics like TV shows or the church. And, it took me years to figure out what was going on. It was my mother, see. She thought music was not the kind of career a really useful cog in society’s machine should pursue. And she would be damned if her child was going to follow in his father’s footsteps. Why I never heard my dad practice at the house. Why, even his record collection of big band and swing music stayed dusty. My mother squelched my father, I think. Held him back. I think my father was a man with a lot of soul, a lot of creativity that just festered, just rotted inside him like cancer, until, well, it turned to cancer and that killed him.

  CM: But, he was a lifelong smoker.

  BG: Yeah, yeah. People die from cigarettes. But more die from fettered ambition. I heard my dad’s band exactly once. I don’t remember why. We had to go to The Vapors for something and mom plunked me down in a chair and said, just stay here, I’ll be back. Well, it was like the music held me there—she could have been gone for hours. I was riveted. And there was my dad, looking cool, and blowing beautiful, liquid melodies out of that licorice stick. Sweet stuff. “Canadian Sunset,” “Old Brown Jug,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Blues for Allen Felix.” It was a revelation. But, never to be repeated. I think I was about 6 at the time, but that hour in front of Dick Delisi and the Syncopators is as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. Man, my dad. What could he have been? Given different times, a different circumstance. He said something odd to me one time, he said: “Bud, music is a bad demon to have. Like hooch. If I could have done anything else I would have.” And, of course, he did, I mean playing at the Vapors wasn’t bringing in enough money to support his small family, so he did books for a paint store. He had a business degree, was something of a math whiz, I think, and he worked in the back room of this paint store in a strip shopping center, most days. Sometimes my friends and I would walk up there and visit him. He looked sad, sitting at this shitty little desk, with a calculator and a pencil in his hand, and bad lighting. It was like the stage set for some damn O’Neill play, you know, all whites and grays and shadows. But, he greeted us like we were the best thing he’d seen all day. And his boss, Mr. Waddell, was a nice guy, a heavy set, crew-cut, ex-Marine, with a face like a catcher’s mitt, and he’d always give us this big, fake hello and hand us all bubble gum. Where I first saw Bazooka Joe. In Mr. Waddell’s paint store. And when dad said goodbye to us, he put a hand tentatively on my shoulder, before letting me go. It was the most he ever touched me, you know, that generation, those dads, not the down-on-the-carpet kind of parents. But that crappy paint store. Man. It was killing him, boring him silly. But, he came home every night with a grin on his face. Ate dinner with us, spot on 4:45, like you could set your fucking watch by it, and then, evenings when he played, he’d sheepishly pick up his little case, which usually sat in the back closet next to his shoe tree, and he would toss off a sad smile and go play till God knows what hour. And Mom would sit and stew. That was her métier. Stewing. Sad stuff, really. Don’t want to think about it.

  CM: Your mother disapproved of music? Was it a religious thing?

  BG: No, no, I don’t think so. I think she just hated anything that took attention away from her. Shit. Let’s move on. I still talk to her, you know, she’s still with us, and things are fine now. We talk. She actually asks me about my music, what kind of songs I’m writing, that kind of stuff, though she doesn’t understand one bit of it. I don’t think she ever listened to music—certainly not sixties stuff—but I don’t think she ever even listened to music from her time. I don’t get that. I really don’t. People who aren’t turned on by music, any music. Man, that’s weird. Anyway. Back to me, please.

  CM: Right. Um, when did you get your first real guitar?

  BG: That was—oh, when I was eleven, I think. I had played around on an old box guitar Dad brought home—I think it was a gift from Mr. Delisi actually. We had to sort of sneak it into the house (laughs) but it was old and didn’t sound very good, though I had fun trying to pick out Carter Family or Pete Seeger songs on it. Or blues chords. And, of course, I had a Mel Bay instructional book. I think Dad heard me, saw that I was progressing beyond his wildest dreams and bought me that electric guitar, without asking Mom, without thinking it was her business, you know? He saw that I was really good, that I could be something special. So he bought me this electric—it was a Hofner Futurama, if you can believe it. My old man…I don’t know what happened to that guitar. Shit. That was a beauty. And, damn, I just took off. Suddenly, I was Clapton, man, I was B. B. King. That guitar fit my hands like a woman would later. Better. And I immediately started playing all the Delta blues I could think of. I learned them all. I mean, Memphis had all these great blues musicians, up from Mississippi many of them, and they’re playing at Overton Park, at the Fair. It was easy to follow them around and learn from them. Mississippi Fred McDowell. Tom “Rooster” Thompson. These guys were great about showing you the chords, showing you how to use your tuning to get a personal sound out of your instrument. I advanced rapidly. Soon, I was sitting in with some of them, just playing rhythm, mostly, though sometimes Rooster was so generous he’d introduce me, as his “pro-to-jay” and I would do a brief solo. I mean, I was 12, 13. And I was playing the blues, A better education I cannot imagine.

  I started buying all the blues records I could find. There were great outlets for records back then. Even the flea market at the Fairgrounds had bins of old LPs cheap. I started listening hard, man, every night. I never did homework. My mother thought the devil had me for sure. I’d be in my room, playing “Heartbroken Man” or “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” or “A Ship Called Father House” on this shitty little amp and I knew my mother was roiling. But, to her credit, Dad, she had given up trying to stop me. It would have been fruitless, of course, I was off and running. It would have been like putting your finger in a dike, with the Great Mississippi behind it. And I even wrote a couple numbers, crude things, but I still remember ‘em, I can still play ‘em. “Caterpillar Blues.” “The Bookseller’s Beautiful Daughter.” “Idlewild Playground Blues.” (laughs) It was all a gas. In a way, man, that was my best period as a musician, when I was a sprout, playing my little man blues, all alone, without a care in the world except to make music. And have it remake me.

  CM: What do you mean?

  BG: Well, I was a weeny kid, you know? There was only one thing you could be when a boy in that decade and that was tough. Everything else was weeny. I wasn’t tough. I was wispy and blond and too pretty. And I got bullied relentlessly. Pushed to the ground, laughed at when I tried to join in during P.E.. I started dreading recess, you know. I just wanted to stay inside and read or write songs in my looseleaf notebook.

  I hated school, hated those bullies—hell, I still do, I hate bullying—but music was my out, or, I guess my in. When I started playing guitar at the school, on the playground, at the talent shows—where I always won, man, every fucking time—I was something else. I was no longer a weeny. I was talented. I found one other thing you could be and get some attention, the kind of attention you wanted, from girls, from the popular set. I mean, I could say I didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought, but you do when you’re becoming pubic, right. When your little dickie starts talking to you. So, I would do a knockoff of some song on the radio and the girls started following me around. And the first thing you know I’m getting handjobs in the girl’s bathroom. Cute girls, too, not just the trashy ones. The cheerleader types. I think my fir
st blowjob was on the school playground, off in a corner, where there was this big bush. Cathy Ceccerelli. Man, she was hot, I mean for a thirteen year old. Great braids that hung on either side of her face. And the first girl in our class to get tits. She was something else—she let me touch her naked ass, showed me it right before she unzipped me and took me into her mouth. (laughs) I didn’t even know what was happening. I kept thinking, is this right? Is this something humans are supposed to do? And should I come? Will it poison her? I didn’t know man. (laughs) When she did swallow my come, with a big smile on her face, I was amazed, you know? I was like zombied. I had no idea that boys and girls did such things. I immediately went home and wrote her a song.

  CM: You remember it?

  BG: Ha. Well, yeah, some of it. “Cathy took me/out of the cold/Cathy took me/she was so bold.” (laughs) Shit. Ok, it was awful, but what other tribute could I give to such a fine gift? I wonder where she is now. Probably married some tax accountant or corporate lawyer. She was our class valedictorian in high school. When she gave her speech I wanted to stand up and say, “I love her. She gave me my first head.” (laughs) And I was voted, of course, “most talented.” But, I’ve skipped ahead. We should spend more time in high school, if you know what I mean. It’s when I cut my teeth, honed my personality, became, for better or worse, what I became. Do you wanna start back in ninth grade now?

  CM: Sure. Yes. Exactly. I think when you were in ninth grade you were already something of a legend in Memphis Music circles. You’d already been sanctified by Jim Dickinson himself. Am I right?

  BG: Yeah, yeah. That’s right. I started playing around town, in clubs I wasn’t old enough to even enter. We formed Black Lung around this time, with Dickinson’s help—the godfather really of Memphis Music, an angel, if you wanna know the truth—and with Sid Selvidge’s. We were doing covers mostly, blues stuff, the kind of thing Cream started with, Canned Heat, Graham Bond. Some pop. We did Boyce and Hart stuff, “She’s Not There,” “Locomotion.” “Roadrunner” Hell, everyone did “Roadrunner.” At least we never covered “Hey Joe.” I’d say Hendrix and The Leaves version of that chestnut are enough---yet there are, what, twenty or fifty or so versions. Anyway. We started to gel quickly, like within months. We were good, given the times, the distractions, the limitations. We were pretty good right away. Dickinson played with us sometimes, as did Sid. A great compliment. And I started adding some originals. Skippy loved it when I’d bring a new song in—we practiced at his house—he had this garage and we covered the old sticky walls with egg cartons. Our own little studio. Skippy was beautiful, man. Full of praise for whatever I wanted to do with the band. Not like a sycophant, you know, a toady. He just was enthusiastic and every artist needs someone like that. I know I do, even today, even now, and it’s Lor, of course. She’s my star.

  LE: You’d do alright on your own, you know.

  BG: I don’t think so. What’s the word—amanuensis, I think. I’ve always needed one. Skippy was my sounding board. When I first played him “Blues for Wendy Ward,” he cried. I mean, he was great. Is great. I love him, you know.

  CM: Is there a Wendy Ward?

  BG: Uh, that’s not for public consumption. The public, you know, is barely able to sit up and eat solid food. They don’t need truth.