Sam Myers, The Blues is my Story Page 11

guitar. Elvis even recorded several of Arthur’s tunes. But the gentleman who was playing the guitar on all that solo work, that fancy

  fingerpicking stuff, it wasn’t Elvis doing that. That was a guy out of Memphis, Scotty Moore. Scotty didn’t get a lot of the credit that was due him because people kept hollering, “Elvis is the king! That guy

  could sure play that guitar!”

  John Hammond, Jr., has acclaimed a lot of stuff, and he’s good

  with it. He can do acoustic, and then a band can come onstage and

  he could play with them. A lot of guys who play acoustic cannot work with a band, because they’re used to being solo. That goes with the

  feeling of what they know to do. Robert Lockwood, Jr., can go both

  ways. He can do more with a twelve-string guitar than a lot of guys

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  can with six, ’cause he carries his rhythm, his chords, and his lead notes all the same. He could take his guitar and do whatever he wants.

  A lot of guys play guitar and got big names, but they can only do so much. I feel like if a man presents himself as a guitar player, he should be able to do more than just one thing. He’s gotta have enough weight about himself. If he knows his instrument, he should be able to get out there, and if something goes wrong with the band, he can do something to keep them afloat. If a guy takes his guitar and can’t play with nobody but just the band, he’s just somebody living off a pole that

  somebody else has notched.

  Chords are a very important thing in music with any instrument

  that you play, unless it’s a saxophone. A saxophone goes to harmony, but you can balance a chord out by a group of horns playing harmony.

  Not the same note, that would be what is called “in unison.” But to

  harmonize, you pick a part that will blend in with a guy that’s playing the lead. If you could strum up some harmony at the same time when

  the guitarist is playing chords, it really helps it out a whole lot.

  B.B. knows a lot of chords, but he’ll tell you himself, he can’t

  play and strum chords all at the same time. A lot of times when

  B.B. is playing, he may have the guitar on the intro, the solo, and on the going out. In between, just playing regular chords, he don’t do

  it. He usually stands there and sings and claps. But that’s the way his style is rounded. He can play one of the best arrangements of “Going Home” on a guitar that I’ve ever heard. One night, he walked into Don Robey’s studio there in Houston. They happened to be playing there

  that night, just a bunch of musicians getting together and jamming.

  Not like the amateur jams you see in Dallas, these were professional guys going to the test. A guy picks a tune and the band goes off and plays, and each guy takes a solo to the fullest of what he knows. So B.B. walks in, sits down, and listens a minute. Then he reaches over and grabs a guitar, and everybody looks at him, because he’s supposed

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  to know what he’s doing. But he decided he would give them a little

  more something to worry about. The horns were doing their part,

  then he went off to do his solo, and he did about two things in one.

  When he got ready to modulate to the song he was gonna do, he just

  did a lot of stuff like fast notes and running chords. He even did “Tiger Rag.” Everybody said, “Now this cat is playing this stuff like he’d been doing it all his life.” But that wasn’t the point. What he knows, and the way his style was, he had to study that. He had studied music in that form. That’s why it was so easy for him to do it.

  Count Basie was the first guy to acclaim B.B. as the world’s great-

  est. B.B. made some appearances with Count Basie for a while. People would look at him like, “That’s just a guy on stage playing jazz.” Now B.B. could play jazz as well as he could the blues. He might be on stage just like one of the guys in the band, with a uniform on. Then when

  he came out again he’d be dressed different and be like wildfire, which is great. I could understand what he was reaching. If an idea comes

  to you, you should just go ahead and do it right then, because if you mess around, you’ll forget it. Just do it while it’s there in front of you.

  That’s why B.B. does what he does so well. Freddie King was a good

  Texas guitar player, but like I always have said, to hear some good B.B.

  King music played, I like to hear him do it.

  The late Little Milton used to be the same way. For years, before

  he found out that he could have a thriving style of his own, everything that he played was just like what B.B. King did. Until he found out he could be Little Milton, that’s the only way he did it. But just like a lot of guys tell you, “Yeah, man, I gotta start somewhere.” But, hell, you don’t have to keep that up the rest of your life!

  Not only Milton, there were a lot of guys who played guitar and

  were some pretty decent singers. B.B. was kind of a milestone for a

  lot of them for a long time, including Buddy Guy. I thought it was a great thing when Milton decided to do his own styling thing. Since he

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  did that, he wound up getting more work, and his popularity began to grow strong; there are just a lot of good things to be said about that.

  I’ve known both guys for quite a while and I thought it was a great

  thing that Milton went on to achieve his own style of performing. It really helped him a lot.

  Ever since day one, there have been a lot of people, even if they

  have a style directly of their own, they usually had a tendency to copy off the other person before they went into their own thing. But a lot of them who started out that way never changed. They grew to be

  old men and their styles stayed the same. There’s a gentleman called

  “Guitar Gable.” There’s so many people who sounded like him, until

  you never knew who was who, because they not only sounded like

  him, they used the same name. I know of about three or four Guitar

  Gables. The original was a blues guitarist who also played a lot of

  other stuff. But there were so many people playing the type of material that he played, until you didn’t know one from the other. Like “Guitar Junior” that played with Muddy Waters for a long time, that was his

  key signature. His real name was Luther Johnson. There were a lot of guys who called themselves Guitar Junior. Clarence Garlow was sometimes called Guitar Junior. He was out of Louisiana. Lonnie Brooks

  was from Louisiana, too. He was Guitar Junior at one time when he

  was a young man. But he wound up saying, “Hey, this not going to

  work.” He came out, left the name Guitar Junior alone and went into

  who he really is, Lonnie Brooks.

  So you had a lot of guys who would take the same name. They

  were copying one another and then they would use that name and

  would say, “You’ve heard this guy. Now I’m going to show you where I can do better.” Kind of step the style up, while still wearing the name.

  It’s just one of those things. Something else that was interesting about that, there was a harmonica player named Sonny Boy Williamson. The

  original Sonny Boy was John Lee Williamson. He got killed in Chicago

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  in a knife stabbing. Sonny Boy Number Two, as they would call him,

  his name was Rice Miller. He hung around mostly the Mississippi

  Delta, then over at Helena, Arkansas. And even though as flat and

  as country as he would talk at times, he wrote some good songs. He

  was a DJ and he just traveled around. How he got to be worldwidely

  known, he would always travel from town to town, state to state, an
ywhere, just him and his harmonica. Plus he did a lot of recordings,

  did a lot of stuff on radio. He was successful at that because the

  real Sonny Boy, John Lee Williamson, was dead; he had done all his

  recording back in the forties. Rice Miller had taken the name “Sonny Boy Williamson” even before the original Sonny Boy had died. But

  after John Lee died, it was wide open for Rice Miller to start calling himself “the original Sonny Boy Williamson.”

  Rice Miller would come to Chicago to record. He would use the

  same musicians that Little Walter used. But he didn’t stay nowhere

  long. He didn’t care for Chicago, and he had a lot of enemies there. A lot of people didn’t like the idea of him taking the name Sonny Boy, when it was originally John Lee Williamson. How he did it, he got his ID and everything to read Sonny Boy Williamson. People who knew

  him said, “Man, you are not the original Sonny Boy.” He’d pull them

  aside and tell them, “Don’t say nothing. I’ve got a gig to play, then I’m on to the next town.” A lot of people around Chicago didn’t like that and didn’t care for him being around, although he blowed a harp like a demon. He could just pick up and start blowing any style. He never did use much amplified stuff, mostly studio mics. People were pissed off at him, but nobody wanted to hurt him because he blowed stuff

  that John Lee Williamson didn’t blow. Not only did he take the name, he took the music and did something more with it.

  He didn’t stay long in Chicago, not because he was afraid of

  anybody, but so he could keep his reputation. Elmore James, Robert

  Junior, they liked Sonny Boy real good because if he ever got into a

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  contest, he could protect himself with what he know as a musician.

  Whenever Sonny Boy went to Chicago where the musicians were, that

  son of a gun, if he walked into a club and if there was any harmonica players there, they just sat back in a corner and watched. And a lot of people don’t know that James Cotton used to stay with Sonny Boy

  when they was in Helena. From a little boy on, Sonny Boy taught

  James how to blow harmonica. That’s why James is as good as he is,

  right today. I met Rice Miller a few times, had a few laughs with him, but I never did play with him. During that time, I wasn’t really all the way interested in harp myself; I was still carrying the trumpet as my main instrument.

  Rice Miller also recorded in Jackson, Mississippi, on the Trumpet

  Records label for Miss Lillian McMurry, in the same studio where I

  first recorded “My Love Is Here to Stay” and “Sleeping in the Ground.”

  But he was there before I was. The first record that he did on Trumpet in about 1951 was “Eyesight to the Blind,” just him, a drummer, and

  a piano player. From that he did “West Memphis Blues” and “Cool,

  Cool Blues.” He had a piano player, Willie Love, with him at that time that played on his records. He had a group called Willie Love and the Three Aces. Not the Aces out of Chicago, but the Three Aces. Sonny

  Boy was a part of that, plus he played a lot with the King Biscuit Boys.

  They consisted of Dudlow Taylor, James Curtis, Robert Lockwood, Jr., and himself. What they would do, they had a broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas, on KFFA, which today they honor every year. The King

  Biscuit Flour Company has a festival called the King Biscuit Blues

  Festival in honor of Sonny Boy Williamson because he spent a lot of

  time in Helena being broadcast on KFFA. Sonny Payne, we all called

  him “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, he still does that show every day from

  twelve o’clock until twelve-fifteen. It was back in the forties when he started that, about 1941 or so. The King Biscuit Flour Company started making this meal called Sonny Boy Meal. It was a sack of cornmeal

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  with a picture of him on the bag, which I thought was an honorary

  thing. And every year since the King Biscuit Blues Festival started, they always bring back Robert Lockwood, Jr., and honor him because

  he was a member of that band. Then they got a Sonny Boy Blues

  Museum in Helena and a Sonny Boy Blues Society. I have a plaque

  that shows where I’m an honorary member, and I really appreciated

  that. This year, 2005, will be the twentieth year they have been doing it, and me and Anson have done all of them since they started.

  I’ll tell you what made me be a proud turkey. Out of all the musi-

  cians that were there at King Biscuit, anybody that was there at the last one saw that Robert Lockwood, Jr.’s band was uniformed to dress. It’s a proud thing for me to say. I wasn’t dressed like his musicians, but I was the only one in my band that had a suit on. That made me feel

  really good. I said, “Hey, this is the blues!” Regardless as to how you were dressed when you got there, if you’re going to perform before

  your audience, you should look presentable. It don’t have to be a uniform, but when you have a suit on and you’re onstage, you’ve got that professional look. You’re in your working clothes then. When I walk

  through a crowd, it makes me feel good to have them say, “Hey, man,

  you sure look nice.” Then I know I have truly laid a mark for myself.

  After Robert Lockwood, Jr., left Helena, he moved up to St. Louis

  and then went on to Chicago. Then Joe Willie Wilkins came in, and

  he and Sonny Boy kept the group going. Then Joe Willie moved from

  Helena over to Memphis, and he played around there, still using that name, the King Biscuit Boys. He was a real good guitarist, and he also worked with Willie Love. They did a lot of sessions at Miss McMurry’s Trumpet studio there in Jackson. A lot of Sonny Boy’s records, Willie Love was on them, then he had some sessions that he did on his own.

  Stuff like “Little Car Blues,” “Shout Brother Shout,” “Nelson Street Blues” and “74 Blues.” A lot of people listening at that song couldn’t understand what was “74.” Was it just a number? But “74” was the

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  number of a freight train. He mentioned, “74 rolls right by my baby’s door / I’m going to hobo my way to Chicago / And I won’t be coming

  back no more.” I had a lot of those records. He died at the VA hospital, Willie Love did, in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1953. He had a cousin, Clayton Love, who worked with Ike Turner out of Clarksdale. I never

  got a chance to meet Willie Love personally, but I really have enjoyed his music because he used the right musicians to make his stuff work for him. A lot of musicians today just get a lot of guys and throw

  something together, just because it seems it might work. A lot of

  music from the early days is being covered by up-and-coming people.

  But if you ever knew the song, it would be a hard thing to recognize it when somebody else plays it, versus going back and listening to the original.

  Getting back to Little Milton for a minute, a lot of those ses-

  sions he did, he was with Willie Love before he went over to Sun

  Records out of Memphis. That was his claim to fame, and he was in

  the business for about fifty years. I think he really made a big mark for himself. To me, he was a good musician, a good guitar player, he was smooth, and he was a hellacious singer. He could sing any kind

  of music that was around. I never heard him do gospel, though. I’m

  pretty sure he could have if he had chosen to.

  The late Willie Dixon, who’s originally from Vicksburg, Mississippi, his regular gig after he disbanded the Big Three Trio was working with Peter Chatman, who the world knows as Memphis Slim. He and Willie

  used to work together a lot at the 708 Club, the Trianon Ballroom, the Zanzibar
, some of the same clubs that Muddy Waters used to work.

  That was Willie’s regular gig when he wasn’t doing his own thing, and he was always in the studio doing sessions. A lot of people like Chester Burnett as the Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, all those guys over

  there at Chess, when they came in, a lot of them wanted to record

  but didn’t have any material. Willie would tell them, “If you want to

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  record, be at the studio at such-and-such a time and such-and-such

  a date.” They’d say, “Man, I wouldn’t know what the hell to record, I don’t have any material.” He’d say, “You just be there, you don’t even have to bring your guitar, whichever instrument you play, you don’t

  even have to bring it, unless you feel comfortable in playing it.” Willie had a lot of songs and even supplied a lot of the musicians with

  instruments to do their sessions over at Chess. That’s how they all

  made it.

  There were a lot of blues musicians, if they were around today, you

  would be proud of them. Around the Memphis area, they still don’t

  get a lot of what was due them. Guys like Joe Hill Louis. He used to have a radio show that came on WDIA there in Memphis. It was called

  “Wheelin’ on Beale” and it was done by a man named Ford Nelson.

  He played the piano there, and he’s still part-time at WDIA, doing a lot of gospel stuff on Sundays. He’s retired, but he’s sort of like Rufus Thomas was. Rufus would do this gospel show in the mornings from

  around six o’clock ’til around ten, when they started broadcasting

  their remotes from the different church services. Joe Hill Louis had the name “The One-Man Band,” because he had a drum he would play, a

  bass drum, and he played guitar and a harmonica. He would sing, and

  he had a rack that went around his neck for his harp. And he would do that, like Jimmy Reed used to do on some of his shows, just sit down and play his guitar. That’s when blues was the big thing. Then along came B.B., and after that, a lot of guys just took the blues and swung it with a big band sound. That is called pioneering stuff.

  I’ve been asked a lot of times how do I compare today’s music

  with the early days. It would be hard to really give a close-in opinion, because everybody’s trying to sound like the next person. Like people would say, you could be doing your own thing but they like to sort of characterize you with somebody else: “Well, that might be yours, but you sound like Bobby Bland or Wynonie Harris or T-Bone Walker.”