Ok - so slow starts are becoming part of the norm on this trip and today was no exception.... Woke up in my shack with a thick head from the many beers of the previous afternoon and evening...
After the swift administration of several aspirins and the application of strong black coffee to the central nervous system I sat and played guitar for a little while - trying to think of some words and a tune for the "Blues for Jimmy Wingo" that I am going to write on this trip.
(Jimmy Wingo, inmate #103467, was a death row prisoner on the Angola Farm in Louisiana and was executed on 16 June 1987 for a double murder that occurred during a bungled robbery. He maintained his innocence claiming his accomplice actually carried out the murders while he was outside the house they were robbing. I saw his mugshots in the Angola museum and his crazy hair made him stand out. Then researching his story I found some interesting stuff about the case. Was Jimmy innocent when he went to the chair? Only God knows but the question mark remained right until his death with several appeals. You can read more about Jimmy Wingo in this New York Times story the day he was executed... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEED8103FF935A25755C0A961948260 )
After noodling around for a while, I called Dick Waterman to see if I could go meet with him at his home. I wrote about Dick on a previous posting - he is one of the links between the Lomax recordings and that era of the Blues and today. As a photographer he shot some of the most dramatic as well as poignant images of bluesmen as well as capturing some of the most important moments in blues history - including the day Skip James re-emerged after 33 years of obscurity to play at the Newport Festival of 1964 in his famous shot of the musician singing the first syllable of the song Devil Got My Woman. (To read about Dick, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Waterman and also visit his website: www.dickwaterman.com)
I couldn't get through to Dick so I left a message and sent him an email, then packed up the car and headed off towards Helena, Arkansas where Robert Johnson had apparently gone to learn how to play proper guitar. Helena is also a major blues center and is home to the King Biscuit Time radio and hosts an important annual blues festival.
As I reached the crossroads at 49 & 61 I got a message back from Dick saying he was home all day and would be happy for me to visit. So I turned the car around and headed off on Highway 6 to Oxford, Mississippi where Dick lives. John Mayer was my music across to Oxford with his studio album Continuum. Mayer may be the pin-up boy of modern blues with thousands of young women getting excited, but one shouldn't overlook the fact that he is an extremely talented musician (classically trained) and an outstanding blues guitarist (who by his own admission owes a lot to Clapton - and not just the preference for Strats...)
Arriving at Dick's house I was in a state of some excitement and trepidation. This man is a direct connection to the music and the artists that I love. He was friends with many, worked with them, managed them, travelled with them, took care of them when they were sick and photographed them in all kinds of situations. He was there and he was part of it - still is.
Dick is a lovely and fascinating guy. Disarmingly straightforward and down to earth and still as passionate today in his early seventies as he evidently was 40 plus years ago. He showed me around his home which is packed with images, posters, gold discs from record sales of artists like Bonnie Raitt whom he managed for some 20 years and of course the photographs. Some are totally unique - like the one of Dylan looking straight into Dick's lens wearing the lime green polka dot shirt that marks this shot as the day that Dylan played electric for the very first time. Others are incredibly personal such as the image of Mick Jagger looking at himself in the mirror, the photographs of the old bluesman Mississippi John Hurt (whose smile Dick told me was 100% representative of the lovely man he was) and the photograph of Robert Pete Williams at the bottom of the stairs in Dick's apartment in the 60s - singing quietly to his wife a thousand miles away...
Dick very kindly gave me a copy of his book "Between Midnight & Day" which contains many of his photographs and his accounts of each of the artists featured including some wonderful anecdotes. He then took me through many of his photos (some are in Holland for an exhibition of his work) and told the stories behind many of the shots. Truly amazing photography that captures an era in music (and in particular the Blues) that is now sadly passed like so many of the artists in the pictures I looked at.
Dick got married for the first time a couple of years ago and I met his charming wife also. Later on in conversation about the Rolling Stones whom he met and photographed many times, I asked him if he had seen the Scorsese film of the Stones - Shine A Light. He laughed and said no, but told me that he had been invited by the head of Paramount to go to the concert in New York that was the concert shot in the film. He had declined because his wife was due back from visiting her family that day and he wanted to be home to welcome her back. A lovely story made all the more touching by the fact that his wife chewed him out for missing such an amazing opportunity to see the Rolling Stones play live towards the end of their careers in such an intimate setting!
He also showed me some photos of his "wedding" - not the formal legal ceremony but the wedding celebration with friends. Down on a beach Taj Mahal (a long time friend of Dick's) plays the father of the bride and brings her to the "ceremony" and the preacher is played by Bobby Rush the blues legend who is also another long time friend of Dick's. A great bunch of photographs and a lot of fun.
I spent about two and a half hours with Dick and his photographs - many of which will be joining my collection of black and white shots of performing artists in my studio / guitar room at home. It was an amazing experience to meet this gentle man who has enjoyed a wonderful life and continues to do so attending festivals and still taking photographs. Thank you Dick for giving me such a fascinating backdrop to these musicians and the music.
Leaving Oxford I scooted back over to Clarksdale following a recommendation of Dick's to go visit Richard Stolle at Cat Head - a shop selling blues memorabilia and historical photographs, books and so on.
Another mini paradise Cat Head offered an array of blues CDs of both well known artists and rarer which I won't ever see in Dubai. I bought a ton of CDs, some T-shirts and a DVD which had been produced by Cat Head's Richard Stolle about Big George Brock - a man now in his seventies who has been in his lifetime a sharecropper, a boxer, a night club owner and a blues musician. Can't wait to watch this movie. Roger also advised of two blues sessions for Wednesday night - one at Ground Zero (Morgan Freeman's club) and one at Sarah's - a juke joint around the corner which will feature Bilbo Walker who also stars in Roger's forthcoming blues travelogue documentary "M for Mississippi".
So I left Clarksdale once again - knowing I would be back the next night - and headed for Helena, Arkansas, crossing the Mississippi on the way. Helena is a small town (population 15,000) - but its influence on the blues is disproportionate to its size. I arrived late with everything shut, but will return to Helena tomorrow to check out the Delta Cultural Centre there and then back to Clarksdale.
I left Helena and headed for Memphis driving up old 61 through some pretty countryside and the lovely town of Tunica.
I blew into Memphis around 7pm and immediately felt the power of a city - Nine Below Zero Live - accompanied this journey, preceded by some Howlin' Wolf coming out of Helena.
Got myself a room at a cheap hotel across the street from Memphis's pride and joy, the Peabody Hotel. Just three blocks from Beale Street I wandered over for browse around what was once to Memphis what Maxwell Street was to Chicago. BUT Beale Street is now just a tourist attraction and all the bars are filled with white executives on vacation and they're served watered down blues by white musicians and watered down beer by ugly barmaids. I chugged a couple of beers listening to a band called Delta Saturn but left after a while because the music just wasn't there. The guitar player tried to cover Texas Flood by Stevie Ray and it ended up sounding like Belgium Flood or something - very poor guitar playing. When the band played a Jerry Lee Lewis number I knew it was time to go, and when the covered "The Weight" by The Band, I knew it was time to "take a load off my fanny" (American usage here!) and hit the street. (Fans of The Band will get my little joke...)
My guitar buddy and boss - Lozz Laurence - with whom I have been recording and playing some blues recently, had sent me an email in the morning recommending a Creole food joint around the corner from the Peabody called Café 61 on 82nd Street. I duly went there to dine on hot BBQ sausage and 'slaw and a nice piece of super spicy blackened grouper served with spinach and corn bread with Jalapenos.... Fantastic.
With a full stomach and a light beer buzz I wandered back to my hotel longing to hear proper live blues - which will happen tomorrow night in Clarksdale....
Tonight I took my aspirins and heartburn pills BEFORE going to sleep to make sure the beer and the spicy grouper don't wake me up with an axe through the head and a spear through the heart!
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