November 21, 2016 interview with Charlie Musselwhite (CM) conducted by telephone by Arlo Leach (AL) AL: Well, thanks for meeting today. CM: Sure. AL: I have a bunch of questions, so I'll jump right in, unless you have anything to start with. CM: Okay. I hope I can answer you. (laughing) AL: Okay, well, we'll do our best here. So, how did you first learn about Will Shade? CM: Well, I had ... I don't know what happened first, but I know I had 78s of the Memphis Jug Band, and I had read Country Blues with Sam Charters. And George Mitchell, who kind of did field recordings, or whatever you call it, he lived in Atlanta, but he would come to Memphis. I met George in Chicago, and one day he was in Memphis and he took me over to Will Shade's apartment. And that was that. AL: Okay. You had some records of the Memphis Jug Band, you said? Did you have a lot of 78s at that time? CM: I only found, only found two of them, but I've got stacks of blues 78s. When I was collecting them in Memphis, I didn't know anybody else in the world was interested in those old records, and if I came up with two of the same one, I'd just throw the worst one away. AL: (laughing) Okay. CM: Yeah, I didn't know it was worth anything, except to me. And I was just buying them for nickels and dimes at, like, the Salvation Army or something. AL: Huh. And were you already playing at that time? CM: Yeah, I started playing when I was around 13. I decided that if listening to the blues felt -- made you feel so good, that playing it must make you feel even better. AL: Oh, nice! Okay. So you started listening ... were you buying records before you started playing, or like, kind of, which came first? CM: Was I what? AL: Which came first for you? Being a ... being a blues fan, or being a player? I mean, were you buying records even younger than that? CM: Well, I had to know about it before I got interested in it. (laughing) AL: Yeah. CM: I mean, I heard it. I heard blues on the radio, and I heard blues singers that were street singers in downtown Memphis, guys on the corner playing for tips. And I heard ... near where I grew up, there were ... there was a creek called Cypress Creek, and on the other side of that creek there were some fields that people would work in, and as a little kid I liked to play around at the creek, especially in the summertime, it would be about the coolest place I could find, 'cause we didn't have air conditioning. The shady side of that creek was the coolest place around. And I could hear people singing in those fields. You know, these real kind of mournful songs. I didn't know ... I don't know if I even knew they were called blues, I just ... whatever that was, I knew that ... that sounded like how I felt. (laughing) AL: Wow. CM: And it really was comforting. Even though it was a sad kind of a sound, it made me feel comforted somehow. And even today, I'll tell people that blues is your buddy when you're up and your comforter when you're down. AL: Yeah. Did you feel ... were those black workers singing that... CM: Yeah. AL: ...and did you feel any distinction, like, that's black music and you're white, or did that not really matter to you? CM: Well, I knew that it was. I didn't really think about it, particularly, one way or the other. I knew how to identify it, you know. AL: Um hmm. Okay. So when you first went to visit Will Shade, what was that like? CM: Well, he was real fun to be around, and welcoming. He loved to have company, and have visitors over and we'd always be having a jam session or something, sooner or later. AL: Ah, nice. CM: And a lot of drinking. There was always ... always an occasion to have a drink. (laughing) And his favorite drink was Golden Harvest sherry wine. So I'd always bring that with me, and would often go out to get more. AL: Oh, wow, okay. CM: And we'd just pass that bottle all around the room, whoever was there. And when it was gone, you'd go get another one. AL: (laughing) And so they were just playing for fun, at that point, just jamming just for fun, just to please themselves? CM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just in his apartment, you know. Either just he and I and Jennie Mae, or some neighbors, or some other friends that stopped by. And if Will started singing, "Golden Harvest sherry wine, Golden Harvest sherry wine, Golden Harvest sherry..." you'd know that it's time to go get another bottle. (laughing) AL: (laughing) Oh, wow. Ah. How often ... so, neighbors would come by and jam. How often did other, sort of like, "known" musicians like Furry Lewis come over. Would they come and play for fun, or was that more just when somebody was recording, or when a scholar was visiting? CM: Well, Furry ... I only remember Furry coming by once, and then he got in a fistfight. (laughing) And, apparently, there had been a grudge between the two of them ever since ... well, I guess they both were after Jennie Mae, and she went with Will Shade instead of Furry Lewis, and they'd been enemies ever since. And ... it's kind of hazy now why Furry got over there, but I remember they got in a fight, and they were rolling around on the floor. They were both too old and too drunk to hurt each other. But it just looked so ridiculous, these elderly gentlemen of the blues, rolling on the floor. (laughing) AL: (laughing) Oh, jeez. CM: Trying to hurt each other. AL: And I've found from ... I've found from census records that Will and Jennie Mae were married at least as far back as 1920, so that was ... that was like a 45-year grudge. CM: Hmm. Well, I don't know the whole story, but that's what I was told. And, well, there were musicians who just came by all the time, I mean, it was just wasn't unusual at all, you just expected it. And that's where I met a whole lot of people, like Earl Bell, and Willie B., and Red Rovey ~, Son Smith, Little Bit, Johnny Moment. Just a ... oh, a guy named ... he called himself Harmonica Joe, later I found out his real name was Cory Love ~. And people just ... were always just dropping by. They'd kind of pay there respects, see how Will was doing, bring a bottle ... always brought a bottle. AL: Wow. CM: And Will liked to sit in a chair right by the window. His apartment was on the second floor, and from that window he could see down into the alley, and everybody passing back and forth, and he'd talk to people, or tell them to come on up if you've got a bottle. (laughing) AL: Oh, yeah? Huh. And what did all those ... what did all those visitors think of having you around. Were they friendly to you, like Will was? CM: Yeah, everybody was ... yeah, there wasn't any problem at all. I just fit right in. I knew how to drink like everybody else. (laughing) AL: (laughing) Okay. CM: And especially when they would hear me play, then that would really ... they'd really brighten up. "Yeah, he can play!" (laughing) AL: Oh, nice. And were you playing harp at that time, or mostly guitar still? CM: Both. AL: Yeah? Okay. Were they ... was Will or his ... was Will or other guys of his generation doing any gigs at that time? CM: Well, they were ... it was right on the edge of starting, 'cause the folk movement kind of thing was just starting to pick up for them. They were ... hadn't quite discovered ... I know that, well, Furry Lewis had one album out on Folkways at that point. But later on, I mean, he had, like, you know, lots of albums. That came later, though. AL: That's right. CM: I got them one little gig* at a little coffee place on Highland Avenue one time, called the Ohso ... O-H-S-O. And they only played for tips. I think occasionally somebody would know how to get ahold of Will Shade and ... somebody knew about him. They would get occasional things, but rarely. AL: Okay. And then... CM: I'm speaking mostly about Will Shade. I don't know about ... you know, like guys like Willie B., he had a day job, and Earl Bell had a day job. I'm not aware that there was much they could do anymore. I mean, all the clubs on Beale Street were having people like B.B. King, you know, big bands and stuff. These guys were like considered old time, over the hill, you know, it's just, you know, they weren't on the radio. I don't ... people hardly knew they were ... anything about them. AL: Okay. And I've ... I've been finding out that ... I'm not sure what the time period was, but busking was actually illegal for a while, so they couldn't play on the street. Do you know anything about that? You said you saw people... CM: I saw people all the time playing on the street. I don't know ... I never heard that it was ... anything wrong with it. I remember seeing people downtown, you know, Main Street, and also down on Beale Street. AL: Okay, and that was in the 50s, or 60s, early 60s? CM: 50s. AL: Okay. CM: And that's where I first discovered them, I started, like, following them around. Often, you know, I'd take the bus to go downtown on a Saturday. That's where everybody went ... they didn't have malls then. And before I'd get on the bus to come back home, I'd often just wander around downtown, 'cause I wanted to hear where all those guys, and often I'd find them. Sometimes I didn't, but often I would. I was too shy to ask them anything, like what their names were or nothing. I just wanted to hear them. I was fascinated with that music and those people. A guy with a guitar standing on the corner, playing these blues, that was really exotic or something, or romantic, or ... really got my attention. (laughing) I thought it was cool, real cool. AL: Hmm. What other instrumentation did you see at that time on the street? CM: There was a guy that played mandolin, and he lived right across that creek I mentioned earlier. He lived on the other side. That was the black neighborhood on the other side. All the black and white kids would meet at the creek to play ... play in the water down there. (laughing) And go swimming in the swimming hole. But he would get on at the next bus stop, after I got on. And I had seen him downtown, at the corner of Poplar and Main, and then one day I happened to see him get on the bus, right at the next stop. Had that ... had that mandolin on his back. One of those round-back mandolins. And he was ... had it on a cord or something, and had it on his back. And I recognized him as the guy singing downtown. I'd love to know who those people were. I mean, they might have been real famous in their day, you know? AL: Uh huh. Were there combos, or just solo ... solo guys? CM: I don't remember ever seeing any more than one person at a time. But Abe McNeil was a blind guy, and his wife would be leading him around. And there was a guy I remember seeing one time on Beale Street, sitting down playing, and his wife was in a chair next to him, but I don't know if she was singing with him, or just holding the cup for tips, or not, but I remember ... I did talk to him, and I remember him telling me that he had played with Sonny Boy. But I didn't get his name. If I did, I don't remember. (laughing) Yeah, at that time, I didn't know any of this was important to anybody but me, so I didn't, like, keep records or something. (laughing) And I didn't know that, you know, I didn't know what to talk about, what to ask, I didn't know the whole ... much of the history of blues, I ... you know, at that point, I'd probably never heard of Robert Johnson or Charlie Patton. I knew who Muddy and Wolf were, from having their records. And at that time there was nothing to read about blues, until Country Blues came out. There might be a little bit in a book on jazz, or something, but they were ... not like today, you know, you got blues magazines and blues societies and blues DVDs, I mean, it's everything you can think of, but there wasn't much back then. AL: Hmm, yeah. Let's see here. So, from looking at the census records, Will was performing even before 1920, but he said he didn't start the jug band 'til about 1926, when he heard the Louisville ... Dixieland Jug Blowers. So I guess he was just playing straight blues before that. But I've ... I hadn't even been aware that there was much straight blues that early, like back in the 1910s. Do you examples of ... I mean, do you know about what kind of music he would have been playing that early? CM: Well, I think Furry was playing blues back then. I think they were playing blues. I'm sure, you know, a lot of those guys, they had to know all the popular, latest tunes, too, it wasn't just blues that they played. AL: Yeah, but this is like 1915, 1920, this is like before the ... like before Bessie Smith and ... real early stuff. CM: Before what? AL: Like before Bessie Smith, before the blues queens. CM: Uh huh. Well, you know, I don't know for a fact, but my opinion is that, you know, blues was being played by somebody. (laughing) And those ... why wouldn't it be those guys. AL: Yeah, okay. CM: And they were ... you know, Will Shade was an entertainer, you know, he had to know not only blues, but, like I say, the popular tunes of the day. A good example is ... one that comes to mind, anyhow, is ... Gitfiddle Jim, who was Kokomo Arnold. He put out a tune called "Paddlin' Madeline." Which was a pop hit tune of the day. It wasn't a blues at all, but when he did it, he bluesed it up. (laughing) And even, you know, much later, a guy like John Lee Hooker, recorded "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." (laughing) AL: Okay. CM: I remember talking with Louis Meyers~ and Dave Meyers, you know, they had backed up Little Walter, and Louis was talking about all the tunes him and Dave would do together that had no relation to blues. They were all just the pop tunes of the day. AL: Okay. Yeah, have you seen the Louie Bluie documentary? About Howard Armstrong? CM: Ah, I don't know really anything about him. I never met him, I don't know his music ... I should. I think I have that DVD of his here somewhere, but I haven't seen it yet. AL: Hmm. Yeah, he makes that point, too. They actually knew all these Italian songs, and they would go to the Italian pubs and go and play Italian songs for them, like, in Italian. CM: Oh yeah. AL: That's how diverse they ... their repertoire was. CM: Yeah, and stuff for Bar Mitzvahs, and all that stuff. (laughing) The all-occasion band, you know, you wanted to be able to perform ... you wanted to get that money in any way they can get it. You wanted to be prepared. AL: (laughing) Well, once ... once Will Shade got into the jug band music, which is ... you know, one way to look at it is blues plus the extra instruments, the extra jug band instruments ... but then he stayed with that for the rest of his life. Do you have an opinion about why that was so interesting for him that he stuck with it? CM: Well, I guess it made him famous, and that was his ticket. (laughing) He made ... probably did real well with it, and that's ... and he liked it, I guess, and proud of it. I mean, he wrote a lot of the tunes, and performed them, and that was part of his life. AL: Right. Do you ... do you have a sense of jug band music being mainly street music, or distinct from other types of blues in some way like that? In terms of how people regarded it? CM: Well, my opinion is that they played anywhere they could. They played on the streets, they played in the Handy Park, or they played for parties, private parties, political parties (laughing), they made records, they were known. I think I'm answering your question. (laughing) AL: Yeah. Yeah, I'm just trying to get a sense of how it was ... how jug band music was viewed, if it was ... if it's something you'd... CM: I don't know about jug band music, period. I just know about Will Shade. That's ... I'm not sure, other than Gus Cannon, and Jed Davenport, or whatever ... how many actual jug bands there were around Memphis. And I don't know if there was room for more than a few. (laughing) Only so many gigs to go around. AL: Uh huh, okay. Yeah, all right. So apparently Will played with ... he backed up other performers, he was kind of a go-to guy at his record company, apparently, but he played with the Memphis Sanctified Singers, did a couple gospel numbers with them. Do you know anything about that? Did he have much of a gospel interest, or was that kind of a one-off, do you think? CM: I would say a one-off. I never heard him talk about that session, or gospel music in ... at all. I do remember something that ... it might be worth noting that just popped in my head. He tried to talk me into buying an organ. AL: Oh, yeah? CM: (laughing) And he said he could play it, that he knew how to play it. And that would make a great, you know, like a ... a background for a band. You know, he was trying to get something going. (laughing) He thought if I would buy an organ, he could play it and then back me up. AL: Oh, wow. That would be fun. CM: And I never saw him, or heard him play any keyboard instrument, but he wanted me to believe that he really could do that. (laughing) AL: (laughing) Wow. He wanted to just have it moved up to his apartment or something? CM: I don't know. It might be like the dog that caught the car, you know? (laughing) AL: (laughing) Yeah. How interested was he in your music career? I guess your first album came out right around the time he died. CM: Gosh, I don't know. I think it might have come out after he died. Yeah, I think so. I remember going to visit him, and he was always interested, and ... and real proud. I mean, it was like ... he was ... he considered me to be ... kind of like an extension of him, sort of. I mean, his student, or his ... you know, like ... what he had taught me was serving me, and that served him, and he was glad to see me making my way in music. I ... the last time I saw him, I played ... he asked me to play for him, and I played some harmonica, and he was going, "Oh, boy, you'se playing uptown, now, you got up there with them Chicago boys, and you ... you really got that Chicago sound, now, you about to bust my head," and all this kind of talk. AL: (laughing) Oh, wow. CM: But it was real sad, too, because Jennie Mae had died, and ... I remember, he used to always say, he'd point over to her. She would lay up in bed, smoking cigarettes and drinking all day, and he'd sit in his chair by the window, and he'd point over to her and say, "Once she goes, I'll be right behind her." Like, he knew that she would die first. He was going to stay around to take care of her. So she did die, and he moved from that apartment, across Fourth Street to another, smaller place, and there was a lady named ... everybody called Yalluh ... and she was taking care of him over there. And I guess she wasn't taking care of him too good, 'cause he had fell down and was next to a ... his arm was up against a gas stove, and it gave him a really bad burn on his arm. He didn't have the strength to get away from it, and he just lay there, and it burned and burned and burned. AL: Ohhhh. CM: I don't remember now if he was ... if Yalluh did find him and move him away from that, or he somehow got away, I can't remember now, but ... he had this awful burn on his arm, and he was too weak to pick his feet up to lay down, and I had to pick his feet up, and put them on the bed for him so he could lay down. And I gave him some money, and I didn't have much, but I gave him what I could. And we enjoyed talking together, and I hoped I'd see him again, but I ... that was the last time I saw him. AL: Was that Yalluh like yellow? CM: Yeah, like the color yellow, but nobody said yellow, they said yalluh. AL: (laughing) CM: I mean, nobody said yellow. You'd pronounce it like Y-A-L-L-O-W, yallow. Or Y-A-L-L-U-H. Yalluh. AL: Do you have any other memories of the apartment, the second floor apartment? Can you kind of describe what it was like in there? CM: Yeah. Well, the building itself was just a ... in the middle of this block. I mean, you had Beale Street on one end, and ... I think Hernando and then Fourth on the other sides of the block, and I don't know what was on the South side, but ... Beale to the North, Fourth to the East, and Hernando on the West. And there were alleys that went into the block, and ... so there were ... sort of like a block within a block. You'd go down an alley, and you'd come to other alleys, and there were more buildings inside the block that didn't face any of the streets. And, so, this building that Will lived in was like that. And it was just a really old, wooden thing, covered with some kind of, like, asbestos shingles. And you'd walk upstairs, he was on the top floor, in the back, the ... that would be the South-West corner. And he looked right down on one of those alleys. There was one bathroom at the end of the hall. He had two rooms. The one main room that he mostly was in, and then the other room, you could go through a door from that back room into the bathroom. (laughing) Or you could go in from the hall. And there was a bed in that second room, too. I always wondered why they didn't, like, to make money, rent that room to somebody or something. It was just an empty room with a bed in it. He had a pot-belly, cast-iron stove. And the best hamburger I ever had in my life, I still remember, he would cook on top of that cast-iron, you know, wood fire, he'd have a wood fire in that cast-iron, pot-belly stove. He'd cook hamburgers, and man, that was the best hamburger ... I've never had a better hamburger. The flavor ... I don't know what he did to season it, but it was just perfect. AL: Oh, wow. CM: I brought him a little electric fan one time, 'cause he had no ... no way to keep cool. And it would get so hot in the summer. Really humid, and that fan was a big help. We would ... he would often get a pot with a handle on it, fill it with water and ice cubes, and we'd just pass it around, everybody would just ... like it was a big dipper. We'd just drink ice water out of that pot. When you weren't drinking Golden Harvest sherry wine. (laughing) And I remember there was a trunk, a big floor kind of, steamer kind of trunk or something. I remember one time Abe McNeil, the blind guy, was there, and he sat down on the trunk, and his wife said, "Abe, you know, you're sitting on the trunk," and he just jumped up! Like it's bad luck to sit on a trunk. I don't know what was in that trunk, ???. I wish I had thought to ask. Maybe there was all kind of photos, and all kind of memorabilia from his life, I don't have no idea. AL: Hmm. And he had a guitar, and some harmonicas? He probably had his bass, too, right? CM: He had that oil can tub bass. He claimed he invented it. (laughing) He didn't always have a guitar or harmonica. I mean, sometimes, if he ... I remember giving him a guitar, and then next time I saw him, he'd pawned it. And he'd ask me to buy him harmonicas. And it was hard ... I didn't really have any money, either. I mean, I would work when I could, and it was real economically depressed. That's really the reason I left Memphis. You couldn't find any work. And the work you could find was like back-breaking ... at least for me, that was my experience. Factory work, and construction work, and other little odds and ends jobs that were just short term. Mowing lawns, I mean, picking up bottles on the street, whatever you could do. So it was hard for me to do what I would have liked to have done for Will. But I helped him as much as I could. AL: Yeah. Did he have a radio, or any way to listen to music? CM: I don't remember a radio or even a record player. AL: So he probably didn't... CM: I had a little portable record player that I brought over one time, and I played him his jug band 78s, and he loved that. AL: Oh, nice! CM: Yeah, he wanted me to leave those 78s with him, but I knew that I'd never see them again if I did. (laughing) At least I was afraid of that. And he had no way to play them anyhow, so I thought it would be better if I took care of it myself. AL: Wow. So he didn't have any kind of memorabilia like that, that you saw? CM: I didn't see any. AL: Yeah. He seemed to have a remarkable ... from other people I've talked to, and I heard an interview that he recorded, himself ... he seemed to have a really good memory of all the sides that he recorded, and the names of the songs, and he ... he was still playing some of the songs, pretty similarly to on the records. Is that your impression, too, he had a real good memory for what he did in the 30s? CM: Yeah, he seemed to be a real ... had a sharp memory, and ... I wish I had known better questions to ask, you know? I'd just let him talk, 'cause I didn't know what to ask. I didn't know anything ... I didn't know to ask him about, you know, who your influences were, things like that. I mean, at that age ... you know, I was just like 18, I just wasn't mature enough to know how to ... I should have been, but I wasn't. (laughing) To know how to think about it better, and ask better questions. I'd like to know more about, you know, what he thought about things. But I didn't ... at that age, at that time, I just didn't think of it, all the things I should have asked. And so I just let ... I just let him talk. He'd tell me stories and stuff, and I loved all of it, but I didn't know what to ask. (laughing) I remember him telling me one time, they were on the road going somewhere, and they hit a pig, and killed it, and they took that pig along with them, and they butchered it and cooked it up somewhere later down the road. AL: (laughing) Jeez. He seems to have been a great storyteller, and great, like, wordplay and witty ... witty jokes. CM: Yeah, he liked ... he had a great sense of humor, and he loved to kid, and joke around, and laugh. He really enjoyed himself as much as he could. AL: I was listening to your ... you have a recording, I think it's like the bonus track on one of your albums, it's "Newport News." I think you're playing the guitar, and you're tuning it, and while you're tuning it, he's just teasing you for like two minutes. CM: (laughing) AL: And you get a sense of his personality, and then as soon as you start playing, he just ... you can just tell how happy he is to be singing. CM: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm glad that got released so that people could hear it. I never got any ... this is the first time I think anybody's ever mentioned it to me, that they'd listened to it. (laughing) AL: Oh, yeah? (laughing) AL: It's hard to make out. In fact, I ... I think I'd like to try to transcribe it, and I might ask for your help on that. It's hard to hear... CM: Sure. AL: ...between the accent and the sound quality, but ... sounds like... CM: I'd be glad to. AL: Okay. Great little snapshot of life back then. CM: Yeah. AL: Can you remember other examples of his jokes or puns? CM: Um ... well, one he told often, he would say, something, I don't know what would tip him to throw this out there, but he'd always say, "Yeah, like the blind man walking by the fish market, saying, 'Good morning, ladies! Good morning, ladies!'" AL: (laughing) Oh, jeez. Oh, gosh. CM: He would say that and just laugh. (laughing) AL: Oh, wow. He's got... CM: I don't remember another joke right now, but... AL: Okay. He's got ... somebody told.... CM: Then there was the Dirty Dozens, he'd play that from time to time, and that was pretty funny, and raunchy. AL: Oh, yeah. (laughing) Yeah, I've heard a couple recordings of that. Um, somebody told me that he used to introduce songs by saying, "Well, ladies and gentlemules...." Just little quips like that he seemed to have a lot of. CM: (laughing) Yeah. Well, it was all part of being an entertainer. AL: Oh, yeah. And you said he used to play "Jump and Jive" a lot, and when I saw you at the blues festival a couple years ago, you dictated some extra lyrics that he had. I wrote those down, I think I sent them to you. But do you have any others on your mind, if I asked you again now? Some of the "Jump and Jive" extra lyrics he had? CM: I don't remember right now. I think you probably know everything I know about that song now. (laughing) AL: Okay. I have some questions about some lyrics that never made sense to me, and maybe you can explain what's going on. CM: Uh huh. AL: In the ... in the "Newport News," he says, "She's got a man on her man, got a kid man on her...." Sounds like... CM: Dog-gone kid. AL: "Kid man on her dog-gone kid"? Does that just mean she's got, like, multiple lovers? CM: Yeah, it's like a pile of 'em. She's got a lot ... lot of 'em, yeah. AL: Okay. Kid man on her... CM: That's what I think it means. AL: Okay. Is a "kid man," is that a specific ... is there a specific meaning to that? Like a young... CM: It's just a young man. You know? AL: Young man? Okay. Okay. What about the line ... this comes up in other songs, too, but Will said it a couple times ... "I got a new way of spelling the state of Tennessee." And then he just lists random letters? Like, double-E, double-R, double-N. Do you know what that's all about? CM: Double-X Y Z. AL: Yeah. CM: Well, I don't know. There's several instances in blues where there's stuff like that, and it's just nonsense. I don't know what purpose it served, if there ever was any, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just nonsense. It's just ... another way of being entertaining or something. Furry Lewis did the same kind of ... he sang that same verse, too. It's a popular verse, I don't know why. AL: Yeah. I guess ... I guess David Mangurian and Don Hill, one of them asked ... asked Will Shade, "What does that mean?" and he just ... he just, like, wouldn't answer, he was just laughing, and being evasive. He's like ... he was saying, like, "Well, how would you spell it?" And they were just confused, and they didn't get ... they didn't figure it out. CM: (laughing) AL: One other one is in "Sun Brimmer's Blues," there's a line about ... um ... oh, shoot, now what is the line. There's something about the fish and whales. If ... I'm gonna ... let me look up the verse. It's kind of a common verse, and I've heard things about fish and whales in other blues songs, but I can't figure out exactly what they're saying in this one. He says, "She's got a head like a rock, got a mind like a marble stone, and the fish and whales are gonna..." something something. CM: Hmm, I'd have to hear it. I don't recall that verse. AL: Okay. You ... and that doesn't ring a bell of other blues songs that you've heard that in? CM: No, I don't ... I don't remember hearing that. I mean, the first verse, I've heard. That sounds real familiar, but the ... about the fish and the whales, I don't know. But if I heard the rest of it, I might be able to make sense out of it, if I could decipher it. AL: Okay, I can ... I can email you a reminder to listen. CM: Okay. AL: Um ... oh, do you have a recollection of Will having a pet, either cat or dog, or talking about one? CM: No. (laughing) AL: Okay. Somebody told me he had a cat, and somebody told me he had a dog. Maybe he had both. But I guess he had a ... he did an interview where he says he had a dog that was named Too Sweet. CM: What was his name? AL: Too Sweet. CM: Too Sweet. Huh. I don't ... when I was around, I never saw a dog or a cat. Or any animal. Yeah, that would be another expense. AL: Yeah, I was gonna say ... sounds like they had a pretty spartan household. CM: They lived real close to the bone. AL: Um, let me go back, I was skipping around a little bit, but I had some other questions here. Oh, so your first album, Sam Charters produced. How did you meet him, and what was it like working with him? CM: While I was living in Chicago, and I was living in the basement of the Jazz Record Mart, which at that time was at 7 West Grand Avenue, and Big Joe lived down there, too. We had cots in the basement. (laughing) But ... and ... so when Sam came through town, he'd always stop by to see Bob Koester, and hang out. He knew that I knew where everybody was playing, and he would ask me to take him out to hear different people, and, so he ... and he heard me playing with Walter Horton, and that's where he got the idea to include me in that series, Chicago, the Blues, Today! And, so we were familiar with each other, and then Elektra came out with a Paul Butterfield album, and then Sam asked me if I wanted to make an album, and I said, "Yeah, sure, I'll make an album, I don't know." (laughing) Nothing else going on! (laughing) Actually, Elektra wanted ... offered me ... reached out to me, too, but I felt since Paul was already on Elektra, it would probably be better for me if I was on a different label. AL: Mmm. Okay. Did you keep in touch with Charters? CM: No, I didn't see him too much. I remembering getting the recording. We did the whole album in under three hours. AL: Oh, wow! Really, your first album? (laughing) CM: What's that? AL: Your first album, in under three hours? CM: Yeah. Well, that was the ... three hours was what the ... that was a session. And if you went one minute over three hours, you got double session. You know, union. AL: Oh. You had to pay for the next three hours? CM: Yeah, so, even if you didn't fill up the next three hours, you still got paid for the next three hours. You got paid ... you got double session. AL: Oh, wow. CM: So they weren't gonna do that. (laughing) And ... so, we didn't have any problem, you know, recording all those tunes in that amount of time. I do remember, Harvey had this little box called a fuzz box or a fuzz tone or something, and he recommended me using it to get a rawer tone out of the amp they provided me there. And I didn't even have my own amp ???. Not a good one, anyhow, to record with. So I used that fuzz tone, and boy, Charters hated that! I remember him just running out of the studio, saying, "The sound is breaking up!" AL: Oh! CM: Yeah, that's what it's supposed to do! (laughing) He hated it! He ... and so I only had that on one or ... I don't know if I did it on more than one tune, but I still think it sounds pretty cool. I mean, he was ... I remember his hands up in the air, just shaking it, saying, "It's breaking up! It's breaking up!" Like it was the end of the world or something. (laughing) AL: Wow, you'd think he would have known. CM: So ... he could be difficult. I remember one time, he ... I don't remember the whole conversation, but he told me that Otis Spann always recorded with an electric piano. Or was it the other way around, always recorded ... anyhow, he always insisted that Spann never recorded except one way, and I knew that was wrong, and I couldn't ... he wouldn't listen to me at all about it. (laughing) And it became a kind of an argument about Spann. I mean, I knew Spann, and I saw him all the time. And he, and he's the one telling me that Spann, how Spann plays, and how he records, I don't know. (laughing) It was ridiculous. But he could be real opinionated. Other times, he was a lot of fun. We'd, you know, go around to the blues clubs and stuff. And I had to hand it to him, he was pretty fearless. I took him to some real rough places, and he didn't cower. (laughing) AL: Wow. Well, he was a pioneer. He ... you and everybody else I interviewed said that he's who got them started on this. CM: Oh, yeah. I mean, that ... I still think that book he wrote, Country Blues, was really a great read, and I still recommend it to people. AL: Yeah. Yeah, it's inspiring. CM: It just ... well, I guess he was a poet, too, and his writing is sort of poetic. AL: Hmm. Nice. So, let's see here. I read somewhere, or maybe you told me, I can't remember, that when ... back in the 20s, Jennie Mae was considered the most beautiful woman in Memphis. Did you ever hear ... was that from you, or did you ever hear anything like that? CM: I think you told me that. I don't remember hearing that. I guess if Will and Furry were fighting over her, she'd have been quite an item at one time or another. (laughing) AL: And I saw in one of the census records, she was listed as Pearl Shade. Or there was ... there was a record of Will's home, and then the person living with him was named Pearl Shade. You ever hear anything like that? CM: Mmm, I don't know ... no, that doesn't ring any bell with me. I never heard her called that. AL: Okay. I guessed maybe that was a stage name she used at one time, or something? CM: Or maybe the census person just made a mistake. I mean, didn't understand what somebody was saying, or something. I mean ... that was ... there could be several answers to why that was the case. AL: Yeah, okay. And ... do you know any more about her singing career, other than playing with the ... playing with Will and the jug band? CM: Do I know anything about what? AL: Any more about Jennie Mae's singing ... singing career? CM: No. She never talked about it, and I don't ... I never heard anything ... wasn't anything ... never a subject of conversation that I recall. AL: Okay. But she did sing when ... when you guys were jamming, right? CM: Rarely. I think she might have once, or something, but she either didn't have the energy to, or just wasn't interested. She just liked to lay there and listen and make comments, and she was quite entertained just to watch the show from her ... from the bed. (laughing) AL: What was it like seeing the two of them, Will and Jennie Mae, together? Seems like they both had a real outgoing and witty personality. Did they banter back and forth and stuff? CM: Yeah. I can't think of a specific conversation, but I know they were ... they seemed to really be in love, and really cared for each other, and had a good relationship. AL: Nice. Okay. And you talked about Cat Porter, the singer. And there are some recordings of her. Roger Brown told me that he thought she was just a neighbor who liked to sing, she wasn't like a professional musician or anything. Does that match what you remember? CM: She was also friends with ... well, I first met her at Furry's house. And she claimed to be Furry's daughter, but I don't think that was true. People would say things like that often when it was just they were close, that's all. It's like, you might have heard the saying sometimes that these two guys are "going for brothers"? You know, they pretend to be brothers. They're not brothers, but they're real good friends, and they ... the expression is that they're going for brothers ... it means that they're not really brothers, but (laughing) they might as well be, they're that good of a friend. AL: Okay. CM: So, Cat, I met her at Furry's, and she also was hanging around with Will Shade's house a lot, and she would often sing, but I don't know that she ever had any kind of a professional career in singing. She was ... I thought she was a really good singer. AL: Yeah, the recordings are nice. And I've got recordings of her, I think two years apart, so she ... you know, the amount of time she was hanging around was a couple years at least. CM: (laughing) You might be interested to know ... this is off the record. (laughing) She was a ... you might call her a girlfriend. AL: Oh, okay. Of you, you mean? CM: Yeah, we ... we ... we had a lot of fun together, I'll put it that way. (laughing) AL: Oh, nice. Okay! Cool. CM: Now I don't ... doesn't ... maybe it doesn't have to be off the record, but... [Charlie said in the email quoted below this didn't need to be off the record] AL: Oh. No, that's fine. Yeah, and they had some nice little banter. I remember one of the recordings of her and Will, they were kind of teasing each other, too, in the middle of the recording. CM: Hmm, I don't think I've heard that. AL: I can't remember what they were saying, but I'll send it to you. CM: Is it on an album or something? AL: It's on one of the ... I think it's on one of the George Mitchell recordings. CM: Huh. I must not have that one. AL: They're kind of ribbing each other. CM: Yeah. Yeah, I really liked her, she was fun. She could really sing. AL: Great. And she ... so ... was she ... was she about your age, or ... she was younger than.... CM: She was older ... she was a little older. AL: A little older, okay. And then you never might Charlie Burse, right? CM: I don't think so. I don't remember meeting him. AL: I've been ... the more I ... the more I study their music, the more impressed I am by him. He really was a multi-talented and very energetic person. A good match for Will. CM: Well, a thing that would happen a lot ... I would want to meet everybody, I would want to hear everybody and meet everybody, but Furry and Will Shade, they would do the same thing, they would say, "Don't be going over there," you know, "You gonna get in trouble over there, you stay right here." (laughing) AL: Oh. They were a little possessive of you? CM: Huh? Oh, yeah, and they didn't want to ... they were ... the fear was if they introduced me to other people, I would spend time with them ... those people, instead of with them. They wanted me to stay there. So, it was hard for me to ... unless they came by, I couldn't get him to introduce me to other people. Although I remember Furry and I drove all over Memphis one time looking for Bukka White. There were different people he thought might know his whereabouts and stuff like that. And at one time he took me to Memphis Minnie's place, and she was there on the front porch in a chair asleep. And we didn't want to wake her up, and we thought we'd come back later, and I never got back. So I didn't really meet her. I got ... I saw her, but (laughing) ... and I wish I'd gone back, but I ... it just slipped through my fingers. AL: So how often did you visit? And do you remember the years that that spanned? CM: Well, 62 to 63, right in there. I was back and forth between Memphis and Chicago. I'd go up to Chicago, then I'd come back, and I worked in a paper factory for a while, I remember, on one of my returns. And I'd go over like once a week, or several times a week. Just depends on what was going on in my life at the time. I don't remember all that now. But I remember I got my hands on a car, for $99. I had an old Lincoln, a 1950 Lincoln. And I could drive down to Beale Street and park in the alley next to Will's place and go right up the stairs. AL: Nice. Did you ever meet Gus Cannon? CM: Yeah. Furry took me over there, too, one time. It was a little store. Well, there were some railroad tracks, and there was a chair by the railroad tracks, and Gus Cannon pointed at the chair and said he liked to sit there in the afternoons. He said he called it Old Man's Corner. And there was a store there, a little, like a neighborhood store, like a ... well, you'd call it a convenience store today, but I don't think we used that term back then ... and I remember Gus and Furry and I bought a bottle in there, and we'd sit out there next to the store and drink it, and got pretty ... pretty high. (laughing) I remember we were doing a lot of ... a lot of ... I don't remember the conversation, except we were all doing a lot of laughing. AL: Hmm. What was it like talking to Gus? He seems ... well, he was quite a bit older by that time, than the others. CM: He was pretty spry, though, and ... I mean, he was real spry. He seemed real fit. And ... physically and mentally. And he was real nice. He was a real ... gentle ... nice ???. I also saw him in Chicago one time. He was playing in Old Town, at a, like a folk club or something, and I stopped by to see him, and we had a nice visit. AL: Oh, wow. I didn't realize he was traveling that ... at that time. I guess there was one ... there was one festival ... there was one festival that there's a tiny little bit of video of him at. CM: In Memphis? AL: I don't know where it was. I'll have to look that up. CM: Huh. Yeah, I think that was ... he got a little ... he got in a little on that folk boom, to make some gigs. AL: Hmm. Playing in Chicago, that's cool. CM: Yeah. AL: Was he living by himself? CM: I don't think so. I don't remember ... seems like there were several people at his house. I don't remember how many or who they were right now. AL: Mm hmm. And then ... do you know what he and Will thought about each other? CM: Gus Cannon and Will Shade? AL: Yeah. CM: We didn't talk about him, because Furry was with us. (laughing) AL: Okay. (laughing) Wow. But Will and Furry were friends, right? Even though they had that little grudge? CM: I wouldn't say so. They never ... that was the only time I saw the two of them together, and that ... you know what happened. (laughing) AL: Oh, wow. Okay. 'Cause they did record some songs together for George Mitchell. CM: Yeah, well, there's probably some, you know, maybe they thought there was some money involved, or maybe there was, I don't know. AL: Hmm. So they could rise above. CM: But that's ... what? AL: So they could rise above it, for that. CM: Yeah. AL: Sorry, I cut you off. What were you saying? CM: I don't remember. (laughing) AL: Oh, okay. (laughing) CM: Yeah, I'm at the age where I can hide my own Easter eggs now. (laughing) AL: Okay! (laughing) So you spent quite a bit of time with Furry, too, then. CM: Oh, yeah. AL: And he ... sounds like he was pretty active. CM: Yes, I ... well, he had a day job. Well, actually, it was a night job. He would sweep Beale Street. He was a street sweeper. He had a ... one of those push brooms, and he had this can that was suspended between these two large wheels, that would roll along real easy, and that ... it had a, like a lever ... it had like a little ... well, how would you explain it, a ... a trough kind of thing on the street, and you'd sweep into that, and then you'd push the lever, and it would go up and dump it into the can. And I would go with him, when he would ... you know ... sweep up Beale Street. And it would be like, I don't know, two, three in the morning or something. And there wouldn't be anybody out on the street at that time of night, he'd just ... all the lights would be on, and we'd just be out there going down the street, sweeping up just loose paper and stuff. And he loved his job. He said it was easy, and he liked it, and he got paid well. It was right near where he lived, and he didn't have to have a car, or ride a bus to get to work. AL: Wow. That's a strange irony, though, of him out there, like, not only being a street sweeper, but actually on Beale Street. CM: Yeah. (laughing) Yep. AL: He probably did some performing on the street in his time, would you say? CM: He probably what? AL: Did some street performing in his time, do you think? CM: Oh, yeah, I'm sure he played up and down Beale Street, and ... with people, and ... back in the day, when it was real ... really happening. I think he ... seems to me he said he once played with W.C. Handy. I don't know if it meant the whole orchestra, or what, but ... I remember him telling me he could play with anybody, anywhere, if he knew what key they were in. And I feel the same way. (laughing) AL: (laughing) Huh. There's some videos of Furry in the 60s, where he's doing ... he's, like, playing the guitar with his arm, and spinning it around. He's quite ... you know, even at that age, he was a very dynamic performer ... showman. CM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, he would do all that stuff around the house, too. For laughs, you know. And he was ... he seemed pretty ... really fit, mentally and physically, too. He did have one false leg, but that didn't seem to slow him down any. AL: Hmm. Well, these are great ... great memories, of Furry, and of the house, the apartment at Shade's house. That's the end of my questions, but do you have any other memories that are coming to mind that you'd like to share? CM: Well, Furry lived in a bunch of places. When I first met him, he lived on a ... a little ... I don't know what you would call it, it was called ... Church Place. It's not there anymore. Where the Hampton Inn is, underneath that was where Church Place was. It was a little street that ran off of the street that runs on the West side of Handy Park. From, I remember, from his front door you could see Handy Park. And that was where I first met him, in an apartment there on the ground floor. Then he moved to a building that was next to Will Shade's place, inside that block I described earlier. He lived on the other side of that alley. And ... also ... oh, Bo Carter lived downstairs, next to that alley, and ... in another building, closer to Fourth Street. And then Furry moved out to a ... he got a house off of Jackson in North Memphis. And that was the last place I saw him. And I guess things were getting better for him, 'cause that was ... compared to his other places, this was a really nice house. AL: Hmm, great. Actually, how did you ... how did you hear that Will had died? CM: Gosh, I don't remember now. Hmm, it's a good question, I just don't remember. AL: Okay. CM: If it comes to me, I'll let you know. (laughing) AL: Okay. Yeah. And what recordings do you have? You said you had some recordings you made, but you gave them to ... Bernard MacMahon~, I think is his name? CM: What's that? AL: You said that you had some recordings that you made, just, like, jamming at the apartment. CM: I don't think I did that ... I only did that with Will Shade. There's just that one tape. I rented a tape recorder, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and took it over to Will's, and that was the only ... that's where that tape came from that you know about ... "Newport News." Other than that, there wasn't any way ... not like today, where it's so easy. I didn't ... I couldn't afford a ... to buy one of those things, so I rented one once. AL: Uh huh, okay. And then ... and you still have a copy of that, right? CM: I don't know. I might. It got ... that tape got so brittle and old. I might still have it, but I ... I had it ... somebody put it on a cassette for me, so I have it in that version, I know, somewhere around here. AL: Okay. CM: And the ... the tape recorder was so ... it was pretty lousy, like, somebody told me later that some of the little wheels inside ... there was a rubber wheel that had worn down, that made the tape go too fast, so it all sounded, you know, speeded up? When you played it ... it sounded okay on that machine, but when you put it on another machine, then you heard it sounded speeded up. And when they put that one tune on that CD that you heard, they had to really work with it to slow it down and try to get it to sound right. AL: Oh, right, uh huh. So they did try to correct it. CM: They tried to make it sound, yeah, at the right speed. (laughing) What a mess. (laughing) AL: No, it sounds ... it sounds just like the other people I interviewed, which is just that they ... they didn't quite know what ... the long term value of what they were doing, they wished they'd asked more questions, or had a better tape recorder. CM: Yeah, or just had money, you know? If I just had money, I could have done so much more. AL: Yeah. Any other thoughts? CM: Any what? AL: Do you have any other thoughts? This is really good stuff. CM: Ah, no. I'm really glad you're ... have the interest in working on something for Will. I wish he somehow could know about it. (laughing) Do you know about the American Epic show that's coming up on TV? It's a BBC/PBS series, I think it's a six-part series? AL: Yeah, I keep waiting for that to be released, and it seems like they keep delaying it. Or not setting a ... they keep saying it's "coming soon," and then ... I don't know that they're ... they've ever set a date for it. CM: And you know that one of the episodes is about Will. AL: Yeah. Yeah, do you know what ... like, what information they have, what's going to be in there? CM: Well, I ... I ... they set up a filming inside this old building on Beale Street that used to be the Monarch Club, and they filmed me playing "I'll Get a Break Someday." AL: Oh, cool. CM: And then they also filmed me walking ... carrying the guitar, walking up to the door, stuff like that ... coming down Beale Street. And I took them around to Memphis, to different places. I took them down to the river, and they filmed down there. Bernard MacMahon, the guy that's doing it, he really believes that Will Shade is an overlooked American musical hero, and that everybody should know about him, and I'm glad he feels that way, 'cause he wants to, you know, wants people to discover him. AL: Yeah. Huh, that's cool. Yeah, he talked to me briefly ... I think he was looking for descendents of Will Shade, and I didn't know about any. That was the main thing. CM: We went out to his ... where he was buried, and the police were out there, and they wouldn't let us in the cemetery. AL: Oh, no. CM: Because they, they found out that the ... whoever was in charge of burying people out there was just burying people on top of other people, in the same grave. AL: Yeah, I heard about that. Jeez. CM: Yeah, so I don't know what the outcome of that was. AL: Did you ever get to see that gravestone out there? CM: No, I never got to go in there. AL: Hmm. They ... the original one was real nice, and it got destroyed by their lawnmower, so then the cemetery, or the county, paid for a new one and had it installed, and the new one was similar to the original, but not quite as nice. And then I haven't been out there since then, so hopefully ... hopefully they haven't destroyed it again. But now the whole thing is closed anyway, so it's ... it's kind of sad. CM: I don't know ... I don't know if it's still closed, or what the outcome was, but I was just there that one day, or maybe two days. AL: No, somebody else told me that they ... well, maybe it was you ... that they tried to go out there, and it was right about the time the scandal broke. CM: Right about the time what? AL: That that scandal broke. CM: Oh, uh huh. Yeah. AL: But he has a ... he has that brass note on Beale Street, now, too. So that's something that more people are going to see. CM: Oh, that's good. Whereabouts is it? AL: It's right by Handy Park, right in front of Handy Park. CM: Oh, I think you told me that, and I think I've seen it, now that you say that. AL: Yeah. But I agree, there should be more awareness. CM: I hope that this will be a big help in that direction. AL: Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait to see that film, that sounds really neat. The American Epic. CM: Yeah. Well, their hearts seem in it, and so I ... I assume because of that, and their expertise, it will be really good. AL: Yeah, they had ... they had quite a research team. I actually saw some excerpts of the film that showed at a ... at a, like a film club here in Portland. They didn't have the jug band section, but they had a section about John Hurt that was really beautiful. And they dug up some neat footage that I don't think anybody had seen before. So maybe they'll have some surprises for this, too. CM: Yeah, they seem to be really thorough in their work, and real professional. AL: Cool. CM: Yeah. AL: Actually, I thought of one other question, while you were saying that. I think you had mentioned to me earlier that the jug band was kind of like a prototype for a blues combo. Can you say any more about that, like what a typical combo was like before then, and then what they ... what they contributed to the development of ... kind of like what we know of as blues today? CM: Well, as far as I know, I mean, I'm not really an historian or anything. I haven't really set out to study anything (laughing), but just from my casual observations, my opinion is that back in the day, you had, like, orchestras, like Handy's, which was like a ... horns, and these guys were reading music, and doing marches and stuff like that. And you had other orchestras like jazz. And then you had, like, little trios, maybe two guitars and a harmonica or something, or.... And then, finally, somebody came up with the idea of a jug band, you know, a washboard and a jug, and whatever they could put together. I forgot what the question was. (laughing) Where am I going with this? AL: (laughing) Just how that was ... how that influenced what we know of as blues. CM: Well, I think it's just the natural ... a natural progression. I mean, it was an instrumentation that later on would just evolve into being electric, with amplifiers. And you got ... at first they didn't have electric basses, they had a guy would tune his guitar down, and ... one of the guys would, and it ... that's how Louis and Dave Meyers started out. Dave would tune down his guitar until they came up with a ... that first electric bass, and then he switched to that, but ... it was, you know, it was just a natural progression, I think, to be able to put together a band. And later on, when it became electrified, that's ... that was ... that was in Chicago. AL: Uh huh. Oh, and you know, there's a recording ... you know that there's a recording of Will Shade and Charlie Burse and an electric guitarist. I think it comes ... I think ... I think it's an Alan Lomax recording. Kind of surprised me when I heard that. CM: Hmm. I know the one that was on a TV show, but I'm not sure I know the one you're talking about. I don't remember hearing an electric guitar before. AL: It's the "Eleven Light City." CM: Yeah. There's a question right there, what's the Eleven Light City? Kokomo, Indiana? I don't know, why? AL: (laughing) Yeah. I don't, either. CM: It's like, there was a town over in ... I mean a place in Binghampton, part of Memphis, called Leven Row. I knew a girl over there I liked. She lived in Leven Row. And people want to know what Leven Row is, well, it was eleven shotgun houses in a row, used to be over there. But they're gone now. AL: Oh. (laughing) Makes sense, when you ... when you know what it's about. CM: Yeah. So, "eleven light city," I don't know what the origin of that is, but it's interesting to think about. AL: Is that just Kokomo, or is that ... I kind of guessed it was, like, a Biblical, like ... well, it reminded me of "Twelve Gates to the City," which is a Biblical thing. CM: Well, there's just that song about "Eleven light city, sweet old Kokomo," I don't know. You know, it's kind of like, "a new way of spelling Memphis, Tennessee." (laughing) Does it really mean anything? I don't know. I understand the words you're saying, but I don't know what you're talking about. (laughing) AL: Yeah. Okay. Well, on that note, I'll email you a couple of those lyrics questions I had. And you can see if you ... if it makes any sense when you listen to it. CM: Great. I look forward to it. AL: Awesome. And I'm going to transcribe this discussion, and I'll send you that, and then I'm going to kind of boil it down into a ... like a discussion that I can publish. So I'll keep you posted as I work on that. CM: Sure. Well, I look forward to reading it, and that might even trigger some more memories. AL: Okay, great. Well, this is really nice, I love hearing your stories. Thanks for ... thanks for talking. CM: Well, I hope I could help you. I hope that's what you're looking for. AL: Yeah, definitely. Have a great Thanksgiving! CM: Have a great Thanksgiving. And stay in touch, and we'll talk again. AL: Okay. Take care. CM: Okay, you too. Bye. AL: Bye bye. Charlie sent this via email on February 11, 2017: A couple of things occurred to me while reading. I don't know if this is important enough to include but I remember Will telling me that his mother taught him harmonica and that she had "grown up in slavery." I saw that part about where Will wouldn't stop calling somebody Mister. I had the same problem. I'd say this to Will and Furry and anybody else that called me Mister Charlie and Mister Charles. I'd plead with them to stop using Mister with me. I'd tell them we're friends and I don't need this Mister stuff. And whoever I was talking to -- it'd always be pretty much exactly the same -- they'd stop calling me Mister Charles for only a few minutes and then they'd go right back to Mister Charles or Mister Charlie. I also remember how amused they'd be at me talking to them about not using Mister to address me. They seemed to act like "okay just to please you, but you don't get it" or something like that. They didn't seem to want to stop and they seemed more comfortable using Mister no matter how I told them how I felt about it. Well, I'm glad I amused them. Does anybody know what happened to Cat Porter? How did she die? I know I told you we had an affair and not to mention it, but if you think it's good for the story you can mention it. She and I had fun.