February 25, 2016 interview with Donald Hill (DH) and David Mangurian (DM) conducted by telephone by Arlo Leach (AL) AL: Thanks for meeting today, and, um, I have a bunch of questions, but if either of you have a place you want to jump in, that's fine, too. DH: Go ahead, shoot. AL: Okay. So, I've been studying all the people that recording, especially around Memphis in the 50s and 60s. One of the earliest that I've found is Samuel Charters, but when I read Don's memoir that he sent me, he was mostly talking about Alan Lomax. I wondered if you were aware of the Charters stuff that came a couple years before you guys were there. DH: Yes, I'm aware of that. I don't know how long I've been aware of that. I think he recorded in the 50s. In the late 50s. AL: Yeah, 58. But were you aware of it at the time that you went there? DH: No. No, I wasn't. I don't know if Dave was, but I wasn't. You know something? I may have been ... if it's in Country Blues, his book Country Blues ... if there's an interview in there with Will Shade, then I would have been aware of it, but I never really thought about it one way or the other. DM: But I remember, we have some evidence from correspondence which is currently unavailable, that ... I took a canoe trip with a friend across the country, from Denver to Memphis, and stopped in Memphis and we had a layover before we went on to New Orleans. And apparently I, in free time, looked up Will Shade. I don't remember it too well, but that seems to be how Don and I sort of discovered him. DH: Right. DM: And maybe I got the tip, you know, from reading Charters' book. Who knows. AL: Oh, okay. DH: But Charters' book was about the only thing out there, as I recall. AL: Yeah. And he'd done some recordings at that time, too, but I don't know how widely distributed they were, so it sounds like you hadn't heard those yet. DH: Ah, we hadn't heard -- I've never heard his recordings. Oh, but maybe that's not true, I think I've got a copy somewhere. But back in those days I had never heard his recordings. I think he recorded Furry Lewis, too, who we missed. AL: So, also, I noticed that when you went on that first trip in 1958, Dave had brought a washboard along. So what ... [laughing] what were you doing that early with a washboard? What was your inspiration for that, do you remember? DM: Did I take a washboard, Don? DH: What's that? I didn't quite get what you said. AL: Oh, it's that your memoir just mentioned in passing that he had brought a washboard on your first trip. DH: Yes, we had a washboard. We recorded the washboard in Arkansas ... Delaney, Arkansas ... and it was Dave's washboard. DM: Are you sure? DH: Yes, yes. And we had thimbles, and we took it along with us, and it's in most of the recordings that we made in Delaney, which we stayed there a couple -- one night, at least, and recorded over a day or two. So that's old timey music, and ... we played it, and the guys we recorded that were mostly our age, and then their parents played fiddle and whatnot, and they incorporated the washboard into their music. [chuckle] Yeah. AL: Cool. DH: I don't remember using that washboard any other place, though. Just there. AL: Huh. Do you remember what you were doing with it in California before your trip? DH: Dave, I think you brought it to play. DM: I don't know! I don't remember it at all. DH: Yeah, washboards were still around. People still used them, especially in the South. AL: Huh. Do you have any recollection of what the reaction was when you got to Arkansas and started playing washboard with those guys? Was it... DH: I don't think they'd seen anything like that, but I think they liked it. Yeah. And I don't think at that time ... I could be wrong, I'm sure there's somebody out there that knows ... but in Cajun music where they use the washboard, I think, I think, back at that time, they used a regular washboard, they didn't have this thing that fits over your head and that you wear on your chest. Yeah, I think, I'm not sure. AL: Oh, nice. Okay. So when you did get to Memphis, how did you end up finding the musicians you recorded? Sounds like you weren't even particularly looking for them, you were on another ... you know, your trip had another purpose at that time, but you ran into some great people. DM: That's what I said. My ... I think ... 'cause in our notes, I sort of made allusion to ... isn't that true, Don, that I had ... when I'd ... we stopped, we were taking a canoe trip across the country, and it was ... we got to Memphis about Thanksgiving, it was really cold, and windy, and we weren't getting anywhere, so we decided to terminate the trip. And we were staying on a ... sleeping on a yacht that didn't lock its doors ... a yacht in a marina ... and I guess I had time, and we were wandering around, and I decided to look up, you know, Will Shade. And, that's what I think happened, and we found him, and probably talked ... I don't think I took any pictures ... and I must have had an address, so that when Don and I got ordered to leave Mississippi by the police after we were arrested, for ... on ... for being crackpots ... so we stayed, and we were going to drive Wade Walton, the blues singer that we had discovered back in 1958, but he wasn't ready to leave yet, and so we had to go up to Memphis and we stayed there until he was ready, and then he came on a bus and then we drove to New York City. So we had time on our hands, and so that's ... so we must have looked up, you know, Will Shade, and then we had ... we spent two days with him, recording. And those happened to be July 18th and 19th, and I remember 'cause it was my birthday on the 18th. AL: Okay! So when was that first trip that you made? Do you remember the year? DM: Ah, it would have been fall of 79. DH: 69 ... 59. DM: No, 59, 59. Yeah. DH: And that was with another student, not with me. AL: And then did you find Will Shade at that time? DM: Pardon me? AL: Did you find Will Shade then? DM: Well, I think so, because I think ... I don't remember, and Don doesn't seem to remember, but I think I had found him, and probably knew where to go in Memphis to find him again. I doubt if I wrote his address down, but I could have. DH: I think it's in one of those letters, one of your letters, that you met him. And Dave, Arlo, usually Dave was the one of the two of us who kept all the addresses and did most of the research ... ??? ... you know, looking up names and ... we had big lists of names, I have a book somewhere, gosh, I should have tried to find that and get that out, but it's got the most interesting names in it that later became part of a blues revival that we were looking for, but we didn't have. We had like, Atlanta, ???, you know. Stuff like that. And we just found a few out of there, but we did find some. And I think Dave probably got that address from somewhere, you know. Or he might have asked around, who knows. I mean it's pretty easy, he's probably still playing in the streets down there, occasionally. DM: And Memphis was a lot smaller city in those days. DH: Yeah. AL: So then when you met them again in 1961, you went to Will Shade's home at least, did you go to any other homes of the musicians? DH: Oh yeah, yeah. Quite a few. We went to, probably, we figure, after meeting Will Shade, he probably gave us Memphis Minnie's address, and we went out to see him and Son -- her and Son Joe, and then that was either before or right after we recorded, and then ... I have a vague recollection that we went by Gus Cannon's house, but he came by Will Shade's place, in any case, and recorded. And then we ... I don't think it was at anybody's house, but it was some room we had found, on the second floor of a place, where we recorded kind of a contemporary blues guy, named Johnny Moses, and a local blues singer, Maude Rainey, not to be confused with the original Ma Rainey. And we recorded her, and then we went out to WDIA, and recorded a guy with the Crowns ... Dave, who was the guy's name? DM: With the Crowns? I don't know. DH: Yeah, harmonica player, and, with Nat D. Williams, a sort of legendary disk jockey at WDIA. And they recorded, they made that recording on our tape, poor us. It was their amateur day, so, I think it was around, you know, middle of the day, and they had, I think it was maybe a 15 minute program, and every day they'd have some amateurs come in and play. And we had brought that guy, the harmonica player over to them, and I think the Crowns was their house band, sort of, and they recorded, and they gave us the tape and we left. And we also went by ... Dave, I don't know if you remember this, and we didn't discuss this the other day, but we went by Sun Records. And I don't know whether ... I think we met ... did we meet Scotty Moore, and... DM: That's my recollection, yeah. DH: Yeah, yeah, I think we did, yeah. DM: We didn't ... I didn't even know who he was. AL: He was just there working at the studio? DH: ??? AL: That's cool. When you visited the ... Will Shade's home, and Memphis Minnie's ... can you describe what their living conditions were like? DH: [laughing] Home is like an exaggeration. DM: No, it was a tenement house. Our ... my notes on the logs we had with the recording was, it was a tenement near Beale Street, and I think we recorded on the second floor, and also the notes say that it was in a room that contained a few chairs and little other furniture, so I don't know if it was Will Shade's living room, as it were, or what. It was just a run-down tenement, like in those days where, you know, really poor people, black people lived. DH: I remember, I researched it when I was writing that memoir, and I ... I don't remember how, but somehow or other I determined that it was likely at 4th Street and Beale. AL: Um hm. Yep, I've ... I have the actual address, somewhere, but, yeah, 4th and Beale, was roughly where it was. In fact, I have a photo of the building that Roger Brown sent me. DH: Oh, wow. AL: Yeah. I'll pass that on to you guys and see if it jogs your memory. DH: Oh, yeah, that would be cool. DM: Yeah. DH: And I went back there in 1995, and I believe that building had been torn down. AL: Yeah, it's ... there's a, like a, sports arena there now. DH: Yeah, there was a big urban renewal. When we were there it was kind of a slum, but now it's like a tourist location. DM: Don and I both photographed Will Shade outside the building, so we have pictures of the building. AL: Oh, okay, is that were the photo of him with his washtub bass, and his, kind of like a baseball cap, came from? DH: Yeah. AL: That is a great photo. DH: Black and white... AL: Yeah. Do you have more from that day? DH: Yeah, that's ... I took black and white and Dave took color, and Dave took the same sort of photos. He's got one of Laura Dukes, Will Shade, and also Gus Cannon. AL: Mm. Are those photos ... this is kind of a digression, but are those photos part of what you sent to the Library of Congress? Or was that just audio? DH: No, we're sending them all of that stuff, too, at least digital copies of it. AL: Okay. DM: And they have the original tapes. You sent the original tapes to them. DH: Yeah, yeah, they've got the original tapes. And they have digital copies as well. AL: Nice. Okay, um ... what about Memphis Minnie? What was it like when you visited her? DM: Um, we have different ... sort of different recollections, but she was sick, and I thought she had opened the door for us, Don says she didn't, that she was in bed ... I trust his memory. And the only thing I can really remember about it is that she ... we asked her for pictures, and she gave us a number of pictures of herself, and I found a place, I forget what they called them in those days, pre-Xerox, and they enlarged the pictures for me, and then I went back and I gave the pictures back. DH: And we got them to autograph them. And I sold mine to ... is the guy's name Gilette? A guy wrote a book on Memphis Minnie, with his wife. AL: Paul Garon? DH: Yeah, in Chicago? Some guy in Chicago. Yeah, so I sold him my copies of those pictures. And, so... DM: I threw mine away. DH: [laughing] Well, that's the way it goes. So I remember ... I have a pretty distinct memory of that, which ... you know, I've not exactly done research, but I realize that memories can really be false. But I remember Son Joe coming to the door, and escorting us back in to see Memphis Minnie. But I had another experience like that with another family and I might be confusing the two. In any case, she was a very, very nice lady. And Dave wrote a notice, I don't think it was a full article, but it was a notice for Jazz Journal in England, and that may actually have some detail in it. I think it's probably online, probably Paul Vernon has put it on Facebook, in the blues research group. AL: So say that again? Did you say Dave wrote an article? DH: Yeah, Dave wrote, I can't remember, I think it's like maybe a paragraph or something, a notice. Dave, you probably wrote a letter to Jazz Journal. And that was one of the main ... in fact, I don't think there was anything like it in the United States, except for Koester's little news ... little on-and-off newsletter, that I can recall, that sort of monitored what sort of blues and sort of old time jazz musicians were doing. So he wrote this, and it got published in Jazz Journal. And that may actually describe our contact, and it's contemporary, so it would be the most accurate. I do remember that making ... it was in somebody's column, I think maybe they put it ... and it making a little bit of a stir because nobody in England knew that Memphis Minnie had had a stroke. Up until then I think she was considered missing, you know. AL: So that was after her stroke that you visited? DH: Yeah. I think that book by ... ??? that book that that French guy wrote about Big Bill Broonzy was out then? The first book on Big Bill Broonzy. Because he mentions Memphis Minnie as being this really great guitar player. I think that might be ... I'm trying to think of how we had heard of Memphis Minnie, you know. DM: The Charters... DH: The Charters book, maybe, yeah. DM: That book made a big impression on us. We both read it before we took the trip. It was the only ... we really got into blues when we were, well, in my sophomore year and Don's freshman year, and, so it was like the Bible, and we had ??? these old people, and so Don and I, that summer, after we decided to take a trip across the country, and record, you know. Because Charters had done it, we could do it. DH: Yeah. And Lomax had done it. And we could do it. Like, Lomax had gone to ... and his father had gone to Parchman Farm, so, why can't we go to Parchman Farm and record the prisoners? How much fun would that be? [laughs] DM: We did go, but we were kicked out! DH: But it wasn't exactly fun, no. AL: Yeah, well, I heard an interview with Sam Charters where he was saying that was his intentional goal, is to inspire other people to go and do it, 'cause he couldn't do all the fieldwork himself, so he succeeded. DH: Yeah, he just died the last couple years, I guess. AL: Yeah, last year. DH: Man. AL: Yeah, I regret that I never was able to talk to him. If I'd had this idea to interview people a couple years earlier, he ... I might have been able to talk to him. DH: Good. DM: Arlo, what I remember from the session, just to give you some impressions of ???. We recorded a lot at night. I don't remember whether we recorded in the daytime, but it was two days, and it was kind of a little chaotic, because other people came by, including this woman named Mary Mitchell, we think she's the one, who had a really bad voice, but insisted on singing a couple of songs with everybody else. And the other thing I remember, and I don't know if it was Mary Mitchell or somebody else, but ... and I think it was the second night we were there ... everybody was drinking a lot ... Don and I can't remember drinking much ... and then this woman, I guess was really drunk, and I followed her back into I guess where her kitchen was, and she was boiling water and she somehow spilled it on herself. AL: Oh my. DM: And [laughing] ... but I mean it was chaotic. I mean Gus Cannon, I don't know whether he came by for the first session, but he'd come by, and then he'd disappear, ???. And Laura Dukes and Will Shade were on five of the sessions we recorded, the tapes, and Gus was only on two, I made a list today, and then there was just some other people. DH: And Gus Cannon, at the end of one of ... he came in twice, each day, once each day, to do a few numbers, and at the end of one of his sessions I think he said, boom boom, a couple of strokes on the banjo, and then said, "I'm gone." And he got up an left! [laughing] I have that memory. And I thought Gus Cannon was like the oldest person in the history of the world when I saw him [laughing], and I thought he was like way past his prime. And over the years I've listened to his ... those recordings, and ... he's just great on there! I don't know what I was thinking. You know, I guess when you're 18, 20 years old or something, everybody over about 30 is old. And I'm older than Gus Cannon was when we recorded him, you know. So ... and Will Shade, the one memory I have, I don't know if Dave has this, too, probably, but ... the sense I get is that Will Shade was the real organizer of the ... our session ... that he got Gus to come in, and he tried to get Furry Lewis and they couldn't locate him, and he got ... I don't know if there was any other ... I don't think there were any other great musicians there. Oh, Laura Dukes. And Laura Dukes, Gus Cannon and Will Shade, they were the main ones. And then these sort of floater people that lived in ... these women that lived in the same tenement ... and ... but the real leader of the session, the person who led the songs, and who backed whoever was singing lead, quite adeptly, was Will Shade. And I definitely was impressed by that. And then over the years, as I got more familiar with the ... both the Cannon's Jug Stompers, who ... collectors generally like the Cannon's Jug Stompers more than the Memphis Jug Band ... but both groups ... that it's pretty clear that Gus ... that Will Shade was a real entrepreneur in a way, you know, in making those Memphis recordings. DM: When I went through the logs we made, Don ... and Will Shade played on these sessions we recorded ... guitar, jug, washboard and harmonica. DH: That's right. DM: It seemed like he was keeping the whole thing together. You know, he didn't throw his instruments away or anything like that, and they worked pretty good and he played pretty well. DH: Exactly, exactly. And I've talked with some people in the last 20, 30 years when I've gotten back into this stuff, you know, I don't know, people like Sherwin Dunner and Rich Nevins and Crumb ... and my sense of it is that they don't ... they really kind of look at Will Shade as a kind of a pedestrian person, as opposed to somebody like Gus Cannon, who's more unique or something, and I don't think that ... I think Gus Cannon really was, like, the main one, you know? Just because of what Dave just said. He really could do it all, and he was always there. Sort of in a way like Big Bill Broonzy was, on another level, you know, he was able to constantly go through these different phases and everything, and just keep it going. He might not have been the world's greatest guitarist, but ... and the same way with Will Shade, but he was plenty good enough. He had a good voice and everything. AL: Well, and also one thing I admire about him is that he found so many other interesting singers and other interesting musicians and brought them together, so when you listen to all the Memphis Jug Band recordings, you have Charlie Nickerson and Jab Jones and all these different people and styles that he kind of brought all together, so he's kind of a recruiter and a talent finder as well. DH: Right. Absolutely. I saw that movie from 1929, directed by King Vidor, Hallelujah, that Gus Cannon's in, it's really interesting. Yeah, sound movie with ... Cannon is in a way the more interesting figure in the sense that his music spans pre-blues as well as blues. AL: Yeah, a different generation. DH: Yeah. DM: Well, another recollection I have, which I've never forgotten, is that ... remember, this is pre Civil Rights Movement days, 1979 -- 59, and ... 58, when we ... 50 -- 60 ... or 61, excuse me for the dates ... yeah, when we recorded in 61. He kept calling me "mister." And I said to him finally, "My name's ... call me Dave." And so he said, "Okay, Mister Dave." DH: [laughing] AL: And was that like a little joke, or is that just how he wanted to do it? DM: No! He was just used to calling white people "mister." DH: Now the only one who could get away from that was Wade Walton. Somehow or other, this barber, blues singer in Mississippi, in Clarksdale ... we had gotten so close to him that he was like a big brother to us, I think. And so when we were talking with him, in his shop, he treated us like his kid brothers, in a way. And then used our first names. But when we went out in public with him, he's give that "mister" routine. It's really interesting. Yeah. I turned in my vocation, which I've just retired from, as an anthropologist, and I worked in the Caribbean for quite a while, and they use that same terminology. They would call, "Mister Don," and my wife would be "Miss Blanche," and we couldn't get them ... they, in fact, in the little island that we worked on, they really didn't like to say people's last names. It was like, your last name was kind of like a sacred thing. DM: And polite. DH: Yeah. And polite, yeah, yeah. Arlo, do you know Bob Koester? AL: I've met him, yeah. DH: Well, I worked for him. I guess Dave, you did, too, for a little bit, for a couple days or something. So I remember this guy came into his store, when I was working, when he was at Seymour's Record Mart. This would have been summer, probably August 1960. And he was playing that game, that sort of "mister" ... "Mister Bob" kind of game, but he was playing it so obsequiously that it just drove Koester insane, and he threw the guy out of the store, you know. "Don't pull that kind of shit on me," you know, ???, "get out of here," you know. As Koester, like ... if anything, and Koester was a real character, and had his own issues, but racism was definitely not one of them [laughing], and he really didn't like this guy trying to kiss up to him, and use that. Especially in Chicago, you know, where it's like, not as necessary as it would have been in Mississippi. AL: Yeah. Huh. So going back to that chaotic recording session, in the apartment, do you think the other musicians were ... just, like, the word got out that people were recording and they wanted to be a part of it, or would people have been hanging out in that way and jamming anyway? Do you have a sense of how much they were playing together when you weren't there? DM: I don't have much of a sense. Do you think, Don, Will Shade and Gus Cannon got together? I don't think so. DH: Yeah, yeah, I think they did. My sense of it is ... and you may, I don't know, I haven't read up on what Charters wrote, I haven't read that in years, so ... but my sense of it is that they still played around. They still probably did ... now, I don't know, I don't think we asked ... we did a little short interview with Will Shade, and ... but in all the other musicians that I recorded or that we recorded together, those guys, especially the guitarists and singers and banjo players, they would play picnics, and they would play for white ... they'd prefer ... most of them preferred to play for white groups, because they got more money. So they would play for white and black groups. So my sense is that they were just continuing to do that, you know. I'm pretty sure that's where like the Mississippi Sheiks and ... who's that guy from Avalon, Mississippi ... Mississippi John Hurt ... I know James Campbell, that I recorded in Nashville, he played at picnics, and ... they'd play at street fairs, and in Mississippi they'd play for pickup ball games, and stuff like that. So I think they probably did play. And I know Laura Dukes continued playing, right on through the blues revival. She was younger. I don't know whether she made recordings. Maybe in the late 30s she started recording, I don't know. DM: But she was on almost all the sessions that Wade recorded for us, and so I would ... my hunch would be that she and Will Shade, if Will did any jobs ???, then they went together, don't you think, Don? DH: Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah, she played banjo uke. And she was still ... there was a woman folklorist in Memphis that I met, and, like, Laura Dukes was like her main source whenever she needed somebody to play at some affair, she'd hire Laura Dukes for it. I can't remember whether Laura Dukes was still alive in 1995 when I was there. She may have been. She was younger than the others. AL: As far as the recording goes, it seems like people really wanted to be on those recordings. Was it just fun for them? You were maybe giving them some wine probably but not much else? Were they just excited to be included? DH: Yeah, I think so. I mean, the main ones, I think they liked doing it. It was like ... you know, this is doing a lot of psychologizing, but I think they probably realized that they were pretty famous musicians at one time, and made a living at it, and now their music was definitely out of favor, particularly in the black community, and ... ??? my wife is black and her whole family just wouldn't even listen. Well, with the exception of one cousin who was a jazz musician. They wouldn't listen to this sort of music at all. And, so, the only people that really liked it were mostly young, white men. And they were more than happy to play for them. And they usually wanted something to drink. Of course, the white musicians did, too. But they just liked being recognized, I think. I think that was true about the country musicians, the white country musicians that we recorded, too. They just liked it. Some of them would complain and carp a little bit, thinking they were going to make some money. I think that guy Johnny Moses thought that we were some kind of managers or something that would record them, and it would be their ticket. We ran into that occasionally, but not often. DM: Yeah, mostly everybody ... you know, it's like anything ... if they go to you, Arlo, and say, "Hey, I understand you have a jug band, can I, you know, talk to you about it," and stuff, you're delighted. These guys really just sort of dropped off the map, maybe they were playing, you know, jobs for other black people, but, you know, a couple of white kids show up interested in their music, and they're thrilled almost. DH: Yeah. I know over the years, people have asked me, particularly white people and academics and people in the music industry, you know, how much did you pay them, and did you use union wage and all that. I say we didn't [laughing] we didn't pay anybody anything, you know. And the implication was sort of like, "Well, you're ripping people off." And we ... I ... to this day I don't think that's true. I don't think it was true then, and ... you know. DM: We had no idea that these ... that some of the recordings that we did would, you know, end up as records. And that wasn't our purpose. Our purpose was you couldn't buy this stuff in those days, to listen to. So we sort of went around the country recording this stuff, and it was a fun trip, we had a great time, then we took this stuff home and, you know, and played it for ourselves. Isn't that pretty much it, Don? DH: Yeah. And at college, we had ... we each had our own radio show, and then we had a radio show together. And one of the shows, I think it was Dave's show, our theme song was the run-off groove of the 78 player, you know, when it's playing an old 78 [makes a scratching sound] ... like that. And I remember the engineer, I've got a tape of this somewhere, where the engineer comes in and says, "Is that your theme?!" [laughing] AL: Nice. There's nothing wrong with your radio. DH: ??? And we played it in college, and we did ... we loved it, you know, and these were really like tapes for us. I played it for my family, and they loved the stories and stuff that were on there. Like that barber from Mississippi, he was really a good raconteur, and he told all ??? stories. And of course, barber shops ... if I had life to live over again, I would go around ... well, Dave, you did this, actually, on film ... but I would go around to barber shops, little barber shops around the country, and record in the barber shops. Not necessarily music, just the talk, you know. And Dave, with another friend, went around the country and filmed. What all you filmed? In supermarkets, I know that. DM: We were filming markets. It wasn't my film, it was my friend's film. But since I knew Wade Walton, and so I said, "Let's go down there and see Wade," and then we ... Wade took us to the first black supermarket in Clarksdale, and then Wade took us out to some country village where there was a little tiny country store for black people [who] lived out there. But when we were recording these people, we never got them to sign releases or sign anything. We didn't get their addresses, or phone numbers, and we had no money to pay them anything. I don't even know whether we had money to buy drinks for Will Shade. Do you remember that, Don? DH: Yeah, I think we bought them drinks. I think that was the deal. We had to buy drinks. I know I recorded once with this folklorist, Cece Conway, nice lady. And we recorded Othar Turner. And she, at the end of the session ... it was a long session, it was like two hours ... and she and Robin Huff videod, and I audio ... made audio recordings ... and he wanted, you know, a little money at the end, and I think we gave him 30 bucks. She didn't want to pay anything because the whole idea was, it was just sort of like a friendly thing and we were friends and this wasn't supposed to be commercial. And that's well and good. But the guy, you know, he could use the money, he gave us our ... his time, and his valuable ... but when we went around, no money. As far as I know, other than buying drinks for people, no money changed hands. I'm trying to think if we ever paid for any of it. DM: There was no money to change hands. DH: No! We didn't have any. In fact we were always running out of money and we'd have to wire back to our parents to get money. AL: Well it seems like everybody that did field recordings around Memphis talked to Will Shade. He shows up in every collection that I've seen. I can think of several answers for this, but why do you think he was the focus for so many people that went there? DH: I didn't realize that. I thought it was just ... I thought it was Charters, us and maybe Mitchell, and I didn't really ... unless he made more recordings, but probably for what ... the reason I said earlier, that he was kind of like the leader of the street musicians. AL: Yeah, he was just the nexus it sounds like for the music scene there. DH: And, you know, we've answered our question about whether these guys were still active. They could play -- that means they were active. You know, they were at the very least playing for themselves, and frankly, I cannot see poor people, particulary poor black people in a segregated society, just sitting around and playing for themselves. They could do some of that ... I know William Ferris recorded some parties in Mississippi where people were just sitting around playing guitar and stuff. But generally speaking ... well, unless you were playing ... I guess if you were playing at a picnic or something like that, you were playing for other people in your community ... but they're playing, you know, they're playing, they're commercial street musicians. DM: Well, we never even asked that question, did we, when we interviewed them? DH: No, no, we never ... now, if I could go back, you know, we were talking the other day, like ... for Will Shade, jeez, you know, for what I learned in the Carribean and at school, I'd go outside, I'd take about a roll of film just of the building around the outside, I'd take the hallway, I'd take shots of the room, I'd, you know, do all kinds of stuff like that, but we never did anything. In fact, Dave is a really good photographer, and you took like one roll, I think, on all of our trips, there's like 30 pictures on three trips, you know. So, that's really, that's a big failing. Dave did write a lot of really great letters, so that's one good thing. But in terms of documenting this stuff, and in organizing? I know when I was in school in San Francisco, one of the things I had to do was to interview people in their homes, mostly women I was interviewing, and I'd go in and I'd talk to them for a little while, and then I'd go and write down everything I could think of, including descriptions of the room and everything. Jeez, I wish we had done stuff like that, you know. Now we'd have a nice rich description of what was in the room. But like I remember that room as being just very bare, you know, but ... and there's a couple of pictures that you can kind of see, that Dave took in the room, but ... and then I remember this sort of hallway, I think it was on the second floor, kind of remember that. I think it goes back to the 1880s or earlier, because somehow or other there's an outdoor, there's an outdoor oven or something, and it looks like, it looks like there had formerly been like slave quarters outside that building. Yeah ... which you run into in the Caribbean, too, you run into barracks yards and stuff, where slaves, and then sort of like indentured labor used to live, and I'm sure they still have buildings like that in the urban South. And that might have been one of them. I do remember, this isn't like a big story, but it kind of fascinates me, is that one of the pictures either Dave took or I took, has little kids playing, and one of the kids is eating from a box of Argo starch ... Argo? Yeah ... Argo starch. Which poor people would eat ... it would be filling ... yeah. Didn't notice it at the time. AL: So a lot of these musicians are associated with jug band, but they played just straight blues, too, and that's, you know, the underlying genre of their music was blues, but why do you think Will Shade in particular was so involved with jug band music for so long, as opposed to just being a regular blues man? DM: [pause] You answer that, Don. DH: Oh, jeez, I ... I think it's, you know, his commercial recordings dried up, I guess right before World War II, pretty much. He didn't make any, other than these field recordings, I don't think he made any records after that, any of them. My guess is they just continued being street musicians, and ... now I'm ... now I'm forgetting the question, what was the question again? AL: Oh, I'm just curious why, if you had any theories about, or impressions about why they continued doing jug band music, in particular, whereas a lot of people were just doing blues, and Will Shade could just do a straight blues, you know, when he wanted to. DH: Yeah, I think that that's what put them on the map, was jug band. I think the first jug bands were where, in Louisville, or Kentucky, or somewhere, and then they heard those records. I think I read that maybe in a Charters interview or something? And they, or they, got the records and heard them and thought they could do a jug band. So Will Shade probably organized the jug band, you know. I don't know when his first recordings were, around the mid-20s? And ... and then ... I think that went out of style. But, I think he just ... you know, it's like any rock musicians ... these old rock musicians are now dying ... they just continued to play in the same style. Like the Rolling Stones, they still play what they've always played. And they're kind of like that, too. And I thnk probably picnics and different street performances and so on just sort of kept them going. A lot of them worked on other jobs as well. I think Gus Cannon was a gardener. I think me mowed lawns or something like that? So they had other jobs as well, and then they just got fixed in that era that made them famous. Other musicians evolved, well, like Broonzy evolved. I think Memphis Minnie, had she not had a stroke, her music could have very easily fit into rhythm and blues, I think, but ... and she may very well ... I think she probably did record after the war, commercially. But, for the Memphis Jug Band, I mean, their style was gone. But they're probably still playing ... and, you know, the old people, both white and black, would have been in that generation, too, and they would have continued playing that older style, or liked that older style themselves, so they might have hired them. I'm thinking ... did we ever meet, Dave, do you remember, Doctor, I think his name was Edmond Souchon? He was a white Creole from New Orleans, a doctor. DM: In New Orleans itself? DH: Yeah. DM: Not really. DH: He was like the musical go-to guy for both white and black music in New Orleans. And I got an album, oh, 10 or 15 years ago ... he played mandolin, I think ... and he had a string band that basically played ragtime stuff, and it was basically upper-class, Creole, white New Orleans musicians. They played turn of the century, that's 1900, style Creole quadrille music, in a way, and ragtime music, you know, up through the 50s, until they started dying. And, so I, you know, these were upper-class people, but I think the same is true about Will Shade and his people, they just kept playing that stuff. And there was a generation that still liked that music, like me ... I don't know anything about rock after the Beatles. That's where my knowledge ends. I don't know, people say, "Somebody from Led Zeppelin died," or somebody ... I don't know who these people are. I like the blues, you know, and Caribbean music, you know. And that's what I know. DM: That's somewhat ... and partly my problem is that the newer music, I guess starting probably in the 70s some time, it just became so loud, and the amplification overrode ... the instruments overrode the voices. I couldn't understand the words. But then when we used to ... my daughter and I used to watch MTV. She used to watch it when she was a young teen. And the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I forget, Metallica, and some of the groups ... I couldn't hear the words, and she could sing the words. Just a different generation. DH: Amazing. Yeah, yeah. DM: So you ... when a musician learns to play a certain kind of music ... my dad played music out of the 20s on piano, and he played it on piano, the same music, until he died. Never learned other music. That's sort of how it is. DH: Yeah. And so I think that's true about that whole generation of blues people that held on ... some of them continued to play, like James Campbell continued to play in Nashville, and others like ... Mississippi John Hurt continued to play for picnics and stuff, and then they get, quote, discovered, and then they just pick up and play for the blues revival. But other people went into other occupations. Like even Big Bill Broonzy, who had been in the Carnegie Hall concerts, one of them, Spirituals to Swing, by ... what's his face ... Hammond, John Hammond ... he became kind of a crossover star in both the white and black communities, but even in 1948, he was a janitor at Northwestern University, I think, or at some college in the Chicago area, and then he started recording again, you know, so ... and he traveled to Europe and did all kinds of interesting things, but they often had fallback ... fallback jobs. So I don't think that was any different with those Memphis people. DH: The difference is those jug band people, they weren't commercial, trained musicians, so they didn't ... and they didn't have educations, so they couldn't do other things. I'm trying to think of that guy you recorded, I can never think of his name, that you recorded in St. Louis, the ragtime player. DM: Roy Brown. DH: No, not Roy Brown, the rag ... the ragtime piano player. DM: Oh, Speckled Red. DH: No no no no no. ??? this classical ragtime player. DM: You mean the guy we ... ???? DH: Yeah, you recorded just an interview with him, you didn't record his music. His big rag was the Lily, the Lillies, and what's his name had also interviewed him, Bill Russell, but he was middle class, even upper middle class, in fact he lived across the street from Chuck Berry's family, and it's all in your interview, Dave [laughing]. And he ... he comes from a different generation ... I mean a different class, so he continued playing rag, and he played for the St. Louis Jazz Club, and this and that, and he played in little bars and clubs. I think he had other occupations, too, that he filled in, but he would occasionally continue playing. But those street musicians in Memphis, I mean, they didn't have much choice. They either had to find some other job, or just continue playing on the streets. My guess is that's what they did. DM: Did you ... did you think Will Shade had a day job, and we only recorded at night? That's kind of what I'm thinking. DH: I don't know, could be, could very well be. I'm thinking, I do know that Gus Cannon did. But that probably makes sense. Yeah, yeah. That would make sense. And probably the same for Laura Dukes, you know. AL: Interesting. Well, I play jug band music myself, and play on the street occasionally, and one thing I've noticed is that the ... having the jug band instruments definitely makes it more attention-getting, it definitely stands out more. You think that would have been the case in their time as well? DH: Sure. The fact that they could just improvise music ... you know, these guys were not considered musicians ... they weren't considered musicians, technically. AL: Hmm. By the general public, you mean? DH: ??? People looked down on them, yeah, yeah. It's like ... I know Will Shade, he says this in our very brief interview, but he really looked up to W.C. Handy, a lot, and ... which is kind of interesting because most of the people like me that follow this stuff really look up to Will Shade, but don't like ... this is not me, personally, because I like W.C. Handy, but most jazz collectors and stuff think that Handy was a fake, you know, which is just totally untrue. You know, he was a schooled musician who knew music from the training point of view, but also had a great appreciation for street music as well, you know ... and he knew how to cash in on it, too. And a lot of people resented that. That's what I think Cece was trying to make a statement, when she doesn't pay, or ... you know, when she wants to do interviews as friends, rather than as a commercial deals, because there's this unsavory thing, selling out somehow or other [if] you're involved in money, and that's just phony, that's not right. AL: Guys, it's been an hour. I have some more questions for you, are you still good? DM: Sure. DH: Yeah. AL: Okay. DH: You know, when you think of money, I believe Gus Cannon was compensated appropriately for "Walk Right In," so.... DM: I heard someplace that he was paid 400 bucks, a flat fee for it. DH: Well, I've heard that story, too, but I did a little ... I did a interview with some radio ... guy that had a radio show, in New York, and I said that, I repeated that story that he was ripped off, and then I read something that he wasn't ripped off, that they actually ... what they did is, which is common practice, and not considered a rip-off, it's got Gus Cannon's name on it, the copyright, and it's got the names of the people who arranged it, who made the million-seller, too, as well. DM: Yep. DH: So he got money for that. So ... and I think maybe Rainer [E. Lotz?] discovered that, too, I don't know when she did her research. DM: Anyway, go ahead with your other questions. AL: On the Gus Cannon thing, I read somewhere that one of the guys from the Rooftop Singers actually got Sam Charters to take him to Memphis and help find Gus Cannon, and they gave him like an initial check, and then signed him up for royalties, so he'd receive ongoing money from that. DH: Yeah, yeah, that's ... that's what I heard, yeah. In fact, I got upset at myself for saying that he was ripped off, and I got the disk jockey on his next weekly show to correct that, yeah. AL: Oh [laughing], nice. One of my favorite characters we haven't mentioned yet is Charlie Burse, and I think ... I can't remember now, he was ... was he in your recordings ... in your sessions? DH: Who's that? AL: Charlie Burse ... sometimes it's pronounced "bursey"... DH: No. AL: No ... okay. Um ... Jennie, was Jennie Mae there? DH: Hmm, no. AL: Okay. Did you ever meet her? Will Shade's wife? DH: No. DM: I did not. [Don steps out for a moment] AL: Huh, okay. I think Cat Porter, or Cat Young was on your recordings, is that right? DM: I don't ... Don knows more about that stuff, but I don't think so, 'cause I went ... we typed up logs on all the recordings, and I don't recall that name. AL: Hmm, okay. DM: I copied down all the names of the people that we recorded in Memphis when we recorded Will Shade, and it was just Will, Gus Cannon, Laura Dukes, they were the main ones, and Charles Hicks, I think he was just a guy, and ??? songs, like Catherine, Kathleen Young, I never heard of her, Mary Mitchell, I think she did a couple of numbers, you know. They'd just ... they'd walk in the room, and then they're playing music, and then they'd start singing, and ruining the recordings. Some of them were not good. AL: [laughing] Okay. DM: But what was your ... I would just like to make the comment ... I mean, if we were looking today in lower income black areas for musicians, it would be a really tough thing to do. Whereas when we were doing it, you know, a white person could walk into a black place and there was no resentment at the time. People were leery, but you could ask enough questions and eventually they'd point you in the right direction. But it was a whole ... totally different time. When we recorded Wade Walton in Clarksdale, in 58, he said ... he was a barber, and he said, "Well, come back at night and we can talk and record," so we did, and he had to pull down the shades of the barber shop, so the police who patrolled that area could not see in, 'cause if they saw a couple of white people inside a black guy's barber shop, they would have come in and told him not to do that. AL: By the way, what is the fear ... what is the fear of that? That, you know, like, you got in trouble for spending the night at Wade Walton's house. What ... what does that mean at that time? DM: Yeah. ??? That was 1961. Those ... the reason, probably, we got thrown in jail that time was because the Freedom ... the buses were going down to Mississippi, and they thought we were agitators, and we weren't. When we went to Parchman Farm, and we got in the farms, and I thought, "Well, let's go to the chaplain's house ... he's be a nice guy, and he can arrange" ... we just wanted to record some of the field songs. Well, we had no idea that the chaplain was as racist as everybody else. And so we went up and he was very uncooperative, so we went back to the administration building, and when we got there, I think it was the deputy warden walked in with a big pistol on his ... in a holster, and told us to get the hell out, especially Wade, who was the black guy. And Wade had to drive back to Clarksdale in the back seat. DH: Yeah. Dave, I don't know if you remember this, but they wanted us to ... the state, they called the state troopers, and 10 or 15 miles down the road they pulled us over, and they wanted us to leave Wade there with them. Just like after Emmett Till had been killed, after that guy in Philadelphia, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a couple people had been killed with the collusion of the sheriff, down there. So, if we had left Wade there, he, at the very least, he could have gotten beat up. But Dave, especially you, were very insistent that we take him back to Clarksdale. And they frisked Dave and Wade. And me, I was hanging out by the fender ... we were sort of separated. And, at any rate, they let us take him back, and they kicked us out of the state, and I since interviewed Wade in 1995, and in that ... and Cece Conway recorded that, videotaped that, and Wade knew those two guys, those two cops. DM: Really? DH: They were notorious state troopers, yeah. Yeah, they all had names, those guys. In fact, our arrest, the record of our arrest was part of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission papers that have been ... they're online now. They're at the end of that manuscript. AL: Oh, yeah, that was very interesting reading the ... the writings from the time ... the documentation. Whew. DM: I always thought that when Wade ... Wade offered ... we had mentioned when we were recording Wade Walton that we'd wanted to go down to Parchman Farm. He said, "Well I'll take you. I used to ... I grew up near there." DH: Yeah. DM: Now, my take on it was that he, I think, had already become involved in the NAACP. And I think that he wanted to take a couple of white kids down there, knowing that something was going to happen, and we'd see racism. And that was exactly what... DH: Yes, I agree with that. And I think ... I think somewhere along the line, Wade told me that, in one of my meetings with him, subsequently, he told me as such. And he wanted to show us where ... we went by where Emmett Till's body had been found, I know that. And, so, yeah, it was really very scary, very scary times. And he treated it ... you know, coming from sort of upper middle class, privileged backgrounds, where we could basically do whatever we wanted to do, and we were encouraged to be very outspoken and everything, I thought it was kind of a lark, you know? [laughing] I was smart enough when we were arrested, I had a picture of my then girlfriend, who's black ... and I married her, we've been married for I think 53 years now ... but I had a picture in my wallet of her, and when we were in the jail they told us to take out our wallets, and I found her picture there, and I was smart enough to tear it up and eat it, before they found out. [laughing] Boy, 'cause I think I would have been dead meat if they ... if those bastards had found that. ??? close to my stomach. Aw, man. DM: We were ... I grew up in Baltimore, which was segregated, but I was just a kid and 12 years old when we left. And then California wasn't segregated, at least officially, and so we, you know, grew up and went to college, and we just thought that's the way things were. Then you drive to the South, and it was a big eye-opener for me. I mean ... you'd see a fountain some place, and it would say, "Colored please use cups." So they're providing little Dixie cups for the colored. I mean now it would be the other way around, you know. Rich people, you get to use the cups. Poor people, you had to drink out of the fountain. DH: Well, I remember, I went to Fisk, which is a black school in Mississippi for one semester, in what they called an exchange program between a basically white school and a basically black school. So in 19 ... spring, 59 ... I went to Fisk, and that's where I met Blanche, in fact. So then, driving back to California, there were four of us, three white guys and one black guy. So, leaving Nashville, we thought, well, we'll stop in Memphis and get something to eat ... we thought we could get away with going to a drive-in, which they had a lot of in those days. And we got kicked out of there by the police, and they chased us down the highway, and I made some turns and everything and got rid of them, so then we tried again in Oklahoma to eat, and I went in first, and [laughing] we came across this roadside restuarant thing, the kind of place that would say EAT out front, and the sign there said, "No Negroes, No Indians." So we weren't able to eat until we got to some place like Blythe, California, wherever Route 66 enters California, I forget. So we're in California, we always had to just have one of the whites go in and get sandwiches, and come out and eat in the car. So now we're in California, and we go into this restaurant, they let us sit down and eat, but everybody's like glaring at us, you know, like we had the plague or something, and so that was the only place we went inside somewhere to eat. DM: We went to a diner sort of place, in the black side of town [in Clarksdale, MS], and it was the looniest thing I'd ever seen. There was an entrance for blacks, and there was an entrance for whites, and there were separate counters. But the staff, in the middle, between the counters, would serve the people, they'd serve the blacks and they'd serve the whites. Everybody ??? the same food off of the same plates. I mean, it was idiotic, but that's the way it was. DH: And my memory is that they had two jukeboxes, one on either side, with mostly blues and rhythm and blues and country. You know, I don't ... when you play the jukebox, you obviously could have heard it on both sides. I have no idea ... I didn't ... it would have been really great to hang out in that restaurant for a while, to see ... I think somebody ... I went through that with Dave, I went with you, but then later, I went with these two other guys from school, back to see Wade, and we ... I took them to that restaurant, and those guys thought it was like the nuttiest thing that they ever saw, and one of them, Mike was his name, he went in the wrong side, and they had booted him out and he had to go around to the other side. [laughing] Once I talked to the ... I talked to a woman in Brooklyn once, who was an upper class Trinidadian, black woman, American terminology, and she told me that she played piano, and most of the musicians were trained, and most of the singers, Calypso singers, were unschooled and didn't have any much education. And I said, "Well, when a Calypsonian came to your house to rehearse, would you just let them in?" She said, "No, I'd make them go to the back door." [laughing] I love that. Daphne Weeks. She was a great old gal, by my God. I said, "You won't do that here," and she said, "No, I don't do that." [laughing] AL: So do you think our country is less racist today, or differently racist? DH: Differently racist. I mean it's less ... I think if you're middle class, you're fairly, fairly well off. My grandson, who looks like he could be Hispanic, or Arab, he gets stopped by the police a lot. My son, who would be classified as black, he gets stopped by the police all the time, and it's upstate New York, just for little picky things, you know. And we have a few blacks in town. This one black professor, when she first came in, they pulled her over and she argued a little bit and they took her to jail. You know? And they let her out, but, you know, yeah, it's still around. Yeah, but it's better, it's better, there's more flexibility, there's more types of jobs, especially if you have education. And there's more pockets here and there ... certain places in California, New York City ... when I live in upstate New York ... and even in, like, college towns, and in some communities where it's pretty well no problem, you know? I talk to black students that I have in class ... it's mostly a white school ... and more of them than not tell me they've never had any racial problems whatsoever. So, you know, go figure. Yeah. AL: Well, I have a couple more questions about the Memphis guys. Do you have any impression of the relationship between Will Shade and Gus Cannon, the ... I've read things that indicated that Will Shade kind of ... kind of was sassy toward him, didn't have a huge amount of respect for him, I guess ... do you have any recollection of that? DH: No. AL: Seemed like they were different generations and kind of ran with different crowds. DH: Oh. No, I... DM: I was going to say, the only thing was, Gus Cannon didn't sort of stick around, he'd walk in and then sort of leave. I don't know whether he was very friendly or whether he was not friendly with Will Shade or whether he just was not interested in recording free or something. I don't know. DH: Yeah, I don't, either. DM: If they'd had been real pals, they would have probably ... and ever played together in Memphis, then I'm sure that he would have stayed, don't you think, Don? DH: Yeah, and I think they did have their different, their different groups. And I think Gus Cannon's buddy was Furry Lewis, but I'm not sure. But maybe that was Gus ... maybe that was Will ... maybe that was Will Shade's buddy, I don't know. AL: Yeah, from the stories I've heard, Will Shade and Furry were more buddies. DH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I think, I misspoke. Yeah. And I think they were totally separate from Memphis Minnie, although he knew, apparently he knew where Memphis Minnie's address was, so he kind of knew where everybody was. But I think Memphis Minnie was more legit, more commercial, you know. I'm wondering what the relationship between guys like this was, and say like WDIA ... probably didn't have anything to do with them. And the ... when were we there, 1961, already Memphis is becoming ... wasn't, what's his name, B.B. King was already ... was he already a disk jockey by then, in Memphis? DM: B.B. King? DH: And there's Sun Records, you know, with all of their rockabilly, and their black performers, so I'm thinking these guys were just out of it, in terms of what was the popular vernacular music of the time. And we were, we were, I know I was, and I think Dave, you probably were, too, I mean, we, we thought that anything ... you know, I thought like Chuck Berry, for example, was ... you know ... degenerated blues, it wasn't real, you know, it was ... [laughing] DM: I don't know, I liked him 'cause I play the guitar and he plays great guitar, so... DH: No, no, I liked him, I mean he's kind of like the last sort of thing that I really listened to. But I didn't think it was as good as the stuff from the 20s and ... I know I liked Big Bill Broonzy was my favorite. And I just had a very, kind of like a snobbish attitude, I think, which is really stupid, but ... which is just the opposite, like I know nothing about the whole rise of the music industry from the era of Sun Records and B.B. King being a disk jockey there, and Stax and all that stuff coming forward ... Rufus Thomas and all that. I'm just ignorant of all that. In fact, I'm also ignorant of the blues revival, which was just if we were a few years younger, we would have been right in the middle. I'm thinking Dave, Dave had a plan to get four of these people that he or we had rediscovered and have a ... set up a concert tour, and I think that had to be one of the first ... he never carried it out, but I think that had to be one of the first plans for that, that later became sort of standard operating procedure. DH: I do remember we took Joe Williams to ... where was that, in the Valley, San Fernando Valley some place ... World Pacific Records, is that right? DM: Yeah. DH: Dave, you arranged all that, yeah. And I just have the memory of Joe Williams sitting in the back seat of my father's station wagon, playing guitar, while Dave and I were in the front driving up to this studio. And we ate something at his house, at his motel, or hotel, in Central Avenue, out of a fry pan that he'd ... he'd made this mushy thing. DM: ??? DH: No, this was Joe Williams, ??? DM: ??? That was at his hotel in downtown LA. DH: Yeah, it was up, like, up a walk up, so we were there, and he was eating, so we shared it all. It was good, ???, some kind of fried breakfast. AL: Was that Big Joe Williams, who was in Chicago? DH: Yeah, yeah. AL: He came out to LA? DM: Well, that's where we discovered him, and I think Koester had put him on. I don't know how we found these people, I really don't, but ... we found Williams ... do you have any ... do you know how we found him? Nobody knew he... DH: I think Koester ... Koester had given us some kind of thing, that ... and then you were his manager, briefly, and... DM: I got him a job at a folk club on Melrose. DH: Did you ever ... you recorded him at one point ... that's the missing tape, isn't it? DM: Yep. DH: Yeah. You recorded him ... did you record Jelly Jaw Short with him, or just him? DM: No. No, just him. DH: Yeah. Yeah, really interesting. Yeah, I remember that guy, I thought he was loony tunes. AL: [laughing] Everything I've heard confirms that. DH: Yeah, actually, he wasn't. I mean, he was just a hustler, you know, I mean he did what he had to do to keep in the music ... and from Dave, Dave also interviewed him, which we have, which is really eye-opening, which is a story you hear over and over again, but basically these guys, especially the Southerners, Southern blacks, would play music to stay out of trouble ... to stay out of jail, or, you know, be a convict laborer or something. There's a huge literature on that now, that this sort of slavery continued well into the 60s and early 70s, and these guys could stay away from it by being entertainers, you know. And it didn't keep them totally away ... I think Williams had spent some time in Parchman, or in labor camps, or in, you know, turpentine camps and stuff like that, levy camps. Yeah. AL: We talked about how these performers kind of just stuck with the genre of music that they first started with, but do you have any sense of what other music they were listening to? Like, were they listening to more contemporary stuff on the radio, or listening to records at all? Do you know? DH: Yeah, I think so. I think Wade Walton, especially ... like whatever contemporary was going on, he had in his jukebox ... Elvis, and he also had people like Lightning Hopkins in the jukebox, and I don't know who Will Shade listened to, or Gus Cannon, but my sense was that a lot of these musicians ... ??? I know James Campbell not only listened to, but played, a lot of country music. And that guy that you studied under, Roy Brown in St. Louis, yeah, he listened to a lot of country music, but it was mostly older country music he liked, like Jimmie Rogers and Hank Williams and stuff like that. In fact, when Koester issued... DM: I don't ... Arlo, I don't think a lot of these really down and out musicians, I don't ... they probably didn't have money to buy radios. And you didn't have little transistor radios, you had to buy, you know, big ones in those days. DH: Yeah, yeah. We had a ... DM: We never heard ... except Wade had a barber shop, and he had a jukebox in it, and that's the only time I ever heard anybody playing music, right? DH: Yeah, he had Bill Black's Combo in there, and he had, like I say, Elvis, and he had Lightning Hopkins, I remember that, yeah. But... AL: Okay. And you gave a couple examples, in the memoir, of Will Shade and his kind of witty comments and wordplay that he seemed to really love. Can you remember any more examples of those? I just love when I hear those. DH: What's that? AL: Do you have any ... can you remember any more examples of those? You mentioned the "ladies and gentlemules." DH: Yeah, I don't remember anything with Will Shade except that he did that trick on Dave, and Dave fell right into it. I mean ... "I've got a new way of spending" ... "of spelling Mississippi" ... ah, "Tennesse," or something? And he would, he would do that ... it's kind of like minstrel stuff ... and Wade Walton was really good at telling fanciful stories. One of his best stories wasn't exactly wordplay, but it was definitely performance. And it was about this murderer, white murderer, named Kinnie Wagner, who was locked up several times in Parchman. And it turns out Wade claimed he knew him. He was a real person. And Wade grew up right next to one of the Parchman cotton plantations. And so he would tell his story, and he would, you know, start telling you stuff that was sort of true, and then it would get fanciful, more fanciful, and so on like ... like this guy, Kenny Wagoner, had a ... had a ... keys, and he would lose his keys, he would tell his dogs to go find his keys for him. ??? And then he also told him that he had a gun, and he would shoot, he just loved to shoot. And we thought that was crazy, and then I realized that they gave trustees ... in Parchman, it was like crazy town. It was like a Trump rally or something. You know. They gave ... they gave rifle, or, shotguns to the trustees, and they picked white murderers as their trustees, and if you would shoot somebody trying to escape you could get a pardon. This is true! You know, they've written quite a lot about this, and so that part of it was true. But then the part where he escapes, because his girlfriend or wife comes by in an airplane with a rope and a loop in it, and snags him. [laughing] That's a little far fetched, I think. So, yeah, wordplay is big in ... and he does the Dozens, he does the Dirty Dirty Dozens. And ???, I had thought that that was the first obscene recording of the Dirty Dozens, that we recorded in 61. Now I've got Jelly Roll Morton's CDs that Lomax did in 39 or 1940, and he does pretty much the same Dirty Dozens, with all the cuss words in it. AL: What does the double ... double E, double R ... what does that mean, do you...? DH: Yeah, double ... I don't ??? myself, but it's just wordplay, yeah. I wish we had gotten more of that. And I like Gus Cannon's little animal songs, you know, like... AL: Mister Frog.... DH: Mister Toad, yeah, "Going down the road, I met mister toad." Those gotta be old ... I don't know what the hell they are, maybe like old English child's songs, or something? Or maybe African? I don't know, but they're really neat, you know. AL: Well, that's a perfect segue to my next questions, because I was curious about the "Jump and Jive," that Will Shade does, and it has the lyrics from an old English nursery rhyme in it... DH: Yeah, well the "Jump and Jive," that's a newer song, isn't it? I mean, that's from the 50s, I think. AL: Yeah, well it's ... that part's Cab Calloway, the "Jump and Jive," and then... DH: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, that's right, yeah. AL: But then the Will Shade version has the "Robin the bobbin, the big-bellied Ben," that's an old nursery rhyme. DH: Um hmm. Huh. AL: And then ... he sings ... I always thought he said, "Get up now and send me John," is that what you thought the lyrics were? DH: I don't know. But that's also a newer song, right? From the 50s? "You send me John." AL: Oh, I don't know any source for that section of the song. "Won't you send me, John" you think is a different song? DH: I'm thinking of one that I think Laura Dukes sang. AL: Oh. On your recordings? DH: Yeah. AL: I'll look again. Well, I was talking to Roger Brown, he was with George Mitchell on their trips, and he thought that he was ... he thought that Will Shade was saying, "Get up, Nell, and send me Joan," and it was about being in a whorehouse and asking for a different ... a different woman. [laughing] DH: Oh! [laughing] AL: And when you listen to it, you can kind of hear it both ways, so I wondered if you guys had any insight on that. DH: Yeah, yeah. That's a tricky thing, doing lyrics. [pause] AL: No comment? DH: I'm forever discovering lyrics that I've been singing for 50 years, and discover that I heard it wrong. AL: Yeah. [laughing] DH: That's very hard. AL: Okay. Well, I've been singing ... I've been singing that song for a while as "Jump and Jive," "Get up now and send me John," I sing it real kind of sweet, almost like a lullabye, and then I find out, maybe it's about asking for a different prostitute? That kind of changes the... DH: It could be. DM: Yeah. DH: Dave, you remember Meade Lux Lewis. DM: Oh yeah. DH: And he was a very nice, pretty cultivated guy, doing fairly well, you now, for those days, and ... very dignified man, a reader ... self-educated, but pretty well educated. And, you know, in reading through his interviews ... we saw him on two different days, about six months apart ... and reading through those, it's quite clear that he was a pimp! At, you know, at one stage in his life, that he ran this whorehouse on Lake Michigan, for some kind of mob, for a while. But we were, you know, not quite teenagers, or just like 20, 21, something like that. And I just though, you know, I mean he ... I never thought about it that way, you know, he ... he would say, "Well, and the girls, you know, would be here, and the girls would be there, and this, and then the guy, the owner would come in and he ??? and of course I'd take a little bit on the side," and blah blah blah. And he was so pleasant, and so well-spoken in it, I just thought it was some kind of like a dance hall or something. ??? most of my life, and then when you really listen to the interview, he's talking about him being a pimp, with all these women, and making really good money running this place that apparently was on the edge of the state or something like that, where they could get away with stuff. Pretty class place, in his case ... he did pretty well there in his life, I think. DM: Meade Lux Lewis? DH: Yeah, yeah. DM: Oh, not ... he didn't make a huge amount of money. DH: No, no, he didn't, but he wasn't like down and out like Will Shade. DM: Oh. DH: Yeah, yeah. AL: So at what point did ... at what point did you guys start thinking that these recordings should be in the Library of Congress? I guess you had tried to donate them to Indiana University, so you had a sense that they had some lasting value, but ... can you tell me about your process there? DH: Yeah, I had left them with them when I went to the Caribbean, I think, or somewhere in there, and they never accessed them. And then they sort of lost them, and then they discovered them in a closet. So I said, "Well, send them back to me." Then I tried to give the ones I had to Jim O'Neal, who you may have heard of, he started the Mississippi Blues Trail, and Living Blues, and I left them with him for like a year or two, and he never did anything with them, so he sent them back to me. And then Dave, I think you ... you spotted that Grammy grant, or something. DM: What happened was, Don, we ... each of us had the same ??? half of the recordings, and making matters even worse is I had ??? dubbed a lot because of ... of ??? recordings, and we had a collection that we didn't really know what was original or not. But anyway, somebody called Don, I think it was Rainer [?], and wanted ... I heard that we had music of somebody, and at the same time somebody called me and he was doing for, I think, Public Radio International, something on rhythm and blues, and had heard, I don't know how, that we had interviews of, I think, one was Meade Lux Lewis, and I think Muddy Waters, he was interested in somebody else. And so that guy came to my house to get the tapes, he lived in Washington, to make digital copies and then bring them back, and then he mentioned the Grammy Foundation was giving out grants. DH: Ah. DM: And so, and Don ... and because Don had received a request, I think, for Wade Walton music, it wasn't, wasn't used, but we thought, "Hey, wait, we got some, maybe, good stuff, that's worth something, and so I found, I somehow contacted the Grammy people, and they sent an application form, and we wrote something, and got the grant. DH: Yeah. DM: And then we had to meet, and I spent almost a week at Don's house, and we listened to all the tapes we had, to figure out which were the originals and which were dubs, and so on like that, and then finally, after we got the grant ... and I had ... at this ... at the time that we were doing this, I maybe ... I guess maybe we hadn't applied for the grant yet ... I had ... I lived in Washington, outside of Washington, DC, and I went down to the Smithsonian Folkways and I went to the Library of Congress, I guess when we were talking about doing something with our collection, and so when we got the Grammy grant, we thought first of Smithsonian Folkways, because they were ... they were issuing stuff on CDs at the time, and now it would be online, and the Library of Congress is the Library of Congress, it doesn't really get the stuff out, it just catalogs everything. But the Smithsonian Folkways was moving at the time. We had to kind of collaborate with somebody for the Grammy people, because they ... the purpose of it was to digitize the recordings and then turn them over to some institution that would preserve them, and that was something that we couldn't do on ourselves. And the Smithsonian Folkways were moving to a different building and they said, "We wouldn't be able to do anything for six months," or something like that. So I approach the Library of Congress, Folklife Division, and they said, "Yeah, sure, we'll do it." So that's how that happened, we paired up. It would have been better with Smithsonian Folkways, because we wouldn't have gotten so bogged down in tedium. DH: Yeah. But we had split the recordings ... well, we had done two things that we've both kind of forgotten about. The first thing we did is, when we graduated from college, in 1961, on graduation day, instead of going home, we camped out in the radio station, where we worked, the college radio station, and dubbed a whole lot of 45s and stuff, but we also made dubs of our tapes. And then, when I got out of the Army, we got together, probably in 64 or 65, and we split up the tapes again, or did something with them ... 'cause I went and visited you in Ventura, I think. DM: Yeah. DH: And ... so then, whatever ... I didn't quite have everything ... and we'd also sent some tapes to a guy in England, that subsequently did not issue them, and so, then when we did this grant, we got all this stuff together and sort of analyzed it and figured out as best we could what was original and what wasn't, and... DM: Oh, but you should point out that we were also cutting the original tapes up for various reasons. Don would send ... send a tape somewhere, or part of a tape to somebody who wanted it, and not get it back. And I sent my Joe Williams, Big Joe Williams tape to Paul Endicott, who was an agent for kind of folklore people, and I never got it back, and he claimed he had sent it back, and ... that was a wonderful tape. So, it was kind of ... it was kind of difficult, when we were starting to organize the collection, to get it back together and see what it really was. DH: Yeah, we lost ... we lost two really important recordings. One was the Joe Williams, and the other was a guy, a street musician I had recorded when I was a student at Fisk in Nashville, called ... my God, now I can't think of his name ... he wasn't that great a performer, but actually I had recorded two sessions with him. One session we have, and the other session had gotten lost somewhere. Probably on the back of another tape that we sent to ... that I sent to England ... Dave said, like we cut up. So that's probably one of them. And then one of the country, country performers that we recorded, that I really liked, but the guitarist backing him was no good, it was his 14-year old nephew, and that kind of ruined it a little bit, but there were some good songs on that. And then there's one Wade Walton tape missing, where he's talking about making corn liquor. So those are the big ones, yeah. But the guy in Nashville, subsequent to my recordings, some other guy recorded him in 64 or 68, and he won a Grammy with that. Who's that guy ... a street singer, he sold pencils, a blind singer. Blind ... C.C. Clark. Cortelia Clark, C.C. Clark, yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm the first guy to record him. [laughing] And ... yeah. DM: What was lucky for us was when we graduated and spent about a week at the radio station, when we dubbed our tapes off, we dubbed them on an Ampex, so the dubs were in good condition. DH: Yeah. In fact, they were in better condition. One of the reasons why I know more about some of this material is that I played them in class ... in class over the years, particularly Wade Walton. And I would listen to them, at least up until the last 20 or 30 years I'd listen to them, for like 15 or 20 years, so ... but every ... one of the tape recorders I had, had ... was faulty, and when you'd stop it sometimes, it would put a little click in the tape. So on some of these, the dubs were actually better than the originals. Or, I had a dub, and a screwed it up, and then Dave had the original. So we were able to kind of like find the best. I'm surprised ... like, I recorded this ... these street musicians, James Campbell's group, on the street in Nashville. And nobody seems to like that. I play that back on my tape recorder ... ??? I play that for ???, I play that for different people, and they say, "All you hear is the buses going by," and this and that, so we digitized that ... it's about 35 or 40 minutes of street musicians. But when you digitize that, and you play it back on a good system, it's fantastic! It more than captures the music, it captures the era. Because they parked themselves right outside, I think, the Hermitage Hotel, which was a really fancy, then-segregated, white hotel. So these black musicians are outside this hotel. And these mostly white, but not exclusively, people are ??? by and listening to these street musicians, and they're throwing coins in the hat, and you can hear the coin drop in the hat, you can hear the buses going by, you could ... now you know this, Arlo, because you're a street musician, you play in the street, you know, there's all this stuff you put up with, that's ... that's part of the soundscape, you know? I mean, that's the whole thing, is ... it's not just the music. Meanwhile, the washtub bass player refused to record for me because I was ripping him off. He was one of those people. And so he's arguing like half of the time. [gibberish to imitate complaining] You know. And meanwhile, the trumpet player played with one of the groups of Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, and lo and behold, this guy Doug Seroff, who with Lynn Abbott has written like three or four massive books now about turn of the century black music, as it appears in black newspapers all around the country ... amazing feats of research ... and my trumpet player shows up in the early 1900s, playing in these bands, you know, going around the country, it's like really neat, you know, what you can do now, with the Internet and everything, with all the researchers out there, so ... that turns out now to be one of my favorite tapes I've got. I love that thing. You play that on a good thing, and you're out there on the street. And you can also hear the segregation, because they say, "Yes sir, thank you so much, sir," you know, stuff like that, for the money that people are dropping into the ... and, "Well, what song do you want to hear?" "Oh, I'd like to hear the Saints." "Oh yeah, we can play that, yes sir." You know, stuff like that. It's really cool. Yeah. AL: So you mentioned the little interview you have with Will Shade. Is that surviving? DH: Is it what? AL: You still have that? Did that survive? DH: Yeah, yeah, that's ... that's there. I think it's about eight minutes long. AL: I would love to hear that. Could you guys share it with me, or should I request it from the Library of Congress? DH: Yeah, I'm just trying to think of how ... my problem is ... is that I live out in the boondocks, so I'll have to make a ... actually, I could put it on a CD, without going through Sound Forge or something, and just put it on as a WAV file ... can you play WAV files? AL: Sure, yeah. DH: Yeah, so I can ... that makes it easy, all I have to do is copy it, if it's all right with Dave. DM: Yeah, the only thing we would like to guard against is if gets put on the Internet, we wouldn't want it lifted off. AL: Okay. So ... so what I'd like to do is just listen to it myself and then write a little summary of what's in there? And put that on the Will Shade website. DM: Oh, that's fine. DH: Yeah. DM: Sure, that's ... that's fine. AL: Okay. DH: Some of ... some of these things, including that, and they're not very good because I didn't transcribe them very well, but most of these interviews, I've ... at least that I was part of ... I published on Cadence magazine. So they might, it might be there. I think it is there. Yeah. So you might ... I don't ... I think Cadence now might even be online. So you might be able to just call that up, already transcribed. AL: Okay. I'd still love to hear it. Just ... I just love hearing his voice. DH: If it's not ... if it's not, then we'll ... yeah, email me, and then I can, I can copy it. Yeah. AL: Okay. Thanks. I have one more question, and this is not for my project, but I just found out that the Memphis Jug Band is getting inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in May, and they have a new... DH: Who? Who is? AL: Memphis Jug Band. DH: Oh, fantastic. AL: Yeah. And there's a new museum for the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis, and they're looking for artifacts that they can display, to represent the Memphis Jug Band. If you have anything you would be interested in donating, I can connect you with them. But no pressure. DM: Artifacts? AL: Yeah. DH: I have his jug. [laughing] AL: You what? DH: No, no. AL: [laughing] DM: I have his washboard, man, I have his washboard. Remember when we brought it back off of our car? DH: [laughing] DM: But then I threw it away, so that's gone. AL: [laughing] DM: I'm joking, Arlo, I'm joking. AL: Yeah. That would be cool. DM: But we didn't ... we didn't know enough ... we didn't even get his autograph. DH: No. And he never wrote us ... some of those guys wrote us, like Wade wrote us a few letters. [pause] One of my favorite recordings we have ... I've ... like, I have ??? weird ... one of my favorite recordings ... I was like a recording freak. And we're in Pomona, and so Dave and I are calling Wade Walton. And this is around 1960 ... or it must have been 61, spring of 61, because we're getting ready to go to Memphis, to Memphis, to take Wade to New York to record, or New Jersey. And so I recorded that phone conversation, which is only about five or six minutes long, but ... I don't know how old you are, but ... in those days, it was a major feat making a long-distance call. You know, the blues about a long-distance call, you know. So all the connections, they're on there, you know ... making the call, one operator ??? another operator, they're trying to locate Wade Walton somewhere, he's coming to the phone, and then when we gets to the phone, Dave's on the phone, and Wade goes, "Dave, Dave!" You know ... it's really neat, it's like, how many old fashioned phone conversations ... now you could call anywhere in the world, and it's all the same, you know. And what they don't realize is that especially ... I don't know ... I don't think I recorded the prior calls, whether they called us back ... usually what you'd do is that you'd tell your instructions to the operator, and then you'd hang up, and five minutes, or maybe an hour later, they'd call you back when they made the connection, you know. And so ... so we've got that piece of history sealed. DM: Arlo, Will Shade's being inducted into what hall of fame? AL: The Blues Hall of Fame. DM: Oh, no kidding, that's great. AL: Yeah. DM: No, I wish we had something, but we don't. DH: We don't. AL: Okay. Yeah, I haven't been to Memphis for a while myself. I went for his gravestone dedication and for his Beale Street Walk of Fame dedication. I'd like to go to this event in May, but I don't think I'll make it. DH: Is that Blues Hall of Fame, would that be considered the major Blues Hall of Fame in the, in the country? AL: I think so, I think it's the organization that gives the ... it's ... it's like a Grammy, but it's just for blues ... I can't remember what it's called, but ... you know, people ... people that get them today are like Buddy Guy and ... you know, I'm sure B.B. King is in there. It's more of the modern kind of Chicago style blues, but they inducted Memphis Minnie a couple years ago and Gus Cannon a couple years ago, and now they're doing the Memphis Jug Band. DH: Fantastic. AL: Yeah, pretty neat. And there was ... when you said you had Will Shade's jug, I did do a double-take, because Gus ... somebody has Gus Cannon's jug, and it was in a museum in Memphis for a while, and the museum closed, and now it's unclear where it ended up, but some ... some private collector has it. DH: You know, I'll take ... there's a ... when I went there in 95, maybe that's the museum that closed. I went through there and I took about 30 or 40 photographs inside the museum. So there may be 1 or 2 or 3 of Memphis Jug Band related photographs that might not be available now if the museum closed. So I'll have to look and see if I have anything of interest there. AL: Okay, cool. DH: Yeah. Of course, we have our own photographs. DM: But they, for the museum, they'd want the group performing, and stuff like that. I don't think we have anything that would interest them, but if you can come up with something, Arlo, that would be fine. AL: Okay. Yeah, I just, I just told them I'd ask around, see if anybody has anything. DM: Good luck. AL: [laughing] Thanks. I appreciate you guys talking to me today. Do you have anything else to add? DH: No, I think I'm pretty well talked out. DM: Well, the only thing is, if we can find my correspondence from 1961, and from 1960, it might have some information and I can call you about it. Because I wrote letters, a lot of letters back home to my family and that's where we've discovered a lot of stuff that we've forgotten. DH: And we're not sure whether Dave has that stuff, or whether he sent it to me, so I've got to go through all my papers and stuff, and see whether I have all that stuff. Anyway... AL: Okay. And Don, thanks for sharing your draft memoir, that was very interesting. DH: Okay. DM: And I've got a question, Arlo. What ... do you play music ... do you play, your jug band play around Portland? AL: Yep. We play about... DM: Regularly? AL: Yeah, about ... a few times a month. DM: That's good. Because we're ... my wife and I are planning a trip up to, actually, Salem, Oregon, where we have old friends we knew back in Bethesda, Maryland, and I'd like to come up and talk. AL: Okay, sure. DM: That would be fun. AL: Yeah. Do you have a timeline for that? DM: Some time this year. AL: Okay. DH: [laughing] DM: I mean, I'll let you know. It's ... it's, I don't know. We're still ... we moved a year and a half ago to California, and we're still adjusting. I mean, I've got still boxes and boxes of stuff that's unpacked, and so on. My wife's got a problem with her dad and her brother back East, so she's going back in March, and then ... a lot of things are up in the air. I'll let you know in advance when you finally decide we're going to go. AL: Okay. DH: Dave, you still ... you still have some unpacked stuff ... some letters might be in there, do you think? DM: I opened up yesterday a box that was labeled "Correspondence," I think, "1960 to" whatever, and all the stuff from like 58 through 61 is missing, so I must have put it somewhere else. And I can't even find the copies of the ... I sent you an, I sent you an email about it, so... DH: Yeah, yeah, and I've got that. I ... yeah, Anthony, my grandson, cleaned out some junk out of the basement, so it's gradually getting better, and over the next week or so I'm going to see if I can find what I've got, you know. AL: Cool. Well, I'll keep you both posted on my ... what I do with this. I'm going to transcribe it and then condense it down into an article that I can put online for people to read. But I'll share that with you as I make progress on it. DH: Oh, that's nice. Enjoy that. I appreciate that. AL: All right. Well, thanks again. DM: Okay. DH: Okay, well thanks. Thank you. AL: Enjoy the rest of your day. DH: Okay. AL: Bye bye. DM: Bye bye. DH: Bye.