December 1, 2015
interview with Roger Brown (RB)
conducted by telephone by Arlo Leach (AL)

AL: I just wanted to start by saying I really liked the book by Matthew Ishmael, and, a lot of good information there, but I don't want to repeat what he's already got, so I do have some questions kind of building on what he talked about. But if there's anything you would like to go back over, or any new stories that didn't make it into that book, then I'd love to hear that as well.

RB: Yeah, we'll get around to that!

AL: Okay, good. Well, let me start with a question here. What was your goal in starting these trips to visit these musicians?

RB: Our goal was simply discovery. When it became clear to us on the liner notes of that Willie Borum album that there was a chance to witness some of these guys live, we just jumped at it. We loved this stuff. Remember, this was all pre Godrich and Dixon, and there was very little out there. So, you know, like with a lot of people, when you got that Country Blues, that Charters LP you know, that really got things rolling. And we combed a lot of record stores in Atlanta and so forth, but there wasn't much there.

AL: Okay. So just the thought of maybe getting to see a live performance, getting to meet them in the flesh, that was a motivation?

RB: Absolutely. That was very appealing, and we had no idea how difficult that was going to be. As a matter of fact, this probably was in the book, we were prepared to search that whole first day. And if you had told us that ten minutes after we started we'd be hearing "Kansas City Blues," with Shade and Burse, we probably would have shipped you to Millersville, which is a Georgia state mental hospital ... I don't know where the one is in Oregon or Tennessee.

AL: That was interesting how quickly you found them, and you at least went to Beale Street and started in their neighborhood. Do you have any sense...

RB: Fourth and Beale, yep, that was in the liner ... Charters I think indicated that Shade lived in a run-down tenement off of Beale. He may have said near Fourth and Beale ... I think he said off Beale ... and I think it was just chance, because Handy Park was there, you know. And so we just parked right there at Handy Park, and walked in the pharmacy ... followed our noses!

AL: Do you have any sense of how well-known they would have been outside of that neighborhood?

RB: Oh, yeah, well, we knew the Memphis Jug Band was a big deal, just from the two or three things we'd heard up to that point.

AL: Uh huh. I'm just wondering how well-known they were outside of the culture of blues music, even right there in Memphis. Like if you had been in another part of town and had asked about them, do you have a sense of what response you would have gotten?

RB: No, I don't even think we'd heard of E.H. Crump, or whatever his name was, the mayor. We didn't know any of that stuff. We just had that one tip. [George] Mitchell had an aunt in Memphis, you know, so he may have had more of an idea of what Memphis was about than I did. His aunt and his father argued about which was bigger, Memphis or Atlanta, or which was better, Memphis or Atlanta, you know. But that was immaterial. We just crashed there so that we could get over to Beale Street and see if we could hear some of that stuff. And of course they were on their way to the Peabody Hotel, that morning. And that's a piece of Memphis ... we'd never heard of the Peabody Hotel. But I'll never forget that lobby! And I'll never forget how Charlie Burse looked duckwalking as he was playing his tenor guitar in that lobby. "Hi yo silver! Hi yo silver!" You know, he was just playing whatever, whatever he thought. You know, that wasn't a blues session for them. That was just tips, from white folks.

AL: Let's jump to that, because that's one of the most fascinating scenes, from my point of view. If I could drop myself back in time anywhere, I would love to see them perform, and you got to see them! At least those two, in the '60s. What else do you remember about that gig?

RB: Oh, the gig at Peabody? Well, I remember ... that was very brief. We gave them a ride over, and we watched them for a few minutes down there, and then some white guy came up and invited them to play for a little party in his room. And so they went up there, and then Will's leg started bothering him, so they left early. And that was all the ??? to that. We have no idea what they played for that guy and his group.

AL: Up in their hotel room, you mean?

RB: Up in the hotel room, yeah.

AL: How long were they playing in the lobby? Were you hanging around as long as they were there?

RB: Yeah. It wasn't very long. I'd say we were there maybe a half hour.

AL: And in the book it mentioned, it says they didn't play blues for that crowd. What were they playing? Just pop songs?

RB: As I said, he was singing something about "Hi yo silver! Hi yo silver!" You know how boisterous Burse could be. No, the music there was unexceptional. I guess you could say they were playing down to their audience.

AL: Oh, just kind of clowning around?

RB: It was Christmas time, and that's where the people were. And they were down on their luck by that time. I mean, that was grinding poverty. I think that's the way Charters expressed it. That was a squalid ... you know, they had raw fish on some rack on the floor. I mean, they weren't eating well. When we went over there for a party, you know, the next trip up, we went out and bought a whole bunch of hamburgers from some place. I mean, good stuff. And so everybody was gorging themselves that night. But we wondered, you know, how many meals they even had a day. And Jennie Mae was in bad shape. She only had one lung, you know. She was ... the second time we went up there, she was in the hospital. Came home, looked like warmed over death. But they're great pictures! She's photogenic enough. You know the picture of him on the bass, with her sitting behind him, on that one album. There's another picture of them, that day, you know, similar picture ... I don't know if you've seen the picture, there's a picture that Mitchell posted on Facebook, recently, of Shade and Borum with George and me behind them? You probably are savvy enough with Facebook so you could get a look at that. That was several weeks ago, but somebody commented on it yesterday, so I saw it again yesterday on Facebook. Good picture. Except that I'm fading now!

AL: I think I did see that, or one like it, because I remember asking whose house it was in, and George responded.

RB: So, yeah, you know how to contact him, right? Because he is of course savvy at sending pictures, you know, electronically, and I'm not. I've got some. I've got a negative of Shade and Furry Lewis that I'd forgotten I had. But there are a lot of photos you haven't seen yet. Have I already forwarded you the picture of the stairs themselves?

AL: No.

RB: Oh, I haven't? Well, I can do that. Yeah, that's impressive. That tells you just what hit us, you know, five or ten minutes after we got out of the car, as Whiskey [nickname] was leading us up those stairs. Those are impressive. But surely I've sent you the picture he took years later of that intersection, right?

AL: No.

RB: Okay, I'll finish ... those are all in my email. I will forward those to you before the day's out. But there's more where that came from, you know, he had a picture of the parking lot, of Abe McNeil playing and those little girls dancing. We got pictures of a woman dancing in the Shade apartment, a very good dancer, I might add. A picture of that Catherine Porter, if that's in fact her name, who sang those two numbers with him on the guitar, "Pretty Baby" and "Every Day I Have the Blues." So there are several pictures that capture that scene there. He's got pictures of Gus, pictures of Furry. I've got a picture somewhere of the last time I visited Gus, with him standing out in the yard with his banjo, straight on, a good shot.

AL: Neat. Yeah, I'd love to see any of that, that you want to share.

RB: Again, but I'm not savvy about sending electronically and so forth, and I've got to be honest with you, every time I've been generous with something like that, I've been burned. I can't say enough bad things about the dishonest jerks in this business. Of course, you know, have you ever looked at the discography, the post-45 discography, was it Neil Slaven that did them? Beale Street Mess Around, by Shade, with Abe McNeil in the background? Now, I don't have the latest editions of anything, but the one I've got identifies the percussion as Abe McNeil tap dancing! Well, sure ... he was clapping his chest! I don't know if it's even been corrected. But it goes to show, you can't believe everything you read!

AL: Uh huh! Definitely. I've got that record, I just got it yesterday, and it's a 2006 edition, and it says "clapping."

RB: Okay! Well, you can thank me for that. Because I told them, I knew that was correct because I was present. And he clapped well! He's also the one you hear making stray comments, say on Furry's "Pera Lee Blues." Oh, he probably interjects about 10 times in that song. Effectively, I thought. Added some spirit. I'll tell you one thing while I'm thinking about it, before I forget. That wonderful evening we spent over at Borum's house, that Borum played a lot. And I remember one verse he sang, that is not on any of his records, to my knowledge: "Her leg up in the air, she began to shout / Go easy on me, daddy, but please don't take it out." And when he dropped the needle, we also dropped the needle on his Prestige Bluesville album, for Charters, and when he dropped it on "The Stuff Is Here," that uptempo harp number, this may be in the book, Shade looked askance at him and said, "You naughty boy," and Borum laughed heartily, because he knew he stole that [the harp part] from Shade. And another thing that they told us, and this, again, no Godrich and Dixon, right? We didn't even know that Hattie Hart existed. We knew that they named the title "Ambulance Man," and Jennie Mae wailed "Ambulance Man," so we assumed that when the jug band recorded "Ambulance Man," it was Jennie Mae. But of course it wasn't, it was Hattie Hart. They mentioned a lot of performers, and they mentioned a lot of titles. We were only aware of about three of them. "Stealin'," you know, "Sun Brimmer's Blues," "K.C. Moan." In any event, one of those songs, this is the inside baseball I promised you, at the end of one of those songs, they're frolicking, you know, and one of them shouts, "Get off of that, too sweet!" Did you understand that?

AL: I heard in an interview with Will Shade that he had a dog named Tout de Suite.

RB: No, no, his cat! It was a cat, yeah. Too Sweet was a cat. Now I've tried, and I have heard that, but I wonder if on some of these reissues if they didn't cut that off, because I haven't been able to find it recently. I was trying to figure the song. But I have heard that myself, and I knew about it from that first trip to Memphis, when they were laughing about that.

AL: Well, so, it's at the end of "It Won't Act Right," the Memphis Jug Band song.

RB: "It Won't Act Right," is that what it is?

AL: Yeah.

RB: You can still hear it?

AL: Yep, yep. "Get on outta there, tout de suite. Woof, woof." They bark like a dog in there.

RB: Okay, I'm glad ... between the two of us, we got it then. Definitely a cat, though, not a dog.

AL: So Will Shade was a cat person.

RB: Well, I don't know that, but, hey, that was a lot of years before. That was ... Too Sweet was a cat.

AL: So are they saying "tout de suite," like the French phrase, or "too sweet"?

RB: You've got to stress the first syllable. "TOO sweet."

AL: But is it like, "tout de...." Is it the French phrase, that means "immediately"?

RB: What do you mean, French? Oh, no no no no no! More than enough sweetness! T double-o, t double-o.

AL: Okay. I always thought it was "tout de suite," like "get on outta there immediately."

RB: Oh, no. Good heavens, I'm sure they didn't know a word of French.

AL: (Laughing) Okay.

RB: That's how mistakes get into books. Yeah, I could see how you could conclude that. No, it's "too sweet," t double-o, s w double-e t.

AL: Okay, very good.

RB: Guaranteed!

AL: (Laughing) Okay. Um, let's go back to that staircase. And you're walking up there for the first time. Was that hard to go into an environment like that, or did it ... I mean, you were crossing a lot of boundaries there, race and culture and class....

RB: Nothing to it, nothing to it, no. Good heavens, man, we came from Atlanta, we were used to blacks, we were used to rough neighborhoods, seeing, you know ... if you rode the trolley from the part of Atlanta we lived in, downtown, you went down forest avenue, the so-called Fourth Ward, where the harp player Eddie Mapp was murdered, you saw all kinds of unemployed men loitering around, you know. No, that was nothing. And remember, we were excited. We were on the track! Whiskey was marching up those stairs, and he rapped on that door and said, "Somebody's here to see you." And he stuck that big paw out, "Shade's my name." "We come all the way from Atlanta to find you." "They're from Atlanta, Charlie, let's play them the 'Kansas City Blues.'" That's exactly how it happened. And then I remember being delerious. I think that's the only time I've been delerious in my life, except when I got a shot of morphine before surgery, my wisdom teeth.

AL: And their attitudes, they seemed so welcoming, and friendly toward you.

RB: Absolutely. Absolutely. "Shade's my name," yeah. Couldn't have been more gracious.

AL: Was that different between the jug band musicians in Memphis, and other blues musicians you visited on other trips? Just the attitudes that they had toward you?

RB: Yeah, we never ... I would not differentiate ... you know, you got personality. A guy like Buddy Moss is moody, right? And most of the time Buddy was jovial and gracious, but not always. Robert Lockwood ... there were times, if you tried to quiz him, you couldn't get anything out of him. I heard an interview Mitchell did ... played the tape once at Mitchell's ... Mitchell wasn't getting anywhere with him. But with Lockwood, if you hung around him, all kinds of tidbits would dribble out, little by little, you know? When you least expected them. But by and large, they always appreciated your interest in their music, and they got ... maybe we gave off better vibes than some white guys. I say that because, I don't know if you've read the book on Blind Willie McTell by that, what's his name, Graves ... it's up on my shelf, he's a British guy. It's a very good ... it's Hand Me My Traveling Shoes ... hold on a second. Hand Me My Traveling Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray. That belongs in your library, that's a very, very good book. But, but, he runs down Curly Weaver's daughter, he said she was nasty to him. And, well, I called her once, I wanted to ask her about Fred McMullen mainly, and she was gracious! Well, I have a Southern accent, he has a British accent, you know ... I don't know how he is in person, but he must have really put her off, because she was as sweet as she could be when I talked to her.

AL: Gotcha. Makes total sense.

RB: I'm trying to think of who else. I mean, listen, I've rubbed shoulders with Robert Pete Williams ... as warm as you could be. Spent the night at his place. Or even a guy like ... oh, what's his "sweet mama" ... "sweet mama rolling stone" ... down on Lake Mary ... Dunbar, Scott Dunbar. You've heard of him?

AL: No, I haven't.

RB: Well, I'll mention him because, as I told my students, he's the most primitive person I've ever met, with the possible exception of Robert Burse. I mean, they don't come any more primitive! I had ... he was a tip for me from Fred Ramsey. I met Fred Ramsey when I was teaching at Hiram College, so he gave me some pointers when I took a group of students down, a colleague and I took a bunch of students down to New Orleans for an inter-term course, and so I called him collect at the general store, down in ... really back in the boonies, is Lake Mary, and so he returned my call. I said hello, I was calling from the jazz archives there at Tulane. And he said, [very low and slowly] "Who you is?" And you ought to ... you really owe it to yourself ... you listen to ... his signature number is "Sweet Mama Rolling Stone." And listen to how that ends, and you'll realize just how primitive that guy is. Or was. He was something. He was something. But, anyway, he was obviously tickled pink in our interest, and of course we gave him a few bucks. And he may have known Dick Allen. Dick Allen was very ... Dick Allen was in with all those guys. In fact, I was looking through my photographs ... I have a picture of a guy named Percy Randolph, who you've probably never heard of. He was a harp player down there, and he recorded. And his nickname was Brother, and Dick Allen called him Brother, you know, they were obviously on very good terms. Never had any problems with any of the musicians. There was a guy who was making threatening noises across the street when I was at Furry's once, and you know Furry just said, "Hey, as long as you're with me, you don't have anything to worry about." You know, and he said, "That guy's a shell-shocked veteran," you know, "don't worry." No, as I told my students, the only time I was really frightened was by Gus Cannon's landlord's dog, the most vicious dog I've ever encountered in my life. He wanted to sink his teeth into my white flesh so bad!

AL: Oh! (Laughing) Seems like just about everybody that did field work in that area went to see Will Shade. Why do you think he was the focus of so much of that? Was he just easier to find?

RB: Well, yeah, you know Dick Allen did, and you know Sam Charters did. Well, look, he was the entrepreneur of the Memphis Jug Band. And if you'll allow me an aside, you know, one thing that always annoyed me with Sam Charters, at some point there in his writing he called Will Shade, quote, a limited musician, unquote. Which I thought was a gratuitous insult, to a quite, quite advanced musician. And the other one that I think is kind of a myth that got out there somehow, you know, these things repeat themselves, that the Cannon's Jug Stompers was superior to the Memphis Jug Band. Well, I love the Cannon's Jug Stompers, and I love Noah Lewis. I wouldn't say Noah Lewis was better on the harp than Will Shade, they had different styles! Just as Jed Davenport had a different style. They all had ... they all complemented each other. Hammie Nixon. But they had twice the output of the Cannon's Jug Stompers! And there wasn't much chaff in there, it was mostly wheat!

AL: A lot of diversity of styles, too.

RB: Yeah! Take a song like "Ambulance Man." Where the hell that came from I will never know. I wish I'd asked him. That's not like ... that's not the normal fare. No, so, I can't say enough about his musicianship. And of course, also, it wasn't his only instrument. It was his first instrument, but it wasn't his only one, either. I like his guitar playing. It's simple, but it's effective. But ... how did you get me on that? Oh yeah, why was he ... well, he was it. He and Charlie were the only ones left, for one thing. And you certainly didn't want to deal with just Charlie. Will was a lot more sensible than Charlie! Charlie was the most irrepressible person I've ever met. And temperamental. Wow ... you know, had to ... he wasn't gonna go give that concert if he wasn't paid more than the rest of them. That was a scene there, something we had to deal with.

AL: That was a challenge.

RB: That was a challenge, just as Willie Borum's wife was a challenge. We didn't have a chance on that. (Laughing) We were naive. Boy, she didn't want him roaming the streets anymore.

AL: So, the way I see it, jug band music is basically blues with some extra instruments added...

RB: Those guys ... some of those jug bands were not "basically blues." The Memphis Jug Band and Cannon's Jug Stompers were basically ... hold on, just an aside, before I forget it. Let's say it originated in Cincinnati, somewhere on the Ohio River. You've seen that video of one of those groups, one of those Ohio River groups doing "Tear It Down, Bed Slats and All"?

AL: Yeah, the Whistler's Jug Band.

RB: Right, right. And you compare that with the one by the Memphis Jug Band? There's no comparison! The Memphis Jug Band is, well, as I told my students, the jug band music may have originated in Cincinnati or somewhere like that, but it was perfected in Memphis. And it seems to me most of those Memphis groups were predominantly blues. But I wouldn't make a blanket statement along those lines.

AL: Well, I guess I was referring to those Memphis groups, the groups that you had met in Memphis. And my question was, why do you think Will Shade and his cohorts played jug band music instead of just sticking with straight blues. In other words, what do you think that the jug band elements gave them as performers?

RB: Well, that combination of homemade and legitimate instruments is a very appealing sound. I mean, I never asked them, you know, when did you guys get the idea. I'm assuming it was in the air, or they were exposed to it from those Ohio River groups, and it must have ... they must have cut quite a scene on a street corner in Memphis.

RB: I'm just thinking of that picture, and I'm sure you've seen the picture in Bengt Olsson of Memphis Jug Band ... and again, I'm very suspicion of them ... it says around '35 ... you've got Will Shade on the jug, that's clear. And then it identifies a guitar player on the far left as Charlie Burse, that's doubtful. Mitchell thinks the guy on the far right is Charlie Burse, he's clowning ... he doesn't have any ... and that looks more like Charlie to me than that guy on the left. Then Wilfred Bell, who I didn't know, and Robert Carter, the younger guy, I think that's probably correctly identified, but I didn't meet him, either. And I don't know what's behind them, looks like a hedge and a building? But I think that was commercially, or playing for tips, you're better off that way than sitting there with a lonesome guy with a guitar. Or playing a harp solo. Look how many string bands there were! You've got Gus Cannon talking about string bands. He could name a slew of them! And all the personnel, you know? And if you've met that guy, T.C. Johnson, who's mentioned in that book, you know ... I accosted him on the street ... you know that story, right?

AL: Uh, no, the T.C....

RB: Well, I asked Furry Lewis about T.C. Johnson, right? And he said, "Oh, he been gone from here many moons, many moons. He been gone from here many moons." And I thought, okay, well, why would he say that to me? Probably because he knew I'd buy him some more bourbon, and if I got a hold of T.C. Johnson, I might buy it for him instead. So I went right down to Beale Street from there, and bumped into Robert Burse, and I asked him about T.C. Johnson. "He come down here every day. He come down here every day. Yonder he come now!" He points, "Yonder he come now!" And sure enough, with his blue suit, and dragging a leg behind him, he probably had a stroke, and so I accosted him, took a picture of him and asked him about his career, and he said something about some ball he played for, and he stayed drunk through the '30s and '40s, I mean, a couple of decades had stayed drunk, but he had a great string band. You ever heard the "Violin Blues," by T.C. Johnson and his group? That's the bluesiest violin you'll ever hear. Yeah, that's worth getting ahold of. I got it from old, um, what's that guy down in ... Joe Bussard, in Frederick, Maryland, who has this great, legendary CD collection. Are you aware of the DVD on him called Desperate Man Blues?

AL: No.

RB: You ought to get ahold of it! It was done by some Australians. I loaned it to somebody who lost it, dammit. You gotta watch that. That guy, he's one of a kind. And I've been in his basement. He's mentioned, there's a chapter on him in this book this gal wrote titled Don't Sell at Any Price. That's a fun book to read about 78 collectors. That's the blues ... there's a chapter on Joe Bussard in there, but that's an experience ... he's one of a kind, no doubt about that. And you can get ... he'll dub numbers for you, in whatever order you want. Unfortunately, when I bought from him it was only cassettes, and now, it's hard to even find a cassette player anymore. But anyway, he's a great source and that's where I got my "Violin Blues" and a few others by T.C. Johnson, and realized he was a significant guy. aBut if you're going to Memphis, yeah, why would you ... I mean, he's very obscure, right? Of course you'd look up Will Shade before anybody else, because he ran the ... he founded the Memphis Jug Band, and he was one of the last two or three survivors.

RB: Now there's one thing I don't buy, it's always puzzled me. Furry Lewis will tell you, you know, "That was my jug band, me and Son Brimmer, the Memphis Jug Band." I have no indication that he ever played with them. He certainly never recorded with them. Now he may have jammed with them, occasionally, but I doubt that Furry ... you know, Furry's not the best informant in the world. Gus Cannon, you could count on, you know. Big Bill Broonzy was a liar, right? I mean, you have to know who you're talking to. Buddy Moss had a good memory, he could tell you a lot, if he liked you. But, you know, when I asked Buddy Moss, "Were you exposed to Blind Blake?" "Yeah, mostly around Jacksonville." See, now I would take that at face value, right? "Is Fred McMullen dead?" "So they tell me." Well, it's probable, then, right? I didn't press; you didn't want to pry to hard with a guy like Buddy. You know, he let me record a couple numbers and I asked him for a third, and then he ... "Well, I done give you that," you know. I realized, "Gone too far. Back off."

AL: Well, I was curious about the jug band instruments, because at least nowadays, a lot of bands kind of flirt with jug band music, do it for a while, and then move on to other things, and Will Shade and Charlie Burse, those guys really were committed to it, seems like, for their whole career.

RB: But look at when it was over ... you've heard the number, that guitar blues they played together? On one of our albums, Beale Street Mess Around or one of these others, there's an instrumental on guitars by Shade and Burse. Very good, you can't say that's a jug band number, right? And that "Harmonica Blues," there's a so-called "Harmonica Blues," with Charlie on the tenor guitar and Shade on the harmonica, it's wonderful. It's on that album, some kind of, maybe it was Folkways, where they had that, you know that percussion guy that Charters recorded ... Virgil Perkins, or somebody like that? You know that rural blues album that came out after The Country Blues?

AL: American Skiffle Bands, that one?

RB: American Skiffle Bands, yeah! There's a number with Shade and Burse on there. But you can't say it's jug band, because it's just ... they didn't have a jug player or kazoo player or anything, it's just the two of them. But they had a repertoire! I mean, did you ever hear that thing ... a German guy asked me once about ... they did a number, and again, sometimes these numbers, Mitchell just made up ... "Beale Street Shuffle" or something, on that first album we put out? We didn't know the title of that ... Mitchell just made that up. But it was one from the last time Mitchell went up, I wasn't with him. They were half dead. But one called "Jump and Jive," or something like that.

AL: Oh, I love that song.

RB: It's a whore ... you know, "big-bellied Ben" ... you know what I'm talking about, right?

AL: Yeah, yeah, I've recorded ... my band plays that.

RB: All right, you give me ... hey, I want to hear if we transcribed the same way. But you know, Sam Charters has terrible transcription mistakes. There are transcription mistakes in this Memphis Blues by Bengt Olsson, too ... on that "Canned Heat" number ... he's not right all the way through that. Uh, what do you think Shade's saying at the beginning of that "Jump and Jive" song?

AL: Well, there's the "who's been here since I've been gone," and then there's...

RB: It starts out saying "get up" ... I say, my take on that is "get up, Nell, send me Joan."

AL: Oh, I thought it was "get up now and send me John."

RB: Yeah! But listen more ... but that doesn't make any sense, does it? It's a whorehouse song, he's bored with Nell, he wants something from Joan! "Get up, Nell, send me Joan" is my ... I'd put money on that.

AL: Okay, well ... that changes things.

RB: And that's typical ... and also, there's "big-bellied Ben," you know ... big old whorehouse hero. Yeah, I think that's the only way it makes sense. Yeah, it's a good song, but this German guy, he thought it was something ... he knew another song by that name and he wanted to hear it to see if it was the same song, and of course it wasn't. But, boy, Shade knew more songs ... original stuff, huh?

AL: That's a curious ... my band plays that song, and as far as I can tell, it's a combination of a Cab Calloway song, and then some of the lyrics are from an old nursery rhyme. I think the "big-bellied Ben" is from a nursery rhyme ... "he ate more meat than the four score men," it's like an old English nursery rhyme.

RB: Really? "Four score men," right? Yeah, that ... listen, I haven't heard that, I don't even know if I have it anymore. If I do it's on LP and I don't have a turntable. But I've listened to it many times and I respect it. I respect him for putting that out. But he even, that last trip, one of those songs, "Kansas City Blues" or something, Mitchell's on the bass and sounds terrible! (Laughing) And I told him that, and he says, "I was hoping nobody would notice." But that was before ... he's probably gotten good on the bass since then, but back then, you know, you couldn't expect him to play the bass the way Shade could. He could play that oil can bass.

AL: Going back to that Peabody scene again, I'm trying to get a sense of what it was like when they were busking in their heyday, and this strikes me as about the closest you could get to experiencing that ... could you hear them?

RB: Could I hear them?

AL: I mean, did their voices and their instruments carry over a crowd?

RB: Oh, loud and clear. Loud and clear, and, yeah, it was a busy lobby, and I think there may have been some kind of a fountain or something there where you threw coins in or something ... I seem to remember that ... but, yeah, it was obviously an elegant ... it was the hotel of Memphis, bustling, but you could hear them loud and clear. Listen, Charlie Burse could sing over anybody. And Shade was just plucking the bass. But Charlie was being the showman.

AL: And were they ... were people stopping and paying attention, or just kind of passing by?

RB: Passing by, except for the guy that came up and said, "Hey, would you come up to my room and play for my friends? I'll pay you such and such." You know, that was it, and then we split, until we came back, we were to come to pick them up to take them back, and I think we came back and they had already left, because Will's leg got to bothering him, you know. He had that leg bothering him the whole time. What's her name, Little Bit, what was her name, Laura Dukes, you know ... that's one I know that's in the book ... offered to massage it. "You'd have to rub me all over" ... with that lascivious grin on his face ... yeah, that was Shade.

AL: The book mentioned Charlie was doing the duck walk during that gig. I also read a quote in a Greil Marcus book saying that Elvis got his leg shake from watching Charlie Burse. He quotes someone on Beale Street, like a promoter, in a club, saying that Elvis learned how to shake his leg from watching Charlie Burse.

RB: Oh, no kidding? I wouldn't be surprised. They did tell us that Elvis had come down to them looking for musical tips, you know. That I think is a fact to take down. I'm sitting here looking at two pictures above my desk. One of them is Charlie Burse in a t-shirt, and shiny, shiny slacks, playing his tenor guitar, at Will's place, where you can prominently see a bottle of, I think it's a half gallon of Golden Harvest sherry on the table in front of him. Mitchell's got that ... you ought to have Mitchell send you that picture. And then the other one is from our trip to Sleepy John's, you know, he's got a guitar in his lap. That may be on the back of one of these albums, too. But he's got his hand on his chin, and a guitar on his lap with a pencil as a capo on the guitar.

AL: Do you know anything about the gigs they would have been doing in the '30s? Like in the heyday of the Memphis Jug Band?

RB: No, other than they were probably doing gigs at parties were Crump was involved, but no, of course, we weren't around, and you can just let your imagination roll. There must have been a lot of street corner jug band playing in the '30s, and I don't know what else, but parties, probably in those gambling joints, Pee Wee's and places like that, must have been some playing going on. Nope, I can just guess. And it's too bad ... a better informant than me probably on that would have been Dick Allen, but I think Dick Allen's no longer with us. Because he interviewed him in the '50s, when Charters ... probably about the same time as Charters, or maybe a little bit before. And he was probably a better interviewer. You know, we were teenagers. Didn't always ... you know, when Abe McNeil suddenly blurted out ... well, Abe McNeil played something he called the "Limousine Blues," right? And it was "Terraplane Blues," Robert Johnson, right? And I said, we have it on tape, "Did you know Robert Johnson did that one, but it was Terraplane --" "Oh, Robert Johnson's a personal friend of mine!" And such and such, and said where they were friends, and blah blah blah blah blah. But I asked yes or no questions. You know, and when we took it back to the guy that loaned us, this great jazz player we knew in Atlanta, he listened to our tapes there, he said, "You don't want to ask them yes or no questions, you want to ask them a question to get them to give you some information in the answer," you know. I asked him what kind of guy Robert Johnson was, "Did he like wine, women and song," or something like that ... stupid question. It's embarrassing to remind myself of it. Well his answer was, "Naturally he did." Well, not a good question, and of course, the answer was obvious.

AL: Okay. I wonder if you have any other thoughts about Charlie Burse. You've mentioned his personality a little bit, but do you know anything about where he came from, or any of his background before the jug band?

RB: I think they were from Alabama, and drifted into Memphis at some point. I know nothing ... the guy that mystifies me is Bozo Nickerson, I would certainly like to know more about him. And the way that Hattie Hart, you know, just dropped out of sight after the second world war ... what a pity. She was a great one ... how much fun she would have been. Memphis Minnie had already had a stroke by the time we went up there, so we didn't try to chase her down. Nobody told us that Bukka White was just down the road. And of course, Furry's guitar was in hock, the first time we went over to his house. And as you know, Gus couldn't find his pants! Went to the house, and couldn't find his pants. And the real irony is, we wasted so much tape at a drunken jam session with Gus, that was the night when Will told Gus he'd lost his ear, you know? And so we only had 15 minutes left when we unexpectedly came up Sleepy John Estes, I mean ... if we'd saved an hour! One hour less of that drunken babble! Well, but that's the breaks. The good news is we did get him. Imagine Shade just off-handedly saying that, while he was saying goodbye. "Sleepy John Estes still living up in Brownsville." "WHAT?" Because, when you're a 16-year old, or 15- or 16-year old, and you drop the needle on "Special Agent" in Atlanta, Georgia, you hear that wailing voice, and you know it's in the '20s, you naturally assume the guy is dead. There's no question about it. And then you read Big Bill's Blues, and he mendaciously tells you that he was an old guy on a railroad crew, you know, calling for the section workers or something ... he just made that up, apparently ... but then it was inconceivable to us that a Peg Leg Howell or Sleepy John Estes would be alive. And then to be at his house an hour later, and ask him how old he is, and he says 58. And he was an old 58! But in very good form that day.

AL: Excellent. Would you know anything about where Charlie Burse died and was buried?

RB: Well, he died first. I asked his brother, I said, "What happened to Charlie?" "He just took sick and died." So that's all I know. So he must have died in Memphis, and who knows where they buried him. Didn't you have some kind of ceremony for Shade, for a Shade grave or something, that George went to?

AL: Yeah, I found his gravesite, but I've walked several cemeteries, and couldn't find anything about Charlie.

RB: No kidding? And nobody around, I suppose Dewey ... Dewey Corley would have known, you know? But Dewey Corley I'm sure is long, long, long gone. But a lot of people ... you know the one I met at Dewey Corley's, without realizing who I was meeting, was that Van Hunt, that sang the "Jelly Selling Woman" with Noah Lewis ... you know the song I'm talking about, don't you?

AL: Um, not off the top of my head, no.

RB: Well, that's a good one. She could really belt 'em out. And she thought I was a guy that could make records, and she said, "We got the book on all those people," you know, and hell, I was just roaming through trying to find some of these guys to play for my new wife at that time. But anyway, then I later realized that when I saw her, I saw a film of her, I realized, "Damn, I was sitting in a living room with Van Hunt and didn't know it!" I could have asked her some pointed questions. That's not her name, she's got a more complicated name than that. Zulu Van something Hunt ... there's a Van in there and there's a Hunt in there, and if you go on Spotify, there's a seven and a half minute song by her on there, the craziest thing you've ever heard. You ought to listen to it, though! It is wild! Yeah. That gives you an idea of what kind of stuff they were putting out, the off-the-wall stuff.

AL: Okay! I've read somewhere that Charlie Burse had a wife named Birdie. Did you meet her, was she around?

RB: We met his wife, I have no idea what her name was, we went over to pick him up and his wife was very stern, she told him not to come back empty-handed, you know. We didn't have a lot of money to be tipping them with, or buying ... we bought them a little Golden Harvest sherry. But I'm sure she was disappointed that night, but no, she was no nonsense, and she wasn't terribly friendly to us that night. But he was raring to go. Now, before I forget, I see a note here to myself ... do you know the book, it's a biography of Yank Rachell?

AL: No.

RB: It's called Blues Mandolin Man: the Life and Music of Yank Rachell, by Richard Congress. And one thing I noticed in there is that he says that Jab Jones drank himself to death.

AL: Oh, wow.

RB: I'm a big Jab Jones fan. And you've got to be careful. Do you know this, Taft, lyric book, Talking To Myself: Blues Lyrics 1921-1942 by Michael Taft?

AL: I think I have that one, yeah.

RB: Be careful! If you look in that ... for one thing, he doesn't know Shade from Jab Jones. He credits Shade with singing Jab Jones songs, ah, and he mixes up Ben Ramey and Shade, and, get this, on page 496, he's got Ben Ramey singing "Cocaine Habit"! Instead of Hattie Hart! He doesn't know a male from a female! Yeah, look, be careful. On page 511, 515 and 496. Egregious mistakes there. Let me beat up, just to give you a quick, this is a very insignificant example, but let me beat up on, one last time here. On that "Cocaine..." -- "Better Leave That Stuff Alone"? He's got here the one, two ... the last stanza. "When you catch a woman begging nickels and dimes," and he has, "Or hooking down the street." It's actually, "When you catch a woman begging nickels and dimes, all up and down the street." Yeah, I mean, that's a white man's ears, or Yankee. I used to tell my students, "You know why you kids have so much trouble with these blues lyrics? You got Yankee ears!"

AL: Well, absolutely.

RB: [laughing] Yeah, well, harder for you up there in Oregon than it was for me. I used to ride the trolley downtown with all those housemaids, jabbering a mile a minute. When you've done that, you can understand black speech with no sweat.

AL: Yeah, when I try to transcribe this stuff, I just try to, like, clear my mind and think outside the box, and, like, it's got to make sense, I just can't, like, the connections in my brain aren't there to make sense of what they're saying sometimes.

RB: Well, some of them, you know, I've got to admit, some of them beat me, too, don't get me wrong. I'll tell you who's really good, if you're really hard up ... do you know Chris Smith?

AL: No.

RB: The British guy, Chris Smith?

AL: Oh, yeah, he's on some online forums. Yeah, I've interacted with him.

RB: Oh, he's smart. And he's got a great ear. He helped me with, um, Fred McMullen's "Rollin' Mama." You try to transcribe that some time. And, uh, it's a bitch. But it's wonderful! But I've gotten help from him, and I tell you, I'm not at liberty to give you the answer. There's a famous stanza by Willie McTell on the "Broke Down Engine." "Can I get on this snake level and..." blank blank blank blank blank blank blank "...tip right across your floor." You know the stanza I'm talking about?

AL: No, I don't.

RB: Well, you listen to it, pal. Well, there are four takes of that song. And he doesn't do it on all of them, but he does it on a couple of them. And it's very fast, he rolls that off his tongue very, very fast. And damn if, I forgot who figured it out. I used to offer my kids a prize if they figured that out. But anyway, nobody, nobody, nobody came anywhere close. And somebody, oh, Dave Evans, it's supposed to appear in a book by Dave Evans, I think, and Chris said, don't tell anybody until that comes out. So I won't! But boy, that's a transcriptionist's challenge. Or the one ... now that's how I got acquainted with Chris Smith. The Sleepy John Estes, "The Floatin'...," no, not "The Floatin' Bridge," the, ah, "Special Agent." He says, "I went up," ah, the stanza that ends, "I could hear the special agent when he came tippin' over the top." You don't know the verse I'm talking about, early in the song? "I went down in the," sounds like he says "frairy voss," something. And according to Chris Smith, it's "I went down in the freak," well, he doesn't agree with me on "vault," but I think it's "vault," "in the free rate vault." "I hung that manifest," that's how it starts, "I hung that manifest, and I went down in the," and then there's the problem. And so I wrote Chris, and he came up with a plausible, plausible transcription there, which I wouldn't have gotten. But I think he's wrong, he says "box." I think it's "vault" instead of "box." Anyway, that's a challenge.

AL: Sometimes I wonder if the singers even knew what stuff meant.

RB: Well, I asked Buddy Moss. Now Buddy Moss did a version of "Broke Down Engine," and he did the same verse, I didn't know that at the time, and I asked him, and when I asked him he said, "Well, he beat me on that one." But I don't think so, because he sang it himself. But ... unintelligibly.

AL: I read somewhere, I can't remember where, but somebody described Jennie Mae Clayton as having been the most beautiful woman in Memphis in the '30's.

RB: Whew. Well, Furry Lewis was sweet on her. I'm not good ... my wife is good at looking at these older people and projecting backwards that she was pretty at some time. I can't do that. I've seen pictures of older women, old women, in their youth, it surprised me how beautiful they were, and you can't believe something that beautiful could be old and saggy and so forth. I can't do that, and I've never heard that. She wasn't attractive when we saw her, but she was 70 and beat up and one lung, and, she might have been a looker when Shade bumped into her on that street, but, I couldn't tell you. I've never heard that. Nor do I know if that Jennie Pope ... that Jennie Pope has a very similar voice, if indeed she's not Jennie Mae, but I can't make up my mind whether it really is Jennie Mae or not.

AL: Well, Jennie Mae seemed to have quite a personality, and mixed it up with the guys when they were jamming at your parties, right?

RB: Oh, yeah. Oh, she was with it. "I got the next verse," you know. Yeah. I know you read the one about, "Why I like my long, tall man so well, every time he loves me, makes my belly swell." Yeah, I'll never forget that, from a 70-year old. And here, hell, I'm older now than Jennie Mae was when she sang that, but [laughing] she was an old gal, and she liked bumming Luckys [Lucky Strike cigarettes] from us all the time. One lung or not!

AL: There's another one she's got on the, I think it's on the George Mitchell recordings, where she says, "Sun Brimmer, it ain't no use, I try to love you, but you ain't got no juice."

RB: "Ain't got no more juice," yeah. That's that very last visit, and both of them were dead within, gosh, she was dead very shortly after that, and he not far behind. Yeah, you could tell, I mean, they had deteriorated from when we saw them, that was only, what, a year or two from when we last saw them, but they had deteriorated a lot by that time. Pitiful. And, you listen closely, you'll hear Mitchell on the bass on one of those. [laughing] It's nothing to be proud of.

AL: No talk of any kids with them, right? Did you ever hear anything about them having kids?

RB: Not a ... never. Never. That's something, isn't it? You don't hear of many blues songs about ... I think it's Paul Oliver that spilled a little ink over that, about childbearing or anything is rarely mentioned. Nope.

AL: Yeah, and I don't really know what the state of birth control was at that time, but it's...

RB: Yeah, I don't ... speaking of kids, though, now, Gus Cannon, you know the guy that does "Moanin' the Blues," Shaw? What's his name, what's his first name, Alan Shaw ... you don't know who I'm talking about? That's good Memphis blues, you've got to ... hold on a second, hold on, I got a CD.... Well, this is not the right one, this is Memphis Blues on Document. The song I'm thinking about is "Moanin' the Blues," which has been anthologized several times, and the name is Shaw, but is it Alan? Well, look at Godrich and Dixon, you'll see it, Shaw, and that was a good Memphis bluesman, and he had a son who was also, speaking of offspring, he had a son who played blues, but he was run over by a bus, according to Gus. Too bad. Yeah, the ones that got away ... there's some guy that you've never heard of, I've never heard of, that Richard Congress mentions in this Yank Rachell book. Shade, by the way, mentioned Rachell to us. I'm not sure we'd heard anything by him yet or not. Yeah we had, yeah we had, the "Expressman," we had heard, on that Smith anthology. That's a crazy story, about the shoplifter George Mitchell? The ingenious shoplifter?

AL: Cutting the record down?

RB: If you've got time, oh, you know that one, huh?

AL: Yeah, the cutting the record down so it would fit into his pocket?

RB: And he was really pissed when I went over and the woman gave it to me. [laughing] He thought he'd earned that thing. Anyway, he mentioned some guy here, and he praised the guitar player, he praises him the way some people to Axel Harney, and people like that, and I guess the guy never recorded.

RB: Fred Ramsey was in Macon, Georgia once, in a hotel, and he heard down in the alley, he heard this great guitar, and he threw on his clothes and ran down there and the guy was gone, you know. The talent that was missed! And you ought to thank your lucky stars that we got the ones, we got as much as we did. It wouldn't have occurred ... Matt [Ismael] probably mentioned this, when I was selling Cokes and so forth at the ??? farmer's market, I know he mentioned this, the old guy, "What are you doing singing blues, boy?" And then he said, "Have you ever heard Peg Leg Howell?" I said, "Oh, yeah!" Of course I knew the one from the Country Blues album, right? The uh, what the hell's the title of that thing? The song of great self-castigation. But that guy probably knew where Peg lived. And if I had thought to say, "Is he still living?" Well, we could have got him a little sooner. I don't know, he was probably in bad shape by then, too, but not in as bad a shape as when we got ahold of him. That was a major, major find. Yeah, you haven't seen my blues poem, have you?

AL: Poem? No.

RB: I probably ought to send you that. Yeah, you know, I've dabbled in poetry the last few years, just for the hell of it, and, you know, I said, "I need ... I'll cap it all with a blues one." I can't quit writing poetry without doing one on blues. So, I did, and for what it's worth, I'll forward that to you, too. Because of the stanza in there that gives some credit to Peg.

AL: Some of those field recordings have a Cat Porter, and then I think on other times they're listed as Cat Young, I think on the same song. So is that the same person?

RB: Say that name again?

AL: Cat Porter, or Cat Young, or Catherine Young.

RB: The one I think you're talking about is the one that we have a picture of that you ought to see, that Mitchell has. He seemed to remember that her last name was Porter. This was just a neighbor, she was down the hall from Shade. She was probably a laborer, and worked at a, probably worked at a dry cleaner or something, who knows, but who had kind of a nice voice, and liked to sing with Shade. And the other gal was a super dancer, and she had her little 10-year old daughter doing the dog, down there, you know, she'd sqaut down and hunch. Jim Lester † said, "She's going to be a whore." And the mother thought that was so funny ... "Do the dog, do the dog," and she'd laugh ... but anyway, that gal could really dance. But this Catherine, her name was Catherine, I know that. Whether it was a C or K, no idea. And Porter only because Mitchell thinks he remembers that. I never heard her last name. And I don't know about Young, I've never heard of a Young.

AL: I can't remember now, but I think there's actually a song where on one LP it's listed as Cat Porter and on another LP the same song is listed as Catherine Young.

RB: Well that's probably just a mistake on the Young thing. 'Cause I don't know how he could have ever found that out. I doubt that on that last trip if he ever went back there and asked her what her name actually was or something, and she said "Young," and he was wrong about Porter. That would be the only explanation for that. But he sure never told me, and that would be very unlikely that he wouldn't. But you can always ask him!

AL: So, I was asking about Cat Porter because Charlie Musselwhite remembered her, and was ... couldn't remember anything ... he remembered her being at some events and singing with her, but didn't know anything about who she was or whatever happened to her.

RB: Well, that would be consistent, because he hung around with him in that time frame at that place. And, so, Cat Porter, huh? Cat could be short for Catherine? Yeah, show Charlie, get that picture and show it to Charlie and see if that's the woman he's talking about.

AL: Okay. And then, apparently she used to joke to Charlie Musselwhite that she was Will Shade and Jennie Mae's daughter. But he said he could never tell if she was joking or not.

RB: Hmm. Well, no indication of that to us.

AL: [laughing] Okay. And, I think his impression was that she was joking, but I was just listening to it recently, and she sounds a lot like Jennie Mae, I think -- her singing voice does.

RB: Well I don't agree with that, if we're talking about the same singer.

AL: No? Okay.

RB: But, you know, it's funny that you should mention that, um ... hold on a minute. I'm gonna look at this picture and see if there's any Shade in her face, hold on. Let's see ... that's the wrong batch ... got a good picture of Scott Dunbar here, down in Lake Mary ... I'm surprised he hasn't crossed your ... oh, here they are. I'm looking at the stairs, and I'm flipping to Will and Jennie, and where the ... hold on ... here it is, I got two envelopes from Snitch †, who's quite a good photographer, no doubt about that. But we didn't even have a camera when we went up on that first trip. Bought one there. I'm surprised we had enough money to buy that little Brownie. All right, there she is. I'm looking at her, and she's right, she standing right next to Shade. Boy, you know something? Boy! I tell you, you gotta get ahold of this. Get Mitchell to send it to you. I tell you, that...

AL: Is there a resemblance?

RB: I may be letting my imagination run wild, but ... I wouldn't say spitting image, but I would say plausible. Plausible!


AL: Huh. I don't know why they wouldn't be more open about it, but ... I'll look up the recording I was listening to, too. I'll send you that and see what you think of that.

RB: You mean she recorded other than "Every Day I Have the Blues" and the "Pretty Baby" that we did?

AL: I think it was "Will You Ride With Me Tonight."

RB: Yeah, well that's the "Pretty Baby." They call it, yeah. But I don't think she sounds like Jennie Mae. I like her singing, but I don't think ... Jennie Mae had a voice all her own. And this gal had a nice, sort of high-pitched, but ... I don't agree with that. But the looks, the features ... it's funny, she's right smack dab next to him there, and then you can see this picture of Abe McNeil in the parking lot. That little girl is down there doing the dog right there, and her mother's standing facing you. That was quite a little scene. That could have been ... you see an Oldsmobile, I think, back there in the background. That's got some historical interest, I think. Fourth and Beale. You know, with Bo Carter's place. You talk about ramshackle. It was less than a stone's throw from where Shade lived.

AL: Oh, it wasn't in the same building?

RB: No, it was not in the same building, it was a separate house right on the alley, off to the side of the alley. I mean, if you were walking toward Shade's building, you'd look over to the left a little bit, and there's a single house, just one story, you know. That was a little scary, his son-in-law was a little scary, but, you know, that was because he hated Shade, the way Robert Jr. hated Shade.

AL: Yeah, he wasn't universally popular.

RB: Yeah, his morals I'm sure were questionable. One of these guys ... are you up on this prison photo? On Facebook? You've been following that? That blues forum, right?

AL: Yeah, I did see that. That's how I found you, yeah. But otherwise I'm not on there very often. Somebody just sent me that photo because they knew I liked Will Shade.

RB: Yeah, that's interesting, it's interesting to look at the one of him playing the jug in Olssen's book. In that picture, you see how much age, how much older you think Shade was in the prison photo from that one. I wish I knew how he arrived at that '35, because, I don't know what to make of that. And I sure wish I knew who that guitar player was on the left. If not Charlie Burse...

AL: Is that the photo where they've got, probably Robert playing a washboard on a stand? Or is it the photo with the Schlitz logos on it?

RB: This is outside ... you don't have Memphis Blues by Olssen in your library?

AL: Man, that book is expensive! It's hard to find.

RB: Is it really? These blues paperbacks, the Storyville, the series edited by Paul Oliver?

AL: Oh, I haven't seen a paperback. I've got the hardcover from the library a couple times, but I don't own it.

RB: Oh, I didn't even know it existed in a hardcover. I got a picture here, down on ... it looks like they're in front of a hedge, and a building behind a hedge, and they're outside, broad daylight, and they're all dressed, it looks like they're all wearing white.

AL: Okay, and does one have a washboard on a stand?

RB: No, there's no washboard. The guy, looks like a guy playing something like a kazoo or trumpet or something, the guy blowing something besides jug, right behind Shade. That would be Wilfred Bell. And it looks like he's ... I don't know what he's blowing, but he's got one hand holding it, as if he's muting something at the end.

AL: Oh ... I think that's a kazoo, with a horn on it.

RB: Mighty long kazoo!

AL: Yep, yep. I've got a kazoo like that, yeah.

RB: You know that photo? Okay, do you know that photo?

AL: Well, no, but I know that kazoo [laughing]. Is it the one ... what other instruments are in the photo. Is there a fiddle in there?

RB: No! There are two guitars, and the guy on the right, who we think is Charlie, probably, Charlie Burse isn't playing any instrument, he's just clowning around. Unless there's something in his left ... I don't see any ... he's got his right hand behind his back, and he's got his left hand flexed, and I can't see if there's anything in his left hand, and he's grinning from ear to ear, and it looks like his hair is straightened, and right behind his head you see the neck of the guitar this younger guy, this Robert Carter's playing, I remember hearing about him, and ah, no, the other guy, maybe ... you would know better than I if that's a tenor guitar that guy on the left is playing. Maybe that's why they concluded it was Burse. I can't tell, it looks like the neck is awful skinny.

AL: Yeah, if it's four strings?

RB: Man, but I can't see, you know, where you turn them. I just can't tell, the picture's not clear enough. You can see only ... the sun is shining on that guy's forehead, so you can see his forehead, and the bridge of his nose, and the rest of his face is shadowed, and that's why ... but the guy on the right looks a lot more like Charlie Burse than that. Although Charlie Burse in that YouTube thingie, where Shade and Burse are playing and singing, playing the "Kansas City Blues," you've seen that, right? Yeah, now that, Burse looks more like this guitar player on the left there	than he does this clown on the right here, you know, he didn't always look ... maybe his hairdo ... but it looks more like his mouth, and it looks more like his personality. If I had to bet, you know, to get into heaven, I'd bet that's Charlie Burse on the right. And Mitchell's convinced of it. Mitchell's absolutely convinced. Mitchell's pretty ... Mitchell's got a good eye. For example, we picked, that picture, that prison photo of Buddy Moss, that's been around, I forgot what album that was on the front of, I mean, it was obvious to us that was Buddy, a young Buddy, at first glance. As Mitchell said, "Look at those cheekbones!" Well, yeah. But now they have, I think they have several versions, several pictures taken that day at that place, Greensboro, Georgia.

AL: Hmm. I haven't seen the picture you're talking about. I actually scanned all the photos from the Memphis Blues...

RB: You've never seen Buddy playing for convicts?

AL: No, I mean the jug band one you were just talking about.

RB: The jug band one in Olssen's book, the 1935 one, you have not seen?

AL: Yeah, and I even scanned ... I just was looking on my computer, when I had that book from the library, I scanned in all the photos and it's not in there, so it must be a different edition.

RB: Oh, wow. Yeah, it's on page ... what did I tell you ... there's a picture of Sleepy John Estes on 20, a picture of Gus Cannon's instruments on 23, the picture of Shade that I know from one of the Oliver books, with a cigarette, playing guitar with a cigarette in his mouth, and ah, probably Bo Carter fretting next to him, and then Gus, Gus looking pretty about 80-ish and ??? on his banjo on the next page, and then 29, "below, left to right, Charlie Burse, Will Shade, Wilfred Bell, Robert Carter and unknown." Yeah, the guy on the far right is unknown. And if, you know, if it's not Charlie, I wonder if it's Bozo. But ... I wouldn't trust the '35 date, but what do I know? And Bengt Olssen's dead, so we can't ask him. It was James LaRocca, you ever heard of him, in New Orleans, that told me about his stealing that guitar. James LaRocca, I think was the son of a jazz musician. That's a well-known name down there among the jazz scene of New Orleans. In any event, he took me to spend the night with Robert Pete Williams. And he surreptitiously was dubbing at the archives of New Orleans jazz, there at Tulane, and Dick Allen caught him, kicked him out.

AL: Speaking of Bengt Olssen and the other Europeans, it sounds like you were kind of acting as a contact for some of those who were doing research, Paul Oliver...

RB: Well, no, I never met Paul Oliver, but I tell you, Karl Gert zur Heide, I had a lot to do with, and that is a very good source, and I'll tell you how I met him. Do you know that story?

AL: No.

RB: Well, I was visiting Furry, and this was 1969, probably, and on the mantel piece there was a thank you note, obviously from a German guy, Karl Gert zur Heide. And I remarked, and he said, "That guy owes me money." So I took down the address, the return address, and I wrote him, and I said, you know, would you mind sending Furry his money? And then the guy, then I get this letter from, I'd never heard of this guy. And he was a young engineering student at the time, may have been a few years older than I am, and he said, translating, he said, "Getting letters out of the wild blue yonder, I've gotten used to that," he said, "But where in the world did you get your perfect German?" and he said, "Your handwriting betrays an American upbringing, and your name is spelled the English way," he said, "I'm flabbergasted," and he said, "By the way, I don't owe Furry any money," and explained to me why. But he said, "Is he in an acute emergency? Maybe I can scrape something up." Anyway, that led to a ... shortly thereafter I was in Germany as a leader of the experiment in international living, and looked him up in Hanover, and ... hell, he played me the "Vicksburg Blues." I had never heard Little Brother Montgomery's "Vicksburg Blues" at that time. He wrote the book in this same series, Down South Piano, or Deep South Piano. By the way, there's a CD set that has come out based on that, recently, in the last year. That would be worth adding to your library. Karl Gert zur Heide, somebody put it out. It's called Deep South Piano. And that's very interesting historically. Some of the piano stuff is pretty out of tune, but a lot of good guys that he rounded up. He mainly was interested in piano blues. But anyway, yeah, through him, man, through him I met this Gerd Wieben, and Gerd Wieben is probably responsible for half of my collection. Cause Karl, Karl Gert zur Heide, we had a falling out, back about 1996, but just that year he introduced me to this Wieben guy, a friend of his in East Frisia, and a wonderful guy, and as Karl told me, he said, "He has everything." Which he denies, but if he doesn't have it, he has friends that will give it to him. And he just showered me with CDs. Oh, man. And he's the one that introduced me to Joe Bussard. He said, that guy, you know, he's got just the right kind of needles to get the best out of those 78s, you know, and ... very reasonable ... so I happened to be down in that neck of the woods about a year later, and so I went to see him, and then I got his catalog, if you can call it that, and so I made 50 orders from that guy! Anyway ... some of them blind! I got a lot of junk because I was just ... a title would catch ... I'd say, "I wonder if that's the same song as such-and-such," when I ordered it, you know. It was only 50 cents, so I was willing to take the chance, but ... I got some great stuff from him, and some if it very clear. Anyway, that's that. So, yeah, the British guys, I mean I only knew, you know, I knew of people like Nick Pearls. But, no, I only know a few German guys, and Napier that put out Blues Unlimited, all I know is, and this might interest you, I ordered from a guy who advertised, a collector over there, I think his name was Jim Vice, and he had a whole bunch of Memphis Jug Band stuff, and I ordered one and I sent the money first, and he just ate the money and didn't send me the thing. And I complained to Napier, Nate ??? and Napier, I think was the name of the guy that put it out, and he refused to even run a warning, or delete his ads or anything. He said, libel laws are such that we can't do anything. He copped out. Anyway, to make a long story short, next time I went to Germany, this was the second time I saw Karl Gert zur Heide, I wrote that guy a letter from Germany saying that I was there with a burly buddy of mine, and when we got to Birmingham, he was going to be sorry he swindled me, and we were going to break every bone in his body. And he sent me my money. I put the fear of God in that crook.

AL: So you weren't with any of those guys when they were here, showing them around?

RB: No, no, no, and I'm trying to think, I'm not even sure Mitchell ... Mitchell knew Strachwitz, you know, he collaborated with him in some respect. I think he got gipped by him at one point. Of course, he knew Mike Bloomfield closely, when he was in Chicago, before he gave himself a golden shot of heroin. And he said he could play any of those guys, lick for lick, you know, on the guitar. He was supposed to be something else. Do you want to read something grim? Really, really grim?

AL: [laughing] I don't know.

RB: Well, I think the title, the title is either Big Joe and Me or Me and Big Joe.

AL: I have read that. It is grim.

RB: Oh, you have read that. Where did you get your hands on that?

AL: Something I was reading about Charlie Musselwhite mentioned it.

RB: Oh, yeah. Because Mitchell knew Musselwhite. Mitchell knew Musselwhite. That was the guy ... so you know Musselwhite, right?

AL: Yep.

RB: And have you read the accounts that he ... I guess it was a letter to Mitchell. Will and Furry got in a wrestling match, you've read about that? Over Jennie Mae?

AL: Yeah, Charlie has told me about that.

RB: Yeah, now Charlie ... now, I knew a blues nut in New England, by the name of Sleeper, who said, "Charlie Musselwhite's the biggest asshole in the world," or something like that. And I bounced that off of Mitchell, and Mitchell says, "You couldn't ask for a nicer guy than Charlie Musselwhite." And then I realized that this Sleeper guy was a creep himself, later, I had a falling out with him. So ... oh, well, Pete Lowry ... Bruce Bastin I corresponded with, right? And I remember asking Karl Gert zur Heide, what are Pete Lowry and Bruce Bastin like, because they wrote Crying for the Carolinas, or whatever it is. And they knew Buddy Moss, you know, Buddy Moss ran them off with his revolver. In any event, he said, "Bastin may be okay; Lowry's a big asshole." That's what Karl Gert zur told me, and of course, those guys were in ... they knew them all, they were digging, digging, digging, sharing, horse trading, all the time. And I was trying to learn my trade in German. I knew there wasn't any money for me, or time for blues in those days, grad school days. But anyway, where was I going with that ... so Lowry I ran around with, but he's not a Brit. I mean, I was part of his Lockwood recordings, and visited a lot of Atlanta bluesmen, you know, Reverend Gates's nephew, and met all kinds of people with Pete. Frank Edwards ... you have the Frank Edwards album, on Trix?

AL: No.

RB: You ought to!

AL: My listening list is growing here.

RB: Yeah! [laughing] Get ahold of that! I'm sure those things have been reissued. Yeah. Of course, he swindled Robert Jr. He let him think ... that's what gets me about these guys. One thing about Mitchell. Mitchell never cheated a musician. He paid them, every penny. Not much came out of there, but he never cheated a musician out of a penny. But most of ... but some of those guys are totally unscrupulous. Theives! And ... never met Fahey before he died. They say he was a very good guitarist. There's a picture of him ... you can see him on the Joe Bussard Desperate Man Blues DVD, you'll see him in the early part of that flick. But Lowry, Lowry ... just inside baseball for you ... Lowry told me, he descended on me to stay a weekend, and he stayed a week, and I thought my wife was going to leave me, and he had, he was wearing a Yellow Cab cap, and he had a beard below his waist, a wild beard, he looked like ... so he wandered around ... people said, "Who's that weirdo with Roger?" And then a friend of mine said, "That's his brother." [laughing] But anyway, he was living ... he had a van, and he had all that recording equipment, he had a beautiful Gibson guitar, and it was all from the interest, interest only, on the trust fund from his grandfather's sugar fortune. He couldn't touch the principal until he was 30, so he was in his 20's. And he'd always wear a dirty, white t-shirt, you know. And he led Robert Jr. to believe that he was poor. And Robert Jr. told me years later that he didn't pay him! He paid him in t-shirts! He said, "We're going to be partners on these albums," and he gave him a whole bunch of Robert Jr. Lockwood t-shirts. And I thought, "That son of a bitch." And he was the kind of guy, you know, he would speak ... I mean, it was obvious that he spoke standard English, right? But he would speak, pardon the expression, jigaboo, condescending to these musicians, as if they wouldn't notice it was fake, you know? I never, you know, I spoke as I always spoke, and Mitchell spoke as he always spoke, but he would turn it on. It was embarrassing to me. But, it was great to experience Lockwood through him, and make some of those other contacts, you know, Cliff ... Jonas Brown, and Blind Buddy Keith, and Ernest Scott, who played like Buddy Moss, loved Buddy Moss stuff, sort of, you know, warmed over Buddy Moss. Anyway, it was interesting with Pete, but Pete is an asshole and a crook, and he lives in Australia now. He's from Montclair, New Jersey, or somewhere.

AL: If you're going to rip somebody off...

RB: You're a young kid, let me give you just one little anecdote. While he was staying with me ... you've heard of the Watergate hearings, of course. He was staying at my place in Ohio, and the Watergate hearings had just started, Sam Erwin and all that stuff, right? You with me? And, do you know who Hugh Sloan was?

AL: No.

RB: Hugh Sloan was the treasurer of the Committee to Reelect the President. He was one of the Watergate figures who was totally innocent. But he was one of the first ones that the committee interviewed. And anyway, so Pete Lowry's in my place, the TV's on in my den, and he looks at the TV and he says, "That's Duke Sloan!" Anyway, he went to high school with Hugh Sloan, and his nickname was Duke, as I later read, you know, one of those famous books. Anyway, go ahead ... [laughing] where do you want to take me now?

AL: Oh, I was just going to say, if you're going to rip somebody off, why a blues musician? Not much potential there.

RB: Yeah, awful. I mean, he was loaded, he was loaded. He never had to work. That just ... that does it for me, and ... no, he had a lot of company. When you see how squalid they were ... you know, Fred Ramsey told me, that, now, I shouldn't say anything bad about somebody who's recently died, but that Sam Charters was really grossed by the squalor, and so forth, how they lived, generally grossed. You know, Fred could do it, felt right at home with them, you know. But Charters said something to him that gave him that clear impression once. Fred Ramsey had a beautiful collection, mint quality, very well taken care of and so forth, that I tried to ... Joe Bussard wanted to buy his whole collection, said, "I'll give him twenty thousand," but he'd already ... Pete Whelan had already run off with them. [laughs]

AL: I read in Matt's book about Abe McNeil ... was mentioned a few times, and he was just presented as kind of a clown, just kind of clowning around. But then just this morning I looked him up, and there's some of his recordings online and they're quite good.

RB: I wouldn't call him a clown in any event. He was a learner at that point, that's what he was hanging around Shade for. He was not accomplished on the guitar, and if he sang, you know, Shade, one time, sang something, "Wine Headed Man" or something, he says, "I ain't gonna drink no more whiskey, I ain't gonna drink no beer or wine," and he didn't drop his pitch at the end of the line, and I remember Shade corrected that, right? But he was a colorful, interesting fellow. He had a cane, you know, and dark glasses on, kind of dapper looking, and with it, you know? He loved, you could tell, that's why he made all these interjections. "Clown" is not accurate. You said you heard some good stuff? I mean, I'll tell you one he liked to play that I liked, and in those days I didn't know what it was from. "I'm going back to Jackson, dear old Jackson, Tennessee, 'cause life around here got the jinx on me." Well, that's one of the first things Sonny Boy Williamson put out. The tune is the same as "Trouble In Mind." [sings] And he sang that, again, he picked that up from Sonny Boy Williamson, obviously. We didn't know that then.

AL: How old was he, approximately?

RB: How old was Abe? Let's see, I've got pictures of him right here. Of course, you know what those racists say. "You can't tell how old a n-word is." You didn't grow up in the deep South, you don't know. Let me see if I can find ... oh, there's Percy, there's Brotha ... I would say he was in his 50's, just off the top of my head.

AL: Okay. I'm trying to get a sense of how relevant the ... like, Will Shade and Gus Cannon were at that time...

RB: At what time?

AL: In the '60s, when you were there. Sounds like several musicians were hanging around with them, or picking up tips, but...

RB: Well, Abe was the only one ... nobody was hanging around Gus. You know, Gus was a loner, and solo, he had an apartment ... our first trip ... he lived a different place every time I went, practically. But he ... this was out, way across town, in an upscale white neighborhood, older homes, you know, stately homes. I don't want to say mansions, but it was a very ... and they had a little side, I don't want to say shed, but a little apartment off to the side of the house, and he was renting there and he wasn't there that day. We went there, and we met the family and talked to them, and the guy said, you know, "He's very talented when he's sober." You know, so we knew he was a drinker. The next time was way the hell across town again, but in a distinctly black, and that time he couldn't find his pants. But then the next night or something, we finally got him with pants, and ... no, I don't think anybody was hanging around, it wouldn't surprise anybody. Furry Lewis was different, you know. People heard about him because he acquired some fame from those Folkways recordings. But he lived down there on Leach (???) Street, and if you weren't with it, if you weren't led to him by Shade, well, I'll put it this way: there was a Dean, there was a Vice President at UNH, let's say, eight years ago, who had spent some time in Memphis. And he told me, he says, "I'm a Furry Lewis fan." So somehow he was exposed to Furry, late in the game, right? And something came up, he was doing "Casey Jones," I think it was, on YouTube, and I remember forwarding that to him, and he said, "Brings back memories," you know. But bluesmen hanging out? I wasn't aware of any, you know. He got together with Bukka White at some point. He was inebriated. I saw a tape of him very inebriated at that point. You know, when I took my first wife over to see Furry once, you know what they were eating early in the morning? They offered us? Chitlins. Have you ever smelled chitlins?

AL: No.

RB: We told them we'd already eaten, I tell you. I didn't want any part of that.  I wondered about Furry's diet. You know, he drank. I said, "What would you like?" "I just drink. I just drink." I always bought these guys Mill Farm bourbon, because it's the cheapest kind, and I'm not a big hard ... I don't drink a lot of hard stuff anyway, you know. And when Lockwood, I'm sure you know, Lockwood offered me that styrofoam cup of white lightning, I said, "No, I don't drink much hard stuff." "You gonna drink it or wear it, one." So I drank it. Didn't enjoy it, but ... I wondered about their diets, man. But Furry lived to a ripe old age. And he worked, he worked for that sanitation department or something, artificial leg or no artificial leg. And Willie Borum, I think he was proud that he never missed a day of work in his life. Robust health, and ... veteran, Second World War veteran, I guess, as that song made clear, and a very polished, wonderful blues musician. He sang that ... my favorite one ... you've got that CD, right? "Worried Man Blues"?

AL: I don't know.

RB: "Today I've been ... a long old lonesome day ... long old day to me ... I can't see my regular or either my used to be." That's how it starts. And that, to me, is the bluesiest and best-executed guitar number he did. I don't think there was a harp on that one. That's my favorite on that whole album, and there's not a dud on there.

AL: Which album is that?

RB: That was the one on Prestige Bluesville, that ... hold on a second ... I'll email it to you. My stuff is not in the ABC, apple pie order it ought to be in. But it's been reissued ... it came out as a CD, you know, I bought it maybe five years ago, and that's GOT to be in your library. Yeah, that one ... 'cause that was the album that sent us up there.

AL: Was that a Charters recording? He recorded Willie B.

RB: Yes. Prestige Bluesville, I believe was the name. But there was a later one or two, and I don't think the later ones were as good as that first one. So grab that first one. Yeah, he was a hell of a bluesman.

AL: So other blues musicians weren't hanging around that much, but it sounds like neighbors were kind of just coming in and dancing and hanging around?

RB: Oh, neighbors drifted in. One guy, one young guy thought he could play spoons. Yeah, obviously he couldn't do it very well, you know. We knew spoons from the Robert Wilkins "Dirty Deal Blues," with Kid Spoons, he's playing spoons, you know? But at least the guy was trying. Yeah, people dropped in there, yeah, because there was music going on! Laura Dukes hung out, obviously, but she was a friend, and she just played a little ukulele. I didn't get the impression that she was an accomplished musician at all. She played simple ukulele. But she was a very nice little person, and seemed to be sort of educated, better educated than they were. And she offered leg massages, you know.

AL: [laughing] Was it all ages of people hanging around, or just older folks?

RB: You know, I tell you ... excuse me ... hold that thought, because I'll lose mine. I think it came up because of the verse, you know, "I got something at home, make you let me alone." And Shade went over in the corner and pulled out a weapon, I mean, it was some kind of farm implement. It was the most grotesque looking thing I've ever seen. And he held it out in front of him ... it was long, and the end of it was sharp, and he was out of shape, right? I mean, he had a belly, and he wasn't well. But he held that thing out in front of him as if he was threatening, you know, waved it a little bit, big grin on his face. Said, "This is what I got at home, that will make you let me alone." [laughing] I guess if a prowler came in there, he could have defended Jennie Mae with that thing. I'm glad he never took it to Furry, I tell you. That was a funny ... I mean, that's the kind of guy ... he was a jovial, lovable guy, so that's the one side of that axis, and then he's the guy that would cheat, that made Bo Carter's son-in-law think he was the worst crook in the world, and try to roll Robert Jr. [laughing] So, those were the two sides of Will Shade. I only knew the one, and I loved him dearly.

AL: And I'm glad you tipped me off to that, ah, the Dick Allen interview, because his personality really comes through on there. Just being able to hear him talk for an extended time.

RB: Of course, you've heard the "Newport News," the one that has him give that little description of how things were around 1900 on Beale Street, right?

AL: Yep.

RB: Boy, that's colorful. "Sometimes you'd find them with NOT their throats cut. Pockets all inside out, money took," you know, oh God. Yeah, he was the greatest. So it pissed me off every time I read, you know, "Limited musician." Don't give me that stuff! Man, he could play. And you know, "Stingy Woman" was obviously one of his favorites. You know, he loved to get up in those high, piercing notes. And he sat there and played that "Stingy Woman" again and again and again and again. He just had that one little C harp in the apartment, for all I ever knew. But boy, he could play that "Stingy Woman." He could play them all, but that was obviously one of his favorites.

AL: I think that "Newport News" interview comes from the Paul Oliver...

RB: Yes.

AL: ...and I've got, like, a CD that came out with a Paul Oliver book, it has just like, it's just like a two or three minute excerpt of an interview, but I would love to get hold of the whole interview. I assume he sat down with him for longer than that.

RB: Yeah, I don't know the ins and outs of that. It is transcribed in that book by Oakley, you know the one I'm talking about?

AL: Oh, no. The whole interview is transcribed?

RB: No, what you hear there, prior to the "Newport News" is transcribed, and not totally accurately, either. Giles Oakley, does that name ring a bell to you?

AL: No.

RB: Hold on a second, hold on.... The Devil's Music: a History of the Blues, by, and you know what's interesting, the front, the cover is an artist's rendition of the photograph of Peg Leg Howell and his gang that we got off his mantelpiece the first day we met him. So you see Peg, and Eddie Anthony on the fiddle, and Henry Williams on the guitar on the front of this thing. And I think he's a Brit, I think this was some kind of ... wait a minute ... and I know ... a picture of John Lee Hooker, and ... oh, yeah, there's Shakey Horton and somebody else, maybe Eddie Taylor on guitar. When I met Shakey Walter Horton, he claimed, mendaciously, that he in fact was playing on that Memphis Jug Band thing in Chicago, when he was ten years old...

AL: Oh, yeah, he claimed that himself, huh?

RB: Yeah ... I said, "Who influenced you?" "Oh, I influenced them," you know. He was drunk and just all braggadocio. But I don't know how they ever made that mistake, or where the hell that ... where that got started. But this is an interesting book. You ought to, if it's still out there ... I've had it forever. It's a British Broadcasting Corporation, and they must have done some kind of series. Edited by [sounding out] Madalina Fangandani? What the hell is that about? "The programs were first broadcast on BBC 1 on Sundays beginning 14th November 1976." Huh. So this is a book for Giles, with a G, Oakley, o-a-k-l-e-y, 1976. Got some decent pictures in here, actually.

AL: Okay. Well I'd love to ... one of my dreams is to get that whole interview accessible, and I've been writing to the archive where, I think it's at ... it was at Oxford, or like a school that's part of Oxford, where the Paul Oliver collection is going, and they don't have it yet, but they're...

RB: You don't have an address or anything of Paul Oliver himself?

AL: No.

RB: I don't either. I'm sure some of my German friends know him. You want me to ask Getz how to reach Oliver?

AL: Sure.

RB: That might be the ... let me make a note to that effect. That might be ... that might be the quickest route.

AL: Yeah.

RB: Okay, [writing] Gertz on P.O. Yeah, he knows them all.

AL: Yeah, I just feel like interviews like that are just a buried treasure, and I'd like to unbury it a little bit.

RB: Yeah, well, I'm so glad you got that out of the archives down at Tulane. Wow. That's priceless.

AL: I mean, I could go there, and go to the listening room and listen to it, but they saved me a flight to New Orleans.

RB: Or you could pull a James LaRocca and try to dub it on the sly and get caught and get pitched out on your ear!

AL: [laughing] There another one, well, Sam Charters has one that's in Connecticut, and I'm considering going there just to listen to it.

RB: Yeah. Well, he's got a widow, right? Ann? Charters?

AL: Oh, yeah, that's right.

RB: Yeah, I wonder. She must have control of all his stuff, I don't know. She was very proud to be the wife of Sam Charters, I know.

AL: Oh, yeah?

RB: I think so. Well, you saw Matt, Matt Ismael. He gave Matt a lot of time. That surprised me. He did a long interview with Matt. That's in the book, right?

AL: Ah ... I can't remember now.

RB: I think he tacked that on to our story, an interview with Sam Charters, and some other guy.

AL: That sounds familiar, kind of like an epilogue.

RB: Yeah, but Charters was very generous with his time, as was Bob Koester. Well, some of them ... there's some decent guys.

AL: Well, and I think in a lot of cases it's not even a matter of decency, it's just that, I think, I feel like in the Paul Oliver case, he only needed two minutes for the project he was doing, but there's got to be more tape somewhere, and I would just like for that to be exposed.

RB: And from all I gather, he's a decent guy. You know, I've heard ... if he weren't, I would have heard something snide from Karl Gert zur Heide, who called Calt a sociopath and Lowry a big asshole, and didn't get along with Fred Ramsey, either. Because Ramsey wanted to horse trade, and he wanted to just, you know, help out, help where he could, and forget about owesies, you know. But anyway, a lot of different guys. It was pure chance that I met Fred Ramsey. His son went to the first college I taught at. Locke, his son Locke, poor guy, who had a terrible stutter. He ended up in an institution, he had a terrible stuttering problem, and drug problem and everything, and they finally had to put him in an institution. But anyway, because Locke Ramsey was there, he and Amelia were there visiting him, I was introduced to him just as I was ready to embark on this New Orleans trip. Boy, I mean, he was great. And he invited me, I stayed with them two weeks, two successive summers, a week at their place in New Jersey, and that was very worthwhile. He was trying to write a book on Buddy Bolden at the time. Imagine that!

AL: So you mentioned Will Shade would play his "Stingy Woman Blues" over and over again, and one thing I noticed in the Dick Allen interview was how well he remembered all the songs. He remembered the titles, and who played on them, and when and where they were recorded.

RB: I had acoustic difficulty with the last two sentences.

AL: I was just remarking that Will Shade seemed to really remember well all of his old songs, and he could tell you when they were recorded and who played on them.

RB: Yes. He did that with us. I just scribbled down notes, because these were just names of titles and names of individuals, you know. I know that he remembered Tee Wee Blackman fondly, and most of those titles, boy, I just barely scribbled them down in my left-handed scrawl. I've got them somewhere, but, you know, now that you've got Godrich and Dixon, you don't ... despite the mistakes, you know.

AL: I'm just interested that he really was still connected with music he was doing thirty years earlier.

RB: He was a pro. He was a pro, there's no doubt about that. He lived it. He lived it. And, you know, it's a shame a guy like that had to, what was his job, worked at some kind of tire place?

AL: Yeah, that's what I heard, too.

RB: I mean, that's terrible, you know, with that bad leg, and ... you hate to see that. You know, Buddy Moss had some menial employment there in Atlanta. Never got the break, you know, never could make ... never got a chance for a comeback. Partly because of his own personality, but ... you know, he turned Koester down. Koester made him an offer and he turned it down. He demanded a prohibitive fee, and so that was the end of that. 'Cause every now and then they get resentful. And you can understand it, but ... Buddy was a hothead. As Ernest Scott said, he said, "He had funny ways," he said. "How could he have shot her that way," you know. Piano Red said he shot her like a rabbit. Christmas Day, you know. Right in the heart. Because he thought she was ... because she came home late. And didn't believe her, didn't believe she'd been to the store. That was ... he had a terrible temper. As Pete and Bruce found out, by mentioning his incarceration in their book, you know, they mentioned that in their book and then they went to see him ... [laughing] he went straight for his revolver! Which convicted felons are not allowed to have. Robert Pete had a revolver, showed me a revolver he had in his glove compartment, because of the Klan. And he'd gotten out of Angola, you know, he'd been pardoned from Angola, but he was ... he'd gotten life ... and he's carrying a revolver.

AL: Did Will Shade have copies of his own records?

RB: Not to my knowledge.

AL: Did he have any...

RB: Buddy Moss had a good collection, but it burned up with his house on Park Street ... lost them all. I never saw any sign of records there, or a record player, or any ... man, that was very primitive. I was surprised ... one of those guys ... who was the guy on Facebook who said he used to have a house, and owned stock?

AL: Yeah, I've heard that...

RB: From Ralph Peer, from his Ralph Peer days? I didn't ... all I remembered was his comment that fools and money don't stay together long, you know. So he blew, he blew whatever he got.

AL: I think the Sam Charters book said he had, he bought a house and then lost it in the Depression.

RB: Oh, and lost it in the Depression, okay. But can you imagine a guy like that buying stock? I mean who even ... getting a broker? That struck me as odd.

AL: Just stock in Victor. I think it was just stock in Victor that Ralph Peer set him up with.

RB: Oh, just stock in Victor, I see. Okay. Okay, maybe they paid him some with stock. Who knows. But he was down, he didn't stay up long. That was seven years, that was a seven-year stint, right, the recordings?

AL: Yeah.

RB: '27 to '34, something like that?

AL: Yep.

RB: Yeah, that was all she wrote. But, boy, look how vibrant they were in the '60s still.

AL: Yeah, it seems like they never stopped.

RB: Yeah. No. It wasn't jug band, but the two of ... get the two or three of them together.... One of the last ones we recorded was that "Train Blues" that he did for us. Is that on one of the albums you've got?

AL: Yep.

RB: With Furry playing rhythm on the guitar?

AL: Yep.

RB: That's pretty good, that's a pretty good little number. I think that might have been the last thing I heard him play. But again, you talk about repertoire! You talk about repertoire!

AL: Yeah. A life, like you said, a whole life of focusing on that. Did he even have a radio in that apartment?

RB: Not to my knowledge. I seriously doubt it. He mentions radio in that last recording, right? The jug band music, sure does sound sweet to me? "Went home, turned on my radio, danced along 'til I broke in my floor"? Yeah, he probably had one then, but he didn't have one ... man, he didn't have any kind of amenities that I could see.

AL: Okay, yeah. You mentioned ... oh, wait a second, where did I see this. There's a ... there's some excerpts from some of his letters in Matt's book. And he's not very literate...

RB: He's illiterate, I would say. Yeah, very ... semi-literate.

AL: Okay. But then Charters and other people have talked about him writing out his lyrics for copyright purposes. Do you have any...

RB: Well, he could squeak through that, yeah.

AL: So he could get what he ... he could communicate what he needed to?

RB: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'll give you another example along those lines. Little Brother Montgomery wrote letters to Karl Gert zur Heide, and he later saw him writing, and it was like trying to chisel, as if he was chiseling one letter after another, you know? When he saw how ... what a struggle that was for him to make a letter, he realized how much effort he'd put into writing him all those letters, you know? Yeah, Will, I mean, "guarantee," how'd he spell "guarantee"? "Ganty" ... g-a-n-t-y or something like that, you know. It was quite ... barely literate, but that's sad, too. I tell you, I remember the first time we wrote him back, I addressed the envelope just "Will Shade." I was just a kid, you know. "Will Shade such-and-such." My father saw that, he said, "You put 'Mister' on there." [laughing]

AL: Aw. Nice. The book mentions some contracts, too, from Ralph Peer. I can't remember the details, but somebody has some of those contracts still?

RB: Don't know anything about that. Beyond my ken.

AL: No? Okay. And, um ... Shade actually played with the Memphis Sanctified Singers, they've got a couple recordings on the Harry Smith anthology ... do you know anything about other, like, genres, or other extracurricular activities like that that he was doing?

RB: All I know is, whenever I saw him come up in Godrich and Dixon or on the Joe Bussard catalogs, I mean, he played guitar for Sister Morgan, have you ever heard that one?

AL: No.

RB: You ought to! [laughing]

AL: Is that the same one, the Memphis Sanctified ... oh, no, that's Bessie Johnson, or something like that.

RB: The Sister Morgan is a solo, it's a ... I guess there was another Sister Morgan, you have to watch out, I think Chris Smith got confused about who I was talking about. There was a gal named Sister Morgan, sang rather, you know, sang nice, sort of in the way that Catherine Porter sang nice, and it's a kind of a primitive number, and I used it in my course, and Shade, it's obviously Shade on the guitar, and that's why I ordered it, instantly, right? And I had the kids ... they had to write a paper on a song which they selected themselves, and as I was asking them for their topics one day, one of them said, "Sister Morgan's" ... "Go Down Sunshine" or whatever it is ... it's in Godrich and Dixon. And I said, "Why Sister Morgan?" This was really ... it was primitive. And she said, "You'll find out when I give it to you." Well then, she ended up having to drop the course, so I never saw what attracted her to this very strange song. But I tell you, you want it in your collection.

AL: Okay. A couple questions about Gus Cannon. I'm more of a ... I'm more personally interested in Will Shade, but there were some interesting interactions with Gus Cannon that you had. For instance, the relationship between the two seemed like ... seemed like Will Shade and his gang, they were kind of their own clique that Gus Cannon didn't interact with as much, and they seemed almost a little condescending toward him. Was it...

RB: "That Banjo Joe can't keep up with us!" Who do you think said that? Did you read that?

AL: Yeah, that was either Will or Charlie Burse.

RB: Well, that's Charlie Burse. "That Banjo Joe can't keep up with us." Yeah, well he was older. And he was usually soused. And so that was true. You hear on that skiffle band thing, you know, he's playing that "Old John Booker, call that gone," I mean, that's kind of...

AL: He's another generation.

RB: ...over the hill. And our friend there, that jazz musician, a white guy we borrowed the tape recorder from, you know, he said, "He's showing his age there," I remember, when we got to Gus. And he was. And they weren't showing age. They were decrepit physically, but boy, when they ... they erupted when they played.

AL: Ah ... cool.

RB: That was a contrast that struck me immediately. The way they cut loose on that "Kansas City Blues," which you've heard ... you understand, that was a reenactment of what happened to us the previous Christmas, right? 'Cause we didn't have a tape recorder with us that first trip. So we went up there with the tape recorder in June. Do it again. And you hear how it starts ... that's interesting, too. You hear Shade say, "Don't say 'look out,' you just hit it!"

AL: [laughing]

RB: Yeah ... "you won't get ahead of me!" Yeah ... I mean, I'm proud to have been part of that not being lost to culture, I'll put it that way. That's a hell of a ... that's better than the ... that's better than the jug band rendition of "Kansas City Blues," is it not? 1927, when they were young?

AL: Yeah, they did so many versions of that song, it was clearly one of their favorites.

RB: But that ... but, boy, the one with Shade and Burse together, you know, "Let's move, then," you know, I mean, he ... and then that Charlie Burse shriek in the middle of that thing. Man.

AL: Irrepressible, like you said.

RB: Yeah, he was irrepressible. Oh, God.

AL: Have you heard the story that when they recorded, in the studio, in the '20s, they had to put a pillow...

RB: Oh, listen, listen, listen, you just hit a nerve. That's one of the stories that Olssen stole from me!

AL: Oh, yeah?

RB: Son of a ... yeah, we got that straight from Shade. Kicking the stool legs. You know, put him on a stool and then he kicked the stool legs, and then they had to put pillows around the stool leg, yeah, that's from us. Son of a bitch Olssen didn't give us no credit. I sent him this picture of Gus Cannon and Willie Williams, in this book? Well, you don't have the book ... you know the one I'm talking about?

AL: Uh...

RB: Oh, here's an example, page 77. "Furry Lewis and his wife, 1969." There's a young chick with her ... sitting next to Furry Lewis with her hands on him. That wasn't his wife, it was just some girl that happened to be there. [laughing] Oh, by the way, when my friend Karl Gert zur Heide was there, with another guy, Furry offered them, you know, go back in the back room, there's a girl back there, and do what you, you know, do what you want to do. And Karl Gert zur's friend did! [laughing] He went back there and tapped him off a piece. But that ... I mean, this is careless as hell. And the picture of Gus Cannon, it's a wonderful picture, and a lot of people assume that was Hosea Woods, one of my favorite singers, by the way, but it's not, it's Willie Williams, and it was at Gus's house, and I sent it to Bengt Olssen. And Willie Williams and Gus Cannon, probably early 1920s ... uh, question that ... well, anyway ... not "courtesy of Roger Brown," right? No. Not from that son of a bitch. Anyway, go ahead, go ahead [laughing], I've bitched enough.

AL: Just a little more about Gus Cannon. They must have ... well, you'd think they would have some respect for his older repertoire that he had ... that's definitely....

RB: Oh, I don't doubt that they ... that they had ... that they were contemptuous of him ... the Gus Cannon in his prime. It's just that he was, at that stage of the game, he was probably fifteen, twenty years older than they were, and drunk, and Will would ... Matt, I had to correct Matt on that, Matt said he'd play the "tone" on his harmonica, he played a scale, he played a scale on the harmonica so Gus could tune the banjo, right? And he kept getting it wrong, and Shade said, "You've lost your ear." "No I ain't!" And he said, "I can't tune the harp!" [laughing] I'll never forget that. Mitchell made me leave that off the liner notes because he didn't want people to think this record was going to sound like Peg Leg. You know, that half dead ... so I had to tone that down.

AL: Ah, that's a great story, though. What about the...

RB: But no, but that was just the stage he was in then, and the stage they were in. I'm sure they knew that Gus was ... we didn't talk about it, but ... I mean, you can't knock Gus's banjo playing or singing in the early days of the Cannons.

AL: Or his broad repertoire.

RB: "Springdale Blues"? Or who?

AL: Or his broad repertoire.

RB: Yeah, he was something. Mississippi guy, originally, right?

AL: Just outside of Memphis, but yeah, northern Mississippi.

RB: And he had two versions, I just realized recently, he had two versions of that "Jonesboro Blues." One just him and the harp, and another ... I mean, one just with him and the banjo, and one with him and a harp. At one point he played some guitar in one of those things, and Shade said, "He's playing that guitar like a banjo."

AL: Hmm! Yeah. That, ah ... one of my favorite things I've come across is the "Wine Headed Man" song that Will Shade sang for you.

RB: Of course! You don't think I could forget that, do you?

AL: Do you have any more to say about that, besides what's in the liner notes?

RB: Well, I'm thinking, did some of that song get cut off? I think it started off, "Look here, Mr. Brown, where'd you stay last night, your hair's all rumpled, you ain't treating me right, I'm tired of your low down...." Well, it's a good example of his humor. It was the first thing in the morning, we'd just arrived, right? And he'd obviously dreamed that up to make sure we didn't forget to buy him some Golden Harvest sherry that day. And, uh, "I wish you'd go back to Atlanta and stay." No, you know ... improvising? I was impressed by his ability to improvise, and I was flattered by ... [laughing] ... of course, "Mr. Brown," right, it was always "mister"? Mr. Brown, Mr. Mitchell ... Will and Charlie to them. So when Matt says "reaching across the divide," that sure was happening. I guess growing up when you did, in Oregon, you probably don't realize just how, at least first hand anyhow, ugly that racism was down there.

AL: No, and it is awkward, I've made some trips down there, but I just am not really experienced with it. You know, you grew up in Atlanta, so you have more background with it.

RB: I'll tell you, if you've got the time, I'll give you an example. The most mortified I ever was in that respect. I was riding the bus with a Cuban friend. My best friend in the fifth grade was Cuban, and a polio victim. And we were on a full bus, and a black, an elderly black woman got on, on crutches. And the only empty seat was toward the front, and she sat in it. And you could tell the bus driver was uncomfortable, and he went one stop and he stopped and he said, "I'm going to have to ask you to go to the back." And she looked back and she said, "I don't see any empty seats back there." And he grumbled something, and then he rode to the next stop, and then he stopped and then he really insisted. And this old battle-ax white bitch behind her tapped her on the shoulder and said, "We're from the South!" And that black lady said, "So am I!" And, boy, I was so embarrassed. Oh, I was embarrassed.

AL: Wow.

RB: But that's the kind of thing, you know, that was not unusual. I want to make sure you understand something. The bus, the separation on the buses, it wasn't that the back half of the bus was for blacks, and the front half was for whites. It was that no black passenger was to sit forward of any white passenger. So what was not uncommon, you might have three or four times as many blacks on the bus as whites. But if the whites scattered out...

AL: Oh, jeez.

RB: ...the blacks had no choice but the standing room only in the back. That was not unusual. And one time, only one time, when I was a kid, you know, I was probably fourteen, the bus driver turned around and said to the whites, he said, "Could you move up, please, so those people can sit down?" And I heard some grumbling among the whites. "Hmph, never heard him do that before," you know. It was awful. Just awful. I'm so glad my parents innoculated me against that, you know, from day one.

AL: Yeah. Do you know Don Hill?

RB: Don Hill?

AL: Yeah, Donald Hill?

RB: No. Who's he?

AL: He and David Mangurian were visiting Memphis a little earlier than you guys. I think their first trip was in '61, and they did home recordings of these same people.

RB: Gosh. No idea. By the way, before I forget. Laura Dukes and those people there, for some reason, they had the impression that Atlanta was much less racist than Memphis.

AL: Oh, really?

RB: They conveyed that to us. Ah, no, no, that's the first I've heard of those guys.

AL: Oh, I'll send you some of their stuff. They have some really good recordings, and I'm going to interview them next...

RB: Oh, good.

RB: While I'm at it, I might as well get ... well, I tell you what, you put your return address on that, and I'll dig up this Cannon photo. I've got photographs scattered all over creation.

AL: I do appreciate living in the digital age, where everything is a copy.

RB: Yeah, you have no idea. [laughing] You have no idea what we were up against, man. When I wrote my dissertation, there were no word processors. You don't know how lucky you younger guys are, in this digital ... digital guys. I'm still a Luddite.

AL: Are there any more anecdotes similar to the recording studio pillow, or the "Wine-Headed Man," that haven't gotten out there yet, that you can think of?

RB: Probably not. Matt interviewed me so thoroughly, and you and I have kicked it enough ... probably not, but if anything occurs to me, I'll email it to you.

AL: Okay. I just love that stuff. They're just gems. 'Cause they're fun to read, and they really express something about the people that are so far gone now, you know what I mean?

RB: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yep. I've got a ... when I do send you something, I bought a CD entitled, and I bought it because of the title, it's crummy, or at least I think it's crummy, but the title is "Fourth and Beale," that's why I bought it. [laughing] And it may have a decent picture on it. Anyway, I will send that along with this Gus photo. Just for the hell of it. 'Cause you're a good guy, and you like Fourth and Beale.

AL: Okay! Awesome. Well, that was all my questions.

RB: By the way, do you have that song "Mary Anna Cutoff"?

AL: I know I have it, but I can't think of it, how it goes.

RB: Why, you ... listen to that ... you gotta know, if you look on a map ... I never could make any sense of, there's a town in Arkansas, you know, Mary Anna, which I finally, finally figured out. And it's sung by Jab Jones, so you know it's good. But that's a good one to listen to. Um, he talks about riding the rods, you know, in there, and all the rest. That's a good one to listen to. If you appreciate Jab Jones was the best jug player they had, you know, great piano player, one of the best, one of the two or three best singers in that bunch, and he drank himself to death, according to our friend Rachell. [laughing] Wish I'd known him. I think Mitchell did meet Yank Rachell. But I never did.

AL: Speaking of Jab Jones and his singing ... I have wondered whether the Memphis Jug Band had so many different singers, and I've wondered whether the singers were also the writers of the songs they sang.

RB: Man, I wonder how ... you know, you've got to assume that Will Shade assigned, you know, who's singing this one, who's singing that one. That would have been interesting to see how he orchestrated those things. I don't know. That's fascinating. I'd love...

AL: Or like with Charlie Nickerson, he came from vaudeville, and landed in Memphis and joined up, and I would assume that he brought songs with him, and said, hey ... I mean, that's how I work, when I play with other musicians, "Hey, here's one I know, let's try it."

RB: Very probable, very probable, and we'll never know. It's terrible that scholars weren't interested in this "darkie" music, and probably didn't think it was worthy of any kind of scholarly attention. I was going to tack on something to that. What the hell was it? About the singing ... damn. Short term memory loss of a 71 year old!

AL: [laughing] I'm sorry I interrupted you.

RB: No, no, not your fault. It just went out, but it will roll back around, and I've got your email address.

AL: Okay. But I just always like to give credit to the real originators of the music, and like I said, they had so many different singers, and Jab Jones, I mean, I think he sang "Stealin'," if I'm not mistaken, so that would be quite a...

RB: What, leading on that?

AL: Yeah.

RB: I don't know about that. He's got the biggest voice of the whole bunch. I could be wrong, 'cause they're singing in unison. Is that what Godrich and Dixon says?

AL: I'll have to listen again. But...

RB: I'll have to listen again, too.

AL: It's not Will Shade, and I think that's one where you can tell that the jug playing stops whenever there's singing, so that's how you know it's...

RB: Well, I know the Georgia Jug Busters sure played that one.

AL: The Georgia...

RB: That is Roger Brown, George Mitchell and Jack Boozer. We played that to good effect. But I don't know, I'll have to listen. But, boy, Jab is one of my favorite singers, as is Hosea Woods. These "big voice" guys I like. And ... there was something else I was going to tack on about him, it seems, or about ... Vol Stevens is the only one that I wouldn't call a great singer. He's not bad. You know who I'm talking about, right?

AL: Yeah, he was in the very first lineup, wasn't he?

RB: And I think he played mandolin, I think he played some mandolin...

AL: That's right.

RB: There are a couple things by Will Weldon, what, "Hitch You to My Buggy" and something else, where he's making comments like Abe McNeil, on the Furry things. He had kind of a very nasal voice, very nasal voice. But I wish to hell we'd known enough to pick their minds more about these people, you know. Charlie Pierce and ... we know, matter of fact, nothing about them. Ben Ramey, you know, there's a guy that knows how to play the kazoo softly, you know. How many songs have been ruined by a bad kazoo player? 

AL: [laughing]

RB: Right? Do you agree with me on that?

AL: I'm just laughing 'cause I play kazoo in my band, and hopefully not too many of my songs. [laughing]

RB: To me the greatest kazoo player I've ever heard is on Ma Rainey's Georgia, whatever, Tub Band, or whatever they called themselves. You listen, that's a guy that can really get out front. They play a kazoo well enough to get out front with it. But most of them, including Tampa Red, will ruin a song with bad kazoo. But I appreciate the softness of Ben Ramey's. You listen. Well, too bad we can't get together and listen together some time, that's ... Matt and I have a great time when he visits.

AL: Nice. I bet. Yeah, I love that stuff.

RB: No women around...

AL: And there was no mixing boards then, either, they just had to get the people in the right position to get the mix they wanted.

RB: Yeah, yeah. He did a hell of a job. "Get," quote, "Gettin' their numbers right," you know? The night he met Charlie Burse, and the man was going to come in the morning, so they stayed up most of the night getting ready. I mean, these guys were pros.

AL: Yeah. By the way, you say "burse" ... did you ever hear anybody say "bursey"?

RB: I heard Shade say it, on that...

AL: Yep, that's...

RB: He said, "I'm the only one living at the present. I and my friend, Charlie Burse(y)." But never when we were there.

AL: Oh, so he said it on the recording, but not other times?

RB: I don't know that I ever heard him ... I don't know that I've ever heard Shade say the last name. 'Cause he was "Charlie" when we were with him.

AL: Okay.

RB: But maybe, yeah, maybe he always called him "Charlie Burse(y)." But why would you, if it's b-u-r-s-e?

AL: That's just one of those little things I've been trying to figure out.

RB: Hey, there are a lot of mysteries out there, man, that are never going to get solved.

AL: [laughing]

RB: But Chris Smith, if you ever have one ... for example, where Abe McNeil said he knew ... Abe McNeil said where he was a friend of Robert Johnson's? Some place in Mississippi, or it sounded like "Little Mercy Pile," or something like that? And I heard that on a J.D. Short interview, and I said, "I know where I've heard that before." So we tried to figure out phonetically what he was actually saying. And so I bounced it off of Gerd Wieben and he came up with some theory that didn't work out, and then Chris Smith solved it. And I can't remember the solution now, but I got it, I got an email from him where he does it.

AL: Wow.

RB: I mean that guy. Oh, I know ... hey, I know what I was going to say a minute ago. I know what I was going to say a minute ago. You're talking about ... there's a guy ... Wieben knows a guy, German guy, who, it's amazing the biographical stuff he digs up online. For example, when they were going to come play the concert for us in Atlanta, they were going to bring a piano player with them, by the name of ... you don't know, huh?

AL: Huh uh.

RB: P.R. Gibson. And of course some German misunderstood ... Karl Gert thought it was Pierre, the French name, Pierre, right? And I said, no, no, no, I'm sure it was P.R., the initials. That's common, you know, especially in the South. And, oh, this guy that Gert knows, man, he came up with all kinds of ... I mean, he got to the bottom of who P.R. Gibson was, let's put it that way. And there were several options, you had to sift out the best one. But I've seen him do that with all kinds of obscure musicians. And I say I'm a Luddite, but I think a lot of people who are even geeky couldn't do what he's done. And I remarked that, I exclaimed that to Gert, and he said, "Oh, auf Winne ist Verlass," he said, "Oh, you can count on Winne." And so, if you're ever really hard up, man, that's the guy to establish a relationship with.

AL: Hmm. So he's in Germany, too?

RB: Oh, he's a German guy, he's in with that German crowd, and believe me, when Germans get on to something, they're thorough. They're thorough. They beat the hell out of all of us. Listen, I went into this old courthouse, in the dusty basement there, looking for Henry Williams, and people, and George Carter, and people like that, in the jail, the court records, right? I found a little document that said, "A. Henry Williams," and scribbled on there, "died in jail." You know, I figured that's probably judging from the address, near Peg's place, you know, that was probably Peg, that's probably what happened to Peg ... the guy from Peg Leg's gang. But anyway, this guy ... too many George Carters, I couldn't make head or tails out of them, but this Winne guy, man, he can do it. If anybody can, if anybody can. I'm glad that came back to me before we signed off.

AL: Huh, okay. Great. Have you heard, by the way, any of the Japanese jug bands?

RB: No!

AL: Talk about...

RB: But I'm such a purist, man, I'm such a purist. If it's ... you know, we played this ... I love this guy, this guy that loaned us a tape recorder, guy by the name, who had a very good jazz band in Atlanta, amateurs, right, but top quality, and we played him something by, I forget which, "Avalon Blues" or something, something by John Hurt. And you know what his comment was?

AL: Huh uh.

RB: "That's awfully white." "That's awfully white." And I, you know, I have two souls, one North German, and one black. And I can't tolerate whiteness in music, you know? You got a guy like Gert, Gert is a Bob Dylan fan, right? When I ask Karl Gert zur Heide, I said, "What do you think of Dylan," he said, "Ich ????," he said, "I find him awful!" And I said, "Me too, me too!" And I had a blind date with a girl, Mitchell got me a blind date in Columbus, Georgia once, and she said she wanted to convert me to Bob Dylan, his poetry. And I said, "Well, you better marry me, then, 'cause that's going to take a long time." And she said, "Well, it's poetry." And I said, "Well, if it's poetry, it's poetry not enhanced by music." Anyway, you'll have to forgive me, so I'm not ... you know, I've got all kinds of eclectic friends, and so forth, that do a little blues on the side ... no thank you. I've heard the real thing too many times, you know. I had these students, you play them "Terraplane Blues" by Robert Johnson, they look at each other! Well, of course, they knew it from, what Yardbirds? I don't know any of those groups. I didn't have to work back from the Who or the Yardbirds, or Cream or any of those. If I've heard them at all, I've heard them by accident. I heard one of them doing Skip James, "I'm So Glad," when I was a grad student, and I said, "My God, they butchered that song!" So I, no, I have no ... and I heard, I heard Clapton himself interviewed on Fresh Air in the '80s, and he said, "When I met Sonny Boy Williamson," he said, "I realized how" ... how did he describe it? "How something and contrived, something and contrived, phony and contrived," or something like that, "my stuff was when I heard the real thing," you know? And he said, "Sonny Boy said, 'Those British boys, they want to play blues so bad, and they play it so bad.'" Anyway, forgive me, forgive me!

AL: Well, I was just going to say that to the same extent that the Germans just really do the research thoroughly, these Japanese bands really learn the parts thoroughly. It's pretty impressive.

RB: Well, I lived in Japan for a year, I'm not surprised. That's something, yeah. Those German guys, there's some real good players over there, but I've only met one that could sing. And I tell you ... you know Dave Evans, you know who he is?

AL: Yep, yep.

RB: Have you ever heard him play?

AL: Ah, yeah, I've played with him before.

RB: Well, he can play Tommy Johnson lick for lick, right?

AL: Uh huh.

RB: But when he sings, you want to go through the floor. I do. You may have greater tolerance than I do. But when he sings, I want to go through the floor! So I don't want any part of it.

AL: We, yeah, we can't help it.

RB: Let me tell you something, give you an example. Now when you sing "I'll Get a Break," you stretch out b-r-e-a-k too much.

AL: Hmm.

RB: "I'll get a break, somewhere, baby before long." "I'll get a break." You add a little bit of a dipthong in there, and that whitens it. Take a tip....

AL: So it should be more chopped off, you mean?

RB: Take a tip from a guy that was there. I heard him sing it when he recorded it. "I'll get a break, somewhere, baby...." "Mississippi River, so long, so deep, so wide, I couldn't get a letter from that other side, but I'll get a break." Let me hear you say it, let me say, "break." I'm a language teacher. "I'll get a break," say "break."

AL: "I'll get a break."

RB: Yeah, yeah! Make sure that's a nice, make sure that vowel is nice and short.

AL: "I'll get a break."

RB: That's better! That's better! [laughing] You listen to you're recording, it's not ... it's longer than the other ones you just said.

AL: There's a ... that song was tricky because when he does it, it's actually kind of jaunty, and when I was doing it, I kept bringing it down and making it more serious, and I couldn't get the style, and I finally just gave up and thought, well...

RB: What couldn't you get?

AL: Just the style, I just kind of gave up and thought, well, this is my version, it's different.

RB: Yeah, that's tough. Well, I tell you, I'm proud ... I shouldn't toot my own horn, but I remember when Cathy Mitchell, that's George Mitchell's wife, he met her in Europe, right, so she's a Yankee girl, and she didn't know anything about us Georgia Jug Busters, but she's going to a party one night and we did the "Newport News." And I'm the lead singer on that for the Georgia Jug Busters. She said, "Roger, I didn't know you could sing." [laughing] I was just ... you know, it was derivative, I was just imitating Shade, but I'm a decent imitator, right? So she ... [laughing]

AL: You are a good imitator, it's kind of amazing actually. 'Cause I've heard the interviews you're quoting, and it sounds just like it.

RB: [laughing] Well thank you, thank you. Well, we should ... we can do this informally some other time, and maybe some other little tidbits will resurface.

AL: Okay, very good. Well thank you so much.

RB: Okay, pal, you send me what you promised and I'll send you what I promised, and I'm supposed to email you ... whose address am I supposed to email you?

AL: Paul Oliver?

RB: Oh, I was supposed to find out from Gert how you can reach Paul Oliver. And what is it you want out of him? That interview, the Shade interview.

AL: Yeah, if there's more to that interview.

RB: Yeah, let me see if I can do some good on that.

AL: Okay, that would be fantastic.

RB: Hey, good talking to you!

AL: Thank you so much. Thanks for your time.

RB: Don't you mention it. So long.

AL: Bye bye.

=======

June 22, 2020
Karl Gert zur Heide sent these corrections via email:

- I never suggested that P. R. Gibson's first name could be "Pierre". Paul Oliver transcribed P. R. as "Piano".

- Gerd Wieben lives in the Ammerland, not in East Frisia.

- While my correspondence with Stephen Calt and Pete Lowry was partly unpleasant (I never called them "sociopath and "asshole" respectively, though -- that's Roger's choice of words, not mine), my exchange with Fred Ramsey was cordial and substantial.

- The fellow I met at Furry Lewis's place wasn't a friend of mine -- I never saw him before or after that impromptu recording session. I don't know who was responsible for the wrong date ("1969") of the photo I took in 1968 - either Bengt Olsson or the editor The Memphis Blues I guess.