IGKTW Round Two: The Lattice of Coincidence (445 hits)
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Rating: 2 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Coyote (View user info) at 2006-05-04 02:11:46 EDT
Time came a couple years back when Janie, that's my cousin' Whiskey Bob's youngest girl, was getting hitched up at this place on 35th and Shields, and I run up against my old friend Roosevelt Jones who used to be a sideman for the legendary JJ West. Jonesy could lay down a backbeat with the best of 'em in his day, until that barman down in Carbondale laid the flesh off his hand with his buck-knife on Christmas Day 1967. Anyway, Jonesy and me got to talkin' about all the bluesmen we knew over the years who had all the talent to make it but never got the good breaks like the couple guys who make it bigtime.
Once we got to jawin', we kept comin' up with name after name of really top-notch players who deserve better outta history than to be totally forgot 'cept for some filed away police reports, like Preacher Bell and his southside-record 529 drunk and disorderly arrests. Seems with all the Cherry 55 me and Jonesy put away at Janie's shindig some of the details might have slipped my mind, but I figure I got the gist of it, at least for the important ones. So, for the record, here's a couple of the guys (and dolls) who could play, man, but for one reason or another never made it big. Most cases it's too late for 'em, but leastways you got their names written down now.
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Johnny Gandershank was a great, great blues man. He's Howlin' Moishe's older brother, and I can tell you that he taught Howlin' everything he knows, way before he ever got that big recording contract. After he converted he started hittin' the communion wine pretty hard and so I guess he never got it together enough to get any tracks recorded but damn that boy could play. I was at Rosie's over on Wallace to see John Lee Hooker, well, John's regular bass-man had left town over a woman and Gandershank was filling in, dead drunk but boy could he still play. Turns out he'd been playin' a little of the old Mrs. Robinson with some cat's wife (Gandershank was only 43 at the time, but he dug the older honeys), and right in the middle of "Crawlin' King Snake" the dude jumps up on stage and kicks ol' 'Shank's chair out from under him. Well, Johnny wasn't never the same after he hit his head on the cast-iron radiator. I still see him down at the Jiffy Lube but you ain't never gonna get a CD out of him at this point.
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Lonely Wolf Murphy (guitar and singer). Here was a cat who could flat out sing, he had a voice that would grab you by the balls and not let go 'til you were completely drained. I only saw him twice, but both times he damn well floored me. We told him and told him that it should be Lone Wolf, not Lonely Wolf, but he always wanted to do things his own way. He had a record deal with Roadkill Chilton but I never heard the result, I think they cussed so much the record company threw all the discs in Lake Michigan and ran 'em out of town. Last I heard, Murphy took up bein' a preacher, usin' that voice to enlighten college kids as to the ways of the Lord. Never heard what happened to Chilton, rumor was he ran for president and got eaten by a wolverine up Bangor way.
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Sandra "Screech Owl" Hooton. Much as we tried to stop her, nothin' could stop Sandra from belting out a few tunes when she got all liquored up. And since none of us ever seen her anything BUT liquored up, I guess you'd have to say she was a singer, but her real talent was the guitar. That and giving head. She used to have a regular gig at my cousin Melvin's place, "the Spiny Anteater", and she used to show up so drunk the bouncer wouldn't let her in. We'd have to go out in the snow and drag her in the back door and sit her down on stage to get her into a session—she'd usually be down on her knees slobberin' on some poor bluesman's crotch before you could make her understand she was s'posed to be playin the guitar and not the skin flute. Word was, she was trying to get back at her husband for playin' around on her. She still walks the streets down in that neighborhood, and if you want a real treat you could get her in the studio for just a couple bucks. Her steady man used to play the mouth-harp, but I seen in the paper the boy's bowels got all chawed up by a sewer rat whilst he was settin' on the privy—and if that ain't some kinda Biblical vengeance then I don't know what is.
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Snarky Dave Jackson played guitar and sang at Ubiquitous Freeman's place of a Thursday night from the fifties until just a couple years ago, and the only break he ever got was when he sat in on one of B.B. King's recording sessions. His licks all got cut from the final mix, but he was always proud of that session. He used to get the crowds packed into ol' Ubiquitous' place, until he messed with a preacherman's wife and the Padre arranged for him to have a fencing "accident". Poor ol' Snarky... never stopped reminding you he took the bronze in sabre at Melbourne back in '56, right up til the day Father Coakley's blade snapped during a repartee and he drove the jagged tip right through his mask and into his brain. They say for three days after that he could still get that strong, ringing, powerful tone out of that guitar of his. The blues lost a great player when he passed. "Sackbut" Smith and his medieval revivalist blues troubadors took over Snarky's gig in '97, but they never brought the crowds in the same way, and when 9-Millimeter Steadman settled his score with 9-Inch Thompson onstage that was finally the death knell for that old joint. While it lasted that was the best place on the South Side to hear those genuine real delta blues though.
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Eight-Deer Jaguar Claw Johnson was the best damn harmonica player I ever heard play, bar none. He used to get sloshed completely out of his mind and claim to be an Aztec god, and he'd get all these roller-derby ho's to get up on stage and be his "preachers". It was only fifty cents to get into his gigs, seventy-five on the weekends, and we jumped at the chance to see a bona fide local blues legend. Them topless jaguar preacher ho's didn't hurt his chances none either, but the muckety-mucks at the record companies wanted a more christian image I reckon. Back in about '83 I'd been spending a lot of time trying to convince Eight-Deer to come record some of his tunes (his signature song was a real juke-joint barn burner, "Back Door Beating Heart Sacrifice Railway Blues") with Jimmy Laphroaig on guitar and Blue Balls Hirohito on drums, but the timing always got a little wrong, and the one day we actually booked studio time I got a phone call from Jaguar Claw saying he was in Uranium City, Saskatchewan! He'd misread the directions to the place. Anyway, ol' Eight-Deer never amounted to much. He had the best goddamn sound, it'd make demons weep, but every time we tried to get him some publicity he'd start in with the human sacrifice and the Aztec god thing, and he ended up dead up in Wisconsin someplace. His brother says it was a speed skating accident, but one of the roller derby preacher ho's who was with him that day swears a vulture dropped a tortoise on his head, and let me tell you, there ain't an A&R rep alive gonna sign a man died of a tortoise-blow to the head. That right there is divine retribution, son, and no mistake about it.
User Reviews
Submitted by Alter (user info) at 2007-09-26 20:30:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No, Comment.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-05-04 15:21:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
From this point on I was sold...
"Well, Johnny wasn't never the same after he hit his head on the cast-iron radiator. I still see him down at the Jiffy Lube but you ain't never gonna get a CD out of him at this point."
Submitted by gank (user info) at 2006-05-04 12:00:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2006-05-04 11:00:21 (#)
Ranking: 2
Is that a real song from somewhere, or did you create it for the story?
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I made it up. As you fabricated old blues cats for this entertaining piece here. Eight-Deer Jaguar Claw Johnson was almost too much, but I laughed. The names just kept getting more crazy.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-05-04 09:55:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I was beginning to wonder about the "preacher" part of the theme until I got into the latter part of the post. Good stuff.
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-05-04 09:10:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Clever
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-05-04 07:51:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"He had the best goddamn sound, it'd make demons weep..."
As does this story. Great work.
Submitted by Beano312003 (user info) at 2006-05-04 07:33:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
intense blues knowledge.
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2006-05-04 06:13:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"every time we tried to get him some publicity he'd start in with the human sacrifice and the Aztec god thing"
See, now, THAT'S why catholic schools won't hire you.
That, and your "little problem."
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-04 02:20:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I kid, I kid.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-04 02:17:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Theme-cheat.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2006-05-04 02:12:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I am going, I am going,
Where streams of whiskey are flowing.