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A Conversation with Eddie Bo |
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Thursday, 02 February 2006 05:52 |
A Conversation with Eddie Bo
By John Sinclair
John Sinclair: Well, let's go back to the very beginning if we could: Official day and place of birth.
Eddie Bo: Wow, I wouldn t have no idea about that, John. They tell me the records are all gone because I was born the same time the Earth was. So you can take me back as far as--I used to shop with Adam and Eve. Ah. You probably came up with that apple. [Laughter]
Well, we can go back to the Lastie Brothers and what was really the first beginning--old Jumpin Jessie Hill. We were all in the 9th Ward, and we used to go from one house to the other house. We rehearsed every day. I d cook a pot of beans, and the next day the other guy would cook beans, and we would go from house to house.
We rehearsed every day. We got real close. We were into the music. They don t do that, people don t do that anymore. We were so close, see, [Drummer] Poppee [Lastie], we had to put Poppee on a 7-Up case. His feet couldn t reach the bass drum, so we had to set all that up.
Y all were kids then?
Yeah, and it was fun too, cause we played, we got so tight that New York heard about us playing in the 9th Ward, and they sent us on our first gig with Little Willie John, in Dallas, Texas. I ll never forget. Now you talking about the beginning stages of everything.
You re talking after you made the record for Apollo [in 1955]?
Yeah. You see, when I did this thing for Apollo, I didn t--I had no idea what contracts and stuff was. That eluded me, so....
And of course they weren t too forthcoming with the information &.
No, and after all the years I heard that saying in a place called--on Freret and Louisiana at the pool hall. Man, that place been there since heck was a puppy--the Brown Bomber. I heard two dudes shooting pool, and they were talking shit: This one guy was coming out &.
See, songs--songs are relative to a lot of things you hear on records. See, he was coming out of the hotel, and his wife was coming out of the hotel with another man, and he goes on to say that, you know, "That bitch was slipping and sliding.
I said, Got me a tune! [Laughter] And from one thing to another, I just started writing shit down. That's the way it go. You really need to get into something--something that you really love.
The music was more important to us than contracts. We were just into it. We didn t know nothing about that stuff. You hear your name on record or see your name on the marquee--that was a big deal.
So we moved from that, we come back, we played the Dew Drop. We played the Dew Drop. You know how everybody knew everybody? You know how everybody played with everybody--Ellis Marsalis, Edward Frank. You know him? Well, piano players is-- piano players is a dime a dozen. They re all over the place, and we talking about great, great pianists that are recognized all over the world.
When we used to go into the Dew Drop on weekends, and every single swinging dick, well, every single body everybody--everybody was there. Everybody. Play a gig from 9:00 to 1:00 or 10:00 to 2:00--Danny White, his group, Irving Bannister and--I don t know if you even know about all that stuff and Earl King.
Well, Earl King was our editor. Everything that went on at the Dew Drop, he had a paper on it. And he knew everybody that did what. We can t get into that part of it, but he had people in every room. Every room. Every room. He lived there.
See, he lived in the hotel. It was a club and a hotel. So Earl lived there. Earl made him a hole so he could see, and then you re talking about things that went down.
I know you don t want this for the record. This is off the record. We re talking about, ah, you know: Ain t gonna mess around with no little skinny legged woman. I don t know if you know that name: Joe Tex. Talking about Joe. We re talking about the marriage between Frank Painia and Joe Turner. No, that's off. That can t go in there &.
So, Earl was the editor, and if you wanted to be OK with Earl, and you had something you wanted to do in any particular room, you had to pay him off. You give him a few dollars and he won t put it in his paper. Oh, he ain t gonna plug up the hole--he's gonna put it in the private file like J. Edgar Hoover.
So we had, ah, Little Richard. We had, let me see, Tommy Ridgley. We had Patsy Vidalia. Know about Patsy? Weird. Patsy, ah &I didn t know nothing about nothing. I was the greenest. I probably was one of the greenest things out there.
When I went in the bathroom, Patsy jammed me in the bathroom, say, You re the only one that I ain t caught yet, so you re going to have to take their business. I don t know how I talked my way out of it, but &.
So Patsy say, And now, ladies and gentlemen, the great, reknown Eddie BOOOOOOOOOOOAHHHH! I don t know how he opened his mouth so wide--he, she, whatever. But the musicians would have fun, saying, Say that again, Patsy.
We had people coming in through like Dinah Washington. I had a chance to play with her. She called a tune once and we played some blues. She said, You can really play. She grabbed me and snatched me out of the chair and the names that she called me, I didn t know them either, because she wanted to show the people how she could really play, and she was a good--she was a great pianist.
Man, I can tell you some stories about what some of the people--you can t write about them. But these are people that I came across at the time and I learned a lot from. I learned a lot from just listening to what they did.
The Dew Drop now has been presented by people who never played there. I don t understand that, John. Now that's one thing that you re going to have to find out for me: How could you present a Dew Drop Revue [with people] who never played in the Dew Drop? You know they re doing it. I don t know if Earl ever played it, or Johnny Adams?
I know I never played it. The Nevilles played there. They should have played it. These are the people, Jessie Hill, these are the people who were active at the time. When all this stuff was going on, that's why they had a bond.
Musicians, they re kind of scattered right now. They don t go through all these stages that we used to do. We rehearsed every single day, except one--one day we would take off. We had six days to rehearse, so we were tight.
So now I want to ask you a question.: How did you hear anything about Apollo? And Apollo wound up in California, and now I know Jo Jones owns all my material.
Well, I had the record when I was 14.
You had the record.
I had the record on Apollo, I m Wise backed with Happy Tears. I loved that B-side even more than I m Wise.
Do you know how many [composers ] names are on there now?
I loved Happy Tears. I d be having trouble with my little girlfriend and I d go to my record player and I put on Happy Tears and I d play that 50 times in a row, and wait for that phone call, and hope I didn t break down on the phone. I loved that song. I was just lucky to get to hear it--I lived in a little bitty country town.
What was the name of it?
Davison, Michigan. Little bitty country town outside of Flint. My dad worked in Flint at the Buick. And he gave me a little $2 allowance every week, and every Friday I d give him a list, and he d go to the record shop--it was owned by the disc jockey I listened to, Frantic Ernie Durham-- in the ghetto in Flint, where the factory was. And my dad would go on his lunch hour and get two records and bring them back out there in the country. That was how I started getting records.
That's really good.
Then I d send away to WLAC. I didn t know where this was coming from. To me, it was coming from God. I d hear these little records, and it would just fry my little brain. There was nothing in my life that related to this. I was in there with a bunch of farmers. The biggest building in our town was the grain elevator, where the farmers stored their grain. So it came to me through the ether. That's why I love radio so much.
Man, that's powerful.
Somehow these records made it to me, and I was so thankful. And if they didn t play them on the radio, I couldn t get them. Little Bo on Ace, I didn t get that until years later.
Is he still alive?
I interviewed Johnny Vincent two weeks ago. I tried to get him to talk about Ace Records, but he wanted to talk about his new artists.
Is he still walking?
He's got a walker, but yeah &.
Next time you see him, tell him to pay his old artists. If he paid, he wouldn t have that walker. That's off the record.
Well, when you made that record for Apollo, was that your first thing?
Yeah, that was the very first one.
How did you get hooked up with them?
That's another story. All fire and no smoke. That was this man's name, Mo Fire No Smoke. That was one of the DJs in the city, and he said, Look, I can call somebody. If you want to record, I can call somebody at the record company as long as you put my name on it. The same old thing. His name was Smith. That's why when you see Slippin and Slidin , it's got Smith, Bocage, and, ah, Collins--Al Collins.
Al Collins of Baby with the Big Butt &
They were close together, so we were doing some tunes together. He did a tune that was close to mine. And he was--well, you can t put this down: He was dealing. He had beaucoup of things. He said that I was the only person in the area that he would trust to hold his money. Man, I never saw that kind of money. Man, I m talking about many thousands of dollars that he was cleaning.
Anyway, he was called Chocolate. He was the man at that time. We were recorded. I didn t sign any papers. James Smith, that was Okey-Dokey, that was his other name. He made the contacts for me.
One day, after a few years passed by, I asked him why it was necessary for him to have his name on it. And he said, Cause I helped you write that. But you wasn t nowhere around. But I said it in front of some other people, and he didn t particularly like it, so that's when the fight started.
Did you know about publishing and all that?
I learned. I learned. Do you know who was the most knowledgeable one about that and brought it to our attention? Earl King. Earl King was into it, learning about getting his money.
How did he learn about it so early?
I don t know. I don t know. He--evidently from talking to different people. Do you remember Benny Spellman? He was around. He and Earl were close, close buddies. Earl never wrote about him in his paper. They were buddies. Alright, to get back to this thing &.
What I liked about the paper is that there was only one copy.
Yeah.
It wasn t like it was reproduced. There was one copy, and you took it up to your room and read it and rented it for a dime, and then you had to give it back. That's the way I heard it.
Well, there's a lot more about the paper. Earl told everybody that you had to help him pay his rent, so if you want to do something in there, you had to give him some money so he wouldn t write, but he would still peep. Nobody knew where the holes were except for him and Benny.
Benny was in it with him. Benny knew more than anybody. Benny was doing it more than anybody else around there, but he wouldn t write about Benny. But I think the whole situation was a good thing when you sit down and look, because there are so many stories.
God, man. People ask me, Do you know such and such? and I say, Yeah, I know him. And I don t need to take that to the end of the world. Because there are a lot of things going on that people don t know that I don t know. I don t hang with certain people because I don t like what they do, but that's their business. Their music is good. I like that.
So everything else--Dew Drop, we re basically talking about what went on around the Dew Drop. The Dew Drop was one of the most unique places in the world. You could go to jail. They used to raid it when white [people] would come. And you would see things that you can t talk about.
Well, you had an atmosphere where everybody was either staying there or coming through there or hanging out every night. It must have been a helluva cauldron.
Man, I saw Ray Charles go outside the Dew Drop--right in front of the Dew Drop--and a brown station wagon, the people were trying to get the thing started, and the hood was up. Ray Charles went in there and fixed that thing. We d tell him, You ain t blind.
We used to clown him all the time He hung around there. He hung around here a long time. He got a lot of stuff from here. Him and Joe Turner and Joe Tex. I could name them, but they don t come right to me. But that's where we met a lot of people and got things.
One time I saw him in the back upstairs, and he was crying. Ray Charles was in the back crying. He was crying and he was at the piano singing. Man, if I could have recorded that! Ray Charles was saying, If I could only hear my mother pray again.
Man, you talking about something. The touch this man had, and the way he approached the harmonics--it makes you cringe. And you could tell, he had feelings for the music. If I could have put that down, but I remember how they approach the things he did.
And you never know what is going through a person's mind. At that time he was thinking about the death [of his mother], and he needed to talk to somebody. He was having some problems.
Frank Pania kept everybody that was stranded, that was working and was stranded, he kept them at the--so you had a chance to meet everybody. And me and Earl--I knew I had to get straight with Earl, so I gave Earl a few dollars and told him, I said, Listen &.
See, Earl would collect money from each person around. Sometimes a dollar, sometimes two dollars, to go and watch a show. There was a priest who used to come there once a week, and he would get somebody to sit on his chest and have a bowel movement. He would catch it, put it on bread, and eat it.
And we we paid to see that show. But they had a lot of shows. Anytime a show would go on, they had to come through Earl. And Earl would put them in a certain room, and they would pay so much. All kind of shows. I m talking every kind of show. But let's talk about something else &.
Right, right. Okay, let's talk about the piano. When you were coming up and you were playing piano, who did you first listen to?
I first listened to my mother. She died last year. She was living in San Francisco. She played the same style well, there are hundreds of players who played the same style as Fess. And that was--they call that the junker blues. Old junker blues. He just took it to another level.
Fess would just play it in such a style that he would get all the money. Fess liked to stay high. Fess stayed high all the time, so he would keep all the money, so he took his foot and played the drums on the bottom of the piano. He didn t need no drummer. He got him a bag after the gig. So that's what developed his left hand and his foot.
He took everybody out of the picture that he could. He d play the bass by himself, and he d create a groove too. People would be dancing to that stuff, man. And I think that was a setting for a man and a God-given gift, cause nobody could teach that. Something that he wanted and he needed, so he eliminated people so he could make enough money so he could buy what he needed to come back the next night. So he kept doing that and that was a style.vv People said--oh, what's the name of the lounge across the river? The Pepper Pot? That was out in the middle of a field &. But what about the 9th Ward? Wasn t there a joint like that he played in the 9th Ward?
Yeah, because we played in a lot of fields the 9th ward had cows and chickens before the houses developed anywhere, and the money wasn t nothing. Wasn t worried about the money. We played. We wanted to play.
So you d hear Fess when you were coming up?
Oh yeah. I talked to Fess a lot. You know, when you sit and talk to a man like Fess a lot, and you love him so much--because he and my daddy was gamblers. And Tommy was also a sucker.
My old man dealt from the bottom of the deck. So he d tell me how he beat Tommy and Fess out of all their money. Fess couldn t hold a dime. Fess is trying to get more bags, and he's going under, so he knew he had to kick a lot of pianos. [Laughs] Fess was working in the back of Joe Assunto's record shop, One Stop Record Shop on Rampart Street, and we used to go over there a lot and talk to him and listen to him play. He d just play. He didn t care nothing about he d just sit there and play for hours, and [in] his style.
You d just look at him and say, Fess, how could you make them runs with three fingers? It was literally impossible, but he was, he was--he was a monster, man.
I d say, one thing I want to know before anything else, what does it mean, Oooola malla walla dolla. He say, he look up, That's my shit, bruh. I say, Boy, if Webster could hear you, he d turn over in his grave. What did he play?
So when I take that and put it all together, he didn t know nothing about all that. All Fess want to do it play and get high, so the thing was a god gift, cause everybody around the country....
Do you know Jerry Wexler spent many thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands to get classic pianists to duplicate that? They couldn t. He spent a fortune. He lost one of his boats trying to hire people to duplicate what Fess was doing.
Man, that's a whole different- you re on another plateau when you re trying to deal with what that man was doing. He just took a simple triad and turned it into something so difficult to play, and he didn t do it like normal pianists like we studied.
Fess would play with any finger he wanted to play with. That's all I ve got to say about that. He would play it unorthodox, and it was so fluent and profound, everybody wanted to play it.
Every piano player you hear, cause I taught it to someone in Richmond, and, ah, he just--he went wild. He said, Where you get that? I said, Professor Longhair. Professor Longhair. He's the only one who can claim it cause it was his stuff.
David Kunian: Somebody that I wanted to ask you about is James Black.
Oh yes indeed. The people I ve played with is hard to James Black and Fred Kemp were the two people I dealt with a lot. Now James--James Black almost lived at my house.
Nobody knew about the many trips he would come, cause he would always tell me it was something he wanted to get from me. And he was going to hang around until he got it, but he got hung up with something else that kind of took him out.
But it was me, James Black, Fred Kemp, and I m trying to remember who the bass player was. We hired two horns to play the runs for Hook and Sling.
So, you know, James was kind of nervous. He chewed gum and smoked cigarette after cigarette, and he told the musicians in the studio, Look, now we don t want to stay in this thing long, yeeeaah? So let's do this little shit.
And he say, See this little part here? He run this down, because one time James took a trumpet player's trumpet and hit him in the head with it and sat there and played the part. He said, Now let's go home. He said, Now pay this M.F. and don t bring him round me no more.
James was a very astute musician. He knew so much about the instruments and harmony and how it should be. Helluva trumpet player, and a helluva piano player. James could play, man. And I m talking seriously play, and he liked the way I played because we mixed up a lot of things.
You know, a couple of years ago, I met your old sidekick, El Bo. He's kicks. What did you guys do together onstage? Did he come out and do...
Well, he d did whatever--he d dance and play a tambourine and clown. That's all. El Bo. David named him. David Lastie named him. Eddie Bo and El Bo [laughter], because he was so close to me. Every time I moved, he would be right there. You got anything else?
Well, you ought to say something about your current activities, since you re putting out your own products now.
EB: Well, I find it better to I just come to a logical conclusion in my mind that it just doesn t pay to deal with those people [at the record companies]. I ve dealt with so many different companies, and they all have the same philosophy: They see how much they can get from this artist and, ah, and how little we can give them, and they just give up what they want up front, and you don t even need to worry about expecting any money, no matter how much it sells.
And I hate talking about that thing--me and James, we put it together. We put that tune together in one take, and everybody was tripping in their shoes, but they were all great musicians. When James is telling you he don t want to stay in the studio no longer than he has to, we just cut that tune, and we left, and we brought it to Al Scramuzza, and we agreed verbally that we d have half and half.
I m in agreement with you, man: Don t play for humans. Don t have no dealings with humans, cause it turned out the same way. Now, the man who introduced Al Scramuzza to an attorney I was using--me and Earl King had the same attorney--so when the woman Florence Greenberg [of Wand/Scepter Records] sent a check, a blank, by her son-in-law for Hook and Sling, and they wanted me to do some more things, she told him, Don t come back without it.
She gave him a blank check. So Al just said, 50,000, so they gave a $50,000 advance. They gave me $5,000. So the lawyer I introduced Al to became his lawyer, and ah, they got together and I got five grand.
And of course there was one good thing. People ask me that attorney got killed the next week. Somebody shot him right between the eyes. So they ask me, You didn t get caught? I said, I didn t kill the man. See, they think I did it because, you know &. Nuh-uh. It wasn t me, John, really, it wasn t me. [Laughter] No it wasn t.
But when you ask me about these things, I just figure, you know, over a period of time, whatever I make, I make. I don t need to be screwed anymore. That's enough. You know, so many shoes can get in your behind. After that, it gets stopped up. Boots and [laughs] &and high heels.
So we decided to do this ourselves. Veronica writes the liner notes and tries to talk to people like yourself and get things to help us along the way. So we do it ourselves and do it quite well.
One last word about your unique piano style?
You know, I don t play orthodox. All my stuff is mixed up in other forms of music, so a lot of people ask me, and I can t explain it to them. I ve had interviews around the world asking me, you know, my projection of instrumentation, and [how] the harmonics are different, but it's just a mixture of cause I didn t want to play rock and blues and all that stuff.
I played jazz, you know, and learning to play, I was following people like Art Tatum. I think that's the greatest artist of the century as far as piano is concerned. They can talk all they want, but Tatum was the most dangerous man ever to sit at the piano.
The man they called God.,,,
That's him! That's the man! Shit, I ll tell you, man--that's the man. When he walked in, all pianists say, Y all think I m good? Here comes God. God is here. That man was flawless. He was flawless. So powerful. You know the only person that I thought equaled him gimme the name Horowitz, Vladimir Horowitz. And he played flawless.
Then I found out he was at all of Tatum s--everywhere Art Tatum played, I find out he went there to go check him out. And that's reading and studying and listening, it brings so much to your mind.
And when certain people call and they talk about the piano and they name a lot of pianists, cause I think everybody have something to bring to the table. That's the way I look at it. But I think that God is dead. Not the God who created the sun, moon, and stars, but the god I know as of the piano. You re talking about the piano. Well, he died when Art Tatum died. Art Tatum died? He died. You got any more questions?
You say Art Tatum: It's all over. Well, what about the guys in the neighborhood, the Lasties and them. You all fell in when you were teenagers?
Yeah. Yeah, that same cow pasture you were talking about with the hogs and chickens, and we had to step in that shit to get to we d get to that little house. We d all get there some kind of way. Wipe your shoes off and play. That's why the shit was so funky.
--New Orleans
1999
(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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