Backroads of American Music

Charlie Nelson: Piney Woods Piano Man (October 28, 1919-March 4, 2009)

Preston — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:29:00 GMT

Charlie Nelson will not be playing at a juke joint near you. It would be unfair to leave his story out of the Backroads project on such a technicality, though. Nelson’s an 88-year-old master of the 88s. He lives on land his parents bought in the piney woods region of Mississippi southwest of Jackson. He’s had recent opportunities in music — an offer to record a CD, and a contract on the table for a set at the Chicago Blues Festival (without a sample, audition, or questions asked). A Japanese film crew offered to pay him $300 to allow them to tape him playing piano in his living room. “I’ll never be that hungry,” he told them.

When I visited him for the first time about four years ago, he had three pianos in various stages of decay in the living room of the trailer he stayed in on his folks’ land. His place stood across a gravel road and sprawling vegetable garden from where his brother lived. The two bought walkie-talkies to communicate with, but Charlie switched the frequency around to listen to hunters in the nearby woods. The ruins of his childhood home smoldered on the lot next to his that day. He and his brother had to get rid of the old place as it had become a haven for critters.

He kept a shiny silver .357 magnum in a six-pack cooler beside his piano bench. He explained that it was for a son he’d fathered in his early seventies. Not the early seventies, his early seventies. Apparently “that bigfoot boy,” as Charlie called him, had two habits that disagreed with Charlie. One was asking for money and the other was taking things that didn’t belong to him. Charlie questioned his parentage of the boy, and said he’d asked the mother to submit the boy for DNA testing, which she declined. Thus the chilliness, I suppose.

Charliw makes muscadine wine. He gave me a flask of it in a cleaned out Crown Royal pint bottle. I took the first sip later with some hesitation, and found it to be to my liking. It’s tart with a hint of sweetness and a trace of natural carbonation, like Piney Woods champagne. I told him how much I enjoyed it and he sent me home with a mason jar full after my next visit. I’m saving it in my liquor cabinet for a special occasion. The grape bits coagulated into a pulpy disk that sits on the bottom of the jar.

Charlie was born, “28th of October, 1919. That was a bad day for the world,” he jokes. “When I was a little fella, about ten, there was a guy from Chicago. He found out I played organ and he wanted to take me up there and put me through the school of music. But I wasn’t leaving my mama and daddy,” Charlie says.

There was a time, the late 1930s to be exact, when Charlie played juke joints and fish fries all around the Nelson homestead. I asked him if he had run across any notorious bluesmen who would have been active then. He told me that he was the onliest one who played piano around there. I’ve always loved that little gem of Deep South dialect: onliest. It’s as if “only” doesn’t quite convey his singularity as a player. Since he’s the onliest one of his generation left standing, it makes sense that he’d figure prominently into his telling of their history.

Charlie picked a little guitar too, but still permitted a cousin to accompany him to gigs out in the country. One night or early morning the two were walking home when they heard a car approaching. They recognized the sound of topless Packard a group of rednecks rode around harassing people like them in, and dove for a ditch beside the road.

The necks pulled over. Charlie and his cousin heard one of them yell “Niggeeerrrr.”

“I carried that big 32-20 with me,” Charlie explains, “and blew it off over their heads. They never bothered us no more.”

The 32-20 Charlie referred to was a revolver that Colt manufactured until at least 1919, the year of Charlie’s birth. Charlie and the Colt traveled around the state, mostly playing log camp dormitories until leaving home to serve in WWII.

He remained in the service, living in Utah, until the 1970s, when he returned home after a busted marriage or two.

He plays the kind of barrelhouse piano you might imagine you’d hear wafting between the slats of one of those lumber camp dorms. He’s of wiry build and quite limber. I marveled at his dexterity and speed as he played an uptempo gospel tune he’d written the first time I visited him. He tickled out the last few notes, and feeling he had nailed it let out a “whoo!” to punctuate the end.

“A lot of people think rich people has the most fun, but I don’t believe it,” he says. “They have the most opportunity, but they too busy trying to make more money. A person ain’t got no money, ain’t got nothing to worry about. Go out there and have a ball if he want to , come back home and go to sleep. Nobody’s coming around to rob him. For what? Old car like mine? It’s a pretty good car, but it’s old.”

***

Update: May 4, 2009
I pulled into the Nelson homestead, a clearing in a pine forest on a gravel road about 15 miles west of Interstate 55 below Jackson, Mississippi, yesterday to visit Charlie on my way home to Memphis from Louisiana.

Something was wrong. His front door stood open and I could see the rain pouring into the front room where he played his piano. One of the windows was boarded shut. I hoped that Charlie had moved over to his brother’s home, considering the leakiness, across the gravel road from his trailer. I knocked at his brother’s door, and a man who resembled Charlie, same rectangular torso, sure posture, long arms, and wiry body, told me that Charlie died. Charlie’s brother Andrew explained that Charlie had gone down fast, and succumbed in the middle of the night about two months ago.

Charlie lived in a way that would put any “green”-espousing member of my demographic to shame. He ate fruits and vegetables that came out of the ground his family has owned since 1937: corn, tomatoes, watermelon, peas. He and his brother fished at McCall Creek or one of its by-waters. Charlie brewed muscadine wine from the tart little grapes whose vines wrapped around the decaying split rail fences, hand-hewn lean-to shed, and mailbox post on the Nelson homestead.

Lest I convey a primitive image of my friend, I should also mention that he went all-wireless about four years ago and would sometimes call from his cellphone while behind the wheel of his self-described “raggedy old car.” He lived an old-fashioned-life by choice, not out of ignorance. As a boy in the 1920s, Charlie was offered the chance to study music in Chicago, but declined due to his strong connection to his family. He knew he had talent enough to make a living in music, but valued health and longevity over fame and glory, and cited his continued survival past his peers’ deaths as evidence of his correctness. (Robert Johnson, the celebrated singer and guitarist, was born less than 40 miles and just over eight years from where and when Charlie entered the world, and died 70 years before Charlie did.)

Charlie was tough. He stood for himself in a way that I hope no one has to anymore in this country. Charlie knew, as only a black Mississippian in the 1930s could know, that no law existed to protect his body from the evil forces that surrounded him and, should those forces erase him, no media would advocate for the justice of his murdered soul.

These circumstances might have embittered you. I know they would have darkened my outlook. But Charlie was funny. He warned me against “Geechie” women, one of whom he had married way back, and any females who cooked rice with garlic. After I met my wife, he asked if she had a sister.

Charlie could play the piano well. Enough to have been offered two opportunities to record and a one-hour slot at the Chicago Blues Festival in the last six years of his life. None of which he actually did, but he at least received some validation from the music world, even if it didn’t matter to him.

I asked Andrew where Charlie was buried, and he gestured over to a fenced-off square of grass. Charlie is now forever committed to the soil that fed him. He rests not far from where a falling pine crushed the life out of his father many years ago, within earshot of gunfire from where he stood against blood-minded bigots. Nearby, new corn peeps up from the ground and, around the cemetery fence, a muscadine vine coils.

He could play that piano and make me laugh, and I’m always going to miss him, and I’m always going to be a better person for having known him. Rest in peace, old friend.

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TC's Lounge

ataylor — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:18:00 GMT

T.C.'s Lounge lies at the dead-end of 12th Street, in far East Austin, TX. Owned by T.C. Perkins since 1979, this BYOB joint showcases blues, funk, and occasionally jazz that transports its Texas visitors directly to the Mississippi Delta. On Monday nights, the Little Elmore Reed Blues Band draws a crowd and for good reason. Whether you're a Southerner home-sick for your roots, or a soul in search of an authentic and unpretentious jam, stop in to this gritty, backwoods bar, to experience music of the same vein.

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O.V. Wright's Final Resting Place

Preston — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:10:00 GMT

Galilee Memorial Gardens

8283 Ellis Road in Memphis, Tennessee

This is also where Peter Chatman, better known as Memphis Slim is buried, as is lesser known bluesman Joe WIllie Wilkins. Slim has a nice bronze marker emblazoned with his portrait, while Joe Willie has nothing. Which brings me to the great Overton Vertis Wright. He spent over a quarter century in the dirt here without a marker. That was until an international group including O.V.'s fans, colleagues, and family got together to pay him tribute. The details of that endeavor can be found here. The lasting effects can be visited every day at Galilee. Or for the lazy, infirm, or unable to make the pilgrimmage, this picture will do.

On a side note, in addition to the greats buried in Galilee, you can visit jug band pioneer Will Shade's grave across the street in the Shelby County Cemetery. A group of fans got together in spring 2008 to give him a fitting monument. Only the Lord knows how many other forgotten musicians lay beside Will out in that potter's field. But you have at least four of Memphis' finest musicians buried within a square mile of each other. Four musical geniuses per square mile sounds about right for hte Bluff City. Just imagine how thick the talent was around here when these cats were livin'.

Rest in Peace O.V. We love you and will never forget you.

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The Columbus Opry, Columbus MS

sylviaparker — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:20:00 GMT

I am beginning to suspect that there may be hundreds of places in the Deep South where people get together for regular, usually weekly, country music jams. Though they're not honky tonks that's the preferred style of music, mixed in with some rock and roll and gospel. Some are run by families and some by local musicians and/or their fans. While there is a core group of regular players and audience members, newcomers are welcomed to sit in with the band at most of the places I've been to. I've had a lot of fun at every one I've visited, but the Columbus Opry in Columbus, Mississippi is my favorite.

Owner Benny Davis sets the tone with his great warmth, sense of humor and talent for letting it rip on electric and steel guitar. Benny tells a story about when he was a child and his Sunday School teacher asked the kids to pick a favorite song to perform in church. The teacher didn't say what kind of song, so he picked Hank Williams' "My Bucket's Got A Hole In It" which he'd been listening to on the radio whenever he got the chance. When it came time for the children to sing their songs, Benny was asked to go first. He sang "Yea! My Bucket's Got A Hole In It, Yea! My Bucket's Got A Hole In It, I can't buy no beer..." to what was was surely a vast sea of raised eyebrows. After that he says his mother grabbed him by the hair and gave him the whoopin' of his life. To this day he still won't sing that song but he's created a place where people can go with their friends and families and sing anything, secular or sacred, that they like. Drinking, smoking and cussing aren't allowed at the Opry and kids are free to knock themselves out singing and dancing or playing hide and seek outside.

A Chief of Police Sings "Mind Your Own Business"

Another thing going for the Columbus Opry is Hilton Hammond, known professionally as Miss Hilton Hammond due to some confusion generated by her first release on K-Ark. People were asking why the guy who cut the record sounded like a woman, so she made her gender unmistakable on later records. She recently treated everyone to a couple of her old songs - "Charlie" which she wrote based on an overheard conversation about a planned knife attack, anthologized on the Collector Records CD "Girls Girls Rockin'", and her version of "King Size Poppa" also recorded by the blues singer, Julia Lee. Click to hear Charlie.

Miss Hilton Hammond

She's there every Saturday with her husband Hap who plays guitar and son John who plays drums and sings. The Hammonds are also working to help Benny keep the Opry going. Donations are gratefully accepted and the lottery of donated items is a fun way to raise funds. (I've won some excellent sweet potatoes and pecans myself.) All the money collected goes towards paying for the property and utilities. So far, they have put in central air conditioning, enlarged the stage and put in a concession area where you can buy hot dogs, popcorn and soft drinks. An electric sign awaits a tall concrete pole required by the city.

Gene Reed

The Columbus Opry runs from 7:00 to around 10:00 every Saturday night. Regular Musicians (singers are marked with *) are: Violin: Jim Fain*; Finger guitarist: Gene Reed*; Rhythm guitar: Ron Bailey*;Lead guitar, fiddle, banjo, harmonica: Benny Davis*; Rhythm guitar: Hap Hammond; Bass: Linda Garrard*; Guitarist: James Cumberland*; Guitarist: Leon Winters; Drummer: John Hammond,Jr.* Singers not on-stage include: Carolyn Reed, Denzel Aldridge, Ruby Bell, Dale Cumberland, Hilton Hammond, Ruth from Aberdeen has joined lately (sings gospel), Doyle Spears picks and sings when he is there.

Benny Davis, Linda Garrard, James Cumberland (left to right)

How to get there: From the East take Highway 82 to the first exit in Columbus (Hw 12/50). From the west, Hw 12/50 is the last Columbus Exit off of Highway 82. Go East on highway 50 for approx. 1 mile. You'll come to a 3-way Stop (2 gas stations at the intersection ) and turn left onto Gardner Blvd. Go approximately 1/4 of a mile. There will be two 40 mile/hr signs, after the second 40 mile/hr sign the Columbus Opry is on the first alley on the right which is a dirt/gravel road. The alley is in between Jerry's Upholstery and a Pawn Shop. The Opry is a small white building on the right.

"Go-Go dancer" Leon Winters and sax player Lars Espensen

There are a couple of places to stop for dinner on 50 before you get to the 3-way intersection. Martie's Steakhouse is on the right and Doug and Hazel's Drive In is on the left. I can vouch for Doug and Hazel's, the food is good (particularly the Chicken Fingers) and it's decorated with tons of Elvis posters and memorabilia. I heard that Elvis actually ate there once, but the waitress denied that. Hilton says that even though Martie's looks like a barn, it's nice inside and the food is good.

Doug and Hazel's Drive In

[Words and Pictures by Sylvia Parker. Check her out at www.sylviaparker.net and www.alabamalama.blogspot.com.]

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Homes of the Stars! Memphis Style

Preston — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:19:00 GMT

Article by Preston Lauterbach

Photos by Justin Fox Burks

As you know, we here at Backroads deeply value the unmarked landmarks of our grand music history. Owing to the Bluff City's unparalleled legacy as a foster of talent, Memphis, Tennessee contains more than its share of homes where the giants of blues, soul, and rock-n-roll were born, first masturbated, developed a taste for fried banana sandwiches, learned music, wrote unforgettable songs, and died. Too often, we arrived late to our appointments with historic structures and elderly folks, finding they'd gone before we fully realized they were among us. We vowed that it wouldn't happen again if we could help it, and went to find as many hidden landmarks as we could before the wrecking ball, kudzu, or crackheads with matches could beat us to them. Click on the pics for a closer look.

First, we give you the birthplace of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. When I say birthplace, I mean, Aretha's mother pushed Aretha out of her own body and into the world on a kitchen table inside this very house, at 406 Lucy Avenue on March 25, 1942. Take note of a few of the home's prominent features. First, it's abandoned. Second, it's dilapidated, and I would say uninhabitable if there weren't the obvious signs of squatters present inside. Third, it lacks any mention of its significance to history. Now can you imagine this happening to one of the founding fathers of our nation? Or a grand figure in American letters? Even the little shack in Tupelo, Mississippi where Elvis Presley was born has a historic marker and a tour guide to take $10 from you and point at the two rooms inside.

The neighborhood is rundown, but the neighbors are friendly, and they don't need a historic marker to know who's house it was.

Next, behold the boyhood home of Booker T. Jones at 666 Edith Street. It's about a block from a great story of resurrected history, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, built on the vacant lot where Stax Records once stood. Anyhow, you get a feel for the proximity of young Booker T. to the studio. He hung around the Satellite Record Shop adjacent to the recording studio until he caught on as a session musician at Stax. There he helped lay the foundation for Southern Soul. Visitors to the museum should visit this site to develop a greater feel for the roots of soul music that a museum just can't convey. By the way, Aretha's birthplace is under a mile from here, other side of McLemore Avenue and Stax.

The home was for sale a year ago. I'm told that the board is actually a good sign, indicating that the owner hopes to keep harmful influences out. It did look like some work was underway. Though a visit is recommended, the timing is very important. The earlier in the day, the better.

The property below hosted a gifted and important artist in her twilight. The great Memphis Minnie spent day and evening in her wheelchair here on the front porch at 1355 Adelaide in South Memphis.

It's been available for sale for quite some time with no takers. Squatters have invaded it, too. The neighborhood scuttlebutt has it slated for demolition, though I'd guess the earth will claim it before the bulldozer does.

Minnie retired to this address after her girlish days ended and a stroke pretty well laid her up. A relative took care of her until the wild one moved on to a rest home and then died in 1973. She knew few peers as one of the champions of Chicago blues in the 1930s. She died penniless, in fact she lived penniless for the last decade of and a half of her life. Her grave sat unmarked until admirers fixed that situation years after her death.

Finally, one of the more tragic tales of rhythm and blues began here at 899 Ferry Court, a short distance from the Booker T. Jones and Aretha Franklin homes. It began with dreams and ended quite prematurely with a gun. Here John Alexander Jr. grew into a young man whose stage name Johnny Ace lived in the breath of teenage African American girls in the early 1950s.

His hit songs included "My Song" and "Pledging My Love." Like other ambitious black artists of his day, Ace toured constantly. The rigors took their toll on his psyche, causing exhaustion, depression, drug abuse, and violent behavior. The vicious cocktail frothed over on Christmas night, 1954 in Houston, Texas. Backstage, he toyed with a pistol in the presence of three friends who say that he pointed it and pulled the trigger at two of them and then himself. It only went off once. He now rests among other fallen greats of Memphis music.

The home is still in the family and because of that has remained in good shape. His niece Michelle lives there now, and didn't seem accustomed to visitors, though she welcomed us. The house is as it was in Ace's heyday, right down to the details:

Stay tuned to Backroads for more hidden history and unmarked landmarks. And if there's something you'd like us to find and shoot, drop a line and let us know.

Special thanks to Justin Fox Burks for his superb work.

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