Thank God for Robert Johnson
by Elmore Leonard [Essay]
“Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey”, ed. by Peter Guralnick, Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren and Christopher John Farley.
Amistad Press, September 16, 2003?
Son House said there was only one kind of blues: something between a man and a woman, one deceiving or walking out on the other. Any situation different than that, Son House said, was “monkey junk.” My experience with the blues goes back to the early 1930s, when I was a little kid in Memphis, and the voices of Mildred Bailey and Billie Holiday caught my ear. It was only ten years ago that I learned Mildred Bailey was white, and I could not believe it. In my memory of her voice and phrasing, she never sounded like a white woman.
In 1941 we paid Woody Herman seven hundred dollars to bring his herd to the University of Detroit High School for Gala Night. He closed with his theme song, the dirgelike “Blue Flame,” and it’s been my favorite big-band blues number ever since, placing it just above Earl Hines’ “After Hours” and the Basie Orchestra behind Joe Williams doing “Every Day I Have the Blues.” During high school I was into black bands almost exclusively, and I was Earl Hines, Jimmie Lunceford, Fletcher Henderson, Lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy with May Lou Williams - all of them at th Paradise Theatre in Detroit - on their way to or from New York’s Apollo. What used to be the Paradise is now the home of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
In January 1946 I got off a Navy ship at Treasure Island, had my first glass of milk in over a year - couldn’t finish it, to rich - and raced over to a ballroom in Oakland to see Stan Kenton. The high point was standing close to the stage and staring up at June Christy doing “Buzz Me.”
In the late forties, following the war, my favorite spots for jazz and blues in Detroit were the Flame Show Bar, Sportree’s, and one or two others. I saw Anita O’Day, Red Allen, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. It was at Sportree’s that I met T-Bone Walker and joined him for drinks later, at an after-hours club.
In 1955 in New York, I told Wild Bill Davison I’d always wanted to play the cornet but now, at thirty, felt I was too old to learn. Wild Bill said, “I can teach you to play the fuckin’ horn in ten minutes.” I went home and bought a used cornet but never learned. A friend who was with me on the trip bought a new cornet and learned to play it but was never any good.
About 1985, I heard Dizzy Gillespie up close at an outdoor venue and was moved to go home and write, practice my craft. Other jazz performers had the same effect on me. I was listening to Ben Webster one time and named a character in the story I was writing after him: a bull rider turned Hollywood stuntman. I make these references to jazz because, according to Count Basie, the blues is what jazz came out of, what it’s all about.
The last time I saw Count Basie perform was in ’69 at the Whiskey in L.A., sitting in with Carmen McRae, who prompted Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis during his solos to “Go, Jaw, Go!” Later, listening to Lorenz Alexandria at another club, we sat close to the bandstand, and I got to watch Carmen nodding to the beat, chewing her gum in rhythm with Lorez’ timing.