fR316 PAGES 47-48-49 25/8/09 12:05 Page 2
f48
“I
’d never been in a big city in my life like that, and
Leonard and Phil was right there at the bus sta-
tion waiting on me. They took me to the office on
Cottage Grove Avenue… it’s no more now. I said
‘Mr Chess, where can I stay? Is there a hotel I can
find?’ He said ‘No, Muddy’ll be down in 15 to 20 minutes’. And
my little heart was jumping right there… I was going to meet
this famous bottleneck player. He walked into the office, had a
hat turned up like a cowboy, and he said ‘Hi Rocky, I’ve heard a
lot about you’. He took me to his house and that’s where I
began learning how he played. He played with this long brass
bottleneck and he had a chrome-plated long brass and he said ‘I
used to play with a Coca Cola bottle but I lost it’. When he lost
that bottle a friend of Muddy’s who worked in a steel mill in
Gary, Indiana, made him that stainless steel slide in that steel
mill. Yes, I lived in Chicago with Muddy and after, I went to New
York… lived in the Lower East Side.”
“I was having hard times in Chicago. If you got a club job
there’s a lot of jealous musicians sayin’ ‘I’d do it cheaper than
Louisiana Red is doing it’. Club owners would come down pick out
musicians what’s going to play for that weekend, off the street
either at Delta Fish Market or down on Maxwell Street. So, they
picked me out… somebody outbidded and I didn’t have no job, so
I had to go right on back home again. I was living at that time
with Sunnyland Slim and Big Time Sarah on South Halsted Street.
That’s where I got the chance to meet Tampa Red.”
“I walked from South Halsted to North Central Avenue and
went to the nursing home where he was. The orderly at the home
called out ‘Hudson Whittaker, you’ve got a visitor’. He told me to
come on in and I sat down. I was just looking at him and asking
him all kinds of questions. ‘How do you get that sound like you do
with that bottleneck?’ He said ‘You get your quart bottle, son, put
a string round it, burn it, then break the neck off it’. He told me a
whole lot of stories about how he ran round together with Big
Maceo and Big Bill Broonzy. I never saw Tampa play. He was old
then and in the Central Nursing Home. What happened, after his
house caught fire he didn’t play no more. He lost his wife in the
fire and he just went out of it. He became ill and Blind John Davis
had to go to look after him. He called John Davis his son, right.”
“I took Tampa Red on as my father. I got a lot of fathers in the
blues. I took on Lightnin’ Hopkins as my father… stayed with him
for a whole month out in Dallas, Texas. I wouldn’t move, just
watched him drink that white lightnin’ and play that guitar. Later
on I met Mr Eddie ‘Son’ House and I began to hang around him.
He was a Pullman porter on the railroad. I’d take me a bus and go
on up there to Buffalo on the weekend. I wouldn’t go back home,
I’d stay there with Son House. That’s why, every time I play that
song Death Letter, I use a copper slide. That’s what he used and
I’ve got his slide right now down in Ghana, Africa, where my wife
she comes from, and it’s there in my little metal box.”
“I stayed with John Lee Hooker in Detroit. My name Rocky
Fuller [one of Red’s many recording pseudonyms] come from
Rockin’ Red. Uncle John named me that – Rockin’ Red. I’d go up
there where he was playing at the Harlem Inn. He had a room
upstairs: ’Go on up there and take that room up there and you
don’t have to go back out to Lansing, Michigan.’ But I had to
catch the bus and go back because I had my job out there. But on
the weekend, I’d go to Detroit and I’d go to see Uncle John play.
Eddie Kirkland was backing him up then. I hung around Detroit
for about two years. Sometimes I stay with Eddie Burns – Uncle
Eddie. I played with Baby Boy Warren and Bobo Jenkins. I took lit-
tle Bo because I wanted harmonica on my Flyright record. That
was him playing on there when I recorded Tribute To Muddy
Waters.”
On making records: “They put me on Checker Records: that
was in Chicago, that was the session with Muddy Waters and Little
Walter. From there it was Atlantic ATCO label… that’s albums. The
other records, that was Atlas Records, that was 1951 before I left
the service. When I came out of the service I kinda gave up music. I
was just disgusted. My guitar stayed under the bed maybe about a
year. One day, harmonica player Bill Dicey came by. He said ‘Some
people in New York want to see you’. It was the Blue Labor Record
Company people who had been looking for me. Sweet Blood Call
was the first one I did for Blue Labor. And then the second one I
made for Blue Labor was with Peg Leg Sam. That’s Peg Leg Sam
blowin’ the harmonica.”
Red first came to Europe to tour as part of the 1980 Lippmann
& Rau ‘American Folk Blues Festival’. As a result Germany became
his home. “Champion Jack Dupree was at the festival and I ain’t
seen him since I was a kid. He said ‘Well I’ll be darned, where’d
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92