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you turn up from? Come on up to me tomorrow.’ I stayed with
him. Horst Lippmann had the police looking for me and I’m up
there at Champion Jack Dupree’s house. When I walked on back to
the hotel, Horst Lippmann jumped up and says ‘Jesus, where was
you?’ Jack came down that night and they gave him a standing
ovation, he was very well known in Germany. One day I was up
there at his apartment and he said ‘Why don’t you go down,
they’ll get you an apartment’. I said ‘Well, I can’t go down and ask
for no apartment. There’s people on the waiting list.’ He took me
down and said ‘Give my grandson an apartment’. Five minutes
later I got a room, that’s all I needed. I was satisfied.”
Being such an advocate for slide guitar, does Red have any
advice for aspiring players? “Keep away from hitting the frets so
hard and just let it ride the string. Just let it ride smoothly in the
middle of the string and you’ll find it will come out. I used to go
like this and vibrate fast, but I like it smoother now. Some time I
loosened it up like this, it’ll go fast by itself. That’s the Elmore
James effect. A friend told me he pulled up on the strings and
that’s how he got this sound. I put the slide on the littlest finger, it
be heavy, and lock my hand there and when I put it on the guitar
let it wobble on my finger and it have good sound. I like a loose
slide. I let the slide do the work. I learned how to roll it just like on
a Hawaiian guitar or pedal steel, just roll it and it’ll spin around. I
like my acoustic most and my Dobro but I’ve got to play electric
when I go back to Germany. I like what me and Michael are doing
now… just acoustic. It’s quiet and the people enjoys it. It’s more
relaxed and I can talk to the people.”
I
t’s more usual for Red to be noted for his wild charismatic
performances. Where does he get his energy? “I don’t know,
I guess from playing and from God Almighty. When I get on
a stage and I get to playing, I can see myself through all
these years, then something comes out of me… like the
other night when I sang a gospel song and I was thinking about
my grandmother. My grandmother, she was very religious. She
raised me up in the Bible. I went to church with her. I began
singing in a choir. That’s where my gospel songs come from. But I
still went back to the blues because that’s my backbone. I take my
songs from life. That’s how I do my songs. I don’t write nothing.
As it comes to me, I go in and record it. I don’t know nothing
about writing. I have wrote things, but I didn’t know nothing
about that. I just get in the studio and record what’s in my mind.
That’s how I did all my records.”
One of Red’s enduring songs is Red’s Dream which he original-
ly recorded in New York for Roulette Records in 1962. “That was a
big hit record. They put it on different labels but I didn’t get divi-
dends. When you get four stars in Billboard magazine, it’s a good
one.” In the song, Red dreamed of being invited to the White
House as the guest of the President and Red would put some ‘soul
brothers’ into the Senate, but did he ever dream that in his life-
time he’d see a black president of the United States? “No, I didn’t,
I couldn’t believe it. I was up all night, waiting to see who was
going to win the presidency. The dog began to howl in the
kitchen. I said ‘What happened?’ and Obama had won. A friend,
bass player and his band played a concert for Obama when he was
raising money for schools in Chicago. They know him personally
and he loves the blues. I hope one day to go down there and play
for him.” Will there be a new Red’s Dream now? “Yeah, ‘I
dreamed I went to the White House to entertain Obama the Presi-
dent’. I might record that.”
www.louisiana-red.com F
Photo: Dave Peabody
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