Blues With a Twist (eBook)

Over 50 Years of Behind the Scenes Blues Adventures

Twist Turner (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
150 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-0791-9 (ISBN)

Infos

50 years of behind the scenes blues adventures as told by internationally known blues drummer Twist Turner.

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Get a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like for a still wet-behind-the-ears young blues drummer from Seattle to move to Chicago, where he headed straight for the ghetto and became immersed and accepted in the local blues scene. Having worked with a literal who's who of the blues over the last four decades there are plenty of great stories to tell.

Textauszug

The Big Move

I had been listening to and playing nothing but blues since late ’69 or early ‘70. It had become all I ever wanted to do with my life, so it was quite natural that I should want to live in Chicago since all my idols still lived and worked in Chicago. I wanted to immerse myself in all that Chicago had to offer. I dreamed every day of moving to the Windy City. I had damn near never been east of the mountains (and I’m talking the Cascades not the Rockies,) so moving to Chicago would prove to be a huge culture shock for me. Here I was moving from my lily-white “Leave it to Beaver”-like world and pretty much jumping right from the frying pan into the fire, but was up for the challenge.

In 1974, I was 20 years old, out of high school, working a boring ass delivery job at my father’s drycleaners, and ready to get the hell outta Seattle. The perfect opportunity presented itself when my mother sat me down one day to tell me she and my father were going to be getting a divorce. I think my mom was surprised at my response. I simply told her that it was all right with me and that I was going to be moving to Chicago to play the blues anyway. I had been getting ticketed frequently by the state liquor commission for playing underage in Seattle clubs. The drinking age in Chicago was 19. I was ready to get on with my life and move somewhere I could legally work.

In January of 1975, I decided to fly to Chicago and check it out for myself. Having grown up in Seattle, I thought I knew what cold was. It got really cold in Seattle having once even reached 28 degrees! LOL! I sure wasn’t prepared for what hit me when I stepped off the plane. Although it wasn’t very cold by Chicago standards, it was around 10 degrees. I had no long underwear and only a little thin unlined leather jacket as my only defense against the cold.

Record producer and blues historian Dick Shurman was the only person in Chicago that I knew; we were both originally from Seattle. I had played in a band with Dick’s little brother Danny in Seattle when I was 14 years old. I had originally just caught a glimpse of him at the family home back in 1968. When I began to really get into blues, I learned of Dick’s interest in the music as well; he had a blues radio show at KRAB-FM that I listened to. I called Dick and arranged for him to pick me up at the airport and to stay at his place for a few days. On my first full day there, he arranged to take me out to hear some music on the Southside.

I was really excited to be able to see blues in its natural habitat. I had only heard real live blues in very formal concert-like settings, not in a nightclub where it was the music of the people, mostly immigrants from the south who were out on the town for a night of drinking and dancing. Little did I know that what I saw that night would later become my life, the world I would be and still am the most comfortable in.

Our first stop was to see Little Walter’s former band The Aces, at Louise’s South Park Lounge, located at 69th and (Martin Luther) King Drive (formerly South Parkway, hence the name). Louise’s was a noisy, tiny little place. Not much larger than a postage stamp! Seriously I don’t think the club even held 35 people. The band played in the back corner. Drummer Fred Below was separated from the band in a little room with a windowless window, which maybe had been a kitchen at one time. The room was barely larger then the drum set itself and I believe Dave Myers may have been back in there with him as well. Louis Myers was sitting kind of in the front, partially blocking the isle and the pathway to the restrooms. The guest vocalist Johnny Drummer joined them during the course of their set, singing the blues hits of the day.

I was in blues heaven, I couldn’t believe all the famous musicians that were stopping by to say hello to the band, and even sitting in for a song or two. Everyone was so friendly. I had never experienced anything like this before. The clubs I had worked in around Seattle were filled with depressed alcoholics sitting at the bar waiting to die: bikers, mental patients, hookers, drug addicts or crazy hippies. These people were having fun, laughing, joking, talkin’ trash………and the jukebox was loaded with great blues and R&B records as well…………what an amazing backdrop for my new life!

Our next stop was to a place somewhere in the 70’s on South Halsted, where B. J. King was performing with the legendary Pinetop Perkins on piano, two clubs with real blues in one night, unbelievable………….

I would later find out after I moved to Chicago that there were probably 200 clubs in the Chicago area that would have blues on a weekend night. Nearly every little ghetto joint with an Old Style Beer sign out front had live music at one time or another. I played so many of them after moving to Chicago, it all became just a blur…………

After I spent the weekend in Aurora, Illinois with Dick and his wife, he decided that I should head into Chicago to stay for the remainder of my trip where I could be closer to the music. I was unceremoniously dropped off at the Metra train station in Aurora on a cold sunny Monday morning and told to take the train to downtown Chicago. I’d never been to a city this large on my own before. The thought was very scary to me. The buildings were huge, and I seemed to be lost in a forest of buildings. There are so many in the loop (downtown) that you could barely see the sky. I didn’t know where to go or what to do; I had no hotel lined up, where would I stay? I was told to head to Rose Records. and they could possibly suggest a place to stay. I must have looked strange arriving at Rose Records with my little suitcase and an old army sleeping bag I had brought with me! They suggested I visit the Jazz Record Mart, home of Delmark Records at the N. Lincoln Ave location. I caught a cab and was delivered safely to their front door. I met both owner Bob Koester and employee Steve Tomashevsky. They invited me to go with them to hear some music on the Southside that weekend, which I did. Steve suggested that there were some motels a little further up Lincoln Ave I might try for a place to stay. I head out and had planned to walk to the motels, which were described as being not far away. Unfortunately I was chased down the street by a harmless wino! This scared me enough that I decided to catch a cab. Good thing I did too it’s a pretty damn long walk from where the Jazz Record Mart was to where the little strip of hotels is on North Lincoln Avenue. I got a room at one of the sleazy hotels for the remainder of my trip. An interesting note is that five years later, Albert Collins would take up residence a few doors down at the Diplomat Motel. The motel I stayed at was “The Spa” and was torn down years later.

It’s a little blurry in my mind what other music I saw while I was there. I know I went to a jam session hosted by Bob Reidy at a Club on N. Broadway. The featured guests that night were Eddie Clearwater (who I would later do a 6-week east coast tour with in 1979), and former Jackie Wilson drummer turned vocalist Andrew Jefferies (who I later rekindled my friendship with during my first stay in the Bay Area and worked with for about 5 years). I also ran into a young white harp player who had lived on Mercer Island just outside of Seattle, Scotty Bradbury. Scotty would later front his own band Scotty and the Bad Boys who were the biggest drawing white blues band in the Chicago area during the mid 70’s/80’s era. I ended up being the original drummer for the band when they first started playing Tuesday nights at the Kingston Mines back in 1975.

I can remember going to see a band at the Wise Fools as well. Who it was I can’t remember; possibly it was Otis Rush, Mighty Joe Young or Carey Bell. I had taken the bus to the club, which was a good five miles or more away but on the same street as the motel. When I left the club at 2 am, I was surprised to find that the buses did not run that late! What now? I was stranded. Had I been familiar with Chicago, I would have known I could have walked around the corner and caught the “EL” (elevated train) north and gotten within a mile or so of the motel, but I had no clue so I decided to walk…………probably a big mistake on my part. I was dressed in some thin soled leather shoes, and a thin leather coat and no long drawers to combat the famed Chicago hawk (that’s wind for you, non-Chicagoans!) I ended up walking to the motel! I walked five miles in sub-freezing weather. It’s a wonder I didn’t get pneumonia!

My last night out was with Bob Koester on his “lets take white folks to the ghetto and scare the shit out of them” tour, which much to his credit he did regularly for years. I remember Steve and Rebecca Tomashevsky (as yet unmarried), Bruce Iglauer, and Wes Race going with us. I believe there may have been one or two others with us. We went to what would later become my home away from home, the famed Theresa’s Lounge at 4801 South Indiana, where Junior Wells was performing. I’m not 100% sure of the band’s personnel that night. I’m pretty sure it was Sammy Lawhorn on guitar and Ernest Johnson on bass. The drummers I’m unsure of, but the usual suspects would be Bill Warren, Levi Warren, Frank Swan, or Nate Applewhite; on guitar was J. B. Lenore’s cousin Byther Smith, who I had never heard of before, and his playing just knocked me out. The band was great and what I’d never experienced before was the audience interaction with the band. In my life to this point, I’d just seen bands play at an audience as opposed to actually interacting with them. This was totally new to me and I liked it and of course Junior was a master at it.

During my visit to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.7.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-0791-1 / 1543907911
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-0791-9 / 9781543907919