blues – foto by smith

lady’s discovered the blues, specifically martin scorsese’s 5 disc soundtrack: Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues – A Musical Journey (2003).

what names these 5 cds contain – slim harpo, guitar slim, memphis slim, memphis minnie, bukka white, son house, robert johnson, big bill broonzy, elmore james, t-bone walker, bessie smith, billie holiday, lowell fulson, leadbelly, as well as all the 40s, 50s and 60s masters such as muddy waters, little walter, howlin’ wolf, bo diddley, junior wells, junior parker, etta james, b.b. king, john lee hooker, lightnin’ hopkins. even includes bob dylan, elvis presley, jimi hendryx, janis joplin, fleetwood mac (most folk don’t know, but fleetwood mac was an excellent blues band before watering down with stevie nicks).

the blues are songs of life gettin’ through life, with the wife off in another’s bed and payday waylaid way after the need to pay.

life is hard. blues blows show you ain’t alone.

a musical excerpt from Criminal by Smith & Lady:

Early 70s I went backstage to interview Bill Haley of the Comets. The usher took me to him and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Haley, this man’s here to interview you for the paper.” Haley looked up at me and said, “Go away, kid. I’m counting my money.” And that was it. The sad part is I could have interviewed Little Richard instead of a used car salesman.

I was at a radio station to interview Alice Cooper and his opening act, Flo and Eddy, who were half of the Turtles and also played with Frank Zappa. The radio station supplied the dope, and we all got wonderfully stoned. Alice Cooper insulted fans who called on the phone, while Flo and Eddy, who also recorded as Phosphorescent Leech and Eddy, were warm and funny, friendly, marvelous folk, magic.

As I left the radio station without my interview with Alice Cooper, a parking lot full of teenyboppers started SCREAMing. One little girl ran up to me and said, “Are you somebody?”

Sad to say I had to say, “No, I’m nobody.”

Interviewed Tiny Tim for 45 minutes. He was broke, touring honkytonks. I watched the act, and after he went through all the normal stuff like Tiptoe thru the Tulips and the vaudeville jokey stuff, he went into a fifty song medley; one song would be from 1890, the next Creedance Clearwater Revival. I went back after the show and told him, “I’m blown away. I think you’re a genius.” Tiny Tim was so hungry for recognition, he took the tape recorder out of my hand and for 45 minutes talked and sang into it. He did a Bob Dylan song in Rudy Vallee’s voice, he did a Rudy Vallee song in Bob Dylan’s voice. He told me about a party in New York City where he opened a closet and there was George Harrison in a cloud of marijuana. He told me he was ripped off by his managers, was broke. They stole everything. Every now and then his wife, Miss Vicky, would try to get him off to do something else, and he’d brush her off.

After my time was up and the tape was finished, the manager came in and said, “Mr. Tim, There’re only six people out there for the next show. Do you want to cancel?”

Tim said, “I don’t care if there is only one person in the audience. I’m going on.”

He wrote his address in my notebook and made me promise to send him the review, which turned out to be a front page piece. I wrote what a genius he was, and I never mailed it to him. Man needed it. I promised it. I didn’t deliver, and it still bothers me. Shame never goes away.

I became manager of an Avant-Garde experimental theater. It was one of those places where if the play started twenty minutes late, everybody sat there wondering if nothing happening was part of the show. Wasn’t very good stuff. The playwright was fascinated by my being a poet, a milkman and a writer. He asked if he could write a play about me. I said, “No. I’m saving me for myself.”

The place lasted two months. I didn’t get paid, but met a lot of interesting people. One of them brought his synthesizer over to our place and played. We tried to get him a record contract. The record man stopped by once a week with free albums and his bong and good smoke. I had passed recordings of the synth player on to him, which sounded a bit like Rick Wakeman in his Six Wives of Henry the VIII phase. The record guy passed the recordings on to his company. For a while we thought we were getting close to signing. I was going to do the album cover, and we’d get money out of it. It fell through, just another dream along the way.

I graduated from Loyola with a BA in English and minor in Philosophy. I still needed a job. The weekly newspaper only paid five dollars an article. I went to some poor peoples’ program and they sent me to a dead Catholic church to be taught speed reading. They timed me and I read faster than their goal, so they sent me to a milk company. It was cool. I figured I could get up early in the morning, do the milk route, go home, get some sleep, then go out to review concerts and interview bands.

One morning on my milk route, I saw a fox in the middle of the road. I stopped and got out. The fox and I stared at each other for ten minutes. Another morning, I drove very slowly as a leaf skipped down the road in front of me. It skipped a long time, it’d start, and stop, and skip, and I’d start and stop with it, talking to it as if it were a leaf alive.

I don’t have any sexual milkman stories. I saw a wee bit of early morning female flesh, but not much. The worst part was they expected you to call on non-customers and try to sell them milk. The milk route was badly designed. After my three week training period was up, I redesigned it and cut two hours off the run. My boss was furious. He raged at me and fired me. As I left, he caught up with me and told me to keep my job. That afternoon I parked the milk truck but I had milk on the bottom of my foot and it slipped off the brake as I was backing into my slot. The truck rolled forward into my boss’s new car and crumpled its fender. A week later, I quit. They owed me three hundred dollars, gave me a check for $5.37.

[ we're looking for a literary agent with links to the main publishing houses. Criminal is done ]

the me within – detail from smith assemblage – foto by smith