If you aren’t sure about Rick Estrin or where this one of a kind entertainer and blues musician of the highest order came from or where he gets his muse and inspiration, he’ll tell you. This long time Alligator Records recording artist has been at the top of the game for decades now, but his tale isn’t an overnight success story and his achievements in the blues music field aren’t accidental by any means. Here Estrin doesn’t pull any punches as he discusses where he came from and how he became who he is today. This tale reads like a Frank Capra movie...if the screenplay was written by Quentin Tarantino. Enjoy part one of Rick Estrin: The BLUES JUNCTION Interview.

David Mac (DM): Greetings Rick. Do you remember some of your first exposures to music of any kind?

Rick Estrin (RE): I do. I have a sister that's about six years older than me and I can remember when I was about six or seven years old, spying on her and her friends when she was having a party. They were playing records by people like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Elvis, stuff like that, and I was just diggin the scene. Six years old or something, feeling that music, checkin’ out all those fine, sophisticated twelve year old chicks, dancing and lookin' good and I think somewhere deep down, I knew, even way back then, what I wanted to do with my life. 

DM: It is pretty hard to imagine not being swept up by the early rock & roll/twelve year old chick dance party.

RE: Exactly...later on, when I was maybe eleven or twelve by that time my sister was something like a beatnik, she started having records by people like Jimmy Reed, Big Bill Broonzy, Champion Jack Dupree, Mose Allison, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, stuff like that. She was always leading the way for me with some hip stuff. That was my first real exposure to blues and jazz. For my 12th birthday, she gave me this Ray Charles album, The Genius Sings The Blues, and I remember a guy she was dating at the time, asking me about this one song I Believe To My Soul. He wanted to know what did I think he was talking about in that song. It was like he was wondering how a kid could even be attracted to that kind of music. Way back then, I was already fascinated by the power of that feeling.

DM: Did you have musical training in school? 

RE: I had very little training of any kind in school. School was great for learning how to read English. That's about the only valuable thing I can think of that I got out of school. As far as music was concerned, I taught myself. All I did at first was to try and copy what I heard on the radio and on records.

Later on I started going out to clubs and picking up different things from the people I saw perform. The first blues records I had access to were my sister's Jimmy Reed, Big Bill and Champion Jack records. After that I just started investigating and getting into Sonnyboy, Little Walter, Muddy, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins. The list just kept growing from there. When I was seventeen, after a year or two of wood shedding, I felt like I was catching on a little bit. I felt like I had learned some stuff that seemed to sound ok to me at the time, so I started to try and play out in front of people.

DM: Let’s talk a little about the live music scene in San Francisco back in the day.

RE: Well, there were some totally different scenes that kind of overlapped a little bit for me. When I was thirteen or fourteen I used to see bands that played at kid dances. They'd play the regular hits of the day. I remember this one band doing Shout by the Isley Brothers they had two guys singing up front, really killin' it.

Then when I was about fifteen, the hippie ballroom scene and everything that went along with it, started happening. My father had just died, I had a lot of grief and confusion around that situation and that new scene offered music, drugs and so-called "free love" so quite naturally that was all quite attractive to me at the time. That was an exciting time to be a kid in San Francisco.

There were clubs like The Matrix where you could see all kinds of acts.  Everything from
the regular hippie type bands like Jefferson Airplane and stuff like that, all the way up to people like Lightnin Hopkins, Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and on and on.

Then there were the ballrooms. Longshoremen's Hall, the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium...up until that point, in about '65, when Bill Graham took it over, the Fillmore Auditorium was the regular San Francisco spot where all the big touring R & B acts would play.

The usual format at these hippie ballrooms was to feature a real wide variety of acts. They'd have real eclectic bills like Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters and Janis Joplin or Junior Wells & Buddy Guy with the Jefferson Airplane and Sun Ra... some real whacked out combinations, but it gave people the opportunity to get exposed to all kinds of music. I naturally gravitated to the same type stuff that moved me when I was a kid diggin' on my sister's records. Around that time I started trying to blow the harp.

Right around then some Chicago blues bands seemed like they were spending a lot of time on the west coast. I got to see Cotton a lot back then. That was the band with Tucker, Bobby Anderson, Alberto, first Sam Lay, and then, Francis Clay on drums. That was one powerful, badass band. Cotton's playing was a big influence.

DM: Muddy Waters was coming out to San Francisco and the West Coast on a very regular basis back then as well.

RE: Absolutely! Seeing Muddy's band back then was really big for me. I was trying to play, trying to learn, I couldn't play much, but being a kid I had this mostly unrealistic idea in my head that I wanted to be and play the real shit, the deep shit...whatever I thought that was at the time. That’s when I first saw Muddy's band, with Otis Spann and S.P. Leary, Sammy Lawhorn and Snake Johnson, Pee Wee Madison. Paul Oscher had just joined. Seeing that band really made a big impression on me...  

DM: How old were you at this time?

RE: This was before I even started really trying to play out in front of anybody, so I was
probably sixteen or seventeen.

DM: Can you describe seeing the Muddy Waters Band back in those days?

RE: They had matching uniforms. Muddy had on a sharp suit, but the rest of 'em had on black slacks and black shoes with these red, brocade, Nehru jackets and all wearing a gold chain with a big gold medallion.

Everyone in the band looked borderline evil. They were all lined up, just barely moving to the beat, playing all this effortless, deep shit. Every once in a while somebody would half smile or sneer and the light'd catch a little gold dental work, shiny processed hair. Dave, you really had to see it. I was young and impressionable and that was about the coolest shit I'd ever seen.

Then there was Paul. He was brand new to the band, hair slicked back, playing the shit, sounding just the way I thought it was supposed to go. I met Paul and Spann that night. I’ve been friends with Paul ever since. After that was when I really started going out and hanging out and trying to sit in at the ghetto clubs.

DM: Let’s talk about those clubs.

RE: In the Fillmore district and Hunters Point there were some great clubs with live music. The Stardust Lounge on Hayes and Laguna, The Showcase on Divisidero, The Blue
Mirror on Fillmore, and a little place out in Doublerock, in the countriest part of Hunters Point, where LC "Good Rockin" Robinson would play on Sunday afternoons for the after-church crowd. By the time I was seventeen I had a mustache and I could pretty much pass for old enough to get in some bars and all those places I mentioned.

DM: What kind of reception did you get from the other musicians working those joints?

RE: The musicians were super-cool, nice enough to give me a chance, let me sit in. I started sitting in with people like L.C., Curtis Lawson, Cool Papa and Lady Margaret at the Stardust, different bands at the Showcase; and B3 was a big thing in the 60s.

Charles Brown's career was kinda low profile at the time and he used to have a solo organ gig at the Haight Levels. He'd always let me sit in. He used to want to give me a ride home too. I passed on that part.

DM: Were you starting to meet like minded individuals who shared your passion for this music?

RE: I started meeting a few more guys who were playing the harp and maybe a couple years older than me and further along in their development. 

This is when I met Jim Liban. He's one of the only people who attempted to actually show me how to play something. He showed me how to play an octave. It was different back then. Back then, very few guys could really play and the few guys that could play didn’t want to show you anything.

DM: This also pre-dates the Rick Estrin harmonica instructional DVD. 

RE: (laughs) That’s right...there was no instructional material of any kind.  You can't see anything on a harp anyway, so there was somewhat of a mystique surrounding that instrument. There were a few guys I met back then like Paul and Jim, Al (Blake) and Rod (Piazza) who could see I was serious and they were real cool to me.

I met Al Blake in a little record store called the “New Geology Rock Shop” in the Haight. He was living in San Francisco at the time. I was looking at some blues records and he walked up behind me and asked me, "You like that kind of stuff?" I told him. “Yeah.” He took me way across town to this little place he was living and played me all kinds of 45s. It was great shit that I had never heard. When I was leaving he took out a harp and played four bars of some classic John Lee Williamson. I asked him, "Man! How'd you do that?" He just put the harp down and smiled and said "I can't tell you everything"

DM: In addition to the traveling Chicago blues guys who were playing in San Francisco you had that whole West Coast blues contingent as well.

RE: That’s right. A little bit after that I heard an ad on the radio for a big blues show at a club called Mr. D's. Check out this lineup Dave; they were advertising T-Bone Walker, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Pee Wee Crayton, Big Mama Thornton, George Smith and somebody they were calling Lightnin' Rod. I went to that show and it was Rod’s band, Bacon Fat playing all night, backing up ALL those acts.

DM: I think it is important to note that you never went in for the trends in the music business that of course included the rock/hippie movement of that time and especially that place.  Let’s be honest you were at ground zero of hippie heaven (or hell depending on your perspective) in the late 60’s in San Francisco.

RE: That’s a good point. Prior to that, any white blues bands I had heard were doing a more rocked up, halfway psychedelic version of the music. Rod’s band was playing it traditional.  They were playing the actual parts to the songs, not just some vague, hippified interpretation. It was more like what I wanted to hear and what I had in mind that I wanted to try to do. That showed me it was possible to do it, if I kept working at it.

Rod was real cool to me too. I remember I asked him about some lick he played and he showed it to me. He didn't show me how to do it, 'cause that really wasn't the way it was back then, shit was old-school...figure it out yourself. He knew that I was asking about and he played it for me so I could hear it again. Then right away he told me "Don't tell George I showed you anything"

DM: That of course being George “Harmonica” Smith. I’m guessing you were continuing to find music on records as you were learning this music and learning to be inspired by it.

RE: Another record that, looking back, made a huge difference was a song called Blues Pain by Lowell Fulson. I heard it on the radio. I really dug the song. I went out and bought the 45, and then I heard an ad on KDIA saying that Lowell was going to be appearing at the Club Long Island. I wanted to hear him sing that song, so a friend and I, along with these two ladies went to the show.

The Club Long Island was kind of an upscale, old-style, ghetto supper club/showroom type place. It was a classier type room than the places I had been going to and sitting in. People got real dressed up to go there and the format was almost like a throw-back to vaudeville days or tent shows.

They had a house band that would play the first set for dancers. Then they'd take a short break and when the band got back on the bandstand, the MC would come out and announce that it was "Showtime"!

The MC was this guy, Big Rock. He'd come out in a tuxedo, ruffled shirt, multi-colored sparkly vest, marcelled hair, diamond cuff links. He'd smile and the stage lights hit his gold tooth and he'd announce the different acts. The opening act that night was Eugene Jefferson, a local soul singer. He did a couple current hits, Soul Man, stuff like that. Then Rock introduced the next act, Ironjaw Wilson. Ironjaw's thing was he would pick up furniture with his teeth. The big finale in his routine was, somehow he'd hook three or four chairs and a table together, there'd be a big drum roll, and he'd pick 'em all up in his teeth at the same time. It was some real old-time vaudeville shit.

A few years later Redd Foxx had a summer replacement TV variety show and Ironjaw was a regular on there every week.

Anyway, getting back to that night, the guy I was with, Joe Robertson, he was sort of a con artist, criminal type…slick. He thought he could talk anyone into anything, and asked me if I felt like playing. At this time I had been trying to play for a couple years. I'd been sitting in around town a little bit, but in less formal situations - like I said I was used to more lowdown type places, but I was young, caught up in the excitement of the scene, plus I had been drinking scotch and milk so I was about half in the bag and I told him, "Sure".

So he went over to Emmit Kennedy, the club owner, and asked him if I could play. Of course Emmit said, "No." Told him, "This ain't no jam session." But Lowell overheard it and said, "Let the boy come up and do a number." 

When the band hit, Big Rock announced, "It's star time!" So Lowell came up and said, "Before I get into my show we're going to bring a young fella up here to sing and blow some harmonica." 

Man, when I got up from the table and started walking toward the bandstand the whole room was looking weird, like puzzled, half of them laughing not knowing what to expect, but definitely not expecting much 'cause at that time, a white guy playing blues was practically unheard of. Anyway, I started a slow blues from the five chord, got about halfway through one verse of singing and the whole place started applauding...slapping five, shaking their heads, laughing, but this time, not laughing at me, just incredulous. I got more “house” after the harp solo and when I finished the tune the whole room fell out and Emmit Kennedy offered me a gig.

DM: What was the gig?

RE: It was five nights opening for Z.Z.Hill. So, the song, Blues Pain by Lowell Fulson and that one experience at the Club Long Island, that one night, really opened some doors for me. When I opened for Z.Z. Hill I ended up meeting some people who turned out to be real important to me personally and important in my development as an entertainer and songwriter. 

DM: Such as...

RE: I met Rodger Collins who wrote and recorded the first version of the hit record She's Looking Good. He had hits with that one and Foxy Girls In Oakland. Rodger turned out to be a real show business mentor for me. The show part AND the business part...

He took me on the road with him and I got hours and hours of education, just riding in
his Lincoln listening to him explain why certain things were effective on the bandstand. Why some things work and some things don't. What to do and what not to do. Rodger was also always a great example for me regarding the amount of hard work and focus a successful music career requires. He always encouraged me to try to write songs and taught me to think like a songwriter. From watching and listening to Rodger, I learned about the kind of discipline it takes to be a good songwriter. He's always set a real positive example. 

That little run at the Club Long Island was also the start of me first getting to know Fillmore Slim. Fillmore's a singer, but at that time he was really known for being the most big time pimp in the United States. He was Joe's neighbor, so I already knew him a little bit. Plus, I knew his "bottom woman" Jill, from back in junior high school. After that night at the Long Island, we got to be friends and I ended up playing in his band five nights a week for about six months. I guess I was a little different than most kids my age. I thought riding around with Fillmore in his Fleetwood Brougham after the gig when he would be going around "checking his traps" was the coolest shit in the world. 

DM: ... and educational as well.

RE: Travis Phillips, AKA Wonder Boy Travis, a great Texas guitar player and singer, was also in that band with Fillmore. Travis and I ended up playing together several nights a week, altogether for about a year. Fillmore took some of his ladies up to Alaska when they were building the pipeline and Travis kept the gig and we worked together about six more months after Fillmore left. Travis made the original Eyes Like a Cat, that I used to do later on with Little Charlie.

He also taught me some real valuable stuff. He would say some funny shit too.  Like at times we had to use some sub-par musicians. We had this one drummer for a short time who was pretty rough and struggling to keep up. Travis told him, "You know, that drum kit is kicking your ass nightly" - Poetry!

Those were some of the people who really had a direct, early impact on how I turned out as a musician and performer. 

I'll be forever grateful to my friends from the blues and R & B community, both in the Bay Area and in Chicago, who accepted me, took me in and tried to show me what time it was with the music and with just life in general. Also around that time was when I first became friends with Joe Louis Walker. We were two of the only real young guys, trying to play blues on that scene. Joe and me - the way we were back then, we were two of the least likely guys to even survive - and look at us - both still here!

DM: Somewhere around this time period I believe you moved back to Chicago.

RE: That’s right. I kept moving back and forth between Chicago and California for about five or six years, right up until 1975. Almost every winter when the weather would start to change, I'd call myself "going home for the holidays" and then I couldn't make myself go back to Chicago until the snow started to melt. I think I made one whole winter in Chicago...one time! 

DM: Chicago winters were not made for Californians like us. That’s for sure.

RE: True that...how I started going to Chicago was, when I was gigging at The Playpen with Travis and Fillmore, I met and became tight with Jerry Portnoy. Jerry was from Chicago, but he had just got out of the army and ended up in San Francisco. 

I think he was a medic in Vietnam for about a minute. He must've realized pretty fast that the army wasn't his scene and somehow he managed to talk his way into a discharge.

At that time neither one of us could play too much, but I had this gig at The Playpen. He'd come down and hang out. Then, in the daytime sometimes we'd get together and try to figure out the harmonica. I guess to a certain extent, for a while, we learned how to play together. Then what happened was, Jerry's father got sick and he moved back home to Chicago. We stayed in touch and he was always sending me postcards about how great it was and how the blues was happening every night. He wrote me and told me you could go out any night of the week and go see all these great people that we knew from records and he kept sending me these postcards. He would write, "I sat in with the Aces. (Fred) Below really dug me." Stuff like that. 

In the meantime, things had started going south for me.

DM: In what respect?  

RE: I had developed a little, recurring drug habit. The gig at the Playpen ended. I'd had the classic musician's girlfriend with a job and an apartment situation going on and she had recently lost her sense of humor and cut me loose.  

Jerry kept telling me, "You need to come to Chicago." So I had this other girl who liked me and she was from Chicago and I somehow talked her into returning home and buying us both plane tickets. As you can gather from this story, I was kind of a semi-lowlife back then. I did a lot of stuff in those days that doesn't paint a real flattering picture, but hey, what can I say? I was a pretty marginal citizen at the time. That was a long time ago

Anyway, my first night in Chicago Jerry and I took the El to the Southside and went to Blue Monday at Theresa's. 

The house band that night was Buddy Guy, Sammy Lawhorn, Below, and I can't remember who was on bass. I know it wasn't Jack Myers 'cause he was so unique, I would've remembered if it was. The band was set up just in the middle of the floor, sitting on dinette type chairs.  The place was packed. It seemed to me like almost everybody was there.

I ended up sitting in. I got over pretty well. I kind of fucked up the house and Carey Bell who was playing harp with Muddy at the time told me he was going to quit and that I should come down to the Sutherland Hotel where they were playing that weekend. He said he'd hook me up to sit in and if Muddy dug me, I could have the gig. Unbelievable, right...?  That was my first night in Chicago.

After the bar closed, Jerry and I wound up riding around and getting a tour of the Southside with Billy Boy Arnold and Louis Myers. Louis talked nonstop the whole time. He was telling us all these great, unrepeatable stories about Walter, Muddy and the whole Chicago scene. I remember sitting there in the back seat of Billy Boy's car, just taking it all in and thinking, "this is the coolest shit in the world" Now, looking back, from 2017, I know I was right.

That next Friday night I went down to the Sutherland Hotel thinking this was going to be my big shot. Jerry went with me for moral support. Carey introduced me to Muddy and
Muddy told me he'd call me up. I ended up waiting around all night. Muddy was alternating sets with Willie Ambon and this place had a 4:00 am liquor license. At 4:00 am the gig ended, and I somehow accessed the balls to say something. I told Muddy "I thought you were going to call me up" He said, "Oh yeah, I forgot. Come back tomorrow." It took me years to finally realize, he was probably just trying to see how serious I was.

Anyway, the next night we went back and about halfway through their last set he called me up and had me play on Long Distance Call. When the set was done, Muddy went back to his booth where he was sitting with a couple ladies. He caught my eye and beckoned me over. When I walked over there, he stood halfway up and started shaking his finger in my face telling me "You outta sight boy! You play like a MAN boy! You got that sound, boy. I know that sound when I hear it. That's MY sound!" At that point, I was like, pretty stunned.

Even today I can still hear his voice in my head, telling me that. He took my phone number, which was actually the number of the girl who bought my plane ticket to Chicago and he told me don't leave town for three weeks. 

I waited the three weeks and got impatient and asked Carey's then manager, who was a pre-Alligator Records, Bruce Iglauer, if Carey was really gonna quit. Bruce said no, that things weren't going as planned so I ended up going back to California for a while. Carey did quit awhile after that and the next time I saw the band, Fuzz, the bass player said, "What happened to you? You was supposed to be with us. You on the lam?"

DM: Ouch...

RE: Yeah....it hurt at the time, but in retrospect it all turned out for the best. At that age I was too young, wild and stupid to really handle anything that cool. If that situation had worked out like I wanted, I'd probably be dead.

I stayed back home in California for a few months. I started fuckin' up again, got another dope habit, worse this time. I wasn't doing well at all, so I thought maybe it was time to go back to Chicago. I was such a dog-ass motherfucker. I actually got that same, poor girl to buy me another plane ticket and I went back to Chicago.

I kicked my habit on Jerry's couch. After a few days, once I started feeling a little better, this friend of Jerry's named Mark came by on his way to audition for Sam Lay. Much later on Mark changed his name to Max and owned a club in Chicago called Smokedaddy's. 

Mark plays a lot of different instruments, but that day he was auditioning on piano. I went along with him just for the hell of it, partly just 'cause I finally felt good enough to get off the couch and also 'cause I was beginning to get the impression Jerry's girlfriend was maybe sick of seeing me laying around her living room. Anyway, Sam Lay had just fired his whole band or they had all quit or something so he was putting together a new band to do this weird tour that he had somehow lucked up on.

Sam was going on the Presidential campaign trail with Senator George McGovern, along with Warren Beatty, the movie actor, who was McGovern's number one supporter at the time. Viet Nam was raging and McGovern was running for the Democratic nomination as an anti-war candidate. They had just lowered the voting age from twenty one to eighteen and McGovern was going to be touring colleges, courting the young people's vote. 

Somebody on his campaign team must've liked blues and figured young people like music, so if they got a band, and put that together with Warren Beatty, who was a huge movie star/sex symbol at the time, they'd attract more kids to hear McGovern's speech. It sounds crazy now, but back then, college age kids were a big part of the blues audience.

DM: For many of our readers who are relatively new to this music, they will find that kind of hard to believe. It’s true though and I appreciate you pointing that out.

RE: I went to Sam's place with Mark. Sam had already hired a harp player, but for some reason the guy couldn't make it to the rehearsal so I filled in. 

Eventually, the way the whole band lineup shook out was, I ended up playing harp, Mark somehow pissed Sam off so Detroit Jr. was on piano, the great Eddie Taylor and a good guy named Jon Wolfe were on guitars, Big Mojo Elem on bass, Sam on drums, and we had two featured vocalists: Lucille Spann and Johnny Twist It was a hell of a crew. Some real characters...

DM: How so...

RE: Twist was really a trip. He'd pontificate on all kinds of subjects and say all this crazy sounding stuff that at the time I thought was funny, but when I got older I realized there was some pretty great wisdom in a lot of the stuff he said.

So in the span of one week, I went from being dope-sick on Jerry's couch to being in a blues band that's flying around the country with a movie star and some guy representing a major political party who's trying to be President of the United States. That's some crazy shit! Pure dumb luck...

DM: That is some very heady stuff.

RE: Yeah, but I was so young and stupid, I was laying up in these ritzy hotels, ordering room service, getting my shoes shined, big-ass bar tab and charging it all to my room thinking, "Man, I must really be a bad motherfucker."

Two weeks later they weren't using the band anymore and I was back on Jerry's couch.

I stayed with Lay's band maybe a year or so that time and all things considered, I kinda kept my shit relatively together...for me. 

I met a real nice college girl and was staying with her in Hyde Park. The band was working a lot. We were touring the Midwest, playing colleges and clubs and it was pretty cool. Then Sam pulled some un-cool financial bullshit and there were some classic, heated verbal exchanges between Lay and Twist.

The writing was on the wall. By the time I did quit I think I was the only one left from the McGovern tour days. Anyway, one weekend when Lay didn't have any gigs, most of the band went and worked with John Littlejohn at Sylvio's, where he was filling in while Wolf was on the road. Littlejohn was so cool to work with, the music was great.

DM: What was he like to work with?

RE: He was a super nice guy, not half a nut like Lay, so we all ended up quitting Sam and going with John. He didn't have as much work as Sam, but he was a great guy, and when he could, he paid better. We did some real cool gigs. Shit I'll never forget...

We played some dances, like at vets halls and Elks clubs and things around Gary and Michigan City and nearby towns in Indiana. We were playing for real blues audiences. They were probably steel mill workers and stuff, transplanted southerners, who still wanted to hear deep blues.

Lay didn't want to play ghetto joints, he liked the colleges and white clubs, but Johnny Littlejohn took it to the people. We played places on the west side like Sylvio's, Damon's Den and the Avenue Lounge. At Damon's Den we started a blue Monday that went from 4:00pm to 4:00am! Wore my ass OUT! Eddie Taylor would be on that gig sometimes too. Regardless, that was one long-ass gig!

Different guys would come and sit in and I remember this one particular Monday, Hound Dog Taylor came in. He had just put out that first Alligator album, was getting some attention and he was looking like he felt pretty pleased with himself.

He came in the club, walking towards the bandstand, shakin' hands and greeting everybody side to side, like it's a receiving line...and he was styling...wearing a brand new looking, ankle length, leather trench coat. He had on that silly lookin' wig, curling up on the edges. When Littlejohn spotted Hound Dog from the bandstand, he got on the mic. "Now I ain't tryin' to cut nobody's head, I'm just doin' my regular thing, just like I do everywhere I go." Then he broke out the slide and kicked off It Hurts Me Too. He played about four verses, just soulful, beautiful, and I'm wondering, "When's he gonna sing?" 'Cause, let's face it, I mean, vocally, Littlejohn could bury Hound Dog. Standing up there next to him, listening to him sing, his voice cut like a knife. Anyway, what he did was, he played another couple of verses. By this time, all the hairs on my arms were standing up, the shit just sounded so good. Then he walked up to the mic, looked down and shook his head real slow. He then lifted his head up and said, real serious, just talking..."It hurts me too"...and that was it. He didn't sing at all. He just spoke those four words. Then he backed up off the mic and played about three more beautiful verses and ended the song. I guess maybe you had to be there, but that shit was so soulful. I can still feel it now when I think of it.

DM: Hell, the hairs on my arms are standing up.

RE: That next winter I came back to California again and this time I stayed maybe a little over a year. I got a band together with Brad Lee Sexton. He later played bass in the Nightcats, but in this band, he played guitar. We landed a five night a week gig that lasted almost a year. I had a pretty good drug habit that whole time which made it an action packed, not always fun year.

Eventually the club owner busted me fixing in the bathroom.

DM: What happened?

RE: We lost the gig and I ended up giving Chicago one more try. I went back there, kicked on Jerry's couch again and started playing with Sam Lay again. 

My last stay in Chicago was the beginning of me getting played out with the drugs and really reaching a personal all time low. My habit was taking me down. I wasn't keeping my shit together at all. I lost the gig with Lay. I forget why, but I told him to "Get fucked" on the bandstand, so he fired me. Mark/Max was nice enough to let me move in with him. I don't know how he put up with my bullshit. 

I kept nodding out with cigarettes, damn near burning the place down on a daily basis. I had no gigs, so I started "working" with this friend of mine, another dope fiend. He had a pretty slick hustle where he'd scavenge (AKA steal) what he called "architectural fragments" and he'd sell this stuff to antique shops. On the Southside, there was one stretch of South Parkway (now MLK Drive) where it was all formerly ritzy mansions. 

The neighborhood had become ghetto and had got rundown a long time ago. Some of the places had been subdivided into multiple dwellings, but some of 'em were these beautiful, decaying mansions just sitting there, vacant. My friend had a construction looking truck with a fake company name on the side and we'd drive up on these vacant mansions, show up wearing hard hats and act like we were supposed to be there. Really what we'd do is break-in and strip the place of these "architectural fragments".

We'd dismantle mantles. We would remove the stained glass windows and transoms. Get all the cut and beveled glass, fancy mirrors, all the ornate trim kinda stuff, then we'd go up on the north side, to where the antique stores were, sell the stuff, and go cop. That lasted a few months. It was getting to be winter again, and the novelty of being a procurer of architectural fragments had pretty much worn off for me. We were lucky we never got popped doing that shit. My drug use was completely out of hand again and I was feeling real hopeless. I don't even remember where I got the dough, probably borrowed it somewhere, but somehow I put together enough for one more plane ticket back to California. 

When I got back to San Francisco, I just said ‘fuck it’ and got on the methadone program. I was just worn out from the nonstop hustle, and this weird thing had happened where heroin stopped providing relief. I could get well. I could even get physically loaded, but my brain would still be kicking my ass. I guess it was guilt.

DM: Let’s talk about this if you don’t mind.

RE: That little period of time was probably my personal all time low. I got off the heroin hamster wheel and got on methadone maintenance.  I got together with a chick on the methadone program who was a hooker. She had a little apartment right there in the Tenderloin. It was conveniently located right around the corner from the clinic. She was a nice person, just messed up, but she was good people. She was actually a real talented singer and songwriter, but she hadn't done anything with it in years. 

Seemed like I just resigned myself and fell into this loser regimen of wake up, go around the corner to the clinic, get my dose, then go across the street to this crummy little chop suey joint where the “methadone for lunch bunch” would sit around, drink shitty coffee, tell lies and wait for our juice to come on. 

A few times a week my old lady would have a "date" so I'd walk across the street to the Laundromat and smoke cigarettes ‘til I figured it had been long enough and the trick must be gone by now. It was a real lowdown, pathetic scene. I couldn't even bullshit myself into thinking I was pimpin'.

DM: At some point you started playing music again?

RE: After a couple months of that routine, I called up an old friend named Sonny Lane. We used to play together in High Tide Harris' band. He came by, picked me up and took me out on the town. Sonny was a great guy. He was a real bluesman, a guitar player from West Helena, Arkansas, and funny as hell. 

He had a new El Dorado, he had two ladies with him and as soon as I got in that car I felt better than I had in months. Sylvia, who Sonny had been messin' around with for years, and Lula were sisters. They were also Little Walter's sisters. 

We went to this place, the Savoy Tivoli, where Luther Tucker was playing. We were drinking a little bit, I even danced, and just by being around the music, I started remembering what a good time felt like.

There was another guy I knew at that Tucker show, a guy named Charles Baty. A couple years before, around 1973, on one of my trips back to California I just out of the blue got a phone call from him. When he called and told me his name, I recognized it from seeing it in the paper in the local club listings.

DM: What was his band called in those days?

RE: Charles Baty Blues Band. I remember seeing that name and thinking, "I wonder if that's a harp player." Back then the scene was so tiny and so competitive, you tried to know or know of everybody out there. He introduced himself over the phone and said that he had heard about me through Gary Smith and he wanted to meet me.

I guess he had heard all kinds of other shit besides the musical stuff about me, so when he came over to where I was living, he brought me a peace offering.

DM: What was it?

RE: What he used as bait was that he said he'd bring me a '45 of Tonight With A Fool backed with Don't Have To Hunt No More. At that time it was this mysterious Little Walter record that nobody had ever heard. Somehow, he had gotten a bootleg copy of
this '45.

So, he came over, played the record, which is great of course, but can you imagine hearing something like that for the first time? I mean this record had previously been like a myth.

I told him that I hadn't been playing much since I'd been back from Chicago. I told him it just seemed like there wasn't any scene and nobody knew how to play behind a harp anyway, generally just bitching and making excuses.

He told me that he knew how to back a harp on guitar. He had learned all the Louis Myers and Lockwood stuff so he could show guitar players what he wanted to hear behind him when he was playing harp. We talked about maybe one day trying to play together, but at the time it was just casual conversation. I don't think I really gave it another thought. 

After that I ran into him maybe a couple times at different gigs. 

One time I remember seeing Charlie was at a club called Keystone Berkeley. Muddy was playing, Jerry was in the band by this time and Muddy called me up to sit in along with John Lee Hooker. Now that was a cool feeling. I was up there blowing, standing between Muddy and John Lee while they traded verses on Boom Boom Boom. After John Lee sat down, Muddy kept me up there to finish the set with him. It really made me feel good that he obviously still dug my playing.

I saw Little Charlie at the Savoy Tivoli, it was a couple years later. He told me he had moved to Sacramento and started a band and he wrote his number on a matchbook cover and told me if I was still interested, I should give him a call in about six months. He thought by then, he might be ready to try playing together. The next day after that Tucker show, I went right back to my dead end routine and I stayed in that rut for a few more months. 

DM: How in the world did you ever pull yourself out of that life?

RE: The weirdest thing happened, and I swear to God it's the absolute truth.

It was summertime and I was loitering in front of the clinic with these two other dope fiends. I remember their names, Walter Black and Buster Dubonnet.

Walter, I knew a little bit. We used to sit and talk sometimes. He was from Houston and he knew I used to play with Travis Phillips and Travis had been kind of a big deal in Houston when Walter lived there, so I know Walter kind of thought of me as somewhat legit. Buster was a dope dealer. I didn't really know him that well and he seemed a little aloof. 

I assumed it was partly because he had the bag, but I felt like it was also 'cause he was sort of a pretty boy. He had that Creole look, green eyes, good hair - I always felt like he thought he was kind of above Walter and me in the lowlife pecking order.

Anyway, while we were just standing there bullshitting, a public library bookmobile pulled up and parked directly in front of us, right in front of the methadone clinic. Now try to picture this Dave, this bookmobile had a giant TV screen on the side of it. Maybe that's not an uncommon feature on bookmobiles.

DM: I do remember the bookmobiles. I don’t remember any giant or even small T.V. screens on the side. I just think that the fall of our civilization and the demise of the bookmobiles are somehow related.

RE: I, on the other hand, am not real familiar with bookmobiles. I had never heard of, or seen anything like that. So, this bookmobile that was parked right in front of the
clinic, for no reason I could see, just started showing the Les Blank film, The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins, on the side of the bookmobile.  

There's a scene in that movie that takes place at somebody's house where this harp player, Billy Bizor, who was I think, Lightnin's cousin, is just rolling around on the floor, drunk, laughing and crying and blowing the harp. By this time, all three of us had shut up as we were transfixed, watching the movie. I was about twenty five at the time and in case people haven't figured it out by now, I wasn't exactly a sensible, well balanced person back then.

Probably out of insecurity and immaturity, I made this stupid statement "Shit, I can play better than that motherfucker." It was dumb and unnecessary, but that was me at the time. When I said that, this guy Buster, got a little chicken-shit, sarcastic smile on his face and kinda mumbled, halfway under his breath, "Yeah, sure you’re right". 

In that one moment, I got real mad...at myself. Mad for letting myself sink to where I was at, and the thought popped in my head, "Fuck this shit! I know how to DO something!"

I went back around the corner feeling like I had a purpose. I went up into the apartment to try and find that matchbook cover with Charlie Baty's phone number on it.

End of Part 1; click here for Part 2

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