Читать книгу Don't Start Me Talkin' - Tom Williams - Страница 4

1.

Good Evening Everybody

“LET’S CALL THIS A TEST,” BROTHER BEN SAYS.

“See if there isn’t a lesson worth learning.”

“A lesson?” I say, closing my magazine. “Lesson in what?”

“Humility.” Brother Ben smiles as he strides down the sidewalk, showing me the way.

It’s said that when Robert Johnson arrived in a new town, the first thing he looked for was an ugly woman who owned her own house. That way, Bob could depend upon a place to sleep, food on the table—he’d supply the liquor—and a bed partner likely as starved for affection as he was. Having just checked into the L.A. Convention Center Holiday Inn, Brother Ben and I hover near the intersection of Wilshire and Lucas. More than good loving and a full bottle, Brother Ben, the Last of the True Delta Bluesmen, wants clean sheets and room service.

It’s two days before the start of my fifth tour. Ben doesn’t keep track any more, as he says the number of shows he’s done would only depress him. Instead of rehearsing or working out the fine points of our itinerary, we’re headed to Silver Screen Motors to buy a new car. That is, we would be headed there had I not showed Ben the issue of Blues Today I still presently clutch. In it, the special Readers and Critics’ Issue, we’re ranked number one by critics and readers have us at number two behind Blind Deacon Roland and the Professor as traditional blues acts. A likely reason for our jump of two places is the deaths of Ott Sikes, the fife and drum player from Senatobia, and the Texas ragtime pianist, Henry Lou Bascombe. Along with those rankings, for the first time my name’s on the list of top ten harp players, an idea so incredible I open Blues Today again. Ben catches me turning pages and says, “Put that away. We’re conducting a test.”

I obey, stick the magazine in my back pocket as Ben steps off the sidewalk. He raises his hand and waves. Two o’clock in the afternoon, early February, and he’s trying to hail a cab. Here we are, two black men, too far from the hotel for a doorman to reel one in for us. Oh, he’s sharp, that Brother Ben. Knows what I’m thinking before I figure it out for myself. In this instance he knew why I was waving those polls at him. Now his test is simple. Will we get a cab? Neither of us resembles a Laker, Dodger or action film hero with a new blockbuster advertised on every other billboard. And if I believe my ranking beneath Sugar Blue as the tenth best blues harp player in the world will get someone to stop or take a second glance, I’ll be on this street corner a long, long time.

Three cabs pass, fast as ambulances. “Ok,” I say. “I get it.”

Ben’s smile straightens as he shakes his head. “I don’t think you do,” he says and waves frantically while cabs four and five don’t slow down. I chew on the notion that L.A.’s a difficult town for anyone to get a taxi in, while six, seven and eight speed by, the last one’s “ON DUTY” lights shutting off as it passes. It’s driven by a dude darker than me. An African, likely, told by his dispatcher he’ll get shot by fellows matching my description. I flip the cab off as it passes, then consider directing my middle finger to Ben. I pocket my hand instead.

So we stand here, Ben now smiling as every wave fails to get us inside a cab. I tug his jacket sleeve—I want to smack him with the magazine—and say, “You’re right.”

Still waving, he says, “Right about what, Pete?”

With no one around on the sidewalk, we’re secure enough to use birth names, though I never call him anything but Ben. “Something you got to say?” he says.

I curl my lower lip between my teeth. I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to see him turn with that look confirming his wisdom and my naiveté. But if I don’t, he might keep us here past dark. And there’s still the matter of a car. As if preparing for one of the occasional harp solos he allows me on stage, I take a breath. Then I say, “No one knows who we are. We’re just two brothers fool enough to think a cabdriver might pick us up.”

Ben’s arm relaxes. He stops waving but still faces the street. “And?” he says.

I take out the magazine and tap it against my palm. I’m not mad at him. I’m more amazed at how this time I thought I might have more say in how we spend the next four months together. What was I thinking? I need this lesson. I say, “And I still have a lot to learn.”

Ben’s hand falls to his side. His other arm lands on my shoulders. “Number one with the critics?” he says. “Not bad, huh?”

•••

McKinley Morganfield. Chester Burnett. Lizzie Douglas. Henry Roeland Byrd. Hang those names on a marquee and see who comes running. Change them to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Memphis Minnie and Professor Longhair, shoot, you’ve got the best of the blues. B.B. King, whom we call the “other B.B.,” is really Riley. And Sonny Boy Williamson II, the man whose music led me where I am today, came into this world as Aleck Ford. He then took up Rice Miller, was known for a while as Little Boy Blue, but his most famous appellation he snatched from another harp player named John Lee, who supposedly went looking for the other Sonny Boy and got his ass whupped or a lesson in harp-playing or both, depending upon your source. Ben and I are in pretty good company, what with the names on our drivers licenses: Wilton Mabry and Peter Andrew Owens.

But it’s Brother Ben and Sam Stamps, AKA Silent Sam, who ride in the back of a Yellow Cab driven by a tense and quiet white man. We’re not in character for his benefit. Though we’re not playing a gig in L.A., we’ll be performing as soon as we arrive at Silver Screen Motors, the vintage car lot where Ben buys all his touring vehicles. After the cab pulls into the tiny space of driveway that’s not cut off by the huge concertina wire fence, we pay the driver, watch him speedily depart down Figueroa. Then Ben presses the intercom button to gain Louis Habib’s attention. A graying, slender man with impeccable taste in shoes, Mr. Habib is quick to call himself Persian and praise the U.S. of A. I’ve heard his story of escaping from the Ayatollah four times but have always suspected he’s from Detroit, not too far from my own hometown of Troy. What we need from Habib is a machine that inspires dropped jaws when we pull up to the various concert halls where we’ll perform. Part of his myth is that he’s deathly afraid of flight, so Ben’s MO has always been to drive himself to venues. And for the same reason he plays pawn shop acoustics and dresses us both in the most garish rags of man made material, the only cars he believes his loyal fans—the blues faithful, he calls them—want to see him behind the wheel of are Cadillacs and Lincolns, maybe a Pontiac if it’s long, with chrome that blinds and fins so sharp they’ll wound a careless finger. Back home in Biloxi, where none of his condo-association neighbors knows him as anything but Wilton Mabry, a retiree who’s always up for eighteen, a Volvo quietly resides in his garage. “The safety record, Pete,” he claims. “Plus those new seat warmers are a dream.”

Now the gates open via remote control and we tip on in wearing pointy-toed, calfskin shoes—perfect in the club, not so on hot asphalt. It’s warmer here than it was when I left New Orleans, my home of the past three years, and I’m glad for my sunglasses, too. The long, buffed hoods and roofs collect the sun’s rays, shooting them off like laser beams in all directions. I do believe I’m sweating in my black Orlon shirt, a remnant from the last tour. It sticks too close and I flap my arms to loosen it.

Engaged with two customers who stand near a Model-T, Mr. Habib doesn’t see us approaching. His voice rising, both hands fly above his head. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was Fresh Off the Boat, like my friends at the Michigan State University International Center used to say. Yet the man has owned this lot fifteen years, I’ve learned, renting vehicles to movie studios and marking them up later to sell to those who’ll brag Denzel drove their Jag in his latest. Meantime, Ben has started shopping. I step beneath an overhang, watching him mime a shuffling, arthritic gait while running his palms over the mirror-sheen surfaces of Fleetwoods, Continentals, DeVilles. All are classics, lovingly restored by the detailers and mechanics here, only Ben won’t keep our newest once the tour ends. Claims it’s more financially prudent to donate them to charity and take the tax deduction. Thinking of the day care centers, Boys & Girls Clubs, and literacy councils in Jackson and Greenwood with castoff Caddies can be a pleasant image, you ask me. And Ben’s never wrong about taxes. The last two years he’s been nagging me I need to quit 1040-EZ’s and apartment living to take advantage of that homeowner’s deduction.

“No, no, no,” Mr. Habib suddenly says, so loud I can hear him over the traffic noise. “You try to steal from me.”

Ben joins me in the shade. “Found it,” he says, pointing to a long brown ride between a sparkling red Corvette and a silver VW Beetle with a Rolls Royce grille. I shade my eyes with my hand and nod, while Mr. Habib shouts, “Final offer. Final offer.” He raises both hands, tangles them in his fringe of graying hair, then turns and says, “Brother Ben! My favorite customer!”

That’s not the voice I’m used to. He nears us, looks over his shoulder at the two conferring men then turns around. In a voice so American he could sell funeral plots in Topeka, he whispers, “Studio types. Always trying to cut a deal.” His blousy short-sleeved shirt shows no sweat marks while he pumps Brother Ben’s hand and mine simultaneously. “The last one still running?” he says. “The ’72?”

“’74,” Ben corrects. He’s managed to shrink, as if generating a Mississippi accent has taken off pounds and inches, and perhaps a vertebra. “And she pow’ful, Mr. Habib. A luxururus machine.”

“Good, good. Now you’re back for another?”

The studio execs break their huddle. One calls, “Mr. Habib?”

He ignores them, nods slyly at Ben and me. “See anything you like today?” Together, we three form a rich brown spectrum, with Habib lighter than cream-heavy tea, Ben the color of a pecan shell, and me in the Hershey Bar range. I remove my hat, swipe at my forehead with my black sleeve.

“I likes them all,” Ben says. “Ever’ time I comes to the land of Californee I wants every car I sees.” Habib just blinks at the echoes of Mud’s “My Eyes Keep Me in Trouble” and Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago.” I put my hat back on and wipe away a smile on my shoulder. I’m quietly humming the harp line of “My Eyes” when both execs holler, “Mr. Habib?”

“Let them call twice more?” he whispers to us. “What do you think, Sam?”

Behind my sunglasses, I blink. My contacts shift and settle, and my lips are dry and stuck together. I’ve been staring, a little jealously, at Habib’s smart, black and white spectator shoes. Takes me a second to loosen my lips, but before I say a word the execs have neared, their loafers creaking. “Mr. Sam Stamps,” Habib says in Ali Baba mode. “Man of few words.”

Ben chuckles and wheezes while his surreptitious elbow catches my ribs, a subtle clue for me to join in. The studio execs now are near enough for me to see their tanned faces, smell their subtle colognes. Smacking the back of one hand against his palm, Mr. Habib shrieks, “What you give me, huh?” Ben keeps slumping as if the hazy Southern California sun is melting his bones. There’s a lot of funny stuff going on right now, and I’m still laughing when the execs and Habib look my way, until Ben’s shoe slips over mine and he puts all his weight down on it.

•••

“Now then,” Mr. Habib says, leaning back in his chair. “What can I do for my favorite customer?”

We’re inside his office, the AC chilly enough to raise gooseflesh on my neck. Habib’s office is large enough to occupy all three of us and his massive desk. Framed photos of Iranian landscapes hang crookedly on the cinderblock wall behind him. A U.S. flag as big as a king-sized sheet stretches across the glass wall near the showroom. Ben leans an elbow on the desk, takes off his hat to mop his brow. The handkerchief comes back dry, I’m sure, but he pockets it swiftly, his hands appearing nimble one moment, bent and aching the next. None of Habib’s rug merchant act is on display now—though ten minutes ago it secured for the Model T a rental fee twice what the execs wanted to pay. Shoes up on the desk, his soles look smooth, like they’ve never touched a surface that might wear them down. He says, “I got a whole new fleet of Caddies two months ago. Did you see them?” He looks at Ben, then me. I nod, while Ben pours it on, thick as cane syrup. “Which the coffee-colored one?” Ben says. “Caught my eye, sho’ nuff.”

“The ‘76 Fleetwood Brougham,” Habib says, his voice softening like a teacher asking questions to the dumbest kid in class.

“Bro-am,” Ben says, sounding out his phonics. He turns to me. “You the educated one, Sam. Tell me how that spelled.”

He’s not talking about my marketing degree from State. He’s referring to the high school diploma Silent Sam’s peoples are so proud of. I shake my head and shrug.

“B-r-o-u-g-h-a-m,” Habib says.

“Sound like some expensive letters,” Ben says, cackling. Habib says something about price, just as Ben’s dry laugh turns to a racking cough that doubles him over. Habib stands, asking if Ben’s all right.

“Fine, fine,” Ben says through a voice close to the grave. His neck jerks twice as he coughs again. “You right,” he croaks. “Let’s get down to bidniss.”

“That cough sounds terrible,” Habib says, looking at me.

Ben’s foot touches mine, a signal the negotiation’s started with him on top. He’s warned me to pay attention to how he haggles in a way that doesn’t seem like haggling. He says I’ll need to do this when I’m performing on my own someday, though neither of us is ever specific on when that day might come. Right now, I don’t even own a car. As poor a light as that shines on a native Michigander, it’s true. One of the reasons I picked the Garden District of New Orleans to live in was its streetcars and buses. I can get most places by my own two feet (and Pelican cabs aren’t too difficult to get when you call the dispatcher). Only time I’m ever behind the wheel is when we’re touring, and usually then on the interstate where I can do the least harm.

Absently, my hand touches the copy of Blues Today. I wonder what Habib would say if I showed him the polls. Among his celebrity photos on the wall, Ben’s is prominent, above Harvey Korman and just below the good son on Dallas. That favorite customer business sure can seem real. The man cuts at least a couple hundred off every purchase I’ve seen Ben make. Because he loves Ben’s music? Or because Ben’s driven so many cars off this lot, always paid Habib in cash? (“Mississippi John Hurt carry Diner’s Club?” Ben once asked me.) I can’t be certain of anyone’s motives anymore. When you spend so much time being someone you’re not, you suspect everyone’s got a con. And you lie waiting for the tipoff that tells what the hustle is.

“Deal then,” Ben says abruptly, his trembling left hand extended—he never shakes with his “picking fingers.” Habib stands, forces Ben’s hand into a soul shake. “My man,” he says. Then he turns to me for a high five. I wipe my palm on my sleeve to oblige him. “Be back with the keys.”

Ben starts counting bills on the desk. Fourteen hundreds form a pile he taps together like cards. “And you’re quiet, why?” he says, his voice without clear emotion. For a few seconds I don’t reply, staring at the enormous American flag and shaking my head. I already know his retort to my belief that the polls indicate our music matters most to fans, not the act we put on. I know he’d tell me something like, “But we got to look the part of bluesmen just to make them hear.” No point in even bringing it up. Besides, I hear Habib shaking the keys. He hands them to Ben as he spots the bills on his desk. “Don’t you want to take it for a test drive?”

“Oh, I trusts you,” Ben says, unfolding himself from the chair but not quite reaching his full height—six one on his Mississippi driver’s license, though most would swear he’s no taller than five ten. One reviewer called him, “the venerable and diminutive heir to such luminaries as Son House and Charley Patton.” Now he nurses a phantom ailment near his spine with his hand. “But I’m gon get behind that wheel in a hurry.” He smiles at Habib first, then me, sharpening his eyebrows in a way that says, “You’re on your own.”

“What about the title and such?” Habib says.

“Sam can handle the paper,” Ben says, shuffling away. At the rate he’s moving, he’ll arrive at the car about nightfall.

“So,” Mr. Habib says, putting the papers in an envelope. “Where are you headed on the tour?”

The AC cuts out. Habib’s just chit-chatting, still my heart thuds and catches in my chest, as it always does when Ben’s not dominating the room. I’m sure he designed this particular moment into as much a test as the earlier experiment with the cabs, only now he’s determining how well I can handle myself alone. I lay my tongue on the floor of my mouth, move my lips only slightly. “Las Vegas foist,” I say. “Then purty reg’lar.”

“That’s strange,” Habib says. “Don’t you usually start in Portland?”

I nod and tug at my collar, which chafes the back of my neck. It is strange, us playing Vegas, but most of the time, on tour, I just follow Ben’s lead. He’s been on the road so long, I’ve got to trust the direction he’s taking us.

“Still, Las Vegas,” Habib says. “That should be a splendid time.” He shakes a slim finger at me. “But keep an eye on your money, Sam. Country folk like yourself often wind up in tears at the roulette table”

“Will do, Mr. Ha-bib,” I say, knowing good and well how to pronounce his surname, having attended high school with Mickey and David Habib. He hands me an envelope containing the papers and we walk out of the office to the lot, where Ben’s at the wheel of the Brougham, coffee-colored like the one Chuck Berry sings of in “Nadine.” It lacks fins but is longer than a city block, with a vinyl top and a hood ornament bigger than an awards plaque. Ben beams like an aged Sambo, honks the horn two notes. When I show Ben the paperwork, he feigns a lot of blinking as he pulls his chin with his hand. In “Where I’ll Die,” he sings, “I never stayed long in no schoolroom, never learned no ABC’s,” a lyric which assures people like Habib of Ben’s illiteracy. “Look all right?” he says. “We let Mr. Mabry take care the rest.”

“As a manager should,” Habib says. “Give him my best, will you?”

Ben and I nod. Habib walks around to the driver’s side, gives Ben another soul shake. “You’ll outlive us all, my friend,” he says. “Don’t run off with a showgirl.” Then he turns to me, his face darkening. “Brother Ben doesn’t seem so well this time. He needs you.”

I nod again, amused at his concern for Ben, and his well wishing of Wilton Mabry, a man he believes he’s never met. I also feel talked out after my ten or twelve words.

Habib tosses his arm over my shoulder. “This is some great nation, is it not?” he shouts. “Men like us, we’ve made for ourselves a new day.”

Oh well. I slump, prepare to hear again the midnight escape from Teheran. The whole story sounds suspiciously like the plot of a movie I once saw, and Habib’s role gets more heroic with each telling. Always he has to leave someone behind, a cousin, a favorite uncle, last time his wife’s deaf grandmother. Ben and I could share some equally harrowing sagas: of Ben’s wife, Martha, dying suddenly and mysteriously after fifteen years of marriage or of my dad’s fatal heart attack when I was three. Only those aren’t Brother Ben and Silent Sam’s stories. They belong to Wilton Mabry and Peter Owens. Now, though, as Habib’s eyes close for the journey back to his departed homeland, a wrecker with a convertible Thunderbird honks its horn. “Next year,” Habib says, thumping my back, then following the wrecker to the garage, waving. I glance at the price of the Caddy on the window. 2400 dollars. I shake my head as I get in the car, whose wood grain control panel dazzles. I sink into the plush bucket seats and brush my fingers against the pile carpeting. After shutting the door, I say, “How?”

Ben interrupts. “He made a killing on those Hollywood boys. Plus, he always takes care of his favorite customer. Especially when he feels sorry for me.” He fakes a cough, as dry as the desert Habib claims he left behind.

I keep shaking my head as he eases the car onto the street. It’s as if he knew what I was about to say, which isn’t that strange a phenomenon, I must confess. For the Last True Delta Bluesman not only has the ability to outduel the slickest used-car dealer in the West, he’s able to read minds and foretell the future. What else do you expect from a man who in “Call Me Your Lovin’ Man” claims he’s the seventh son of a seventh son?

•••

Wardrobe next. And though the kind of swap meet rags we want are available in every neighborhood with an African American population above ten percent, Ben always depends on the stores along Crenshaw to provide the tackiest and ugliest. Today’s expedition to the two-for-a-dollar bin yields an armful of shirts quite popular circa 1975. Ben singles out for me a long-sleeved, iridescent number. “Looks like the color of motor oil,” he says, laughing his everyday laugh, not the stylized one he employs on stage: “Gon get up in the morning, huh-huh.” I meander toward the jackets and suits, wondering on what occasions did the former owner wear this leisure suit the color of mustard. It’s in my size, though: 42 Regular. Meanwhile, Ben’s more efficient. Along with a dozen shirts, he selects for us six pairs of polyester flares, guaranteed to rise up and show off the opaque, ribbed socks we favor. He drapes some suits over his arm and grabs a pair of black, ankle high boots with roach-killing toes and zippers on the side that’ll fit both of us—I wear an eleven, Ben a ten-and-a-half.

Spot a brother my age—twenty-seven—dressed in any and all of these outfits and you’d either ask him where the costume party is or give him directions to the soup kitchen. Yet when Ben and his first harp-player, Reggie “Bucketmouth” Carter—and yes he could fit a whole harp in that mammoth mouth of his—veered into the seventies, after playing all the sixties coffee houses and festivals in dusty brogans and faded Big Smith overalls, a lot of people wore these synthetic monstrosities. Only for bluesmen did they stay in vogue long past their expiration date. Everyone from John Lee Hooker to Junior Wells to the other B.B. looked like an extra from Superfly until about five, ten years ago. Nowadays, you’ve got blues men dressed like rappers, others like cowboys or rock and rollers. The ladies, like Koko and Etta, prefer gowns, the more sequins the better. And the other B.B. seems only to appear in a tux, which no fan expecting a demonstration of an authentic Delta past will allow. Ben thinks we may as well not monkey with a good thing. Just accept these uncomfortable threads as the necessary password that allows us to enter the venues where we get paid to play. After each gig, we’re both out of them faster than any crawling king snake can shed its skin. For now, we hand over forty dollars and earn from the cashier a lopsided grin, then head to the latest pimp wagon to haul our slick asses back to the hotel.

•••

“You want some advice?” Ben says, a question he’s asked me so many times he rarely waits for my answer anymore. “You best lay off that red meat.” We’ve just ordered room service—Heart Healthy special for him; cheeseburger platter for me—and lounge in his room. Ordinarily, we share quarters, but Ben’s sprung for two tonight.

“I’ll be all right,” I say. Out of our stage clothes, we’re comfy in slippers and bathrobes. Seated at a small table, Ben fills the compartments of his weekly pillbox. Nothing going in is prescribed. There’s no medical conditions I have to know, no emergency numbers to contact in case he starts clutching his chest like Fred Sanford. He counts on homeophathic remedies and supplements to keep him in a physical condition that steadily reminds me of the ten or fifteen pounds I need to shed. “We got enough strikes against us, Pete,” he says now. “Hypertension, diabetes. You best get some greens and grain in your diet. Cruciferous vegetables, too.”

“Charley Patton keep an eye on his fat grams?” I say.

“And how old was he when he died?”

A bad choice. I search the pantheon for a long-lived bluesman. “Lightnin’ Hopkins drank gin and fried eggs for breakfast.”

Ben shuts the seven compartments of his plastic tray. “Well then let’s get you chopping cane like Lightnin’.”

“Chopping cane?” I say. “When’s the last time you were out in the fields?”

He grins, drums his hands against his taut stomach. I pull mine in. “Don’t let’s get started on that,” he says. “What grows in Michigan?”

“Cherries,” I say, recalling seventh-grade Michigan History. “And boy when massuh found out you was eatin his crop. . .”

A knock at the door stops me cold. Most likely, it’s room service, but you never know. Ben’s always willing to let fans visit wherever he’s staying—in fact, he encourages them—and the two of us sharing a room displays the country-negro frugality that balances our garish clothes and fancy cars and creates the overall image Ben believes we must cultivate. I doubt we’ll get such a visitor now, but I creep to the door, tighten my robe and say, “Who dat?”

A moment passes, long enough to make me suspicious. I say again, “Who dat?”

This time, I hear “Room Service,” in a pleasant young woman’s voice, so I open the door to retrieve my food along with the steamed vegetables and brown rice for a man who on stage purports to smoke dynamite and drink TNT.

•••

At nine, Ben racks out—the Last True Delta Bluesman needs his eight hours—and I tip to my room to listen to Sonny Boy and examine the dates and locations of the tour. A few radio and TV interviews along the way, with most of the gigs at places we’ve played before. A lot of colleges, though it’s rare we see students. Their professors are always present, as are the record- and health-food store owners and all others who graduated but never found reason to leave Missoula, Ithaca or Athens, GA. This time around we’re the featured performers at a conference at Indiana Northern University, my first gig of that kind. We play Eau Claire in addition to Madison but will get to Detroit about half way through. Not to play, though. I need to see my mother and her husband, Grover, who are soon headed to Ghana, the motherland. She’s been planning such a trip since Alex Haley published Roots, only I bought the tickets because two years ago I couldn’t make it to their wedding. And once again, we’ll bypass Ben’s hometown of Clarksdale and the Beale Street Blues Awards, though we’re nominated for Best Traditional Act, as we are every year.

In all, of these next four months, much of my time will be spent in rooms like this one. I’ll play harp, practice to speak like a Mississippian with a high school education so I sound true to people who probably count me and Ben as the only black people they’ve conversed with. The brothers and sisters I’ll see, other than my mother and her husband, will be waiting tables or sweeping up. They won’t be in line holding tickets for the Brother Ben Show. I always assume a few are in the crowd, just outside my peripheral vision—half the time, on stage, my eyes are closed, anyway.

From my case, I take out the Military Band Hohner in G I bought for the tour and haven’t broken in yet. Its weight in my hands is a comfort as I play some Sonny Boy, “Good Evenin’ Everybody,” which was a modification of his King Biscuit Time intros. The point then for Sonny Boy was as much to sell flour as to make sounds like no one else had ever heard before. For me now, nothing feels more right than the smooth metal running cool across my lips, my tongue slapping holes to chord, my hands cupped or flapping like wings, yet I stop when my eyes open and I see my black shirt hanging on the doorknob. That’s part of the other show, the one we’ll be putting on, before and after the music. After four years, I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. But I get to play harp. I get to play harp.

•••

First time I heard a harp was on a radio show called “Who Covered Whom.” The station was Detroit’s Cool Q 102, and I listened every Sunday so I could appear in school on Monday, dressed like everyone else in a rugby shirt and jeans and Weejuns, and talk about what records were played on “Who Covered Whom,” as if knowing Little Eva did “The Loco-Motion” before Grand Funk might obscure that I was the only twelve-year-old in Troy who was black and fatherless. One Sunday, the DJ played Slowhand Clapton’s “Eyesight to the Blind”—from the soundtrack of Tommy, a popular midnight movie among the stoner set—then Sonny Boy’s original. The sheer sound, so rough and raw and real, reached inside and shook me. I didn’t know how anyone could have made the sounds Sonny Boy did. I almost believed those trills and slides emanated from within, like song from a bird. Plus, I knew instantly, unlike with Jimi Hendrix on the same station, that Sonny Boy was black. And I wanted to learn how to kick up such a racket myself.

Once I bought my own harp and instructional books to go with it, I was soon stumbling through “The Star Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America,” meantime listening to Sonny Boy and Little Walter and wondering if I’d ever sound like them. Later, at Troy High and at Michigan State, I joined several bands—the Mr. T’s, Sheik and the Trojans, Motown Mojo, Jack and the Dull Boyz—but we sounded like George Thorogood or J. Geils. Having grown up on Apple Blossom Court instead of Dockrey’s Plantation, I feared I was never close enough to the real blues to play them. I needed confirmation of my talent but was too frightened to sit in with players who came through East Lansing and Detroit. Didn’t help that my bandmates were named Trevor and Steve and came to the blues after several viewings of The Blues Brothers. No brothers and sisters were stopping to see me either. So, two months shy of graduation, when I’d been offered a job by Loomis and Pratt, a marketing firm in Cleveland, I was confident I’d take it and keep a harp at home to play along with my Chess records on weekends.

Then came the audition announcement in the Detroit Metro Times, calling for harpists to try out for a spot with Brother Ben. I owned but didn’t listen much to his and Bucketmouth’s first album, The True Delta Blues, but like I believed Bessie Smith died because she wasn’t allowed into a white hospital and believed Tommy and Robert Johnson sold their souls at the crossroads and believed Blind Blake shot a dog and alone could ride the New York City Subway system with ease, I believed the story in the liner notes about how twelve-year-old Ben was arrested for stealing a Stella from a pawn shop, then sent up before some stern, but sentimental cracker who asked why Ben had committed such an awful transgression. “To play the damn thing,” young Ben is purported to say, a response that so tickled the judge, he said, “Then let me hear what you can do.” Naturally, Ben shook those strings so well—without even a lesson—that the charge was dropped. I believed all those stories and more, as if by learning them I might make up for my assimilationist experience and play the blues as if I’d lived them. I’m sure the twenty white cats I auditioned with in an Auburn Hills Hilton believed this tale, too, only I was chosen to play with the man. My confirmation. And my introduction to a world as much defined by manipulation as music-making. Still, backstage at our first show together, I asked Ben if the story about him and the judge was true. He didn’t even say a word right away, just tilted his head and squinted as if I were indeed the rawest negro on the block.

Now, five years later, I hold the notes of “Good Evening Everybody” as long I can before letting them go. This morning, flying from New Orleans to LAX, when I first read the polls, I believed things had turned my way. We’d finally get more than just a nomination at the Beale Street Blues Awards. I’d flash these polls before Ben and he’d agree: “You’re right, Pete. Let’s just play.”

Thank God I couldn’t hold on to such notions for long. Thank God the Last True Delta Bluesman showed me once more that this is his show and will be until he says he’s through. That he knows much more than I, as a businessman, a musician, a bluesman, a man born black in these United States. Without that, I might have believed I had the answers. I might have believed it was my time to go it alone.