Bob Bell on Juneteenth

Juneteenth Festival in Houston, all those years ago.

Juneteenth is to the forefront of people’s consciousness today. I can hear readers in Europe asking, just what is Juneteenth? 

The day commemorates Union Army General Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in Galveston, Texas, on June 19th, 1865, that all people held as slaves in Texas were free. Although the Emancipation Proclamation had officially freed them almost two and a half years earlier, and the American Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent.

I had never heard of it until I came to the States in 1980, but after joining Roomful of Blues, I soon learned about it. Back then, the Festival was largely confined to Texas. I can’t recall the actual year I first attended it - I think it was 1982, although it might have been in 1981. 

Anyway, Roomful was booked to play the Festival, to play our own spot, and also to accompany a very special guest, the legendary - I know- legendary is a hopelessly overused word, but in this case it is spot on - Arnett Cobb, tenor saxophonist extraordinaire. I was very excited at the prospect of getting to hear Arnett, having listened to him on record for many years. I was also excited to hear another guy that was on the bill, and that was Texas pianist and singer Big Walter Price, a musician I had first listened to when I was still in high school. In 1961 or so, I had bought an EP called ‘Rock & Roll’ with four different artists on it - one of them being Big Walter performing ‘Pack, Fair And Square’ accompanied by Little Richard’s road band The Upsetters. It was one of my favourite records and I was just as thrilled at the opportunity to hear him as I was to hear Arnett.

In usual Roomful fashion we had another date later that day, in Austin, Texas, about one hundred and seventy miles away. In fact, we had played there the night before, at Antone’s, a storied blues club run by Clifford Antone, a serious blues fan who, it turned out, subsidised the club by importing pot. We later played for him in jail, in Big Spring, Texas, but that’s another story.

Anyway, we had two nights in Austin, a Friday and a Saturday, and the Juneteenth gig late Saturday afternoon. The Festival agreed to supply us with backline, the industry term for rented equipment. The plan was to play the Friday, leave our equipment at the club, drive in our band vehicle, a converted bookmobile, to Houston, check-in and rest for a few hours, make the gig, and then the band was to grab cabs to the airport and fly back to Austin, and I was to drive the bookmobile back, hopefully in time to make the gig. Given the tightness of the schedule, we all decided it was less risky for the band to fly than to drive and chance not getting back to Austin for showtime.

So that was the set-up. We got to the hotel around 5 am, checked in, and made plans to leave for the Festival in mid-afternoon. Our set started at 4 pm, and we were supposed to be off by 6 pm. The flight left at 7.00 pm. Showtime in Austin was around 10 pm.

I was awake early, excited to go see Big Walter. Got up, showered, grabbed some breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and then figured out the best way to get to the gig, thinking the band would follow me in the bookmobile later.

So where was the festival? This was before all the tech stuff we have at our fingertips today. You couldn’t just google ‘Juneteenth Festival’ and get directions. Plus of course, this was really a black festival. Most of the white folks around the hotel had never heard of it. So I did what a sensible Englishman would do, I called the police for directions. 

“Oh hi, I’m new to Houston and want to get to the Juneteenth Festival. I understand it’s being held in such and such a park and …” The voice at the other end cut me off. ‘You doan’ wanna go down there. That is the black part of town. No way you wanna go down there’, and he hung up.

I was dumbfounded. Obviously I had an English accent, but he couldn’t see me. He didn’t know what colour I was but just guessed. Thing was, here was a festival marking the end of slavery (and by implication, the end of discrimination), and marking it by the date, June 19th, 1865, all those damn years ago, and I get to hear, “You doan’ wanna go down there. That’s the black part of town.”

Wow. Welcome to Houston. Time was pressing on, and before I knew it Big Walter’s showtime had come and gone, and I was still in the hotel, so I never got to see him. 

Two o’clock came and we all clambered into the bookmobile, that filthy stinking humid windowless truck, and rattled off to the gig. The others had been there before - indeed, they had played with Arnett at the Festival a couple of years before - and so knew the way. We were the only white band on the bill. Older black folks recognised what the band was playing and they didn’t care what colour we were - they knew what they were hearing, and they knew there was no-one else out there playing the way Roomful played. As did Arnett. Which is why he jumped at the chance to play with the band again - we were a mutual admiration society.

It was hot. Not many places as hot as Houston in the summer. Hot, humid, sticky. I found the stage manager, and inspected the rented equipment. Our drummer John Rossi looked over the kit. “Sure, that’ll do. Pretty nice set. Where’s the sticks?’ ’Sticks? Sticks?’ Quizzed the stage manager. ’Shit man, backline never includes sticks - you supposed to bring your own sticks.” 

John looked at me. A sinking, dismal kind of look. We were the last act on - the previous musicians had split, and we were due on in ten minutes. It is in these moments that time does a mysterious thing. It both slows down and speeds up simultaneously. Moments before I had been at the soundboard out in the middle of the field. I had seen some guy in front of it with a drum stick in his back pocket. That was one … I rushed over to the board and he was still there. Breathlessly I explained the predicament and he laughed and graciously handed it over, saying, “Sorry, I don’t got but the one.” Running back to the stage I handed John my precious cargo. He had found a long sliver of boxwood from a fruit box …. It would have to do. 

Sprinting back to the board, I got there just in time to get a level on the vocal mic as the MC brought on the band, “And from Providence, Rhode Island,  Roomful of Blues” and we were off to the races.

Now John was a powerhouse drummer, very physical, a master of the shuffle, he really pushed the band. His axiom was ’ to aim the beat at their feet’ and he set the pulse for the dancers. He normally used huge cymbals and equally huge sticks. He was kind of the volume control for the band, and often I would have to bring his volume down in the house PA in order to make the rest of the band audible. Mixing sound for outdoor shows is always tricky … the wind will literally blow the sound away at times, whereas a room will contain it, bringing its own acoustic challenges. This time I had to give John some serious juice, but he rose to the occasion, and I doubt that there were hardly any people there that knew anything odd was going on.

Arnett came on, an elderly black man leaning back on crutches, the lingering result of a serious car wreck many years before, but blowing like a teenager. Not for nothing was he once nicknamed ’The Wild Man of the Tenor Sax’, and he went on to wow the crowd. 

It was a lot of fun, and the crowd, nearly all black, roared and carried on, raising beer cups and shouting in appreciation. 

I had earlier ordered four cabs to be backstage at six o’clock, and as the hour approached, I started looking for them. 

The show ended, and I rushed backstage to find the cabs, and get these guys to the airport.

I look and waited anxiously, then worriedly, and then desperately. Six came and went, six-five, six-ten … still no cabs. One cab appeared, and then another. They weren’t the ones I had ordered, but they were empty. I grabbed a third, and jammed the musicians in, bidding them farewell and bon voyage, promising them I ‘d see them in Austin a few hours time. And off they went, seconds before four empty cabs rolled up. 

“Er, too late buddy - you were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago.” A cascade of curses, gales of grumbles … four very pissed off cab drivers, and one very nervous me.

But off they went, as did I, all alone in the bookmobile, Austin bound, navigating Houston’s roads heading for Interstate 10, headed west, tired, one more gig ahead and then blessed bed. 

And I made it to Antone’s, pulled up outside the club fifteen minutes before showtime, turned off the motor and ambled inside, up to the board, to battle with Antone’s creaky PA one more time.

Today, going on forty years later, a lot more folks in the USA are hip to Juneteenth, and what it means, what it celebrates. 

Progress is, it seems being made, but it is not fast enough. Certainly not for the likes of George Floyd, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and the countless others who have felt both the whip and the gunshot of racial injustice.