Bob Bell's Hot Little Mama Tour: 13 - Back to the Moonshadow, Dancers and Drunkards.
(Albey Scholl with Junior Wells - photographer unknown)
The Moonshadow Saloon, on Johnson Road in northeast Atlanta, a large and well-designed showcase club, spacious, great sight-lines, huge dance floor and a fine sound system, with the board upon a raised dais, pulpit like, so the sound guy had a clear and unimpeded view of the band, had all the ingredients for a great night. Add in the fact that Roomful had a strong and solid following in Atlanta, aided and abetted by lengthy features in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution by music writer Mitchell Feldman, the portents for Tuesday night looked good.
Over the subsequent years that we played The Moonshadow, the opening band would either be The Heartfixers, fronted by Louisiana born Chicago Bob Nelson, who acknowledged the applause after each number with a nod, and a ‘Thanks, sure ‘ppreciate it’, or The Fins, led by Albey Scholl, a great little band that had morphed from The Alley Cats, whose ranks had included Roomful’s former bassist Preston Hubbard, who a year or two later rejoined Roomful, replacing Jimmy Wimpfheimer, and in that glorious way in which all bands get mixed up and morph into each other, the Alley Cats had included The Heartfixer’s guitar player Tinsley Ellis. This particular evening it was The Fins who warmed the sold-out crowd, a gratifying turn out for a Tuesday night, consisting of Roomful fans, Fins fans, blues lovers, dancing devotees and the simply curious, plus the usual assorted musicians on a night off, friends of the band, dealers, chancers, hangers-on and drunks.
Albey turned out to be a knowledgeable and friendly guy and in the years to come, I went to several after-show parties at his place - he was a big blues guy and had a cool record collection.
Thing was, at that time there was a big and surging interest in blues, vintage r & b and rock and roll, and rockabilly. I’d noticed it in England during the 70s, specialist record shops sprouting up all over the place, importing America 45s or more often, repressing 50s releases with the original label art, most probably bootlegged, labels like Ace and Charly reissuing hot American music from the 40s and 50s on well-annotated LPs and the growing popularity of rockabilly bands like the Stray Cats, the Rockats, the Polecats, Whirlwind, Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers, Shakin’ Stevens, and a few bands trying their hand at R & B, like Red Beans and Rice, whom I had gone to see with some A & R guys from Island Records at the close of 1980. A resurgence was in the air, which was why I had placed ‘Hot Little Mama’ with Ace, figuring that a hip label like that would give Roomful the right exposure in the right market.
It was an odd but undeniable fact that American record companies had, in the main, ignored American culture and its history, instead constantly aiming at the main chance with new, and very often sadly disposable junk, and it had been Europe that had waved the flag for American roots music, both on record and in person. True, this has changed over the last couple of decades, but back then things were somewhat dire in the good old US of A. It was bands like Roomful up in the northeast, and the T-Birds in the south-west that were rekindling interest in America’s post-war sounds, Roomful the horn-heavy sound of jump blues, and the ‘Birds the greasy southern grooves of Louisiana and Texas, all very different from the Chicago sound that had sparked the blues craze in the UK in the early 60s.
Roomful of Blues - photo Joe Rossi
A battered guy in his sixties, his face red and puffy, came to the dressing room door, asking for Porky. Porky got up and sauntered over, looking up at him quizzically.
‘Porky!’, says the guy, ‘remember me? From the Barnet band?’ Porky studied him, he obviously had no idea, didn’t know him from Adam. The guy grinned in a self-effacing way like his whole life had been spent explaining who he was. ‘I’m Danny, Payne. Remember?’ Porky’s face was blank, then he smiled, and said, ‘Hey, Danny, yeah, man, wow, Danny.’
And then after a wee little pause, ‘Got any pot?’ Alas, Danny had no pot but offered that he’d love a drink if there was anything going, and it was obvious from looking at that sad, woebegone, worn old face, that he most certainly would like a drink or four. Porky sat Danny down and they talked for a while, and then the Fins came off and I had to go fix the stage, position the mics and do the quick obligatory line-check.
As I went from mic to mic, uttering the soundman’s mantra, ‘Testing, one, two, three’, and looking out at the expectant crowd, I could feel the electricity in the air, the anticipation, the collective envisionment of what was to come, presentiments of thrills and kicks just a few moments away.
The old saws about blues being the music of being down and out were all very well, and indeed, had a place in some situations, but the blues was also a music of celebration, of ecstasies and joys as well as pains and sorrows, and it was in the riotous expressions of those feelings that came liberation from the hassles and grinds of daily living, and was one of the main reasons for the great blues resurgence of the 80s - no self-conscious noodling with pretensions to great art here, no pompous time changes, no bombast and bullshit, jest simply music with feeling, and a beat you could dance too. Pic would often say in interviews that Roomful was, in essence, a dance band, and that was what we were. Didn’t hurt, either, that the band swung, a feel and a rhythm that was new to punters of a certain age. And so it was that from town to town we’d meet musicians like Albey Scholl, Freddie Cisneros, fans like Rod and Lisa Anderson in Fort Worth, promoters like Brian Brock in Cheyenne and Roger Nabor in Kansas City, folks just like those cats in London running record labels putting out the music that had inspired them as kids, who now had the wherewithal to be players, to put out obscure but worthy records, hire and promote bands and musicians who had that thing, that feeling, that groove that made the fans go crazy, that made the moon hang silvery in the dark sky, and the American night mellow and good, spreading smiles and joy, bonhomie, glad-handing and high-fiving, messages of fellowship rippling across the land.
So given the contagious enthusiasms in the air, the dance-me-daddy come-hither of the ladies and the reciprocal assents of the dancin’ daddies their own selves, no surprise then, that the crowd at the Moonshadow got the message, dancing, whooping and hollering, laughing and grinning until the last notes of the last encore faded, and the dance floor slowly emptied, the crowd filing towards the exits, sweaty, tired and exhilarated, reliving moments of the night, squeezing hands, stealing kisses, giving great joyful hugs, a mad hubbub of satisfied souls, bidding farewells, stumbling towards cars, hailing cabs, shouts and waving arms, all slowly morphing into the warm and humid southern night, as close to satori as it gets on an early Wednesday morning, under a Georgia moon, casting its spells and shadows.
After Doug and I loaded the equipment into the trailer, we went back into the club to round up the band. Danny was still there, at Porky’s side, a shot in his hand, his face scarlet, his breath dangerously inflammable, his speech pretty much indecipherable. Nodding, as if to acknowledge his incoherence, he silently handed me an LP, ‘Danny Payne Sings’, bowed to Porky, and walked, with practiced drunken dignity out of the dressing room, across the dance floor, past waiters cleaning vacant tables and made his forlorn way towards the exit, and his battered world and tattered memories of a momentarily glorious but presently diminished past.
‘Hey Porky, so the two of you worked together on Barnet’s band?’ I asked. Porky looked at me with frustration and annoyance. ‘Well, that’s what he said. I don’t think I ever met him before. What an asshole - he just talked and talked and drunk half of my brandy. And didn’t even have any pot’.
He grinned with a kind of benevolent disgust and chuckled. ‘Never mind, I got some from one of the guys in the other band. That’ll make tonight’s ride to DC a little better. We ready to go?’
