Bob Bell's The Hot Little Mama Tour, Part Two
Not too long after our string of dates with Roy Brown, we flew Jimmy McCracklin in from California for a show at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Providence. Ace Records in the UK, who were in the process of releasing ‘Hot Little Mama’, had suggested that a good way of breaking into the European market would be to set up a tour with a couple of special guests, namely Rosco Gordon and Jimmy MacCracklin, the subjects of two recent Ace releases.
Rosco Gordon, whose offbeat style was hugely popular in Jamaica, and who was thus very influential in the growth of Jamaican blues and ska, would have been a big draw to the older West Indian population of London, while McCracklin would have rounded out the proposed tour by making it a one-two punch for blues fans. Greg spoke with both artists, with the result of hiring Jimmy for a one-off date in Rhode Island.
Rosco Gordon
Jimmy arrived and proved to be a bit of an odd duck. He wore a coat of many colors, made out of some kind of strange shiny fabric. Certainly, it was eye-catching - indeed, it was just about impossible to take one's eyes away from it. This is not to say it was appealing, well-cut, fashionable or tasteful. None of the above, to be sure. Jimmy proved to be a man quite equal to his coat. His stories, in which he was always the central character, were eyebrow lifting, their veracity doubtful and provenance questionable. He lied about his age, which if what he said was true, would have meant he was but a toddler when he made his first recordings in 1945.
When we got to Lupo’s to rehearse before the show, he spent a lot of time trying to show Al Copley how to incorrectly play Avery Parrish’s ‘After Hours’, a tune that Al knew very well, and in fact knew how to play it much better than dear old Jimmy, who insisted on showing Al a mistake-ridden version.
To be fair, Jimmy had written some great songs over the years, and the show that evening was a great success, both musically and crowd-wise. The joint was jammed, full of Rhode Island’s finest. Roomful had developed an enthusiastic and large following over the years. New England seemed to be jammed with blues and R & B aficionados, and fans came from miles around to catch the band when they played in Providence, and all the more so when Roomful hired a special guest. Jimmy had an unusual vocal style, halfway between singing and speaking, ideally suited to his big hits like ’The Walk’, ’The Georgia Slop’, ‘Just Gotta Know’ and ’Susie and Pat’. As he wrote most, if not all, of his material, it’s no surprise that they suited him.
Jimmy McCracklin
News of the show reached Jimmy’s Oakland hometown, just over the bay from San Francisco. Greg had been talking with promoter Tom Mazzolini who ran the San Francisco Blues Festival, and wanted Roomful for the Festival, suggesting that for the band’s California debut, we accompany Jimmy for part of our slot. So we got a good anchor date for the west coast part of the upcoming tour in September. We never got to Europe with Jimmy, nor with Rosco. Indeed, we never played with Rosco, although Duke Robillard, who along with Al Copley, had founded the band back in 1967, did end up making a great record with Mr. Gordon many years later.
We spent the summer promoting ‘Hot Little Mama’ throughout New England and down to Texas - a typical trip was one that started on May 28th. with a three-night stand at The Red Creek Inn in Rochester, in upstate New York. Rochester was an odd town. There always seemed to be a bewildering amount of physically and mentally disabled people wandering the streets. Whether the cause was just something in the water, or more simply that there were multiple sad institutions close to our hotel that ware-housed these unfortunates, who knew? The more cynical amongst us suspected chemicals used by Kodak - the city’s biggest employer. The Red Creek was a regular gig for Roomful - we’d hit it at least twice a year. Damn long and boring drive to get there, though. Especially in the winter - it gets cold up in northern New York, butting up as it does to Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes, separating the US from Canada with its gray-green vastness, offering no impediment to the searching stabbing northern winds. Much of the drive is through farmland, large rolling fields on either side of the highway, stretching to the horizon, snow-flecked in the winter, with long wooden hurdles zigzagging close by the wire fences, there to catch drifting snow and to keep the road open during storms. This time out it was summer, the season of humidity and sweaty discomfort. A land of extremes, to be sure.
From Rochester, we had one day to drive to Atlanta, Georgia. Take a look at a map - it’s long long way, close to a thousand miles. Atlanta was a kick for me - it was where I had originally met the band the year before, and now I was returning with them, the prodigal son, though scarcely anyone there knew me so I was in deep disguise. The posters we had ordered for the record had recently arrived in Rhode Island and I had sent a big packet to the venue a few days before. When we got there, the joint was decked out with them. I’d hoped they would plaster the town, but it seemed as if they had saved them all for the club. Didn’t matter - it looked very dramatic, very big time, and the place was sold out, and we sold a ton of records. From there another long drive to Dallas, Texas, and Nick’s Uptown, followed by dates in Lubbock (Fat Dawgs), Austin (Antone’s), Houston (Rockefeller’s), New Orleans (Tipitina’s), back to Houston for Juneteenth and then home, all the way and all the time in the stinking Chevy Suburban, the U-Haul trailer bouncing along behind us, its tires becoming more cupped with every mile. I dunno what the U-Haul guys thought when we finally brought that beat old trailer back to them. It was leased to us for local use. In our defence, we did always bring it back to them, thousands and thousands of miles later.
A couple of weeks later down south for a string of shows around Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia. Ah, Richmond! How I dug Richmond. I'd split from the hotel and go looking for junk stores, looking for 78's. Those eastern tobacco states had been great markets for blues and R & B over the decades, and there were always great finds to be found. Country blues by Blind Boy Fuller, Memphis Minnie, Brownie McGhee, R & B from Lucky Millinder, Tiny Bradshaw and Tab Smith. I'd spend hours shuffling through dusty cardboard boxes and old crates, reaching under counters and behind fading armoires with peeling veneer, searching, searching and searching - finally staggering back to the hotel with an armful of grubby shellac, grinning like a loon. Then back home to New England, and all the while Greg and I were firming up dates for the September tour.
Blind Roy Fuller
It had not taken me long to understand that I needed a good seven or eight weeks lead time before a show to promote it properly, to get all the info from the promoter, get him what he needed, and for me to mail out promo packages to all the relevant writers and radio people. I needed to contact them, talk to them and hopefully set up phone interviews. Thing was, it was rare to get them on the phone the first time out. I had to leave messages, and hope I’d be close to my phone if or when they called back. As I was on the road for so much of this time, I’d have to make calls from gas stations or hotel rooms. The latter were great because I could do business lying on my bed, but more usually it was making calls at a gas stop, standing in driving rain or searing sun, a fistful of change, trying to get my message through, while the band waited in the Suburban, looking at their watches, studying the map, anxious to make the hotel. We were under the gun constantly, to make time, to cover miles, play the gig, and get paid.
Living in Providence wasn’t all work, however - the town had a thriving and growing club scene. Doug escorted me around during those early months, showing me the town, introducing me to the musicians, artists and all the crazy and interesting cats that lived in the area. Doug knew everyone, everyone knew Doug. He was one of the funniest guys I had ever met, sometimes a grim and sardonic wit, at others sweet and gentle, forever wise to the incongruities of life, how ridiculous it all was, meeting every situation with a one-liner delivered at the speed of light that often left the recipient bewildered, non-plussed, not figuring out the joke until Doug had left the building, turned the corner and vanished. He drank like no-one I had ever met … shots just evaporated, quarts disappeared. Never saw him stumble, never saw him at a loss for a word … if anything, the more he drank, the funnier he became. One night at a club in Worcester, he was begging the bartender for one more last shot, trying politely, trying with a smile, trying in differing voices, shuffling the words so that the request came across bit different each time, just to be rebuffed after each attempt. I was humping equipment past the bar and out the door, and so heard these repeated entreaties. Eventually the hassled bartender, trying to clean up after a long night, lost her temper, and said, ’No, not one more fucking drink! Geddit? No more!’ And as fast as a whip, I hear his rejoinder: ’So I suppose a blow job is completely out of the question?’
The beauty of the timing was in immaculate contrast to the tastelessness of the subject, and it didn't go over too well.
Lupo’s had bands seven nights a week, and there was the Met Cafe, a scruffy beat little brick building that hired bands, many great little bands. I became friendly with Rory McLeod, a fine bass player, who was then playing with Duke Robillard, alongside drummer Jack Moore. Rory invited me down to a gig with Duke at the Met. Duke was something else, and I wished I had heard him with Roomful before he had left the band. The Memphis Rockabilly Band, based out of Boston, often hit Providence, and they always rocked the joint. Their guitar player, Billy Coover, was the epitome of joy - his face was forever lit up with the widest grin you ever saw. The more he played, the more he grinned. Now there was a man who loved his job. On bass fiddle was Preston Hubbard, who’d played with Roomful through much of the seventies, and was on the band’s two Island LPs. Preston could play anything it seemed - way before his days with Roomful he’d played with the Hamilton-Bates Blue Flames, a jazz unit led by tenor player Scott Hamilton and guitarist Fred Bates - John Rossi had been the Blue Flames’ drummer prior to going Roomful. The Met showcased blues one night, jazz the next and rock after that. Not really sure if ‘showcased’ isn’t perhaps too grand a word for the Met. There wasn’t a stage - the band set up on the floor next to the entrance, adjoining a short wall. It was dive, a joint, crowded and beer-soaked, and a great place to hear music, drink, and shoot the breeze. I saw Shorty Jackson there, tiny crippled pianist who’d written ‘Knock Me A Kiss’, “Slender, Tender and Tall’ and other tunes for Louis Jordan, in a little band led by Mike Lattimore, with Fred Bates on guitar. Five-foot tall Shorty, next to seven-foot tall Fred, running his fingers up and down a Rhodes electric piano, smiling into the murky madness of the Met, all beer fumes and tobacco smoke.
Louis Jordan and sis Tympani Five
Another time Roy Eldridge, jazz trumpeter towards the end of a long and illustrious career, who’d come up from New York City, all that way to make his rent, I guess. A far cry from the theatres and ballrooms of his heyday. Then there was Louie Camp, a short squat tenor player, who’d led a local band, the Savoys, in the very early sixties and with whom Roomful drummer John Rossi had started out with. Louie had a guy on B-3, who filled the room with sound, and the little band played tough and greasy instrumentals a la Bill Doggett and all those cool and swinging tenor and organ combos that played for night club denizens, dancers and lovers, listeners and boozers, winners and losers, in those days when the lines between jazz, blues and popular music were so deliciously blurred, so gloriously mixed up.
Our east-side apartment on Hope Street was a mile or so from Thayer Street, which was hard by Brown University, close to the Rhode Island School of Design - known to one and all as RISD, pronounced rizdee - and was a thriving hub of cafes, record stores and hip shops catering mainly to the students who roamed everywhere. There was a forever crowded print shop and that place was my usual destination, hitting it to get press releases and press kits printed, itineraries updated and all the seemingly endless paper stuff that went with telling the world about Roomful of Blues. There was so much to tell, and so many to tell it to. And when all was printed, I schlepped it back to the apartment, addressed the envelopes and mailers to the press, stuffed in the presskits, the LP, and perhaps a little personal note, and then headed for the main post office which, praise the Lord, was open until midnight. Oh man, I don't know how many times I walked up to the counter at 11.45 pm and handed over a massive bundle of envelopes to a yawning clerk, who'd grin when he or she saw it was the Roomful of Blues' guy, and make some comment about the band. We were big fish in a little pond, and the name was becoming increasingly recognised.
August simmered along in the heat of the New England summer, and we played gigs in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. We had started a Monday night series at a fine restaurant in Worcester, the El Marocco and on the second or third Monday there, a lantern-jawed Englishman approached us during the break, asking if he could sit in on piano. Said his name was Ian Stewart, which left most of the band clueless, but I knew the name. He was the sixth Rolling Stone, the band's piano player whom the Stones' early manager Andrew Loog Oldham had chucked out of the band because he didn't have 'the right look'. Ian had put the music above his pride and had continued with the band as their tour manager over the years, and usually played piano on gigs anyway. Not wanting to appear a fawning fool, I feigned ignorance as to knowing who he was and asked him if he was over here in the states with a band, and he confirmed my hunch by saying, '... er, yeah, mate ... er, the Strolling Drones'. All this played through my mind as I whispered to Greg who he was, and while doing so, I looked at the guys in the band and felt blessed that Oldham had never got involved with this bunch.
Al graciously gave up the piano stool and down sat Ian, approaching the ageing upright with finesse and feeling, belying suspicions that he might just be some rocked out guy who had lucked into a good gig. He played with taste and a sense of dynamics, attack and restraint as fitted the song. At the end of the night, he thanked us for the opportunity, and upon hearing that we'd be back there the next Monday, said he try and bring Mick and Keith with him.
The Stones, it turned out, were rehearsing in nearby North Brookfield, preparing for a major US tour, and of course, Mick and Keith would be very welcome indeed to come by next Monday. Knowing that making a big deal out of that possibility would turn it sour, we kept our mouths shut, but the word got out, mainly I think from the restaurant owners. Next Monday came, we pulled up two hours before showtime and the parking lot was jammed and inside the place was mobbed.
And surprise, surprise, no sign of Ian, Mick or Keith, and our secret unspoken hopes of getting on the Stones tour ebbed, evaporated and disappeared.
