Ain't Bad for a Pink (28 page)

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Jason Woolley is a guitarist and bassist who has performed nationally and internationally. He is the Principal Consultant for the Rock School 2006-2012 Guitar Bass and Drum syllabus and a freelance composer, producer and sound designer.

One afternoon in 1997 a fleshy bloke with a goatee and a Southern drawl came in. He spotted my twelve string Dobro and his eyes gleamed. Love at first sight. This was Tom Hubbard: blues musician, from Georgia, USA. He was in the UK for an interview and like many far-flung musicians had found his way to my shop.

If Dobros were cars they’d flash their headlights at oncoming Dobros. I’ve had the twelve string Hendrix Dobro since 1976. They are usually made from mahogany or plain maple. The Dobro Roy Rogers has is ordinary maple; Tom had a mahogany one. My instrument is extraordinary because twelve string Dobros are rare anyway but this is made of special book matched flame maple – tiger striped – and would have cost the buyer a serious amount of extra money. It might have been made as a presentation instrument, like the one Dixie came across which was made of bamboo and had something like “Emmy-Lou ‘82” instead of a Dobro serial number. A supplier of laminated bamboo for kitchens supplied this material to Dobro – plywood giving the correct amount of density and rigidity for the resonator function. Des has that guitar which was made for the supplier’s daughter. But I digress.

Tom Hubbard from Georgia offered to buy my twelve string Dobro for £3,000. I refused the offer. He offered £2,000 plus a vintage National. I refused; he was confused! “This man has as many guitars he
doesn’t
sell as he
does
!” The Dobro was not for sale because I played it and when I did play it Tom was astounded: “Man, that’s awesome!” He took a tape of my songs and when he contacted me from the States, he said he hadn’t stopped playing it and that he would organize some gigs for me. This was a yearned-for opportunity to play the blues in some of the places of their origins.

In a Radio Stoke interview (January 1998) I spoke about my excitement and apprehension at playing the blues in America. Although many people had said that mine was the most authentic-sounding blues performed by a non-American and I knew that I had done the groundwork properly over the years, I still felt humbled. Nevertheless, in March 1998, full of hope, I went to Georgia. The Georgia visits – four altogether – are chronicled in a daily journal, which in parts, echoes the themes and rhythms of the music I respect.

My time with Tom Hubbard and his wife Kathy, at Newnan, forty miles outside Atlanta, in a typical single-storey wooden house I regarded affectionately as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a direct exposure to some of the Southern themes which had dominated my musical studies. Nothing prepared me for the huge scale: the epic weather systems; the stark, rugged landscape not softened by the springtime blooming you get in England in March; the vast stretch of suburbs where you’ll find no pedestrian; the varied and often deadly wildlife. Nothing prepared me for the large contrasts: lavish and formal Southern hospitality co-existing with some narrow and forthright racial views; the KKK still having some left-over rights and everyone going to church. In Georgia there are people holding placards saying “any job for a roof” and lines of shacks – think of the worst pigeon loft – mixed in with huge, ostentatious mansions such as that owned by Evander Holyfield. Nothing prepared me for the ubiquitous gun culture: everyone owns one and they’ll shoot you for being in the wrong place or doing something on the wrong day. There are no gardens to soften the boundary between home and wilderness either and in spite of swings on verandahs, there is a Spartan element to the way of life that isn’t to do with wealth or lack of it. It’s in the culture: summed up by the austere lounge in Hoyt Hubbard’s brick-built house whose upright chairs symbolised a Victorian sense of rectitude. No lounging in the lounge!

I appreciated the country pursuits, the wildlife and the farm tours with Tom’s father, Hoyt. Originally used for cotton, Hoyt’s 260 acres is now dedicated to leisure activities like shooting and fishing from the large artificial lake. Within the rural scenery there were abandoned cars and trucks almost assimilated into the undergrowth, as if a fairground had dropped some of its paraphernalia.

There are dangers too: although I walked every inch of Hoyt’s land, I was extremely wary of snakes, not being used to them. Water Moccasins are two to three feet long and as fat as your wrist. Deadly poisonous, they live near water and they give chase! Being handy with the broom, Hoyt’s wife Peggy had killed one that came in the house. King Black snakes lurk in barns and there are some highly coloured numbers that just fall out of trees. Highland Moccasins live on slightly higher ground and are equally poisonous. The locals know which places to avoid but I was nervous, even though I was given a gun with snake shot in it and as soon as the temperature rose, I became housebound – a bit embarrassing if your blues name is Snakey Jake!

Hoyt had been furious about a black farmer who had allowed tyres to accumulate on his property, because this is where these snakes take cover. There are other dangers: the swampland on Hoyt’s land had swallowed a whole tractor and various cattle but my Enduro riding made me more capable of facing this challenge. Good job too!

Just as snakes permeate this landscape – perhaps more luridly in my imagination than in reality – another sense of unease is apparent across these former cotton fields. My video footage takes in a rough blue cross marking the grave of Old Blue Eyes, Hoyt’s dog, and a startlingly white water tower with a black lettering: COWETA COUNTY (
1)
which dominates the skyline. My camera eye returns to the tower time and time again; I was mesmerised by its incongruity in this pastoral landscape. It is this iconic presence that allegedly appears in the film
Mississippi Burning
(1988) based on the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964 and the power of the Ku Klux Klan. Hoyt received a fee from the film company.

There is also footage of an old building: a one-storey brick-built cottage almost throttled by climbers whose branches have yet to show their spring growth. I was offered this shack that once housed a black family, plus half an acre on Hoyt’s land in exchange for my Dobro – the one that his son Tom coveted so much. What a strange idea to own so cheaply the sort of place many of my musical gurus had lived in.

The water tower dominates the sky like an alien craft.

I had some very revealing conversations with Hoyt about the white Georgian attitude to African Americans, whom he still calls “niggers”. He recalled how, as an enlightened and astute farmer he would make sure his black hired hands had a rail so that they didn’t fall off the truck transporting them to the fields! Other farmers were less mindful and could end up with two or three of their cotton pickers having fallen off. The feeling was not one of concern for their safety but of the inconvenience caused to the farmer when he was short-handed. Hoyt also described black people being shackled by the sheriff for real or trumped-up crimes and the locals being allowed to thrash them with thongs: thongs which had silver dollars threaded through them as if to emphasise the economic hierarchy. It’s easy to see how lynching could occur. I wondered naively how such a callous attitude could persist post-Civil Rights. Hoyt was a decent enough man.

I decided it must be to do with the way the white supremacist categorises people. With surprising neutrality, Hoyt regards black people as he does his stock – and with less human feeling than he has for Old Blue Eyes. Control and a certain amount of self-interested care and paternalism are necessary to get a good return on your business. That’s all. He believes that all black people are lazy and inferior. He doesn’t hate them but his world view is absolutely secure and that is that.

Hoyt’s son Tom said, “I’d like to piss on Martin Luther King’s flame.” There is an eternal commemorative flame to the great Civil Rights leader in Atlanta and this is how Tom gave vent to his hatred. He has a far more emotional attitude to black people than Hoyt, hating without knowing any. When Tom visited my shop, he came back from the local supermarket absolutely fuming: “Them niggers wouldn’t get off the sidewalk!” he raged. It’s discouraging to feel that nothing has budged in the hearts and minds of people like Tom. At least Hoyt doesn’t compound his racism with hate.

Fortunately I did meet some people with liberal views during my stay in Georgia and I was able to take refuge with them when the white tower seemed unconquerable.

It’s easy to judge someone like Hoyt Hubbard but I liked him. He has the views of a conservative farmer, belonging to a time when racist attitudes were the acceptable norm. The British have nothing to be proud of. They treated their workers equally badly; they supported slavery until it became an economic no-no; they behaved unspeakably in the colonies. What I did take issue with was Tom’s racism; he was born into a different era and his racism is an anachronism based on hatred. Tom is a bully and like all bullies a coward. “He’s a prize steer with no horns,” Hoyt said of him.

Tom would have led the lynch mob.

The shadow of the Ku Klux Klan still passes over the State: every year they hold a televised meeting on top of Stone Mountain – the site of the reincarnation of the Klan in 1915 – courtesy of an unrepealed law giving them the right to hold celebrations there. More depressing: it’s attended by thousands of people harbouring unrepealed prejudice.

I never did get used to there being a loaded handgun on the breakfast table next to the coffee pot. Like the snakes and the lingering sense of oppression, guns are endemic in this part of the South. I am familiar with the gun as a sporting accessory and I enjoyed the lessons I received from the “Georgia boys”, but knowing something is not the same as experiencing the peculiar position gun owning holds in the US. I was completely taken by surprise when someone shot at me for drinking on Sunday! It didn’t make me feel any better when it was explained to me that this was just a warning shot – Georgia boys never miss. I soon noticed that Tom always took his gun when he answered the door and that all the road signs off the main highways were full of gunshot.

There was also a very awkward situation with a sheriff. I took the car 400 yards to run the battery up then across the fields to have a walk, during which I collected a couple of fir cones. On the return journey I was pulled up by the sheriff: “STAY IN THE CAR!” He gave me the third degree about trespass and demanded to know what I was doing. I showed him my passport and said I was collecting a couple of fir cones for my girlfriend in England. That must have sounded pathetic and I must have looked frightened of his gun, handcuffs and truncheon because he let me go. “I didn’t want to shoot you,” he said.

For trespass?!

Yet, as a contrast to this territorial aggression, I experienced hospitality which was as wholehearted as it was formal. When Hoyt said grace he included good wishes for me, before a good meal of fried okra, purple-eyed peas, cornbread, biscuits, pan-fried flavoured chicken and lemon meringue pie – all home-made. A nice woman gave me an Atlanta Braves baseball hat when I visited her house. This was not a trivial gift; it would be treasured by anyone owning it. Hoyt gave me a silver dollar which happened to be from the same year I opened my shop; he regretted he could not give me a 1949 silver dollar – the year of my birth.

For all its pleasantness and upholding of family values, it seemed to me that with this hospitable culture comes an insularity, a lack of vision and a narrowing of possibilities. Apart from visiting one another’s houses, the only other social activity is church-going, dressed to the hilt. Yes it is true that people eat out a great deal; restaurant prices are very cheap. But these weren’t social occasions: things were much more basic, more single-minded than that. This was about eating. There are few bars and social drinking is frowned upon and relegated to ne’er-do-wells.

But going to church is big amongst the majority of Southerners, black and white. The churches appeared to be segregated. Martin Luther King said that the most segregated hour of Christian America was eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. I didn’t attend a church service and this has surprised some people, since the blues are linked to gospel music but I had a good reason for my fastidiousness: as a non-believer I felt I had to avoid voyeurism. But I could hear the gospel music; it was fantastic, with fabulous harmonies and the experience reminded me of the old tin church in Stewart Street, Crewe where you could feel the walls bulging with sound during services.

Hospitality notwithstanding, I found the dearth of alcohol perplexing for a Brit used to a pub on every corner and one in between. I was surprised how small a part alcohol plays in the day-to-day lives of people. As a committed drinker I felt it needed recording: “Hardly any bars but a church on every corner!” Another journal entry makes reference to surreptitious drinking: “TJ invited me round the back, gave me a polystyrene beaker and a jug in a blue shroud – Crown Royal Whisky”. And how joyless it was! The echoes of Prohibition and bootlegging are still around. This feeling is supported by the draconian drink laws in this part of the US: Sundays are dry and if you have an open liquor container in the car, even if empty from a previous day, it’s a serious jail offence. For a man who has punctuated a good part of his life with alcohol, I became just a bit pre-occupied with my supplies!