Can't Be Satisfied (11 page)

Fifty-three years before Alan Lomax wrote the above, and one year before the first Delta expedition, John Work III wrote in the introduction to his book,
American Negro
Songs:
“The fatal error made by many writers in this field is that in their analysis of these songs they relate altogether upon the verse, rather than upon the music. The Negro slave was
too handicapped by inadequate vocabulary and too absorbed in the music to give much attention to the words. In many instances his verse was magnificent, yet throughout his songs we definitely sense
the importance of music over words.”

Pioneers in any field create the context in which they can be criticized by those who follow in the privileged position cultivated for them. Lomax played an essential role in raising the
public’s awareness of the beauty, importance, and significance of African American culture. Without his participation in the project, the “discovery” of Muddy Waters might have
languished in the vaults of Fisk University. But in a world where authorship is authority, Lomax virtually erased the scholarship of John Work. Far more troubling than his blending of dates is
Lomax’s refusal to acknowledge the contribution of others, especially of an African American whose ideas, research, and knowledge were pivotal to his own achievements. Bluesmen were much more
generous and fluid in the exchange of inspiration and artistry. Lomax recorded the blues culture, but did not absorb the spirit of cooperation that made that culture thrive.

T
hree months after the initial visit by John Work and Alan Lomax, an event occurred in the Mississippi Delta that would have a profound effect on
Muddy, on blues artists, and on blues fans. When it went on the air, radio station KFFA was a tiny place, but its impact was enormous. KFFA reached farther than the loudest juke joint and into
every home, regardless of race, economics, or social station. The station broadcast right from the Mississippi Delta — the banks of Helena, Arkansas — and for the first time, the Delta
heard itself. Man, it could sing.

KFFA was established by three businessmen. Sam Anderson teamed with John Franklin, of the Franklin Ice Company, and Quin Floyd, a truck-line owner; their surnames form the call letters. The
studios were established in an office upstairs over Floyd Truck Lines, a block from the Mississippi River levee. The owners were businessmen, not radio engineers, and were more interested in paying
rent to themselves than in the proximity of microphones to the din of roaring trucks. Broadcasting began in November of 1941.

Harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson and guitarist Robert Lockwood Jr. — two prominent musicians in the area — approached owner Sam Anderson with the hopes of getting a regular
broadcast slot. Anderson knew a grocer around the corner interested in sponsoring a show. Max Moore’s Interstate Grocer Company had been packaging the King Biscuit brand of flour since 1931,
and radio seemed like a great way to reach new customers. Dubbed King Biscuit Time, the program broadcast weekdays from noon to 12:15, and for half an hour on Saturday, coinciding with the field
hands’ lunch
break. “We did the very first show and it took off like a house on fire,” said “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, an early KFFA disc jockey.
“The blues was something we heard every day on the street, and we took the blues for granted. I said, ‘These people aren’t going to go for [blues radio],’ but it was the
best thing that ever hit this part of the country.”

Born Aleck Miller (or perhaps Aleck Ford) on December 5, 1899 (or perhaps 1897 or 1909), Sonny Boy Williamson was known to musicians by many names — among them Willie Williams, Willie
Miller, Alex Miller, and Little Boy Blue. Those who knew him best called him Rice, despite his blatantly co-opting “Sonny Boy Williamson,” a name still in use by a popular harmonica
player who’d been releasing blues hits on the Bluebird label since 1937.

Sonny Boy II, as Miller became known, was in his forties when his radio career started. A tall and lanky man, he made up in physical energy what he lacked in meat on his bones. According to Hank
Harvey, who delivered laundry in Helena, “Sonny Boy in action was worth the trip. Even with the old Coca-Cola thermometer on the side of the grocery store pushing 100, he stood there in knee
boots with slits cut in the sides. He wore a thick belt with loops for his harmonicas. When he played, he flapped his arms sometimes and did a dance step. He could make the harmonica cry or yell,
or make it moan like a steamboat whistle if he wanted to. He got right up next to the microphone and played, then sang, and sometimes seemed to play and sing at the same time. He sometimes put the
harmonica completely inside his mouth and played it that way.”

Although fifteen years Sonny’s junior, Robert Lockwood had been sharing gigs with him for five years. Lockwood, with an ear for accompaniment, had fleshed out the pair’s sound with
melodies and contrast. It helped that the innovative guitarist had received guidance around 1927 from his mother’s husband — Robert Johnson.

Lockwood and Williamson — the King Biscuit Boys — were paid a few dollars for each week’s six shows. The real money came through announcing their forthcoming gigs, directing an
audience of thirsty patrons to the joint where they’d next be throwing down. Proprietors
got packed houses and the band often took home more than their weekly wage in a
single night. Muddy hired Sonny Boy and his band to play on Stovall. “He’d [announce] every spot they’re playin’ at,” Muddy explained. “You could hear it all
over the country down there. Drew them peoples from all in the back of them cotton fields, everywhere.” Sonny Boy was the first harp player and Lockwood the first guitarist that Muddy heard
playing through an amplifier. “Every time there wasn’t a radio around,” said Muddy, “I’d run to the next house where one was at to hear them play.”

If white cotton had made slaves of African Americans, white flour now made them paid musicians. And flour companies and blues seemed to get along, perhaps because so many black women worked in
white kitchens. By reaching the black audience, the companies were in effect reaching white dinner tables as well.

“There was not much interference for KFFA’s two hundred fifty watts of power,” recalled Sonny Payne. “We would go anywhere from seventy-five to one hundred miles in four
directions.” The King Biscuit Boys found themselves in demand at increasingly distant juke joints across the river, but they were not alone. An appearance on the show could be a huge career
boost — something Muddy soon realized.

“I met [Sonny Boy] over in Helena,” Muddy remembered, his initial foray into the city only twenty miles from his house inspired by the radio program. “I went up, and he let me
did a couple of numbers on one Saturday. We drove up to Friar’s Point — leave the car on this side — cross on the ferry to Helena. We went over one Friday and they had a show come
on in the days. He let me and my buddy play a couple a numbers along with the band, Son Sims.”

His King Biscuit appearance upped Muddy’s star quotient. “If we got a chance to set in and do a couple of songs, man, when we got back on Stovall, that was the whole talk. Everybody
that’s heard it on the radio was running, telling all the people all on the plantation, ‘I hear them, man, I hear them, they on it!’ ” Indeed KFFA’s impact on Muddy
was so forceful that fulfilling the dream of having his own show there would draw him back for an extended stay even after he had achieved success in Chicago.

King Biscuit Time pioneered black radio programming, and its success did not go unnoticed. Black programming spread from Greenville, Mississippi, to West Memphis, Arkansas.
By 1948, in the big city of Memphis, WDIA became the nation’s first radio station to format black voices on the air, programming for black listeners — full-time. Technology was
presenting new types of mobility to Muddy and his peers. Most of the great Delta artists performed on King Biscuit Time or its competitors. Reputations were built on the show. With blues radio, the
modern blues star was born.

In mid-April, 1942, after the chance of freeze had passed, Muddy mounted Colonel Stovall’s tractor to harrow the ground. In mid-June, with the plants a foot high, he
manned a hoe to chop cotton. When his plants were set with blossoms, Muddy enjoyed his lay-by. With time on his hands, he might have reflected on St. Louis, time and distance making what had seemed
cold and foreign less daunting, the thrill and excitement of a fast-paced city now taking on a dreamy glimmer. And he might have looked forward, wondering about the white man from Washington, D.C.,
and his black university associate. Would they come back? Had Muddy been forgotten?

He had not. After several delays, Alan Lomax arrived in Nashville on the evening of July 12, 1942, driving his new green Hudson Super Six. Air-conditioning was not yet standard in automobiles,
and he arrived hot and bothered, writing in his field notebook, “Violently hot all day in this filthy and ugly old town.” One day down, fourteen to go.

Lomax had assumed authority over the study and arranged for John Work to be excluded from this return trip: proprietary tensions, personality conflicts, operation of the recording machine
— they didn’t get along. As a replacement, Lomax enlisted a member of the Fisk sociology department, Lewis Jones, with whom he’d struck a friendship on his previous visits to the
university.

Friday, Lomax and “Sr. Eduardo from Sao Paulo” (a sociology student of Jones’s) stopped in Tunica County, where Lomax reunited
with Son House. This time,
he pushed further for information on Robert Johnson. Interest in Johnson’s blues and his life had continued to build since his murder in 1938.

“How it come about that [Robert Johnson] played Lemon’s style is this,” Lomax reported House saying. “Little Robert learnt from me, and I learnt from an old fellow they
call Lemon down in Clarksdale, and he was called Lemon because he had learnt all Blind Lemon’s pieces off the phonograph.”

With his luck running high, Lomax forged on, his previous year’s discovery affirmed: “But isn’t there anybody alive who plays this style?”

House replied, “An old boy called Muddy Waters ’round Clarksdale, he learnt from me and Little Robert, and they say he gettin’ to be a pretty fair player — that’s
one. And they’s me, but I about done quit. I’m getting to be an old man.” (Son House was all of thirty-nine; he would live another forty-six years and enjoy a second career.)

A week later, Lomax reunited with Muddy. “Spent a fine day with my old cronies — Muddy Waters, Son Simms [sic], and their friends on the Stovall Place — five miles east [from
the King and Anderson Plantation, where Lomax was staying and where the Fiskites were studying farm life]. Planned another session for Monday [July 27]. They really like me.” The previous
month, Muddy had written Lomax about the check and records he’d been promised; he’d not yet been paid, and Lomax made no note of Muddy inquiring in person.

There was, however, an entire evening devoted to interview. On July 29, Lomax visited Muddy’s home. With the family gathered — Della, Uncle Joe, Muddy and his live-in girlfriend
Sallie Ann Adams — Lomax took out his pen and the four mimeographed sheets of paper that he’d titled the Tentative Family Schedule, a questionnaire developed for the Fisk–Library
of Congress Coahoma County Study. In addition to information on education, labor, and travel experience, the final page was entitled “General Musical Questionnaire,” reflecting the
emphasis of their study. On this page, Muddy cited the kind of music he liked best:
Blues.
Why? “I can play it a little bit.” He added, “I don’t hardly ever have
the blues, but just
plays ’em. I don’t have the blues when I play ’em.” He does go on to say, should his qualifications be questioned, that
“women done quit ’im.”