juke houses competed with the church for the community’s dollars

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“Sonny Boy would get too advanced. This white woman in Little Rock, she like him, and he was in her house taking it easy. He has his shoes off, and a white man came by. Sonny Boy, he left there running. Me and Elmo was going back home in my old car and we ain’t seen Sonny Boy. Elmo was saving, ‘Where’s Sonny Boy?’ And I was saying, ‘I don’t know.’ My radiator was leaking and stopped by a ditch to get a little water. Sonny Bov calls, ‘Motherfucker, open the trunk and let me get in!’ He was hiding in the ditch there.”

FATSO! Come in an git these. Brang me some summa sausage. Baby!

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Oh, I used ta play Suppas fur my sister. Last time you caught me in a drunk, I got over there an went ta drankin. Play a little while, drank some mow. An my sister’s house was at the top of a little old hill. After a while, I went outside. Git me a bit a fresh air an take a leak, you know. An my legs was sorta wobbly. An direckly, I stumbled an rolled all the way down that hill, into the ditch. An I found myself in that mud, water all on me. An couldn move. So them people back in the house was waitin on me. One said, “That boy been gone a long time. Lets git some music goin here.” A Mexican was in there said, “Well, I’ll run out in the dawk there an holla at im. See kin I find im.” He come on out off the poach: an I was down in the sank. Couldn do nothin but jest roll around down there. Finely, they fooled around an found me. Carried me up the hill ta my sister’s place. An set me down in the flow. Didn put me in no chair! “Git out the way, you old drunken bastud! He’s jest reelin an rockin an fallin down.” Talkin ta me. Guyin me. Cause I couldn do nothin fur myself. Jest had ta lay there, take it. I rememba everthang they done. An some of em I got even wit em after I got sober. Here they jest kickt me an walkt on me, they drug me an pusht, pulled me round on the flow. “That old nigga aint good fur nothin. Put im out the way! Roll that drunk bastud under the bed so we don’t trip over im!”

As a tractor driver, sex was always on my mind.

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Got to the theater and discovered I was on the same bill as H. Bomb Ferguson. H. Bomb was explosive, the extrovert of extroverts. His idol was Wynonie Harris. H. Bomb was loud and cocky, one of those guys who seemed to know it all. Even though H. Bomb was from Carolina, he’d been living in New York and acted so slick, he made me feel like a hick. I’d brought the six-piece chart on “Three O’clock Blues” by Bill Harvey. “Won’t work,” said Tiny Kennedy. “We got eighteen pieces. This is a big band. You need a big-band chart.” “Where do I get one?” I asked. “At the liquor store,” Tiny answered. “What does that mean?” “Buy some booze for the cats writing the arrangements,” Tiny advised. “Let the cats fix you up.” The cats fixed me up. For the price of a few bottles of Scotch, I got me a kickin’ arrangement of “Three O’clock Blues” that let me shine at the Howard Theater. H. Bomb, on the other hand, refused to give the guys anything, so they played in keys that gave him fits.

Little Richard sang harsh and wild, so I played honkin’, wild sax.

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The Blues Ramblers was about the most popular band in Houston during this time, and the women was pretty crazy about us. There was one night when a policeman caught me over in French Town in Houston. This was after a gig, and I had this girl with me. I always knew how to find me a dark street. Sometimes we’d do it in the front seat, and sometimes I’d get comfortable and get in the back seat. I had this girl in the front seat when the police drove up behind us, got out, and flashed that light on us. He said, “Boy, let me see that hair between your teeth!”

She's a river hip mama and they all wanna be baptized

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the temptations cast before an attractive woman with time on her hands in the flourishing unrestrained atmosphere of the Negro quarter of a Southern town are enough to sway her loyalties. "Sharpclothed" gamblers and pimps with peg-top trousers, long watch chains and sky-bonnet hats rub shoulders with muscular loggers in town with their "spending change," their brightly decorated shirts open to reveal bared brown chests. Saloons and barrelhouses rock to the music from the peacock-hued juke boxes and the crap-shooters on the pavement pause to admire the legs of the passing brownskin girl with the side-slit "Mary Jane" skirt. When her man tracks her down on the street corner she laughs in his face.

"outrageous coddling of cold-blooded killers sentenced to long terms.”

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“Some inmates set a trap to knock me off, they tried to electrocute me one time, they had it fixed, this room, and I’m getting ready to open the door to go iron my clothes and a guy named Curly knocked my hand out of the way. He said, ‘Johnny, you’re supposed to be dead.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He picked something up and said, ‘Watch this.’ He threw it against the door and [he makes the sound of an explosion]. A lot of guards didn’t like the idea that the niggers were going out singing ... a lot of people wanted to kills us ... fellow prisoners and the guards wanted to set it up, the guards set up for a lot of people to get killed in those days. They wanted Johnny bad, they wanted to kill that nigger.”

random percussionists keep the dance rhythm hot

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Images of chaos, of rough black bodies rubbing and sweating and dancing wildly in the heated kerosene haze, powered by a loud pounding rhythm raging with erotic dread. Walls painted randomly in harsh dark shades close in on the shocking scene. People are half seen, acts are half followed, as in dreams. Seated on a chair amid the tumult, a stocky man named Willie Brown frantically knots a broken string on his guitar. In the corner his partner Son House fends off a woman who keeps pouring beer into his battered guitar. Son guzzles the beer out of his guitar until it is dry, as Willie yells to him. The furious momentum increases even without the music. Son rushes toward Willie as his female admirer chugs the rest of her beer. Picking up on the sizzling tempo by stomping his foot and sliding a jagged glass bottleneck over the guitar strings, Son explodes with improvised song. The air is ecstatically wicked. The intense activity is a cross between heated dance and heavy petting. One woman struts like a chicken as her mate makes a face like a fish. Others pound the walls with fists and bones. One guy grabs onto a window and jerks it off its hinges. The surging music ensues.

the Bucket-of-Blood, the Upholstered Sewer, that's where you heard jazz

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Some guy came in for some innocent diversion, only he had about a grand on him. We had about six gals there, all sizes and all types. They worked on a percentage, so many drinks - phonies - drunk a night, so much earned. Well, this unlucky guy comes in. I strike up a tune and the big parade starts. First one gal sidles up to this fall guy; he doesn't give her a tumble. Then another, and still another. By this time he's downed several and is more amiable. Soon he latches on to one he likes. You know these girls could promise strange worlds with their eyes - it didn't pay to gaze too deeply. Well, he invites one of the gals to drink with him, and soon she's warming him up, and he buys me one - and then she invites one of her "girl friends" to join her - and pretty soon it's one big happy family, with our friend for the afternoon buying drinks for the house, about ten of us, and the drinks comin' so fast that nobody got a chance to really drink except, of course, our indiscreet friend. And somehow he passed out and had to be assisted upstairs. Just before my shift was up, he awoke - refreshed, but very short of dough. Very short. He was very outspoken about it, but no one knew where it had strayed, except - "Remember, you were buyin' everybody drinks - remember?" And so he started drinking again, and fell off one of the stools. This time the dishwasher helped him up, but somehow his hand got caught in this man's pocket. But the man with the grand (minus) wasn't that drunk. He put up a squawk. So there was nothing for Old Man McGovern to do but fire the dishwasher. So he got his hat and coat on and with his head hanging low, walked out - out, past the front window to the side door that also led back of the bar (partitioned off) to the kitchen, where I later saw him back at work, washing dishes.

“Tittie Man” and “Leave Your Panties Home” show Drink’s “dirty” side.

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The name “Drink Small” continued to draw crowds at clubs around the state. Drink shared how a defunct local club owner offered to give him a birthday party. The event turned out to be less of a party and more of a way for the club owner to fill his establishment by promoting the event as a Drink Small concert. Drink was told he could have a VIP table for friends and dinner for his musicians. That January evening, the restaurant was packed; however, there was no singing of “Happy Birthday,” no banner, no cake, not even a card. Drink performed on stage as promised, and at the end of the night, the club owner handed Drink a bill for $175. An outraged family member went back to complain, and the club owner barely looked up from the register as he counted the night’s receipts and barked, “F--- Drink Small.”

Hot and loud and vulgar music, non-stop for five hours

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To the older generation rock 'n' roll came to mean Teds and violence. There was a riot in Berlin. Some countries banned rock 'n' roll altogether. In Singapore police were called in to stop British soldiers jiving in a cinema foyer after a midnight premiere of Rock Around The Clock. The Rev. Albert Carter of Nottingham denounced rock 'n' roll from his pulpit: 'The effect of rock 'n' roll on young people is to turn them into devil-worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness, impair nervous stability, and destroy the sanctity of marriage.' In Miami, Florida, the head of the local censorship board described rock 'n' roll dancing as 'nothing more than shoving boys and girls around' and 'vile gyrations'! Racialist Asa Carter of the North Alabama White Citizens' Council was scared too: 'Rock 'n' roll is a means of pulling down the white man to the level of the 'Negro'. It is part of a plot to undermine the morals of the youth of our nation. It is sexualistic, unmoralistic, and the best way to bring people of both races together.' Many older musicians hated rock 'n' roll: 'Viewed as a social phenomenon, the current craze for rock 'n' roll material is one of the most terrifying things ever to have happened to popular music ... Musically speaking of course, the whole thing is laughable ... Let us oppose it to the end.'

I was just doing what felt good, if that was a sin, then sin on!

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I loved to watch Don Wilkerson attack Fathead on the stand. It brought out the best in both cats. When someone tries to stomp on you, naturally you’re going to respond. And together—blowing out in front of the band—they’d be burning up the place. I like to think I’m a half-ass composer. I ain’t no Duke Ellington. I heard what West Coast cats were doing, and it was good music. But my heart was really with the East Coast dudes. They were harder cats and had a grittier sound. There was more blues in their playing, the approach was tougher. I still hear something different about the way the cats play back East. They’re pushier, more aggressive. They got a certain stink that the guys in L.A. lack. I miss the filth—the East Coast filth—that you hear on the streets and in the recording studios of New York City. When I do a song, I must be able to make it stink in my own way; I want to foul it up so it reeks of my manure and no one else’s.

Big Mama chasing Little Richard with a butcher knife

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Boy, oh boy, the action started. Every conceivable avenue of pleasure was rampant at this center of activity, a drunken man being dragged home by a good Samaritan, a couple of painted lilies standing in the corner smoking and indulging in that favorite West Dallas pastime—profanity. I paused to hear the deluge of obscene language coming from everywhere. A boy, apparently twelve years of age, walked up and asked for a cigarette. I gave him one on his nerve. He took two out of the package. A nickel Victrola started playing “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home?” Couples dancing, couples drinking, some talking in tones that I could not understand. A woman walked up and asked me to put a nickel in the Victrola. In obedience to her command, I placed a nickel in the slot and she requested that I play “Baby Don’t You Stay All Night.” The earthworm wiggling that started with the music was below my dignity, so I moved on down the avenue of “good times.”

Most rockabilly lyrics freely express sex as a positive thing

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ANDY STARR started out saying things like, "Yeah, we had a good time. It was the era of Elvis Presley . . . " - it sounded like I was talking to Eisenhower. Next time I talked to him he said, "You know, Bill, I didn't tell you, but I had sex with over 5000 women! ... Did I tell you about the time this guy was shooting at my car - his wife was hiding in the back seat while I had two blondes in the front!" He called me up and said, "Billy, I'm doing these big shows now - I'll send you photos." Then he sent these pictures, and he's singing in front of a potato chip rack.

In New York, no one knew diddly fuck about Sun Records

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Oh, yessuh, good people, this is ol’ Daddy-O-Dewey comin’ atcha for the next three hours with the hottest cotton-picking records in town—(aside: Ain’t that right, Diz? “That’s right, pahd’ner.”). Yessir, we got the hottest show in the whole country—Red, Hot and Blue coming atcha from W H Bar B Q right here in Memphis, Tennessee, located in the Chisca Hotel, right on the magazine floor—I mean mezzanine floor (aside to himself: Aw’ Phillips, there you go again, you’re always messin’ up!).