he had a hit called 'The Funky Tramp,' a man making love to a gorilla

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T-Bone's exotic good looks had made him a babe magnet from an early age. By the time he was a teenager, he was an accomplished dancer, he did the splits while playing the banjo, and billed himself as 'the Cab Calloway of the South.' … Big Jim Wynn, impressed by his abilities as a dancer (and his ability to pick up tables with his teeth!) recruited T-Bone into the band. 'The people went mad.  He was a showman, and the white tail coats, the zoot suits, and the brilliantined process were a vital part of the mix. So too were the moves, by the time he got to his flash finale, where he would raise the guitar over his shoulders and fall into a slow split, the floor was covered with panties and money. … By the '70s T-Bone Walker was in a bad condition; drinking a bottle of gin a day. Gerard Herzhaft describes a 1970 gig in Paris: 'He staggered on stage and clowned around for a while, before being frogmarched off by Big Mama Thornton, who was equally drunk, but carrying it better.'

"Hipsters are the parasites on the body of jazz"

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He wanted his own world, one in which the problem of mixing with the squares would be non-existent. 'To be called a square in those days was to be square in music only; which, in a strange sense, was much worse than being generally square.' Of course it was. Often he didn't even bother to use the word 'square'; a shrug of the shoulders, and a weary 'oh, man ', would be sufficient to dismiss the opposition. The hipster language was laconic at best, and one step removed from inarticulacy at worst: 'There were no neutral words in this vocabulary; it was put up or shut up, a purely polemical language in which every word had a job of evaluation as well as designation. These evaluations were absolute; the hipster banished all comparatives, qualifiers, and other syntactical uncertainties. Everything was dichotomously solid, gone, out of this world, or nowhere, sad, beat, a drag'.

No second chances in the land of a thousand dances

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The band followed him onstage. He adjusted the microphone. “Es una canción muy sencilla, and it’s been berry good to us here. “Loco Amor.” One, two, threes, quatro.” Clink-­clink-­clink­-clink­-clink­-clink, went the piano. To-­to-­to-­ta-­to-­to went the drums, a slow-­dance bag. Six over four in a minor key. The place got quiet.

            Este, este, loco amor. En la sangre, me hierve

            No puedo estar, no puedo estar sin tu amor

            Este, este loco amor. El amor de mi vida

            No puedo estar, no puedo estar sin tu amor

            Es loco amor, lo que en mi corazón, siento por ti

            Toma, toma, todo mi amor, amorcito querido,

            No puedo estar, no puedo estar sin tu amor

            Loco amoooor, loooocoooo amooor

Crazy love. It’s in the blood. I’m going crazy, I can’t make it without your crazy love. Johnny got on the title phrase and wouldn’t stop: “Loco, loco, loco, loco por tu amor.” He started crying, he pulled his hair. He fell on his knees clutching the microphone stand in both hands. He was doubled up in pain. He gasped, he shook. “Loco, loco, loco, tan loco ...” He raised his head. Tears of grief rolled down his face. The band pushed at him, they worked him. The out-­of-­tune piano pounded, the spacey guitar jangled. The Filipinos banged their glasses down hard and whistled.

Then Betty made her move. She strolled across the stage and stood over Johnny, brandishing the horsewhip. He looked up and whimpered, “Loca?” and she brought the whip down. He screamed, “Loco!” and the whip came down again and again. The bolero jacket came apart each time and her tits popped. The Filipinos went mad. They rushed the stage, they threw money — bills, change, whatever they had that they weren’t going to need later.

shoved nickels in the jukebox and played Wynonie Blues Harris

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Out we jumped in the warm mad night hearing a wild tenorman bawling horn across the way going “EE-YAH! EE-YAH! EE-YAH!” and hands clapping to the beat and folks yelling “Go, go, go!” Far from escorting the girls into the place Neal was already racing across the street with his thumb in the air yelling “Blow, man, blow!” A bunch of colored men in Saturday night suits were whooping it up in front. It was a sawdust saloon, all wood, with a small bandstand near the john on which the fellows huddled with their hats on blowing over people’s heads, a crazy place. The behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from “EE-yah!” to a crazier “EE-de-lee-yah!” and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bullneck who didn’t give a damn about anything but punishing his tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom crash. Uproars of music and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Neal was clutching his head in the crowd and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging that tenorman to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes; and he was raising himself from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the furor. A six foot skinny Negro woman was rolling her bones at the man’s hornbell, and he just jabbed it at her, “Ee! ee! ee!” He had a foghorn tone; his horn was taped; he was a shipyard worker and he didn’t care. Everybody was rocking and roaring. Helen and Julie with beer in their hands were standing on their chairs shaking and jumping. Groups of colored guys stumbled in from the street falling over each other to get there. “Stay with it man!” roared a man with a foghorn voice, and let out a big groan that must have been heard clear out in Sacramento, ah-haa!

For all the slouch-o carpet shredders around the globe-o-vooty

 

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