Moody Jones, Floyd Jones, and Snooky Pryor
It would be frustrating to try to pinpoint with any accuracy the birth of the “new” Chicago blues on record. All we know is that the honors properly belong to that group of new Maxwell Street artists who recorded either for Bernard Abrahams or for Chester Scales, a North Side record shop owner. Abrahams’s releases by Little Walter, Othum Brown, Johnny Young, and Johnny Williams appeared on his own Ora Nelle label from 831 Maxwell Street while Scales’s recordings of Snooky Pryor, Moody Jones, and his cousin Floyd appeared on Planet and Marvel, which may or may not have been operated by Scales or Al Benson.
The year would be 1947 or 1948, probably the latter, for Scales’s recordings were later reissued on disc jockey Al Benson’s Old Swing-Master label, which started up on January 29, 1949. From other interviews it is apparent that Snooky is convinced that he, along with Floyd and Moody, kicked off Chicago’s postwar blues; what is known for certain is that the Scales artists were more immediately successful. Snooky and Moody and Floyd had local hits with their releases, and it was their recordings that really ushered in the new style.
This, then, is the story of the “Old Swing-Masters.” Interviews with Moody and Floyd were conducted at the apartment of Rev. Moody Jones and his wife, Willie Mae, on Chicago’s North Side and with Snooky Pryor at his son’s West Side apartment. I was and still am indebted to all of them for their kindness and the gracious way they answered my questions. It’s sad to note that Moody died on March 23, 1988; Floyd, on December 19, 1989; and Snooky, on October 18, 2006.
—Mike Rowe
Mike Rowe
Blues Unlimited #137/138 (Spring 1980)
Six foot six and massively built, Moody Jones talks disarmingly of his early blues-singing career, occasionally turning for confirmation to Willie Mae, his charming wife, who enjoyed the reminiscences as much as we did, or his cousin Floyd.
Rev. Moody Jones is perhaps the ideal preacher—a man tolerant, kind, and wise who has seen both sides of life and can talk frankly and laughingly of the earlier foolishness and without a trace of bitterness of a musical career that paid off only in experiences.
Now in his seventies, he was born in Earle, Arkansas, on April 8, 1908. Moody looks back on a life which, though very different from now, was still “a wonderful time.”
Moody: So my daddy’s name was Henry Jones, my mother’s name was Hattie Jones … and three children, there were three of us—both, all of ’em’s dead but me. They passed on, but that’s about the size of it … I’m the youngest, yeah. My brother, he was nine years older than me, my sister’s three years older than me … and there was three more, but I didn’t know them. They died before any of us was born, so when it come to knowing the family we didn’t get to know them. But we come through this knowing one another. We was very attached, but we had to give it up … we had to give it up. Yeah, like Floyd says, I was born down in Earle, Arkansas, Mr. Bob White’s place. (laughs) In other words, a cotton chopper, yeah.
When I left Arkansas I went to a little place called Wolf Island, Missouri, that’s out, I think, that’s out from Charleston. And I left there and came to East St. Louis, got with a bunch of fellas around there and began to play with them. We had a little group called All Stars, that was years ago, that’s probably back in ’27, 1927. We had a group called All Stars. We had some home-made instruments, some instruments we bought. I used to play a tub. I used to play a—a gasoline can, made me a—got me a banjo neck and put it on and played a gasoline can. I played the tub, I can play it better than I can a bass fiddle now. Did you ever see a fella play a tub? It sounds like a bass fiddle, don’t it, Floyd? Yeah, I could play it just like I play a bass. Old Fiddler, he used to play a mandolin, see, when I was in East St. Louis. He could play it, too. But I just didn’t feel that at that time I was good enough and I didn’t bother, and I didn’t think there was anything to it anyway. But he was really good. We were playing hillbilly all out there, Western songs, hillbilly and Western. We were out there at that time. No blues. We played a few blues, but we was out there to make a buck and we couldn’t get nothing much for the blues at that time, so we learned to play everything. Old Fiddler, he used to come around and hear me play the guitar. He’d tell me, “Say, why didn’t you come on and play with me, we going uptown and play some?” Oh, no, I’m not that good! He say, “You don’t know how good you are,” and he’d go away and I just kept on playing, kept on playing, kept on.
No, I didn’t know ’em [other musicians in East St. Louis]. I was working, I didn’t fool around with music then. I didn’t think it was going to amount to so much at that time, so I wasn’t interested. I learnt a little so that I would go out and play with some of the fellas, but I worked. I worked in a flour mill, Hollen Mill and Company down there in East St. Louis, from about 1927 to 1931. I used to bleach flour. Then I worked long time on the Mississippi River on a barge. I had something called a barge line—big, great big steamboats. The sugar would come in from Louisiana, from Mobile, and all them places. We’d unload ’em, put ’em on the dock, load them on the next barges come in, ya know. We did that for four, five years. Finally, I made up in my mind to leave from out of there, do a little running around. That’s how I got through, running around, had time to set down to learn.
Before I ever had my hands on a guitar, I said, “I can play this thing.” And I believe that I could. The first guitar I ever had, my mother bought it for me for $3 and it was busted up and everything. The neck was broken, cracked all around, but I took the thing and one night—I hadn’t hardly had my hands on it, because my daddy was a Baptist preacher and he didn’t believe in no guitar—and the first night I had it I played every song that I could sing, but this on one string! Just one string with—I didn’t have to say, ya know, what the song was. I said, “I can play this thing and I’m going to add some harmony to it.” Then I went to play on two strings. I kept on till I got that harmony where I want. I got three strings there. Then I come to add my bass, back tones, all of it. As I said before, I had an old man. He was a schoolteacher. His name was Walter Hassett. He didn’t know but three chords and that was C, G, and—yeah, that’s all they was. Now, he didn’t know how to send off one to another. Now G7—he used to tell me that was “long G.” He said, “That’s long G, can you remember that?” I said, “Yessir.” He said, “Alright, okay, you work on that chord”—now, that’s the only three chords he knew. I took them across the country—I went across the country with them, right. Everything with them chords and I got so I could play in G. I started out playing in E, nothing but E, but I got started playing in G. When I started playing good in G, I switched them chords around, went to play in D then, and I completed—I learned to play in D and then I learned how to play in C. And the hardest thing for me to do was to play a lead in E-flat. That was hard for me to play a lead in E-flat on the guitar, but I worked that out, the whole thing. I sat down, if I could make E-flat and play that out, then I could get in all the other keys. I want to see how far could I go, how much could I make, and I worked on that for months and months … how much can I make on these B … how many chords I can make, how many minors, how many diminishes, how many seventh chords, how many ninths and all of this. I stayed right there, I wouldn’t go out. And I studied bar chords. They call ’em bar chords—for a year, whole year, nothing but that. I stayed in. I played on the side and studied those chords, and after I completed learning them chords, and then believe it or not, it took me a year to get in time, put ’em in place. Oh, man! Put ’em where they belong and get in time, get back to where you was and go to another place.
I started playing after I come to Chicago, in 1938, I believe. I used to play way back long time ago down South, but it was hitting here and there on the guitar, like I told you one time before. I told you that I played a lot of songs, but I was using the same tune! But I got things straightened out and played everything as it was.
See, what makes it hurt your fingers to learn to play a guitar, it simply because you don’t understand how it plays. You gonna press harder than you oughta press. You gonna slide harder than you should, but whenever you get used to it … this corn here on my hand for forty years, I guess. My fingers is tough and hands—but when you get used to it, your fingers get tough. I learned the hard way. When I was down South, I used to have to pick. I didn’t know what a guitar pick was. I didn’t have an electric guitar, so when peoples get to hollerin’, we had to play hard at them dances, and all around this part of the thumb be a blister. Yeah! Then I had to learn to play with all of my fingers. I had a pick on this finger and a pick on that finger—that was all of it. I make $2 a night, half a pint of whiskey. (laughs) It didn’t pay off much in money at that time, but it paid off later because it put me where I could be able to stand anyplace where I wanted to go. Big Bill Broonzy and all of ’em used to say—Muddy Waters and all the rest of ’em used to say, “If I could play like that.”
’Cause people used to sit and look at me. They say, “You sure put your heart in it, don’t you?” Yeah, whenever I’d do anything, my whole heart went into it. If you heard me, you heard all of me, ’cause I got everything, you see? I used to get up at midnight, think about a song, I’d get up at midnight and play it. I didn’t want no light on, because I wanted to go out and play without watching my fingers, ya know? I used to get up in the dark house and my wife say, “What you doing?” I’d say, “I’m going to play this guitar,” and get up there and play it, too. And then, you see, when you entertaining, people don’t want to look at this [crouches over guitar and shows the top of his head], and if I’m watching my music that’s what they see. They want to look at you and see the expression on your face. And see, ya know, a lot of times people just look at you while you’re performing, that do something to ’em. One year I studied nothing but the chords and the next year I studied how to get them in. I learned it and after I got through with that, then I went out, people liked it. Then I began to improve. I began to work on it then, because I wanted something to satisfy the people, eliminate so many sad faces. I used to tell my boys sometime, “Look at the people.” Everybody got a distressed look on their faces, everybody in trouble, everybody’s worried about something. Somebody’s blue, somebody’s crying—all this. But wherever we go we kept ’em happy. I’d take the bass fiddle, go out with this, I’d lay it down and play and people laughing at it. I used to whistle like a mockingbird. I’d get out there and whistle, ya know. Probably they weren’t looking at me. I’d whistle like a mockingbird and look down at the bass like I thought it was a bird down there (laughs)—wonder where that bird was? I’d get down under that bass! So we eliminated a lot of sadness, everything, people glad for us—they was even glad if we decided to get on a streetcar and play a tune or anything.
Ed Newman, bass; John Henry Barbee, guitar; Moody Jones, guitar; James Kindle, banjo. Chicago, 1942.
And then when I met old Tommy Stewart, Stovepipe, and, uh, who else was playing with them guys when I started? Jesse Moore and myself. Jesse was a brother-in-law of mine at that time—they tell me lost his mind. He played a tenor banjo—come down to blues he would just hit in there awhile, ya know, but we had it anyway. But Tommy Stewart, Stovepipe—he was a good dancer, too. I come here and they heard me play a couple of times. I was swift then. And they said to me, “Why don’t you come on and go out with us tonight?” I said, “I don’t care, I believe I will.” I went out with them not planning on making anything, ya know, just to get the swing of the band. Man, I got up there with them fellas and we played together till they went to died out. All up and down Madison Street, out at 63rd and Cicero, also we used to go to the Pitchin’ Inn—that’s way out across Cicero on Roosevelt Road. They had a place called the Pitchin’ Inn and they had some pitchers this tall of beer, ya know. The pitchers would hold a quart of beer and you could get ’em for fifteen cents. And we would go out there and play all night long, ya know. Pitchin’ Inn—we stayed out there for a year playing at that Pitchin’ Inn. There weren’t so many colored people out there—if you were out there you had to be a musician. And we made plenty money and plenty tips. The tips amount to more than the original pay, because everybody come in would, after they start to having a good time, and everything outside’s quiet, say, “Can you play this song for me?” “Yeah, I can play it, throw your $10.” Another fella come along, say, “Give him some more,” and they take your box up to the bar, say, “Give ’em something.” The tips was real heavy, see? We stayed out there a long time. I played 3241 West Madison, say, about two years—3241 West Madison Street—and fooled around. One of the boys got drunk in the place, and the man said, “Well, you’re a good fella, but I’m gonna let all of you go and if you can get anybody else, you come back.” So I was away about two weeks and I got another fella to play with me and I carried him back. He played accordion—we called it squeeze-box—he really could play. He was a fella from the West Indies. His name was George and he, after playing one night, looked like he had some kind of spell. I don’t know, just—I didn’t know him good when I got him, but I guess this is the way he act. Man, he got up and stopped playing. He throwed his accordion down and walked up to the bar and told the man, “Give me a drink.” He went to hitting on the bar, the man gave him a drink, he got drunk, and the second time I was put out of there. I got put out again. I’ll tell you exactly what he told me. Ya see, I had played there two years, and after the first guy made things bad for me he got rid of us and told me if I got somebody else come back, and I got this guy and he made things just as bad for me, and you know what the boss told me? “No more colored people,” that’s what he said. It hurt me, ya know, but because everyone that I get act that way. So I went by and he had another band in there—a Spanish boy—and everyone was acting nice.
We played whatever they ask for, ya see, but they didn’t want any blues till after midnight. They say, “Come on, give us some of those low-down blues. Can’t you play something low-down?” I say, “Sure, we can play something low-down.” We get on, ya know, they turn the lights down low, have a couple of blue lights over you, couple of red lights, and we go ahead and give ’em the blues then. And you know one place on Madison years ago used to be a tavern up east nearby to Canal Street, used to be a big tavern up there and people would have us play. We’d come in at nine o’clock in the night and start playing and we would play until twelve-thirty. Police didn’t allow no more music there after that time of night then, back then in the ’30s, but, ya know, what they would do? They had a place they had a trapdoor, and when twelve-thirty or one o’clock come they would open up that trapdoor and we’d go down there. There was just as fine a bar down there as there was upstairs. We go down there and play till day, nobody bothers us. Used to make money like that. People would come in, every time somebody would come in the door the bartender would say, “Listen, we got some boys playing here and I want you to buy them a drink right there.” He had Coca-Cola in whiskey bottles, the bartender did, ya know. He had a Old Taylor bottle. He had Old Granddad bottle. He had different kind of brandies, good brandies, ya know, the bottles, but everything that was in ’em was Coca-Cola and that was for us, that wasn’t for nobody else. And so he would say if anybody wanted to buy us some gin he had a Gordon’s gin bottle there full of lemon soda, full of lemon soda. Somebody come back there, say, “I want you to buy my band a drink, whatcha all drinking?” Well, I wants Old Taylor, that’s $2 a shot—that’s good stuff. He say, “Alright, alright.” He pour—he get one of those shot glasses, pour each one of us one of them. Bring it back there and set it to us, ya know. We understood the boss, see—this is what he had us to do. He would tell us that just act like he was saving the money for us. We would give him a portion of it, too. That was back in the ’30s. So, man, we take a drink of that Coke, we’d know what it was, ya know. Take a little—say, “Aah.” (laughs) He was laughing at us, say, “What’s the matter, boy? Can’t you take it? Can’t take that stuff, it’s so strong—that’s good for you. Give it here. No, I want that drink.” (laughs) And the boys was drinking it. And after everything was over, when everybody went home, we’d be about the last to get paid, he would pay us out our salary. Then he would go back and get a large jar about that tall and it would be full of money. And he would give it to us, see, that’s more for him because nobody would get drunk. We didn’t have enough to get drunk. If he give us a pint of whiskey apiece or a fifth we wouldn’t want it and he would just take a little portion of that money. Sometimes he’d pay us off and give us that money, he call it your B-drinks, B-drinks. I don’t think they do that now, but that was years ago. But I tell you, we used to make a lot of money at that.
Somebody come in there, policemens come in there and seeing most of them was Irish, ya know, say, “Can you play a Irish song?” Say, “Yessir.” We go ahead and play “Wild Irish Rose,” “Irish Washerwoman,” that’s a jig, ya know, that’s pretty fast and everybody love to jump about on that. Yeah, all of those songs. Somebody come in, say, “Can you play any Polish numbers?” We’d play a Polish hop, we’d play “Pennsylvania Polka,” or we’d play all kinds of polkas. “Beer Barrel Polka” was in prime then, we’d play that. All those kinds of songs, German songs, Italian songs, Spanish songs. Floyd, you remember “Conchita”? We used to play that song. Somebody asked me what was the name of that song and when I told them the name was so long. I’d be singing that song, boy, and it tickled me so bad I couldn’t sing it. That was a mess. You know what the name of that song was? “Conchita Marquitta Lolita Pepita Juanita Lopez”! That was the name of the song! (laughs) We were playing mostly for white audiences until we started to recording, ya know. That’s why we had a certain place we’d go and play the blues, because we know where they liked them really at. But before it was dawn, everybody loved the blues—white and black. That’s what made it so good for us. “Give us some blues”—got some real low-down, we’d give ’em that.
The first piano player that I ever played with in Chicago. He was a fella we called him Black Bill. You ever hear of Black Bill? That was his nickname, Black Bill or something? Say, Floyd, was it Black Bob or Black Bill?
Floyd: Bob!
Moody: Yeah, I remember, Black Bob, yeah. But Black Bob was a piano player and he used to give me a lot of trouble, ’cause he really knew his music and they—if you made one wild note he’d stop right there. Didn’t care where you was, he’d stop. Sometime I’d be playing along with him—if I made any kind of wild note there he’d stop playing. Didn’t care who was there, didn’t care what kind of crowd you have—he’d say, “You didn’t do that right!” I wanted him to stop saying that so bad, because I wanted (laughs) to be a big musician, too! He’d say, “You didn’t do that right now! We’ll go over it again.” I’d say, “Okay,” and we’d go over it again. Yeah, sometimes we’d be rehearsing, he’d do it. Sometimes we’d go in a little old side restaurant we had way on Maxwell Street and be rehearsing there—he’d do it. Sometimes we’d be out playing in a bar. We’d be very careful, because he’d stop right there and get you right. He want nothing to go wrong. But after I found out he was doing that, I was really going, because I didn’t have anything to do in the daytime but work with my guitar, and I would do it—I’d work with the guitar. Anyway, I played with him a long time. He used to get drunk, too! He—some fellas told him come on, get in the car and go for a ride. He got in the car and when he got through he was in Mississippi!
Me and Robert Nighthawk we played a long time together, and we had another guy called Smitty played with us and we had Smitty played the washboard. Me and Robert Nighthawk played guitar and also I played tenor banjo, see? And I carried guitar and banjo with me. Smitty, he carried the washboard. He played drums, too. Robert Nighthawk, he was a nice fella, but his wife, Ann, I think it was—think it was Ann, ya know, she was a singer for us.1 She’d sing, dance, roll all over the floor dancing. People throwing money, everything, just throwing that money to her! Well, see, whenever somebody give money we would divide the money, everybody split it up equally—just dollar to you, dollar to me, just keep going till we divide it equally. And if there was more than equal money we spend it. So every time they put down a lot of money she goes to the washroom (laughs), pick up all the money and she’d have to go to the washroom! I told her, “Now, listen, if you’re gonna rake up all the money and go to the washroom I’m gonna have to go with you!” (laughs) Have to go with her because something was happening to the money. When we got through playing we wouldn’t have so much money. Out of all the money peoples done throwed us, just a little above our salary what we was getting, see? But some of the money would just disappear!
She played washboard and, well, drums, too, but she had a washboard. Later she mostly played drums a little bit, but she’d get up and dance, that’s what made them give us so much money, ya know. She’d get up and dance with a little tight dress on, dress around about her waist. Dollars come flying every whichawhere—I guess she felt she had a right to ’em. That’s when they were throwing ’em, when she was dancing. (laughs)
Me and Robert played a long time together. We played out on Grand Avenue and Harlem—there was a nightclub out there. We played out there a long time. First part of the night I played a tenor banjo, but after twelve o’clock the man come to me and said, “You’ll have to get rid of that thing, because it’s penetrating. They can hear it all in the neighborhood and they’ll close us down.” Then I put it in the case, got the guitar, and Robert Nighthawk—he played harmonica, too, also, ya know—and he played harmonica and I played guitar. Sometimes both of us—each would play our guitars. But that was out on Grand and Harlem. We played out there a long time. And then we used to play out on South Chicago Avenue—that’s way out south. Then we used to go over Indiana and play over there. We went all around playing, same thing. Robert was a nice fella to play with. He was kinda serious-minded. He didn’t carry on too much foolishness or any clowning—he looked like he was just in his music. I think he was just in his music ’cause he wanted to play like he wanted to play it now. Everybody wasn’t gonna play with him, because he wanted to play it right, but we didn’t have no bad feeling, only about the money walking off!
Floyd: Robert Nighthawk made a many sad blues—he had real soul. I know ’cause just two of ’em, no bass, no horns, no nothing. Then after he and Shorty got together they made a lot of gigs, just them two. Shorty, that was his drummer. He sprung out of a window here a few years back—killed himself.
Moody: But we did quite a few things, foolish things, each one of us. We did things that we would know better than to do now, ya know, but we watched everything, and some money went the wrong way. We want to know where did that money go? But now it wouldn’t be like that today, because we could understand it. Maybe we would make a better deal, maybe it would come out better entertaining today. But I tell you, I had a full life of entertaining. I loved it and that’s what made it what it was to me, because I loved it. ’Cause if I couldn’t get an instrument I’d make me one and play it! Times fella can make one and can’t play it. I’d make me one and play it. I just couldn’t blow a horn, that’s all. I always had it in my mind I wanted to play a saxophone when I was young, ya know, but I never could do nothing with it, no wind. I remember one time I had a trumpet and I give the thing away because I couldn’t get it to sound! But, boy, that guitar—when I was fourteen years old my mother bought me one for $3 and I went right on from that night, very night she brought it in the house, I went to playing songs on one string, add another string, add another string—that’s the way it started.
I remember one time old John Henry [Barbee] and I were playing. I was out on the streets and all I was just playing a boogie, ya know, and he said he wasn’t playing, he was just standing there. One-Leg Sam was playing. He told somebody he was talking about how to play. He said, “I can play right with him just how he’s playing.” So when we finished the number I said, “I heard John say he can play this right with me.” I said, “I wished you had the guitar.” Sam said, “He can take mine.” And I was playing the boogie in E—it’s a good place to play it, ya know, for me and when he sat down I started playing the boogie in E-flat and he couldn’t get it. He couldn’t play in E-flat. He say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, where you at?” I said, “I ain’t done nothing to the guitar.” He said, “Well, this guitar ain’t tuned to it.” I said, “Oh, yeah, that tuned just right.” Sam say, “Yes, it is.” And he couldn’t play—you know why? If you can only play in one key, anybody can come along and show you up if you get outta that key. But I used to go to the taverns down there, I had the different places where the boys were playing. I’d go around and sit in, ya know, just to be clowning around. Get up there just start playing, say, “Where you want me to play?” I say, “Anywhere, man, just go ahead, take off.” I didn’t care where they go, ’cause I’d be right there. Floyd, when we played on the street, we went out there to playing, but now people waiting for somebody to come along. And you see one person on the street trying to hit some music, he’ll come over there, and another man come to see what is he looking at. And there’s two people out there and everybody say, “Well what they doing over here, let’s go see.” And they didn’t have to say that when we were out there, because, boy, when we hit the streets …
We used to take long breaks then, man, ’cause we were drinking then, man, we take long breaks. They say, “What time y’all be back?” We say, “Oh, about thirty minutes.” In thirty minutes they be there waiting, “Man, where y’all been? Y’all been too long now.”
Yessir! We had old boy used to hang around us all the time. He was a good crowd drawer, too. He’s taller than I—you remember the big fella used to pull all the people in the car? He used to put eight men in an automobile, step on the brakes, and he’d pull it!
Floyd: Yeah. Take a horseshoe and break it—break it with his teeth! He—he’d twist it.
Moody: Yeah, he take a nail and drive it through that table top with his hands, just put that nail in his fingers like this. He used to be out there with us a lot of times, too. He was good, he’d draw a crowd, too. He’d stay around us ’cause we really had a crowd.
One fella where we was—I don’t know if you were with us that Sunday when that fella came round, gonna eat a stovepipe! Boy, I’m telling you, people sure taken off with him! He had a joint of stovepipe. He had a piece of stovepipe about that long, rusty; he walked up there where we was playing, throwed it down—boom! It made a lot of noise, everybody looked. He said, “Alright watch, watch,” just looking at him, everybody, big crowd, he said, “If I get a lot of money down there I’m gonna eat this pipe.” He picked it up, throwed it down … boom! People just throwing money, throwing money. Get out the way. He got a lot of money down there, he got to raking it together, “Ain’t enough money yet. I get enough money down there I’m gonna eat that pipe. Right there, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t care about it’s rusty.” And they throwed dollars and dollars and quarters and quarters. He picked ’em all in. He got all that money—we’s playing right in front of a tavern, Goldberg’s. He say, “Watch the pipe, I’ll be right out.” (laughs) He went in that tavern (laughs)—we didn’t see him no more! (laughs) He didn’t come back out that door, he must have went out the back! (laughs) People standing there waiting to see him eat that pipe!
Ya see, people they want to see the unusual, they want to see something unusual. I used to stand and look there was a fella used to come out on the street—he—he had a head, a man’s head sitting on his car. He used to charge something like a dollar, but he had it sitting up on his car and the eyes do this—just like everybody’s eyes would turn, ya know, just like he was looking at somebody. Wasn’t nothing but a head! I used to stand there looking at that thing. I say no use me watching, that he’s probably got a battery in that thing. Nobody at all, just a head sitting there. And he be just selling medicine.
Little Walter be out there earlier than we would some mornings. He setting up there with a lead guitarist. He played harmonica on the street sometime. I’d be out there playing. I’d be way up the street, he’d hear my electric guitar, ya know. He’d holler up there, “Do that again. You better not do it again, ’cause I’ll do it!”
Floyd: He could pick up quick, too, yes, he did. He sure could.
Moody: He could play that harmonica, ya see. Now, he used to work in a laundry in St. Louis, and when he come to Chicago from down there he brought a mike with him. Now, that wasn’t his home, but he—I learned he was working in St. Louis in a laundry and he had somebody’s microphone. All of a sudden he got ready to leave from there, he hooked up with some of the boys. That’s the way he told me, but I know he told me hisself that he was from the South or somewhere down there.
Johnny Shines and I, we used to play together on the streets and in restaurants. Over there on Maxwell Street, Mary Baker’s big restaurant used to be over there. Back in the ’40s lady named Mary Baker—she was down on Maxwell and Peoria Street. She had a restaurant down there, and what we’d do when we get through playing at night—I played till two o’clock at night and come in then and go to that restaurant and play till day. Sure, me and Johnny Shines used to play down there till day and go out on the streets. He could play and sing. He had a good voice.
Ed Newman, he was my bass player, ya know. We used to play everywhere together. We’d get out there on the streets—no difference, we’d play. I’d play his bass and we’d always put on a show, ya know. I’d put on an act. I’d see a fella playing the bass, “He can’t play that thing, let me have it.” (laughs) Get up and run over there and get it and play right on. Other fella, James Kindle, had the banjo—I’d go over, “Give us the banjo.” I’d take it up and play it, ya know, then I had my own banjo made out of a can and a neck that I had done found. I could play it good as the other thing, ya know. Then I had my tub, some of them was out there trying to play the tub and I’d play it and they wouldn’t know it wasn’t a bass! If you heard it and didn’t see it you’d think it was a bass fiddle. And so that’s the way I’d go from just one thing to another.
Boy, I tell you, I put a whole lot of fellas out there. I learned a whole lot of them guys how to play. Taught ’em, sat up all night, go to work next day. I tell you, Floyd, a long time ago, man, we had everything to work with, but we didn’t—people didn’t do right, did they?
Floyd: We just didn’t have the lift.
Moody: They wouldn’t do right then. You can get by with anything now, but I couldn’t get by with anything. I had the real thing and you had it too, but we couldn’t get by with it then. You know the first thing the people went to working on us because we had the hottest thing in town. We had the hottest thing in town. Other fellas was going around copying, playing the records and getting our music, getting our basses off our music and everything.
Floyd: Copying our style and then somebody push them and they was gone and we were still standing there.
Moody: But we made the first record we made when the guy brought it back. He brought the dub back or whatever you call that thing. Ya know, as soon as we made it he brought it back, put it on a little speaker out there, man, and peoples gathering all around, they wanted to buy it. He said, “I ain’t even—even waxed it yet.” Not yet and they was wanting to buy it. That was the “Stockyard Blues” and “Keep What You Got,” “Snooky and Moody’s Boogie.” They was hot then, but all of that—I thinks about that now. All that good hard work, that good hard work, man. You remember how we used to rehearse with them things? If it didn’t sound right we didn’t put it out. Somebody get an idea in their head now—just hit something and go on out there. Man, we worked hard at that stuff.
They used to ask me, “If a record is released today how is it you can play it tonight?” I say because I studied it—that’s my job. I’d just hear a record played once or twice and I’d go in the bar and put money in there and play the thing and hear it. And the people used to try and stump us, ya know. The record released today and they’d come out tonight, “Oh, can you play such a thing?” “Sure, we’ll play it.” Say, “I don’t believe they can play it.” “We’ll play it.” We played it! We play it every time. So they want to know how you do it. You see, when I was a boy and learning to play my guitar we didn’t have no light like that. The lamp you light it with a match, a coal-oil lamp, and, uh, something I would want to learn and I just couldn’t do it and I would put out all the lights and get up in the dark and play it, because I wanted to be so I could play it without looking at my hands. Put out all the lights and I’d start fooling around, then I’d go to playing. I’d say, “That’s it,” and never forget it, see? And sometimes way between midnight and day, one or two o’clock in the morning, a song would come to me that I had been thinking about and didn’t know how to play it. It would come to me in my sleep. I’d wake up, get my guitar, “I’m going to play that now,” and I would have the memory that came to me while I was asleep, ya see. Then I would get up and play it and never forget it. So anything they asked for I would get it. I’d go out, play different places, and when we get through or if we get on intermission, people put money in the box, see, so they could have music. We’d be off on fifteen-minute intermission and whatever they be playing, I’d be listening. The fellas be sitting around there talking, looking at women to talk to, drinking going on and I’d be listening. I say, “Uh, I’ll play that.” They liked that because they putting money in there to play it, so I’m gonna play it! So sometimes I wouldn’t play it that night, but when I’d go in the bar next day, ya know, and I’d put money on it, nickel, sometimes a quarter, I’d play up there and listen at it. Next time we’d go in there and they’d ask for a certain number and I’d play it, and then they would give me the money instead of putting it in there! We’d do that and the fellas would look at me! Well, sometimes I’d get mad and wouldn’t go to play one. “Ain’t you gonna play?” Say, “I don’t feel good.” They say, “Come on, you ain’t got to do nothing much. We got a special number you play with us.” I say, “Okay,” so we would make it alright, ’cause I wouldn’t get mad.
We went up on the North Side one time—way up north here—and they wanted me to go with them for one reason. And that reason is because we make money. They wanted me to go up there because it was no colored neighborhood, see, and they wanted the kind of songs that the people wanted. They wanted Polish songs, Irish songs. They wanted cowboy songs, they wanted hillbilly songs. We carried Snooky with us with harmonica, Sunnyland Slim, Floyd—they was all there—and sometimes we had never seen them people. They barbecued the whole deal and we had everything we wanted to eat, everything they give us. They brought a fifth of whiskey apiece and set it down by each musician. “This is y’all’s.” Just drink all they wanta and I wouldn’t touch it. I wanted to be right. I had had my lesson about drinkin’ whiskey, ya know, and ruining your job. So I went and played. We didn’t have to play long. We made a big sum of money that night.
[In] ’48 or ’49—we was cutting up around that time. I’m gonna show Mike (Rowe) how this mark [on the guitar] come here. See that? (laughs) I had a pickup on here, electric pickup, ya know, that’ll make it sound loud. And I was supposed to been playing, but there was a little ole lady there. There was a little ole lady there and I was courtin’ her, ya know. And the little ole lady behind the bar I called myself going with her, too. And so this little ole lady out here, she was talking to me and I leaned over like this talking to her, and a big thick mug hit this back here, and by me having a electric pickup on here it sound like somebody shot me … boom! I jumped, put the guitar down, and after I seen nothing had happened, oh, man, I got mad! Then I got up. They had one of these bars where you open it like this and go behind and shut the door. I went up there and opened that bar and somebody done grabbed me and I went back here. And she done come out, said, “Don’t you come back here, don’t you come back here!” I said, “Well, you done hit my new guitar now,” and we headed round there fussin’. When she got ready to go home I went with her, didn’t I, Floyd? Weren’t you with us sitting there? I went with her and she wasn’t talking and I was talking, ’cause I was going to beat her up about my guitar. Got up there and got drunk and went to sleep and she could’ve beat me up. I didn’t know what happened. But the next day I went on home and the next day I come back they was looking for me. They sitting up there at the bar—they was buddies! I walked to the tavern where they was—24 Club. I’d cooled off a little bit now, because I didn’t want the two girls to go. And I looked at them and they looked at me. I didn’t say nothing, they didn’t say nothing. So they got up and walked out and I sat down with a drink. Later on we talked about it and that ole girl was scared, too! But, boy, that’ll tell you. I sure hated that—24 Club, 24 Club … I went there one time looking for my girlfriend, say, “I ain’t seen her.” I said, “Well, has she been here tonight?” “No, she ain’t been here.” So, okay, I went everywhere. All the taverns I could, looking for that girl and I couldn’t find her nowhere. I called and you know where she was, Floyd? See, Wes and them living in the rear [of the 24 Club] and those two girls was back there asleep! And I wanted to go back there and they wouldn’t let me go back there, ’cause they knew somebody gonna get whupped. Probably been me gonna get whupped! Just crazy, but we—we come through it all. I can say it was fun.
Do you know Big Bill Hill? Well, he was having a big show at the 5th Avenue Ballroom one time, see, and he invited me over. It was on 5th Avenue and what?
Willie Mae: 5th Avenue, Madison and … California.
Moody: Yeah, and you see what he did, he told me he wanted me to appear on his show, ya know. Just like that. He didn’t book me or nothing. He wanted me to appear on his show, told me what night it would be. I told him I’d be there. And I got sick and I couldn’t go—he never did have no more use for me. I got sick, stayed sick a long time after that, but when he did see me, man, I was playing on Madison Street one night, at least I wasn’t playing, I was over there and I think … I don’t know … I believe Muddy Waters’s band, yeah, Little Walter and Muddy Waters was over there at that time, and like they usually do, ya know, when a musician in the house they call him up to play a number? Big Bill Hill was sitting there with his girlfriend, so they got up to the mike said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a outstanding guitarist in the house. Mr. Moody Jones, we gonna ask him to come to the bandstand.” I got up and went up there. Big Bill Hill got up, took his ole lady out of there until I come down from the bandstand. When I come down he come on back in. That’s just how he felt about it, see, ’cause he wanted me to play—to be on his show and I got sick.
Dew Drop Inn, 3609 Wentworth, yeah, they used to have contests out there—a contest between Big Bill and … it was just a racket.2 They used to have contests out there, but, see, reason why I say it was a racket among the musicians—everyone in the tavern, they knew who was going to win in the first place. Now, if they set a time for me to win they wouldn’t tell everybody that. They put a contestant up there with me and he know he gonna lose, too, but what they was trying to do was entertain the congregation, see? They had Big Bill up there and, uh, somebody … Muddy Waters, I think it was … they was the contestants. So Little Walter was one of the judges. Little Walter said to me, “Now, listen, I want you to be a judge, but you remember this one thing: I don’t care what happens—Big Bill got to be the winner!” (laughs) I said, “Okay,” so he went around, told all the judges that, ya know. This was to entertain the people who were coming in buying drinks and everything. So Big Bill, that was his day to win, he wins a fifth of Old Taylor. I think $25 like that he won, and the next time they got together and said who was going to be the winner the next time. That’s the way it went, ya know. Everybody know who’s gonna win, don’t matter how good you can do a thing, the other fella just win if they says so. They just played it like that.
Onliest time I seen Memphis Minnie play here was on 47th Street. She used to play over here on … what was it?
Willie Mae: Uh, on 47th? Up there—upstairs in the hall—708 East 47th.
Moody: 708 Club—she used to play there. She brought ’em in, too. She had a crowd then. I tell you what, though, she didn’t have nobody get up there and play her guitar. She would play till intermission time, come down and have intermissions, and she’d go back. But where we were we didn’t care who played, ’cause nobody gonna beat us anyway. If they beat us at one thing we beat them at another, ’cause we had a band. Her husband, Son, he was onliest fella that knew more about chords than—I mean among us lot. Everybody knows more about—I’m talking about us musicians that knew each other. He was only fella that knew more about them chords than I did. And at one time he felt like I knew more. He told me, “You play. I’m gonna watch you.” I used to joke Minnie a lot of times, ya know. I used to tell her, I say, “Minnie, why don’t you play guitar and stop playing just one string!” (laughs) She looked at me and laughed, but what she was doing she could do it.
What’s the guy’s name, Willie Mae, played organ with his feet? Earl Dranes. Yeah, you remember him? Earl Dranes was a terrible guy.
Willie Mae: Organist, I guess. Pianist, too, but somehow he get all down in the music so good that he start playing with his feet!
Moody: There was one fella over here on Madison Street I never got acquainted with him, but I seen him a lot of times over there. He called hisself Texas Slim. He wore two artificial guns and, like the cowboys, had on his cowboy hat and high-heel boots.
Floyd: I know a piano player, but I didn’t never know nothing but King.
Moody: Oh, yeah—little ole King.
Floyd: Little ole King—was a good piano player.
Moody: That’s all we know, King. He was playing when we were around there too, King was—little ole short fella. Yeah.
Floyd: L. B. Lawson.
Moody: He’s the one who drove the car and is blind, isn’t he?
Floyd: Drove two blocks …
Moody: Drove it and he’s blind. That’s a dangerous man to play with! (laughs) We used to play out at Argo. He got mad out there one time—everybody getting out of the way ’cause he might start shooting at us! Like Dixon—the fella they call Arvella Gray—me and him used to play lots together. He was on welfare. He couldn’t get his check, his worker kept putting him off. He went down there and shot up the place. Boy! They sent him a check! “Mr. Dixon, don’t you come down here no more.” Everybody was crawling under the table.
I’ll tell you something else, ya see. We didn’t hardly ever try to find out nobody’s names. For twenty years they just knowed me as “Buddy.” Nobody knowed my name. Everybody called me Buddy. Later on it went to Texas Slim and “Slim.” Nobody knowed my name was Moody until we came to record. I tell you a lot of fellas we didn’t know their real names …
Floyd: I think I called you on the record, “Alright, Buddy!” “What you call me Buddy for?”
Moody: Yeah, that’s right. We playing “Stockyard Blues”—“Alright, Buddy.” When we got home I said, “Buddy? Nobody know Buddy.”
Me and Johnnie Mae used to play together.3 We played on Cermak Road. Yeah, ole Johnnie Mae used to love to play with me, ’cause I could clown, ya know. I never did get tired and I was kinda a comedian. I kept my feet patting, couldn’t do it playing, do it anyway. I don’t know what that place on Cermak Road was called …
Willie Mae: I don’t know, it’s up in a pocket behind some factories or something, I don’t know if it’s closer to Blue Island …
Moody: Johnnie Mae and all of us used to play at Taylor and Paulina, too, Miss Andrews’s place. Wallace had the place first over there, had to give it up and Miss Andrews got it. Floyd, what was that place name where we played—did it have a name or was it just Taylor?
Floyd: Taylor and Paulina.
Moody: I was telling Floyd today, I talked to him on the phone, I said, “Well, I’m gonna tell you something, boy. You all gave me a pretty rough deal. I pushed all you fellas out there, put you where you are, gave you your music. All I got was paid for the session. You fellas draw royalties, all that kind of thing.” I’d get the session. I can’t sing. I can’t sing good enough. I fooled around and lost my voice out there in the open air. I used to play electric guitar and, uh, sing without a mike, see? Sometimes it’s loud when you get out there in the air and everybody want to hear you. I was just hollerin’ and I had good lungs and fooled around. My voice is tore up. That’s what old Joe—Joe Brown said. I called his name. (laughs) I had some good blues, ya know, and I wanted to sing ’em. I wanted to make the song, ya understand? ’Cause all the boys was coming in there with a song, they wanted to make the record and I told them I had a song. He said, “What is it?” I said, “Rough Treatment.” “Well, I’d have to see what it sound like.” Well, my voice had done got bad, ya know, and we sung that and he said, “Oh, that won’t go no-how.” I said, “Well, why don’t you record it?” “No, no, not that.” Before I knew anything he done—he had it on tape and Little Hudson recorded it. “Rough Treatment”—my number.
He didn’t sing it like it was, ya know, but he got some of the words—or most of the words. He just went out and hollered like he wanted to. I had a kind of South American number I wanted to do for ole Joe Brown, and he didn’t act right and I kept it, too. A kind of Latin number, ya know, a Latin beat to it and everything.4 But still and all he didn’t have it as I sung it. They changed it a little bit. They kept the title. They changed it a bit. Because way back I had heard, I had heard the title before. Curtis Jones, Curtis Jones, way back when I was a boy—he sang “Rough Treatment,” and I think he the one had the song the “Bedroom Blues.”5 Yeah, but at that time I figured I’d put a little addition to it.
I don’t know if I was there when he [Floyd] sang that [“On the Road Again”]. Well, see, because I got my leg broke and Floyd made “Dark Road.” I had a cast on my foot up to here and I couldn’t sit down. And so I had to play the bass. We went all the way up to the studio and I didn’t have the bass with me, and Will let me have his bass and I played bass on “Dark Road.” I might be playing on quite a few records and people have never heard of me at all. I played on ’em. We taped many things at home, in different places. Floyd, which one of them records did I play the bass on?
Moody Jones, 1950s.
Floyd: “On the Road Again.” You wasn’t on “Dark Road.”
Moody: I had planned on going—going out and getting me a big band, but I finally changed my mind when Little Walter made his first record—his first good record, “Juke.” When he made “Juke” he had a old raggedy Hudson car, ya know. I was pretty hotheaded at that time. He said to me, “If this record do good I want you to go on the road with me,” and then before I could say anything he said, “Oh, but you’re too crazy about Chicago. You ain’t gonna leave here. I’ll have to get me somebody else.” And I got hot right there. I said, “Well, you get somebody else.” And so I didn’t go with him, but he did get somebody. But fellas told me they couldn’t hardly get back home. Put their clothes in the cleaners down South somewhere and they weren’t able to get them out, ’cause Walter wouldn’t give them no money. But I tell you, when he put out that record he did good.
Floyd: Yeah, that fella was something else.
Moody: Yeah, Walter, too bad … all those fellas. Well, I guess everybody ended up different. Surprising thing what a man will do coming through life. He’ll pass up a lot of opportunities. It takes a real smart man to think of everything to do—to think the right thing, to make the right decision. But, ya know, after I got old and looked back at it, we didn’t get so much out of it as we should have. Could have made a lot of good records, ya know, and put ’em out. Well, I missed one great chance because people I talked with. I had a fellow come from Whiting, Indiana, saw me playing on Maxwell Street over there with a band. He wanted me—he wanted to put me in a big band, see, because he liked the chords I made, and he says, “Why don’t you come and let me take you over there to the band?” Say, “I’ll show what I’m gonna do.” I said, “Where do you live?” He said, “Whiting, Indiana.” So I say to him—it’s on Sunday—I said, “Well, I can’t go today, you come here next Sunday and I’ll go with you.” Sure enough, I thought he was jiving me, he come back the next Sunday. He said, “You going with me today? I tell you, you make orchestra chords and I like that, see, ’cause I’ve got a big band. I’ll put you in. You won’t have nothing else to worry about.” Then the fellas got around say, “You liable to be trying to fool you or somebody kill you, man, you better stay here.” They outtalk me, ’cause they didn’t want me to go, ya know. So finally, that was the second time that he was over there, so I said, “Well, you come back next Sunday,” and he come back the next Sunday. Then I got drunk. I was gonna go that time and I went around to divide the money and the fellas went and got a whole quart of whiskey and we drinked it. Before I know anything it was one o’clock at night. So, you see, I flunked that chance and mostly by listening to other fellas, all of ’em say, “Oh, don’t go nowhere with them people, you never seen ’em before. They might take you out and kill you, anything.” If I hadn’t been thinking like I’m thinking now, ya see, I’d still probably be retired now with a big bank account, big bank roll up there and everything ready to do like Duke Ellington. I did a whole lot of hard work for nothing, and I missed a whole lot of good chances sometimes through not trusting. Sometimes you’re afraid to just step on out, ya see, and then by the time you’ve got ready to step out everything’s passed.
See, it takes a real man, takes a thinking man to do that, and some kind of man can see where he made just one, one little wrong step that’ll affect him all the way, and then sometime if a man makes the right decision at the right moment, he’s got it made from that time on. Just like the prizefighters—they don’t have time to make a decision until it’s all over. When it’s all over he end up broke, he end up sick, end up all knotted up, beat up, and everything. No money, ’cause he haven’t got time … he young and restless. Me and Floyd Jones used to play all night, say, “Ain’t you going to bed?” “No!” “Let’s go out—go out to …” Oh, I remember one morning Sunnyland Slim, Rice Miller, what called himself Sonny Boy Williamson, all of us had been out all night—we had played until the tavern closed. Then we went by Sunnyland’s house. We balled over there till day. Say, “Let’s go to the Zanzibar over there where Wolf is.” Ole Wolf was over there. We went over there. Wolf had us to play some. We got up there and played. Rice Miller was on the harmonica. Ole Rice Miller got hincty, “I’m not gonna play unless you get me some Old Taylor.” He wanted Old Taylor—eightysix proof. Laid his harmonica down, said, “Carry it right there. I want one hundred proof less I won’t play.” (laughs)
Floyd: I can remember the exact words he said, “I don’t drink milk. I want whiskey—one hundred proof.”
Moody: He can’t help it now. Now, you know where the Zanzibar was? I’m gonna show you what a man runs into when he’s going through life. Now, we were there drinking, getting drunk, playing the blues, having a good time. We didn’t know what was gonna happen later, but I’ve stood right there where Rice Miller wouldn’t accept that whiskey. I have stood right there on that spot and preached. Now, that Zanzibar was taken away and there was a church put there, and I had done quit playing music and I was a preacher. And I told them, I said, “Right here where I’m standing I have played music in here, I’ve played the blues in here.” Now I’m on the other side of life. I want to be a champion just like I was on that side. I strictly had a good time, though. Just crazy, but we—we come through it all. I can say it was fun. Then I met a real sweet wife—I met a real sweet wife after running around. But I tell you it took a whole lot to bring me down to the Lord, because I really—I didn’t love nothing but the music and that’s all I had in my mind. Now I can’t play anymore.
Willie Mae: We met—I think Floyd’s brother and my cousin is the cause of us meeting. They set up a blind date.
Moody: Kept telling me, “Come and take my cousin out tonight.” I said, “I ain’t studying about your cousin.” “She’s nice.” “Who cares how nice she is, I’m tired. I’m going home.” Finally, they kept begging me until they got me to go. I went out with ’em that night, and, uh, they put her up in the front seat with me. I used to have a little black car, used to keep it shined all the time. They used to say, “Here come Grand Daddy,” when they see that car coming, boy. But, ya see, I took her out and she wouldn’t talk to me, see! We went to the tavern where Muddy Waters was playing, 3609 Wentworth. That’s the time he told me—he called me to play. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got an outstanding guitarist in the house. We’re gonna ask him to come up and do a number for us, so let’s give him a big hand—Mr. Moody Jones.” I got up and she wouldn’t talk to me. So I went up, Muddy Waters handed me his guitar, he said, “Don’t fool with that slide!” So, okay, I played a boogie and I played a blues, and when I come down she wouldn’t talk to me. So some little ole girls come in—two of the most cute girls come in and said to me, “Hey, Moody, don’t you remember us?” I said, “No.” Said, “Don’t you remember us from the Hi Hat?” I said, “Oh, yeah!” They said, “Come over here and have a drink with us.” And I went over there and, man, she had never talked to me, but you could see her there and so I had a drink with them girls, and I came over there and she liked to talk me to death then! Hi Hat was on Madison Street.
Willie Mae: It was 22-something West Madison.
Moody: I played there a long time, long time and, well, now, I keeps forgetting that guy’s name up there. Elmore James was playing up on—that’s what I’m talking about, Sylvio’s. Uh-huh, I was playing one place, Elmore James was playing at the next place up. That was back in the early ’50s.
Now, I didn’t quit playing music when we got together. Many times she used to be real angry with me because I wasn’t home, but I wasn’t doing anything but playing music, and sometimes she’d come out where I was playing music and I’d get her a table. So we went to the Cotton Club. See, on nights when I wasn’t playing I’d go round the clubs and have a good time. I had all the nights I wanted to. The Cotton Club’s on the North Side—I think it’s on Bryan or Wheel something …
Willie Mae: On Wheel, I think …
Moody: Yeah, right off Clark. It’s tore down now. But I told her to get up there on that table and she did just what I told her. We had a line of tables lined up, ya know, just brought the tables together so we could have a party, and she got on that table and walked from one end to the other, stepped on folks’ whiskey, about to fall, drunk and everything …
Willie Mae: Just clowning! (laughs)
Moody: We went to Muskegon Heights. Did you ever know a fella by the name Frank—was it Frank Smith? He was a harmonica player, oh, this is way back in the ’50s. I thought it was Frank Smith.6 I don’t know, but he was a real dark fella with a gold tooth in his mouth, and he played harmonica. He called hisself a great blues singer. He just played around with the fellas on the streets like that. But he went everywhere, traveled around. Me and Little Walter would run into him on the street—great harmonica blower and singer, too. I don’t think Frank recorded, because he was around the streets all the time. He was a pretty good harmonica player, but he did a lot of hollerin’. He was dark, eyes kinda red, he had a gold tooth in his mouth, and he be out there just hollerin’ and blowing that harp. He made a lot of money doing it. He went with us up in Michigan, Muskegon Heights, Michigan, and I think all of us had to sleep in one room, about six of us—all of us. (laughs) It was terrible. The whole band and the band’s wives, everybody sleeping in one room. He was the only one had no wife. (laughs) He was the onliest one didn’t have no wife, and we (laughs) all got to sleep in one room and everybody who had a wife was watching Frank.
Didn’t nobody want to go out get nothing! (laughs) Old Frank was around singing to all the women and didn’t nobody want to go out to get nothing! Frank was onliest one didn’t have no wife. Me and Frank and Sunnyland and, uh, let’s see, who was the fourth boy with us? I think there was four of us that night. Anyway, that was a kinda funny thing to me, it tickled me. The next day daylight come, we had to stay there a couple of days and when, ya know, daylight come, people got to going about everywhere and everybody’s carrying their wife with them! Frank wasn’t carrying nobody. Everybody slept in the same room. Frank say, “I’m gonna stay here and sleep,” and wasn’t nobody going nowhere except they carried their wife with them. That was the funny thing. They wouldn’t take no chances with Frank, ’cause he’s too crazy about the women, he was. They weren’t leaving their wife with Frank!
Downstairs was a restaurant, but they had us upstairs in a place that wasn’t so large. It had a low ceiling. It was a restaurant downstairs and a bar. They had a small place upstairs and that’s where they had us playing. And I tell you, it made me sick, because the ceiling was real low and you didn’t need my electric guitar then. And we had an electric guitar and, man, the thing was so loud you couldn’t hear nothing, and an electric guitar can be real miserable, I’m telling you, in a small place. And everybody wanted to be heard. And a harmonica up there with a mike to it, ya know, and people—I’m kinda sensitive about playing, ya know, because I know all there is to music is time and tune—you ain’t got to—it’s not loud. Music is not loud in a place like that. Ugly ole place. You say, “Well, let’s play mellow in here, we don’t need it loud!” And everybody get a little louder, wants somebody to hear him, ya know, and the other fella he’ll be playing along, he’ll look, he’ll leap down there, he’ll turn his knob up a little bit, he’ll go back to playing. He’s not loud enough, you see him turn his guitar up a little bit and he rush back there! But if everybody toned down it’d be alright. We had a little low place up there give me a headache. Sometimes you see people sitting all along the bar doing this [puts hands over ears] and you know you can’t order a drink when it’s so loud.
We used to play one place over there at Vi’s Lounge. They were playing over there for a long time then Floyd and them got me in with them. So I said, “Let’s get back here and play mellow and see what happens.” So, okay, and I said, “Now, don’t nobody play louder than I’m playing. I’m not gonna drown you out, let’s not play so loud.” And we getting on alright and everybody said, “That’s so nice—this is nice music tonight.” And after a while somebody slipped back there and turned the thing up and couldn’t nobody hear nobody but me and him. The other would turn it up and then you hear both of them loud. ’Cause I never did like that—be too loud anyway.
There was more fun on the way back from Muskegon Heights.
Moody: Sunnyland Slim tickled me. I think we was up there three or four days playing up there, ya know, and on the way back almost had an accident because everybody telling funny jokes. He was a terrible joker, ya know, and we was almost to have an accident because the driver was laughing. We was hollerin’ and laughin’ and our eyes was full of water and when we did get ’em cleared and settled down, ya know. There was a man up there waving us down. Radar! He done caught us doing seventy miles per hour and he want to lock us all up. Sunnyland Slim used to have a knot on his head, see. He don’t have it anymore. He had it removed—and anytime somebody would get him in a tight place he would feel that knot, ya know. So I said, “No use feeling that knot now! We got to do something to get away from here.” The man wouldn’t let nobody go. He says, “I wasn’t going too fast.” Didn’t even have a speedometer on the car. The thing was broke so we couldn’t tell how fast we were going. So there we was again. Man, we had a terrible time looking miserable!
Moody recalled one of the clubs and the lady who owned it.
Moody: She used to get high every night. She was sitting back there and she get high and give the stuff away and everything. We played there a long time, me and Floyd Jones and Shakey Head Walter … and little ole Willie Foster—he used to act so bad! He just get up there and say everything to everybody, just cut up. I’d say, “Boy, you better stop that.”
Willie Mae: ’Cause I used to know him when he was in his prime, ya know, and he knew everybody and had a family. He was very nasty.
Moody: I used to have trouble with some of the boys who was playing with me, ’cause drinking did something to ’em, you know. Drinking changes a lot of people. Some people can’t contain it, see? I used to drink so much that I couldn’t stand up, but I just be having fun, see? But other fellas sometimes—I went to a place on Madison Street where the boys was playing and I just went by to visit that night and they said, “Sit down over there, Moody, you ain’t got to go home.” I said, “Okay, I’ll sit down.” I sat down. They brought me a table close to where they were playing, and I sat there and they just kept putting brandy up there and I just kept drinkin’. Wasn’t even bothering me. I was just sitting there drinking and when they got ready to go home I couldn’t get up!
The favorite drinking story must be when Moody first invited Willie Mae to hear him play.
Moody: On North Wells Street, 876, ah, we’d played, we had been playing over there for quite awhile and the fellas crazy about our music. Peoples was so crazy about what I was doing all of ’em wanted to give me a drink. Everybody see me, “Come over here and drink with us,” and so I just tried to drink with everybody, be friendly with everybody, ya know. Everybody’d come along, “Tell the tall guy to come over here.” Some of ’em didn’t even know me and I’d go over there and take a drink. Finally ended up flopped over my guitar, laying there asleep and they couldn’t wake me up. And so the boss saw I was so full of mash they couldn’t wake me up. And so the boss saw ’em trying to wake me up. The fellas come around from behind the bar, he said, “Let him alone, don’t wake him up. Let him sleep. Let him sleep. When he wakes up he’s fired!” (laughs) And so they let me sleep, and at two o’clock when it was all over with, the man said, “Let me see, you bought half a pint of whiskey here on credit. I’m taking that out. Here’s the rest of your money, don’t come back.” I said, “What did I do?” He said, “You didn’t do anything. That’s the reason I’m paying you off and letting you go. Other men playing, you sitting there asleep. You didn’t do anything!” Me and Sunnyland Slim and Floyd—we might have had a drummer, too. I forgot who he was.
Willie Mae: I wasn’t there. I went home! Brought my sister, my brother, and my sister-in-law—a car full. That was the first time, because they didn’t usually go out to play, but they wanted to hear him and he was asleep. They didn’t hear him play nothing—not a thing! He leaned over his guitar all the night like that. He didn’t play nothing, so they still didn’t hear him play!
Moody: Yeah, but I begin to think about that thing, I begin to think. I said, “I’m gonna stop drinking.” And I would stop drinking for a while and some of the fellas would come along. You ever tried to stop drinking then you don’t have to buy anymore—they’ll buy it for you! “Oh, come on, man, come on, man, you chicken?” Say, “Yeah.” So I started back to drinking. So one time I stopped drinking and we playing on Maxwell Street and some people came from Gary, Indiana, and there was about two hundred people around us on Maxwell, just far as you could see around, and all of ’em liked what we was doing. They was throwing money everywhere and we had two or three cigar boxes of money there. And so one fella said, “What do you drink?” I’m about half drunk, I said, “Anything.” He went there and bought a fifth of Old Taylor and brought it out there and give it to me and all. Man, the sun was hot. Really, I didn’t intend to do, but I got to drinking that Old Taylor. He said, “Drink all you want,” and you know how some people do when you give something to them and say, “drink all you wanta.” Say, “Well, I better load up right here,” and when I knew anything, really, I had got drunk that time and they done carried me over the street. My bass fiddle player, Ed Newman, he lived over there on Peoria. He lived at 1308 Peoria Street. And another thing, I woke up in his house. I guess it’s about three o’clock in the evening when they carry me, probably, but I woke up at his house about one-thirty in the morning. I said, “What am I doing here? Where am I at?” He said, “Well, you got drunk. We had to bring you in.” He said, “You ought to be ’shamed, everybody looking at you carried you off the street!” (laughs) Then I was ’shamed. I said, “I’m gonna quit.” And I quit. That’s one of the things that put me against drinking—especially when you work. There’s men who can take a drink at suppertime, a shot, and go to bed. I couldn’t do that. If I start drinking it was half a pint, it was a pint, it was a fifth and then, ya see, I know that wasn’t a right thing. Anything that can rule you, let it go. That’s the way I figured. Some men could rule it and I couldn’t. So I let it alone.
What a life! Still we were blessed, because we came through it without hurt. I only got put in jail one time and I never was a criminal, see, but one time my brother got in trouble, and ran off and they couldn’t find him. And they felt like I knew where he was and I did not. But they came and picked me up early one Sunday morning, locked me up. “You wanna tell us where your brother is?” “I don’t know where he is.” They knew me from playing on the streets, so, “I tell you one thing—it gonna be a long time before you play your ole guitar anymore on the streets.” They kept me about a week and a half and couldn’t find him. My boss called up and they told him, “Tend to your business, ’cause we’re gonna tend to this, we don’t have to let him go.” Boss said, “Book him so he can get out.” Said, “No, we can move him from station to station, we don’t have to book him.” So finally they let me go. For $30 they let me go.
I got songs here now, right now, that I wrote back in the ’50s before I quit playing. I never recorded them. I never sang them, never copyrighted them or anything. And then I got me a religious group. See, I stepped across the fence from the other side. I had a Christian group. I’m a minister now. When you put all your—the old folk say, “When you put all your eggs in one basket you can get a basket full.” So I don’t try to do too many things at once. If I’m jack-of-all-trades, I’m good at none, ya see?
Now, if I were going to play the blues, I’d just be honest and say so, just like you, Floyd—you’d be an honest man. And the good part, the blessing about it is because every man should feel free to do what he wants to do. No one has the right to criticize a man for what he wants to do. People have crazy ideas. But you know it’s better for a man to work than to steal, and for a musician, a professional, he’s working. And if everybody did the same thing, this would be a crazy world. If everybody just played church songs—what you gonna do with the fella don’t go to church? What you gonna do with the fella don’t even believe? What if everybody played the blues? You couldn’t do nothing with that. With the human race—every one of us is different. We may be made like our body, but, now, our mind, there’s no two men that has exactly the same mind, the same thoughts, believe in the same things. So this what makes it a great world, for if a person come to church and hear a good sermon, he might say, “Well, I’m going down here now. I done heard a good sermon and enjoyed myself. Now, I’m going down here and hear Floyd and them play something. I wanta hear those blues.” What’s wrong with that? We got to have variety of things, and you be going to eat, you don’t just go in there get you a big piece of meat, eat all of that and say, “I’ve had my dinner.” But you have some meat, some bread, some syrup, some desserts or some pie or some cake—it takes all this to make up a meal. Ain’t that right? It [takes] all that to make up a meal, so I’m saying that it takes all of this to make up our world as a whole. If was no musicians, the world’s in a bad fix. If there was no church, world’s in a bad fix. Because God has fixed it so that every man can have what he want. It’s up to that man, every man has the decision, he may change from this to that. Nobody told me to stop playing. Nobody told me to get in church, but I was raised up in church and this was real to me. I came of my own accord. All the fellas said, “Oh, he’ll be right back out here next week.” I didn’t criticize them and don’t do it now. But, brother, I’m happy like this and one fella told me—and I was broke then like I am now—one fella told me, “You could make $200 a week.” And I said, “Well, I’m not going anyway. I’ve retired now.” So we had a wonderful time.
Moody Jones. Chicago, May 1975. (Photo Bill Greensmith)
Interview with Moody Jones conducted September 1973, September 1974, and September 1978. Interview with Floyd and Moody Jones conducted September 1973 and September 1974.
1. This is almost certainly Ann Sortier (Amanda Sortier/Porter?), who recorded with Robert Nighthawk for Decca in 1940 and later on her own account for the Chicago label as Ann Sorter McCoy, “Tell It to the O.P.A.”(Chicago 101).
2. Moody meant Big Bill Broonzy.
3. Johnnie Mae Dunson.
4. Moody actually auditioned three songs, “Rough Treatment,” “Why Should I Worry,” and “Please Somebody,” on April 28, 1952. All were issued on Flyright’s JOB series.
5. Bumble Bee Slim recorded “Rough Treatment” (Vocalion 03637) in 1936. I don’t know of a Curtis Jones version. However, Moody’s song, apart from the chorus, is different from Slim’s and, to be fair, so is Little Hudson’s version (JOB 1015) from August 1953.
6. This is presumably the mysterious “Black Frank,” recalled by Otis Spann as a harp player who sometimes played with Muddy Waters.
Mike Rowe
Blues Unlimited #137/138 (Spring 1980)
Floyd Jones was born in Marianna, Arkansas, July 17, 1917. His father, Robert, and Moody’s father, Henry, were brothers, but Floyd didn’t meet up with his cousin until the ’40s in Chicago. Floyd kept a day job for much of his playing career in Chicago, but never gave up music and in retirement, devoted his whole time to playing the blues.
He got his start when he met Howling Wolf while Floyd was driving a truck for the Nat Phillips plantation near Twist, Arkansas, and Wolf was a semi-professional musician.
Floyd: When did I leave home? In ’33. I left with Wolf in 1933. I was living just across from this Twist brothers at the place they call Nat Phillips’s farm. So that’s where I left from. We went all through Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, back around through the low part of Arkansas, then back up through Louisiana, Mississippi. Well, Mississippi is where Wolf was—his home, but he moved around there close around me in 1932. And we was living on the same farm. I started—I played my first dance 4th of July 1933—on Twist brothers … forty-two sections of land in one block. Yeah, they did have a farm! And they had a big, what you call boardinghouse—they done had a lot of day workers, a lot of day hands. They had a great big boardinghouse with two stories and then a lot of the different sections had small boardinghouses … Twist, Arkansas. I played up there, ya know, off and on. Yeah, still there—all of the older heads are dead, but I think it’s only one of the younger fellas are living, but he’s got it.
I was singing, uh, “Roll and Tumble” and what I heard, ya know, just like, uh, now, my mother wrote a number way back and, uh, I sung that a few times. Now that, well, she had a title “Overseas Blues” and it was … uh, I done forgot this lady made it a long way after then, but she says: “My mother’s dead, papa’s across the sea. Ain’t got nobody in the world to live and care for me.” Well, now, my mother wrote that in the year I was born, that’s fiftysix years ago. Yeah, she played piano, she played bass, she played drums, she played … well, it wasn’t no bass guitar then, it was just regular and then a fiddle. Well, she played most of them, but she was better on piano—she taught piano. My father didn’t play, no, just my mother and her brothers. She had two brothers was musicians. Minnie Bishop was her maiden name, had a brother named Sam Bishop and one named Joe Bishop, but, see, they didn’t get to do no recording or nothing back in that time. But they had a jug band way back, ya know, in Arkansas. She was one of the top rally dancers back way in her time, one of the top. Then when the Charleston came out she would do the Black Bottom, two-step, all that, see, right along in there. Around Marianna, yeah, Helena, all through Arkansas.
Eddie Taylor and Floyd Jones. Chicago, mid-1950s.
Some of the fellas was never known. There was a fella Lossie Chatman—he never did get to make no numbers or nothing, but he was a good guitar player. He only—he got burned when he was a kid—he only had two fingers on that hand, but he could lead—he could really lead. He played with Wolf a long time … sure did. This is still in Arkansas, Phillips—Nat Phillips and, uh, then there was an older man, Tom Foulks, George Foulks and all them fellas I know I imagine is dead now. Tommy Johnson, I saw him, yeah … Jim Jackson … then there was a fella I done forgotten his last name, but his name was Ted something, he was a good guitar player. He played like Otis Rush with his left hand. He was down around 96 Corner, they call it—that was out from Hughes.
Could you make a living by playing music then, or did you have to work as well?
Floyd: Well, put it this way. It was tough doing ’em both, ya know, and there wasn’t much money around, it wasn’t much money around. A musician could make a living, he could do better playing than I did working, because if you could take care of what you made, but the average fella, if he playing, if he didn’t watch himself he be broke when he got through, ya know. But I know the time this same fellow, James Pettit, was paying me $3 a night, but it wasn’t—I was working Saturday and Sunday, and Wednesday I made $2. Well, that’s $8 a week. Well, I worked six days for $3.60—sixty cents a day. Well, see, I could beat it and, man, I wouldn’t have no food or nothing to pay for if I just worked Wednesdays—then I stayed first one of them places, then the other till time to play. When I came here I made something more, yeah, but it is $7 or $8 what we was making back then.
How did you team up with Wolf?
Floyd: Well, I just seed him around and after he moved on the same farm we were on then I go up to his house and so I’d ask him let me see his guitar. He say, “Be careful, don’t break no strings.” Then so he had an old guitar, he left along in the spring, and he let me have this guitar. He give it to me and, uh, he come back when I was playing with this Lossie Chatman then—when he come in off the road and, uh, Thanksgiving we played on this Nat Phillips, this fella’s place whose name was James Pettit. We played Thanksgiving night, we kept playing in around there till, oh, few days before Christmas and then he was with me when I found my mother—I hadn’t saw her in a good while and when I goes back she only lived two weeks. And he left me then and I didn’t see him no more until 1934, then we teamed up again. And off and on we worked around, then in ’40, last of ’41—no, first of ’41, I believe, in March—he went to the army and he was over there one year, maybe. Then he come back, we teamed up again. Then in about three months they called him back and he went and stayed awhile, and then he came back and we teamed up again in 1944. And that’s when I left from Arkansas and came back August ’44. I stayed up here the first of ’45 and went back, stayed about a month, then I came back and I’ve been here ever since.
No, I never did live there (Mississippi). My father was there, oh, few years—now, he and Jim Jackson logged together way back, I don’t remember that. But he moved, he brought me to Arkansas. He was around Tutwiler, Mississippi. But I was born in Arkansas, then he went to Mississippi logging and stayed a little while, but I don’t remember none of that. Then he went back to Arkansas and me and my brothers was brought up in Arkansas. And, uh, my first time in Chicago was 1933. I come in ’33, stayed a couple of months with my aunt, then I went back. Then I come back in 1937, stayed a little while just visiting, then I went back and I originally come here to stay in 1945. Then I been here ever since.
I was living on the South Side—6145 South Aberdeen, my people owned that building there. Then I eventually come to the West Side around Jew Town there for twenty-five years. I just thought I could make more money (in Chicago) and, uh, see, after war-time, ya know, jobs were getting pretty plentiful then and I came and started work. Then I started playing on Maxwell Street and met a lot of the fellas. And so we teamed up and went to playing in … what we really used to do, Little Walter and John Henry (Barbee). Well, now, ’45, my first gig here, if I can remember correctly, yeah, was with Sunnyland Slim, Little Walter, and Pork Chop. John Henry had it and he went to Kentucky and he got me to play in his place till he come back, we taken two weekends. This was at—it was called Sloppy Joe’s, it was Lake and Talman. See, it’s tore down now. I know that building ain’t there now. And me and Little Walter and them used to go from one tavern to another one and we’d make maybe $10 or $12 a week, and a lot of Sundays I have—we have made high as $30, $35 down on Maxwell Street on Sundays. And I was working in a foundry for about $48 a week.
Homesick James and Floyd Jones. Chicago, April 1974. (Photo Bill Greensmith)
Yeah, and then I went into the stockyards and I—well, you see, the first job I got was in the foundry. Then I went to Swift’s and worked there for a long time. Let’s see, when I went to Swift’s must have been about ’48—first of ’48—’cause ’45, ’46 I was at the American Car Foundry making brake shoes for trains and streetcar shoes. I was a molder.
Floyd remembered an audition at Gatewood’s with Johnny Young and a piano player named Pie Face.
Floyd: Gatewood wanted some folks to play. So we went to Gatewood’s and so (Big) Bill came down and said, “These fellows can play.” So Pie Face said, “I don’t play no blues.” So I said, “Johnny would.” Ya know, he’s jumping around so glad to get up there with his mandolin. I said, “Yeah, but you hear what this fella’s saying?” He said, “What did he say?” I said, “He said he don’t play no blues. See, he don’t play no blues.” I said, “What, did you just quit playing?” He didn’t say nothing. So Johnny said, “We’ll take it, man, we’ll take it by ourselves.” And I tell you the boy died, Elgin, was drummer, so we started playing—and, uh, then Alfred Erskine.1
Al was with Muddy a long time when he died, but he wasn’t with Muddy then. He come in, man, and he sat in there and we played the first set and Miss Gatewood give us a pint of whiskey. And so we go back up, then Pie Face wanted to come in. I said, “Man, you don’t play no blues.” He said, “Oh, well, I’ll sit in with y’all.” I said, “No, that’s okay.” And we got Wednesday night there at Miss Gatewood’s. She said, “Y’all in the union?” And Al hadn’t paid, but he had a permit and Johnny had his card. So she said, “Well, I’ll give you all a contract.” She first said “indefinitely,” then she said, “No, I’m gonna lose on you anyhow. I’ll give you a definite contract for three months.” Then we start. From then we worked at Sylvio’s, then we got the Purple Cat, and then we got to going round and then little later we split up, and then I think we went, let’s see, we went to Argo a few nights, then you started working at the Jamboree …
Moody: When I started with you.
Floyd: Then we went to the Mill Gate, that was in South Chicago—it wasn’t far from the Jamboree. The Jamboree was 90th and Mackinaw and this was 80th, 90th—it was 89th—it was off Mackinaw, because, let’s see, Snook made a number about 8910. Yeah, that’s right, 8910, that was the Mill Gate.
Moody: Well, Floyd, did they ever know about Richard?
Floyd: Richard Williams?
Moody: Richard who got killed—used to drive his own truck?
Floyd: No, I don’t think so. Richard never did recording. He played a lot, around. Richard Williams and Gray-Haired Bill, he was with Baby Face Leroy, Snooky, and me—that’s a long time ago.
Moody: Gray-Haired Bill said he was going to play till he died. He did!
Floyd: That’s right.
Willie Mae: And who was Gray-Haired Bill? That’s who you played with in the basement on 43rd and …
Moody: Wentworth. That’s how I lost the amplifier. We left amplifier in the place ’cause we were going to go back, we didn’t want to carry it home every time, ya know. We weren’t going to carry it home every night. So I didn’t go back the next night, and when I was back the lady told me that he had come and got the amplifier and I never did get it. Ya know, before I quit playing, Floyd, while I was out there, I tried to get a chance to make “John Henry.” So many people had messed it up. Man, I had it, didn’t I? I tried to get chance to make that, see, and, oh, my wife saw Big Bill one night—they had him, I think, on TV. That’s way back when we stayed over on 45th Street, but anyway he was singing “John Henry.” Come closer to it than anybody I ever heard sing it. Except Doc Hopkin.
Floyd: Oh, yeah, Doc could play it.
Moody: Doc Hopkin, he was a white fella with the Prairie Farmers—WLS years ago. I remember one night Floyd called me up—I was way over here on the North Side. You remember that night you wanted to play “John Henry” for somebody over here on 90th Street, wasn’t it? (laughs) You wanted to play “John Henry” and couldn’t think of the words. I had ’em. Floyd said, “Tell me on the phone, just tell me what it is on the phone.” He went out there and played ’em and made that money, too!
Johnny Young, early 1950s.
Floyd met with Wolf again in ’54, with disastrous results.
Floyd: ’54, that’s when Wolf came here. That’s when he first came here. See, I was going to do an audition with him, for the job. His boys he had ’em, but one of the boys was too young. He had to get him in the union and whatnot, and somebody, his parents, had to sign for Wolf to use him, ya know, ’cause he was only eighteen years old, Hubert (Sumlin). So we parked, went in—this is the Rock Bottom, it’s on Madison right off Madison on Paulina—and I done lost my guitar, too. He said, “Well, you won’t have to use nothing, Mr. Jones, you use our stuff.” Then he said, “No, you have to have your guitar.” So I went back to get my guitar and they broke in there and stole my amplifiers and everything—they got ’em then.
Floyd and Moody have had a lifetime to digest the savage twists of fate in the Blues world. Their story about Little Willie Foster is an example.
Floyd: Yeah, down there on Maxwell Street some guy stopped me. I didn’t know him, so he says, “What you think about that little guy?” I said, “Who’s that?” He said, “Willie Foster.” I said, “Willie Foster’s got a good voice.” He say, “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, too.” And after a couple of months, ya know, he was working with me. And come up fast, but he fooled around and got hurt. He probably would’ve made it on up there.
Others didn’t even get a chance or anyone to give them a push:
Floyd: Only thing, that nobody don’t get you, you stuck, just stay there. Somebody get you and keep pushing you, you got to go.
This was all in the past for Moody, who found his true vocation in the church, but Floyd still played the blues. Did he think he might follow his cousin’s example?
Floyd: Really, if you don’t believe it, don’t do it. If you believe it, do it. Am I right? Don’t pretend, I never pretend. “Man, are you going to play the blues?” I’m gonna play on a while longer, I don’t know how much longer. They say, “Well come on, play in church. You can make this, you can make that.” I say, “No, no I don’t feel it.” And that’s why. I used to—I’ve done a little playing in church, that’s how I know it wasn’t right. Because I wasn’t feeling it. When I leave church I be looking for me for some whiskey and get drunk, shoot craps, and anything. And I know that ain’t right. They say, “Well, you don’t got to worry about the other fella.” Well, what about wrongdoing and that kinda stuff? And if you don’t mean it, it’s useless to get in there and pretend it. But mostly, mostly the blues players—the real down soul players come from church. Whatcha bet?
Interview with Floyd Jones conducted September 1973. Interview with Floyd and Moody Jones conducted September 1973 and September 1974.
1. Alfred “Erskine” has cropped up in other interviews, usually reported as a drummer; whereas in the interview Elgin (Elga) is the drummer, not “Erskine.” Homesick James said that “Erskine” accompanied him on his first Chance session but definitely played bass. This suggests that Alfred “Erskine” is Alfred Elkins. Elkins was present at the double JOB session of April 28, 1952, when Moody and Snooky Pryor recorded. It seems more likely that “Erskine” is actually bass player Alfred Elkins and that he is also being confused with drummer Alfred Wallace!
Mike Rowe
Blues Unlimited #137/138 (Spring 1980)
Snooky Pryor, the last of the Old Swing-Master trio, was probably the most successful in material terms. Not, of course, from the music, which he gave up later than Moody in order to get into the building trade. He lived with his wife and family in southern Illinois, spending some of the year on building contracts in Chicago. He also played festivals and made European tours, business permitting, and this combination of activities was certainly more rewarding than a full-time musical career.
Snooky Pryor, late 1940s.
Well, I was born September 15, 1921, which was Lambert, Mississippi, where I was born at. Started playing around the age of eight or nine years old when I decided I wanted to be a musician, crazy about it. My father, he was what you call a minister, a Baptist preacher. Well, in his religion, stuff like that, ya know, he didn’t believe in music. Well, I had an uncle and he played music. He played fiddle—violins and all, they called him Tom Harrover, that was his music name, ya know what I mean.1 And then he had a brother, a cousin also, they called him Will Feather and he played the same instrument.2 That’s the only musicians I know come from my lineage. I heard them play several times at, ya know, little picnics and things back there, but as far as going out to clubs and things when I was small and young, if daddy knew about it he would really give me the works. (laughs) I’m named after him. He was named James Pryor, they called him Rev. I. E. Pryor, so my name is James Edward Pryor. He was pastor of a church called, ah, Galilee or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t much of a church member myself and never have been, ya know. No, no. My mother’s name was Willie, Willie Pryor. She died when I was really young. She died in 1939.
Around the little town where we used to live here was a guy there called John Blissett, otherwise they called him Al Bounder, which he was a religious-looking guy. Al Bounder … he only could blow one number, but it was real good. (laughs) He called it “The Mississippi Drag Line.” He was real good with that, and I used to hear him play. It was a little rhythm jump something like a train they called it. But the guy he was really good. He used to keep a crowd around him when he was playin’ that. Jimmy Rogers, he know the guy. Jimmy and I grew up around there till I was sixteen years old and I cut out, started on my own. And James Scott, which is one of my favorite musicians, and he instructed me a lot into my music, ya understand, when I was starting out from a kid. This is the one used to steal me out from my father’s house, ya know what I mean, to go play house parties. Yeah, he’s much older than I am. So he live here in Chicago here somewhere now close around in this neighborhood, so they say, but I haven’t seen him. When I was a kid he and Charley they was playing music then, Charley McLellan, even before I thought about playing, yeah. And then somehow or another after I started out in the music and left the South and came up in here and then I started recording, I just surpassed them. He came from Clarksdale when he came here, but he was born around Lambert and Vance, that’s right. I bet he’ll remember about his mother whipped me about his guitar! I’d get the guitar from behind the door—they used to keep it behind the door. I tried to get it out from behind the door, ya see, I was going to slip it out, ya know, and play it. And just as I opened the door back, the guitar fell out on the floor and kept up a lot of noise and his mother heard it and, boy, did she get me! (laughs) This was Lambert.
When I first left I went to Memphis and from there back down in the hill part of Mississippi around in there from where Baby Face Leroy used to live, out there around Grenada and Wynona. And from there I come back up in Arkansas and from Arkansas to Missouri. On the harmonica (laughs) I didn’t start no work or nothing like that till after I went in the army and came out. That’s how I made my living, ya know, when I was a kid. Town to town, house parties and things, and play my harmonica, yeah. Sure, that was rare in those days. Shoot, when you was—back in those days when you could play an instrument then, know what I mean, you were recognized as being real great. And so they was having those house parties, picnics and things, they was looking for people to play and I come along right in the nick of the time this was going on, and so it was really nice for me in those days. Sometime I would run up on guys, ya know what I mean, could play on guitar or some other instrument and we would team up, you understand? One guy I ran up on—called him Cooder Haines—and I run up on him in some parts of Arkansas and after that I never ran into him no more. He was very good on guitar. Cooder Haines, that’s what they called him. That’s the onliest thing I ever knew. This was around Osceola, Arkansas. Yeah. Then, in Mississippi I played with Tommy McClennan. He and I used to play for house parties. The same Tommy McClennan that made “Bottle Up and Go.”
He was a little bitty ole guy. He had a scar right up here on the side of his head. Yeah, I knew him well. He liked to drink, too. And he had a little small wife and they used to fight quite a bit, too! (laughs) I forget her name, but he was real small and if you could have seen him in those days you wouldn’t have believed this was the guy all this voice was coming from! Oh, I bet the guy didn’t weigh over 110 pounds to save his life, if he weighed that much. Little bitty fella, but he really had a voice on him and he wouldn’t play his guitar in “natural,” ya know what I mean? He always played in what we called back in those days “crossed” and, uh, I don’t guess he was able to buy a clamp to go on his guitar, so he used to take a—in order to get it down with the harmonica. In those days I played those fine keys harmonica, and he would take a pencil and a string and tie it across the neck of the guitar he used for a clamp, yeah. This was in Mississippi, around Cleveland, Mississippi. I never found out exactly where he was from, but I know he hung around Cleveland. He and I played around Cleveland and Pace and Boyce, oh, different places. Oh, I messed around with him for quite some time … just house parties and things like that. Ya know, what they used to call country break-downs and all that kind of stuff. Yes, he had made “Bottle Up and Go.” Yeah, he had made “Bottle Up and Go.” Oh, yeah, I used to play with Tony Hollins, too. I been knowing Tony Hollins all my life—ever since I knowed myself I knowed Tony Hollins. Yeah, “Crawling King Snake.” He’s from Lambert, Mississippi.
All during ’36 right on up to ’39 and ’40, I was just traveling around through different places playing my music, nothing but playing my music, playing my harmonica. In the South, here and all throughout Missouri, all up in where I live at now, where my farm and house is down in southern Illinois. I used to come all up in there. I came to Chicago in ’39, then I went back south, stayed there two or three weeks, and then back to Chicago and then the army grabbed me. I was living over here on Erie and Halsted, and Milwaukee Avenue and 647 North Morgan Street right in that neighborhood and then the army. That’s where the army caught me. I went in the army and I came out of there in 19 and 45. I was a bugler—still following my music! (laughs) Yeah! Yeah, I was a bugler in the army, bugler, messenger, ya understand, and mail clerk. Yeah, I’m the one that blow reveille, wake the boys up. I still stayed with my music! So that’s how I created this sound, ya know what I mean, the big sound from the mike, from the army. I did USO shows in the army. I used to go from camp to camp on different islands in the Pacific after they found out I could play harmonica like I did. I used to go to different companies and play harmonica for the soldiers. First sergeant got that set up for me. Just blues. Same thing as I do now—rhythm and blues, like that. Then I played a lot of army songs and things on the harmonica, too. I could even play taps on the harmonica, ya know, “Call to Quarters,” the song that you play when the soldiers have to put out the lights and go to bed. So, otherwise, I stayed with my music until after I came back to Rockford, Illinois, at Camp Gretna. Well, I came into Fort Sheridan first and then they sent me out there to Camp Ellis, Illinois, and from Camp Ellis to Camp Gretna, about ninety miles west of Chicago. That’s where I was discharged at November 16th, 1945. Came out and grabbed my harps up again, started back out, started back out again.
Even before I got out of uniform, when I come from overseas—well, I, let me see, I came from overseas. I left May 19 and got into Fort Sheridan June 16 and, uh, I stayed in service here until November, from June to November. Well, at the same time, ya see, when I was at Fort Sheridan—that’s about thirty miles, maybe not quite that far, north of Chicago, big army camp up there, and I would come down from Fort Sheridan in my uniform. So Sonny Boy—this was in 1945 when I come from overseas—Sonny Boy, he was playing at the Purple Cat. I don’t want to get them “Cats” mixed up. They got the Purple Cat and the Kitty Kat, the Purple Cat right there on Madison and Leavitt, somewhere along there. The Kitty Kat was right across the street, about four doors opposite on Madison Street. The Purple Cat was before the Kitty Kat. Sonny Boy, he was playing at the Purple Cat and this bandstand you had to have a little ladder. This bandstand was way up in the ceiling of the club, so you would have to climb the ladder to get up in the bandstand and so, uh, I had played there several times. Sonny Boy had let me come on his bandstand and play several times. Well, you see, the bartender, they all knew me, because at that time I was in the army, but my wife she was living at 2318 Washington Boulevard. So all of ’em knowed me in that neighborhood and know me through playing my harmonica. I had on my uniform, well, I’d stop on the streets anywhere and play my harmonica, see? (laughs) And so all the people knew me up there. And so Sonny Boy had the job playing there and so all the fans they would ask Sonny Boy to let me come up, ya know, and play a number for ’em. And so I started playing and then he had put out a record long time ago called “Apple Tree”—and everybody called me “Apple Tree” because I could play the number, ha ha, better than Sonny Boy. “Looka there, honey, right over by the apple tree,” and so the bartender he likeded me, all the waitresses they likeded me, ya know what I mean, and so when I got up there and play, oh, I rocked the house.
So Sonny Boy, he couldn’t shake ’em like I could, and then they started giving me too many applause, ya understand, and Sonny Boy he didn’t like that. So he came up there and snatched me down off the bandstand. Yeah, told me to get off his bandstand and don’t never get back on there, and he didn’t let me come back on his bandstand no more. And then after I got out of the army. Now, Sonny Boy the cause that I’m in the union today. He’s the cause of I got a musician’s union card, yeah. So after I got out the army, he was playing out here in a little club on State Street, 63rd and State, a little club you call the Club Georgia. So he was playing there and a lot of peoples knowed me in there, and so the manager that run the place, ya know, people wanted me to play. But Sonny Boy he didn’t want me to play. Otherwise he was the greatest, ya understand, ’cause he had made a lot of records. And so the bartender or the manager of the place Sonny Boy was playing for he got Sonny Boy to let me play a few numbers. So I played a few numbers, got the house rockin’ and everything, and the union man came in and Sonny Boy put the union man on me, told him I didn’t have a card (laughs), told him I didn’t have a union card. And so the union man told me if I played music anywhere in any club and he catch me anymore I better have a card. So I went and joined the union after that. This was right back after I got out of the army, around about ’46. I had just got out of the army. So I been a union musician ever since. Uh-huh. Oh, me and Sonny Boy used to tussle a lot of times. Me and him had several great battles. But I likeded the guy, he was a nice dude, but he didn’t want you to mess—he didn’t want you messing with him. See, he wanted to be the king, which he was. (laughs) He didn’t want you messing with him about his music.
At the time he was playing at the Purple Cat, well, he had Eddie Boyd and I believe Lazy Bill, and I disremember who he had over at the Club Georgia. That’s when he turned me into a union man—and what-you-call used to play with him, too—Big Bill Broonzy used to play with Sonny Boy. I remember all those guys, I used to sit in over there. I used to sit in with Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie, Son Joe—yeah, I used to play with those guys. East 47th Street at the 708 Club, yeah, me and Memphis Minnie, Sunnyland Slim, and Son Joe, we used to work there at the 708 Club. Big Maceo, I’ve sat in with Big Maceo, he was playing on Wentworth there, 3609 Wentworth, Dew Drop Inn. Miss King used to own that place. He wasn’t with Tampa then. Johnny Jones was with Tampa during this time. I disremember who was playing guitar. John Brim wasn’t with him then. John Brim came up after that. Even I have sat in with Lonnie Johnson, oh, I’ve been around for quite a little while. (laughs) Yeah, sat in with Lonnie Johnson and also Johnnie Temple. Yeah, Johnnie Temple, he was a very nice guitar player and very intelligent, too. [We played] up here on Lake Street and this place right below Sylvio’s—I forget the name of this place. Not Gatewood’s, that’s where I used to sit in with Big Bill Broonzy. See, Gatewood’s is on one side of the street and this club is on the other side, right below. I know you’ve heard of Martin’s Corner, well, just below Jim Martin’s, Gatewood’s was on the corner of Western and Lake, I think it was. Yeah, and that’s where Big Bill Broonzy would be at all the time. And I went to visit him just before he died. He thought a lot of me, Big Bill did. He was living on Cottage Grove when he died, around about there, 3700 on Cottage Grove.
When I started back out again got my little band and everything here in Chicago. I had a boy by the name of Gray-Haired Bill. Well, first started out was Floyd Jones—yeah, Floyd Jones and I, we bummed around quite a while after I came back from the army. And then from Floyd to Moody, ya understand, because during that time you wasn’t getting no bar work or nothing in Chicago then with little bands and things like that. And if you got any work they wouldn’t want over one or two pieces. Yeah. And so used to play quite a bit down there on Maxwell, but house parties and things used to be real great here in Chicago, and you could make pretty good money, too, at those kind of places. Oh, my goodness, you’d make all the way from $100 to $150, $200. Yeah, because you see the people, they would sell food and drinks and all this kind of stuff. They really used to have some real nice parties and things … here on the North Side, over round Orleans and out here on the West Side, Taylor Street and right off Maxwell on 14th Street, just different places. People used to gamble, ya know what I mean, and have parties and things. And then after I put out that record “Telephone Blues,” then I started getting, started spreading a little bit.
Well, the way that happen, I hadn’t been too long come out of the service and over here on that street that I speaks about on the record, Sedgwick Street. Well, it was—a guy there named Chester Scales and he was in the record business. He had a record shop and, really, the guy, he really was known and he knew all about the record business and about the distributors. And so I used to hang out round over there, being young and didn’t much know what I was doing anyway, because I was just over there gigging we called it then, ya know, little hustle, ya know, playing music. So I was gigging around over there, that was the time I ran into this guy we called him Gray-Haired Bill, which he’s dead now—very good guitar player, too. All the musicians they know him. Well, I ran into him and then I liked the way he played and he liked the way that I was playing, ya understand, although I was a little far experienced in music than he was. And so we teamed up and started playing there on Sedgwick Street right by this here record shop, no mikes or anything, just in the open air. And so this guy he came out named Chester Scales, and he asked me what was my name and I told him. He said, “Well, I haven’t seen you in this neighborhood long.” I told him I had just got discharged out of the army and he asked me would I like to do some recording and I told him, well, I didn’t care. I told him, because that was what I’d been looking forward to—making records. He pitched up a big deal and everything. Me, young and not knowing too much about the recording business, you understand, so I told the guy, “Okay.” And so he set up a date and everything and he told me he was setting it up on his own label, but when it wind up, Al Benson and a company—I think this company is out in California, Trilon Records—they wind up having the record and the master and everything, although I got paid for the session.3 But royalties, no, uh-uh, that’s out. I only started getting royalties and things until way, way later. Scales was—he was a real genius, if you know what I’m talking about, pretty slick. Yeah, he was my peoples (laughs), yeah, but the guy he was real slick, he really knew his business.
He didn’t want Gray-Haired Bill to record with me, ya see. Well, that was my hangout over there, ya understand, and then it was a little club right down the street from his record shop and I started playing in this little club. I forget the name—anyway, uh, I built the little club up so and it start to drawing such a bigger crowd there, so Arthur Big Boy Crudup, he came in and played there with me at the same little place right on Sedgwick Street. Then, uh, he heard me and Moody play, ya see, and he likeded Moody and then, uh, Floyd was traveling with us, too, at the time, but I don’t know where Floyd was when I got ready to record. I couldn’t get up with Floyd, because I wanted him on the session, too. I couldn’t find Floyd some kinda way, so Moody and I we went on and did the session, just he and I alone. Yeah, and so it turned out to be pretty good after all.
This may be kinda amazing to you. I wrote the song when I was on New Mill, New Caledonia in the South Pacific, that’s when I wrote the song, in the army. And that baby I was talking about I was gonna call up that was my wife, which it is today down in southern Illinois. Yeah, I was gonna call her up on the long distance telephone (laughs) and she was right here in Chicago then. That’s what that record is based on, so that’s how I come by that record. The other side the “Snooky and Moody’s Boogie,” well, I created that little sound, that little tune when I was in the army, and I used to play over there on Sedgwick Street all the time and the peoples there they went for it, and so that’s how I created that song and that’s why I put it out ’cause the peoples went for it when I was playing it in the club. I figured if I put it on wax they would go for it then—which they did. And Al Benson, he used to play it all the time here in Chicago on the air. Otherwise, before all these other musicians and Muddy and all the rest of them, there wasn’t nobody but Snooky here in Chicago. I had Chicago sewed up once for the blues.
I was the first to amplify the harp. Well, that was after I got out of the army and I went down on State Street. The place ain’t there anymore, I never forget it. I will never forget it. I’ll never forget the number, 504 State Street, that’s where I went and bought me a PA system. None of the musicians had a PA system or nothing like that, ’cause we were going to these little house parties, clubs like that. You were just playing the bare harmonica, you understand, and very few guys had pickups on their guitar then. Some of them had done got these little ole pickup, ya know what I mean? Thing stick right in the hole of the guitar, but they didn’t put out too much, so that’s why the guys wasn’t able to amplify, ’cause at that time they only had a little amplifier, just only carried one guitar. Nobody had a mike under that. Well, by me getting this experience in the army about this hookup and everything, well, I come out of the army with it and I went down on State Street and bought me a PA system and then I bought a mike, too. And then I hooked it up from that, and that’s where the big sound started at, here in Chicago. Yeah, I am the one that started it.
The way I got this name Snooky, well, they used to call Jimmy Rogers “Snook.” That’s a little pet name, ya know what I mean. And after I started playing with Floyd Jones, ya know, during my band and we’d started working together and, uh, at the same time, he had met Jimmy Rogers and he used to call Jimmy Rogers “Snooky.” And so after that, he couldn’t think of my name, and by me and Jimmy Rogers had been knowing one another ever since kids and we met together in Jew Town one time. Well, I started to calling him by his kid name and Floyd couldn’t think of my name and he started to calling me “Snooky.” And that’s how that got started and then, uh, Chester, this guy that I know that I cut the “Telephone Blues” for, he heard my name being called Snooky and he asked me how I would like to use that on record label. And then by that being my first record, ya know, that I had recorded—Moody was a nice guy, ya understand. I wanted him to be in the limelight and I wanted his name to be on the label. I asked the guy would he print the label up as, ya know, split label, two names—that’s in order to give him a name, too. Oh, he said that sounds nice for a music name for me, Snooky, and I’ve been had the name Snooky ever since. So Floyd started this Snooky and that’s how this Snooky got started.
It was back during the time right after I made the “Telephone Blues.” [Baby Face] Leroy and Lee Brown, you know this little joint I was telling you about on Sedgwick Street, another joint, oh, it wasn’t but four or five doors, a big ole place on Clybourn. Well, Leroy and Lee Brown was playing there. Now, this was back in the ’40s, around about ’48, ’49, something like that, back then. Things was really jumping pretty good then, and so Leroy and I we used to travel around quite a bit. Yeah, used to go from Chicago all through the South, all down in Louisiana, Tennessee. We used to broadcast on radio down there, we used to broadcast in Cleveland.4 I forget the name of the station. But we were living here in Chicago then and used to go down there on tour, sure did. Baby Face was a great guitar player. He was real great, only one thing was his trouble. Now, he didn’t get too drunk to play, but, ya know, for his own good, ya understand, he was just drinking himself into bad health. And he was a nice fellow, real friendly, jolly. He kept you laughing all the time. He was about the funniest guy you’d ever meet. (laughs) Floyd and I—we played together for quite some time, too. Eddie [Taylor], he worked with me for a long time.
I can’t quite recall now how long it was in between, matter of fact I’ll tell you the truth. I forgot the next record I cut after “Telephone Blues,” but I know the “Telephone Blues” it went over pretty nice, I know that. It’s been so long I done forgot the next time I cut, ’cause after the business started getting so bad it didn’t interest me no more. I was only interested in clubs and things, because the records was getting me nothing but a name, ya know?
The way I met Joe Brown through down here on Maxwell. I was in there, my records was selling pretty good, I was in there talking to Bernard, you know the one they call “Fat” down here in Jew Town? Well, he used to be good in the record business here in Chicago and he used to do all the pushing of records and things and, uh, if you weren’t in with Al Benson, ya know what I mean, your record didn’t hardly get off the ground. And so it happened that my record was on his label so that gave me a good boost. Well, this guy Bernard, well, he’s the one handling all these records down in Jew Town there. Well, you see, he was playing these records and things all day long and if he had a pretty good hit, you didn’t have to worry about it being sold. And, ya know, Jew Town is just about the heart of Chicago on a Saturday and Sunday, ya know, that’s where most of the people be. And so I was in Bernard’s place one Sunday morning. Something had went wrong with my PA system, ya know. He used to fix amplifiers, too, so he was working on my PA and he was talking to me about the record I had put out. If you want to know how your record was doing, how it was selling, and how much it was selling, you could go and ask him. He could really put you on, he could tell you what was going on. That’s what he was talking to me about as he was fixing my PA system, and Joe Brown happened to come in while Bernard was talking to me. I don’t know whether he and Joe had something going or not, but Bernard introduced me to Joe Brown and that’s where it started at, ya understand? And he was telling me about he had a label and everything. I didn’t know him from Adam. So then, uh, he talked me into recording on his label and come to find out his label wasn’t much at that time, but then I didn’t know it. And then he told me he was in with Chances—well, you see, I know Art Sheridan, he had a pretty fair label, and so he told me he’s supposed to be in with Art Sheridan, also King Record Company. So that’s how I met him. Only one thing, he was a hard man to deal with. (laughs) From the first beginning, though, he treated me real nice. He started making money, I guess, the way all of ’em go after making money, they gets a little greedy, ya know.
“Boogie Twist,” that was on JOB label. Now, that wasn’t a bad number, either. That was a pretty good number, “Boogie Twist,” and Chess wanted that and Joe wouldn’t let him have it. And the reason I didn’t go on Chess label years ago, I had my own band. Floyd and Baby Face Leroy and I wanted Homesick James to record with me, and Chess wanted to use his band. He wanted to use Muddy and Jimmy to back me up. I wanted to, ya know, go down with my own band. Well, since he didn’t want my own band to back me, well, I told him I wouldn’t record for him. And at the same time I don’t know what he had against Floyd, he didn’t want Floyd, either. After that, Floyd recorded for him, but during the time when they’s recordings just like hens’ teeth, but recordings was just that scarce back there, and so, uh, I wouldn’t record. ’Cause he didn’t want me to use my own band. I wanted to use Moody, too. See, at the time, Moody was playing with me. Matter of fact, Moody was a great help. He was a great backer, ya know, behind my music at the time and Chess didn’t want him. And I told him if I couldn’t record with my own band then skip the whole record business and that’s what I did. At that time Chess was down there on 31st and Indiana or 35th and Indiana, down along there somewhere.
See, that’s the way lot of those companies was, they was really up tight together. See, now, if they didn’t want you to record for them, they’d shut you out everywhere else. Some of them would tie you up on the contract, knowing that they ain’t gonna record you, and then they won’t release the contract. They tie you up to keep other companies from getting you and they won’t record you they own self.
Vee-Jay, well, now, Joe introduced me to them. He said he wasn’t doing much business then and he asked me how would I like to record on the Vee-Jay label. I told him it would be alright. Depends, ya know, how they pay, how they handle the record. Well, now, they treated me very nice, they treat me very nice. So he introduced me to Jimmy Bracken. He had me to come into his office and that’s when I made “Someone to Love Me,” and I think it was “Judgement Day” on the other side. Floyd Jones and, uh, I think Johnny Young was on guitar and Earl Phillips was on drums. Johnny Young, he played mandolin and guitar, too. He played guitar on that session. See, Moody was supposed to play, but Moody he was a guy he was kinda undependable. (laughs) Yeah, he just soon as show up as not to show up. He ain’t never been too interested in music, but he was a doggone good musician. Hard man to beat.
Johnny Young never did really make it too big, but he was a good musician. Now, he used to do a lot of playing with me. He was a good musician, though, sure was. He strictly stuck by his music, too. Now, he was a man that really loved music.
I played several clubs, ya know. I played the Kitty Kat, the Purple Cat, and this big club used to be on Chicago Avenue, the Ebony Lounge. It’s about half a block east of Halsted Street, yeah, so I think it was 744 West Chicago Avenue. I think that was it. Anyway, Bill Hill used to broadcast from there. Yeah, Bill Hill and also Sam Evans, he used to broadcast from there, and I used to broadcast on their program every Sunday at four o’clock. They used to have one hour every Sunday. Me and Floyd and Muddy used to broadcast from there, Muddy Waters. Otherwise, there used to be a lot of celebrities there, but Muddy and I, we was the head of the show. I was playing the harp with Muddy then, yeah, I played harp with Muddy before Walter did. And then I went on my own because I make money. I could make more money, yeah. Otherwise, when Muddy came to Chicago I was going strong, I had a band already. I had a boy by the name of Gray-Haired Bill. Willie Evans, that was his name, but everybody called him Gray-Haired Bill. Well, he wasn’t that old, but it was a mystery. I mean his head was really white. He used to work with me at the Jamboree sometimes. His face was young, but, ya know what I mean, his head was white all over. It was a mystery the way he was. And he was a real good guitar player, too. And also a boy named Richard that got killed. Well, Richard was a good guitar player, he got stabbed some kinda way. See, what it was, I had got him, I had to go out of town on a gig. I had to go down to Dyersburg, Tennessee. Homesick James and I had to go down there to do a show, and so Richard was about the best around then, ya know, in Chicago. He had about the best band going in Chicago. And at the time I was going pretty strong and I had a contract out where I was playing at this Club Jamboree and, ya know, it carries a pretty nice crowd. And the manager, which was Ross, he didn’t want me to leave and go on tour unless I could put somebody there would draw a crowd. At that time I wasn’t working no side jobs or nothing like that then. I was only after music then. Well, you see, then I wanted my job to be secured when I come back, ya know. And so I put Richard in my place to work until I came back. So he had never heard Richard. I got Richard to go out there one night through the week, and Richard he was working and he just only played weekends. I got him to go out there to do an audition. So Ross liked him—my boss he likeded him, so he told me, “Yeah, well, he can keep the club going” until me and Homesick come back. And so he went out there to play and got killed. Somebody stabbed him. And Gray-Haired Bill was with him, and they say Gray-Haired Bill tried to kick the guy off him when he was stabbing him. I don’t know exactly what year this was, but it was the early ’50s. It had to be in the early ’50s. And this kid, Willie Mingle, he used to play harmonica for Gray-Haired Bill and Richard, too. Now, he was a pretty good little harp player, too, a guy you call Willie Mingle or Mangle—something like that.5 Moody, he know him, also Floyd know him. I don’t know what happened to him. During the time when I was going pretty strong, ya know, there was a lot of little harp players coming up around here and there, but I used to blow them away. (laughs) I don’t know if you ever heard of a boy called Gene?6 He was coming up pretty good. Floyd know him. Then there was a little young kid, well, he should be around forty now, but back in this time he was really young, he was way under me. His name was Sonny Cooper. He was very good with the harmonica, yeah, very good. He told me he was going to record one time. He used to play over here on Madison Street. Yeah, he used to play there. Chuck’s Corner they used to call it [at Damen and Madison]. Yeah, I used to know quite a few real harp players. I don’t know what happened to ’em—just disappeared. And during this time what I’m talking about, Jimmy Reed wasn’t nothing but an amateur then. Yeah, that’s all Jimmy Reed was. He used to come up to the bandstand in South Chicago and ask to play a few numbers and I would let him play.
Now, years ago I used to really love music in my young days. I thought there was nothing in the world no better than music back in those days, but now I come to realize it’s just another job with me, music. Well, I do know it’s an inheritance, I do know that. Who do I think I got it from? Well, I have to be born with it in me, because I never asked nobody since I’ve been in this world to show me nothing about music. That’s right, ’cause nobody have never taught me about music or how to play a harp no way. Now, I heard Sonny Boy’s records on the air and played ’em on turntables and things. And this Rice Miller, Sonny Boy Number Two, well, back in 1934, when I was real small and young, he used to come through the South playing his harmonica, and I really think he was the best, ya know, that ever picked up harmonica. He was real good. He was one of my favorites. I don’t blow like anybody else. Matter of fact, I don’t believe I can. (laughs) Yeah, I have my own style. Just about every song I recorded I written most of them all, just about every song I recorded.
Snooky Pryor. Chicago, September 1972. (Photo Bill Greensmith)
It was a long time before I started messing with a day job. No, I wouldn’t do nothing but play music then. Around about ’62, ya know what I mean, I really started getting away from it. I remember it just as good. December in ’62, that’s when I started getting away from it, ya know, ’cause it seemed to be nothing but obstacles during that time, and so I was determined enough not to let anything get me down. I’m still the same way now. I likes to go forward as long as I is going, I don’t like to go backward. You don’t gain by going backward, you gain by going forward. But I still do some recordings then. I do a few tours and I do a few shows, festivals—if the money’s right. If not, I just remain as I am, take it easy. Matter of fact, I ain’t got too much to worry about. Father Time is catching up with me. I’m just about made now.
Interview with Snooky Pryor conducted September 1978.
1. Tom Highroller, according to Living Blues 123.
2. Will Fiddler, according to Living Blues 123.
3. This is particularly interesting, as Floyd has independently said that “Stockyard Blues” was issued on Trilon. There was definitely a tie-up between Trilon and Old Swing-Master, as some Trilon masters (by Jimmy McCracklin) were issued on Old Swing-Master. But there are no known instances of Old Swing-Master items appearing on Trilon.
4. Cleveland, Mississippi.
5. Willie Mangum, according to Living Blues 123.
6. Presumably Gene Dennis (see Living Blues 38).
Moody Jones died on March 23, 1988, and his cousin Floyd died on December 19, 1989. They leave us with one last story to celebrate their life in Chicago’s blues, and although it had to remain untold during their lifetime, it was a story that gave them a lot of laughs for almost forty years. And I think they would like us to enjoy it now.
Moody: Oh, Floyd, don’t you remember one time we went out to Sunnyland’s house one night? When we had to do some running! Old Wes Brown was shooting at us …
Floyd: Oh, man, yeah! (laughs)
Moody: Man, that was one of the terriblest times we ever had!
Floyd: Wasn’t nobody at that wheel when Wes went to shooting. Old Lucius was down behind—he say the lights have gone. (laughs) I said, “Well, start it.” He said, “I can’t start it.” I said, “Well, go somewhere, get on the sidewalk.” He went up the sidewalk, didn’t he, Moody? He went up the sidewalk.
Moody: Tore up the street sign, that’s how he got on the sidewalk with the car, and we went down an alley and met Wes coming that way shooting. And finally, after he done chased us every whichaway he could chase us, shot at us, scared us, everybody getting down in the car, nobody driving … and his wife was in the car with us. She say, “Run the red light, I’ll pay for it.” “What you gonna do if somebody hit us?” “Run the red light and I’ll pay. If we don’t make it, don’t need to pay!” But finally we got out a distance, I said, “Let’s go to Sunnyland’s house.” He was up there asleep. “Come on, man, Wes shooting at us, give us something to fight with.” He got up then and got one of those broken-off butcher knives about that long! (laughs)
Moody: He sat down on the side of the bed, “Ah, sure I got something.” He went in the kitchen and got a butcher knife! Now, how we gonna get that close to a man shooting at us?
Floyd: I said, “Man, that fella got two pistols!”
Moody: Shall I tell ’em how it started, Floyd?
Floyd: Yeah. Tell ’em all the way.
Moody: See, me and Floyd had been playing for Wes over at his tavern. Floyd had been going with Wes’s wife—had been a long time. She’s crazy about him, he’s crazy about her. Wes is watching and nobody knows it, see? So she went down to somebody’s house, me and Floyd was over at the tavern clowning around that night. That’s 24 Club—we were playing at the 24 Club on Larrabee. That’s where it was—24 Club, wasn’t it, Floyd?
Floyd: 1424 North Larrabee.
Moody: So we was clowning, kept wondering where is she at. We didn’t see her, she was round to her friend’s house. After a while I got a phone call at the tavern. “I want to speak to Moody Jones.” I went to the phone. “Is Floyd Jones there?” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Well, y’all come and get me. I’m going out on the West Side. We’re gonna drink.” So I said, “Okay, okay.” So I fooled around and got the word to Floyd, Wes sitting right there. I got the word to Floyd about where she was and everything. She was waiting on me to come and get her. We got Lucius, and, anyway, we finally sneaked out, say, “Well, we’ll see ya, Wes.” Wes was drinking, he going to bed, he’d closed the tavern. We went around there and got her. She got in the car and we went over to the Foxhole on the West Side. So we got over there to the Foxhole, they sell whiskey there, it was a tavern. But she said, “It ain’t no use us buying no whiskey, I’m going back home and get some whiskey out of the tavern.” They was living in the rear. She went all the way back there to get some whiskey out of the tavern, to get a fifth of whiskey, and old Wes was looking right at her and she didn’t know! (laughs) He came out behind her, trailed her, and she didn’t know it. She got back over there. We sitting in the front of the Foxhole just drinking that whiskey that she’d done went into the house and got all of us, me and Floyd, Lucius and Sandra—that was her name—just drinking. Ole Wes drove right up beside the car and put a spotlight in it. Somebody said, “Down, Wes!” and everybody went to the floor. When he said, “Down, Wes,” everybody went to the floor! Lucius there tried to start the car, he got it started and Floyd said, “Go ahead, man, go ahead.”
Floyd: He said, “What must I do?” I said, “Go ahead.”
Moody: And so after he started off the car, Wes he shot a couple of times. Bang! “Go ahead, man. Go somewhere!” And Lucius went around the corner, driving around the corner and got to a real, rough street—ole Wes was shooting like a cowboy … Pow! Pow! And every time he shoot everybody would go down. (laughs) So finally we got to an alley, Floyd says, “Go up the alley, go up the alley.” And we go up the alley and Wes come in there shooting, pow! Pow! Beating us in that alley. I don’t know how a man can make a U-turn in an alley! We got out of that alley, and they had been working on the streets and had the whole street tore up, wasn’t nothing smooth but the sidewalk. And Lucius come and slowing and Wes … pow! Pow! … “Go somewhere, man.” “I can’t go nowhere.” Said, “Yes, you can, go somewhere,” and he got up on the sidewalk and driving along, the car just shaking and, well, he got straightened out on the street. Said, “Go ahead.” He said, “Red light, red light.” “Dat’s alright,” Wes’s wife said, “Dat’s alright. Run it and I’ll pay for it.” “What you gonna do if a car come and kill us?” (laughs) So everybody was scared … and the sad part about it, after everything cool off—we done run all night and after everything cool off, next morning here come that woman, coming up to Floyd’s house talking about, “Is Floyd here?” I said, “Lawd have mercy! (laughs) He’ll be starting shooting at us again.” Floyd said, “You better go home.” (laughs)
Floyd: But you know the first two or three times he shot, you know what she said? Said, “Lawd have mercy, I’m unarmed.” I said, “Man, go ahead, talking about she’s unarmed, this cat got two pistols. Yeah, his and hers, too.”
Moody: Yeah, but after we got everything over with and she come down there the next day—wanted you to carry her to Indiana. I said, “Lawd have mercy!” I was scared to go home. I hadn’t been home. I was scared he’d come around there a-shooting.
Floyd: And he asked someone, “One of the fellas had my wife, didn’t he?” “Yeah, I don’t know which one.”
Moody: I explained that it wasn’t me first!
Floyd: Yeah, and we was cool. We went back there and played there next Wednesday, ah, that Friday night.
Moody: We went back and played there … Floyd had a pistol … he had a pistol in his pocket (laughs), sitting up there playing with the band, a pistol in his pocket. Oh, Floyd’s playing, Snooks blowing … “Go on, fella” … “Git it, Buddy, git it”—he tell me to git it!
Floyd: Wes sitting out here looking—he looking too and then, uh …
Moody: Floyd gonna be bad, “I ain’t scared to play for him, I got my gun” … ooh (laughs)
Floyd: Ole Snook played—what was he playing? “Caldonia”—I guess he must have played it an hour and a half! And I said, “Well, this is the time to hang it up now!”
Moody: When was that? That’s back about ’49?
Floyd: Uh-huh—’49.
Moody: ’48 or ’49, we was cutting up around there that time.
Floyd: ’48—yeah, that was ’48. But don’t you put that in no magazine—that cat’s still living—no kidding! I tell you!