In the early 1970s, Mike Leadbitter told me of meeting Jimmy Thomas, a former vocalist with Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm, who, improbable as it may seem, was living in West London. Following Mike’s death and my own increasing interest in all things Kings of Rhythm, I’d often reflected on his words, but having heard no recent mention of his whereabouts, I’d come to the conclusion that he must have returned to the United States. Imagine my surprise when in 1980 Cilla Huggins obtained the telephone number that led straight to our man, who was living within a stone’s throw of the Queens Park Rangers grounds in West London.
Jimmy “Popeye” Thomas was born in Osceola, Arkansas, on January 20, 1939. Raised by his aunt and uncle, he grew up listening to the records of Big Maceo, Tampa Red, Walter Davis, and Sonny Boy Williamson, among others. Osceola in the 1940s and 1950s was a busy and prosperous small Southern town that supported several clubs and juke joints along with a small, but healthy, blues scene. The most popular artist was undoubtedly Albert King, then still known locally as Albert Nelson. While still in his teens Jimmy formed his first band, the Rock and Roll Trays, performing popular R&B and blues, appearing regularly at local venues in and around Osceola.
It was upon Albert King’s recommendation that Jimmy traveled to East St. Louis to audition for Ike Turner, joining the popular Kings of Rhythm in early 1958. Closely followed by Tommy Hodge, the pair were replacements for the recently departed Clayton Love. It would also signal the beginning of a gradual shift in Ike Turner’s musical direction, one that would take him from his blues base to one that featured an increasing amount of R&B and vocal group material.
The period encompassing the years 1956–1960 was arguably the most creative and inspirational in the Kings of Rhythm’s history. Ike Turner, having made the transition from piano to guitar, found a truly unique style that set him apart from all others. A rock-solid band, a succession of outstanding vocalists, and some truly exciting records—in particular, their period with Federal—secured Turner’s and the band’s reputation.
Apart from a demo recorded in Memphis with the Rock and Roll Trays, Jimmy’s first serious foray into the recording studio came when the Kings of Rhythm traveled to Cobra/Artistic Records in Chicago for a marathon session. The band accompanied Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, and Betty Everett, as well as recording numerous sides of their own, mostly featuring the vocal talents of Jackie Brenston and Tommy Hodge. Jimmy was relegated to backing vocalist on a couple of the sides. In recent years he has identified many of the key personnel, subsequently unraveling many previous inconsistencies in the Cobra/Artistic discography. In 1959 he recorded for the Granite City, Illinois–based Stevens Records along with Ike and the band’s rhythm section. The wonderfully bizarre “Jack Rabbit” and the storming rocker “Hey-Hey” were issued under the Ike Turner pseudonym Icky Renrut.
Jimmy Thomas was a vocalist with Ike Turner for eight years, during which time he had several records issued under his own name on the Sue, Sonja, and Sputnik labels. He witnessed many significant changes for both Ike and the band. The advent of Tina Turner, their transition from a popular local St. Louis act, through to the early days of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue on the “chitlin’ circuit,” to their emergence as one of the top R&B acts in the country.
Leaving Ike and Tina in 1966, Jimmy first settled in Los Angeles working local jobs and recording for Mirwood before eventually relocating to London in 1968. In the intervening years there has been an album on Contempo Records and a handful of singles, including his own Osceola Records. Jimmy continues to live and perform in England.
Cilla Huggins and I first met Jimmy one Saturday afternoon in June 1980 for what turned out to be the first of many enlightening and memorable meetings. A gifted storyteller with a remarkably detailed memory and the good-natured patience to answer our unending questions, he approached the task with a great deal of good humor. That initial meeting ran into the early hours of Sunday morning before we finally left, our sides aching from having laughed so much. Jimmy Thomas is a tireless R&B enthusiast. I don’t know of many people who would phone you at eight o’clock in the morning to tell you the name of a club that had burned down twenty years previously, the name having just returned to him in a dream! Thanks, Jim.
—Bill Greensmith
Still Hanging Right on in There—Dirty Jim Tells All: Jimmy Thomas Interview
Bill Greensmith and Cilla Huggins
Blues Unlimited #140/141 (Spring/Winter 1981)
I was raised by my uncle and aunt. My mother had me when she was fourteen or something, and my father, I never really knew him, but I knew his family, but, like, he split. He was married, I think, or something like that, when he got my old lady pregnant. She was just a girl. My grandfather was a big black man. My ancestry must be from West Africa, ’cause he looked like them. I’ve only known the characteristics of the people from West Africa since I’ve been in England.
This man was a real rich farmer, black farmer in Osceola, Nick Thomas. And there were a lot of sons, lot of boys, and they were real tear-aways, man. Anyway, he got my old lady pregnant, she had me, he split, and my uncle and aunt—my mother’s sister and her husband—raised me. And my mother moved to Saginaw, Michigan. So that was my parents. I was still a few months old when my mother moved. I never knew my father, though I knew his brothers and things, my uncles. I was never really interested in him. I don’t know where he moved to. I think maybe Detroit, because everybody went up north somewhere. My uncle and aunt, I always knew that they weren’t my mother and father. In other words, there was no hiding it or nothing like that. I knew everything, they brought me up very good, told me exactly what was happening.
I don’t know a great deal about the history of my family on my mother’s side. I know that they were from Greenville, Mississippi, some of them anyway. They had a portrait that used to hang in the house of my great-grandmother. She was a Seminole Indian and I know they come from Mississippi. My mother’s name was Ollie Booker.
Any relation to Charley Booker?
I don’t know anything about my family on my mother’s side. I could have been, but it’s something I never did delve into. My mother used to come back once a year, holidays and things, to see me. When I joined Ike and started traveling, played Saginaw, all my folks on my uncle’s side, they were all in Saginaw. Saginaw was the place for my folks, so when I went there it was like a homecoming, although I knew nothing about Saginaw. My uncle’s name was Isom, Willie Isom; they called him Shag, that was because he had really shaggy hair. And the Isoms they were really great people. That was on my mother’s sister’s husband’s side, who was acting as my father. It was like a homecoming playing Saginaw. It was as if I was playing Osceola, the kind of reception. They nicknamed me Popeye as a kid; that’s what they used to call me. I suppose I had tight eyes. If you’re short they call you Slim, if you’re slim they call you Shorty. My mother lives in California now.
Jimmy Thomas. Osceola, Arkansas, c. 1956. (Photo Stella Reeder)
So what got you interested in music?
Well, shit, let me see now, we would have music classes in school, but, you know, it went in one ear and out the other. What it was, as a little kid I can remember as far back as I can go. My uncle and aunt they were very much, you know, music. What do you call it when somebody supports music? You know, local bands and things. They really dug it. That’s how I come to know Albert King and people like that, old blues piano players. They bought a piano and used to have parties and things at the house, Albert and cats would come around, man, and play the piano and guitars.
And I used to sing along with the 78 records, man. They used to have a collection. Wow, if I’d known then like I know now I’d have been a rich man! They had, like, Walter Davis, Big Maceo, they had all them records, man, Tampa Red and all that shit. When I was a little tiny kid, man, I used to listen to them, I used to play ’em. I used to really dig “Going Down Slow” and Walter Davis. I used to like “Detroit Blues” by Tampa Red and all them kind of things. I weren’t much more than a toddler, but I could remember the words. I used to learn the words, man, it was great. I used to sing along with the record player.
Although they bought a piano, I wasn’t all that interested in learning to play it. I was interested in singing more than anything. I didn’t care about playing, although I could pick out tunes. Even at the earliest age I can remember I always wanted to write the songs that I sang. Although I learnt the songs off the records and stuff, I used that as a guide to teach me something new. I would go to the piano, I learnt how to play the piano. I would be trying to pick out new melodies and thinking up new words.
There was a guy—I can’t remember his last name, but I can see him in my mind’s eye—his name was Lonzo, it was either Lonzo or Alonzo. This guy, man, was one of the baddest piano players that I’ve ever heard. Reflecting back, maybe he wasn’t all that good, but to me—this guy, his fingers were like ballet dancers. Anyway, Lonzo, Albert King, all them guys. Hoss, there was a guy named Hoss, a piano player in Osceola, he was in the time of Alvin somebody.1 Anyway, Hoss was his rival, they were supposed to be the baddest piano players around Osceola. These guys, man, they used to come around, my old man he bought him a electric guitar, he thought he wanted to be a little novice, you know. Albert taught him a few chords and stuff, but there was nothing serious, it was fun, you know.
Albert Nelson, that’s his real name, we used to call him Black Albert. That was his nickname around town. Everybody, “Hey, Black Albert.” He used to drive a big trailer truck for a living, for his normal job, hauling seeds, cotton seeds. I was pretty young, but I was a man. I knew what I was doing. Music was a natural thing, it wasn’t no thing that I had to struggle to get into or nothing. And there was quite a few guys around school like me, we would just beat on tin pans, anything. You know shoowop, Five Royales and people like that came out. The Clovers and all that.
Did you have any gospel experience?
A bit, not a lot. My gospel experience was limited to the local church, which I wasn’t forced to go to, which I didn’t believe in anyway. I was only there for the chicks. If you didn’t go to the church you were left out, you couldn’t get any of the chicks, because everybody had to go to church on Sunday. You know choir practices, things like that, so you want to get in the choir, because that’s where everybody was, you had more fun. And you get a chance to be away from home sometimes, go and visit other churches. I was never a serious gospel singer, but I always loved gospel groups like the Five Blind Boys, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, and all them, Mighty Clouds of Joy.
Did you see the In the Groove Boys?
Yeah, I saw the In the Groove Boys playing a lot of times. ’Cause my old man, like a town like that in the South you always get took around to these juke joints and stuff with your old man. They be drinking beer and stuff Sunday afternoon, things like that, dress me up, show me off—loved it. The T-99, that was a little bit later, after I got a little bit older. There were clubs like Distance’s place. Distance was a guy who had a club outside of Osceola, one of them juke joints where everybody went.
What was it like there?
Oh, fucking great, man, great. Lovely hamburgers, that’s what I remember, I loved hamburgers. Distance had one eye.
I tell you one that was real famous. In your travels did you ever hear of a club called the State Line Club, north of Blytheville? Missouri and Arkansas state line. That’s where everybody used to go to get the liquor and stuff, man, oh, it was great. Let’s see, there was the State Line Club, there was Distance’s, these places were outside [of town]. I can’t remember who ran the State Line, but it was a club where all the cats from Memphis and places used to come up [to], like Wolf and all them guys. It was up north of Blytheville, and Blytheville was eighteen miles north of Osceola, and then the State Line was about three miles north of Blytheville. Blytheville is the first town you come to on Highway 61 coming south from St. Louis after you cross the Arkansas state line. Let’s see, there’s another place I wanted to tell you about, man. This place was out on Highway 40 going west of Osceola. Oh, shit, what was this guy’s name? It’ll come to me later, these joints outside town where people get in their cars.
Distance was west of town. I got him confused with another club north of town, sort of northwest between Osceola and Luxora called … a guy named Black Willie. Now, Black Willie’s place was another hot place, man. It burnt down. It burnt down before I even left.
Would this be Willie Bloom’s?
No, Willie Bloom’s was in town. That was our little teenage hangout. It used to be a grown-up club, but for some reason he turned it over to us. Oh, yeah, shit—Bloom’s, man, that was our place. No playing there, it was just a café, just a hangout spot. It wasn’t a joint, but I think they used to gamble. They used to have a gambling joint somewhere in the back, back of his house somewhere, but we never knew, we never went in there. We never knew about that place, we were just in the café part.2
Yeah, Black Willie’s was another party place everybody went there. They used to have ball games out there. Every Sunday was a ball game and there was always some band, either Little Walter [Jefferson] and them, Albert King—somebody would be playing out there all the time.
Did you get name bands out there?
To us they were big names. But Albert, to me, man, he’s the epitome of a good man, because he always tried to help us and encourage us in every way.
Let’s see, George York’s place, that was a café. He also had a hotel that was right on the railroad. And I remember George York had a bald head. He was the first Kojak I’d ever seen, shaved. Real nice man. I remember his wife died when I was real, real little. And his café was right there on the railroad tracks. The In the Groove Boys played there. I mean every joint, all the guys who was around they played in every joint, there was no residencies, everybody moved around, you know, up and down Highway 61, out Highway 40, all the joints. All in between there was loads. There was so many joints down Wilson, Arkansas.
Bootlegger’s Alley?
Oh, right, man, Bootlegger’s Alley was like a forerunner. This was before the T-99. It survived after the T-99, but the popularity was gone. Bootlegger’s Alley was this little area, one joint and a couple of houses, and the joint was owned by a guy they called Bootlegger. And Bootlegger was an ugly cat, man. This cat he had one eye, but a really nice man. I can remember him when I was a kid. They used to gamble there, all the joints would be gambling, pitching dice and shit. Then came the T-99 and everybody started going there. Bootlegger’s Alley would have music—now, I’m really going back now, man. I was so small then my uncle would take me around and sit my little ass up on the crap table—a toddler, I suppose.
Albert King with Baby Sister and Louise Reeder outside of T-99, 1953. (Photo Stella Reeder)
What about the T-99?
In the T-99 it was fun. That’s the only way you can describe it, fun. M. C. Reeder was the guy that owned it. M. C. was kinda fat, kinda short, wore big hats. Dressed kind of smart all the time, wore string ties and he dabbled in playing saxophone. He was a novice. He dug it, but he was alright. He could honk, he was a honker. Yeah, Jay McNeely, that was his thing. There was one tune he would always want to play when he’d come up on stage and he used to bug us. We liked for him to come up and play with us sometime, because he owned the club for a start, he paid us! “Cornbread,” that was his favorite thing and that was it, everybody would be up on they feet, everybody would be clappin’ and slappin’ … It was good fun. M. C., yeah, he was a great guy, man.
He had a beauty shop in the same building—he’d expanded, man. It was a hotel, it was a beauty shop, it was a club, it was everything, gambling joint. But M. C.—well, I don’t know if I should say this. Next time you meet somebody from down there you ask them if they know of this. There was a rumor that M. C. was supposed to have three nuts. (laughing) I’m telling you, it’s true. He was supposed to have three nuts! This is true, he was known for that.
How did this tie in with the beauty shop?
Oh, yeah, the beauty shop. I tell you what it was, here’s how it come about, the beauty shop. M. C. added the beauty shop on because he was screwing two sisters, right? He started screwing the older sister, then he started screwing the younger sister, and they were both really fine, man. I’m telling you, to us they were like—Marilyn Monroe didn’t have nothing on them chicks. I’m sure my memory’s pretty accurate on that, they were really beautiful chicks. Black chicks, fair-skin chicks, big tits, everything.
M. C. Reeder. Memphis, Tennessee, c. 1945. (Photo Stella Reeder)
Nobody could believe it. That’s probably how he got that reputation of having three nuts. People would kill, man, you know. Chicks would be jealous down there, carry knives, razors, you know what I mean. They would be chasing cats with bricks (laughs), you don’t cheat. Everybody was cheating, but don’t get caught. Your old lady catch you cheating, Jack, you got a real problem.
And nobody could understand it, man, how M. C. had these two chicks. He got the first one and he built the hotel. And he got the second one and he built the beauty shop and both of them was running the beauty shop. There was one called Baby Sister, she was the youngest and he had her as well, and they run that whole complex with M. C. They were sisters and they were beautiful and they knew about the other one. Totally accepted. And we used to be, man … we’d have our tongues hanging out. After we grew up a bit, then, they would begin to chase us a bit. M. C. got toppled off his throne after awhile. But that cat was known for that. That’s what his whole thing was supposed to have been.
Black Matt?
I’m trying to remember about Black Matt. He was running a café. I’m trying to remember where it was. I don’t know what George York’s connection was with Black Matt, there was some connection. Black Matt, I know he was supposed to be working for the police, a snitch as they call it. Because everybody—there was whiskey stills and shit, man. People was doing bootleg liquor and stuff, all kinds of stuff was going down. But everybody knew that he was a snitch or whatever, so they accepted him as that. They just knew Black Matt.
Matter of fact, my old man, my uncle Shag knocked his ass off, knocked him out, one punch put him right out. (laughs) This was famous around town, man, I’m telling you, this was famous. Because Black Matt pulled a gun on my uncle, in his face. This was out at Distance’s club.
I can’t remember what it was about, but my uncle he was a really nice-looking guy, he looked like a black Errol Flynn, because he was fair-skinned. He really was a nice—chicks loved him, man, and I think Black Matt was really jealous of him. But he pulled this gun on him and put it in his face and snapped it. He actually pulled the trigger and it snapped, it missed. When I say missed, it didn’t fire and it was loaded. It went just like that, man, tried to kill my uncle. And my uncle hit him and there was a crowd, everybody duckin’, “Oh my God!” whatever. My uncle didn’t give him a second chance, boom, and the cat went down. They used to tell that story a lot. That was famous around town.
So Black Matt wasn’t exactly one of my favorite characters back in them days. I mean we didn’t have anything against him, and later he apologized and begged my uncle to forgive him and all of that stuff. Because my uncle, everybody liked him, he was a good lad, he was alright. And they knew Black Matt was a snitch anyway, so they cooled it out. But my uncle used to say, “Watch him, man, don’t you never have anything to do with that guy.”
George York, he was like M. C., he owned a club right on the railroad tracks, located right across from the light plant, the power plant. He was giving the guys work, between him and M. C., because they were the two main joints in town. They had all the connections and everything and they paid the guys, put money up for them. George York also had a hotel in the back of the place, a big hotel right along the railroad tracks.
So the guys would be in town, they weren’t earning no money in them days, they probably played for fifty cents. So he was giving them food and shelter and putting money in their pockets, helping them buy their instruments and everything, so he was like a godfather around town, George York. My old man, he was friends with all them guys. I don’t know, they were like mentors, they knew him, they knew me and the situation. My uncle was a real good guy. I mean even taking me, his wife’s sister’s kid. Looking back on it now, he was a really well respected man. Because he was a young guy, all the chicks wanted him and he was hooked up with this lady and not even his own kid, and, man, he was really proud of me all the time.
So that’s how I got to know, got help from Albert King, through his respect, you know. Because Albert’s a great guy, he always tried to help somebody. Yeah, Black Albert, Big Foot Albert. Yeah, Albert, everybody liked him, too. He’d drive a truck all week hauling them cotton seeds and things, whatever he was hauling, and playing his guitar on weekends. They used to play old Hofners. I remember them big old blond guitars they used to have, electric pickups on them, old Hofners, Epiphones, things like that.
I was so young, man, but the In the Groove Boys were local yokels as far as we were concerned, but to me they were fantastic. Now, them guys, they were old guys. As I grew up in school and me and my boys started to play for real, them guys had been around for ages. And they would sort of help us along, and they would come and play with us sometime, giving us pointers. And they were learning off of us as well, because we were playing another kind of music. In other words, we were doing the shoo-wop stuff, but they were very much just blues. You know, this was after the Midnighters and all them cats came on the scene, because we was into that—WDIA and all that.3
Osceola was buzzing Saturday night. Shit, yeah, Osceola was hot. It was tiny, it was small, but, boy, it was hot. I suppose because it was on the road to Memphis. It was one of the obvious places between Memphis and St. Louis. It was even hipper than Cairo and all them places which were bigger towns. Yeah, Osceola was much hipper; matter of fact, Osceola surpassed Blytheville in popularity. Every joint, every café there was gambling. I mean legitimate, supposed to be cafés. You know, in the back or somewhere off the side somewhere there was a little crap house, man, shooting craps.
Arthur Woods, he had a little café. Now, his joint was legit. I mean, they really went there for a meal and things like that, drink beer and listen to the jukebox. Arthur Woods, and his wife’s name was Pearl. They were really nice people.
I didn’t know too much about Blytheville, but I’ll tell you there was Pearl’s Grill. That’s where all the teenagers hang out, like Bloom’s in Osceola, that was the equivalent. There was two clubs in particular, but I can’t remember their names for the life of me.
There was another group called the Footstompers or Footwarmers, something like that, somebody and the Footwarmers. They always used to alter around anyway. Sometimes Albert Nelson’s band would be the Footwarmers or the In the Groove Boys, they all used to alter around.
There was a rivalry between George York’s place and the T-99. Then somebody opened another club called the Club Morocco, which was just a street over from the T-99, and these cats were great rivals. After the Morocco opened up that’s when me and my cats were on the scene, just little ole schoolboys. It was very much a novice thing, and we had all the young kids around following us. Sometimes [Eddie] Snow would play with us. Then we had another group that was rivaling us. Me and my group called ourselves the Rock and Roll Trays. I don’t know why the hell we called ourselves that. It didn’t make no sense, but it just sounded good! We were doing things like “All Shook Up” and stuff like that, which was very much the vogue, and so we had all the little girls and things following us around.
The piano player we called Maestro, Walter Lee. Can’t remember what Lee’s last name was. Then there was Walter Jefferson, we stole Walter Jefferson from … he worked in all them local bands. He was so good everybody wanted him, but he was based up around Cairo, Illinois, a lot. And whenever he was in town he would always stay at the T-99. And they had a ballpark there as well, baseball park out back. Because it was a whole plot of land and it started off just being a club. Then he built a two-story hotel which was just like an army barracks reflecting back. (laughs) It was on the north side of town across the railroad tracks. So they had a ballpark out there, and people used to screen off the porch and that was the grandstand. People used to watch the ball game. So Little Walter [Jefferson] joined us. Snow would play with us sometimes, and sometimes Alvin would play with us. Alvin played with Little Walter [Jefferson]. Albert King and all the top local guys that was around. Earl Hooker and all them guys. Now, let’s see, who else was around? This guy Hoss. Now, Hoss had long fingers. I remember there was a rivalry between Hoss and Alvin. Now, Alvin could play, he was a real blues and boogie-woogie man. Alvin and Hoss both, they were pretty good musicians, technically speaking. They were always trying to correct people. The people that would come in anywhere, didn’t matter about the bars. Them guys would always be trying to show them some discipline and show them about tone. They were always trying to help in that way, although they were very unassuming guys. But they had a great rivalry between them and they were old guys, too.
One thing I remember distinctly about their rivalry was that Alvin had short fingers, short little stubby fingers, but he was fast, man. Hoss used to criticize him, saying that he couldn’t play because he had short fingers, “Man, whoever heard of a fucking piano player with short fingers?” I remember Hoss’s fingers were really long and slim. This cat could reach a span like that and they used to argue about lengths of fingers, and the guy said, “It ain’t never been written nowhere that a cat with short fingers can’t play piano.” And he said, “Yeah, man, I’ve never heard of anybody with short fingers being a good piano player.” It was always that kind of little rivalry thing, but they were the best of buddies and them guys would alternate in and out of the band.
There was no set pattern of musicians in any particular group, even in Albert King’s band. All them guys, I suppose some would leave and some would be working whatever, because everybody had to sort of subsidize their thing. But everybody played in all the clubs, there was no sort of permanent residency for nobody. Everybody just moved around among each other, that’s why it was so good. You had a chance to work with all those different guys.
All the musicians sort of drifted between Osceola and Cairo, it was like a permanent gypsyish life for them. I guess they hit all them towns in between, they’d be there.
Lee Taylor, piano player?
Yeah, he was good. He didn’t play with us. He was an old cat, he was like Albert King’s thing. Let’s see, he used to play mostly by himself, I think. I’m not sure, because at that time I was pretty small. He used to come around our house and play. I’m not sure if he played with bands much. I don’t think he did, but I’m sure he did play with some bands sometimes, because he was so hot and he was really good, from what I remember. Lee Taylor, this cat was known to be a thief. Yeah, Light-Fingered Lee! No shit. Yeah, everybody knew because he’d been in jail for stealing and shit, but he was honest among his friends.
What kind of stuff would he play?
Oh, boogie-woogie, blues, barrelhouse. He was good, too. He could thump that shit out, boy. Lee Taylor was bad. I knew he was bad, because my old man said so. He used to sound good to me, but my old man knew, he had good taste. That’s how I knew about all them blues cats like Maceo, because he had all that kind of shit. That was the records he always bought, Sonny Boy and all them. I grew up on that shit. So if he said Lee Taylor was bad … I don’t know whatever happened to him, he must have been about thirty or forty then.
But, yeah, Little Walter, he was something else. He’d have a jug of wine sitting by him and he’d sit on a stool with his guitar, and, god, the guy could play, man, I mean really make a guitar talk, make it weep. He was a young guy, but he was older than us, but he fitted in with us better than Snow and them cats, because they were much older. But they all wanted to play with us because we were hot.
Walter Lee played piano, Aubrey Wallace played drums, sometimes we switch around and I’d get on the drums. But we finally got Frank Seals, Son Seals, to play drums, he was the permanent drummer. I didn’t know he played guitar until you showed me that picture of him playing guitar. He always used to pick up the guitar and try and play. He was alright, he was learning, but his main thing was a drummer. He was our drummer.
Wilson, Arkansas, was our first out-of-town gig as a band, me and my boys. I remember that, man, we packed up into cars. Shit, I remember we went to Memphis to do a demo. It was some guys, it was Joe Harris, I think he’s dead now. He used to work with my uncle, and Joe had lots of brothers. And one of his brothers was named Volley, and they used to live in Toledo, Ohio, and so to us they were slick, man. They came down driving big cars, Big Apple hats and shit, them cats they knew everything to us. They recognized that we were good and being from cities up north, to hear a compliment from them—well, hey, man, we must be pretty good. We must be cookin’.
And them guys, Volley and his partner named Chuck, they decide to manage us. They talked to our parents and things, “We’re gonna manage these boys, we’re gonna make sure they gonna be alright, they good,” this and that. So they started getting us gigs out of town, outside Osceola in little towns like Grider, Wilson, Lepanto. Shit. (laughing) Oh, all them little places, man. They even used to get us white gigs. I mean, down there then to play a white gig? Albert King was one of the only guys that was doing white gigs.
White gigs like out in Little River. There’s a place called Little River, Arkansas, which was really redneck country, wasn’t no niggers out there. Niggers didn’t like it around Little River, man, but it was more myth than anything else. It wasn’t really as bad as that. But I remember we played Little River and they wanted us there every week. It was really hot. We was smokin’, because we was doing all Chuck Berry’s stuff—that was my idol, Chuck Berry. I mean, shit, “Maybellene” and things like that used to get audiences standing on tables and chairs.
So Chuck and Volley being our managers were getting us gigs all over the place—white, black, all kind of clubs—and they wanted to take us back up to Ohio. They wanted to take us to Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, and all up there. We wasn’t too sure about that, but we didn’t care, man. They was delivering the goods, so we didn’t care, man, whatever they say, but going up north, well, I don’t know. So Chuck and Volley they decided that they were going to get us to make a record. Now, to us that’s what it meant, but in fact it was just a demo. They were going to take the thing and try and do … you know, because we knew nothing.
They took us to Memphis, some little ole place down on Beale Street. That was my first encounter with a recording studio and it was a bullshit little studio, but nevertheless to us it was big-time. And, man, we got in there, we saw microphones and things, little booth there. I was the only one that wasn’t nervous. To me it was a natural—I was just fascinated by the equipment.
It was called “There’s No Need of Crying,” and the other side of it was called “Two More Days,” and I wrote both the songs. I kept it for a long time. I think I wore it out. They pressed up about twenty-five or thirty of them just so we could give them around to our friends. Each one of us had a few. I was trying to learn to write songs then and they wasn’t bad. I modeled “Two More Days” on Frankie Lymon. Oh, man, pride. We was bursting open with pride and we was getting gigs and we was really getting hot, starting fights and things. When I say starting fights, I mean chicks would be clamoring over us and guys want to beat us up! Oh, it was hot, man.
Everybody sang. Everybody played something and sang. I would just sing and I would kick a little drums now and then and I had me a little thing I could play on piano. I had a couple of boogie-woogie things I could play, but we would just swap around. There was no set thing in the band, it was just a good-time thing. We were just doing it having fun, but we knew that—well, some of us knew that it was going to be our profession. I certainly knew that it was gonna be mine, and I think that Son Seals knew it was gonna be his. And Aubrey Wallace, the other boy who sang and played a little drums as well, I think he had an idea that he wanted to be professional. But the rest of the guys got into preaching and all kinds of stuff and getting married. Some of them never got off the ground.
What about Frank Seals?
I’m glad you talked to me about Son Seals. I’m really glad that that’s the same guy. His old man was just a character. He had a little café, little greasy-spoon café, and he used to push his little thing around on wheels, selling pig ears and things, pig tails, pig feet, yeah, Son Seals’s old man.
No, he was just an old guy, man. He was really a character. I suppose he would be like your typical East Ender who would sell what you call them, snails—winkles and all that. Used to hang out outside all the joints. That’s what the old man was and he had a little old greasy-spoon thing that he ran over in Laney Quarters. They called it Laney Quarters, it was shanty houses and shit. Well, they wasn’t really shanties, they was alright. The houses were owned by a man named Mr. Laney, he was most of the niggers’ landlord in the west side of Osceola. Yeah, Mr. Laney, he owned most of the property.4
We was like brothers, man. Shit, that’s where it all began with us. Son wasn’t on that demo tape. I was sorry too, because I remember he was around. And a lot of the guys—because we was considered a better class of kid, if you like, than Son Seals. I mean, Son Seals—it was real down there, man. (laughing) This cat was drinking wine at ten, you know what I mean? He was hanging out! Really, he was. Like he was a real tramp, man, tramp kid. But he was cool, man. We loved him, he was great.
At first we didn’t like him. Well, they didn’t like him much. Aubrey, Walter Lee, and all them guys, they didn’t like him too much. They used to look at him … well, Frank used to walk around, his old shirttail hanging out, dusty old hair everywhere, man. He just didn’t care. He didn’t comb his hair and his eyes all half-mast, but he’d fight, so nobody fuck with him, nobody messed with him, you didn’t talk to him wrong. But he was just like that, guys—“You dirty …” “Yeah, but I’ll kick your ass if you mess with me,” so everybody sort of just talked about him and stood off. “You funky, man, you smell, Jack.” He’d be beating the drums and shit, “God damn I don’t wanna stand—I don’t wanna stand by him, man. Why don’t you bathe, nigger, wash your nasty ass?”
But, no, he was okay, man. He cleaned up and everything, and one of the reasons why Frank got accepted was because I dug him and my old man dug him too. He used to come over to our place, and we had a nice place. Old man was really clever, he could build anything, do anything. So I was getting support all round, whoever my friends were; if I wanted to bring them home it was cool. And Son Seals started coming around to my place a lot. I was the only one who wanted to associate with the guy and he started to clean up.
We did that demo and he wasn’t on it, because they didn’t want him on it or something. I can’t remember now what the politics were, but Walter Lee played drums. Walter Lee and Aubrey sort of switched around on it, I think. Aubrey, he played drums, really he was a singer, like I said. We all tried. First thing we tried to do as we sang was try to play the drums when we wasn’t singing. If it was my turn to sing, you play the drums. Everybody had their little thing and so we just swapped around like that till Son Seals joined the band, and when he joined the band he was the real drummer.
He couldn’t sing real good. Now, what was his song? Wait a minute—he had one favorite song, “Jenny Jenny,” Little Richard’s thing. That was his song and that was about the only song he sang. I don’t know, maybe one more. But he was the real drummer and then it started to take the shape of a real band. Then Little Walter joined us and he was the guitar player, he was bad. And Walter Lee started playing the piano. He was the real piano player, and myself was the real singer and Aubrey Wallace also sang. And we had a girl name of Bobbie Clayton. She used to sing with us as well, and we used to do Shirley and Lee tunes and things like that. We used to have a lot of fun. Barbara Jean Clayton, she’s probably married with a houseful of babies like the rest of them did. Most of the chicks did that I grew up with.
Robert Lee?
Oh, yeah, a guitar player from Osceola. He was one of the guys from my little group when we would mess around the T-99 and all the little clubs. I don’t know if that was his whole name, or was it Robert Lee something? But he was from Osceola and he was at least five years older than me.
When we started playing we were the hottest thing around there. There wasn’t no competition. Albert had gone, he’d moved.5 The only competition we had was from the bands from Memphis, the big bands. I mean we gave them hell, we really did once we found a format, found how to structure things, you know, climaxing shows and things.
People like Bobby Bland, man, we used to be on stage with people like that, whenever they would come to the T-99 and gig. We wouldn’t back them, we’d be there, they’d come on and emcee would always, “Hey, listen give our boys a shot, we got our boys here come on and do … hey, yeah …” So Bobby would get on the mike and say, “Yeah, we got some boys here, little Popeye and his group, the Trays,” or whatever we started calling ourselves, all sorts of things. “You know, get them up and do a number.” We’d get up and do “All Shook Up” or something. We’d tackle any kind of song, not just rock ’n’ roll, anything. And we’d get up and break the house down, blow the roof off the thing!
And guys like Bobby and them, “Hey, these boys is great,” and he’d get me up and I’d sing one of his songs like “Don’t Want No Woman,” which was one of my favorites by him at the time. My voice wasn’t strong like his, but I’d be trying to copy him, you know. And shit, man, he’d come and he’d sing with us, he’d start playing the number, get his band back on stage, “Hey, boy, come on and sing this song with me,” things like that. We would always blow with them, whoever was around.
Did these guys always bring their own musicians?
Oh, yeah, they had their own bands, B. B., all them guys. T-99 was the place, that’s where everybody played. Then the Morocco got hot and that became the T-99’s main rival. Because George York’s wasn’t really big enough to hold the kind of people that them cats drew, but the ’9 was big enough.
Howlin’ Wolf?
Loved Howlin’ Wolf. Wolf used to play a lot at the State Line Club. My old man used to take me up there. In fact, that’s where I first saw Howlin’ Wolf. He had a whole band, saxophones, he had everything. Them cats come from Memphis, they were professionals to us. They were really big guys. Most of them had horns in them days. Oh, man, he was big shit to us! That just goes to show you how low down the scale we were! We was on the floor, man. But it was great, because them guys they taught us a lot. They liked for us to come around and watch ’em, try to copy them. We never tried to copy no mannerisms, but voices and things. I think that is why I’ve got a versatile voice now. I can sing in nearly any register. That’s because I used to try and sing like Howlin’ Wolf and all of ’em, man (sings “How Many More Years”). I used to love it, man.
Calvin Newborn and them? We didn’t particularly care about Calvin and Phineas Newborn very much. They were verging on jazz a lot, and in them days jazz wasn’t really our thing. I mean, I really didn’t get into jazz until later.
Junior Parker?
Yeah, Junior Parker, that was another one. Usually wherever Bobby Bland was playing Junior was either—well, I don’t know how it was set up, but he was either there by himself or later on he got a band. Now, I don’t know if he played like that all around, but when he would come up there it was usually Junior Parker and Bobby Bland. I never knew Junior Parker very much. When I say very much, he would come and maybe get up and do a number at that point. You’d hear about him on the radio, you know, ’cause he was making records, but it wasn’t until later when he come into his own right that he meant anything to us. We didn’t follow his career very much.
Did you ever see Matt Murphy?
Guitar Murphy? Baddest guitar player ever lived. Yeah, man, yeah! Guitar Murphy, that guy, we used to say he had Highlight on his fingers he was so fast. Highlight was a chemical supposed used to … I think it was probably a myth. Suppose if you got a mule or a dog that was kinda sick and you didn’t want to put him down, just want him to kind of leave, you didn’t have the heart to put him down, you’d just put a drop of Highlight on his ass and he’d run himself to death! That’s what it was supposed to be. It must have been some kind of acid stuff, some very hot stuff.
No, Guitar Murphy, this cat, man, his fingers, he used to walk around squeezing a rubber ball all the time, keep his fingers nimble. This guy was bad. I saw Murphy with—let’s see … I saw him in Chicago later after I joined Ike and them. That’s when I got to meet him and got to know him, otherwise he was like a god. But he was just a guitar player that came over with some bands. He was with Bobby Bland. I don’t know, I think he came over with Rosco Gordon. Because all them guys was on the higher scale, but all them guys they was just country boys, so they just played, like, whoever had a gig this week somewhere. They all knew each other’s numbers, they were all broadcasting together. You never knew who was playing on what half the time, because they all played the same licks anyway.
Yeah, man, I was young then, like from a toddler, but I prided myself on always knowing what was happening with records and things. I really loved it.
Did you ever see Johnny Ace or Earl Forrest?
I never seen Johnny Ace or Earl Forrest live, but Earl Forrest played the T-99. Saxophone players and instrumentalists and things, we never was too much into that, but later when Jimmy Forrest made “Night Train,” I remember that. Like, that was a big thing, man. That was like the black national anthem. Anywhere the record played it was like—everybody, “Yeah, do it!”
The same with B. B. King when he first did “3 O’Clock in the Morning.” Wow, you’d hear that guitar start, everybody stand up and “Hey!” Beer would be flying. I’m telling you, man, it was great. They’d wear them records out. In the space of a week, less than a week, every jukebox in Osceola had worn out its copy it had. They always had to have a new copy to come in. Yeah, because people just play ’em, man. I mean they just play ’em to death, the jukebox would be smokin’. It would be hot on Saturday night, shit. People drinking that beer, wine and shit, boy, and eating that fish, man. Guitar be singing and B. B. be singing them blues. Yeah, that was great stuff.
But, I mean, in looking back at that stuff sometimes it was like it never happened, it’s so far removed. I mean I’m so far removed, it’s just amazing. Because them times they will never be again, no way. It’s a shame they didn’t have videos and stuff like that to capture some of that stuff in them days, because it’s really gone. And it’s difficult to try and describe it, what it was like, the atmosphere, I mean in those funky clubs, man, juke joints. But you just can’t describe it, the smell, everything, the way people act, the language, the whole communication. It was a totally different world and it’s amazing.
Did you see any other guitar players that may have come through town, like Robert Nighthawk?
Yeah, Robert Nighthawk, that was another one. Yeah, shit, that’s right, because him and Ike they went way back together, because I remember later on after I joined Ike, he used to talk about Robert Nighthawk. He said, “Oh, yeah, I used to see him, he used to come through town sometimes.” I don’t think I ever saw him.
Boyd Gilmore, Sonny Boy Williamson?
I never see none of them guys, I knew about them.
Sax player, yeah, I remember him. Adolph was based in Memphis, I think. He was like a really slick guy. He used to wear zoot suits and shit—“Adolph’s in town, man.” He was one of the pros. Later on I heard he was called Billy, you know listening to WDIA, because he was always on there with them guys, Rosco and all them cats. Yeah, but we knew him as Adolph. He could play. That guy could blow.
Did you know L. V. Parr [guitar]?
L. V. was bad. I remember L. V. I remember he would come to our house sometimes, because he was good friends with my old man.
Did you ever see Ike’s band at the time?
No. I never knew anything about Ike Turner until I got to St. Louis. Jackie, because Jackie’s record was such a big hit, Jackie Brenston. I didn’t see him, but as a matter of fact I bought the record “Rocket 88.” Yeah, Jackie Brenston, man, I remember when that record came out, wow! I think the closest Jackie got to us was Memphis or maybe West Memphis. He was pretty big then. In fact, he was so big then till he was like …
The band split then?
That’s right, they told me about that. It was at that time, I remember, Ike had a little rivalry with Jackie. After Jackie had the hit apparently there was some argument, certain controversy. Because when I joined Ike, Jackie was there and all that. Because Jackie was tight. We was all tight. We used to talk about them days when Jackie had the hit and Ike hated Jackie for that. And Jackie hated Ike because he had to come back and start working for Ike now, whereas he used to be the star. But, now, all them guys when they was working from Clarksdale, around Memphis and that, let’s see, they was working with the Wolf and a lot of people. [Willie] Kizart and all them. There was Bad Boy [Willie Sims], Johnny O’Neal he was around there with that set.6
But anyway, what happened—Jackie, I can’t remember exactly how the song came about, but Jackie got the credit and Ike didn’t think he should have. Because every song that came out in them days, it was under the name of someone else, the guy that sang never got the credits, in other words. In them times the way they had their little setup. But Jackie somehow got his name on the record, it was his record “Rocket 88,” Jackie Brenston. So the cats was mad, they was pissed off. ’Least Ike was pissed off, because apparently him and Jackie didn’t speak to each other for a long time. And then Jackie drank himself damn near to death and came back in to work for Ike in St. Louis later, I remember that.
Big City Four? They broadcast from Forrest City.
No, I never listened to Forrest City.
Jerry Lee Walker was the drummer.
Jerry told me something about that. That’s right, he used to tease me a lot. “Fucking Osceola, little ole nigger from Osceola, you ain’t shit. Osceola ain’t nothing, man.” He used to talk about Forrest City, that’s right, Jerry Walker. Wow! You just triggered off something there. I never listened to Forrest City radio station, we always listened to Memphis.7
KOSE was a white station, wasn’t it?
I don’t know, because we never listened to it, only when the fellows were broadcasting.
Earl Roberts?
Yeah, he was a disc jockey [on KOSE]. Little cat wore glasses and wore, what you call them little straw hats, you know the kind they show in all them American-type musicals and things? Yeah, a boater. He used to wear one of them and cock it. We call it ace-deuce, cocked to the side. Glasses on, bow tie, real little dandy-like guy, that was Earl Roberts.
There was another radio station in Blytheville called KLCN. They used to also—same guys, Albert and all them.
But radio that’s one thing we didn’t do. We didn’t like KOSE very much. We only liked KOSE for Albert King or Albert Nelson and a few local gospel groups, that’s the only time we would listen to KOSE. We listened to Memphis stations. Albert was on once or twice a week. I can’t remember anything except it was the In the Groove Boys or something like that, it was no big thing. They did have sponsors, but I can’t remember who they were.
Peptikon was B. B. King’s one, his first sponsor. When he came on, his little theme song was (sings): “Peptikon sure is good [x 3] / You can get it anywhere in your neighborhood. / Man, I’m really livin’!” That was B. B.’s first thing. That brought B. B. King on, the Beale Street Blues Boy. They were the only things I really remember as far as advertisements go, bringing on bands. We could get WDIA very clearly, because when I left, shit, it was about fifty-thousand watts then, you could get it in about five states. WDIA was smokin’, Rufus Thomas and all them guys. Moohah, he was the Rev. A. C. Williams, but all during the week he was Moohah. Nat D. Williams, that’s Booker T. Washington High School. Joe Hill Louis, I think he died or something. Yeah, big fat Ford Nelson played piano, wow. Willa Monroe, she was the Angela Rippon of the black radio. (laughs) There was Rufus’s little daughter Carla, she came up. Carla Thomas was—well, we wasn’t taking her serious. She was alright, but I don’t know—to me, I didn’t particularly care about Carla Thomas very much. We was more interested in B. B. and them guys. Rosco and all them—they was hot.8
I used to hate Joe Hill Louis’s music. The reason I didn’t like his music was because nothing ever rhymed. If my memory serves me well, this cat used to come on WDIA and his theme song was like this (sings): “The Be-Bop Boy is on the air [x 3].” “Tune in at 4 for the little ole show,” or something like that, nothing ever rhymed: “I’ll think I’ll lay my head down on this railroad track / And let the train cut my head off.” (laughing) And I used to want to kick the radio. You fuck, I hated it, at least make it rhyme. Now it would be humorous. If I could listen to it now I could really get off on it, but in them days when I took it serious it was terrible.
Yeah, Bill Harvey, he joined up with B. B. In fact, B. B. went on his first tour with Bill Harvey, I remember, when that was a big thing. B. B. had never flew before and it was his first gig, and he was gonna fly to Houston, Texas. And it was a big thing, they was teasin’ him, Rufus Thomas and Moohah, “Yeah, our Beale Street Blues Boy gonna get on the airplane, man, he gonna fly …” Yeah, man, and they were playing his records and things. Going to Houston, Texas. Yeah, I remember that real good.
Did you ever listen to Dewey Phillips’s Red Hot ’n’ Blue?
Yeah, WHBQ from Memphis. Yeah, Red Hot ’n’ Blue, I remember. But there was also another show, In the Groove. It was on WMC, it was an NBC national network station, but the local things they slip in between, and I think In the Groove came on every afternoon about three-thirty, I think. I can’t remember the deejay, but I remember the theme song “In the Groove,” it was only on for fifteen minutes and the guy would come on: “Yeah, welcome to In the Groove.” I can’t remember all the patter, but that was one of the first black music shows that just played black records, just records, as far as I remember. I think it preceded WDIA. I don’t remember hearing WDIA until after WMC In the Groove.
How did you come to join Ike’s band?
What happened, when I finished school I was supposed to went to college in Little Rock. I only stayed a few months, less. I hated it. Couldn’t stand the whole thing about college. I was supposed to be studying agriculture and shit like that.
When I came back to Osceola I started working with my uncle and decided, well, I don’t know what to do yet, except I know I want to play music, but I don’t know where I want to go to play it. I didn’t want to go to Memphis and I wanted to get out of the South for a start, and I always thought I would like to go to Los Angeles. But that was all dreams, I’d just got back.
My uncle never objected to me going into music, they were really cool, really was. They tried to tell me, like, hey—because my uncle could turn his hand to anything, like, he built a house. He always tried to tell me, “Wherever you go or whatever you do, just know that you can always work, man, always earn yourself a living. All the things that you done learn from me.” And he had a lot of faith in me, I think.
Anyway, I came back and I’d been working about a week, man. One morning, we used to have to get up about five o’clock in the morning, so we could be down at the gig, early start like six. So that morning my old lady was cooking breakfast, me and my old man was up, washing up and everything, the doorbell rang. And who was at the front door ’cept Albert King, five o’clock in the morning with this funny-looking guy. This was Eddie Jones, turn up on our doorstep.
“Hey, Albert, how are you?” this commotion out front. “What’s happening, what you doing back? Welcome, what you doing in town?” “I came to getcha, boy,” I heard him say that. “I come to get Popeye.” I heard all that shit, I thought, what? I dashed out there, “Hey, Albert!” “Hey, boy, you ready?” I said, “What you talking about?” I had overalls on, getting ready to go, man. He said, “This is Eddie Jones, he’s a saxophone player, he’s with Ike Turner’s band and Ike’s changing his show and he needs some singers.”
To me, Ike Turner was God. I mean, after them hits that we’d heard down there, like, shit, that was really big-time. And incidentally one of my buddies had gone to St. Louis the summer before on holiday and he came back, and he was telling us about the music thing up there and Ike Turner’s band was the hottest thing in the land up there. So to us, around Osceola, the name Ike Turner meant that, man, meant God. Because my buddy was a good dancer, man, he knew when something was hot.
So anyway I said, “Really, man?” I thought he was joking. “Me?” “Yeah, shit, you wanna sing, don’t ’cha?” I said, “Yeah, sure do, man, damn, but Ike Turner!” Then my old lady started with the questions to Albert, and Albert started explaining and telling them what’s happening, this and that. And he’s gonna look after me and don’t worry. I was supposed to go for a week to try out and see what it was like and that was it. I just packed a few things and jumped in the car with Eddie and Albert and tore up to St. Louis.
Eddie just drove down with Albert for the company. Fuck, man, it was great when I got to St. Louis, man … straight to East St. Louis, 3126 Virginia Place.9 We drove up there. I remember seeing a big Cadillac sitting in the drive. Big old house, fishtails sticking up in the air and shit. I thought, wow, man, this is it, I’ve made it. I’ve arrived! Pretty chicks walking up and down the street—I was girl mad. I walked in and there was everybody there, meeting Ike. I remember the first impression I got of him, he looked like Rosco Gordon. He was the cat. So Ike met me and we went downstairs and got around the piano and started playing some songs, run across some things. Soon as I arrived he got out the bed and I sang.
Yeah, let’s see, we ran over some songs the first day. I was so scared, nervous. I’ve never been nervous. I could just sing. I was pretty free about it. But I was nervous, man, I was singing the songs, alright, I was cookin’, but I didn’t understand nothing about projecting power in the vocal thing, because we didn’t have that—we just sang. Anyway, Ike was telling me about things, “Yeah, man, you got a good voice, but I need a strong voice because I’ve got a big band and these guys are powerful, I’m telling you.” I said, “Yeah, I know, I’ve heard their records.” He said, “Well, you’ve got to sing hard.” And so I think it was Jackie, Jackie or Raymond Hill, they said, “Yeah, well, I like him, man. I think we ought to keep him anyway. I think we could use another …” Like all them modern group songs and stuff.
So that was a change in Ike’s direction musically from just hard-down blues, the Johnny O’Neal–type voice, Billy Gayles and them, what they was doing. So when I came on the scene there was a difference. They started doing things like group numbers. I mean, numbers that were popular, the doo-wop stuff, contemporary music, and it really changed the whole thing, his popularity increased a lot.
Then he hired Tommy Hodge to handle all that old hard stuff that Billy Gayles and them used to sing. Tommy came in a few weeks after me. So that’s when they decided instead of getting another Billy Gayles or Clayton Love why don’t we have these two guys, because Tommy had a gospel-type voice and my voice was different. I had the modern … and I learnt, I started learning from Tommy and the other guys singing that gospel stuff.
Was Tina there then?
No. No, she was around, but she wasn’t with Ike. She was living with her mother and stuff in St. Louis, Missouri.
So who was Ike’s wife at the time?
Annie Mae. Was it Annie Mae [Wilson] or Audrey [Madison]? I think it was Audrey, because I remember I was fascinated by her beauty. I couldn’t believe that cats could get chicks like them. I mean, Annie Mae and Audrey, yeah, man, Ike’s old ladies, they would always be them kind of chicks. Like M. C. Reeder’s chicks that he had, them sisters, like Marilyn Monroe chicks. Like in them days it was really fashionable for chicks to be like that, good hips, big tits, the curves, and all of them had it, yellow [light-skinned]. Yeah, it was Audrey, the first one I met. Him and Annie Mae had just broken up, she came back later.
Then after that a girl named Lorraine [Taylor], who now lives in Los Angeles. Lorraine is the mother of Ike’s boys, the kids he’s got now. Sputnik, Ike Jr., and another one, I can’t remember his name now. Anyway, she was the mother of them. She came after Annie Mae and Audrey. Then Annie Mae came back at one point. Now, wait a minute, Annie Mae came back, Lorraine was there. I’m telling you, man, like M. C.!
Here’s what happened. Now, Annie Mae was smart. I mean she was a clever chick, she really knew how to hustle, man. She knew how to hustle businesswise, she could talk and she was fast and charming. And she was fine. She could get her way with people, you know. She knew how to use her charm and femininity. She really did look great. So she came back in as the business manager. She traveled with us a lot at one point. I can’t remember what years they were, but during a certain period in the early ’60s. Her and Ike didn’t have any kids.
Was Annie Mae actually married to Ike?
I think they was actually married. Because I think he married once or twice, I don’t know. It’s very difficult, see, because he’d been with a chick before her named Bonnie which I never met. I never knew her. That was in the Mississippi days. I think he married Bonnie. I’m not sure, but I know she was on some early recordings. He used to tell me about Bonnie a lot. And then he met Annie Mae and she was playing piano with the band.
Then Tina come along, who was another hoofer and singer. She was Anna Mae Bullock. What a name, Bullock! We used to call her Bo-lock. Make her mad, man. “Don’t call me no goddamn Bo-lock, that ain’t my name.” Then we started calling her Bo. “What’s happening, Bo?” Start a fight, she’d chase us.
But when I first came up, Tina was living in St. Louis and Ike was living in East St. Louis. He had his old ladies and things, and she was just a chick that used to come up and sing. She had a good voice, lot of soul, a lot of heart. But, see, in St. Louis, in them days you weren’t supposed to go into joints. I was too young to go into joints and so was she, but the thing was with a guy he could always put his age up. That’s what I did, maybe grow a moustache. Ike gave me some suits and shit, fixed me up nice. I looked like a grown-up cat, got a process, hair slick. It looked horrible, I’m sure.
I was about seventeen, because I’d just got out of school. I’d only been away for that summer. I remember Billy Gayles and them had been broken up. Billy broke up with Ike and Clayton Love came in, that’s the way it was. They had made “The Big Question” and the reason Clayton was leaving was because he was gonna teach school. He married, his old lady was pregnant or something, and he wanted to settle down and be a schoolteacher, which that’s what he was doing. But he was still singing with Ike at the weekends for a while until he got somebody. When I came in that’s when he got the idea of changing the whole image of the show by having two singers.10
Billy Gayles had another band in St. Louis during the same time. I didn’t really meet Billy till after we’d got on the road. Tina had got in the band and we went on the road, done a tour and came back to St. Louis. I had met Billy but I didn’t know him real good. He came on the road with us one time for a few weeks, just sort of hanging out, singing with us.
Billy didn’t actually play drums with Ike?
No. Not as a drummer. Because I knew him as a singer, and when I found out he was playing drums I was amazed. He was singing and playing drums, I used to go and see his band sometimes. I used to really like them. He was a good drummer as well. He could kick as good as he could sing. That guy was bad and, you know, a drummer that can sing—I don’t mean just singing, but you know Billy Gayles what he sing like! That guy, he was magic to watch playing them drums and singing, because he’d be burning on both, and his range—what an amazing guy. And he was so humble. He was such a nice, gentle guy.
That’s why Billy and Ike could never … He was the kind of guy, you could take advantage of him and that’s what Ike did. You know, all them hits and shit that they had.11 I mean, Ike really took advantage of the guy, and when somebody else—I don’t know, his old lady or somebody—told him you should be whatever, apparently that’s when they fell out. Billy went on, formed his own band.
Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm: (back) Jackie Brenston, Raymond Hill, Eddie Jones, Fred Sample, Billy Gayles; (front) Jesse Knight Jr., Ike Turner, Gene Washington, 1956.
Bennie Smith, guitar player with Gayles’s band?
Yeah, Bennie Smith with the cockeye. I tell you who he remind me of, he was ugly, really ugly. Bennie remind me of this white actor, Jack Elam, that’s the ugliest motherfucker I’ve ever seen in my life. But he could play, man, he could sure play. This was at the time when Ike was hot around St. Louis. During the time when all the bands was there, Albert, Little Milton, and Billy Gayles had his thing cookin’.
Let’s see, who was with Billy? He was at the Moonlight bar and all that shit. Billy played the Moonlight and that thing over on Cass Avenue—what was that called? On Glasgow and Cass, KATZ used to do live broadcast from over there, Dave Dixon and all them before Dave got killed, car accident or something, years after we left.12
Billy would sing and play drums with his own band. He could play good and sing good, playing drums didn’t inhibit none, he still burn. I think Sam Rhodes was with Billy. I think Lloyd Wallace was on piano. Who else? The horn player who was with Ike at one time, very fair-skinned guy, kind of remind you of Raymond a little bit, Billy Duncan. I can’t remember who else was on horn, because I think he had two horns. Gayles cooked, he had a smokin’ little outfit there one time, but it didn’t last. It’s a shame. I presume it’s down to the fact that Gayles didn’t have nobody doing his business.
A saxophone player called Tyrone Sweet?
Yeah, Tyrone—him and Raymond was good buddies. Tyrone, let’s see, I think he was with Billy Gayles, I didn’t know him very well.
Like I say, the band was your whole social thing, man. The other guys you’d see and hear them, but I never hung out with them guys, it was always with our boys. We was always running together. But Tyrone, yeah, he was a good horn player, he played kinda like Raymond, really honked, rocked the house, house-shakin’ stuff, you know, all outta key and shit. People loved it.
Raymond Hill was there when you joined?
And he dropped off just when we started traveling. He never did go on the road with us. The band started to change around a lot during them times, musician-wise, because some of the guys would go on the road for three months or so, didn’t like it, and go back to St. Louis.
So the band when you joined was Raymond Hill, Jackie Brenston, Eddie Jones, Gene Washington, Jesse Knight Jr., Fred Sample, and Ike?
Yeah.
Did Ike ever play piano on stage?
No. But certain times in the night he’d just lay the guitar down, play “After Hours,” something like that, and get back on his guitar. But he told me and played me records and things and he said he used to actually play piano—that was his major instrument. He said he hadn’t played guitar that long before I got in the band.
That’s him on “Rocket 88”!
That’s him. He told me that’s why him and Jackie fell out. I think that’s what prompted Ike to start playing guitar and being a bandleader as opposed to doing it the other way around. Because Jackie got all the glory and everything, and Ike never forgave him for that.
Jackie did go on the road with us at first in 1960 or ’61. I just think he got fed up. A lot of the guys we brought from St. Louis didn’t stay on the road, because they didn’t like the road life. And Jackie was a bit fed up, he’d been on the road a lot of times before he was a baritone player.
He was back to being just a band member?
Baritone player, that’s right. The hit was nowhere in sight. He was just a regular cat, he didn’t even talk about it unless you mention it. Yeah, he sung, we used to have great fun singing together.
Would Ike let him do “Rocket 88”?
Oh, no. No way, nothing that was a hit, that he had that was a hit, no way. It was incredible that Ike wouldn’t allow Jackie to do his hits, people knew about Jackie Brenston, but no way. He was nowhere on the bill. I mean my name was on the bill and who was I? I wasn’t shit. But Jackie Brenston’s name wasn’t on it. That’s the kind of thing I was talking about, that jealous thing that went down with him. I don’t know how deeply rooted it was, but I know it was pretty deep. They never sort of forgave each other. Each one had their own side of the story, who did the dirty on who. But the kind of things Jackie was singing on the road then was the current hits like Jackie Wilson, “That’s Why I Love Her So.”
So Tommy Hodge joined the band about the same time as you did?
Yeah. There was about a week in between.
Where did he come from?
I don’t know where he came from originally. As far as I know he came from Kinloch, which is a black suburb of St. Louis, it’s out by the airport. I think he was born in St. Louis, around that area. He wasn’t from down South, he was strictly from the gospel side of things, from the church thing. In fact, I think when he joined us he hadn’t actually sung any blues. Oh, man, he was straight outta church. He’d been singing in a gospel group all the time. I think he was with a group called the Smith Jubilee Singers, and he was bad. He was bad, man, he had that gravel.13
What was Eddie Jones like?
Hilarious. Oh, man, he was the most humorous guy, that guy would just keep you laughing. He left the band in the early touring days, he didn’t come to England, for example. We came over in ’66. I think Eddie toured in the early ’60s, like when we first went out. He’s from East St. Louis. He joined after—this is after Johnny O’Neal and all that stuff broke up.
Even back in them days he was always trying to fly planes and things! (laughing) Can you imagine? Eddie Jones always wanted to be a pilot and he was actually flying. He was going taking flying lessons, man, I’m telling you, in East St. Louis! (laughing) This cat, man, he knew all about it, he used to be telling us, “Yeah, man, going for my flying today, going flying.” Big shit. We thought it was big shit. But in fact we found out that the damn thing that he was flying was like a kite, it was so raggedy. One of them old prop planes, really old ones, the kind where you get out there—Eddie would sit inside, and a guy would get out there and spin the thing. “How the fuck you got the nerve to get in that plane?” We should have guessed it, because Eddie was always the one for … If you listened to him talk, this guy, you would think that he’s really something.
We’d be at a rehearsal or something and he’d ring up his old lady, “Annie, could you drop the car off today, I’ve got to go to such and such after rehearsal, ah, drop me the Cadillac off. No, on second thoughts you better put it in, it needs some new brake shoes on the front, drop the Lincoln, I’ll have the Lincoln.”
He had two or three cars right, big-name cars like that. So if you didn’t know him and you never seen the cars you think, wow, who’s this cat? He’s badder than Ike! Shit, he’s badder than the boss, Lincolns and Cadillacs. He’s only supposed to be a horn player, you know. But, man, they would be ancient cars, really broken-down bad-looking cars. Buicks—he had a Buick, Cadillac, and a Lincoln, and he was flying planes. So, you know, Eddie was hot shit. He was something, a real character. Crazy guy.
Fred Sample?
Fred Sample, he was an undertaker, man. That’s what he always wanted to be. That’s why he wouldn’t stay on the road. He went at first, made the first trip to California with us, went that far and back. That was it. Went back to—what was the name of that funeral parlor he worked at? Oh, shit, I can’t remember now. I think the reason why he was into it so much was because he used to like driving those big old hearses. He used to like it, man, turn the siren on—“Wahhh”—he was crazy. Not a hearse, an ambulance, but they used them the same way, you know, go and pick people up; he loved it, man, I’m telling you. Turning corners on two wheels, siren wide open, he loved all that shit. He used to tell us things about it.
And this cat he was crazy too. When I say crazy, he used to do crazy things. He had a buddy around him all the time, his best buddy name Delarry and he had a big head, too. Delarry just hung out all the time with the band, he was like a roadie or something. Anyway, Fred and Delarry always tried to drive like gangsters everywhere they went, man. Fred had a little Ford, he used to burn that thing up. Eventually Delarry wrecked it on the Eads Bridge. Now, let’s see, how did this happen? Delarry took Fred’s car without his permission, some shit like that, which he did all the time anyway. Because he had the accident they started a fight.
(Laughing) I remember one time—no, fuck, I ain’t telling you that. No, man, I can’t tell you that. It’s a dirty one. I mean it’s an evil thing to do to somebody. We didn’t do it, I mean we did it but it wasn’t our fault, it was Ike’s fault, he instigated the shit. He was always instigating shit. Get us in some worse shit, but he always came to the rescue, I must say. One time, man, Ike for some reason had lost a lot of money gambling and he needed some new tires for his Cadillac. So he tells me and Tommy, Fred, and Delarry, you know we’d do anything. Ike said, “Hey, you guys wanna make ten dollars apiece?” Said, “Yeah.” “Well, okay, get me some tires for my Cadillac.” “Right.” “Tell you what. I’ll pay you twenty dollars a tire.” “Okay, we’ll get you five.”
So Ike follows us around, we in two cars, I’m driving one. Say, “Hey, man, this is a bit conspicuous driving around.” It’s like two or three in the morning in two cars, we got to go in neighborhoods where only Cadillacs are. Now, we hit about two cars, got one wheel. Well, they hit, I was driving the getaway car. Tommy was pretty fast, he was strong, kinda big. Oh, Carlson [Oliver] was in on it as well, and Carlson had those three toes, man, he was a big cat.
So anyway, Ike had a buddy who ran a used car lot and his name was Fred Clements, and he was good friends of Ike’s because they had done a lot of business. Ike had bought cars from him for the band boys—for Raymond, Fred, all the cats had bought cars through Ike and Fred Clements. Eddie, Buicks and things. They all liked Buicks. They couldn’t have a Cadillac, because Ike had the Cadillac. And Fred Clements had a Cadillac, too. And he was well-off. So where he lived was a well-off neighborhood, some Cadillacs around there. We didn’t know Fred Clements’s car, but Ike knew it. But he didn’t tell us.
Anyway, we hit a couple of Cadillacs, got us a couple of wheels, and we hit another one and it was Fred’s. Okay, we got about two blocks, man, and there’s all the cops in the world. Shit, froze. “Okay, what you boys got in the car?” “Nothing, man.” Anyway, open the trunk, Cadillac tires. “We’re not criminals, we’re musicians, Ike Turner’s band.” “Really? Hey, Ike Turner’s band! Hey, we got ’em.” Big scandal, you know, good news, man. Oh, shit. They take us down the police station and Ike come, and somehow—the night sergeant or whoever was the head guy of the precinct—they squashed it. They called Fred Clements up, said, “We got somebody down here,” because Ike was with us. Ike had bribed the fucking policeman, the head guy, and it wasn’t gonna be reported or nothing.
He called us all over in the corner away from the desk and said, “Okay, boys, here it is, now, look …” Ike said, “Fred we’re sorry we hit your car.” Fred said, “Okay, I know you alright, I know you didn’t mean to get me.” But I knew, the observer, right? I knew that Ike knew. They squashed that shit. No fines, it never came out in the papers, nothing. But he’s good with that shit. He always come to the rescue to get you outta that shit somehow.
They all sound pretty crazy.
Oh, yeah. Motley crew, man, really. It was like watching a film or being on a film set. I wasn’t really one of the actors, I didn’t think, but looking at it, yeah, I was. It was always fascinating, all those people. It was something to behold, the lifestyles and everything.
It was great, it really was. I never took no sides with none of their disputes or none of their rivalries or anything. I was always trying to patch things up between them all. They would argue about different things, like the thing with Jackie and Ike, for example. Billy Gayles and Ike. All them kind of things. They always carried grudges, they all had done something dirty on each other somewhere down the line. Who was right or wrong, you never could get the straight of it. But I don’t know, my closest affinity was with Ike always, because we was close like that.
Jackie and all of them they was all heavy drinkers and they was drinking that really bad shit, boy. That stuff they used to drink you probably wouldn’t allow it in your house! Not even to wash the floor. I’m telling you, man, it’s really amazing. I’m surprised Raymond’s still kicking. I often wondered whatever happened to him.14
Not well. Raymond and them’s buddies.
Did he used to hang around?
No, because they had their own set. Because when I came in Ike’s band, Ike Turner’s band was … Every band had their own social set, although they was all friends from back home and all that stuff. They used to hang out together sometimes on off nights, certain guys, but very seldom, because they all had their own little social thing. It was like a little club.
Johnny O’Neal’s band was called the Hound Dogs, I think. Johnny O’Neal’s Hound Dogs. Who was in it? Shit, Bad Boy, Kizart, and who else? I don’t know, because I didn’t know that band all that well. I only heard them play a couple of times. I just knew them because I went out there one time to that place with Raymond to Firework Station. Raymond and Junior [Jesse Knight], because they was buddies, and some nights when they would be off they would go out there and see if they could poach some of them cats’ girls and things. It was that kind of a thing.
What kind of place was it?
Oh, shit, man, funky. Hot. Fun. Total fun. Like the T-99. Fish, hamburgers and fish be smellin’, funk be flying. Dance floor in the middle, music be loud and hot.
Raymond and Jackie and them, man, them cats they could put away alcohol, man. Vodka. They used to love vodka. That was their drink. You couldn’t smell it, because Ike would fine them if he knew they were drinking. Although he knew they were drinking they would still hide it. Jesse, he could hold his drink pretty good. He try to keep up with them, but he would go to sleep, man, on stage playing! I’m telling you. Look, there was one time, I can’t remember the club, but it was outside of East St. Louis. There was some garbage cans in the entrance to the bar right by the stage, the stage was right along side of the bar. Now, there’s the garbage cans, where they dump the lemon peels and soda tops and shit.
We was up there playing, Junior on the end, drunk, noddin’, playin’. He’d wake up and Ike would be giving him a dirty look, playing his guitar and looking at him. Junior wake up, try to perk up, started laughing, start fucking with somebody in the crowd trying to keep himself awake, anything. Do crazy antics, man, to try and stay awake. Do little monkey dances and things down on the end. Anyway, he knew he was gonna get fined, because he knew Ike had pinned him, but he was still trying to put on a brave face and he couldn’t, and he fell asleep again and this time when he woke up he was in the garbage can.
It was funny because we was in the middle of this number and everybody was cookin’. If you could have seen him! And Ike kept looking at him, standing there, dirty look. “Just watch this motherfucker, watch this crazy motherfucker—don’t, don’t touch him.” Fred was gonna try and wake him up, he was still playing, wasn’t missing no notes. Then crash! Legs in the air, bass over behind the bar, shit feeding back, everybody falling out laughing. Now, we got to help him up out of the garbage can, put him back on stage. Crazy. He just couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t keep up with them other guys. But Jackie and them guys, they could drink all night, every night they would do it, they wouldn’t miss, not a night. Wake up, start in the afternoon. That’s the way it was all the time. You could easily drift off into that kind of thing. It was fun watching it.
What clubs did you play in St. Louis?
There was the Club DeLisa, we had lots of clubs. Ike’s residency days were almost over when I joined. He was still playing the Manhattan only sometimes, at weekends or something. When I first joined, the first few months he was still doing the Manhattan in East St. Louis like every weekend. He was playing three gigs a day on a weekend. Do a gig at the Manhattan, maybe a matinee before that. Maybe the Club DeLisa in St. Louis on Vandeventer, between Vandeventer and Washington. Club DeLisa was funky, wasn’t nothing high-class, not yet. All this would be from Thursday to Sunday. Monday or Tuesday we would take a day off and Sunday was always payday.
Then over in Madison, Illinois, which is like a suburb of East St. Louis, there was a place called Kingsbury’s, which was a real funky joint. Originally it was just a gambling joint, long café, bar, and then they started having bands in there and that was a hot place, used to love it. When we used to get there it was about two in the morning. From two to about six.
So we was constantly packing the … you know, we go to one gig, man, unload, everybody grab a piece of shit, stick it on the wall, PA things. In fifteen minutes we’d have the whole thing set up and cook, I mean be ready to burn. You’d think that after sweating and being funky for so long that you’d be really tired and ready to drop. Instead, everybody pile in their cars and shit and, “Okay, see you over the river,” and see who can get over there the fastest. It’s a wonder we didn’t kill ourselves, we used to drive like maniacs through St. Louis, man, across them bridges and things at night. Fuck, it was like madness. We’d be playing gangsters and things, crazy.
Would Ike gamble?
Oh, yeah, he loved to gamble, he’d gamble his ass off. He was pretty good, too. He was alright. He was pretty lucky. He wasn’t a guy that studied gambling, you know, where he knew what he was doing. It was really just luck and he was quite lucky. And he usually had enough money where he could sustain long enough if he had a bad streak. If you’ve got enough money, eventually it’s got to turn your way.
The Birdcage?
That was in St. Louis itself. In Brooklyn there was the Paradise Country Club that we used to play at.15 And about half a mile up the road was this club—I can’t remember what it was called now, but it was really a hot club. Everybody just used to say, “Going to Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Illinois.” Oh, shit, what was that club, I think it burned down—yeah, the Harlem Club!
The Red Top?
Yeah, the Red Top was in East St. Louis. Pop Stallins, he’s an old guy that owned the Red Top. He had a couple of clubs. The Starlight, that was his other club. It was at Firework Station. Benny Sharp and all them cats, Stacy Johnson, Vernon [Guy], and all them used to play there. I used to sing out there, too. Yeah, we used to have a lot of fun at the Red Top, man. That was a hot little spot.
Pop Stallins’s son had the band. He had two boys—one was a drummer, one a bass player—had the resident band. We all used to be in that band when we weren’t gigging, having fun jamming and stuff.
Do you remember a one-armed trumpet player named Willie who was supposed to have been with Ike?
I remember a one-armed trumpet player, but I can’t put it into context as to when and where. He wasn’t a member of Ike Turner’s band when I was there. I remember this guy, but I can’t place him in a particular place.
Piano player with Little Milton, Lloyd Wallace?
Yeah, Lloyd played piano, good piano player. I don’t know what Lloyd’s doing, he was a very serious musician, he played with Oliver Sain and Little Milton. There was only two bands in St. Louis, Little Milton and Ike Turner, the rest of them were just also-rans, even Albert. Yeah, James Carr, saxophone player, Jerry Walker on drums, Oliver and Fontella Bass later.
But I enjoyed cats like Doc Perry, a bass player I was telling you about. I used to like his band, they played cruder blues. They played the Moonlight, same old places like Albert and the rest of them. Some of them guys’ bands I enjoyed more than our band, I suppose, because I knew our band so well. But I knew their bands weren’t as good technically, not at that time, anyway. The sound they used to get, the way them cats used to play was different. They maintained that country edge in their blues, whereas we, or when I got in the band, we began to water our thing down. It became a show more, started doing more of the popular commercial stuff.
Doc Perry had the same size band as we had, which was standard in St. Louis in them days, three horns, et cetera. I used to hear them cats at Harlem Club, they used to work out there a lot. It was just outside of East St. Louis going toward Granite City past the Swift Packing Company, Brooklyn, Illinois, that’s right.16
Did you ever meet Billy Emerson?
Yeah, I met him a few times. I didn’t know him. I met him in Chicago, met him in St. Louis. As a matter of fact, I think he came down during those Cobra sessions, came down with us one time back from Chicago to St. Louis. Spent a few days with Ike at Ike’s place. Old Big Head Billy Emerson, that’s what Ike used to call him.
Moose John?
Yeah, I saw him in Osceola. He used to come through there and hang out, playing bass, Earl Hooker and them. Then I ran into him when I was with Ike, I can’t remember where, Chicago, St. Louis, I don’t know. When I saw Moose in Osceola he was a clown, a real clown, we dug him. Earl Hooker really influenced Ike more than anybody, I believe it.
Wasn’t he living in East St. Louis for a while?
Yeah, that’s right, it sure was East St. Louis. That’s where I think it was, at Ike’s house I met him again. Yeah, Ike used to tease him a lot, tell jokes about what they used to do. Every time they run into each other, anybody Ike knew, they had a lot to talk about, stories. And there was that story about the window situation. They always used to laugh about that. Because there was another story, was it [Ernest] Lane or Ike or both of them? They had to jump out of a window one time naked. Oh, fuck, man, was it Lane or was it Ike? They used to tell this thing and laugh like a motherfucker. There was a married woman involved and one of them or both of them. And the guy was supposed to be at work, a big guy, and they knew him, this cat would kill. He was a bad cat and he come knocking on the door, blam-blam. “Open this motherfucking door.” And there was only one thing left but the window. Clothes under the arm, no time to check it out, just jump two stories or something and down through the woods. This was in Mississippi when they were teenagers, things they used to get up to. Ike used to talk about that shit, him and Lane.
Pinetop Perkins?
Pinetop, yeah, I remember he was one of Ike’s buddies. He used to talk about him.
Did you have any contact with Chuck Berry when you were in St. Louis?
Well, yeah, we knew Chuck, met him quite a few times. We used to go to his—he had a restaurant. We used to go there sometimes, rap to him and that. It was alright.
I drove him home one night from about 150 miles outside St. Louis, in between Chicago. We’d been up in Chicago recording, in the Cobra days. Driving back home, always liked to drive, man, I just liked them big cars. Cadillacs and things, never liked to sleep in case I missed something. So one night we were coming from Chicago going back to St. Louis on 66. I’m driving, everybody asleep, and I see this bad Cadillac with these fish tails parked on the side. “Ah, it’s Chuck Berry’s car.” So I woke Ike, “Hey, man, it’s Chuck.” Said, “Pull over, man.” It was like three in the morning and they’d been to Joliet or somewhere. They had a gig and—what’s the guy’s name that’s the piano player? Johnnie [Johnson]. He always drank anyway. They was all knocked out.
So we stop, wake them up, “Hey, man, we wiped out.” So Ike said, “I’ll drive my car, do you want to drive, Chuck?” Chuck said, “Hey, man, you a good driver? You motherfucker, you look—you young-assed punk-assed niggers, you all tear my car up, man.” He was really paranoid. He’d made “Maybellene” and all that stuff about cars, and you’d have thought he was a real speed freak, but he was just the opposite, he was so paranoid about speed. This cat, man, said, “Okay, you drive, but don’t go over fifty.” Now, Route 66 at three o’clock in the morning, you know—shit, man, big trucks and things, varoooom—and you creepin’ along!
So I nursed Chuck and them back to sleep, I drove fifty. So finally mouths open and I pushed it on down and I was in St. Louis in like an hour or something like that. Then they woke up saying,“We here! What? Say, man, nigger, you been driving my car at 100 miles an hour.” I said, “Yeah, man, but you here, ain’t ’cha?” Chuck said, “Well, I say, man, you gotta be bad, because I didn’t feel a thing going around no corners, you gotta be ace.”
Vocal group called the Trojans, was that one of Art Lassiter’s groups?
I don’t know. I don’t know much about Art’s groups except I knew Art and I knew the guys, yeah, they were a proper group. They used to come around sometimes and sing on some of our gigs. But I don’t know nothing about the history. They never had a band, not that I know of. I mean, Art used to play a little guitar sometimes.
Was the Rockers Art Lassiter’s group?
Well, he was in it. I presume it was his group. Art, Doug, and I forget the other guy, they was brothers.17
Raymond Hill told me Luther Ingram was in it?
I don’t know, I don’t think that’s his name. Luther Ingram became a name in his own, this guy never did.18
Art came from—I don’t know if he was originally, but he was based in Indianapolis. After the song [“Down in the Bottom”] was a hit or something, whatever happened. I know Art was living in that place and Ike sent for him to do this song “Fool in Love.” He came down especially for some reason or whether he was just in town visiting or not. But anyway, him and Ike collaborated, and because of Ike’s involvement with them before, doing shows and things in town, he was glad to see Art. And he had this song especially for him and all that. And Art didn’t turn up for the session, so Tina sung it and that’s how Tina was born. That was the birth of her.19
Did Eddie Acon have any tie up with Stevens?
Now, that I’m not sure of. Because there was an old guy—like I said, I didn’t know nothing about that side of it. Those guys was around and they was the cats.20
Yeah, that’s right.
They did a version of “Boxtop” which was on Tune Town before the Cobra version, with credits to Ike, Carlson Oliver, and Little Ann.21
That’s right. Right, now, that’s really strange. When Carlson first joined the band, Raymond hadn’t left yet. Carlson was just hanging around, he wasn’t really on a salary and he took over from Raymond. I think Ike must have sensed something, because Ike was pretty sharp. And Carlson could honk and he honked kinda like Raymond. He was just laying around picking up all of Raymond’s licks and learning, I suppose. That’s right, because it wasn’t long after that before Raymond split. It was right after that that Raymond went back to Mississippi.
Did Raymond ever come back and rejoin?
No, I don’t think so, I never remember him coming back.
So he wasn’t on any of the Sue things?
No. If he was on anything for Sue it would have to have been something that Ike had recorded and doctored up, you know what I mean. But when we did “Fool in Love” that was all done in St. Louis, but for Sue. “Fool in Love” was done in a studio, not at the house. I can’t remember the name of the studio, but I remember the engineer’s name was Ed. I can see the studio real clear, but I can’t remember the name of it. You probably heard of it, because Milton and a lot of the guys recorded there. It was out in Clayton, which is like a suburb going west.22
When Ike was doing that early Sue stuff in that studio he also did Fontella Bass.23 Now, Raymond was around, I think, at the early stages of that. I think Carlson had just come in on the set. Like I said, I think they were both there and it was a little time later that Raymond left, and I don’t mean the next year, but it was a matter of weeks or months. So it is possible that Raymond was on some Sue stuff. Now, what tunes or what I don’t know, because most of the tunes and stuff was just rubbish anyway. It was only like “Fool in Love,” “Poor Fool,” and stuff like that that stuck out, the rest of the stuff was just tracks being filled in.
Fred Green and the Mallards?
The Mallards sound familiar. That sounds like one of them local St. Louis vocal groups, there was loads of them around. Charles Drain and the Imperials.24 They had to change their name when Little Anthony come along. The Five Du-Tones—they were St. Louis guys originally. They moved to Gary, got that “Shake a Tail Feather” hit. I think they was the Five Du-Tones before they moved. There was a lot of vocal groups around, cookin’ ones.
What’s this guy’s name? Rick Holmes, and this old man had a drugstore, one of Ike’s partners in crime, if you like, when they were doing that shit with Tune Town and all the “Boxtop” shit and all that. He was a black guy, middle-aged, very nice man, and I don’t think he knew much about the record business, but he had cake. There was the Tune Town thing and that guy.
And there was another guy that looked after the groups. They had a little rehearsal room, little studio down on Franklin there. It might have been Rick Holmes, the guy we just mentioned. Because there was all these vocal groups hanging around, all day every day, just line ’em up, Jack. I didn’t know them guys that well, that was Ike’s thing, I was just there then. Yeah, all them little groups be hanging around, I used to see ’em. I used to think what assholes they was just hanging around this funky studio, “shoo-wop-de-wop.” They could sing alright, but I looked upon them like bullshit. At the time they were the same age as me, some of them a little older. But my thing I knew was much more heavyweight than what they were doing, because there was so many of them, and I figured they didn’t have a hope in hell of anything and there I was with Ike. They was kinda envious a little bit, they gave me a certain kind of respect. “Hey, Jim …” “Yeah, motherfucker … shit, you can’t sing man, get back, got a lot to learn, Jack.” (laughing) Because I was hanging out with Tommy Hodge and all them bad-assed cats—shit, really heavyweight.
Yet I wasn’t doing shit. I was cookin’, though, I suppose, for what I was. I had to develop, but I was smokin’. Shit, I’d wipe any of them out. You know I used to wipe Jackie out, Tommy and all of ’em. I used to clean all of them out, it was amazing. Ike used to tease them about it, because they knew, those cats were in front of me. No way I could touch them technically as far as that, but as far as getting across on stage, I used to wipe ’em out, because I was a little young cat, and I suppose there was a certain kind of cuteness about it, the way I would perform. And I would tackle them blues. I’d be singing “3 O’Clock in the Morning” and, shit, I’d sing anything, fuck me. Them chicks would be … I’d do B. B.’s “Sweet Sixteen,” I’d sing that motherfucker, Jack. There would only be … if Gayles drop by I’d back up, don’t fuck with Gayles, no way, I don’t fuck with him. Because I really admired him too much, but all them other cats, I mean, shit, man, I wipe them out.
But later on when Gayles got back on the road with us, them cats was, “Wow, man, you really developed into a motherfucker, didn’t you?” They wouldn’t dare fuck with me on stage. And when Tina got in the group, Ike had him two tigers, Jack, he could sic us on anybody. Cats would drop by to sing, you know, from Chicago, you know. Somebody just had a hit like Barrett Strong and all them kind of guys, shit, make ’em look shamed. Yeah, it was great.
But them Tune Town days, them groups, I really thought I was hot shit. Well, to them guys, I was just bullshitting them, I knew I wasn’t. It was funny, I used to laugh, plus I’d get to drive the Cadillac and shit. (laughing) Oh, what! I was just out of school—that was heavyweight. Big chicks, the chicks you read about in magazines back in Osceola, Jack. I mean, hey, St. Louis, big city and it was just fucking fun, man. That was a fun time. But it was really sad later on. I don’t think St. Louis was a shithole then. It might have been, but not as much as, but, man, it just run down to nothing. I hear it’s a real shithole now, everybody say so.
There was such good musicians and singers in St. Louis, I mean they really turned out some helluva people. And some people there was just bad, bad, and nobody ever heard of. That was the whole thing, going to gigs and sitting in on cats’ gigs, having battles of the bands and stuff.
Seaphus Scott, the Five Masqueraders, Kenneth Churchill, the Lyrics on Joyce. Apparently Joyce was the sister label of Tune Town?
Don’t know none of them. That’s right, there were some more guys around that were recording for Tune Town that Ike was—I guess he was producing them. And there was a guy named Gabriel, who later became a disc jockey.
What, the “Buzzard Lope”?
That’s right and all that. Gabriel, he was a weird guy. I mean he used to dress up like a real angel. Crazy guy, man, good disc jockey, though.
Is he the same guy as the Flock Rocker?
Yeah, that’s him. Mitchell Hearns was his real name. Became one of the top deejays in St. Louis after Dave Dixon died. He specialized in blues at one point, then got into mainstream soul music.
Flock Rocker—I wasn’t into his music much. We used to really laugh at the cat, he was so absurd. Yeah, man, we would take him around with us sometimes, he come on and do a little spot. Come out in this white robe and this thing around his head with a thing sticking up, makeshift halo, and his trumpet. Everybody would break up, getting drunk, et cetera. But he’d cook, he’d burn.
Roosevelt Marks on Planet Records?
Yeah, Roosevelt Marks lived in L.A. Is he still alive? Now, Planet, that’s another story. I’m not sure, but I remember Planet. I think it might have been Ike’s label, I don’t know for sure. Ike was dabbling and had lots of little bullshit labels.25 Sony, Prann, Teena, Sonja, I remember Little Milton and them was doing stuff on Bobbin. Ike didn’t put nothing out on Bobbin. That was during the time that Milton had “Lonely Man” on Bobbin. I think that was the thing that sorta put them on the map, because it was a local hit.
Was Robert Lyons the manager of KATZ?
That’s it. That was the link-up. You know, I told you on the phone I thought there was a connection between Bobbin and the radio station? But I didn’t know anything about the politics of the business in them days. I don’t know what happened to Robert Lyons, I didn’t know him. He used to come around. I used to see him sometimes, but I didn’t know nothing about his business. I think he was a white guy. I know the guy that owned Stevens was white, the Granite City thing. There was a tie-up between Bobbin and Stevens, but I didn’t know what it was. As far as I was concerned I thought they were rivals. But I didn’t know then like I know now how things can be hooked up. It could have been a sister situation.26
Little Bobby Foster?
Yeah, Ike wrote a song, one of his girlfriends, Jane something, wrote a song called “You’re So Wonderful.” Bobby Foster had a range, a really high falsetto he could go into toward the end of the song. He’d sound like a bird or something. Little girls used to love it. We used to hate it, man. We used to think this cat’s squeakin’ all over the place, we used to hate it. We used to hate him. He thought he was a little star, I remember that. “Angel of Love,” that’s it, that was Ike’s girlfriend’s one. She was a white girl, I remember.27
I wasn’t at the session, but I can remember they would come around and rehearse before they actually done the record. I think one of them was done on that Ampex. You see, during that Ampex thing that was the beginning of the relationship between Ike and whoever, you know, with the Stevens thing. Because Bobby Foster was one of the artists and I was one of the artists.
Johnny Wright?
Yeah, I remember Johnny Wright, he had a thing on Stevens.28 I’m trying to remember who the horn player was with Johnny Wright. He had a band like Ike did and I think Ike recorded some stuff with Johnny Wright one time, but I don’t know about this recording (“Gotta Have You for Myself”).29 I remember the other side. I remember hearing it, I used to like it. Ike found quite a bit of talent for RPM, he used to tell me about all of that. Ike was a disc jockey, too, he say at some point. He said one of his catchphrase things was, “Anybody want to buy a duck?” Let’s see, what he call it? “A dollar two sixty-five.” It didn’t make no sense, but that was the catchphrase.30
I remember doing the Stevens stuff, that was my first time recording apart from the time in Memphis. Junior on bass, Fred Sample on piano. Let me see, was it Gene Washington? No, I think Bootie Lip was on drums then, a guy named John Wings. Gene had quit, he fell out with Ike. But when I first joined he was the original cat. He was one of the original Kings of Rhythm.
This was Bootie Lip’s time, I think. He was a good drummer, but he got killed. We called him Bootie Lip because his bottom lip was really fat. He drank lots of wine and clown around, but he was a good drummer. He killed himself in East St. Louis about five o’clock one morning. Ran into the back of a bus that was parked. He’d just dropped some girl off—you know, drunk, slam into the back of a bus. I remember going to his funeral and everything, wiped him out.
Were both of your Stevens things done at the same time?
I’m trying to remember now. No, I think they were two separate things, and I can’t remember which was which, because they were all just bullshit, I mean I wasn’t really serious. We did one of them in a studio in St. Louis. I can’t remember which one it was now, although I can still see the little bullshit studio. It was a little ole thing on Franklin, just where Easton becomes Franklin.
“I Know You Don’t Love Me” on Royal American?
That record, there was two versions. The Royal American was done on the Ampex (recorded at Ike’s house) during the “Boxtop” sessions. That stuff came out as the forerunner of the Cobra releases of the same things. The two tenor players, that was during the time that Carlson and Raymond both, just before Raymond split the band. The first part of the solo was played by Raymond, second part by Carlson.
And “On My Trail,” there was a line in that song where he says, “I’m on your trail, I’ll follow you to hell,” but he left the “hell” out (on the record). Tommy used to do it live on stage, but he left it out because Ike thought it was a bit dirty, wouldn’t get played or whatever.
What about the Cobra deal with Toscano? Was that something Ike sorted out?
Yeah, because I didn’t know nothing about it. I was there, but I don’t know nothing about the politics of it. We did Betty Everett, it was during the time we did guys that were his own artists, who were already on his label. Like what was his name? Oh, shit, Otis Rush, there was one Otis Rush did.
Ike’s band backed … ?
Yeah, Willie Dixon came in. On some sessions Odie Payne on drums, I remember that guy, he was the most beautiful drummer with brushes. Fuck, I’ve never seen anybody play brushes like that guy. Odie, yeah, that’s right. Ike’s playing guitar and, let’s see, who else was there? Otis Rush and somebody else at that time, Buddy Guy. But Buddy, I don’t think he was recording for Cobra.
No, he was on Artistic, same thing.
That’s right, but he came around. He was over there with the sessions, because they were all buddies from way back. And them cats would all be … Whenever we’d be in Chicago recording they’d come around. Junior Wells and who else was there? Shit, I can’t remember, maybe it’ll come to me later. But all them Cobra guys, I was overwhelmed by them guys, because Otis Rush and them cats was like gods to me. I’d been hearing their records and sitting there in the studio with them! Fuck, it was just mind-boggling.
No. I think we had something in the pipeline. I don’t think I actually laid nothing down, or if I did, it wasn’t released.31
Did you get to meet Eli Toscano?
Eli, the Cobra guy? Yeah, nice guy, but in them days I wasn’t really interested in cats like him. They was just around and it was Ike and them doing their politics. He got on with everybody great. I’m sure he was a crook.
He was found in the river.
I’m sure he was a crook. Most of them guys was, they was all crooks, but they was great with the musicians. They was ripping them off left and right, but musicians didn’t know no better then. They had their gigs going and they was eating and sleeping, that’s all they cared about.32
But they made good records?
Oh, man, yes, shit. They really knew their music now. He knew his blues, that’s the one thing about all them guys that had them Chicago … Like the Chess brothers, I mean, they knew, man, fantastic.
Can you imagine the kind of ground that was being broken in them days when Leonard Chess signed Chuck Berry? People like that, you know, hey … And the variety, the diversity, it was great, man, from shoo-wop to the dirtiest blues you could name. After the Cobra thing Betty Everett got signed with Vee-Jay.
Ike knew all them guys, so while we were doing those Cobra sessions we would go out to clubs. Ike used to get up on the stage and I remember one night him and Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. I think it was Buddy and Junior’s gig, if I remember correctly. A lot of guys, Otis Rush, bunch of ’em. They showing us around, because it wasn’t that often we got up to Chicago. We was usually around St. Louis. Well, the jam was like magic, all them guys was like gods, as far as I was concerned. Since I was a little bitty kid I’d been hearing their records and shit. Harold Burrage, he was another one of the guys who came around. I liked him, liked his voice, that guy—he’s a good singer, man.
But Eli, yeah, since you mentioned it, they were gamblers. They lived to that shit, shootin’ dice, him and Jake, Shakey Jake. What a name—Shakey Jake!
What about Eli Toscano’s right-hand man who got killed?
Tampa, yeah. He was just a guy that showed us around different cafés and things. Eli’s right hand. And a few years later when that shit went down he got killed, he was the first one. This was some years later, maybe a year or two. Otis Rush, “Double Trouble”? Yeah, on that session “Double Trouble” he said “millionairies.” “Hey, why you say “millionairies,” it’s “millionaires,” Jack. Don’t you know how to say that?” He start to get self-conscious about it. We said, “No, man, keep it like that, it’s really nice, don’t change it, whatever you do.” That was great, it was unique.
Erskine Oglesby?
Yeah, Gayles had two sax players and Erskine was the other guy in Gayles’s band. He later joined Ike’s band as a baritone player, yeah, that’s right, because we got him from out of Gayles’s band. He worked with us for a while before we went on the road.
Did he record with you at Cobra?
No, that was Jackie.
So he replaced Jackie?
Yeah, for a while, because Jackie was out of the band for a while and Erskine replaced him. Then Jackie got back in the band, then we went on the road. The first time we went on the road to California, Jackie was with us. I think Erskine didn’t want to go on the road, that’s why he dropped out. Then we had a nice little variety show, because Erskine could sing, too. He wasn’t all that versatile, but he could sing things like “Stagger Lee,” all that Lloyd Price stuff. “Stagger Lee” was his favorite song.
Leo Gooden?
Leo Gooden, he’s dead now. He died a long time ago. He was a big fat guy, I mean real fat, but he was very rich. He was a black guy, but he was white, very fair skinned—you know how black people is in the States, shades. I don’t know where he got his money, but he was a politician of some kind. And he was always into trying to do something with music. He was always trying to promote it in some way.
He opened a club in East St. Louis. I forget what it was called, but a lot of good people played there. Originally it was supposed to be a jazz club, then he graduated over into blues, soul, and R&B. Everybody used to play there and that was one of the most popular clubs around St. Louis area. He used to bring in big-name bands.33
There was a club he bought one time called the Bamboo Key Club. Originally it was called the Mambo Club, which was once upon a time owned by gangsters, mafia people. People who used to be in St. Louis, what’s his name? Mickey Cohen, he used to own that club. Leo Gooden bought the club.
He was a West Coast figure, though?
Yeah, but he hung out in East St. Louis because East St. Louis used to be the gangsters’ thing, because there was a big race track there. The Mambo, it was black like marble—not marble, but that stuff that shines like glass. It was beautifully designed, the shape of it was kinda long, fantastic. So nobody, no niggers ever got a chance to see inside of it until this thing busted open and they put it up for sale and Leo Gooden bought it. Ray Charles, everybody used to come. And he bought another one and sold it to a man named George Quarles.
So Leo, he had a jazz quintet called Leo’s Five, though he didn’t play. It was in his name because he was the cat. Leo’s Five was hot. They used to be all on KATZ, the hottest jazz thing around town, and they had the residency there. Then he started opening up to rhythm-and-blues guys.
He did something with Ike, too. Him and Ike had some stuff going. I don’t know if it was ever released or whether Leo just put up some money for Ike to do some trips to Chicago or whatever, but they were very thick at one time on the business scene. I don’t know what the hell they were doing. He used to follow us around to a lot of gigs out of town like Springfield and places.
Yeah, strange people, strange lifestyle, even in them days it was all crazy. The lifestyle was crazy, but at that time we thought it was normal. We knew it was kinda crazy, we knew it wasn’t like the normal bands that were around. I mean most of the bands were pretty boring and stuff. But I suppose that’s why Ike’s band had such a reputation. The cats was crazy, man. We get into all kinds of fights.
Oh, man, this was a classic. We all come out the Club DeLisa one night and Carlson Oliver, one of his girlfriends had a car. I think it was a little Nash Rambler. Anyway, she used to follow us around. So the parking lot was across the road. So we all coming out the club with the stuff and we hear, “Ahh—my car’s gone!” It’s Carlson’s girlfriend. “What! Goddamn dirty mother … somebody’s stole my old lady’s car.” And while we were all standing there going crazy being flabbergasted, the car passes by. “There goes my car! Some nigger—there it go.” “What! Fuck, come on, let’s go.” So this whole club of people, all the stragglers, groupies, hangers-on, everybody, maybe sixty people in the street, running down the street in the direction the car went. The car had made a right turn up in a little alley. We all know it’s the entrance to a school playground and there’s a brick wall down there with a tall fence. So we, “Hey, we got him! We got him.” So me and Ike is the fastest because we is the lightest, because most of them other cats was pretty big guys.
So there’s the car sitting there rocking, lights on, engine still running. The cat done jumped over the fence. So we said, “Went over the fence, come on y’all.” Me and Ike hit it and a couple of strides and over. As I looked back, people falling over, it looked like an assault course, we were over in the school playground heading for the next street. Big ole fat Carlson, man, and he only had three toes on one foot anyway. Man, big cats were falling.
Then we see the guy as we turn out into the next street, “There he go.” So, man, it was getting funny because as we look back down the street we saw all the gang, the mob. This is like three in the morning and police cars have joined in the race now, somebody called the cops, “Hey, riot, or something.” They don’t know what’s happening, all this shit going on.
So we gaining on this cat. So me and Ike looking at each other side by side. “Fuck, man, we’re gonna catch him.” “We got him, we got him.” We started laughing. So Ike, when this cat gets to laughing it’s so infectious, he’s got a weird laugh, so we’re running and laughing. So Ike says, “What we gonna do?” “We’re gonna jump on him.” “Wait, I know what to do, don’t worry, shut up, don’t say anything.” He said, “Hey, nigger, stop.” I thought, I wonder if he thinks this guy’s really gonna stop. I said, “You crazy, man, this cat ain’t gonna stop.” I’m really falling over laughing. He said, “Nigger, if you don’t stop, I’m gonna shoot. I’ll count three and if you don’t stop, that’s it, I’m blowin’ your head off.” Ike says “One, two, three,” and he goes “Bang!” This guy, man, he must have thought he really had a gun, you know. He was anticipating getting blown away. He couldn’t look around, he didn’t have the time. He knew everybody was back there and we was pretty close. And when he said “Bang,” listen, you seen cartoons? I’ve seen some fast guys, Roadrunner and all them cats, man. But this cat on the count of “three” he jumped up about three feet off the ground. He settled back down and never broke the stride, but it looked like smoke jumped out from under this cat’s feet. This guy hit another gear. He could have been an Olympic sprinter, Jack, I’m telling you, man. I ain’t never seen nobody so fast. He just start disappearing on us. And me and Ike were looking at each other, “Wow, you see that nigger run?” But what a night, man. We used to have all kind of weird things like that happen. That’s the way it was. Crazy days.
Stevens Records 107.
You told me before that you wouldn’t do “Jack Rabbit” on stage. Why was that?
I think it was basically because I didn’t like the song that much, so therefore I wasn’t nagging Ike to do it. Our repertoire was so full until … That song we just did it as a novelty and I don’t think either one of us took it very serious. I didn’t like it very much and I don’t think he cared for it that much. We had fun with it a couple of times.34
But “Hey-Hey” was popular?
Yes, that’s right. “Hey-Hey” became a little ole classic around St. Louis. I started getting really known from that “Hey-Hey” and “Ho-Ho” shit. I mean kids were really requesting that shit. I remember we used to play a place called Lindy’s Hall out in Wellston, in St. Louis. And in them days Ike’s band was the only band that was breaking the ice, the white and black thing. And being a black band and playing this stuff that the white kids wanted to hear, it wasn’t like Little Milton. Ike’s band was doing everything, doing all kinds of shit, especially the rock stuff of that time, like Chuck Berry. I was kicking ass. That was my thing, we began to branch into that.35
I remember, man, we got raided in Lindy’s Hall because we had such … I mean, all the chicks, white chicks, they dug us so much. There was loads of groupies and there was one or two chicks whose parents were somebody, right? So this was really, “How dare you hang around down at that funky Lindy’s Hall with them tramps, niggers, and things. What are you doing?”
So they come and got us and marched us out with about thirty or forty groupies and hangers-on and shit, the whole fucking shebang, down to the police station. Let them all go, but really hassling us, searching us for drugs and shit. None of us didn’t have any, we were really smart about that shit. Ike knew that he was a target. That his band would be a target because we were breaking ground, he was smart about that. He told us, “Hey, you motherfuckers who smoke, make sure we’re out of these clubs, stay clean, because we may get hassled any time.”
Then we started getting other places like the Club Imperial and all them. A guy named George Edick had the Club Imperial, which was one of our home places. It was a white club and, man, they loved Ike’s band and I was the cat. I was the rock ’n’ roll cat. I was Chuck Berry and all that. I mean, we used to get off on all that stuff—the kids did, too. We used to have dancing championships. Ike’s band was definitely the heaviest band around, there was no doubt about that. All the kids, black and white, and this club was one of the forerunners of the rock ’n’ roll thing in St. Louis. This was before we done any of the “Work Out Fine” hits, before they hit. We were still local.
Did you do any TV shows with them back then?
Yeah, yeah, I did. My first TV show that I remember being in a TV studio, it was funny, man. It was in St. Louis. George Edick had a big hand in this television station and he got a local sponsor to do a program on Ike’s band in the club about the rock thing, what’s happening. It was like a documentary thing, I suppose. It was kinda documentary, but then it was an entertainment thing, because it was the band, it was us. And he was talking about the club and what was happening within the structure of rock ’n’ roll.
Anyway, I had all the youngest side of the people with me and I had to do “Splish Splash.” There was no kind of presentation, bam! There was Ike Turner’s band. “Whatever you do it’s up to y’all.” So there was no kind of theatrical thing involved, no props. But me, I’m gonna sing “Splish Splash.” The sponsor was Steve Mizerany. He manufactured kitchen appliances—fridges, ranges, washing machines, et cetera, that kinda shit, right? So I said, “Why don’t I come out of a bathtub with a towel wrapped around me for real?” So George Edick said, “Shit, man, yeah.” That was my stroke of genius, right! “Yeah, shit—hey, boy, look, c’mon, that’s pretty good, that’s good imagination.”
So sure enough they got this bathtub in for me. “Now, it’s Ike Turner’s band with Little Jimmy Thomas, he’s takin’ him a bath in so-and-so’s bathtub.” Whatever the name of the store was, took a sneaky little plug in there and sure enough the camera zoomed in on me—“Splish splash I was takin’ a bath …” So I come outta this bathtub with a towel around me, so you think I’m gonna be naked or something. So then I open the towel, start dancing around, I got on my jeans and things.
I was great. Fuck, it was the talk of St. Louis for weeks. I couldn’t live it down, man. All the black cats were laughing, “Saw you in that bathtub,” and they started calling me “Splish Splash.” “You gonna ‘Splish Splash.’” But it went down great, man. And I saw the tape a couple of weeks afterward. George Edick had a cinema thing in his basement and he was running this thing. He said, “Hey, man,” one night after the gig. “Hey, man, y’all wanna see what you did on TV?” Because it was live, everything was live. “Oh, great, yeah.” So he got us all down there, sitting back waiting on the program to start. And sure ’nuff, I came up, man, and all through the whole program every song I did I was chewing gum, man. Looking really stupid, chewing gum. When I wasn’t singing I’d be chewing gum while the solos and things going on, I’d be dancing away, Jack—chewing.
I was cringing. I was going “Noooo, no. No wonder they were laughing!” It was hilarious, it was so funny. But it was good, it was fucking good and musically it was right, man. It was hot. Because we used to play everything faster than any record was anyway.36
Tina Turner?
She was around before me, in fact, but she was just turning up at the gig now and then, she wasn’t really singing with the band as such. She had a sister, Aileen, she brought Tina down. She [Tina] was great with me. A lot of the girls and a lot of the guys around St. Louis didn’t like her. They thought that she thought that she was hot shit because she was singing with Ike Turner and all the guys, but you know, she was sweet, man, she was nice. Total innocence all the way. I mean, like, sex-wise, total innocence as far as life—she was just an innocent girl. She has always been like that, vulnerable, in fact. She come across like—the big butch chick or something, but no. She wasn’t like that at all and she still ain’t.
Fontella Bass?
During them days there was so much going on. Ike did record Fontella Bass. Yeah, Fontella and Tina. Fontella could sing, man. She played piano with Little Milton, but not all the time, just when her spot would come up. She wasn’t playing as the permanent … there was another guy, I think it was Lloyd Wallace. He was Milton’s piano player.37
During them days that’s where the first Ikettes came. These girls worked with Art Lassiter around St. Louis. I think they called themselves the Artettes. The Artettes were Robbie Montgomery, Frances Hodge, and I think one of Robbie’s sisters.38 Then when they joined Ike, that’s when Ike brought Jessie Smith into the band. She was from Alton, Illinois. Anyway, these girls joined, we was already on tour by now. No, that’s wrong—wait, we hadn’t been on tour yet.
Ike and Tina Turner, c. 1960.
Before the Sue Records?
That’s right, just before. Because “Fool in Love” was written for Art Lassiter, which was the Rockers’ lead singer. Now, Art didn’t turn up for the session or something and Tina sang it and these girls backed her, them three girls I’m telling you about. And, that’s right, we went on the road and took them with us. That was the … they wasn’t Ikettes as such, there wasn’t no name. That’s when we really got into doing backing vocals. We took them three girls because the record was a hit.39
How did the deal with Juggy Murray (Sue Records) come about?
Now, I don’t know how that happened or how it came about, I just remember when it did happen. I remember Juggy coming to East St. Louis to Ike’s house. And we saw this guy, smart New York nigger, you know, smart cashmere coat and the kind of hats they was wearing in them days, looking like a gangster. And lots and lots of money.
I didn’t know anything about the business in them days, just some guy turns up named Juggy Murray and him and Ike were doing some heavy business over this song, this “Fool in Love” thing. I knew about how “Fool in Love” came about, because I was there. But Juggy and Ike got on, made the deal. Ike got lots of money, got a new Cadillac, new station wagon, we hit the road. “Fool in Love” was a smash, it really was everywhere hitting.
So you were still a local band up to the deal with Sue?
Up until “Fool in Love.”
But you traveled before, though?
Locally, yeah. Jefferson City, Kansas City, all the places around. We played a lot of places.
At first it was two or three cars. Our first national tour all we had was a Cadillac, an Oldsmobile, and a Pontiac station wagon. Then he bought a long—what you call them things? Like a van, but extended, one of them extended version vans. And it had seats in it and you could put instruments and things on top. And Eddie Jones used to drive it! (laughing) And that damn thing, man, it was like an almost bus. Eddie used to wear funny hats and things and used to drive this damn thing and they used to freeze to death. Everybody would always complain, the heater always breaking down. Every time they get it fixed it would always break down. Finally we got more and more popular. Ike, you know, the records start selling so he bought a bus. So then we just had the Cadillac and the bus on the road. Everybody travel in the bus, we travel in the Cadillac. We was supposed to be big-time then, I guess. It was funny, man, but it was great fun, though.
Billy Gayles went to Washington, D.C., with us when we were doing all those theater gigs. He would come up, Ike had him doing a song in the show. This was in ’61. Ike would have me introduce him or something. And it was sad to me, because the kids weren’t getting off on Billy Gayles. And I knew, shit, I was thinking to myself. It was sad, every night I would have to introduce him, because the kids would be sitting there going, “Groan.” And that guy, man, he’d be burning, smoking. I’d think to myself, fuck! And as soon as he’d go off and I’d come on, “Cheer.” I’d be singing whatever the current crap was and it just didn’t seem right. I felt very sorry for Billy Gayles in that sense, because I had so much respect for that guy. I felt very sorry that he wasn’t receiving his proper thing.
But then I was learning. We was on the road and I was a little slicker then, things like that. I knew about showmanship, how to get an audience, and he didn’t. He was definitely just a blues man. He was used to singing in them joints. He would just stand there and flat-foot sing, and the kids would want to see you do the Jackie Wilson shit, you know, running across the stage, splits, and all the crap that was going on. He toured with us around Washington, East Coast for about two months. And it was really sad, because Ike was really treating him badly, giving the cat, like, a little pocket money and just paying the hotel bill. It was bad, because Billy was a great man.
Wilson Watson?
Yeah, nice guy. Rich black cat down there in the West Virginia hills, loads of money. He was involved with Lloyd Price and Harold Logan. I think he helped finance … He used to book a lot of gigs up and down there.
Hector (?), a piano player?
Oh, that was another guy from St. Louis. He was with us during part of the Washington thing, he didn’t stay long, either. Had Hector been working with Billy? I don’t know. But this was during the time that Ike got Gayles from St. Louis to join us so he could record him for Wilson Watson. He didn’t come with Gayles, he joined us in St. Louis. He didn’t stay long, six months something like that, because Ike didn’t like the way he played. He would always get drunk a lot.
Were you still based in St. Louis then?
No. We’d moved from St. Louis, but Ike still had his house and whenever we were in that part that would be our base. We would tour from there. Billy left, he taught me so much—him and Tommy Hodge, all them guys—about singing. I used to really listen to them, sing with them. But I knew more about harmonies, so we were learning off each other, but I used to really look up to them guys.
So Ike recorded Billy on that tour?
He did. He made some records in Washington, D.C. That was the purpose of him being with us that few months. Ike was writing some songs for him, for me, some of the girls, and Tina. This was when he was getting his production thing together, his whole package thing for Sue.
Ike was stopping off at various places making tapes and things in studios. We cut some sides in Washington, D.C., on Billy and on this girl named Eloise Carter. Eloise was with Chuck Jackson for a while. Eloise Hester was really her name, she was from Los Angeles, Ike was screwing her. So he had to cut some sides on her. “My Man Rock-Head,” some crap, it was really bad.40
I don’t know what label it was on, I don’t know what deals he had with the guy. There was a little fair-skinned guy who was like a little wheeler-dealer record man around Washington. He used to have little offices. I remember we used to go up there and he got the studio equipment and all that stuff together to record.
You know about Jimmy and Jean? Shit, man, that was me and this chick called Wilhelmina, from Washington, D.C. She was another really fine chick who Ike took on as an Ikette, only there was no Ikettes in them days, not yet. But this was the beginning of that whole concept. Eloise was on the road with us and we were backing Tina, plus we had our own spot. It was a revue, it was that kind of thing. I had my spot, Eloise had her spot, Tina was obviously the star, because she had the hit.
When we got to Washington I started messing around with a chick who was one of Jackie Wilson’s girlfriends and she introduced Wilhelmina to us. She had a nice voice, but a very soft voice. But she was a nice girl, very gentle girl. So Ike was, like—he was crazy. He was like M. C. [Reeder]. All the chicks in the band had to be his chicks and Wilhelmina was no exception. So anyway, he produced a single of me and her. I think we did two records, in fact, under the name of Jimmy and Jean. I don’t remember what label it was on, but it was at the time that they had the Sue contract and there was some fight between … Ike was mad with Juggy, so Ike was gonna show Juggy, it was that kind of thing. And, sure enough, Jimmy and Jean’s records were selling a little bit.41
Who was on drums after Bootie Lip?
This cat Pap. Steeplehead Pap from East St. Louis. He had a steeple-shaped head, man, it was shaped like a half moon on the up. (laughs) He played good drums.
Nose [James Norwood] joined after Pap, maybe somebody in between. Oh, yeah, a Washington cat, he was a junkie, but a fucking good drummer. Nose came from Durham, North Carolina, we got him from there. He was in a local band around there. Nose was there about three years, I think, roughly about ’63 to ’66.
We also picked up a lot of other musicians around Washington during that time, because we hung around Washington a lot. Al “TNT” Tribble, his father was a drummer as well around Washington, he had a residency in some club. But TNT was a really good drummer. He was so funky and had a heavy foot. Drive, shit. And the Kings of Rhythm were known for that driving rhythm.
So the band during that time was TNT on drums, and after him was a guy named Billy something, from Washington, who was a real thin willowy guy who was a good drummer, too. He was basically a jazz drummer so he had technique down pat. He wasn’t as driving as TNT, but he was ace. He only played for a few months. We picked up another little drummer out of Memphis one time. I can’t remember his name, but we called him Rebop. Good drummer, but I can’t remember the guy’s name for shit, little short guy. So many people come in and out of that fucking band. Boy, I’ll tell you, it’s amazing.
There was one little guy we had played drums, little tiny guy, he looked like the guy in the Mad magazine. You know the skinny kid on the beach, kick sand in his face, he looked like that one. This cat was like a bag of bones, man, but he could play. His name was Mo. Fuck, I can’t remember his name either.
Then we got a big chick named Royster. Vermita Royster, something like that. Gospel chick, used to be in one of them Clara Ward, Marian Anderson, Stars of Faith, or something, she’d sing her ass off. But she, oh, man, I hope none of them hear this shit. (laughing) I’ll get killed, Jack. But she was built like a football player, big shoulders, big tits, she was strong. And she fancied Mo. And we used to have fun, man. She used to chase his ass through the dressing room. And the cat had a broke back, he fell off a ladder or something and she used to nurse him. He used to hate it. She was big and he was a little bag of bones. I remember that shit, that was funny. This was in the mid-’60s somewhere.
This other boy who was Tina’s sister’s boyfriend who OD’d—he died somewhere down in Texas. His name was Marvin Warwick, played baritone, really nice cat. I can’t remember who the piano player was at that time, but I think it was Leon Blue. Because I know he joined somewhere along the line. Oh, yeah, I know there was a guy from St. Louis. I can see him, his name was Edgar, he was a good little blues pianist.
Jesse Knight Jr. was still with us at that time. He was about five years older than me. Him and Raymond, they were all about the same age. I think Junior was younger than Raymond. He quit the band one time and rejoined again later. When I first joined the band in St. Louis and when we first went out on tour nationally after “Fool in Love,” Jesse was with us the first time we went out. So for the first year of that tour, I’ll say for the first six months, he was with the band, then he left.
Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Front row: Bobby John, Jessie Smith, Robbie Montgomery, Vanessa Fields, Thomas “Nose” Norwood, Jimmy Thomas. Standing left to right: Sam Rhodes, Herman Relf, Rayfield Davers, Clifford Solomon, Anthony Chenault, Ernest Lane. Top: Ike and Tina Turner, c. 1963.
Going back to the St. Louis days, I remember this one night we got off—I think it was the Club DeLisa we played. We got some chicks and we was all there. Ike had a big house and a lot of musicians lived there and Junior’s room was upstairs. There was a whole bunch of us downstairs in the sitting room with the piano and shit and drinking. Well, Junior was the kind of cat he liked to stir shit. He was a clown. If he came in here, he’d have to start fucking with something, make you laugh. He used to be famous for putting sheets over his head. You know, he’d take a chick to his room and the chick is there to give him some pussy, but before he’s gonna do that he’s gonna scare the chick, chase her and shit, and the chick would be, “Aaahh!” … But he was like that, funny cat.
Anyway, this night, man, wasn’t nothing unusual, just Junior chasing a chick down the stairs in his jockey shorts, chick is fully clothed, can’t imagine what the fuck. We hear all this noise, “Aaahhh, stay away from me …” The chick runs off carrying on a merry little chase through the sitting room, through the living room, back through the kitchen and, shit, running around turning over things with Junior chasing her.
Man, when everything slowed down we’re all, “Look, Crow got on his little shorts.” He hated that, hated to be called Crow. “Crow, get your ass upstairs and get dressed, Jack. Fuck me, look at him, black-assed Crow.” And Junior turned around to go back upstairs and there was these brown shit streaks all up the back of his shorts (laughing) where he hadn’t wiped his ass too good. I swear, man, we was in stitches. It was so funny because all the chicks was there, everybody was there and the lights was bright. Motherfucker turns around and he’s got shit all up the back of his shorts, man. Plus we started calling him Sergeant Starchy after that! (laughing) Sergeant Starchy, that motherfucker would chase you. He’d be serious, he’d chase you, man. He’d be ready to fight, on stage, anywhere. Junior—funny cat, boy.
Ike shitted on himself one time on stage, man. Yeah, Eddie Duncan comes into this, man. This was just before my time in East St. Louis. Raymond and them used to tell me about it, they used to laugh about it all the time. Let’s see, was Johnny O’Neal with Ike then? I don’t know. So Billy Duncan must have played with Ike before Eddie Jones, maybe. Because he sure worked with Ike sometimes.
Anyway, Ike had a bad cold or something and he took some, I don’t know if it was Epsom Salts or something. He didn’t know what it was, Annie Mae gave it to him. “Ike come on, baby, take this.” She could charm the drawers off you. “Come on, baby, if you don’t take this that old cold gonna kick your ass.” And sure enough she nagged him into taking this shit. Not knowing it’s a laxative Ike goes to the gig (laughs), you know what happens.
He goes to the gig and I remember the place they told me it happened at, it was a famous landmark after that. Every time we went past it they would always point. Was it the Blue Flame in East St. Louis? Anyway, gig starts to cook, Ike comes on stage, Duncan and them playing, puts on his guitar, tunes up, stomps off the number. I think they said Jackie was singing “Jim Dandy,” it was something really hot. “Jim Dandy” was their house rocker, they used to turn the damn club out on that kind of thing. Raymond and them used to walk, the saxes, out through the crowd and all that.
Anyway, Duncan’s standing next to Ike on this particular night and suddenly Ike stopped and they kept cookin’. Duncan looks over at Ike and he sees Ike looking funny and easing the guitar off. Nobody don’t know nothing yet. He takes the guitar and eases it to the side, slowly, and the band’s still cookin’. And suddenly it starts to really stink, boy, and “God damn!” they knew. Everybody knew. All the folks in the front. And as he turned around to lay the guitar down Duncan hit him in the ass with his hand like plop! And the only way out of the club was through the crowd. Ike had to walk through that long crowd, walk that fucking gauntlet, Jack, with shit running all down his pants leg, squelching in his shoe tops. And stinking t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e. Man, they told me that, boy. They used to tell that a lot. It was a landmark. That place was famous among the band.
Did they play there again?
No, he became real famous after that. Maybe that’s what helped him get famous.
Anyway, we started hanging out around Washington, up there. And that’s where this guy joined, Rahoo, played bass. I can’t remember what his name was now. Everybody came in the band, I had to have a nickname for. He just looked like a Rahoo to me! He played with us before Sam Rhodes joined, so we had quite a few guys from Washington. That particular band it didn’t last all that long. I think Marvin, the guy that died, probably lasted the longest out of that Washington band.
Washington, musically, was very good. There was Billy Stewart and his brother. There was a place called the Spa, a great big old club where all the cats would meet up and jam. Somebody was always hot that was working there. And what’s this blues guy, “Trying to Make a Living,” Bobby Saxton, met him in Washington, he was pretty hot around there. He was living in Washington at the time. He was one of the permanent fixtures around there.
Jesse and Ike made it up and Jesse started back touring with us again and we went to California that time. That was like ’61. Jesse toured California with us. That’s when Ike was looking around to buy a place. And I think he toured all around through the country and back a second time and quit somewhere along the line. Then we got Sam Rhodes. That’s right, on the way back across, again, St. Louis, one of the bases. Jesse quit, he didn’t want to go back on the road.
Sam Rhodes was obviously the next best choice, because he had a similar style. Sam had worked with Billy Gayles and people like that a lot. That’s right, Sam was Billy Gayles’s bass player before he joined Ike. He had his own little thing going, good band.
Who is the sax player in the photograph in Blues Unlimited number 135/136, page 18?
Rasheed Ishmael. His name was Norman Rich, he was from Washington. His adopted Muslim name was Rasheed Ishmael. He was really a nice guy. He wasn’t really a staunch Muslim. He tried to be, but being on the road, he was always into things, man, chasing chicks, the whole trip, getting in trouble. And he used to carry the payroll. Ike would give him the money, he was like the band treasurer. And there was a friendly rivalry between him and Eddie Jones. They were both tenor players and they used to really fight hard for which one is gonna get the solos on what songs, you know, things like that.
Slippery Harry?
Oh, yeah, his name was Pat. We picked him up from around Washington—that was during the Wilson Watson days. He was, like, Ike’s cat before Rhonda.
Who was Rhonda?
Well, Rhonda was Ike’s secretary and she’s still Tina’s today. She’s still working for Tina. She was the chick who done all the—done all the dirty work.42 So Harry, he come from around Washington.
And Junior was having it off with Harry’s old lady. Then Mack Johnson started getting it, Mack started fucking her then. Then everybody—god damn, I hope none of them people don’t hear this shit, boy. (laughing) I get somebody killed. I can’t remember what the fuck happened, but there was a big thing about it. Harry got fired, anyway, him and Ike fell out. Don’t nobody stick with Ike too long except a few people.
“Gonna Work Out Fine.” How come Mickey and Sylvia were on it and not Ike?
I’ll tell you what happened. I know we were at the Apollo and they was on the bill with us. And, you know, they got tight with Ike and Tina and them. And Sylvia’s husband—they were doing real good, they had a club, he was a rich guy, rich black man, they had lots of money. Sylvia, she was a great lady, she looked good. We used to go out to their club after the gig. Tina, Ike, myself, couple of the guys maybe. And they got very tight and they got into Mickey and Sylvia’s songs, and Ike used to really admire the way Mickey played.
Up in the dressing room one day Sylvia had brought this song in that her and Mickey were writing or had wrote, I can’t remember now. But I remember that they had made arrangements to record it and Sylvia was gonna play it instead of Ike playing it. And Mickey doing the talking bits, because Ike was too bashful to talk.
You know, they had the words there and Mickey was telling him. And every time, Ike would crack up laughing or something, he couldn’t take it seriously. “Yes, Tina!” breaks up, oh, man, “Cut, cut.” So finally Mickey done it. And me and Eloise and this other chick, Wilhelmina, did the background. I sung the top, it was a nice sound having a guy sing the top with two girls, had that little thing, something weird. It was a weird way of life, it was a weird band, really. Always did things kinda strange. Ike may have played piano on it, I guess. I can’t remember now, but not very much, he was mostly into the production side of it.
I presume he got credits for all of that as producer, because he was the cat, he actually was in charge. “Work Out Fine” was like Ike and Tina’s crossover song. Because before, nationally speaking they hadn’t reached a white audience. You know, certain clubs, certain towns, but they started to get radio play on the Top 40 with that record, whereas “Fool in Love” didn’t. Nor did “Poor Fool” or none of them others, only the black stations.
What about all those package shows?
Yeah, those East Coast tours, the theater thing. There was the Howard in Washington, the Apollo in New York, the Royal in Baltimore, the “flea pit” as everybody called it, the Uptown in Philly, that was the theater circuit, and the last one was usually Washington, because it was furthest south. Then you start on the one-nighter thing, down through Virginia, North and South Carolina, and all them places.
You did some gigs with Buster Brown?
Yeah. We also done some gigs with Tarheel Slim and Little Ann. Whenever we done gigs like them theater circuits like the East Coast, this was something like ’62, ’63, somewhere like that. Ernie K-Doe, Buster Brown, all them cats.
Did you ever run across Bobby Robinson?
Yeah, lots of times, used to see him a lot. I don’t think Ike had any dealings with him that I know of.
What was Buster Brown like?
I didn’t know him, but he was on the show. He was a very quiet old guy, fat, cockeyed. But he was in another world from what I was into. Me and the cats, man, chasing chicks. He was just a nice old cat. He had a nice little set, you know, play his harp, “Fannie Mae,” yeah, used to like it. I remember him as being a very pleasant man. Yeah, whoopin’ and blowin’, he really had a nice style.
We were touring with people like Jerry Butler, Chuck Jackson, no blues people, it was all soul people, R&B thing. The Miracles, Smokey and them, a lot of Motown acts, whoever was hot. There would always be six or seven top name acts touring. The East Coast tour system, it was the normal thing then, the thing to do. Whoever was hot, there was two agencies, Universal and Shaw.
What about Howard Lewis?
Oh, yeah, Howard Lewis, shit! He was outta Dallas. Yeah, he done all of Texas and Oklahoma. Howard Lewis I remember very well. I remember him real good, as a matter of fact, because our bus driver was having it off with his secretary.
She was such a classy chick, man. She used to wear these diamonds and things. Howard was a rich black guy, he was rich, man. I don’t know what other line of business he was in outside of promotion, but sometime he wouldn’t be on (the road) and he’d send his right-hand boy out there and this lady. The two of them to go around to the gigs with us and get the halls organized and things. And this lady was having it off with Duke, our bus driver. And they was like … oh, it was filthy, man! It was great.
And old Duke, let’s see, he got … Howard Lewis’s secretary shot herself trying to shoot Duke. Something happened, really. This was in Oklahoma City, in a motel as we were checking out, something happened. I don’t know what, if she pulled a gun on Duke because of some chick or what. But Howard Lewis’s right-hand man was in on the whole conspiracy. He knew, but he wouldn’t say anything, because he was hanging out with us. I mean, what the hell, he didn’t care no ways, he was makin’ money. They made up some kind of lie and told Howard Lewis how she got shot. Some kind of accidental thing, she fell down with the gun …
There was always funny things happening on tour. We were all in this motel in South Carolina. It was with Chuck Jackson, Ben E. King, the Miracles, there was a lot of groups, and we was partyin’ hard in this motel after the gig. And Mack Johnson the trumpet player, who was on Phillip Upchurch’s “You Can’t Sit Down,” he was with us. He was doing the trumpet solo. He was really bad, man. He could really upset a house, blow the roof off, he’d get everybody on their feet, you know, playing that number. He used to use a toilet plunger as a mute! Consequently he pulled a lot of chicks in them joints, they’d follow him. He was a nice-looking dude, but he was a drip.
So we were in the motel partying. So somebody rings up and say come on down to the office, man, something’s happened to one of the Ike and Tina boys. So we all made this mad dash to the office. We all pile in the cars and go to an address somewhere, and there’s Mack hiding behind a tree, naked. You know, down in South Carolina, three o’clock in the morning. So Ike knocks on this door and we’re all on the porch backing him up. So the guy opens the door, say, “Yes?” He looks out and sees all these stars, man. He says, “Well, I caught the nigger in bed with my old lady so I hit him and he ran.” So Ike says, “Well, all I want is just give me the nigger’s clothes.” So he give him the clothes and we split. But there was always something happening, that’s the whole point of it. On them tours, man, there was always somebody getting in trouble.
Like this time with Ike and Gorgeous George in Atlanta. Gorgeous George was the guy that was with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, who were great friends of ours because we toured. This was the original player Gorgeous George. And George was an immaculate dresser, lady killer and all that, but a really great guy. Anyway, we met up in Atlanta in this motel. It had a concrete courtyard and two floors of rooms with their own little patios overlooking the courtyard. And this girl in the group, Eloise Carter, she’d known George from a long time ago, they were great friends. Anyway, Ike was having it off with Eloise and he was very jealous and his nose was wide open for her, man.
He went to the room about three in the morning, he probably thought everyone was asleep. So he crept down, knocked on the door and George was in the room. So Ike starts raising hell and we hear all this commotion and everybody starts peeping out their doors trying to find out the source of this noise. We hear all this cussing, “You motherfucker—god damn.” “Well, Ike, hey …” We heard the word “Ike” and it was, “Ike’s in trouble, let’s see what’s happening.” So we see this little scuffle start up on the thing and Ike slapped Eloise or something and she ran back to the room and, “Fuck you, man …”
Okay, now, they get down in the courtyard, George and Ike and Ike’s still raising hell. “Nigger, I thought you was my friend—blah blah—don’t tell me shit …” And George says, “Ike, we don’t need to argue and fight, we’re grown men. The girl, hey, man, I’ve been knowing her since …” “Don’t tell me nothing, nigger …” Then Ike swung at George and missed and George—knowing karate, judo, and all these things—he grabbed Ike’s hand, did a little spin with him, and Ike’s ass went up in the air and, boom, hit that concrete, boy, and bounced. And Ike got up, he still wouldn’t stop. George leaned over, tried to tell him, “Hey, calm down, Ike, don’t try to do that, be cool, I don’t wanna hurt you, man.” “You won’t hurt me, nigger, what the fuck you …” And he swung again and this kept happening. George would take his feet, things like that. Ike was flying up in the air, he was flying all over the place like a dishrag or something.
Jimmy Thomas and Bobby John, 1964.
So anyway, everybody laughing by now. All the band and everybody knew what was happening, they didn’t feel sorry for Ike, they thought, serves you right, motherfucker, you think you slick. He never attacked Ike, he just used evasive moves, but he knew so much about the shit till Ike was really raggedy after about the fourth fall. This cat was dusty and bloody. He was wearing a process and his hair was all over the place. His suit was raggedy, trousers torn, one shoe off. (laughing)
So George, I suppose, was trying to frighten Ike into submission. He picked up an iron chair, “Okay, motherfucker, you won’t stop. Okay, this is it for you, then.” There’s Ike on the ground, can’t even get up. So I ran down and grabbed George and coaxed him on away, cool it out. Ike had black eyes for weeks after, he wore shades. Every time somebody look at him and start laughing he’d want to fight again, it was really funny. Anyway, he learnt karate after that, he became obsessed with learning karate. Him and George became great friends afterward. But there were a lot of things used to happen in them days.
Ike’s done some really dangerous things, man. I mean, people passing by shooting in his house and shit. He passing by people’s houses and shooting in, he’s always been on the border of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I think it was Lorraine’s ex-husband, he took Lorraine from her husband and she was staying over there. One night shots rang out, everybody was in bed. Bullet holes. This was at Virginia Place in East St. Louis. You could see the bullet holes up there. Then he and the guy became great friends. Crazy. Her name was Lorraine Taylor. Her father owned the Taylor Sausage Company. A black sausage maker in St. Louis, can you imagine?
It must have been a lot of fun?
Oh, yeah. I mean people used to think I was Ike. Because they always expect Ike and Tina to be a song thing! And people would often mistake … As a matter of fact, I posed for Ike a lot of times. There was a few times he’d have to fly to L.A. or to New York to do some business with the agents and things. Or sometimes he’d be stubborn for some reason and wouldn’t come on tour, pissed off or whatever.
A couple of the tours Ike wasn’t there, we hired another guitar player to play the licks. And I would do the talking bit for “Gonna Work Out Fine,” but nobody ever be there. It was only on a few college gigs where somebody would say, “Are you Ike?” and ask for autographs. Nobody even asked about Ike, people just assumed all the time that I was Ike, except certain places we played so many people knew who Ike was.
And, like, sometimes if I was doing the introductions and things, or if Eddie was doing it, it would usually be one of the guys out of the band or myself would do the introductions, all the rappin’ and shit. But nobody ever bothered, because Ike was kinda shy. He was a very shy kind of guy on stage about talking, but he got bolder later on, he wasn’t caring about that much of it. But a lot of people really did think I was him, really weird, man. And it was funny posing as him when I had to pose as him. I had to do it because of the contract situation.
If you book Ike and Tina Turner and you pay a certain amount of money to an agent for that act, in Ike’s case they had their own agency after a while, that’s what you’d expect to be there. Ike and Tina Turner and the Revue. And the Revue consisted of Jimmy Thomas, the Kings of Rhythm, and the Ikettes, and you’re in breach of that contract if all these people are not there. And so I had to play that role or otherwise they could have been sued. It happened three or four times, it happened on two tours. There were two tours he actually didn’t go out on.
You had someone replace Tina one time when she was pregnant?
Yeah, that’s right, Shirley from Detroit. We did a gig in Oakland with her as Tina. That was our first time in California, so nobody knew. She only did one or maybe two gigs. She never became an Ikette, because this was pre-Ikettes.
Bobby John?
We picked him up in L.A. and he was Ike and Tina’s valet, looking after the clothes. He was a good singer, but they had no space for him on the show, really, so they just gave him a little spot. He was just a funny guy. He was a good guy to have around, kept the spirit up all the time.
Anyway, we were down in Panama City, Florida, that’s right, and we were playing this place in Georgia just across the state line. We was gonna play two towns. That time we were staying in Georgia and Panama City. So we played the first gig. I picked up a chick, the chick followed us to the next gig. We played the first set, I looked up and there she was. So we go outside to get some air, cool off, place packed like sardines, funky, you know. One of the local yokels, man, he was jealous, because she was nice and everything, so he shouted out some obscenities at the chick about her being a groupie and everything. So I, trying to be chivalrous, I wasn’t really brave, I was scared shitless, but I’m trying to show that I’m cool. You don’t let the lady get insulted that you’re with. But there was too many of them, like three or four. If there had been one guy, okay.
The cat jumped off the car and slapped the chick, the chick ran and the guys started attacking me. She tried to help, but couldn’t. One of the guys flashed a knife, but I managed to kick the knife. Somehow I kicked him in the right place and he dropped the knife and I hit another guy and he flew, and by that time they’d started to hesitate. Anyway, I didn’t stick around, I just started running. As I’m taking off I’m surrounded by cars, so I’ve got to leap cars. Have you ever tried to leap cars in a dark car lot? Stumbling and falling. But when it’s survival and you think guys are behind you with knives and things you really can be pretty good. So, man, I was flying. I was graceful across the hoods and roofs.
So as the guys were chasing me, I don’t think that they were too in love with trying to catch me. After that little demonstration they probably thought I was bad, and I was. But there was this one guy that was faster or braver than the other guys, he was closer to me, he was catching up. And by the time he got really near, the crowd came out the joint. So I heard all the yelling and screamin’ and shit and gunshots. “Hey, Jimmy, what’s happening? There he goes.” Pow-pow! So I knew the cavalry had arrived, man. So the other guys were no more ’cept this one guy close to me, so I beat the shit outta him. I had to show something. Bobby John had the gun shooting up in the air. It was always things like that.
I remember one time in Vallejo, California, man, this was supposedly when we’d made it. Forget the St. Louis days, we were on the road. First trip we made to Vallejo everybody warned us before we left out of San Francisco going over to the gig. “Say, man, watch Vallejo. James Brown was over there two weeks ago, man, niggers over there turned it out. They fight over there, man. They turn the dances out. They got a thing going on, it’s really violent.”
So, well, we took it. Well, okay, something obviously must have provoked it. So we went over, done the gig. We’re on stage, it’s a big auditorium, tall stage, they didn’t have no bouncers, it was a gig. I’d done my bit and I’d introduced Tina. And I’d go up in the dressing room and relax or chase chicks or whatever until the end of Tina’s set when I’d come back on, as we had a little finale thing we’d do together. So I’m back in the dressing room and I hear the band break off in the middle of a number, “Fool in Love” or something, and suddenly—shit, you know, started up again. I thought, what the fuck’s going on? So I dashed downstairs see what’s happening. Some of the cats—Ike had kicked somebody in the face to get them off the stage, trying to grab the girls’ legs, go up the girls’ legs.
By the time I came down the band had taken off their jackets and were diving off into the crowd, into the front row of them cats, chicks, and everything, Ikettes and Tina and all of them. They had to, the crowd that was doing the naughties, there was a handful of the nasties that we’d been warned about. So anyway, they were leaping off like lemmings and I had to dive off as well, with no understanding of what was going on. It was crazy, man. Total craziness.
Nobody got hurt, we just had a nice dustup. And after the dustup the police came, put them out, take them away, we go back and start the show again, everybody raggedy, we carry on. Oh, it was crazy, man. Yeah, but looking back on it, it was crazy days. It never was normal, but strangely enough it did seem normal. Weird when you think about it, but we thought it was normal.
What was the story involving Bobby John and the band’s payroll?
Oh, yeah, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Yeah, that was really something. It was some kind of con that this guy worked on Bobby. And it was supposed to be an old trick whereby a guy knows you’ve got a bankroll. I don’t know how it really works, but he shows you so many twenties and stuff and the rest of it is just cut up pieces of paper for his bankroll, and he’s gonna look after your bankroll and his for some reason.
I don’t fucking know what it was about, but anyway, Bobby, like a fool, let him hold his and the guy pissed off. I don’t know how it really went, but it was supposed to be a really old silly trick. It was explained to me at the time, but it was too ridiculous to even believe. Crazy.
I bet Ike was pleased.
Oh, boy, I’m telling you, that was fun for days there. Shit. It was really funny.
Where would you play in L.A.?
There was the 5-4 Ballroom, 54th and Broadway. We played all kind of places, shit. In Watts—I can’t remember the name of the place in Watts, but we used to play a lot of white places in them days during the surfing times. And we played places like the California Ballroom. I think the 5-4 closed down.
I remember one time at the 5-4 Ballroom. I’d never dropped any reds before. I’d met this groupie and she said, “One won’t hurt you.” Well, fuck me, I’ll try anything once. Well, I dropped one, boy, and I was stoned, not tripping, but very spacey.
It come to the gig and it seemed like I’m burning like never before. Out there on the thing, oh, fuck, man, everything really sounding good. I finished my little bit, applause dies down and I said, “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Ike starts his little theme song, I think it was something like “The Stumble,” great, man.
“Yeah, now it’s star time, ladies and gentlemen, the young lady you’ve all been waiting for …” You know I’m going through the whole thing, “Fantastic, dynamic, unstoppable …” Everything I could think of, man, I’m stalling for time to think of that name. (laughing) I just could not for the life of me remember her name. I couldn’t call her Ann, that was there, Ann. I thought, fuck, what do we call her? And finally Ike’s seen the dilemma and he skipped up by me, “Tina, motherfucker, Tina!” (laughing) I said, “Yeah, Tina Turner, yeah.” Boy, I’m telling you, it was funny as hell. I never took another red devil after that, anybody come close to me with a red after that, I ran like a fucking stripped ape, boy.
Did everybody call her Ann?
Yeah. We never used “Tina” on the road. Call her everything, “Bo,” never used “Tina” unless you were being funny or something.
We would only be in L.A. three months out of the year, we be touring like nine months. And we would supposed to be, like, resting for three months, rehearsing and getting a new show together and all that. We’d spend about two weeks rehearsing and then we would start touring the West Coast, Arizona, Washington, Northern and Southern California.
When did you first meet Ernest Lane?
I didn’t meet Ernest until we got to L.A., but I used to hear Ike talk about Ernest a lot. Ike used to tell us about all his old buddies, Robert Nighthawk. Ike used to tell me about all them cats. But Ernest Lane met up with us in L.A. Ike had been talking about him a long time, but he didn’t need no piano player then. Ernest joined the group about the second year that we were based in L.A., second or third. We moved to L.A. about ’62 or ’63.
Charles McGowan?
Yeah, I knew Charles McGowan, but I didn’t know all that much about him. I knew him through Ike, he was one of their buddies. This was in L.A. I didn’t know him in St. Louis, but I knew of him. I don’t know when he went to L.A., but I met him, Raymond and all that.
Can you remember Billy Gayles coming out to California?
No.
The early live albums, were you on them?
Yeah. On one of them they spelt my name “Jerry” Thomas. Yeah, we did those things down in Dallas, Dallas and Fort Worth.
In Dallas I got to know some of the guys pretty good. Big Bo Thomas and the Twisting Arrows, he used to own a club. He used to have a keyboard player who sang, too. His name was Fred something, he was damn good, as a matter of fact—he could burn. He was the boyfriend of Delores Johnson, she was from Dallas, good singer. She was with Bobby Bland for a while, touring with him as part of his revue.43
Ernest Lane recorded in Dallas?
That’s it! I remember the song “What Kind of Love Is That You Got,” that’s what it’s called. Now, I don’t know if that was ever issued, but I seem to remember … I think Ike put it out on his label, one of them—Sonja or Prann.44 He had a garage full of unsold records on everybody. Things on me. I had one called “The Darkest Hour” which was a nice little record. He had about five or six different labels.45
Ike’s band was on the session with Lane, the cats, but Ike wasn’t there. Let’s see, who was on guitar? It was either Herb Sadler or Baby Huey, great big guy, but just like a little kid. That’s what we called him, but his name was Odell Stokes, good guitarist, man. It could have been Anthony from St. Louis. A little weedy guy, but he was smokin’—shit hot. It was a good song, I think he done two or three numbers.
Who would cut the live things? Ike?
Yeah, that’s right. Mobile stuff. I did “Down in the Valley.” Stacy Johnson and Vernon Guy did some tracks on one of them, too.46
Where did they join the band from?
From St. Louis. We were already touring, this was one of the times when we just came back through, picked them up. That was about ’64 or ’65. Vernon was with us a year, less than a year, before we came to England.
Benny Sharp, guitar player [from St. Louis]. He had a group called the Sharpies?
Yeah, yeah.
“I’m So Tired of Being Lonely”?
Yeah, that’s right, I don’t know what else they made or whether it was only two they done, but they was good. Benny Sharp came on the road with us for a while, because his band didn’t last long. He used to work at the Starlight and a couple of other clubs.47
I sung with him for a while. Yeah, me and Stacy and Vernon, that’s where I met them, this was before the Sharpies. I sung with a couple of bands just messing around. Sometimes there would be so many nights in a week I’d sing with someone else. That lasted about three months or something. I know what it was, I’d got pissed off and I’d left. I can’t remember what happened, why I’d got pissed off. We had an argument about something and I said, “Fuck it,” and left. I started staying with a chick, big-tittied chick over in St. Louis, little apartment. I hustled around for some gigs. Worked with Benny Sharp, Eugene Neal, done some gigs with Albert King for a few weeks. Then me and Ike made it up.
And the Sharpies came after this?
Yeah, because we’d left St. Louis then. There was a guy named Herbert who was the lead singer on “I’m So Tired of Being Lonely.” He was bad, Herbert Reeves.
When they were in the band did they replace the Ikettes?
Yeah, for a while there was just the fellows and maybe one girl. Then we got Ikettes and we had them and Ikettes until Ike sent them all home, fired them all.
Shit, it was a good show, fucking cooking. There was us three fellows and we was fucking hot, Jack. I mean each one was a lead singer, plus as a group. We had a whole part of the show where we done lots of numbers. Break the house up before Tina come on. He had Tina come on sometimes, we would back her, maybe one girl. They was having a lot of problems with girls at the time, and finally we got Venetta [Fields] and Flora Williams, those chicks out of Buffalo. Vernon and them was with us maybe another six months after Venetta and them joined. It always did cook, but to me that was the highlight at that point. Anybody who paid their money to come and see the show got their money’s worth.
In them days they never seemed like they could get the success on record that they deserved. Tina and Ike. They were making a little bit of noise, but never no big hits like James Brown and them was getting. Our show was strictly sold on the strength of live performances. The records ticked over and kept us popular. It got pretty big later on after Phil Spector, but it was after that the shit was falling apart anyway.
We was always picking up certain people, adding to the show, making the show varied. Me and Tina would always change routines and stuff, Ike got into it pretty good. He was so rigid at first. He was always trying to change things, but, you know, from where he was coming from musically speaking. That kind of thing we had that he didn’t have, so the combination was great. That’s why it worked so good. He could deliver anything we could ask for as far as the musical side goes. A lot of times we would create things right on stage. Just be crazy on stage, we used to come on with great routines, man, really funny things, had audiences in the aisles laughing.
I remember one time, man, this was somewhere in Washington. Olympia, Washington, I think it was, yeah. I had on this tight suit, Jack, and it was time to do “Tell the Truth,” which we closed the first show with. We started really cookin’, the tempo was really hot. It was a decent-sized stage but a lot of wires and things across the stage. You’re doing your thing and moving fast and a lot of people doing it, because you got three or four girls as well as me and Tina. So the band kinda step back and they routining as well. It looks great from out in the audience, all that. And me and Tina, man, we used to have these little battles with each other about dancing fast and dancing hard and getting down on stage, “Wow, got you tonight, Jim …” Fuck, that night I felt great, felt a little bit too great.
My trousers went halfway, I don’t mean just a rip down the thing, halfway the whole seam went. So all my ass, everything was gone and I didn’t have on no coat, just my shirt. Strobe lights were on, so it was cool and it looked like part of the act. You got to make it look like it was intentional, we meant it! We’d be cracking up laughing, man. And Ike, that cat, he used to laugh, he’d have to lay his guitar—he’d fall over in the corner laughing. But I mean my ass was hanging out and I couldn’t quit boogalooin’ and nobody noticed, but Ike noticed, Ike noticed it first, he said, “Turn around, Jim, spin, do your famous spin, Jim!” By that time everybody on the stage knew. I went off sideways. Gracefully, sideways.
I mean, like, interrupting each other’s songs sometimes, Tina was really great for that shit and Ike was really bad for it. You singing some nice ballad-type thing, lights low, quiet, and Ike would skip up and say something to you in your ear, you know, make you laugh, shit like that. When the show was going it was really good, shame that it broke up. There was never a dull moment.
What happened to Ernest Lane?
I don’t know, he just got tired of touring, tired of being on the road, wanted to settle, try to get things organized. He joined the band from L.A., he was already there. Him and Sam Rhodes quit about the same time.48
We got another guy after Sam called Ron Johnson from L.A. on bass. Then came different other guys, it started changing a lot then. Al McKay, guitar player. Soko [Richardson] and Lee Miles. Ernest was there a couple of years. I think he joined about ’64 or ’65, somewhere back there. He was about the same age as Ike.
Eddie Silvers?
Yeah, let’s see, Eddie was with us about ’61, ’62, something like that. Tenor player, he was in Little Willie John’s Upsetters.
Who were the band that appeared on The Big T.N.T. Show in 1966?
Sam Rhodes, Ernest Lane, Nose, Herb Sadler, and Ike. Herb was a white guy played guitar from Granite City, Illinois.
One of the most embarrassing moments of my life: a couple of years ago I’m sitting up looking at the Old Grey Whistle Test and they ran one of the ’60s films of Ike and Tina Turner, I remember when we did it. And we did “Tell the Truth,” Ray Charles’s thing. Me and Tina used to do it. And I came in on the end of the song and my part was real high, the Ray Charles bit, real loud scream and I’d come across the stage on one leg, shit like that.
I was sitting there looking at this thing and suddenly it’s Ike and Tina Turner and “Tell the Truth” and I go, oh, fuck, I wonder if they show it all the way through to my bit? And they showed it. Oh, man, I cringed, I ducked. I looked so terrible, so stupid. Oh, what! I said, why couldn’t they lose the film or something? Crazy days.49
Who else would you tour with?
We did some shows with Jimmy Reed. He had three or four musicians, this was in Oakland, I think. We also did some things with Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter. It was really good, because I like Sonny Boy.
I just didn’t like him, he was just a nasty-attituded guy. I stayed out of his way. Because he had such a reputation, he was like God around Chicago. He used to book all them gigs at the Regal Theater, we played the Regal. They had it sewn up, really did. He was a real dictator, man, because he was the hottest deejay.
I’ve seen him go out and shout at the crowd out in front of the theater. People be queuing up, somebody would be behaving a little bit, you know. He would go out and talk to people like they was fucking dirt, man. Everybody would cringe, like, “Here comes Al Benson, man!” I’d think, shit, I mean, I just couldn’t stand it. But I guess he was alright. I was probably, you know—like I said, because I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I just didn’t like his reputation.
But him and Ike seemed to get on alright. And Ike was the kind of guy, if anybody was shitty or funny or something, he’d know it real quick. So I suppose he was alright, because I don’t remember them having no fight. Because Ike was the same kind of guy. Most people, “Oh, fuck, I can’t deal with that cat, man.” Little Hitler, we used to call him, the Fuhrer. I think Sam Rhodes gave him that name. “Here come the Fuhrer, man, put that joint out quick.”
The Apollo Theater?
Man, this was the funniest thing, every Thursday night was amateur night. They used to have this cat who had a big cowboy hat and a pair of red long drawers. This was an ugly cat, man, and some kind of funny shoes and his face painted funny and blanks in his gun. Now, when somebody would mess up, the lights used to flash on and off, all the lights in the building, and a siren would go and pow-pow, the cat with the gun …50
The emcee would come out, “Well, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, it’s amateur night at the Apollo. Let’s see what we’ve got here …” They had a little trio on stage doing the backing and this would always be some cats who could play anything. They had to be brilliant because people that would come up—you can imagine, you had to be fast, really quick, to find their keys and stuff.
“So, okay, who’s gonna be the first contestant? Let’s see, who we got here? This young lady she’s gonna sing—what you gonna sing, darling? What’s your name?” “My name’s Helen,” or something like that. “What you gonna sing, Helen?” “I’m gonna sing ‘I Know.’” “Helen’s gonna sing ‘I Know,’ brave girl. Alright, let’s give her a round of applause, give her some encouragement …” This was just a general thing how they would behave.
Then there was this one guy I remember, man. This guy came out after about two or three contestants. “Now we gonna have John, what’s your name, boy?” “John Jones.” “What you gonna sing, John?” “‘Your Precious Love.’” “Alright, John, go and sort the key out with Pete over there on piano.” He’d tell a little joke while they sorting it out. “Okay, John’s ready. Give him some encouragement, ladies and gentlemen …”
The cat, man, the band started, he come in anywhere, musicians trying to find him—all out of tune. Then the fucking lights would start, pow-pow-pow, the guy would be jumping, this clown shooting his gun. Sirens going, audience breaking up with laughter, man. Lights flashing and shit. Shit falls apart. And the emcee would come out when that happens, “Okay, okay.” Laughter died down. “Okay, John, you better go back home, practice a little bit more. Right, we’ll get on to the next one. Who we got back there … ?” The guy with the guns would always be there. Like when you fuck up he gonna come, but from anywhere. He may come from the back of the audience.
Now, after this guy fucked up on “Your Precious Love,” they got one of them kind of mikes on stage that come up outta the floor, one of them electric things. So the next contestant’s up there trying to sing some shit, she’s cookin’, going pretty good. Audience got with it a little bit. So after she launches into the thing real good, this guy breaks loose from backstage, the previous guy who fucked up “Your Precious Love.” He come out on stage, man, and pushed the chick out the way, “Get out the way, bitch. Yoourr precious love …” and the band still be cooking on “Mockingbird” or something.
Bang bang, lights be going, “Get him off, get that nigger …” Shit going on, man like to start a fight. The emcee comes out and him and another guy grab this guy and they’re trying to drag him off stage! Meantime the audience are breaking up. Poor little chick who’s trying to sing is scared shitless, she don’t know, she thinks it’s something she’s done wrong. And they drag the cat off. We’re still laughing, we’re all in the aisles. “Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know who this guy … Come on, baby, let’s get her back, give her a round of applause, settle her nerves a little bit.”
Okay, she launches back in it again. And this motherfucker comes out again, man. He gets loose, they’re trying to put him out the thing and this cat broke out from back there again. This time he comes out they stopped it. Bang bang. Emcee comes out, “Hold it, hold it, I’ve got to get control of this shit.” Everybody laughing, poor chick standing there scared shitless again. “Okay, I’ll tell you what, since he insists on singing this song, he thinks he’s got it so together, let’s give him another chance, shall we?” “No, fuck, get the nigger—no, man, let’s hear the chick, yeah.” “No, wait, we got to be cool. Let’s give him a chance or he ain’t gonna give us no peace. Alright? Now, man, sing the song.”
“Yoourr precious love …” This cat goes into anything, they can’t find him again. The shit starts going again and they still couldn’t get this guy off. So what they did, remember the mike comes outta the floor and was controlled remotely from backstage, they lowered it, man. Somebody pushed the thing and the mike started going down. “ … Means more to me …” following it on down. The mike disappeared and they drag him off by his heels this time. Oh, man, I’m telling you, this shit would go down, boy, any time those amateur nights at the Apollo, any time you were in for a treat. It was better than any of the shows.
Yeah, they used to have amateur night at the Handy Theatre in Memphis. We played there when we first went on the road. I didn’t know much about the Handy except on the radio and stuff. They used to have an amateur night there with Rufus Thomas. That’s right, because they televised it, too, it used to be on television—yeah, didn’t you know that? Rufus Thomas, little Carla, I remember seeing her on there a lot. The resident comedian was a cat named Robert “Bones” Couch, funny little dude. Him and another guy used to work together. Oh, they was funny. This was when I was still living in Osceola, this would have been in the mid-’50s.
Did you do any national service?
I didn’t go to the army through Ike. I was registered in East St. Louis and we was on the road, my paper came. And I had to go and report, took off a couple of days to go. We was in Lubbock, Texas, had to hold up the show. Ike was freakin’ out, he didn’t want me to go to no fucking army. But luckily the guy who was the recruiting sergeant was a guy who used to come to some of our gigs and he was a great fan. Ike made a call or something. When I got there the guy, “Yeah, yeah, right, man, don’t worry, it’s cool.” Just squashed that shit. Cooled it right on out so I didn’t have to go. He used to do things, pull more strings. That cat, man, he could really pull strings.
What about the Phil Spector thing?
Spector was pissed off with America. He had some kind of war going on, the mafia thing, the Top 40 stations, the record industry, the whole thing, there was something happening. I can’t remember exactly. Anyway, he was gonna show them they couldn’t keep him down, they couldn’t stop him.
So he made this record [“River Deep, Mountain High”]—he couldn’t get no play. The white stations said it was too black, the black stations said it was too white, so they had him caught, man. So he said, fuck it, I’ll release it in England. And he released it over here (in England) and it became a number 2 record. And he said … like, that to them.
But toward the end, I started getting really bored, because I started feeling so much more musically and I got tired of doing other people’s stuff. And I got tired of being on the road and not being able to record, and that’s what I really wanted to do.
I done the road and it was great. It was fun, but I wanted to get serious. On the road, you got to be crazy. You got to be a bit mad or you won’t enjoy it, it can be really hard work otherwise. Good days, though. I don’t regret none of them days, I tell you that. You’re around such crazy people, you learn. (Or) go out like a lot of them did—it’s so easy to get into that, drinking and dope.
How did Ike used to treat you?
Oh, I was like his little brother. We was really like that. That’s why I watched everybody come and go. I was with them from that time until I left to come over here.
He could put the boot in real good, he could really fire people, fine them and act crazy with them and stuff, oh, yeah, man. I’ve seen him do people wrong, but he would always have his justification and we believed he was right, me and Tina, that’s why we was there all the time. We always would support him, because we felt like what he was doing was bigger than all that other shit.
Me and him never really had no cross wires till one time when I got ready to quit and he fined me because … I wasn’t really late, though technically he was right, but I was right, too. He fined me twenty dollars. Also, it was a bit of jealousy. Sometime he’d get a bit shitty with me or something. If a chick come in the group and I’d get it and he didn’t get it, he’d get a little bit shitty and try and find some fault.
I really didn’t believe he was gonna fine me, but, sure enough, when Sunday night came my paycheck was twenty dollars short. I rang him up, man, I said, “Shit, what’s the matter, man? Why you fine me?” He said, “You was late the other night.” I said, “Okay, I wasn’t there in the dressing room when everybody’s getting dressed, but when you hit the theme song, I hit the stage.” I had been circling around about five minutes trying to find somewhere to park. I just dashed in and I heard them hit the theme song, so I just dashed on stage.
Well, he was fining me because he said I wasn’t in the dressing room before he went on. I said “Shit, what difference does that make, man? You wrong, Ike, you wrong, I don’t think it’s right.” I can’t remember now how he justified the shit. Anyway, there was a little argument and I wasn’t going to argue with him, because I knew you can’t win arguments with him anyway, because he’s the boss. What’s the point? Either you quit or whatever, so I quit. I gave my notice, man, and he thought I was jiving.
Next day he was on the phone, and we must have been on the phone for about four hours just talking and we talked about everything. From way back in the beginning, you know, the shit that I’d been through with him and the shit he’d been through with me. “You know, things are beginning to happen, we need each other, blah blah blah.” That wouldn’t win. Then he tried to get heavy, ‘Well, motherfucker, you know I’ll kick your ass, man. You can’t fucking just quit like that.” And that didn’t win. So he said, “Look, come on out and let’s talk again before you decide.” So I said, “Okay,” so we was cool.
They were getting ready to go on another tour, you know, so I said, “I’m not going.” I stayed and went to San Francisco and hung out. He was getting ready to come over here on tour and he rang me up from New York. He’d been over here (to England) once and I’d been with him. I’d made a nice impression over here that time. It was the Ike and Tina Turner Revue and I was one of the featured attractions, so he’d sold the tour on the strength of that. Anyway, that’s what he told me.
He said, “Man, I’m in New York.” I was really surprised, because it’s early in the morning. I said, “Shit, Ike, man, what are you doing in New York?” He said, “We’re getting ready to go to London, going to England, we leave first thing tomorrow morning. Have you got your passport and everything in order?” I said, “What for?” He said, “I want you to come.” I said, “Man, most of my stuff is in Los Angeles. I have to go to L.A., pack, and then go to New York, and I ain’t got my passport anyway. So I have to get a passport.” “You can get one in New York.” “Man, it’s impossible. How can I if you’re leaving tomorrow?” Well, shit, a lot had to be done, book flights and things.
He said, “Look, man, I tell you, you gotta do it for me, because I need ya.” I said, “Why? It’s you and Tina, man, it ain’t me. Nobody’ll give a fuck whether I’m there or not.” “No, man, you don’t understand.” He told me how it was. So I said, “Okay, hey, man, me and you always.” We had that kind of relationship.
This was the second trip. This was after I quit Ike and went back, early ’68. I told him, “Okay, man, I’ll do this tour with you, but when we get back to L.A. I’m gonna have to leave, because I can’t really … It’s nothing to do with you, it’s just that I’ve had a taste of doing it myself. I want to do things myself, produce myself, write songs and take my career in hand. All the years I’ve spent with you would be wasted, all the things I’ve learnt. If I could never put them into good use, what’s the point?” And he understood it and he was glad too, he felt proud. He felt like what he taught me hadn’t been wasted. About how to be a leader, how to do things, how to get on.
So what did you do after Ike?
As a matter of fact we got us a little thing together called the Goodtimers. Me, Ernest [Lane], Sam [Rhodes], who else, shit? This was ’67, when I first split from Ike. Yeah, we got a little thing together and it was going good. Did alright. We had a couple of gigs around town, wasn’t nothing, just fun to keep our hand in. Then I split up to San Francisco, me and my chick. We never made no records, it never got that far, just a few gigs.
And the Ikettes left and called themselves the Mirettes. They signed up a contract with Randy Wood, Mirwood Records, so I did a couple of records. The Mirettes had a little hit. I wrote one of the songs on Mirwood. I had two records on that label, “Where There’s a Will,” “Just Tryin’ to Please You,” which was one record.51 The other two sides I don’t think were released. That was a nice little time, me and the girls, first little taste of independence, you know.
Next thing I know after I moved to England, President Records bought the masters. Randy Wood came over here, I seen him, and brought the masters over and sold them to President. It became a number 1 soul thing. “Where There’s a Will,” which was the B-side in America, sold a lot over here.
The last time we spoke you were telling me something about Roy Brown.
Yeah, I remember I did some shows with Roy Brown when I first quit Ike and went to Oakland. In the [Roy Brown] article in Blues Unlimited [BU 123/124] I noticed he mentioned a guy named Goldberg. Before he went to California a guy named Goldberg, had some guy going around impersonating him.
Well, Goldberg, man, here’s something, he calls himself a black Jew. Lives in L.A. and wears a big hat and talks loud. Great character. You either love him or hate him. You hate him at first, probably. And he used to do things like that. If somebody hot on the East Coast, which was way away, and ain’t likely to get to California, he get some local guy to go around and pose as him. Hell, yeah! This was not too long ago, early ’68. Yeah, that guy Goldberg, he used to do all them kind of things. A real crook, man, real crook.
Jimmy Thomas. London, March 1981. (Photo Bill Greensmith)
Roy Brown’s name was big as shit, “The Fantastic Roy Brown!” This was 1968. Who knew anything about Roy Brown? Up and down California, just little towns and we did a couple of spots in Oakland then we cut it a-loose, man. We had Vernon Garrett on there. Nobody got paid very much except maybe Roy Brown. Him and Goldberg was like that. Goldberg had probably told Roy, “Hey, man, shit, we can still make some money off your name.” But nobody was turning up at the gigs, they would be very sparsely populated. Roy Brown was a nice cat, though. The tour lasted about three weeks or a month. You know, hotel bills and things wouldn’t be paid, because he was supposed to pay.
It was really interesting to see that in Roy Brown’s interview, but he didn’t expand on it, I noticed. I thought, oh, wow! Goldberg, it’s gonna be good. I bet he’s got some really funny stories to tell about this cat, because everybody has, anybody that has been in any kind of contract with this guy.
I remember Ike wanted to jump on him one time, wanted to kick his ass. I don’t know what happened, but Goldberg had done something. This was the only guy I knew that would call himself a black Jew.
Did he look Jewish?
Hell, no. He’s just a nigger, man. Just a black nigger with a big old cowboy hat.
Why did you come over to England?
I waited to come to that point and England was perfect. Right time and I thought, yeah, fuck, sanity, man, I can really do it here. So I came over. There was the “Beautiful Night” thing, which was released on Parlophone. It was never officially released on that label.52 Denny Cordell invited me to work with them, to work with the writers’ workshop thing. They knew what I wanted to do, get into production, and they just let me go into the studio and do what I wanted. It was great. I’d never been into a studio on my own, my own songs, any musician I chose.
I did a tour with Fontella Bass over here during the time I was doing the Contempo album.53 I had wrote the songs and I had the album all worked out the way I thought I wanted it. And John Abbey told me he was bringing Fontella over. I said, “Great, man.” Just me and Fontella. She had her brother-in-law or something, sax player, he was her musical director. It was a good little tour, thirty days. That was the only tour I did in England on my own.
Anyway, this “Beautiful Night” became a collector’s piece up around the Midlands, Wigan, northern soul shit, right, it was one of them. Man, I couldn’t believe it, because I forgot about the damn thing. I went up there on this tour with Fontella. I was doing my album tracks, people shouting for “Beautiful Night.” And we didn’t even know how to play it. It was insane.
That’s the only thing I did in England live. Help other people out sometimes for a laugh, make a little money, you know. Did a thing with Elkie Brooks, did a tour with her, only shoo-wops and things. Session work and lots of lead vocals on other people’s stuff.
Did you do something on [U.K.] Spark?
Yeah. “No Trouble” was one and “White Dove.” I did about three singles on that label.54
Tommy Hunt?
He was on Spark. He was with the Flamingos. I knew him in the States, because he did a lot of tours with us, like these East Coast theater things. Him and Chuck Jackson used to have similar voices.
And now?
I’ve got so many things I’m doing, trying to do. The main thing is trying to get the label going. The label strictly as a vehicle for me. I just want to sell some records right now. Don’t want to bust down no chart walls, but I’ve got the material for it. I’m very confident of what I’m doing musically. You’re gonna like some of it, some of it you’ll probably hate, but it’s fun, it’s fun stuff. And it’s honest. I haven’t done a cop-out. I’ve never lost my roots.
This is it. The sum total of it. Crazy, but this is it.
1. Alvin Goldsberry. Piano player and drummer, originally from Clarksdale, Mississippi.
2. Carl Tate/Bob Starr remembered the In the Groove Boys playing at Willie Bloom’s club around the late 1940s/early 1950s. By the mid-1950s Bloom no longer featured live music. A small shotgun-style house with a jukebox, it was popular with local teenagers. It is possible that there were two locations for Willie Bloom’s clubs. Bloom was also a piano player, although by the mid-1950s he seemingly confined his activities to private parties. In the early 1970s Willie Bloom recorded an album, Sweet Man, for the Jonesboro, Arkansas–based Alley Records, AL222.
3. Radio Station WDIA Memphis, Tennessee.
4. In numerous interviews Son Seals claims his father owned the Dipsy Doodle, a club that regularly featured blues artists. This much repeated statement, continually perpetrated in print, has become an acknowledged and unquestioned fact of blues history. But we only have Son Seals’s word for this; others have expressed doubts and have questioned the veracity of Seals’s statements. No Osceola resident or musician I’ve spoken with recalls Son Seals’s father ever owning a club or any establishment that featured live entertainment. Jimmy Thomas, a boyhood friend of Son Seals, has claimed all along that Seals’s father never owned a club. In this he is supported by M. C. Reeder’s daughter, Stella, who also knew Son Seals from childhood. For many years her grandmother lived next door to Son Seals and his father. As the daughter of the owner of the T-99, she was perfectly placed to observe much local blues activity and is quite emphatic in her denial of Seals’s recollections. Other Osceola residents have also supported their assertions. Checking Son Seals’s claim one last time in 2011, I once again asked Jimmy Thomas if Seals’s father ever owned a club in Osceola. His answer was a swift, “Fuck, no!” However, there was, at one time, a Dipsy Doodle in Osceola. As a fifteen-year-old, Ora Lee Swinson recalled going there in 1941 (the year before Son Seals was born). Located in a shotgun house, it was the local teenage hangout, for dancing to a jukebox and drinking Cokes. The Dipsy Doodle was owned by an Ed Johnson and never featured live music.
5. Albert King moved from Osceola, Arkansas, to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1956.
6. Ike Turner, along with various band members, including Willie Kizart, Willie Sims, and Johnny O’ Neal, moved their base of operation from Clarksdale, Mississippi, to East St. Louis, Illinois, late in 1954. These musicians did not continue to work with Ike for long, and by the following year Turner had replaced them.
7. Drummer Jerry Walker eventually moved to St. Louis, Missouri, working extensively with Little Milton, Oliver Sain, and leading his own bands.
8. Nat D. Williams was a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, Tennessee. Angela Rippon was a popular BBC Television presenter and news reader.
9. Ike Turner still owned the house on Virginia Place in the early 1980s.
10. Billy Gayles was Johnny O’ Neal’s replacement as vocalist with the Kings of Rhythm. He in turn was followed by Clayton Love. “The Big Question,” Ike Turner and His Orchestra, vocal by Clayton Love, Federal 12304.
11. “I’m Tore Up,” Federal 12265, sold well in several areas, appearing at number 2 on the St. Louis Billboard chart for July 7, 1956. By the end of July the record had dropped off the charts, reappearing again briefly at number 6 on August 18. Strangely, King/Federal could never seem to decide which side of the record to promote, their advertising often listing “If I Never Had Known You” as the A-side. The situation eventually changed, and “I’m Tore Up” continued to be listed in their Billboard advertisements into January 1957.
12. The Dynaflow Inn was at 2840 Cass Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri. Popular KATZ radio disc jockey Dave Dixon died on September 19, 1964, as a result of injuries sustained in an August 28 car crash.
13. The Smith Jubilee Singers were from East St. Louis and recorded for Modern Records among others, although these recordings predate any possible involvement with the group by Tommy Hodge.
14. [Raymond Hill died on April 16, 1996.]
15. There is some confusion with this name. Jimmy is possibly referring to Nick’s Country Club, 4201 Trendley, East St. Louis, Illinois.
16. St. Louis bass player and bandleader Doc Perry should not be confused with the East St. Louis harmonica player Doc Terry.
17. The Trojans/Rockers, consisting of Art Lassiter, George Green, Murray Green, and Douglas Martin, recorded for RPM in 1955 and Federal in 1956, accompanied by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm.
18. Raymond Hill was confusing the personnel of the Rockers and the Gardenias. Formally a gospel group known as the Alton Crusaders, the Gardenias included Luther Ingram among its members. Accompanied by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm, the Gardenias recorded for Federal in 1956. Federal 12284.
19. “Fool in Love,” Sue 730.
20. Eddie Acon was a partner in several recording ventures with disc jockey/vocalist/trumpet player Gabriel. Recordings were issued on Joyce, Yvette’s, and Tune Town.
21. “Boxtop,” Tune Town 501, was recorded at Ike Turner’s house, 3126 Virginia Place, East St. Louis, Illinois.
22. Technasonic Studios, 1201 S. Brentwood, Brentwood, Missouri.
23. Ike Turner recorded Fontella Bass in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1963–1964. The recordings were issued on his own Prann and Sonja Records.
24. Charles Drain and the Tabs.
25. Planet Records. The label was owned by Gabriel.
26. Bobbin and Stevens Records were two separate, independent companies. However, the majority of the songs appearing on Stevens were published by Lyco Music, Bobbin Records’ publishing company.
27. Bobby Foster, “Angel of Love,” Stevens 106. Written by Jane Busung.
28. Johnny Wright, “Gotta Have You for Myself”/“Look at the Chick,” Stevens 1001.
29. Johnny Wright, “Suffocate”/“The World Is Yours,” RPM 443.
30. Ike Turner claimed to have occasionally worked as a disc jockey at Radio WROX, Clarksdale, Mississippi.
31. Jimmy Thomas is a background vocalist on Betty Everett’s “I’ll Weep No More,” Cobra 5031; “Everyday of My Life,” Flyright 589. Jackie Brenston, “You Keep on Worrying Me,” Flyright 578.
32. Rumor and speculation abound surrounding the death of Eli Toscana, whose body was pulled from Lake Michigan in 1967. Most attribute his death to a gangland slaying over unpaid gambling debts. There is not, however, any conclusive evidence to substantiate this theory.
33. The Blue Note Club, 4200 Missouri Avenue, East St. Louis, Illinois. Leo Gooden also owned the L.G. record company and Coun-Tree Records.
34. Icky Renrut, “Jack Rabbit,” Stevens 104, vocal Jimmy Thomas.
35. Icky Renrut, “Hey-Hey”/“Ho-Ho,” Stevens 107, Jimmy Thomas vocal on “Hey-Hey.”
36. “Party Time at Club Imperial” recorded c. March 1959. Hosted by Club Imperial owner George Edick, the show featured Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm and some of the audience/dancers from the Club Imperial. The show was underwritten by Steve Mizerany, owner of numerous kitchen appliance stores in the St. Louis/East St. Louis area. Mizerany, the self-described “King of High Trade,” was himself a St. Louis legend famous for his wonderfully eccentric commercials, his antics on “Party Time” almost stealing the show. Jimmy’s memory is at fault on one detail: he emerges not from a bathtub but from a washing machine!
37. Fontella Bass, “Poor Little Fool,” Sonja 2006. Rereleased on Vesuvius 1002 as by Fontella Bass and Tina Turner.
38. Robbie Montgomery’s sisters were not singers.
39. Robbie Montgomery, Francis Hodge, and Sandy Harrell were the background vocalists on “Fool in Love.”
40. Billy Gales [sic], “I’m Hurting”/“Dreaming of You,” Shock 200. Eloise Carter, “My Man Rockhead”/“I Need You,” Sue 742.
41. Jimmy and Jean, “I Want to Marry You”/“I Can’t Believe,” Sue 743.
42. Rhonda Graam, Ike Turner’s secretary starting c. 1963.
43. Delores Johnson was a member of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue c. 1961–1962. In June 1961 Ike recorded her in St. Louis for Bobbin Records’ “Give Me Your Love”/“Gotta Find My Baby,” Bobbin 132. It is possible that Delores Johnson was no longer with the revue when she recorded “You Can’t Have Your Cake” in 1963–1964, Ike and Dee Dee Johnson, Innis 3002.
44. Ernest Lane, “What’s That You Got”/“Need My Help,” Sony 114.
45. Jimmy Thomas, “The Darkest Hour”/“The Little Cheater,” Sputnik 10001.
46. Jimmy Thomas, “Down in the Valley,” The Ike and Tina Turner Show, Warner LP 1579. Stacy Johnson, “Drown in My Own Tears”; Vernon Guy, “Your Precious Love”, The Ike and Tina Turner Revue Live: Recorded Live at the Club Imperial and the Harlem Club St. Louis, Kent LP KSD 514.
47. Billed variously as Benny Sharp and the Sharpies, (on Midas Records) or the Sharpies. Four singles were issued on One-derful Records as the Sharpees. Before she became an Ikette, Jessie Smith was also one of Benny Sharp’s vocalists. Little Miss Jessie/Benny Sharp, “My Baby Has Gone”/“St. Louis Sunset Twist,” Mel-O 102.
48. [Ernest Lane continued to live in Los Angeles, California. In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, he was once again playing piano in Ike Turner’s band. Lane died on July 8, 2012.]
49. Old Grey Whistle Test was a BBC Television music program, 1971–1987.
50. Norman Miller, aka Porto Rico, was the master of ceremonies for the Apollo Theater amateur shows.
51. Jimmy Thomas, Mirwood 5522.
52. Jimmy Thomas, “This Beautiful Night”/“Above a Whisper,” Parlophone 5773. The record was supposedly withdrawn soon after issue, as Jimmy was signed with Essex Music, not EMI. These sides were issued in the United States on TB Records 101.
53. Jimmy Thomas, Abyss, Contempo Records COLP 1002.
54. Jimmy Thomas, “No Trouble”/“Springtime,” Spark 1035; “White Dove”/“You Don’t Have to Say Goodbye,” Spark 1040, released in November 1969 and June 1970 respectively.
