Could you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your first experiences here in music were?

I grew up in Brownsville, Tennessee, Hayward County, Tennessee, about ah, about ah, eight miles east of Brownsville, Tennessee in a little community called ah, Union. And ah, my first experiences with music was listening to the Grand Ole Opry and watching my grandmother pick the guitar and gospel black, black gospel music in an old church called London Branch Church. My brothers and I used to go down to the church and back then they didn't have the air conditioners. They raised all the windows up and get the old cardboard fans out and fan and the faster the preacher talked, the hotter the air'd get, the faster the sisters would play and so, ah. I would listen out there but they would sing some of the prettiest music I guess I ever heard, some of the tightest harmony I ever heard and they didn't really have any formal education, no musical education at all. And we would sit up on a big old tree out there on the bank and listen to them sing. And I'd go back home, even think about that when I, when I go to bed. It was just some of the prettiest music I'd ever heard in my life.

Same question, a little bit about where you grew up, first music, Grand Ole Opry and the church.

My first experience with music was when I was just a kid. I guess I was around, oh, 8, 9 years old, somewhere along in there before I got really interested in it. And, ah, ah, my first experience with music was listening to the Grand Ole Opry up in Nashville, and, ah, watching my grandmother play the guitar. She played old timey songs and think kind of finger picked a little bit and, ah, so then I would listen to her, listen to Grand Ole Opry. Then my brother and I would go down to this church on Sundays and listen, they had all day preaching down at this black church on Sundays. It was called London Branch church, and, ah, out in Brownsville. And, ah, they had the windows up, of course there wasn't any air conditioning back in those days, they had all the windows up in the church and, and they had these old cardboard fans, you know, then they'd fan, you know, and faster, the hotter the preacher would get the faster they would fan with the fans, you know. And, ah, but the singing was what really got me, was listening to the singing. They had, ah, some of the best harmony, some of the best singing that I ever heard in my life and I just, I would just go home at night, think about it at night because they had such good harmony, good singing that, that, ah, not knowing, I mean I knew that they didn't have any formal education, musical education, just singing from their heart. So the feel, the feel is what struck with me, the feel that they had in the music was what really struck me. And, ah, I just, ah, I guess it just, just lingered with me all my life.

When did you first start hearing blues? Was that easy to hear when you were a kid growing up or was it a little bit underground?

Well we wasn't allowed to bring that kind of music in our house, blues, much. My mother didn't like blues much but I did and I would sneak around and play records in my friend's house and stuff and listen to the records and, that they had, and they had some blues record stuff. But you could hear it on the radio if you tried to cut it on but it wasn't like the blues is played now. Those day, it wasn't modern type blues it was more like, we call it cotton field blues, like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and people like this. That's the kind I, I listen to because it was simple and but there was a lot of feeling to it. And I got interested I guess when I was about 10, 11 years-old. In the blues.

Tell us about what you had to do to listen to blues records and what your mother's attitude towards that kind of music was and why the suggestive and all that.

Well back when, ah, back in the early days when I started listening to blues, well, ah, there was, the music itself but the words was suggestive. And my mother didn't approve of that. Of course this being Memphis and, ah, bible belt area and she didn't really approve of, of, of the lyrics that was in the songs, some of the lyrics in the song, some of the songs. But, ah, when my mother would go to work well I'd go down to my friend's house, borrow his records and bring them over to my house and I would play them on my sister's record player. And I'd sit there and try to play the guitar along with them because I liked the music. And it really wasn't the words that I liked it was just the music and the feel and the feel of, of the music that I liked. But my mother, I couldn't, I had to get them back home before she got home from work.

Tell us about how you started playing country music. Describe us the scene when you went out there and played KWEM and Wolf.

Ah, well, KWEM was a little radio station up in West Memphis, Arkansas. It was a daylight till dark type radio station. And, ah, it had two studios, in the studio, it had a front studio and it had a back studio in the back. So we played on the front studio and, ah, Wolf, Howlin' Wolf and the blacks played in the back. And, ah, the control room was right in between the two studios. So, but the white studio had glass between, in the hallway, when you go down the hallway, they had glass where you can see into the studio. And then they also had a room that you could in with glass there where audience, where the audience could sit and watch you playing while you was playing on the air. So, ah, then the back studio didn't have any glass except for the ctro… between the control room and the back ah, ah, studio. So, but I had noticed this, ah, ah, this guy come in there, ah, and standing outside the door lots of times before we would go off the air. I was playing with, with Scotty and Shiver Polen and, ah, country music. And we'd been playing around with a bunch of clubs and stuff like this, on weekends, just weekend stuff only. I mean I was working as an electrician apprentice and playing on weekends and stuff like this. So, ah, his name was, his real name was Chester Burnett and he would come in there to the studio in the afternoons and he had a program that went on after we went off. They would do the news and off the air at 6 o'clock I think. So, ah, this one particular time when, ah, he was standing outside and he was leaning, in the hallway, he was standing upside the hall, leaning upside the hall and he had on a pair of khaki pants and white T-shirt and big old black, ah, ah, shoes, shiny type shoes, ah, ah, patent leather shoes with the holes cut inside of them for his corns, just taking out through there. So, ah, I'd seen him before you know and spoke to him before but I never really talked to him. So this one particular day he was standing outside there and I listened to him on the way home, on the way home in my car I would listen to him on the radio and I like his music, his style and, ah, and 'cause he was kind of wild and he would, he'd howl like a wolf, and, you know, Owww, you know, and this is a wolf, this is a wolf coming at you baby, you know, and everything. And I liked him. So he was standing outside there that day and this guy was, was singing the, he was, he was singing some, ah, country song but it had a kind of a feel to it that you could put some blues on, you know. So, so, ah, this is kind of, I was just standing out there and he was standing looking like that and I was going. So, so he finally, he did like this you know, so, like that. So when I came out of the studio, when this program was over we got off the air and I came out of the studio, he says, man, I like the blues, you know, you were playing over there. And I say, well, thank you. You know and he says, hey, how about, he said, how about, he said, would you like to sit here and play some blues with me today? And so I say, yeah, I'd like to play some with you. He said, man, that's fine. You know, said, come on back. So Smokey Joe Ball was standing back there, he, he was just was sitting over there in the studio so Smokey Joe said, he talked real raspy, kind of like Louis Armstrong, you know, he was a white guy. And he said, man, you going to go back there play the guitar, he said, I'm going to go back there play the piano. An ol’ upright piano right there in the back. So he went back there with us, so, so, Will Toman said, come on man, mother Mary, you know. So we went back there and we sit down in the studio and we started playing, you know. What, what he did, he had a great big box, harmonica, he had, he had a great big metal box like a candy box, great big candy box. He had his guitar sitting down over there in the corner. But he started off, sit down on a chair like this, put the microphone right in front of him, like this, took this old top off this candy box, had all these harmonicas down in there. So I plugged my guitar and amplifier in, you know, and I got ready and Smokey, sitting on a little piano, you know, and he started out, he took, he started, picked up this.

You were playing with a country band and went out to KWEM radio in West Memphis to play with Howlin' Wolf there.

Ah, I was playing in a country band and this band we'd been playing around Memphis in clubs on weekends and stuff like this. So we would, then we also had this radio show at KWEM West Memphis, Arkansas. And that's where, ah, had been listening to Howlin' Wolf on the way home in the afternoons, after getting through playing with the country band. So, so, ah, ah, he, ah, ah, I liked his sound, I liked the way he sounded on the radio and I liked the feel and the test he had in his voice and everything. So, ah, one day, well, ah, when I was playing in this country band, well, he came in the studio and was standing there. And I could see him through the window there. And so, ah, he, ah, he, ah, he came, he came along. And he was standing outside the window and he was looking in the window at us playing and I, this guy was singing this one particular song with kind of a bluesy feel to it. So, ah, ah, so I saw him standing there looking. He was looking right at me, you know, so I just standing there and I'd been listening to him on the way home, you know, so I just kind of went, on the end of the song, right on the end of the song. So he did like this, he said, like that, you know. So when I came out of the studio, well, he, ah, he says, he says, he says, I like the way you're playing blues, you know. And I said, thank you man, I said, I've been listening to you every day going home, you know. I said, I like the way you singing them too and play. And, ah, he says, well, thank you, you know. He said, would you like to play blues with me today? And I said, I'd love to, you know. So, they had two studios there in, in, in the radio station one was for white and one was for black. The black was in the back and the white was in the front. The control room was right in the middle, had a hallway you walked down through. The first one was a white, glassed in with glass on the front, was a, was an audience, place for audience to sit. You go down the hallway, past the control room, then the, the black studio was on the right, was the last one down the hall. So, ah, I, we, we was going down to the, in the studio, so, ah, this friend of mine and, ah, was there playing the piano, so he said, well, if you're going to go down to play the guitar, he said, how about me going back there and playing the piano? So Howlin' Wolf told him, said, well, come on, man, he said, the more the merrier, you know. So it was just all fun, just like a jam. So we went back to the studio and sat down back there in the studio, you know, and got all ready. And he sit down with his harmonicas in this big box and he took the harmonicas out and opened the top and he sat on his chair and put the mike like this right here. And reached down got his harmonica. He stuck the harmonica in his mouth longways, like this, you know, Howl played the blues, Smokey played the piano. So, you know, that's the way the whole thing went and it just, it just went good. And I, I enjoyed it. I wish I would have had some tapes of it you know, wish I could have found some later on but I really enjoyed it. And then, so after that, well, the first day, well every day you'd get there a little early, you all go play with me today? Say, yeah. So we, so that went on for about three months. And so, ah, finally well the guy that I was playing with, well, he, he changed radio stations so we didn't go back over there to KWEM so that's why. I, I guess I'd have kept playing with him. But he did invite me to come out and play one night with him out at the club. It was on 17th Street, 16th, 17th Street, in West Memphis, Arkansas. So I went over there one Saturday night and I had to go around to the side door, he told me to come around to the side door, so I went around to the side door. And he let me in. And I knocked on the door and they opened the door and I told them I wanted to see Howlin' Wolf. And they said, he's, said, ah, well, ah, said, he's on the stage, as soon as they take a break, we got a couple more songs. Said, I'll get him to come to the door. So he came over to the door and when they took a couple more songs and, and, ah, got me. Then I went over sit down beside the band and I sit there for, ah, a little while. Well, he told me, he said, you want to sit in, play a few with us? I said, I'd love to, you know. So, ah, I sit there during the whole set 'cept maybe four or five songs just before the last, the next set was over. Then he called me up, he let me come up there and play with him, you know. And I got to play with his whole group and, ah, oh I just, I just, I loved it. So so I just sit there, you know, and play, I stood up there rather and played. And, ah, then they took an intermission. Of course he walked me to the, he walked me back to my car, all the way out to, to the parking lot and stood there until I got completely out of sight. So, ah, I don't guess I ever seen him again after that because we didn't go back to KWEM West Memphis and I think he went to Sun Records in Chicago after that. So I never seen him after that.

Can you start out with something like, “When I played with Howlin' Wolf it was 1950”. Tell us about white musicians playing with black musicians in Memphis, how unusual it was, what kind of reaction you got from both sides there about it.

Ah, about 1950, ah, when I met Howlin' Wolf and, ah, ah, at that time, the whites playing with black or the black playing with the whites, was just kind of unheard of around Memphis. People didn't, ah, they just didn't play together at that time. Ah, it wasn't because we didn't like the music and they didn't like us. But, ah, it's just, just didn't happen. And, ah, he couldn't call our names and, ah, it was just very unusual that, ah, the blacks, whites would play with black in those days. And you had to have some feeling for it, ah, to get into it because, ah, it just had a feel to it that you liked so good that, ah, you wanted to play it and, ah, ah, and, ah, but there was just, ah, I don't know why, I don't know why they just, it was right at that time well it just, just wasn't done.

Start out by saying, around 1950 when I first started playing with Howlin' Wolf the white musicians and the black musicians didn't play together. Maybe say something about what the attraction was with the music that brought people together.

About 1950, when I started playing with Howlin' Wolf, ah, on the radio station called KWEM over in West Memphis, Arkansas. It was very unusual for whites and blacks to play together. In fact over the studio had two different studios over there, one was for white and one was for black. And, ah, of course he played in the black studio and we played, and we played in the white when I was playing with a country band. But the music, ah, the blues was different, completely different from the country music and it had such a good feel to it, it had a good, ah, rhythm, it had good rhythm and it had a good feel that you could dance to, you could move your feet to and dance to. And, and, ah, country music just had a, a, it, it was completely different. You could, I never could dance to country music myself but I could feel, the, the blues, I could feel it and, and, ah, you could just feel it. And so that, ah, to me was just, ah, just a completely different feel. That's why I wanted to learn to play the blues because I felt it, it was just a feel music. The people, ah, weren't, weren't associating that much together but the music, I think everybody had, liked music, had music in their soul and in, in their hearts and they just, ah, could hear the blues and just kind of, ah, it just kind of pulled them together and just drew them together and I think that music had a lot to do with, with the people coming together back then. Later on, because back then, they couldn't called our names even when we played on the radio, it was just unusual for anybody to call up. We never even called our names all the time we played with him on the radio. So he just said me and guys or me and the fellows are going to be out at club so and so this weekend. It was just very unusual that you, you didn't see it, you just didn't see it happen, not around Memphis, it might happen up North some place but not around Memphis.

You know country music, ah, I like to play it and everything, it was, ah, it, it, ah, the words, some of the words and stuff was country and gospel, stuff like this. I like this kind of music and everything but it didn't have the feel that the blues had to me, it just didn't have the feeling. And in fact, ah, I couldn't dance to country music, never could, I don't, there's just a lot of country music now that I don't even, I can't dance to. Some of it, of course, the modern country now you can but I'm talking about when I was playing country music back in the Fifties. The kind of music that you could hear back in the Fifties was kind of like, it was Ernest Tubb and Hank Snow and people like this. And I just kind of illustrate it, just a little bit about the way Ernest Tubb type music keeps going, try to dance to it and you can see for yourself the, the difference, how, how it would sound.