1973 Yank Rachell Art Rosenbaum Naptown Blues Party 2-Page Vintage Music Article

Description

1973 Yank Rachell Art Rosenbaum Naptown Blues Party 2-Page Vintage Music Article
Original, vintage magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm)
Condition: Good
Art Rosenbaum's brick house is a half dozen blocks from
the University of Iowa campus where he teaches painting.
The walls are covered with the creations of Art and his
students. The living room also serves as the storehouse for a
piano, acoustic guitars, the banjos he used for the Cool Hand
Luke soundtrack, a dobro hanging on the wall, fiddles in beat-
up cases, an old mandolin and a jug.
The Friends of Old Time Music were having a party in
Rosenbaum'shouse. Some people sat and stared at the walls.
Others were slicing cheese and mixing punch in the kitchen;
getting the reception set for Yank Rachell, J. T. Adams and
Shirley Griffith of Indianapolis. They had come from Nap-
town to play the blues at a university concert sponsored by
the Friends.
The party was a far cry from the gatherings where the old
bluesmen got their starts; the country suppers of 40 or 50
years ago where the hosts sold catfish and moonshine, the
men shot craps in the barn and young musicians like Yank
walked miles in order to play. The lights got shot out in the
old days. This, in turn, was a gathering of professors and
students having wine and cheese after a concert.
The bluesmen were the last to arrive. J.T. made a quick
circle through the kitchen to get some punch and then headed
for a corner in the living room. He didn’t want to talk to
anyone. At the concert he hadn’t wanted to sing. “J.T., sing
something for us. If you can eat you can sing, and you sure
been eating all day long.” Yank’s taunting didn’t work.
Without his teeth, J.T. refused to sing. He found a chair out of
the way and settled down to drink.
Shirley stayed in the hallway and a rock ‘n’ roll drummer
brought him some punch. They talked about making records.
Shirley had been playing for more than 40 years but had been
recording only since the early 60’s.
“I had my chances. Ishman wanted me to record in
Mississippi but I was a wild boy and didn’t pay him no mind.
Leroy, he died before me and him got a chance to record
together. I wanted to but things didn’t work out for a long
time after that.”
The drummer asked about young blues musicians. Shirley
liked them but didn’t mention any favorites. “These boys
don’t play like we do. We didn’t have no big group when we
played so you had to do it all. You sang all your songs and
played and stamped your feet for a beat. Boys don’t do that
now. They got an easy way of playing. I don’t do it myself,
can’t get used to it.”
Shirley liked to sing and didn’t mind talking but he left the
bulk of the story telling and the crowds to Yank. Yank had
moved right into the living room, sent someone for some
punch and launched into some stories. Even though he was
tired, he liked having people around to listen to how he traded
a pig to Augie Rawls for his first mandolin or about the time
he and Sleepy John Estes and Jab Jones spent the 0 they
got for their first record on two suits each and a good time in
West Memphis. Yank pawned his watch to get home the next
afternoon.
“Yank, have you had any songs stolen?”
“Well, I had some. Joe Williams stole some and John Lee
Hooker, he took some of mine. But, you kjsow, everybody
wrote their own songs and played them their own way. Then
some other guy come along and play them his way. I
borrowed some that way myself.”
Someone asked Yank how he turned professional. The
answer would have been the same for almost any of the old
bluesmen. After he got well known at the suppers he would
get paid cash instead of just a meal. He’d play weekends and
pick cotton or lay tracks during the week. And if he got really
good at his music he left for the taverns and whorehouses and
even the sedate white dance parties in Memphis or New
Orleans. If he was lucky he met Ralph Peer at the big
auditorium on Front Street and made records. That was how
Yank got the 0.
“I didn't come north till the 50’s,” said Yank. “My wife’s
folks died and we moved out of Brownsville. I’d quit playing
by then. My wife asked me to stop so I stopped. So ’61, she
passed. I was so lost and blue and everything I had to start
playing again.”
The rediscovery of Sleepy John sparked the search for
other country bluesmen. About the time he started playing
blues again, Yank was found by album producers, club
owners and the sponsors of folk music festivals. But, the jobs
tend to be few.
Shirley had come to Naptown much earlier. In 1928 he
brought his brash delta style to the blues team of Leroy Carr
and Scrapper Blackwell. But they died and Shirley took a job
at the Chevrolet body plant. He plays in public only oc-
casionally: a tavern, birthday party or college concert.
J .T. came next; he arrived in 1941 after he had been laid off
his railroad job in Kentucky. He looked up Scrapper to learn
the Trouble Blues that he and Leroy had made famous.
Scrapper and J.T. played off and on in local taverns and
clubs. His steady job was at theChrysler plant.
And yet after 40 years and the black exodus north and the
days in the car plants and the nights in the bars and the
English invasion of the 60’s and the young whites playing the
blues like they invented them, things hadn’t really changed
from the days in the south. Folks getting together to play,
their music, people having a party on a Saturday night, and
the older men talking to the young musicians just as Ishman
Bracey had talked to Shirley in the early 20’s.
Art started to play. He had brought out a fiddle, and while
the drummer kept time with two spoons and the Welshman
who had mixed the wine punch whistled into a jug, Art played...
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