Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 1 No. 2 | Summer 1979 /// Issue 2 of 41 /// Master#2 of 73

south and a levee to the north. Past the Yazoo, the land is flat, empty, set with lonely shacks and an occasional two-story wooden house. Watery black cottonfields run to the horizon on both sides of the road, cut by streams and rivers and canals — all between levees. The Mississippi must have flooded the land regularly, once, making the soil rich and fertile. The levees hold back the river now. so there are no more floods, and the soil is dying. Pump in fertilizer and chemicals. Move north to Memphis or Chicago. Running north toward Caile and Indianola and Doddsville, the land grows emptier and lonelier — flat cottonfield swampland, red-brown in the setting sun. There’s no shelter. The houses stand full fields apart. Small wooden houses under the sky with peeling paint and a washing machine on the front porch. Shacks with broken windows and the doors standing open to the wind. No wonder people sang about being lonely, no wonder they had to play the blues. Even the commercial signs are insufficient, abbreviated, as if letters were running short: JAY'S GRO. and ALMA’S GEN. STO., and IDA'S SER. STA. And in every town the Rose Gas and Oil Station features a big wooden cut-out of a hand extended in neighborly greeting, with a caption reading, "Ride With Rose — Your Friend." In the Delta, you can use every friend you can get. The sun is down as we hit Clarksdale at the top of the Delta, where Robert Johnson may have been born, where he may have sold his soul to the devil. The sky is strange, with a band of pitch black on the horizon that leaps up suddenly to cover the sky. It’s a terrifying sunset; it makes me think of hellhounds on my trail, and it makes me wish I was already in Memphis, only 75 miles to the north. You could walk it if you had to; lots of bluesmen had to. Suddenly, it’s clear to me — why the Delta Blues sounded like they did, and why they moved to Memphis, and then Chicago. Why they died. A Greyhound bus comes out of the darkness, headlights burning, and roars past. It’s for Robert Johnson. "You may bury my body down by the highway side,” he sang in 1937, “ so my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride.” Jesus, even the ghosts are gone. Gilded Splinters Ace Records is two dusty storefronts on the working-class side of downtown Jackson. Mississippi. The lettering on the glass says ACE RECORDING STUDIO, but it could say JOE’S JOOK JOINT AND POOL HALL in the same funkytown lettering. Ace Records! The legendary (Jackson-based) New Orleans label that recorded Frankie Ford, Huey “ Piano” Smith, Lee Dorsey, Mac Rebennack, and James “ Little Gonzo" Booker. The original Ace records are collectors items these days, and fetch outrageous prices if you can find them at all. But in 1975, owner John Vincent brought out two new LPs of old material — a Huey Smith anthology and a Dr. John collection — and I wrote an ecstatic review in City Magazine. Vincent called me up personally to thank me. Maybe he’ll remember. Maybe he’ll have a copy of the Frankie Ford Sea Cruise LP. Vincent is a genial, balding, southern gentleman looking no more than 55. His office is cluttered with old 45s, LPs, and tape boxes, and on the wall are six priceless old Ace albums — including Sea Cruise, and a Huey Smith LP, Having a Good Time, that I’ve never even seen before! Vincent’s assistant is a 20-year-old black kid whose dialect is so impenetrable I can only get every sixth word; Vincent sends him for coffee. Vincent does remember my writeup, and he gives me the full journalist’s treatment. He tells me that someone from England’s Charly Records came through the week before to offer a deal on European rights to the Ace catalogue. He shows me a list of 25 "new releases” that I suspect will never see the right side of a record press. He’s got a blackboard on which someone has written SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and AMERICAN HOT WAX, and he asks me if I’d be interested in writing a filmscript based on the Ace Recrods “story.” Actually, it sounds like a great idea, and we toss scenes back and forth — blues, r&b and the real (i.e., New Orleans) “Sea Cruise” recording session. “ It'll have lots of plot and music,” says Vincent, “but it has to be about the search, the search for songs, the search for music.” Finally, I tell him that I’ve come with an ulterior motive — I’m looking for the Sea Cruise LP and I’ll be glad to pay for it if he’s got one. “Well, you know that record is going for $100 in oldies stores,” he tells me. “Frankie called me just last month looking for a copy, and I didn’t have one.” My heart drops. “You might find one upstairs, though,” he adds, and my heart beats faster. “You want to look around upstairs?” “ Looking around upstairs” is every record collector’s secret fantasy — especially if the upstairs is somewhere in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, or Tennessee. The kid takes me down a pitch-black corridor and pulls a light chain, revealing a wooden stairway covered with broken 45s. We climb up. crunching records underfoot with every step: Big Boy Myles 45s, Earl King 45s. It’s like walking on gilded splinters. At the top of the stairs, there’s a gigantic room full of stacked LPs, all covered over with heaps of plaster dust and debris. The first stack is all Sea Cruise, and I walk toward it like a man in a dream, records cracking underfoot. I brush dust from the top of the stack and pull the first jacket. It’s empty. I try another, six inches down the stack. Empty. They’re all empty jackets. “No records here,” says the kid. “Mrowbo yowzli wenna collectors inyow all gone.” “Aren’t there any records left?” The kid reaches down into the dust and pulls up a Sea Cruise LP, cracked clean in half. He throws it against the wall. “ Yowza branter any records for me?” asks the kid. “What?” “Murra wunzibi records I can sell,” he says. Suddenly I get the notion that the kid has got a stash of actual LPs somewhere up here, but he’s not turning them loose unless I bribe him, which I’m not prepared to do. He shrugs. “Yalla tennis next room?” he says. The next room is just as big, just as full of debris, and twice as dark. Pigeons flap past us, shitting as they go. Shitting on an incredibly large pile of 45-rpm records. The kid reaches down, picks up a 45, and slices it through the air at the pigeons. It shatters against the wall. My instant fantasy is that it’s the last copy of some totally unknown New Orieans side. With the light on, I can see that the pile of 45s is roughly circular, at least 12 feet in diameter, and about three feet high in the center. Guess the number of 45s and win a trip to cloud- cuckoo-land. Crunching closer, I grab the three nearest 45s. A Frankie Ford picture-sleeve 45 of “What’s Going On” (never seen one; maybe his best song); Huey Smith and the Clowns doing “Popeye,” backed with “Scald- Dog” (never heard of it, dynamite); Alvin Tyler doing “Happy Sax" (available elsewhere). Downstairs, Vincent separates himself from the phone long enough to • MUSIC • MILLENNIUM • Records, tapes and other joys Any T-shirt in the store only $5 with this ad m W SAVE MONEY WITH SALESJUSED LPS,THEIR RECORD CLUB! 32nd E.Burnside NW21st + Irving We also have a complete selection of new and used records, tapes, posters, cleaning accessories and much more—all at the lowest prices in town. We have Paramount tickets too! open 7 days 1431 N.E. Broadway 281-4400 couponexpires July 31,1979 y^arural ToodsaraCommunity-Owned, Non-CProfirCo-op J^w.-Sar. \o-y yAon. 'nils z blocks north of Jbwell ‘j f i is adqoodfor of~ayiypurchase over$5°° Ju ly 6-2/ ( onejoerjmon) 26

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