Blues Unlimited by Bill Greensmith

Author:Bill Greensmith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2015-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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