“Well, it was my Freshman year and I was still living at home—my parent’s house in Weymouth. I had a stomach virus or something and when Miz called about the gig, I was in the bathroom throwing up. My mother tried to tell Miz I was sick and couldn’t come to the phone, but Miz was insistent. When I was finally able to get to the phone, I heard Miz say, ‘We’re backing Little Walter tonight. I’ll be by to pick you up in ten minutes.’ I told him I was sick, I couldn’t do it, but Miz’s response was, ‘Hat up, Clucky!’ He was there in ten minutes. He took my amp and bass, loaded them and me into his VW bus, and we headed to Boston. We stopped at every drugstore between Weymouth and Boston. At the first drug store, Miz ran in and bought Pepto Bismal, jumped in the car and drove off, I took a swig and a few blocks later leaned out of the car window to threw it up—Miz didn’t even pull over for the event. So we’d stop at the next drug store, Miz would run in and buy some other stomach medicine, and, well, you get the picture.”
“Much too vividly,” Jane said. “Go on.”
“On the drive Miz told me that Little Walter had gotten on the plane in New York headed for the gig, but his band had not. Dave Wilson had booked the gig, and he knew he needed a good blues band to back Little Walter, so he had called Mercon and told him to get the Blues Children to the Moondial for an 8 o’clock gig.”
“Moondial?”
“Yeah, the Moondial Coffeehouse, which is now the Boston Tea Party.”
“No shit!” It was the first time Jim had heard Jane swear.
“When we got there, Miz took my equipment in. The rest of the guys were already there and mostly set up. Miz went out and got his equipment. He set us both up— I just sat on a chair with my head in my hands. By the time we were all set up it was quarter of eight, and no Little Walter. Bill, the manager of the Moondial, signaled to us from the back of the room. We grabbed our instruments, left the stage, and followed Bill up a flight of stairs to what must have once been a choir loft. You’ve seen the stained glass window of a Jewish star on the building, right? Well, it used to be a Jewish temple, and what was once the choir loft, or whatever, is now the green room. A few couches, a little kitchen with a fridge and stove. Miz and Mercon tuned up, I sat in a chair trying not to throw up. Miz grabbed my bass and started tuning it, and at that point Little Walter climbed the stairs.
“Bill went over and greeted him, handed him a bottle of vodka, then brought him over to meet us. The other guys stood up and shook Little Walter’s hand. He took swigs from his bottle between introductions. I was introduced last. Little Walter took one look at me and said, “My man don’t look so good.” Miz explained that I was sick. Little Walter said, “Well he better get better in a hurry, ‘cause we goin’ on.” He put his vodka bottle on the table, and headed down the stairs. Bill went to the kitchen and grabbed a pot from one of the cabinets, handed it to me saying, “If you have to throw up, use this.” Miz handed me my bass, and I followed the other guys down the stairs. I was pretty unsteady on my feet, and I bumped my bass against the wall on my way down the stairs. I can show you the little chip in the finish. It’s my proudest possession.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“We got on stage, I put my pot on the floor next to my amp, so I could reach it in a hurry if I needed it, plugged into the amp and switched it on. Little Walter didn’t wait for us, he just grabbed the mic off the stool in center stage and started playing. After hearing a few notes, John looked at me and Miz and silently mouthed G. John has a great ear and can figure out the key quickly. I’m a lot slower—especially when on the verge of vomiting. But Little Walter’s rhythm and phrasing were so precise that, once John had given me the key, I knew just what to play. Before I could think, we were in the middle of “Juke” and it was cooking!
“I don’t remember much from that first set. I was just trying to hang in there and not reach for that pot to puke in. But I do remember one note. On the third chorus of ‘Little Red Rooster,’ Little Walter cued a break by holding up his clenched fist. Al hit a rim shot, Mercon and Miz strummed chords and immediately musted the strings, I played a bass note, staccato. The silence underpinned Little Walter’s note—a note that was more than harmonica. It was a trumpet, the crowing of a rooster, the howling of a wolf, the agony and exaltation of a human voice, of all human voices. It rose into the rafters of that old temple and danced there for what seemed like an eternity.
“Little Walter signaled the end of the first set by putting the mic on the stool and walking off stage. The band followed him. I put my bass on the guitar stand, grabbed my pot by the handle, and took up the rear. When we got to the Green Room, Little Walter settled into a chair with his bottle of vodka, and we pulled up chairs around him.
“Wait—I do remember one other tune from that night, ‘Blues with a Feeling.’ We had not played it with the Blues Children, because Mercon had dismissed it as just another blues. He’d said that Butterfield had just made up some lyrics to a blues and they’d recorded it. But when Little Walter called it and counted it off, I understood what had happened. I didn’t realize that the count-off was the first bar of the tune. Three bars on the one chord, then to the four. Threw me off. I caught it, after a measure of wrong notes. I asked Little Walter about it on the break, but we didn’t have the language in common. I tried, ‘If we’re in G, then when do we go to the C chord? Is it...’ Walter took the bottle from his lips and said, ‘Don’t think about that stuff. You’ll feel it, man. You got it man. You got it. When I play this..., you play this..., and that’s it, man, that’s it.’
“‘You is the only white boys what’s got it,’ Little Water said. ‘Them other white boys, they just don’t got it—don’t got the blues feel, you dig? When I play’—and he cupped his hands in front of this mouth and sang a phrase, looking at Mercon—‘and you play chunk-chunk-chunka-chunk, and’—looking at me—‘you play uumm, uumm, umm,’ —looking around at all of us, taking a big swig of vodka, and smiling, ‘That’s it! You dig? That’s IT!’
“Mercon and Walter talked through the whole break between sets. Mercon asked Walter about harmonica players. Walter said he’d taught Paul Butterfield. He said, ‘When Butterfield play this’—singing a riff into his cupped hands—‘He play it like that, but that’s not what I taught him. I taught him this’—he sang the riff again into his cupped hands, this time the riff was filled with pain, yearning, and fulfillment. ‘That’s the way to play it.’
“During the break Little Walter finished the quart of vodka.”