by Mark Jordan
've
got the blues, have had for a few weeks now.
I don't just mean depressed or upset; I mean the kind of impenetrable funk from which you think you will never emerge. Not the kind of suffering you get from economic, social, or physical oppression, mind you, but in many ways much worse because it hits in that place where you think your guard is the strongest, the heart.
I'll spare you the details but will tell you that the fountain of my pain is the same one that has irrigated men's misery since Day One -- a woman, in this case a woman who either cannot or will not return my ardor.
You
might not notice anything if you saw me on the street, but the symptoms
are unmistakable: sullen, a little surly, unable to concentrate. I find
myself taking serpentine routes home so I can "coincidentally"
drive by her house. And I'm listening a little more intently to Jewel songs
and finding way too much meaning in the words.
I tell you all this not to elicit sympathy but by way of explanation, so you understand that when the opportunity arose to travel to Los Angeles to see B.B. King receive a lifetime achievement award from the Blues Foundation, it seemed just the remedy I required. Nothing, after all, soothes the mind and reinvigorates the spirit like travel. And what better destination than the City of Angels, a place where the blues simply cannot survive? This is, after all, a community that is constantly beset by tragedy -- earthquakes, drought, fire, mudslides, riots, the Los Angeles Clippers -- yet its million of citizens continue to bop along sunnily, all the while looking beautiful and tan. This is exactly what I need.
"So, when are you leaving?" my editor asked.
"Saturday afternoon."
"Have you packed yet?"
"No, not yet."
"Oh," he said, and then paused. "You know what you need? You need to find yourself someone. It's great, having someone to help you pack, someone who worries about you while you're gone and is there to meet you when you get back. It's the best feeling in the world."
This is what
I needed to hear? Not hardly. And the whole time I'm thinking, this trip
cannot begin a minute too soon.
The Boeing 757 penetrated the smog and landed in the surprisingly cool L.A. night. It had been an easy flight, highlighted by the best airline meal I've ever had: a little tray of Corky's barbecue with baked beans and apple cobbler.
My co-reporter on this trip, Paul Gerald, having arrived earlier and having already picked up our rental car, somehow found me in the mammoth confusion of L.A. International Airport and drove us to where we would be staying, his college friend David's house in Beverly Hills. That first night in L.A. we settled in; I would take the couch while Paul would sleep on a mattress on the living-room floor. Then we picked up a few six-packs, and David took us on a tour of L.A. As we surveyed the vast expanse of Los Angeles, driving by sites I'd seen a million times in countless films and television shows -- the Hollywood Bowl, Sunset Strip, Universal Studios -- I was for a while truly out of Memphis. I had no deadlines, no woman trouble, just a beer in my hand and a great big, strange new city to explore.
We slept late on Sunday. And early that night we headed to Universal CityWalk Center Court to meet a fellow Memphian, Larry Bell, and check out B.B. King's Blues Club-L.A. Bell was, until just recently, director of operations for both B.B. King's clubs. When we hooked up with him in L.A., he was counting the days until he left the company to run his own production company and a store, Rockwear U.S.A., which he recently opened on Beale.
The West Coast franchise of B.B.'s popular Memphis club opened in September 1994, and has, by most accounts, been losing money ever since. It's located out of traffic's way in City Walk, a kind of outdoor mall adjacent to the Universal Studios theme park, which otherwise is a successful tourist trap, filled with stores, restaurants, theatres, and bars.
Of course, B.B. doesn't own his namesake club, and in fact has never set foot in it; soon after it opened, a rift developed between King's management and the club's owners over money, outside endorsements, franchise agreements, and required personal appearances by B.B. The dispute is in the hands of lawyers, who, according to sources, are either about to settle it or go to court.
We checked out the club, which has a bizarre three-level setup that gives spectators on the top floor a great view of band members' heads. After a few drinks, Paul, David, Larry, and I took a stroll down CityWalk and stopped in the Hard Rock Cafe there. It was here that I discovered our host David's wild streak. He ordered the first two rounds of shooters. To be polite, I ordered the third. By the time we left Hard Rock we were fairly drunk. We dropped Larry off at B.B. King's and left, I thought, to go home.
Instead, David took us to a strip club, a place whose exact name I can't recall but that I believe was some combination of the words "live," "nude," and "girls." We left a couple of hundred dollars poorer and a little drunker still. After a quick, messy breakfast at Mel's Drive-in -- an all-night restaurant modeled on the hangout in the movie American Graffiti -- and a brief flirtation with a waitress named Bubbles, we finally went back to David's house to sleep. On the drive back, I wondered if any woman in her right mind would be flattered by the comment, "We went to a strip club, but I was really thinking of you the whole time."
A friend
of mine who doesn't imbibe once asked me what was the good of getting drunk
when you're depressed. I didn't know what to tell him then, and I'm still
not sure now. But I think it must have something to do with wallowing in
your despair, not just accepting it but plumbing its deepest recesses. If
you're feeling sad, listen to sad music to make yourself sadder. If you
hurt, drink too much and hurt more. Purge the misery out of your system.
Early Monday morning Paul managed to purge, but
I couldn't. I still had some wallowing to do.
Monday was the night we had been waiting for. After nursing our hangovers, grabbing a bite to eat, and taking care of some last-minute shopping, we headed for the Hollywood Palace. Though we didn't know it at the time, the Palace may actually be one of the most famous venues in the city. It's located in the heart of old Hollywood, a stone's throw from the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine and around the corner from Mann's Chinese Theatre and the Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Academy Awards were held and where most of the Blues Foundation staff was staying. The famous Hollywood Walk of Fame runs right in front of the Palace, with names like Johnny Carson and Dinah Shore just feet from the theatre doors.
An ornate, old-style auditorium not unlike our own Orpheum, the Palace in its heyday hosted various hit television shows, including Your Show of Shows, You Bet Your Life, and the eponymous variety show Live From the Hollywood Palace. And it has a prominent place in music history as well; it was the site of the Rolling Stones' first U.S. performance back in 1964.
We picked up our press passes and went to work. Paul ran off to the kitchen to hang out with the cooks, a couple of Memphians whom the Blues Foundation had brought in to prepare a real Southern feast for the occasion (see "Cooking For B.B.").
I, meanwhile, milled around the theatre's entrance watching the celebrities arrive. They pulled up in front of the Palace in limos -- John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, and finally B.B. himself -- and made their way down the blue carpet leading inside, while photographers and reporters swarmed around them separated only by a blue velvet rope.
Once inside, musicians and VIPs mingled at a cocktail reception. The 77-year-old Hooker sat on a couch flanked by two much younger women. Dr. John chatted with Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band. And Ike Turner and Junior Wells arrived decked out in their flashiest stage outfits.
And there was B.B., posing for photos with Raitt and his manager Sid Seidenberg. Seidenberg looms larger than most artists' managers. B.B. himself gives him a lion's share of the credit for his success. If B.B. can be said to have the genius of performing, then it was Seidenberg who sold that genius to the world and made B.B. the most recognized blues artist in the world.
There was a plethora of lesser-known Memphis celebrities there as well -- Bell, Kevin Kane, Linn Sitler.
A longtime friend of B.B.'s, Rufus Thomas, was ecstatic to see his old WDIA co-worker receive his due and was more than willing to take a little of the credit for getting him here. "I was one of the reasons he got the name B.B. King," he said. "The program director at WDIA gave him the name `Blues Boy' King. That's how he got all those B's in there. And let me tell you, those B's have been making him a lot of honey ever since."
While everyone enjoyed the reception, the staff of the Memphis-based Blues Foundation, including executive director Howard Stovall, were buzzing around trying to make sure everything went smoothly. This event must have been a daunting challenge for Stovall, at the helm of the foundation for less than a year. The third lifetime-achievement-award ceremony -- Willie Dixon and John Lee Hooker were the first two recipients -- this event for King could easily be seen as a make-or-break night for the foundation, a chance for this group, which promotes and supports the blues and blues musicians, to honor a giant in the field but also to use his popularity to promote itself and possibly put it on steadier financial feet.
To that end, those who had paid as much as $500-a-setting tickets were soon ushered to their tables on the theatre floor to eat their barbecue-and-catfish meal. At 9 p.m., the festivities began with Rufus and blues singer Ruth Brown leading the audience in singing "Happy Birthday" to B.B., who turned 72 on September 16th.
And then they started handing out awards. Brown received the newly established B.B. King Hero Award for community service. And Bobby "Blue" Bland and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were inducted into the Blues Recording Hall of Fame. Finally, Z.Z. Top's Billy Gibson and Rufus took the stage to roast their friend and idol, and B.B. was presented with his lifetime-achievement award, a hulking object which Thomas looked as if he was about to drop.
Once the awards were presented, the stage crew quickly prepared the stage for the post-festivities jam, which was being recorded for future broadcast by Sid Selvidge, producer of the Blues Foundation's syndicated radio show Beale Street Caravan. Raitt and Hooker kicked the music off. And though there were sound glitches early on, they did little to diminish the excitement coming off the stage.
Raitt and Hooker were followed by a revolving lineup that included Junior Wells, Thomas, Elvis' guitarist Scotty Moore, and finally Ike Turner, who then led the unlikely supergroup in a rendition of his "Rocket 88," widely considered the first rock-and-roll song.
And
they were followed by the man of the hour himself, B.B., trimmed down and
beaming with pride over the night's events.
By the time Keb' Mo' and Coco Montoya and Kenny Wayne Shepherd took the stage for revelatory sets, most of the early-to-bed, early-to-rise L.A. crowd was headed out the door, so that there were few people on hand to hear Ruby Wilson close the show with a great, gutsy take on "Let The Good Times Roll."
It had been a great show, featuring some of the finest blues performers alive. And I hadn't enjoyed it; at least not in the sense that I had fun.
Early in the show, I ran into Beale Street developer John Elkington in the lobby. "I would hope someday that Memphis could host an event like this," he said. "But this is where the money and the media are, so they have to do it here for now. But I tell you, it's really a tribute to Memphis. From the food to the music, that's our culture they're celebrating in there. It's like we just packed up Memphis and brought it to L.A."
He was right. I'd traveled 2,000 miles to get away
from Memphis for a few days, to forget my troubles, and now I realized Memphis
was more with me than if I had been sitting at home in Midtown. Here I was
dining on barbecue and catfish, listening to the blues, seeing many of the
same old faces, and still thinking of the same woman.
Though the city had played the perfect host, by the next day the Memphis contingent to L.A. was itching to get home. The passenger list for my Tuesday-afternoon flight must have looked like the guest list from the night before -- Larry was a few rows ahead of me, Rufus, Howard, and Sid behind me. And up in first class, as she should be, was Ruby.
"You should be able to get some great stuff on the plane with all those people there," Paul said when he dropped me off at the airport.
And sure enough, there was plenty of material to be mined. Does Howard think this event signals a new era for the Blues Foundation? What about rumors of next year's lifetime-achievement-award recipient? Does Sid think he'll be able to cull enough material from the show to make a CD? And now that he has left B.B. King's Blues Club, what does the future hold for Larry?
But it had been a long four days. I wanted to rest, they wanted to rest, and airplanes are not great interview locations.
Besides I was much more interested in talking to the woman sitting beside me, a pretty, red-headed Memphian who was a member of the first graduating class at Houston High School. She was a travel agent who mostly booked airline flights for government employees, law-enforcement officers, and the like. Ironically, she hated to fly, so when the plane encountered some turbulence, I started to talk to her to keep her mind off the rocking and shaking.
She was on her way home after visiting her husband, a FedEx mechanic on temporary assignment in L.A. Every weekend, she explained, her husband jumps seat on a FedEx plane and makes the four-hour trip to see his wife, an eight-hour commute every week. So this time, they decided she should fly out to see him and make a vacation out of it -- Disneyland, a few days in San Diego.
"It's hard being away from him so much of the time," she said. "But we talk on the phone every night. And it's not permanent. In a few months he'll be moved back to Memphis, and maybe then we'll get a house somewhere."
Back to Memphis.
We touched down a little before 7 p.m., and everybody made a beeline for baggage claim. As we waited for our luggage, I watched a dozen little reunions take place. Rufus was met by his family, Sid by his wife Shirley. And Larry's wife and kids were there, too, including precocious Camden -- named for Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team -- who just couldn't help but attack people's bags as they rolled by on the carousel.
I collected my bag, said my goodbyes, and headed out alone to collect my car from the long-term parking lot. As I drove home on Airways, through the cold drizzle, I reached over into my glove compartment, ferreted out a tape, and stuck it in. The tape was number four from the B.B. King boxed set King of the Blues, the song was "Many A Mile Traveled." The drummer clicked his sticks four times and the band launched into a mid-tempo R&B groove.
And then B.B. started to sing:
I've been to every big city/Small town truck
stop in between./Played more concerts and club dates than any man has ever
seen./I've got enough bonus miles to take me to the moon./When I get a vacation,
it won't be too soon./I've many a mile traveled./But there's one thing you
most know,/I've still got a long way to go.
B.B. was singing my blues now. I'd traveled halfway across the country to escape my troubles, and instead, all I found was the Memphis blues again.
by Paul Gerald
IT'S THE END OF THE EVENING at the Hollywood Palace, and John Collmer is among the last half of the crowd still around to hear Ruby Wilson close out the show with "Let the Good Times Roll." It's been a long day and night, but Collmer has a big grin on his face. "Imagine," he says, "all these stars, all this talent in one place, and we cooked for 'em!"
Cooking
for B.B. King's induction into the Blues Hall of Fame was, in fact, a Memphis
affair all around. Collmer, chef and owner of Bistro 122 in East Memphis,
and his brother-in-law, Ernie Mellor of Hog Wild Barbecue, were charged
with feeding the Memphis and L.A. music-industry crowds a genuine Southern
meal.
To do this clearly necessitated bringing Southern cooks, Southern food, and Southern equipment. Mellor hauled his cooker, with which he earned a second-place finish in the 1993 Memphis in May barbecue festival, all the way out from Memphis to cook 22 pork shoulders donated by Bryan Foods.
Collmer, meanwhile, collected 120 pounds of Mississippi-raised catfish filets from Off the Dock in Memphis; a few dozen bottles of Graceland Wine; and 40 pecan pies from the Indianola Pecan Company in B.B. King's hometown. They were said to be B.B.'s favorite pecan pies. Rounding out the feast, served to about 300 before the big show started, were 450 cobbettes of corn, three 25-pound cases of okra (fried, of course), six cases of greens, and four sheetpans of cornbread. The food was served on plastic trays, and dessert came in pie pans, for what Collmer called "that homey feel."
But home was a long way away this Monday night, and these two Memphians, working on a volunteer basis, went through their share of adventures to get the meal on.
First they had to spend the night before B.B.'s induction tending the fire in the cooker -- the cooker being in the parking lot next to the Palace. "We put the shoulders on at 10 last night," Mellor says. "Then we took turns sleeping from 12:30 to 5, because you have to stoke the fire every hour or so. Plus, there was some sort of gay convention happening in the Palace, and it was a complete carnival. There were guys who looked like they could play linebacker for the Chicago Bears, running around in a pink tutu, pink shoes, and pink hair."
Both men were up and on the scene from 5 a.m. until showtime. They were treated to the afternoon soundcheck and managed to sneak in the occasional red-and-white can of frosty adult beverage. The only scare was when the fire marshal, a thorn in planners' sides all night, walked in the kitchen, looked around, and announced, "This isn't what we expected at all." A moment later he broke the stunned silence with the words, "Actually, everything looks okay."
Asked around 8 that night if he was getting by on an adrenaline rush, Collmer said, "Hell, yes. I'm cooking for B.B. -- and for John Lee Hooker and Dr. John and Bonnie Raitt. Wouldn't you be on a rush?"
Collmer had come west the day before and, being a chef, went out to "check out the competition, see if I could get some ideas." He went to Geoffrey's in Malibu, where he had a "fine meal." But, being a chef, he also had to add this: "I had a smoked-salmon hash which I could have executed better. The consistency was wrong, and I think the salmon was grilled, not smoked." The folks at Geoffrey's couldn't be reached to comment on such an accusation.
Mellor, acting in the same vein, went to a place called Smokin' Johnny's Barbecue out in the San Fernando Valley. "It left something to be desired," he said -- but then again, those goofball Californians were barbecuing beef, for heaven's sake.
Mellor's pork, meanwhile, was causing quite a stir in the Palace kitchen. It's frankly amazing to consider the fact that somebody in the Memphis in May festival created something tastier, especially when it's coming right out of the cooker, and there was a constant stream of people coming through to grab chunks. It says here that if you're looking for someone to cook some barbecue for your next party, you should call these guys and see what the fuss in L.A. was about.
There were other sources of fuss in the Palace kitchen that night, and not all of them were positive. No kitchen which is preparing food for more than three people will ever be calm, so cooking for 300 in a small catering kitchen was far from sedate. Along with the usual kitchen cries such as "I don't know what happened to the cornbread" and "Who took the extra salad bowl?" there was a little conflict of principle between Collmer and the Palace staff. The staff wanted the backup trays of catfish to be stored under the buffet table for ease of access, but Collmer -- being a chef -- voiced his dissatisfaction with this plan in a non-subtle manner:
"You want me to leave my fried food under the table for 30 minutes? That ain't gonna fuckin' happen. You can call me an asshole if you want, but I'm not gonna feed B.B. King that. Jesus Christ!" -- and then back to the fryer he went. The response from a Palace staffer drew hearty laughter as a defining comment:
"Well, somebody didn't tell you what they told us."
The crew of people wandering through the kitchen throughout the evening was as varied as the crowd being fed: wait staff, hostess, security people, Collmer's wife, Mellor's girlfriend, the building's owner, a freelance TV guy from New Zealand, a hungry journalist, and somebody needing a plate for Charlie Musselwhite's vegetarian wife. ("Sorry, man, you're at a Memphis cookin' dinner. We're a little short on veggies.") That person left with a plate full of lettuce.
One of the more interesting visitors was Santa, who was described as The Cooler. Santa is about the physical type you would expect from a guy named Santa (he says he has a collection of about 600 Santas back at home), and when I asked someone what The Cooler does, I was told, "Well, if something heats up, Santa just cools it down."
The lesson: Don't fool with Santa.
The Hollywood Palace actually has a chef in Hope Bailey. She says the only other time she cooks Southern-style is for a big country-music awards show. "This is the first time we've had other chefs come in and share the kitchen," she said while cutting up yet another tray of cornbread. And how has it gone? "Real well -- I love these guys." At that moment Mellor and Collmer, lost in an adrenaline daze as 300 people sat down to eat, were giving each other grief about which of them the linebacker in the pink tutu had been hitting on. Things do get odd in a kitchen around mealtime.
Later in the evening, after the crowd had eaten and settled in for the presentations and jam sessions, the Palace crew moved in for kitchen cleanup, and Collmer and Mellor went back to the hotel for a shower and change of clothes. The last of the crises -- the pecan pies were falling apart and somebody yelled out, "We need a Southerner to cut these things" -- was long cooled off. A beer and a vodka tonic were consumed by the cooks, and there was nothing left to do but dig the high-quality musical talent.
Collmer summed it up thusly: "The thing about the restaurant business is, it's one challenge after another. You get through one thing, take a breath, and then say, `Okay, what's the next thing?' This was a great challenge, and we did a great job. I'm exhausted, but I'm thrilled."