Maybe Happier Blue-With Blue Guys In Mind

 

Who knows when love fades like the morning dew as the old Child Ballad, or one version of it sung by Marianne Le Bert on her Tramps and Trips album, had it. Certainly Josie Davis knew when she pushed Stanley Peters out the door after a two year hot and cold love affair that the love had faded, the love that was pleasing and teasing when new had turned to ashes in her mouth in the six months previous to lowering the hammer on her ex-lover, pushing him not so gently out that condo door not physically but with her wildcat tongue. It hadn’t started out that way, hadn’t started out like it was going to fade as both sensed in the other a kindred, a soulmate he had called it one night when in bed they had made a game out of how many common interests they shared and above all their love of the blues singers on the radio or record player that were always forming the background music in the condo day and night.

They had met at Joe’s Place in Cambridge across the river, the Charles River, from Boston University where she was trying to finish up her Master’s degree in sociology as prelude to pursuing the doctorate necessary to get anywhere in a field crowded with liberal arts graduates like her who needed to find some niche in academia outside of the over-the-top English Lit programs which only produced a surfeit of waitresses and taxi cab drivers. Joe’s Place at that time had probably been the outstanding blues club in Greater Boston, a place which drew the better blues performers still alive and working and hence the serious blues aficionados. Josie had only then recently become a serious blues enthusiast having for years before, since high school at Hunter College Hunt in Manhattan under the guidance of her then best friend Frida Hoffman whom she had not spoken to in years since Frida had run off with her boyfriend, Todd, from Wisconsin where Josie had gone to school as an undergraduate, been a traditional folkie.

One night she had heard Bessie Smith, the self-styled Empress of the blues, 1920s and 1930s barrelhouse blues featured on Jim Miller’s American Folk Hour on the local Cambridge radio station, WCAS, had been so enthralled by her style and lyrics (and having just been two-timed by a guy, Gene Solomon, so very amenable that minute to Bessie’s bitter-sweet memories of her two-timing guys who left her high and dry, took her hard earned dough too), and decided to pursue the matter further.

After a few inquiries about where to get that old time blues material Josie had gone to Sandy’s over outside Central Square in Cambridge heading toward Harvard to grab some albums, used as it turned out but serviceable, and through Sandy, the owner and one of his blues-crazy staff found out about other artists, mostly female but a few males too like Skip James whose piano riffs grabbed her. One afternoon she saw a poster as she walked into Sandy’s advertising that Big Tommy Johnson, one of the last of the old-time country blues singers from down South, from Alabama, would be playing at Joe’s Place that weekend. Not having gone to a blues club before she was not sure what to expect having been strictly a coffeehouse denizen in the Village, later in Madison and then after she moved to Boston to Harvard Square, the Club Nana being her main hang-out since Tom Rush and Jack Elliott played there on a regular basis. After asking Ted, the blues-crazy clerk at Sandy’s whether Joe’s was the kind of place where she could go and sit at the bar alone, have a couple of drinks and not be hassled by guys looking to “hit” on her and he told her she was big girl and could handle any blues-crazed guys who came her way, and if not Red Radley the bartender would make sure that things were right she decided to check the place out. (That not hassled by guys, by the way, somewhat half-hearted since she was “single” and frankly a little horny but really did want to hear Big Tommy’s act without being bothered, unless she wanted to be.)       

That Saturday night she showed up just before Big Tommy’s opening set, sat down at the bar and ordered a scotch and soda, without being molested. In fact that night and the next several times she went there over the next couple of months was not bothered, including a couple of time when she saw guys who she might have liked to have bothered her. In the meantime she learned a lot about various blues song, traditions and players, many white who were carrying on the tradition since young blacks were mainly not into their heritage music. Then one night, a Thursday night, Buddy Guy was playing and she had taken her customary seat at the bar and ordered her scotch and soda from Red (who had only made a couple of half-serious, half in jest passes at her when serving her liquor to her), when Stanley Peters showed up at the seat next to hers. Not by accident. He introduced himself and told her that he had noticed her several times before but she seemed a strictly “no-go” ice queen but that she seemed to enjoy the blues and he was an aficionado. Was she.        

After blushing somewhat over that ice queen remark (she couldn’t believe that her demeanor showed that way in public since she considered herself a free spirit of sorts, maybe that damn degree thesis was getting the best of her) she gave Stan the details of her stepping into the blues scene. He in turn gave her about three thousand facts about Bessie Smith from cradle to grave (an untimely early grave due to serious racial animosities in the deep South where a hurt in an accident black woman, famous or infamous, could not get aid at a white hospital and was turned away and got help too late elsewhere) and then about six thousand facts about the blues tradition in general, not all of the information she felt she needed to know. But he was pretty charming, funny, and well she still had that unresolved horny thing so she expected that he might take her home, or at least ask for a date. No deal, he only expressed the hope that she would come back to Joe’s again. So no go that night anyway although she found herself going to Joe’s a couple of times expecting to see him.

Then one night, Bonnie Raitt, who had gone to Radcliffe and then gave it up for the iterant blues mama wanderer, was playing, playing blues learned at the feet of Mississippi Fred McDowell a name she knew now, Stanley showed up next to her at the bar a little stoned, nothing serious by she could tell from her own bouts with weed, mainly at Wisconsin where you could hardly turn a dorm or apartment complex corner without the whiff of ganga filling the night air and said hello. Got a little brave and asked her if he could buy her a drink (yes, but only if she could buy him one in return) and once that was settled they sat listening to Bonnie played some very complex notes, and talking in a low voice to one another while she was playing. At intermission he asked Josie if she wanted to step outside and have a few hits of a “joint.” At first she was undecided but then she said what the hell and then went out in the back alley of Joe’s where others were also lighting up and split a joint. She was mellow for the rest of the evening and when he asked if she wanted to go to his place and listen to a new Little Walter album he had purchased at Cheapo’s she took the bait and went with him. (The next morning Josie made him laugh when she told him she thought it funny that he had used a variation on the “come and see my etchings” come on with that Little Walter come on and so some things don’t change in the boy-girl world.)      

So their affair started held together by the music, by their mutual interest in film noir, their love of the beach and long autumn walks among other things (you know favorite colors, food, cars, etc.) and eventually Stan moved in with her. Stan had always been a little vague about what he did for a living, although sometimes he would say he was a painter (he did show her his work which was quite good although she was not sure whether the subjects he painted would earn him a living) at others a handyman but he for most of the time they were together up until that last awful six months before she called it quits he pulled his share of expenses.

Then he just stopped, stopped paying his share of expenses, stopped painting and stopped making love to her. What she didn’t know was that Stan, beautiful, charming, funny Stan had “graduated.” The more than occasional Stan joints was being supplanted by sister (his term), by cocaine that she knew was making the rounds at Joe’s and other places as the drug of choice of the month. It had become “hip” (and easier to conceal and carry than reefer) to do lines with dollar bills before blues concerts and Stan had joined the mob.     

They constantly argued about the drugs, he tried to have her do a line or two but she refused, and she was getting angrier each day, getting blue as blue could be is the way she confessed it to a fellow worker at the social service office she worked at as part of gaining information for her dissertation. Then one night in a rage he hit her, not hard but hit her. That was the end, or the start of the end since they still had several more days of arguments before she started wild tongue screaming, screaming she would be happier blue, much happier. Then she pulled the hammer down.