The Story Behind the Photos
Part 4: Life in the Blues Lane
After the Eddy Street photo session was finally done, Wolf suggested we go “get a beer.”
On the way to the bar, I found a very broken record in the gutter (Aaron Neville’s “Tell It Like It Is”) and took a shot of Wolf’s hand holding it, clearly showing his guitar-calloused fingers.
We walked about a block and a half to a bar called “The Barrel House,” located on Fillmore Street, in the (pre-gentrified/pre-“Redevelopment”) Fillmore District. I felt totally “in” to be hanging out with Wolf, and so proud to have succeeded in my photo-mission that day.
We sat at the great old U-shaped bar, and Wolf ordered two beers. Just as we were served, a number of very frightened-looking folks began coming into the bar and moving to the far back, pressing against the wall and looking apprehensively at the door. So, I began to also stare at the door, figuring maybe there was some fight going on outside. Wolf didn’t seem to notice, he was so calm and centered, I could feel it.
Then… this tense, pissed-off and up-tight looking young black guy came into the bar, carrying a gun, and found the only empty seat in the place, next to the only “white guy” at the bar, the seat to MY right! The timeframe here, as you may recall, was just a few months after Martin Luther King had been assassinated, as well as RFK.
He placed his gun (It was a LUGER!) onto the bar in front of him and said, “Nobody’s moving!”
The place got very quiet.
I had a moment’s thought to grab that gun (a very SHORT moment) and then a moment’s thought about NOT (a longer moment) and both moments seemed an eternity, or threatened one I wasn’t ready for … so I was just kinda somewhere in an unhappy place between bewilderment, fatalism, and trying not to listen to any internalized parent-tape saying, ”see what you get for hanging out in places like that with people like that” … and then… Wolf just leaned down to me and calmly and quietly said, “C’mon man, let’s get outa here.”
I said, “lead the way” (figuring I had nothing to lose, but oh, maybe my life?) And so Wolf got off his stool and I did mine, and we calmly and slowly (well, me just slowly) walked out together… with no problems… (all the while I was almost hearing that shot I was expecting!) and, before we even fully got out to the door, much less out of it… Wolf started discussing something about the photos!
I said, “Can’t we wait ‘til we’re out of range? I can’t think about it now.” He said, “Oh yeah, OK,” and may have even been amused somewhat, although I was just trying to NOT feel a “new hole” in my backside.
As we walked down the street, Wolf mentioned to me how just the night before he’d gone to a corner store to buy some liquor and had accidentally slightly bumped into someone (or vice versa) and that the guy became very upset and belligerent, pressing a .38 against Wolf’s belly. Wolf said he had to ask him pleadingly, “Please don’t shoot me!” He commented on how aggressive and violent so many people were these days.
So, now... it felt BETTER than great to be walking down that sidewalk with Wolf!
I found out much later from a friend who lived in that part of town that “The Barrel House” had a very bad reputation. She said, “What were you doin’ in THAT place?”
Wolf and I corresponded after that. I was a bit late in getting my proofs to him, but Wolf was good about it, but I’m sure wanted them sooner, especially as I was so far from him at that point. I was having financial and roommate troubles - the acid-heads in the building had invited speed-freaks in for parties, my engine had blown up, my place was robbed when I was out for the day, and that bank work was making me insane… they even measured sideburn lengths as part of their dress-code! Ah, some OTHER sides of the ‘60s! But, finally, I got it all done, as much as possible myself, using rented public darkroom facilities.
Then, I sent him all the proof sheets of the shots I’d taken, and a few special prints of others to distribute as gifts to the subjects in them. From the three photos he selected in one of his replies, I made 200 copies of the one he wanted to be his booking promo photo and 1000 (500 each, two different sets) of full photo-backed business cards. I sent them all to his Chicago home.
Oh, yeah, “by the way”… the NEXT day after we did those photos in San Francisco, I had gone to see Wolf again at the motel, because he said I could come back so that he could teach me blues harp! I wanted to learn, and had already been trying to, on my own, for a while then, and had some harps, and knew just a bit by then - although as a rock musician and “child prodigy” classically trained percussionist as well as limited-chops but very “into it” boogie-woogie piano player, I was very comfortable with the music.
So, that day, in a different room this time, I recorded 2 small reel to reel tapes on which he told me about his early life, some of his up to the moment life, and… I recorded his harmonica lesson, with me playing drums on the nightstand! He told me he’d played certain things so that I could practice with them and copy them until I got them down, somewhat as he said he’d done - which, except for that amazing (unduplicatable) ‘Wolf tone” and a few of his chops, I eventually did.
When he laid down some harp for me to study… I played “drums” on the nightstand (not intentionally loudly, but joyously for sure. Apparently I had some other tenants quite upset with that, because the super refused to let me into his place (where Hubert was relaxing that day) to interview and photograph Hubert Sumlin, since the super had been awakened by my “drumming” and was saying some pretty angry things from inside his place. I regret not being able to interview and photograph Hubert candidly, as I had been expectingto and had discussed earlier.
By the way, I later had one “official” harp lesson from Paul Oscher and one from Sonny Terry, who taught me the first harp song he’d ever learned from his grandfather, a “Canned Heat-like falsetto-sung very early proto-blues song.
In Wolf’s taped story, he told me how he’d run away from his uncle out of fear of severe or maybe fatal punishment after he’d killed a prize stud hog that his uncle had just paid a lot of money for…When Wolf was feeding it, the pig rushed him (they can be very dangerous in such ways) running between his legs and knocking him into the muck, getting the greasy slop Wolf had been ordered to carry while wearing his Sunday best, which included on this occasion his first pair of long pants, which he paid for by having worked (beyond his other harshly-imposed chores) six weeks in the forest cutting railroad ties for 50 cents a day. He’d been about to court his girlfriend and take her to church. The pig ruined his clothes, and Wolf then hit the pig over the head with the bucket, causing that stud boar to leave before he came, so to speak. This matter is depicted in great detail including this story in his own words in the new Pantheon Press bio-book just out this year.
