Hangin' With Mr. Rhodes

by Curtis Hewston

Just how does a poor white child from Lincoln, Nebraska, end up smokin' an' drinkin' an' carryin' on with Sonny Rhodes in a central Florida recording studio? I'll skip the Nebraska part and go right to last Thursday. Alan Rollins called me about 8 a.m. and told me we had to do something for Johnny Copeland right away. He'd taken a turn for the worse last week. Alan faxed me some press releases from Buddy Fox at New York's Manny's Car Wash (who got them from Holly Bullamore, Johnny's manager). I put up the "Johnny page" early Friday, after workin' for the big bossman til midnight puttin' out an Excel CBT. (Windows '95 it ain't, but that might be a GOOD thing.)

Holly also manages Sonny Rhodes, who as it turns out, was playing my beloved JunkYard Friday night. (He played Manny's Car Wash on Thursday -- about the time I was undangling modifiers in Lesson 5). I feigned drunkenness (to some extent) to get out of a post-deadline slash X-Files party to take in Sonny with some of the local Midnight Creepers, the Kingsnake Records studio guys (Bob Greenlee, owner and bass player; Warren King, guitar; some great harpist whose name I didn't catch; and Tony Coleman -- from B.B. King's band -- on the drums).

I also took my copy of Sonny's Livin' Too Close To The Edge CD (unlike in February when I forgot to take Damn Right . . . and found myself within 10 feet of Buddy Guy) and 20 copies of the "Johnny page" to leave at the exit door. Soz I walked into an unpacked house of several dozen. I especially love the blues because it doesn't take much to get real close to the greatest. This is particularly true, I discovered, when the Magic are playing Game 3 on the tube from Chicago. It was the same with Lucky Peterson last year, but twas the Pacers instead. I caught Sonny between sets. We talked about Johnny, I asked to hear Sleep Walk -- which he didn't play -- and I got me the autograph.

He told me that none other than Holly, their manager, would be at the studio Sunday afternoon as he put down some tracks for his new album. THEN HE ASKED ME TO COME ON BY! I feigned nothing.

This is the part where it gets long. Two years ago, I began to glean from BLUES-L that there seemed to be an inordinate number of guitar players from Mississippi. (Sonny and Johnny are from Texas and Louisiana, respectively, but so what.) Today I sat in on the making of an honest-to-God piece of blues history. They were just laying down tracks, which I'd heard is a lot like watching paint dry, but if you happen to love paint . . .

I took a seat behind the keyboards (ain't none on this disc, I assure you, but you might hear a smoker's hack about two minutes into the forthcoming Lifetime Thing). Bob Greenlee, producer and bass player; Warren King, guitar; Sonny, vocals and lap steel; and I sat in the second-floor studio -- off a dirt road next to Bob's house, with a genuine chicken coop inbetween. Ronnie "Byrd" Foster manned the drums from the adjoining hot box and Brian, who's going on tour with Molly Hatchett this week, was mixing the thing. (I didn't catch the name of the beer-runner, but he looked a helluva lot like a character actor reminicent of Dom Deluise.)

Sonny was wearing a Phillies cap under dem headphones and a red t-shirt proclaiming Bojangles as Portland's home as the blues. He had pants on, too, as I recall, but maybe not shoes. When I got there, Sonny was scribbling down lyrics in a spiral-bound notebook -- all dated and signed, I noticed later. They put together first the makings of Lifetime Thing, an R&B seduction poem kinda tune: "I pitched my last ball. I played my last fling. Now I'm signin' up for that lifetime thing." (Damn, I'm thinkin', not "fling," Sonny. That's a mixed metaphor. How about "played my last game, . . . that lifetime thang." But who am I to alter fate.)

Then they put down a beautiful tune called Christmastime in Texas, which Bob said might not make it onto this CD, but would be the first cut on the Kingsnake Christmas compilation ;-). Again, not "all the leaves are brown," dammit, Sonny. How about "all the TREES are brown." Not that anybody's gonna confuse you with Mama Cass -- she's dead, but -- Christmas, trees, ya know what I mean? (I'd told them all a bit before that I felt a little in the way -- that I'd start writin' lyrics in a minute or two.)

Then they took a break, then Sonny broke out the lap steel to do some licks for She's Excited, or it coulda been I'm Excited, I'm not sure. Next was Death Grip -- an instrumental, maybe, which should not be confused with Death Letter or anything with "Grip" in the name, Edward Liu. There might be words eventually (I promise not to write them.), something along the lines of "get off my case, woman. A man's gotta be what a man's gotta be." It probably won't follow Lifetime Thing.

Next they did what Bob called a "minor mambo," meaning a "mambo in minor," so, as he put it best, ". . . if we're ever on the run and have to make a living in Puerto Rico." Sonny likes to do the occasional quirky, off-beat piece. The tune Sleep Walk (which I'd requested Friday night, to no avail) came up, then Since I Met You, Baby, which he shared that he'd first heard while picking cotton back in Smithville in 1935. (He was born in 1940, but so what.) They wrapped it up for the day with two tunes: a good ol' Texas shuffle called Have Love Will Travel, and a little something Warren called "a slow Lumpy, Lumpy," which Bob called heresy. Warren also suggested that this could be the title cut, and they could take Sonny out of that damn turban and dress him up like Palladin.

It started getting dark, it rained a little and my sunroof was open, and the beer was gone, but Holly finally showed, and we talked about Johnny. She read over the "Johnny page," and told me he was now off the respirator -- actually that he'd pulled the damn thing out himself.

We talked some about the Clapton PBS show and how much we enjoyed the old Muddy/Wolf/House/Bukka/T-Bone/B.B. and Freddie King/et. al clips, how Muddy once told Buddy not to worry about rippin' folks off -- that he was just too young to know the guys Muddy was robbin', how the great unknowns used to sneak up on the Chicago Blues Fest stages back in the day, how Otis Rush is a nut, but mostly about Johnny "Clyde" Copeland -- a great bluesman who's starin' at heaven and mad as hell.

That big bossman gave us Monday off, so I'll be "back in the studio" come 10 a.m. I done sent mine; if you can find the time and a pen this week, write out a dinky check payable to "Johnny Copeland's Heart" and send it to Manny's Car Wash, 1558 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10128.