Fact #1529
When:
Short story:
Jay Arthur Lane is born in Ruleville, Mississippi, USA. As Jimmy Rogers he will play with The Muddy Waters Band, and record for Chess Records in his own right.Full article:
JIMMY ROGERS - INTERVIEWED BY PAUL TRYNKA
Jimmy Rogers : My grandmother reared me, and where she'd go I would go. She had two brothers, one lived in Detroit and one was in Chicago, and she could get tickets to travel by train - anything like that they'd send her tickets. Chicago was where I started meeting guys I liked and was really interested in. She had me in St Louis for a while, and I met Walter Davis down there and St Louis Jimmy. Then I'd met guys like Joe Willie Wilkin from the King Biscuit things, not too far from Memphis, and that's why I got the chance to see those guys in person. Sonny Boy, Rice Miller - I had already met John Lee. Then I met Little Walter and we was playing around together in Memphis and Helena.
I came on a bus. Chicago to me was just another big city. I'd been around Memphis and places, and I knew you had to stay on your toes and watch the people you associate with. I had uncles and cousins in Chicago, so I felt pretty safe there. It was a big raggety city to me, big tall buildings, cars blowing their horns, buses running and people making a lot of noise. But I wanted to meet these guys. Tampa Red, Big Bill, Memphis Slim, Memphis Minnie, Doctor Clayton and people like that, 'cause they were based around there.
Me and Blue Smitty, Lee Brown, Baby Face Leroy, we got a little band together. It wasn't too hot but we played little local gigs - they call em chitlin' gigs, but we was out there havin' fun, workin a day job. On Saturdays we'd play out on the street. They done tore that all up now, you go down there and all the hot dog stands is gone, the clothing stores, and all that is gone - Jewtown's not Jewtown any more. So that's where we started up, playing in the street to make a little money. That was real fun, they'd throw money in the kitty, and really on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, from maybe around II o'clock to about five in the evening, you could make more money like that with three or four guys just playing and collecting money, for those couple of days, than you could make in a club in the whole week!
Joe Willie Wilkin had the first electric guitar I'd actually seen, in Memphis. So when I got to Chicago I got a guitar with a De Armond pickup, and put it on there so we had an electric sound. We had just small amplifiers, I had a small Gibson with a 12 inch speaker, but you could get a good sound. That was before Muddy came. So it wasn't hard to get him hooked in to wantin' to hear that sound when he got to Chicago, to get him a rig. We'd get the power from a man that was in the block, he would drop an extension cord down from his front window down to the street, and we'd jack in there and get the juice. Right there would just be our group, then down the street there'd be someone else doing the same thing.
Now those other guys would be playing acoustic, but the sound of the amplifiers was drawing most of the people away, so we would make good money - that's why we did that. Man, there's be hundreds of people around, some give you a quarter, 15 cents here and there, whatever, as they pass the kitty, and we'd make in a day, split it up, and you'd make 60, 70 dollars each or maybe a little more sometimes. And in a club you'd only get four or five bucks a night.
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Jimmy Rogers : My grandmother reared me, and where she'd go I would go. She had two brothers, one lived in Detroit and one was in Chicago, and she could get tickets to travel by train - anything like that they'd send her tickets. Chicago was where I started meeting guys I liked and was really interested in. She had me in St Louis for a while, and I met Walter Davis down there and St Louis Jimmy. Then I'd met guys like Joe Willie Wilkin from the King Biscuit things, not too far from Memphis, and that's why I got the chance to see those guys in person. Sonny Boy, Rice Miller - I had already met John Lee. Then I met Little Walter and we was playing around together in Memphis and Helena.
I came on a bus. Chicago to me was just another big city. I'd been around Memphis and places, and I knew you had to stay on your toes and watch the people you associate with. I had uncles and cousins in Chicago, so I felt pretty safe there. It was a big raggety city to me, big tall buildings, cars blowing their horns, buses running and people making a lot of noise. But I wanted to meet these guys. Tampa Red, Big Bill, Memphis Slim, Memphis Minnie, Doctor Clayton and people like that, 'cause they were based around there.
Me and Blue Smitty, Lee Brown, Baby Face Leroy, we got a little band together. It wasn't too hot but we played little local gigs - they call em chitlin' gigs, but we was out there havin' fun, workin a day job. On Saturdays we'd play out on the street. They done tore that all up now, you go down there and all the hot dog stands is gone, the clothing stores, and all that is gone - Jewtown's not Jewtown any more. So that's where we started up, playing in the street to make a little money. That was real fun, they'd throw money in the kitty, and really on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, from maybe around II o'clock to about five in the evening, you could make more money like that with three or four guys just playing and collecting money, for those couple of days, than you could make in a club in the whole week!
Joe Willie Wilkin had the first electric guitar I'd actually seen, in Memphis. So when I got to Chicago I got a guitar with a De Armond pickup, and put it on there so we had an electric sound. We had just small amplifiers, I had a small Gibson with a 12 inch speaker, but you could get a good sound. That was before Muddy came. So it wasn't hard to get him hooked in to wantin' to hear that sound when he got to Chicago, to get him a rig. We'd get the power from a man that was in the block, he would drop an extension cord down from his front window down to the street, and we'd jack in there and get the juice. Right there would just be our group, then down the street there'd be someone else doing the same thing.
Now those other guys would be playing acoustic, but the sound of the amplifiers was drawing most of the people away, so we would make good money - that's why we did that. Man, there's be hundreds of people around, some give you a quarter, 15 cents here and there, whatever, as they pass the kitty, and we'd make in a day, split it up, and you'd make 60, 70 dollars each or maybe a little more sometimes. And in a club you'd only get four or five bucks a night.