“You couldn’t Hear Nothing But the Wind Blowing the Breeze through the Trees”: Clarence Butler’s Story and Stories

Clarence Butler (1942-2003) and his twin brother Curtis (1942-2004) were born in Killen, Alabama, a suburb north of Florence. Their father, Willie Butch Butler, was an outstanding local blues musician who inspired but did not teach them to play. Both twins began to play as youngsters, forming various bands which played throughout the South as the Butler Twins until they relocated to Detroit in 1960. Dropping out of music for a decade, they reunited after meeting Uncle Jessie White, who had also dropped out of music for some 20 years before returning to it during the Detroit version of the blues revival. This is Clarence’s story and stories recorded in Lansing, Michigan, in a hotel room with Uncle Jessie White at the National Folk Festival, September 14, 1999.

“The first music I recollect to know what music was was when I heard my daddy playing guitar. And I loved it when I first could recognize what it was. I loved it, his playing. Then so every time he would play for me and his two twins he called it. He made a song about us. He got two little sons that look just alike as two peas in the pod, you can’t tell them apart so you might as well give them what you got.

He used to sing that song for us every time we used to really love to hear him to sing that song. But that’s when I first knew music.

Then he had a buddy that blowed harmonica named Raymond Evans. He was about the best I ever seen with the harmonica. Like the harmonica was louder back then, it wasn’t no factories, like you hear all that noise outside now; it wasn’t all that back then. You couldn’t hear nothing but the crickets and the birds at night. You know the hootin’ owls and stuff like that. It was still at night down through there. You couldn’t even hear nothing but the wind blowing the breeze through the trees. So sound traveled. Back there we knew when that guy was coming to the house and daddy and them had a fish fry to play for. We knew just as well because we could hear him at least three blocks away blowing and singing. And when he get to the house, he’d bring the crowd with him. And Ma, she’d go to the prancing and fussing. Daddy, he didn’t pay her no attention, he just went up on the chifferode, chifferode we call them but it was of them old stand-up closets. He’d reach up there on top of that thing and get his guitar, tuned it, and by the time he get through with it, Raymond [knock] was up standing on the porch knocking on the door. He ready to go then, they ain’t got no ride, nowhere but they got a gig to play. So they walk way wherever where they had to go. To this little fish fry and play for it all night. And that’s when I started learning a little.

And when I got old enough to put my nickel in a jukebox, I heard Muddy Waters, and them and all them people. Shoot, I thought my daddy and them had made a record, him and Raymond. I come back home and asked my daddy, ‘You’all make some records?’ He said, ‘No,’ then he told me who those peoples were.

And this guy blowing with Muddy Waters, Raymond, he sounds just like that guy. But the only thing they was amplified up and they wasn’t – they was acoustic. But they was some awesome pair. I just feel bad, it’s nothing on record of them. Nobody had no tape on them, no tape recording to tape them at that time. But they was awesome.

I started playing harmonica at 7. I won a talent show, me and Curtis, blowing harmonica together at the school we was going to. W.C. Handy built us a school in Alabama because that’s where he was born, in Florence. Then him and his daddy they moved to Memphis and he was raised there in Memphis. But he was born in Florence, Alabama. I used to play in that shack where he was born in. Fact of the business, I got a piece of it at home. And they got a festival, a W.C. Handy Festival every year in Florence and a museum there. So they tore the house down, and rebuilt it and put it in that museum.  It was his home where he was born. To me, we played all in it, play hide and go seek in it. Broke windows out of it. We didn’t know. To us it was just a shack. And we was living in one almost looked just like it. So I started playing. We got up there at school, start to playing. It was a good time because my daddy, he wouldn’t learn us how to play.

He said: ‘If it’s in you, you’re gonna play.’

And that’s the way I played with mine. See, his brother was older than him and he played guitar, but his brother wouldn’t teach him anything. So he got the guitar and in a couple months he as better. So the brother gave him the guitar.

So we used to get his guitar down and I would imitate, I would imitate the harp blower and Curtis would imitate Dad. And we would listen to him and then when they leave and go to the field or somewhere, or leave somewhere, we get the thing down and we hum it until we get it on the guitar and then we play it. And we got down five songs of them. We was playing. I was blowing and Curtis was playing and I don’t know where Daddy come from. We thought he was gone for the day. We were sitting on this, we call them shotgun houses. We were sitting on the end of this porch, he come up on that side. And I was blowing the harmonica and singing the blues. And Curtis was picking that just like them, that same song we heard them play. I don’t know how long he was standing there but I looked back and saw him I like to swallow that harmonica. Because I knew he didn’t want us with his guitar, because he didn’t buy nothing but the best and he didn’t want us to bust it because now I can understand why he didn’t want us to bother it because he’d had to work so hard to buy it because he didn’t but nothing but Gibsons. Back then guitars cost $100. And he didn’t come by no $100 every day, not then. Not at that time. So that same guitar he didn’t want us to play. He stood there. He didn’t say nothing. So finally he says:

‘Sounds pretty good. You guys sound pretty good.’ Then he went on in the house and got what he was coming for and then he split. So now we don’t know what’s on his mind. We panicked and we scared we crying. Then here Mama come, we crying. Mama say, ‘What you crying for?’ ‘Daddy gonna kill us. We don’t know what he’s got on his mind. He caught us playing his guitar.’ Well, he didn’t catch me playing it; he caught Curtis playing it. But my father, he gets one, he gonna get them both.

We all worked in the fields picking cotton work from can to can’t, like you said, Mr. Jessie, he out to the field before day and when day breaking we be done plowed almost a half field. We start out there with lanterns. We start out there before sunrise. Start about 5 o’clock. It’s still dark. So when you start, you started with a lantern. Then we would knock off at 5 o’clock.

I plowed mules myself. I plowed mules. And we had one work his heart out, but if he got tired he’d stop and you couldn’t pass dinner time because he would quit. But we had a horse that worked itself until it’s almost dead. The horse would run under you until he fell.

But the mule he’s the strongest, the best worker when you work him hard, all you got to do is let him rest. We just like you at rest time, rest. But if you work him on and try to work him, I don’t care what you do, he going to quit at a certain time and he’s gonna quit at quitting time.

The mule’s the smartest animal in the world. See, a horse will work for you until it falls dead. That mule will work until it gets tired. Then he will sit down until he’s rested. He won’t if he doesn’t sit down, he’ll stand still. You can beat him and beat him – he ain’t moving until he rests.

I was a young boy. I never will forget, there was a young boy named Carter Bodie. He was 19 years old. And everywhere my daddy went, everywhere he went to play, well he say, ‘Well, Butch Butler play that. I heard Butch play that.’ He never met my daddy. But everywhere he went to those fish fries and played, somebody always tell him, ‘Man, you playing the same thing I heard Mr. Butler, or Butch, play.’ Now he got to find this Butch. He been hearing about daddy all the time. So one Sunday morning he knocked up on the door. I let him in.

‘Well, my woman’s cooking me breakfast. You and me, we got to go out.’ So my daddy went out and washed up and everything. They got their guitars tuned up. So mom called them in for breakfast. And daddy was, by that time, good old for mama’s cooking play no guitar.

And she called us all in for breakfast. After breakfast, it was an old tree sitting out in front of the house – a big old shade tree. And it was hot. It was August and way down south it didn’t get 90 degrees – it got 100 degrees down there in the shade. But it was early that Sunday morning -it wasn’t even 9 o’clock, but it was just getting up there. So he went out, brought two chairs up under that tree. But I don’t know where those people come from, but before they got set and went to playing, it was a yard full of people. So the duel went on.

I have to say for a while there this young guy, he wasn’t but 19, a young guy, he was doing a pretty good job on my dad. So my dad say, ‘Well, it’s time to pull out the stops on you.’ And my daddy started playing something that I never heard before, heard him play it before because he started playing stuff like John Henry the steel driving man and all them type of stuff. And he didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know the chords he was doing playing. That was standard new to him. But that’s the only reason he really beat him. He pulled out the stops on him. He told him, he said:

‘Don’t never learn nobody all you know, don’t ever show nobody all you know.’

He say I got things that I learned because I learned when I was 9 years old. He says: ‘The things I learned when I was 9 years old play straight myself. I don’t play anymore. That was my learning period. He says this is what I’m putting on you. And sure enough Carter Bodie was true to his word. He left and went to the next county. He left and went to Leland, Alabama. But he was boss there. He was the boss guitar in Leland, Alabama. At the young age of 19 he was good.

So when I was 14, we got a band together and this guy give us our first job. Well, he built a jook joint next door. And he heard us on the porch playing. Mom, she bought us an amplifier and a guitar and a microphone. She got it on credit at Sears and Roebuck. Bought us a Silvertone Amp, a Silvertone guitar. And all of that didn’t cost over 50 bucks. And we was sitting on the porch playing and this guy’s fixing to open this joint up and he asked us did we want to play over there that night, that opening night.

Well, we never played for money before. We didn’t know what we were doing. But by that time this little dude come up named James Bundy. He was a couple of years younger than us, but ooh could he sing. So he told me I couldn’t sing. Laughs. He said: ‘You can play all right, but you can’t sing.’ I said, ‘Think you can do better, get the mike.’

Already there was better peoples in the yard. Man that little dude got on the microphone and he tore that place up. He wasn’t bragging, he could sing. And he could sing songs and when he sung the songs (Mr. Jessie) he sung them in their voice at that time. When he sang Jackie Wilson, he sounds just like him. When he sang Elvis Pressley, he sounds like him. And he sang a lot of Elvis. At that time we could play a lot of it and we could play a lot of blues too – lot of Jimmy Reed, a lot of Lightning, lot of Muddy. And we told the guy we’d take the job.

And the guy was charging 50 cents at the door and he told us that we could have the door. We didn’t know the place was gonna be jammed. And he give us the money. We made about – I don’t know – I believe it was about $45 that night. We took most of the money and give it to mama so she could pay off Sears for that amp. But we talked her into buying another guitar and an amp because we told her we was gonna pay for it in a month, which we did. So we had another amp and another guitar and it paid for itself. And that started the Houserockers down South. And we played plumb on up to – we played everywhere – Tennessee, Mississippi, all down through the South -Birmingham, Alabama. Just everywhere. Of course we had Florence sewed up because we were the only band there at that time. We played all the school socials, school events, and we got hired out at the juke joints which we didn’t have no business in it. But all up and down the South they didn’t give a shit, excuse me, as long as you could play and get the customers to like it. Anything the customers liked they didn’t care. So, Mama made George Watkins, a friend of ours, made him be chaperone, be responsible. He started playing drums for us. Because all that other time we didn’t have a drum. We had two guitars, singer. James Buddy singing then George Watkins on drums then we got a real drummer named Charles Oates. Then we had a good band. And I got married. That messed that up. That will do it every time. And I quit playing for 20 years. I didn’t start back playing until I met Mr. Jessie. Then we all started going over to his house on 29th Street back to playing again. And that’s where we started from, back up again.

There was that kind in every little town. We had the same thing in our town, Florence, Alabama. I live in Alabama, he lived in Mississippi right up the road from each other. We had one gal called Big Sarah. Big Sarah, she was some kind of woman boy, I’m telling you. She had six babies and a husband. And she could hit harder than any Joe Louis I seen. And she was married. Her husband couldn’t do nothing with her. He tried to chastise her and she had to knock him out. I mean out.

So when she get ready for a beau, he go in one of them juke joints and she look in there, see you. Well, she’d tell him:

‘You going home with me tonight.’

He say: ‘I ain’t going nowhere.’

She say: ‘You watch. You wait a minute, when the show is over and the thing was over you’re going home with me.’

So the dudes get about half drunk and still be messing with all them women in there. The time she get ready to go, she go over there and tell him: ‘Let’s go.’

Now you know how you is when you’re half drunk now: ‘I ain’t going nowhere,’ so and so well.

She say: ‘Well, you going either you have to go or whup me. Now which one is it? Which one is easier to do?’

Jesse: Go with her.

She said: ‘The best thing to do is come on and go. Because if you whump me I’ll go on about my business. But it’s gonna look bad for you to get a whupping and go.’ (Laughs.)

Jessie: And go. It’s better to go without the whupping.

And he would say something stupid like you know the F word is you and all that and she’d knock him down and the fight’s on. He’d get up and try to – This dude named Billy Cherry, he was what’s called the tush hog down there, you understand. He was a knock-out artist. Other words, them guys could be in the ring because they could one point you and you’re out. Gone.

He hit that lady with all he had. And I done seen Billy knock out many guys, big and small. He hit that woman. She shook her head and said: ‘That’s all you got?’

And knocked him down. She got through whupping him and he got up, they left, they stayed together for about two months, him and her. Big Sarah and Billy Cherry. But he wasn’t going, but after he got the whupping, he went. She told him so. She said: ‘It was bad for you to get the whupping and still go. Better to go without the whupping. You gonna look bad before your friends.’ We was all down there. Everybody knew him was in there. He went with her.

But the woman was good looking. She was a little on the heavy side, but she wasn’t gawky big, you know what I’m saying. She had a neat waistline, big you know and a big butt. And she had a nice looking face. But I don’t know where that woman get her strength from.

And a guy come in. We was over in Scipio one night, guy come in. He wanted her, she didn’t want him. And then vice versa, the guy cracked her with a chair. I thought he hurt her. He knocked her down and she just shook it off and turned around and knocked him out the door. Plumb out the door, from out that man’s glass door. And he cracked a chair, tore it all to pieces and it didn’t break the skin on her. I told myself, ‘if you ever walk over to me and say “let’s go,” I’m going.’”

Barry Lee Pearson
University of Maryland

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Dr. Barry Lee Pearson, Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland stands as the most steadfast supporter of the local acoustic blues scene in the greater Washington, D.C., area and beyond. As a musician, author, college lecturer, folklorist, and personal friend to the musicians, he has been the voice of this regional blues scene.