Mississippi was a rough place: Eddie Burns’ Story
By Dr. Barry Lee Pearson
Eddie Burns (1928-2012) was born in Belzoni, Massachusetts, and was raised by his grandparents around Clarksdale in the heart of the Delta. His father played guitar, piano, and harmonica. Eddie took up harmonica around age 10, inspired by Sonny Boy Williamson number two (Rice Miller), when he later worked with him in Detroit, Michigan. Leaving Mississippi in 1946, he worked for the Illinois Central Railroad in Illinois and Iowa, teaming up with guitar player Johnny Smith Iowa, with whom he moved to Detroit in 1948. There he learned guitar, mentored by John Lee Hooker, with whom he recorded in 1948. Burns also first recorded in 1948 with Johnny Smith. A fixture on the Detroit blues scene, he recorded for various labels from the ‘50s to the ‘80s. This interview took place in Washington, D.C., June 26, 1987.
“I was born in Belzoni, Mississippi, a sharecropper’s son and a sharecropper’s son I was raised. I was born in Belzoni, but have never been there since I was grown up. I was raised up around Clarksdale and Dublin, Mississippi, and Webb, Mississippi.
I learned to play a harmonica in Mississippi at the age of 9 or 10. That was my first instrument.
My father was a guitar, harmonica, and piano player, so I guess it rubbed off on me a little bit. I got two brothers that also play in Chicago. One plays guitar and vocals and one plays bass and vocals. And one brother is a minister. I am on the opposite side.
I learned to play guitar in Detroit, but I guess it was already in me. The time just hadn’t come for me to start working on it.
I was born in 1928 but in about 1935 I was finding out what music was about enough to pay attention to it, personally, myself. And then I started really listening to it. At first I was listening to the radio like cowboy music and all this kind of music, because I was a little boy, you know, hillbilly. Mills Brothers, stuff like that was on – the Dorseys. Artie Shaw and people like that, the Ink Spots. See, they were very popular people back then.
So when I first started paying attention to blues I met Sonny Boy Williamson number two. And I was walking with a man down the road, Sonny Boy Williamson number two used to travel from town to town and he walked a lot because he didn’t have no car. I guess. Maybe he probably was low on cash too, see, and I guess he probably just worked his way across the country, you know, with his harmonicas.
So this man was coming down the road, which happened to be Sonny Boy Williamson, and he had this belt around his waist and all these harmonicas on him. So he’s just walking down old 49 Highway in Mississippi, and he was walking. I was seven or eight and that’s going back a long ways, but I do remember what went on. So as they approached each other this man that I was with, he said, asked Sonny Boy could he blow a little harmonica. And he said, “Yeah, he blowed harp so then he asked him about a particular tune which Peetie Wheatstraw made it a thing called ‘I’ll be so glad when Good Whiskey Comes Back in style Again.’
So he gave him a dime, well, this was back around 1936 or ’37. And Sonny Boy blowed it. And we were off on our way. And in 1944 or ’45, I ran into Sonny Boy again. And at that time I was just beginning to get into my tunes. So at that time he was playing on this live radio, he had a live broadcast on KFFA Delta Network Interstate Groceries, coming out of Helena, Arkansas.
So when I saw him again, he was coming to Clarksdale and played in a place called the Upper Brickyard. Spot was out there, a juke joint really, called the Green Spot. So he made a big impression on me right there because I was fooling around with the harmonica at that time. And so they had this gambling house on the back of the juke joint, see.
When the time come to hit Sonny Boy went on stage and the band was still back there gambling. So when they came out from back there, they was fired. Sonny Boy played the whole gig by himself. Didn’t let them play. But the next day they were on the air with him again. But he didn’t let them play that gig that night.
So he did numbers like ‘I love you for sentimental reasons,’ and ‘Tanya,’ by Joe Higgins and ‘Honeydripper’ by Joe Liggins, ‘Kidney Stew’ by Eddie Cleanhead Vinson. And I was really impressed by that. I didn’t know the harmonica could really sound so good.
So he was a whole lot different than John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson number one. The man was very talented, I mean I have to take my hat off to him even though he’s dead now. The man was great.
Juke joints they was nice. They had gambling and fish fries and all kinds of food to sell. And just clean dancing and stuff like that. But whenever they did have some violence, it was some mean stuff going on. It was tough, you know, like shooting scrapes and whatever. And sometimes they would do that because some mean people come from Mississippi, very mean. Treacherous. Mississippi was a rough place. I don’t know what it’s like now, because, see, I haven’t been back but once since I left, and I left in 1946. I don’t know what it’s like now, but it was a tough place.
I’ve seen them gamble and everybody would lay their guns up on the table in the lamplight. You know there wasn’t no electricity back then, so everybody get to shooting in there and lights go out cause the lamplight got a tendency to don’t stay lit, a lamp don’t, when they shooting in a house. Everybody’d be in the dark. Can you visualize what that was like?
My father used to play piano, guitar and harmonica. I only play the guitar and harmonica. But my father used to play stuff like ‘Mama Don’t you Tear my Clothes,’ ‘Come on in Ain’t Nobody Here But me,’ ‘I got Six Bits in your Dollar.’ Stuff like ‘I’ll be Glad When you’re dead you Rascal You,’ ‘Forty-Four Blues,’ and ‘Smokestack Lightning,’ believe it or not. This tune, that goes way back. I think it’s around there with Charley Patton, but the recent version that came out in later years was by Howlin’ Wolf. But Howlin’ Wolf was one of the guys who was cashing in on this old music back then.
So I heard all this stuff. ‘I want to Trade With you.’ It was a lot different stuff was around that I never heard on records – Betty and Dupree and stuff like that. Blues was ‘Must I Holler.’ So all these was old tunes. And they were just songs that musicians just out of the ordinary used to play by hobbies. And I wouldn’t consider them as professionals, but a lot of them did become professionals in the later years.
But at that time I heard a lot of them and you know it wasn’t nothing to find two or three guitar players on one plantation, a piano player on one plantation. They didn’t read no music, but it was just a gift. And they were very good at what they were doing.
Most of the musicians I couldn’t see them, like in the heart of Mississippi, but I mean like I knew them on records like for instance Memphis Slim, he was playing solo piano back in them days. There was Jazz Gillum, Big Bill Broonzy, Tommy McClennan, Sonny Boy Williamson number one.
See, Sonny Boy Williamson number two, he wasn’t making records then. He didn’t start making records until 1950o r ’51. So the other Sonny Boy goes back to the late ‘20s, coming on up through the ‘30s and ‘40s, clear up to ’48, when he got killed. Then Tampa Red, Big Maceo, Rosetta Thornton [sic], Lil Green, Lonnie Johnson, was on the scene back then, and Walter Davis. See, these was my influences in blues. They was good blues. That was from records.
Back in those days they used to have the price of records right on the cover – 35 cents, 25 cents. I’ve known records to be as cheap as 25 cents. So that’s the days of yesterday. Harmonicas wasn’t nothing but 25 cents back then too.
My first harmonica was given to me by a youngster because it wasn’t nothing to find a youngster with a harmonica in his pocket back then they walk across the fields, they blow them we talking young men really – 18, 19, 20 years old. And the first harmonica I got was from one of those boys. He had a sprung key in it and naturally once you become familiar with harmonicas, I mean when you got a lame key you don’t use it because it’s out of tune. So they give it to me.
But it do sound like you’re bending a note because that is the best effect on harmonicas – is to learn how to bend notes. And with that sprung key, that kind of inspired me to really fool around with the harmonica, because it sounded like I was doing something on it. Maybe I wasn’t, but it sounded like that. So right behind that, from that, I did start doing something on it.
My family stayed in Mississippi, when I left. I left in 1946. I left with a labor agent from Illinois Central Railroad. Then I went to Scales Mount, Illinois, and I worked there because that’s where the camp was. And then I left here and went to Dubuque, Iowa, and I stayed there for a while. I was still on the camp though. Then worked my way all the way out to Waterloo, Iowa. So after I got there I stayed there and worked for a while for the railroad. Then I went to work for John Deere Tractorworks, which is a big plant in Waterloo. Then, this was around 1948. Then in ’48, August of ’48, we got an opportunity to come to Detroit
I ran into another guitar player there in Iowa. He was working on the railroad too, in Marshalltown, Iowa. He was from Chattanooga, Tennessee. So then he and I teamed up as a duo. His name was Johnny Smith. We called him John T. Smith. Then he came to Detroit and we ran into John Lee Hooker. John Lee Hooker had cut ‘Boogie Children,’ but it wasn’t released then. It was in the can, they call it. And then he heard this guy and me playing at a house party and he happened to live right in back of this place. So he came in and he sat in and he introduced himself and then we knew who he was. And he liked the way I blowed. So he said, ‘Well, hey, man, I got a session coming up Tuesday’ – this was like Saturday night – said, ‘I would like to use you and your harp on my set, if I can.’
So I told him, ‘Yeah, that was fine I would do it.’
So when we went to do the set, we did tunes like ‘Burning Hell’ – you probably heard that – ‘Miss Heloise,’ ‘Black Cat.’ And so when we got through cutting his session, then the man wanted to know what I had. And so he said, ‘I want to know what you got.’ So I didn’t go there to do a session by myself, and that was like a surprise to me.
So he say, ‘You blows a nice harmonica, I would like to cut you if you got anything.’ And I said, ‘Well, only have one tune.’ He said, ‘Well, you would need two tunes. But I really do want to cut you.’
So I thought about it for a minute and I said, ‘Hey, I think I can arrange that. So what I did, I sat down and got to kicking this tune around and I come up with a thing called ‘Papas Boogie,’ which happens to be on this album now. So, if you get that ‘Treat Me Like I Treat you,’ album, you got a treat, because it’s got all my blues classics on it all the way up to 1982. It’s all there. It’s got Motown Masters, King Records. It’s got Chess, two or three times I was on that label and it’s got DeLuxe, it’s got JVB and my label now, Redbird.
I made ‘Orange Driver’ for Harvey label, you that that tune was also cut by J. Geils, you know that group I think they’re out of Boston. They cut it in 1975, and I cut it on Harvey label in 1960. But I got news for you, ‘Orange Driver,’ it’s here in the museum now on an album along with 15 other tunes. It’s a very good album. It was a lot of blues classics by me. You know the first recording I did was in 1948 – it’s on there too.
At that time in Detroit there was a lot of clubs, but I wouldn’t say the blues scene was real big there. The blues scene has never really been big in Detroit. So when you learn how to play, if you’re a musician from Detroit, blues especially, you got to learn to play other types of music. I mean, if you want to survive there. I mean, it’s not like Chicago or a lot of other cities.
I worked in Detroit with John Lee Hooker, Baby Boy Warren, Sonny Boy Williamson. He also was there. In 1957 he was there and I played lead guitar for him for about a year and a half, two years. But see I grew up around Sonny Boy in Mississippi, see. So like I said, I’ve been knowing him just about all my life. I heard him on radio called ‘King Biscuit Time.’ So I knew him down there. I was living in Clarksdale and he was in Helena, but he was playing all over on the Mississippi side, because the only thing that separates Arkansas and Mississippi is the Mississippi River.
He didn’t bring his band there, because he was playing some with Elmore James. They was friends from the south. I only met Elmore once. But I never did play with him. Sonny Boy did though. He knowed him, they was good friends, see. But, no, he didn’t bring the band. The band that what he put together was out of Detroit – all Detroit musicians.
Bobo Jenkins was part of the scene, but it goes like farther than that. He was working taking pictures in a club called the Harlem Inn back in 1951, 1952. And he wasn’t a guitar player, so I helped start him out in music. So he wasn’t playing guitar then, but he was working in the factory and then he was taking pictures on weekends.
John Lee Hooker left, so I guess he would be called formerly from Detroit. He’s in San Francisco. That’s where he makes his home.
But blues in Detroit, it never was real strong there, and one of the main damaging things is happening to the blues in the Detroit area and all over now. I would think is that you got a lot of people that’s cashing in on the name of the blues. And they’re really getting a lot of the younger generation confused about what is blues. And so the only true image of the blues is guys like myself and I don’t take all the credit for it, but I take my hat off to anyone who’s trying to stay straight with us. You know, because it’s gonna take all of us. Again it still might not turn the trend around. In the years to come it won’t turn it around, but right now we still got a little grip left.
Now I’ve been into a different sector for the past 15 years now. Naturally, like everybody else. I mean, with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Wild Child Butler, Sonny Boy Williamson number two, John Lee Hooker – all these people, they in a different trend today with blues because there’s a thing called support and whatever you doing, if you don’t get support, you can’t really last.
So nowadays, all of these people are playing blues on the other side. The other side happens to be white people. White people is real great about supporting blues. And I don’t quite get the drift, I mean, what the connection is there, but they buy your records and come out to see you. So that is support. They pay you good so, hey, what can I say.
But I like in Detroit you got a whole lot of people playing. The first thing they put out, I don’t know why, maybe the blues title is easy to come up with, so they say this is the blues band such and such. And you get there. You hear everything but blues. See, so this is no good for the blues. So what they do, they go in to these clubs and they hire to, these owners and then they burn the people out on what they playing, so called supposed to be blues, and then when a guy like myself come along and want to go in there and play some blues, the man says, ‘Well, I had some blues in here – didn’t do nothing for me.’
But what he had was some rock in there or something, so naturally it might not do nothing for him. So then we’re shut out on somebody else who went along and tried real good. So that makes me have to get out and go to Europe and everywhere, which I enjoy, but I would also like to be able to play back home too.
But I plays there, but there is a lot of places I don’t play in Detroit because, you know some of the places where you can play blues is a little too rough there, crime and stuff like that, and I don’t go into places like that. But it wasn’t a lot of crime when I first started playing in clubs in Detroit.
I am one of the oldest bluesmen around Detroit. And naturally what I was doing in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, I don’t expect to be doing it in the ‘80s and ‘90s, see, I want to be going up. I don’t want to go backwards. So that boils it down. It’s a limitation to how many gigs that I’m going to do in the Detroit area.
I’ll be going to Europe starting to tour in September. I got a new release also that’s going to be out on Black and Blue. I was just there in ’86 with the Chicago Blues Fest ’86, and I cut an album for Black and Blue. So it’s going to be released when I get back. And I’m also cutting a new one in Holland for this organizer I’m going with. Then I’m on tour with John Morris. Then I’m doing a tour with Avalanche, which happens to be a Belgian band. They live over there. See, I’m not limited. I can play with all musicians. As long as they’re not rock or disco. See, I refuse to do that.”
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.