George “Wild Child” Butler’s Story and Stories
By Dr. Barry Lee Pearson
Chicago, July 1974
I was born in a small little old – it was a small town, but it was a big plantation in Autaugaville, Alabama. Me and Wilson Pickett, and all of us come up together. And I used to play at them all night jooks. They, my peoples, called them suppers. They call them suckers. We call them all night jooks because we call my blues jook blues. We, a guy named Deal and Ace, and then blow the harp, Moe and Sloan and then play the guitar. I was small. I stand and watch him. So I used to beg them let me blow some. Let me blow that harp. They let me blow, and you know, I’d strike a little tune or something on it. So they told me, say, You’re going to be a big man blowing this harp one day.
They gave me an old harp. So I kept that harp for a long time. I blowed on it and I blowed to the harp went bad. I took me a Prince Albert tobacco can and put some rocks in it and closed up the mouth where it made some holes in the back of it like the better one, and I used to hum hum and things stop my foot you know. And I, when I became thirteen years old I wrote my first song, blues. I wrote a song that I used to sing about I had trouble way down on old Jack Wilson’s farm.
And I used to blow the harp and sing I could get a harmonica I could go to town I didn’t have to pay but $0.50 and buy me a harp that’s all I could get you know. They took me. Now I went to work, I didn’t have a chance to finish school. I had to come out to help my mother. She had you know children and her husband was in trouble in prison, and I had to come out of school. They said I could work and she didn’t have to pay no rent you know. She could stay and I had to come out. I’m making, working for $12.00 a month. This this was around the last of the 40s I making $12.00 a month and I go to school half a day then and you know work in a milk dairy sometimes clean up new ground. You could get like if you get up like we get up 2:00 in the morning, I get the cows up and we be through milking when the sun rise. You could go work a half a day then, and make, they call it an extra buck. You get a dollar, you go work a half a day. That’s what they give me ‘cause the grown people wasn’t making but $2 for the whole day. Me a dollar, but I work it in the milk dairy, they give me… Like they call it rash and then, like a 7 1/2 lbs of meat and a half a bushel of meal. You get that. You get it on a Friday.
Then we moved over there, when she got married that’s in Saint Clair. So I stayed around down there until I became a full grown man. And then when I moved to the city I carried my mother to Montgomery the capital of Alabama. And I started working at those tire companies when I come to be a tire changer. I was a road man. They gave me a dollar and a quarter an hour period that’s what they gave me, give me a dollar and a quarter period but I play my blues on the weekend, at night on them dirt country. Call them jooks I still was playing.
See, I was raised up with it. Matter of fact, the people who I was raised up, my parents and their neighbors Moe and Sloan and them, used to work in the fields when I was young and they would bring they guitars to the field with them and on their lunch, when they come – call that dinner, they call it dinner down there, they would play, play and sing the blues and drink corn liquor and have a good time and then go on back to work. And I was raised up around with that. (Laughs.) And it come to be a part of me.
I was just born like that ‘cause she say I was the cause she had to get out of school. I was her oldest child, her first child. She say when she first got pregnant with me, her father pulled her out of school, you know how they do then in those days, put her to cutting rails with him. She had to cut rails when she was pregnant with me. So she didn’t drawn no money, her old man would get all the money. Her father would. He was a heavy drinker, gambler. She said it’s hard with me.
When I was born, I was some sickly with kidney disease and they carried me to the doctor, said the last thing she remembers, last doctor she carried me to say, carry me back ‘cause I was going to die. Take me back home. So they carried me on back and so every day they was looking for me to be dead. Say how they kept giving me, feeding me like the juice from turnip greens, stuff like that. And said the next, it looks like after a week or two I was coming along with the playing and smiling. They say, “Oh, he gonna live.” That’s what they told me, say, “He gonna live.” And I been here ever since. Then I started doing these blues.
I know a lot of musicians, Cleveland Chenier and Clifton, the one plays that accordion, Cleveland Chenier’s brother. Cleveland Chenier is now back with his brother, playing together now. See, Lightnin’s wife is Cleveland’s cousin. And Clifton. They first cousins. They Frenchmens. And Lightnin’s wife is Ansinetta Hopkins. And I every time they come to Chicago they tends to stay with me. I the one that got Lightnin’ for the Quiet Knight for Richard cause he quit coming here. He quit coming cause he said every time he come here his money would be wrong and other people’s he dealing with. He didn’t want to fool . . . He wouldn’t come so I went to Houston. I went back to Houston and stayed a while. I told him I’d have him call Richard to get in touch with him. Richard said I was the first guy that got him in touch to talk with Lightnin’ on the phone in person. Everybody else given him the run around, you know. Lightnin’ has been here twice since then. He says he wouldn’t come back this year. He says he gonna rest a while. He gonna do a little resting. Now he’s not traveling too much.
I was gonna go back home but right now I’m not gonna stay in Chicago. I’m gonna leave this fall. I’ve been here now two years or better. This is living here, straight in Chicago. But I never worked too much. I never made no money here. I makes my money going out of town. I have to come back to Chicago. I spend it to live when I come back here. I never did too good here. But I would always cut a lot of records here in Chicago. I come here and cut records. I get a lot – a lot of musicians they come up here. But I don’t think . . . I never been good enough to be on their sessions.
My first record was made down South. I was cutting records when I came to Chicago. My first record was “Aching All Over” and the flip, “Down it he Chili,” on a 45 (1964), on a small label called Shaw. I went to his studio doing my own session, playing for it. They saw me and so they went to managing me and put a record out on me. That was my first start and after then they said, you know, wasn’t no good sound there. They let me come to Chicago and paid for it.
I came here and I got with Willie Dixon. I come to see Buddy Guy. I went to see him and he turned me on to Willie Dixon. So I went and met Dixon. Me and Dixon started workin’ together and I did a session. So Dixon got Jewel, Stan Lewis down in Shreveport, Louisiana. He let them hear it and Jewell called me manager and they got that first one me and Dixon and them did together. Dixon got the musicians here. So I went to coming back here, doing a session and I go back home. And finally I moved to Chicago after that blues festival, the big blues festival.
I moved here, working round here and I come to know the people. And I found out then it was tough when nobody work together. They tell me this, you know, I still would use them on my session, but every time they do a session, I found out, well, the man say he wanted his artists on this session, you know. I wasn’t good enough. It come to em then. I just wasn’t good enough to play on Chicago musicians session. That’s why I don’t call myself a Chicago blues musician. I’m from the lowland, the swamp. I’m from where the blues came from and that’s where I’m going back to before it end up and something happens to me. I’m going back to the lowlands, that’s where the blues came from right off that old country farm. That’s better down there now. It’s a whole lot better.
Wild Child, that name, my mother named me that. She named me that. She used to way I was real rough after I got up, coming up from being a baby. And got so I could, you know, crawl and fool around. She say I was really a rough customer. She just named me Wild Child. Says this guy is wild. She’s the one that gave me that. And I been carrying it ever since. So I, when I cut the record the people like they was more crazy about the name than they was me! You know, they talk about my name. Tom Radai, he the first guy that gave me a job when I came to Chicago. He in Milwaukee. He booked me cause weren’t no one in Chicago do nothing for me. Willie Dixon did one or two jobs, but you know, he’s a busy man. He didn’t have time, but Tom, where I really made me a piece of money. That allowed me to stay on my feets. Every once in a while he’ll call me and say, “I got the gig if you can make it.” I go do a gig for him. I go do the gig and everything be just no hassle about the pay or nothing at the gig. I never had no hassle. I just, nothing he promised wouldn’t be just like what he say. I never had no hassle with him. If I play, when I mostly play in Chicago, I mostly be like with Bob Reidy or with a group, you know, as their special guest or something. I never got a job.
But some people told me they tried to get in touch with me but they never been able. I never had my own gig here in Chicago. Never have. But people have told me they tried to get up with me but they couldn’t, you know. See, the people who I have played with say they don’t know how to get in touch with me.
But I can always manage to get records cut, you know, like artists. They say they got good managers but they can’t get on a record label. But I can get on a record label, but I can’t get a manager.
Now and then I get calls, guys call me all the time. I got a group. I get up there, see my name, big, “Hey man, you want to come up? I’ll get you the side men and tonight you my special guest, okay?” I say, “What is it, a favor.” I know it’s a favor. Yeah, it ain’t much money I gets there and I done got to see my name in the headliner. And I think I done had jobs and I didn’t know it. Because someone else did it with the group that I be with. Well, reckon I done got there and saw my name in the headline. Well, so what? I’m there then I go on and hopin’ some day I go back. That done happened to me a lot. I found out you don’t get mad with a guy cause they like that. And I found a lot of jealous-hearted musicians, you know, in Chicago. I imagine that’s the reason some of them hasn’t got no further. I really saw this. And I play . . . like there some gigs I go on I see the guy “Well, I want to be last, I’m the biggest star.” You know, I watch this . . . it’s not many blues musicians, why are they like that? When the guy come and ask me, I say, “any time” cause what I’m gonna do my thing I don’t care what time I do it. So that’s the reason you see me tonight, you know, the guy called me up first, they know I don’t care, they know I’m gonna do it cause I come here to entertain. I come here to sing the blues. It don’t make no difference when you bring me up. All I want you have a good . . . If I ain’t’ got my own group with me, you have a good band for me, you know. That’s all I want I’m ready and raring to go.
I’m gonna sing these blues, I love to sing them. I used to get lonesome. When I get lonesome I get off with me and my harmonica and I can have like pressures on me and when I get through blowing or singing the blues or something I feel just loose and free then. That’s the way my blues was. I could just off and just blow and sing, make up my song, wasn’t no special song, you know, I just make me up and that’s when I come to know then, like when I could write a song. I used to make ‘em up and the people ask me, “Hey, where you heard that at?” I said, “I ain’t heard it.” They say, “Do that again.” They ask me to do it again, say, “Man, you got a good tune there, you wrote that?” I say, “I made it up. I ain’t never write it.” I say, “I made that up.” He say, “Well, what you did, you done wrote it.” I said, “All right, then I wrote it.” And they get together with me and go to playing on it too.
And I did some of Sonny Boy’s things with it, you know. I used to sit and listen to some of his things when I got old enough. And my people had an old wind ‘em up, they call ‘em, graphanolas back then, and I sit and listen to some of his tunes and I went to blowin’ them, you know. But I always would change my style. I didn’t never want to b exactly just like no one else. I just wanted to be me.
So I’ve just been struggling along. You know the blues is all I know. I’m gonna always play them anyway. Don’t care. Till the day I die. Know I always love ‘em. I just love ‘em. Which it just come to me, you know. I can be just coming along, walking along singing, I be done hollering out before I know it. Whatever, you know. A tune come to em, you know. I’ll be done hollering. Some peoples they look back, think that guy must be crazy . . . what wrong with him. Some asks me, “Man, what’s wrong with you? You feeling bad?” ha, ha. And I say, “No, I just feel like hollering, singing something.” “Oh, be my guest. Go ahead.” But that’s the way it do, that’s the way it come to me. I loves to sing the blues.
See, the blues is your best . . . I found to me, in my life. I’ve found that the blues is a man’s very best friend, any one’s best friend cause it don’t never ask you where you’re going, it don’t care where you been. And it don’t care who you are and that’s the way the blues is. That’s what I love about it. I just love to sing ‘em. I’ll sing ‘em. I love to sing the blues, you know. Sometimes I just get . . . I don’t have to be just sad and down out all the time to sing the blues. I just will sig them anyway. It just comes to me to sing ‘em.
I can look at you too, you know, I can look at peoples and see their considerations and it hit me just so hard, you know, like that and I can make a song about that person, but I put myself to it, but I can make a song about it, I can look at it (another human being ) I can make a song about it. That’s the way it is. It’s a lot of people, you know, sometimes I have songs I have wrote, definitely I write the song, maybe an idea but in a way, to me, sometimes it ain’t my idea, cause I lookin’ at that person and I see his shape or what he goin’ through with, in a way I done got it from him if, it weren’t for him doing it. But I can put this together, I feel with it. I can sing about it. But I ain’t never been able to figure did he write it or I’m writing it cause this didn’t come to me till I saw him. So I think both of us do it sometimes. But I don’t never know the people’s names. But I have watched them on the streets, you know. I’ve lived in the ghetto. I live in the ghetto now. You know, I come, I watch, I see this. But I’m going to, when I go back I’m anxious to build me a house back, way back out, you know, on them plantation farms, cause we buying down there now, on them plantations. They selling, you know, parcels. That’s where I always want to live. I’m not too crazy about the city. I like to come to the city and have fun and do around and head back, you know, head back to the lowlands. But one thing about the lowlands, you don’t have to have no lot money, you can always stay, but you have to have money in the city, but in the lowlands, you can make it. That’s what I like about it. You can always stay back in there and make it. You know, in a way, I guess I knows how to live in there because I was born in there.
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.