“Henry Townsend’s Story and Stories”
By Dr. Barry Lee Pearson
(Multiple Interviews)
My daddy was a musician. He played accordion and another man, we called him Otto, his name Willie Davis, he played a guitar. And it remains to be the thing that really pushed me over the cliff towards playing the guitar, that was the beautifulest sound ever I heard. And late that night they’d put me to bed. I remember this was in Carruthersville (Missouri) they’d put me to bed and they got started out on their instruments and it woke me up. And I woke up to that music and I guess when you’re asleep and you wake up to music it sure enough sounds pretty because you get it all. And I woke up to that music. And that was a thing that could never leave me and that hasn’t left me. That was my first sound of the blues.
And my daddy, he done vocal. I remember the old song he used to sing when I heard that, he would sing something about because he kept repeating it: “Hurry down sundown and see what tomorrow brings. It may bring sunshine and it may bring showers of rain.”
And that was one of the old verses. I’ve heard other people sing it, but I know back in my time, it it was before my time, couldn’t nobody today be the author.
I was born in Shelby, Mississippi. That’s not too far belong Memphis and of course with migrating parents we came through Memphis, Carruthersville, Cairo, Illinois to St. Louis. That’s where I started my musical career as a real young kid. Actually, the first music I played was harmonica. My brother Charley and I was together in Cairo, he and I would go to the 10-cent store and buy us a harp when we got hold to a quarter or something. We’d buy us a 10-cent harp and each of us learned to blow harps. And we done a little entertaining with those harps. He learned to blow real good and I learned to blow good enough. I guess I was about as good as Robert Nighthawk was on harp, something like that. We entertained a little bit around town, around Cairo down there. Little parties and with not, we had a dual harp thing. We were little bitty fellows on harmonica We had a team, a little duet on that. We used to do things I don’t hear too much anymore. We did cross section in harp. I’d pick one key and he would take another key, but we’d do it in a cross section. We’d take this harp and translate it, go to the key that he was blowing in and vice versa. And it makes a very beautiful sound with a low and a high. In semi-harmony. You don’t hear that too much now.
We didn’t play on street corners, it wasn’t permitted because I was much too young to be doing what I was doing. To get out where everybody could see it, that would have got me in trouble.
I remember them singing songs on the railroad because I road the railroad quite a bit. I would go out and catch a freight train, where it was going I wasn’t concerned. All I knew I was leaving, and if a person asked me “Where you going?” Well, yu got to follow me because I really don’t care. I would run into these places where they had work camps. I would see them out there working, singing songs. Sometimes, if you hobo enough, sooner or later you’re gonna get a – make yourself comfortable on these cars, you’re gonna get set aside somewhere. If you’re not careful. So I got set aside a few times and wake up and I’d be right on the work section. When I had to stay there until some transportation come in. And they would sing those work songs driving those ties and one would sing something, the other would sing something and answer with their hammer.
I’m gonna leave soon – bing
And I’m not coming back anymore – bing
And about a few licks in there and the spike was all the way in tie and they just step over there to another one until somebody set the peg and they through there. I watched that a half a day waiting on a train to come through there so I could get on and get away.
I had a little experience in Cairo with the road work, they called it camp work as a water boy. But I left Cairo early, you know, I heard rumors what I heard people say about it. But I know it wasn’t good but it wasn’t necessarily on account of Southern Illinois people, the acts were always committed from right across the river in Kentucky. There were a lot of people that come from over there and would involve themselves in things that they shouldn’t have been concerned in in Illinois, but as long as you were black, they made it their concern. But I wasn’t there too long.
I ran into a little problem with my parents – maybe not a problem, but when my dad was ready to punish me for what I had done wrong, then I come on over to St. Louis and as far as the conditions, I can’t verify too much of the bad things although they were, I was almost – my feelings were always – was if this could be better than I’m gonna make it that way, that was my feeling all through my life. So certain conditions I can’t elaborate on. I’d ignore it and wouldn’t pay it any mind. I’d throw it out of my mind and my method always has been what you can’t do something about, then forget it. And if I couldn’t do anything about it, I’d just throw it out of my mind.
I left Cairo and came to St. Louis, which wasn’t too much different than in that, you know, believe it or not. I got locked up in St. Louis for suspicion of stealing the clock out of the tower of the Union Station. I wasn’t taken in custody and was held for no reason. No charges. Just what I said was the charges. Which was atrocious, you know I was too little to even look up to a clock. I couldn’t see it hardly but that’s what they said that I was suspected of stealing the clock out of the tower of Union Station.
I came over to St. Louis at an early age when I was about nine years old. And I didn’t start in to the music until, oh, I guess I was about 14 when I decided I – when I first got my first instrument to start music. And from that time on, I wasn’t in the South, or further South than St. Louis and Cairo, Illinois.
The guitar always did fascinate me. Just the sound hit the string, it does something to me. That was my first inspiration. But I got into music for myself in St. Louis there where a couple of fellows around there kind of helped me out. There was a man called Dudlow. His name was Harry. He never did reach the peak in recording but he was a very good guitarist. So I kind of followed him around. He was a little older than I was cause I was very young at that time. I was a teenager and didn’t really know what it was all about. And he was kind of a father to me. And he played guitar and he would take me to street corners and we’d draw crowds on street corners and things like that. and I guess it could have been that Harry was from the deep South, some part of Mississippi.
That’s why I adopted the sound, because I still do it as such. He kind of led me along even vouch for me when the crowd worked to get me. So this was a little protection for me.
He was one of the PEOPLE that helped me to stay in to it. And several other people that I was inspired by, a kid just a little older than I named David Cushfield. But he overindulged while young and died early. But he was a terrific guitar player too. And a couple of other people around there too. One, we called him Son Ryans, he was one of the famous around guitarists around there.
Down through the years I got to be old enough, I guess the first famous man that we all might know would be Lonnie Johnson. You might think you’re playing like somebody else. Like I tried to imitate Lonnie Johnson for a long time and I come up to myself and I said, “Why is I’m working at this guy so hard when I am me.” So I just dropped it all together. I doubt I can play any of Lonnie’s pieces now and I used to play everything he played. But now I’m going to be me. I can’t be him anyway. You can’t be nobody else even if you try. You got to be your own and you are your own.
My piano style came from various people. My major piano style, it came from a dela friend of mine, Roosevelt Sykes. We swapped knowledge with one another. I taught him guitar and he taught me piano. So my style, it deviates of course, but it’s more toward his style than anything else.
I was an old man when I got my first piano, but before that I used to just go around joints and practice until they run me out. And I’d find another one where they’d let me work awhile until after a while the public began to accept me so I wasn’t run out of anyplace else. They say come on in and work. So I started working piano from that. Also included in that was the late Walter Davis.
People think that Walter Davis, that I got inspiration from him. Actually, it’s the reverse. Walter Davis, I started him on the piano. And most people don’t think it that way because they heard of him way before they did me. But I had recorded piano before he had. But just one number, kyou know. So I started him with piano and of course I was his major back up man on the guitar. And that’s why I could carry him so far on the piano, because I could take from one instrument and show him o the other instrument what to do. And he went on for himself now. He didn’t stay where I put him. He went on for himself.
Walter and I were much alike. Now I played clubs around the city scene, but Walter did not. Walter didn’t play at any club at any time to my knowledge. If it was, it was not in St. Louis. And he was reluctant about doing that. But he happened to be going back home and the people we played for, he knew them real well and that was it.
Of course now St. Louis has. I guess, the favorite at one time of all the blues musicians. They all have lived there once upon a time. Maybe for a few years or short briefs or so on. But you’ll find if you talk with any musician in the blues field, at one time or another St. Louis had something to do with his life.
The average one in Chicago, they got a style in Chicago that’s much different from St. Louis, but one time or another they was in St. Louis. St. Louis had a particular style which I think no other city adopted which was kind of a snappy string thing. Ow I can tell you the reason why this happened .It was house parties, that house rent thing. And when there’s a crowd of people, the more people come in to the building would just – the guitar, no amplification, why the guitar ceased to be loud enough. In other words, the bodies would absorb the sound so the people a little further back wouldn’t even hear it. So the musicianers of St. Louis, they kind of developed a little thing that would carry it a little further, though they didn’t have the steel guitars. They would kind of make a snap string like.
St. Louis was one of the first cities, it and Indianapolis was the two cities that coordinated the guitar and piano together. We had got things together and this was one of the means we had of making sounds because the piano was kind of scarce. Poor people didn’t have pianos. And when we would find an old raggedy piano, something had to learn to do something to it and put it in shape. I was one of those guys that learned how to tune pianos and what not. Matter of fact, I made a living from it for a while too.
I worked rent parties in St. Louis, and this was in the Depression times. And the musicians had a little access to nickels and dimes rather than the other guy that was lookin’ for a job cause there wasn’t any such thing. And we would get together after the landlords threaten to put ‘em out and the musicians would kind of put their little money together and buy some kind of commodities, some drinks to sell at the party. Then we’d put the party on. And that was the way we had to aid the people that were more unfortunate than we were.
They would kind of – we would kind of seek this thing out. The thing went on month after month. It’d be here this month, someplace else next month, but the musicians – it was some kind of – what they say “a relief agency” for the people that was in total distress. It was done not only for house rent. Sometimes it was done for collections of food. And we would do these things and it started out in one little segment of town down around a street called Biddle Street and it continued and spread all over the city. So we kind of, in later years, we kind of entitled that “the poor taking care of the poor.” Which was the facts. That’s the way it was done. And this continued on through until the WPA days give up some kind of relief of P.W.A. – whichever title that thing had. So there was less need for it.
We used to get some old piano or something or other and put it on something’s truck and ride up and down the street to advertise where this thing was gonna be, you know. And charges for the musicians, the musicians wasn’t getting’ anything out of it. I guess we felt it was a duty for us to do. And we got pleasure out of it. We really got pleasure out of it. So saying again the poor supported the poor, which sounds odd but that’s what it was.
So that was the first jobs that I played, those house party jobs.
Musicians were always able to get out on the street corner and somebody would come by and make a request and give them a dime or 15 cents, you know. So it was easy for me to accumulate maybe a dollar or sometime in a whole day. And for that reason, it didn’t. cost anything hardly to live. For that reason the musicians could put themselves together and not hurt themselves either.
I was always fortunate enough to have a place to stay and food to eat, but others were less fortunate than I was. Why we just got together and sort of protected them from the wolves.
It was done in the Depression and it was at the time that the banks was closing up on the people’s money, those that had money in there, and of course it didn’t hurt me because I didn’t have any. That lasted quite a spell, roughly during the entire ‘3o0s until that W.P.A. thing give some relief. But it – during the entire ‘30s and the truth remains it went on up into the ‘40s because some people were more unfortunate than others. I wouldn’t be too sure if some of it ain’t going on now. So it went on quite a while and things kind of changed over at a later date where the people get aid from the state and that kind of cured their ailment. And the people that was in need could get jobs on the W.P.A. That helped heal the wounds some too. But back then it was a lot of places you could play at.
Illegal taverns, they were in quite a few homes. We called them speakeasies. They sold moonshine or white lightning or whatever title you want to give that spirit whiskey, home brewed whiskey., They had plenty of that. Oh there was numerous places. We call them taverns and bars nowadays, but at the time it was prohibition and they called them joints, kind of a nickname for a hidden bar. It wasn’t really an open bar. But you could go to clubs where they were supposed to have dances, but it was also liquor there, bootleg liquor. They’d have music there for entertainment and it was kind of a little coverup for the violations. We would play there. Supposed to have been food and what have you sold there, but it was also and everything else was sold there. And in some way or another it wasn’t such a bad violation that in many cases the law didn’t bother you or either you had to pay them off. They call them different names, but it’s mostly the same thing. It depends on what some people categorize as a blind pig, house parties, that was a very common thing. So I guess you could say that every house, once in a while, would get to be a blind pig.
I started recording at the top of the ‘20s and early ‘30s with Columbia. I was selected to record for Columbia then. I was, I guess, one of the first blacks. I don’t think there was about one or two that was recording for that particular company, Bluebird. You name the label. I’ve been on it. Sometimes not outstanding for myself, but performing with whoever, Walter Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Pinetop and Milton Sparks and Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Joe Williams, and you name them, in the blues field.
I was there. Robert Nighthawk McCoy’s his name and on and on. And you name the artist and you can’t make too many mistakes if they were in the blues field, that I haven’t backed up and worked with them. And Robert Johnson, the first time I met Robert was at one of those house rent parties.
I know nothing of Robert Johnson before we worked together. I had not heard of anything of him. That was in the 1930s. But “The Terraplane” I did know,. I remember the first time I went back to visit my cousin in Future City, I didn’t hear the record but I heard him talking about how great the Terraplane Blues was. I had heard about it.
And when I met him, I wasn’t aware of that’s who I was meeting then – until after an hour or so after I met him.
When I first met Robert, it had to be shortly after my first recording with Columbia and I was working at a place on Jefferson Avenue there in St. Louis. I was hired by-weekly, really, but I wasn’t playing every night. And the guy that had me hired, somehow, I don’t know whether he had heard Robert Johnson playing on the corner or what, but he was very enthused over Robert’s sound so he hired Robert too. So when we got up there, and Robert was doing some tunes when I come in there that evening and we met up there. So I asked Ernest, his name was Ernest Walker – I asked him, “Well, Ok. You got somebody else?” He say, “Yeah,” I got somebody playing.” I say, “Ok, will that mean I’m going?” He say, “No, you don’t go nowhere. I’m gonna team you guys together.”
I think his idea was to see if Robert and I would work together. Now, I don’t know why. I had nothing in commo with Robert, you know. I was just struggling doing my thing. And Robert was a genius to me at that time, way back in the ‘30s. And Robert and I worked there. At Ernest Walker’s and the last few days, it may have exceeded two weeks or slightly less, I don’t remember exactly, but the last two days we played, or nights we played there, we worked together and after I got my self-esteem up to work with a guy like that. And we done it pretty good. So then it wasn’t too long before Robert left. But we worked together and we worked separate, on our guitars. So I got a chance to deal with him on his level and him on my level. And I was very, very outmanned. He was one of the people like, I have to give myself credit for. He was one of the people, if you played it right he could play with you. If you played it wrong he could play with you and whatever you do it was right for him because he was just that bright.
So we spent better than two weeks together. A lot of people ask me what kind of disposition the man had. I can’t vouch for that, because the acquaintance was too short, but I do know that he was kind of a quiet fellow and I never did see him approach anybody with a conversation. But if you approached him he was just like any other ordinary person. He would carry a conversation with you. But like some of us, I’ll start a conversation but I never saw him do that. So this is my experience with Robert Johnson. I thought he was a brilliant man and there’s hardly none like him.
I heard all that talk about him selling his soul to the devil. Indeed I did. I also heard at the end of the rainbow there’s a pot of gold but see I was smart enough even when I was a kid. We were living in the city and I was a sufficient scientist and I would make me a little most of rain and you could see a little rainbow in there. And I knew there wasn’t any pot of gold right there I the yard. So I believe in selling your soul to the devil the same way I believe in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
See, I know a lot of people calls this kind of a thing, when you use the term “blues,” say, ‘That’s the devil’s music.” Well, it’s just as good as gospel. It’s the same as gospel. The only difference is the gospel people singing about the biblical days and they singing about people and what they done at that age. But I’m not at the biblical time. I’m at as of now, people as of now. And I be singing about true things about people’s lives, stories that was brought to me or some of the experiences that I had. And each word that I say would be the truth in the sense of it’s happening. And I would never sing that I was gonna swim the ocean because I’d be lying and to keep from lying in anything that I sing, I would never put a false thing in it. So I just stick to the truth. And of course, if you can condemn the truth, then I haven’t got a chance because that’s all I’m telling.
And the “devil’s music,” it depends on one’s feeling in the fir t place and I don’t think the devil cares too much about the truth. And those that have the faith, some people don’t believe in anything, but those that have the faith, they can certainly discard the idea that blues will send you anyplace any different from gospel. Because as long as it’s the truth, one truth is no greater than the other. And that’s my conception of the blues.
You know, years ago they used to call this the same thing they call the blues now – it was called reels. Back then that word “blues” wasn’t used. I never heard the word used. They called them “reals” back then You’d get scolded about singing one of them ungodly songs. My grandparents you couldn’t do it there. My daddy didn’t bother about it, but my grandparents, you couldn’t do it.
In the later years they started saying blues – the lonesome fellow’s the only guy sings that. But not necessarily so. It’s tears called happy tears, proud tears, I mean you so glad you cry. Sad one’s. It’s things that can be so critical with you you’ll cry. But now how can one tell you what you crying about unless he know what the whole story is. There can be crying, there’s something wrong with him, maybe not. Maybe it’s one of the happy moments in his life.
I’ll tell you each thing that’s said in blues, it is a fact in somebody’s life. It has happened to somebody. No matter how you put it, it has happened to somebody and those people can relate to you then. Maybe in the early part of it they didn’t get a thing out of it but sooner or later you gonna hit on something that they know all about. So that’s when they begin to. understand the meanings of this thing. It is true.
So I have no regrets of doing it, singing it. I love it and it’s a part of my act on stage. As the old saying goes, the world is just a big stage each plays his part. So that’s my tiny part and I play it and proud. Everybody got their limitations – you better off to try to improve your own image than to go out and try to gather someone else’s. Cause that’s when you start failing. You might do quite a bit of imitations, but it’s not as real and you will run out and find yourself not as good with your own as you should be.
You see what’s bringing about a chance is people in your age group and younger and a few older, they got more intelligent on what it’s about. Now, don’t forget, there’s a segment of people above and maybe a little below me in my age bracket, totally resents it because they can’t understand it, they don’t want to, they won’t open their minds. They don’t want to.
If you say, “I’m gonna play.” “Well, I don’t even want to hear it.” You know, that’s because they’re in this particular, this is what they, I’ll use th term “brainwashed.” They don’t want to accept anything else. With a closed mind, how can you improve yourself. You can’t. You think what you know is enough and that’s all. Nobody can get through to you. Well, it’s over with you, as far as you’ll ever go. And it’s a lot of people have that mind. It’s absolutely closed.
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.