“Little Milton Campbell’s Story and Stories”
By Dr. Barry Lee Pearson
June 23, 1996 – Dayton, Ohio
You know, the first music that I heard, I’m sure it was the radio and I think it was probably country and western. I know we had one of those battery radios, because we lived right outside of town in the country and we didn’t have electricity out there where we lived. So they had the coal oil lamps and if you had a radio, it had to be operated by the battery. You had the big long battery. I don’t know if you know about those or not. That had to be what it was, because I remember me being a young boy I used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night. Then the next thing I practice was Gene Noble with the Tarzan holler thing. That was on WLAC playing the blues and what have you. And I guess that was my awakening to what music that I really loved dearly and wanted to perform. Because I figured like there just had to be a better way to make a living than chopping cotton and plowing the mules and harvesting the cotton and the crops and stuff. I said there’s got to be a better way. If the bossman can ride around in a truck air-conditioned, why can’t I? That was always my thing. I’m a businessman first, entertainer second. I’m one of those no nonsense type of guys.
I have changed my thing at no time from the beginning until now. Naturally you have to do a little flavoring sometime and the lyric I always try to look for something that’s the truth that’s meaningful. It’s kind of hard to find a definition for what the blues is and what it’s not. It just don’t worry me. I feel that as long as I can produce and record music that people enjoy, they can call it blues, they can call it rhythm and blues, they can call it soul or whatever. I don’t care.
I loved the guitar so much. Always have and still do. To me it’s one of the greatest instruments that makes music. I’m sure you’ll find other people that play other instruments will say different, but me being a guitar player, this is my first love of instruments as far as making music goes.
I built I guess what every kid that likes music or whatever, the old thing up against the wall of the house. You take the two nails and the strings of hay baling wire and you put these nails in the wall and you tie this wire around it. And you get a couple of bricks and put in on each end. And you use something to pick it with and a bottle. You get, you know, like a Hawaiian type sound. I call them guitars, other people call them other things you know. But then I tried to make a guitar with boards. Naturally it wouldn’t stay. It wasn’t stiff enough.
So after working and trying to save my little money doing odd things and stealing a little money – when I say stealing, I mean not giving it all to my mom because that was a must. You make some money you got to go turn it in and then she give you what she wanted. You to have. So I’d hold out. And I saved and saved until I saved up enough to pay for a little mail order catalogue guitar. And I think I ordered from a mail catalogue at that time was Walter Fields. And it cost fourteen dollars and I think about 40-some cents.
And when the notice came, I’d be the one to go and get the notice and what have you.
My mom said: “Maybe it’s something you ordered for me or something I ordered, so go see what it is.”
I knew what it was. I went and got the guitar and brought it back. I was all excited on the way back. I had took it from the box a few times, you know. And when she saw it she hit the ceiling. She hit the ceiling and told me: “You’re gonna take it back. Where did you get the money from?” And blah, blah, blah. We had a hell of a big row.
So I was sitting outside sad and my stepfather, whom I respect with the utmost, he was the man of the house. He was the man. Whatever he said that’s what it was. So I was sitting out looking sad sitting on the step waiting. When he came he said: “What’s wrong, Milton?”
And I told him what had happened. He told me, he said:
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it.” And he went in and the voices raised a little bit then it was quiet and after a while he came out and winked his eye at me. She never said anything else about the guitar.
My mom just passed in ’95. She was 88 years old. But through the years after I got to be successful I would tease her because I loved her dearly and I always told her when I was a kid, I told her that one day she wouldn’t have to worry about anything, that I would take good care of her. And I did do that. And I said:
“Mom, you think maybe I should have took that guitar back?”
She said, “Hell no, man. I’m glad you didn’t.” She didn’t use the word “Hell no,” but it meant the same thing. It’s a true story.
The first time I ever made any money, would you believe it was with Eddie Cusick. Part of my little hometown, I say part because Greenville and Leland, both take credit for Little Milton. I lived right between both of the little southern cities. They were like about six miles apart. So we were three miles here, three miles this way. If I say I’m from Greenville, then the people in Leland have a little problem. If I say I’m from Leland, the people in Greenville have a little problem. So I always say Leland and Greenville. But I met Eddie Cusick. My oldest brother and I were uptown, we lived right on the outskirts of the city. And we heard this music across the street at a little jook joint and went in there. And it was Eddie Cusick one Sunday evening, you know. And I had been trying to play the guitar a few years, couldn’t play worth a damn but I knew nothing about electric guitar. His guitar had the hold in it with the pick up. It fit across the hole. And he let me play it, and I thought that was the most beautifulest sound. And I could sing, so he let me sing a few tunes. And I could always sing, because I started singing from a little boy, a little bitty thing in church. My mom had me participating in church programs and what you have. So then he said:
“Listen, man, if you gonna be in town Saturday, Friday or Saturday, won’t you come by.”
He was playing a club, just little clubs around there in the city. He said “Maybe you can sit in with me and do a few tunes.”
So I said, “I’d love that.” So that Friday and Saturday, man, I was uptown. And he let me sit in and people started applauding and hollering and what have you. You know that young strong voice. Couldn’t play worth a damn, but I could sing. And pretty soon, then he invited me back the next week. Went back and the same thing, reaction of the crowd. So Eddie said:
“Listen, do you want to work with me? Or work for me, whatever you want to call it?”
I said: “Sure.”
So he was paying me a dollar and fifty cents a night. I thought that was good. So if we work three nights, you know how much I was making? Four dollars and fifty cents. And I have worked for less than that. I have gone with some big bands and some bands over in Greenville, after I moved from Leland to Greenville. We call him King Mack Simmons and his Aces of Swing or something like that. And a bunch of us young guys, he would promise us ten or twelve dollars and that was big money then. But then once we got out there, some time, I have worked for thirty, thirty-five cents. When the gig was over I got thirty-five cents. (Laughs)
And we would always swear that we were not gonna go back out there with him anymore, you know. He had a gimmick that he would go by and talk to us individually. And he would come to me and say, “Listen, I talked to the rest of them and they’re gonna go.”
So, I wouldn’t want my buddies to go and I not go, so. “Will you go?” I said: “Yeah, Ok.”
Then he go do the same thing. And when he got through going around one on one each time, he’d have the whole band back together again.
I began as a singer but the guy that I idolized was the late T-Bone Walker. And I suppose it’s literally impossible, especially back then for any guitar player, or anybody that wanted to play the guitar to play it and not play some things, or runs on phrases or what have you and pulls or pushes like T-Bone Walker. To me he was the greatest that ever did it. And if you listen to the Lowell Fulsons, the B.B. Kings, Little Milton or whoever, you will always hear some T-Bone Walker. You know people who were the pioneers of certain styles of music, you can’t miss them. It’s unfortunate that people that’s out there before you, you come along and touch some of the little corners and things that they are into, people will call you imitators and what have you. That’s what happened to me. They called me a Bobby Blue Bland imitator, a B.B. King imitator, whatever. So I say to call me anything you want as long as I can do the kind of music that I feel – don’t call me late for dinner and don’t call me late to the bank.
Sonny Boy was a gem of a person. Far as I know, the man was, I know he was a hell of a musician, hell of an entertainer. And I learned so much from him of how to conduct myself, how to respect other people, how to not let your talent make you be a fool. Like, in other words, not to get the big head because the people make you. If the people like you and come and support you, that’s what makes you successful. Without them, there’s nothing to you. I learned that from him, Willie Love, Joe Willie Wilkins. These were my mentors as far as learning how to maintain your status and carry yourself. In order to get respect from people you have to give it and to be humble, mannerable and respectful. And he always told me that if you give respect, then you can demand it in return. That has stayed with me.
The guy, whatever he promised to pay me, he paid me. And I had a lot of fun and learned a lot. These were some of the greatest guys that ever played music in my book.
You find a whole bunch of people out here, when things don’t go their way they’ll say bad things about you. They can be jealous. Envy is a very dangerous thing, which I’m sure you know. People don’t like for you to be independent and Sonny Boy was a guy, he was a very proud man. He was plainspoken. If he didn’t like you, he’d tell you he didn’t like you. If you came around him he would say, walk up to you, say, “Look, get away from me.”
You say: “Why?”
He say, “Because you stink.”
That’s just the way he was, so if want to be around him, h would say, “If you want to be around me, go wash your ass.”
You know things like that. and I don’t see why you hate somebody for doing that. Me, I think that that’s a true friend. If a friend can’t tell you about a problem that you got, then I don’t think that that’s a true friend. I’m not saying that the man was pervect. None of us are. But from my experience of working with him, it was a learning period for me. And one that I cherish for the rest of my days.
I have to thank the legendary good friend of mine Ike Turner. He was sort of a guy with a lot of ingenuity that knew a lot of. people. He had all the inside connections to the recording folks. Especially Sun Records – and he took me in to the studio for the very first time and we did several things. Not a good business venture, but at that time I was young and foolish and didn’t really care about the business end. I just wanted to get a record out. I guess everybody do.
So Ike Turner took me to Sun label and we did some things in the early 1950s. And from there we did a thing with Meteor Records that was a little subsidiary label of the Bihari Brothers which had R.P.M. Then we went to East St. Louis and started the Bobbin Record Company which a certain gentleman gave me a copy of a 45 that, a couple of tunes that I wrote way back then. It’s basically priceless. I was truly shocked to get it because most times they just don’t give up those, you know, record collectors and what have you pay big money for them.
Every time Sam Philips was interviewed or they had some sort of press release, or different types of exposure it’s so strange he only would mention Elvis Pressley, the Jerry Lee Lewises, Johnny Cash or Carl Perkins. It’s so unfair that he would never mention the Ike Turners, the Rufus Thomases, the Little Miltons, the Little Junior Parker, which was a big big thing for him. And I’ve spoken out against that. And I’ve told him so. I thought that was really quite unfair to the people that laid the foundation for a label such as Sun Records.
The Southern white person basically is above board with the way they feel about you. They either like you or they don’t like you. If they like you, you can do no wrong. If they don’t like you, then you got a problem. But they’re very plainspoken about it. Whereas in the North, in the Midwest, everybody grin in your face, pat you on your back, and when you walk away you a black so-and-so or whatever and I wish you wouldn’t come around here. I remember going around where they wouldn’t serve what they called colored people. And some of the restrooms it was white women, white men, and on one it said colored. – just the one, black men and women would have to use that one. I remember all that kind of stuff.
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.