FLASH FROM PAST
COMES BACK TO HONOR BLUESMAN
Mark Hedin
Sunday, November 13, 2005
"I feel sorry for 'em. They're all dead now, all the people
who stole from
me," former Muddy Waters drummer Francis Clay says with a
chuckle, looking
back on his long career in the music business.
So are many of those who shone in the spotlight while Clay kept
the band on
its toes behind them: John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Gypsy
Rose Lee,
Jimi Hendrix and Charlie Parker, to name a few.
There are some in the music world who assumed that Clay, the
man Big City
Blues magazine refers to as the "gentleman of the blues,"
had died as well.
Among them had been a former bandmate, southpaw bass player Mac
Arnold. On
Tuesday, Arnold instead will be the headlining act at Biscuits
and Blues as
Clay celebrates his 82nd birthday.
Arnold and Clay are the only surviving members of their incarnation
of the
Waters band. Back in the day, they'd play seven nights and two
afternoons,
and -- besides maybe recording, too -- air two broadcasts per
week.
"Francis was very energetic, a good guy to work with,"
says Arnold, on the
phone from the South Carolina farm where he settled in the '80s.
"Muddy
depended on him. He wasn't too noisy until he got onstage. He
was a
super-good player. I can't wait to see him."
Arnold, 63, can still reel off some of the places they went as
the rhythm
section for the Waters band in 1966 and '67, including the Fillmore
and Jazz
Workshop in San Francisco, Monterey festivals and behind Hooker
on his "Live
at the Cafe au Go-Go" album.
"I'd been looking for (Clay) for years," Arnold says.
"Just found him back
in the spring. We had no idea he was still alive."
"Francis always was a nice, friendly guy," says local
guitar slinger Elvin
Bishop, who's been known to show up at Clay's parties in the past
-- "I
always try to," he says. "Francis is a guy I've been
knowing for 100 years,
since Chicago."
Other than sitting in behind Johnny Cosmic at a fundraiser for
Cupertino
public radio station KKUP in early June, health issues have kept
Clay from
playing much this year, but the whole country got a glimpse of
him
thundering on the drums behind Waters at a Newport Jazz Festival
show that
was part of "No Direction Home," Martin Scorsese's recent
Bob Dylan
biography televised on PBS.
On Tuesday, Clay will read some of his poetry -- "Ode to
Martin Luther King
Jr.," in recognition of the late Rosa Parks, and a newer
composition, "The
Flag Don't Wave for Me."
Arnold had left the music business behind in Los Angeles to return
to South
Carolina in the '80s, but was recently coaxed back into playing.
His
subsequent album of original songs, "Nothin' to Prove,"
has been well
received, and at a Blues Foundation competition in Charlotte,
N.C., Arnold
says, his group "sent 10 bands home."
Arnold played behind James Brown in Greenville, S.C., during
the '50s,
before the Godfather of Soul "did 'Please, Please, Please'
and we didn't see
him anymore," Arnold says with a laugh. He made his way to
Chicago in 1964,
caught on with the late A.C. Reed, then got an audition to join
Waters' band
in 1966. While the band members were warming up the audience before
Waters
took the stage, Arnold would often lead them through Brown covers.
"He was a very exciting player," Clay recalls. Arnold
eventually left Waters
to form his own group, then hooked up with Don Cornelius and a
job on the
"Soul Train" TV show that settled him in Los Angeles
for the '70s.
Clay, meanwhile, after co-founding the James Cotton band, put
down roots in
the Bay Area and has been living in Mendelsohn House, a South
of Market
senior facility, since 1994, when local harmonica ace Big Bones
and
Mississippian Alvin Youngblood Hart helped him move in.
"He was not your average Chicago blues player," Bishop
says. "They were
often people of very limited education. He obviously has some
education, a
different frame of thinking than the average bluesman did. Rather
than being
just a beat keeper, he added a lot of color and melody. That's
what set him
apart."
Clay says similar things about Arnold. "He was in pretty
good shape when he
came in to Muddy's band in '66. He's had some pretty good training,
outside
of me hollering at him. He understood the arrangements more than
most of
'em."
Arnold, however, will nonetheless be showing off some backcountry
ingenuity
at the show. As a child, he made a guitar with his brother Leroy
when their
dad, the deacon, wasn't looking. They built it from a gas can,
with wood
scraps for a neck, nails for tuning pegs and heavy brass screen
wire for
strings.
He'll be bringing a similar one to Biscuits and Blues, he says,
made a bit
more professionally with real tuning pegs, a pickup and actual
guitar
strings. He keeps it close at hand when he's home.
"Too bad we have to travel so far," he says. Were the
gig closer to his
farm, he'd be doing his usual routine of bringing along home-grown
vegetables and melons to give away.
E-mail Mark Hedin at mhedin@sfchronicle.com. |
