Shreveport Sounds in Black and White

The Legend of Old Blue Goose

210 The Legend of Old Blue Goose —Dan Garner First celebrated on Jesse Thomas’s  recording “Blue Goose Blues,” the area he sings about does not appear on any official maps of Shreveport, nor will many present-day city residents know its location. Blue Goose was an African American part of town in a segregated area, the “wrong side of the tracks” used by the Texas and Pacific Railroad. It was officially known as Wilson Alley, but its local name derived from the Blue Goose Grocery and Market, located at the corner of Snow and Pickett Streets. Jesse Thomas’s song commemorated this important neighborhood for Shreveport blues, one that barely exists today but constituted a thriving part of Shreveport’s black life from the s into the s. He was only one of the musicians who hung around there in its early decades. Oscar “Buddy” Woods played in Blue Goose, as did many of his contemporaries, most of them now lost to history. Dan Garner’s description of Blue Goose originally accompanied a  compact disc The Legend of Old Blue Goose (BGB Records , ).  Note . According to Garner, Muscat Hill (celebrated in a song by Woods) may have been another smaller black section of Shreveport located within blocks of Old Blue Goose. Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter is considered to be an icon of early blues, not only in the Shreveport area, but all over the world. However, many years before Leadbelly was recorded, other blues artists from the Shreveport area had already made records, and they all played music on the streets in a small area of town, which today is officially identified as Wilson Alley, but was earlier THE LEGEND OF OLD BLUE GOOSE 211 known as Old Blue Goose. In , a teenager named Jesse Thomas recorded a song called “Blue Goose Blues “ in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas, Texas. After many years and many roads traveled, there came a resurgence of interest in this bluesman in the mid-eighties. At that time I had been performing with Jesse for several years and was dumbfounded to learn that this very talented guitarist had been a recording artist for six decades. Some would suggest that he was an early innovator of what is commonly referred to as jazz-fusion. I had the good fortune to travel with Jesse throughout the country, performing his music at some great blues festivals. It was on the way back from one of these festivals that I asked Jesse about “Blue Goose Blues.” He explained that Blue Goose was just a neighborhood with a cafe, a barbershop, and a grocery store where people used to gather and have some fun. He said it wasn’t on any map; it was just a name that people called the area because of a picture of a big blue goose on the side of a building. “And that place,” he said,“. . . it’s still there.” During a photo shoot for Jesse’s last CD, we ended up where it all began: Old Blue Goose. It was a cool, sunny day. I could see the skeletal rooftop of the Calanthean Temple, where, in the twenties, thirties, and forties, the upper echelon of black society danced to the live performances of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington. I could almost hear the music and laughter waft along the dusty road, much like it must have been at the time Jesse first visited these mean streets, so long ago. In between shots I couldn’t help asking Jesse what he remembered about the area. Did he ever perform on the streets? No, it was just an area that he wrote a song about, a place where people congregated and he had been to a couple of times. A mutual friend, Monty Brown, had interviewed Jesse years earlier and received a slightly different answer about Blue Goose. “That’s where I stayed when I first came here, and I just—made up some words, put it on record. You know, I didn’t even know what I was talking about at that time. I think I saw some old man there and he was real good on the guitar, on the chords. He didn’t sing good, just play something like that, and I copied some of that and put the words to it.” Located at the corner of Snow and Pickett streets, in Shreveport, Louisiana, this community of Blue Goose certainly dates back at least...