In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey

Time Out: Bossmen

TIME OUT: BOSSMEN SothereIwasinthefallof’69,outofwork.EventhoughIwasgenuinely laid off, for some reason it never entered my head to apply for unemployment . I’d saved up some money over the summer. Sheila and I had decidedtogetmarried,butIfiguredthatI’dcomeupwithsomething.We wereyoung.Weweren’tworried.Atsuchtimesyouneedtogetcreative, and I did. I woke up in the middle of the night with this thought in my mindthatBillMonroeandMuddyWaterswerejustalikeaspeople.The more I thought about it, the truer it seemed, and it seemed true about their music too. In the morning I sat down and wrote up the idea in a couple of pages: Every field has its “bossman”—the one who sets the style, makes the rules,anddefinesthefieldinhisownterms.Intheworldofbluegrass andearlycountrymusicthemanisBillMonroe.Intheworldofurban blues and blues bands—Chicago Blues—the man is Muddy Waters. Bill and Muddy have remarkably similar careers. Both came from rural areas where they grew up listening to the natural music around them.ForMonroeitwassquaredancemusic,churchmusic,theblues 78 FINDING MY OWN VOICE guitar of a colored man named Arnold Schultz, and, above all, the fiddleplayingofhisUnclePenVandiver.ForMuddyitwasstring-band music, the sound of the harmonica, church music, preaching, but, above all, the sound of the blues as played and sung by such men as Robert Johnson and Son House—the raw sound of Mississippi Delta blues. Both men brought their music to the city and the structured worldofcommercialmusic—BilltoNashvilleandMuddytoChicago. Thereeachmanbegantoworkwithwhathebroughtwithhimtogive itanewshape,anewstyle,thatwouldspeaktoanewtimeandtonew situations. Each man formed a band, and each band became a school to the best musicians in the style. These musicians went on, in turn, to form their own bands, and, in time, the worlds of bluegrass and blues bands took shape. Armed with this, I called up Ralph Rinzler’s cousin Richard Rinzler, who was a book editor. He told me that he’d just signed a writer to write a book about country blues named Peter Guralnick. I knew Peter. He hadgottenstartedwritingaboutmusicwhenhecametotheClub47and wrote his first piece about Howlin’ Wolf. However, Richard referred me to an editor at Dial Press named Bob Cornfield, who took me to a nice publisher’slunchinNewYork,completewithmartinis!Hereadmylittle piece over lunch and, with no hesitation asked me how much time and moneyIwouldneedtodoit.Ifigureditwouldtakethreeorfourmonthsto do,soIaskedfora$3,500advanceplussomeexpenses.Hesaid,“Okay,it’s adeal.”Howsimplelifewasthen!TherecorddealwithWarnerBrothers and this book deal with Dial happened so easily. There were no middlemen involved, no marketing people, no focus groups. If you had an idea someone liked, and it didn’t cost the moon, they’d take a chance on it. A lot of good records and books saw the light of day that way. I signed the contractafewweekslaterandagreedtodeliverthebookbyMay1.Sheila and I could go ahead and get married. We wouldn’t starve. ItalsooccurredtomethatImightlookforworkasatourmanagerand went to see Albert Grossman; I’d come to know him a little bit through theKweskinJugBand.TheClubhadalsoputontheDylandocumentary “Don’t Look Back” in Boston. It lost money, but Albert appreciated that I had taken the risk and gave me a break on the loss. He also appreciated that I’d put on The Bauls of Bengal at the Club, which also cost me 79 TimeOut:Bossmen money. His wife Sally had brought them over from India. One of their mainclaimstofamewouldbethattheyappearedonthecoverofDylan’s John Wesley Harding album. Many people in the folk music community didn’t like Albert. They seemed to think that he wasn’t honest or was too aggressive as a manager . One person once described him to me as a kind of vulture circling over Greenwich Village picking off innocent young folk singers! One of those singers was Peter Yarrow, one of Albert’s first clients as a manager . Another was Noel Paul Stookey, a fledgling stand-up comic with a guitar.AnotherwasMaryTravers,herselfanativeofGreenwichVillage. Albert put these three people together, provided them with songs from GordonLightfoot,IanTysonandSylviaFricker,andBobDylan(another innocent he had picked off), hired the vocal arranger Milt Okun, who had worked so successfully with Harry Belafonte, rehearsed them for months before they recorded and got them a deal with Warner Brothers Records at a time when the label needed a boost. Bill Keith and I saw themattheCapeCodMelodyTentinthesummerof’62.Alberthadhired arisingyounglightingdesignernamedChipMoncktodothelightsand Bill and Terry Hanly, pioneers of rock sound, to do the sound. The great bassist Bill Lee backed the trio up. I had never seen or heard folk music presented this way. The quality of the material, the vocal harmonies, the stage presentation were all absolutely first class. That quality was a hallmarkofAlbert’sworkasamanager.Therewasnodoubtthathewas tough in his business dealings, but in my limited experience with him I had found...