Tag: Preston Lauterbach

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Music Music Features

Howard Grimes on His New Book and Bulldogging the Beat

Howard Grimes (Photo: courtesy of Nick Loss-Eaton Media)

When I walk into Electraphonic Recording to meet Howard Grimes, I hear him before I see him. He’s behind the drum kit, recreating a beat he used to do when he backed a doo-wop group, the Largos, at Currie’s Club Tropicana. He’s laughing at the memory as he plays the shuffle he’d start when Roosevelt Green did his comedy bit. “He would pantomime this whole scheme, and it was all based on the rhythm I was playing. Boom-chick, boom-chick. The funniest part was when he got in his car, and he’d slam the door and I’d catch him — it was tight, man! — then he’d crank the car up, and you’d see him still moving and dancing inside as he drove away.”

Club Tropicana is fresh on my mind, as I’ve just read Grimes’ new autobiography, Timekeeper: My Life in Rhythm (Devault Graves Books), written with Preston Lauterbach. Yet having it spring to life with his actual playing and stories from his youngest days feels like some kind of miracle. It makes one grateful to be around when legends like Grimes still walk the earth.

Reading the book, to its credit, is very much like hearing stories from the great man himself. Only the beats are missing, though you can listen along to the accompanying “Howard Grimes ‘Timekeeper’ Playlist” on Spotify. It presents hit after hit that Grimes played drums on, from Rufus and Carla Thomas’ “Cause I Love You,” a significant early single on Satellite Records (before it became Stax), to Willie Mitchell’s “Soul Serenade” from 1968, to the silky funk of Al Green’s greatest chart-toppers. Few figures span the transition from early ’60s R&B to the smooth, funky soul of the ’70s with such aplomb, but hearing the span of his work on the playlist as you read, a direct connection between the herky-jerky “Frog Stomp” and the smoldering “Love and Happiness” becomes apparent: a relentless, driving rhythm.

That driving, steady quality led Willie Mitchell to call him “Bulldog.” As Grimes recalls, “Willie Mitchell told me, ‘You know, Howard, when you play, I can hear you coming.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. But when I cut a track, he said, ‘I can hear you coming. That foot!’ Willie was very distinct on listening to musicians. That’s how I learned so much.” The nickname has stuck to this day with variations. “Teenie [Hodges] always called me Pup. ‘Hey Pup, what ya doing, Pup?’ Leroy [Hodges] called me Dog. When I cut a session, Willie would always go, ‘Hey Dog! There’s the Dog! Here he comes!’”

Speaking of the many iconic tracks he laid down with the Hodges brothers and Mitchell, I can’t resist asking Grimes about one beat in particular, so distinctive as to have been subsequently sampled on nearly 200 tracks, from The Notorious B.I.G. to Massive Attack: the introduction to Al Green’s “I’m Glad You’re Mine.”

“Well, I love Ernie K-Doe and Lee Dorsey. So Lee Dorsey had this record out, ‘Working in the Coal Mine.’ The day ‘I’m Glad You’re Mine’ came up, I couldn’t hear nothing but that ‘Working in the Coal Mine’ pattern! So something guided me to play the first four bars of that because I knew it would fit with the way we had worked up the song. When we put the song together and we cut it, [Willie] said, ‘Man, you crazy as hell! Drummers ain’t never gonna figure out what the hell you did! Where in the hell did you come up with that?’ So I told him, and he said, ‘You just as crazy as Earl Palmer. You all is tit for tat.’”

Some rhythms that Grimes put on wax years ago mystify even him. “I cut a song on Ivory Joe Hunter, called ‘This Kind of Woman,’” he relates. “There’s no cymbals, just bongo drums and rhythm, and I don’t know what I did! It’s a difficult song, man, and I’ll be playing it now every day, trying to figure it out, could I ever bring that back? I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Howard Grimes and Preston Lauterbach will appear at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Live from Studio A, on Wednesday, July 21, 7 p.m. Live attendance is at capacity, but viewing by Zoom is offered at this link. The Bo-Keys will also perform with Grimes and singer Percy Wiggins. Free.

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Music Music Features

Brother Robert: New Memoir Sheds Fresh Light on a Legend:

“I still think of how it felt to hug him,” Annye Anderson says of her stepbrother. “Walking with him to Third Street, Highway 61, where he’d hitch a ride across the Harahan Bridge, going over the Mississippi River. … He put his skinny arms around me. His clothes felt starched and pressed. His face felt smooth. He smelled like cigarettes and Dixie Peach.”

It could well have been yesterday, just another family farewell in Memphis. But hitching a ride on Highway 61 takes on a new meaning when you know she’s speaking of blues legend Robert Johnson.

Johnson’s story has been so shrouded in myth that most only imagine him hopping freights or wandering the Mississippi backroads at midnight. Some even imagine Satan waiting at the crossroads, selling guitar lessons for the price of a soul. That’s why Anderson’s new book, Brother Robert: Growing Up With Robert Johnson (Hachette Books), is so significant. While Johnson’s fans are legion, few of us imagine him living in Memphis with a loving, supportive family for much of his life, or that he was such a fanboy himself — of Gene Autry.

Now, the myth of Johnson’s life melts away like a mirage, as we learn the pithy details of life on Georgia Avenue, in the bustling home overseen by Johnson’s stepfather, Charles Dodds Spencer, and his third wife, Mollie. From the time he was seven, Johnson lived with Spencer in Memphis. Though he was 18 when the Georgia Avenue home was acquired, and he was already prone to the peripatetic life of a musician, he continued to gravitate to his stepfather’s home, or the homes of other family members in the neighborhood. The young Annye saw a lot of him.

We see this milieu through the eyes of a child, starting with the lanky Brother Robert carrying stepsister Annye, or Baby Sis, up the stairs into their new home. “We weren’t blood,” Anderson notes. “We were family.”

And her extended family, living in Mississippi or in a few square miles of Memphis, may be the true subject of this book. It’s a tribute to the tightly knit bonds of kinship and resourcefulness that the African-American community relied on to thrive, and there are so many interwoven threads of family at play that the book provides a quick guide to their various connections. Charles Dodds, who added the name Spencer when escaping a near-lynching in Mississippi, is always at the center, having reinvented himself in the Bluff City, raising crops on vacant lots and caring for all manner of family and friends.

Through it all wanders Robert Johnson, the affable young man to whom Sister Carrie happened to give a guitar. He holds it in the book’s newly revealed photograph, and Anderson shares many vivid memories of Johnson playing it for the rest of his short life, from practicing on the porch to holding court at house parties, dancing while he played.

Indeed, such was young Annye’s last memory of Brother Robert, as the family gathered at Sister Carrie’s to hear Joe Louis fight Max Schmeling on the radio. “You should have seen him in his white sharkskin suit, Panama hat, and patent leather shoes,” Anderson recalls of that Memphis night in 1938, and you can almost smell the barbecue. A short while later, a telegram informed them Johnson had been killed.

If it all reads as if Anderson is sitting next to you, telling her stories, that’s because she is. In 2018, her 92nd year, having made an educational career for herself in Boston, she felt it was time to correct the myths. Well aware of Johnson’s musical legacy, and how others had either robbed her family of royalties or rendered them invisible through all the myth-making, she reached out to author Preston Lauterbach, known for his vivid histories of Beale Street, whose interview transcriptions beautifully capture her wit and eye for detail. An interview between Anderson, Lauterbach, and authors Elijah Wald and Peter Guralnick sheds further light on the story.

The result is a breathtaking look into the provenance of one of the 20th century’s great musical minds, the social warp and woof of Black Memphis in the 1920s and ’30s, and, in spite of racial violence that continues to this day, the persistence of family and the power of music.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Church and Crump and the Myth of Black Political Elitism

Robert R. Church and “Boss” Crump were once viewed as political allies. On the surface, they looked like oil and water, but, for years, they operated like a match made in heaven.

Or so it seemed.

Robert R. Church

Church, a Republican, was the South’s first black millionaire. Mayor Crump, a white Dixiecrat, was a political provocateur who willed power over Memphis well through the 1940s.

Author Preston Lauterbach’s essay, “Memphis Burning,” describes how their “bipartisan, biracial coalition” ultimately “controlled Memphis politics and elected most of its officials.”

We see a similar longing for this perceived political utopia in the current electoral landscape. We see polished and seasoned politicians (and a few younger aspirants) angling allegiances with unlikely allies — black democratic congresspersons aligning with Republican Governor Bill Lee; black county commissioners and city council persons yielding to the likes of University of Memphis President David Rudd, FedEx CEO Fred Smith, major real estate moguls, and the like.

Wait. Something seems rather one-sided here.

Boss Crump

It seems that the reach across the aisle is only coming from one side.

In this framework, black political elitism is always hamstrung by an invisible hand of a white economic monopoly. Check the campaign pledges of the most notable elected officials and there we find commonality in donor-ship. This means that what most of us view as black exceptionalism is, actually, black tokenism — a few people of color who have proven themselves to be nonthreatening to the establishment and political status quo.

This tokenism has cultivated a generation of people aspiring for office who long more for assimilation than liberation. Too many black people aspire to (and obtain) positions of influence at the expenses of empowering the masses. They don’t want a more equitable society. They want to be in closer proximity to power. They want triumphalism — a better seat on the bus of injustice and inequity. And they will exploit social justice talking points to obtain it.

A bipartisan and biracial coalition might be possible, but there is no true partnership if only one side makes all the compromises.

If, for instance, white power brokers were sincere about equitable relationships, they’d be on the front lines advocating for equitable access and inclusion in the political process. However, when it comes time to increase voter turnout, “mum’s the word.”

What we are left with is a group of aspiring Robert R. Churches being contained by a group of 21st century Boss Crumps. This matrix is the source of black folks’ political apathy. We can point to the decades of black symbolic leadership that didn’t yield much fruit in our perpetually impoverished neighborhoods. And it is hard to point to progressive and productive leadership when out of 150 of the most populated cities in the country, Memphis was 136 in how well it is run, according to the website wallethub.com.

If we continue this path, we’ll end up like that deceptive dynasty between Church and Crump.

Lauterbach goes on to detail how “short-lived” that “period of biracial cooperation” was. He writes, “In the late 1930s, Boss Crump turned on his counterpart. In the span of a few years, the Democratic machine banished Bob Church, seized his property, broke the family fortune, and dismantled his Republican organization, crushing the most vital arm of black enfranchisement in the city.”

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Past is prologue.

Black political elitism is a myth in Memphis if there is no massive political movement of everyday people (that centers black citizens) to support it. And what the myth of black political elitism has done is bind up our political imagination prohibiting black people from seeing what is possible.

What is possible is the ushering in of a more just, progressive, and equitable class of leaders. A group that gleans the support of the elders and inspires the next generation to become more optimistic about their involvement. The municipal elections this October could very well hold the key to the black political independence of the next 25 years. It’s about time we recognize what Dr. Martin Luther King called, “The fierce urgency of now.”

Dr. Earle Fisher is the Senior Pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church and founder of #UPTheVote901.

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Book Features Books

Preston Lauterbach’s Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers

CREDIT: Elise Lauterbach

Last week, as Ken Burns visited Memphis to unveil his upcoming series, Country Music, he said he considers himself not so much a historian as a storyteller. It’s a distinction salient to Preston Lauterbach’s new book, Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers (Norton). As was seen in reportage by Marc Perrusquia nearly a decade ago, and in his subsequent book on Withers from last year, the subtle differences between history, storytelling, and journalism make a dramatic impact on the final framing of a narrative.

Perrusquia’s work, for example, was centered on the writer’s own sleuthing, and his ultimate triumph in gaining access to the FBI’s file on Ernest Withers. The reporter’s success turned Withers’ life story into one big “gotcha” moment. Revelations that the renowned chronicler of the civil rights movement had made regular reports on that movement to the FBI’s Memphis field office were indeed earthshaking, but that narrative of betrayal so overshadowed any other perspective on Withers’ life that many Memphians who knew Withers resented Perrusquia’s detective work.

Lauterbach’s storytelling offers a refreshing widening of perspective. His more holistic focus on Withers’ life, in all its contradictions, makes that life emblematic of Memphis history itself. And it’s undeniable that the photographer, a lifelong Memphian, embodies the city’s distinct character, not least in his willingness to think outside the box and forge his own independent path.

Elise Lauterbach

Preston Lauterbach

Lauterbach’s previous volume on Memphis history, Beale Street Dynasty, was loosely organized around the life of African-American millionaire Robert Church, with the city itself a character in the tale. Because that book did not aspire to biography, even in its title, the wide-ranging digressions on other major players in the Beale Street saga made narrative sense.

The new work, then, is a sequel to that tale, bringing Beale Street into the late 20th century. Withers was a fixture there, setting up his studio “in the thick of the midnight world.” There, Withers gained easy access to clubs on the street, snapping photos of patrons and performers alike, then running across the street to develop and sell them that same night.

This, along with with Negro Baseball League players and everyday weddings and funerals, became Withers’ initial subject matter. And he is defined in this book primarily by the places he went and the things he did. As a biography, it makes little headway in unpacking the psychology of its subject, or his relation to his friends and family. The Ernest Withers of Bluff City is primarily a doer, with an instinct for finding significant events and the flash-frame moments that express them.

Lauterbach has a storyteller’s gift for setting a scene — and the threads leading to moments captured by Withers’ lens. A digression seemingly unrelated to Withers’ life or personal relationships will culminate in the moment immortalized by Withers with a single, well-chosen shot. And as the civil rights movement heats up, becoming more torn by its internal factions, the scene-setting comes to dominate the tale, as extended digressions on the lives of key civil rights figures cause Withers’ personal story to vanish at times.

One salutary effect of this is a more informed perspective on Withers’ relationship with the FBI. When Withers first begins reporting on civil rights groups’ activities, it’s clearly a natural extension of his reliance on federal authorities to keep him safe from more racially blinkered local police, as when FBI agents investigate his abuse at the hands of officers in Jackson, Mississippi.

As the movement develops, the ethics of Withers’ involvement become more blurred. If, on the one hand, his reporting on the Nation of Islam helps counter the FBI’s tendency to paint them as instigators of violence, he’s equally willing to buy into the Bureau’s anti-Communist rhetoric, brazenly misleading Northern activists to earn his informant’s wages. In light of Richard Wright’s disillusionment with doctrinaire Communists in Black Boy, it’s understandable, but Lauterbach never really digs into the historical complexities of the Left’s racial politics. For that, one must turn to other sources. The implication — that Withers was trying to insulate moderate activists he deemed legitimate from accusations of extremism — remains merely an implication. Teasing out such ethical and political niceties is precisely where the book’s storytelling falls short of historical analysis.

Of course, Withers’ true intentions will always be mysterious. Having passed away in 2007, he’s never been able to answer accusations of “spying” directly. But Lauterbach’s tale, with its greater sensitivity to the contradictions inherent in surviving racism, goes a long way toward a fuller, more human vision of a life lived in the fray.

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Book Features Books

Beale Street Dynasty

Preston Lauterbach called it “a revelation.” The former Memphis magazine staff writer and onetime contributor to the Memphis Flyer was referring to his research into the life of Robert Church Sr., a man who helped make Beale Street the Main Street of black America beginning in the late 19th century and for several decades to follow. Lauterbach, author of The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll (2011), tells the story of Church (born to a white father and black mother) and of his son, Robert Church Jr., in the pages of his latest book, Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis (W.W. Norton), and it’s Beale Street — and the city of Memphis itself — as you probably never knew it or would hardly recognize it.

There were saloons, gambling, music, and brothels on and around Beale, for sure. But the street was a commercial hub too and a center for black newspaper publishing, churchgoing, and political organizing. For many black Americans, it was, in short, “the place to be, the place to get to,” Lauterbach said in a recent phone interview. “It was Harlem 30 years before the Harlem Renaissance. It was vital to national culture.” It was also the key to political power in Memphis and beyond.

“Mr. Crump wouldn’t have been able to build his machine without Beale,” Lauterbach said. “Beale won the state of Tennessee in the 1920 presidential election for the Republican Party! That blows me away.”

As Beale Street Dynasty makes plain, the influence of African-American voters in Memphis — organized through the efforts of Church Sr. and Jr. and right-hand man Lt. George W. Lee — was well recognized by black and white politicians alike, and it worked both ways. According to Lauterbach in his book, “Crump needed votes to get his candidates into office, and Church aimed to help his people.” Both Churches, father and son, did indeed help their people.

It was no paradise for black Memphians, Lauterbach was quick to add in our interview. This was still the period of Jim Crow and lynchings, which were reported on most notably by African-American journalist Ida B. Wells, who started her career on Beale, site of the city’s first black-owned printing press. But it was the black vote that set Memphis apart and made it, in Lauterbach’s words, “unlike virtually every other place in the South.”

“We know Beale is a powerful place,” he said. “It has a reputation, a mystique. But who were the people behind it? We know about Ida B. Wells and W.C. Handy and the music. But what was the ‘backbone’ to Beale history? How do we put all this together?”

Those were questions Lauterbach asked himself when he began looking into Beale Street’s long history. And Beale’s a long way from San Diego, where Lauterbach grew up. It’s his “outsider” status, however, that’s helped him in his 100-year history of Beale, from the Civil War to World War II. There have been previous histories, but none so deeply researched or definitive in the telling.

“I didn’t go into this with an agenda,” Lauterbach said. “You know, Memphis has had its ass kicked in recent decades, we gotta make this look as good as possible for the rest of the world. And no, I don’t have a great-grandfather who owned a cotton firm. But history is so heavy in Memphis that in certain respects it does take an outsider to see it.”

Not quite such an outsider. Lauterbach lives today in Virginia with his wife, Elise (who grew up in Memphis), and their children, but he’s currently a visiting scholar at Rhodes College, so he and his family return to the city regularly. As he said, “We’re all still part-time citizens.”

Thursday, March 19th, is the official launch date of Beale Street Dynasty, and to mark the occasion Lauterbach will be speaking inside Rhodes’ McCallum Ballroom of the Bryan Campus Life Center at 6 p.m., booksigning to follow. For more on Rhodes’ three-day “Beale Street Symposium,” see this week’s Flyer calendar or go to rhodes.edu/bealestreetsymposium.