Lunch with the King of Jack's
Freddie plays what he calls gutbucket blues, with his manager/label head "Wacko" Wade on the drums and a longtime harmonica player with him. I know from reading his Living Blues feature that King used to be a student of BB King. I think he knows what gets people dancing in NOLA isn't King-style blues. His good friend and fellow bluesman Alabama Slim walked in at one point and immediately a woman started dancing with him. I noticed that King played a lot of Louisiana blues: namely Slim Harpo's "Scratch My Back" (a personal favorite), a Jimmy Reed tune, and Guitar Slim's "Things That I Used To Do." He started one groove with a Bo Diddley beat that featured him alternating singing with his guitar playing and it was as funky as can be. The one drawback was that Freddie sometimes has his own timing on the turn arounds and the bass players kept a 12-bar pace, not always following his leader. Late during the second set, he launched into a slow, Memphis-style blues, and it was masterful, full of feeling and grace, for turn after turn of Freddie's soloing.
He took a break and we stepped outside to say hi to him and Slim as they smoked. I also complimented his harmonica player (apparently Bobby Lewis DiTullio) on his playing, especially on "Hideaway" (which the bass player, in particular, didn't seem to know). He turned around and said, "Thanks, I'm a f---ing mockingbird." King said he might have to give him that nickname.
The next day, Jeff and I took King to lunch at his favorite restaurant, the fried seafood palace Jack Dempsey's. All the waiters, with no exceptions, knew him and greeted him warmly, asking him when he was playing next. It's on the edge of the 9th and the Bywater, across from an abandoned parking garage, and it has a dropped ceiling and an old-school menu, where vegetables are rarely to be found. He told us about how he moved to New Orleans in 1957 at the age of 14 (post-war NOLA must've been a throbbing place of life and also of vicious oppression) after a school trip there. He talked about growing up in McComb, Mississippi. He talked about playing at the Dew Drop Inn, about playing every Jazz Fest other than one, and about how his first record (officially titled Harmonica Williams with Little Freddie King but long known as Rock 'N' Roll Blues, with Harmonica Williams) is out of print and can only be found for hundreds of dollars now (though it's on YouTube). He has a memory that's as sharp as his guitar playing and his dressing (he wore the same outfit from the night before, a purple suit with a do rag under a hat, the latter of which had a skull and crossbones).
Most remarkably, he talked about Lightnin' Hopkins being his cousin. He said that he had heard rumors to that effect and always noticed a similarity in their playing, until they were on a festival together, and Hopkins pulled him aside to talk to his kin.
We bought him lunch and told him how grateful we were that he had returned to health after a bicycle accident (he is well known for biking around New Orleans) and he said that he was glad he elected not to have surgery and let his body heal on its own.
After dropping him off back at his duplex in the Musician's Village, he invited us in and showed us his Gibson guitar, which he had modified himself. (Tim Duffy later told me that he tricks out all of the bluesmen's guitars in New Orleans for them.) He invited us back any time and told us next time to bring our instruments. I hope it isn't too long until we can take him up on his generous offer.
Little Freddie King is a Music Maker partner artist and your donation helps him and artists like him. He is also a Ponderosa Stomp favorite.
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