Nighthawk Blues

by Peter Guralnick

Genres: African American Historical; Biographical; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Peter Guralnick—in this, his only novel to date—draws on his rich storytelling skills and his intimate knowledge of music to create an an unforgettable character, and to give us an "engrossing, evocative" ( Washington Post) look at the blues life. The Screamin' Nighthawk is a legendary bluesman, an uncompromising musician, and a cantankerous old man awash in memories of road trips and one-night stands, recording sessions and barroom escapades, love affairs and driven, inspired, down-home music making. As Hawk travels back down Highway 61 to Yola, Mississippi, for what may be his last gig, the novel immerses us in the world of Hawk, his friends and family, the nursemaid manager he craftily evades, and the beautiful young blues singer who alone can crack Hawk's crusty exterior.

Release date: May 12, 2009

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Print pages: 258

Sample

Acclaim for Peter Guralnick’s

NIGHTHAWK BLUES

“An exceptional book. … In Nighthawk Blues Guralnick reaches for the most elusive goal of anyone who writes about music this passionate and complex — to make the reader feel the power of the blues, and the joy it offers.”

— Franklin Jones, Jackson Sun

“An ambitious novel. … Refreshingly different from the usual run of music fiction.”

— Simon Frith, Boston Phoenix

“Engrossing and evocative. … Guralnick is most moving in his depiction of the Hawk himself.”

— Harry Sumrall, Washington Post

“Guralnick brings the same sensitivity and loving attention to detail to his fictional characters that he brought to their real-life counterparts in his two wonderful collections of musicians’ portraits: Feel Like Going Home and Lost Highway.”

— Library Journal

“Unlike most efforts to explicate the mystery, majesty, and urgency of the blues, this book is grounded in a black voice — the ornery, weathered, contradictory, restless voice of the Screamin’ Nighthawk. … Mr. Guralnick takes a larger-than-life mythos and grounds it within the humble boundaries of tar-paper shacks and dirt roads, feverish one-night stands and jugs of demon whiskey.”

— Steve Dollar, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A true love story full of pleasure as well as pain.”

— Walter Carter, Nashville Tennessean

“Guralnick writes with tremendous feeling for the rough-and-tumble dignity of the Screamin’ Nighthawk.”

— Dave Marsh

“Peter Guralnick’s novel draws upon his vast experience of the music he has known and reported on, and he has turned his information into the stuff of people and feeling. We can all be pleased and grateful that Guralnick came to fiction. We knew he was a comprehensive reporter, and now we know that he is extraordinarily able as a storyteller, too.”

— Mark Harris, author of Bang the Drum Slowly

“As a search for depth and authenticity in an America that sees those qualities fading away, Nighthawk Blues says something to anyone who ever looked outside himself for something that can only be found within.”

— Don McLeese, Chicago Reader

“The author of superb nonfiction profiles of blues, country, and rock ’n’ roll artists, Peter Guralnick may very well have fashioned his ultimate portrait in the Screamin’ Nighthawk. … He has created a character against which we must no measure our own personal blues heroes.”

— Robert Hull, Creem

Prologue

WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY

As USUAL they were arguing—it was always about money or women or something that had happened in the dim forgotten past, and half the time it was a combination of all three. Hawk was driving, his hands gripped tight around the wheel. Teenochie sat next to him, stiff and erect, a derby perched lightly atop his shaven head. Wheatstraw kept one hand on the doorhandle, and every so often the door itself flew open, prompting cries of “What you doing, you crazy fool, you want to get us all killed?” and a squealing of car brakes.

“What you talking about?” Hawk’s voice boomed out unmodulated, filling the automobile as if it were a concert stage. “I been knowing that gal for fifty-two years, and she be doing tricks when I met her. That gal got a cock that’s made of whalebone, and your dick better be made of rubber if you want to last the time with her. One time she get a whole orchestra in the studio, and she do ’em all, sometimes two at a time. That’s why they call her Ma Grinder. She-it.” He chuckled to himself. “That gal keep all the nickels she ever made, she have more money than Rockefeller ever seen.”

Wheatstraw giggled, and the door nearly flew open again. He gave his Woody Woodpecker laugh and fished a battered harmonica out of his suitcoat pocket.

“Yeah, yeah, but still and all, she wasn’t no whore,” Teenochie protested. “She made some good records—”

“Shoot. Just because she whispered sweet nothings in your ear fifty-two years ago!” Hawk rolled down the window and spat contemptuously. “You think every pussy you get has got your name written all over it. You get them little old white gals come up to you at the colleges, say, Mr. Teenochie, play me some blues, and right away you be thinking they gonna suck your dick. Shoot. You couldn’t use none of that pussy no more anyway. You better off with a goat.”

“A goat!” said Teenochie indignantly.

“Yeah, just like that 3-in-1 oil, with a goat you can suck, fuck, or buck, then when you get tired of that you can cook it and eat it up—man, that’s where you really getting your money’s worth.”

Hawk guffawed heavily. Teenochie sent daggers of resentment with a lopsided, gold-toothed grin. Wheatstraw ran his lips over the mouth harp, closed his eyes, and dreamed of Arkansas.

“You think they give you a good count?” said Teenochie, taking a long pull from his bottle and pointedly recapping it without offering Hawk a drink.

Hawk nodded. “Don’t make no matter. They got it worked out between them.”

“Who? That kid and Jerry?”

Hawk just grunted.

“Well, Jerry ain’t so bad, man. Not like some of them managers I had. At least the cat is trying.”

“She-it, I wish he try a little harder and just get out of my life,” said Hawk. “I get along fine before I ever knowed that boy, and I get along fine after he be long gone. Sometimes he act like he don’t even think I been out here before, but I been out here for sixty years, before I knowed him, before I knowed you—

“I don’t like playing in no college gyms,” Teenochie cut in, not wanting to hear any more of what Hawk had to say, not wanting to put up with any more of Hawk’s emphatic opinions. Ever since they had been out on the road, for nearly a month now, he had had to listen to Hawk’s stories, he had had to endure seeing Hawk get the credit which, if there were any justice in the world, would go to Teenochie Slim, he had had to suffer Hawk’s impatient correction and practical jokes—and he older than Hawk himself and practically having given him his start in the business! He had pleaded with the boy, he had told Jerry that Teenochie Slim was a solo act, but the boy wouldn’t listen, evidently Hawk had taken the boy in, too. He said, “Hawk and I are friends, we’ve worked together for a long time now.” Friends! That motherfucker wouldn’t know the meaning of the word “friendship.” Well, that was all right, Teenochie thought. He would get his own back in the end. He always did. He twiddled with the radio dial, but the radio, of course, didn’t work. “Sound of the piano get lost in them gyms,” he said. “Boy didn’t have it miked properly tonight.”

“Hunh!”

“You asleep or awake? I can’t never tell, cause your eyes be open all the time. You still awake?”

“I must be awake. I can still hear your yammering.”

“And another thing. I don’t see why you got to go on last all the time. Just as many peoples there to see me as there is to see you. It make more sense, I think, if I be out there playing piano behind you, then I just stays out there and does my little number at the end.”

“That’s all right,” said Hawk imperturbably. “We just call up the boy and tell him. You know, you stomping all over me tonight anyway—I don’t think I want to hear no more piano when I be playing.”

“What you talking about, I be stomping all over you? I couldn’t hardly hear myself, your git-tar was turned up so loud. Hey, where you going? You wandering all over that center line.”

Hawk said nothing. Wheatstraw woke up and started playing his mouth harp, a sad, lonely, achingly astringent blues that seemed curiously at odds with the franchise-cluttered highway. “That’s pretty,” said Hawk, nodding his head. “Play some more.”

Wheatstraw, who scarcely needed encouragement in the first place, beamed. “Yeah, it be better to play than to talk,” he said, in a statement that pretty much summed up his personal philosophy. It was then that Teenochie saw the truck. They seemed to be heading straight for it. “Hey, Hawk, hey, Hawk,” he said, not worried at first, thinking it was just another game Hawk was playing. When he looked over, Hawk was still gripping the wheel, still staring fixedly ahead, but seemingly not seeing anything. “Hey, wake up, you crazy motherfucker,” Teenochie screamed. “Don’t you be doing me this way.” Wheatstraw just kept on playing.

I

RHYTHM ROCKIN’ BOOGIE

JERRY was in the middle of an uncharacteristic sequence of conference calls—shifting phones from ear to ear, trying to act casual, as if it were really he who was negotiating another big-time deal instead of that improbable impostor who had taken over his true klutzy self—when his secretary, a high-school dropout in blue jeans and pigtails, sailed in oblivious and tapped him on the shoulder. He stared at her, looked out the window, listened to what Sid and the lawyer each had to say, watched the kids run through Harvard Square and the traffic jostle noiselessly along. He raised his hand—no interruptions, he said with a gesture, knowing that Stephie wouldn’t take that kind of ceremony, she would just give him shit about it afterward. Over in the corner was a bar, though Jerry never drank alone and rarely had people in. The big-screen color TV had a game show on; the women were exclaiming silently over a new, all-purpose, all-in-one appliance which, if you believed all the claims made for it, could only help implement Thoreau’s advice to simplify, simplify; the MC cooed with his patent-leather hair and stay-press soul. …

“It’s Hawk,” Stephie said loudly.

“Look, could you, I’m sorry, could you hold for a minute, look, why don’t you guys just, uh, talk to each other, I just, something just—What?” he said to Stephie, knowing full well what she had just said.

“It’s Hawk on the other line.”

“So?” He stared at her blankly.

“He’s calling from the hospital,” Stephie said.

This was ridiculous, he was thirty-six years old, he might in some quarters even be considered a success, he didn’t have to apologize to anyone. …

“Look. I’ll call him back.”

“He doesn’t sound so good,” she said. She dabbed at her eye. Did Stephie, too, have feelings that extended beyond the next Springsteen concert? Oh, shit. Why did Hawk always have to be his problem? Truly sometimes he wished he had never met—but then, of course, he would never have met Lori, whose contract he was in the midst of renegotiating. In fact everything that had happened in the last ten years, good or bad, was in some way connected with Hawk. He wished he were married. He should long ago have come to some resolution—

“Look, gentlemen, something’s come up.” He sensed the consternation at the other end. Did they think he was getting smart? Did they think he was getting cute in his old age? What was there to get cute about? Lori hadn’t really made any money for the company, 120,000 units on her last album, sure, but what was that compared to her potential? And there was no way she could live up to her potential if she wouldn’t guarantee a minimum of personal appearances, if she wouldn’t promise to follow up the next album with a full-blown personal tour. And that she wouldn’t do under any circumstances. She insisted on seeing her music as art, not commerce, making the records the way she wanted, when she wanted, and with whom she wanted. He’d be lucky if he could get front money of $50,000 for re-signing, and this was for an artist who everyone agreed could be a monster. Which was the only reason they still wanted to hang onto her. They didn’t want to let him go, but he was firm. Who knew? Maybe this would jack up the price another $25,000.

“Yeah?” he said, jabbing the button on the phone console.

Hawk’s voice sounded whispery and far away. The familiar hoarse rasp was barely audible.

“Something happened, boss.”

Jerry was annoyed. What the fuck did he have to call him boss for? He knew how it irritated him. It made him look like an asshole. He supposed that was why Hawk did it. Hawk thought he was an asshole. After all he had done for Hawk, practically lifting him out of the gutter—well, out of the Sunset Cafe in Yola, Mississippi, which wasn’t far from it. A ludicrous fate for this man who was virtually a legend in his own time, a source, an inspiration, an unreconstructed—Jerry was embarrassed at the rhetorical flourishes even his imagination conjured up after all the similar flights of fancy he had served to the world, both before and after meeting their subject—genius. “Nigger,” Hawk corrected him in mournful, dolorous tones. “You know, boss, I ain’t nobody’s angel child, just another nigger baby trying to get along in the world.”

“An accident,” said the voice on the line. “We just about made Indianapolis.”

Jerry began to get worried. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent them out alone. Three septuagenarians in one of Hawk’s interchangeable twenty-year-old piles of junk on wheels. The Blues Express, his idea—they should be playing Notre Dame tonight.

“What kind of an accident?” Jerry’s voice rose in concern.

“How many kinds of accidents is there? Ain’t never heard of a good accident myself. Wheatstraw gone.”

“Wheatstraw’s dead?”

“Yeah, that simpleminded fool done gone to his reward. He couldn’t hardly talk, but he could play.”

Jerry thought he must have come in in the middle of some bizarre joke. “He’s not dead?”

“Went flying right through the fucking windshield. I saw him. Man, I know. He looked like some big bird just about to take off. I say, Hey there, motherfucker, you think you can fly, so that’s what you mean when you sing about that old flying crow?” Jerry thought he must be losing his mind. Was Hawk chuckling softly under his breath? “He didn’t never do nobody no harm, he were just simpleminded from a kid on up. I told you, man, I didn’t never want to do this tour. Didn’t want to be no blues legend.”

Little beads of sweat stood out on Jerry’s forehead. Wheat-straw dead. Hawk was right, it was his fault. Hawk hadn’t wanted it. Hawk hadn’t wanted the tour in the first place. But Jerry had seen it as the opportunity for one last payday. In the ten years that he and Hawk had been associated, trends and styles had several times changed, and the wave of nostalgia which had unearthed the great blues singers in their sixties and seventies had now passed on to something else, bookings were fewer and farther between, and old black men were no longer fashionable on campus. Jerry didn’t tell Hawk any of this, but he had conceived of this tour as a kind of farewell appearance on campuses across the country and promoted it as such. Three old black men. The Screamin’ Nighthawk. Alex Wheatstraw. T&O “Teenochie” Slim, the piano player.

“How about Slim?”

Hawk mumbled something.

“What?”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with Mr. T&O Slim that a gag in the mouth wouldn’t cure. Man, what you send me out with that sorry-ass motherfucker for? Always getting fucked up by them pretty young things. Oh, Mr. Slim, would you teach me how to tickle them ivories? Tell me about the time Mr. Lester Melrose brung you up to Chicago so’s you could make your classic sides with Big Bill and Tampa. Tampa, shit, can’t even tie his own shoelaces, and Slim couldn’t never keep his yap shut, dawn to dusk, drunk or sober, whether he knowed what he was talking about or not, he always be shooting off about something—”

Oh shit. Oh shit. He was going to have to go out to Indianapolis, he knew he was, he was going to have to straighten out this whole mess—

“Well, look, how do you feel? Do you think you can hang on for a little while? I’m kind of tied up here right now, but I can catch a plane later tonight or tomorrow morning.”

The voice on the other end audibly weakened. “Well, you know, boss, I ain’t doing all that good, really, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. Why don’t you just stay where you are, I don’t require nothing, ain’t no need to call Mattie, I don’t suppose. They say it must have been some kind of shock, but I’m coming along real good now. Won’t be no time, boss, before I can get around on my own, you know.”

Jerry had visions of old black men reproaching him in his sleep. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his responsibility. “Look, I’ll be out,” he said. “You just tell the doctors or whoever that I’ll be out, I’ll straighten it all out—”

There was only a satisfied silence at the other end.

He hurried to get ready, called the airport, shaved around his beard and drooping mustache, observing himself all the while with soft self-pitying brown eyes. He packed a light suitcase, called back CBS, and then explained to Stephie what was going on. He gave her careful instructions to close the office at five, put the phone on answering service, and not bother to show up until he got in touch with her in a few days. He called the wire services and tried to think of anything else there was to do, and when he couldn’t then he made the call.

She was in New Orleans for no good reason. She had gone down there with her bass player, who was black, fifty-two years old, a junkie, a physical wreck, and had played with every prominent New Orleans musician for the last forty years. By sheer chance he got her after only a couple of calls at some old jazzman’s house. He didn’t have to explain, he knew he wouldn’t; that quality of passionate intensity that seemed so at odds with her flat self-conscious speech patterns came into play almost before he got the words out. It was the same quality that transformed her singing voice into a graceful, soaring, instinctive instrument that seemingly had little to do with plan or intention. Was there anything she could do? She’d fly out right away. She would, of course, pay for Wheatstraw’s funeral, at least help out, she insisted, when he mumbled that wasn’t necessary. Here were some numbers where she could be reached. How was Hawk? Jerry answered all the questions slowly, patiently, all the while seething inside. There was never a word, of course, not a single word, about her discoverer and mentor—how he was, how he was bearing up under the strain, how terrible it must be for him. She was, after all, his discovery; if she had the talent he was the only one with the willingness to advance it, to promote it, to indulge it, to put up with her absurd middle-class guilt, the lack of necessity behind her art. Her public should give him a medal, they honestly should, because without him—oh, it was absurd on the face of it, he was just distorting the reality. It was Hawk, not Jerry, who had first heard that something in her voice, it was Lori herself who had sought and captured Sid’s attention. Still, if it hadn’t been for him, she might still be in ethnomusicology getting her Ph.D. somewhere, playing timid botdeneck behind some decrepit old bluesman the local Blues Appreciation Society had brought to town, beautiful, deferential, effacing herself and her talent. Her pictures surrounded him mockingly, each click of the camera undeniably capturing some aspect of her appeal but somehow leaving the inner self untouched. Her eyes calm, still, playful, her lips pursed in an oddly self-satisfied smile, her blond hair whipped around her face no doubt by one of those vigorous blushing denials, elusive, teasing, inviting, sensual, the whole obscured by each of the parts, the whole somehow untranslatable—

He knew now what he should have done. He should have hidden her talent from her, he should have denied it when others spotted it, never even hinted that it might exist. But that hadn’t been an option. That had never been an option. She would have realized, someone else would have told her, and then he would have lost her anyway. He hung up the phone bitterly. “What do you say?” he said to himself, not for the first time. “What do you say?”

At the airport he was as confused as ever by the dizzying rush, the isolating busde. They were just thousands of strangers gathered under one roof. And yet somehow, as he always did, as he always would, of course, he got through. On the plane he ordered a double Scotch and then another, setded back, sailed into the sunset, and closed his eyes for a brief troubled dream before the rude shock of landing jarred him awake. At the claims area he hung around waiting for his bag, eyeing the black porters, black taxi drivers, black maintenance men, middle-aged and elderly, any one of whom for all he knew might be another Screamin’ Nighthawk, another castoff from another life who might be sought out and lionized by a community of whose existence he could be only dimly aware, while he was himself insignificant and anonymous within his own community. God help him.

At the hospital they gave him a hard time, because it was after visiting hours. It didn’t seem to make much difference that he had come all this way, nor were they interested in who the Screamin’ Nighthawk was. What they were interested in, of course, was who was going to pay the bill. Indianapolis had enough indigents of its own, thank you, said the admitting nurse, taking down the scanty information that Jerry was able to provide—born December 27, 1902, 1900, 1899? Given name: T.R. Jefferson. Social security number? Jerry almost wished he had brought clipping. . .