records, contacts, dogs

When  a person thinks about World War II, we think about England and America being Allies, but when we think some more, we realize on our respective home-fronts, we did not have the same experience.  England was bombed by the Luftwaffe --

I was BORN -- in a crossfire hurricane --
Bomp-BOMM--ba ba BAH -- ba Bah BAH

Rolling Stone Keith Richards, born 1943, recalls the phrase "before the war" being what the adults used to say a lot, when he was a boy in post-war Dartmouth, a London suburb.

"Before the war it wasn't this way."
"Before the war we used to do it that way."
"Before the war..."

--------------------- [excerpt, K. Richards autobiography] ------------------ When I was growing up, it was heavy fog almost all winter, and if you've got two or three miles to walk to get back home, it was the dogs that led you.  Suddenly old Dodger would show up with a patch on his eye, and you could basically guide your way home by that.  Sometimes the fog was so thick you couldn't see a thing.  And old Dodger would take you up and hand you over to some Labrador.  Animals were in the street, something that's disappeared.  I would have got lost and died without some help from my canine friends. -------------------------- [end excerpt]

In his book Mr. Richards discusses anticipating National Service, upon graduation from school.  (National Service?  Some kind of -- peace-time draft, I guess....)

------------------- [excerpt] -------------- I had spent my entire school life expecting to do National Service.  It was in my brain -- I was going to art school and then into the army.  And suddenly, just before my seventeenth birthday, in November 1960, it was announced that it was over, ended forever.  (The Rolling Stones would soon be cited as the single reason why it should be brought back.)  But that innocent day I remember, at art school, you could almost hear a massive exhale, a huge sense of relief that went through the school.  There was no more work that day. -------------- [end excerpt]

------------------ [excerpt 3] ------------------- Mick and I must have spent a year, while the Stones were coming together and before, record hunting.  There were others like us, trawling far and wide, and meeting one another in record shops.  If you didn't have money you would just hang and talk.  But Mick had these blues contacts.  There were a few record collectors, guys that somehow had a channel through to America before anybody else.  There was Dave Godin up in Bexleyheath, who had an in with Sue Records...[break in excerpt]

Hang on, I've heard of Sue Records, but in only one other source -- Tina Turner's autobiography -- [excerpt -- I, Tina] --------------------- Ike sent tapes of "A Fool in Love"

You know you love him, you can't understand
Why he treats you like he do, when he's such a good man

to a St. Louis disc jockey, who in turn sent them out to several record companies, including Sue in New York City.  Sue was that rarest of record-biz phenomena, a label owned and operated by a black man.  Its proprietor, Henry "Juggy" Murray, had grown up on the streets of Hell's Kitchen dancing for nickels on street corners.

Juggy:
Ike sent "A Fool in Love" to every record company in the country, and every one of them turned it down.  I didn't know him from a hole in the wall when the tape arrived in my office.  But I knew it was a hit, and I got in touch with him.  He wanted to know how come I thought it was a hit and nobody else did.  I said, "'Cause they don't know."  Ike was a musical genius, but he wouldn't know a hit record if it fell off the Empire State Building and hit him on the head.

So I flew down to St. Louis.  Never been there before.  He sent his driver to pick me up at the airport in this long black Cadillac and take me to his house.  East St. Louis was a hell of a town -- had gambling twenty-four hours a day, and they bet down there like they bet in Las Vegas, I'm serious. ...[end, Tina excerpt] ----------

[return to Keith excerpt] ------------------- There was Dave Godin up in Bexleyheath, who had an in with Sue Records, and so we heard artists like Charlie and Inez Foxx, solid-duty soul, who had a big hit with "Mockingbird" a little after this.

~~ Google Mockingbird  Charlie and Inez Foxx > You Tube
~~ Google Mockingbird  James Taylor and Carly Simon > You Tube

Godin had the reputation for having the biggest soul and blues collection in southeast London or even beyond, and Mick got to know him and so he would go round.  He wouldn't nick records or steal them, there were no cassettes or taping, but sometimes there would be little deals where somebody would do a Grundig reel-to-reel copy for you of this and that.  And such a strange bunch of people.  Blues aficionados in the '60s were a sight to behold.  They met in little gatherings like early Christians, but in the front rooms in southeast London. ...

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