Free Leavin' Trunk Blues by Ace Atkins Page B

that Muddy’s blues were too hip, too electric cool for the old set. But really it was a reversal. Melrose’s Bluebird beat relied on a light touch, a jazzy optimism. A mix of vaudeville and twenties novelty blues.
    The bleak, desperate sounds of the 1930s Delta artists had evaporated.
    When Muddy arrived in ‘43, his own sister told him: “They don’t listen to that kind of old blues you’re doin’ now, don’t nobody listen to that, not in Chicago.”
    After a failed effort with Melrose, Muddy would get a second chance with a style he’d learned from Son House and Robert Johnson. New independent labels were flourishing thanks to new, cheaper technology. Producers, like the Diamond brothers, also knew how to sell directly to their market—barbershops, salons, and stores in black neighborhoods.
    In the late forties and early fifties, independent record labels exploded like umbrella salesmen in a New Orleans rainstorm.
    All you needed was one big hit and you were off. Hell, Muddy was still driving a truck for a living when he recorded “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “Feel Like Going Home Again” back in ‘48, giving blues a kick in the ass. At first, producers weren’t sure if Muddy’s bottleneck style and almost field hand moan would sell in the city. But the record sold out twenty-four hours later. Down on Maxwell Street, even Muddy had to pay almost double for his own song.
    “ Late in the evenin’
    I feel like a goin’ home.
    When I woke up this mornin’
    all I had was gone.”
     
    A little slice of the Delta seemed to hit the spot for black immigrants, just like Ruby’s “Lonesome Blues Highway” reminded folks of the long journey. That kind of success, that kind of gamble, is why outfits like Diamond and King Snake started. The boom ended about the time Ruby went to prison. Rock ‘n’ roll and R&B were on the rise. Young blacks had turned their ear to new sounds and a white blues audience didn’t exist.
    Nick parked on a dead street where snowplows had stacked sludge like the banks of a dirty river. The iced wind blasted through his ears as he kept his hand on the car hood to keep from slipping.
    The front door to Diamond, a two-story building with a wide aluminum canopy, was unlocked, and Nick followed a hallway lined with pictures of old recording stars. A who’s who of Chicago greats. At the end in a large room, a group of children in matching blue T-shirts painted walls while listening to rap music on a battered boom box.
    “Mr. Jordan?” Nick asked.
    A kid with a lazy eye and plugs of hair missing pointed upstairs.
    Nick followed some rickety wooden steps to the old recording room. He heard someone whistling at the top of a rambling wooden staircase. Nick followed the slow tune into the old studio where he saw Moses Jordan in an undertaker black suit painting a door. Six black teens watched him demonstrate a painting motion. Jordan moved the paintbrush like he used to handle the drumsticks. Like it was born in his hand.
    He gave the brush back to a kid with a pick in his hair and said, “That’s how it’s done.”
    Jordan looked like an old-time weight lifter with a bulging stomach and short legs. His brown face was wide and flat with eyes burning with a permanent irony. A little perspiration shined on his forehead with silver hair ringing his bald head in an almost metallic glow. Somewhere in his mid-seventies, Nick guessed.
    “Travers?” Jordan asked.
    Nick shook his hand. Great to meet the guy. Jordan was in a class with Willie Dixon, Wolf, Muddy, and all the golden-era guys. He’d seen him talk in about a half dozen documentaries and read endless interviews, but they’d never spoken. Still, he felt like he’d known Jordan his whole life.
    “Gonna look like it did in the day,” Jordan said. “Got the old equipment and asked the families of those who’ve passed on to donate instruments. . . . Sometimes I feel like they’re still here.”
    “If they’re remembered, they