"On The Road With Muddy"
Select an excerpt from Paul's forthcoming book "Alone With The Blues"

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Chicago

"I moved into Muddy's house at Lake Park Avenue and 43rd street on Chicago's South Side. I was staying in the basement. Spann was in a room in the back. The front room belonged to Muddy's driver, 'Bo.' 'Bo' slept with a sawed-off shotgun next to his bed. When he was drinkin' he would have nightmares and shout out in his sleep 'move bitch, move motherfucker!' I was sleeping on a couch in the next room.

This is the place where Willie Dixon had rehearsed the guys on all those big numbers -- you know, with Little Walter and everything. Muddy had his Harmony guitar that he used at Newport hanging on the wall, and his Fender Bassman amp that Cotton used to blow through was there covered with red oil cloth.

One afternoon, I was hanging out across the street with guitarist Pee Wee Madison. This woman came home from work, and I said 'Hey, Barbara, what's happenin?' Next thing you know this guy comes out of the doorway and says, 'This is for you bitch!' Boom! Shot her right in the head. At first I thought it was like a cap gun or blanks or something like that. But then she sorta swirled down real slowly and her feet started kickin' up. Pee Wee looked at me and shook his head. I said, 'Goddamn!'

The guy that shot her was still standin' there, so I ran across into Muddy's house. Now I don't know what Pee Wee did. He might've just stood there. But I told Muddy, 'some guy just shot this woman!' Muddy was real cool. He just called 911 or whatever the number you called in Chicago was back then, and said, 'there's been a murder over here on Lake Park. You'd better send the police.' Then Muddy put a pistol in his waist band and walked out by his front fence and said, 'this motherfucker don't scare anybody.' The guy who shot the woman kept yelling and waving his pistol. The police came and they locked him up.

They say the woman didn't die. And the guy got out after six months and ended up being killed by the cops. The funny thing was that about two weeks before the shooting, I was drinking with this guy. He loaned me a water glass, y' know, an ordinary ten cent water glass. But Pee Wee kept saying, 'Make sure you give him back his glass.' He must have known the guy was crazy."

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The South

"The year was 1968, before Martin Luther King was assassinated, before the Watts and Chicago riots. The country was in turmoil, fighting the Vietnam War and the war for Civil Rights in the South. The times were changing.

I was riding in a Volkswagen van traveling on a winding highway somwhere near Tupelo, Mississippi with Otis Spann, S.P. Leary, Sammy Lawhorn and Bo the driver. Luther "Georgia Boy Snake" Johnson was driving the lead car, a station wagon, with Little Sonny Wimberly riding shotgun. Muddy Waters was relaxing in the rear seat. Everyone in the band carried a gun.

(Left to right) Paul Oscher, Otis Spann, S.P. Leary, Pee Wee Madison,
Little Sonny, Muddy Waters, Snake Johnson - Germany, 1968

As the band entered the town, a large railroad-sized billboard of a hooded KKK nightrider on a white stallion, reared up on its hind legs, greeted the band. The sign had a caption below it: "BEWARE, YOU ARE NOW ENTERING KLAN COUNTRY."

Everyone in the band saw the sign. No one spoke."

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St. Louis

"We used to play this place in St. Louis called the Moonlight Lounge. I remember the first time we went down there. We pulled up at the hotel and all these prostitutes on the corner started shouting 'Muddy Waters Band is here!' And they'd hike-up their dresses. I remember at the gig Muddy played 'I Just Want To Make Love To You' and I had this chromatic solo. I dropped to my knees still playin', and this woman yelled-out from the audience, 'Don't stop now baby! My drawers are wet!"

Muddy Waters And Paul Oscher
Miss Herbs Moonlight Lounge
St. Louis, Missouri 1968

Muddy would mesmerize the audience like a preacher. He'd walk all over the club singing and people'd shout 'I hear you brother!' '....Tell the truth!' Tell it like it is. I loved those shows. After the gig, we came back to the hotel. You entered the hotel through a barbecue joint and then in the back there was a bar and a piano. Spann would play the piano all night. We would shoot dice and hang out with the girls. You had people sitting in like Albert King. It was just a great time. I had a great time."

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Texas

"I remember one time in East Texas we were going in someplace to sit down and get a bite to eat. And the whole place just got quiet. It was a white roadside place. It just got so quiet. Six tough black guys with their hair tied-up with doo rags and me. No one said a word. Not a sound. The tension was incredible. We just decided to get take-out. Food to go. It was like -- did you ever see Easy Rider? The reaction of those rednecks when those hippies walk into the place -- but this was worse. It looked like that -- everybody wearing' cowboy hats. East Texas is really like Mississippi, almost."

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Anywhere, USA

"Andrew 'Bo' Brown was Muddy's driver and valet. He was a big, dark-skinned guy that liked to act mean. Bo would drink gin while he was driving. He said it kept him awake. He'd take a long swig of gin and say, "Ooh, I see the moon and the moon see me. Hah! God bless the moon and God bless me." Then he'd turn around and say, "Wake-up! Y'all sleeping' while I'm trying to drive."

At that time, Muddy was booking himself. We were zigzagging across the country: DC to LA, Chicago to Texas. One time we had to go from New York to Montreal, Canada. And there's, like, a straight route all the way up, right? Bo didn't know the way, so he went by way of Buffalo! Four hundred miles out the way. Stuff like that would happen. We'd miss towns. Some of the guys in the band couldn't read....everybody carried a gun."

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For additional reading check out "The Gift" by Paul Oscher, published in the companion book to the PBS series Martin Scorcese Presents "The Blues" page 223 and the essay by Paul's lovely wife Suzan-Lori Parks "How I Met My Husband" page 226.