Speckled Red

[stefanwirz]

Illustrated Speckled Red discography

[alanbalfour]

The following is from Jazz Journal, June 1960 p. 3-6 (less half page photo). It's rather lenthy.

SPECKLED RED by DAVID MANGURIAN

Rufus Perryman is nothing more than a passer-by to most of the people in St. Louis—a pale but ruddy-complexioned, heavy-set man past his middle age, light yellow Stetson hat pulled down just above his squinted eyes, and a broad red tie faded from age showing between his wide-lapelled grey coat. They might encounter him riding the Page bus on his way to a pool hall on Franklin Avenue or in a small cafe close to Newberry Terrace where he now rooms.

But had they lived in the Black Bottom district of Detroit thirty-five years ago, or happened to see the Red Rose Minstrel medicine show somewhere in the South thirty years ago, or bought a beer at the World's Fair Bar in St. Louis just five years ago, they couldn't have helped but seen this same man sitting at the piano with a hat just as low to his eyes—his chubby left hand fingers nimbly walking a boogie bass while his equally clumsy looking right hand rocked out a version of the melody. But they would have known him as Speckled Red, barrelhouse piano player and author of The Dirty Dozen.

Passing through St. Louis in October of 1959, I had my first chance to hear Red play at a tape recording session in the home of some good friends. This was the piano that I was looking for; that I had heard on records but was unable to find still being played. Upon returning to live in St. Louis in 1960, I visited frequently with Red, taped and notated his remarkable story.

He was born Rufus Perryman in Hampton Georgia, on October 23, 1891. He was one of those rare individuals of the Negro race born an albino. His skin was white with the exception of a few scattered specks of darker-coloured pigmentation on his neck. His eyesight was extremely poor from birth. He was raised up in Hampton until he was about seven years old.

"Then my mother and them moved to Detroit, Michigan. We had some people there, an' so, we stayed there for years. I went to school there. I got about, oh . . . about the sixth grade. That's about all. I had to work, help take care the rest of the chil'un."

Every year after school was over young Rufus, as he was called then, would go back to Hampton to spend the summer on his grandpappa's farm. When he had to leave school he got a job at the Hennison Mann Company knitting mill in Hampton. He worked there from 1912 until 1917, when his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Apparently Red had married around this time, but he left his wife and returned to Detroit where he stayed for the next nine years. That winter he took jobs doing housework. It was during this time that he started fooling around with the piano.

"Used to live next door to a lady by the name Miss Fat; that's what we called her. She ran a goodtime house. She had a piano. I used to clean up for her, an' I always did like a piano. I tried to learn how to play, but had nobody to learn me. My eyesight was pretty bad, an' I couldn't take no music lessons. So, I just hear people playin', an' I'd try. But I never knowed how to play a song —just kept up a lot of noise.

"Well, I went down to the Koppien Theater one time, an' I heard a fellow by the name of Paul Seminole out of Cincinatti. He played a piece an' I liked it. Everywhere I went that piece stayed on my mind—I couldn't get it off, I don't care what I done. So I went home an' I went to sleep, an' I dreamed I was playin it. I got up the next mornin', an' I went over there to Miss Fat's and that song was on my mind. I went in at the piano like I did every day, an' started playin' that piece just like it was, an' the people thought I was a new piano player. All the girls come in there an' they believed I could play all along an' I wouldn't play for them. Ever since then I been playin'.

"Anything I heard that I liked—well I could play it. I don't care if I hear it on a Victrola or over the radio or anywhere—it don't make no difference. If I like it, well I can play it. Ain't nobody ever show me how to play.

"I could never see the keys well enough to see how my fingers went on the keyboard. I was born near-sighted. I couldn't tell which finger was hittin' which key. What I went by was the sound.

"I still play that same song. I play it today just like I did when I learned it. I don't even know the name of the song."

Red played in the Detroit area until 1927, mostly for house rent parties. There were plenty of them, and Red was busy seven days a week. People weren't making much money and rents were high. So the Negroes in the big northern cities devised house parties to bring in the rent money.

"It's just like the people have what they call clubs now. I meet at your house this week, a gang of us, all our members, an' then the next week the members meet at the next house, an' the next house, an' the next. Just until they all got around."

There would be gambling, refreshments and dancing. They'd have crap games, skin games, poker whist, five up games. The people would play cards for drinks, and the drinks would be bought from the house—all kinds of drinks, from soda to Bevo (an unalcoholic beer), along with sandwiches, pies, cakes, and chicken. But during these prohibition years. bottled liquor was hard to find.

"They didn't sell no whiskey or nothin' like that—oh, maybe they did slip some in there sometimes. Sometime they had some—what you call it?— lightning! They made it out a' banana peels an' first one thing an' another; I don't know what. But anyhow, they sold you that for a dime a glass. It taste kinda like whiskey, but it wasn't. An' you could buy a half a pint for a dime."

The drawing card for the house parties was the musician. Sometimes Red would play with a mandolin and/or a guitar, but usually he would play alone. And to his boisterous playing the crowd would get to dancing.

"That was the life of the party—dance! Oh yeah. You know, wasn't too much of a dance but just walkin' around anyhow. They done nearly all kind a' dances. One step, two step, an' all waltzes, an', what you call it—chatterin'. Black Bottom an all them. Every kind a' dance that come out well they done it. They all get out there and do rubs. They get to feelin' good an' all they'd need was a rug or a towel on the floor. And they had a dance they called Fish Tail. And we pitched ball! "

The parties would last all night long and the people who ran it would make sometimes nearly $100.

"Oh, they made plenty. They wouldn't a been givin' the party if they didn't. But as far as musicians, they never did. If you got five dollars, you was tops. You always got around three dol]ars, four dollars. When you got five, you was way up in the bracket. You was makin' big money! "

It was during this time that he acquired his nickname "Red". Down in Georgia, he was always known as Rufus Perryman. But his rosy complexion compared to his darked-skinned friends earned him the name Red. The name "Speckled" was added because of the scattered specks visible on his neck.

In early 1927 at a house party, Red met a group of musicians who were starting a band. There were four or five of them who played guitars, harp, cornet, and drums. They called themselves the Wolverine Nighthawks.

"But they didn't have no piano player, an' they got me in there with 'em. An' shucks, we went over big! The McKinney Cotton Pickers—we played against them out on Highway Avenue, at a big dance hall there. Of course we didn't win, but we give 'em a tough round!"

Red left Detroit late in 1927 and went to Memphis. He played in various bars and joints in Memphis, and he met and played with blues singers Jim Jackson and Tampa Red. In fact, it was through Jackson that Red got his first chance to record, late in 1927.

"Jim Jackson was already playin' for Brunswick. Oh, he had done made a hit with that piece he made called I'm Goin' Move to Kansas City. He knew the people that I was playin' for there on Maeweather an' Pauline, an' he'd come out there an' pick his guitar. So. Mayo Williams come to Memphis. Well, he come out there an' heard me play. He liked the Dirty Dozen when I played it, an' he asked me could I make it on record. I told him I never played on no record. An' then he say, 'Well, I want you to play on record. You'll get paid for it.' An' I said, 'Well, anything to make me some money!' ~

"So, I played it for him there, an' then he give me a 'signment to play. I went down to the Peabody Hotel in the basement floor. We recorded down there. I made eight songs that day: Dirty Dozen, an' Wilkins Street Stomp, an' . . . I can't think of the rest of them."

The records (at least The Dirty Dozen and Wilkins Street) were issued by Brunswick in March, 1928. Red Pot $125 at the time of the date, and $75 more a month later. He claims that the money was supposed to be for The Dirty Dozen. and that he never got paid for the rest of them. Two hundred dollars was a good fee for a recording session by a "race" artist in those days, but for Brunswick it was a cheap price. The Dirty Dozen became a big hit immediately. It was so well liked that it was learned in one form or another by nearly every blues singer of that time. The song itself written by Red, had an interesting origin.

"You know how boys do be around an' tellin' lots a foolishness, callin' different kind of names? One try to out-talk the other, an' played it when one beat the other one he say, 'Well, you put me in the dozen.' So, I decided I'd make a song. Heh! 'Course, on record it's all right. But I made it bad! When he wanted me to, put it on record, well, I just changed the words. It all mean the same thing but I just changed the words."

After Red's first recording session with Brunswick, Jim Jackson got him another job. Jackson had taken up with the Red Rose Minstrel Show, and the touring medicine show needed an additional man to play the piano. The show had a big tent and a group of musicians and. of course, sold medicine.

"They sold what they call Gen Sing. It had some kind of alcohol in it. Good for anything. Fact it wasn't good for nothin'! Sold different kinds a' soaps. some kind a' medicated soap. Oh they make plenty money! Don't need to worry 'bout that. He sold plenty medicine ! "

For years the show travelled all through the South. There were seven musicians with the show. Red played the piano for the band when some of the others were singing and dancing. But often he would be up on the stage himself cutting a few steps and cracking jokes as end man and one of the show's stars. But for all the fun, it apparently was exhausting work, for Red tells how Jim Jackson was moved to write a blues about it.

"That's where Jim Jackson wrote that song . . . when he was on that medicine show, about the Foot Achin' Blues. He'd dance an' we'd have to walk whole lots of times. Well, he made that song about the Foot Achin' Blues."

Meanwhile, Brunswick wanted Red to come to Chicago to record The Dirty Dozen 2.

"That's where they got me the second time I recorded for Mayo Williams. Brunswick Recording Company, in 1930. They come down in Mississippi and got me off the show. You know, when it was so dry that year. An' I made the second Dirty Dozen. I played some songs with Jim Jackson too: The time we went up there in 1930, I made some songs with him. Foot Achin' Blues an' . . . I can't think all the names."

Aside from the sides Red cut himself and with Jackson, he played on several that Tampa Red and Georgia Tom made. One of them was Goin' Back to Chicago. But for all the songs, he was paid even less than for his first session in 1928.

"I got $125 all told for all I made with Jim Jackson an' Tampa. Never found out how they sold, but everywhere I went I could hear them playin'. The depression was on an' I thought I had somethin' then with that $125. I never did have no sense then."

Red rejoined the Red Rose Minstrels after the sessions and played with them through the 1931 season. He tired of travelling with the show and for the next ten years he hoboed around through the South and the Midwest playing here and there by himself, sometimes staying a year or so in one town or another. Every so often he would hobo back to Memphis to play around with Jim Jackson until Jackson died in 1937.

Red usually avoided any real work but would often follow work around and play in the nearest tavern or dance joint. The hours were long and the pay low, but for Red it was worth it—it saved him from work and allowed him to continue playing.

"I was playin' in West Memphis, Arkansas, down there for Eric Seal. He wasn't payin' me but seven dollars a night. I played from three in the afternoon until three the next morning. Sometimes I'd be so wet with sweat . . . like I done jumped into the river an' come out. That's one thing I never did get tired of playin: I just get tired of sittin' in one place."

But for Red these years were the most exciting of his life, and he tells some good stories about them. One of these happened while he was still in Mississippi after he left the Red Rose Minstrels.

"I was stayin' in Greenville, I run a little dance hall down on Foresman and Gill. But every Saturday night I would go out there at a place called Hole In The Wall an' play for parties. And they gambled. They had a place out there they called the quarters. Nothin' but a gin an' one store an' whole lots a' housos.*

"An' so, I got to goin' with a fellow's wife there. He was the moderator of a lodge. So, we made a date to be there when it's lodgc night. An' so, I went down to his house that night, an' they had one a' them little ol' three room houses, 'shotgun' what they call it. Three rooms right straight behind one 'nother. But they didn't have no ceilin' on top the house. It was frame house, an' they just had the rafters up there. An' they had a few planks layin' on top of the rafters. They had one a' them fence gates at the front there. They had a little yard, but they had a fence gate. They had a bucket on the gate with iron in it, so when you pull the gate open, it shut itself. The old gate there had rusty hinges on it. It would . . . yaak!

"So, we thought he was gone for 'bout couple a' hours, an' after a while we heard the gate say . . . yaak! I jumped up an' would a' went out the back door, but the yard wasn't so long he'd get in the house before I'd get out the back door.

"So she said, 'Here come John! Here come John!' So I run in the kitchen an' got up in the loft. Was a couple a loose planks up there, they wasn't nailed down; just layin' up in there. I climbed up, got up in top the loft.

"He come in an' say, 'Well, some a' the officers wasn't there, so they decided they wouldn't have the meetin'. They put it off 'til Wednesday.' So he say, 'Well, I guess I'll eat me a bite an' go to bed.'

"He didn't have no electric lights. He had a lamp. You know how a light show in a dark room, it look like it goin' shine on me anyhow. An' I come a steppin' back tryin' to step in the shade where he couldn't see me. If I stayed where I was I'd been all right. But by me steppin' over there an' stepped on one of them loose planks just as he went to come in the kitchen. All at once that plank slipped. One end flew up an' I flew down . . . flew down on the table, turned all them dishes over . . . Wham! !

"The old man, he come a runnin'. He throwed the lamp down an' run out a the house like a late freight, talkin' about 'Hant! Hant! Hant!'*

"I liked to have kilt myself. I knocked my wind out or I'd be laughin' hard. I couldn't get out of that house. I opened that back door an' went out, an' she come back there an' fastened that door. Then she went runnin' out behin' hirn, 'Don't leave me! Don't leave me.' She knowed that wasn't no hant, but that it was me. An' everybody in the quarkrs come down there to see the hant! They come in there an' all the doors was fastened, an' all the windows was nailed down. They looked in there an' said, 'Well, never heard tell of a hant tearing up the dishes.' Then I went on around, up behind the other houses an' come back down there an' I'm goin' help them look for the hant too. I said, 'Well, what kinda hant is this? I heard tell hants scarin' people, but I never heard tell them tearin' up nothin'.'

"An' every Saturday after then, she used to come to town an' we used to get to laughin' 'bout that same thing. Every Saturday. I stayed down there 'bout maybe year, year an' a half."

Red travelled around everywhere by hopping freight trains. He returned to Memphis again, for about a year, and then played in a small town in Arkansas. west of Memphis, called Crawfordville. That year he followed the cotton pickers to Steele, Missouri, where he played for about a year and a half, and in 1936 he travelled to Kansas City, where he played around different bars for another year and a half.

There is no telling where Red was, all during his hoboing years, for one week he might hop a freight to Memphis, and the next he might be back. He travelled as far west as Colorado, as far north as Detroit, and as far east as Albany, New York. About this time Red found himself up in Nebraska where he met a girl he nearly married.

"I hoboed and brought a girl from Scottsbluff, Nebraska, to Kansas City! Her mother an' them hadn't seen her in five years. I brought her clean to Kansas City an' they thought I was goin' to marry her. I stayed there about three days an' I left an' come on here to St. Louis (laughs). Then I hoboed down there to Cairo (Illinois) when the flood was, 'an I hoboed away when the flood got there. They was goin' make everybody work on the levee an' I knew I wasn't goin' be out there. I'm scared a water anyhow, an' I wasn.'t goin' to put no sacks up on no wall or anythin'. So I slipped away at night an' hoboed away from there."

In 1938 he was called up to record again—this time for Bluebird. Chicago had barred race recording and the records were made in nearby Aurora, Illinois. Red cut sixteen sides including St. Louis Stomp, Louise Baltimore Blues, Down on the Levee, and The Right String Baby, But the Wrong Yo Yo. On two or three of the numbers Willie Hatchet (mandolin) and Leroy McCoy (guitar) accompanied him, and he played piano on some of the songs they made that same day. Bluebird was having tremendous success with blues records, and apparently Red's recordings did quite well. But out of the whole eight records he got only $75. After the Bluebird date Red returned to Memphis. He suffered the only illness of his life in 1940 and was hospitalized briefly for an abscessed liver. Red went back up to Steele, Missouri, in the fall of 1940.

"They come down to Memphis to get cotton pickers to come up in Missouri, an' I went 'cause I was goin' play at a joint of some fellow that I knew. He liked the way I played, an' I stayed there with 'im. Same as one in the family. We got famous enough there in Steele, me an' some girls an' boys got ourselves a little medicine show an' showed up there in theater in Steele an' Caruthersville, too. Oh, it went well. Then 1941, when the war was going' on, they said they goin' make everybody go to the field or somethin' other to work, if they didn't go to the Army. So I left Steele an' come to St. Louis. I wasn't goin' out there in the field. I wasn't goin' out there in the hot sun. So I came on here. An' I been here ever since."

But Red's good old playing days were over. He took a job at the Food Center working nights as a truck loader. Then two checkers had to go into the Army, so Red took over their job. Red's memory had been developed because of his poor eyesight and he could remember where everything was in the five story building, and could do the job faster. "What took them two boys from two 'til ten to do, I'd finish up in six hours an' then rest for two."

Although Red was no longer playing, and his rowdy hoboing days were over, he could not escape his ability to get into predicaments —especially over women. One of these occurred in a bar on Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis.

"A lady tol' me, well, you know how you go in a bar an' the lady says she didn't have no friends. An' I seen her in there two, three times. So I decided I'd go home with her. An' so, I went there to her house an', oh, we sit down an' talk an' talk an' had fun . . . had all the fun we wanted to have. After a while somebody come an' knocked on the door. Well, we's through havin' our fun. I's just sittin' on side of the bed there.

"He knocked on the door there an' she say, 'Who is that?' He say, 'You know who it is, so open th door.' An' she say, 'Shorty, I tol' you I don't... me an' you's through. I don't want you no more. I got company.'

"An' 'nother fellow was with Shorty, one with a gross voice an' one with a light voice. The other fellow say, 'Shorty, you want that door open?' An' he told him, 'Yeah.'

"The fellow says 'Back up!' An' he shot an' hit the lock. ..Boom! ! The lock flew all across the room an' I jumped out the window an' jumped on a mop handle. They got ash pits 'round there an' there was a mop in there. I jumped on the soft end of a mop an' the handle flew up an' hit me on the back a the head, an' I says, 'Lord, don't kill me, don't kill me!' An' there wasn't nobody out there but me.

"They come runnin' back down stairs an' say, 'Man, here he is, he's goin' down the alley. He's in the ash pit.' When they broke back downstairs an' run down through the alley, shucks, I run all the way from Jefferson to 10th an' Cole. He shot at me a couple a times goin' down the alley, but I was runnin' so fast they didn't hit me. I run in the police station there, an' they ask me 'What's the matter with you?' I say, 'They out there!' They say, 'Who out there ?' I say, 'They out there.' I was so tired I couldn't talk. "So they w nt out to see an', oh man, he say, 'There ain't nobody.' So I said, 'Just lock me up!' He says, 'No, you can go home.' I says, 'Not me! Now when it get day when I can see, well then I'll go on home.' That's one time I sit in the jailhouse office there 'til the next day, 'til the next mornin'!"

In 1945 Red lost the job with Food Center because of a union rule that workers had to be able to drive a truck. However, Food Center got Red another job with the Withneber Produce Company. Again his prodigious memory helped him, for after only a year he got to be the "boss." He stayed there for seven years.

During the ten years that Red worked for the food companies, he gave up playing completely. His working hours left him no time to play anywhere. Again he met a woman, and this time it brought him some good.

"I had a girl friend named Mattie Barr. Well, I wasn't doin' anything, an' she knew I could play 'cause she used to be down there in Missouri, in Saxton. I liked her, an' she wanted me to start playin' again. I'd go down with her at a restaurant . . what had gamblin' in the back on the quiet. When I first played, I couldn't. We'd go down there once or twice a week an' kept tryin', an' finally it kept comin' back better an' better. In a month or two it came back. The better I got, the more I'd go down there.

"Well, then he got to payin' me because more customers came in. Then I played 'cross from the bus station for three years in a place called the World's Fair Bar. That was in 1953, 54, and 55."

Meanwhile, the traditional revival was well under way. Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, and a flock of other very fine old time jazz musicians were rediscovered in the early 1 940's and brought back before the public. Big Bill Broonzy was making a big comeback in the fifties before a new and white audience. Many other old and famous blues singers were being grabbed up by recording companies, presented with amplified instruments, and stuffed into echo chambers to record a new kind of blues.

But Red seems to have escaped nearly all notice. A few short, unauthenticated paragraphs did appear in several guides to jazz and Folkways re-issued one of Red's old recordings on their History of Jazz. But no one seemed to know much about Speckled Red, much less know where he could be found. That was until 1954.

A St. Louis plainsclothes policeman, Charlie O'Brien, an avid jazz fan, became interested in locating old musicians while he was engaged in his police duties. One day he happened to break up a pool room brawl in which Red had become innocently involved. Upon further questioning, he learned who Red was.

News spread fast to the St. Louis Jazz Club and member Bob Koester of Delmar Records. Soon Red was playing again. He played intermission piano for a while at Jacovaks where the Dixie Stompers were playing, once on a boat, a few times at the Yacht Club, for picnics, and once for a music class at Washington University in St. Louis. Koester recorded rolls of tape for a record he intends to issue later this year. At the same time, Erwin Helfer recorded Red and issued three tracks on his Tone record, Primitive Piano.

But lately the jobs have died down. Red only manages to play once every six months or so—usually for the jazz club. He doesn't own a piano, never has, but to hear him play you would never guess it. He still plays with the same barrelhouse gusto, and his singing, if anything. has improved.

Today Red lives with a family on a little street called Newberry Terrace in St. Louis. He is sixty-nine years old, but you would not know it to look at him. He still wears a faded red tie and an old Stetson hat pulled low to shield his eyes. His sole income is a monthly old age pension check.

If you were to visit Red at night (he usually spends his day downtown), chances are you would interrupt him in a card game. A smile would be on his face as he brings the cards close to his face to see them, for he probably would be winning. No more gambling, but he is still quite a card shark. He would likely have a late dinner on the stove. Red loves to cook, and he loves pork chops. There would undoubtedly be a beer on the table. After you have stayed and talked a while and are ready to leave, Red will light out with a broad grin and say, "You be good, an' I'll be good as I can."

*A company settlement for the families who worked in the cotton field'
*Southern dialect for haunt, meaning spook— pronounced hint.