With Washboard Sam

by Randy Burns

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It was October in Greenwich Village, 1966. I had been playing as the permanent opening act at the famous folk club The Gaslight. It was the folk club to play. There wasn't a better gig in the Village -- not for an eighteen year old, new to the road and the urban folk revival in New York City. I was playing week after week with the biggest folk stars of the era, most of them I'd only read about or listened to on records. Clarence Hood, the owner of the Gaslight, made it his business for me to know everyone that was anyone in the folk world then, and the Gaslight on McDougal Street was the center of the folk world all through that amazing era. I knew the gig I had was folk Heaven, but I still needed a break. Mr. Hood (I always called him that, never called him "Clarence" like some of the other singers because I had too much respect for the man) he would let me come and go as I pleased, and leave my job open for me to return to on a moment's notice. You just couldn't beat that!

Randy Burns

Mike Porco had asked me to do a week over at Folk City, second bill for an act called "Julia and the New Olds" I'd never heard of them, but the money was good and that was the break from the Gaslight I needed. I said, "yes," to Mike, and my week at Folk City soon began.

On opening night, which was always a Tuesday at Folk City, the opening act went on, and a few minutes after he was done I did my set. It went very well, I thought. Yeah, I sounded pretty good. I put my guitar in its case in the basement then came back upstairs for a beer at the bar. After only a few sips came: "Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in welcoming to Folk City, Julia and the New Olds!"

There was a decent crowd and they applauded politely. No one knew where Mike Porco had found this act, but it was unique. Julia was an okay singer. That is to say, when you heard her sing you said, "Okay." That was about it as far as her voice was concerned.

Now we'll move on to her musical backup. Julia didn't play an instrument so she needed musicians. She hired two men to play behind her so she could sing for the week. One was a tall skinny black man that played electric guitar. The other guy was much older and the only thing he played was a washboard. Yes, Julia's band consisted of one electric guitar and a washboard. Even for the sixties it was a strange combination. While Julia was on stage singing, the guitar player and the washboard man remained conspicuously in the background. They were both good, really good, and you could tell the two of them were having fun. Almost like they had an inside joke going on, or they knew something we didn't.

Around the middle of the set, Julia left the stage for the guys to do a song by themselves. A real show-biz kind of thing, but she paid dearly for it.

The guitar player broke into a free, easy riff, and people's heads started bouncing up and down. He played that riff a few times over then in crashed the other guy on the washboard. From there they fell into an irresistible groove when the washboard man began singing. "Diggin My Potatoes."

It was great; everyone there was completely blown away!

When they finished the song the audience went crazy, the two of them had smiles as big as their faces. Then it occurred to me, Julia now had to return to that stage. Oh man, you just couldn't follow that.

She couldn't, and the remainder of the show was lifeless.

I fell in with those guys easily, drinking and telling stories in the basement of Folk City. The beers were free in the cellar and you could grab another one whenever you wanted. We'd spend time at the bar in the showroom, too, but the drinks up there would go on our tabs.

I don't remember the name of the guitar player, but the washboard player, Sam, he and I got along like we'd known each other forever. On a couple of nights the three of us would be drinking in the basement and the guitar player would start an argument with Sam. The first time that happened, it escalated quickly and the guitar man pulled a knife. I jumped up and tried to slow the whole thing down, but Sam said to me, "Don't worry, he's never used the damn thing on anyone. He pulls it out a lot, but he'd never use it. Goddamn fool!"

Sam was right, he pulled it a few more times that week and even I ignored him.

On the fourth or fifth night of our gig, a friend of mine named Spanks came in to catch a set. Julia and the "boys" were on, while Spanks and I drank beer at the bar.

(At the end of the previous evening, Julia had fired both Sam and the guitar player for doing "Diggin My Potatoes," after she'd told them not to. They had promised her they'd do a different song. She strolled off in the middle of the show feeling comfortable about not being upstaged again, when they jumped right into it. Again it tore down the house.

When the next morning came she called up and hired them back. She had to, or she didn't have a show. Julia knew that. What made it more fun: they knew it, too.)

Getting back to my friend Spanks, he and I were at the bar. Julia had left the stage again, this time only hoping. Then came the riff, in came the washboard, and Sam was soon singing and taking the crowd's spirits up to his place.

Julia came back on stage pissed, and from there they finished the show.

Sam came over to the bar to join me for a drink, so I introduced him to Spanks. "Spanks, this is my friend Sam. Sam, meet Spanks."

Right then everything changed. As soon as Spanks heard me call him Sam, he put it all together.

His eyes suddenly opened wide, "Not THE Washboard Sam?"

Sam broke into a huge grin, "Sure, that's me, I didn't think no one remembered!"

Spanks started rattling off almost all of the songs Sam'd recorded on Bluebird Records. He was pumping Sam with a million questions, but Sam was loving it. They talked about Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, Bukka White and Roosevelt Sykes. Spanks treated Sam like royalty.

I'd never seen him act that way. I didn't know anything about the names and songs they were tossing back and forth, but I'd heard the names, and I had heard of Bluebird Records. I realized then, sitting right in front of me was the very beginning of my musical education. Sam was a friend of mine, but he was also an original founder of the Chicago Blues.

Washboard Sam recorded over 160 78's. Many of them had Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes and Big Bill Broonzy backing him up! People say he was the illegitimate son of Frank Broonzy, Big Bill's father. He wrote songs for all of them. What made his popularity soar was not that he played the washboard better than anyone else on earth, but people really loved to hear him sing. I read that his popularity faded in the mid-fifties sometime, when he didn't crossover into electric blues.

He probably never told me because he thought I was too young to know much about those times. If that were the reason why, he would have been right. It was a good feeling listening to him talking to Spanks about it, and Spanks taking it all in. And for just a while, at the Folk City bar, he was "Washboard Sam" again. I felt lucky to be doing what I wanted to do, and quite honored to be friends with Washboard Sam. Me, an eighteen year old white kid from a middle class family.

Meeting Washboard Sam made Spanks' night, and it sure as hell perked up old Sam. If Spanks hadn't come around that night I would have never known Sam's story. To think he played that whole week with nobody in the audience knowing who he was or what he'd done.

Just talking one night, I asked him what he was doing now, where he lived?

Sam took out a picture from his wallet and showed it to me. "That's my shoeshine shop in Brooklyn," he said with pride, "I got all kinds of washboards hangin on the inside of it, too!"

For the last three nights of the gig, Sam and the guitar player got fired and rehired two more times. Still, God bless him, to the very last set on the very last night, he drove the audience wild singing "Diggin My Potatoes."

After that night the week was over. We said our goodbyes, Sam and I. "If you're ever in Brooklyn, Randy, you come stay with me," he said. "You'd get to see my shop" Then Sam disappeared down West Fourth Street heading home to Brooklyn. Back to a place surrounded by washboards, inside and out.

I went back to sing at the Gaslight again. On to more stories and new people. But yes, yes indeed, that was the break from the Gaslight I needed.

That all happened at Folk City in October 1966. Only recently did I read that Sam died early the next month on November 6th. You can read more about Washboard Sam on the Net, just type in "Chicago Blues" That's where you'll find him, and that's where he'll always be...

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RANDY BURNS has this to say for himself: " I started on the road as a folksinger in nineteen sixty-six. It was during the urban folk revival in Greenwich Village New York. I slept on subways and park benches until I landed my first paying gig at the Gaslight Cafe on MacDougal Street. I was only eighteen years old, playing every night with the biggest folk and blues stars of that era.

Sonny and Brownie, John Hammond, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs...and so on. While I was playing as the permanent opening act at the Gaslight, Missippi John Hurt died. That message was delivered on stage to the audience by Ramblin' Jack Elliott. It shocked the folk revival, making everyone sad.

A few years later I had albums out on Mercury and Polydor Records, came right to the very brink of success. I was playing all the top clubs in the country, then the business made me sick.

I broke all my contracts and went out on the road again as a folksinger, bag over my shoulder and a guitar in my hand. I owned nothing, and all the money I had could be found in the right front pocket of my blue jeans.

I lived that way another fourteen years after the release of my last album. I sang everywhere, lived on other people's couches, rode a lot of trains.

Now I write for the net. Fiction, Memoirs, Columns, Non Fiction. I've been published many different places on the web: Gadfly, Lovewords, Music for the love of it, Greenwich Village Gazette, 3AM Publishing, and on she goes. I've written a book about my twenty two years of traveling and singing. It's called "Before The Road Ended," (A Singer's Journey). I'm in the final stages of editing now. I'm a Connecticut man, but I once lived everywhere, back when small eras made legends out of time." This is Mr. Burns' first article for The World's Magazine.

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