David Gill Guitar, Much Less Play One Like He Did, but He Said He'd Give Me a Listen, Anyway

Home , Woody Guthrie

though Okies didn't have much of that, neither. I heard this one Okie named Woody Guthrie on the radio playing folk music and People's Song singing songs I liked, so me and my banjo hitched down to Tijuana to talk him into a try-out. (Bound for Glory, 1978) On meeting him, I told Woody he was too runty to pick up a by David Gill guitar, much less play one like he did, but he said he'd give me a listen, anyway. His studio wasn't much but cork board and egg crates and two stools with a microphone for Woody and his partner, Lefty Lou. Their first number was the theme song, then "The Rangers' Command." I tuned up, and when Woody busted a oody Guthrie has shown up again in my hospital room, string, I helped finish the song off. Don't know what made me and he's swigging from a bottle of cheap whiskey, like the happier, playing on live radio or standing next to Lefty Lou in her first time he wandered in here two nights ago. I frilly dress that just did cover up her knees. Then Woody W introduced me to the audience of "unseen friends" as "a string recognized him right off because of the scrawny build, the wild hair, and the guitar slung on his back, labeled this machine bean boy like Goldilocks. Keeps sneaking in the house when kills fascists. At night, the nurses leave my door open a crack. nobody's looking." Ain't anybody played "Cripple Creek" so fast They think I might give up the ghost if there ain't some light, but I before nor since. My left hand scrambled up and down the strings ain't never been afraid of the dark. Hell, between the machines so fast my right hand had trouble keeping time. I was about done, they got me hooked up to--one tube down my throat, another one and done in, when Woody did a two-pat and hollered "one more to feed me by--it ain't like I got a choice. I ain't dead, but this ain't time!" before he joined in and Lou followed along clapping. I exactly what I'd call living neither. couldn't go another round so Woody stepped up, and I moved into When Woody first showed up, it didn't concern me he'd been the background. dead almost thirty years. What bothered me was he didn't offer "You still got that picture of us outside the station?" he said, some of his booze, which wasn't like him at all. Not that I could and I could still smell the sweet liquor. A chord of light played drink any, but still, my mouth watered for some whiskey. against Woody's face, and I saw the patches of stubble on his "Evening, unseen friend," he said. "How are things out in cheeks. He didn't blink in the brightness, just took a nip from the radio land? How you like being cooped up in this government bottle. holding pen? I see from the look in your eye, you been I winked. Yes, I still got it, and he smiled like it meant the anticipating me." world to him. But I didn't have the picture. I had nothing left My eyes must have known something I didn't. A dead man I except this ragged body locked up in a room the size of a boxcar, a hadn't talked to in almost fifty years wasn't the visitor I'd expected. boxcar the bulls had nailed shut so the hoboes could get neither in He put his finger to his lips and grinned at me, his foot up on the nor out of. bed and that E-chord guitar ready. His shirt was untucked and "Didn't I commence to teach you about singing before you hit raggedy, and he smelled like the road, all dusty and sweaty like in the highway back North?" the days when we'd thumb rides back and forth to Tijuana where No, I wanted to tell him. Four months living off beans and rice we worked for radio XELO. so you'd teach me to sing and write songs, and I still wasn't "Don't try to talk, Goldie," he said. "I know you ain't up to it. anything more than a picker. You taught me then that balladeers like Just stop whatever you're a doing and let this lone wolf do the you couldn't be trusted to keep your word. howling for you." Even before Guthrie, nothing with strings was safe from Those words sent me back to 1936, when the Okies were Goldie Peoples. After hitching back to California, I played regular migrating to California, still trying to find heaven via US 66. I in the camps and in joints where black folks taught me to play the played fiddle and banjo in the camps some, mostly for my supper, blues. Then for years I hoboed across America and hooked 1 2

D A V I D G I L L PEOPLE'S SONG (BOUND FOR GLORY, 1978) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ….

up with everybody who was anybody on the folk and blues scene: The nurse sniffed the air. "Mr. Peoples, you been drinking?" Leadbelly, Blind Lemon, Woody, The Carters, Pete, Lee, and She smiled and lifted my head to turn the pillow and pulled my Brownie, just to name a few. White or black, I could fit right in on ponytail out from under my back. "Sure wish my hair would grow the circuit of rodeos, camp meetings, fairs, carnivals, rallies, street like this." corners, and empty boxcars. Skin color didn't matter to folks, long I didn't get my nickname from the long hair, which I haven't as you kept your trap shut and let the music do the talking. cut since I was discharged from the Army in '45. Folks credit me Then just when I was making a name for myself, this These with being the first hippie-folkie, but it ain't an honor I'd like strokes hit me, and they passed me along from nursing home to engraved on my headstone. Hell, who am I kidding? I'd be lucky if nursing home. Without family to watch my interests, my guitar anybody noticed I was dead. Woody was the artist, not me. I could got stolen, then my dulcimer, fiddle, mandolin and dobro. If I'd out-play him, no doubt, but his songs, simple as they were, out- settled down like Woody told me to so many times, I might have did anything I ever tried. He had this sparkle in his eye, like the passed on some of my craft. If I'd had a daughter, maybe she'd trickle of a stream coming off the Sierras, and it flowed into his been a good singer, or maybe even a picker like her old man. singing--and his drinking. Hells bells, I could throw down more "Ain't nothing like good whiskey," He took a swig and cinched whiskey than a roughneck, and Woody still made a better drunk the cap. "Too bad I ain't got none." than me. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down the throat. His pockets were stuffed full of scraps of paper, songs he'd written on I woke up the next morning , Woody's words stuck in my mind anything he could find. They were coming out the tops of his like a true pure note. Maybe that's what he had over me: the gift boots, too, and his pants pockets. A bar of light from the door fell of making his words stick. That's sure what happened after he got across his face as he kicked back in the chair beside me and made Huntington's disease. Folks came from far and wide to sit with up songs about a paralyzed man needing to piss, which I thought him, hoping some of his sparkle would rub off like bottled glitter. was comical and was laughing inside when he scooted the chair And in late 1960 that's just what I did when I hitched back closer. east to New Jersey to see him. The Huntington's had just about "You want that bad to learn to sing?" He whispered like it was wasted him away by the time he got committed to Graystone something sacred. "I tell you what, just listen to your child. Hospital, a place folks called "Gravestone." They didn't know he Children got the truest hearts and that's what makes the best was sick at first. Most thought he stayed drunk, but I knew music. Too bad you wasn't around to hear the music come from better. Didn't take much for me to see Woody alone at Graystone, your baby's loving heart and squalling mouth. You might have just a few bucks to the attendants who took me to him. learned something along the way." It was dark inside his room. The morning was just shining I wanted to say, I never had babies nor a wife, especially not through the bars in the window, more light than heat, and the three like you and a barrel full of younguns to sing and write songs shadows laid across Woody's back as he slept sitting up in a to. wheelchair. He put aside the guitar and leaned so close I could feel his I squatted down in front of him. His hair had turned gray and breathing. What's he going to tell me? I thought, and closed my grew even wilder, like a sheep needing sheared, and his skin hung eyes. But then the graveyard shift nurse came in. Woody loose on the bones. His head and arms jerked around, spasming, saw her, waved bye, and walked out the open door. I wanted to and he slobbered down his shirt. The wheelchair vibrated from cuss that girl like nobody's business because Woody was gone him moving constantly. So this was where he'd ended up after and his secret had walked out with him. running away from everybody and everything he 4 3

loved to escape a disease that stayed hot on his trail, no matter beside my bed and played. I wished then I had a sparkle in me how many freights he jumped, no matter how many jails he ended like Woody that made folks come to learn his secrets, to take what up in. he had to give and spread his words like dandelion seeds on the Steno books were piled beside his bed in the corner. wind. The light that shined in the boy's dark hair made me Temptation got the best of me, so I sat down on the bed to read remember some other dark hair braided like that, hanging over a Woody's words. Don't know what I was looking for. Treasure, pretty brown shoulder. Then I could smell her in the air, the maybe, or a map to the places Woody never would take me. Before sweet aloe she combed into her hair to make it shine. the disease overtook him, he had good handwriting. What was Chenoa, I called her, when we met in Yuma in '61 when I was written on those steno books turned out to be as wild as his hair, feeling lost. She taught me how to braid hair, and we made love in and I almost couldn't make out a word of it, the letters were so big my sleeping bag out in the flatlands and her scent was like a song. and erratic. The disease took his songs, now his words. With her round face against my chest, she sung her peoples' songs For the better part of an hour, I fretted over his writing until for me, and I knew I'd missed out on something. A breeze blew by, some of the chicken scratch made sense. He wrote that he was a piling the sand on top of us. The night sky went on forever, and teacher, not a singer. I figured right then that Woody had lost it. I the stars were so far away, they looked like dust. knew as well as I knew my name that he was a singer through and In the morning when I had to move on, she understood. On a through. Him denying his gift made me sad that I'd come all that lonely rode in the middle of nowhere, she waited beside me until a way and spent all those years waiting for him to keep his promise. truck stopped for my thumb. Though I could see the sadness in Now, he didn't have nothing left to give me. her good-byes, we stood two feet apart without hugging nor I closed the books and left them in a pile. Though he wasn't kissing, just her eyes singing in a voice as soft and brown as peaceful during the minute or two I stayed to watch him sleep, his doeskin. When I got in the truck and turned around, she had breathing seemed strong enough to keep that little body going. I already slipped back into the desert. The road went on for miles left him like I found him. with nothing ahead and nothing behind but sand. I never looked Over the years I've been cursed with my share of glitter back. seekers, ethno-folk professors and musicologists who ain't never If the banjo boy had come by the morning after Woody spoke felt the chill of a boxcar in a Nebraska winter nor ate dust by the to me, I would have found some way to tell him, You don't own the spoonful who wanted to record my picking. "The most versatile folk music. You just take care of as much of it as you can, for as long as musician in history," they called me. But that interest dried up you can. Then again, I was glad he didn't visit. I sounded stupid when my body did. Lately, though, this one boy has been visiting. and preachy, and I knew Woody would have done it better. He looks like a Hopi and has a braid down his back. He just showed up out of the blue and asked the nurses if I was Goldie The second night I waited for Woody until the nurse made her Peoples, the legendary folk artist. I would have told him, Son, ain't rounds, but he couldn't be trusted to show on time. It was way in nothing legendary about me except my drinking and singing voice, the night when he woke me up by humming in my ear. I could see neither of which my mama would have approved of. Though he him smiling in the light that leaked under the door. He wore his knew about my condition, he wanted to spend time with me and Army uniform, his cap turned upside down. practice the banjo. "How about singing one for me, Goldie?" After months of me giving him winks when he'd mess up and I scrunched up my eyebrows, meaning no deal. lifting my eyebrows when he was going good, he got to be a damn "How bout I steps in then?" The voice was like an echo in a fine picker. His fingers soon danced so fast I couldn't see them, deep well. I looked over and there he was, old Leadbelly himself, his picks were a blur of mother of pearl, and he sat for hours decked out in his pin-striped suit and polka-dot bow tie. "You 5 6

I caught Woody's eye and winked as if to mean, It's okay. No ready to sing some blues, Goldilocks?" hard feelings. Leadbelly bent a note and took me back to '46 when me and I woke up the next morning with the banjo boy on my mind. Woody met up again. He had talked me into playing some rallies He reminded me of the Shamans I'd met who had a knack for in New York, New York. I hadn't been in town more than a couple showing up in the right place at the right time. Around lunch hour hours when I got word some folkies were meeting in an he came in with his banjo. He said his hellos and started playing. apartment over at Washington Square. When Woody saw me come And this noon when I looked over at the boy with the long in, he lit into "John Henry," and we didn't quit until we'd stormed braid who'd come out of the blue, I thought maybe I'd missed through three more railroad songs. Then Leadbelly'd said, "You something before. I blinked fast to make him pay attention and white boys ready for some real singing?" and his twelve string thought real hard in hopes he could hear me. flowed along with his deep voice, "I'm leavin' in the morning, Sing to me, I wanted to scream so loud my voice would bounce Mama, but I don't know which way to go..." I hadn't heard blues around the room like an echo in a canyon. like that since I'd bummed around St. Louis before the war. While "What's wrong?" Leadbelly sang, Woody said to me, "Hear that hurting, that sorrow He put down the banjo and leaned over me, his ear an inch that makes him sing to keep his heart from breaking? Ain't a from the tube running down my throat. But I couldn't even rasp grown man alive can teach another to sing like that." out my meaning. In his eyes, I saw my Chenoa with her butter By then the Almanacs had come in, and we had a regular skin and the lines that creased her smile. hootenanny right there. A meeting was just another word for party Chenoa, I wanted to howl, Who is this boy? to Woody and at any party, he stole the show. He knew thousands The tears weren't welcome, and I shut my eyes to hide them. of songs, both made up and learned, and he naturally changed The boy touched my face to hush me. He sung a song and though them as the mood hit. I'd heard "This Land Is Your Land" be as I didn't recognize the words, the melody had a familiar ring. I peppy as a jumping bean and as lonesome as a poor white boy on knew that song, and I forgot the girl long enough to search the Beale street. We all sat around drinking and singing, and I'd had flatlands of my memory, then saw that he wasn't singing a folk enough whiskey to join in. Even drunk, I didn't sound good, and ballad: it was what Chenoa sang to me when she rocked me in her they asked me none too politely to quit fooling around as I was arms, and I drank her smell like a man dying of thirst. throwing them off-key. I shut my mouth and sawed at the fiddle, Are you? My eyes begged an answer. What was your mama's but my heart wasn't in it, so I settled into the background. Even name? though I could out-pick any man, woman, or over-sized child in But he couldn't hear me. He stopped singing long enough to the room, I knew I didn't have what they did inside. pick up the banjo. "I wrote this for you." He blew through a train Then last night, before Leadbelly got half-way through "Irene," song, his fingers dancing on the strings, the picks about to catch the damn IV machine started beeping and when the nurse came in fire. He bent his head, playing with his heart wrung out. I saw to fix it, Woody jig-danced around yipping, though she didn't sweat on his lip and the soul of his mama in the music. Then I notice. She hung up a new bag and checked my drainage and left realized it didn't matter if I could talk to this boy or not. the door open a crack. Leadbelly nodded bye and followed her on He hadn't come here to learn from me, but to teach me out. something nobody else could, and now, inside, I was smiling a Woody hung around a minute more. "It's about time I hit the road, smile and singing a song to put Woody Guthrie to shame. too. Just wanted to say sorry about not teaching you to sing 7 and write songs, Goldie. I just played around too much, I guess, *** or I figured on everybody being able to sing some, if their heart was in the right place."

So now I wait. Wondering if Woody's up for another visit, I About the author: David Gill is an assistant professor at the stare at the ceiling, the cracks in the plaster, a map of these great University North Carolina at Wilmington. United States and I count off the number of times I criss-crossed this land. This story first appeared in a slightly different version in as I'm up to forty-five and still going when I smell whiskey. "People's Song" in Writers' Forum, v. 22, 1996, p. 66-73. Changes Woody's thinner tonight, and he's got a slack-jawed look about from the original text were made by permission of the author. him. There's a sadness in his eyes, like in the days before he ran Permission is granted for reproduction for educational purposes. off to Topanga Canyon. Copyright, 1996, by David Gill. You all right? I want to ask him. Ash drips to the floor from the cigarette perched on his lip. "Well now. We're down to brass tacks. My tongue's about wore out from talking. Words don't mean a thing without a sound to go with them, so I'm dedicating this next number to my good friend." So he sings me a song that isn't like the boy's nor Chenoa's nor like the well-dripping echo of Leadbelly, and it especially and finally isn't Guthrie. I hear the desert wind sift the sand, as if it were blowing stars across a sky that goes on forever. It is me. My song. And then I pull my banjo out from under the bed and join in. Woody steps into the background and I play on, hitting the purest, cleanest notes any man ever made on any string. "You know how to make a song good?" he says. "Tell the truth. Make the most twisted knotted-up feeling you ever had in your life as clear and concrete as it possibly can be. Make it ring true, Goldie, even if it ain't got no words." Clear as a bell, I understand him. I take his bottle and pour whiskey down my throat. It burns like light. My door opens, and Blind Lemon picks up my song and Leadbelly follows him in, the twelve-string already humming. And Burl and Cisco and Don and Lefty, they all squeeze in, with more folks crowding out in the hallway. Pretty soon, we have us a dyed-in-the-wool, foot-stomping, hand-clapping, yipping and hollering, howling-at-the-moon hootenanny to beat all others. They hand me a dulcimer and a harp and a half-dozen other machines and holler for me to play them all. I promise I will, but first, because I don't want nobody to bust up our little hoot, I walk over and shut the door.