Page 26 - BiTS_10_OCTOBER_2022

and during that time I could only play for my own people. It was a big hole until I come to
Europe in this late life of mine and I’m really enjoying.

I opened at the 100 Club, Oxford Street and when I got here I never went back. I sold my boat
ticket. I knew I wasn’t going back. So I
married an English girl and I have two girls
and any day this month I’ll have another
baby but I hope it’s a boy. I live in Halifax
now. You ever come to Halifax, just ask
anyone, and they’ll put you direct to my
home. I love to live there, it’s my wife’s
home. I think I might run for mayor. The
people are so very nice. I like small places, I
don’t like London. I don’t like places with
too much atmosphere when I don’t feel
welcome. There’s too much competition
between people who start trouble and I
don’t like to be in those places. I like to be
where everybody is just people.

I used to record with Sonny Boy and when
he come from here the last time, he told me
to go to Europe. He said if you go there you
won’t come back. And he was right. I come
here and I didn’t go back.

Some blues guys are not used to white
people and they’d rather go back home. It
took me about six years to get used to it.
That’s why they go back. But me, I never went back. If I was to go back and a white man was to
throw a glass of beer at me or spit in my face I’d kill him you see, because I’m used to nice
people and I couldn’t take what I did so I left. I wouldn’t be thinking about any lynching, I’d kill
them. So I don’t want to go back.

Yes, it used to be that they’d spit in your face and do anything they want to you, and you
couldn’t do anything about it because if you do you get lynched, so you just had to take it. But
since I’ve been living here with people, I wouldn’t take it. Hit me! I’ll kill the bastard, I’d kill
him in a minute.

Eddie Boyd is living over here now in Brussels, but I don’t know if he’ll stay, but he’s over here
now. Curtis Jones is over here too, I brought him here. So America loses all the time, they don’t
gain. They don’t have to send for me ‘cos I’m home and I play in my own style and I give you
enough of what you want. Not 10 minutes, I give you enough!

I’ve taken out British Nationality – I’ve got a British passport.

I must be the first British piano blues player from New Orleans.

In Britain, there are some good blues players – Mayall, Green, Clapton. They do a good job, but
they don’t sing their own life – they sing my life. I’ve been mistreated so long, I can sing my life.
You have to go through this life to feel it. So if you’ve never been a slave, you can’t feel a slave.
Even the young coloured blues men, they can only sing from what they hear – they don’t sing