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When he was about 14 years of age he got into an argument with his white boss,
George Crumble, which ended with Eddie putting a hay fork into Crumble’s back. He
had no idea how badly he had hurt him, but had no choice but to flee. The Arkansas

Beale Street, Memphis, TN

State line was only a quarter of a mile away, but Eddie kept going for 60 miles, ending
up in North Memphis, Tennessee, where his Mother lived. “Man, there was 1,000

men came looking for me. If you a Negro and you do something to a white man down
there - boy, there would be 95,000 white people come to look for one man - and I
was only a little boy. So that’s how I left my home”. Incidentally, other accounts are
that it was actually a fight with another (white) youth that resulted in the stabbing

- I guess we will never really know.

It was in Memphis that he started to take a serious interest in music - “I first started

to play harmonica. I didn’t like it because it seemed like such a poor excuse for a
musician in those days. So then I tried to play a little guitar and I learned to play 2
melodies. I played a lot of gigs playing guitar but I wasn’t really playing nothing. I

liked guitar but I never could halfway master the instrument”.

At age 17 he teamed up with trumpeter Eddie Childs and drummer Robert Garner,
and formed a small combo, playing afternoons at a local cafe, and generally learning