White Bicycles Read Online Free PDF Page B

move in to preserve or resurrect the form. Preservation Hall was run by Alan and Sandy Jaffe, New Yorkers who had fallen in love with New Orleans music and set up a tiny showcase for the musicians who still played in uptown funerals and parades. The Jaffes provided them with a regular payday in the French Quarter, where devotees, mainly European or Japanese, would pay homage. I stayed until the last note every night as George Lewis, Kid Howard, Kid Thomas, Percy Humphries, Billie & Dede Pierce, Alcide ‘Slow Drag’ Pavageau and Joe Robichaux improvised elegantly in a long-ago style.
    There were some surprisingly young players in the Preservation Hall bands. New Orleans is unusual for an American city in its ability to embrace the old and new simultaneously. As in Brazil or Cuba, musicians and dancers there follow the latest fashions yet can still demonstrate skills in fifty-year-old forms, a phenomenon seldom encountered in Brixton or South Los Angeles.
    I walked around the corner one evening into Bourbon Street, then not quite the drink-sodden playpen of Texas frat-boys and conventioneers it is today. Cousin Joe Pleasant, the member of the upcoming Blues and Gospel Caravan about whom I knew the least, had a regular gig there singing vaudevillian blues and telling tall stories. His signature tune was ‘I Wouldn’t Give A Blind Sow An Acorn, Wouldn’t Give A Crippled Crab A Crutch’, a wry send-up of the bragging blues form. We hit it off immediately; his help would prove invaluable in the difficult early days of the tour. After a week, I headed north to Chicago.
    On the South Side I toured the declining blues clubs, most of whose customers were old and poor. The area was poised between its golden age, when it vied with Harlem for the role of capital of Black America, and the dismal last decades of the twentieth century when it spiralled down into violence and destitution. I introduced myself to Muddy Waters at Pepper’s Lounge, his home base. His band included stars in their own right, such as James Cotton on harmonica and pianist Otis Spann. During the late set, a young white guitarist named Mike Bloomfield sat in and played some enthusiastic lead.
    Leaving Pepper’s around 2.30, I stopped to give some change to a panhandler and found myself being pushed at knife-point towards a dark doorway. My friends shouted and people came out of a fried chicken joint to chase the muggers away. A crowd gathered round to make sure I was OK and someone bought us drinks in a nearby bar. Like a down-at-the-heel unofficial chamber of commerce, they wanted our assurance that the experience wouldn’t put us off coming back. The next day I headed east to pack for the start of my European adventures.

Chapter 4
    I PASSED THROUGH CAMBRIDGE a few days before my departure. As I was standing by a phone booth in Harvard Square with a handful of nickels in search of a bed for the night, a girl I had always fancied (a concise British term that would not enter my vocabulary until I got to London) walked by. She told me she had a new boyfriend-free apartment and I was welcome to stay. Another English verb I would soon learn was ‘to pull’: I thought I had just pulled Mary Vangi.
    She gave me a key and a kiss and put my bag in her bedroom as I set off to hear legendary blues master Skip James at a Boston coffee house while she got ready for her waitressing job. Later, she and a friend planned to crash a post-Joan-Baez-concert party; she’d be home about one. After an exhilarating evening of music, I strode eagerly up her front steps at the appointed hour to find the sofa made up in the front room, my bag beside it and a note reading: ‘Dear Joe. Sorry, change of plans. Will explain in morning. Sleep well. Love, Mary.’
    When I woke to the smells of coffee and bacon, I threw on my clothes and peered into the kitchen. Mary was standing by the stove in a dressing gown looking extremely pleased with herself. The bathroom door was closed and I