by James Walker for Blueswax
May 2003
Remember the song by Dan Fogelberg titled "Leader of the Band?" Some of the lyrics went like this:
He gave to me a gift I know I never can repay...
The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old,
But his blood runs thru my instrument and his song is in my soul,
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate this man,
I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band.
Charles Goering, better known in the blues world as Barrelhouse Chuck, is a living embodiment of those lyrics. One of the few Chicago blues pianists to have studied under Sunnyland Slim, Pinetop Perkins, Lafayette Leake and Little Brother Montgomery, Barrelhouse Chuck draws on this distinguished lineage to create a blues, boogie-woogie and barrelhouse piano style that places him at the forefront of this celebrated tradition.
Born in Ohio (Columbus, OH - July 10, 1958) where he first learned to play the drums at the age of 5, Barrelhouse Chuck later switched to the piano and was living in Florida when he heard his first Muddy Waters record with Otis Spann on piano. This was a major turning point in Chuck's life.
Realizing he needed to immerse himself in blues piano, he decided to go directly to the source. In 1979 he drove 24 hours straight from Florida to Chicago and went directly to B.L.U.E.S on Halsted specifically to see Sunnyland Slim.
Chuck spent the next 10 years studying with the living legend, who Chuck calls "the great-granddaddy of all the blues piano players." Through Sunnyland he met all the great blues musicians in Chicago, and often ended up playing with and hanging out with them. People like Pinetop Perkins, Lafayette Leake and Little Brother Montgomery took Chuck under their wings, invited him into their homes and made him feel a part of their families.
During the past two decades Chuck has played all over the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America and tours Europe regularly. He has also appeared more than a half dozen times at the Chicago Blues Festival. He is currently performing dates with Nick Moss and the Fliptops.
There are only a few of those great piano players left. Even though most of his teachers have passed on, Barrelhouse Chuck has become one of the bearers of the flame, and keeps both their spirit and music alive, passing it along where ever he plays. Visit him at www.barrelhousechuck.com
James Walker for Blueswax: Man, this Salute to Sunnyland Slim, that's a great CD!
BC: Thank you very much.
BW: I just started listening to it with more attention the other day-I played it and I thought, dang, that's good blues! Played it again-I thought, damn, that's good blues! Third time around,
I thought, hot damn, there's some great stuff on here!
BC: You know, you're one of the people that get what that's about. It's a certain era of Chicago blues with the players on there from the Muddy Waters Band and the Howlin' Wolf Band and you know, S.P. [Leary] from Wolf and Muddy, and then Calvin [Jones] and Willie Smith, and Sam Lay, and there was just a great effort to recapture something that was left to me from Sunnyland [Slim]. You know, he really gave me an incredible gift of lots of years, the almost 20 years that I spent with him. I really wanted to do a couple of his songs, "Depression blues", and then at the same time try to get that Chess sound that I so much fell in love with.
BW: Tell me about another CD you have personally released, the "25 Years" CD.
BC: It is titled, 25 Years of Chicago Blues Piano. It is an incredible anthology; every song is from a different session. You've got Willie Kent, Bonnie Lee, Hip Linkchain, Smokey Smothers, S.P. Leary, Calvin Jones, Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, Hash Brown, Carl Weathersby, Ted Harvey, Sam Lay, Billy Flynn, Johnny B. Moore, R.J Mischo, and many more. What it does is give you a little bit of information about all the people I have recorded with. What's cool is that all these guys are big names in Chicago Blues, and I'm the glue. I'm the guy pulling it all together playing the piano through all the sessions. These are all guys that were in my life. It lets you know where I have been and how long I have dedicated my life into this music.
BW: How does that influence your music?
BC: A younger musician of today couldn't possibly have that depth. I learned from the originals. I learned on the bandstand. What a difference to play with these guys and have them show you stuff. I could ask, 'Hey [Sunnyland] Slim, how did you do that?' And then they would show you. They would break it down. That is a big difference from some keyboard player sitting in some other country with a piece of plastic that can read music and give it his interpretation of what he thought. The old guys would be first to tell you when you were wrong, too, 'Don't do that - that ain't right!' That doesn't make me better, but it does give me a depth of feeling and passion when I play.
BW: That is an incredible background and experience you have that you will always treasure!
BC: You know, it's all such a personal thing with me, these songs, James -I remember these guys doing these songs, and over the years, I took care of these guys. As they got older and sicker, I was there, and I started losing them one by one-S.P. Leary, and Little Brother Montgomery, and Sunnyland Slim, and (Big) Smokey Smothers, and I was fortunate to be able to be with them. I had the keys to Little brother's house. I took care of him and took him to the hospital. The day before he died, I held his hand. He told me, 'I'll never get out of here alive.' He died at 6:30 AM the next day. When you get close to these people, you follow their career and their music, and they teach you and you take care of them all the way to the graveyard and then you travel... What I am trying to say is that this music is so personal that when I do a song that was theirs, it has so much feeling. It is something that you just can't get off a piece of vinyl.
My music I got from the people who made the records, the masters. I really wanted to get to know these guys, and I really did because they were so accessible. If you showed an interest and you were sincere, they could pick up on that. I loved their music and I went out and bought all their records. They were so happy. So, when I sing a Leroy Carr song or a Little Brother song, those songs are really close to me in my heart. It really hurts forever [that they are all gone] when you hear those guys sing on their records because I knew them, I know their voice, I can see them. It is an emotion inside that I can only tell you how deep it is - the feeling and how I will forever miss all those guys. How nice they were and what gentlemen they were to treat somebody like me as well as they did.
BW: The accessibility of blues musicians-It's one of the two things I think I like about the blues the most-the fact that you can talk to musicians, and usually they're happy to talk to you, with the rare exception.
BC: Exactly. They really are.
BW: The other thing I think I really enjoy is the biracial camaraderie that seems to go with the music. The racial chasm is as broad as it's ever been, I suppose, and music seems to transcend that. In the band members themselves, and the audience, you get that harmony that you just don't see in other aspects of life.
BC: Especially the old guys. They were the nicest, even though they went through the Jim Crow and 'sitting in the back of the bus' era. Unfortunately, they were the ones that had such a hard time being treated the way they did. But they were the nicest-they never really ever made you feel like 'You did me wrong'-you could see how great they were. They were the butter. I'm the margarine.
BW: Where do you consider your career to be at the moment? Do you think right now is the best it's ever been?
BC: You know what my dream is, James? I want to teach every night I play. I want people to know who Leroy Carr was and Sunnyland Slim and Little Brother. These are the great guys that I knew and I buried. That, to me, is the reward, not to have someone remember me, but to remember where I got it from. That makes me feel good. I'm giving back, I'm remembering, and that's why I write songs like "Salute to Sunnyland" and "Farewell to S.P. Leary". For Leroy Carr, I wrote "Carr's Hop." I'm constantly writing songs for people I knew that are no longer with us. It's a nice feeling. It would be nice to make $300-$400 a night and get enough nights' work. Blues musicians-we don't look at it in the aspect of like, "millionaire"!
BW: What about recording your music?
BC: Well, I think I'm very, very fortunate to have Sirens Records. Sirens has put out these records for me. It's an independent blues piano label, and I'm very, very happy. To answer
your question, in the last two years, I've had 8 Hands on 88 Keys and then I had a solo CD, Prescription for the Blues (2002). The Sirens label has been very nice and a great help, because people who seek blues piano can find it on this label. That in itself was nice, along with my other CD's. I've recorded on about 16 different labels over the years.
BW: Do you prefer being a band's leader?
BC: I've done that, but I am a band player-I'm from the school of : I like to play on top of everybody. I like to get in and get out. I like to do a solo and then pass it to somebody else. This is kind of the structure Muddy Waters' band did. I love slow blues, the sadder the better, and it takes forever. The guitars and the harmonica and the volume are always the ones people like. I've never been ruined by playing other kinds of music! Chicago blues is where I'm at.
BW: You have been playing some dates with another Chicago Blues fan, Nick Moss.
BC: I'm glad to be playing with Nick Moss and back on the road again. I'm on Nick Moss's new CD out in May, Count Your Blessings. I am all over that album playing piano and my Farfisa. All the old guys would play a Farfisa, and I enjoy it.
BW: Tell me more about a Farfisa.
BC: It is an organ from Italy. I am the only guy in the blues playing one. Everybody likes their Hammond, and God bless them all, but the Farfisa, to me - first of all it is more portable - it's got a real nasty, greasy, dirty tone. It is not jazzy.
BW: Where have I heard of it.
BC: Question Mark and the Mysterians played one on "96 Tears." I loved that Michigan band.
BW: What is your take on contemporary blues?
BC: I don't like the new stuff I hear-It's gotten so rocked up. I'm a purist-I like the Elmore James and the Eddie Taylors and the Muddy Waters and the Howlin' Wolfs and the Little Walters. The stuff today is just so quickly produced and recorded. Put it out and get it
out there-the time hasn't been taken. It is not like Chess recording studio in the old days -'this is take #75, motherfucker!' I like the blues, 'cause it tells a story of where you are and where you've been. I think country blues is even deeper.
On Big Walter Horton:
BW: I have heard you mention what an enigma Big Walter Horton (1917 - 1981) was.
BC: There were times when a lot of the old guys would all be at the same club. None of them would even think of getting up to play when Walter Horton was on stage! They wouldn't even look at Walter! Walter just had this stare in his eyes.
I used to follow him around. He pulled a knife on me one time, but he was a lot of fun really. My friend Little Joe Berson, who was an incredible harmonica player and the reason I came to Chicago, was Walter's protégé. I was Sunnyland Slim's protégé; he called me his son and I went everywhere with him. I would walk into B.L.U.E.S on Halstead [Street] with Little Joe, and Little Joe could sound just like Walter Horton. Walter for some reason liked me and would purposely ignore Little Joe. Walter had a hundred foot cord for his harmonica. He would see me walk in. He would walk past everyone in the room and come up to me and put his eyeball about half an inch from my eyeball with the harmonica in his mouth and hit a screaming note! Usually he hadn't shaved, and he sometimes would actually rub the side of his chin on my chin and sing, 'I don't feel good tonight!' Then he would sit down next to me, cross his legs, and play "La Cucaracha, I Been Around The World, That Ain't It, or Walter's Boogie."
In 1979 I was staying at the Tokyo Hotel [in Chicago on State St.] down the hall from Little Joe' room. It was $24 a night. Fannie Mae, Walter's wife, had gotten into it with him and put a hurt on Walter. He came up to Little Joe's room all scuffed up and needed a place to stay so Joe put him up. I would let him borrow my rig [PA].
One time Water told us that he wanted us to know where we could find him if we needed to. He said, 'Now, don't ever tell Fannie Mae this!' He took us down to 63rd Street to a little down-and-out bar that had a place in the back that was his hang out.
When Walter Horton played - it was the most incredible feeling - like being in an electric chair. He made the top of my head go numb! The feeling, his phrasing, his tone, and his presence was just undeniable. The look that he had - that fire in his eyes - it was like "Don't mess with me; if you do, I'll cut you!" He pulled his knife about two inches from my throat one night just to let me know. I was messing with him just a little bit, and he, like 'eeeaahh'! I was like, "Whoa - ok, Walter!"
Whenever you would ask him about other harmonica players like Little Walter [Jacobs] or Sonny Boy Williamson II, he would say, 'I taught'em all!' and he did.
On Muddy Waters:
BW: Now you also followed Muddy Waters on tour in the South, right?
BC: I was just a kid (teenager) - I lived in Gainesville, Florida. When Muddy toured down South, we would follow him around - Lakeland, Orlando, Tampa, Gainesville. We had no money so we would sleep in the van. We would wait for the van to pull up with Illinois plates. We would go, 'Hey Pinetop [Perkins], hey Willie ["Big Eyes" Smith].' They would let us go in the stage entrance with them. Here I was backstage with Muddy Waters! Then the band would go onstage for a few numbers and it would just be me and Muddy backstage. That happened again and again.
After the show, Muddy would say, 'Let's go get something to eat.' So, I'd be sitting in a restaurant booth with Pinetop and Muddy in some little dive at 3:30 in the morning! You talk about dying and going to heaven, that was it!
Years later I got to open up for Muddy in Seattle. I had a really good band called Blue Lights. When we closed our set and came upstairs, Muddy said, 'Who was playing that pianta? You play my shit, GOOD! I like you doing my songs.' He didn't know it was me. That meant a lot to me - I was 19 years old, a kid! When he realized who I was, he said, 'Whacha doin' - you followin' me, boy?' He smiled and gave me a little button. I got pictures with him - it was a great time in my life!
And what a great band he had at that time - Guitar Jr. [Johnson], Pinetop Perkins, Calvin Jones, Jerry Portnoy, and Willie Smith. They were so good - they sang their own songs taking turns - it was amazing that Muddy Waters, when he came out, could take it up to the next level.
On Little Brother Montgomery
BW: Earlier you talked about your time with Little Brother Montgomery. When Buddy Guy had his first big hit for Chess in 1960, "First Time I Met The Blues," that was Little Brother's song and piano in the studio. What was his story?
BC: Little Brother Montgomery's dad owned a barrelhouse in 1910 in Kentwood, Louisiana, and he used to crawl out his bedroom window at 3:00 in the morning and go about two blocks. He would crawl underneath his daddy's barrelhouse, on the ground. He would crawl right underneath the piano. And, there playing the piano three feet above his head, was Jelly Roll Morton! Later he would have piano "wars" with Jelly Roll and Fats Waller. Louis Armstrong lived with him at one point. I have his autograph and pictures. I have a letter that Little Brother gave me that Louis had written to him and an autographed picture that Louis had given to him.
There wasn't anything that Little Brother couldn't play - I never stumped him. He was a 1920s era jazz musician that could play stride - anything. He could play "Sinking of the Titanic, I Wish I Had a Talking Picture of You." He could play Earl Gardner, James P. Johnson - any composer. He once told Eubie Blake, 'Eubie, that's wrong! That ain't right!' Eubie asked, 'What do you mean Little buddy?'
'That chord is wrong' in "Memories Of You" [Blake's 1920s classic].
Little Brother played it his way and Eubie said, 'You know what Little buddy, you're right!'
So, I got to hang out with a guy like that, on that level - who lived with Louis Armstrong and had piano wars with Fats Waller and had listened to Jelly Roll Morton! And he knew WC Handy! Little Brother was with John Lee Williamson [Sonny Boy I] when he got murdered in 1948.
BW: So, all that got handed down to you - incredible.
BC: I got to hang out with so many of the piano and blues greats. Sunnyland Slim was like the godfather - he was! When I play, it can go over everyone's head. In twelve bars, I will play a little [Otis] Spann, a little Maceo [Merriweather], a little Memphis Slim, a little Pinetop [Perkins], a little Leroy Carr, a little Sunnyland [Slim], and a little Barrelhouse Chuck - all in twelve bars! It just comes out simply as blues piano. All I play is 8 and 12 bar blues - Chicago Blues. I don't play anything else!
BW: What kind of memorabilia did you collect from those years?
BC: I could open a Blues museum - I have all this incredible stuff. I have Big Walter's harmonicas, his microphones - The Golden Static and The Golden Voice. I got all of Little Brother's stuff he gave me - his wallet, his chairs, his PA, his turntable. I got Sunnyland Slim's piano and on and on. I've got a thousand autographs and pictures, posters, hats and everything else you can imagine. I am a collector.
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