Catfish Keith: The Blues Don’t Float

Searching for the roots of it all, I finally discovered it in the cutout bin at the record store. Son House. Father of the Folk Blues. His “Death Letter” both riveted me and left me disturbed. The doomed conviction and drunken tone of his propulsive, crying slide just kept calling me back. As a teenager in the mid ’70s, I couldn’t have cared less about rock and heavy metal—all the music my friends listened to. I wanted to hear Blind Willie Johnson, Charlie Patton, Fred MacDowell, Bukka White, Barbecue Bob, Little Hat Jones, Tampa Red, Sol Hoopii, Lonnie Johnson, Bo Carter. When I listened to that music, whole new worlds opened up for me. When I was eighteen, I mail-ordered a shiny, chrome-plated 1930 National Style O. Angels sang when I opened the case the first time. After leaving high school in late 1979, I started to travel around and played some music—in general, just seeing what was out there. For a time, I lived in my rusty Oldsmobile, traveling through the east, south, mid-west, the old west, and California. With my National guitar, I was a happy man. In January of 1982 I bid farewell to my folks in Iowa; I’d bought a one-way ticket to the Virgin Islands. It was thirty below zero at home with two feet of snow on the ground. My thoughts turned to a fellow I had met at a party in Cedar Rapids who told me, “If you ever come to the Islands, look me up. You could crew on my sailboat.” Seemed like a good enough excuse for me to bolt! My Dad, wrapped up like Nanook, took me, shivering, to the Greyhound station with my duffel bag and my National. Stepping off the plane in St. Thomas, I was immediately struck by the bright sun, heat, humidity, and fresh salty Caribbean air. I had on my keep-from-freezing-to-death long john union suit and sweaters, which with great celebratory flair, I chucked wholesale into an airport garbage can. “I’m never going back there again,” I thought to myself. Before me was the kind of paradise I’d dreamed of but never experienced. Shunning taxis, I ran with my gear right to the water’s edge and jumped into clear blue water warm as a bath. Following my inaugural dip in the sea, I proceeded across the Island into Charlotte Amalie, where I jammed with a dreadlocked sax player from New York for awhile. I then learned that to find my captain, I’d have to taxi to Red Hook, then ferry to Tortolla (in the British Virgin Islands) and look for him in the little bay where the ferry docks. It was dusk by the time I arrived; the ferry and all the people were gone. The captain’s name was Curly, so I called out a few times to a handful of boats, “Currr-leeee! Cuuurrr-leeee!” My voice echoed across the bay without reply. It was getting darker, and I was starting to get a little nervous. Again, “Currr-leeeeeee” and finally, “Yeah, waddaya want?” Well, Curly was terrific, a kind of merry pirate, and true to his word, he took me on as “crew.” I hoisted the mast mizzen, scraped barnacles off the hull, caught big tunas and lobsters, played his Gibson, and slept in the fo’csle—the little forward area of the boat below deck. Since I was only nineteen, sleeping at a right angle was no problem; I was made of rubber then. I was overjoyed with my new island life, sailing around… man, what a life! One calm moonlit night Curly and I took the dingy ashore to a little restaurant & bar off the Island of Tortolla. I brought my National along and played a few tunes. Curly and I had a few rum drinks, which were followed by a few more rum drinks. As the evening turned to morning, the staff bid us farewell (kicked us out), and, aglow with good cheer, we got back into the dingy and shoved off. When we got to the edge of the yacht, Curly stood up, but suddenly stumbled sideways. “Oh, no!” he yelled. “The dingy’s sinking!” Down went the dingy, down went the captain, down went the National, and down went me. Curly was flailing in the water, trying to save the outboard motor, swallowing gasoline and seawater in the process. In the bright moonlight, I could see my National, floating along in its wooden case, just out of reach. Then moments later, it keeled up like the Titanic and plummeted to the bottom. Instinctively, in a sort of drunken adrenaline rush, I dove down, grabbed the guitar, and heaved it up onto the deck of the boat. Curly, helplessly watching the dingy and outboard go down, was aboard too now. After purging himself of gasoline, seawater, and rum, he was okay. The next morning, saltier but wiser, we assessed the previous night’s damage. The dingy is found, right under the sailboat; the engine needs some work. Guitar and case are hosed down with fresh water; it still has good tone. We both require pain relief. Entropy and oxidation ensue. My adventures on Curly’s boat continued for another few weeks. When a group of Curly’s friends came to charter the boat there wasn’t room for me anymore. I said my farewells and moved onto the island of St. John, where I happily lived in a tent on the beach. I did gigs all over the island with my trusty, rusting steel-body until springtime came and the island got real quiet. With my pocket full of gig money, I bought another one-way ticket back home to Iowa, brown as a nut, and sun-bleached hair down to my shoulders. That old National guitar, though rustier over the years, has served me well. I continued to use it on thousands of gigs and on my first five albums. I put it in semi-retirement in 1998; the guitar just kept rusting until it came to resemble the blown-out bumper of my 1973 Oldsmobile. It was one of the first Style O guitars made in 1930, with a body made of steel, not brass, as they later were. When I’d give it a good strum, little chips of rusty dust would crumble onto the floor. It’s now in the hands of Don Young and McGregor Gaines at National Reso-Phonic Guitars, being lovingly restored to its original, salt-free condition. Looking back, I miss those cocky, carefree days. But a fellow eventually learns about danger, heartbreak, and gravity (the one law you really can’t break). Hopefully, you live through it, ebullience intact. All those things I was so damn sure about then don’t seem so clear to me now. Dreams can get bent when confronted with years of hard-bitten reality. But the songs and the music go deeper. What you have left has more meaning. Velocity gives way to space and authority. You ain’t the kid no more. It’s time to pass it on, and listen to that Son House sound inside, that for good reason, still scares me to death.
Visit Catfish Keith at www.catfishkeith.com