[Harp-L] The Life and Death of Paul Butterfield (Was To Tell the Truth)

[Aeskow@xxxxxxx]

The image of the young Butterfield--no  doubt
<stoned,  hung-over, and
<packing a .22 in a calf-holster or tucked under his  
<belt--staring across a
<game-show set at the likes of George  Gobel

Someone responded:
--Did ya'all know his dad was a lawyer?

I did, in fact, know that his father was a  lawyer.  Also that he was offered 
collegiate scholarships in track and  field, was an accomplished flute player 
in high school, and knew more  entertaining bar-games with coins and 
matchsticks than anyone I've ever  met.  Apparently--if you ever talk to Nick 
Gravenites, or read the superb  4-part series that Tom Ellis wrote for Blues Access, 
or had a chance to spend  time with the man himself--the lawyer thing slipped 
his mind occasionally.   In his youth, especially, he was so indiscreet with 
his backstage gunplay that  Sam Lay--who'd already lost a testicle when his own 
quick-draw exhibition went  slightly wrong--and Jerome Arnold refused to go 
onstage with him when he was  packing.
 
I guess the point of all this--which is of  course unrelated to what one's 
father does for a living (do we need to point out  how badly the children of the 
powerful can behave?)--is that, like many of us,  Paul came up believing that 
to be a genuine bluesman you had to be  hardcore.  Cheap .38s, 
smack-and-coke, stealing women from pimps, willing  to stare Mortality down with a sneer.  
The romance of the street.   Some of us are lucky enough to live it for a 
while, then find some way out  (having children did it for me; some of my friends 
needed help from penal  institutions.)  Sadly, of course, Paul never completely 
escaped it, and for  him, The Street dead-ended in a lonely motel-room, with 
his cocaine and heroin  and valium and reefer and vodka surrounding him, 
instead of some fellow  musicians.  I still mourn his loss.  And I don't only mean 
his death  by OD--I mean the slow-motion death that consumed him in the last 
ten years of  his life.  And unfortunately, when you've made that particular 
bargain with  the devil, no lawyer on earth can find a loophole in it.  
 
I don't know if there are still young men  attracted to the blues because of 
its aura of danger.  But if there are any  of you out there, remember that you 
can wield your harp like a .38, get high on  your breath control, and be 
wildly sexual by wailing on one single  note--you don't have to buy the myth of 
The White Boy As Ghetto Badass.   'Cause if you follow that route much past your 
20s, you're likely to end up in  that same bleak motel room--completely 
alone, dead as vaudeville, and no Daddy  to come and make everything OK.
 
Peace and Respect,
Johnny T